I flair up my Field and smash it against his from the inside, finally claiming dominion over the space around myself as his Field reels back from the blow, only to return with rage and smash back into mine, our two Fields wrestling for control as they push against one another. All around us, any weakened structures that still remained standing begin to topple and fall under the combined weight of our presence, buildings crashing down and rubble falling from hills in small landslides just from the initial clash. In this place, fire grows larger and burns hotter, and shadows grow longer and deeper, shadows and flames dancing as our Fields mix and clash, fighting for supremacy.
Having dodged under his slash, I move forward, shorting the distance between us further as I stab out with my clawed hand, moving faster than most people would be able to perceive. He simply turns his body, my claws scraping against his scale covered chest and leaving grooves in his armor. In the next moment, his fist is in front of my face, filling my vision.
I pull down low, spinning under his punch and transitioning into a kick, the claws on my feet growing into spikes as I aim for his stomach, only I end up kicking his weapon, the length of the massive thing wreathed in his flames as it blocks my blow.
Darkness clashes against fire, both made solid through the power of magic. The shadows grown from my foot break, the flames on his weapon burning them away as their broken shards fall apart in the air.
He moves to kick me, his leg bathed in fire. Riding on the recoil from my blocked kick, I twist in the air and then kick off a platform of shadows under my feet, propelling myself up towards his head. Lashing out and grabbing his head, I try to bring my knee up to kick him in the face, but my leg gets grabbed and I suddenly get pulled down and swung around. Up and around I go, and with a roar, he tries to slam me into the ground. On the downswing, I pull in on myself, easily moving against the g-forces to latch onto his arm and pull myself up toward his shoulder. The swing goes through, but even with my leg still caught in his grip, I remain grappled onto his arm, my clawed hand going for his throat with the intention to rip it open.
Flames spring up in his defense, coating his neck and his arm. I have barely a moment to react before the flames can spread onto me, quickly coating my body with shadow flame to counter his.
His eyes open in surprise, but he quickly recovers and responds by trying to scrape me off his arm with his flaming weapon. I quickly let go as I kick his wrist with my other leg to forcefully release myself from his grip, the blade of his massive weapon passing between us.
I land in the exact same spot where I started, him not having moved a step as well, nothing but a couple feet of space between us.
As we look at each other, his eyes go down to his arm, his armor there now reduced to a potted mess where my flames had started to eat their way through before they could be burned out by his, the palm of his hand, where he had been holding my leg, is bloody, and as I watch, I see the skin slowly knitting itself back together. My leg, where he was holding me by the ankle, is bloody and raw, the skin burned and melted away. He watches as my skin heals as well…
“Ahh, the gods are truly cruel.”
“Mmm, I agree. Those brats lead you to fight me because they knew this wouldn’t be a fast fight.”
He raises an eyebrow curiously. “So, you also know of the Gods?”
“Yes, and they aren’t gods. They are children playing a stupid game, leading you around by the nose so that we would eventually end up fighting for their amusement!”
“Mhh, I had suspected as much, and I guess this confirms it. But it matters not.”
“No?”
“No. Even if they used me for their own entertainment, even if they lied and tricked me, and even if it cost me the lives of my children… I got what I want. Now, no more talking.”
With his final words, his Field ripples with pressure, flames building across his body as he flexes his body. With an exertion of will, he explodes with fire and heat, the waves radiating off of him smashing into me as I defend with my own fire. Getting knocked into the air, I am sent flying back, down a hill of rubble. I turn into the momentum and rotate in the air, getting my feet back under me just in time to catch sight of him charging towards me like a flaming wrecking ball.
With shadowed limbs spreading out, I reach out in every direction and grab large sections of rubble, killing my momentum and letting me land on the balls of my feet. With him charging forward, my shadowed limbs move, pulling on the rubble and scooping up great chunks of the scenery, four massive tentacles flying forward to smash him with car sizes boulders and chunks of concrete.
