Chương 47: CHAPTER 46 – Errors and Attempts

The gemmed cylinders slid into the earth, plunging directly into the sea. Grayson fixed his gaze on Maliard for a moment before smiling"If that boy had not saved you, he would be standing where you are now. The death of one of you was inevitable…" He took a step forward, pointing his finger directly at him.

"I would have liked to take you out to convince Lance, but it was an error not to account for his emotions in the calculation. I should have foreseen it, given that he helped something like me." Maliard moved, stepping forward as well, wrapped in the smoke emanating from his gauntlet.

"Hey…" He raised his finger to the sky, pointing directly above the scientist's head. Grayson stared at him in confusion, stepping back. The air grew colder and stale, as though carrying a grim omen.

"Your technique has collapsed…" Maliard smiled, vanishing from his sight. Grayson turned sharply, but not quickly enough to prevent the enormous iron blade from driving into his abdomen." He has been monitoring the Dome this entire time?!" His thoughts lost their value almost immediately as a second blow struck him, directly at the temple. His brain flooded with blood, and his fingers began to tremble." The temporal lobe? He wants to cut off my regeneration?"

Before he could react, the back of his skull was destroyed by an explosion the size of a marble. Blood began flowing from his head as his vision and his body slowly collapsed.

"Instantaneous regeneration is genuinely extraordinary for an Änderung, but it carries a single flaw." Maliard reappeared in front of him, his arm wrapped in a thick layer of rock and iron fused into a dense incandescent mass. He pointed at the skull with his gauntlet, tracing a circle.

"It flows like every other instinct of our body. By destroying the posterior and temporal regions, it is disrupted for a brief window of time." A few drops detached from the mass on his arm, hissing against the ground.

"It won't kill, but it's more than a simple hindrance." Grayson managed to rise with difficulty, trembling and drenched in sweat.

"Just before that last blow… He altered the gravity around the explosion to compress it. He is still evolving." The scientist tore the lance from his chest and dropped it to the ground. The wounds were already beginning to close, but Maliard was faster for the second time. Grayson's arm was completely fractured by an invisible force, flattened as though caught in a press. Before he could free himself, a jet of magma crossed the space between his abdomen and chest left by the blade.

"Your tissues will burn, and the vapour from your fluids will cause your capillaries to rupture…" Maliard appeared at his back, pointing his index finger directly at his head.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it! Who in the devil is this man? A demon!? Grayson's mind raced through every possibility. His body was slowly being eroded by the extreme temperatures, and the blood draining from him had already begun to turn into a boiling mass.

"If he cannot turn, he cannot crush me with his gravity. The next blow will be the end of him!" A minute point of magma channelled onto his finger. A tear ran down his face, evaporating almost instantly.

"This is for Lance!" The incandescent dart flew through the air with a hiss, impacting directly with the back of his neck. It exploded into a mass of luminous crimson drops and sparks, scattering around the scientist. A shattered expression crossed Maliard's face: eyes wide, fingers frozen.

"I am beginning to understand even more…" The mass was expelled from Grayson's body, now completely regenerated. The drops around him began to flow above his head, dispersing a moment later. He pointed his hand at Maliard and closed it." Shift." Maliard's body flew into what remained of the rubble, passing through it with force. The impact against the rock was extremely violent, reducing his leg to a contorted mass.

"Are we serious now?!" He smiled, rising quickly. He moved Compulsion in front of him as though tracing a wake. The darts of light stopped just short of his face." Stornieren…" The light disintegrated, followed by a black vapour. Grayson appeared through the smoke, gripping another blinding blade between his hands.

"You are going to die. Are you aware of that?" The scientist's gaze was severe, flat, far from the excitement he had shown before. The light danced between both their hands, coiling around their bodies like vines.

"Whether you are a god or a demon does not concern me…" A violent eruption of smoke and black light enveloped his gauntlet as he rose. Maliard's face was impassive, covered in scratches.

"This island will be your grave." A smile flashed for a brief instant across his face before being eclipsed by an enormous eruption of fire and embers. The vast column of lava and smoke rose into the sky, illuminating the desolate zone. A light cleaved through the flames, cutting down the earth below.

"As long as I alter the gravitational centre of the air around me, no flame can touch me!" The scientist smiled, brushing sparks from his body. A violent jet of water crashed against his barrier and dispersed immediately.

