Author Note - NEW STORY!
Hello, guys. I started posting a new story on webnovel.
The name is,
Thomas Prest: A Simple Magician
Check it out.
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Kaguya appeared high in the sky above Isshiki just as he landed in a crouch on the ground, tanking the insane force of Kaguya's previous attack, making the ground under him crack for several hundreds of meters.
He didn't even get the reprieve to take a breath before Kaguya threw another Shinra Tensei at him, making him buckle up, his knees straining against the weight that could be likened to trying to lift the sky itself.
The ground under Isshiki's feet dented, creating a large crater with a radius of hundreds of meters, crushing everything growing on the surface inside its zone of impact into mush, whether it was trees or vines.
Kaguya's second Shinra Tensei instantly erased the cracks caused by Isshiki tanking the first one, whereas even the outside of the impact zone was not spared. From the edge of this new crater, more cracks appeared, the ground separating into pieces as if it was pie being divided by an invisible knife.
This residual force that escaped the impact zone was powerful enough to make the cracks span for kilometers, some of them going up the trees, cracking the bark and some of the trees closer to the crater were even split in half.
Rei watched with a wry smile how much damage could one proper attack of Kaguya cause. It had to be said, these trees were not normal. They were much tougher and larger than anything in the Elemental Nations. Cracking one could be likened to cracking a bonafide mountain and yet, there was an entire sea of cracked trees in his field of view now.
Isshiki, however, did manage to tank the blow with his body.
But then came the third Shinra Tensei. Decimating the surroundings some more and causing dust to fly in the air... and then the fourth came and for good measure, Kaguya added the fifth one right on top of the previous two.
Rei observed with a twitching eyebrow as his dimension was akin to being hammered down, the entire place shaking at its core with every single Shinra Tensei of Kaguya.
His house in the middle of the dimension was already decimated just by the residual earthquake and Rei inwardly sighed. 'Screw repairing it. I will just transform this dimension into a battle arena. I am sure Mei would love to fight Kaguya with her Jutsu restriction being lifted.'
Thanks to the abundant Nature Energy, the land and trees would repair themselves and regrow extremely quickly so even if it was destroyed on a regular basis, it wouldn't matter. Maybe it would even be beneficial for the dimension if a strong chakra residue, especially Kaguya's, was fed to it so often.
Kaguya cheerfully laughed, extremely happy that she could finally just let go and mindlessly use her full power against somebody that is not Rei. This was actually very fun!
Sparring against Rei was annoying. Even if she used her full power, his damned sealing arts had her restricted to hell in ten seconds flat. It didn't matter he was several magnitudes weaker than her when he could just wrap her in so many restrictive seals that her power level dropped even beyond him.
Kaguya's palm was pointing towards the ground where Isshiki was as she was about to joyfully send another Shinra Tensei at him because she felt like it, but abruptly, despite the dust cloud covering him, Kaguya's eyes could clearly see him whip a...
Kaguya jerked her body to the side, a black rod coming out of her sleeve as she quickly grasped it and pushed it in front of him into a guarding stance just as a massive black rod of the size of a tree trunk, created and enlarged by Isshiki, almost rammed into her... well, whole body, really.
She barely managed to block it, in disbelief at how stupidly fast the rod was as she was slightly pushed back by the sheer momentum and weight behind the impact. Something so big had no right to be so fast!
Kaguya's eyes narrowed in contemplation, 'I see. Enlarging objects and making them selectively ignore some disadvantages of their size. That's Isshiki's power.'
Before his attack, she had seen Isshiki create a normal-sized rod and hurl it at her with all of his physical strength behind the throw, causing it to gain insane speed. Only thanks to her Rinne-Sharringan's slowed perception did Kaguya have a brief split of a second to realize the rod was enlarged mid-flight. The tip of the black rod was bigger than her body so it would really slap her out of the sky like a fly if it hit her.
Kaguya pushed a bit more strength into her arm with her own small black rod and she swatted the massive tree-trunk-like rod of Isshiki to the side...
Instantly having to sidestep to the right, deflecting another, smaller than normal, black rod aimed at her heart.
Isshiki used Kaguya's momentary distraction from having to deal with the two black rods he hurled at her and leaped forward, straight at Kaguya.
Kaguya's black rod was still in the deflecting motion, away from her body and it was obvious she would be unable to use it for blocking or counter-attacking in time as Isshiki's fist neared her chest.
Just as he planned, Isshiki's attack was pulled off successfully and he inwardly smirked as he saw he had a free path to Kaguya's chest... but in the next split of a second, Kaguya moved her free hand and Isshiki inwardly scoffed.
It was he who spent millennia on body enhancement! There was no way she could...!
