Meanwhile, Third stared. He didn't scream, or lash out, or even ask if she dared. He stared down at Zelsys, as she floated lower to the ground so she could spend that energy on replenishing herself for a potential continuation of their fight. Then, he flared his aura, and rid himself of the lingering constructs hanging onto him. Only the spear, or rather, its core of True Fangs and the bullet etched with Antediluvian Glyphs, remained, embedded right next to his heart. Brightly-glowing, silver blood seeped out of the wound, and Zef's glyphs encroached onto Third's reddish skin like a plague, but he raised his left hand, and by gripping the spear he halted the infestation of glyphs from advancing any further. He didn't seem able to make them retreat, or to pull the spear out, however.
He raised his other hand, and did a simple revolving gesture with his finger. Despite everything, the maelstrom lurched, as if to try and right itself. The opening narrowed, and in places, the maelstrom seemed like it wanted to return to its normal revolving motion.
It seemed as though even this would not be enough, as if Third would retain his focus in spite of this, only for a ghostly Type-ZZ Anti-cultivator Cannon shell to follow immediately in the Dragonslayer's wake. It struck Third's stomach, and what little order the maelstrom still retained was now erased altogether. A barrage of bullets and swordbeams followed, by some miracle striking exactly the right spots. Despite the lack of physical impact, the spiritual impact was undeniable; great cavities in the maelstrom exploded out of Third's body right across from where each spiritual projectile struck him.
BELLADONNA SIGN
RECOLLECTION OF IKESIA'S FALLEN
PHANTOM SCRIPTURE: GHOST PLATOON
Indeed, Zefaris hadn't just stood by idly recuperating. she, too, had prepared, pushing herself - not just to prepare to summon as many of her phantoms as possible when the time came, but to prepare a barrage ahead of time.
And now, it was time to make use of it.
Previously frozen in time at the moment of contact with one another, dozens of bullets bounced off of dragonsteel coins and hammered into Third in rapid sequence.
Thereafter, five simultaneous dragonshot bullets followed, compressed into the space of a single shot through flagrant defiance of the laws of time. Tears of blood ran freely from the socket of the blonde's blackstone eye and the veins around it bulged out of her skin, but even now, it burned glyphs into thin air with a machine-gun cadence.
BELLADONNA SIGN
ILLUSORY TRIBUTE TO IKESIA'S FALLEN
HEADPIERCER ARTS: GHOST BATTALION -PHANTOM REPRISE-
"You. Shall. Cease!" came an earth-shaking proclamation from Third's lips. He was barely opening his mouth, barely whispering, and yet his words blasted out from him and were echoed by most of the maelstrom even as the rest of it gradually, irreversibly slipped out of his grasp. Bit. By. Bit. His focus wavered. Thousands of revenants, twisted echoes of sacrificed souls, spilled out and began swarming, fearfully avoiding those with substantial presence.
Zefaris stumbled. The pressure had become too much, and Third's wrath cast her to her knees.
Then lightning struck him.
And again.
And again.
And again.
A rapid-fire cadence of lightning strikes, every single one powerful enough to rip apart a tree, each greedily drank up by the Dragonslayer Rod. With each strike, the plague of antediluvian glyphs spread further over Third's body, the divine glow within him becoming just as unstable and uneven as the maelstrom around him. His previously perfect posture suddenly shriveled, as if his entire being was gripped by a horrific cramp.
The cause was none other than Zelsys.
Walking forward through the rubble, her hands held up, her weapons still merged into one. To her left stood the armored figure of Thundercannon, and to her right Fulguris. Behind her, the imperious brute that was the Primordial Self had also manifested, its arms crossed as it strode ahead.
Between each step, lightning exploded inside her chest several times. With each explosion, a furious tendril of blue-white death shot out from her gun and unerringly joined to the spear in Third's chest.
"How does it feel? To meet a tribulation worthy of your transgressions, filth?! I suppose that, in the end, I cannot expect the heavens to do all the hard work!"
"You..." the Third Truthseeker struggled out, but he couldn't finish it. He didn't have the strength to express his incredulity.
Of course she dared.
She considered - she knew - herself to be his superior. In morality. In cultivation. In Truth.
And the worst part was, something inside the Third Truthseeker agreed. Something wretched inside him wanted to acquiesce. It was something that he crushed down and pulverized.
Third decided that enough was enough. Even as he was, having refined only somewhere between three and four tenths of the sacrificial aura, he was already stronger than Fourth. Not by much... But by enough.
"Fine. If you would rob me of that which is rightly mine..."
He held out his right hand and drew in as much of the maelstrom as he could reach. As much as would obey him at this instant. A few hundred souls' worth of sacrificial aura filled and enveloped his hand, then his arm, all the way to a small section of his torso. Thusly protected, he grasped that accursed spear and leveraged the sacrifices of hundreds against those accursed glyphs.
They made the glyphs retreat, if only partly, but they did not suffice to make the spear budge. So, he repeated the feat with his other hand. All the while, that accursed woman kept hammering him with lightning, each strike erasing dozens of lives worth of energy. It was absurd; he knew of single mortals who survived lightning strikes.
"Then I shall burn it all, and you shall perish in the flames!"
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