Universe's End

Chapter 280: Rhongomyniad

Rory wouldn’t lie.

Things weren’t looking good.

Match-ups be match-ups.

Take a plant magic user, for example. Put them in a jungle, and they’d be a vicious opponent. Place them against a fire magic user, though? Not so much. Sure, given time, maybe the plant magic user would specialize and evolve, developing volcanic plant magic that could counter a fire magic user, but that would take time and practice.

Or a more applicable example, The Bird. Having faced Zoey, the Monk, the Rogue, and now even the Spear, Rory was reasonably confident the only one in that list who would have beaten the Bird handily, was oddly enough, the Rogue, his pseudo-domain skill allowing him to cut off the Bird’s connection to the twin suns, while also delivering the sort of precision lethality needed to strike the Bird down before he could regenerate.

Against everyone else? They would have had a terrible match-up against its skillset, with the only two obvious counters being Rory and the Rogue.

Except, for once, it was Rory who was on the bad side of the matchups.

It had taken Rory precisely two single exchanges of blows after her heart had begun beating like a war drum, for Rory to recognize that the woman was growing stronger the more intense her heartbeat.

Some sort of berserker-style skill?

The details almost mattered less than the reality: as time dragged on, the battle would turn in her favor. And unlike in his battle against the Bird, Rory had no way to handle the problem. Both she and the Monk had the uncanny effect of fucking with the space around them in ways that made it difficult to establish a domain; the Monk’s aura was just that cold. Meanwhile, for the Spear, her aura of inner self, or ‘Mantle’ as Rory had heard the name becoming more and more popularly used, had somehow become partially infused within her general aura, like the space surrounding her up to several feet away was somehow a ‘part’ of her just as much as her actual body.

Not to mention, the arena they fought within, while it looked similar to the Ehkorrian battleground, actually existed somewhere else, a space constructed purely for this battle alone. It wasn’t his to claim and use for domain shenanigans, as Ehkorrus itself had been during his battle with the Bird.

With the thought of a domain being thrown out the window, Rory had slowly worked his way down the list of tools available.

Nathair? Sure, it had the necessary punching power. Still, it was also too easily defended against, a direct linear shot that could be blocked or deflected as she had done prior, not to mention. Ironically, the extremely precise damage was almost too targeted. If he couldn’t put her down in one shot, her heartbeat would only take advantage of it.

Dragon’s Fall? Well, it definitely had the widescale scope to hit her with massive damage all at once. The issue was that it wasn’t exactly a fast attack, not to someone like the Spear who’d shown the ability to get the hell out of the way and was smart enough not to try something stupid like trying to hold back the meteor as his Bane had once tried, only for the second meteor to drop on his head a moment after.

Empyrion Fulmination? It was both fast and powerful, with enough ‘area of effect’ that it would have been the perfect answer.

Except the woman seemed resistant to lightning, as if she were made of rubber.

One of his newest moves, the Sidereal Sequence, was also thrown out. It would have been a perfect solution, slowly draining the life from both of them before exploding it within her, except the constant damaging effect would only be turned against him as her heartbeat began to beat into overdrive. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if he could get Sidereal Cage to land with her mantle-infused aura, or the fact that he'd need to draw a bunch of runes up on the ground.

Even straight brawling had been tested and discarded; she was, at worst, his equal in technique, her fighting style reminiscent of Earth-based Muay Thai. Except, once again, considering the elephant in the room, one needed to address her ever crescendoing heartbeat.

Of his standard arsenal, all that was left was hitting her with some good old-fashioned Oblivion energy, exploding her with a singular strike.

Yeah, good fucking idea, let’s just kill her. Real smart.

Intent tended to matter a lot with magic. It wasn’t an exact science, but if he dropped Empyrion Fulmination on someone without the intent to kill, it was as if there was a tiny grace period where he could pull back on the magic.

With Oblivion Energy, intent to not kill mattered fuck all. Oblivion Energy was the energy of erasure born of paradoxes colliding or a similar phenomenon. If anything, the paradox between the intent not to kill and the energy used would probably make it even stronger.

