The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 532: Taking it seriously

Zhian’Thar lunges at me with a swift kick. I catch her foot, but the force is so immense I have to use all four hands. I grip it tight, yanking her off the ground and heaving her into the air.

She points a hand at me, as if to use magic, but then seems to remember the rules forbid it. All she can do is get slammed into the ground. I twist her leg forward and drop onto her lap.

I release her leg and start punching her face with all my might. She tries to shove me off, but realizes I’ve anchored my legs firmly around her hips. Instead, she raises her hands to shield her face.

”Come on!! Is that all you’ve—” Before I can finish, she carves a deep gash across my chest with the bone plate on one of her hands. The sudden, searing pain throws off my punch. She dodges to the side and drives a fist into my chest, forcing me back.

Using her legs, she pushes off from the ground even while lying down, launching me upward. With a twist, she reverses our positions. I let go of her and use her body as a springboard to leap back, putting distance between us as we both crash to the ground.

”GYYAAAAHHH!” I scream in agony as my eye is pierced. A strike from her hand tears a massive hole in the giant eye behind me. She had hurled a shattered piece of her bone armor.

”TAKE THIS, YOU BITCH!” she yells, unleashing a barrage of punches into my stomach that drives me backward. My eye begins to regenerate, my vision flooding crimson with blood.

In a quick motion, I seize her wrists and headbutt her, driving the spiral of black sludge straight through her head. The piercing spiral smears her face with the dark ooze.

”Y-You!?” She stumbles back, disoriented. She starts clawing at her face, trying to wipe it off, as the black sludge seeps into her eyes. I charge forward and kick her in the gut, sending her crashing to the ground. The uncontrolled impact triggers a quake for miles, as she made no attempt to soften the landing.

Given our massive size and strength, we always brace our falls to minimize damage. Without that, our sheer weight makes the earth tremble for kilometers. I grab her leg, swing her in an arc, and smash her face-first into the ground.

I swing her again and hurl her away. It would be great to use magic, but if I break the rules, she’ll fight with magic too, and I’ll lose.

’The cumulative damage is getting bad...’ It must be her passive abilities. At this rate, things will get complicated. Fortunately, I’ve started to adapt.

’So fast...’ My status has risen to level 800 million during this fight. It turns out that facing an extremely dangerous enemy, one constantly trying to kill me, has pushed my adaptation into overdrive.

Level = 800,000,000 / 100,000,000,000

Power = 799,998,500 / 799,998,500

Life = 799,998,500 / 799,998,500

Stamina = 799,998,500 / 799,998,500

Resistance = 799,998,500 / 799,998,500

Magic = 799,998,500 / 799,998,500

Total = 3,999,992,500 / 3,999,992,500

’With my level at 800 million, I should be able to handle the damage a little better...’ I take a deep breath, even though I have no head, so I’m not sure exactly how my body breathes.

Zhian’Thar rises from the ground, glaring at me. Her face is still smeared with black ooze, her eyes bloodshot and filled with pure hatred for me as she spits out the sludge that got into her mouth.

”You filthy whore,” she sneers, stomping the ground and cracking it. I kick the floor, hurling a chunk of debris at her. She punches the rock, erupting a huge cloud of black dust. The great eye behind me burns from the dust as I block a punch from Zhian’Thar.

I grab her arm and spin, using my whole body to torque her joints. Two of her arms break with a horrible crunch. I hear the grating sound of bone, followed by the dry snap of it breaking, and her pained groan.

She throws punches with her other two arms, but I jump and clamp her head between my thighs, my intimate parts pressed directly against her mouth. Confused, she freezes for a moment. I use that opening to twist in a lever motion, wrenching her neck so violently the bone armor protecting it groans loudly, cracking.

Before she can react, the armor shatters. I hear the sickening crack of her neck breaking, twisted completely backward, as I jump off her and land on the ground.

”Ghmm!” She falls to her knees, bracing herself on the ground. Her head is twisted at a 170-degree angle, the bone armor on her neck completely shattered as she gasps for air.

”Still alive? Very good. But I bet you’re in a tough spot now,” I taunt. As expected, her joints are her greatest weakness. She doesn’t get up, trying to regenerate her neck.

But since her bone armor regenerates slowly, she’s struggling to get her head back into the correct position.

