Ascendant - the realm that was the dream of countless many. The word came from one simple ability that all ascendants had - flight. As one reached a certain level of power - be it through law marks or any other way, the laws of gravity were unable to fully exert their influence. As a result, one could step on space (in a way, fly). Even demi-ascendants could float in the air for a small-time using their law energy but this was simply negating their weight through the support of energy. It was fundamentally different from ascendants who defied the laws of gravity itself.
But it was not necessary to cultivate to reach the same level. Some beasts had enough raw strength that it resulted in them becoming ascendants from birth without any cultivation. Thus, while gaining law marks was definitely a way to ascend, there were a few ways that did not require law marks. Currently, Michael had already reached ascendance in a sense. While his cultivation was not there, his dao intent filled in the gap.
The four rank one ascendants charged at Michael. Their speed was much beyond the immortals from Aterna. It was as if they reached Michael in a single step. One of them attacked his face with a well-placed punch while simultaneously attacking his torso with a deadly spell. The other went for his legs from behind. The other two came in from the sides. But their timings were not the same!
Amateurs!
While these cultivators had great power, they had very little coordination. It was evident from the lack of timing between their attacks. Why was this so? Because very rarely did ascendants need to fight together in a battle. There were constant planar wars that happened in the law ocean. But a war requiring coordination of different ascendants was very, very rare. Even though the gap in timing was only a fraction of a second, it was still enough for Michael.
As the other two were a bit away, Michael immediately nullified gravity with his power and kicked the incoming punch.
Boom!!!
Shockwaves created from the impact shattered the air around. The spirit energy of the surroundings cracked apart and cracks appeared in the walls of the mansion. Michael flew away like a bullet as he had not taken any support from the floor. The floor beneath the attacker was thoroughly crushed. One must remember that the mansion was made by extremely sturdy stones found in myriad planes. The immortals of Aterna would have had a problem in breaking the stone with a single attack. But the stone was added with countless layers of restrictions and formations making it so that even full-power attack from someone like Igor would not form a crack.
As Michael flew off, he felt his foot go numb. But the feeling disappeared quickly as celestial energy healed him. He grabbed the attacker behind him by the hair mid-flight. The other person had not been anticipating this and immediately attacked. But before he could, Michael rammed the guy's face into the floor. Shattering sounds occurred as Michael wiped the floor tiles with his face, literally. A groove was formed by his face planed in and dragged through the ground. Michael too had taken the attack and had broken a few ribs. But he healed instantly. The guy stood up and his facial bones were visible from the side. One could see teeth from the side. It was as if his face had been ripped off! But his wounds healed rapidly as well, though slower than Michael who commanded the law of life. This was another fact of a battle between ascendants. It was hard to decide the outcome as all of them had great recovery abilities. Of course, this was only in case of normal attacks. Attacks which contained laws could still harm them if there was sufficient power of laws infused. Also, if the raw power was great enough, one could directly shatter the law marks of the other party completely obliterating the ascendant. Though most cultivators did not possess such power in the same realm. Michael's attack was impressive because his laws had been infused with his dao-intent. This was also the reason the enemy's wounds healed slower than him.
But Michael was still outnumbered. And he was also trying to save someone.
Michael saw that the two guys who were to his left and right were rushing directly at him. Meanwhile, Geophery was trying to break the barrier surrounding Ashley. Michael could only pray that the protective treasure on her would hold out for a while. There was simply no way for him to handle all of them at the same time.
He charged straight towards the two incoming enemies. His charge left a storm behind him. In the end, he stepped on space and pushed with his power launching himself like a bolt of lightning at the incoming attackers. The air at his feet had exploded as a result. Michael exchanged many blows with the enemies without caring about defending. The attacks of his attackers were all fatal for a mortal. In just a few seconds, Michael retreated with a punctured heart, several broken ribs, a shattered skull and a gouged out eye. But his enemies were even worse. One had his heart completely ripped put and the other's entire head had been pulled off violently from his body. Apart from that, Michael had also broken several bones in their bodies which were piercing out from different places. This was an extremely brutal scene shocking the other two.
Michael healed completely the next second. His healing speed was simply miraculous. But his enemies were effectively out of commission for the next few minutes. A rotting aura was eroding their bodies and while their law marks were shining brightly sending out healing aura, their law was being overpowered by Michael's grand death law boosted by his indomitable intent. As a result, while these guys were not dead, they were going to take some time to get any combat ability back.
