LIGHTNOVELSTORY Chapter 141: Desperate Measures
The tip of the large blade started to flow with wispy blue energy as it began dipping in and out of the open wound, like it were slowly sawing away into the edges before it suddenly cut clean all the way through, right across the monster's abdomen as Typhon's gut was ripped open from the insides and its entrails began to spill out amidst a waterfall of blood as Lyze burst out of its gut and landed on the disembowelled Typhon's arm as the monster clutched its spilling intestines while letting out howls that were more of shock than pain.
Lyze looked up and took a moment to observe the monster before glancing at the sword in his hand. Gone was the Excalibur he was used to, the primary sword that he'd wielded for the past five years and during his whole time under tutelage and as an adventurer. In its place was a weapon much larger and grander than the holy sword, longer than he was tall, a blade that simply throbbed and buckled with divine power as it was a struggle for Lyze to even hold it.
Being even larger and longer than he was, this new sword had a hilt which seemed to be the tongue of the face of a long-haired man which acted as a cross-guard. Coming out of the old man's hair were the upper torsos of three men who looked like they were supporting the actual blade itself. Coloured gold with a silver trim around the edge, there was a partition in the middle of the blade nearer to the hilt which was filled with blue energy, and seemed to be the core of the sword's power as from this little source flowed the wisps of energy that coated the blade.
Lyze was actually brought out of his anger in a comical moment as he took the time to actually feel exasperated.
"It's just becoming like a rip-off special at this point!" The boy grumbled. "I'm holding the freaking Blade of Olympus!"
The original being a weapon forged from the heavens and the earth, this version seemed to have been born from Excalibur and the infusion of a mysterious Divine Masterbolt that had been thrown at him by some mysterious assailant. Only a god could have thrown something like this because Lyze had felt the heavy, heavy amounts of concentrated Arcanum in the lightning bolt. It was now nothing short of a divine weapon.
Lyze felt that the lightning bolt had actually been intended to hit him and he'd used Excalibur to shield himself, only for it to absorb the attack and transform into something completely new. Lyze concentrated as he tried to feel around for the souls of the ancient heroes within, to see if they were still with him. But there was not so much a peep from them when he prodded, not even as much of a whisper back. It was like they had been muted...or they were gone in some sort of second-death.
And that immediately returned the anger in the boy as now he had another reason to be mad. But he did not dwell on his thoughts longer as Typhon shifted its giant arm. Now standing at 2000 feet tall, simply twitching its arm made Lyze feel like the entire landmass he was sitting on was moving. Because of the monster's immense size, it seemed to move slowly as it shifted the arm Lyze was on vertically so the boy would fall into the palm of the other hand.
Lyze let himself free fall as he took a glance at the monster's abdomen. The intestines were actually spilling out in giant ropes and the land beneath them was soaked and stained red with an ocean of blood. A gruesome sight to be sure but Lyze felt that with how much blood had been absorbed by the barren lands beneath the Beol mountains, the mountain range would soon have giant meadows growing beneath it thanks to the blood.
A passing thought as Lyze landed on Typhon's palm. He looked up as the skin on the palm began to bubble before monsters burst out. Clutching his new weapon in hand, he span on his heels as he tried to adjust his fighting style to the new size and the new weight of the blade while also trying to regulate the power spilling out of it. Forget bisecting the monsters, he absolutely vaporized the lot of them, atomising them as one slash unleashed a shockwave of divine energy which just made them into nothing.
A shadow blotted out what light was available, and Lyze looked up to see the Typhon had lifted its other hand high into the air, intending to slap its hands together and crush Lyze into a bloody stain like her were a fly. The giant hand which probably would have been able to wrap around the base of Babel tower came crashing down with a weight force of perhaps hundreds of millions of tonnes as Typhon tried to squish the boy by clapping its hands together. Lyze had lifted his hands above his head and with the godly strength he possessed now in this limited time he had, he completely stopped the giant hand, preventing himself from being crushed.
The weight did drive him to his knees though, and he struggled for a moment as his arms buckled, threatening to give way. He pushed himself to his feet and threw the hand off of him as Typhon pulled away its hand to find that Lyze had not been killed or even remotely bothered it seemed. Instead, Lyze drew his sword out and slashed out the air, sending out a shockwave of divine energy which cleaved Typhon's chest open. He then directed another towards the elbow of the the arm holding him and Typhon screamed as its entire forearm was hacked off.
