Chapter 466: The Heavens Shall Fall (VII)

Then his eyes changed.

The pale green sharpened into something colder, the embarrassment and fury consolidating into a single point of focus that was different from everything he’d shown so far.

His hands dropped to his sides.

His breathing evened out. The light authority crackling across his knuckles pulled back inward rather than flaring outward.

He was done being angry.

That was somehow worse.

“…Fine… FUCKING FINE!”

The air around him changed.

“Domain of Light.”

It expanded outward from his body in a single pulse, silent and total, the boundary establishing itself across the entire platform in under two seconds.

The divine-treated stone beneath our feet became something else, not physically different but fundamentally different, the surface now carrying the form of his authority in every particle of it.

The air inside the domain lit up, not brightly, not blindingly, just present, light sitting in the atmosphere itself rather than coming from any single source.

Everything inside it was visible.

Every angle and shadow was eliminated.

Every possible position I could occupy within the domain’s boundary, fully exposed from every direction at once.

No blind spots.

No dark corners.

Nowhere to be that his authority couldn’t see and reach and saturate with equal ease.

…He’s a God of Light?! Fucking hell… I did not expect that at all.

Dammit… his authority is the only one that actually contradicts my race, and now I’m in his domain.

This was bad… actually bad.

The Fallen God race, albeit extremely powerful, had a few drawbacks, and those were its weak points.

This race was directly connected to “darkness” and “evil”, which meant that “light” or “good” weakened his strength directly.

The light in the domain intensified slightly, pressing against my skin with a warmth that wasn’t comfortable.

Seran raised both hands.

His eyes were calm now.

“In here, there’s nowhere to go.”

He wasn’t wrong.

The domain compressed the effective distance between us, the light authority saturating every inch of available space, making repositioning cost more than it normally would.

Every movement I made inside it was visible before I finished making it; his authority was practically reading my position in real time through the light sitting in the air between us.

He threw the first strike, and it came from three directions at once

Fwoosh!

One attack, the light authority splitting mid-travel and rerouting around my initial dodge, following the repositioned target with the simple logic of illumination finding every surface in a room regardless of angle.

KOOM, FWOOP!

Two of the three branches connected, attacking my left shoulder and right hip, causing me to slide back a few meters.

“Ugh…”

That genuinely hurt.

Fwip!

He was already throwing another punch before my instincts, which were usually pretty damn on time, could react.

They had the same principle as the three from before.

Light splitting and rerouting, the domain itself acting as a targeting system, my position constantly fed back to him through the saturated air, the attacks arriving from angles that required me to be in two places simultaneously to avoid both branches.

Thump!

“Tsk…!”

This it hit me on my right rib.

I won’t be able to do anything to him at this point…. so, I planted my feet and stopped trying to dodge the split attacks entirely.

Seran paused for half a step.

I looked at him through the saturated light.

“Not dodging anymore?” he asked.

“Nowhere to go. You said so yourself.”

Something cautious entered his expression.

He threw the third strike, larger this time, the light authority converging from every direction at once rather than splitting into branches, a full compression aimed at my position from all sides simultaneously.

KROOOOOOM!

It hit.

All of it.

The force drove me straight down, both knees hitting the platform, the divine light degrading my energy at the point of contact in a way that was genuinely unpleasant and genuinely effective.

The arena crowd reacted.

Seran lowered his hands slightly.

His eyes moved across me, still on one knee, assessing.

“…Stay down,” he mocked.

“You fought well. But this is my domain. Inside here, the rank gap is real, and you can feel it. Stay down, and I’ll end the match cleanly.”

I looked at the platform surface and pressed my hand against it before then looking up at him as my lips slowly curled up.

“Can I ask you something?”

“…What?” He blinked in surprise.

“Does the domain work if I break it from the inside?”

He paused slighly, probably confused by my question.

“…Nothing breaks a domain from the inside,” he said slowly.

“Mm.”

I stood up and relaxed my joints lightly.

“Y-you… how can you still get up? I hit all of a god’s body weak points…” his eyes were filled with surprise.

A god’s body weak points, huh?

Of course, that doesn’t work on me… I practically rebuilt my own body and tempered multiple times so it didn’t have any weak points.

I spent numerous resources, yes… but it was definitely worth it.

“So?”

“Your divine energy should be—”

“Seran.”

He stopped.

“Your domain is built on light. Light needs something to illuminate. Take away what it’s illuminating, and the targeting system stops working.”

His eyes narrowed instantly.

“That’s not how—”

Fwoosh!

I rushed directly at him, crossing the domain distance in a straight line at a speed that his light authority tracking registered immediately and fed back to him exactly as intended.

He raised both hands for the intercept, domain light converging on my incoming position.

