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Chapter 129 - Limited Power
🕑 Added 2019-09-01 09:07:53 +0000 UTC
From within the clouds, a lone figure descends. A white leather coat, long silver hair, violet eyes narrowed in displeasure - it's Zenlith. Right now, I don't feel the need to turn around and see whether or not Lucianus V has disappeared from the platform on the other side of the battlefield because this could go down any moment now.
"What are you doing?" The self-proclaimed Lord of the Sky asks in an annoyed tone that thunders across the area.
"You are here because of that creature too. Where is it?!" Not showing the leader of their game any respect, Zylos yells at him to reveal me. It seems he can't make me out from that far away.
"You have ruined the game with your unplanned appearance." Ignoring the frigid boy's question, Zenlith remarks while glancing around. A portion of the demon army has been buried under the ice, though it's safe to assume that most survived it in one way or another - as if to prove me right, I see some of them popping up on the surface after digging their way through, with more and more following.
"Fuck your game!" Pointing at his fellow Old Human, Zylos loses his temper. "She killed my sister right before my eyes!"
"Then you are at fault." Zenlith's merciless statement stuns the ice boy. "Being unable to protect her even with your so-called Absolute Zero means you let it happen."
Zylos' mouth hangs open at this accusation. Asoko told me that she doesn't even remember what exactly happened, only that when she woke up from her popsicle state, she was incredibly hungry. There was a giant made of lava, several people she recognized and could hold back on eating, and a lone naked woman. That one seemed okay to eat.
When she had consumed her, she finally came back to her senses, and then Zylos was standing before her. At the time, her mind wasn't entirely there yet, so she genuinely believed that by eating Kanundra, she could use her flame powers. The Imagination Engine answered her, and she somehow overpowered his imagination with pure ignorance.
Well, it was his fault, though. Because according to the maids that were present and witnessed it all, Zylos took away his sister's powers when she tried to fight him, which allowed Asoko to swallow her whole. He did the same thing to her that Tahiri did to her children when they were fighting her - or what Zenlith did to Exla today through a different pathway. Only that the Lord of the Sky knows not to take away all her powers and make her mortal. Even if she's a thorn in his side, he doesn't want her to die.
"Shut up!" The Winter's Frost yells at his fellow Old Human when he can't think of a proper comeback. He must realize that his actions directly caused Kanundra's death, but having that pointed out to him so bluntly has angered him.
It looks like there's going to be a battle between the two now. I'm afraid that it's going to cause widespread destruction, as I doubt Zylos will hold back right now. And if he goes all-in, Zenlith will have to, too. That will doubtlessly result in the destruction of this entire area, if not the whole continent.
But hey, now that Zenlith has stepped up personally, I can use my full powers too. I only need to believe in myself, and I should easily be able to achieve what Asoko has without even knowing about the Imagination Engine.
Somewhere halfway between Zylos and me, Zancras pops out from the ground, closely followed by Kamii, Terog, Ireyo, as well as other demons that were covered by my shield earlier. Suddenly, the frozen boy points at her, and his expression grows even more insane than it already was.
"You!" He shouts, and the little dark elf spins her head around toward him. Then she immediately lowers her stance as if ready to fight. They know each other, huh?
But that's not an opponent her combo curse or clever teamwork can ever overcome. He survived getting a hole gouged through his chest, can create an iceberg in the blink of an eye, and freeze even a Crawling Chaos into a statue that required some special way of thawing - even though I'm sure at this point I could overcome that just as Asoko did.
I immediately shoot forward and cover myself in a shield before Kamii and the others can do something rash. Coming to a stop in front of her, I extend a hand to signal that they're under my protection.
"There you are!" With these words, he points at me and summons a swirling storm that flies in my direction. I fly toward him and burst right through the tornado, ignoring the frigid temperatures. If I don't feel the near absolute zero conditions in space, this is nothing.
Zylos' expression is filled with surprise when he sees me approach him on my own accord. But before I reach him, a lightning bolt hits me from the side and sends me off-course. Even though it was only electricity - which I've grown immune to after training with Tahiri all this time - I also felt a physical push. I crash into the ice splinters covering the ground but shift my transformation so that when I flip over myself, I end up standing upright again.
"Two on one?" I turn around to Zenlith and ask, ready to accept the challenge. If I can go all-out, then I feel confident that I can deal with their personal fantasies. At least I'm immune to their abilities now so I'll figure out how to kill them during our fight.
