Chapter 333: Beyond The Fabric
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- Mild Non-Human Gore Warning -
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Late Evening - Late Summer : The Dungeon of Colossus | Western Sirathan Mountains
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*vvwwoooOOOOOMMM-TSSS* The air around me sizzled as the ground was reduced to powder and melted under the weight of my paws. My aura flowed so intensely that even the mana strengthening in the ground was eroded away until there was nothing left. -I'd like to see which arrogant fuck touched my Father.-
*Flash* Changing to my fenririan form as I lowered my stance and spread my wings, I started to roughly read my aura throughout the dungeon and calculate how I would traverse it, but before I could finish, the presences I felt deep in the dungeon suddenly vanished.
-Huh?- It was like my aura suddenly couldn't reach them.
But it wasn't what I expected. *rrruuuummbbllee* Before I could think, the entire dungeon started to shake as if the whole mountain was about to be split in half, and the entire pathway into the dungeon began to shrink and close.
The dungeon was detaching itself from the surface, closing and sealing the path to its core, and before I even had the chance to notice, it had completely surrounded itself with several kilometers of stone and ore.
But at that moment, there was nothing that could stop me. "Who knew a dungeon could feel fear..." *Fwoom* The sounds around me warped as everything suddenly slowed to a halt, and my draconic pupils thinned to focus on a single point through the ground.
Far under the mountain, I could faintly see a blurry cloud-like sphere. -That must be the dungeon core...- It was so far away that, at least with my current ability, it was impossible to pinpoint.
But all I needed was general direction. *blub-CRACKLE* Digging my paws into the half-molten ground, I flexed my legs, lowered my snout, and folded my wings.
With time around me slowed with my divinity, whenever I touched something that wasn't slowed to the same extent as my body, so much force would be applied and energy would be transferred that the ground would turn to liquid and the air would turn to plasma. With most creatures, even if they could use divinity, just the forces of the slowed air around them would lock them in place as well, as their bodies would break thanks to an equal but opposite reaction...
But my body had no issue exerting such forces, even if I didn't acknowledge it.
*crack-FWOOOOM* Darting into the ground, an instantaneous tunnel of molten rock formed in the wake of my body without giving the surrounding rock and ore time to react to the impact. With my eyes focused on the blurry sphere, I simply tunnel-visioned until, eventually, the sphere came into focus, and I burst through the ceiling of the dungeon's boss room.
*VWOOP* My aura filled the room nearly instantly, and as I turned to look toward the auras I felt around Father, I found a white and gold-robed human with three ancients right behind her. However, they weren't the subject of my gaze.
-There you are...- Behind them was the largest of the group, a pure cherry-red scaled dragon standing tall and confident while dragging Father across the ground with his tail. -To show him such disrespect...- *VWOOOM* Zero'ing my momentum against the ground, I jumped into the void before instantly returning over his head. *vwoop-vwoop*
But while I wanted to disassemble his skull, having him die without knowing how didn't sit right with me. -I want you to feel the fear of death...-
*mwooOOOF* Releasing my divinity, the flow of time around me started slowly returning to normal, but as it did, the world was finally able to react to the damage I had done.
*crackle-flash* With the energy rivaling a nuke, a colossal pillar of light and energy formed in the wake of where I traveled before the ground, where I zeroed my momentum spontaneously liquified and exploded downward. *BRRRRMMMMM* In an instant, half the boss room vanished.
The ancients and the human instantly turned to face the immense burst of energy, but as the red-scaled dragon turned his head, his gaze landed on me, my form darkened and silhouetted by the wall of light so that only the purple glow in my eyes and within my fur was visible.
For an instant, our gazes matched, and color started draining from his face, but before he could move, I reached out and set my paw on his nose.
*vwoop* Between us, there was nothing but silence. "How dare you touch him." *CRUUUNCH* His snout, starting from just in front of his eyes, instantly vanished as it was reduced to unrecognizable waste and blasted into the ground. *CRACKLEE*
Before he could even recognize what happened, an unfathomable wave of pain washed through his mind and he went to scream, "RAAAH!!!" But it sounded like nothing more than an unintelligible noise.
