Chapter 88: The Hero & The Demon (II)
Downfall Dragon Spear's acute, incandescent shine reached its absolute precipice. Fafnir's energy that resided within its gold-metal coil overlapped with Alduin's, creating the necessary feedback loop through their contract in order to fuel the colossal power-up that was a Balance Break.
His unshielded body was now protected by a dense, thick-armored set of bright-gold scale mail. Skyrocketing his defense straight to Peak Satan-Class. The same immense strength he had utilized only once before in his battle against Tephos Beur. The royal purple jewels embedded into its plated exterior gleamed brighter than ever, a product of Alduin's newfound level of synchronization with Downfall Dragon Spear as a Satan-Class Devil rather than Ultimate-Class.
Before, he had only tapped into 70%-80% of the Sacred Gear's full power, now that number was looking more like 90%-95%.
"A devil with a Sacred Gear…" Georg muttered in astonishment. He presumed the Golden Aura Alduin was using was a part of his biological powerbase, and even if that weren't the case, a full-on Sacred Gear was the last thing he expected to see. "Does that mean he's like Vali? Is he somehow masking his human side from Dimension Lost? Is such a thing even possible?"
His instinctual curiosity as a Magician surged, but he kept it suppressed. Personal inquiries could wait until they had Yasaka in their custody.
Cao Cao's transformation followed. It wasn't nearly as flashy as Alduin's, but an extravagant display didn't have any real bearing on a transformation's power.
A divine, radiant halo of light appeared behind Cao Cao, enveloping the hero descendant's torso like a celestial circle—accompanied by seven, pitch-black identical spheres that formed a perimeter around his outline. Each densely-packed with a foreign, almost alien form of energy. A mutation from the Holy Power that True Longinus was home to.
A Sub-Species Balance Break: Polar Night Longinus Chakravartin.
A version of the state that derived from its usual form, and altered itself to uniquely suit the wielder. A rare phenomenon only those who possessed the highest degree of understanding and resonance of their Sacred Gears could ever hope to attain.
Cao Cao was among those seldom few.
He hummed, observing Alduin's state with a similar intrigue as his tactician, but like him, he understood this was no time to humor himself. His opponent, despite being a devil, had survived against True Longinus in its base form, and even nearly killed him before he had the chance to let his true prowess show.
He was the real deal. An opponent. Not prey to be hunted like the rest.
Cao Cao activated the first of seven spheres, each of which possessed a different, unique ability. Assaratana. A sphere that let him either teleport a person of his choosing, or himself to any location he pleased.
In the blink of an eye, Cao Cao vanished, a startled shiver crawling down Alduin's spine. Without Ki, he couldn't discern where Cao Cao was the moment he reappeared, and in a battle like this, even the slightest amount of delay would be enough for the hero descendant to drive a holy spear straight through his chest. Ending Alduin before he even knew what hit him.
Fortunately, Alduin's vision still worked just fine. Through his scale mail's visor, he could see that another shadow had suddenly appeared beside his own, the outline of its spear raised high in the air in preparation to perform a fierce, downwards overhead sweep.
He snapped backwards, his draconic spear gripped with both hands, and thicker than an elephant's trunk with the full force of Fafnir's unsealed power reinforcing its composition.
CLANG!
The two weapons grated against one another, but to Alduin, something felt off. They appeared equally matched from an outside perspective, but the sheer confidence on Cao Cao's face was unnatural. It was the kind you'd expect from someone who had just managed to lure another into a trap. A silent, inward declaration of presumed victory.
Cao Cao activated his second sphere. Cakkaratana. The sphere that allowed him to destroy anything considered a 'weapon'.
Alduin's spear included.
As if some cosmic, divine law had descended merely to spite him. Alduin's draconic armament simply shattered, it had nothing to do with Cao Cao's force, or a lack of expertise on his part as the weapon's wielder and creator. It just—broke.
"You're not the only one who can catch his opponent off guard," Cao Cao sneered. Even with his face hidden behind his helm, the devil's stupor was clear as day.
Alduin acted on sheer instinct, moving to lunge backwards in order to escape Cao Cao's strike zone. Wind Magic carrying his feet on nothing but pure reflex. However, with the element of surprise on his opponent's side, he was a beat too late.
SHATTER!
The tip of the heavenly spear tore through the right side of Alduin's chestplate, the metal's natural top-tier resistance allowed him to move back a little further before the alloy soaked in Christ's blood could make direct contact with his skin, but the damage was still done, and in spades. This wasn't like when True Longinus brushed near Alduin's shoulder while it was in its base form.
This was its Balance Break. The already insane density and quantity of Holy Power inside the spear was running on overcharge.
