A bright flash of light radiated from my corpse, followed by a giant shockwave, and one could only hear the sounds of mountains collapsing as their view was obscured from a mushroom cloud of dust.
The valley where the battle took place had disappeared. Or rather, it had been obliterated in less than a second. What was left was barren plains, and where my body should have been was another, larger crater, which could have been mistaken for the impact crater of an asteroid.
In the center of the crater stood a knight clad from head to toe in white, his sword impaled in the ground. From behind his back, a pair of white feather wings, also armored, spread out, as gracefully as the scissor doors on a Lamborghini. This knight was seemed to be the personification of righteousness, of justice, and of fair judgement.
That knight was me.
I had always viewed my angelic form as a curse, but at this moment in time, I was quite glad that I was still alive thanks to it. Now, I was no longer the human being Cyrus; I was an archangel of the highest order. I could only maintain this form for around an hour or so before the angelic body turned into a human one, the form only activated when my human body had died, but apart from those downsides, there was only absolute power. In addition, my human body could also use some of the form’s abilities, including flight and inhuman strength. All in all, it was a magical girl transformation, but better in every aspect possible.
As for why I viewed this form as a curse, that’s a story for another time.
I looked down at my holy body, clad in ivory-colored armor. Every millimeter of this ergonomic naturally curved armor was intricately designed for maximum defense. Conventional weapons would simply slide off of its smooth surface, but if one dared to touch the armor with their bare hands, they would discover that the armor was anything but smooth in a bloody way that was surprisingly painless. In my right hand was my lone weapon: a silver broadsword without a crossguard. Unlike my armor, it was unembellished, and wouldn’t have stood out if it wasn’t for the white flames that danced across the blade, forming moving patterns that put the beauty of Damascus Steel to shame.
I looked up, and raised my sword at her, before lowering the visor on my helmet and preparing for the next stage of our battle.
Of course, I was not the only one that had undergone a transformation.
What awaited me now was no longer a girl, what awaited me was a deity. Although there were no changes to her physical body (I assume that she had healed herself with some artifact or another), countless giant arms, each larger than her body, unfurled from behind her into the shape of a lotus, and another halo, with a warm amber glow, had appeared behind her. She looked like a savior, one that would bring humanity out of the hellhole that is Earth. The storm clouds that were originally there had parted before her, and a ray of sunlight pierced through the sky, a spotlight for this seemingly benevolent god. That was until one saw the glint of her weapons in the sunlight, and suddenly, her form, originally basking in the sun, now obscured it, mending the crack in the ceiling of clouds. Her benevolence had all but disappeared; what remained, was a goddess of war. She finally opened her eyes, and their golden light illuminated the darkness. She had discarded her purple dress for a set of full plate armor in dark red, which served to further contrast her golden eyes. I watched as the dark red slowly spread to the arms, when they started to etch bloody stripes into the originally warm surface. At the same time, a pulsating purple began coiling itself around her armor and the arms, reinforcing them. It also spread, like a parasite, to her head, and etched itself into her face in the pattern of warpaint, with three stripes on each cheek. It was as if her power was feasting upon her body. Her originally comforting demeaner had metamorphosized into a perfect abomination with its own captivating inhuman beauty. She looked like a fallen angel, ready to wage a war against the heavens.
I couldn’t help but stare in awe at the being that stood before me. My new divine eyes could fully appreciate every detail of her new appearance, even from tens of kilometers away.
Avalokitesvara: the thousand-armed buddha, bestowed 1000 arms and 1000 eyes to comprehend and aid the suffering. This was the legendary class artifact embodied this deity; it bestowed upon its user 1000 mechanical arms, each of which had double the strength and speed of the user’s arms. The original artifact would also grant 10 extra mechanical heads, each containing an unknown ability. However, nobody could use the artifact, as it took too large a toll on the human brain. The Buddhist Theocracy had separated the original into two artifacts, but even then, users could only utilize a tiny fraction of the artifacts’ power, thus making them unsuitable for real combat. The arms were used for infrastructure construction, while the eyes were utilized in espionage and intelligence gathering.
However, with this great power came, not great responsibility, but a stupendous operation and maintenance cost. The Buddhist theocracy almost went bankrupt before they managed to sell the artifact off to a willing buyer. This girl rivaled the superpowers in more than military power; her wealth was probably larger than most of their treasuries. And this girl was only 16...
In her hands, their true power was shown. With her superhuman processing abilities, she could control all 1000 arms at once. True to her sobriquet of “The Armorer”, her almost boundless soulspace had more than enough weapons to arm each arm while bringing out their innate power. Some of these were firearms, others were blades, and some even wielded artifacts.
She smiled.
