Divine Desolation (1/2)

(A/N: My bad guys I forgot to post yesterday's chapter so there are two chapters for today.)

At the next moment, a white beam of light came from the cathedral, trying to stop the nuke from coming any closer.

But it was already too late. The beam of light was able to stop it, but all that resulted in the nuke exploding a few miles or so away from the cathedral.

*BOOOOOMM*

A blinding flash of bright light appears above the cathedral, followed by the formation of a massive mushroom cloud of smoke.

Yue is flabbergasted at the utter destruction that was caused by this single weapon.

"What even was this!?" Yue asks.

"That my dear Yue is the true power that science can bring when merged with magic."

"Do you think that the magic circle that's supposed to give us the ancient magic survived this huge blast?" Mai asks Masashi.

"To be completely honest… it wasn't too major of a nuke compared to the actual earth-destroying ones that I could make, it was just a simple nuclear bomb with uranium. I clearly did not want to destroy the thing that we were here for in the first place.

"And the circle is directly below the cathedral, so the damage would be mitigated. See, the shield of the cathedral seems to still be standing, albeit barely." Masashi sees the shield still standing as the dust settles.

After about a minute or so, there were intense winds near the cathedral of the church, probably by the surviving priests that were chanting spells to clear up the air.

The cathedral became visible. The walls though were filled with cracks and the entire building seemed like it would fall if the wind was strong enough.

"The nuclear fallout from this is gonna be pretty bad for anyone that ever comes to the Divine Mountain." Mai likes explosions as much as the next guy but isn't a supporter of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear bombs that cause far too much fallout."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. This is a magical world. Mana gives the particles many unique properties.

"Radiation naturally dissipates from the soil, air, and everything else due to the effects of mana. So basically mana doesn't leave any pollution due to human actions."

"Really? That makes sense considering how the air and everything else is always so fresh."

"Let's go finish the job." Masashi stands up, opens the hatch of the plane, and jumps down from it.

Using wind magic Masashi managed the angle of his fall as he aimed to drop right on the cathedral.

Using gravity magic, he increased his weight so that his speed would increase.

With his physical stats getting close to almost 20000 even a collision at two times the speed of sound wouldn't do any damage to him, let alone dropping from a high position with the gravity amplified.

Masashi spotted the group of priests that were chanting wind magic to clear the mushroom cloud taking some actions after noticing another airborne object.

They were trying to power the artifact that intercepted the missile with the solid bean of compressed light magic.

It required a tremendous amount of mana. Around a hundred priests charged it at the same time for about 30 seconds as they were all exhausted even more after the mana drain.

The artifact was fired right at Masashi's face as he grinned wanting to test the limits of his mana.

Masashi wasn't idle in the thirty seconds that the priests were charging the artifact.

He used his liquid mana along with the atmospheric mana to cast a similar solid beam of light except that it was blue in color instead of the gold beam that was fired from the artifact.

As he fell, his weight still amplified by the increased gravity around him, he entered a battle of attrition with the church's air defense.

He realized that no matter what he would be winning this battle of attrition, his mana output wasn't even a few thousand per second. And he had ten million units of MP.

His innate regeneration was able to offset the use so much that his mana practically never decreased.

This was where he realized the true value of compressed mana. It required far fewer units to cast magic using this mana.

Finally, after a few minutes of the stalemate, the priests were exhausted and stopped pouring their mana into the artifact which Masashi took full advantage of.

The blue beam of light finally overpowered the gold light and went down to reach the cathedral.

The next moment a pure white light arrived in front of the beam after which the beam itself completely disappeared.

Noint, the god's apostle had appeared. After using her disintegrating magic on the light beam, she opens up her angelic wings and shoots her feathers at Masashi.

Masashi felt that there was something extremely dangerous heading for him. As he was about to use wind magic to dodge the large number of projectiles heading his way Mai made her presence known behind him by casting a defensive shield made of ice to block the feathers.

Noint's expressionless face seemed to be scorning them both knowing that her disintegrating magic is far too powerful to be blocked by a mere ice shield.

The next moment she was utterly shocked when her feathers weren't able to penetrate the ice shield.

"How?!" She noticed a fine sheen of light on the surface of the ice shield.

