NOVEL NEXT Chapter 453: Three Crowns.
"Do not speak of matters that predate you-"
"Am I wrong then?" He began sneering and the woman's lips thinned into a line.
"You betrayed your own, I don't care what the reason was betrayal is betrayal, and I am going to make sure you draw your last breath because of what you made her suffer."
"You have no idea..." She began her rebuttal but paused.
"No," Rasha took a deep breath and balled her fists, staring at her feet and then raising her eyes towards Sol once more. "This long after the fact, words are pointless, I did indeed betray her, but that is all in the past, Sol Vestic Godslayer of Gold." The woman's hair began glowing white while she spoke while the mana around her compressed into a thin layer on her skin like ripples of water.
"I fight you as a general of the Emporium only."
Sol took a breath as well and then began slowly walking towards her. "I disagree, but go ahead and think what you will... the outcome of today's fight will not change for either of us."
"Are you not curious in the slightest about why all of the highest ranking officers under Ikaris left her?" General Silva asked, seemingly taken aback by Sol's determined gaze.
"Ikaris is my wife, the mother of my first child and the light that brings equilibrium to my darkness, even if she were to end up being a harbinger I would still be the hand leading her, finding out why she was betrayed would change nothing!" Sol ended the conversation with a snap as he thrust his fist forward at the same time as the General did, both causing the terrain under their feet to disappear in a clap of thunder leaving an endless chasm.
"Somehow, I doubt that!" Rasha recovered from the kickback before he did and grabbed his hand pulling him into a punch, but Sol flashed his head and thrust his forehead at her fist instead causing her wrist to snap as the woman yelped in shock before his fist slammed into her chin cracking her jawbone while his other hand clasped over her arm to prevent her from being blasted away.
"I have spoken!" Sol spun with the woman like a ragdoll and slammed her into the rapidly reforming ground sending mountainous chunks of rock flying again in every direction. "What difference could it make this late in the batrayal wether I know why or not?!" Sol roared. "It doesn't matter!"
Sol locked his other hand onto her's, spun and rested his foot in her shoulder and then began pulling, determined to tear her apart, but suffered a beam of concentrated mana directly into his abdomen breaking his armour and sending him crashing across the edges of the crater while the General spun and fell into a crouch fixing her dislocated shoulder with not even so much as a grunt.
"It does matter!" Rasha rebutted with a rasp in the back of her throat. "It should!" Her eyes vanished behind the hue of her mana and she took off towards him landing at his side with a great mace made of mana while he was still crashing, smashing it so hard against his exposed stomach that it shattered as he was sent flying even faster with a grunt. "It matters a lot, actually, as the one serving that monster, you deserve to know this about her!"
The ground around her melted as soon as her feet made contact with it and the General was sent propelling after Sol once more from a diagonal jump, but upon catching up and attempting to attack again Sol spun out of the swing of her foot and grabbed it, spinning with her momentum and smashing her into the ground a third, fourth and then a fifth time before opening his mouth when she pulled herself free.
[Unknown Tier: Cosmic Scream]
He fired it at point-blank range, but somehow he was the one sent flying again leaving a chasm across the land after missing his shot.
[Godspeed]
Rasha was in the middle of righting herself when Sol's fist slammed into the side of her head, causing a quake and an instantaneous crater when she hit the ground and flipped out only to be subject to several more punches as he went into a frenzied state and began dealing dual blows to her head and abdomen before finishing with a roundhouse kick that left her spinning in the air before him like a top.
He stood there for several seconds waiting for her to slow down while his fist folded with mana stacking upon itself.
[Unknown Tier: CLOCKWORK]
"If Ikaris is a monster-"
The air around Sol's fist began warping.
[Stacked x10]
"Then I might as well be the devil-"
[Stacked x 700]
"Ikaris is not my master," He admitted watching time slow down for the Godslayer before him until her spin halted and the atmosphere around them began burning while the armour on his arm and shoulder melted away. "I am the monster that she willingly submitted to, you who are the enemy to us both have no place amongst the land of the living!"
[Stacked x ∅]
Rasha's head slowly turned amidst the slowed time, she was trying her hardest to but she was moving at the pace of a snail, she could only watch as this self-proclaimed monster and devil raised his fist and launched it at her like a rail-cannon, his eyes that had seemed beautiful now shone with malice so fierce it could scare either sides of the afterlife, and his hand coated in that strange energy felt like it held the weight of an entire universe imploding.
[Godslayer Fist: Primordial Wrath]
She saw everything as clear as the fabricated daylight before her, and then it all went white.
Sol and Rasha were fighting on a secluded terrain above the others, but when his punch was unleashed, an entire half of the entire plane ceased to exist instantaneously, the dome shattered and the stars in the direction he had punched all simultaneously collapsed causing a Phase Transition Event* where they vaporised into clouds, formed anomalous explosions, cooled and ignited in one massive mess of lights, a horrifying event that broke every law repeatedly and caused the battlefield to go silent as everyone watched with their mouths agape.
"This is Master's power?!" Dina stared in shock landing next to Ikaris.
She was questioning her senses and rightfully so, Sol's mana had seemingly gone out like a candle before suddenly exploding on a scale that could have easily put anything else he did to shame.
By scale it was nothing near the biggest nor the flashiest, but the accumulated mana that he had unleashed was unlike anything any of them had ever witnessed before.
"Amazing," Xie mused, wondering if he would have been able to realistically counter an origin event of that calibre and leave with his limbs intact. "This growth of yours is simply amazing, Sovereign!!" The man exclaimed excitedly, spreading his hands wide while the explosions began gathering in one singular point, but slowly, that grin began to fade and his hands began to lower.
At first he and others like Yu and Ikaris thought it was Sol's doing, but the mana began to change form before their eyes, it was the General that Sol had attacked, sure to have been killed by a blow meant to be final, Sol watched shocked as the woman with a half of her head still materialising gathered the singularity into her being through a spherical void that had opened in her stomach screaming in pain with her arms and legs thrashing about.
It was multiplying her mana by every degree that was absorbed and she seemed insatiable, for even as she was clearly in pain, General Silva held a wide grin, one that became apparent when her eyes reforged anew and she turned her gaze to her enemy.
"How...?" Sol asked, sure he was the one who unleashed it, but he strongly doubted he was capable of enduring or absorbing that much mana that quickly without imploding, it was an infinity of creation level events happening in a finite space, even for him, this would have led to death.
"How refreshing!" Rasha snapped lowering her gaze to look at him properly while the sphere in her abdomen became solid and shattered revealing nothing on the inside. "With this much power, I could possibly rival the Second!" She cackled.
"But there is more... something MORE!"
Sol was again shocked when he saw a flicker behind the third General, and then another spark of crimson before a trio of Halos resembling crowns exploded into being. Two small ones behind her shoulders and a large one behind her head, smooth on the inside but rough and jagged on the outside reflecting the volatility of their conception.
She slowly raised and spread her hands wide, forming maces from her mana while the skies slammed shut behind her leaving thunder and night from the absence of the stars, within a single moment, this being had become an unprecedented variable standing before him.
"This is power that can possibly rival the Second...?" Sol mused on those words, this woman who had just eaten of a forbidden fruit and gained a damnable amount of power even greater than his own was still saying something that absurd.
"How much stronger are the first and the Emperor, then?"