Universe's End

Chapter 196: Guardian of the Seventh Peak Pt. 2

Deep underground, a cavern shook as two foes fought, locked in calamitous battle. A battle that had been waging for over an hour now.

Talons swept through the air as Rory jerked his head back, avoiding the savage blades.

Avoiding the attack, Rory held his staff horizontally as he swept two fingers across its length, green lights flickering into existence as projected arrows lined the length. Then, drawing his hand back, the green arrows were drawn back in synch as if pulled back by a bowstring.

Releasing the non-existent bowstring, a flurry of green arrows whizzed forward, bombarding the Architect Bane like a green carpet bombing, exploding with well-packed power.

Slashing out with its talons, space itself tore apart as the monster dove through, reappearing from another rift torn in space. The rifts were everywhere at this point, something that Rory found excessively annoying. It could already teleport, and now it had rifts it could dive between as well.

Not that it wasn't necessary for the Architect Bane, as the ground beneath its feet had turned into an enemy; if it remained in place for even a moment, stone spikes would erupt, attempting to skewer the monster as Rory leaned heavily on using Earth Soul to its maximum potential.

The Shores of Oblivion, which were once sterilized and cleansed from the fallout of their last battle, had been turned into a warzone. Acid, null beams, lightning, stone, and projection magic abounded.

Losing sight of the monster for a moment, it appeared only a moment later behind Rory, attempting to stab him through the back. Sensing it, the earth beneath his own feet suddenly buckled and flared, launching Rory out of the way of danger as he rolled forward before popping back up, staff pointed at the bane, a beam of concentrated magic fired off a moment after.

His bane opened its mouth, a beam of null light firing and eradicating the concentrated pneuma, the power difference too vast.

Yet Rory didn't hesitate; he was already moving once more as a spear from his inventory suddenly appeared in his hand. Rearing back, Rory launched it forward, the spear flying forward, only for a cloud of more spears, projection green, to appear to chase after.

The bane flickered a few feet away before diving through a rift, avoiding the barrage of spears that exploded like a bombardment of TNT.

Swiveling, Rory loaded a rail above his staff where it floated, charging up some good old-fashioned rail gun magic.

Orange crescent blades suddenly flew toward him from several directions at once, sent through the rifts in space that the bane had torn open.

Forced to dodge and abandon the railgun magic, Rory's eyes widened as the bane flickered into existence in front of him, whipping around and backhanding him into a wall.

Or that's what would have happened had the staff in his hand not vanished in an instant, leaving him empty-handed. No longer encumbered, Rory caught the strike from his bane, planting his foot and heaving as he used the momentum of the monster against it, as it was the one launched into a nearby cavern wall.

Flicker on cooldown a moment too long, it slammed hard into the wall, but before Rory could capitalize on the advantage, it flickered away as its cooldown reset.

Rory grimaced, annoyed. It almost perfectly encapsulated the tides of their battle. The moment Rory found an advantage, it flickered away, its ability to perform spatial jumps refined to an instinctive practice.

Yet as slippery and tricky as the bane was, it was struggling to corner Rory either. Having gone the entire tier without gaining any adaptations to use against him, it lacked a concise method to turn the tables that Rory didn't have at least some level of familiarity with.

Several times it attempted a paralyzing shriek, but to no avail; the sash tied around his ears and forehead snuffed it out before it could take hold.

And so, they continued their status quo, unable to score any significant hits on one another.

Unfortunately for Rory, he knew that as far as endurance went, he would wear out first. It was the sheer reality that between himself and a peak tier-seven monster, it had more reserves to call upon. Well aware of the fact, Rory spent much of the battle chewing on the point, looking for a way to change the flow of battle.

Inspiration came at last, when, after launching his bane away with a stolen echo strike from Kai Rong, a new thought occurred to him.

Why don't I steal more?

She had a specific skill, Cinnabar, that enabled external transmutation, allowing her body to take on crystal forms.

Rory couldn't outright copy that; that was a skill gained from years of practice and built upon a foundation he lacked.

But.

But that didn't mean he couldn't emulate it.

His bane flickered in front of him, claws attempting to slash out, only to be blocked by an arm covered in stone.

The bane's surprise was short-lived, as a fist similarly covered in stone lashed out, smashing into its face as it staggered back.

Taxing. Very taxing.

Much of Rory's body had been covered in stone as Rory mimicked Kai Rong's Cinnabar skill through the deliberate dual application of Earth Soul and his regular projection magic. It felt weightless, but in a single instant, the floating stone particulates barely clinging to his body could harden into dense rock. Such fluid use of Earth Soul was expensive, and that was saying something, given Earth Soul's big selling point was just how efficient it made earth element manipulation.

