Chapter 143: Tremble.
"Oh, my, god..." Dina stared at the system window watching everything turn white before a bright light enveloped the entire screen nearly blinding her and forcing her to look away. "We're all dead..." She mused as she felt the cosmic mana fluctuating across Zola; every critter, every beast, every child and adult, the seas and the lands, the air and everything in-between shook in terror.
"We are safe." Ikaris countered. "We will experience a miniscule amount of discomfort at best, the grand and nigh total majority of that absurd attack was directed away from us, and even then the first wave of its destruction will reach this place in about...
Fifteen or so years, according to the system's calculations." She explained, and Dina looked up again, sure enough although she had seen the explosion through the system window there was no sign of it showing up in the sky.
"Are you telling me that Sol initially survived a hit that sent him fifteen lightyears away in a matter of seconds?" She asked shocked.
"He has endured worse, we; all of us..." Ikaris looked at her and gestured to her and all the other gods as well as Arla who sat too stunned to speak after Sol had brought witness to something most of them had never even heard of. "We are beings capable of trampling across entire universes and laying waste to them, albeit some infinitely slower than others.
"Even me?" Arla asked, and Ikaris nodded with her brow raised.
"I would say your strength has made impressive leaps and bounds to be accurate, Arla, without checking something as insignificant as levels I can tell you are nigh as strong as Sol was when he first arrived on Arkadia, mind you, he was powerful enough to defeat two thirds of the Arkadian pantheon upon arrival."
"You're stronger than me?" Dina spun to look at her teacher, but Ikaris chuckled again.
"She gained power through interacting with Sol, I do not understand how exactly, but they currently share a similar simbiosis to him and myself; that is to say she has access to abundant Arkadian mana even though she is here, and her limiters were broken when he tampered with her mana and gave her those sigils, he might have thought it was just a cosmetic change, but when I inspected it earlier I noticed similar properties to my own crests and sigils, it is a slave contract through and through."
"That's crazy..." Dina stared at Arla who had a rising blush on her face as she remembered how caring Sol had been toward her since waking up.
"You are stronger though." Ikaris stared at Dina bringing both her and Arla a greater shock than either of them were ready for. "At your current strength, you could possibly fight someone along the same strength as Sorath, the Arkadian goddess of the sun, or maybe stronger."
"Eh?"
"Yes, do you honestly believe you would have been able to critically injure Sitri otherwise?" She asked, and Dina shook her head, from her perspective she didn't feel any stronger than the day they were dragged through the portal on D'ol.
She was going to speak again but the system window buzzed and Sol appeared on the screen redirecting her attention to him.
His eyes were bleeding, as we're his ears and mouth, and he was directly breathing in the vaccum, heaving and huffing out large car-sized clouds of raw excess mana while he stared at his hands that had been torn, burnt and shredded beyond recognition, around him were waves and clouds of cosmic dust and fire already spread thousands of miles away, and holding on to his chestplate Orion was staring at him with one half of his body burnt black and falling apart and the other half burnt down to the third degree.
"You fucking survived something like that to the face...?" Sol smirked nervously as he felt his mana output rapidly falling again.
Orion didn't respond, he just stared with his one good bloody eye shaking with wrath.
"I still have power to spare." Sol raised his arms and focused, causing the flesh to start healing over painfully as all the dead skin and shattered bones burnt away.
"I have plenty of power to spare!" Sol raised his arms higher and then slammed them down on Orion's, expecting his arm to shatter since it had been burnt to charcoal by [Hypernova] but he winced when his hands stopped halfway and bounced back upward, revealing bone beneath the shattered skin and muscle.
*Haaaaaaaaa~
Orion breathed a mist of red mana from the good corner of his mouth and then leaned his head causing more of his burnt self to shatter and fall off as he began rapidly healing. "Is this the best you can do?" The Demon-Lord asked as his eye regrew and settled in the socket of his exposed skull.
"Is there no more power left, Sol Vestic, the destroyer?" He asked, balling his fist while the hand holding Sol tightened and broke through his armour.
"If so, then it is my turn, do not die, I have to repay you for the pain I have just experienced, thousandfold."
[Master-]
*Doommm!!*
A nigh inaudible explosion appeared from the inside of the still expanding ball of cosmic mana Sol had created, and from that explosion a streak of white appeared and vanished, just like before all it took was one hit for Sol to start cascading across the void unable to stop himself and reeling in pain.
