Chapter 497: The Heavens Shall Fall (XXXVIII)

“Fuuu…”

But I wasn’t going to go down without using everything I had.

I adjusted my grip on both swords and let out a slow breath, watching as Krathax stalked toward me with his axe raised, confidence radiating from every movement.

He thought he had me figured out, thought he knew the limits of what I could do.

Time to show him otherwise.

I shifted my stance, bringing Midnight up in a guard position while the Heaven Swallowing Sword extended forward.

The Authority of Ice surged through my body, and I felt the familiar cold settle into my bones as I prepared to unleash my sword art for the first time in a while.

…For him, I guess… stopping at the sixth move should be fine?

“Moonlit Ice Lotus Sword Art…”

Krathax paused for just a moment, his eyes narrowing.

『 First Move! (✦ Ice Lotus Bloom ✦) 』

SHRWOOOOOOOSH!

I swung Midnight in a circular motion, and ice erupted from the blade in expanding patterns that looked like flower petals opening.

Each petal was razor-sharp and moved with independent tracking, all of them converging on Krathax from different angles simultaneously.

Fwip!

Shing, clink!

He blocked the first few with his axe, the impacts sending chips of ice flying in all directions, but there were too many coming from too many directions.

Several petals sliced through his arms and legs, cutting deep grooves in his flesh despite his Authority-enhanced durability.

“Grraaagh!” He roared in pain and swung his axe in a wide circle, creating a shockwave that shattered the remaining ice petals.

But I was already moving, flowing into the second technique before he could recover.

『 Second Move! (✦ Ice Lotus Barrage ✦) 』

This time both swords moved in synchronized patterns, creating dozens of ice constructs that formed in the air around me.

They looked like lotus flowers made entirely of crystallized frost, each one pulsing with compressed divine energy.

Then they all launched at once.

FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOSHH!

The barrage hammered into Krathax like artillery fire, each lotus flower exploding on impact with enough force to crack his Authority-enhanced skin.

He tried to block with his axe, tried to dodge, but the sheer volume of attacks made it impossible to avoid them all.

BOOOOOM!

BOOOOOOOOOM!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Explosions rippled across his body, and I saw blood beginning to pour from dozens of wounds.

The arena floor beneath him cracked and cratered from the impacts, and he stumbled backward for the first time since the fight began.

“Enough!” he bellowed, and his aura exploded outward with golden light.

“Authority of Fate! I decree that these attacks never happened! I decree that my wounds are healed! I decree—”

『 Third Move! (✦ Moonlight’s One Flash ✦) 』

I moved faster than I’d moved in the entire fight, channeling everything into pure speed as both swords became blurs of motion.

The technique was simple in concept but devastating in execution… a single strike so fast that it arrived before the target could perceive it had been launched.

Shing!

My swords cut through his Authority of Fate like it was tissue paper, my Authority of Defiance making his reality manipulation completely ineffective.

Both blades carved deep wounds across his chest in an X-pattern, cutting through muscle and scraping against bone.

Space fractured around the strike, reality unable to keep up with the speed of the technique, and I heard something crack inside Krathax’s body that sounded important.

“GRAAAAAAAH!”

He swung his axe in a desperate counter-attack, and I barely managed to lean back far enough to avoid having my head taken off.

The blade passed so close that I felt it slice through a few strands of my hair.

WHOOOOOM!

The displaced air from his swing created a pressure wave that sent me tumbling backward, and I hit the ground hard enough to bounce once before catching myself.

Krathax was breathing heavily now, blood pouring from the X-shaped wound on his chest and from the dozens of smaller cuts covering his body.

His Authority of Strength was keeping him on his feet, but I could see the strain in his movements.

“You… you’re more skilled than I thought,” he admitted, his voice rough with pain. “But skill means nothing against absolute power!”

His muscles swelled even larger, his body growing until he stood nearly five meters tall, veins bulging across his skin as he poured everything into his Authority of Strength.

CRAAAAAACK!

The arena floor beneath him shattered from the sheer pressure his body was exerting, and when he moved forward it was with speed that shouldn’t have been possible for something his size.

BOOOOOM!

His axe came down like a meteor strike, and I knew I couldn’t dodge this one in time.

So instead I met it head-on.

『 Fourth Move! (✯ Lunar Collapse ✯) 』

I brought both swords together in a guard position above my head, channeling massive amounts of divine energy into creating a barrier of compressed frost and chaos energy.

The technique was designed to receive overwhelming force and redirect it, turning the enemy’s strength against them.

CLAAAAAANG!

The axe met my barrier with an impact that created a shockwave visible to the naked eye, a ring of displaced air that expanded outward and cracked the arena walls hundreds of meters away.

The force drove me to my knees, my legs buckling under the pressure, and I felt the stone beneath me compress into powder.

But the barrier held.

And more than that, it redirected.

FWOOOOSH!

The kinetic energy from his strike rebounded back at him, concentrated into a beam of frost and force that slammed into his chest and sent him flying backward.

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASHHHHHH————!!!!!!!!!!!

He tumbled across the arena floor, his massive body leaving deep gouges in the stone, until he finally crashed into the far wall hard enough to create a crater.

