Chapter 315 - Chaos Rains

Kiri lashed out with her armoured fist, the speed of her movement causing a blast of air to ripple out from the attack. Even with Divine Energy empowering her, it wasn’t enough. Perenthia, similarly empowered, was already moving and the retaliatory cut from her sword sliced Kiri’s leg in half. The artifact didn’t seem to be able to do more than scratch the surface of Kiri’s Regalia but the Concept of Severing didn’t seem to have any issues with passing right through her armour and out the other side. The slash left a furrow in the dirt stretching behind Kiri but she was already moving, her leg already restored.

Kiri stayed low to the ground as she followed the retreating Perenthia. At least, that was what Kiri was telling herself was going on. It was clear that Perenthia only gave ground to inflict cuts and it was hard for Kiri to question the crazy woman's talent. She’d never seen anyone move like the elven blademaster. Every step was perfect, every angle calculated, every attack devastating. If it had been Wulfgar facing her he would’ve already been dead. In fact, besides Nate, she didn’t think she had seen a single Lesser Divine that could hold a candle to the elven woman's skill. Shame she was batshit crazy.

Kiri fired off two quick punches followed by a sweeping kick as she got in range. Perenthia sidestepped the first punch, countered with a slash to the shoulder before the second punch could land and then jumped just high enough to avoid the kick before landing and unleashing one of her mana empowered cuts. Kiri’s Regalia held. Her stomach did not. The Severing Strike, as Kiri was calling it, passed right through her, slicing her in half and a copse of jungle trees behind her went flying as the Concept empowered slash continued on into the trees.

Divine Energy flowed into Kiri as she Endured the pain, Endured the injury and Endured her failure to land a strike. A smirk danced on her lips as she healed again, ignoring the two bodyguards as they finally caught up.

“This can only end one way. Did it tell you that?” asked Kiri as she walked in a slow circle around Perenthia.

Kiri hadn’t missed Perenthia’s phrasing after the first killing attempt she’d made on Kiri. It wasn’t wrong. Those were her words. Nate hadn’t relayed his suspicions but Kiri wasn’t an idiot. Perenthia was manipulating probability and to do that she must have some way of assessing the probabilities. Kiri didn’t know if it was a Familiar, a bound Spirit or Summon, but what she did know was that whatever it, it had clearly told Perenthia something about how hard Kiri was to kill.

“It’s wrong,” hissed Perenthia. “It has to be. There is nothing I can’t cut. There is nothing I can’t kill. And once you’re gone he’ll be with me!”

“You should have listened to it,” drawled Kiri as she continued to rile up Perenthia, circling the elf even as the elves' bodyguards circled her in turn. “You’ll never have him. My brother and I will always be there for each other. The only way you could get him to yourself is if you killed me, and ‘it’ told you the truth. You cannot kill me.”

“You’re wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! I just need to try harder. That’s right! I just need to prove that I am better. Then he will love me!” screamed Perenthia, as she reached up with her free hand and pulled out some of her pink hair.

“Even now ‘it’s’ telling you you’re wrong, isn’t it? Telling you that you’ll never have him? What a useful thing to have. Like your very own fortune-teller but it actually knows what’s going to happen. It’s told you already, hasn’t it? We’re going to keep fighting. Then I am going to kill that bodyguard,” expounded Kiri, pointing at one of the black-robed swordsmen. 

“Then I am going to kill that bodyguard.”

Kiri pointed at the other swordsmen, or swordswoman. It was hard to tell with the voluminous robes and for all Kiri knew they weren’t even human.

“And then, I am going to kill you. So that you can never haunt my brother's footsteps again.”

“He’s MINE!” yelled Perenthia, clearly coming apart at the seams.

Kiri barely had time to react as Perenthia launched herself across the intervening space, blade tip whistling in another Severing Strike.

Kiri vanished, reappearing behind the first bodyguard. He moved before she had even appeared and Kiri got the faint sense that the probability of him repositioning was changing. It didn’t matter. Kiri’s fist rocketed out and passed through empty air, the probability of the bodyguard avoiding her fist having become absolute. Then a third fist appeared out of Kiri’s shoulder and shattered his throat before anyone could react and while Perenthia couldn’t even see.

