Chpt. 54) Starting A War
The world went still as Haze yelled, and she looked around in a panic. Zise’s sword, that monster’s sword, was nearly cutting into Zeana’s neck, only hovering a few centimeters away from her hair. She couldn’t let anything happen to Zeana. She can’t allow anything to happen to her students again! She couldn’t live through that again.
“Who … are … you?” a deep, rumbling voice echoed in her head, making her wince.
“I am Grandmaster Hazaizil!” Haze answered desperately as she tried to move, but her body would not respond. She could barely move her head to look around and speak.
The deep voice did not respond immediately, and once it did, it asked the same question, “Who … are … you?”
“Please! I need to save her!” Haze pleaded, “Let me go!”
“Who … are … you?!” the voice repeated.
Haze roared angrily, her patience breaking, “I AM GRANDMASTER HAZAIZIL!” Haze’s body moved slightly, “I AM THE ONE WHO PROTECTS THE WEAK!!” She stepped forward, and the icy wires around her right leg evaporated, “I AM THE ONE WHO WILL BURN THE TRUE MONSTERS FROM THIS WORLD!!!” She took another step forward, the wires on her left leg evaporating, “I AM THE ONE WHO WILL SAVE MY HOME!” the wires around her left arm snapped and evaporated as she wrenched her arm forward, “I AM THE ONE WHO WILL DESTROY MY ENEMIES!” the wires around her right arm snapped, “I AM THE ONE FULL OF BURNING RAGE THAT WILL LIGHT THE WAY FOR THE FUTURE OF MY STUDENTS!!” The wires around her neck snapped and evaporated with a hiss of steam. She gasped for air and turned to Zise, her eyes burning with rage, hatred, anger, and wrath.
The deep voice chuckled and asked, “Is that the god you wish to be?”
Haze’s glare took on a sinister look as she raised her chin, and a manic, battle-hungry smile spread across her lips, “Yes.”
A boom sounded behind her, and she turned to see a massive serpentine dragon. Its red and orange scales shifted, shimmering as orange energy sparks jumped around its body. It lowered its long snout, and two orange tendrils snaked out from its nose like lighting as it chuckled and said, “You amuse me, human. Give me a name, and I will assist you as long as you reign.”
Haze’s manic smile never wavered as she named him, “Volcanis.”
Volcanis laughed a deep, rumbling laugh and touched Haze’s brows, disappearing in an explosion of energy that threw everyone back and sent power coursing through her entire body. Haze turned slowly to see Zise looking both astonished and enraged simultaneously. Zeana and Orrin were knocked out against the far wall, alive and uninjured. While Nezha received a blow to the head from a block of marble that shot across the cavern and struck him, knocking him out cold.
“What did you do?! What are you!?!” Zise growled.
Haze chuckled as she cracked her knuckles and neck. A symbol of a coiled dragon eating its tail manifested behind her as she bellowed, “I AM HAZAIZIL! GODDESS OF WRATH!! LET’S FIGHT!”
Zise sneered and cycled her power through her body. The ice blue spikes on her shoulders and forehead began to glow an ethereal blue, and a full flaming blue crown formed around her head. “If you want to die so badly, I guess I will start with you,” Zise snarled and charged at Haze, her entire presence bearing down on the newly born goddess.
Haze’s smile never faltered as she cycled her seventh core’s power and wreathed herself in orange-red lightning. She met Zise’s attack head-on with a flash of light, tackling the goddess and throwing her back with a swift punch to the gut. Haze laughed and mocked, “Is that all you got!?!” as she cycled all her cores simultaneously, each one using their own chakra channels. A handy little skill she learned from a particular reckless student.
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Zise struck the far wall next to Orrin and Zeana, creating a crater in the wall. The goddess snarled again and pulled herself out of the wall before nodding, “I suppose I should take this seriously.” She snapped her fingers, and a blast of dark energy shot toward Haze, destroying the floor in its path.
