My sense of time compressed to the extreme, until a mere instant felt like an eternity. This wasn’t a physical force like heat or pressure. It was a massive bundle of light—the very concept of a 'Star' compressed into a singular point. The light of the Holy Sword roared ferociously as it surged forward to erase my very existence. Faced with that overwhelming entity, every sense and instinct within me screamed a singular conclusion: *Run! That is the power coming to obliterate you!*
Without a moment's hesitation, I detonated the Authority of the storm beneath my feet.
“O Father of Storms, Ruler of the Heavens! Guide this body with your wild breath!”
The Authority of Tāwhirimātea erupted at my heels. Caught in a powerful updraft, flinging my body to the side was the extent of what I could manage. It was a paper-thin margin. The River of Stars that grazed my cheek obliterated the hill behind me without leaving a trace. As if a portion of the world's painting had been rubbed away with an eraser, the lush grass, soil, and rocks that had existed there vanished as if torn from the very pages of causality. Cold sweat poured down my spine like a waterfall.
“Alice, Alessandro! Get as far away from here as possible, now!”
Snapped back to reality by my shout, the two moved immediately. They knew better than anyone that a Knight interfering in a battle of Kings was a path to self-destruction.
Once I confirmed their safety, I faced the God of Steel once more. His green eyes were still burning with a rage that had completely eclipsed his reason.
“King Arthur. I understand your anger... but do you have no intention of talking?”
“Talking?!”
He cut me off with a scoff.
“I have nothing to say to an interloper like you!”
He swung Excalibur once again. Dozens of starlight threads converged from every direction—heaven and earth alike—becoming a cage of light intended to imprison and consume me. I responded with an armor of storms, but it was shredded like wet paper. Several strands of light grazed my arms and legs.
“Ugh...!”
It wasn't the pain of being cut. It was a fundamental sense of loss, as if parts of my existence were being 'erased,' that pierced my entire body.
Blood splattered; my body wavered. This man had zero intention of speaking. He was simply a mass of calamity seized by a divine wrath, seeking to destroy everything in his sight.
...In that case, meeting him not as King to King, but as Godslayer to God, is only proper etiquette.
I swallowed the agony of my wounds and forced my stumbling body upright.
“Fine. I’ll give you exactly what you want, King Arthur!”
I unleashed my full reserves of magic power while chanting the Incantation to push Tāwhirimātea’s strength to its absolute limit.
"Hear my voice, O Firmament! Let your breath become a blade, and your tears the lightning that strikes my foes! I command the storm to manifest here and now!"
A violent gale began to howl around me. The sky didn't merely cover itself in black clouds; it was dyed a sickly crimson like diseased veins, and the earth was rent apart by blades of compressed air. The peaceful southern sky of Britain transformed into a landscape of the apocalypse in an instant.
I ascended into the sky, riding the storm. Hundreds, thousands of lightning bolts writhed like snakes within the black clouds, locking onto King Arthur. Simultaneously, my eyes began to glow with an eerie, reptilian light.
“O Goddess of Darkness, Mother who bestows the curse of the crag! With your serpentine eyes, imprison all that lives within the silence of stone!”
“Foolish sorcery!”
The man was a monster. Even amidst the storm, King Arthur stood firm without a hint of wavering. His Excalibur swung as if in a dance. Every strike of black lightning descending from the heavens was shredded before it could even reach him by a swordsmanship that had reached the Divine Domain. He dismantled each one perfectly, like a master craftsman shearing away unnecessary material.
Within that chaos, my Petrifying Evil Eye finally met his gaze. But the moment the curse of petrification should have ensnared King Arthur, my intuition was brutally proven wrong.
“Before the light of the Holy Sword, all magecraft is nullified!”
Following his roar, a holy light erupting from Excalibur enveloped his entire being. My curse of petrification shattered helplessly the moment it touched that shroud of light, vanishing like mist before the morning sun.
“What...!”
I clicked my tongue at the absurd sight.
Recognizing that a direct assault wouldn't work, I changed my approach. I immediately revised the strategy, using Tāwhirimātea’s Authority to generate a dense fog in the space around me, distorting the linear path of the light.
“O Atmosphere, hear my command and distort. Deploy a labyrinth of mist here where even light loses its way!”