Divine Energy from the kill flowed into Kiri and she breathed deeply while Perenthia looked on in shock.

Kiri smirked again. Intentionally. She wanted that lunatic elf as angry and crazy as possible. The less she let Perenthia be calm or controlled, at least as controlled as the insane can be, the better.

“Your Skill doesn’t work on me, does it? You know, it was Nate that figured it out. That you’re somehow reading latent soul energy from the back and forth exchange everyone does.”

Kiri noted how Perenthia lit up at the mention of Nate’s problem solving and Kiri had to forcibly try not to roll her eyes.

“It’s impressive. The Skill I mean. But it’ll never work on me. You can’t see anything about what I am going to do and once I am close enough to your bodyguards, they’re in my Soul Domain. No exchanges with the Spirit Realm for them either. That was one, it’s time for the second.”

Kiri had thought Perenthia might jump to their defence but the elf didn’t seem to even care as Kiri used Soul Shift once more to appear next to the second bodyguard. Three movements later and the woman, as it turned out, was dead on the ground sans a head.

Just like Nate had been working on turning his System granted Skills into Abilities within his Divine Vessel, Kiri had been doing the same. Soul Domain was the culmination of a few things. Her Soul Sanctuary, where she stored a huge mass of soul energy and the copies of her own soul imprint was the core of it, but the second half was her original Skill for creating soul tethers. The only difference was that now Kiri instead made her body the gateway for her soul imprinted copies. And with a little Divine Energy she could do so much more, as Perenthia was about to find out.

“Just you and me now,” grunted Kiri.

Then she charged. As she closed on Perenthia, her body empowered with Divine Energy, she drew out the first copy. Her fist rocketed towards Perenthia’s face and as the elven blademaster defended, a second Kiri appeared out of Kiri’s body and punched the elf in the face. Perenthia went careening into the pile of wood and leaves that had once been trees. The copy glanced at Kiri, flashed her trademark smirk, and vanished back into Soul Domain. The attack hadn’t been cheap on the Divine Energy but it proved to Kiri that she could in fact injure the elf. That seemed like it might become a problem though and Kiri flinched at the amount of Divine Energy that blasted out of Perenthia.

Trees turned into woodchips, the leaves were shredded into almost nothing and the ground around Perenthia looked like someone had spent the entire day carving random lines into it.

“HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME!”

Kiri wasn’t great with Concepts outside of her own, but even she could feel the Concepts of Severing and Probability coming off of Perenthia as she stood in the middle of a cutting wind and for the first time Kiri saw the woman's problem laid bare. Probability lines flickered along Perenthia’s body in blue and gold. Mana and Divine Energy, like a web laid upon the elf’s skin. But everything else around her was Severed.

Her Embodiment is different to her Divine Vessel, thought Kiri.

Kiri’s mind quickly drifted back to her training with Ankh’aris. The ancient dragon had made her change her Embodiment before he tried to help her achieve a Divine Vessel. Nate hadn’t mentioned anything of the same, but then, Nate’s Embodiment and his Divine Vessel were always aligned. He was Conceptual. He even took the three core principles that basically governed everything as the Concepts for his Divine Vessel. Ankh hadn’t needed to change him. And now Kiri was seeing why Ankh had needed to change her. The girl was cracked in the head and Kiri couldn’t help but think it was because she was cracked down the middle, at war with herself.

The feeling Kiri got from Perenthia was getting worse and she could see, through the storm of dirt, greenery and wood that was turning into dust, that Perenthia’s lips were moving.

Then the storm died and Perenthia’s body lit up, the web of lines on her skin turning sharp, like the edges of a blade. Blood sprayed as Perenthia was cut by her own Divine Vessel.

“If I cannot change fate to bring us together, then I shall Sever Fate,” stated Perenthia in a dead voice.

Divine Energy formed around Perenthia and Kiri had her body obliterated for the second time. She looked back at her Regalia from within her Soul Domain. The armour still stood but of Kiri’s body there was basically nothing left. She pulled on the thread that connected her to the Physical Realm and for the first time felt resistance. Something was trying to cut her tether back. Funnelling Divine Energy into the connection restored Kiri immediately but for the first time in a long time she lost significantly more Divine Energy than she gained.

