[MA] 357. Final Foe (Patreon)

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[A/N: My sinusitis is improving, and I've successfully moved to another city. The house is still a mess, but I should be able to release the late chapter next week.

Chapters this week: 3/3

Late chapters: 1

Next chapter: Tuesday]

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The daggers were already cutting deep into Shen's brain. Considering the system was blocked and wouldn't heal him, that was a worse injury than one might think. The Axioms had returned to the vault, but Energy hadn't magically appeared inside. There was no qi for Shen to absorb and use to heal himself. He had brought healing crystals in his spatial ring and Inventory, but unsurprisingly, the mana barrier blocked both from working.

So, he couldn't heal, and the brain injury would lower his performance for the remainder of the fight. He could only fight at around 90% of his peak. The fight had become even more challenging than expected.

Shen could do nothing on that front, so he reacted by ignoring the wound and counter-attacking Voided Darkness with a swing of his spear. Unsurprisingly, the creature disappeared before his weapon reached it.

Even as his attack continued, he rushed toward Voided Earth. Voided Darkness had already mastered a Law, and he'd rather kill the ones who had yet to take that step before anything else. He didn't feel like trying to find Voided Darkness with two enemies positioned to take advantage of his distracted mind.

Voided Earth and Voided Mace had been running at him, but they backtracked the moment Voided Darkness appeared. They had anticipated Shen's move and knew time worked in their favor.

Shen ran toward Voided Earth with all the speed he could muster. Although both had roughly the same speed now that they used Time to move faster and Shen was injured, he still managed to close the gap. The room was only so big. He reached the creature, which had developed a mace on its empty weapon hand. Its small shield was also growing into a tower shield, but as with Void Spawn, Voided Guardians took much longer to adapt their forms after taking one than to adopt their initial one.

He Backstepped dozens of times in a row, changing his destination hundreds of times. He was taking advantage of the creatures' relatively underdeveloped thinking ability. It worked. His chaotic movements and constant attempt to appear all around it confused his foe. Eventually, he appeared behind it, where he delivered the best thrust he could.

His spearhead struck true, and even the Laws of Reality on its way were cut into fragments. The blade found considerably more resistance in Voided Earth's "skin" than it had against Voided Wind's shield, but Shen had thought of that when he thrust his spear. The very tip of his weapon concentrated all his power in a single Extreme point, adding to its piercingness at the cost of a smaller area of effect. That was enough to make up for the enhanced defense.

His weapon pierced the creature's nape and dug deep into its head before moving down. It was easier to slash the creature after its external shell was perforated, even though it looked made of the same foggy substance on the inside and the outside. He Backstepped again after cutting it into two vertical halves, appearing beside it to cut it into six cubes.

His Backstep saved him from another sneak attack. Voided Darkness had timed its attack right after Voided Darkness was cut into two. It already understood psychology enough to predict possible bloodlust and try to use it against him.

After that, Shen kept attacking, but his every strike was elongated, also reaching for the place Voided Earth had just been in. As expected, as it became a seventh cube and started dissipating, the Laws of Time flared. It appeared with a whole body where it had been a moment ago.

Shen cut it again, using the same tactics. This time, Voided Darkness was prepared. It waited for him to start attacking again after Backstepping to strike. Shen had also predicted that and started stopping his attacks mid-swing. Still, there were only so many times he could get lucky.

Eventually, three things happened at the same time.

First, Voided Earth died.

Second, Voided Mace reached him and swung its weapon at him.

Third, Voided Darkness found an opening, and its four daggers pierced his neck and chest.

To be honest, Shen could've avoided Voided Darkness slashes, but Voided Mace's swing made him change his mind. The attack was too powerful. Just as Shen's strike had cut the very Laws of Reality into Law Fragments, the mace in the creature's hand shattered every Law in the way. And it did that a lot better than Shen's spear had. The Laws in a wide area around it broke down so thoroughly that Reality behaved weirdly.

