Novel Full Chapter 340: Something Stupid [II]
Chapter 340: Something Stupid [II]
The displaced air from that cyclone nearly knocked me flat. In hindsight, it was the perfect chance to retreat and collect myself.
But I wasn’t about to let an opening like this slip through my fingers!
So instead of doing the sensible thing, I recklessly chose to capitalize on the momentum and poured a massive flood of Essence into the ground. The entire valley groaned and shook as the stone hands I had summoned earlier crumpled away.
Right after, the earth itself ruptured open into a chasm directly beneath the God’s feet… then surged upward, molding into the form of a large, serpentine dragon of compacted rock and jagged shale.
The dragon’s massive maw hinged wide before closing with a sound more deafening than thunder, not only swallowing the deity whole but crushing him.
The dragon then carried him at least fifty feet into the air, its stone fangs grinding fruitlessly against his divine hide.
Because of course, merely this much wasn’t going to be enough to put down a god — even a fallen one.
As expected, a blinding flash of light erupted from within the dragon’s throat a second later before its entire body disintegrated from the inside out in a rain of stone fragments.
I grinned, wiping sweat from my eyes.
An attack like that would’ve, if not killed, then at least slowed down most Greater Spirit Beasts.
To give you a reference, I doubt the Solbraith Cyclops from back at the Night Sanctuary’s massacre would’ve survived it. Sure, it would’ve resurrected, but it wouldn’t have been able to tank the blow.
Yet here, it seemed the God Who Eats Is was only amping up.
I scoffed as my stone dragon finished shattering into a thousand pieces.
The God hung suspended in mid-air for a fraction of a second.
I noted he had switched the chained sickle in his center-left hand for a vajra — a short, symmetrical metal scepter that had two ribbed spherical heads embedded with azure jewels.
Unluckily for him, he didn’t get a chance to use his shiny new toy. Because a massive column in the shape of a gigantic baseball bat was already closing in on him with a full, lethal swing.
And it connected with all the weight of a skyscraper falling at the speed of a freight train.
THWAAAM—!!
The sound was glorious. The bat struck the God and thrashed him across the horizon like a star athlete hitting a record-breaking home run.
The deity became a streak of gray, tumbling through the air until he… he…?
CRACK—!!!
…Until he slammed into an invisible veil that shattered like a mirror. And I’m not being poetic or metaphorical here.
The air— no, the very reality itself quite literally cracked in the distance as its broken fragments fell away, dissolving into nothingness.
I slumped slightly, leaning on my axe, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Right in front of me, the view had changed. I could now see the end of this previously endless valley.
Not very far away from where I was standing, the grand canyon opened up to a vast shore that was as sandy as it was desolate.
Beyond its coastline was a sea of shimmering silver water that sat still and undisturbed, like a desert of liquid mercury.
Unending streams of crimson light bled from the red moon in the fractured sky — the same red moon that had haunted us throughout our journey — and fell somewhere past the boundless skyline, pouring over the surface of the silver sea.
It was a beautiful scene… beautiful in the eerie way a graveyard is beautiful.
But I had to tear my attention away and bring it back to the shore, because in the center of that friable expanse, the God Who Eats Is lay embedded in a crater of churned, white sand. He wasn’t moving, his gray form a stark contrast to the pale tide line.
For a second, I entertained the idea that I had done it. I had defeated a god.
After a second, my expectations were destroyed. The God began to stir and stand back up like he hadn’t just eaten an attack that would’ve demolished a small city block.
That bastard had been using his Ring Of Illusion to hide the end of this valley from our sight, breaking us not only physically but also mentally.
“Fine then,” I breathed heavily.
I wasn’t feeling good. I had never used so much Essence so fast. My lower body felt tight and heavy, while my upper muscles ached in a dozen different spots. Every inhale was accompanied by a strange sense of tiredness, and each exhale felt like it was taking a little more of my life with it.
I had to finish this quickly.
The giant stone golem that had materialized beside me brought its equally ginormous baseball bat up to start crushing the crude club into a dense sphere.