This was completely unexpected for Geophery and his company. But things changed every moment in a battle and plans would always fail. Michael charged at the remaining two. One of the guys retreated while the other attacked. The one who retreated made a detour to reach his disabled compatriots and fed powerful healing pills to one. As for the other, he crushed the pill and placed sprinkled it over his neck placing his head on top of it. The healing power of the pill was incredible and the blood stopped flowing out of their wounds. In the next few seconds, one of them had grown a new heart while the other one's head had his body.
As these guys got back their fighting ability, the one who had helped them turned to rush back to the battle. But as soon as he turned, he was left stunned.
Michael had torn off all the parts of the other person. His entire body had been torn apart as if ravaged by a hungry beast. Arms, legs, ribs, organs and flesh lay scattered and crushed into a paste along with a pool of blood. Michael was standing there holding the soul of his enemy - bathed in blood and flesh - both his and the other person's. All three of them felt a terrifying chill. Law-marks did not make one immortal. Even if the body contained law marks if someone managed to extract their soul out, they could still die. Besides, such a level of damage was difficult to recover from, even with law marks. The only other option was to reincarnate into a new body and cultivate again. After all, not everyone practised the life-law. Other laws like the law of air or water were not that useful in healing one's body or soul. The soul was struggling to get out but was being suppressed by Michael's celestial energy and indomitable intent. A law mark which remained on the soul of that ascendant was still burning bright in Michael's hands.
Michael gave a chilling smile before he brought out his space ring and forcefully pushed the soul into the ring!
Space ring was something that was made by warping the space and then stitching it together. Only upper ascendants with the understanding of laws of space could make them. One could ask, why were the space rings so abundant then? That was because they were simply too hard to break. Normal methods could hardly do anything to them and even attacks from laws were not enough. Thus, while the production rate of the rings was slow, its consumption rate was basically null. But what would happen if the space ring was attacked from the inside with an attack of laws? Life inside space ring was impossible because space inside the space ring did not contain laws. A spatial treasure that contained laws was extremely valued as it was, in essence, an independent plane. Even upper-ascendants wanted such things. The teacher from the Ritz family who was currently attacking Sheryl's barrier had a similar treasure. But what would happen if a soul that contained law mark, that is its own law, was placed into space ring which was incapable of bearing the pressure of laws? The answer was
Explooosioonnn!
This was the recipe to create a disaster. The three of the attackers paled as they tried to get away but Michael had thrown the ring towards them. As soon as the ring reached near them, it exploded and the warped space forcefully tore through the original space and melded with it. The force of the explosion, however, was beyond the power of a rank three ascendant! This was a space explosion. Space itself was torn and remended. What kind of power was that? Sufficient to destroy an entire country in Aterna. The explosion force travelled across the entire mansion catching almost everyone off-guard. An entire section of the mansion crumbled and fell off while all parts of it developed gaping cracks. The land itself groaned and the entire area of a few square kilometres turned into a crater. The barrier around the mansion creaked and cracked. The ones hit most badly were the three ascendants. Their bodies had been completely smashed apart. Even the parts of their body disintegrated from the force of the explosion turning into bits and pieces of flesh and gore. Even the law marks in their bodies were gone. The law marks in their soul managed to protect their soul but even their souls were badly damaged. It was a situation where their only option was to reincarnate. This was equivalent to slaying ascendants.
The unfortunate soul who was the cause of the explosion also survived as a damaged soul. It was only because the force of the explosion was mostly projected outwards. But now, all four of them were effectively useless and the power that they could display was not a threat. The next highest damage was done to Michael. His body and soul were completely mashed up! This was simply suicide.
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The next badly damaged were Geophery and his teacher. The teacher had put himself in front of Geophery to block the explosion force and would have been injured badly had he not used a special treasure. Geophery, as a result, was safe. Also, this had protected Sheryl as well because she was on a straight line from the epicentre to Geophery, on the opposite side of him.
> Madman!!!
Geophery howled in anguish. All these four people were ascendants from his family. Now, his family had been weakened significantly due to the suicide of a single madman. But before he could even register the facts completely, the heaven and earth trembled. A huge amount of spirit force formed a vortex and started rotating at tremendous speeds. Laws of life emerged as a flash of green light and focussed on what were the remains of Michael's carcass. Boundless power converged an in front of the disbelieving eyes of Geophery and his teacher, Michael's body and soul resurrected from the dead! Geophery and his teacher were so stunned that they could not even react to stop this phenomenon. Michael healed completely in half a minute - such a rapid speed. He checked his body while clenching and unclenching his fists.