"No. Keep out of this." But it seems that the Lord of the Sky has different plans as he points at me with a frown, then turns to Zylos. "Leave now, or I will have to remove you."
"You're defending her?" The frigid boy misunderstands Zenlith's intentions and flares up. His character of a sullen-looking, cold-hearted person who doesn't care about anything in the world has been completely broken, and ice doesn't seem to fit him anymore. "Doesn't matter, I'll just remove both of you!"
Does he really think he can defeat Zenlith? According to Exla, he's the second only to her - although her level is supposedly far beyond all of theirs combined. Where is she anyway?
Not only breaking character but also the concept he's so proud of, Zylos extends a hand at Zenlith and shoots out a shockwave that hits the latter like a physical object and throws him backward. But he catches himself in midair and points a finger at the frigid boy, calling down a lightning bolt on him.
But as if welcoming it, Zylos raises a hand and takes the electricity in. It courses through his body and causes his hair to stand on end as he revels in the shocking sensation. Then, as if gathering the energy in his hand, he balls his fist around it before throwing it back at Zenlith.
Considering he can turn into living lightning, the Lord of the Sky doesn't even dodge and takes it without batting an eyebrow. But then he realizes that hidden inside the lightning bolt was a chain of ice, which connects him directly to his opponent's hand. In an instant, his entire body freezes over.
However, unlike Asoko, Zenlith knows the rules behind Zylos' imagination, as he bursts out of the ice encrusting his surface and destroys the chain in the process. Then he raises a hand at the ice boy and creates a whirlwind on the spot, aiming to shred him to pieces.
Zylos counters it by lowering the temperature around him to the point where the wind dies down. It's a battle between two people who know how to control the weather to some extent, so this is just a fruitless back and forth. Neither can be truly harmed by the other, so their attacks will eventually escalate and begin to involve the entire continent.
Before that happens, I have to take either one of them down somehow.
But as I think this, Zylos extends both his hands toward Zenlith and brings his palms together as if crushing something between them. It's the same move the latter used on me during our very first encounter, using air pressure to try and squeeze me to death.
"You challenge me in my own domain?" But it obviously doesn't work against his target, who sounds angry at the attempt.
Then, the air around Zenlith suddenly burst out into flames. It's definitely Zylos' doing, as he no longer cares about keeping up appearances. I doubt this can harm an Old Human, least of all one who can turn his body into lightning.
To prove me right, the fire dies down, and the man in white casually emerges completely unscathed. But then, the frigid boy extends another hand at his opponent and the space around Zenlith warps. For the first time in their altercation, I see surprise on his face, as he looks around with a worried expression.
"You lack imagination, Zenlith." Zylos says, his countenance as cold as he used to be for just a moment. Then he spreads his arms as if ripping something apart, upon which the Lord of the Sky's shape is torn apart from all sides and turns into a fine mist as if billions of hooks pulled on him at the same time. "You could never deal with having your body destroyed."
"Damn you." Even though he just lost his body, Zenlith's consciousness still lingers in the area, and his voice echoes through the air. Why can't he reform his body? If he can turn into lightning on his own accord, why is it so hard to remake himself after being turned into mist? Tahiri could do that quite easily when he did it to her. Does this mean he lacks the imagination to do so?
"Sit back and watch me end this monster." With these words toward the disembodied Zenlith, Zylos points at me as if saying that I'm next.
Well, I won't be defeated by whatever thing he just pulled though. I was able to immediately gather my scattered pieces even when my consciousness cut out for a split second, so that won't be able to kill me. But before he can even start attacking, I'll make the first move.
I shoot forward at several times the speed of sound with no regard for air friction on my surface, turn my right forearm into a spike, and stab it straight through his heart. But I don't feel any resistance other than cloth. He looks down in surprise, then turns his eyes up to give me an unhinged sneer.
"Did you forget?" Ripping open his shirt to reveal that my spike went through the hole Asoko left there, he laughs me in the face. "But losing my sister hurt a lot more!"
He throws a weak punch in my face, but it's stopped by my shield. Even though he could have used the Imagination Engine to freeze me or damage me in any other way, he condensed all his hatred into this simplest of attacks. It wasn't meant to hurt me but to appease his primal urge to kill me with his own two hands - or at least lay his hands on me once.
I won't wait for him to come up with a means to achieve that and return his attack with my own, sending him flying several meters away. He skids across the ice and comes to a halt, but immediately sits back up while throwing a temper tantrum.