"I told you it was useless." He transformed that same mass of water into a shard of light, piercing through the smoke.

"Certainly. If we were talking only about ranged strikes, you would have the advantage…" A voice called to him from behind, seizing him by the neck. A vibration passed through all the surrounding air.

"Unfortunately, my ability… Is far more irrational." Grayson and Maliard's gazes crossed before both were passed through by a tremendously sharp gust of air, honed like a razor. Not even an instant to focus, and his face was struck by the gauntlet. Cheekbones, jaw, and chin were completely fractured as the scientist rolled across the ground. Maliard returned to the earth, taking hold of the air around him as though it were water. All the air around him became liquid, condensing around him like extremely thin slabs.

"I will see to dismember you until your regeneration runs dry." He smiled, pointing his finger at the scientist. Grayson stood, pressing a hand to the severed flesh on his abdomen. The earth beneath his feet opened, and his shoulder began to detach from his body. He stared in bewilderment at the blood flowing to the ground in a fountain of spurts." Those slabs are pressurised air?" A second blade severed part of his leg, bringing him to his knees.

Maliard took another step forward, pointing his index finger at his head.

"It ends here, Grayson Dirac…" A final slab condensed before his face, but just as it began to cleave through the rock, it shattered just short of him. The wounds regenerated almost instantly as Grayson rose from the ground." Ideal …" A cubic form materialised before him, the size of his palm. A smooth, bluish mass, wrapped in a halo of white and black numbers. Maliard stared at it in bewilderment, then felt a viscous nodule in his throat. Into his abdomen had sunk a cylinder the same colour as the cube.

"An ideal shape composed of an imaginary material…" The scientist smiled, driving the form even deeper into his body. A second cylinder appeared at his back, pressing him between the two. A mass of flames appeared on Maliard's arm, striking the form with violence, to no effect.

"Not even a scratch?!" Maliard murmured, spitting mucus and blood. Dirac smiled, tearing off his coat. His horns grew slightly longer and more luminous.

"A perfect form can only be produced on paper. In reality, it is impossible." He slid his fingers along the smooth surface of the cylinder, fixing his gaze on Maliard.

"That is precisely why you cannot destroy it!" His arm became a black, lustrous mass. Everything in the vicinity was swept away as he struck Maliard squarely in the chest. The agent flew directly toward the mountains, crashing into a cloud of smoke.

"I am slowing the project down too much. I need to finish this here." He extended his hand toward the dust cloud raised over what remained of the mountain. A sudden flash pierced his palm, carrying two fingers with it.

"STILL ALIVE?!" The scientist roared with fury, swinging his arm before him. Everything collapsed, crashing to the ground with sufficient violence to crack the earth. A second flash tore away his shoulder, shattering behind him in an eruption of light and glass shards. Behind him, Maliard began charging one final bolt. The bluish gleam channelled into his fingers, preparing to fire.

"Wretched problem!" Grayson leapt at him, shattering the rock and rising into the air. The bolt fired from Maliard's hand with a hiss, igniting the dust around them both." ORIGIN!!" Another gleam, this one white as snow, illuminated the desolate plain. The impact between the two was bright enough to light up the entire sea, as though dawn had suddenly broken. When the darkness fell again, Maliard found he had lost part of his side. Grayson's blow had surpassed the bolt.

The scientist caught his breath from the rage, pressing a hand to the bare flesh on his arm.

"Have you run out of aces?" He smiled, advancing toward him. Something fell from Maliard's arm, catching the scientist's attention. His body had returned to completely normal.

"And with that, we are at four…" Maliard sneered, wrapping himself in a thick membrane of black smoke. His shadow began to devour the faint moonlight." Those cylinders are your weapon?" He asked, lifting an enormous mass of debris into the air like spears. Maliard smiled, wrapping his arms in black and white gleams. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Calling it a safety measure would be more accurate…" He took a step toward him, covering his arm in flames and magma, his green eye beginning to flash. Grayson held his gaze, illuminated by the gleam of his horns.

"Do you hate me for what I am doing?" He asked, lowering his hand.

"The emotions I feel toward you are identical to those of a judge toward a criminal. Something more intrinsic and less personal." Maliard answered, pointing his hand at him. Grayson laughed and kept laughing until the air around them was saturated with it.

