[MA] 377. Lonely Void Spawn (Patreon)

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[A/N: Minus one late chapter!

Chapters this week: 4/6 (3 of which are late chapters)

Late chapters: 2

Next chapter: Saturday]

It took the Emissary less than a minute to reach Shen again. He could still use his improved techniques after deactivating his domain, but he was only mid tier 9 at his best. The creature was peak tier 10 in raw power. It was faster and stronger than him, and its pursuit techniques were better than his escaping ones. There was nothing he could do to get far from it.

Well, he could try to cut some corners, but it was more likely to kill him than help. For instance, if he cut Spacetime to form a tunnel to traverse, he could keep teleporting away forever—or until the Void Spawn caught him in an unexpected way. However, although he was stronger than Venamour, who had been able to do it, such teleportation was a matter of finesse and expertise, not raw power. He was guaranteed to mess up and die in three teleportations if he did it without mastered Laws—and that if he lucked out in the first two.

Shen could only keep using his remaining few tricks to kill the Emissary and stay on the run until something changed or he died.

The Emissary approached, and the trick Shen chose this time was a simple one he had used a little before the Cohort arrived: he thrust his spear. He turned and used all his power to cut through photons and Space itself, and a truck-wide spear of qi shot ahead, piercing everything in its way. His seven Laws obliterated everything, clearing the Voided Subnode for miles on end and leaving not even dust behind. The sound of air rushing to fill the empty region was like thunder created by a god of anger.

The Emissary resisted—at first.

Shen had already attacked the Void Spawn that became the Cohort with that, so the Emissary would be prepared. But it was still his best long-range strike. He did not want to get caught in close range if he could help it, so he had to make it work, and he knew just how to force the matter.

One of the reasons he had been using only single attacks to deal with the Emissary until now was to make it less likely to be prepared against the elementary tactic of repeated insistence.

Shen used all his agility to thrust his spear again and again, dozens, hundreds of times in milliseconds. He burned through all his qi and kept doing it. Every particle of energy he recovered was reinvested into the following attack. Most of the bones in his body broke, his blood vessels ruptured, and he cried blood when his left eye burst.

He was C-rank, and his body could take a beating, but not this. He was wielding the Laws of Reality, forcing himself to bear their weight repeatedly, without even the qi to properly support them. Reality's Laws also didn't like being cut by his strikes, and the rebound weighed on him. His body failed him.

Yet, it worked.

The Emissary didn't try to dodge, and the repeated strikes hit it head-on. The black lightning nullified hundreds of Shen's attacks, but eventually, one went through. At first, it was also resisted by the creature's liquid skin, which was equivalent to peak C-rank with the best techniques. Ultimately, it also didn't resist the continued barrage.

To be fair to the Emissary, Shen himself couldn't have dodged the attack in time if he had taken the first hit. He struck too many times, too fast. There was only withstanding the attack or dying after getting caught in that.

The Emissary exploded, and Shen resumed running.

He recovered all his qi in a dozen seconds. After reaching the Ethereal Harmonization Realm, as long as the environment had qi, Shen would only lack it if he used everything too quickly.

With qi came the ability to heal himself, and his injuries closed up swiftly. He didn't return to peak strength, though. He had expected the Emissary to die in less than half the attacks he had used, but its body was growing ridiculously resistant, too. After he started, he also had to either kill the creature or die trying because he had been unable to attempt anything else. Using double the attacks he planned took a toll; he needed proper rest to recover the last 10% of his power.

His existence was exhausted, especially after the infernal business with his domain and True Self.

Shen kept running, and the geometric shapes suddenly gave way to a clearing. A single Void Spawn, a foot taller than Shen, was floating in the middle. He smiled as he felt something on the edges of his Aural Realm: a Void Farm.

Hope filled him.

Shen could use his domain to escape into the Void through a Void Farm's unique space. It would hurt him to activate his domain right now, but Void Spawn couldn't exist in the Void, so the Emissary would dissolve if it followed him. Theoretically, at least. The Void Tide might've changed that, too, but it was willing to take his chances.

