Chapter 124
From this new height, with other meteors streaking past like bullets around him, Ilux gained a different perspective.
His view was now level with part of the catastrophe itself, and more importantly, closer to its source.
'As long as my feet remain suspended, gravity is no longer relevant.'
At the peak of his unstable footing atop the rumbling meteor, at the precise moment before he launched himself to leap even higher, Ilux called forth a buried primordial power.
From the core of his being—or perhaps from the memory of his shattered shield—five primordial elements rose.
Pure white ice, shimmering like a frozen sea of shattered crystal, formed around him.
Dense black fire that emitted no light but devoured it greedily emerged as his dark shadow.
Ancient golden wind spiraled gently, carrying whispered incantations and promises from a forgotten age.
Beneath him, volcanic obsidian stone pulsed with an organic, heated rhythm, as if it contained the very heartbeat of the earth.
And crowning them all, a surge of pure, wild crimson energy erupted, like the core of a neutron star newly awakened from an endless slumber.
These overwhelming elemental forces were not unleashed to attack, but instead channeled with near-mad precision.
A sliver of each element—only a minuscule yet incredibly dense fraction—flowed from the soles of his feet and touched the surface of the meteor beneath him.
The moment contact was made, a silent erasure occurred.
The meteor, forged from rotting flesh and corrupted energy, did not explode, nor did it crumble into ordinary dust.
It underwent absolute existential deletion, unraveling down to its most fundamental level, where even the concept of atoms was far too crude to describe the nothingness left behind.
It vanished without a trace, without ripples in reality, as if it had never existed at all, and the universe obediently filled the void it left behind without question.
The momentum generated by that erasure itself provided recoil.
But Ilux did not need it.
Instead, with deep concentration, he drew back the remnants of the five elements, condensing them into a complex and stable energy platform beneath his feet.
The platform resisted the gravitational distortions of the domain, allowing him to hover in perfect balance, free from both the pull of illusory earth and the vacuum-like suction of the surrounding void.
From his new hovering position, an immediate threat emerged.
Another meteor, larger and faster, shot straight toward his face with undeniable intent to destroy.
Without panic, almost without unnecessary motion, Ilux's left arm—still retaining the hybrid form of a Western sword and a katana—moved.
The blade flashed.
Not with a crude slash, but with a clean, cold, absolute cutting line.
Light from the blade split the distorted air, slicing the meteor perfectly in two before both halves passed by either side of his head and drifted harmlessly into the darkness behind him.
The meteor fragments still burned with corrupted energy, but they were no longer a threat.
Ilux remained hovering in place, surrounded by lingering elements and drifting meteor fragments, his unblinking eyes still locked on Aldraya's distant figure, ready for the next step or strike in this silent dance of destruction.
'I can still fight.'
With swift, machine-like precision, Ilux's right arm—now a pinnacle fusion of war technology—snatched several still-glowing meteor fragments left from his previous strike.
The shards of metal and corrupted energy were seemingly absorbed into the surface of his cannon-arm, becoming fuel or guidance material for its complex internal weapon systems.
Then, the blazing counterattack began.
From his monolithic right arm, three forms of destruction were unleashed in deafening harmony.
Fighter-jet missiles streaked forward trailing white smoke, curving with artificial intelligence to pursue erratically moving meteor targets.
At the same time, the embedded tank cannon thundered, firing dense energy projectiles that slammed into nearby meteors with air-shaking explosions, while ten pale blue laser points along his forearm flickered in a savage rhythm, slicing and vaporizing smaller space rocks with piercing hisses.
The entire space before Ilux became a canvas of continuous detonations, filled with surging flames, shattered stone, and colliding arcs of energy.
Ilux himself became the eye of the storm he had created.
His body rotated slowly in place, guided by the elemental platform beneath his feet, allowing him to aim his hybrid weapon arm in every direction.
Each rotation unleashed a new sweep of missiles, cannon blasts, and lethal laser grids, systematically clearing the sky of the endless meteor rain.
Smoke and explosive dust formed clouds around him, yet the sensors in his arm and his sharpened instincts pierced through the fog of war, identifying every new threat emerging from behind the still-floating debris.
For threats that breached extreme close range, streaking to within mere inches of his body, Ilux's left arm took over.
The hybrid sword-katana blade became a blur, a protective circle of cold metal and light.
Each slash was fast, clean, and final, splitting meteors that came too close into harmless fragments before they could touch his skin.
His movements formed a dance between long-range destruction and ultra-close defense, a symphony of violence he was forced to perform to survive.
Behind all this offensive and defensive action that demanded extraordinary focus lay an even deeper foundation of inner concentration.
Ilux continuously condensed and channeled the flow of the five elemental powers he commanded into the platform beneath his feet.
Ice reflecting the glow of explosions, black fire absorbing shock energy, golden wind stabilizing his rotation, obsidian anchoring him to the remnants of reality, and crimson pulsar energy providing limitless thrust—all worked together to create an island of stability within absolute chaos.
That platform allowed him to hover without wavering, granting him unshakable footing to spin, fire, and slash, becoming a fixed center amid Aldraya's attempt to turn him into dust within this insane domain of space.
'Channel it again. Do not let it break.'
After successfully obliterating the cluster of meteors surrounding him, Ilux realized a cold truth.
Defense, no matter how formidable, was merely a postponement of death in the face of this endless storm.
His battle-hardened inner sight calculated rapidly.
Roughly a quarter of the total aerial threat had been neutralized, but the remaining three quarters still hung overhead like countless swords of Damocles.
Aldraya, the source of the catastrophe, still floated untouched at the center of the chaotic orbit, continuously pumping out more meteors born from her distorted flesh and suffering.
Endless survival was defeat.
Therefore, advancing forward was the only chance, no matter how small or blood-soaked it might be.
With resolve crystallizing like ice in his chest, Ilux changed tactics.
He did not cut off the flow of the five primordial elements into the platform beneath his feet—instead, he intensified it.
Yet the nature of the platform changed.
From a static foothold for defense, it transformed into a dynamic spring for attack.
Ice and obsidian formed a firm yet responsive base, golden wind became agile guidance, black fire absorbed impact energy, and the red pulsar delivered precise bursts of propulsion.
Then, he moved.
To be continued…