"This cannot be happening!" Punching the ground and jumping back up, he raises his hands to his sides. His face is cracked as if his body is made of ice, but it quickly mends itself again while he creates two whirlwinds in his palms.
Whipping his arms forward, he makes the whirlwinds move across the ground like two giant snakes. They pick up the tiny ice splinters and grow to massive proportions, poised to shred me to pieces in their crossfire. But I fly forward once again and avoid their convergence point, then jump up when he brings them together into one massive horizontal cyclone to catch me between them.
From midair, I shoot a beam of plasma down at him, but he raises a hand and blocks it with his palm. Then I feel a spike piercing my own palm and realize that he sent a pillar of ice right through the beam. Before he can try to freeze me, I split my hand in two and pull away from the pillar.
That's when he suddenly is right in front of me and grabs my throat as if trying to strangle me, intending to freeze me just as he did with my other half. I remember myself floating in the vacuum of space, wholly unaffected by the nearly absolute zero environment there. Whatever he throws at me is only minimally colder, so it shouldn't have any effect either.
"This won't work against me anymore." I'll leave him in the illusion that Asoko and I are the same person and kick him in the stomach to separate him from me.
"Absolute Zero can't be beaten by your puny imagination!" He catches himself in midair and roars while glaring up into my eyes.
"That's because what you're doing isn't Absolute Zero." Exla's voice suddenly comes from next to us, and I turn my head to find her sitting cross-legged on a floating cloud while looking down on her fellow Old Human with a pitying expression.
"Exla... what are you doing here?" Zylos is more surprised about the little Old Human's presence than her statement but then catches onto it. "What do you mean, not Absolute Zero? It can't be."
"Even though your imagination is strong, you never learned the limitations of the Imagination Engine. You would think that human imagination is limitless, but it's not. Not when the energy to realize it is limited." She sounds almost sad to see him in such a state, then goes on to explains in a grave tone. "The sun is finite, its energy finite. If imagination is left unchecked, life on earth will cease to exist."
She points at the sun just about to disappear behind the walls of Erbilan on its way down. It confirms what I already suspected when I ran into Areteniha in Zohigal and learned that she's an Old Human as well.
"I'm the only one here who knows that there's a limiter built into the Imagination Engine. You can't request anything that requires more energy than the output that's available to us."
So this is the final truth behind the Imagination Engine. It's located on the sun and draws energy from it to achieve everything that's being imagined on earth. I've read somewhere that the sun's output every second is magnitudes bigger than that of modern-day humanity's in a whole year. Powering individuals who imagine themselves shooting flames out of a staff or even turning their bodies into lightning should be child's play with that much energy.
"Absolute Zero would require infinite energy or infinite time." With these words, Exla finishes her explanation. "But unlike something like destroying the universe or creating a new one - both of which would also require infinite energy - a very close approximation to Absolute Zero is achievable with very little use of energy."
But of course. If a fantasy requires more energy than the sun can output, the request can't be accepted. To not break the illusion, it will apparently try to get an approximate effect in those that are achievable.
Zylos opens his mouth and closes it without saying a word when he hears this and stares at Exla. It seems his entire world is crumbling before him, as he has been so proud of his ability all this time, only for it to turn out to be a lie. But then he looks up into my eyes, and I see his wish for revenge still burning strong.
"If Absolute Zero doesn't work, then I will go in the other direction." He balls his fists before his entire body bursts out into flames. Maybe he wants to honor his sister with this, or he thinks that's the only way to defeat me, who doesn't fear cold. It's true that as a Crawling Chaos, extreme heat does affect me more than extreme cold.
Extending a hand at me, he shoots out an explosion of heat, but it doesn't even get to me. With the Imagination Engine backing my shields, I'm practically immune to such things too.
I take a page out of Zenlith's book and bring in air pressure from all sides to crush Zylos. However, it seems to have the opposite effect as the oxygen feeds the fire, and his body grows hotter and more intense to the point where his entire form glows like a miniature sun. Heat radiates from him and evaporates the ice on the slope in a large area. The steam is then blown away by the storm whipped up by the clash of temperatures and the air pressure I'm throwing at him.
This is only making him stronger, so I stop it. He looks up at me, and inside the radiance, I see his face smiling triumphantly. But just as he's about to fly at me to burn me in his fiery embrace, I cover his body in layers of shields to stop his movements.