And I dropped flat, sliding across the platform surface on my side, completely beneath the convergence point, the light authority crashing together two feet above me in a collision that detonated with enough force to crack the air.

BOOOOOM!

I came up directly underneath his guard.

My open hand found his left cheek.

SLAP!

The sound echoed inside the domain in a way that the open platform hadn’t allowed for.

Seran’s head snapped right.

He stood completely still for three full seconds.

The domain flickered slighly as if reacting to his own emotions.

“You… YOU’LL REGRET SLAPPING ME AGAIN!”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

He detonated.

Everything left in his reserves, the domain amplifying his output and feeding it into one final strike, both palms driving forward with every fragment of light authority he had remaining.

CRAAAAAAAAACK!

The platform beneath his feet was cracking from the output, the domain itself burning brighter as he pulled from it.

I let both swords out.

The Heavenly Swallowing Sword met his palms first.

The light authority hit the blade and choked, the divine component of it sputtering against the edge, the massive output he’d committed suddenly losing its divine quality mid-release and becoming something considerably less than what it had been a half-second prior.

His eyes went wide.

But unfortunately, the remaining physical force still hit me square in the chest.

BAM!

Three steps back.

I caught myself at the platform edge, and rolled my neck slighly, letting out a faint crack.

His hands were shaking slightly, the light authority gone from them, the domain losing its saturation rapidly as the output he’d been feeding it dried up.

The brilliant even light filling the air between us dimmed in increments, shadows returning to the platform one by one as the domain retracted.

He looked at the Heavenly Swallowing Sword in my right hand.

“T-that sword… d-did it just eat my authority?”

“It did.”

He lowered his hands slowly.

Phew…

If I didn’t have the Heavenly Swallowing Sword, I probably wouldn’t be able to deal with him. My power was practically lessened by more than twenty times just in the presence of that damn domain.

I looked over and raised an eyebrow as I saw Seran staring at his own hands.

The empty hands of someone who had just watched their best weapon get eaten in front of several thousand people.

His jaw tightened, and then his shoulders started shaking.

But not from exhaustion.

I recognized the difference immediately.

“…Six years…”

“SIX YEARS.” His head came up, pale green eyes burning with something that had moved well past embarrassment and frustration and landed somewhere considerably more dangerous.

“Six years, and you stood there and SLAPPED me. Eight times. EIGHT. And then you ATE MY AUTHORITY WITH A SWORD YOU FOUND—”

“More or less found—”

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE SPECIFICS—”

His divine energy erupted from his body in a full release that cracked the platform surface beneath his feet in a spiderweb pattern radiating outward in every direction.

The air around him compressed.

The temperature inside the boundary field climbed sharply.

He was shaking with it.

Every second of the past, however long this match had been running, all of it converting into fuel for something that his body had decided it was going to do regardless of what his reserves said about the feasibility.

“I’ll show you…”

“I’ll FUCKING SHOW YOU WHAT SIX YEARS ACTUALLY MEANS!!!!”

He raised both hands.

“DOMAIN OF LIGHT!!!!!”

THRUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!

It came back.

I took a step back before I caught myself.

The domain didn’t expand the way it had the first time, that single pulse establishing a boundary and filling the space with ambient saturation.

This time it was built.

Layer after layer after layer, each one pressing down on top of the last, the light not filling the air so much as replacing it, the very concept of shadow being removed from every surface, every angle, every particle of space inside the boundary.

The platform beneath us was no longer stone.

It was light, solid, and fundamental and absolute, the domain’s authority sitting in it at a density that made the first version feel like a candle compared to what was currently assembling itself around us.

The crowd above had gone completely silent because of how shocked they actually were at Seran’s actions.

This was simply madness…

“Tsk… this feels fucking terrible.”

I felt the domain’s pressure against my skin, and it was not the warm discomfort of the first one.

It was weight.

Actual, pressing, dimensional weight, the kind that came from an authority operating at a level that the space it occupied wasn’t designed to accommodate comfortably.

Don’t tell me that he’s actually rebuilding his domain right now…?

The domain locked into place.

The light stopped building and simply was, absolute and total, and roughly ten times the density of what had been sitting here thirty seconds ago.

The boundary field at the platform’s edge had gone invisible inside it.

The arena above us had gone invisible inside it.

There was only the platform and the light and Seran standing in the middle of it with both hands raised and his pale green eyes burning with the specific fire of someone who has stopped caring about what this costs.

A 9✯ True God would think twice about rebuilding a domain mid-combat.

Seran Voss had just done it from empty.

I stood inside it and felt my divine energy start degrading at a rate that was no longer gradual.

I looked around at the light sitting in every direction with no gaps, no angles, no shadows, nothing.

“…Fucking hell,” I muttered under my breath.

“And here I thought it couldn’t even get brighter.”

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