Becoming a Monster

Chapter 326: Chapter 326: Corruption vs the Divine

The room was indistinguishable from what it once was. One side was covered in an almost blinding heavenly spectacle while the other carried a suffocating cold pressure devoid of hope.

It didn’t take long for the powers creating the scene to clash.

The collision between divinity and corruption created a rupture in the air itself. For just a moment there was no sound.

And then—

A silent detonation.

The mass of energy that Noah created would normally explode, but when the holy energy entered into it, it imploded on itself. And then a powerful suction came afterwards.

The entire chamber convulsed as if reality itself hiccupped. The walls and floor cracked even further, digging past the building’s foundation, tile and brick alike was being pulled towards that powerful suction.

Noah stood behind his barrier. His body, despite his mana sphere absorbing most of the attack, was currently releasing multiple sources of steam. The Seraphim wasn’t naive enough to send all of its beams into one direction; nearly twelve beams ventured off path, wrapping around the sphere and penetrating through the barrier he built, eventually digging into his body.

Black steam hissed from his shoulders. Armor cracked, body hunched, the pain was excruciating. Yet he stood firm, his gaze steady, and pensive. He looked past the man-made singularity born from their clash, locking eyes with the Seraphim.

With Arachne’s armored ability, combined with the staff to increase the level of his and his creatures’ skills. Magical abilities were reduced to nearly half of the power that they would initially inflict. Even so, the damage he received still spoke volumes of the Seraphim’s strength.

Yet in Noah’s eyes, a strong spirit surged, he was ready to fight to the end. But he needed to know, just how much did the Seraphim suffer, or did it suffer at all?

The miniature black hole soon subsided after the energy that made it was compressed from the energy of both Noah and the Seraphim continuing to clash. Noah and the Seraphim both were waiting for the next round of their fight to start, affected by the suction’s strong pull.

And then the moment when it faded, the Seraphim’s wings flared. Its hands raised began to conjure beams after beams, this time much smaller and thinner than before. But they were faster.

The beams were released in rapid succession.

Noah’s eyes narrow. Before the Seraphim even moved, Noah had already responded. His eyes were always glowing, preemptively seeing it all.

And his body responded in kind. Tens of hand appendages emerged from his domain, while some sprouted from his own body. Miniature mana spheres formed, ones that were the size of golf balls. If this was before he absorbed a portion of the Seraphim’s spirit, the number of individual spheres wouldn’t be possible to form. The mana cost, the control, the synchronization, all of it would be impractical.

Each sphere was released almost a millisecond before the beams, each of them pathing onwards in the same direction the beams were about to be released.

As the spheres and beams once again blanketed the sky in a sea of blinding lights, Noah’s body glowed intensity, the black slime that incorporated nearly his entire existence was exhibiting strong hues of violet as he activated abilities derived from Ailetta. These abilities extend the durations of all of his skills by nearly half.

The moment he sensed an opening, his six demonic tails that levitated behind Noah shot out at extreme speeds. The speeds at which they propelled forward were even faster than the Seraphim’s’ beams. Each tendril under Noah’s control was enhanced with an ability that propelled them to move nearly 200% faster than before.

If Noah was attacked with his own tails, without his ability to foresee his opponents attack, even he would be unable to react against it. Yet six reverberating impacts sounded in the Seraphim’s location. A giant barrier protected it, one much larger than before.

When Noah’s tails struck the barrier, the barrier didn’t move an inch, yet his tails were turned ablaze by blue flames. The flames quickly spread through each tail, threatening to reach Noah’s main body.

Both violet and dark miasmic energy bathed the tails in order to combat the flames. And although the flames painfully burned at his soul, the tails weren’t incapacitated. Each tail pathed in different directions. One attacked from both of the Seraphim’s sides while two traveled behind it and the last two struck at both the heart and the creature’s face respectively.

The sudden attack elicited a strong reaction from the Seraphim as it materialized a holy sword that was as long as its body.