But I can work with this.

Reinforced, Rory took the fight to the bane with increased intensity. Glowing orange, its claws attempted to corrode his stone 'skin', but it proved entirely ineffective; the corroded particles were discarded and replaced with new earth particle elements.

Suddenly, finding itself in a worse position, his bane retreated before firing another null light beam toward him. Unlike the corroding acid strikes, which could be easily ignored, the paradoxical beam was far more dangerous and something Rory had zero intention of tanking.

Slipping to his left, Rory was surprised to suddenly find a clawed hand wrap around his neck, the bane off in the distance reaching through a rift, its arm popping out a rift to his right that he hadn't noticed.

Pressure began to mount, a layer of stone keeping it from crushing his windpipe. Unfortunately, its hands began to glow orange, the acid magic beginning to corrode the earth element.

Rather than panic, Rory reached out, grabbing the bane's arm, reaching through the spatial rift that was holding him by the neck.

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Where the hand of the bane had glowed orange, Rory's hands began to crackle with intense electrical buildup before discharging into its body.

In the distance, Rory saw as the bane began to writhe, the lightning being continuously dumped into its body, wreaking havoc on it.

Yet, its grip held firm, continuing to corrode the stone covering his neck as his eyesight began to turn blotchy. It wasn't even the lack of air; his blood flow was being cut off quickly.

Eyes swimming, Rory glared at his bane, as if daring it to see who would last longer.

As the two suffered in inflicted agony, seconds passed before it was the bane who faltered first. Lightning, naturally capable of bypassing a large amount of durability, was something that the bane couldn't risk continued exposure to.

Rory, meanwhile, had managed to tough it out. While the crushing grip was a pain in the ass, reducing his blood flow, his affinity was blood; it would have been moronic if he couldn't have managed to compensate for at least a few seconds.

"Didn't go quite as you wanted, huh?" Rory shouted at the bane, coughing once before flipping it the bird.

Rory was beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel; meanwhile, his bane was slowly feeling itself being cornered. Its current body simply wasn't up to the task.

Lacking extra tools to use against it, his bane resorted to flickering, appearing next to him as it attempted to slash out, and yet Rory blocked the strike once again, punching out with his golem fist.

His bane, its flicker cooldowns currently in a short-cooldown sequence, was able to teleport away all but instantly.

Tch.

Staff reappearing; Rory held it horizontally, sliding his fingers down its length as green arrows appeared and fired. His bane avoided them easily, but Rory wasn't seriously trying to wound it, or even expecting to, instead trying to force a teleportation.

If I could pin it long enough for one of my big attacks.

Dragon's Fall was far too slow and televised for there to ever be a chance to drop a meteor on his bane.

Nathair was too linear of an attack; it would simply teleport out of the way.

Empyrean Fulmination was probably his best bet, but it required building up a lot of electrical charge if it didn't have a city's worth of pneuma all but begging to be used by him.

While Rory was quite good at making up attacks on the fly, it was a little different against something as tricky as his bane.

Well, I've got one idea but… no, probably not.

It was a type of skill he'd seen used by monsters on numerous occasions, a domain-type skill, which could shift the surroundings to his advantage. It wasn't just magical; it wasn't just physical; it required a blending of the two and a focused vision of one's 'domain.'

Or that was what Rory had figured out from his tests at manifesting proper domain-type magic in the past.

What? Not like I was going to watch monsters bust out skills like that and NOT try to recreate it.

Again and again, he attempted to clash with his bane, but it had grown skittish, never fully committing, seeming to adopt a more 'wait and see' approach, knowing it was likely able to outlast him.

And it's not wrong.

A lot of things went into magic: imagery, physical understanding, conceptual understanding, alignment and adjustment, output, efficiency, and reserves, to name a few.

Rory's current problem was a reserve issue. As a low tier, using magic was primarily external, but as one rose higher up the tiers, an internal reserve began to form. Investing in pneuma would deepen the reserves, meaning that even if one should find themselves in an environment lacking in much external pneuma or filled with extremely nebulous pneuma, they could still call upon potent magic.

But the flipside was that using your internal reserves and blending them with external pneuma yielded the same benefits as using just internal pneuma, while using those same reserves much more slowly. And that was the problem, because even though he had taken efforts to measure out his internal reserves, even with his efficiency, after fighting as long as they had been, Rory was close to tapping out, after which he would be forced to rely on external pneuma.

A flash of internal calculus left Rory grimacing.

