Chương 88: Chapter 141: Set The Sky Ablaze

The changes were familiar. Known. Ryland's world was turning into one of Conceptual Glyphs, everything written in the eternal language of magic. One that he could tap into and change at will with merely a flick of thought. A Glyphic crown glowed with world-gouging power around his temple, more Glyphs shimmering to life to wrap around his wrists and ankles. The world cracked around his presence, ripples of power emanating from him to make the Glyphs constructing reality ripple and undulate ever so slightly.

Ryland's opponent wasn't just waiting for him to unleash all his might. Pious was already busy. Having seen that he wasn't making any headway against Ryland either, and was instead pegged back and forced to recover from one overwhelming spell after the other, he was upping the ante as well." [Thunder-struct]!" Pious yelled. His amorphous, cloudy form spread out farther, compressed mana flickering along its length like lightning as always.

But instead of being restricted to his specific form, the lightning-like mana was now lashing out, threading through the air. A few stray bolts flew in Ryland's direction, but of course, he was unaffected by them. Which seemed to be fine with Pious. The real target wasn't Ryland, after all. Instead of him, they connected with the debris blown up from the explosion when Ryland and Pious had burst out of the depths of the Crypts.

Most of it was still stuck to the [Singularity Trap] spell, so the lightning-like mana didn't have to travel far at all. They ripped into the floating debris, tearing it apart and quickly pulling the broken rocks away to clad Pious's cloudy form in rocky armour. It took only seconds. In the brief time Ryland needed to unleash his manasoul, he found that his opponent was already covered in jagged, broken rocks. Pious then proceeded to slam them all at Ryland.

And as if half a broken mountain's worth of rocks wasn't enough, the Order mage had also electrocuted everything. The whole ensemble was now coated with the same lightning-like mana he used for everything else. It all crashed in with frightful speed and power. Ryland realized momentarily that this was just a different version of that other spell of his. What was it called? [Avalanche of Storming Souls]? Something along those lines.

Just instead of hammering blows from multitudes of thunderous bolts from the blue, Ryland was being attacked with physical, lightning-wreathed mass. Thankfully, the solution was simple." [Absolute Null]," he incanted, his voice rippling across the area with the effect of several echoes playing over each other. The debris shattered. The lightning sputtered out. All of Pious's cloudy form, at least within the vicinity that Ryland had targeted with his spell, fell apart entirely, quickly dissipating to nothing.

Even the momentum they had been imparted with simply reduced to zero. Everything that Pious had flung at Ryland just fell down to the earth in a dusty, sparking rainfall. That didn't slow Pious at all. There was already another spell forming. Ryland could see it in the way the Order mage's manasoul warped and shifted. So, he put a stop to it without wasting any further time." [Immortal Maelstrom]," he cast.

Whatever Pious had been about to cast was now lost as rifts big enough to accommodate a small moon fractured across the air, both far above and far below the Order mage. The eternal storm of Realm 51 now raged right on Rhel, a ripping cyclone bigger than a mountain tearing through Pious. Real lightning made its presence felt, alongside hail shooting like ballistae bolts. In the pure chaos that Ryland had unleashed, he couldn't make out Pious's scream.

Yet he felt it in the air, with the way it warbled even at a distance of hundreds of armspans. He ignored it. His real goal was to still locate the piece of himself and wherever Pious was keeping that "heart" of a pseudo-Calamity that he was holding onto tightly. Sure, he might have unleashed the worst storm known to any living being within all the populated Realms. But that was no excuse. But the chaos wasn't the problem. It was locating where exactly upon his person that Pious was keeping what Ryland sought.

Even with the help of [Omniscience], Ryland still couldn't make out just where the pieces were. Neither his piece, nor that of the Dreadlich. It occurred to him that Pious might not necessarily have stored them at this exact location. They might not even be on this Realm, perhaps not even within this plane of existence. Ryland did his best to not sigh against the sheer number of possibilities he would probably need to check up on. The issue was time. Again. Which was ironic since he had a Soul Glyph of Time.

But temporal magic was never insane enough to simply create enough time for him out of nowhere. There were some lines, some levels of reality, that even he was incapable of tampering with. With another enormous cry, Pious managed to force himself out of the eternal storm Ryland had flung upon him.

"Your efforts are futile!" Pious cried.

"But I've said enough. It seems words will never move an obstinate fool like you."

"And yet," Ryland said, before the idiot could keep running his mouth on and on.

"You keep going and going."

"And I have finally decided to change my ways."