He approached the lonely Void Spawn...

...but nothing happened.

Shen could feel the Void Farm's boundaries. He had trespassed into it. The creature looked at him. Yet, it didn't react, and Shen's surroundings didn't change to see the crops.

Frowning, he approached the Void Spawn and cut it down—

He didn't. His spear went through it as if it was an illusion. It wasn't; he could feel it with his every sense. It was as real as him. But the Void Tide was also real, and the Void had broken the bullshit meters.

Shen swore and kept running. He hated Void Tides already.

As he ran, he prepared his following trick. One of Liya's. His every move created microscopic fissures in the air and space he ran through. He scattered qi in his wake, all trembling in different frequencies. The Emissary went through them without a worry, its lightning armor nullifying all adverse effects they might bring to him. Or so it believed.

This attack looked similar to the pure anti-lightning frequency on purpose, but it was about accumulating invisible damage over time, not denying an Axiom. If the lightning was part of the creature's body or it wielded it as a Guardian did a weapon, it would notice the damage piling up. Any peak C-rank would. However, it was a Void Spawn, and the Alliance had long concluded that its lightning was a tool it controlled without any awareness of or caring about its state. It was no different from a commoner holding a plank without knowing whether it was rotten on the inside.

Soon enough, the Emissary was upon Shen again.

He waited for the perfect moment, then reversed his Stream.

He had to use a lot of willpower to turn one of his Laws on its foot like that, reversing the natural Stream of Water itself as it ran through him and harmonized with the universe. His body suffered a painful rebound, but it worked. He instantly reversed his momentum as if he had been running toward the Emissary the whole time. The damage was worth it to surprise the creature.

The Void Spawn reacted quickly, stopping instantly a few feet from Shen, but that wasn't fast enough. Not unless it had also reversed course, but it didn't know how yet. It would know next time. For now, it could only ignore momentum enough to stop instantly.

Shen rammed it spear-first, but it dodged at the last second. It had learned not to underestimate his attacks.

He turned his trust into a horizontal swing while already Backstepping. As expected, the Emissary dodged again, but the pre-emptive Backstep allowed Shen to be positioned in the right place for the dodge to be useless. He would've failed to position himself without his momentum advantage, and Heavens know how bad the fight would become then.

Shen sent a shockwave with his entire body as his spear approached the creature and Backstepped again. The shockwave hit the black lightning just before his weapon did, triggering all the microdamage it had suffered. Lightning itself wouldn't have accumulated damage like that, but the creature had just detached it from the Axioms of Lightning.

The bolts shattered like glass, and Shen's spear was about to strike the Emissary when a third arm grew from its body, holding a black liquid shield as if it had been hiding inside.

Shen's spear never touched that shield. He had Backstepped already, positioning himself atop the creature horizontally. His qi-enhanced blade cut it from head to toe, or so was his intent. It stopped midway through. The Emissary's body was impossibly hard for anything in C-rank.

Shen only wasted a few moments cursing it for ignoring the rules, finished cutting it diagonally, and used his Material Suppression to slow it down as it tried to escape. It couldn't ignore the water pinning it down without the lightning. Shen sliced it three more times.

The Emissary exploded again.

Shen ran once more.

He was fairly sure he could kill it one more time. There would be no tricks involved, only a direct battle, using his superior training and experience to compensate for the raw power gap. It might not work, though. And even if it did... Shen had nothing left to try the next time.

Death was coming.

Genuine panic made him a little better at running away, and he accelerated slightly. But it was too little, too late. There was only more maze before him and no safe harbor in sight. He didn't think he would survive this one.

"General Long Hei, please help!" he yelled and was met with silence. He tried to locate his dragon genes and do anything with them, but nothing happened.

"Immortal Emperor, you owe me by Karma!" he screamed. No one replied.

No one was coming to save him.

Shen kept running, but his future looked bleaker each second.