It was not one of kindness, of heavenly benevolence. Those words had disappeared from her dictionary. This smile was sadistic, but not psychopathic. No crazy laughter accompanied it; the person before me was not a cliched villain in a web novel. It would look upon you with pity, as if you were a cornered animal, already injured and bleeding to death, while she was the hunter that had inflicted the fatal wound. There was something captivating about it, and one could not help but feel drawn towards it. It was a siren’s song, and it could attract enemies to their death like moths to a flame. If this smile could speak, it would be coaxing you to die, and to die faster, in a sweet voice that was irresistible. This smile was not devilish; it was the devil.
Then that smile disappeared as abruptly as it had bloomed, and was replaced with her trademark look of distaste.
She stared upon me from 30000 meters above with a piercing stare colder than the Antarctic wastelands, in more ways than one. Probably due to an artifact, cold ice started to form across my armor, threatening to imprison me into a sub-zero coffin. She had assumed that my fire could be countered, but unfortunately for her, my sword melted the ice faster than it could form. I had to keep my distance; I would move to close combat once I knew all the abilities of all the artifacts she had in store. However, both our power’s had time limits. The power required to power Avalokitesvara grew exponentially over time, and eventually, she would run out of Denergy. Once that happened, I could safely move in for the kill. I was fairly confident that she wouldn’t be able to maintain it for an hour, so I would let her exhaust her power while I accumulated mine. I expected her to keep distance between us, and rain attacks from above. I would finish it all in one strike once she had expended everything she had.
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Six giant gates, each larger than the halo that surrounded her opened in a circular pattern around her. Out of each came a large, cylindrical aerial vehicle, that looked similar to a cargo plane, but without wings or a nose. Its design did not care for aerodynamics. Why would it, when it was never meant for deployment in the atmosphere? Four jet engines, two attached to each side, kept each airborne. On the belly of each vehicle was a hatch, which was the only visible entrance. The entirety of a vehicle was painted in a reflective chrome, which unnaturally stood out against the murkiness of the grey stormy sky.
Mobile Armories.
Designed for deployment into space, they soon rendered ICBMs useless for strategic missile warfare. Firing warheads from mobile armories was much faster than ICBMs, and could hit targets with higher accuracy. In addition, they were less susceptible to radar jamming, microwave weapons and other technologies designed to disrupt the targeting systems on ICBMs. They assured larger destruction; there would be no time for evacuation beforehand. They were also effective in siege warfare; there were few anti-air weapon systems that could protect a city against High Altitude Low Orbit bombardment, and the few that could require special ammunition, massive amounts of power to operate, or both, neither of which would be in surplus during a siege. In addition, they could be outfitted with interception missiles that would render surface-to-surface missiles useless, taking them down mid-air.
These used to be, and in some cases still are, the spearheads of a country’s military, if they could afford one. Each one was worth a city; it was only natural, as they had the power to destroy a city. That was the construction cost alone; it didn’t even take into account transportation costs, decommissioning costs, maintenance costs, and the cost of defending one of these superweapons. Even large nations could only afford to keep 10 armories maximum in service at a time.
And here she was, using 6.
"Wealthy” was an understatement when describing people like her.
The hatches opened.
A hail of projectiles rained down from the storm clouds. Any barrage of this size would have been enough to destroy a country multiple times over, but I had nothing to fear. None of these would be able to pierce my armor. I simply moved towards her, flying as if stepping on an invisible staircase. I didn’t even bother using my wings; she was no longer a threat. As the warheads exploded, radiation, chemical weapons, electromagnetic pulses, and more bombarded me.
I continued climbing my stairs to heaven, unaffected.
She quickly gave up on regular conventional weapons. Several of her arms pointed their weapons at me, and fired. To my mild surprise, she had managed to get her hands on some prototype weapons. Sonic cannons, microwave weapons, even an industrial mining laser. Still, it seemed that she was getting desperate, or that she was simply trying to buy time. It would be troublesome if she possessed a WMD that was Nation grade or above. Destroying this country and further toppling the fragile regional power balance could lead to a continental war. A domino effect would ensue, and soon enough
My casual pace quickened into a run, and as I climbed the stairs 5 steps at a time. Her calm expression began to crumble. By my estimation, her armories were almost depleted. Anytime now and the nuclear warheads would appear. Those were my target; I was less concerned about the damage and more about the political consequences. Fallout would be inconvenient, and even if no one could challenge me in military might, the backers of this country could litter my life with annoyances.
Her last missile salvo came flying towards me. At a preliminary glance, they were all the same, but she was more cunning than that. Mixed in this fusillade were WMDs, immediately evident to me through my energic vision. I utilized my wings, which had folded back after my transformation performance, and with a single flap of them, the missiles were far behind me. As I continued my charge, the missiles behind were blown away be my sheer speed before they exploded in the air. I had aimed for the fuel tanks when I sliced through the missiles, and for the nuclear ones, I had separated the warhead from the missile body after disabling the activation mechanism with a micro-electromagnetic pulse. I would deal with the warheads after the battle.
