Chapter 929 - 928: A Battle Against The Gaze Of The One

Simon brought the Chaos Blade down.

Black Chaos flames erupted along its edge. Crimson tribulation lightning tore through them, stretching the slash into a colossal blade that fell across the sky.

For an instant, black and red overwhelmed the violet.

SKREEEEEEEE!!!!!!

The world screeched.

Pride’s pressure spread beyond Simon. The surrounding winds resisted, then bent into his attack. Space tightened along its edge, lending the falling slash a sharpness that split the clouds far beneath it.

A violet shield appeared before the eye.

BOOOOOOM!

Flames spread across its curved surface. Lightning struck the same point in branching torrents, and the shockwave stripped another layer from the ruined land below.

"ARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

Simon roared.

All six wings drove backward. He pushed the Chaos Blade down with both hands, forcing more power through the trembling edge.

The skin across his knuckles split.

However... the shield held.

His slash broke apart, spilling black fire around the eye without touching it.

Simon saw a violet shape through the scattering flames.

An axe.

Its head was wider than a fortress, and it was already falling toward his skull.

His lower wings snapped forward.

Crimson jets burst from their vents, throwing him backward as the axe passed close enough to peel skin from his chest.

It continued downward.

Far below, the earth opened beneath a straight line of violet destruction.

Simon had barely stopped moving when spears appeared around the eye.

Dozens.

Their points turned toward him.

Then the sky was filled with streaks of violet.

He shot sideways.

Three spears burst behind him. Another crossed his path, forcing him upward, directly into the next volley.

’You’re driving me somewhere.’

His grin sharpened.

He folded one wing pair and rolled through the gap between two spearheads. His middle wings swept outward, crimson wind sharpening along their edges.

Two shafts broke.

Their explosions flung him off course.

A third spear punched through his left middle wing.

Simon snarled, seized its shaft with his free hand, and wrenched himself around it before the point could turn toward his back.

The Chaos Blade struck.

The spear burst.

Half the wing membrane disappeared.

Blackness immediately gathered around the wound. Devour seized the hostile power eating into the torn edges, and Gluttony pulled it apart.

Unholy Regeneration followed.

New flesh was still stretching across the exposed spines of his wings when Simon accelerated.

Below, Lilith watched without moving from her position. The attacks could not hurt her because of her current state, and the passing shockwaves could not move her.

Her golden eyes followed the crimson streak tearing around the colossal eyes.

He was still alive and he was still attacking.

The four seeds were not merely tolerating one another. He was making them work together.

She knew how little he understood about the seeds of sin. He was barely drawing out a fraction of the power those seeds already held.

Yet he had already achieved this against a gaze she had expected to end him.

"Blackmoon..."

An astonished smile touched her lips. She could not look away.

Then she saw what waited behind him.

Five violet spheres hung in a crescent across the sky.

Each swelled into a blazing sun.

Simon felt the heat against his wings.

The One had been steering him toward them.

He drove downward.

The suns opened along their centres.

Five pillars of fire swept after him.

Simon twisted between the first two. The third seared across his thigh. He crossed his upper wings against the fourth, covering their membranes with overlapping plates of ice.

The plates exploded into steam.

Violet flame poured around their edges.

The cube in his solar plexus flashed.

Nine white currents rearranged within its transparent depth. Under Simon’s direction, power shifted from his folded lower wings into the pair shielding his chest.

They held long enough.

He kicked away from the fire with a violent beat, then plunged into the shadow beneath a tumbling slab of stone.

Darkness flooded outward.

For an instant, his silhouette vanished inside it.

The pupil followed him anyway.

The fifth pillar tore through the shadow.

Simon emerged beneath it, his shoulder burning.

Devour and Gluttony tore the clinging power from his shoulder. Unholy Regeneration closed the flesh as soon as the interference was gone.

His skin closed before the blood could finish running down his arm.

"Hahaha!"

He flew straight back at the eye.

A violet chain cracked across his path.

Simon ducked beneath it.

Another caught his ankle.

It tightened.

Before he could cut himself free, the chain whipped him backward and hurled him toward one of the suns.

His six wings flared.

The chain pulled harder.

Simon brought the Chaos Blade down across the link nearest his foot.

Once.

Twice.