In an instant, an alien labyrinth of fog unfolded between Arthur and me—a place where even light seemed to drown and lose its bearings.
“Useless tricks!”
King Arthur swung Excalibur, but his starlight was merely sucked into the fog and dispersed, failing to reach its mark.
“If you can't see, you can't cut!”
Concealing my presence within the mist, I dove into his blind spot. However, even within the blinding fog, he pinpointed my location with terrifying accuracy.
“That’s enough hiding!”
With Arthur's rage-filled shout, Excalibur spat out a fierce light without even aiming. Sundering the fog, a slashing wave of obliteration surged right before my eyes to finish me!
I couldn't dodge it. But I could stop it!
I stared directly at the fiercely charging starlight. My eyes turned a deep, cold gray that seemed capable of inhaling all light in an instant.
“I proclaim to the place where my gaze rests, and to all domains reached by my will. Let all that lives and breathes meet their eternal rest within the Garden of Stone.”
In a radius of several meters around me, space itself was dyed gray, its very texture transforming. It became the 'Garden of Stone,' an absolute domain of Authority governed by my will.
CRUNCH!
An unbelievable sight unfolded. The slashing wave of Excalibur's light, which was about to swallow me, saw its momentum die abruptly the moment it entered my domain, as if it had slammed into an invisible wall. Cracks spider-webbed across the surface of the once-fierce starlight; it discolored into ash and lost its vitality. Finally, just before touching my body, it shattered into stone dust and scattered helplessly onto the ground.
I looked down at him with gray eyes and smirked at his confounded expression.
“...You...!”
King Arthur let out a voice mixed with bewilderment and rage for the first time. It was the shock of a God witnessing his absolute power being broken within the domain of petrification.
However, as both a magnificent monarch and a seasoned God of War, he immediately analyzed the power his enemy had woven like a net.
“Ho, a rather interesting talent. A domain that imposes the law of Stasis around yourself, is it?”
Arthur’s eyes soon regained their composure. In them, the light of a warrior who had found a powerful rival replaced simple anger.
“But a King does not play in the garden of another!”
Instead of stabbing Excalibur into the earth, he raised it high toward the heavens. Then, what erupted from the sword was not a slash, but pure light itself. A holy radiance, scorching like the sun, began to coat the entirety of my Garden of Stone.
SCREEEEEEEEE!
A screeching friction, felt in the soul rather than the ears, rang out. My gray world of 'Stasis' and his golden world of 'Purification' clashed at the boundaries of our domains, pushing against each other. My domain was slowly being eroded by his divine light, and golden cracks began to appear in the gray territory.
“Guh...!”
I gritted my teeth and poured all my magic power into the Authority to maintain the domain. But he did not miss this opening.
“You are full of openings!”
With my movements pinned down by the pressure of his light, King Arthur took a step toward the gold-stained boundary of my domain. The moment his foot touched my gray world—
SHATTER!
A sound like breaking glass echoed. The surface of his divine armor was momentarily stained gray, and his movements slowed, but he pushed forward, suppressing the curse with his divine will. One step, then another. My domain screamed in rejection of him, but he trampled that refusal with a King’s resolve and charged at me!
I was forced to abandon the domain and used my remaining strength to trigger a storm, blasting myself backward. But it was already too late. His sword strike, one step ahead of me, surged forward.
Squelch—!
The moment his blade reached me, defense was meaningless. The Authority protecting me through the Garden of Stone was torn apart, and my flesh was helpless. A horrific sensation tore across my chest, from my collarbone to my side. It wasn't just being cut. It was the sensation of my existence—of my very qualification as a King—being negated by that sword.
“Cough...!”
I spat out blood and plummeted to the ground. From the wound, alongside the blood, parts of my Authority were scattering into particles of light. I couldn't stand. The wound from Excalibur was shaking the very source of my power.
Kneeling, I realized something. He was overwhelmingly stronger than any God or Devil King I had fought until now.
Even the battle with Salvatore Doni felt like mere child's play compared to this calamity. A premonition of defeat was etched into my bones. It was a sensation I was feeling for the first time since I killed a god and became a King. Gasping for air, I looked up at him. The God of Steel stood there, still noble and without a single wound.
It was a perfect, total defeat.
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