Chapter 1203 Calamities Manifest
As Arthur challenged the empyrean head on, he studied his appearance. It was an old man, not ancient in appearance, but with an agelessness that spoke of a life extended far beyond its natural span. His violet robes rippled with an echo of the temporal distortion that pulsed around him. His face was a mask of cold calculation, marked by lines etched not by age but by the weight of his terrible ambition.
There was no mistaking the bloodline, the eerie familiarity that flickered in his eyes. But while the Yalen King was a viper, this man was a storm made flesh. This, Arthur knew, was the apex of the power he'd been battling since coming into this world – the Empyrean of Yalen.
"Osian the Invincible?" the figure boomed, his voice an avalanche echoing through the distortion. "Do you think I would be scared with threats, outsider?"
"The name is Arthur Netherborne," he retorted, his voice tight with the simmering fury that threatened to burst forth. "And yes... you should be scared."
Black lightning snaked around Arthur's form, crackling and snapping, a physical manifestation of his defiance. The very air thrummed with the clash of their spiritual energies, a prelude to the inevitable devastation that would descend upon Giant Garden if they chose to unleash their true potential.
"You will not touch Oriole," Arthur vowed, his golden eyes locked on the Empyrean, unyielding. "Not while I draw breath." The unleashing of Arthur's spiritual energy was less like an eruption and more like the cracking of a cosmic egg. It didn't merely fill the air; it became the air, twisting reality around him. The ground trembled, not from an earthquake, but from the strain of containing such unfathomable power. Space itself shimmered and warped, as though Arthur's spirit was simply too vast to be contained within this world's boundaries.
The Yalen Empyrean, for the first time since emerging from the fog, betrayed a flicker of genuine surprise. His eyes narrowed, his ageless features tightening. Unease gnawed at his composure, but a chilling pride still burned in his gaze.
"Intriguing," he rasped, the word thick with disdain and a hint of academic curiosity. "Such raw, unrefined power… truly an outsider. Still, it is nothing but brute force before true knowledge."
A flicker of his wrist, a barely noticeable gesture, and the air around Arthur thickened. Not with the smothering weight of a physical attack, but with the oppressive force of time itself. Each second seemed to stretch into an eternity, an invisible weight bearing down on Arthur, seeking to slow him, bind him. Arthur realized that the empyrean was using his ability to cast vision to confuse Arthur's sense of time. As he found himself entrapped in the temporal force, time began to dilate in his mind. The Empyrean smiled, thin and cruel. "Time, outsider, is the most potent weapon. It grinds down empires, erodes mountains, withers even the most potent magic. What chance does your unbridled fury stand against the inexorable flow of existence itself?" Arthur grimaced but didn't collapse, didn't buckle under the impossible pressure. It was as the Empyrean said; Arthur's spiritual energy thrummed not with skill but with the raw force of his defiant will. Yet, defiance was the very essence of his being. Where the Empyrean controlled, Arthur would resist. "Funny, though," Arthur muttered from within the temporal illusion. "For I am existence itself, too. You underestimate me, old man," Arthur growled, his voice strained. Black lightning crackled and flared around him, shattering the temporal slowness the Empyrean had sought to impose. "My power… it was forged in the heart of a dying world. You and your petty tricks can't even begin to comprehend its depth."
With a roar of defiance that reverberated through Giant Garden, Arthur's spirit surged outward again. The ground cracked beneath his feet, the very air shattering as the full weight of his unleashed power threatened to tear reality itself apart. The Empyrean staggered back, his eyes wide with a mix of shock and a thrill bordering on madness. In that singular, earth-shattering moment, a terrible understanding dawned on the Empyrean. This wasn't just a battle for Oriole or the fate of some fledgling rebellion. A wave of unnatural energy surged from the Empyrean, a ripple in the very fabric of reality that was less attack and more a decree of how the world would be. Ancient forests sprouted from the ground, their gnarled limbs twisting upwards like grasping hands intent on dragging Arthur beneath the earth. Mountains sheared from the landscape, their jagged peaks plunging downwards like a titan's fist. It wasn't mere illusion. The Empyrean was reaching into the past, twisting and reshaping it to his will, imposing his distorted vision of the world upon the present. Temporal distortions warped the very laws of physics, sending boulders flying on impossible trajectories and causing the ground to buckle and collapse without warning. Yet, in the eye of this temporal storm, Arthur stood defiant, an impossible anomaly. The Empyrean's manipulations brushed against him, flickered around him, but couldn't truly grasp him. The outsider, his existence a paradox within the Yalen lineage, stood as a living rejection of the past itself. Black lightning surged from his fingertips, jagged and unpredictable, lashing out at the temporal distortions. The very touch of it was anathema to the Empyrean's manipulations – pure, destructive energy tearing at the meticulously crafted threads of causality the Empyrean sought to weave.