Now, I had no need to worry; her divine weapon arsenal, which she had most likely been relying on, was ineffective against me, though unlike conventional weapons, it would be able to harm me. Whatever. At most, it could only leave a scratch, and unlike my human body, my current regeneration was instantaneous, and I had enough Denergy to regenerate my entire body several times over.
The rest of her arms began to move, at a frightening speed untypical for limbs of that size. As the arms that had been firing at me reloaded and recharged, the rest maneuvered into action, with a terrifying reach that was not obvious at first. I was met with a wall of exotic polearms, which ranged from flaming spears to poleaxes of ice to lightning-charged halberds, when I neared my target, but a simple swing of my sword was more than enough to melt all the divine weapons in one fell sweep.
I continued my charge, my white flaming sword decimating all in its path. Her divine weapon arsenal, which was her pride and joy, had been reduced to half of its original size. Avalokitesvara’s 1000 arms had been reduced by around 40%. I slowly broke into a sinister grin as I observed as her panic rise to her face. It was not every day that you would see a stoic person reveal their emotions, and this would definitely never happen again in a lifetime.
Her lifetime, that is.
A minute had passed since her offensive began, although it could hardly be called an offensive. Desperate resistance was a more appropriate term. As the distance between us shortened, she did not retreat, despite her overwhelming disadvantage, in close combat especially. I commended her for her courage; any other person would have likely either begged for their life or committed suicide.
Not that it mattered, as it wouldn’t allow her to avoid her fate.
Realizing polearms and long-range divine weapons were naught but ineffective against me, she switched to the core of her arsenal, her proud collection of divine blades. Avalokitesvara moved into action, its arms forming a hollow hemisphere, as if I was a baseball and it was a catcher’s glove. What happened next surprised me.
Around half of the arms detached from the main body, and came together to form into a menacing creature right out of an alien invasion movie. Its hide was thorny, formed of countless divine weapons, and even though each blade was different from the rest, their collective glow formed an iridescent brilliance. The beast opened its giant jaws, ready to reduce me to mincemeat. The maws opened wide, swallowing me whole, as I moved faster than they could bite down.
I sighed. This was an obvious ruse to attract my attention while she prepared her final, and likely suicidal, weapon. As if I would fall for it.
My sword started to morph, as if undergoing an evolution. The process was smooth and soundless, and soon, it was replaced with a glaive. The glaive shone in a light of azure blue, and with a single slash, I split the belly of this whale in one clean stroke, vaporizing all in my path, splitting apart this sea of swords similar to how Moses split the Red Sea.
The glaive had morphed once again, and now took the shape of a lance. Before the wound could close, I had already flapped my graceful wings once, and instantly broke the sound barrier as I hurtled towards her.
I had closed the distance to 4000 meters
She was ready, with a large contraption in her left hand. While I had been devoured, she had activated a barrier, and now we fought in a spherical vacuum in the air. No wonder the blades had moved so swiftly; the barrier had been set up while I was occupied with the divine polearms, and as air was sucked out of the space, there had been less air resistance. She summoned a pistol into her right hand, and the contraption, which I now realized was a cannon, fired.
An artillery shell flew towards me, and it only seemed to balloon in size as it approached. It seemed to be a pressurized-liquid bomb, perhaps liquid carbon, and once activated sub-zero liquids would burst in all directions before solidifying into crystals of high durability and sharpness. This would usually be a suicide weapon, but she had undoubtably prepared countermeasures. The pistol was probably her ace up her sleeve, and this shell was but a distraction.
In this vacuum, my lance’s flames had dissipated, and my current sword would not manage to counter this weapon effectively. However, my calm expression did not change. I continued my charge nonetheless, and before she could detonate the bomb, my lance had shapeshifted into a javelin, which I threw towards the shell. A blinding light once again illuminated the stormy skies, and both javelin and bomb ceased to exist.
The energy from the mini-nuclear explosion had destroyed the only two things in its radius. I preferred not to use nuclear energy due to its many aftereffects, but within this barrier, I could let loose a little.
A new sword had formed into my hand while I continued my nonstop charge towards her. We were only 1000 meters apart now.
She fired the pistol in her right hand after discarding the cannon.
A single lone bullet flew towards me, faster than I expected. All thanks to this damn vacuum.
It flew through my visor, puncturing my left eye. The bullet detonated when it was lodged firmly into my brain, and the antimatter inside was released.
A heatwave spread out from inside my body, vaporizing me. There was no blast, and the process was painless. An orb of light engulfed my body, and when it dissipated, the upper half of my body had disappeared, as if bitten off by a predator. The rest of my body was heavily charred, and if my body contained any water, it would have all evaporated. My armor was in tatters, all that remained of my wings were a few lone burnt feathers, and all of my momentum had disappeared. My corpse floated in the sky, morbidly, as if a warning to the intelligence agencies that were undoubtably observing our battle. The victor of our duel seemed to be decided.
As if a semideus could die so easily.