Electricity coursed out like a river, spewing from the cut. It didn’t pool on the ground, instead instantly dissipating. Such was the nature of Hibiscan energy.
Kash dispelled his fourth dimensional form, letting his extra faces, arms, and legs fold back into his body. It wouldn’t survive in three dimensions.
The Knife Amalgamation righted itself and floated up.
“Ah, the dimension-severing slash technique. That hasn’t been used since before Kambili’s death.”
Kash was holding the upper and lower halves of his body together and tried infusing the cut with Hibiscan energy to heal it.
“That won’t work,” said Knife Guy.
Kash split off the halves of his body into lightning clones, each with 50% of his remaining Hibiscan energy. The clones both formed, being cut in half.
“Neither will that,” said Knife Guy.
“H-how?” spat out both of Kash’s bodies simultaneously.
“You being cut in half is now a fundamental property that you hold,” Knife Guy answered.
In a rage, Kash threw bolt after bolt at the Knife Amalgamation, charging each with speed. The Knife Amalgamation darted out of the way, only hit by a few. Minimal damage was dealt.
“My ascended form is much faster than your lightning. There’s nothing you can do.”
Kash gritted his teeth. He could still win this. The Knife Amalgamation was spewing out the milk from the creature that sustained it. Eventually, Knife Guy would have to split apart the creation back into its constituent parts, and then he would lose the speed that allowed him to dodge a Red Dragon powered lightning bolt.
But Kash was also rapidly being drained of his Hibiscan energy from his wound. Just before his Dimension Displacement, he had 95% Hibiscan energy remaining. The Displacement cost 40% to activate. Knife Guy had already lost 1.5% from each of his current clones.
The Knife Amalgamation slashed Kash several times, the cultivator not moving the two clones out of the way in time. The slashes did substantial damage to the clones. With each having only 26% left, they had less energy to reinforce their bodies with. Deep cuts appeared on each.
He merged the lightning clones into one body again, which had 52% Hibiscan energy, and healed the cuts. The body-severing cut remained intact. The clones were the same size as Kash’s normal body, they just had halved density. Thus, the energy spilled out faster because there was less keeping it in. In one body, lightning energy spillage was halved.
Knife Guy wasn’t even using the dimension-severing slash again. With the Knife Amalgamation actively collapsing, the most logical move would be to use it while he still could. Knife Guy on his own almost certainly couldn’t pull off that attack.
Kash’s fourth-dimensional vision was gone, but he could see that the Knife Amalgamation was coming apart. The metal armor split off into individual Knife Clones and Knife Guy spun into the air and out of the dividing Knife Amalgamation. Kash immediately hit him with a speed-enhanced lightning strike, which Knife Guy was unable to dodge. Kash’s lightning energy had dropped to 51%.
Dozens of Knife Clones swarmed him. Kash blasted them away and then was attacked by Knife Guy again, dealing surface wounds on his back. Kash heard a rumbling sound below him, and barely jumped out of the way. The meat worm burst from the ground, the Knife Clones jumping on top of it. Portals opened up and spilled out milk from the creature, the Knife Clones and meat worm gulping it all down.
He had enough for another Dimension Displacement. Knife Guy probably couldn’t use a dimensional slash now. In a fourth dimensional form, he could easily kill Knife Guy. The Hibiscan artifact was out of tricks. Without access to his ultimate knife form, he would easily lose.
Displacing another lightning dimension and transforming into his fourth dimensional body was an insane gamble. But it was the only way to win. Otherwise, he would get ground down in a battle of attrition. The Knife Clones and the meat worm re-energized by milk from the creature would overwhelm him. And Knife Guy all the while would be knife-sniping him from afar. It would be a manageable situation, if not for the fact that he was rapidly leaking lightning.
No, a second dimension displacement was the only option.
It would be a gamble. Maybe turning into the fourth-dimensional form would cause the wound to get worse, to spew out Hibiscan energy even faster. Or the fourth-dimensional form might transcend the cut and heal him permanently. Regardless of the risks, it was the only way to win.
Kash swirled a ball of lightning together. He compressed it so tightly that the electricity fused into a near-singularity. He agonizingly pushed it into the fourth dimension. He let the ball expand to a diameter of two inches, large enough for the fourth-dimensional lightning to begin stabilizing. It was time to properly activate it.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Dimension Displacement: Boundless Revolving Tesseract of Lightning.”
He forced fourth-dimensional lightning to expand into the space surrounding all of the combatants. He released his grip on it, corrupting that section of reality and displacing a dimension.
Something was off. A crack formed in the dimension, splitting it in half. It collapsed again.
“Hah, weren’t you listening!” yelled Knife Guy. “Remember when I said that the dimension-severing slash made it so that being cut in half was a fundamental property of your body? The same thing happened to your Dimension Displacement.”
Kash was down to 11% Hibiscan energy. His last ditch effort had failed.
“It’s over,” said Knife Guy.
There was no winning this fight. Knife Guy, the Knife Clones, the meat worm, and the supplemental milk from the creature were too powerful for him to resist. His Dimension Displacement was unusable and Knife Guy could simply slash open a normal Dimension Expulsion.
