Chương 140: Master of A Calamity

Pious hadn't wasted any time after dealing with that horrid woman. Even if her revelation had been nonsensical, it would be foolish not to at least double check the veracity of her statements. The Hand of Freedom involved in the matter? Preposterous. Which was why he had opened a Wound Corridor and quickly travelled through the scar in reality to the Hand's main hideout. Existing and operating within a glacier the size of a small continent didn't leave much room for imprecision and mismanagement.

It was why, as ever, the whole area was running with a terrific amount of mana, strands and streams running everywhere to allow some level of existence where nothing but frozen ice and unfortunately-caught debris should have existed. But the Hand was making do. Their leaders were making everything work. Extremes were their favourite, after all. Pious forced his form to travel through the ice, reducing his sensitivity to temperature since the sheer cold was rapidly getting annoying.

Everything, including space itself, was still frozen solid, but Pious could modify his form to make use of the tiniest gaps through the material, at a particulate level if necessary. Nothing was ever as secure as it pretended to be. Light flashed. Two presences grew to volcanic proportions.

"Pious!" one said.

"You've arrived! What a delight." The figure before him was large but slight, appearing like a watercolour painting brought to life. Their clothes were just as bright, and just as shapeless and watery.

"So I take it you two aren't involved," Pious said.

"That lying hag…" The figure's head twisted around, revealing the second person whose face was pushing out of the back of the first one's hairless skull.

"No hellos? No greetings? Must you always be so straightforward and uptight, Pious?"

"Existing in this icy prison makes me testy," Pious said.

"You know this to be true. So why do you persist in making me suffer the same punishment that you think you deserve, Gracious?"

"Come, come," Gracious said. Gracious the First. The one who was facing forward without twisting the neck unnaturally." You are the one who decided to appear before us, Pious. Should you not be blaming your own judgment for doing so?" Pious's mind grated against his impulse to bite back at the two idiots' blathering. The only reason he held himself back was because this was normal, which suggested that the First High Adjutant had been lying to him. That hag. It was just as he had expected. She was lying in truth.

"I'm going."

"What? Leaving already?" Gracious the second asked, quickly twisting her head around to look aghast at Pious. That he could make out her expression in the chaotic whirl of colours inside the glacier spoke volumes of their terrible magic.

"Won't you stay?"

"No. Never. Do you know I left him behind?" Gracious's head twisted around like a screw trying to come off. Stranger things had happened when both heads had attempted to wrest control from the other.

"Impossible!" said the First. The Second forced herself to face Pious.

"Him?" They were both continuing to blather as they always did, but Pious was no longer paying attention. There was something else that had taken up all his mental space. It was like someone had reached in and clutched the very centre of his being, the power and pressure indicating that his heart was moments away from being squeezed to pulp. Pious gasped. Then yelled out in laughter that cracked the ice all around him. Gracious was asking him what was going on, but he was hardly paying attention.

He didn't care one whit. The stupendous idiots could cry and die eternally for all he cared right that moment. For he was in contact. For he had met the traitor. For he had been presented an opportunity unlike any other, one he had known would come to pass as soon as that overwhelming magic had torn free the Second High Adjutant's soul.

"Farewell, fools," he told Gracious.

"I must now depart and claim my rightful place at the very peak of the Order." They both gasped. Stared. Clearly tried to figure out the complications. There was so much else going on in their heads, no doubt. They'd hate the fact that he was about to take centre stage. That his project had just received the boost it needed to see itself to completion far faster than any of them had anticipated. With a joyous snap of his fingers, Pious bid his last farewell and arrived in the pit of the Dreadlich.

Ryland lost control of the heart he had gotten a grip on. It wasn't truly his fault, though he felt he should have seen that coming. Of course the Calamitous object would be something that the member of the Flourinus Order would desperately want to possess. He just hadn't anticipated the layer of magic that Pious would have used.

"An Encapsulated Glyph," Ryland said, impressed.

"Yes!" Pious confirmed, clearly proud of his achievement.

"The Glyph of Absolute Belonging. Ingenious, isn't it?" Ryland nodded. It made complete sense that something that belonged to a person originally would no doubt be determined to return to the owner, if imbued with the right magic. If only Ryland had Inscribed every iota of his body with the same Glyph. Then he wouldn't have had to resort to searching through the whole cosmos. Pious had already started gathering power.

The cloudy form of him was thickening with overly condensed mana, the intensity of his magic increasing rapidly. Far, far faster than the pseudo-Calamity had done. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Oh, what a day," Pious said.

"What a pious day! Fate prays for my success in this endeavour."

"Do you mind explaining what's going on?" Ryland asked.

"Before we start? I'd like to know what exactly I'm fighting for before I annihilate you." The blunt words made Pious freeze for a moment. Then he laughed. Every time a boom erupted from him, his cloudy form flashed like he was trying to contain the lightning-like mana within him.

"You really are something else, Marionys Ryland. The same as always. Arrogant. Unshakeable from your belief. Unassailable in your obstinacy."

"I know what I am. However, I don't know what you are. Or perhaps, what you intend to be." Pious stared at him with a wide grin and lightning flickering in his eyes.

"I intend to be more than anything in existence. Isn't that what it means to be Transcendent? Is that not the peak of true power?" Ryland shook his head.

"So selfish greed it is, then?"

"Selfish greed? When one is to become Calamitously strong, one is obliged to think only of oneself!"

"Is that why you have a piece of me?" That made Pious frown even as he continued gathering strength and power. His glowing eyes clouded over like the rest of his body, and he was furiously trying to think.

"A piece of you? I have no pieces of a traitor with me! I don't need any."

"And yet, I sense it upon you, clear as daylight. You are in possession of something I seek." Pious's power was continuing to grow second by second, heartbeat by heartbeat. Half-formed souls were swirling around him in a storm, magic flickering like lightning between each one of the amorphous spirits.

