"Bankai," she whispered into the void. "Formless Macrocosm."
Lauren became undone—her blades, body, soul and the Infinity stone exploding into dark, vicious liquid that melted into the cosmos and seemed to smother all of the light.
I unleashed another pulse of energy from my runic constructs, reinforcing the spatial lock already in place, then rapidly switched back to my psychic enchantments and throttled them, pumping in as much raw power as I could safely siphon from the Phoenix.
I heard a disembodied scream rip through the ether, but the pain wasn't enough to undo Lauren's Bankai. Not nearly.
Without warning, all of my runic constructs shattered. I caught fleeting silhouettes dancing through the void with my enhanced senses, but only barely, and I activated True Form instinctively.
There was no sense in holding back anymore. My body warped beneath the armor, and the Arcanite frame morphed to accommodate it.
Two horns grew out of my head, my skin thickened, and my muscles swelled; my defense skyrocketed.
My fingernails curled inward, growing into half-inch claws, and my wings turned purple and solid. They looked and felt like the real thing.
I'd taken considerable effort to limit the transformation to minor physical changes. Once again, I had to exploit my channeling and energy transference runes to prop up my new Shapeshifting skill.
The effort had even boosted it to Adept.
The bonuses from True form crashed in right after I got the notification, and suddenly, maintaining a partial physical transformation felt as easy as breathing.
700% boost to all physical attributes, energy output, and regeneration
+600% boost to all affinities and energy control
Moments after I transformed my caution was rewarded. Thousands of shadowy cuts slammed into a rune-covered telekinetic shield I raised, and with a flex of my hand, I ignited the blades, channeling an ocean of energy into the construct.
It was like a solar flare had gone off and bathed the system in light.
Arcanite gushed out of me and solidified into seven massive planetoids the size of Earth's moon, all covered in runes. At the heart of each planetoid were small computer cores loaded with copies of my Sentinel AIs, and they immediately came to life.
All I had to do was establish an energy tether using my transference runes, and suddenly I had backup.
"Analyzing threat: Patterns detected: accelerated adaptation, sensory impairment, soul energy manipulation, reality manipulation, superhuman physicality and sword mastery, duplication, and matter generation.
"Recommended course of action: Generate more planetoids to support the creator and fight back the horde of dark silhouettes. Generate solar mass to eliminate sensory deprivation and introduce varied energetic attacks to slow adaptation. Build a singularity powerful enough to neutralize the threat instantly using Time, Density, and Gravity energies."
They spoke to me as one, their voices layered over each other like some disembodied grand consciousness, and got to work immediately.
As massive runes shifted across the surfaces of the planetoids, hordes upon hordes of barely visible clones charged them, recognizing they that were as a clear threat. Most of them avoided me directly.
That turned out to be the wrong move.
Massive runes appeared around the planetoids for miles and miles, each inscribed upon a paper-thin sheet of telekinesis.
Atoms surrounding that vast section of space grew impossibly dense, boxing them in for an instant before microscopic slashes ripped through them.
A cleansing fire followed immediately after, annihilating the survivors.
Another army followed on the heels of the first but by then it was too late. The planetoids thrummed with Time and Space energy, and I recognized the spells they were weaving.
The first was a layered Time Compression rune to buy them the time they needed to create the singularity and generate additional planetoids.
The second was a space-extension spell. It did exactly as the name suggested, increasing the distance between any two points in space. You could imagine how useful and effective that could be when fighting a teleporter.
Under the cover of time magic, things moved fairly quickly. A large Anathema sun manifested at the center of the planetoids, pulsing out solar flares that washed over the approaching waves of clones and eldritch monstrosities, bathing them in a purple glow that made them all recoil, but only momentarily.
Right before my eyes, they developed a tolerance to it and multiplied. Other solar flares from the planetoids and directed attacks followed.
Disintegration rays channeling, wind, and density runes. Time-accelerated psychokinetic attacks. And other potent attacks mixing and matching energy combination. I was surprised by the sheer variety.
The blasts burned, slashes, tore, and crept through the horde with surprising efficiency, drowning me in red orbs.
I didn't stay idle while all of this was happening.
Four mini-orbs circled my head, each equipped with artificial intelligence possessing processing speeds and thought complexity that dwarfed anything on Earth.
They were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to create runes on the fly while I fought. My hammer and sword spun in my hands as the first wave approached me.
The silhouette leading the charge was different from the Laurens and the tentacle monsters. He wielded a massive Odachi and was dressed in metal armor.
I recognized him immediately. Kenuichio Harada.A.K.A. Silver Samurai. His mutation allowed him to generate a tachyon field around his weapons and armor and made him nearly unstoppable on the battlefield.
He fired off several slashes at me as he approached at tremendous speed. The slashes were sharp enough to cut through my undefended Arcanite, but they never reached me.
Two dimensional slashes leaped from my sword and turned his attack aside. He lunged at what he perceived to be an opening, but it was ultimately a trap.
The orbs glowed astral blue, the color of my angelic affinity, and spat out the biggest bolt of lightning I'd ever seen. It was thicker than a skyscraper, and it vaporized Silver Samurai, leaping to thousands upon thousands of shadows and flash-frying them in an instant.
I let out my best Palpatine laugh. I can't believe I didn't think of this until my orbs spelled it out for me. Wind with a little fine manipulation equaled lightning.
A truckload of it.
Ancient Runic Magic has evolved to (T) Runic Arsenal (Grand Master)
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