He doesn’t stop moving, simply plowing through the attack like a freight train through a school bus, knocking aside my tentacles, the shadow construction of their bodies falling apart as they come into contact with his flames.
Damn fire… It’s looking like I will have to fight fire with shadow fire. Would have liked to have more time to practice with this stuff! Just a couple of days isn't enough!
Quickly making a fireball, I throw it at him as he charges towards me.
Lashing out with a flame covered fist, he knocks the projectile aside and just keeps moving. The black fireball, when it hits the ground, instead of exploding, it instead implodes. A couple meter wide crater is left behind after it sucks in everything around it, and then vanishes with a pop and a little flash of light. I go wide eyed at the sight of it, but I don’t let it distract me enough to keep me from dodging away from my flaming opponent as he swings for me.
What the hell was that!? It was supposed to explode, fireballs explode! Don’t they?
Father’s great sword of a kaiju claw destroys the ground in an explosion of flames as I move away from him, sweat drenching my body from the heat and sapping my strength just from being close to him. My Field can only do so much to keep the heat down to a bearable level. Still feels like I am in an oven though.
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Lashing out with some new tentacles wreathed in shadow flame, I attack him as I move in close. Drawing my heavy-duty hand axes from the holsters strapped to my thighs, I go in for the melee as he deflects my tentacles.
Moving in under his deflection, I swing for his midsection with both of the axes, but he backs up and avoids the blades, his weapon quickly following through to strike me as he rotates it in a downward arch.
Blocking with one axe, the flames covering both of our weapons clash, coiling around each other like snakes as they snuff each other out in flashes of light and little distortion of space like black dots flashing into existence for a fraction of a second.
We stand our ground, swinging at each other with our weapons and blocking each other’s attacks as we move faster and faster. Seconds go by as we clash, our weapons becoming blurs as black and red clash and embers of each get sent flying in every direction. Wherever the sparks land, little holes get melted away or deleted from the surrounding rubble, dust getting stirred up with every swing, the heat rising by the moment until nearby structures are being reduced to molten rock, shadows snaking up and covering everything until parts of the scenery seem to be sinking into the shadows like they are mud. Occasionally, one of our attacks will get through and hit the other. The blade of one of my axes cutting into his armor and removing a segment, or the blade of his great sword managing to graze me and rip away an armored plate from my gear.
As our weapons continue to clash and the surroundings become warped by our presence, we don’t contain ourselves to just fighting with our bodies. Our magic is clashing at the same time, with shadow fire wreathed limbs fighting to grapple his body and push through the flames that are covering his body and streaming off of him in an inferno. As my shadows try to drill through his defenses, he moves between an attack and points a finger at my face, a small bead of light having formed at its tip.
Moving at the last possible moment, I pull my head to the side just a laser of extremely compressed heat rips past my head. He moves his aim and tries to follow, slicing through a good length of my hair as I swing up with my axe to try and take his hand off. He quickly stops the attack and blocks, and I spin through the motion to assault the length of his weapon with a flurry of blows that would have reduced the side of a tank into scrap metal, his magic reinforcing the durability of his weapon to a ridiculous extent.
Behind me, I can hear as another building collapses, probably cut in half by his laser.
With him on the defensive, I increase my speed further. Swinging faster and faster as I strike the massive claw with my axes in quick succession, leaving cuts and groves in their wake that crisscross across its surface. Not stopping for a moment to let him go back on the attack, I keep up the fury as my body gets soaked in sweat and my breaths come out heavier and heavier, this damn heat not letting up for even a moment.
I catch sight of him from behind his guard. The bastard is smiling as he looks down at me, the steadily rising Sun lighting up the desecrated earth behind him with light as I continue to carve away at his weapon.
Bastard is conserving his energy, while I’m burning through mine! The higher the sun gets, the less shadows I have as fuel. There is plenty of darkness under all this rubble, but it’s mixed with too much earth mana. It’s not enough, not against someone that I am evenly matched with. Going to have to get risky!