Sure, if I could fight for another hour, I'd probably win by virtue of having more in my arsenal than little old Bane over there, but I don't have hours; I have minutes.

Faced with that reality, Rory internally sighed.

To hell with it. May as well try.

If he wanted to win, he was going to need to take a chance; he needed a way to hold it down for long enough to hit it with something serious.

It was time to unleash a domain attack.

One thing to say, another to do it.

The reality was that Rory was under no illusion that he would be able to pull it off au naturale; that was something you'd expect from the lead in some superhero movie, where gumption and belief would succeed in the impossible.

So, instead, I'll cheat.

Withdrawing his mechanical gem, Rory empowered it as he swapped it to the room setting.

In theory, if I can manifest a domain into a localized spot, it should cascade outward, spreading over a wider area like water rushing to fill in holes.

His main issue, aside from the obvious that he wasn't actually ready to pull off a domain successfully, was that he didn't have a domain image, a visualization of his domain skill that he meant to impose on reality. But, while Rory lacked a proper domain image, that wasn't to say there wasn't some form of space Rory believed he could visualize well enough to work as a sort of stopgap, a space that was directly linked to his ability to turn mind into matter.

His Mind Palace.

If projection magic is taking an item or image from my Mind Palace and manifesting it into reality, the domain version would be manifesting the entire Mind Palace itself.

"Easier said than done."

Taking a deep breath and stepping out of the way of several orange acid blades, Rory began to speak under his breath, not a chance in hell he was going to be able to pull off a proto domain without chanting.

Going to need something more impactful than my modern chant. Time to bust the classic back out.

"From my mind, all things imagined."

As if realizing Rory was up to something, the bane slipped through a rift, vanishing for a moment.

Not that it really matters.

"From my body, all paths traveled."

The bane reappeared from a nearby rift, already firing off a null light beam, yet it was Rory's turn to be purely on the defensive, avoiding the magic beam even as his lips continued to move.

"From my hand, all things may be forged."

Realizing attacking from a distance wasn't enough, the Architect Bane flickered in front of Rory, its claw swiping toward his head. Yet as fast as the bane was, Rory's words were faster.

"My mind, a universe manifest!"

Tweaking the ending chant slightly to be more fitting, it was as if reality suddenly zoomed out, distorting before snapping back into place.

Instinctually, Rory knew it hadn't worked as it was meant to, and the fact that one of his spooled off mental threads was distantly curling inward into a gibbering mess of pain as its mind shattered didn't help with that conclusion.

Problem for later.

The world had become a black void, with a smoky green haze clinging to the ground all the way up to his knees. It was the same shade of green that his projection magic usually appeared, except far less tangible.

As curious about the proto-domain as he was, Rory didn't have time to waste. The bane had been drawn inside his proto-domain, and thus it was time to end things. Flicking his hand upward, the green haze reacted, circling the bane before solidifying into chains of the brightest gold imaginable, the bane shrieking.

Daybreak metal works well for restraining it… Good to know.

Hands waving like a conductor, more and more chains bound the bane in place, feeling more real than even reality itself, his domain anchoring them into existence as if they were a fundamental and immutable law of reality, existences that always had and always would remain.

Good enough.

Pneuma reserves horrifically low, Rory raised his hand overhead.

"Fall, Architect's Manifest!"

Descending from above was a column of green light, bathing the bane in intense energy as it shrieked.

Nope. That's not right.

The green light was meant to be more, yet, for the time being, it was Rory himself who was failing to imagine exactly what that more was, something that would take time for him to truly decide upon.

The bane continued to shriek, and just as Rory felt like victory was his, everything went sideways.

Or rather, he was sideways, lying on his side in the dust and gravel.

Huh. When did I get on my side? Oh, look, blood.

Blood was pooling beneath his head, draining from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Well…. I did say it wasn't ready.

His domain, a proto domain even with the added assistance of a chant and a room gem, lacked the significance to withstand the energy he'd attempted to bring down upon his bane.

Hooooh boy, I'm pretty sure that's another mental thread that just shriveled up and died.

There was no question at this point about who had won, and as if to prove the point, his bane limped over toward him, standing overhead.

Oh, really, how cliché.

Reaching down with its talon, it proceeded to scratch a single line across his left eye and eyebrow, a diagonal scratch that was sure to scar.

"Bitch," Rory managed to spit out, as the bane vanished a moment later.

He'd lost, but honestly, that wasn't even the most important thing on his mind for now.

No, the most important thing, and last thing on his mind before his brain forcibly shut down, was a single thought.

I might have sprained my brain.