The Star Of Annihilation

The Star of Annihilation

Chapter 55 – Duels (3)

Written by : Eleven 

* * *

“Do you concede?”

The simple question rang out through the arena like a judge banging his gavel.

Elias felt the tip of Roy’s saber touching his neck, not allowing him to get up unless he conceded.

‘But why?!’

Elias was frustrated in his own headspace as he didn’t know why it was so hard for him to do anything.

He was trying desperately to hold on to that fleeting feeling he had when he saw Nate arousing his fighting spirit earlier.

‘…why!? Whywhywhywhywhy???…. WHY?!’

He wanted to hit the floor and cry.

Elias didn’t know why he was feeling so frustrated.

He knew his chances of winning were slim, but the fact of the matter was that he couldn’t do anything properly and his chances of failing the examination were higher than ever.

Elias was normally never this heated.

It truly started to weigh in on him, just how rashly he had acted.

It was extremely unlike him.

Even from the very beginning of when he asked Roy for the duel, it felt like something inside of him was compelling him to act this way.

* * *

Ba-dump. Ba-dump.


‘What in the world?’

-Oho. To think that I would be able to see that stingy woman Dola, choose an Apostle.


Nate felt a huge thumping inside of his mana core as it felt like his divinity was pulsating and threatening to burst out of his chest.

Varpulis, who often remained silent in Nate’s day-to-day life outside of his training, spoke up with a voice filled with satisfaction and curiosity.

‘An Apostle? Dola? Are you saying there’s another God that’s about to descend into that guy’s body?’

Nate felt a strong force pulling him and compelling him to watch Elias, the boy being beaten one-sidedly by Roy.

-Her name is Dola, yes. She is part of the upper realms like myself as she is a God that rules over Destiny. It’s just very interesting that this universe, let alone this planet, truly has so many Gods starting to take interest in choosing Apostles inside of it.


Neither Roy, nor Nate knew what the terms ‘realms’ or ‘universes’ applied to.

Nonetheless, he knew that it was not normal for another God to be choosing an Apostle.

Varpulis was the God of Thunder, but in reality, he was in more fine-tune control of the wind, and was a neutral God.

A conceptual god like Dola, the name of the Goddess who was about to descend into Elias’ body, was something Nate naturally felt wary about.

‘Wait. You said when you first made contact with me and chose me as your Apostle, you descended into my body right? Doesn’t that mean Roy is in danger?’

-Pfttttt! Your friend? That boy is much more important than a mere Apostle. He is someone even we, gods cannot touch easily unless we want to have our very existence erased completely. Dola will probably play around with him a bit, since he is a bit special to beings like us…. But nonetheless, she won’t kill him or harm him greatly.


Varpulis’ words sounded ominous as Nate still didn’t have a good feeling about a Goddess descending into another boy’s body and ‘playing around’ with his friend.

When a god chose their apostle, they would only temporarily descend to establish a connection into the body of the host. Descent was something that was bound bound by the laws of casualty, and the God would not be able to exert their full powers in the body of a mortal, but when Varpulis had descended into Nate’s body when he was at 1-star, and had been able to exert power similar to that of a 5-star magic spearman during that time.

It was needless to say what kind of danger Roy might be in.

-I think it might be better if you just watch first. Your friend is no fool.


Nate held the words back that he wanted to yell as he got a weird feeling.

As he looked at the duel where Elias was seemingly defenseless, a bright column of light suddenly burst out.

* * *

Wuooooong.

Roy immediately retreated when he saw the large amount of light burst from the sky and descend like a pillar towards Elias’ body.

‘Are you kidding me?’

Roy knew exactly what this was as he had already witnessed it once before.

‘What are the chances that I would ever see two descents in my entire life?’

Roy sarcastically berated himself, but inwardly felt a plethora of emotions.

The first, was expectation.

‘How strong will they be?’

-Get ready, this fight is about to get a whole lot more intense.
‘Why are you so sure they’ll attack me?’

-I told you that I would talk to you later this week about it… but let’s just say that you’re a very enticing mortal to those Gods and Demons.
Roy smirked as he heard Ifrit’s warning.

[Manifestation]

Roy immediately felt a strong repulsion of force to the body of Elias which was starting to shine brightly in a dim blue haze of holy power.

‘Is it because the Demonic Energy technique you taught me is incredibly pure?’