Lyze rose in flight as he let the arm fall and observed the extent of the damage done by the weapon he now possessed. The entire mountain range behind them now had a large slash mark embedded into them, and because he'd used a vertical slash to cut off the arm, there was now a canyon in the ground and the storm clouds had been split apart, revealing the blue sky beyond.
Not wasting another moment, he threw one of his chain blades towards the falling arm and hooked it into one of the bone spikes sticking out. With a yank, he sent the giant limb flying right back at Typhon who didn't have time to react as its own severed arm impaled it in the throat. Using the chain as a booster, he pulled himself forwards and slammed an earth shattering punch into the arm and made the spike come out the other side of its head.
Typhon swayed about as it tried to keep consciousness with its airways compromised as Lyze landed on its forehead. Drawing the divine sword, Lyze lifted the Blade in the air as he summoned Olympian lightning from the sky to supercharge it, the sword acting like a lightning rod as it caught every bolt. With one rage filled battle-cry, Lyze drove the sword into its forehead and redirected all the energy into its skull as he tired to pulverise the brain.
Typhon released a series of horrible noises which should have been screams but were impeded by the spike stuck in its throat.
...
Lyze suddenly felt a wave of weakness come over him as he felt his power slipping away. He'd been operating on borrowed time the entire battle anyway, and this off limit state was bound to have a set duration. With no small amount of increasing anxiety on his end, Lyze felt his new powers start to slip away as his mortal self started to return, and the Blade of Olympus started to burn his hands, making him release the sword for just a second.
That was all Typhon needed as it sensed the resolve of its opponent falter and it flicked its head, throwing the boy off as Lyze began to feel lethargic while desperately trying to hold on a little bit longer so he could finish the job. Typhon watched the falling body and with its remaining arm let out a right hook that would have flattened Orario with a direct impact. It smacked right into the boy, making him feel as if his innards and his own soul had been knocked out of him as the front of his body just lit up with pain.
Lyze's body shot like a meteor across the sky, and above the glades as he felt the world spinning around him, his fiery aura flickering before dying out completely as his body was sent back to Orario. The citizens of the Labyrinth city managed to catch sight a ball of silver fire hurtling towards their city before the aura died and all they saw in its place was a small shape sailing towards the tower.
The godling's body smashed into the tower, making it shake as cracks spread throughout the structure. Gravity then took its toll as Lyze felt his body peeling out of the indent as he began plummeting downwards towards the plaza. In normal circumstances, Lyze would be alarmed and trying to get out of this predicament or at the very least prevent himself from dying somehow. But at this point, he was much too weakened to even fear death.
Typhon had drained far too much power from him when he was stunned. Had he retained all that energy, he might have been able to sustain his new form for much longer. But alas, luck was only with him so far on his path. He'd used it far too much before this point. He closed his eyes fully expecting to just collide with the stones and become a blood spatter or his superhuman body would just sink into the ground and create for him the perfect little grave in which he could just die peacefully, and put an end to this madness once and for all.
The wind blew in his ears and flicked his burnt hair about his face as he felt somehow, by some sort of rise or fall in pressure (he could not be sure), that the ground was near. He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see the ground waiting to meet him and just left it to fate to decide what to do with him. But apparently, fate had different plans to what he'd been expecting.
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(Lyze POV)
I felt a pair of large muscular arms catch a hold of me just as I expected to become a comical blood omelette. The arms didn't hold fast though, perhaps in consideration of me just in case having my fall be broken so suddenly by such strong arms would have broken my bones, not that plenty of them weren't broken already. The arms went down a little with my body before scooping me right back up as I felt my world jump for a moment before I came to rest in the grip of my rescuer.
"I have him Goddess!" I heard someone say.
I couldn't tell who they were though because my head was ringing with a massive migraine and there was a shrill ringing in my ears like an early onset of severe tinnitus. With how stressed and tired I was, I may have become old already. I was jostled for a moment before I felt the small of my back rest on the ground as my legs rested on someone's knee while a large hand cradled my head which I was pretty sure had a lot of gashes in it. I'd been bleeding from the head the whole time since the freak appeared and I wondered to myself how that hadn't killed me yet with blood loss.
