MAGUS INFINITE

”...and it is enough.”

I did not give it time to finish whatever it was going to say when I could see that the demon was preparing itself, so I attacked.

The dragon head had torn apart the road I made in the sky, so that meant there was lots of Lightning Essence floating around this region, and with every breath made by this dragon, it was sucking a portion of the lightning essence into its body, most of them were immediately converted or destroyed inside it, but there was enough still surrounding its head, and I cast Lightning Edict, full power, nearly draining all the Anima in my channels, the command driven into the air itself,

”Break.”

The word left my mouth and arrived inside the dragon’s skull simultaneously, a Law-imbued command that should have cracked that immense head like an egg, and the damned thing... flinched, as if I just poked it with a stick, and not enough power to shatter a mountain.

The head recoiled, and the demon’s voice came out of it, sounding very annoyed.

”That was rude, Elric, and just super pointless. This is the skull of a god’s child, my stubborn little spark, and you cannot imagine what this truly means.”

I frowned and did not answer, this damned demon was still gathering power, and I attacked again, this time with the Loom, a net of threads that would have sliced through a town. The threads wrapped around the dragon’s skull, pulled taut, and I felt them slide off the scales like water off oil.

The demon laughed. ”You see? The child of a god is not so easily unmade. It took the power of the fallen Celestials and the might of the demons to bring them down. Do you even understand your own history? Let me teach you.”

The black fire that had been gathering in the throat of the dragon, exploded out at this moment and I reached for it with my Fire Resonance to understand what sort of flame this was, and my grip was torn aside by the corruption and the sheer ridiculous heat riding inside the flame. I barely got the Loom up in front of me, converted it to a shield with Edict and placed a bit of my flesh inside of the shield, before I was hit.

The shield lasted a quarter of a second, as the beam drove me a mile through the sky and put me in the water, and I went down through it in a column of steam.

I came up burning, although it was not fire, there was darkness, corruption, and flames fused together, and it had gone through my chest and into my ribs and was melting my body.

Three forces at the level of laws were trying to tear me apart, and I watched it for a moment, feeling the way my Adamantium Flesh fought against the laws trying to tear me apart.

Even the demon paused and looked at me, a bit surprised that I was just staring at my body being torn apart. It was painful, but all I could see was the right fuel powering my growth, but I could not die yet.

So I took my own chest apart, ripped the corrupted section out with both hands and threw it into the sea, causing a massive section of the ocean below to rapidly vanish, and let the Law of Flesh rebuild the hole while I pushed myself into the air.

”Oh, hardcore, Elric.” Sad laughed with delight. ”You did that yourself. Sad likes that.”

∞

I had not ascended past a few hundred feet when the demon attacked me with a roar. Five of its long weird arms stretched forward, and it began to make demonic gestures that spread death across the ocean, while a construct of black fire the size of a house was being gathered before its massive, draconic head.

Slapping its arms together, the flames vanished and surrounded me in a cage and they immediately shrank.

I dropped the Titan form, so I was not sliced into pieces, slipping through a hole in the closing net, and with Stormstep, I made several jumps that had me dancing between its arms while weaving a net with my thread, as I tied arms to each other, and restricted others from moving.

The demon roared in anger, but I was moving too fast, like a spider across its body, and its weird arms worked against it, as I tied them together and I appeared near its chest before reaching for its neck.

All these while I had been weaving Inscriptions on the threads I was gathering on my palm, Break, Sever and Harden, among others, and I wrapped those threads across the thin neck of the demon, and I allowed myself to fall, while exploding back to my full size.

My weight, gravity, as well as burning lightning out of my back caused the threads to tighten and the cries of the demon choked in panic before the thread sliced off its massive skull from its body.

The tautness of the thread a moment before caused me to slingshot up towards the falling head of the demon. I shrank and appeared between its massive jaws, and then grew again as I pulled the mouth of the dragon open.

I stretched my right hand inside the mouth of the screaming dragon and cast Tribunal Lightning with everything I had to give, and for a moment, the entirety of the dragon’s skull glowed golden, before a heavy explosion blasted me out of its mouth and I bounced in the air for several miles before I regained my footing in the air.

Looking in the distance, I saw a massive mushroom cloud, and I glanced down at my right hand that was glowing red hot as if it was metal on the verge of melting.

The cries of the demon resounded in the distance, and a massive shockwave tore the mushroom cloud in two, revealing the head of the dragon, where a large portion of its scales were gone, alongside half of its jaws, the scales left were blackened and cracked.

If the powers of the Celestials were responsible for tearing down the reign of the gods, then the demon should not have told this to me, because the more Earth Gates I opened, the closer the Anima in my soul was transforming closer and closer to Celestial Essence.

I figured that I did not know what I was truly capable of, because I was pushing against the peak powers of this world, and this demon was the right tool I needed to sharpen my spells against.

I reached for the heavens and began casting Tribunal Lightning as it was meant to be cast, and black clouds that stretched for miles began to gather overhead... ”Demon... you were saying?”

The dragon’s head turned toward me with a hatred that was almost tangible. The demon’s voice emerged from the ruined throat, distorted but unmistakable.

”Clever little spark. You have touched the power of the Celestials. You think that matters? How much of their fading powers do you have to spend before you are empty?”

I cocked my head to the side, did this demon think the near Celestial Essence flowing in my channels was stolen? I shook my head and called down Tribulation lightning.

The first bolt struck the dragon’s skull, and it screamed. The sound was not the roar of a dragon, but the shriek of a demon that had just discovered that it could be hurt.

”YOU DARE TO...”

I pulled the second bolt from the clouds, and it struck the same spot as the first, widening the crack in the dragon’s scales.

”I can,” I growled. ”Watch me.”