"You think this can hold me?!" Zylos' voice sounds like a roaring flame as he increases the intensity of his heat on his own accord. I feel the shields dissolving and realize that they must be made of something as well; Zenlith's were made from a layer of gases that he could hold in place with his imagination, so those made from light must use something similar.
But I simply add on more and more, hoping that he reaches a point where the Imagination Engine will deny his fantasy; if he wants to create a second sun here, it will surely be considered an impossible request.
"Stop!" Exla suddenly calls out to Zylos, but her voice doesn't seem to reach him in his sun-like state. "You'll kill yourself!"
"Huh?" I'm surprised by her trying to help him, but then notice that he's dissolving my shields faster than I create them. A wave of heat hits me like a wall, and I'm flung backward as my surface begins to bubble to alleviate the burns. I quickly create a layered shield around myself instead and take my distance. It doesn't look like he wants to follow me, as he continues to grow hotter.
Has he lost control?
Demons that were trapped under the glacier and have been freed by the heat melting the ice spontaneously burst out into flames. Those in the close vicinity instantly evaporate when Zylos turns up the heat even further.
"Stop it!" The cloud girl tries again while even her form wavers in the heat. She can't maintain her body and has to fly away as well now. I can't even begin to imagine how to stop him, but I don't think anything I can do would be able to reach him right now.
He's floating in place, and the brightness grows so intense that his form disappears into a sphere of light. My vision fills with white, so I quickly retreat backward while continuously mending the shields over my body, which start to get dissolved too. As I turn around, I notice Zancrax crouching on the ground with his back turned where I last saw him, the granite armor on his back red hot from the heat. He's shielding Kamii and the others with his life!
I fly to them and erect a shield all around us. Then I pull up a mound of earth and create a physical barrier to shield us from the direct heat radiation. I can't even begin to imagine how hot our surroundings are right now, and I won't activate my sense of temperature to try it out. But if I hadn't seen them here, they would have been caught up in the mad Old Human's meltdown.
When I look around, the dirt just outside of the shadow of the wall is beginning to melt. I have to create a dome of earth and cool it down from the inside, or everybody will get cooked alive by the rising ambient temperature of the air.
But that's only a stopgap measure. I feel like this might very well be the end of this entire area, if not the whole continent. The fact that the Imagination Engine hasn't stopped his request yet means that this is all within its output limits. When I think back to my knowledge of the sun, I shudder to imagine what it would be like to have all the energy drawn from the sun through the engine right now concentrated in this one spot.
But the light suddenly disappears as if a switch was flipped before I could even complete the dome.
I immediately cancel it and shoot out from behind the earthen wall to peer across the area. That's when I find that Zylos has vanished, nowhere to be seen. The effect of his rampage is still visible everywhere, with the ground immediately underneath where he was floating a giant pool of lava.
All demons in his area of effect have vaporized without a trace, with those on the fringes burning or already charred, while those further out have collapsed from the heat or are trying to crawl away still. The massive circle of blackened ground and burning buildings make it seem like a bomb has gone off without generating a shockwave.
Just how many died here?
"He's gone." Exla comes down next to me and states in a solemn tone. "There's a reason his sister never went beyond a certain temperature. At one point, it turns into a runaway process that goes beyond the Imagination Engine's capabilities. His body was annihilated when the engine couldn't keep his atoms together anymore."
I shudder at the thought that Asoko believes she has that kind of power too; I have to warn her never to exceed whatever temperature that limit is.
"Onee-sama!" Hestia comes flying toward us. Luckily, she was far enough away not to get caught up in it. Korenga and Halthor's battle took them over the mountain to the right of Erbilan, so she should be fine as well.
"Thank Exla; you're alright." I call out to the angel girl, feeling enough relief to add a little quip. The cloud girl is floating next to me and gives me a funny look. It just wouldn't feel right to say 'thank god' when I have an entity so close to one right here.
Then I look in the direction of the overrun wall. The fighting has stopped, but I still see some demons standing among the humans. Both are staring in our direction, incapable of continuing their little squabble after what just happened. They just witnessed a battle between gods, and I'm sure they will never truly understand what really occurred here today.
What they saw is Zenlith, the Lord of the Sky, coming down from the heavens above and having an argument with Zylos, Winter's Frost. The former was then destroyed without a trace after a short exchange of powers. Then I fought Zylos, upon which he turned into a miniature sun and then disappeared as well.
For all intents and purposes, their principal god died during infighting, and I just killed the other one right in front of their eyes. If that's not something to capitalize on, then I don't know what is.