And so, Rory had realized something.

He was fucked.

That wasn’t a fun realization, and as such, he’d rejected that reality and searched for a new answer instead. His traditional arsenal wouldn’t be useful, so what if he went outside it?

Stigmata-infused attacks could have the firepower needed. Still, within the arena space, Rory couldn’t even touch upon the faith-based energy, even if he had decided to opt for that route.

Searching further back through his memories, there was, of course, the possibility of exploding items in his inventory, using their physical form converted into pure significance as energy, as he had done against the likes of the Blight Khan some time ago. But that would also require him to destroy a ton of shit, which he preferred not to do. Assuming it even worked.

But the idea had brought up a different memory. A memory from what he still believed was the closest he’d ever been to true death, saved not from anything he had done, but from Zoey getting him out just in the nick of time. A pack of giant evil slugs had been ready to eat him at best, lay eggs in him, and use him as a breeding ground for their young at worst. Not wanting to go down without taking a few of the evil slugs with him, he’d set up a rather grand ritual at the time, plenty of gems, bound circles, you name it, he had laid it out, with the lynch pin being taking the weapon that to this day was the closest thing he had to a ‘signature’ weapon, and burning it up.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

All of it tied together had allowed him to ever so briefly project the concept of a Spear, the truest form of the word, rather than a regular old physical manifestation of an item or weapon. Its power had been immense, given where he had been in his life at the time, it was, as if adjusted to his current strength, still probably his strongest attack to date.

Rhongomyniad.

A name ripped off from the legendary spear used by King Arthur. The problem with such an attack was that Rory had no way to ever hope to recreate those conditions as he was now; he had no spears with the shared history among himself, the user, and the weapon, to have the weight of ‘spear’ significance needed to call upon Rhongonmyniad. Raw power was also questionable, but if he aimed only to use it for a few moments, then perhaps it would be possible.

And so, realizing he couldn’t, Rory had been ready to toss the idea.

Wait… I’m an idiot.

While Rory had been fixated on the thought of needing specifically a spear with enough historical significance, that was technically flawed thinking. It was really about the significance related to the concept of the spear.

And here he was, currently in the most significant battle in this universe’s –albeit relatively young— history, against the literal Spear.

Running with that train of thought, a plan had been put into place. All the parameters and mental threads that would normally be dedicated to establishing a domain would instead be put full force into projecting a concept.

Buying time, all while understanding that time was not on his side in this sort of battle, Rory patiently wove together the blueprint of the memory of the conceptual projection within his parallel mental threads, the clock behind his back ticking down, until at last it was ready.

Having temporarily pincered the Spear between a surge of Earth Soul formed stone spikes and a bombardment of projection magic, Rory cut it off the instant the clock hit zero, and he was ready. Reaching upward, it was as if a crack in space tore open, golden light spilling free as he drew it free, a spear that burned his hand just holding it.

Holding it, Rory watched the Spear’s reaction to his spear for several moments, until her aura exploded, her heartbeat going wild.

Yeah, can't say that I’m too surprised there.

For someone called the Spear of the Precursors, witnessing even a fragment of the literal embodiment of thespear's conceptual formwas probably akin to being shown the face of Jesus.

Or so I suppose, not like I was religious.

“Ready to finish this?” Rory asked, his hand still feeling like he was holding a nuclear reactor.

The Spear was silent, her surging aura doing all the talking needed.

No point in wasting any more time.

Last time he’d used Rhongomyniad, the name of the ‘summoning magic’ more so than the name of the spear itself, which had only one identity as spear, it had been a single explosive attack, a bomb he’d lit without any hope of containing.

That was a far less experienced Rory.

Rushing the Spear, each casual swing of even a fragment of the spear’s total form carried something like seventy percent of the power a charged Nathair shot contained. Had it not been for the fact that the Spear was surging, the sight of the conceptual spear bringing out 110% of herself out of sheer inspiration, Rory could have seen the woman failing to hold up after even a few attacks.

Not that Rory was doing much better. For as powerful as the spear was, the backlash of just holding it was like someone was setting off a firework show within his body from every single twitch and movement; already, several mental threads had been partitioned off for the sole purpose of hiding away the shock and pain.

