R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 66 (Patreon)

R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 66

It didn’t make any sense.

Orion’s eyes were cold as he reached up to his left shoulder and, with a quiet grunt, ripped out a large silver spear. Blood poured down from the jagged hole, staining his arm red and stopping only after the Dark Wraith channeled Elemental Lightning to sear the wound shut.

‘47 minutes.’

The First Lord ducked slightly, narrowly avoiding a brilliant beam of yellow light aimed at his head. In the same movement, he reached out with his left hand and slightly shifted his stance, gathering an immense amount of energy in his arm.

‘Thunder King’s Martial Art - 2nd Chapter, 2nd Passage.’

Lightning crackled around the open palm of his left hand, coalescing into a massive vertical whirlpool.

‘Force Dispersal.’

A split second later, a scorching wave of molten fire smashed into Orion. It was a tremendous attack, a wave of flame a dozen meters high and wide, aiming to overwhelm the First Lord and leave him no room for escape. The heat from the attack was fierce enough to melt the earth it washed over in a fraction of a second, turning it into blackened slag.

However….

Instead of incinerating the First Lord, the wave of fire slammed into the vortex of lightning Orion had created. Immediately, all of the heat and energy within the attack was drawn into that whirlpool and flung to the side, dispersed in a mesmerizing flare of light.

The attack failed, but its flashy, dying fanfare bought Orion a few seconds reprieve to gather his thoughts.

“47 minutes.” Orion muttered out loud, his voice deep and guttural, tinged with a hint of emotion.

Disbelief.

From the time this battle began to now, 47 minutes had passed…

And he had failed to kill even one of his targets.

It was unbelievable.

As the smoke from the wave of fire cleared, Orion’s surroundings gradually came into focus.

Apart from the still intact Sanctum behind him, the landscape around him was devastated. The ground was littered with enormous gouges, cracks, and burnt rock. The air was dyed gray from smoke and ash, quivering from the frequent clash of powerful energy attacks.

Orion’s gaze latched onto his attackers as the air cleared, his focus never wavering.

Directly in front of him was the Lord Justiciar. Blood dripped down from Gregor’s mouth, ears, and nose, a sign of overexertion and proof that Orion’s attacks were taking effect, but the Farian stood tall nevertheless, the only warrior present that could match the First Lord in terms of raw power.

Behind Gregor, and slightly to Orion’s right, stood the Great Wizard Shahsta. The woman’s face was pale and covered in blood, but still radiating a steadfast determination to fight on.

‘A brave fool is still a fool.’

Defensive Artifacts could only do so much. A Wizard should never engage in close combat when facing an opponent of his caliber.

Around the 19 minute mark of this battle, the Defensive Artifacts and Spells Shahsta had prepared to protect herself finally failed. The Wizard had tried to fall back to reapply them, but not before the shockwaves from Orion’s attacks ruptured both her eyes and her ears.

The Rakkonian Wizard could use Magic to compensate for that loss, but her injuries were taking their toll, slowing her attacks.

The wind stirred ever so slightly behind Orion.

Nigh-instantly, the First Lord took a half step forward and spun to his right, raising his right arm up in front of his chest.

‘Thunder King’s Martial Art - 1st Chapter, 4th Passage.’

A mix of Elemental Lightning gathered around his forearm and then rapidly condensed in on itself, merging with Master Tier Fist Energy until it was barely a centimeter thick.

‘Heaven’s Wall.’

Not a moment later, a blood-red rapier slammed into his arm. The air crackled as the sword glowed, black energy flickering around it briefly. The powerful sneak attack stabbed forward around 1/3rd of the way through the extraordinarily dense layer of energy on the First Lord’s arm before halting, unable to truly connect.

‘How many swords did this man bring?’ Orion thought, his eyes zeroing in on the opponent in front of him.

Or, rather… zeroing in on where his attacker should have been.

Somewhere around the 12 minute mark of the fight, this human fighter, Baron Fortuna, had activated some Ability or Artifact that allowed himself to turn invisible. The warrior had turned to launching countless sneak attacks, attempting to take advantage of Orion’s split focus.

Of course, those attempts failed.

‘Shatter.’

