The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 649: Divine Battle — Part 5

”...” Elysia stops glowing like gold, while the massive energy beside us begins to disperse. Because of her time magic, some things become difficult to pull off.

So I let my body plummet since floating got a bit costly. Elysia starts falling too as several magic circles form around her. The moment we touch the ground, we both surge forward and kick at each other.

Our kicks connect and generate an impact that cracks the ground around us. I spin and throw punches, she does the same, and we start trading blows, hitting each other’s fists in an attempt to create an opening.

”I hate how similar we are, Auntie,” I say with mockery, and the moment I call her ’Auntie,’ her expression twists into pure disgust as she leaps back and fires off several swords with a dark blue hue.

I shape my divine weapon into a broadsword and defend against the strikes by cutting through her magic, while pointing at her with my other hand and firing a ”cube” her way.

She tries to cut it by summoning her sword to her hand, but the cube stops, and I leap as the cube opens and land a kick to Elysia’s chest, slamming her to the ground.

I use my tail for balance and spin, knocking her down. Before I can strike her with the sword, she uses a spell that makes my body glow white, which bothers me and makes me want to recoil.

”?” I try to dodge, but she grabs my leg and spins me, hurling me against the ground. I use my tail to lift my body and see that Elysia has switched weapons.

She’s wearing two gauntlets that resemble golden scales, with sharp claws—a pretty strange weapon. Two magic circles float above the palms of both hands.

”You think a weapon that isn’t divine works against me?” I mock her for trying to use an artifact against me, but I still keep my guard up.

Her outfit has changed too. It’s still the white dress with golden details, but some parts have gained a kind of scale-like plating matching the gauntlets.

”Ngghh!!” Before I realize it, a punch to the stomach already hits me. I try to react, but I take a punch to the face followed by a terrifyingly fast sequence of blows that I can’t defend against, not even with my tail.

Each punch generates violent temporal waves, distorting everything around me in a bizarre way.

I try to create distance, but she won’t allow it, keeping constant pressure with extremely powerful blows. I feel my Mana being drained with every punch, even if only in small amounts.

’Wh-What a wretched woman.’ I kick the ground to break it, creating a crater to throw her off balance, but she uses her Mana as a platform to slam me against the crater floor and keep punching me.

Since neither of us can inflict instant lethal damage, the fight comes down to who exhausts the other first. At this rate, my Mana will run out before hers.

CRASH

I manage to land a punch to her jaw that sends her flying. I hear the crack of her bones breaking as my fists glow in a very dark red hue with the outer edges shining black.

”Don’t be so arrogant, like a parasite, Auntie.” She recovers from the blow, though her step becomes a bit unsteady, showing she was dazed by the martial art I finished developing with Azraelith’s help—the same martial art I used against my mother in training.

”Parasite is what you are, you disgusting thing.” She spits blood on the ground as she recovers. For someone so spoiled and self-centered, Elysia is actually way too mentally stable. I expected someone pampered who would cry after taking a good punch, but she simply resumes her stance.

’In the end, she’s quite old. Spoiled, no doubt, but definitely someone who understands fighting and knows what it’s like to take damage.’ I channel a lot of magic into my fists, charging at her while using my divine weapon as a bandage to close the wounds that won’t regenerate because of the time magic around us.

”!!!?” She closes the distance instantly, throwing an overhead punch straight to my jaw, dislocating it in one hit and nearly tearing it off, while with her other hand she punches the spot between my eyes, breaking my nose and throwing me backward.

’It’s the gloves, isn’t it?’ She’s faster than before. It must be some kind of buff. Strangely, Elysia still hasn’t tried any debuff magic on me.

I relocate my jaw back into place while spitting blood. She circles me cautiously, trying to find openings to land more dangerous punches like that one.

”Your caution right now is pathetic,” I taunt and start circling too as we revolve around the same point. I feel my instincts on edge—the risk of death in this fight sharpens my instincts to the max.

The smell of blood in the place also makes me hungry, makes me want to chew and tear something apart with my teeth.

”If you find caution so pathetic, why don’t you come at me? Maybe you can’t?” She taunts back as she stops walking. I also stop walking and stare at her with a cold expression.

”For someone billions of years old to be losing to someone who doesn’t even have six years of physical age, and nowhere near 100,000 years of mental age—that’s pathetic indeed.” She and I start walking forward with our guards completely open, provoking one another in search of any slip-up.

”Age doesn’t influence a goddess’s maximum power. From what I see, you’re at max level, so you only lack experience. But you adapt. For a being focused on adaptation, isn’t it pathetic that you still haven’t adapted?” We stop in front of each other.

Our chests nearly touching as we emit so much magic that it generates collision sounds as if they were fighting.