'That's disintegration magic!'

Noint is horrified at Mai's ability to use disintegration magic. Her expressionless facade falls as she shouts at Mai.

"How can you use that power?! As god's apostle, I was given that power by god himself. How could he bestow it to an irregular who is nothing more than a pawn."

"I guess that your god isn't that special, is he?" Mai taunted the apostle.

By now the trio had arrived and was standing in front of Noint in the air. Masashi and Mai were using gravity magic to not fall while Yue was more agile and better at controlling her airborne self than the two of them.

"Blasphemy!" Noint unsheaths her twin swords and uses her twin sword style, lunging at Mai.

Mai pulls out her daggers to counter Noint's swords.

Masashi brings out his swords to attack Noint who blocks his slash with her wings.

Noint's wings are coated with disintegration magical Masashi's swords are unable to penetrate them.

Instead, Masashi's sword was affected by the disintegration property and started to disappear into light particles.

"Okay... Wings bad."

Meanwhile, Mai was using her daggers to hold back Noint's swords. She was at a disadvantage since Noint's swords had more reach and the daggers are better for surprise attacks, not close combat.

'Switch!' Masashi told Mai to telepathically switch their spots.

This was an ability that Masashi inadvertently found out when he was in the inner world with Mai.

He and Mai could access and use the anchor left by the other person.

For example, when Mai enters the inner world from one spot and Masashi enters from another spot, they have the choice to appear back in either of the two spots.

This way they practiced a move to instantly switch their places while in the middle of a fight.

The next moment, Masashi appeared in front of Noint with his swords drawn.

'Teleportation!?'

Although one of Masashi's swords was destroyed due to Noint's wings, he had a lot of spares.

Masashi engaged Noint with his swordplay and Mai started using Noint's disintegration magic that she copied to attack her from the back.

Making small orbs of disintegration using fluid magic Mai was able to control it much better than Noint herself.

The moment Mai and Masashi switched places Noint kept getting pushed back.

Slowly cuts started appearing on Noint's flawless white skin as her wings kept losing feathers from Mai's orbs of disintegration.

After a few seconds of Noint getting pushed back, she shouted, "Enough!" As she furled her wings around herself.

She was just about to open them to release a barrage of feathers in all directions but suddenly danger bells started to ring in her mind.

'Dodge!'

She abandoned her plan of attack and pulled herself away from her original spot.

Trying to dodge whatever was coming for her.

Just as she was trying to get away, a point mass appeared in the air at Noint's original spot.

Masashi and Mai were already away from the spot knowing what was coming.

"Black Hole" Yue said as the point mass in the air started to suck the surrounding air, compressing it.

Within an instant, the point mass got as big as a basketball and the suction increased to an impossible-to-dodge level.

Mai and Masashi were already away so they weren't affected but Noint was a little late and got stuck in the gravity field of the attack.

"AHHH!!" Noint screamed bestially at parts of her skin being pulled by the pseudo black hole that Yue was maintaining with mana.

Noint who had already lost her swords in the extreme gravity of the black hole pointed both her hands toward the black hole and let out a weak disintegrating beam since she was under a lot of stress trying to resist the pull of the black hole.

The disintegration beam reached the black hole and the black hole started vaporizing into tiny particles of light, the gravitational pull dissipating.

As the black hole was disappearing, Masashi and Mai were already upon Noint, starting the barrage of attacks again.

Noint without her swords only had disintegration magic at her disposal.

Noint was desperately blocking Mai's attacks and keeping Masashi at bay but even she could tell that she wouldn't be able to last.

Masashi used one of his lesser-used skills [Speed Enhancement] to get close enough to Noint to use {BIOMANCY}.

[Dexterity Enhancement LVL 43: Allows The Gamer to consume stamina and enhance their Dexterity by a multiplier of 43. (10SP/sec)]

Before Noint could react Masashi reached her and grabbed her by the throat.

"You'll be the perfect test subject for my aging power later. Miss immortal apostle.

Masashi used {BIOMANCY} to disable Noint's muscles and her access to her mana.

Next, he gave Mai a look and threw Noint into the inner world as Mai also disappeared.

"Follow me, Yue."