Chapter 273
[The Skill 'Godspeed' has been created.]
[You have learned a Legendary-rated Knowledge!]
[You have triggered the [Endless Learning]!]
[All Stats +15, Wisdom +10]
[Good Luck +10]
[Number of knowledges that can be created: 12/15.]
[Godspeed (Lv. 1))]
[Rating: Legendary]
[Active]
[Overclocks the nervous system using lightning magic to mimic the realm of the transcendants.
- Increases attack speed and evasion speed by 500%.
- All attacks deal an additional 100% Lightning Magic damage.
* Mortal perception cannot process this speed. Conscious control will result in severe disorientation.
Resource Consumption: 2500 HP and 5000 Mana per second.
Skill Cooldown: 10 minutes.]
Rudra gripped Extortion and triggered the skill.
[Godspeed is active. 2,500 Health and 5,000 Mana will be consumed per second.]
Thick, violent arcs of blue and white lightning erupted from his black coat. Rudra pushed off his back foot, aiming his staff at Lucious's back.
He completely overshot the target.
His brain couldn't process the sudden speed multiplier. By the time his eyes registered Lucious's position, his body was already thirty feet past it. Rudra ricocheted off the ground, entirely out of control, and slammed face-first into the heavy stone wall of the ruined barracks.
The stone cracked. Rudra slumped into the dirt, a massive chunk of his health gone from the self-inflicted crash.
He spat blood. His vision was vibrating. Conscious thought was useless at this speed, at least for the current him. If he tried to steer, he would just crater again.
He closed his eyes. He deliberately loosened his grip on his staff and emptied his mind, suppressing his near-perfect control. He let the delayed tugs and pulls of [Super Sensitivity] dictate his muscle twitches.
His body jerked.
Operating on pure, thoughtless autopilot, Rudra became a mindless blur of blue lightning. He bounced off a shattered guard tower and slammed directly into the center of the fray, slipping right past Abellio's paint waves.
While his body fought on instinct, Rudra's consciousness retreated inward. He channeled his remaining focus through [Legendary Sage's Eyes].
He watched Lucious fight. He looked past the physical movements and analyzed the mana.
He could finally see a little more clearly on how Lucious attacked. The Devil Monarch was perfectly balancing Divine and Demonic energy. When a target approached, Lucious used the demonic force to temporarily corrode and erase the target's defense, and then instantly injected divine energy to mend the gap the second his attack passed through. It was an impossible equilibrium of creation and destruction.
He opened his Deep Sage interface.
He tried to replicate the Devil Monarch's exact technique, using [Knowledge Creation] to perfectly manipulate and reverse the two opposing extremes.
[The creation has failed. Your current status cannot realize this concept.]
Rudra gritted his teeth. He couldn't replicate the absolute control, so he had to take a step down.
He opened his [Knowledge Creation] skill again and immediately created a new skill based on the same concept, but sacrificing stability for pure, destructive output. He described a formula that deliberately smashed his reserves of Divine Energy and Demonic Force together at a single focal point. He explicitly accepted the severe drawbacks, without Lucious's flawless control, forcing these two opposing origins to collide would heavily injure his own body.
It was a brutal, necessary trade-off required to forcefully realize immense attack power and guarantee a 100% defense ignore effect. Anyway he could just rely on his [Harbinger of Divine and Demon] title to ignore the internal backlash.
The system finalized the parameters, instantly synthesizing the highly compressed energy at the tip of Extortion.
[The Skill 'Twilight Annihilation' has been created.]
[You have learned a Legendary-rated Knowledge!]
[You have triggered the [Endless Learning]!]
[All Stats +15, Wisdom +10]
[Good Luck +10]
[Number of knowledges that can be created: 11/15.]
[Twilight Annihilation (Lv. 1)]
[Rating: Legendary]
[Active]
[A forced fusion of opposing forces. By deliberately stepping down from a perfect equilibrium into pure destructive output, Divine Energy and Demonic Force are violently smashed together into a single focal point.
- Fires a concentrated beam of Divine and Demonic energy that erases everything in its path, dealing damage equal to (Divine Power Stat × Demonic Power Stat x 1).
- Ignores 100% of the target's physical and magical defense.
- Damage equal to (Divine Power Stat × Demonic Power Stat x 0.5) will be dealt to the user as internal damage.
Resource Consumption: 80% of maximum Divine Power, 80% of maximum Demonic Power.
Skill Cooldown: 24 hours.]
His body, still operating on lightning-fueled autopilot, snapped into perfect alignment behind Biban's sword swing.
Rudra opened his eyes, taking back control for a fraction of a second, and fired.
A concentrated beam of grey-black energy erupted from the metal. It cut straight through the distorted gravity aiming right at Lucious’s heart.
Lucious shifted his shoulder.
The beam grazed his suit jacket. It singed the expensive fabric, leaving a charred line across his collar, and burned a few strands of his dark hair.
The Devil Monarch stopped moving.
He ignored Ken. He ignored Jessica's magic. He lowered his hands and locked his dark eyes entirely on Rudra.
The white lightning of [Godspeed] fizzled out. Rudra dropped to his knees, his mana pool completely empty and he was just one second from activating his legendary passive, gasping for air.
Lucious touched his singed collar.
"A forced fusion of opposing origins," Lucious observed, sounding mildly entertained. "You used the knowledge of that sea god to keep creating an equilibrium between the divine and demon and mimicked my technique. Crude, but it worked."
Rudra swallowed hard. His mouth was dry.
Lucious hadn't even struggled to understand the spell. He just looked at the beam once and immediately understood even the method with which he created the spell.
Lucious brushed the soot off his shoulder.
"I think I will leave you intact," Lucious decided, looking down at Rudra. He reached up and dug his bare fingers into the empty space in front of him, pulling his hands apart.
The dimension tore open, exposing a swirling void of dark space.
Lucious paused at the edge of the rift.
"We will meet again, Harbinger of Divine and Demon," Lucious said, his voice quiet but carrying clearly over the wind. "Try not to die before then. If you do, I will come back and destroy these little people and everyone you've ever met."
He stepped through the tear.
The rift snapped shut behind him. The oppressive red sky shattered, and natural sunlight flooded back into the ruined courtyard of Stormbreak.
Rudra sat in the dirt, leaning heavily on his staff. He looked at the bleeding, unconscious bodies of his guild and his knights scattered across the yard. The surviving Transcendents stood silently amidst the rubble.
It was over, but it didn't feel like a victory.