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She came like a golden bolt of pure Karmic Justice. He was in such great danger that her Realization felt it from another corner of the Alliance—and compelled her to act.

Reality and Void gave way to her passage. She wouldn't be denied. She owed it to him. She had come to repay the debt.

Nothing could stop her from saving the man who had once been the last push she needed to Realize her Path.

Until something did.

Liya didn't even understand what happened until she was pushed back into her body in the darkness of space. A solar system was a few lightyears away. She could feel the flimsy barrier between regular Reality and Samir's Node a few miles ahead, but a solid barrier stood before her in the form of a gorgeous drow.

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| Darla (A) — 120,000 / 300,000 HP

| The Denier

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A drow A-rank. Considering how many drow B-ranks had left the Triarchy over the ages, that existence didn't surprise Liya. Her HP, however, did. Both in sheer numbers and how it wasn't full.

Liya couldn't see into the woman, not her Laws or soul. She looked like a commoner to her every sense—at first. However, her soul was so injured that her Realization seemed to seep into the surroundings. It was like an invisible gas, twisting Reality in a way Liya had never seen before. She didn't even have words to describe it. However, whatever was touched by that woman's Realization became something else. Bent. Broken.

Denied, as her Title implied.

Liya hated the smile Darla gave. It was a smile with the kind of sincerity you would expect from someone biting into your face's flesh and telling you it was for your own good. The memory alone made Liya repulsed, and the worst part was that she guessed the woman had done it on purpose. She knew Liya and how to evoke emotions in her. She had come prepared.

"Youngling Liya," Darla said with a voice that could make stars reach nirvana. Liya had to control her impulses, and she wasn't into women. Even that truth of himself was also being denied, it seemed. "I wish I didn't have to fight you with an injured soul, but Void Tides are known for crushing all plans except those crafted around it. And whoever knows a Void Tide is coming? Eons of preparation thrown away. Tsk."

She meant to fight. If it hadn't been clear before, it was now obvious Darla was here to stop Liya from helping Shen.

That wouldn't do.

"I won't show mercy because you're drow or injured," Liya replied, picking her spear from her spatial ring and sending her Realization against Darla.

"Oh, that's not what I meant," Darla said with sneer. "I can't control myself so well with my soul like this. You're going to hurt."

She did.

As soon as Liya's Realization touched the "gas" leaking from Darla's soul, her own soul cried in agony. It was like touching an acid created to deny your very existence. Her essence was almost unmade, and she recoiled in pain, like a child who just learned fire burns.

Darla's smile widened, sweet, but with something else... almost evil. "I would tell you I'm doing this for his own good, but you wouldn't believe me, would you? No one would. Few understand the quintessential workings of Reality as I do, and I mean S-ranks, too." She sighed. "But this is also for your good. You must learn a few things about using your Realization in combat." She raised an eyebrow. "You also don't believe that, do you?"

Liya didn't reply. Shen was in danger; her Realization screamed so at her every passing moment. She had no time to waste with words.

She rushed ahead. She needed to physically touch the gas to learn if it would also hurt her. Then, she had to formulate a battle plan.

Darla's smile became feral. "Ah! So purposeful! So strategic! Come, Youngling Liya. Show me you deserve to reach A-rank and stand by my side. It's been so lonely at the top!"

Liya ignored the taunt and attacked.

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| Carl Jones (A): LET ME TELEPORT THERE! MY REALIZATION WILL DESTROY ME IF I DON'T HELP HIM!

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Long Hei never got the message. The System Administrator erased it without ever giving him a chance. He was blissfully unaware of anything happening to the boy in his own front line or to his former sworn brother so far away.

She didn't know why the Denier—who had hacked her system to give herself a Title without her knowledge, and she needed to double-check—had just said she was doing it for Shen, but the Admin was doing it for freedom. The Chaosbringer needed to die for the cthulhus' plan to work, and it was best for everyone if he fell by the Void's hands.

But even if he survived the somehow...

She left a tiny speck of attention focusing on his desperate escape while taking care of more important matters elsewhere.

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