"Then I am not the only one playing a part here!" He exclaimed at full voice, shattering the rocks in the air"What do you mean?" Maliard fixed him with a stern look, clenching his fists.

"You, too, like me, are far from manifesting your authentic self. Within me, I hear dozens of voices, but mine is the most distant." He answered, staring at his hand covered in blood and earth.

"You and I? So then, who in the devil am I speaking with?! A psychopath or a murderer?!" He shouted, slamming his foot into the ground. The earth cracked all the way to the scientist, unmoved.

"I do not know. At present, I am only dealing with numbers and calculations. You may consider me a god or a demon. The difference is a matter of perspective." He answered, raising a finger. A mass of numbers concentrated into a black sphere.

"Tell me your name…" Maliard studied him with scepticism and coldness, but decided to answer.

"Maliard Turner…" Dirac's face broke into a smile, growing still paler and more drawn.

"Maliard Turner, is it? Thank you for spending this night with me." The sphere began orbiting him like a fly, accelerating steadily. The two fixed each other one last time before resuming the fight." Dome …" The sphere expanded like a violent shockwave, striking everything within range. Maliard launched himself forward, leaving behind an incandescent trail of molten rock. In the underground passages of the island, the vegetation was growing thin.

The man and the young woman were both contending with exhaustion, without ever loosening their grip on their weapons. A tremor brought down another piece of ground, raising a cloud of dust directly between them.

"Whatever is happening up on the surface must be quite the spectacle…" Roman smiled, watching her as he drove his blade into the ground. The plants nearby lost their colour, but did not wither. Jeanne stared at him in silence, letting the vibrations in the golden metal of her maul speak for her.

"I wonder whether those two are still alive…" Her grip on the hammer grew considerably tighter, as did the grimace of fury on her face.

"Perhaps they are already dead? Perhaps I should have let you go to their funeral?" He smiled, stopping Jeanne's violent blow from decapitating him. The golden maul was straining against the thin disc of bones and shadowed skulls that had appeared from his shoulder.

"Predictable." He smiled, sparing a glance at her sharp face, wrapped in a halo of rage and hatred. A tendril struck her directly in the side, followed by another blow, this time to the abdomen. Jeanne struck the rubble that had fallen from the ceiling, hitting her head. Roman walked toward her, noticing the soreness in his own leg. He studied the girl before him, then smiled.

"You really are built like concrete, you accursed wretch…" He took another step, preparing to raise the blade directly toward her. The shadow on his shoulder mimicked the gesture.

"Stay there…" She whispered, gripping the hammer hard in her right hand despite the blood on her face. Roman stared at her in confusion, pointing the blade at her throat.

"Last words? It would be cruel not to ask for the final words of such a dear little demon." A crash at his back caught his attention, making him turn sharply. An enormous boulder collided with his shadow, shaking him. Behind him, Jeanne sprang upright, rotating her entire body along with the maul. Tied to one of the fragments in the air, a thin, whitish thread.

"She is actually still on her feet?!" Roman whispered those words just before feeling his bones shattered by Jeanne's violent blow. The tendrils bound themselves together to cushion the impact, but it was not enough. His body crashed brutally against the wall, sliding down it as he spat blood.

"Die…" In a thread of voice, Jeanne resumed climbing the stairs to deliver the finishing blow. Roman smiled, pointing a finger at her. The ground beneath her feet fractured, and an enormous shadow erupted from it, composed of hundreds of smaller bodies." He still has this much energy?!" Jeanne pushed herself off with the hammer, rising into the air. The colossus tried to seize her, managing only to graze the flames she was emanating.

"That girl is not stupid. Whether by instinct or design, she understands how to use her environment to turn the fight around. There is still one problem, however…" Roman struck the ground with his foot, raising a thick wall of skeletons and tendrils. A moment later, a flash of liquid lightning burned across its surface, Roman's smile emerging through the cracks." She knows I am trying to regenerate using the pseudo-plants in the plaza, but in doing so, she is distracting herself…"

The colossus finally seized the girl, crushing her between its hands and slamming her into the ground. Her body bounced off the concrete before being buried under the rubble. The shadow retreated, vanishing into Roman's back. He found himself fatigued, with strange sprouts across his fingers. He shifted his gaze toward the rubble and smiled.