Perenthia stood across from Kiri, bleeding along a hundred thin lines so that she looked like a rose of white streaked with red and crowned in pink.

“Nascent Mind says you can’t die, but it can’t see what lies beyond a Severed Fate. I am going to kill you now,” said Perenthia without a hint of emotion in her dead eyes.

Then the fight resumed and Kiri realised she might actually be fighting for her life. A smile crept onto her face as she clashed with one of the greatest Blademasters in the Lesser Divine strata. This was what she had been missing!

*************

Kalin suppressed his worry as liquid silver crawled over his body like fluid armour. He avoided looking at the jungle to the right where entire sections were flying into the air as though put through a shredder. If anyone had told him that Perenthia Illari’Svell would struggle to put someone down he would’ve laughed in their face. But that battle had already been going for over a minute and the sense of an unyielding pillar of Endurance remained.

Around Kalin fires raged from the first attack by Nathaniel. There had been more attacks since then. Lances of energy as black as the void of space and just as destructive had struck at their lines. Some of the flight capable combatants had risen into the air to try and contain the flying weapons platform in the shape of a nautical ship. They’d tried multiple times. Every time a cackling laugh had echoed down from on high and the fleeting words ‘Heaven’s Fist’. Then gravity bombs that could only be launched from a High-Grade artifact had swatted them out of the sky like chaff. Only two were dead so far but that was two more than expected. They hadn’t died from the weapons platform though. No, that had been from the lava, screaming in agony as they melted under the heat. That same fact was why Kalin was hesitant to truly throw himself into the battle as so many others were doing as they tried to close the distance to Nathaniel.

Kalin growled in frustration. Where the fuck was Sel’kin Might and what was taking him so long. Their plan had hinged on the assassin bringing down Nathaniel’s barrier. Yet one minute in and still not a single shot. Kalin shook in anger and finally joined up with Kole. Perhaps the two together could create an opening through the fiery field from hell that the Risen Sun Sect Prime Seed had created.

*************

Nate was doing twenty things at once and he still felt like he was losing ground. His barriers rotated around him increasing complex layers as his Regalia looked like it was built entirely from different Barrier runes. A light flashed at the base of the volcano and two barriers folded leaving another eight untouched. Nate instantly began rebuilding the destroyed barriers, throwing Divine Energy into the mix. 

Three warriors from the Eternium charged at him, covering for Drim Hall who came behind them flowing over the ground on black water. 

Four red flower shaped runes lit up beneath the ground and launched pillars of lava from the heart of the volcano in their direction. Nate used a second rune to guide the lava and a small amount of Divine Energy to enhance the Molten Concept within them. One died, the lava covering him in a layer of the superheated material. She screamed as she died, her body melting away. The other two aborted their attacks, narrowly escaping using Divine Energy of their own. Then there was Drim. A lance of black water, the material filled with Destruction, crashed into Nate’s outer barrier…and flowed over it just like water, dripping onto the ground and hissing as it turned into steam.

The look on Drim’s face was one of shock. Then Nate activated the second layer of runes and launched the hobgoblin into the sky with a Gravity Rune. Lava followed but Drim covered himself in his black water and streaked towards the Solaris. That was a mistake as Nate heard Frick’s scream of ‘Heaven’s Fist’ and saw the little mini-Frick’s trigger the cannon, loaded with both mana and Divine Energy from artifacts.

A Gravity Bomb dropped onto Drim and while the destructive nature of his water seemed to bleed off some of the power of the cannon due to a liberal use of his own Divine Energy, it wasn’t enough to prevent him from being blown back into the ground as the upper crust of volcano continued to crater.

The hobgoblin tried to flee. Nate felt the escape artifact reach out, trying to crush the intervening Space and create a tunnel away from the battlefield. Nate’s Space Control rune buried behind him lit up and shut that down right as another red flower bloomed beneath Drim. Nate made sure to strip away the Destruction from Drim’s water as lava bloomed and incinerated the hobgoblin.

“One down,” muttered Nate. “Two to go.”