Chapter 142: Collapsing Star.
"All out?" The Demon-Lord grinned. "Do you honestly believe it makes a difference how hard you fight?" He asked, stopping with Sol still in his grasp and causing a massive chunk of debris to hit them, and Sol watched him with a stoic stare as the large body of rock and dust broke apart upon contact before it was caught and dragged past them with everything else.
"I don't know, but the fact here is, I can sense your power, which means I can beat you, it means I will kill you regardless of how strong you are, regardless of anything!" Sol's expression went dark as he raised his legs in the weightlessness and thrust his heels into the demon's chest separating them and taking off toward the forming planet.
"It can't be broken, but it isn't sharp enough to wound him, or rather I didn't put enough power behind it!" Sol stared at the sword in his grasp clicking his tongue as he raced through the field of falling debris and landed on the reforming Hāl like a comet kicking up molten ground and chunks that rapidly fell back from the intense gravity.
Hāl had barely amassed 20% of its former mass and was mostly magma and dust clouds from constant meteorite crashes as the farthest chunks collided into it from getting dragged back with more force,
"You may go ahead and give it your all then, do not bore me!" The Demon-Lord landed on all fours several hundred metres away from Sol and raced off without righting his posture, making an animalistic dash that covered the distance in a millionth of a second.
"Shi-" Sol ducked beneath the large hand and swung his sword again watching it bounce off once more with a frown of confusion before he was caught by his torso and slammed into the burning ground so hard a massive red crack opened up across the entire malshaped sphere which was now four times the size of earrth sucking them in after the core of the gravitational pull was exposed for a second.
More seconds passed, and Hāl shook and groaned as more massive chunks fell and formed large volcanic craters and debris clouds, and after a full minute of the new planet shaking as if it would plumet down to Zola-Prime another large explosion tore the opposite side open, and from the core of that explosion Sol emerged with his hands crossed in guard and his sword spinning off into the void.
"Is he already on the defensive?" Dina sat on the floor of a forest on the opposite side of Zola with Ikaris staring at the system windows showing the fight from multiple angles. "It hasn't even been five minutes yet-"
"His opponent is strong, far stronger than he is, but that gives him an advantage." Ikaris answered with her eyes glued to the screen.
"How?" Arla asked from her opposite side.
"Because he is a being of limitless potential." Ikaris watched Sol maneuver through the debris and make a head-on collision with the Demon-Lord exerting so much force that the space around them distorted and folded on itself when they both crashed back into the closing crater.
"The stronger his enemy, the more he grows; when Sol is cornered without a way out, he breaks the laws of the universe, you have seen it before, that is why I believe he will win." Ikaris finished her explanation. "He has to."
"Can I... hold your hand?" Arla asked, and Dina looked away from the screens to her with herd brows furrowed, but Ikaris was the one that caught her eye; she was worried, scared even, she was visibly shaking.
"Are you a child?" Ikaris asked without looking away.
"Please." The half-elf insisted, and Ikaris unfolded her arms from around herself and reached out to Arla who scooted closer and locked hands with her, resting her head on her shoulder and sighing. "He will win, your holiness, he always wins."
"Yes." Ikaris answered resting her other hand on Arla's head and combing her fingers through her hair, she wanted to agree, but "yes" was all she could say, after all she now knew where Sol's true hatred of demonkin came from, the things he saw, the one fight he lost, and what happened after he lost that fight.
[Name: Orion
All other information is outside of my access]
"Orion..." Sol repeated the name of the Demon-Lord amidst running through the smoke and sutt caused by the constant meteorite shower. "Let's keep raising the stakes until there's nothing!-" He broke through a meteor right before it hit the ground and caught Orion in his jaw with a punch that created a crater of its own.
"-Left!-" Sol caught up and delivered another punch before summoning a whip made of his own mana and lassoing it around the Demon-Lord's arm
"-To to raise!" Sol closed the distance a third time, spinning and delivering a successful dropkick in his stomach, sending him crashing thousands of metres like the projectile of a railgun.
[Godspeed is about to deactivate-]
"On who's authority?" Sol asked dragging his hand down his jaw and fixing his half helmet.