"Is that right?"" [Set The Sky," Pious incanted as he started ascending even higher." Ablaze]!" It was easy to tell that the Order mage was attempting something incredibly destructive. There was a tremendous shift in his manasoul, one that made his spirit spark destructively as he rose higher and higher up into the atmosphere. Moments later, he exploded. With a detonation that made even Ryland shake along with everything else, a continent-wide cloud had overtaken the heavens. Ah. So that was what he was going for.

In a heartbeat, the enormous gathering of clouds was descending, slamming downwards.

It was only another blink or two before Ryland was swallowed by the gigantic cloud. Pious seemed to think there was nowhere for Ryland to go, even though he had seen full well just how much Ryland used rifts. Surely, he had surmised that Ryland himself could travel through them. Maybe he was under a misconception that there was a limit to how far Ryland could travel. Whatever the case, the cloud proceeded to rupture as every bit of its enormity decided to turn to lightning.

If Ryland was being honest, he was actually rather impressed. Pious was making good use of his power, truly making a case for becoming Transcendent one day. Ryland was impressed enough that he even used [Omniscience] to view the destruction from farther out in the cosmos. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The sight was awe-striking.

From this massive distance, it almost felt like a quarter of the entire planet of Rhel was covered by that enormous cloud from Pious. All of which was now bursting. Ryland wasn't quite sure what sort of deleterious effect this would have on Rhel's atmosphere, but the destruction was easily visible from outer space. Of course, where Ryland's actual body was located, everything went through a detonation the likes of which most Rhellians had probably never seen. Ryland himself felt nothing of it.

Especially since he was encased in his protective barrier already. Especially when he cast another spell on top of it." [Animus Aegis]." His flaring manasoul beat back the titanic destruction, violent energy crashing against an impassable barrier. Ryland might not have felt any of the destructive power directly, but he could certainly feel the other effects. The noise rammed into his head and compressed his whole body.

Air was vapourized on the spot, creating a series of implosions where the feeling of pressure grew so hard that there was a multitude of shockwaves bursting from the location.

That he was able to even differentiate the different processes going on under that level of energy in that short a time surprised even him. Everything swam in heat when the explosions finally stopped. The endless peals of thunder had dissipated, leaving only Pious's laughter booming across the sky. Though that slowly started fading as well when he noticed that Ryland had come out entirely unscathed.

"That was a decent effort," Ryland said.

"If a little impractical and imprecise." Pious stared, the glow of his eyes slowly dimming. Now that the explosion had ended, his body was reverting to a more compressed starfish of a thundercloud.

"You're still alive…"

"I can't say the same for you." The Order mage's eyes flickered back to full power and awareness, his awe and wonder quickly replaced with wariness. He was about to act again, perhaps dodge, perhaps cast another spell. Ryland was well ahead of him. Chunks of Pious started falling off his body. He screamed as his tendrils began falling off, as his body started dissipating into sparking mist, as he lost complete control of himself. Even with his lightning-mana webs, he couldn't pull himself back together.

"What have you done?" he yelled.

"What is this?"

"I have simply excised one of the most important Glyphs on you. The Conceptual Glyph of Adhesion."" What? I don't even—""Of course you have it. Nearly all of us do. Or are you forgetting what Conceptual Glyphs are in your panicked madness?" Pious just screamed as he tried to haul his body back into its original form yet again. Ryland just shook his head. In his current form, everything in the world for Ryland was Conceptual Glyphs.

Really, his buffet of choices on what to manipulate and control would have been overwhelming had he not possessed centuries of practice on just what exactly to target. So, it was no difficult matter to locate the exact Conceptual Glyph he needed to manipulate to end this fight once and for all. Because with Pious now occupied with just trying to hold himself together, all Ryland had to do was locate the two factors allowing Pious to output the tremendous magic.

"This is broken," Pious cried. He was still trying to hold himself together.

"Futile. Annoying." Ryland simply focused on his work." [Omniscience]."

"Once I'm done recollecting myself, I will make you pay. You truly think you can get away with ignoring me like that? Oh, just you wait. Once I get myself back, I will destroy you. Argh!"

"I am not actually ignoring you," Ryland said.

"On the contrary, you occupy my thoughts even now, deplorable as that is for me."

"What?"

"The items you draw your strength from—the piece of me you've somehow managed to gather and the seed of a Calamity that you've no doubt been nurturing for years now—will both become mine."

"Ha! You and your piece can go get cursed. And you will never find where the glorious heart of my Dreadlich is!"

"Found it."" What?"" [Translocate]." Ryland held out his hand. A rift cracked open on his palm, depositing the "heart" of the Dreadlich he had lost when the battle against Pious had started. And then there was the piece of himself on his other hand.