-You know well. I may not be a full demon, nor am I a full Spirit King in the sense of the title, but I do know that my Demonic Energy cultivation technique is one of the best there is. Of course such a raw Demonic Energy source would be the practical antithesis to a God’s holy power.


“Hoooooo….”

A sigh escaped Elias’ lips as his hair was fluttering in the blue light shining from his body.

“Who are you?”

“….Heh.”

Roy asked the question to the unidentified God that had descended.

The Goddess, Dola, who had descended, merely smirked in reply to Roy and disappeared in a ray of light.

-I know who this is.
‘You do…?!’

Roy immediately was cut-off from his conversation with Ifrit as he had barely any time to defend at the attack that had suddenly shot out towards him.

Dola, using Elias’ body, shot a ray of blue holy power like a bullet towards Roy.

Pangggggg!


Roy’s hand went numb.

Despite his body being enhanced multiple times over with his auxiliary magic and the sudden transformation of his body as he had used manifestation, which enabled him to use Ifrit’s powers, he had barely managed to block the simple attack fired out from Elias’ palms.

As this was all happening, the onlookers to the duel didn’t know if what was happening was even real.

Some of the children had already fainted at the immediate sight of a descent taking place right before their very eyes.

The examiners didn’t even think of judging Elias or Roy anymore, as the power both of them were emitting was ridiculous to even try and measure.

A human that was emitting such pure Demonic Energy… A human!

It was unheard of that a human had ever been able to cultivate Demonic Energy. Yet, here was one who not only was radiating a fierce amount of it, he had even transformed into something that looked like a war god.

Roy’s appearance looked ghastly.

His dark hair started to flutter like dark red flames; the same appearance Ifrit had when he had materialized in the mortal realm to take care of Argenta.

He had the same black claw-like hands as Ifrit, and blackened skin.

One boy looked like a demonic god of sorts, and the other was an actual god in the body of a mortal!

“What kind of luck did I have to accumulate in my past lives to experience something like this…”

Tom, the staff member who had pretty much been relegated to being brainless bystander number one, muttered thoughtlessly as his eyes were blank.

Nate understood the feelings that Tom felt.

One might say Nate didn’t because he was an Apostle himself, but Nate hadn’t even been able to force Roy to this state of manifestation of Ifrit’s powers when they had been sparring earlier this morning.

It had happened before, and Nate was already starting to get used to these rather odd occurrences always happening around him.

‘Who is this then?!’

Roy grit his teeth from the pressure he felt ringing out through his body from Elias’ attack.

-If I’m correct, it’s probably Dola. She is one of the gods that rules over Destiny. One of her trademarks is her lofty attitude in the Upper Realms and that intense hue of blue holy power. I’m not saying for certain that this is her, but I have a pretty strong gut feeling it’s her, considering her and Varpulis are from similar Societies.
‘Varpulis was the god of Thunder and Wind, but she is the God of Destiny… What does her form of powers look like then?’

Roy needed to know urgently, just what facing the powers of destiny were like.

-In a nutshell, Destiny is the tangible opposite of Fate. Fate is a concept of belief that everything is predetermined beforehand. The set of actions every organism takes, are predetermined and we are all following a script. Destiny is the opposite, meaning, her powers break free of all constraints that seem ordinary. Reading her movements, or trying to look for flaws, is tantamount to suicide against her.

Roy could tell something was off around Elias’ body.

The world that Roy saw had imperfections. Ever since awakening his body through enlightenment when crossing the threshold of 3-stars, he had seen these imperfections and felt blind for not seeing them up until now.

Lucius, his master, had these imperfections.

Lucius was able to cover them up or even distort these imperfections so that he could use them as weapons, but this was the first time Roy felt like he was truly looking at someone without a single imperfection or flaw.

“You’re not human are you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“…..You know the answer to that.”

Roy knew that if what he could see were flaws, then it was clear that the Goddess could see something much more intricate and likely knew what Roy’s capabilities led to.

“That’s true, I guess. You really are no fun at all.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Honestly? I’m not too sure. You are certainly ‘his’ descendant, after all.”

For some reason, something felt incredibly off about Dola’s words.

“Did you just say….”

“Oh! Perhaps someone paid the price for you to hear those words. The Laws of Casualty aren’t all encompassing…. Heheh!”

Roy felt like something was wrong.

