Chương 501: 501

Mark knew how to deal with the Lightning Spires, now that he had survived them once. He just had to get to them before Wongod appeared. Other goblins were not a worry. Literally no other person, or even goblin, should be able to survive those things at close range… Maybe Glorious Man or Nova Nexus or Aurora Valen could. Mark could, too. Wongod could only survive them because of his Enforcer's Staff and his natural strength. Even Kardi couldn't survive getting anywhere near one of those prismatic bursts.

As Mark flew in superspeed, Alacrity and Slowness turning the world to fire all around him, he reviewed some footage with Quark, who was also moving at super speed. According to Quark's calculations, every single 'spaghetti string' of crystallized prismatic mana was about 100 meters long, capable of curving in midair with a radius of 100 meters, and was about 10 meters thick. The kill zone around each 'bolt' extended to 15 meters around the actual white part.

They moved at a roughly 15x Speed modifier, which Quark was able to tell based on mana fluctuations on the lightning of the Spires compared to the actual bolts they threw, so they absolutely had some superspeed imbuements to them. They were constructs of power moving at 550-ish kilometers per hour, but without those superspeed components all that constructed power probably couldn't keep up with that 550 kph rating. They could only make a strong turn once, too, and only when they were close to their target.

So Mark needed to leave behind most of his body, stretch some of himself forward, let the bolt hit his main body, and resume the forward trip with the rest of his body. He might need to stretch himself out a few times as the targeting systems spun around and learned his tactic, but by then Mark should be able to smash through one Spire. From there, he should be able to break the next four Spires rather easily.

Might only take one broken Spire to send the whole arrangement into a cascading failure, though; whatever ritual magic Wongod was doing had to target all 5 spires, so removing one would break the like-to-like ritual. They were just solid stone, after all, pinned in place by the magical nature of the System.

The ritual that empowered the Spires was somewhere in the depths of Metrovakara, which was too much space to cover, and the ritual didn't matter—" Incoming, sir," Quark said, as he marked the location on Mark's sight. It was a dot far ahead, past the curve of the ocean but heralded by a glow on the horizon that Quark had been able to see, but Mark could not. The sky was pretty bright by now. A half second later and Mark saw the attack. It was the same kind of bolt that the Spires had shot at him before.

100-ish meters long, 10-ish meters thick, and moving at a rate of 150-ish meters per second. It curved, gently, right at Mark. Mark kept the Pillar of God in his soulhouse, leaving it there while he moved in, enacting his strategy, elongating forward, body stretching, curving, eyes still in his remainder, hearts pulsing with Adamant and Ethereal and strengthening what remained, even as his main body Unioned with Alacrity and Slowness.

And then the bolt was there, splashing away his body and Mark condensed his eyes into his forward-self, becoming himself again, ripping forward through the sky. It was painful as fuck. For a brief moment time was normal. Behind him the bolt angled into the ocean, burying itself, steam erupting from below as the bolt lost cohesion somewhere in the crust of Daihoon. It had hurt like hell to do that, but Mark already had 3 hearts and a few scattered, small brains Unioning with the necessities.

He switched out his new main body's Unions for Alacrity and Slowness, rushing forward like a few different streamers of himself, spreading out as much as his range would allow, hearts and minds and eyes flowing fast and then faster. Three more prismatic bolts curved through the sky. Mark's hearts beat fast as he danced on the edge of death, discarding bodies like lizards discarded tails.

Adamantium splashed away under prismatic light and still he curved through the sky, mirroring each curve of bright, prismatic crystalline power, chasing tails of his own. The bolts struggled to turn fast enough to catch him, and ultimately failed. Coruscating power slammed into the ocean, or passed into the sky, or skipped along the horizon and disappeared beyond sight. Mark was already past the attack. He was coming in hot. The Lightning Spires were still too far ahead to see.

Five more prismatic bolts curved across the horizon at him, but Mark dodged those, too. It was painful to get hit. It was not as much pain as those people down in the 'human district' were feeling— One of the giant bolts turned a full 180 degrees, curving at him from impossible angles. Mark let his body splash away as he reawakened in another part of himself, still moving at super speeds, hearts beating in strings of his body, brains firing in links, eyes focusing.