[You are still alive!] The system shouted at him, causing him to open his eyes and stare at his left arm which had been reduced to a stump after he tanked the entirety of the attack with it, protecting his torso.
[Godsp-]
Orion appeared faster than Sol could cast, right before him in perfect condition with his fists clasped and ascending.
Without thinking Sol lowered his right arm and tanked yet another blow, seeing the stars turn into streaks as he went flying again, all the way into an entirely different galaxy, exerting every bit of his mana into [divine heal] was the only thing that prevented him from burning out when he tore through cosmic clouds and zoomed past stars.
He began roaring as he had done before, violently healing himself just before his momentum slowed down above a red sun.
"How, how much stronger could he possibly be!?" Sol blew the blood from his nose and stared up again just in time to catch Orion's smile before he let loose another unavoidable punch at him, causing him to crater into the sun and exit the other side in an instant, emerging with his armour burning red while Orion beat him to the exit by flying around the star, and from there he grabbed Sol by his hair and tossed him back into the sun again and then clasped his fist with a chuckle.
"You play with the powers of the universe as if they are yours to manipulate; as if you understand them, child, how dare you enter my own domain and threaten my life?" Orion sneered as the sun began shrinking rapidly, trapping Sol inside as it turned from red to a blazing orange, and then from orange to an even brighter yellow before it started turning white, speedily gaining mass as it shrunk
"You have no idea of the power this one wields, you can never fathom the powers of I; Orion, to disrespect me in my own territory, and have the sacks to believe yourself superior, a lesson in manners must be taugh... Nay, forefeit your life and begone!" He tightened his fist causing the star to shrink and condense until it started spitting cosmic beams from the two polar points.
"I am the strongest, I am the most powerful, I am the All Powerful!" Orion raised his other hand, lowering it with a huff and summoning another star from out of deep space in an instant and then approaching the white dwarf and kicking it upwards into the blue giant with another huff.
"Burn away!" Orion roared, summoning several more blue giants from the deep and crossing his arms, forcing them to all to converge on the dwarf that trapped Sol.
"Burn into nothingness and disappear forever!" He continued roaring as the stars spun several times around the dwarf and then all collided with it simultaneously, creating another explosion several times more powerful than Sol's [Hypernova] explosion had been.
He himself could barely withstand the force of the blast, and was sent hurdling through space and laughing every time his eyes met the phenomena forming after all that mass had converged.
"There is none like me, there will never be any like me, sink into the depths of emptiness and be crushed to death by the power of gravity beyond your comprehension."
BLACK HOLE.
As the residual matter rapidly converged and collapsed onto itself, the cosmic rays started bending against their will, forming an event horizon in a matter of seconds as the gravity caught and started eating the very light around it, which then caused Orion to stop spinning as the gravity of this Stellar-Mass black hole reached and caught him as well.
After it did though, the demon stared in confusion, because after Sol's attemt to shield himself had failed from overexerting all his mana earlier, he started sensing another demon deep within the soulless mass.
"What is that?" He squinted, slowly floating away from the mass and trying to make tails of what was happening inside of it. "Is someone attempting to save that creature?" Orion wondered, but then discarded that thought when the demonic presence disappeared as well, leaving a foreign entity inside of it. "What is that?" He wondered again.
"His vessel has been shattered..." Ikaris sat forward with her hands clasped and her eyes watering.
"His vessel -what does that mean -did Sol die?" Dina asked tearing up as well, but Ikaris shook her head and leaned further forward starting with more fascination than ever as she observed the contents of the light-eating mass with her eyes brightly glowing a beautiful shade of blue and her sigils turning blue along with them, humming as she swelled with joy and pride.
"He is reborn...." Gadriel who had been silent as she witnessed Sol exert more power than she was ever able to fight a being she never imagined could be defeated. "He is reborn anew!" She held her mouth as she too began tearing up.
"I never imagined I would see such a day..." Gabriell chimed in.
*Ding
The system appeared before every being including the Demon-Lord.
[The mortal vessel has been broken]
"Mortal what?-"
[The ancient primordial judge has been set loose]
"Who speaks?" Orion grabbed at the window, but failed to touch it as his hand whisked through. "Show yourself, coward!" He demanded, and the system appeared before him as an intangible entity, still unable to be touched as she stared at him defiantly and spoke.
[Now comes The Grey, now comes Atonement, Now comes Order and Absolution]
[The Godslayer has been unleashed upon this universe]
[Tremble]