Michael smiled at the duo. If any other celestial had been as badly injured as Michael, they would have died for sure. But, Michael was a psychic cultivator. His conscient had the recovery attribute. Also, he had terrifying willpower. As a result, his conscient could stay alive and kicking even if completely separated from his body and soul. Michael had never tried doing so for the fear of revealing his secrets. Usually, people's conscients were not separated from their souls - both were equivalent. This was true for everyone who was not a psychic cultivator. Only psychic cultivators could separately manipulate their conscients. As a result, the damage to their conscients was usually smaller than the damage done to their souls. Also, Michael had the recovery attribute. So, his conscient recovered immediately from all the damage that he incurred. As Michael had some basic command of life laws, getting back from such a damaged state was not impossible, especially with his extreme will and perfect persona blessing.
The two also understood the implication of this matter.
A psychic cultivator!
The psychic path was as mysterious as the dao path. Very few people were known to have achievements in these two paths. In a way, they were the rarest of all paths. Psychic cultivators were not found easily. How could they have expected to find one here?
Geophery was feeling dread for the first time after beginning the operation.
A fucking psychic! To think that I would find one here. Now it makes sense! He was ready to blow up the space ring because he can not be killed that easily. He also cultivates laws of life and death! He is effectively a fucking immortal. Only upper-ascendants can kill him, that too after paying a huge price. There is no way to complete this mission now. He will not go down and time is running out, To think that the Marx family had employed such a monster. Indeed, these old families have deep foundations!
His teacher's thoughts were similar. This was a psychic cultivator. Killing a psychic cultivator was extremely difficult. One could use their own conscient to kill a psychic - if one was a psychic cultivator themselves. Or they could completely destroy the psychic's body and soul and hope to have eradicated their conscient. For someone like Michael, not even Gordon Marx had the power to completely disintegrate Michael's body and soul in a short period of time. Only upper ascendants could do so. But even then, it was no guarantee that the psychic was truly dead. Psychics could reincarnate with their conscients after all. Only divine ones were able to completely kill a psychic with complete surety. Michael apart from being a such a terrifying existence was also versed in the laws of life. This meant that as long as they did not disintegrate his body and soul to the extent that his laws could not piece him together again, he would continue fighting. This was an enemy that could not be killed!
They both looked at each other before acting.
Geophery jumped to the side collecting the souls of his subordinates and hastily tried to open a portal to escape. But he was not Gordon who could tear space and leave. Now, in the presence of several formations, his treasure was taking more time than usual in opening the portal. As for his teacher, he had started fighting Michael.
As much as one would expect from his immense momentum that Michael fought valiantly and managed to suppress the teacher, in truth he had his ass kicked. He was beaten up so badly that he hardly had the time to even attack. He was dominated in all aspects - speed, strength, damage, proficiency with spells. He was beaten one-sidedly. Green lights flashed as Michael focussed his perfect persona blessing to keep his body and soul from falling apart. His awe-inspiring might as a celestial was not at all awe-inspiring in this fight. Even though the attacks did not bring even a scratch to his conscient, that was definitely not what it looked like. Besides, he could still feel the pain. Michael tried his best but he was out-classed. But the teacher was also not able to do anything else. He was completely tied up by Michael and could not hasten the formation of the escape portal. He knew that while he was beating up Michael pretty badly, perhaps his conscient was completely fine and if given a few seconds, he would recover to his best condition.
As they set into a tempo, the teacher was monotonously beating Michael. But after a few seconds, Michael's eyes shined brightly and suddenly the teacher felt his vision darken. The ambient light was all sucked away! He saw a dark phantom. The phantom was huge. Calling it humongous was not wrong. It was thousands of feet tall and similarly wide. It was as if a giant shadow had appeared behind Michael! He felt dread like he had never felt before. A feeling in his heart was saying - run!
Though before he could run, the giant shadow rushed through Michael's back and into his arms. A black lustre appeared on Michael bloodied arm. The arm was badly damaged. All his veins and arteries had been entangled as the bones of his arm were jutting out of his flesh. His fists were completely disfigured. But at that moment, a green light flashed and his arm had healed almost completely. By this time, the entire phantom had rushed to his arm and his entire arm was completely black. Tremendous pressure exploded from his fist! The earth trembled, the buildings groaned and the entire world seemed to be going grey! All of Michael's celestial energy and indomitable intent was sucked into the arm as he punched!