I pushed myself back to my feet, breathing hard, every muscle in my body screaming from the strain of blocking that attack.

“U-ugh… Just a little more,” I huffed, my eyes blazing with killing intent.

Krathax pulled himself out of the wall, his body covered in frost that was rapidly spreading across his skin.

He tried to brush it off, but the ice from the Fourth Move wasn’t ordinary frost, it was conceptual cold that seeped into his intestines.

“Get… off…” he growled, his movements becoming sluggish as the cold seeped deeper.

Of course, I didn’t give him time to recover.

『 ModifiedFifth Move! (✯ Thousand-Lotus Guillotine ✯) 』

This technique combined elements of the first two moves but on a completely different scale.

I swung both swords in complex patterns, and the air above Krathax filled with thousands of ice constructs, each one shaped like a guillotine blade suspended in mid-air.

Instead of a thousand slashes directly at him, I decided to create one thousand blades to attack him at the same time.

For a moment, everything was still.

Then they all fell at once.

SHIIIIIIING!

The sound was like a thousand swords being drawn simultaneously, and the guillotine blades descended in a coordinated cascade that left no room for escape.

Fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip——!!!!

Krathax tried to block with his axe, tried to use his Authority of Fate to decree that the attack missed, and tried to enhance his body’s durability even further.

None of it mattered.

The guillotine blades cut through everything, carving deep wounds across his entire body.

His arms, his legs, his torso, his back… every surface was hit multiple times by falling ice that cut like divine metal.

SPLUUUUURTTT———!!!

Blood sprayed into the air in a crimson mist, and I heard him roar in pain and fury as the technique tore him apart.

When the last blade fell and dissipated, Krathax was still standing, but barely.

His body was covered in hundreds of deep cuts, blood pouring from wounds that even his regeneration couldn’t keep up with.

His axe had fallen from his hands, too heavy for his weakened grip to maintain.

But his eyes still burned with determination, and I knew he wasn’t finished yet.

“You… haven’t… won…” he gasped, his voice barely audible. “I am… a champion… of the Crimson Throne… I don’t… fall… to lesser… beings…”

He raised one hand, and I felt reality begin to warp around him in ways that made my divine core scream warnings.

He was preparing something massive, some final technique that would either kill me or kill him in the process.

I couldn’t let him finish it…

But yeah, my calculations were right.

I only need to do the sixth move, and it’s over… but I’ll probably pass out, so let’s just hope that the creator will take care of me.

『 Sixth Move! (✯ Moonlight Descent ✯) 』

I leaped into the air, both swords raised above my head as I channeled everything I had left into this final technique.

FWOOOOOOOM!

The Authority of Ice, combined with divine energy and the power of my Chaos Energy, created a construct above me that looked like a massive moon made entirely of ice and silver light.

The moon descended.

Slowly at first, then faster, gaining momentum as it fell toward Krathax with inevitable force.

He looked up at it, and for the first time since the fight began, I saw genuine fear in his eyes.

“Authority of Fate!” he screamed desperately.

“I decree that this attack—”

BOOOOOOOOM!

The moon struck him before he could finish the decree, and the impact was apocalyptic.

The entire arena shook, cracks spreading across every surface as the force of the technique released in a single devastating moment.

A dome of frost and compressed air expanded outward from the impact point, flash-freezing everything it touched.

CRAAAAAACK!

Space itself fractured in a sphere around where Krathax had been standing, reality breaking apart like shattered glass and revealing glimpses of the void beneath.

When the dust settled and the frost cleared, there was a crater easily fifty meters wide carved into the arena floor.

At the bottom of that crater lay Krathax, his body broken and still, encased in ice so thick and cold that it would never melt through natural means.

His eyes were still open, still conscious somehow, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything except stare up at me with an expression of disbelief.

I landed on the edge of the crater, both swords still gripped in hands that shook from exhaustion.

Every part of my body hurt, and I could feel my divine core running dangerously low on energy.

But I’d won.

I looked up at the stands where the godly figures sat watching, and I saw something I hadn’t expected.

Shock.

Complete and utter shock written across every face that was capable of expression.

The being made of living fire had stopped shifting forms, frozen in surprise.

The darkness-shrouded figure was leaning forward, its attention completely focused on me now.

Even the geometry-violating entity had stopped changing shapes, as if it needed to concentrate to process what it had just witnessed.

The silence stretched for several long seconds.

Then, one by one, their gazes turned toward the creator woman on her throne of crystallized starlight and shadow.

She sat there with a faint smirk on her lips, looking completely unsurprised by the outcome.

『Well then~』

Her voice projected across the arena, carrying that same authority but with an undertone of satisfaction.

『Any other questions about whether my champion is adequate?』

No one answered.

The creator woman’s smirk widened slightly, and she turned her gaze to me.

『Excellent work, dear~ Now come up here and rest. We have more fights ahead, after all~』

I wanted to argue, wanted to demand answers about what exactly I’d gotten myself into.

But my legs chose that moment to give out, and I collapsed to one knee, my vision swimming from exhaustion and blood loss.

The last thing I saw before darkness claimed me was the creator woman’s satisfied smile.

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