I flooded even more Essence out of my soul, fueling it to excite the rock ball’s matter until the sphere glowed with a red-hot, incandescent heat.
The air around the golem’s hand began to warp and shimmer, the intense thermal energy liquefying the outer layers of the stone into a viscous, molten slag that dripped onto the valley floor like tears of lava.
I didn’t wait for the God to fully regain his footing before commanding the golem to throw.
The construct’s massive shoulder joint groaned, gears of Essence-reinforced stone grinding together before it unleashed the projectile with a whip-like crack.
The molten meteor streaked toward the God Who Eats Is as he raised his newly equipped vajra. The azure jewels embedded in it started crackling with sparks of electricity.
A low-frequency vibration hummed in the air before a majestic lightning bolt shot from the scepter’s tip and struck the incoming meteor head-on.
Only chaos ensued as the collision triggered a messy explosion, causing the incandescent rock to splinter into a myriad of magma fragments that rained down in a burning deluge.
The white sand below was pelted by the sudden downpour of magma rain, which turned into cooling obsidian on contact.
As a result, the sand hissed and fused, instantly turning to glass under the intense thermal shock.
The God then swapped the chained sickle in his lower-left hand for a gleaming, three-pronged trident.
Then he moved at such supernatural speed that it left his blurry afterimages everywhere, weaving through the torrential falling lava in a display of agility that shouldn’t have been possible for his hulking frame.
He retreated toward the silver sea, then started walking over its watery surface before thrusting the trident into the mercury-like depths.
As if on cue, the still water obeyed. Cold whips of silver liquid gushed upward, orbiting the deity in a protective cocoon that vaporized any stray droplets of molten stone.
Not that I thought it mattered. I doubted a few splashes of lava would have truly scarred his divine hide anyway.
Clicking my tongue in frustration, I rushed forward.
As I passed by it, the gigantic golem reached its limit. Its joints finally gave out, and it started collapsing into a heap of debris. I didn’t spare it a glance.
Before the rock slide could consume me, I pushed my body into a full sprint, reaching the glassy, sandy shore in a heartbeat.
Common sense screamed at me to stay on solid ground. My control over water wouldn’t be as refined as earth.
Not to mention, the God seemed to be able to manipulate three elements — lightning with his vajra, water with his trident, and wind with his crooked staff.
But he did not have any control over land. The better strategy would be to stay here and fight him where, if I held no advantage, I at least held no disadvantages.
So naturally… I ignored the better strategy and plunged onto the silver sea.
The moment my bare skin touched the surface, the liquid mercury-like glimmering water didn’t swallow me.
Instead, a shelf of jagged and translucent ice bloomed beneath my feet, spreading for meters with every step I took, essentially freezing the water to give me a solid platform in the center of the God’s domain.
Then I began conjuring ice spikes from the frozen sea and started launching them like ballista bolts toward my enemy. I also started hurling fire arrows with the stone hand on my back.
The God countered, both his crooked staff and metallic trident dancing as he lashed out with whips of heavy silver water and wind blades, harmlessly decimating anything I could throw at him.
We continued trading blows, several of which sent thunderous shockwaves rolling across the silver expanse.
More than once, the God tried aiming at me with the vajra, but I kept moving in the most unpredictable patterns I could manage.
…Until finally, the fallen deity slammed his trident down.
A giant wall of silver water rose between us like a towering reverse-waterfall that cut off my line of sight completely.
I skidded to a halt on my ice island, panting but already gathering the dregs of my power for a counter-move by summoning [Piercing Bolt] and [Flame Lash] Cards.
…But the God was faster.
From behind the shimmering curtain of the waterfall, a serrated disk of dark metal suddenly emerged. It spun with a high-pitched, metallic shriek, catching the crimson light of the red moon.
My eyes widened as it came at me faster than I could track. I threw myself into a desperate dive to the side, though my heart leapt into my throat as I realized, with mounting dread, that I was too slow.
Swish—
THWACK—!!
I didn’t feel the pain immediately — just a sudden lightness where my limb used to be.
I also felt cold as I watched, detached yet horrified, as my own right arm spun away, cleaved clean off at the shoulder.