Getting in another rush of attacks, I aim for the same spots and widen the wounds carved into his claw. The next time I see his face, smiling smugly down at me, I take in a deep breath, filling my chest and my cheeks with as much air as I can hold. He blinks in surprise at the sight of me with my cheeks and my chest all puffed up.
Doing what feels natural, I hold one hand in front of my face with some shadow flame waiting. Mixing my mana with the stored air, I breathe out like I am trying to spray fire like a dragon.
A stream of black flames is born, cutting through the air and slamming into Father as he hurriedly moves his weapon to block the breath attack. Light gets pulled from the area as everything around the attack starts to darken, the flames flowing over his weapon and spilling out over the surrounding land in a cone of deleting flames that cut chunks out of the scenery further than I can see past him, the black flames quickly spreading as they move across the rubble and reduce everything into bits of black dust.
Compared to the flamethrower that I used to cut through Gra’s ice wall, this spell is far more devastating, but also much more draining.
As Father continues to back away from me and defend, his flames pushed forward along with his weapon as a shield, I continue to step forward, pushing with every bit of air that my body can hold to fuel the attack as I maintain the image of a fire breathing dragon as the shape for the spell. All around us, the world continues to grow darker and darker despite the rising sun, the heat in the air getting sucked away until it is replaced with a cold chill, the only source of heat being the flames protecting Father’s body from my own.
The black flames continue to roll over him as I push him back, my breath slowly running out and beginning to sputter until all I can do is spit out a last few last puffs of black flame.
As the attack fades, Father swipes his weapon to the side, his flames cleansing both it and his body of my flames, his armor falling away from his body and exposing a bare and bloodied chest of rippling muscle. As he stands there in nothing but a torn hide wrap around his waist like a barbarian, I get sight of the devastation I just inflicted upon the world.
Besides a stretch of land that was blocked by Father’s body, the rest of the landscape for hundreds of meters have simply been deleted, a large gaping trench cutting into the earth for tens of meters down in an expanding cone, exposing the sewers down below, cutting through them and revealing lengths of tunnels where dirty water now pours out into the massive opening of jagged and sheer cut rock. Above, the remains of the city scape had not fared much better, entire structures being left as halves as large chunks of their body had been deleted, many of the remaining buildings that remain standing on the edge of the trench are crumbling and falling apart as they tumble into the abyss that I just carved out of the Earth with a breath.
Coughing up some black smoke, I look over the devastation in shock, quickly trying to catch my breath in now cooled air as I had blown away the overwhelming heat that had been flooding this place.
Did I actually just do that!? That’s the biggest attack I’ve ever done! Holy shit!
My eyes go back to my opponent, I watch as he takes a deep breath, his flames still dancing over his body as his wounds heal, his blood-red body returning to a pristine state. His weapon has been reduced to a broken claw, its body full of holes and most of its sharpened edge reduced to a worn away and dulled stick.
“Hmhmhmhm~” He starts to chuckle, the noise like a rumble in his chest as he it slowly grows into a full laugh. “Hahahahahahahaha!!!”
I tighten my grip on my axes as he laughs, warily watching him.
“Why the hell are you laughing?”
He stops and looks down at me with a contemptuous smile.
“Gre’dem. I am happy.”
“Happy?”
“Yes.” He says as his smile grows, showing a line of sharp teeth tailor made for ripping meat from bone.
“I am happy because you just proved me wrong. I was worried that this would be too easy. That you were going to disappoint me, the target of all my rage, my revenge, my enemy! Thank you. I will enjoy killing you, Gre’dem.”
He casts aside his ruined weapon, his flaming feet stomping on the broken armor at his feet.
“No more playing, Gre’dem. Let us kill each other to our heart’s content!” He declares as the flames dressing his body flare up with wrath and joy, his face spitting ear to ear with a massive blood hungry smile.