When the Domain of Entropy had pushed the Axioms away, individual Laws indirectly enforced some Concepts of Reality into place. The rules of physics were mostly respected. Now, however, Laws were shattered. Enforcing any Concept became a tall order. The creature's weapon seemed to teleport both forward and back; gravity pushed it in all kinds of weird angles at unexpected pull strength; and Shen's senses couldn't understand what was happening there.

That hindered the creature as much as it did Shen. Its attack took much longer to reach him. But that still made him decide killing it was worth getting injured again. The thing was, what if it mastered that ability?

So, he held his position and attacked the incoming mace as the daggers pierced his body.

Targeting the enemy weapon was arrogant of him, as the mace was evidently more potent than his spear. But Shen felt this was needed. He refused to accept his True Self could be inferior to some fake Path formed by a random Void creature less than half a minute ago.

He concentrated all his power on the tip of his spear again. Metal met solid fog. In the shattered Laws of Reality, a spark turned into a massive explosion of light, and a small black hole was formed in that vault for a split moment.

Shen won because of the most basic of experiences—and the most advanced of comprehensions.

These creatures could "master" Laws quickly, but it wasn't true mastery. Guardians had to wholly understand the intricacies of his Laws, while the Voided Guardians seemed to just become better at using theirs. There was no comprehension involved, only them becoming better at swinging their Laws like weapons.

Voided Mace didn't behave as if it knew its weapon's characteristics. Shen noticed it at that mace swing. It contained a lot of power and sufficient technique to keep the weapon steady, but it was unrefined. Breaking the Laws on the way was a waste of strength, adding needless drag to the attack. That it negatively affected the swing was evidence of it being an unwanted effect.

That was the trigger for Shen's sudden shift in perspective.

When all the power of Extremity, supported by Shaft, strengthened by True Boundlessness, sped by Conductivity, steadied by Steam, and kept slightly unpredictable by Gentle Breeze, drove his Killing Weapon, it was an entire True Self fueled by a domain that struck against that single Axiom of the Mace.

Everything Shen was met a Mace that was not.

The mace gave.

That was the meta-battlefield of domains. Shen couldn't push his domain out of his body, but everything in his body and spear belonged to him. Everything in his domain was under his supreme will, and he had just decreed that any alien existence in his domain was to be destroyed. When two things attempted to occupy the same space at the same time, Reality defined what pushed what based on its rules. But inside Shen's domain, his will was absolute.

In that single instant of what-ifs when the weapons met, when the clash's result was still undefined, when two different Paths sought to occupy the same place, they overlapped in the potential of the realization of their desire. That was enough. Shen's spear cut through the mace so easily that he got out of balance momentarily.

Shen finished cutting the creature and knew it wouldn't be able to rewind time and reform. He had destroyed it on a fundamental level. He had unmade its Path, its very existence, in a way. Even if that only happened where his spear went through, it was enough for that already impossible existence to become "too impossible" to continue.

Meanwhile, Voided Darkness had struck his body a dozen times, its daggers leaving and entering it quickly. It cut his two legs off, but he found he could keep them "attached," albeit disconnected, through his domain.

At first, Shen controlled his domain so as not to affect the creature. Only when he killed Voided Mace did he finally will the blades in his body to be unmade, then swung his weapon against the creature.

He missed. Voided Darkness reacted as soon as its daggers were gone. He still cut into its face, but that was all.

It disappeared before Shen could pursue it. He focused on his surroundings and found it this time. It was in that same place the Voided Guardian with mastered Space had used, the boundary between the third and fourth spatial dimensions, but hidden in there, ethereal, hard to grasp.

Shen swung his spear to the right and killed his invisible, final foe—if you didn't count the white mist.

The smoke had already covered over half the vault and beat like a heart again. Then, once more. It kept beating too fast for the commoner eye to ever perceive, but it felt slow for Shen's current senses.

The ripples came and went, and nothing changed. Still, the fog persisted. It seemed angry on top of thirsty, almost raging, incapable of holding still after Shen got rid of the Voided Guardians.

He would've liked to send a qi particle against it, but that option had been taken from him by Reality's Axioms. While his domain remained active, every qi particle he used had to contain his domain. He couldn't push it out of himself without injuring his soul. Furthermore, his soul was already stressed. If he deactivated his domain, he would be unable to use it again for at least a few hours.

