Chapter 520: The Heavens Shall Fall (LXI)

Squelsh…!

Nyarlathotep’s remaining golden eye glowed with twisted delight as more tentacles sprouted from his reforming body.

“Again!” he shouted loudly enough for the air to scream.

“Hit me harder next time!”

Aestrea’s red slit eyes narrowed as he stared at the regenerating mass of horror before him.

’Almost no chances…’ he thought inwardly, grip tightening on both swords.

’This bastard cancels out nearly everything I throw at him with his own authority. Perfect battle sense. No openings. No hesitation. The only thing that pisses me off is that fucking laugh.’

Nyarlathotep’s colossal golden eye pulsed with amusement as more tentacles sprouted from his reforming body.

“Hahahahaha! Come on, little god! Is that all you have?!”

The laugh grated on Aestrea’s nerves like nails on glass.

He stopped using the Moonlit Ice Lotus Sword Art entirely.

The techniques were beautiful, but they weren’t working. Nyarlathotep was reading them too easily, countering with raw conceptual bullshit before the moves could land properly.

’…Fine!’

Aestrea exhaled slowly, letting the dual swords dissolve into black mist. He wouldn’t rely on them anymore.

Instead, he raised both hands, palms open.

“Authority of Gravity… Maximum Compression.”

The entire battlefield warped.

Gravity multiplied by a thousand in an instant, crushing down on Nyarlathotep’s colossal form like an invisible mountain.

The ground beneath the Outer God caved in violently as his tentacles were slammed flat, bones or whatever passed for bones snapping audibly.

Black ichor spurted from ruptured flesh in thick, pressurized jets.

“GRAHHH—!!”

But Nyarlathotep countered immediately with his own authority, reversing the gravity around himself and launching upward like a cannonball of writhing flesh.

Aestrea was already moving.

“Authority of Void! Devouring Domain.”

A massive sphere of absolute nothingness expanded around Nyarlathotep, trying to erase his existence entirely. The air screamed as reality was torn apart.

Nyarlathotep laughed again and forced his way through the void by sheer conceptual dominance, his body bleeding profusely from hundreds of new wounds.

Golden-black blood sprayed in wide arcs, freezing instantly upon contact with the ice.

“Hahahaha! Cute!”

Aestrea clicked his tongue.

’Annoying…’

He layered more authorities on top of each other without pause.

“Authority of Ruin and Authority of Annihilation!”

Everything Nyarlathotep’s body touched began to decay at the atomic level while simultaneously being annihilated from existence.

Large chunks of his tentacles simply ceased to be, exploding into red mist and black dust.

Nyarlathotep responded by opening thousands of new mouths and vomiting waves of living madness that canceled the dual authority with raw entropy.

The two forces clashed violently, creating explosions of blood and shadow that painted the broken citadel in grotesque colors.

Aestrea didn’t stop.

“Authority of Time!

He froze a section of Nyarlathotep’s body in time, locking hundreds of tentacles mid-regeneration.

Then he followed up with Authority of Devouring Chaos, creating a black hole-like vortex that tried to swallow the frozen parts whole.

Nyarlathotep broke the stasis with a scream and countered by turning parts of his body into conceptual “anti-time,” reversing the effect and healing even faster.

Blood and ichor continued to splatter everywhere. Aestrea’s black energy armor was now stained with the Outer God’s corrosive fluids, but he ignored it.

’No openings… fuck!’ he thought, hiseyes narrowing.

’He predicts every combination. Cancels them before they fully form. Perfect instinct.’

Still, Aestrea pushed harder.

He unleashed Authority of Creation, something he rarely used, to forcibly generate anti-madness constructs around Nyarlathotep, trying to stabilize reality and weaken the Outer God’s influence.

Nyarlathotep laughed louder and shattered the constructs with pure conceptual chaos.

“You’re getting desperate now!”

Aestrea clicked his tongue again.

He layered Authority of Defiance, Authority of Ruin, Authority of the Abyss, and Authority of Absolute Entropy all at once.

The combined attack created a storm of black lightning and devouring darkness that tore into Nyarlathotep’s body like a meat grinder.

Chunks of flesh the size of buildings were ripped away.

Golden-black blood sprayed in massive fountains, freezing mid-air into grotesque sculptures before shattering.

Tentacles were torn off in chunks, mouths screamed as they were erased, eyes popped and dissolved.

For a brief moment, Aestrea thought he had him.

But Nyarlathotep simply regenerated faster than the damage could accumulate, laughing the entire time.

“Hahahahahaha! Yes! More! Give me more pain!”

Aestrea’s expression darkened.

This fucker…

He kept cycling through authorities without pause… Authority of Infinite Gravity, Authority of Soul Shredding, Authority of Concept Erasure, Authority of Primordial Flame (black flames that burned existence itself), Authority of Mirror Dimension (trapping parts of Nyarlathotep in reflective voids), Authority of Blood Dominion (trying to seize control of the ichor spraying from his body).

Every single authority was answered perfectly.

Nyarlathotep countered each one with equal or superior conceptual power, his body constantly torn apart and rebuilt in seconds.

Blood rained down continuously… practically thick rivers of golden-black blood, chunks of writhing flesh, shattered eyes and teeth littering the broken ice floor.

The citadel was being reduced to nothing but rubble and blood.

Aestrea’s breathing remained steady, but his mind was racing.

’No fatal wound sticks. He cancels my authorities the moment they form. His battle sense is flawless. The only weakness is that fucking laugh… but that’s not enough.’