Isshiki's punch was barely caught by Kaguya's left hand an inch from her chest as her fingers wrapped around his fist as her body was once again slightly pushed back, making her cough a bit of blood due to the resounding shockwave from the meeting of their hands that hit her unprotected chest point-blank.
As the shockwave spread, it made the trees in the distance violently creak and furiously shake all the while it created a new deep crater under them despite them being high in the sky.
The bones in Kaguya's hand instantly shifted the second Isshiki's hand met hers, tearing themselves free from her skin and ripping into Isshiki's arm, creating large smoking gashes in his forearm as they tried to disintegrate his body.
Her fingernails blackened and sharpened as she viciously dug her fingers into his, intending to sever at least some of them.
Isshiki had only a second before his arm started to be shredded by Kaguya's bones and he instantly yanked it back, kicking the air under him to create a distance between them, ripping chunks of his flesh out of his arm in the process because of the sharp Kaguya's bones. Only now he felt the invasive energy injected into his arm by Kaguya's bones and it spooked him out at how much of his chakra it took to counter.
His body might have been too strong to be directly disintegrated but it still cost a lot of chakra to counter it! He instantly realized the melee fight was disadvantageous for him because Kaguya could just outlast him thanks to this ability of hers.
Kaguya smirked at Isshiki. She had forcefully closed her hand just as he was pulling away, and now she opened it, making a show of dropping several of his fingers she managed to rip out at that moment.
While that was going on, the bones sticking out of Kaguya's hand, wrist, and forearm, started to slowly sheath themselves back into her flesh, leaving only unmarred white skin when they were done.
Kaguya opted to do this little provoking show instead of pursuing and pressing Isshiki with a follow-up attack because she needed a moment to heal her inward injuries too.
That friggin shockwave produced by the force of his blow was damn powerful and her left hand was creaking and painfully stinging as she moved it despite it having full bone coating under her skin just as she blocked Isshiki's blow.
'I was careless.' Kaguya inwardly frowned, in contrast to her outward calm and provoking smirk. 'If that landed on my chest, he could cause severe damage.' She realized with dissatisfaction while already growing her bone armor under the skin of her whole body, especially her chest.
Sure, a blow like that would not cause her defeat but healing a shredded heart and lungs would be troublesome...
Not to mention how utterly humiliating it would have been, having her breasts be blown to smithereens right in front of Rei and having to regrow them. Her womanly pride would have taken a massive hit!
Isshiki frowned as he saw his fingers falling through the air, but he didn't dare to follow them with his eyes, keeping them fixed on Kaguya.
His hand missed several fingers and his forearm sported massive deep gashes but it was of no consequence. Kaguya's bones couldn't fully penetrate his tough body. The gashes were only surface wounds that didn't manage to reach bones and his fingers could be ripped out only because they were fundamentally weaker compared to other parts of his body due to their smaller size.
It didn't matter anyway. Isshiki pushed his chakra into his injured hand, blowing away Kaguya's residual chakra and then he added some more of his chakra and his arm and fingers started healing and regrowing at a visible pace. Two seconds later, his arm and hand were as good as new.
What did make Isshiki frown deepen, however, was Kaguya's slow transformation that was happening right in front of his eyes.
Her armoring herself up did have several outward signs. Bony horns sprouted from the sides of her head, curving themselves into an intricate shape. The fingernails on her other hand also blackened, elongated and sharpened, giving Isshiki an uncomfortable feeling as Kaguya's disintegration ability was highly concentrated in her fingernails now. Her skin became even whiter, if that was even possible, and with his special eye, Isshiki could clearly see Kaguya's chakra seeping from the bones underneath her skin into the said skin, hardening it to an insane degree.
If before Isshiki was reluctant to go into melee against her because of her disintegration ability, now he was downright afraid to approach her at all. She was a moving and fully armored fortress of deadly bones capable of sprouting from any place on her body, reinforced by hardened skin, adding even more defense on top of her bone armor.
Yet, her outward appearance deceptively barely changed.
Isshiki pursed his lips in distaste, 'This might be harder than I initially thought.'
But he regretted that thought a second later when around Kaguya, two moving black globs appeared, twisting and squirming before they hardened into two small balls reminiscent of the black rods.
When Isshiki's eyes landed on these, they widened as he recognized the Truth-Seeking Balls of Hagoromo Otsutsuki and he could practically see how much of her chakra was in these two inconspicuous balls of doom rotating around Kaguya.
"Well, then. Since you almost managed to land a proper hit on me, I guess I should take you just a teensy little bit more seriously, don't you think?" Kaguya teasingly asked with a smile, letting Isshiki see that even her teeth became noticeably sharper.