Arthur didn't just resist; he pushed back. Around him, a sphere of golden light bloomed - the raw, chaotic mana that fueled his runes. Where the Empyrean sought to impose a twisted reality, Arthur's mana fought back with the unformed potential of pure creation. Illusions withered, impossible angles crumbled, and the temporal assaults sputtered into confused eddies of misaligned magic.
The Empyrean hissed in frustration. "Impossible," he rasped, the word thick with ancient anger. "Your very existence is a violation of order!" Arthur's reply was a roar of defiance as he launched himself forward, a blazing comet of black lightning and golden mana. He wasn't merely fighting an old man. He was battling the very concept of control, of a world meticulously puppeteered by forces that sought to crush all that lay outside their grand scheme. A surge of frustration boiled within the Empyrean, twisting his once-composed features into a rictus of fury. "You will not defy me!" he roared, his voice a discordant blast that caused the mountains themselves to tremble.
The air around the Empyrean shimmered, warping and distorting into a grotesque echo of Arthur's own spiritual manifestation. Within that swirling vortex, a single, glowing point took shape - a beacon of chilling intensity. The Empyrean reached out with a trembling hand, his fingers tracing runes older than any civilization, whispering incantations born from forbidden knowledge. The glowing point grew, then split. Not with the blinding brilliance of Arthur's mana, but with a cold, sickly radiance that seemed to suck the very life from the vibrant Giant Garden. A tear opened, not into space, but into the shadowy echoes of the Empyrean's corrupted astral form – a twisted prison realm hewn from stolen moments, broken lives, and echoes of forgotten futures.
The tear yawned wide, and from within spilled abominations. They were vaguely humanoid, yet formed of shifting constellations, of nebulae twisted into gaping maws. One shimmered with the echoes of a dying star, another writhed with the remnants of planets devoured and broken down to their very essence. These weren't creatures; they were calamities made manifest, fragments of the Empyrean's own power twisted and given monstrous form. With a wordless command, they surged forward, a wave of cosmic horrors eager to feast upon the rebellious outsider. Arthur, for the first time since the clash had begun, faltered. There was no strategy, no technique to face this tide of destruction. His black lightning crackled and flared, lashing out like a whip that shattered one cosmic abomination into scattered stardust, only for its remnants to coalesce anew. His golden mana blazed, creating shields that buckled, warped, and almost extinguished under the onslaught of another creature of starlight.
The Empyrean cackled, the sound echoing with the madness of those who gazed too long into the abyss. "Despair, outsider! These are not mere beasts; they are forces of the universe itself, enslaved by my will. Your defiance is a pebble thrown into the sea of eternity!"
Arthur gritted his teeth, a defiant fire burning in his golden eyes. He was outmatched, outgunned, facing an unfathomable fraction of the Empyrean's true power. But he refused to yield. He was not just Arthur, the outsider brought to this world by happenstance. He was defiance incarnate, the ember of rebellion born within a dying world, the embodiment of resisting the inevitable.
He raised his hands, black lightning and golden mana spiraling wildly, and roared his defiance into the storm of monsters. "Then I will be the pebble that sinks your damned ship, old man! Come forth, Kingdom of Wrath!" As he clapped his hands together, a giant gate manifested behind him, its doors gnawing open as a million spirits screamed for justice. The battle reached its climax as a million souls rushed to face countless astral beings.
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