Alduin's pupils dilated, his sclera straining with red lines as he found himself doused in a tidal wave of scorching, searing, agonizing pain. He burned. The skin over his chest charred within seconds, turning a grotesque, charcoal color, as if he were being barbecued alive. Even for a Satan-Class Devil, with an insane composition like his, the boundaries of his pain tolerance were being pushed to their apex. If he didn't react quickly, a loss of consciousness would be all but inevitable.
'I have to slow the spread!'
His Dryadic Blessing coursed through his bloodstream at full power, all the Golden Aura enhancement that had once gone to his spear now redirected to super-charging his healing factor. No matter what, a demonic healing ability couldn't counter the corrosive nature of Cao Cao's holy relic, but it was possible for him to weaken it, slow it down, and maybe, just maybe, his draconic cells would come in clutch for him. It wasn't a foolproof solution, the furthest thing from it, but it was a solution. Just a wishful one.
"Now this is more like it!" Cao Cao chuckled aloud, twirling his spear and balancing it over his shoulders, posing as if he were Wukong. He couldn't help but find a sinister sense of satisfaction as he observed Alduin's current state, a complete contrast to how he had carried himself pre-Balance Break.
No bravado. No smugness. Simply the sound of pained, labored wheezes echoing through his mouthplate. His shoulders dipped with each breath as his body forced itself to work overtime simply to stay upright, and exerted double the effort to keep the Holy Power from wreaking absolute havoc throughout his organs like an unstoppable plague.
Contentedly, he smiled. This was how it was supposed to be, this was how a devil stupid enough to challenge their perfect counter ought to look like.
Although, in all fairness, the devil-dragon had put up some decent resistance. Far greater than Cao Cao expected him to do, that's for sure.
"As a show of respect," Cao Cao spoke, his voice notably less humorous than before. "I'll make it painless," he had no real respect for supernatural races whatsoever, but he did have a certain degree for the art of battle itself. The devil was owed that much, or so he believed.
Unhurried, he inched towards Alduin step by step. Even if the devil had some kind of last-ditch-effort trump card up his sleeve, so what? He was still inside Georg's Dimension Create, and Leonardo had yet to chip in. With three, top-tier Longinus at play, his situation was more than hopeless. The only way for him to survive was if he had wisely chosen to avoid the battle in general, unfortunately for him, he hadn't made such a decision.
[Let me in.]
Alduin stammered.
A voice had just spoken to him, not that of Fafnir's, nor his dragon's, and probably not that of the heaven-piercing tree either. After all, this was a voice he recognized in all its cold, calculated, frigid apathy.
His mother.
[You'll die here unless you let me in.]
The version of his mother that dwelled within the Demonic Ki she had implanted into him. Younger, but still her nonetheless.
[Can you accept that? Dying before you reach the real me?]
Time seemed to slow down for Alduin, not physically, but perception-wise. As if his own brain had allotted him a period of bonus time to consider the demonic manifestation's words.
[Even if by some miracle you beat the spear-wielder, his company still looms to your rear. A weakened-you has no chance against them, you know this.]
He saw nothing, but he could feel—he could feel the sensation of two, icy, soft arms wrapping around the back of his shoulders. Pulling him close as his mother's voice whispered its rationale into his ear.
["She" cannot help you, she spent her energy keeping me from spreading further. I am the only salvation you have at your disposal, you can either choose to let me in, or perish here, having accomplished absolutely none of what you set out to do.]
Alduin paused a moment—
And then he laughed, the self-depreciating kind.
Indeed, this could very well be the end of the line for him. However, that didn't mean this version of his mother meant well. Albeit, she didn't appear to be particularly concerned about driving home the notion of her being an 'ally'. She wouldn't be using such ominous wording like "let me in" if she were.
This was not a get out of jail free card, this was a trade-off. If Alduin let the Demonic Ki do as it pleased, he was bound to lose something in exchange.
Nonetheless, it was his only chance of survival.
"Oh, what the hell!" He threw his arms up. "Knock yourself out, Mother!"
Cao Cao, Georg, and Leonardo all felt it happen. An abrupt, unforeseen whirlwind of change that overcame the panting devil-dragon. They couldn't even begin to fathom what the change was supposed to be, or how it happened, but mentally, they all came to the exact same realization.
Something dangerous had just been born.
"Oh for heaven's sake, a last minute power-up? Seriously?" Cao Cao leapt back, speaking through jittering teeth as he put a solid thirty meters of distance between himself and Alduin. Even his spear began to reverberate, not because the weapon itself was afraid, but because it feared for its current master.
The invisible, subconscious barrier inside Alduin's meridians broke as he allowed the Demonic Ki, once kept at bay, to merge with the vessels that facilitated the flow of his Ki. Heavily impeded by Georg's ability to cut off his sub-dimension from Urakyoto's Ki-rich atmosphere.
