Chapter 12: Radiance (5)

~12.5~

*****

“She’s fighting by herself?!” Allison said as she gave Kaede to Joseph. “I’m going. Both of you get off Atlas.”

“Hannah told us to go to Atlantis and wait there.”

“Yes, that’s good. Go.” The boys teleported away with the baby and Allison teleported to the beach. She found quickly found Alethea. “Is she really fighting solo? The power I’m sensing right now is from her alone?”

“It’s hard to believe,” Alethea said. “She’s using the Awakened State and Aether Drive at the same time. I don’t think I could do that.”

“What?”

“She’s planning to use Mana Burst through the soul-bond, too,” Michelle added.

“What?”

Michelle nodded hesitantly. “She’s using Aether Drive on herself and wielding an Awakened Hikarimaru.” Her eyes were glowing. Allison noticed a faint diagram in her irises, but didn’t question it. “She’s using her own mana, too. She’s not drawing anything from Astraia’s supply.”

“She’s pushing out five hundred fold through her own body and up to Astraia’s limit through Hikarimaru, all from her own supply?” Allison knew very well who Kye was. Only Alfia knew Allison’s true identity. This is far more development than we could have ever imagined. To think you would gain this much since the invasion. Elysia, what have you gone through to obtain such fine control?

“It’s unimaginable, even by our standards,” Adele added. “To use two calculation intensive abilities at the same time, both without system assistance... it’s as if...” Her eyes widened as she realized it. “Mein gott.”

Michelle and Alethea figured it out at the same time.

“““She has never used the system!”””

“What?” Allison turned back toward Kye. “So then... for the past five billion years... she’s been reincarnating over and over again... fighting countless battles... all without ever using the system to fight? Every spell she has cast... she calculated herself?”

Five billion years? Alethea repeated in her head. How could she know that?

“That’s just who she is,” Alfia said confidently. “Eli is the best of us.”

Alethea nodded. “And she’s... angry.”

“I’ve never seen her angry,” Allison said.

“I’ve only ever seen her angry one time. That was in our previous life together when she killed Shiro Shikigami. Our daughter was very young at the time, but he tried to use her against us.”

“To do that to a parent as powerful and caring as she is...” Allison looked toward the sea. “Whoever angered her has made a big mistake. Shiro Shikigami... no, Phantom. You have angered the one person whose rage you should fear the most.”

*****

“Awaken!” Kye felt a surge of aether from Hikarimaru. Soul weapons are rare and powerful. To wield one is to wield the power of the person behind the weapon. Astraia’s power was great, and her mana output was at Kye’s disposal.

“Ready whenever you are,” came Astraia’s voice.

“Transform into an odachi.”

“Got it.”

Astraia adjusted her size and didn’t ask why. She had absolute trust in Kye, especially with how much mana was coursing through her blade.

Kye held the oversized katana on her left hip, poised to draw at any moment. The longer the beast waited to do anything, the more mana Kye channeled. Every extra second was that much more power behind her opening attack.

Soon, the beast grew impatient and began to swing its weapon. Before it could move an inch, Kye vanished. She moved at an incredible speed, faster than most could see. She drew the blade, closed the distance in a split second, and slashed the beast with such force that she launched it backward with an intense shockwave.

As it flew, Kye appeared above it and struck again, this time sending it downward diagonally. Before it could hit the sea below, she got ahead of it and struck it as if it were a baseball, sending it flying further out to sea, each strike releasing a shockwave.

Then she kicked it into the sea, where it finally recovered and skated along the water’s surface. But Kye was a step ahead. As the beast was flying across the surface trying to get a sense of its opponent, Kye appeared in front of it. “<<Seiken>>!” She swung her blade horizontally with an immense burst of golden aether. The split second her sword impacted the beast’s sword, it shattered, and it was flung far into the distance on a powerful wave of radiant golden aether, slowly rising away from the water’s surface. The sword wave was so massive and powerful that as it carried the beast past the barrier mountain, it sliced through four of the mountain tops halfway up. The sword wave carried the beast far out into the open sea beyond.

Before the mountain tops could crash back down, Kye generated sixteen orbs of radiant golden mana. She compressed four sets of four together tightly until each set was appeared as four orbs, rather than four sets. Normally, the catalysts would explode, but Kye’s control was so great that she kept them intact.

“Did she just cut the mountain tops off?” came Hannah’s voice over the call the others were using to coordinate. “Wow...”

“No kidding,” Alaira said. “I didn’t think even an elder royal could cause damage to the environment like that.”

“That’s Shi-chan for you. She’s done worse.”

“““WORSE?!”””

Kye flung her arm forward. “<<Detonation>>!” The orbs bolted forward, past the still floating mountaintops, and collided with the beast. Each set of orbs detonated individually, and due to their close proximity, they collectively detonated with a far greater force.

The explosion dwarfed the mountains.

Ground shook all the way back at the resort where Alethea and the others were. The tops of the mountains were blown back toward the resort, and parts of other mountains were blasted off as well. Each mountaintop broke apart from the force of the explosion, and it looked something like a fiery meteor shower.

The audience at the resort had all stopped to watch when the mountains were sliced apart. It was Hannah’s first time seeing Kye in action. “What the hell?!”

*****

Revision: 2024-2-17