Desperate Rush Against Time, Part 13?
664 10/11 3:19 (Autumn, Day, Midrar)
JouleMark dashed back at full speed, a beam of light blue energy illuminating their body, dodging both the beam itself and the ice spikes that started to rapidly spread from the point of impact.
Their eyes narrowed in focus, rapidly moving towards Luna in the sky and sharpening further, lightning accumulating around their body and erupting towards her distracted body.
Yet their attack went in vain, the monstrous being of elemental rage interposing in the way of their strike one of its four tails, the scaled pattern imprinted on its armor plating shimmering briefly, their own lightning bolt being atracted to and then crashing harmlessly against the Barrier that emerged around its body.
Its slightly metallic frame slowly moved forward, its immense weight and size allowing it to cross a surprising amount of space in little time and moving with enough inertia to force them to retreat rapidly, their eyes roaming all over the massive obstacle in their way, especially concentrating on the light blue flames that started to lightly spread over its six wings.
And thanks to its ability to fully use any and all of the Skills owned by Luna's Familiars, even if in a much more cold-focused way, it was able to masterfully control the flames it was now enveloped by, solidifying them in the form of sharp, feather-like blades, launching them towards JouleMark together with its wingbeat.
The blonde's glowing blue eyes worked overtime, desperatly calculating the flight path of the various projectiles towards themselves, moving frantically to dodge the deadly rain of spear-sized arrows made entirely out of solid, cold flames.
Their Energy was rapidly waning, feeling the chill that spread from the Vessel's flames, carefully dodging the embers spreading upon the ground.
They rapidly moved all over the place, light trailing behind them before detonating towards the crystal beast in a concentrated beam intent on carving an hole right through its chest.
The beast created by [Ragnarök] didn't react, letting the beam go through without offering any resistances.
Yet even so a ray that should have been powerfull and concentrated enough to pierce an hole right through its chest merely ended up destroying a small part of its armored torso, briefly revealing the blue crystal forming its body and the sphere of pale lightning glowing in the vague position of its heart.
This vision lasted but a couple of moments as the rocks grew back, returning to once more hide the sphere of lightning that probably functioned as its heart beneath its stone armor.
Yet, even so, JouleMark doubted killing it would be as simple as just destroying the mass of lightning in its chest, thing already hard enough considering its combination of Barrier, Imperial Scales, Adaptability, Undying Body and its evident retention of [Ragnarök]'s ability to weaken Light-Attribute, considering how it was composed by Luna's six Familiars, it probably had at least six such cores.
The Human-Spirit Hybrid quickly scanned their opponent, noting down in their though the relative slowness of its movements, probably a mix of not being fully accustomed to their current size and shape, their fused state without Luna's active presence to lead them and the nature of the Spell itself.
It was evident to JouleMark that [Ragnarök] was not a Spell focused on killing other People but instead a support one, specialization that was evidenty retained even in its current size, as shown by the fact that despite Acceleration, it was still way too slow to properly fight equals, instead being much better defensively or as a static turret.
Its pair of arms moved and shifted, the twisters surrounding, no forming, its forearms changing into six-fingered clawed hands made of high-velocity wind, the upper two joining before its chest while the bottom two pierced right through the ground beneath its body.
And starting from a rough circle around it, sharp, freezing crystals ripped their way from the ground, erupting into long erratic lines towards the [Avatar Manifestation]-using one, a rupturing wave that would have not only impaled JouleMark but would have also frozen them solid immediately after.
The biting cold followed after the blonde, forcing them to retreat continuously or be struck and in this time buying the freezing abomination enough time.
Within the Vessel's joined hands, blue embers started to burn, sparkling more and more intensely and condensing together in a single point, growing bigger and more dense until they became fully solid before it opened its mouth, a similar glow concentrating within its maw, twin orbs that narrowed into small points before exploding forward in the form of gelid plasma, currents linking together the two separated beams and in this way further increasing their width.
JouleMark immediately activated their Time Walker, the now grey World stopped in an instant as they dashed away, launching themselves beyond the two still rays and right at the immobile Lunarian, their tightly clenched hands, both the flesh and blood one and the electric one, aiming right to crush her head and chest both.
Yet they hesitated once they reached her, being able to notice immediately the sharp smile on her face and deadly light in her eyes, their own gaze instinctively moving upwards towards the orb floating between her horns, vibrating rapidly and spinning faster than ever before.
