Chapter Five: Three Minutes

Alistair launched his bare hand forward, his hardened skin easily parrying the axe swing of Oblivion, his axe gliding off of the back of the teenager's hand. Upon getting behind the arm of the demon, he launched a left hook, punching the jaw off of Oblivions head.

Before the demon even had time to regenerate its lost chin, Alistair, with his right hand, would grip the demon's left wrist, tugging him down with abnormal strength and pulling the demon's head down into a knee. Holding onto it's wrist to keep it in place as he lit it up with three more straight punches, recoiling Oblivions head with each blow. The shockwave sent spurts of the demon's blood all the way to Eorlund and Kieran's feet.

Kieran: "How in the hell is he doing this? Didn't you say it had only been a week? I mean, it doesn't even make sense. Why would he intentionally dilate the time within the rift?"

Eorlund: "It's been a long week; the time dilation was intentional. There were three rifts that opened around the world within about thirty minutes of each other, the first being in a supermassive volcano. The next being the two rifts here, the one you and your team were stuck in and the rift the other team got stuck in. I couldn't get clearance to come in here until that other rift was destroyed. Luckily, or unluckily, they lost a lot quicker than you guys did, and that demon that attacked them is on transit to the supermassive volcano."

Kieran: "Okay, why are they gathering at that volcano?"

Eorlund: "Patience, you're distracting me from the fight at hand."

Alistair was now on the backfoot, backing away just out of range of Oblivions axe swings, and just as it swung, it's second axe he committed, standing his ground and throwing a shovel-led uppercut. Smashing the demon's jaw off again before slamming his lead foot down on its left arm. Breaking it and trapping him in place for his follow-up attack.

Oblivions Six demonic eyes would shed poor blood as Alistair swung his leg around to kick him in the head, a voice emanating from its jawless maw. "NO!" Alistair would leap away, barely avoiding a boiling blood vomit right where he was standing, which melted its own arm off, but it quickly regrew it and picked up its axe again. It's eyes moved rapidly; it's skin tightening; it's body squeezing; it's unnatural muscles. "DEAD DEAD DEAD YOU DIE."

Alistair: "Like a child having a tantrum, your time is up. Three minutes have passed, so I can stop holding back."

With his hands by his side, Alistair released his aura, shaking the very space within the mountain barrier as he powered up. The barrier concealing the mountain disintegrated, being dispelled by his very act of unsheathing his suppressed essence.

Eorlund: "It's not that he had no essence; I simply had him suppress it to a level where it was undetectable. Of course, concentrating on something like that means he didn't have access to anything besides basic stat boosts. Anyway, this fights over."

Oblivion launched forward in his powered state, dedicating every bit of his tainted energy to this double swing of his axes. Bringing them downward from over it's head, attempting to cut Alistair's head off from both ways. In this powered state, his attack potency was about ten times higher than normal, but with all of his essence poured into this strike, its lethality was even higher. Lightning bolts imbued with dark, fiery shadows shot from Alistair's neck, halting the bloodaxes right in their tracks. The shockwave was enough to shake the very realm of the living.

Alistair's glowing amethyst-colored eyes were filled with blood red around his eyes. "Die." is the only word he uttered, unleashing an invisible attack directly on the very concept of this demon, obliterating it into non-existence using its very own bloodlust energy against it. Standing over the disintegrating demon with a look of pity down at the flakes of its existence fading away. "My goal is a simple one: exterminating every shitbag demon till I find the one behind this incursion." Taking in a deep breath, he calmed his aura, the blood red in his glowing eyes fading away.

Eorlund: "So, did it work?"

"Yeah, it's just like you said, I can actually deconstruct anything, so that is my essence core? The very concept of deconstructing something, I can reduce it to literally nothing on every level. Even if it's something subatomic or well, something as complex and powerful as an essence core or concept of a demon."

Eorlund: "He's a damn monster, isn't he, Kieran?"

"Yeah, a monster." Kieran spoke it but hardly meant it; this was insane. Something at this level, even with the little bit of time he's spent with a master exorcist like Eorlund, shouldn't be this strong! His reserves of essence energy must be boundless; his understanding of his own core is less than a week old, so he hasn't even developed any genuine techniques. Well, at least he didn't display anything besides his hand-to-hand combat ability and how he can deconstruct something even as powerful as a demon like that. He's far beyond a monster; his power to be able to break things down and then use them is downright broken. It makes him unparalleled in the normal world of magic. Once he takes your type of energy in, he gains resistance to it and sometimes outright immunity due to how the basic energy types work! So at this rate, not even Kieran's deceased father would be comparable to Alistair; none of his shadow or dark techniques would work, and even if they did, they would immediately be deconstructed.

A living anomaly, his very existence is an affront to Exorcism and all of the users before him; if Leo wanted to change the balance, he'd found the one being in existence that can do it! His very ability probably places him at a grandmaster level, if not above it. Kieran stared down at his own feet, his insecurities as an exorcist filling his very core. He didn't even notice as Eorlund and Alistair gathered Andrea and Ethan's unconscious but stable bodies. Lily walked out of the earthy bunker, tears dripping down her face as she clung to Kieran's school coat.

Lily spoke, sniffling. "Don't look in there. It's horrible, Lucas. He sacrificed himself for me." She sniffled as Kieran held the pink-haired girl tight to his body, his dark eyes looking up at Alistair holding Andrea's unconscious body.

Alistair spoke in an almost passive tone: "We leave for school, then I need to go to the volcano and help Leo. Are you coming, Kieran?" A look was on his face—a look of boredom. Was it because of his strength or because of his lack of care? Either way, it made Kieran's blood fucking boil.

Silverpeak was a disaster, but they weren't out of the woods just yet; their arrival at the school showed things haven't been easy. Several injured students and faculty all around in tents were being healed by other exorcists. Alistair had barely placed Andrea's body into the care of the healers before he stepped out and leapt up like a lightning bolt, disappearing into the direction of the supermassive volcano.

Eorlund didn't follow, but he did join a group of exorcists around several screens. Kieran and Lily would walk over, getting to see a live stream of the volcano. Two rifts were colliding and had been for the last week. Leo's golden rift clashed with a dark nebula, looking as if it were two galaxies colliding together. However, there was a third rift, an eerie green and black one colliding with the opposite side of Leo's rift.

Kieran: "This is bad; he's going to die. Not even Leonidas can fight off two Calamity-level demons."

Eorlund: "You don't even know half of it; these are the three demons that were the main reason the category was even made. Oblivion was the demon you faced. Entropy is the green and black rift, and that dark nebula is the worst of them all. Lysandra is the demon that obtained infinite knowledge."

"Where are the other grandmasters? Why isn't my brother helping out?"

"You could ask him yourself; we tried contacting them, but they've got hundreds of demonic incursions they're dealing with. This is more or less all we can muster, but they didn't expect us to have a Trump card. Alistair walks a fine line; his ability lets him harness any concept, ability, or thing. If he wasn't such a newbie, it's likely he would have had an easier time with Oblivion without even using his deconstruction."

The masked and hooded man sat between the dimensional threads, peering above the colliding rifts. It was only a matter of time. In the showdown of a century, the greatest grandmaster exorcist Leo and the soon-to-arrive anomaly Alistair would face off against the two strongest calamity-level demons. This would be a good watch, but he, of course, would have to join once the time was right. "Once my plan is set into motion, this world will be forced into an age of darkness. Even this anomaly won't be enough to prevent that." He gazed at the teen flying into the volcano, his red cloak rippling in the wind as lightning poured off of his very essence.