”For someone so strong, don’t you think it’s pathetic to lose to me in such a humiliating way? Come on, get up and come kill me. I’m not satisfied yet.” The mouth on my stomach reappears, now fully regenerated, and it licks the blood that dripped from her blows, cleaning it from my body.

”...Haaa... Haaa...” Zhian’Thar, still panting, holds her head with two of her hands and forcibly twists it back into place to aid her regeneration. She seems to have abandoned the bone armor on her neck; the cost to regenerate that part wouldn’t help her.

”You’re dragging out the fight to adapt, aren’t you?” She hits the nail on the head, finally realizing why I insisted on a purely physical fight. In a battle of brute force alone, my regeneration will keep me from dying, and I can prolong the fight long enough to adapt and become stronger than my enemy.

Whereas in a magic battle, there are too many variables to adapt to, it would take longer, and I’d have a higher chance of dying.

”Well, you are my mother’s servant. I bet you know perfectly well what a Tenebris Abyssus is capable of,” I say with a smile.

”Ah, yes, of course I know...” She stretches, her bones popping as she takes a step forward, adopting a different fighting stance now. The two hands on her right side are raised forward at chest height, but with open palms.

’Why open palms? Is she not going to punch anymore?’

”You must think you’re all-powerful now. Too arrogant for my taste. I’ll teach you your place.” She suddenly vanishes. The ground where she stood cracks, a fissure shooting to the right.

”...” I turn to the right and leap back to dodge, but I feel a touch on my shoulder. I realize she circled around me faster than I could detect. Her hand descends smoothly downward, slicing through both my arms as if they were butter.

”GHMMM!” I groan in pain, trying to strike back, but she spins into a kick. I only now notice she has abandoned all her bone armor, standing completely naked and exposed. In exchange, she has become extremely faster and more flexible. Even though she’s behind me, she lands a kick to my stomach using just the flexibility of her shin.

”...” I vomit blood from the force of a kick by such a powerful monster. She doesn’t seem to be holding back at all anymore.

I turn to strike her, but she’s already gone. I feel multiple punches on my back. Before I can turn around, she’s in front of me and lands a punch directly on my chest. I feel the pain of my heart being compressed by the impact, while the eye behind me bulges with veins from the agony.

”It’s not so good getting punched in the chest, is it?” she asks, leaping back to create distance. I fall to my knees. She has returned exactly two of the most significant damages I dealt her in this fight: two of the greatest humiliations—shattering the armor on her chest and compressing her heart, and forcing her to her knees by breaking her neck.

Since I have no head, she just made me kneel to return the favor. The mouth on my stomach grins madly.

”Hehehe... hahahahahaha!” I laugh, reveling in this sensation of pain. I rise to my feet with a staggering step.

”Not bad. But is it really smart to abandon all your defense for speed?” I rub my stomach, assessing the damage. Since neither of us can use magic, we have to rely on passive regeneration to heal severe wounds.

”I don’t need defense if you can’t hit me. And I wonder, how will someone as slow as you manage to hit me without using magic?” She leverages her advantage in physical combat. Me not being able to use magic is also a disadvantage for me.

’This speed... it’s easily light speed, or even more in the worst-case scenario... How can she move that fast without her body tearing apart? Even with magic resistance, magic doesn’t negate physics... There must be a trick...’ I remember Celeste.

Celeste also moved at light speed. She would temporarily become part of the light and move, exiting that state at the end of the light paths she created. So she could only move, not attack at light speed. But this bitch clearly can attack at light speed.

’The armor... It must be related to why she discarded it...’ It can’t just be the weight. The armor was heavy, but not enough to make this much difference.

”You’re right. You don’t need to defend if you’re that fast...” I can achieve light speed too, but not use it in combat. Using it in combat would be unstable, especially reaching that speed without using magic to stabilize.

’Her achieving light speed without magic as a stabilizer and shock absorber... Maybe her body is...’ Before I have time to think, she vanishes again. I decide to focus on the fight and observe more closely.

I need to figure out how she’s doing this. If I can’t hit her and she keeps moving like this, I’ll lose.

”GHMMM!” She punches me from behind, then appears in front of me, pounding my stomach repeatedly. My arms, which she cut off earlier, regenerate and I try to grab her, but she’s already gone from my sight before I can even touch her.