Deity of Wrath VS Goddess of Wrath (2)

As much as her stamina was falling, this fight still wasn't going anywhere.

I was hitting Dani with everything possible to weaken her. All of the abilities combined were still only whittling her stamina away... I wanted a surefire method.

Something had bothered me, all the way back to the fight in the Coliseum.

Elo had told me that somebody was behind the System. This whole time, I thought it was Illya, as she had helped me fight Dante and regain my stamina after wasting it so often.

But that was wrong.

Avie, the person hiding within my System, who saved me when I was fighting Providence, and abandoned me once I lost to Illya, was the real person behind my System.

An entity so mysterious that I no longer wanted to understand her.

She was an independent being whom I now accepted. Using my body at her will to weaken myself and ruin my progression, she had her own goals, and a part of accepting myself... is to accept her as well.

All of these thoughts culminated into one thing while I was staring at Dani.

Something... no... someone was inside of her stone and causing her to do all of these things.

That's right, something like Avie is within Dani. And I have to extract her, just as Avie did to me.

I blocked another strike from Dani and pushed her back. I was holding my ground securely and confidently while she struggled to even make me sweat from her onslaught.

Pushing her back with brute force was enough to ruin her rhythm and she could never gain enough momentum to stun me. Any attempts she made to use her gravity ability were absorbed and reversed thanks to Shike's ability.

I had become too strong for that power... my mom's power...

Dani eventually stopped and focused on me from afar. She wasn't going to keep this up, as she was wasting stamina... I needed one more definitive combo... and I had an idea to push that being out of her System to pull her back from that terrifying state.

I ran in with Boo's ability. The world warped around me and I felt my core heat up as I rose my hand up, and struck Dani in the shoulder.

I felt the bone snap and form around my hand, and her body launch back.

I teleported behind her with Boo's ability, absorbed the kinetic energy from her trajectory, and spawned icicles above Dani.

I electrocuted her, keeping her in place while the icicles fell, and jumped up in the air with them, sending them down faster by individually pushing them with strands.

As I did push them down, I started to fall as well, flipped my body, and cocked my fist back, slamming it into the ground in front of Dani, which disrupted her.

I let her swing at an illusion I created of myself, and hit her in the neck with a straightened hand.

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, but she soon reclaimed her consciousness, running it at me again.

I defused her charge, flipped her over, and downward-kicked her stomach into the ground again.

I froze her to the ground, launched myself into the air, and went for a risky attack.

I charged down with Boo's ability, snapping Dani's ribs and punching her in the stomach. She coughed up blood and one of the horns snapped off of her body.

I was getting close!

I picked her body up, threw it into the air, and sent more icicles into her body. They punctured all four of her limbs, and from the air above her, I kicked her down to the ground.

The glass inserted itself into her body and she coughed up more blood, with another one of her horns completely breaking off of her head.

She was weakened, and her eyes seemed distant, but something was still pulling her to exert too much power.

I jumped in again, ready for my final attack on Dani.

[RECALLING ARMAMENT...]

I picked up my blade, fixed it with strands, and cut Dani's right arm off completely. She instinctively used her left hand to deflect my blade, grabbing onto the handle herself, and disarming me.

She slashed at me and her left hand slowly moved past my face as I used Boo's ability to speed myself up.

She was finished now.

My most powerful attack wasn't a culmination of the abilities, it was only one in particular.

Her left hand was at a perfect 90-degree angle from the rest of her body.

And her White Stone was sitting in front of me.

I pulled my left hand to the right side of my body as Dani's hand passed right by me, and by speeding myself up as fast as I'd ever gone before, I slammed my White Stone into hers.

[DEFLECTION ENGAGED]

Like striking her consciousness directly, Dani absorbed the hit, regenerated her limbs, lost her weird clothing and horns and other attire, and fell to her knees.

Her eyes were closed, and I crouched down to catch her before she hit the ground.

[You May Have Won This Round... But You Will Need My Power Again, Asterio]

The text in my eyes vanished as I slowly picked up Dani's body, dispersing the dome surrounding us, and walking back over to the others.

I guess this will be the first time in a long while that they've seen me... I wasn't sure what to say to them. I wanted to be cool and have an appealing entrance phrase, but nothing came to mind.

I walked over to all of my friends finally, and as they all peeked out of cover, I set Dani down on the ground with the coat she made supporting my neck.

"It's been a while," I said to them with a smile on my face.