Slowly, a dark, sickly miasma started to leak out of Alduin's pores, stretching out in the form of a hundred or so thin tendrils which proceeded to wrap themselves around their source's body. Enveloping him like a malicious cocoon, forged from a substance that Georg, at a mere glance, bore toxicity of ridiculous proportions. Especially for fragile humans like them, a single inhalation could put them six feet under.
In excruciating fashion, most likely.
He held up one finger, scooching another inch closer to Leonardo. "Ward of Greater Toxin Protection. Ward of Greater Atmospheric Sterility." As was the norm with the once-in-a-millennia Magician, a few words were enough to create top-level barriers capable of protecting himself and the faction's youngest member from whatever unholy byproduct Alduin's abrupt transformation was about to produce.
There was no need for him to worry about Cao Cao, the Holy Power running through his system and True Longinus's natural protection would keep him safe.
Beneath the cocoon's layered surface, Alduin's appearance started to alter. The usual, haunting bright-green luminescence of his irises began to fade, draining themselves of all color and leaving nothing behind but two abyssal, jet-black orbs. The poster image of lusterlessness and indifference. Voids attached to his face. A reflection that'd only show its beholder the worst version of themselves.
His hair too experienced a metamorphosis of his own, both in texture and coloration. The signature rugged, unmanageable spikiness he had inherited from his father's genetics started to settle, soften, and smooth out. It didn't stand up with that porcupine-esque roughness anymore, it cascaded over his shoulders, flowed even. A beautiful grain befitting a true noble of the Underworld.
Like his eyes, the ashen pigmentation of his hair started to fade, however, darkness didn't take over in its stead. Rather, the signature looks of his maternal DNA decided to show itself in all its bright-verdant majesty. The only remnant of his Buné lineage that remained were the four draconic horns that sat atop his scalp like a crown.
Right now, he truly looked like his mother's son. Sure, his eyes didn't appear like they once were, but it was possible his mother's would transform the same way if she ever chose to enter such a 'state'.
One by one, the tendrils keeping Alduin guarded started to peel off. His Balance Break was no longer active, yet somehow, he appeared a thousand times more intimidating than before. Georg wasn't sure how to articulate it exactly, but there was something just plain wrong about his emergence.
The way the dimensional mist almost seemed to bounce off his skin was much too bizarre, the sub-space itself remained stable, hence why Georg's composure held firm. But still, his magical experience and logic-based intuition told him to keep his reflexes on a knife's edge.
Alduin closed his eyes, breathed a slow, drawn-out exhale, then opened them. His body shifting here and there, as if he were getting used to his own skin for the first time. "You did well, Magician." Oddly enough, he chose to address Georg instead of Cao Cao. "Orthodox Ki usage is heavily reliant on the pre-existing lifeforce in one's surroundings. Had I possessed access to Urakyoto's richness, all three of you may have perished by now."
Doubtful, Georg narrowed his eyes, triple checking the integrity of Dimension Lost. "You still can't access it, as long as my Sacred Gear's active, Urakyoto's Ki will never reach you." This transformation of Alduin's was yet another, mind-numbing deviation in the tactician's plan. The worst by far, for he didn't have a damn clue what had become of the devil.
Alduin wheeled his head, side-eyeing Georg who was positioned behind him. "You seem to have misunderstood something, Magician." His tone turned authoritative, the same one his mother adopted with him when he made an 'obvious' error in his spellcraft. "I have no desire to utilize orthodox Ki against either of you, had that been the case, I would've focused all my efforts in dispelling this mist of yours rather than assuming this form."
An explosion slammed outwards from Alduin's position, not the fiery, napalm-kind. The kind that came from a qualitative, sudden stacked increase of internal power.
"The power I intend to use does not originate from 'else', it's rooted in one's accumulated sense of 'self'. You seem well-learned, so I imagine you'll at least understand the surface of what I mean."
Alduin's meridians, once barren and unable to draw in any meaningful amount of 'life'. Now filled with an abundancy, perhaps even an excess of 'death'. A force that took form in the shape of a thick, dense sheen of pitch-black miasma that surrounded every inch of his form.
Even if Georg were to dispel his sub-space, Ki would still remain inaccessible, for the warm, gentle nature of lifeforce simply could not co-exist with the cold, callous nature of its demonic parallel.
Horrified beads of sweat trickled down the pores of all three members of the Hero Faction, encountering supernatural existences that made use of powers that could be considered 'demonic' or 'evil' wasn't an alien concept. In fact, they had found themselves in such situations a plethora of times before.
But this?
This was different.
This power was on the furthest end of that spectrum of 'evil'. True Longinus's vibrations confirmed as much.
For all intents and purposes, Alduin had become a veritable Demonic Ki Practitioner. Such was the only description that befitted someone who managed to fill their meridians with Demonic Ki, and remain the captain of their own vessel.
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