Bro, I'm not an Undead!-Chapter 1617: Breaking Away

"I, Kintar Aladaster, forge a RULE, a command for a Aigas to obey. ENLIGHTEN ME."

All of a sudden, the Genuine Divine energy burning Kintar up was consumed by some monstrous mechanism and all used up. It left in its wake... Kintar, as she had been a micro moment before, only complete with all her limbs, her beauty, her arrogance.

She looked no different than before, but Nigerra could tell that something was off.

Her eyes trembled as she looked at the Realm Source Mage. Her Trigger Racers continued pouring towards Pherdanta and some leaped towards Kintar.

Nigerra’s Secondary assault function was nearly ready, but she didn’t feel assured. The sight of Kintar now... made her throat run dry.

"What... what did you do?!" she cried.

Kintar delicately raised a hand in the air, and the thousands of Trigger Racers approaching her were forcibly stopped midair. It was as though invisible casks of ice had suddenly devoured all of them.

Nigerra ground her teeth and kicked off the air to attack, brandishing her extreme Form Using technique. She was faster and stronger than just a second ago. She believed she could kill Kintar if she simply landed a good blow.

...But her target blinked away before her attack could connect. Kintar kicked off one of the thousands of frozen Trigger Racers, then another and another, another and...

BOOOM!

A casual right jab from her dented Nigerra’s chest. A ghastly cavity opened within it and she spat a mouthful of blood... and then a crisp slap to her cheek sent her spiralling, drilling through dozens of the pathways within her Territory.

...!!!

Nigerra disregarded the agonizing pain causing her mind to spin.

There was something deeper than Kintar’s sudden, absurd physical strength.

No.

The two blows she’d taken just now...

They didn’t just violate her body. They also chipped chunks away off of her Aspiring Immortal Shadow as well!

For the first time since becoming an accomplished Beyond the Veil Stager, Nigerra felt the presence of this obscure space that often shielded her. She felt careen and crack under overwhelming force.

It was...

’Impossible...’ she thought, and turned mad. Her bloodshot eyes glared upwards.

"Impossible! Not by the likes of you!" she cried and aimed to use the extensive range afforded by her Aspiring Immortal Shadow to reach Kintar despite the distance. "I will wring you out of this power you’re so smug about, wench!"

She used her Eyes of Moving and reached into Kintar’s body. She would move, no, expel everything out of her. She would wring her out of this newfound strength she had discovered – a power that could effortlessly contend with Divines!

"Give it a good hard try. I’m right here." Kintar was suddenly standing on Nigerra’s broken chest, forcing her further and further down through runways, through the dense space of her Territory. "Take your best shot."

...!!! 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Nigerra could hardly believe the cold, daring look in Kintar’s eye.

She attacked. She used her Eyes of Moving as best as she could.

She defined movement as absurdly as she could.

...But nothing happened. While her eyes bled profusely, Kintar looked down at her with the same grace as someone watching paper burn.

Nigerra withered. "What... did you do?"

Kintar smirked. Finally.

What had she done?

Indeed, she had accepted a truth that she had never thought she’d be forced to, but what else?

Well, her arrogance had not disappeared. She refused a future where she was ever matched by the likes of the Stark Troops, even if a single iota of respect was budding for them within her.

She had begun by simply... producing Genuine Divine energy without needing a vermillion core. Indeed, the process was simple. One just needed to disassemble themselves and use the raw energy produced as fuel.

All species on Aigas were created using Genuine Divine energy (and not Amras, since it wasn’t malleable enough to create things). The formula for that wasn’t too hard to grasp for Kintar or anyone who had the ability to regenerate or replicate.

In general, there were many types of cloning and replication abilities on Aigas, but none of them were capable of reproducing an exact, genuine copy of the original. You could see the limitations of the copies in a lack of power, or stringent time limits or a general lack of perfect substance. Even Kintar was limited by such things, hence why all the clones she made couldn’t be permanent bodies.

As a matter of fact, this conundrum concerned Reality as a whole. Genuinely replicating oneself was something even the Primeval Deities struggled with. Only powers on the level of the Existential Parallels had such capabilities.

Yet... while genuine replication was mostly impossible, perfect reassembly was a very feasible idea.

To match Nigerra in strength temporarily, Kintar had begun to disassemble herself and using the resulting Genuine Divine energy to boost her body. Then, she had freely allowed herself to unravel, releasing all the Genuine Divine energy the Deities had used to create her in order to forge a Rule.

It was a RULE that allowed her to understand how the Deities created the species on Aigas – soul and body – and attached them to their chosen power system: Classes, Stages, and mana.

This knowledge, Kintar’s Absolute Magics, her Class – True Myth Mage – and the hard lessons she’d learned from the masked man and Nigerra, allowed her to do the impossible.

She turned herself into a being completely stripped of the limitations of Aigas’ power system!

She stood above it and its machinations.

All of them were ineffective against her.

Territories, Aspiring Immortal Shadows, skills, Rules, Creeds, mana.

Kintar recreated the perfect version of herself sustained only by knowledge and Magecraft.

She was Infinitesimal Division, Fiction’s Summit and all other affinities and magic types she’d mastered.

"Do you really want to know what I did?" Kintar said to an ashen Nigerra. She chuckled. "Sorry, I might be willing to entertain useful scrubs now, but you’re not one of them."

...!!!

The two finally landed on one of the pathways without busting it apart. Kintar crouched and dapped a finger at Nigerra’s forehead. Some funky effect threaded through the long-faced woman, making her tremble. A cold, electric jolt filtered through her. It thrummed within her arms and legs and torso.

Suddenly... her strength began pouring away. She rapidly turned weak. She felt increasingly feeble by the microsecond, so much so that by the time a full second passed, she could hardly fathom the idea of lifting a pebble.

Nigerra began breathing hard. Her vision blurred. She didn’t even have it in her to be shocked. She knew exactly what had happened with a mere touch from Kintar.

The former Realm Source Mage...had shattered her progress in the Stages of progression.

At that moment, Nigerra wasn’t even at the level of a Foundation Stager!

All the hatred pooled to her eyes as she stabbed Kintar with a raw look. It was meaningless, but she dared bare her fangs anyway.

"You... Have you any idea how hard it was... how many I had to kill to obtain that power?" Her voice was soft, but sharp whispers were a thing. "Why is it you taking it all away from me?"

Kintar gave a chittering laugh. She laughed so hard, it quickly became questionable if there was anything that funny in what Nigerra had said. Her eyes turned into mischievous crescents.

"I would have wanted it to be all me. But sadly," she said, and pointed upward, "I’m sharing the spotlight with her."

...!!!

Like clockwork, a rolling, cutting presence rattled the entire Territory. It was lethal, sharpened bloodlust given freedom.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!

By the time the sound of steel leaving a ring in the air came to every ear, Godspeed Highway had been slashed through and busted apart in a single move.