195. The One Second Duel

The moment Alistair uttered those words, the atmosphere shifted.

He had already used [Eyes of Truth] to investigate, Kadeus, but the man’s Intelligence was too high to reveal much.

Name: Kadeus

Species: Pure Essence Form Human (Non-Pathfinder Analogue)

Bloodline: Hidden (Lacking Intelligence)

Class: Hidden (Lacking Intelligence)

Level: 99 (Non-Pathfinder analogue)

Kadeus struck immediately, and with his ultimate Skill.

Three spectral guns appeared over his head, each a different color. The leftmost was a purple bolt-action rifle, the middle a sleek orange laser rifle, the rightmost a green revolver.

The amount of Mana gathered in such a short time was something Alistair could not hope to replicate. As a Peak Foundation, Kadeus’s Intelligence was far ahead of Alistair’s, and it would be his primary Attribute if he had a Pathfinder Class.

But Alistair was already on the move.

One hit, one kill. The Dao was all about duality. Yin and Yang. His draconic steel body was precision manufactured to outlast all opponents, yet his fist was also deadly. Sometimes, Justice mandated an unstoppable strike that destroyed the enemy before they could touch an innocent life.

[Mindshift] plus Dev’rox shortening the space thrust Alistair forward. Three bullets, colored the same as the guns that created them and infused with enough Dao energy and Mana to warp spacetime around them, exited their barrels.

They were chock-full of killing intent—nue. It was the first time he had ever seen a human use nue to such an extent besides himself. Kadeus manipulated his nue so that those bullets, which already far surpassed the speed of sound, would follow Alistair until his death.

They came at different timings. The purple bullet of the bolt-action rifle was first. It was so fast that even with Dev’rox offering all of his brainpower and combining [Monk Motionless] and Tranquil Mind, he could barely perceive it.

That was where his fist came in. [Force Fist] wrapped around his right hand, fueled with the core of his being. Dao energy flowed forth, layered with an immense amount of Karma that began to sear the threads of Fate.

[Force Fist] upgraded to Tier 4 as Alistair recognized the gravitas of his fist. The activation time lowered even further to almost non-existent, while his Mana become more potent. Not in strength, but in quality, as he felt it attain a specialized hatred against nue.

The [Force Fist] demolished the purple bullet mid-[Mindshift]. The shrapnel warped around him, slicing into his skin, but that was simply the price he had to pay.

His movement Skill ended with him a foot away from the gunslinger. Both he and nue clone appeared at either side of Kadeus as the second and third bullet diverged.

One bullet for one individual. The laser bullet passed through Alistair’s nue clone, dissipating it instantly and exploding into a sphere of energy.

The revolver’s bullet struck the real Alistair as his fist flew toward Kadeus’s face. Unimaginable pain seared through his torso as the spectral bullet spiraled inside of his flesh.

That was all within his expectations. He diverted as much of the damage as possible by flexing his [Steel Body] and twisting his body so that it avoided any vital organs. Of course, none of that would have been possible without his autonomous reflexes preparing the road.

What was pain to him? Did the bullet come even close to the consciousness-annihilating fires of the Final Trial of the Steel Body? It wasn’t enough to shake his nirvanic state.

The edge of the laser’s explosion touched Alistair’s right side as his left hand, clad in [Force Fist], met the energy and the bullet, which peaked out of its own aftermath, still intent on killing its target.

The new Tier 4 [Force Fist] eviscerated the nue within the bullet and explosion, leaving only Mana and some trace amounts of Dao energy.

Dev’rox snapped his fingers. The imp took Alistair’s place as the bullet connected, while Alistair’s fist swapped from about to connect with Kadeus’s nose to the back of his head.

The amount of force in that punch rippled up Alistair’s arm. The gunslinger’s skull shattered upon impact, a crater forming under his feet and a shockwave emanating from the absolute power of the punch.

Without a second to spare, he flooded his physical body with the Ghost Node, etherealizing himself and letting the mixed affinity Mana pass through him.

Body triumps over mind but soul transcends body, Alistair concluded within Tranquil Mind. Such is the natural state of things.

Even while being drowned in Mana, the threads of Fate continued to burn. And burn they did around a mysterious entity emerging from Kadeus’s body.

Alistair had never encountered anything like it. It wasn’t comprised of any quintessence in particular—Mana, nue, or Dao energy, or an additional source like life force or Karmic energy. Nue was certainly a part of it, but not the whole piece.

An astral being mottled like the night sky and glowing like the sunset stretched its arm out of Kadeus, while his [Hand of Karma] assaulted it from every direction.

Alistair was losing. The energy of the orange bullet wiped over the horizon, vaporizing the ice beneath them in the crater the size of several football fields, yet he didn’t lose focus on the enemy before him.

Tranquil Mind went to the wayside as he focused on purely Karma dumping. Even against George, he had never had to use so much Karmic energy in one moment.

So this is what pain feels like,thought, Alistair thought as the infinite despair of Karma leaving his body multiplied the pain of the wound to his stomach. He did not give up.

More and more Karma passed through the searing crimson threads, wrapping around the astral body.

It was difficult to compare pains. They said that nature let women forget the agony of childbirth so that they would continue to have children. Alistair would have said that nothing could compare to the purgatorial fires, but in this moment, he wasn’t sure.

I can’t take it, Alistair realized. His Karma was depleting too fast, rapidly heading to the negatives. He made a split-second decision, allocating 14 of his free Attribute points to Charisma, putting the stat over 1,000 for the first time.