"Enough of your lies!" Ryland shook his head." [Translocate]." He disappeared into a rift, appearing right on top of Pious. Or where he should have been. It seemed his gathering power was also granting him a terrific boost to his speed, one he used to propel away from Ryland with the speed of electric impulses.

"No, no," Pious said." I will be the one to draw first blood. [Avalanche of Storming Souls]." His magic gathered and flashed out with blistering speed. Honestly, Ryland admitted his own fault for getting hit. His mind was still stuck on the Dreadlich and how he had dealt with that monstrosity. He should have figured that he was facing the originator of his first enemy.

Essentially, the spell was the same as that moment when the Dreadlich had wreathed itself in a storm, before charging at Ryland with the speed, force, and fury of lightning. Except, instead of one ramming, cannoning charge, there was a storm of them. An avalanche, as the spell itself had stated. If the pseudo-Calamity's strike had been the rush of a bull, then this was a mountain flung by a titanic giant.

[Eternal Bastion] still managed to stop Ryland from actually receiving any damage, but that didn't mean he stopped the enormously powerful spell. He was sent crashing upwards, the sheer surge of power from the spell breaking apart the entire chasm and everything above it. In hardly a blink, Ryland found himself flying into free air from the force that Pious had unleashed, the storm of soulful lightning dancing across the eruption of debris. Ryland almost laughed in incredulity.

He had been punched right out of the Crypts. From its very lowest point.

"There!" Pious cried as he burst out of the explosion of debris, his cloudy form flickering with ropes of white magic. Every moment, he looked as though he was going to explode, but he reined himself in for the time being.

"You have seen nothing yet. I—"" [Singularity Trap]." Ryland had heard enough. He had also seen and experienced enough too. Since the magic was far more powerful than what he had faced from the Dreadlich, he would need to step it up a little. So, he did just that. [Singularity Trap] created a point of inescapable gravity wherever he set it to. He could perhaps have set it to a black hole, but that would be a little too disastrous for the planet he was currently on, even if he did for a very short while.

But for this purpose, it was enough. More than enough. Overpowering gravity captured everything that had exploded outwards, drawing it all straight to where Pious had burst free from the ground." Argh —" His scream was cut short when half a mountain's worth of exploded matter all coalesced upon him. In an instant, he had become a misshapen sphere of debris, shattering and crumbling as he immediately went about setting himself free. Ryland was about to cast another but then—" [Unfurl]!" Pious screeched out.

His form exploded out of the debris. Tendrils of darkness writhed out, continuously flashing with his lightning-like compressed mana. He was pulling himself free from that point, surging outwards and practically ignoring the singularity point of massive gravity. So, Ryland feinted next. His mouth moved, his fingers flexed to point at the Order mage, and even his manasoul spiked with all the intention of casting [Singularity Trap] again. But he didn't. Not really.

Foreseeing his move, Pious had already cast his counter spell." [Wound Corridor]!" Exactly what Ryland was going for." [Translocate]," he incanted." [Everlife Spectre]." They were forcing out the spells in rapid-fire fashion. Move after countermove, all happening in split seconds. In this case, as the ugly tear in reality opened for Pious to travel through, Ryland was already punching his hand into a small rift and grabbing one of the swirling, half-souls with his spectral, skeletal arm.

Through a second rift, he slammed the soul into the ugly reality that Pious had just put his first metaphorical step into, pinning the fritzing expression of magic against the "wound"." [Mana Burn]," Ryland incanted. The idea came from Pious's own power, in truth. Flickering, thunderous forms of mana surged out of Ryland's manasoul, conducted through the spirit, and touched upon the Wound Corridor.

With his Soul Glyph of Energy and a Subglyph of Repulsion as one of the main components, Ryland shocked the entire Wound Corridor, and anything touching it. This included Pious, whose whole form turned radiant as the sun as a hundred thousand lightning bolts' worth of crackling power was driven into Ryland's target. The screech from his opponent made the air itself tremble, distorting both sight and sound, but Ryland's focus was immaculate." [World Devourer]," he incanted.

Since Pious was in a vulnerable state, Ryland had decided to end things. The collapse of the Wound Corridor ensured he had no escape routes. So, when cracks larger than the broken obelisks fractured open, Ryland was more or less certain it ought to be enough. Jaws of a gargantuan maw, known to travel from Realm to Realm in order to eat mountains and moons, burst from the gigantic rifts, white, thorny, and enormous.

Like a flytrap, the jaws snapped close, the impact of the bite unleashing a shockwave that hammered into the mountain range over the Crypts, setting off multiple landslides and avalanches. And still his opponent refused to go down. The titanic maw was only closed for two blinks before it was forced open with a horrific retching sound Ryland had never heard before from the creature.

"Ha!" Pious screeched out.

"You truly thought that you had what it takes to end me. Me of all people? Have you forgotten why the Order has lasted as long as it did? Have you truly forgotten what the Flourinus Order is capable of?" Ryland didn't answer. He had forgotten nothing, of course. The real issue wasn't the Order or even the specific member of the Order that he was dealing with.

Maybe it could be argued that he was still underestimating the strength of his opponent, but Ryland knew what the real problem was here, and it wasn't that Pious was powerful. If it was such a simple issue, then he could simply overpower his opponent with a little more effort. No, it was what he possessed. For Pious still had that heart of a pseudo-Calamity he was drawing incredible power from. He still held the piece of Ryland too.

Like Dyron, he was pulling in enormous amounts of mana with which he could grant greater and greater potency to whatever magic he performed. Which made Ryland's next few goals rather clear. Two factors. Two specific issues that Ryland needed to deal with. So, taking in a quick breath, he unchained his power and let loose his manasoul.