"Let me see him Ottar! Hold him steady!" A woman's voice commanded, and I felt the grip of the person holding me become more secure.
Ah, Ottar. I might have guessed he'd caught me now that I felt his arms. I'd taken the care to memorize every detail of the Boaz's body in our spars, just so that I could find any holes in his guard or openings in his defence for me to exploit just so I could land a blow in. I might have deduced the answer if my head wasn't such a mess right now. And if Ottar was holding me right now, then the woman who wanted to see me would be...
Soft dainty hands poked at my face as a silky, beautiful voice that sounded like the songs of angels called out my name as the owner of said voice tried to wake me.
"Odr! Odr!" It said as one of the hands travelled down my chest, patting at the many fresh wounds and re-opened wounds. "Come on Lyze! Wake up! You cannot go dying on me now! Not after all this time! Hedin, bring a healing potion!"
"Forget it." I muttered as I opened my eyes to come face to face with the otherworldly beautiful visage of one of the very few people who knew my darkest and most well-kept secrets. "Absolute poison resistance remember Freya? The drugs in it will be negated."
"We have to do something!" She said to me, her face contorted into an expression of anguish as she looked over every one of my wounds, her hand clutching at her heart as if she felt the pain I was feeling.
Huh, that's a new dress...a modest one for her tastes...where'd the old one go?
"Just give me a moment." I said as I pushed myself off of Ottar's lap and stumbled onto my hands and knees. "Since you were so gracious to save me from death, I'm going to have to go back out there and finish the freak off some moment soon."
"Tell me you're joking Odr." Freya said in disbelief, her usual emotionless mask slipping before her Familia who had surrounded us, perhaps to keep us away from the attention of the many other people I could sense in the area. "You're out of power. You can't fight that thing anymore. Especially when its draining power from your sword!"
"How the hell do you know that?" I asked as I looked at her, bewildered before I caught sight of a magical broadcasting screen above us. Looking around, I could see several more in the plaza alone and who knew how many more scattered throughout the city. I grit my teeth, grinding them in anger. "Hermes!" I said in fury.
I swear, the next time I see him, I'm gonna rip his legs off!
I paused for a moment as I reflected on that inner thought before chuckling to myself. It was official. I was obsessed with my new namesake enough that I envisioned myself doing the same kind of violent and messed up things he did.
But taking a good look at said screen did provide me a live update on how my opponent was doing. I saw it rip its severed arm out of its throat and true to what Freya was saying, it looked like it was using the power from the sword to heal itself as it regenerated the wound in its neck. It shook its head a bit as if to dispel the pain before turning its gaze to the city and opening its mouth. Its body started glowing alight with my powers that it had stolen from me as it charged up a huge beam in its mouth.
I quickly panicked and rose to my feet wobbling as I deduced what it was trying to do. It was going to use what divine energy it had left in itself to level the city and destroy me alongside every other Familia inside. And in doing so, the Dungeon would be unsealed, leaving the monsters to flood the surface as they once did. One stone, many many birds.
"Leave me be!" I ordered as I pulled my chain blades to me which looked like they'd come along for the ride and were just laying at Ottar's feet.
"You're out of power!" Freya exclaimed as she grabbed my arm. I looked down at her, surprised to see suppressed tears in her eyes. "Please...you're going to kill yourself." She begged me as she tried to stop me from going. "Let the gods deal with it now. You've done enough."
"Any of you gods break the Pact, and the whole world is going to be plunged into the same danger." I warned her. "And besides I can't give up now Freya, especially not now."
"Why?" She asked. "Why are you risking yourself when you're barely standing?"
"Freya." I said gently, completely ignoring the small crowd around us as I put my other hand on hers. "That thing...it harvested Ais's soul. If I don't take her back now before that freak absorbs her completely, she'll be lost forever, never to return to the cycle. I can't turn back now."
A look of understanding came over her face and I felt her grip on me lessen. For a moment she hesitated as she still wanted to stop me from going before just letting go completely and nodding. An understanding settled between us and I swear to this day, it was that moment that made Freya one of the most important people to me from that day on.
I shrugged as I gripped my blades and focused on the dying embers of the Origin Flame in me, Holding on to the last of them, I invoked a skill that was one of my last resorts, and the most dangerous card to me in that moment. If I was in danger before, I was most definitely effed right now.
"{Overdraft}"
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