He watched that super-spiralling bolt suddenly lose cohesion and break apart in the sky, exploding like a firework, splashing power in every direction. The fragments were dangerous enough to scatter Mark this way and that. Mark adjusted course, heading high and then curving out of the way of another bolt. Union pulsed hard, sucking in power and expelling weakness as Mark evaded another two bolts, each of them crashing at each other and then at him.

The explosion of one bolt against another was a nuclear bomb, but not; it broke the world at speeds faster than a nuclear shockwave. Mark rippled forward, catching the shockwave, watching that wave as it quickly lost speed, suddenly becoming a 'normal' shockwave from a 'normal' bomb. The splash zone of prismatic fragments was the size of a kaiju, but that didn't really matter. The explosion looked paused, to Mark. Mark had already moved on. The Lightning Spires were there, just beyond the curve of the horizon.

100 kilometers, maybe less. Mark was still moving fast as a myriad of bolts gathered at the tip of each Spire, buzzing fireflies ready for blood, preparing to greet him properly. They were trying to gather power and overwhelm Mark with pure numbers. Quark counted 21 bolts by the time Mark got within 10 kilometers of the leftmost Spire— Something broke in the fourth spire from the left, four down the row.

The controllers had tried to hold the charge too long, and suddenly that charge was violent toward itself, the bolts crashing against each other around the tip, turning that tip of that Spire into a conflagration of superspeedy fragmented mana that rapidly attenuated, turning to sparks of almost-white lightning that sucked into all the other spires. All the other spires suddenly released their payloads, each one curving right at Mark.

Mark flowed— Mark flows with each strike as they come at him like burning white trains. A bolt spirals, cutting him to splashed bits of black. Mark comes back together in time to see four more bolts crash right where he is, so he stretches forward, hearts manifesting in black, Mark nothing more than the blood pumping between each heart, brains scattering, eyes on a dark streamer.

A conflagration of white splashes behind Mark and Mark is at the first spire, four more bolts curving and striking the white rock right beside him as he races behind it. The Spires are insulated against their own attacks. Each touch of bolt to stone makes an explosion of breaking mana that sucks into the Spires and Mark is already curving around to the other, other side. The stone does not break. The bolts do not get through. Mark wonders if he could even damage the stone. The bolts aren't damaging it at all.

But that's a loser's way of thinking. Mark is in range now, and something changes. Suddenly, the world stops moving. Mark does not stop at all, but the flow turns more thoughtful. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Mark had touched the first spire, and Mark suddenly knew that he would win any battle in this location. Speed? He had never known speed until that moment. He only thought he had.

With an almost casual spin in the air, Mark flowed as a spiral up and around the side. The Spires had speed aplenty. Everything was slightly darker now, his eyes moving too fast for his brain to catch up, but Mark adjusted himself and his body. Mark stood in the air, a spiral of himself linking up and down the first spire, watching as the prismatic bolts splashed in the air, fragments frozen in the air like boulders of starstuff scattered from a celestial volcano.

Mark reached out and touched one, his finger burning at the speed he moved, but also burning away as he actually touched the mote, his black adamantium splashing away. Mark pulled back, his finger healing to full as he drew on the power of the Spire. … Well then. Mark was moving too fast for Quark to keep up, as he turned around and surveyed the world. If Wongod was out there, then Mark could not tell.

Mark spiraled down to the base of the first spire, quick as a flick, removing himself from the splashed danger overhead, and then he took out the Pillar of God. The black Enforcer's Staff wasn't aware it was being moved until Mark grabbed it with his hand, and then it sped up to match him, suddenly flexing and unflexing, thickening and then thinning, burning the world as it moved, as it woke up. And then it moved with Mark like it was a part of him. It was almost eager. Mark was certainly eager.

Time to remove a weapon from goblin control. Mark moved himself a little bit away from the first Spire and eyed the distance to the next Spire. This one was in the ocean, and so was the next one. The third, middle one was on an island, and the final two were in the ocean beyond. The whole stretch of them was about 5 kilometers long, and each one was roughly 750 meters tall, and 100 meters wide at the base.