"You… found my gallbladder?" Ryland asked. Pious just screamed as more of his form simply fell apart. That he hadn't already dissolved to nothing was surprising. Although, now that Ryland was looking closer, he found that the Order mage was actually reknitting himself, if at a much smaller scale than before because of his inability to compete with how Ryland had simply rewritten magic itself. Interesting.

Even with the two sources of power severed from him, Pious was still managing to hold a modicum of himself intact. Maybe his allusions to strength weren't entirely baseless. Nevertheless, Ryland had every intention of ending things. He didn't cast a spell. That would be too much effort for the kind of weakling he was now facing. Instead, he just cast his Soul Glyph of Sundering, attaching infinitesimally small versions of it to every iota of Pious he could see.

"No!" the Order mage screamed.

"I will not lose to one such as you! I will not die! Not before my great work can be completed. Not before I've accomplished the greatest goal of eternity! [Wound Corridor]!" Ryland sighed as Pious disappeared into an ugly rent. Then he finally ended his foe. ### Pious reappeared out of the Wound Corridor. Free. It was almost impossible to believe he was free. After that fray, after that impossible battle, he hadn't believed he'd get away. He hadn't thought he'd taste free air.

Not that Pious would ever admit it out loud. Just the thought of showing anything even akin to fear to that odious traitor made him want to hurl out all his innards. But the sensation was there. The doubt couldn't be ignored. The terror was still following him like a shadow. Pious had almost died. The thought made him freeze for a moment. But he forced himself to get going. Free. The air tasted of liberty, the sky was open, and the world was his for the taking and travelling. Nothing was beyond Pious.

Not now that he was free. Not now that he was boundless. So, he shot forward, flying across the atmosphere of Rhel as fast as a bolt of lightning. As he journeyed to his destination, memories of the last battle continuously assaulted him. He had lost it all. Everything. Curse that traitor to the depths of the lowest Realms. He had taken the Dreadlich. He had taken Pious's work from him. How had he even found the pocket Realm that Pious kept hidden from everyone? How had he located the Dreadlich's heart?

Even now, it failed to register in his mind that Ryland had simply shrugged off everything that Pious had thrown. Forget all the other spells he had used, [Set The Sky Ablaze] should have deleted that monster from existence. Pious had ended a whole civilization with it once. What was one ignorant traitor compared to that? What was this unfathomable creature he was supposed to have beaten? Maybe Pious should have listened.

Maybe he should have heeded what had happened to Valorous and been better prepared, or just simply asked for assistance. Instead, he had succumbed to arrogance and been reduced to this. A wreck. A broken mess. A defeated failure. Pious had been travelling through the sky for nearly twenty seconds when he collided with something. The impact let loose a shockwave that dissipated the few clouds around him for a few dozen leagues.

Halting, hating the pause, Pious tried to investigate what in all the Realms was going on. Why was there a magical barrier in the middle of nowhere? Who could have— He blinked. Pious stretched out one of his disintegrating tendrils and tried to push through the whitish barrier in front of him. This was… compressed air? Pious didn't understand what was going on at first. But then he looked closer and closer.

And found the Glyph of Unity impressed upon every iota of air, upon every little particle that made up the vapour forming Rhel's atmosphere. Pious jerked his head around, staring. The barrier was everywhere. Already ever-present. Hemming him in. Imprisoning him like he was in his own version of the Crypts, determined to keep him locked down and unable to escape. Just so the monster he had evaded could reach him easily.

"You!" Pious growled as reality cracked and deposited Marionys Ryland from a rift.

"Did you have him do this?" The traitor didn't answer at first. It was hard for Pious to even look at the man. No, at the Incarnation. He was far more than a man now. Far more than any mage could ever hope to be.

"I know not what you mean," Ryland eventually said. The world was responding to his magic. It was as if everything was crashing down around him. Space itself was closing in on Pious, as though answering Ryland's integral intent without even the need for magic. Well, almost closing in. The bastard was keeping Pious alive. He was… he was toying with Pious. The laugh that escaped the Order mage was a broken thing now.

"Impossible. What kind of being are you?"

"Is that not clear enough?" Pious had to admit that it was true. This was an entity for whom nothing was impossible. He sighed. Blocked all around, with no route of escape, Pious faced the greatest threat to his person, the greatest fear he had ever known, and confronted it. With a scream, he attacked Ryland since even a Wound Corridor wouldn't be enough. A Glyph flashed. Iridescent and incandescent. In the next moment, the Great Pious, a vaunted member of the eternal Flourinus Order, ceased existing.