He kept attacking relentlessly.

Authority of Absolute Zero and the Authority of Destruction.

He froze Nyarlathotep’s central mass at the conceptual level while flooding it with destruction, trying to shatter him from the inside out.

Nyarlathotep screamed, his body exploding in a fountain of blood as half his torso was obliterated… only to regenerate almost instantly.

“Hahahaha! It tickles!”

Aestrea’s eyes narrowed in complete annoyance.

’This is getting nowhere,’ he thought, black chaos energy coiling tighter around his form.

’Every authority I throw at him is met with a perfect counter. He reads the flow of battle like it’s child’s play, and its regeneration speed is also absurd. Conceptual resistance is off the charts. If I keep fighting like this, we’ll be stuck here for centuries.’

A dangerous idea began forming in the back of his mind.

’A plan that requires me to almost die…’

He didn’t execute it yet.

He needed the perfect moment… the exact second when Nyarlathotep’s arrogance peaked, and his guard dropped just enough.

So… for now, he kept fighting.

Aestrea blurred forward again, no longer relying on any single sword art. He fused raw physical combat with layered authorities.

Authority of Speed + Authority of Space!

He moved at speeds that broke the sound barrier a thousand times over, appearing behind Nyarlathotep’s regenerating mass and slamming both palms into his back.

Space itself crumpled inward like a collapsing star, crushing flesh and bone into pulp.

Golden-black blood and chunks of writhing meat exploded outward in a violent spray, painting the frozen ground in thick, steaming gore.

Nyarlathotep roared and spun, hundreds of tentacles whipping around like living whips.

Aestrea dodged most of them, but let two graze his shoulder on purpose.

’Not yet…’

He countered with Authority of Soul Rending mixed with Authority of Primordial Flame. Black flames that burned not the body but the very soul erupted across Nyarlathotep’s form.

The Outer God’s countless mouths screamed in genuine agony as pieces of his essence were incinerated.

Yet the wounds closed almost immediately, new flesh bubbling up from the charred remains.

“Hahahahaha! Yes! Burn me! Tear me apart! This is what I live for!”

Aestrea’s expression remained cold, but inside he was calculating every micro-movement, every twitch of those tentacles, every flicker in that colossal golden eye.

’He’s enjoying this too much… perfect!’

He unleashed Authority of Blood next, trying to seize control of the rivers of ichor still spraying from Nyarlathotep’s body.

The golden-black blood froze mid-air and reversed direction, stabbing back into the Outer God like millions of needles.

Nyarlathotep laughed even louder as his own blood tore through him from the inside, only to regenerate the damage instantly.

The fight dragged on in a brutal, never-ending cycle of destruction.

Aestrea used Authority of Mirror Dimension to trap sections of Nyarlathotep in infinite reflective voids, then followed up with Authority of Absolute Entropy to decay the trapped parts into nothingness.

Splash!

Blood and black mist filled the air as entire tentacles dissolved into dust.

Nyarlathotep countered by turning his body into living anti-entropy, reversing the decay and growing even stronger from the pain.

Every clash sent shockwaves that leveled what remained of the citadel. Ice spires collapsed. The ground split into bottomless chasms.

The aurora above fractured into chaotic colors.

Still, Aestrea waited.

He let himself take more hits than necessary, a tentacle grazing his ribs here, another slicing across his thigh there.

Each wound healed almost instantly thanks to his chaos form, but he made sure they looked painful.

’Come on… get cocky…’ he urged on inwardly.

Nyarlathotep’s laughter grew more triumphant.

“Look at you, struggling! All that power and you still can’t kill me! How does it feel, knowing your precious little wives and that precious daughter of yours will die soon? I can end them with a single thought. Their screams will be delicious!”

Aestrea’s eyes flashed with what looked like pure rage.

He stopped holding back.

“You dare threaten them?!”

He suddenly roared and charged forward like a berserker.

Black chaos energy exploded around him in a wild, uncontrolled storm. He abandoned all defensive caution, swinging with raw, seemingly reckless power.

Nyarlathotep’s countless eyes gleamed with delight.

“Yes! That’s it! Show me your anger! Show me your despair!”

The Outer God met the charge head-on, tentacles lashing out in a frenzy.

Aestrea appeared to lose all composure.

He tanked hits that should have been avoided, letting tentacles slice across his chest and arms, blood spraying out in arcs.

He countered with brutal strikes, mixing chaos energy with pure physical force.

The battlefield turned into a slaughterhouse of gore.

Nyarlathotep’s tentacles pierced Aestrea’s shoulder, his side, his thigh. Black blood mixed with golden ichor as both beings tore into each other.

Aestrea kept roaring, eyes blazing with apparent rage, but deep inside his mind was ice-cold and calculating.

’…Gagh… not yet!’

He let a particularly thick tentacle graze dangerously close to his heart, pretending to be too angry to dodge properly.

Nyarlathotep laughed maniacally, clearly believing he had broken Aestrea’s composure.

“Pathetic! All your power, and you still fall for the oldest trick! Your lovers will scream beautifully when I rip them apart!”

Aestrea’s fake rage reached its peak.

He lunged forward with a wild, seemingly desperate overhead double strike.

Nyarlathotep took the bait.

Swip!

A colossal tentacle, thicker than any before, shot forward like a spear of pure darkness aimed straight for Aestrea’s chest.

SPLUUURTTTTTTT———————————!!!!!!!!!

The tentacle pierced clean through Aestrea’s chest, exploding out of his back in a fountain of black divine blood.

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