High School DxD: Return of the Crimson Dragon Emperor

Chapter 526: Chapter 516: The Butterfly of Despair

”A ’counterattack time,’ is it...? Fufu, I wonder if things will really go that smoothly for you?”

Asem wiped his mouth, a smirk playing across his lips. Even though his teleportation had been cracked, the lingering composure he projected only meant one thing: he still had another trick up his sleeve.

Well, he hadn’t even drawn that black gauntlet yet. I’d have to back him into a corner just to force his hand... but how exactly was I going to pull that off?

I tightened my fists and spoke.

”No idea if it’ll go smoothly. But I’m not going to just stand here and take a beating. If you’ve really been watching me all this time, you should know that much.”

”Fair enough. Then show me how you’ll crack this. Because unless you take me down, this fight isn’t going to end.”

”You don’t need to tell me twice. Taking you down was the plan from the very start!”

With a loud roar, a rainbow aura erupted around me—and I launched myself forward without making a sound. Setting his stance, Asem readied his aura scythe to intercept me.

Sinking low, Asem swung the scythe horizontally, sending a razor-sharp wave of aura flying straight from its tip. Just a split second before the slanting arc could cleave through me, I ducked down, sliding across the sand to dodge the attack and close the distance between us.

”Sliding like that leaves a pretty massive opening!”

Asem pulled the scythe high and brought it crashing down in a lethal overhead chop. His target was my neck. At this rate, I’d be decapitated... but I wasn’t going to go down that easily.

I thrust my hand forward, shaping it into a knife-hand strike, and concentrated my aura into my palm—

”I can pull off stuff like this too, you know!”

Just as Asem had formed his scythe out of raw aura, I manifested a blade of my own. Glowing with brilliant rainbow light, my aura sword perfectly caught and held the dark, malevolent scythe.

Facing my defiant grin across the clash of energy, Asem showed no hint of surprise.

”Well, I figured you could manage at least that much.”

The moment the words left his mouth, Asem aimed his free palm at me and fired a point-blank energy blast. I kicked off the ground and leapt backward, somersaulting midair to put distance between us.

When my feet touched down, an oversized energy orb was already barreling toward my face.

”Get outta here!”

I slashed out with my aura sword, slicing the massive projectile clean in half. The cleaved masses of power hurtled past me, detonating far to my rear in a colossal explosion that rocked the very structure of space! Even his basic attacks were packed with a terrifying amount of raw power!

As I tried to reset my stance, Asem closed the gap at a speed that felt blinding even to my current senses. Closing in, he fired a rapid stream of energy blasts from his outstretched palm!

Sensing immediate danger, I threw myself sideways. The blasts that missed me struck the ground, completely erasing the terrain on contact—as if that entire patch of space had been gouged out of existence.

This bastard... he’s mixing that power of destruction into his normal energy blasts...!

Standard energy attacks could be deflected or parried, but whatever this ”power of destruction” was, it didn’t allow for that. If I possessed strength far surpassing Asem’s, maybe I could brute-force it, but right now, keeping up with him was the absolute best I could do.

Asem and I traded blows in a blur of hand-to-hand combat, clashing blades and swapping ranged blasts. But continuing a battle of attrition like this wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Even if this deadlock dragged on until reinforcements arrived, taking Asem down would still be a monumental task. He’d just turn the tables using whatever hidden card he had up his sleeve. After all, he possessed both the power and the technique to make that happen.

Well, if Ophis or Great Red in their prime showed up, that might be a different story...

...No point dwelling on things I didn’t have. I just had to do what I could do. That was how I’d always survived, and that was how I’d keep surviving.

—Time to make my move.

”Hah!”

With a sharp shout, Asem unleashed a sweeping strike. A massive shockwave surged from his scythe straight toward me! Realizing I couldn’t dodge in time, I deployed a dense barrier of aura in front of me to absorb the brunt of the blow...

”Which leaves your back completely wide open!”

Asem materialized directly behind me. I spun around, thrusting my right arm out to block the incoming scythe. Instead, the blade sheared through my aura and severed my arm clean off—

Next instant, my body dissolved into a cloud of glowing rainbow particles and vanished into thin air.

Asem’s eyes widened in genuine shock.

”Quantumization?! At this timing?!”

Reassembling my physical form from the gathered particles, I reappeared right inside Asem’s guard.

Asem definitely knew about Quantumization, and he had undoubtedly factored it into his battle plan. So why was he so surprised?

Because I had activated Quantumization after taking his attack.

Quantumization was an emergency evasion technique meant to be used before an enemy’s hit connected. Using it after taking damage was supposed to be far too late. Asem knew that fundamental rule.

—Which was exactly why I used it at that timing.

Quantumization temporarily sublimates the physical body into ki before reconstructing it. And when the body is reconstructed, any sustained injuries are completely wiped clean. It demands a massive toll on physical and mental stamina, but in exchange, it acts as a total physical reset.

By taking advantage of that, I intentionally let Asem cut off my arm, converted the lost limb and my body into ki, and slipped straight into his blind spot.

To be honest, repairing a severed limb on the fly was something the old me could never have pulled off. But stepping into this new realm of power made it possible. And thanks to that, I caught Asem completely flat-footed!

Asem tried to teleport away, but—

”Like I’d let you escape!”

Before Asem could shift through space, a brutal uppercut buried itself deep into his solar plexus!

”Guh-gah...!”

Asem’s body bent double as a spray of blood burst from his mouth! Finally—I had landed a blow that dealt real, significant damage! And this was my absolute best chance to finish it!

Wrapping my restored right arm in a thick layer of rainbow aura, I drove a devastating follow-up straight punch into his chest! From there, I unleashed a relentless barrage of fists and kicks! Controlling the flow of ki throughout my entire body, I carved into Asem’s frame with maximum speed and destructive force!

”Kgh...!”

Even while taking deep damage, Asem swung a fist back in a desperate counter attack!

”Too slow!”

I caught his incoming fist and yanked it toward me. Drawn by the sudden momentum, his upper body lurked forward—right into an incoming elbow strike. Timed to perfection, the elbow slammed square into Asem’s chin, knocking his consciousness completely black for a split second!

A high kick snapped upward into his jaw, launching his body into the air. I reached up, grabbed him by the face, and slammed him violently back down into the earth. The impact blasted a plume of sand into the sky, accompanied by a deafening roar.

”Take THIS!”

Spreading my arms wide, I funneled raw power into both palms. Creating two colossal spheres of aura in my hands, I slammed them together in front of me, forcing them to merge. The compressed energy transformed, swelling into something even more immensely destructive—

”SUPER AGNI—!”

A cascading torrent of light, glowing brighter than anything I’d ever created, swallowed Asem whole.

Rumble, rumble...

The entire area shook relentlessly. The bursting rainbow light remained hovering in the air long after the main torrent of energy had dissipated.

Super Agni. The evolved, advanced form of Agni. Its destructive power wasn’t even on the same scale... though maybe the name was a bit too straightforward?

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