Similar to how he went from 30 to 60 base Karma upon reaching 500 Charisma, with a doubling of the stat came a doubling of the Karma. He instantly received 60 Karma since his new base Karma became 120.

Alistair let out a guttural scream as red hot Karma exited his body in clumps so thick that space itself became wavy.

Finally, the astral body seemed to relent, retreating back into the body it came from. Once it rejoined with Kadeus completely, he fell on his back, resting his head on the soft top layer of snow. Somehow, Alistair just knew that if he hadn’t stopped the astral body, Kadeus would have lived despite the broken skull.

“At least you didn’t go into the negatives,” Dev’rox said. “You’ll get me killed that way.”

Realizing his mistake, the imp tapped Alistair’s shoulder with his tail. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s fine,” Alistair said, sitting up. “It’s true. I got Sofia killed because I wasn’t strong enough to win without going into the negatives.”

He walked over to Kadeus’s body, which was buried a few feet away and partially in the ground because of the angle of his punch.

“It goes to show you the difference between styles,” Alistair said, as the wound in his torso knit itself back together. “I didn’t take that much damage, but that doesn’t mean the fight wasn’t close. If he was a little bit faster and I had gotten hit by the full force of the orange bullet, he likely would have been able to finish me off. My punch would never have landed, and I would be the one lying there.”

A colossal aura blossomed in the distance. Alistair immediately dropped into the fetal position, protecting himself from the sheer dominance of the power. It felt vaguely familiar, and he understood immediately that its ire was not directed at himself. Otherwise, he would be in a vastly different scenario.

That’s far stronger than Fara or Jindor, Alistair thought.

An enormous marble fist crashed down onto Kadeus’s corpse in five thousandths of a second. Blood and guts spattered everywhere, covering Alistair’s face, who could only watch on in sadness that he didn’t get a chance to absorb the blood essence first for his bloodline.

“You did a good job.”

The assailant was the marble titan that oversaw all traffic in and out of Nuevo Invierno. Seeing the forty-foot-tall creature in his full, towering majesty was something else. The hammerfist that splattered Kadeus was something that represented strength itself—despite the mass and speed involved, somehow the surrounding environment was unaffected.

“My name is Bakrav,” the titan said. He wasn’t in the best shape, bite marks over his neck that were black, the flesh around them rotting. “You likely didn’t sense it, but the second stage of his internal guardian was going to rise from his body.”

An internal guardian was a bloodline implement stored within a cultivator to defend them in a worst-case scenario. If the astral body the the first stage of the guardian, a technique so powerful it would have revived Kadeus, he didn’t want to see the second stage.

“Jindor broke through to Adept and is fighting that man’s three bodyguards, yes?” Bakrav asked.

Alistair nodded. “They brought a bunch of Peak Foundation soldiers as well. We have a few fighters on our side as well, but we’re outgunned.”

Out of nowhere, the entire arm that Bakrav used to smash the dead body crumbled into rainbow dust, fading away almost like a dream returning to reality.

While the enormous titan was controlling his aura much better, Alistair could still feel the immediate decrease in power.

“I underestimated that brat’s bloodline,” Bakrav said in a low grumble. “This is something that we are not qualified to deal with. Damn it. Just hop on my shoulder and let me take care of things down there.”

“Your turn to be the passenger,” Dev’rox said with a chuckle as Alistair jumped up to Bakrav’s shoulder. He’d thought he’d have to hold on tight, but a strong presence secured him in place without any physical restraints.

Bakrav raised his good fist up in the air. Invisible Dao energy revolved around the marbled hand.

Strength. Immovability. Dominance. Unshakable might.

Those were the feelings that struck Alistair as he watched.

With a guttural cry, the titan punched the ground below.

The crater that was the size of a football field suddenly became a thousand-foot deep monstrosity stretching for miles in every direction.

That was a single punch.

Bakrav winded his fist back up and punched again. Each time, his fist demolished frozen rock for miles upon miles, digging up thousands feet deep each time.

Alistair was completely unaffected by the impact of the blow. The Dao worked to mold reality as the titan saw fit, through the absolute authority of his physical strength. Bakrav’s strength could not be used against its master, and that included the theoretical shockwave or debris that should have flown at them.

It was a path that he admired, even though it wasn’t his own. They had a lot in common, both using their fists to impose their wills upon the world.

This was a demonstration of the degree to which even a Middle Adept could dominate the physical world.

Somehow, he was reminded of Atavius Meloi’s rampage. Atavius was a Middle Adept, and he had easily destroyed cities and entire countries, though that was mostly because of the lack of the Dao over the old Earth made his Dao more real.

This method of punching was far faster than Alistair and Kadeus’s ascent. They had to navigate around twisting caves, while the marble titan was punching straight down. It only took thirty minutes for them descend to his starting location.

Alistair thanked the Sage that he could still feel Jindor’s Domain clashing against the two enemy Adepts’. Bakrav let him down gently, imbuing him with a protective energy that felt similar to what Jindor had done not a few hours earlier to help him penetrate Gloria’s Domain.

They were above the little cave that he and the others had carved out, perhaps only thirty feet of rock separating the unlikely duo from the others.

Bakrav hummed in the bass register, gathering himself. “I will open my own Domain, and we shall kill those abominable invaders.”

Alistair’s eyes bulged wide, ready to observe the opening of a Domain in preparation for his own.

“Mountain’s Invincible Bearing.”