Chapter 384

Adulation (III)

There was a change—it was an abrupt, hasty, and unpredictable change that forced Cain to retreat away from the net he had cast. Among the masses, from what felt like the bottom of the ocean, crawled out a Mana signature that put even him to a pause. He frowned as his eyes began scanning for the exact position before locking onto a half-human and half-creature… thing that was ‘walking’ out from the crowd.

It was some eleven feet tall, at least, broad-shouldered with four arms in total—two fanning out from the shoulders and two from the upper back, looming over the creature’s head. It had one eye, though three mouths—one where all humanoids had them, and two to the sides—one on each cheek. Its nose had one, huge nostril, and its jaw was flat and long.

It wore heavy armor banded together with golden and silver clasps, leaving free the left shoulder and the feet. From the Mana fluctuations oozing out of it, Cain realized that it was likely the strongest individual they had. Its level was likely in the 200s, which meant that Cain would be unable to defeat it without parting with some of the secrecy surrounding him.

His frown deepened once again as he felt the surrounding spacetime wiggle and worm before the two of them were suddenly disseminated from the original reality into the rippled dimension. It was a world in-between, neither here nor there, their faint remnants flashing in and out of existence. After all, the rippled dimensions behaved like the higher dimensions—which meant that they eluded the normal perception.

The thing drew out a pair of war axes—usually, most warriors and warrior-like Classes would wield just one war ax, as they would one greatsword, yet the thing was large and strong enough to dual wield the damn weapons.

“I have prepared this arena for you,” a familiar voice caused Cain to sigh inwardly. “Only I can peer into its contents. While you battle, I’ll ensure nothing untoward happens to your people. Feel free to go berserk, Child Divine.”

Cain grunted inwardly, realizing that, still, he was just the entertainment. While he basked in the self-importance of being the ‘chosen’, he’d forgotten that he wasn’t really chosen so much as he was ‘groomed’. It was infuriating, but there wasn’t much he could do—and so, he focused on the giant in front of him, realizing it would be a good target to vent against.

Even so, it wouldn’t be an easy battle; while Cain was confident in winning against the ordinary thrice-Awakened, someone in the 200s was on the cusps of breaching through the Awakenings altogether, unchaining themselves from the Class System and creating their own path. That had never happened on Earth, but Quinn and the twins broke down a lot of the things that happen past a certain point.

Even if the creature in front of him hadn’t quite come up to that point, being close to it still made it extremely dangerous. Cain himself, despite being classified as a ‘twice-Awakened’, belonged in the similar class as the giant in front of him. This was discarding the countless items he had that provided him with cushions, and even the full effect of the Divine Seed. Even with those, however, especially as the latter hadn’t been completely refined, he still wouldn’t be ‘outside’ the Awakened system either.

In a weird way, the giant was perhaps the perfect target to grind him around the edges as it has been years since he was decently challenged by someone who wanted his head. Such long periods of inactivity can easily lead to a decline and dullness, something that he could hardly afford—as evidenced by a completely abrupt and random invasion of the Earth.

Taking a deep breath, he eyed the giant once again before he felt the Mana beginning to stir. The giant’s four arms worked in unison to drag forth confluences of Mana into shapes of blades that kept expanding like foam. Cain, on the other hand, elected to beginning the battle on the defensive, erecting quite a few shields to act as buffers.

While many things had changed since his last life, one had remained a relative constant as it was a root of who he was: in the times of uncertainty, he always stood back for a moment and ‘felt’ the opposition. He didn’t want to rush in blindly even if he was confident in being able to hold his ground, as it was pointless. He was a Mage—though changed in more ways than one and with a completely alternate set of skills, it changed nothing. The way Mages fought was reactively, especially against melee combatants.

It wasn’t just him—it was everyone. As such, he stayed back and waited. He needn’t wait long, as the giant soon fired off the four blades, each at least ten feet long, made up entirely out of pure Mana. Even he, if directly hit, would suffer the consequences of it. As such, he used the many layers of the shields to block the two and the remaining layers to alter the trajectory of the other two blades as to shoot past him.

In the meantime, the giant rushed forward, donning a sword in each of his hands, his one eye bleeding blue around its edges. Cain blinked backwards, conjuring up a flaming, spherical, star-shaped orb above each of his extended arms, firing them forward and using their explosive acceleration to blast himself further back, evading the fiery onslaught of the blades.

The explosion created semi-quasars that blasted heat and light akin to the birth of a star, suffusing the realm with enough energy to kindle a genesis. The giant bore through the suffocating flames and gravitational pressure of the stars, roaring madly and weaving the four swords in a strange pattern.

Cain frowned, a sensation swelling within his chest akin to a pull, a want to dive into the blade. Scoffing, he whitled it away with a quick burst of Mana, blinking backward and channeling a swath of Mana into a singular pillar of light. Within his fingers, energy of star’s core burned, cyclic, spinning unto itself. The pillar grew taller and wider, its color shifting ever-so-closer to the pure white of creation, though never quite grasping the purity.

Unleashing it, the energy curved through the void and met the giant head-on; the latter roared and swung the four blades in a perfect deflection, deflecting the starlight and edging past it, its blade reaching toward Cain’s heart. The latter, against the common thought, leaned forward and accepted the stab, his right arm extending, palm open, burning. Within, there was a tiny pebble--and yet, the pebble held the weight of the creation.

The giant felt an unprecedented sense of danger from that tiny little pebble that shone in the exchanging black and white; beyond the sheer quantity of energy, there was a primordial essence etched within the pebble’s creation, a pull of soul, suffocating. He withdrew, thought not before the pebble gently shafted forward and blew up between the two of them.

It wasn’t an explosion, not in the common sense anyway. The burst of energy was contained internally, erasing the surrounding spacetime from existence. Cain observed it closely; the ‘attack’ wasn’t really aimed at the giant and was more of an experiment. Seeing the spacetime recover so quickly he barely caught the tail end of it caused him to frown.

He was a fawn still, he realized; in order to recreate something erased by a primordial trace, it required twice, if not thrice, the energy that the destruction necessitated. Glancing up, beyond the membrane of the dimensions, he wondered silently... just how strength was conveyed at that level.

After all, Cain was strong enough to literally destroy a planet--every one of his serious attacks could form craters the size of the largest lakes, and any sufficiently charged one would be akin to a moon-sized asteroid blasting into the Earth. If his attacks were of such grand scale and destruction... then what about those that were leagues stronger than him? From the looks of it, they could repair everything he destroyed as quickly as he destroyed it. A terrifying thought, really.

“Are you done?” a playful voice quizzed, causing him to grin sheepishly.

“Whatever do you mean~~”

“Your distaste has angered your friend. The battle now truly begins; if you skate aside to test me, you might just lose one of your several lives.”

“It’s a good thing, then, I’ve got lives to spare,” Cain mumbled, noticing that the world had turned quiet and anew. In the distance, some five-six miles from him, the giant stood and stared, its eye red like blood. Its three mouths all parted into a berserk grin, its muscles bulging as it lifted the four arms and pounded them against its chest like an ape. “Well, ‘suppose it’s time I take the fight seriously, too. Can’t fuck around too long; got kids to save, after all...”