Haze spread her arms wide and roared at the oncoming energy as it struck her and pushed her back. But only a few steps as Haze heaved and threw the energy up toward the canopy of the cavern. Creating a hole straight up to the surface. She smiled as Zise looked astonished and incensed by Haze’s redirection.
Haze chuckled and said, “Well, it looks like you won’t take me seriously. I guess I will have to do that for you.”
“What?!” Zise growled.
Haze cracked her knuckles again and charged. She closed the several-meter distance between them in a blink and punched Zise in the gut again, sending her back into the crater she made before. As Zise got hit, she just barely caught the gleam of a spell circle behind Haze with a number one in the center of it.
“One,” Haze said before following up the first punch with another five in the span of half a second. Each blow hit with more and more damage as Zise was used to borrow a new tunnel through the mountain. Haze never let up as she hit Zise half a dozen more times and shot out of the side of the volcano. She barely had time to react when Haze stood at the five-meter-in-diameter tunnel she had just made and said, “Twelve,” before blasting toward Zise again and striking her with the force of a cruise missile.
Zise shot back to the ground with a sonic boom accompanying her forceful ejection from the air. She hit the ground with enough force to create a small mushroom cloud, shaking the earth below and causing several surrounding volcanos to awaken from their slumber.
Haze laughed as she casually floated in the air and bellowed, “I win!”
A blast of blue fire and dark energy shot out from the crater Haze had just made with Zise’s body, sending her flying back into a newly erupting volcano. Once Haze struck the side of the volcano, she pushed herself off the rocks and wiped a few drops of blood from her lips as Zise floated up and said, “Round two.”
Haze smiled again and launched herself at Zise but never got close enough. A blast of pale blue light launched her back into the volcano as a full blue moon formed behind Zise. She filled her hands with the pale blue light, forming spears of moonlight that launched themselves toward Haze at incredible speeds.
None of them struck. Haze launched herself out of the way of the spears running on orange bolts of lightning around the area they fought in as a trail of spears fired themselves at her. She finally angled herself at Zise and dodged spear after spear sent at her, twisting and turning to avoid the pale blue spears. Zise floated back, gliding on pale blue rays of light, as she created a swarm of blue fireballs that added their numbers and power to the pale blue spears.
Haze cursed and dodged several of the blue fireballs before one struck her foot and exploded in a wave of flames, making her trip, followed by several more fireballs and a few spears that stuck themselves in her right shoulder, the center of her abdomen and through her left breast. Haze fell to the ground with a loud crash, creating a trench where she landed.
“I win, always,” Zise said, breathing heavily. She turned to go and eliminate the pesky little monster Zeana when a loud boom sounded behind her, and she whirled with a glare fixed on her face. Haze had her knuckles pressed together as she forced large amounts of chakra around her to condense and bend to her will. “No, she can’t possibly know how to do this?!” Zise yelled.
With a bellowing gleeful laugh, Haze yelled, “DOMAIN CREATION! HELL’S BARRAGE! PURGATORY!” then she was gone. She disappeared into nothingness before reappearing nose to nose with Zise and saying, “Round three.” Then the world turned red as time caught up with Haze’s movements, and the spot Haze once stood erupted in a goutte of molten lava reaching up to her fist as she brought it down on Zise’s face.
Zise couldn’t move as the blow landed, followed by another blow and another. Within one second, fifty consecutive punches and kicks landed on Zise before she could react. Then, each hit exploded in orange-red flames as the air around her ignited one after another, and she was launched higher into the sky, parting the clouds at impossible speeds and igniting the air as she traveled.
Zise finally slowed down once she reached the lower atmosphere, and Haze was already there to greet her as she grabbed her by the throat. “This has been very cathartic for me,” Haze said, drawing back her fist, “Let’s not do it again.”
Zise made a weak laugh and said, “You are too late. The war has already begun, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Haze chuckled, “We’ll see about that.” Then she threw her fist forward, and it blasted through Zise’s head in a spray of blood and grey matter. “And be done with you,” Haze said as she tossed the body aside, releasing her flow of chakra and letting gravity pull her back to the ground.
***