A barrier formed in front of it, viewing the threat of Noah’s tails being essentially dangerous if its face was struck. The Seraphim reacted instantly, but even its divine awareness seemed to fail to adapt to the sudden barrage.

A roar emerged from the Seraphim’s’ voided face. It was a cry that wasn’t devoid of pain, but filled with a righteous retaliation as four tails were stabbed into different areas of its body. The areas where it was stabbed didn’t bleed, yet the areas were darkening, corroding.

The sensation was no different from when Noah was attacked, but instead of ashen smoke, the Seraphim’s body burned a golden steam.

Its sword spun in retaliation, attempting to slice the tails in one fluid arc, but then the tails avoided the attack, striking at it again in positions from before.

All the while, the beams of energy continued without pause, though at a reduced intensity. The energy once solely devoted to the beams was now being divided, redirected between sustaining its shield and materializing the sword that bore an even greater concentration of purifying energy.

The Seraphim didn’t panic, no one was sure if the Seraphim could actually show emotions.

What the Seraphim did next changed the entire flow of the battle. It no longer resisted Noah’s tails. As long as it divided its focus, it would never gain the upper hand. Noah’s tendrils that released numerous mana spheres were now outnumbering its own projectiles. It understood that it needed to defeat the user at its source.

All at once, its radiance condensed, every ounce of divine energy redirected into the shield and its sword.

And then.

With a single flap of its wings, the Seraphim vanished into a blur of golden afterimages, tearing across the battlefield. The holy shield surged ahead like a battering ram parting the field of destructive miniature mana bombs with pure force.

It arrived in front of Noah while in the motion of delivering a strike to cut him in half. Just being in such close proximity, the domain that was left of Noah’s territory was instantly forced to recede even further inside of Noah’s main body in order to avoid being purified. This severely limited the number of attacks that Noah could perform.

Despite the overwhelming handicap, Noah wasn’t afraid, nor did he falter. Because this... this was exactly where he wanted it. The Seraphim didn’t realize that it was in close combat where he excelled.

In the blink between one swing and the next.

CLANG!

An impact much greater than when its barrier struck sounded as Noah strengthened a tendril that turned into a blade to intercept the attack.

A blade that should cut through all corruption was stopped. Noah’s slime was not only hardened by Arachne’s armored ability, but through her abilities, whenever he parried an attack, the attack’s damage was reduced by a significant threshold.

The blade that absorbed the impact burst into stronger flames than before after taking on the divine energy contained within the sword. But in return, Noah’s arm, an arm that built more like a titan than any devil’s, struck forward.

A barrier materialized to stop the attack. Like before, the Seraphim was anticipating for the attack to simply rebound against its barrier, giving it the opportunity to strike again. It could feel it; the damage it was dealing to the devils soul was mounting.

But then, danger arose against the fist that was now inches away from its barrier. The fist was eerily glowing with an indescribable aura. Before the Seraphim could understand what it signified, it learned the moment the fist collided with the barrier.

____________

”He broke through a Seraphim’s’ divine barrier!” The angel was startled beyond belief as she watched the barrier explode into fragments of light. Not only did Noah pierce through the barrier, but he also obliterated it.

And in that small moment it was down, Noah attacked relentlessly to gain an advantage while the Seraphim responded in kind.

The Angel’s fear was rising. Not because Noah was proving to be stronger than she initially believed. She still could see that the Seraphim was winning. Each attack Noah inflicted still came at a cost, a heavy, soul-cutting price.

And yet...Even with that knowledge, the unease inside her twisted tighter.

Her eyes cut back to the mass of energy more insidious than the devil before her. And yet the Seraphim’s purifying essence didn’t affect it in the slightest.

She feared what was inside the mist. She needed the fight to end quickly before whatever was inside emerged.

And then...

From deep within the mist, a shape stirred. A pair of violet eyes devoid of pupils locked onto her. Hateful, greedy eyes like they had been waiting an eternity for her.

The Angel no longer was able to wait. Her wings spread in panic. She was too afraid to stay any longer.