Avoiding a rush from the Spear, Rory stepped back and swung the spear around himself, as a circular wall of tornadoes rushed outward from the sheer gale force and leaking significance.

Forced away, the Spear seemed to take a moment as if preparing herself, before sprinting forward, her aura folding as closely as possible as she raced through one of the tornados, which tore itself apart as she pushed through.

Not wanting to give her a chance, Rory thrust forward with the spear as a beam of golden energy lanced forward, almost like a laser if one didn’t look closely enough. The attack was entirely mundane, no pneuma involved; the sheer significance of the trusting strike was an attack in itself, the existence of the spearin their local plane warping reality like a grown adult overriding a mere child.

The lance of golden significance barely clipped the woman as she dodged. The downside of using such a powerful weapon was that Rory could only withstand the backlash of relatively basic maneuvers. And yet, even barely being clipped, the bone-white armor shattered, the entire left side of her stomach and torso exposed, tanned caramel skin taut with powerful muscles, a glimpse into the century of battles that had shaped them.

Rory grimaced. Within his visor, blood was spilling free from him at a rather prodigious rate, evaporating as the sheer cost of using the spear greedily drank up any speck of vitality that wasn’t kept closely protected by the effects of his own internal mantle. Skin all over his body was beginning to split open, more and more of his vital energies escaping as golden significance burned him like radiation.

Thirty seconds? Maybe forty-five if I really push myself.

A tier eight wasn’t meant to harness the aspect of a true concept; hell, Rory had doubts that touching a true concept was something anything below a double-digit tier should normally hope to survive, but this was one of those battles that historians would one day argue endlessly about whether it was merely a fabricated legend or an actual historical event. This was the sort of battleground worthy enough for such a weapon to be used.

Knowing his time was nearing its end, Rory reared his arm back; the movement felt excruciatingly slow, as if he were struggling to pull his body through thick syrup, muscle fibers burning away with each movement as more and more of his body was fed into sustaining the spear’s prolonged stay in reality.

The Spear, who had been charging forward, immediately pumped the brakes, coming to a sudden halt. Whatever the case may be for where her thoughts were, or what she was currently thinking, there was no doubt that she felt the raw inevitability of what was coming. No amount of dodging would work, no amount of defending, cause and effect merely suggestions when a true concept was leveraged in the way Rory was about to.

So, rather than fight the flow, the woman wisely did the only thing she could.

Had Rory been able to see her face, he would have seen the regret and resignation as she placed the butt of her spear into the ground beneath her feet, one hand holding just beneath the spear head, the other mid-shaft. Driven by instinct more than by a well-documented intent, the Spear relinquished her own spear, a weapon she’d had for far longer and used for far more battles than any single weapon Rory had in his entire arsenal, the single most storied weapon in history at this point. As the weapon disintegrated into nothingness, it was as if a wrapper were being pulled away, revealing what appeared to be a black-and-white clone of the spear Rory held.

The barrier within the arena, maintained by the planet's literal World Spirit, shimmered, thickening until it looked like a pane of glass several feet thick. Normally, even the finishing moves of two Transcendent fighters who were only tier eight wouldn’t have been enough for Aelia to preemptively reinforce a barrier she was maintaining, but there was no mistaking the taste of a true concept.

Much less the fact that two of them had appeared.

Copying Rory’s movement, Allison leveraged her own attempt at grasping the spear, gasping as she did, the noise blocked by everything else going on. Even being clipped by the Architect’s laser-like spear thrust had done more internal damage than everything else combined, and now she was trying to maintain control over a fragment of a true concept in physical form. Had she not been literally the Spear, the attempt would have ended in instant failure.

Rory and Allison stared each other down, eyes obscured by helmets, each struggling under the conceptual weight of differing fragments of the same true concept, their spears bristling with power unmatched.

Nothing left, no final words or banter or taunts, together as one, the two launched the conceptual weapons forward, primal yells tearing free from their throats.

Before the world was awash in a primordial, cosmic light.