Even if that weren't the case, deactivating his domain meant letting the qi he was using on it dissipate. Shen wouldn't have enough qi to reactivate his domain later.

Shen had to pick one of two options: touch the mist with his spear or wait for rescue.

The answer was obvious. Waiting was theoretically safer in a mobile fortress but depended on people Shen didn't trust. Where were they, by the way? It would also leave him without his domain, so he would be much weaker later if he decided to move against the mist at the last moment.

He stepped closer to the fog and touched it with his spear—

A black sphere filled his vision. No, not a sphere. An eye. An enormous eye bigger than life itself. It stood there, staring at him. It had no iris. It had no form, either. It had nothing.

It was nothing.

The Eye of the Void.

'I'm a Herald,' Shen's own voice said in his mind. 'I can't be a Seer.'

The words confirmed this thing had created the Voided Guardians—actually called Seers—by corrupting actual Guardians. The name Seer also pointed at their primary goal: infiltration.

Shen had never even heard of the Eye before. In fact, its existence made no sense according to everything he knew of the Void. The Void Overmind should be the sole existence that merged nothingness and Will. This was new, except perhaps to those with much higher clearances than him.

The image disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and Shen found himself back in the vault. The mist was still there and still expanding. He felt nothing in its contact with the thing.

He willed his domain to destroy it, and it worked. However, the next instant, the fog opened around him. Shen ignored it for now and approached the cauldron.

The big black iron thing was filled with micro-cracks. The mist had already proven ineffective against Shen but hadn't slowed down. It still strained the cauldron, and he suspected the goal was to weaken the mana barrier, not convert Shen.

He touched the cauldron with his spear—

The Eye was back.

'I'm a Herald,' Shen thought again. 'I destroy in the name of the Void. Even when my target is the Void itself.'

Then, he was back. At least the thoughts he had just experienced fitted what he knew of the Void. The Void didn't care. As long as something ceased to exist, it was satisfied, even if it was its own self. Every existence born from the Void shared the same single-minded goal.

Arthur tried to cut the cauldron down without his domain's meta-perspective and failed. The thing was harder than anything he had ever encountered. He suspected it was at least A-tier.

He used his meta-perspective next, but it still failed. Or rather, it demanded his qi to work. Against things at such a high level, even enforcing his will inside his domain consumed resources.

Shen now had to decide whether to trust his Void Herald identity to keep him safe after the mist filled the whole vault or take a smaller gamble. He obviously went with the latter.

He positioned himself beside the cauldron, pulled his spear back, and concentrated. He focused his all on his next swing. It would be a slash instead of a thrust because he aimed at causing as much damage as possible.

It took him a few moments to reach the perfect state of mind, and then he attacked.

Shen used all his power in the attack while simultaneously willing his domain to burn the very qi keeping it active as fuel to destroy the cauldron. There was a single instant of not having enough qi to sustain his domain while using qi to help it work against the A-tier metal. It was so short-lived that even Shen thought he might've imagined it.

But it worked.

His strike was so fast that, despite the small paradox he caused, he managed to cleanly cut the artifact from one side to the other, right in the middle of it. His spear shattered the next moment—and so did his entire body.

His domain was gone, and it hadn't just pressured his soul. His body couldn't withstand it, either. Almost every muscle was torn apart by the stress, every bone broken, every tendon ruptured. His mind fared no better. His True Self was everything he was, and it almost broke on the rebound of using his domain for less than three seconds.

Shen saw the white mist freeze, then release a last pulse, a ripple stronger than any other. Even as it released it, it was already dissipating. He had managed to destroy the cauldron, which was also turning into fog and fading into nothingness.

The ripple reached him, and Shen had not a single ounce of qi to protect himself this time. He still made his body vibrate in the opposite frequency, but the ripple was much stronger than before.

There was overwhelming pain and then utter darkness.

Shen's last thought as he fainted was that he welcomed a little rest at long last.

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