Theirhis widened eyes watched, cracks shining in all colors expanding in the air from the orb forming a circle with the singularity forming its center, glowing brightly before sending a wave of force towards themhim, striking themhim in the chest and sending themhim flying down to the ground.
Theyhe flipped around, landing on theirhis feet and deactivating Time Walker. "You…"
"Me. A copy of my consciousness exists within this singularity above me. And as you should already have noticed, it is able to reach through your ability to stop time. I am sorry to say it but your Unique Skill is no longer something that can protect you from me." Luna affirmed, her eyes gleaming sharply in a promise of coming death.
Something unsaid but obvious to both of them, was that while in this state, she would be aware of anything theyhe did while in stopped time, removing any chance of taking her by surprise.
The distortions in the air around Luna vanished, the damage in the fabric of space and time vanishing into nothing as little damage was repaired almost immediately after it happened.
Her sphere of Condemnation Attribute merged and mixed with small masses of Water- and Earth-Attributes, deepening and writhing. "Are you sure you can afford to be so distracted in this moment?" She mockingly asked, her eyes gleaming dangerously.
JouleMark widened theirhis eyes, turning around towards the Vessel and seeing its upper arms hold twin blue flames, turning them into long spears that it impaled into the glass-like crystalline spikes around itself.
And as a conseguence, the entirety of the crystals similarly caught aflame immediately after, spreading all over the ground and in this way forcing themhim to move again or be burned and frozen at once.
Blue sparks created a web of connection between its wings, accumulating ever more as it started to, thanks to its six-fingered hands, weave together a single, vaguely tree-like mass held between its upper hands while its lower twos were enveloped in a mix of crystals and freezing flames, serving to properly connect its consciousness to its crystals.
The [Ragnarök] Vessel properly wielded its new weapon, the part beneath its joined hands narrowing together into a spiraling point before with a soundless roar, it impaled it right through the crystals beneath its body.
And in response, its crystals started to shine brightly, lighting up in a sky blue glow and then shattering, erupting in a wave of freezing flame-like lightning bolts that ammassed in the sky before raining back down into a bombardment of paradoxically subzero plasma that struck the entire Domain without rime or reason, also aiming towards the Domain's creator itself, even if this last one redirected all incoming rays into her singularity, rising the amount of Energy it was storing.
JouleMark instead was forced to exhaust a lot of theirhis Energy to deflect away the beams that threatened to froze themhim solid, breathing heavily yet being reassured upon seeing how the Vessel was stuck immoble, slowly recovering Energy so that it could return to fight actively, another proof of its focus against armies instead of individuals.
Yet theyhe had no opportunity to rejoice, focused as theyhe was on the mass of Condemnation-Attribute floating between her hands, mass that had something of a resemblance to both a bubble and the depth of the ocean.
"Too late, too late. Now, what should I call this Spell?" She mused aloud, her smile widening sharply. "Ah, found it. [Atlantean Fall]!" She crushed the sphere at once, the Spell having been Channeled entirely through her whole Domain.
The Human-Spirit Hybrid gasped, the air soon filling entirely with water as they crashed into the ground, theirhis hands going right to cover theirhis mouth and nose alike, the Domain having been completely flooded, forming a sphere of water that tried to crush themhim under its weight.
Under the slowly growing weight of the water above themhim, theyhe was sent to theirhis knees.
Luna floated in place, both herself and her Vessel being left entirely unaffected by both the weight or the now significantly higher resistance to movement caused by the water that now surrounded the three of them.
After all while her Anti-Anti-Luna Effect was way too wide in range to be able to significantly affect other Beings, it was still an excellent way to Target and add in a slight drain on all of her possible Targets.
The great bubble gradually became denser and denser, its weight increasing over time and in this way assuring her opponent would die either by drowning, being crushed under the water's pressure or eventually being dissolved by the Anti- Effect imbued within the Spell once exhausted enough.
Well, if Luna and the Vessel didn't kill themhim first.
Luna's beholded her Spell's lethality, a slight dissatisfation obvious for one with JouleMark's experience with the Lunarian, derived by the simple fact that this Domain would Target her Mates. "I need to refine the Anti-Anti-Luna Effect. It's unacceptable at this point." She commented aloud.
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