His descendant?

He had heard those words before. No… not exactly those words, but something incredibly similar.

-The Laws of Casualty were supposed to block out that information from her mouth. I guess one of your brethren paid the price for you to hear the truth.

‘The price? My brethren?’

–It’s not something I can say much about unless I want to have my existence erased. Just know that you are not who you think you are.


Roy didn’t know why, but he was starting to get angry.

It wasn’t just anger at this point. It was wrath.

Transcendental beings were always doing this to him.

He had vowed not to be the same as his past life, where he died meaninglessly for no reason as he was ordered around by those in positions of greater power.

What was the point of having incredible talent at something if you couldn’t grasp power when it was at your fingertips?

Roy started to cool his thoughts; but he did not soothe his wrath.

He focused and channeled his wrath into Deletus.

Shwwwik.

Roy sliced his palm with Deletus and blood spilled onto the floor.

He felt mad even at Ifrit.

His feelings of being alone started to come out as he started to chant and a magic circle was drawn with his blood.

There were many things Roy had picked up from the Dragons. They were powerful, but also their spells and way they handled mana was fundamentally different from humans.

Roy realized that the spells he had seen them use were not possible for humans to use with their mana cores as they were. That was why he took the chance to form a mana core that was modeled after them.

However, even Roy had not attempted to use this spell yet because he was still having doubts about whether his body could handle it.

But as his mana started to circulate in the form of the spell he desired, everything in his body moved like a well-oiled machine, as if to prove his doubts and worries were baseless in the first place.

“What kind of spell is that…?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that. It-It’s…. Beautiful.”

The examiners were struck in wonder as Wizards when they saw the magic circle taking its form.

Roy didn’t even bother to hide that this spell was not normal.

“That’s a neat trick you got there. Did you learn it from the time you had beforehand?”

Dolas spoke as if she already knew that Roy had regressed.

Time was a concept not even Gods could manipulate, but yet they knew Roy had regressed somehow. Was this related to the ‘fate’ that the mysterious voice from the pendant talked about?

Roy stayed silent as he kept his cold gaze fixed onto Elias- no, Dola.

[Dark Void]

The keywords in the chant were spoken, and as Roy said them aloud, the entire area went dark as if the sun had suddenly disappeared from the world.

Even Dola’s Holy Power was extinguished like a candle flame in the wind.

At least that was what Roy thought.

“Learning to run before you can walk? You definitely are taking the right path…. A dangerous one at that… but you’re still much too early to be attempting to erase a divinity without even learning how to express intent into your attacks yet.”

The dark world that had suddenly cast out all of the light, disappeared like the spell had never even been cast.

Grit.
Roy grated his teeth.

The spell worked just fine, but there was a fatal component that Roy had not been able to interpret correctly.

It was the wall between those who had transcended their own race, and those who hadn’t.

The Dragons were all Transcendents. Swordmasters and Archmages went through something called body metamorphosis when they reached their levels as it was when they transcended their human limits.

The spell had been correctly created, but Roy was lacking a serious component when he was faced against a God.

He wasn’t a transcendent yet, so naturally he couldn’t express the true intent of the spell.

“As much as I thought this would be fun, I don’t have a lot of time left. Let me at least leave you with a piece of advice…”

Dola spoke mysteriously as the blue light around Elias’ glowing body started to fade.

“Things do happen for a reason, but that doesnt mean this world, nor you, have to be confined to the fate that is predetermined. When you are ready to move on and find your true worth as a chosen descendant, then find me in the Upper Realms.”

With those last words, the blue light vanished from Elias’ body and he dropped to the floor unconsciously.

Thud.

Roy fell to one knee as he felt the fatigue of his body catching up to him.

Dola’s words left Roy feeling uncertain about many things.

But what was certain…. Was that he clearly needed to get much much stronger.

‘I’ve been too shortsighted.’

Dola, a Goddess, had given him a hint as to what he truly needed to aim for.

‘I can’t stop with the Dragons. I need to grow into something far stronger than that.’

Even though Ifrit was silent, Roy knew well.

He knew well that whatever was in store for him… was much larger than just his revenge.

Chapter 55 – Fin

Mass release chapter (5/10)

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P.S. : I need to sleep since I got work at 10 am tmrw morning (technically already today since it’s 12:25 am lol), so I’ll update the rest as soon as I wake up!