"To be safe, I will destroy it with another creation of Dush. I have no desire to see her again." He drove his blade into one of the cracks in the ground. A series of vines tightened around the heavy block, slowly fracturing it. The rock cracked, sending several pieces tumbling down. A moment before the block could collapse entirely, the vines snapped with a violent crack. Roman felt as though his own arm had been shattered, enough to send several drops of sweat running down his face.

"She cannot be alive…" He murmured, with a faint tremor in his words. The block rose slowly, uncovering the figure hidden beneath. Jeanne's suit had been torn, exposing her arms. Her face was covered in thick paint, along with the rest of her clothing. She smiled, narrowing her eyes against a faint bluish gleam." Grijs…" Blades of liquid iron began launching from her body in a dance of ferocious stingers. Roman hurled himself to the side, avoiding the spike poised to pierce his forehead.

All the remaining darts curved toward him, giving chase across the plaza.

"They are maintaining liquid properties now?" He turned, deflecting one with a shadow. A hiss at his back forced his attention forward again. One of the lances was driving directly at him from the opposite direction.

"She wanted to surround me?!" He smiled, catching the blade with the shadow on his shoulder. The creature gripped it between its tentacles, pinning it with the axe.

"Caught you…" Jeanne smiled, liquefying her lances. All the liquid slid across the floor and around Roman. Its colour shifted rapidly to a bluish hue. Roman's figure disappeared in a violent eruption of bolts and sparks of electricity. Everything in the plaza lit up with the blue gleam of electrical discharges, and the smell of smoke spread through the hall. Jeanne reclaimed her hammer, launching herself into the cloud of dust and gas, smiling at the sight of Roman covered in burns.

Their weapons met in the air, dispersing the haze. Tendrils erupted from the ground, giving Roman a footing. The sinuousness of his slashes overwhelmed Jeanne's hammer, opening a gap. The man's blade passed through her abdomen, and he began rotating it the moment he realised he was grazing her organs. The girl vomited a dense stream of blood, flecked with whitish clumps. Before the liquid could touch him, Roman lacerated her arm and threw her to the ground.

Spectral vines closed around her arm, hurling the foil directly through her leg.

"Can we finish this? I am not an exorcist or a hunter…" He complained, pulling the blade from his own flesh. His pinkish blood spread across both their garments as Jeanne began to lose colour.

"I will be quick…" He smiled with a shade of gentleness, giving a signal with his hand. A shadow disentangled itself in the air, stopping directly above her. The edge of his axe was viscous, clad in skulls and bones. His fingers snapped, and the shadow lurched downward, crashing onto her. The impact sent a gust of air through the room, lit by faint lights and flames unable to consume the vegetation.

"Had you been more forthright, perhaps things would have gone differently." He regenerated his wounds using the plants at his feet, which finally lost their vitality. Roman moved to turn away when he heard a faint creak from behind him. He turned sharply, halted by the sight of his blade beginning to fracture. Jeanne's tongue was coated in a greyish substance. With force, she pushed the axe to the side and snapped upright.

In an instant, the girl bit into the shadow, severing it in two, under Roman's stunned stare." So she truly is a monster." Jeanne rose to her feet, wiping the blood and the sticky remains of the shadow from her lips. The wounds on her abdomen and legs had already been covered by the paint, which was slowly taking on a metallic grey colour.

"These things have a revolting taste. I genuinely cannot understand how Noel ever managed to eat one." She delicately slid her thumb across the last fragment of tendril remaining on her face. A ribbon of paint expanded from her hand, catching the hammer from the ground. It returned to her with a violent thud.

"I was mistaken…" Roman smiled, summoning two more creatures to his shoulders. One carrying an enormous two-pronged pitchfork, dressed in a torn robe and frayed suspenders; the other a tangle of skulls and long, contorted bones, covered in thorns.

"You still have much more to give me!" He smiled, seizing his blade firmly and wrapping it again with tendrils. Jeanne took the hammer in a single hand, lifting it above herself.

"I cannot sense it that well, but his energy and his body are not yet at their limit…" She gripped the shaft with force, drawing it behind her head.

"Can I beat him?" A smile appeared on her face. Her eyes began to colour slowly with a red gleam.

"Of course you can, Jeanne!" She launched herself at him, causing the ground at their feet to collapse.