Geophery's teacher had wanted to escape far away but the pressure of the arm slowed down his movement. But still, he had managed to create a good enough distance between him and Michael. But that did nothing to calm down his heart. The world groaned as Michael punched. It was as if he had poked a hole in space! Space itself crackled as the power of his punch went destroying everything in its path. It was a spectacle of pure destruction. It was like the power of a natural disaster - unstoppable, fierce and devastating. The accumulated power hit the man and his entire body felt it. The special treasure that he had used before was overloaded and shattered completely! This was an upper-ascendant crafted treasure! Earlier, the spatial explosion had damaged the treasure quite a lot. Now, the power of Michael's attacks had completely decimated it. As his body was hit, his 13 law marks glowed with great power. The power of his laws was firey but contained a hint of laws of purity as well. Michael did not know what law it was but it was definitely a grand law! The power of his law marks was still not enough! His body had to bear the pressure as he bled through all his pores. It reached the stage where his entire body was going to explode. It was a dire situation for him!
At that moment, he decisively destroyed one of his law marks! The tremendous power of laws exploded out from the law mark completely destroying the momentum of Michael's attack. But even though he was relatively unhurt, he had an extremely ugly expression. His eyes seemed to spew fire as he looked at Michael. But deep within them was a sense of fear! The loss of a law mark was a permanent loss and it would be impossible to gain law marks without going through another transformation. This definitely prevented one from reaching their full potential. But this was still a much lighter loss than having one's body completely destroyed. If the body could not be healed, one would have to possess a new body. This would cause a drop in strength as well as potential. After all, every physical body and its soul was a perfect fit - compatible due to the mysterious supreme laws of creation and order. It was also the foundation of internal energy and celestial paths. The destruction of the bodies of 4 ascendants, thus, was a significant blow to the Ritz family.
Going back a few days, Michael had already managed to find his celestial balance. At that time, Michael had seemingly again hit a bottleneck. He could become a celestial when he wanted, the same for a demi-ascendant. He had also completed his trump-card spell. It could be said that he was ready to face the danger that was going to come. But Michael would never be himself if he did not have one true trump-card. Never would he show all his powers either. He started focussing on the one skill that he had been trying to master but had been unable to - will manifestation.
Will manifestation was exactly what the name said - manifesting one's willpower. Of course, there was a way to do it through one's psychic powers and conscient. Michael had to keep on trying to succeed. First of all, Michael needed a manifestation target. What to manifest? Michael had thought long and hard before deciding the figure of a giant. Why did he take this figure? It was a subconscious representation of the ancient beings in his mind. From the time he had met the two ancient beings, he had always wanted to know more about them. Were they humans? Were they cultivators or were they born with their power? Were they the same size as humans and other races or were they true god-beasts? In his heart, he imagined them as giants that could hold the laws in their hands. His giant manifestation was based on this desire. But choosing a target was not enough. First of all, the target should be possible with one's willpower. Though this was not a problem for Michael, if it was someone else, their will would have died making them a vegetable. Another restriction was psychic energy. Michael's conscient after going through his ordeal had become very strong and he had a huge amount of psychic energy. But he had never cultivated psychic energy. As a result, he could only recover psychic energy naturally due to his recovery attribute. Also, his psychic energy had barely been able to support the giant outline Michael wanted. And most importantly, Michael was not well-versed in handling psychic energy and handling such a huge amount placed a great burden on him. But even after all these limitations, Michael's will manifestation was simply monstrously powerful - capable of severely injuring a second rank ascendant. Even rank three ascendants would have to take the attack seriously. Currently, the only thing holding Michael back was the requirement of psychic energy as well as his own lack of mastery in the skill. Another thing was the burden on his body and soul. This move used Michael's body as a medium for the flow of a tremendous amount of energy.
After completing the move, Michael did not have the guts to test it. After all, his body at that time would not have been able to take it. Even now, his right arm had been injured at a fundamental level. Healing it with life laws was going to take a good period of rest - perhaps even a few days. But even with such a huge price to pay, it had been worth it. Geophery's teacher did not understand a lot about psychics. This was the first time he was fighting one. And he did not know if he should expect another similar attack! If the opponent could attack like that multiple times, he might truly die! Thus, he did not dare to continue beating up Michael and remained standing at his place. But lady luck seemed to have deserted them. A powerful aura appeared in the skies of the Mansion as the barrier split to let in the man everyone in the Marx family was waiting for - Gordon Marx!