Chapter 310: 309 – How the Mighty Have Fallen

“ARE YOU SO FOOLISH TO THINK YOUR OWN HAND WILL DO ANY BETTER THAN THE BARBARIC THING YOU CALL A WEAPON?” he questioned, but his words were betrayed by the way he said them. There was no malice there - only a mixture of curiosity and respect, eagerness, even.

“Something tells me you’ll appreciate this,” she grinned, grabbing her right wrist with her other hand. Then, she rolled her shoulders, and twisted. With the sound of metal bending, her arm turned clockwise in an unnatural way. Again, and again, and again, she kept twisting, moving up her forearm, until her ulna and radius bones had become a double-helix spring and her hand had returned to a natural alignment.

Pulling the Butcher back out, Zelsys spun it in her hand, maneuvering her forearm to show that its horrific, twisted state had done nothing to limit its mobility, merely causing it to writhe like some skin-wrapped abomination with every movement. Even in its complete form, the tradeoff between speed and power had limited Thunderclap Sting.

The solution: Draw from elsewhere to make up the difference.

“I’ve turned my forearm into an organic spring,” she gladly explained, perhaps in part from the delirium of simultaneously coping with multiple lethal physical injuries, and the partial dissociation from reality such a feat required, given her methods of achieving it.

“By calculating the rotation it will undergo when it springs back, I can predict the point of impact and determine exactly where the beak of my blade-” she continued, pointing to Ubul’s head, exhaling a curtain of Fog as she made it contort to form a warhammer-like beak. “-will strike your metal skull. I won’t need to penetrate it at all - combined with my Thunderclap Sting technique, the force alone will be enough to pulverize whatever’s inside.”

Briefly, ever so briefly, Zelsys let go of the reins and allowed the Primordial Self to slip out, the snarling grin, the guttural cackle, the subtly different glow in her eyes that crossed over into the stare of an animal.

“Ingenious, isn’t it?”

Then, the next moment, she reigned herself back in, taking up a wide southpaw stance to take the stress off of her busted leg. She had expected the general to move in an effort to dodge, to defend, or perhaps to try interrupting her attack, but… He didn’t.

Why would he? He knew it was a fruitless endeavor. He felt that skull-masked gunwoman’s aim on him, doubtlessly waiting to skewer him yet again with a glacierglass spear ready, should he attempt to move. Behind him at five o’clock, there was that mortal swordsman, his legitimately impressive technique and lackluster physical attributes complemented by a machine-armor of Kargarian artifice and abominable elixirs that tinged his aura all sorts of unnatural shades, the radiance of Fivefold Philter only making it all the more unpleasant to look at. Even to his left, at ten o’clock or so, just out of sight, that bearded Victory Demon lurked, watching and waiting, failing utterly in concealing his own presence. Though he was able to stop his body from emitting heat, that didn’t dull the off-golden shade of his aura, like a damn walking sun.

Not least of all, off in the distance, that red tank loomed, motionless, despite the fact it could’ve shot him or charged in five times over by now. Watching. Waiting.

In short, because of his honorable nature, Ubul had allowed himself to be hopelessly outmatched.

Even if he had somehow wormed his way out of here… What was the point?

The glow of Aether burning and Fulgur arcing flashed under her skin like lightning inside storm clouds as she surged forward. It was almost the same motion as last time, yet subtly different. Enough to have thrown him off, had he tried to dodge. He didn’t. He focused and watched his demise-to-be approach, her arm unwinding counter-clockwise like a spring, leaning further into the already inhumanly fast whipping motion of this strike. Her cleaver’s beak-end struck with such force as to envelop Ubul’s entire existence in the sound of a great bell, the crystalline lattice of his brain fracturing and shattering to a million tiny pieces, and not only his brain.

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So too did the cleaver erupt into uncountable fragments when it struck his skull, its cracked-apart countenance flying apart like a tree struck by lightning, leaving behind only a jagged, dagger-length shard - the stump. The woman raised her broken weapon, the Living Storm’s empyrean power flickering inside her for a moment more before her hair fell limp against her back, and she followed suit by falling to one knee. In a single breath’s span, the armored swordsman rushed to her side, lifting her back to her feet, the man humorously short compared to her.

Ubul felt his demise swiftly approaching.

Once he ran out of essentia, that was it.

In pursuing a fraction of the strength he had once possessed, he had transformed his body into something that could not quickly recover from exhaustion. His body was no longer a reactor. It was an accumulator, a giant essentia battery.

He had no choice but to burn the last reserves he had left: His own soul.

Only… He could not find reason enough to do such a thing. Resolved though he was to fight to the last, he knew he was beaten. Even if he somehow managed to truly, permanently, irreversibly put Newman down, it wouldn’t matter. There were others right here that would put him down in turn, and Ubul wasn’t the sort to entreat every specter of death just to spite his enemy even in defeat. And so, with the last of his strength, he reshaped what was left of his body to a perfect replica of his original self, before all the mutagens, before cultivation - the body of a mere man, rendered to perfection in immortal stone.

Seconds passed, and already his grasp on it began to crumble.

Were he so inclined, had he had the will, he could’ve held on a while longer, but what was the point?

“I… AM BEATEN. MY CHOSEN SIDE… PROVEN WRONG BY THE RIGHTEOUS TRIAL OF COMBAT,” he said, looking to Zelsys.

“TELL ME, IF YOU WOULD. WHAT YOU SAID OF YOUR STRENGTH: WAS IT TRUE?”

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