Lowering his stance and turning his gaze to the ground, he looked down at the blood pouring from his 'mouth' onto the shattered stones with a strained gaze before bringing his paw up to hold it, only to coat his claws with blood and find that his snout was completely gone.
In that instant, his body started to quiver, and a look of fear washed over his face.
A look of fear that I relished. "Did you think that having a little strength would make you invincible?" Using my aura, I crushed and shredded the muscles in his tail and legs, forcing him to release his grasp on Father and collapse to his knees. *thud* "Or was it that you thought following some god that only sees you as a tool would make you untouchable?"
Finally recognizing my presence as the impact from my entrance started to lessen, the other ancients turned to look back at me, only to freeze in place and turn pale before dozens of massive mythril spikes shot from the ceiling and ground and slammed into my back and underside.
It was the dungeon's last-ditch attempt to deal with me, but of course, it led nowhere.
*Clink* As the spikes were bent against my fur, I turned my gaze toward it at the center of the room. "After seeing you move so much earth to try and hide from me, I had higher expectations." *Fwip* Then, with a swift swipe of my tail, the core across the room was ripped out of the ground and hurled toward me, where I would swat it out of the air. "Had you stayed out of this, I would have left you alone."
*Crackle-VWOOOOM* The core exploded the moment my paw touched it, but while my senses were dulled by the explosion of mana, I found a white, cloudy figure looming over my head.
It was a tall, strong-looking woman with a distinctly shaped soul, but lacking much detail, similar to Magni.
But to me now, someone with that level of strength was next to nothing. *WHAAAM-CRACKLLEEE* Spreading the impact of her fist across the ground, everything around me shattered, sending rubble into the walls and ceiling without making my head budge.
From the looks of things, it was her full power. -How weak...-
But as I got ready to erase her by shredding the fabric of space around her, I felt seven other divine presences suddenly appear, with four of them instantly appearing in front of my chest. -Huh?!-
It wasn't as if they had simply come from afar away using their divinity to 'teleport', rather, it was like they just appeared.
But besides catching me a little off guard, there wasn't much going for them. *Fwoom* Freezing my divinity again, I bolted to the side before throwing the back of my wrist into all four of them at once, *CR-R-R-RACK* sending them into the opposite wall through the wall of smoke before the three other ancients, possessed by the other souls, froze their divinity and lunged at me.
"Tch..." All I could do was click my tongue at such a disgraceful sight. "For dragons to give their bodies to humans... How sad."
Deciding to test a new spell idea I got from Hera, I quickly poured mana out of my reserve to create an immense mass of space mana before connecting it to various points around each ancient.
It was a spell I had never even tried in an experiment, but I was curious what the result would be. -Now, let's see what their fate will be.- *crackle* Instantly detaching and isolating a sphere of the fabric of space around them, I gripped the fabric with my own mana before suddenly flipping it and forcefully reattaching it.
The fabric actually wouldn't line up properly, but the moment I would release it, it would snap back into place. -I wonder what the result will be...-
But the moment I released it, unlike the instantaneous 'atomic disassembly' I expected, the ancients were hurled upward at a speed I could barely follow with my eyes, even with my divinity frozen.
-WHAT THE?!- In a moment of instinctual panic, I instantly shredded every spec of the fabric of space around them in hopes of containing the blast of heat, radiation, and mana.
But while it did end up limiting the damage to everything around me from the resulting beyond-fusion-scale temperatures.. the moment my eyes caught up to where I shredded everything, I found two of the huge spheres of cracks in space.
However, as the fissures started repairing themselves, the blackness of the void suddenly started turning red, and becoming brighter, and brighter..
Until finally.. it turned completely white like the purest of beacons and exploded.
*crackle-FLASH*
The next thing I knew, every single one of my senses was overloaded to the point that they went numb, and I suddenly found myself in an empty, black space with nothing but my mind.
-W..what...-
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