Chapter 313: Erosion Beneath Godlike Domain!

The Turtles didn’t pause. They had expected resistance. They had measured him. They had decided.

The shield bearer stepped in next, its slab of reinforced shell less a shield and more a mobile fortress. The defense amplification Domain flared around it, turning mass into inevitability. It crashed into Bruce’s torso with a sound like a mountain colliding with another mountain. He launched backward, struck the curved sealing barrier, and rebounded forward as though space itself had decided he belonged within their reach.

The staff descended. It struck across his spine.

The sound was thick. Dense. Final.

His legs buckled. For an instant, sensation vanished below his waist.

Heal.

Golden veins pulsed beneath his skin, radiating from his sternum like branching lightning. Numbness retreated. Vertebrae reformed. Ligaments stitched. He forced himself upright before the darkness creeping at the edge of his vision could claim ground.

And then Vitality Sovereign spread.

Not explosively. Not arrogantly, but subtle. Like a tide creeping into the smallest cracks of a shoreline.

Before, the Core’s protection had wrapped these beings in near inviolable law. His Authority had pressed and been denied, suppressed, rejected outright. They had stood beyond erosion.

But here, inside their own enclosed battlefield, something was different.

Their Domain sealed the space. It amplified their strength, thickened their defense, crushed his movement. But it also separated them from the Core’s direct influence. The same walls that trapped Bruce also isolated the Turtles from their patron. Inside this sealed god space, the Core’s absolute protection couldn’t reach them with the same potency.

The protection wasn’t gone. But it was thin. Attenuated. A fraction of what it had been on the open battlefield.

Bruce felt it.

Faint resistance where before there had been immunity. Vitality Sovereign brushed against their life force like fingers testing tempered steel. Dense. Ancient. Layered in Bastion Pulse and Domain reinforcement. He didn’t attempt to tear.

He pressed. Slowly. Measured.

The first hammer rose again, faint crimson energy coiling along its head as stored force condensed. It descended with renewed brutality. Bruce braced. The blow folded his abdomen inward and drove him to one knee, ice fracturing outward in compressed rings.

Heal roared through him again. Golden light flared brighter this time, illuminating the undersides of the shell domes in flickering brilliance.

And beneath that Vitality Sovereign pressed harder.

For less than a fraction of a heartbeat, one Turtle’s vitality wavered.

Not visibly. Not dramatically. But undeniably.

Bruce felt it. A flicker, the faintest tremor in a foundation that should have been absolute.

His teeth clenched. Blood filled his mouth.

“Not yet.”

The staff came from his blind side and cracked into his ribs. Bone fractured inward with a wet snap. Before he could reorient, the shield slammed into his jaw, snapping his head sideways. Blood sprayed across the ice.

Heal.

The distortion Domain thickened instantly when he tried to pivot, dragging at his muscles and stealing torque from his movement. The sealing curvature nudged him back toward center as though the battlefield itself rejected escape.

The Turtles were no longer merely executing. Their movements carried weight beyond function, there was exhilaration in the synchronized rise and fall of their weapons. Their roars rose as one, territorial and exultant, the sound of guardians who believed absolutely in their own supremacy.

Alien. Intruder. Destroy.

The hammer smashed into his shoulder. The staff cracked across his thigh. The shield drove into his sternum. He hit the ground hard enough to shatter the ice beneath him into powder.

Heal.

Vitality Sovereign seeped deeper.

It wasn’t a violent drain. There was no spectacle. No visible siphon of light. It was erosion. Constant. Persistent. Like water wearing down stone over centuries, imperceptible in any single moment, inevitable across enough of them.

Inside their Domain, the Turtles felt only amplification. Their armor reinforced. Their strikes magnified. Their law absolute. Why would they sense something as small as a single grain of vitality shaved away beneath the thunder of their own godhood?

They struck harder.

The hammer lifted high and descended with increased force, red glow intensifying. The blow cratered the ground and buried Bruce halfway into compressed ice. For a heartbeat he vanished beneath fractured white.

Heal erupted again.

His spine reformed. His lungs reinflated with a ragged inhale. His vision sharpened through blood.

Vitality Sovereign pressed.

This time he felt a thread. A faint siphon. Tiny. But real.

The Turtle’s aura dimmed for a breath so small no one but Bruce could have detected it.

He smiled faintly through cracked lips.

“Soon.”

The shield bearer lunged again. Bruce caught the rim instinctively, but the distortion Domain thickened around his arms, stealing leverage. The Turtle overpowered him easily, driving the shield into his chest. Ribs shattered inward in a concussive collapse.

Heal.

The staff thrust downward like a spear of judgment and pierced through his side, emerging from his back in a violent burst of crimson.

For a moment, he was pinned, impaled and motionless, the Turtle’s golden eyes staring down at him with the cold satisfaction of absolute dominion.

He tore himself free before the weapon could anchor him. Flesh closed around the exit wound in golden light, the hole sealing itself as though it had never existed.

All the while Vitality Sovereign did not stop.

It spread like unseen fog inside the Domain, brushing each Turtle’s life force with sovereign claim. Testing. Pressing. Accumulating microscopic victories that no individual blow could detect.

Hammer. Staff. Shield. Again. Hammer. Staff. Shield.

Each sequence landed with terrifying precision. Hammer to drive him low. Shield to restrict angle. Staff to exploit posture. Their coordination tightened as they stepped closer, compressing space between them, turning the center of their Domain into a crucible where force recycled endlessly and the target had nowhere to bleed the damage.

They could feel him adapting. They responded.

More force.

The hammer glowed brighter with Bastion Pulse. The staff hummed with compressed kinetic tension. The will Domain pressed harder against his mind, whispering inevitability.

Surrender. Collapse. Yield.

Mental strain surged through him. Draining SSS tier beings wasn’t comparable to eroding S Rank beasts. Their existence was vast, dense, resistant, like layered continents of vitality stacked atop one another.

But Bruce was not ordinary.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep