Chalice Silver

If Kagutsuchi can scream, he probably would've started screaming minutes ago.

But he can't, so all he can do is run away in that blob-like form of his, flying through the air as he tries to escape my relentless pursuit.

I'm not quite sure where I am right now. I'm very high up—higher than even the clouds—and I'm pushing past cold winds as I chase Kagutsuchi. He's trying his best to escape, but he isn't fast enough to fully outfly me.

And it shows. When this blob form of his first appeared after I blew up Augusta's body, he was about the size of a large beach ball. But now? He'd shrunk greatly, looking more like a basketball of Divine Energy.

He can't do anything about it. If he tries to attack me with his flames, I can just hold out my arm and drink the Divine Energy. If he tries to come closer, I can just catch him and drain the massive amount of Divine Energy that blob form of his contains. If he tries to run, then I'll just catch up to him with my superior speed.

It's kinda sad actually.

Not that I care. I feel over the moon right now. I've absorbed a crazy amount of Divine Energy, and I'm going slightly insane. The Eyes of God are absorbing quite a substantial portion of the Divine Energy I've taken in. Some of the 'blocks' that were put up to protect my soul are falling away, and a crazy amount of knowledge is flooding my brain.

Suddenly, Kagutsuchi flies upward, going further and further out of the earth's atmosphere. He plans on going into space, it seems. "That monster is still human!" The god screams inside his formless body. He believes I'm held back by many of the limitations of the normal human body.

I can't help but smirk. His delusions have remained even now.

Primal Energy floods my legs, and I rise further into the sky like a rocket. A cone of air trails behind me as I fly, and what distance Kagutsuchi begins to shrink immediately. The god flies further and further, but the distance between us only shortens.

At some point, we cross into the earth's mesosphere. Tiny meteors rush past us as they burn up in the atmosphere. The air thins considerably. Most humans would struggle to even breath if they came up this high without any equipment.

It doesn't impair me. I can hold my breath for hours at this point.

Then, I manage to catch up to him, and my finger barely grazes his blob-like form.

Kagutsuchi silently screams as a third of his remaining Divine Energy escapes him, pulled away as streams of orange. It seeps into my body, and another explosion of strength and euphoria floods through my veins.

He quickly escapes during it. I quickly move to follow him.

We cross into the thermosphere. What little air there was thins even more, and my skin tingles as the oxygen that once clung to my skin is swept away. Bands of light spring up around me, forming into brilliant auroras as the sun's radiation is broken apart inside the earth's atmosphere.

I catch up to him once more. My palm sinks momentarily into his body, and half of his remaining Divine Energy is absorbed. It floods into my body, swirling towards my skull as my eyes greedily drink it all up. More information becomes open to me. More power swells deep within me.

Then we cross into the exosphere. The final layer of the earth's atmosphere; the final barrier between the planet and the cosmos. Kagutsuchi halts suddenly, his blob-like form stretching before it rebounds into place. He remains there, as if contemplating something.

I cross into the exosphere when I feel it. Kagutsuchi's gathering all the Divine Energy he has left into a singular point. His blob-like form collapses into itself, like a star that had finally run out of fuel. His spherical form shrinks, his spin getting faster and faster the smaller he gets, before eventually,

He explodes. All that heat and Divine Energy breaks free from the forced shell it was placed into, and it all rings out as a massive explosion that spreads across the exosphere. The heat is nearly unbearable, and it almost feels like I'm standing before the sun itself.

The air itself shakes, and the light it creates pierces through even the thickest of clouds. For those watching from the right position, they'd see the clouds spontaneously turn orange, as if the sky itself had caught on fire.

This fragment of Kagutsuchi is dead, his consciousness broken apart.

As for me? Well,

Suddenly, the cloud of heat and Divine Energy stops expanding. Then it begins shrinking, spinning as it shrinks towards where it expanded from. More and more of the Divine Energy disappears, and the head fades with it. And before long, the giant cloud of blinding light is gone, all absorbed into my body.

I float there, carried by the lingering winds near the edge of space. The Divine Energy I absorbed quickly twists through my body as it rushes towards my eyes. There's an urgency in my chest, as if something had been desperately waiting for this moment, for when enough Divine Energy is subsumed into my eyes.

And when it does,

Pain. Pain of untold magnitude explodes through my body. Every inch, every orifice, every organ, every cell; it all screams as an invisible lock holding my mortal self shatters. Volcanic heat pours out from me, seeping into the atmosphere and burning what little air remains here.

My body disappears inside the ball of fire I'd lit up. The sphere of heat grows and grows and grows, and with it the ball expands. And for a brief moment in time, the people far below can look up, and it'll almost seem as if a second sun had spontaneously appeared in the sky.

Then, just as quickly as it began, it ends. The sphere of flames breaks away, and I remain there, seemingly untouched by the flames that'd surrounded me.

Most of my body remains unchanged on the outside. Only my hair has experienced a noticeable change. The pale white of my hair has changed, turning into a visibly glittering silver, reminiscent of the sheen you'd see from an ingot of pure silver. I give my head a quick shake, and I can almost see the trail of sparks my hair leaves behind.

The insides of my body are a completely different story though.

Once, my body had acted to house all the varying energies I've taken up. Primal Energy, Ki, and Divine Energy; all three had taken residence inside this body. Some have built their own organs to better move around their new homes, and in return, I gain the ability to call for their strength. I was the housemaster, and they were the residents.

It's different now. My entire body has turned into a conduit, allowing movement of these energies without even a shred of resistance.

My body and all the energies now live in harmony. My Primal Energy no longer needs that outdated organ to remain inside me. My Ki can move throughout my body without the use of those veins it carved through my flesh. My Divine Energy no longer needs to remain tethered to my eyes to keep it from clashing with the other energies.

This should've been impossible. Primal Energy and Ki can work with one another without issue, but even the slightest interaction with Divine Energy usually incites some problems. It's why using Divine Energy in any form had been so difficult in the past.

Not anymore. My body has become the perfect conduit to allow these energies to interact without causing me to explode from the inside.

…I just wished it was a little less painful. I can still feel the phantom aches all over my body.

But with my phantasmal dinner eaten, I begin diving down. I moved quite the distance during my chase, and it'll take some time to come back to where I started from. Not a lot of time—I'll reach the fortress in minutes at the speeds I'm going—but a few minutes are more than enough for something to happen.

I zip past falling meteors, cutting through clouds and pushing past resisting winds. And as I do, I take the time to get used to my recently changed body.

Everything feels clear. Too clear, even. The slight dullness that'd once separated my mind from my body is gone now. Sensations are immediately recognized by my brain. Commands are sent instantaneously. My powers come to my beckoning without even an effort.

Even my Divine Energy is no different. This latent divinity I'd stolen from Kagutsuchi had never been the easiest thing to use. When I first received it, the energy remained stubborn against my call. It remained inside my cells and stayed there, forever stewing inside my body, keeping itself away from everything.

It's what made creating Infernal Arms such a chore. Divine Energy carries with it the aspect of 'Permanence', which essentially keeps all the energies I stuffed into my artifacts from just spilling back out or being stolen. I'd used my bones—which carry the most Divine Energy inside them—and ground them up, before infusing them into my artifacts.

Now though? I don't think I'll have those issues. I'll be able to create Infernal Arms without struggling so much, and given time, I'm sure I can do the same with Sacred Gears.

Before long, the fortress comes into sight. Or, at least, what remains of the fortress. That initial lightning strike Akeno sent had melted through quite a major part of the fortress, and I can see more of the walls had fallen down, all riddled with some manner of scorch marks.

Akeno isn't in the vicinity, nor is Satanael. It seems Satanael had forced their battle to relocate just a distance away, perhaps in an attempt to save what's left of the fortress.

Judging from how terrible everything looks, it doesn't seem to have worked.

But there's something that's odd. Most of the corpses around here are charred in some way, their bodies burnt through by an intense, concentrated blast of heat.

And yet, I can find a pair of corpses lying by the northern end of the fortress, their bodies perfectly untouched except for the eerie blue veins that run all across their bodies.

I use my eyes to learn of what happened, and my eyes go wide. Those blue veins; they're blood vessels that'd been completely overrun by Mana. In other words, someone had infused an incredible amount of Mana into these people, and they'd died from Mana Poisoning.

That's not something many people can do. You'd need to be able to control pure Mana, untainted by the elements most mages use to-

Ah, so that's it. So she finally did it.

Akeno finally gained the ability to control pure Mana.

I can't help but smile slightly. I know just how frustrated the girl was getting over her lack of progress regarding this. When I'd awakened her Primal Energy, she'd promised that she'd return the favor one day. Constantly finding blocks she couldn't overcome; it was killing her from the inside.

But now she's done it. These two corpses are testament to that.

I can't help but smile proudly. She's accomplished something most masters wouldn't even imagine, and it's only taken her a few years. It speaks to her sheer talent, I suppose.

I can save the gushing for later though. Akeno's battle with Satanael isn't over, and I'll be damned if I do nothing.

So I take a breath, and I take off to the skies.