Kash opened a tiny portal, testing to see if that still was blocked. It fizzled out immediately. The Umbra Crimers must have been keeping up the array of portal-blocking wards.
He could simply run away. In his pure lightning form, he was extremely fast, nearly reaching 0.4c. However, he would have to run much slower than that to avoid his torso falling off. Kash hit Knife Guy with one more speed-infused discharge, before bolting in the opposite direction. Cuts kept appearing on him, Knife Guy precisely swinging at him.
When Kash was ten miles away in less than a second, he split off half of his energy into a lightning clone who phased into the carbon. They both sped away from Knife Guy, but at slightly different angles. They were each at 5% Hibiscan energy.
The underground clone mentally reached out to the Papa Pole. Kash, as a former owner of the Papa Pole, could request that he be given it back. That would appear as a message in Grzegorz’s mind. He could use this to message him in Morse code. Of course, it was merely a request, it would not give him back the Papa Pole unless Grzegorz allowed it, which he wouldn’t. But the volume of requests would be suspicious, and Grzegorz would certainly notice Kash was trying to communicate. He sent out “Knife Guy, carbon plains, meat worm, Knife Clones, milk creature, don’t say I’m alone, Knife Amalgamation, dimension severing slash, probably working for tortoise”.
On the surface, Kash’s hands slipped on the blood, causing him to tumble to the ground as he lost grip of his torso. His legs sped off for over 4 miles before he stopped them. He ran them back and plopped himself back on them.
Kash snuck a glance behind him and saw that Knife Guy had risen miles up into the air. Kash had traveled far enough that Knife Guy was briefly blocked by the circumference of the Earth.
Hundreds of portals opened up around him. Kash needed only to zap them with minimal lightning, and they destabilized and broke apart. That was just a distraction, though. Knife Guy opened up several more cuts on Kash.
He was at 2% energy. The bisection bled profusely while he was running, and the hundreds of other cuts also contributed. He had nothing left to do besides distract Knife Guy for a little while longer.
“I’m alone,” said Kash.
“No,” said Knife Guy. “You’re not.”
“Who hired you,” Kash hacked up blood. “My dying wish is to know.”
“Nope,” said Knife Guy, as he killed that lightning clone in one strike.
Kash’s remaining body sped underground, steadily oozing out Hibiscan energy and blood.
The carbon layers cracked and broke open above him, Knife Guy continually pummeling them with his strikes. He had been found out. He tried to dodge and move around, but Knife Guy’s slashes exposed the entire area surrounding him.
He tried delving deeper into the carbon but was cut in half lengthwise, from the belly button to his jaw.
Kash lay there in agony. An expression of pure rage contorted his face. He used Hibiscan energy to force his shattered jaw bones in the right place to speak.
“To think that I lost to a knife,” he sputtered out, coughing up blood.
Leaking lightning stained the carbon beneath him.
“I shit talked you a lot. But you were the strongest opponent I’ve faced since the Second Battle of Heaven three hundred years ago.”
Kash was stunned. “Y-you were involved in that?” he coughed out, spitting up blood.
“You’re about to die, so I might as well tell you. I fought alongside Kambili as we faced the demonic Heavenly Beasts.”
The four Heavenly Beasts consisted of the Five-Headed Tortoise, the Feces-Eating Dog, the Spiral Lion, and the Infinite Rabbit. The latter two turned to demonic cultivation and established sects that wreaked havoc in the Hibiscan world. When the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect had conquered the world, only the Spiral Lion Sect and Infinite Rabbit Sect stood opposed to its rule.
Kambili declared war on them. As their armies of cultivators battled across the world, the righteous Heavenly Beasts fought the demonic Heavenly Beasts. But the Five-Headed Tortoise could not fight, for its mortal wound meant that any significant movement would cause its instant death. Instead, it detached the Snake. It possessed only a fraction of the strength of the Tortoise, but was still powerful. Thus, Kambili, the Feces-Eating Dog, and the Snake fought the Spiral Lion and the Infinite Rabbit.
In the end, the Spiral Lion and Infinite Rabbit were severely and permanently weakened, but at the cost of Kambili sacrificing his life. The Infinite Rabbit was reduced to only a few rabbit bodies and was still at half strength or less in the current year. The Spiral Lion had a spiral-shaped hole drilled into its body, barely surviving the attack. In the war on the ground, the demonic alliance was beaten back, and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect emerged as the undisputed world hegemon.
“Kambili forged me. Not just me, but the meat worm and the creature. We were designed as part organic, part inorganic Hibiscan creations. When merged together, we would become the Knife Amalgamation.”
Kash was on the verge of death. He looked up at Knife Guy, a glazed look in his eye, and coughed up more blood.
“The Lion was nearly killed by a dimension-severing slash. After the battle was over, it saved its life with demonic methods. But it could never fully heal that spiral-shaped wound.”
Kash looked down at his own cut. The way it gouged flesh was distinctly spiraled. And he understood the true nature of the dimension-severing slash. For it spiraled in and out of every dimension, cutting everything in its path.
He had never stood a chance of victory against Kambili’s legacy.
“You were a worthy opponent, Kash.”
Knife Guy executed him with a final slash.