As soon as the rapier made contact with Orion’s forearm, the Dark Wraith flexed the energy on his arm, forcing it to seek out and collide with Fortuna’s sword. Elemental Lightning was an unstable energy at best, and when it merged with Master Tier Weapon Energy of any kind, it gained terrible destructive properties.

The rebound of energy slammed into the rapier and shattered it, destroying the Artifact.

‘He let go? Not bad.’ Orion’s senses were incredibly keen, in-tune with the world around him in a way few beings could match. As soon as the sword broke, he could instantly tell that the warrior had abandoned his weapon and retreated.

After Orion realized Fortuna could dematerialize his sword at will, storing it in his Spatial Ring to avoid Orion’s counterattacks, the First Lord had adjusted his strategy. Now, every time Fortuna attacked, the Dark Wraith forced the human to sacrifice his weapon or give up on his attack, leaving him no opportunity to play around.

‘That’s his 13th sword.’ He noted. Fortuna’s Sword Mastery was no match for his own, forcing the warrior to avoid direct confrontations.

In the air, around a dozen meters away, the First Lord’s keen eyes spotted several drops of blood falling to the ground.

‘Invisibility is meaningless if you can’t-’ Before Orion could even finish his train of thought, the Dark Wraith cut himself off with a grimace.

With superhuman reflexes, Orion twisted his head out of the way as another beam of light attempted to pierce through his brain. A second and soon third beam of light followed as Orion contorted his body, smoothly dodging each attack.

“Saint.” The First Lord turned an irritated glare towards the Nirvana Saint.

Standing nearly 100 meters off to his left, the Nirvana Saint’s eyes glowed golden as he lobbed laser beams of light at Orion’s skull. In his right hand, the Nirvana Saint held open the same gold and white book, some sort of Artifact the First Lord failed to recognize.

Standing next to the Nirvana Saint were two of his Knight Commanders, the Sun Knight and the Cloud Knight. Both warriors were bloodied and bruised, their armor damaged and torn.

The third Knight Commander, Francis Dubois, the Sea Knight, knelt on the ground behind them, his face pale. Of the enemies Orion faced, the Sea Knight was in the worst shape, missing his right arm and right eye, nearly unconscious from blood loss.

‘It’s the price you pay for the spear you left in me.’ The spear Orion ripped out of his shoulder belonged to the Sea Knight, the result of a coordinated strike by the 3 Knight Commanders and the Nirvana Saint.

Midway through his thoughts, another beam of light flashed towards Orion’s head.

‘I heard he’s a newer arrival on the Ancient World… he hasn’t had enough time to adjust to this land.’ Orion observed.

Sweat covered the forehead of the Nirvana Saint as he focused on Orion. The leader of the Purgatory Church put every iota of focus he possessed on the Dark Wraith, using the strongest technique he currently possessed: ‘Judgement Rays.’

These beams of light were a unique power he drew upon using his Ability ‘Solomon’s Book.’ Each beam possessed incredible penetrating power, capable of boring through a mountain in a matter of seconds.

The First Lord made it look simple, smoothly dodging each laser beam of light that the Nirvana Saint sent out, but the reality was far from that.

While the attacks didn’t truly move at the speed of light, the laser beams burnt through the air at an extraordinary speed. Even Orion himself was unable to physically track the attack, the laser beam simply appearing in his vision all at once.

However… while Orion couldn’t track the Judgement Ray, he could track the movements of the Nirvana Saint.

‘He lacks experience.’

Orion’s observations were spot on.

The Nirvana Saint had arrived on the 2nd Layer only recently. In that time, the leader of the Purgatory Church not only had to ‘clean house’ to cleanse the Church of the Vile King’s Seeds, but also organize and take complete control of the Purgatory Church.

The precious little time he had left he devoted to his training and growth, but as much as a genius as the Nirvana Saint was, it wasn’t enough to overcome the martial instincts of the World’s Strongest.

“It’s not you.”

The slightest of movements that the Nirvana Saint made, in Orion’s eyes, practically telegraphed his attacks. The Nirvana Saint had realized this as the battle went on, and made efforts to disguise his attacks, but it wasn’t enough to escape the First Lord’s eyes.

“Oho?” Orion’s eyes practically glowed as he dodged a few more of the Nirvana Saint’s Judgement Rays and turned his focus back to the man in front of him.

