Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead-Chapter 1181: No Limits

Chapter 1181: No Limits

Lighting crashed down from the sky, pouring into the hammer before it was instantly thrown at Loimos. The undead dodged to the side, but the hammer flashed with lightning, reappearing in its owner’s grasp, allowing Thor to land a blow across the side of the skeleton’s helm.

The corpse was flung to the other side of the arena, but somehow landed on his feet despite it all.

The deity had just lessened the restrictions, having realised that they wouldn’t be going anywhere with the previous restrictions. This allowed for Thor to wield his powers more broadly and destructively, but it also loosened the restrictions on his opponent as well.

Without wasting time, Loimos condensed a small sphere of rotten black blood and clapped both palms upon it, firing a powerful stream straight at the divinity.

Thor blocked the attack with his hammer, sending the foul liquid in several directions as it crashed against a resilient surface… But instead of harmlessly landing elsewhere, the blood seemed to writhe and twist like ropes caught in a storm.

Within a moment, they surged with smaller sanguine tendrils, forming a grated sphere of sorts around the god, and like a snare trap closing around prey, the sphere clasped down around the god, binding him in place.

The bloody restraints proved resilient as Thor was unable to break free quickly, as the undead fired several more piercing drops of pungent blood. They punctured the god’s flesh but failed to come soaring out of the other side in all cases, which wasn’t much of a relief for the deity, as the drops carried a caustic effect.

Thor could feel himself melting on the inside, but he didn’t falter, managing to tear the binding apart, booming with lightning as he forcefully expelled the dark blood, his body healed at a prodigiously fast pace before he kicked off the ground.

The spot he stepped upon was left scorched.

He swung his hammer at the undead. Loimos narrowly evaded the strike. Two claws of bone sprouted from his left fist as he twisted his arm around to land a powerful swing, slashing right across Thor’s side, cutting against his ribs.

The deity frowned, but kept on the offensive. His attacks were faster than before, imbued with high amounts of lightning, less predictable as well… Thor could turn a downward swing into a wide sweep within a mere moment by using lightning and his inherent control over his weapon, but Loimos was either dodging or managing to only be struck superficially every time.

‘Something’s off…’ thought the god.

Thor went for another swing, raising one foot to stomp the ground and destabilise the skeleton, aiming to ensure that the attack would land… The god’s foot did not shake the earth. Instead, it felt more like he stepped into a puddle of mud.

He had already sunk beyond the ankle.

He had just stepped into a marsh-like goop of rot created by Loimos, and the swampy puddle burst with countless skeletal arms and putrid tendrils that held Thor in place as the undead raised his right arm.

The skeleton’s limb swelled, and the god grinned.

“Crafty bastard”

Loimos’s arm seemed to burst as he fired a cone-shaped blast of bone shrapnel directly at his adversary.

At the same instant as the attack landed, a massive bolt of lightning fell on top of Thor. The lightning was a piercing blue, overflowing with pure divine energy. A brilliant shine overtook the god’s domain, and everything dimmed down. The arena was gone, and the two combatants were in a field of wheat after the crops had already been cut down, resulting in a ground covered in a thick layer of golden wheat.

“It has been more than a millennium since I’ve gotten a good fight… The other great gods are content just sitting around or messing around inside their divine domains… You… You’re quite something!”

The restrictions had once again been eased. They were still present, simply in a different manner… The restrictions had been greatly reduced when it came to the amount of power that could be dished out, and had instead been further reinforced to prevent the usage of particular techniques that Thor deemed would make the fight less entertaining. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Since Thor’s aim was to enjoy the fight, it was to be expected that amongst the things that Loimos was barred from engaging in, including battle arts and the use of conditions, indeed, if Loimos was allowed to use those, Thor would already be dead.

All in all, anything that could allow Loimos to provoke what was essentially instantaneous death had been banned.

Thor spun his hammer above his head, conjuring lightning in the sunny sky of the great farmlands. The god’s next movement was much faster than anything he had done before. The speed at which they could go was still severely reduced, but ‘severely reduced’ did not have much meaning when talking about a great deity and the pure undead…

Wheat was flung through the air as the god struck, his facial expression one of wonder as Loimos once again managed to dodge. The skeleton’s evasive capabilities had not been that good at the start, and now, they were somehow always correct in some way.

The god was mostly managing to lend grazes, and occasional good hits that would somehow turn out to the undead’s advantage. It was like the undead were inside his head or predicting the future. This should not be possible within Thor’s domain, so there had to be something more to it…

Thor stopped his attacks for a few moments, standing a distance from Loimos. Both of them were still perfectly fresh, mostly due to the fact that they recuperated from their injuries within the blink of an eye.

The god controlled the laws of his domain to momentarily include an obligation to answer and tell the truth. He was just too curious.

“How are you able to evade my strikes so consistently?” he asked, and the undead didn’t even bother trying to resist the power of the divine domain.

Whether because he deemed it futile, or for some other reasons, nobody could know.

“I have already analysed your fighting style. Your moves are predictable to me” simply replied the skeleton.

It was merely an application of Harbinger’s Harvest. Loimos had quite literally learned every style of combat available to him. He had learned the thinking process of all of those he had consumed with his rot and beyond. He had immersed himself in memories that did not belong to him. He had learned to combine everything that he knew into one. He had learned to meld and separate everything about what he had learned.

Loimos was perfectly aware of what being every single species that had once occupied a portion of the Undead Empire was like. He knew what it was like being an innumerable number of people. He had learned, he had analysed, he understood.

He might be incapable of understanding ‘anger’ or ‘sadness’. But he knew exactly what they meant or how they came to be.

So deciphering a single combat style was of an ease that could hardly be put into words. It was akin to asking how easy it was for a heart to beat. There was no concept of ‘easy’ or ‘simplicity’ in it. A heart would beat. That was its purpose. You could question the ‘why’ or ‘how’, but there was no sense in wondering if a lung had a harder time doing its job than the liver.

Loimos hadn’t tried to comprehend the fighting. He had done so because killing Thor was his goal. As simple as that.

The god stared into the endless abyss of dark that was the inside of Loimos’s helm. Within, there was nought but a skull surrounded and filled with abject rot, but to those who stared at it for long enough… Something else began to creep up within their imagination…

Thor frowned.

“Is that so? Very well… Then I suppose it is senseless to continue this fight in such a manner”

Many more restrictions were lifted.

Thor’s domain manifested in its full force as it was fused with what was not the inherent pseudo-zone all gods acquired, but a genuine, divine zone that Thor had crafted and refined with sweat and ichor.

However, Thor did not manifest it in the traditional way. Rather than taking over an area and enacting a divine decree, he condensed it all and absorbed it within himself and his hammer, his power soaring to incredible heights.

Visible through the bear pelt that he wore, runes carved into his flesh lit up, and the god roared.

Not only was he bringing out all his in terms of divine might, but Thor had even just entered a state of berserk, a skill that was not divine in nature at all… it would appear that Thor had not been born a god and had instead once been a mortal.

Thunder rolled across the horizon as the deity launched himself at Loimos.

The undead bloated with rot, his form twisting into something else…