The link snapped on the third strike.

Too late to stop his flight.

The sun filled his vision.

Simon folded all six wings around himself.

Ice layered over their outer surfaces. Black Chaos flames filled the spaces between them, and crimson wind wrapped the whole defence into a spinning shell.

KRAAABOOOOOM!

He tore through the sun.

A burning figure burst out the other side, trailing strips of membrane and blood.

The cube blazed beneath his ribs.

Its currents diverted power around damaged pathways, keeping his sword arm supplied while regeneration struggled with the rest.

Simon forced his wings open.

Two responded badly.

He used the other four.

There was no time to wait for the pain to pass.

A colossal violet hand formed above him.

Light gathered into fingers and a palm large enough to hide the clouds. The fingers closed, and the knuckles turned toward him.

The fist descended.

Simon slipped sideways through a fold in space.

It grazed his trailing wings and drove him toward the earth anyway.

He caught himself above the shattered ridges.

The fist followed.

Simon thrust his left hand downward.

Earth answered.

Great slabs ripped from the ground and stacked themselves between him and the descending knuckles. Ice bound them together. Shadow filled their seams.

The fist shattered the first.

Then the second.

Simon used the third as a foothold.

He launched himself sideways as the entire barrier disintegrated, then swept the Chaos Blade across the extended wrist.

Black fire and crimson lightning carved into violet light.

The hand broke apart around him.

Its fragments detonated.

Simon folded space around himself. The blast caught his legs before he vanished, and he reappeared closer to the eye with blood running from his mouth.

He was already raising the sword.

Greed demanded more.

The other seeds answered, pushing additional power into his pathways. Pride governed their release, keeping Wrath’s violence from seizing his thoughts.

Gluttony drew demonic energy toward him through Devour.

The incoming torrent fed his wounds and the fire gathering along his blade.

His heart squeezed hard enough to hurt, but he kept feeding the blade.

"Again!"

He struck.

The world shrieked beneath Pride’s insistence. Winds rushed up from the devastation and joined his slash, carrying a black-and-crimson crescent toward the eye.

The shield caught it.

Simon attacked from above before the flames cleared.

His middle wings swept forward, releasing intersecting blades of crimson wind. His lower pair drove him around the barrier while the upper pair shed lightning into the wake of his sword.

Explosions chased him across the sky.

The violet eyelid lowered slightly.

The pupil stopped following his blade.

It followed his wings.

Violet chains erupted from behind the shield.

Simon cut through the first and rolled over the second.

The third caught a wingtip.

He tore free, leaving flesh behind.

The remaining chains spread wide instead of closing upon him.

The four remaining suns burst apart.

Their burning fragments scattered along the chains, surrounding him on every side.

Simon felt the heat return, and his smile disappeared.

The chains snapped inward, dragging the burning fragments together.

A cage of violet fire closed around him.

Simon drove his sword into the nearest seam.

Wrath surged.

The gap opened.

A narrow escape.

He threw himself through it.

The cage exploded before his last wing cleared.

BOOOOOOM!

The blast struck his back and hurled him downward.

He lost sensation below his ribs.

Devour reached into the wounds. Gluttony pulled the foreign power free, but damage was spreading faster than Unholy Regeneration could repair everything.

Simon chose his spine.

Then the wing roots.

The seam of his third eye remained closed.

Four wings caught the air.

The fifth dragged behind him.

The sixth beat once, crookedly, and slowed his fall enough for him to turn.

His feet struck the ground.

Stone erupted around his legs.

Simon slid through the rubble, carving two deep trenches before driving the Chaos Blade into the earth.

He stopped with a violent jolt.

For several breaths, he could only stand there.

Blood poured from the gaps in his flesh. His chest heaved, and his wings trembled as new tissue struggled across their ruined membranes.

Crimson lightning crawled over him.

Black fire burned along his shoulders.

His long white hair hung in bloody strands around a face still stretched into a savage grin.

He looked like something Hell had buried and failed to keep underground.

Yet his crimson eyes were clear.

Simon pulled the sword free.

Demonic energy rushed toward him again, feeding the wounds, feeding the four seeds.

Above, the violet pupils shifted.

Away from the Chaos Blade.

Toward the current flowing into his body.

A violet spark appeared inside it.