[You have never used it for anything other than short bursts of speed, we have no idea what kind of sideffect prolonged use will have.] She replied, but Sol clicked his tongue again and ceased his momentum.
"Godspeed doesn't have a cooldown, it doesn't need deactivation, I usually only do that because I get confused from my brain thinking faster than my body can react, like a connection delay from the massive amounts of information I'm gathering," He clenched his jaws and went into a running stance, feeling the burning atmosphere around him forming and releasing a breath of fire.
"I can handle it just fine now, I've been able to ever since I became a demigod!"
Electricity surged around his body and the ground and air burned when he took off again, leaving white lightning lingering for several seconds before the entire area he was running across exploded.
Orion was having fun.
To him this had not yet felt like a serious fight since Sol had been unable to hurt him thus far.
It felt to him like playing in a bouncy house as he was being tossed around, but that sensation changed when Sol appeared before him again and the world started moving in slow motion.
[Clockwork]
[Cosmic fission]
[Magic combination]
Sol's fist connected with his arm when he raised it, and his expression registered shock when his elbow bone tore through the back of his hand and the flesh on his face started burning.
"Cosmic fission!!" Sol shouted out his attack for once as the heat and force behind his kinetic buildup was released at the same wavelength of a supernova, except it was isolated to his fist against Orion's arm.
Hāl was in terrible shape, every time it seemed to gain some level of volcanic mass through collisions another part of it was completely destroyed and sent hurling around it causing a belt to rapidly form, but this time Sol's attack completely erased an entire half of the fiery mass leaving him suspended in space and staring as he watched another small portion of Zola before him vanish as the attack carried on.
"At this rate it doesn't matter if they fight here or not..." Dina placed her hands on the ground when a quake passed under them. "We'll die either way."
"Beautiful." Ikaris stared in the air watching Sol with her naked eyes.
"No matter how many times I see him fight, it always feels like witnessing art, the things he does-" She stopped mid-sentence and grabbed her mouth when Sol was caught in an explosion more lethal than the one he had just caused, erasing the rest of the forming planet and leaving the gravitational mass sucking down more debris when Orion came back in a rage.
"I underestimated you!" The Demon-Lord grabbed Sol in the middle of the fiery cataclysm and slammed his fist in his chest, shattering his armour and sending him flying off into the void like a streak of light while the explosion was dispersed with a silent *pop. "Come then, I will fight you seriously!" He sneered flashing Sol's blood off his hand and staring in his direction again.
[Your mana output is already at 70%]
The system warned Sol while he was cascading through space, but he ignored her yet again, exerting his mana almost like a child in a tantrum with hands and legs flailing and raising his output until his body became reminiscent of Ikaris's with his skin glowing slightly.
[110% output-]
[-135% and rising, your body is experiencing an overload Master, power down immediately]
She warned him, but Sol continued to roar as he flew until he had full control over his body again, flashing his head of the blood that stuck to him and searching for Zola, but blinked in shock when he realised he'd travelled far beyond the system they were currently in; had he not cast a multitude of healing effects onto himself beforehand he would have likely popped like a balloon when he was struck.
"If I'm all the way out here-" Sol held out his hands, reactivating [godspeed] again and slowing down his perception of time as he sensed Orion's rapid approach.
"Your body cannot handle this level of stress!" She appeared next to him extending her hands and creating a shield made of mirrors and reflections before him. "Stop this madness your output is already up to over 300%!"
"No." Sol floated backward as mana started erupting from his eyes and bursting from the cracks in his armour.
"I keep getting told I'm overpowered, I'm not, I get overpowered by my enemies all the time, but I'm determined to completely suppress this monster, no matter how strong he is or how powerful he gets, I'll do it even if it breaks my body and shatters my bones into dust, I've felt it all before -I can handle the pain!"
Sol screamed and took a solid step on empty space staring as the dimensional barrier the system had created was shattered by Orion.
"I swore to kill every last one of you!"
[Sol!]
The system called out to him when he compressed all his available power into his palms and dodged Orion's fist, vanishing around his body and appearing behind him using his back as a platform and directing all that power onto one focal point.
[Collapsing star: Cosmic Disaster]
"Hypernova!"