Mark aimed the Pillar of God at the second Spire, straight ahead in a line with the other four, and then he braced himself against this first Spire at his back. He let it rip. Pillar of God acted exactly as Aluatha had named it. The Pillar expanded and expanded, thrilled to be working again, first ripping out to a good 20 meters thick, and then the forward point of it narrowed to a hand-span, and then it blazed forward, breaking the atmosphere with its speed that it borrowed from Mark.

Pillar of God struck the first Spire in its path and crunched right through like it was a nail through white stone. The stone broke, cracking upward and splashing away from Mark, as Mark braced against the Spire at his back, almost crushed between the Spire and the Pillar. If Mark had been moving in normal time, if he would have had a normal body, then he would have been crushed. As it was, he was just squished.

He pushed forward, and the Pillar of God pushed forward even stronger— Pillar of God cracked against the middle spire and the world in that direction exploded in a conflagration of prismatic power. The Pillar screamed in absolute pain and then retracted, the top half of it burned and melted as it slipped right into Mark, vanishing into his body, into his soulhouse, declaring that it was done for now. … Unexpected, but… Oh shit.

Mark watched as the ground and the sky and the ocean and the island ahead all turned into white mana that undulated and fractured, bursting in and out. Mark got going, fast as he could, far, far away to the south, outrunning the blast of power— Another Enforcer's Staff slammed into the sky in front of Mark and all of his speed died. Behind Mark, the world was a burning white orb. In front of him, Wongod stood in the sky, furious, staff in his hands as he yelled, "You don't even know how to use any of this stuff!

You just break and break and… and you fucking flying brick!" Mark taunted, "Jokes on you! I like flying bricks!" Wongod flexed his staff, holding it at the ready, saying, "And you broke your own staff." Mark glanced at the Pillar of God in his house, sitting on the porch. It was already absorbing adamantium, rebuilding itself as Mark Unioned with Good and Bad, rapidly healing his own self. Mark spread out, preparing for the next fight as he told Wongod, "I can bring it back out if I have to, but it's good for now.

SO! WONGOD! We can do this, or you can stand aside and I'll go clean up some parts of your society I don't like. Tsk tsk tsk! I hear you're keeping humans in a new district, Wongod." Wongod narrowed his eyes from 400 meters away, saying, "I'll kill them if you approach." Mark did his best impression of a person who didn't care, shrugging as the world continued to explode behind him in a white conflagration.

He raised his voice to be heard as he said, "They're already dead, just like the people in your first 'human district', so if you stand aside and let me 'revive' these new ones, then I'll—" Wongod jerked to the side, someone speaking in his ears. Wongod didn't let Mark's Union touch him, but his displeasure was so strong on his face that there was no hiding; he did not like what he was hearing. And then Wongod glared at Mark, asking, "What will you do if I stand aside and let you take those humans home?""

And Kialo, and that staff in your hands, too, and also your left ear." Wongod scoffed, "Trying to take a trophy to some hunter's headquarters?"" You're right; that was a useless taunt. Give me your fangs instead. Both of them."

"… You impertinent… ignorant…" Wongod metaphysically expanded, the sky darkening with the Green as dream began to overlay reality.

"I'll go to Total War with all of you! Right now!" Mark spiraled hearts and brains into the air, darkening the sky in his own way as he spoke from a hundred voices, all at once, "I'm not threatening your people right now, Wongod. I'm gonna take away your toys, your fangs, Kialo wherever he is, and then I'm gonna take your humans away. You get to keep your lands, whatever goblin trees I don't burn, whatever, and this lesson: I'm gonna fuck you up, now and whenever I want, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Wongod exploded with anger, the Green sky becoming an aurora of roots and branches and one sharp black curse stuck in the middle, poisoning everything as the 'Wrong-Made God' screamed incoherent rage. Some tiny vector tried to speak to Wongod, to calm him down, but it was a distant vector trying to delay a hurricane. Wongod rumbled the sky, "Stupid human!"" Didn't you hear!" Mark rumbled back, his voice echoing through the Green-filled sky, "I'm an elf now!"