Obviously, I’m not adapting properly because Elysia is always launching new attacks and never using repeated ones. So my adaptation can’t finish before it already has to start another adaptation against something else.

”I will make sure to devour you when you die.”

”And I will have the guarantee that not even a trace of you will remain, as if you never existed in this existence, when I kill you.” A crack rings out as the time magic that prevented my regeneration and blocked both of our Mana circulation shatters like broken glass.

We immediately attack each other. Our strikes connect, and we pass straight through one another, ending up back to back. I quickly turn to face Elysia, and she does the same.

As five vertical cuts appear on her face and four deep lateral cuts appear on mine, staining our faces with blood, it frustrates me how close we are in power. Our wounds close as we charge and grab each other’s hands.

”This is irritating,” we both say at the same time, starting a contest of strength using Mana as a way to push each other back. Thanks to adaptation, I can better sense when she is specifically using the [Sky] Element.

With that, I know she’s now using it to try to destroy my Mana reserves. However, I use the Doom Element to repel her aura while pushing her backward.

My hands squeeze hers firmly, trying to break her balance, while she tries to break mine by pressing my body backward. Massive cracks spread across the entire floor.

And the cracks become so severe that pieces of the dimension crack, creating fissures in the very air and atmosphere. The sky also gains cracks as she throws a knee, and so do I.

”?” We think so identically that the blows connect. We throw a sequence of knees and kicks that frustratingly go in the same direction, blocking each other.

We pick up the pace, which is only broken when I hear her gauntlets creaking as if about to break. Elysia, noticing this, tries to push me back as gray cracks appear on the golden gauntlet.

”[Celestial Blackout].” Catching me off guard, Elysia uses magic. I hear a buzz before hearing the sound of flesh being split. Elysia retreats, kneeling for a moment as the gauntlets were squeezed with such force that they were crushed against her hands, trapping them. The cracks in the gauntlets emit a faint red and black glow.

”Urgghh...” My body falls to the ground, and I realize I’ve been split in two horizontally, my waist separated from my torso. My blood and organs spill onto the ground while Elysia gasps in pain.

The Doom Element isn’t so fragile. The damage my Doom Element-laden Mana inflicted on her hands is beginning to surface and spread through her flesh, trying to consume her after breaking through her Mana defense.

’Th-This is bad...’ I can’t regenerate. My body can’t recognize the wound as a wound. She erased the existence of the severed part, so to my body, it has always existed split in two.

My mind enters a brief moment of instinctive desperation, seeking ways to survive regardless of the cost.

”[Doom: I sacrifice 30% of my Current Mana in exchange for more regeneration and the ability to recognize existential erasure damage as a flaw permanently.]” I sacrifice a large portion of my Mana to be able to regenerate.

And so that now, permanently, my body will know to recognize that a wound like this is not normal. My body slowly begins to rebuild and regenerate my lower half as I groan in pain, dragging myself to try to stand.

Elysia tears off the gloves and notices red marks like cracks covering her hands and reaching up to her arms. She looks at me with pure hatred as she is forced to use some strange healing magic that manages to repair the effects.

The healing magic mends the damage and the [Consume] effect that was applied to her existence. With that, our magic levels equalize again to a close amount. However, at this pace, even if I win here, I won’t be able to go help Mom and Azraelith.

”Pandora, you have no idea how much I hate you. I hate you!! HATE YOU!!” She stands up while, with my body now regenerated, I also stand, though I still feel a terrible pain in the waist area that was cut, even after regeneration.

”It seems you needed all that magic you spent. Poor thing. What a pity for you, Auntie. It looks like our fight will end here.” Neither of us has enough Mana left to defend ourselves as completely as we were before.

Our next exchange of blows will depend purely on who can inflict more dangerous damage on the other.

”...Tsk. Fine, let’s end this already. This exchange of blows has already taken more than 16,923 years. There’s no need to drag this out any longer. Time to decide which side of existence will remain in control, Goddess of the Apocalypse.” She catches me off guard, having kept count, and even more so by finally respecting my goddess title.

And indeed, although it felt like a quick fight of just a few minutes, because of the time magic and the time we spent exchanging physical blows in pure concentration, a great deal of time has passed.

’16,000 years fighting...’ I never expected to have enough Mana to fight for so long. A goddess’s Mana is truly something disturbing to measure, not to mention the concentration of spending years trading punches without even noticing the time pass.

”You’re right, Auntie... no... you’re right, Elysia, Goddess of Humans. It’s time to end this once and for all.” I need to finish this right now. It’s already getting too costly.

”Let’s destroy each other to death and see who comes out alive.” I give a huge smile, while she stares at me with a cold but determined expression, set on winning.