Chapter 196: 194 – Empire of Mind

Zelsys backed off and summoned up a storm of fireflies, spreading out her arms and with a stomp bringing uncountable sand-grains into the air. Each and every one she transformed into ball lightning, conjuring forth ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand fireflies.

Unleashing them upon the titan carved a hole into the Queen head, blasting a channel through her skull, and even as she fired off a barrage of fireflies, Zelsys conjured yet more to continue her onslaught, but she was cut short. Even though she could focus on the mind-splinter controlling the giant to sense its intent, she used it only to ensure that she could dodge away in time, and that she could do so in a way clearly visible to the Primordial Self.

She wasn’t really fighting here. She was trying to illustrate a point. The futility of fighting alone.

Minutes passed and they struggled against the impossible monstrosity, and only when the Primordial Self had managed to - with great struggle - rip off one of the Composite Titan’s fingers, did it see the futility of its task. 

A single finger, and it had nearly destroyed itself, suffering dozens of dismemberments and close self-reconstructions in mere minutes. Even if it could hold itself together without issue, even if its wounds healed in seconds to the bubbling of blood and sizzling of steam, it would eventually grow tired and too weak to fight, according to the laws of its own nature as it understood them.

The Primordial Self leapt down on the ground next to Zelsys, who had constructed a defensive formation of Fulgur-imbued green glass, making it seem like she was just trying to survive, when in reality she had known the beast would come here, and she had set it up so that the shield would be guaranteed to deflect at least one of the titan’s blows.

For a few moments, both halves of Zelsys stood there, staring herself down. 

She thought of using pictographs, of literally illustrating her intentions, but abstraction was in the realm of man, it was not under the purview of instinct. That alone was proven by the total lack of a reaction to the very obvious pictograph she’d etched into the glass platform they stood on. It depicted each of them striking the titan in turn and falling, then both of them striking it at once and the titan falling; as simplified as it could conceivably be. 

The Primordial Self had looked at it, tilted its head and furrowed its brow, then looked up at Zelsys, gaze utterly devoid of any reaction or understanding. Its eyes burned only with an overwhelming desire to eliminate an immediate existential threat, a desire that Zelsys played into by nodding and grabbing her cleaver, pointing at her beast-self, then at the Composite Titan before she held her cleaver with both hands and willed it to grow.

It began to grow, and grow, and grow, taking on not the shape of a Thundersaw Beast, but maintaining its own as it sprawled out behind Zelsys into meters of length in red-hot cold-iron. Even its handle grew in size, handlebars forming in the blackstone as it did.

Sheer size and the basic flow of time were both things the Primordial Self understood, and it understood that the cleaver would take a while before it got big enough… And as an instinctive hunter, the Primordial Self also understood stalling tactics.

Zelsys poured every ounce of will she could muster into the cleaver, forcing it to grow larger and larger as her imagined armor of lightning faded and dissolved, the focus which kept it existent cannibalized. The Composite Titan’s fist connected, and her Fulgur-glass barrier erupted outward in a hailstorm of glass and lightning, so forcefully it managed to knock the gigantic limb back.

You are reading story Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL] at novel35.com

In this brief time the Primordial Self had managed to get to the beast’s three heads, ripping at its eyes so savagely it actually got the giant’s attention, in no small part because its controlling intelligence was still just a piece of Zelsys and it still shared her end goal. 

When the cleaver’s metal body wouldn’t grow any further and it still didn’t suffice, Zelsys called upon her memories of the Living Storm and her catching of a lightning bolt, exerting her will over the dream to conjure an all-consuming lightning-strike from the clear sky, holding one arm up while hefting the cleaver’s colossal mass upon the other’s shoulder.

Everything became white-burning clarity when it struck, a divine waterfall that split in her hand and flowed through her without even the tiniest of resistance, the searing fury of the heavens slithering across her body like a deadly serpent that had been tamed. It enveloped the cleaver and wrapped itself along its blade, lashing out at the sand all around, melting it, and binding the glass to the blade to grow it further still. Underneath its force, influenced by the memory of Thundercannon, two glass firing chambers were formed at the cleaver’s base, filled with great shards of green glass that lazily floated in seething, pseudo-liquid congealed lightning.

Even as Zelsys felt her own thoughtform manifestation fraying at the seams, she pushed on.

It was in these moments that the Composite Titan threw down the Primordial Self, the Queen’s head limply flailing from its neck, as did its wings, tail, and stone arms dangle from its body. The Titan reared back, bringing down its fist upon the Primordial Self, only for the beast-woman to emit a ground-splitting howl that shattered a nearby plate of sand-glass, two fragments of which she took hold of. Before the fist could impact, Zel’s beast-self leapt onto it and sprinted up the Titan’s moving arm faster than the arm itself moved, ripping and tearing flesh using two massive shards of fulgurglass as she went.

Even as the Primordial Self’s thoughtform manifestation began visibly fraying at the seams, it pushed on.

A river of emerald-green vital fluids spilled forth as the tumorous arm lost cohesion underneath the beast-self’s instinctual onslaught, melting into a slurry of Viriditas and decoherent connective tissue. 

Zelsys glanced backwards, witnessing a colossal monstrosity of cold-iron, glass, and lightning, which tapered off to a wicked point, and she knew that it was finished.

But she couldn’t lift it.

You can find story with these keywords: Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL], Read Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL], Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL] novel, Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL] book, Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL] story, Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL] full, Retribution Engine ARC 2 – [COMPLETE – SEE SYNOPSIS FOR SEQUEL] Latest Chapter