The only warrior here he recognized as truly dangerous.

Gregor Mantorel.

The Lord Justiciar walked forward slowly, ignoring the blood that dripped down from his face. Every step he took was measured and precise, a strange Aura rising about him as he moved.

In the one moment, his movements seemed slow, almost too slow.

In the next…

He was already there, just two meters apart from Orion.

‘Thunder King’s Martial Art - 3rd Chapter, 1st Passage.’

Orion’s eyes blazed as he punched forward, Elemental Lightning and Master Tier Fist Energy swarming his fist.

In the same moment, the Lord Justiciar cut forward with every fiber of his being, imbuing his sword with Master Tier Sword Energy.

‘Thunderous Assault.’

An enormous shockwave blasted out as the two attacks connected, cratering the already devastated earth. A storm of debris flung upward into the air, hard, rock shrapnel that shot out faster than the eye could see.

The awe-inspiring attack sent both fighters stumbling backwards. Gregor’s arms bulged as he flew back several steps before regaining his footing, his arm twitching from the impact. His body was covered in a pulsating blood-red Aura, shrugging off the strings of Elemental Lightning that tried to cling to him.

Orion fared slightly better, falling back only a single step. The two were almost equally matched in strength, Orion relying on his Lord Tier Ki and the powerful natural strength of the Toren body he had just obtained, while Gregor utilized his Primordial Giant Bloodline to great effect.

“It’s not you, either.” Orion muttered, ducking instinctively as he dodged yet another laser beam from the Nirvana Saint.

‘48 minutes.’

This fight has lasted 48 minutes thus far…

48 minutes, by itself, wasn’t an enormous or odd amount of time to most.

To Orion, however…

This was the longest battle he’d fought in more than 700 years.

‘It’s strange. You should be dead.’ Orion’s eyes flickered, from the invisible Fortuna, whose movements he faintly detected somewhere off to his left, to the Rakkonian Great Wizard behind Gregor, who was in the midst readying a new attack.

48 minutes had passed. In that time, he instinctively felt that he should have killed Fortuna, all 3 Knight Commanders, and the Great Wizard Shahsta. The fact that they were alive, that he had failed to kill them, was strange.

It gave him a sense of cognitive dissonance that he couldn’t simply shrug off.

He knew they should be dead. The martial arts he had spent hundreds and hundreds of years perfecting were not something amateurs like this could survive.

‘Is it you two?’

Orion’s gaze snapped off to his far right for a brief moment.

There, a golden haired man stood holding two swords, standing next to a burly, muscular warrior with silver hair.

The silver haired man had gathered a tremendous amount of energy inside his body over the course of the battle, but had remained on the sidelines, yet to attack. Orion had kept track of the palpable level of power the human had condensed inside himself throughout the fight, never lowering his guard even once.

The golden haired man, however…

He just stood there, as if he had no plans to attack.

Orion’s intuition flared.

He didn’t know how.

He didn’t know why.

He didn’t even know if he was right.

But at that moment in time, Orion’s intuition told him one thing.

‘It’s him.’

The inexplicable reason for his failure, the unsettling, cognitive dissonance that had permeated this entire fight…

It was because of him.

‘The man with golden hair.’

Abruptly, the entire Aura about Orion changed.

The wild, chaotic air of a warrior in the midst of battle seemed to vanish, replaced by cool, calm focus.

‘Thunder King’s Martial Art - 1st Chapter, 2nd Passage.’

For a short moment, the world around Orion seemed to stand completely still. Everything went calm, for a brief, blissful second.

That moment passed.

And…

‘Chasing Thunder.’

Orion vanished.

There was no other way to describe it as the Dark Wraith moved with such tremendous speed that it defied reason.

This deceptively simple movement condensed an enormous amount of both Ki and Elemental Lightning into his legs in a split second. The powerful, rioting energy was entirely self contained, leaking not even the slightest trace as he devoted everything he had to his fastest instant movement technique.

In less than 1/10th of a second, Orion re-appeared directly in front of the golden haired man.

And it was here that the First Lord, the World Strongest, Orion Thunderfist, finally came face to face with the single most annoying opponent he had fought in his entire life:

Director Prime.

.