Chapter 204: Chapter 204

Chapter 167: Tear It Apart

“Does it have a name?”

“Night’s Knight’s Edge.”

“That was your best?”

“No, of course not. Who would call that their best name?”

“Then why did you call it that?”

“I didn’t. My grandson did it when he was a kid.”

“Now I feel like an arse.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not sentimental."

I was by Craftalot’s side, which was causing Nina some pain as she was blocking the bullets headed towards us while we spoke bullshit back to each other.

“Are you two done?” She couldn’t even be bothered to use her words despite the fact that we were right next to each other.

“Yep.” I nodded and held the massive sword that was stupidly heavy.

Craftalot added, “Once you activate its main ability, the arguments to allow it to float will be disabled.”

“Didn’t I already disable them?”

“You did…” He nodded, “You are absurdly strong.”

I looked at the blade, then at my target. I needed to make good use of my strike, as I was told this blade had a chance of breaking. It was a strange beast and felt in between something made to be a powerful sword and a grenade. Without using its core ability, it would likely last, but its main ability, as Craftalot called it, the finishing move, generated a large amount of energy that shattered matter in its path. As a downside, it greatly damaged itself when doing so; therefore, Craftalot said it likely didn’t have many uses left; maybe it only had one.

I had no doubt this wasn’t the only thing up his sleeve, but asking what else he was hiding wouldn’t do much in this situation. From watching him fight, he was a crafty sort, and while originally I thought he was here, as his body felt to have his soul in it, the more time I spent around it, the less confident I was. I tried to ask Espr, but they gave me the silent treatment after a laugh, which I felt made my guess at least a little correct. I think the laugh was because I should be able to figure it out, but too bad, I was still a little dumb with my ability.

“Okay, Nina, be prepared to take a step back as you need to recover your energy after this.” Nina had definitely taken the worst of it out of the three of us. I could feel the damage on her body as the attacks shocked it, and the damage from the backlash was building. She was healing herself, which only made it look worse. If she appeared exhausted and injured while healing herself, what would she be like if she couldn’t?

“Are you sure you will be capable of doing a serious blow?”

“If the wizard is correct about what this blade can do. Then yes, and if not, I will just handle it.” I couldn’t exactly criticise Craftalot for keeping this weapon hidden when it could have been used earlier. I did the same with my own abilities, though I could still be an arse to him about it.

This sword was strange, and I figured he honestly didn’t expect anyone to wield it; it was unbalanced and stupidly heavy, the worst combination. By his age, it might be something he had created years ago, but due to its weakness, he couldn’t use it but didn’t want to throw it away.

Maybe he was a little more sentimental than he was letting on.

The rain of bullets everywhere still wasn’t stopping, but I could feel that Craftalot was right; the mana within was being drained, and if we did nothing, it would turn off in about ten minutes. However, it was destroying everything it could, and it was left unattended. Perhaps it might even go boom trying to take everything else out.

Need to destroy it before it does something worse.

I waved with my backhand and dived from Nina’s bubble. “Well, see ya.”

Craftalot grabbed Nina’s shoulder a moment to stabilise her as the mana within her body drained.

Throughout the combat, so far no one else had joined us. The forces had been split across three planets and all the best combatants were still underground. The truth of the matter was those bullets hurt and were easily fatal; even if people could survive one bullet, even if they could survive ten, surviving a hundred was hard for so many. Even if they were fast, there was still the risk. They couldn’t rely on Nina to protect them, as it would just drain her dry and they would all die.

So they left it to the three people who were seemingly doing a good job. One of which was the greatest artefact creator ever, the second was one of the great healers and barrier mages, and the third was some psychotic individuals who were tearing the mech apart with their hands.

…Everyone else looks to be safe. I had been keeping an eye out on the people on the ground. Many had retreated either underground or far away and the mech division had regrouped to a different location. They couldn’t handle the massive bombardment.

People had died but thankfully some who were seriously injured had managed to be dragged away.

You just think this is going to fail.

(“ Based on the artefact in question, there is a 50% chance it explodes in your face ”)

Fuck, well, if it does, it looks like I have to do it my own way.

I flew through the hellfire bullet surprise as I crashed towards the head of the mech. Its massive arms swung to knock the fly out of the sky but with a flare burst of speed, I zipped by and shattered through the barrier around the top of the mech.

“Let’s see what this baby can do!” I ran along the top of the base as I prepared to swing the blade; the energy within it when wild and the weight quadrupled.

Mana lightning shot up from the ground and dug into my armour. The lightning slowed my body down as my armour clenched up.

If only my Starlight actually disrupted this damn thing. It was too big for my Starlight to actually break anything; I could temporarily disable some parts but I could inject into the whole thing. My armour cracked as I forcefully moved forward and stabbed the sword into the base of the cannon.

Black energy shot up as the metal around began to be sucked into the blade and then pushed out as everything started to disintegrate.

Yeah… I ain’t being around that… It felt like a different form of Nina’s melting moonlight but created a slightly different result. Perhaps I would be fine, similar to Nina’s attack but why would I take the chance?

I leapt off the side and still had to dodge all the laser fire, as that wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

Craftalot said, “Glad it worked.”

I replied, "Surprised the fifty percent chance worked?”

“It was more than sixty-five percent at least.” Google seaʀᴄh novelꞁire.net

The top of the mech slowly disintegrated and the cannon tried to fight back as its repair function went into overdrive, but it wasn’t enough. The rot continued until the whole cannon was consumed into nothing. A beautiful sight to see that thing magicked away. The matter deletion thing was very slowly going down from the top of the body but not anywhere near fast enough. By the time it would even reach a quarter down, it would’ve already been out of power.

At least the cannon is destroyed. I slid down the side of the mech and tore out a few more cannons. However, when I did, a few more popped out. The annoying twats.

However, while I was complaining and debating how to fix the problem. The entire mech’s surface began to sizzle as the outer material slowly began to melt.

Oh? I giggled with delight.

After about thirty seconds, with some major damage done, the overall shielding had also seemed to disintegrate, leaving only the, to be fair, extremely tough metal exterior to defend against attacks. However, that shielding was much less resilient to Nina’s Moon shenanigans.

“Nina, are you recovering?”

“Yes, slowly.” I could hear the exhaustion from her mind talk. “I have retreated back down into the hole it emerged from. So I’m out of sight lines for the weapons.”

“Good, do you have people supporting you?”

“Good. Your moon is doing the work now that the shielding has properly shattered.”

“Didn’t break earlier?”

“Appears to have multiple layers, some more hidden than others. There was likely another layer that was directly over the metal that repaired itself quickly. I felt it shatter and repair before when I was tearing apart the insides.”

“Any signs of that shielding coming back online to counter my magic?”

I examined the whole mech once over with my skills, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of that.

“I think we are good.”

“Bad news?” Craftalot’s voice echoed in both our minds. “Its remaining mana is covering towards the centre of its core, and based on some of the readings, it looks like it has initiated some sort of self-destruct sequence."

“For fuck’s sake.” I complained, “Got another one of those swords?”

“Do you have items you want to bring out?”

“I have a lot of useful artefacts, but most aren’t designed to deal with large things. Heck, most of the wider destruction I’ve created I only did in the last few months to prepare for this. I mostly like creating personal artefacts; most aren’t even for combat.”

“You had that sword, Divider, was it not called, that could slash through solid objects. Give it to me.”

“Fuck it. Dealing with it myself.”

“I have something that might–”

I interrupted, “Just make sure it doesn’t explode; if you cannot do that, then I am taking your head, your real head.”

In a burst of intense flames, I rocketed towards the mech and my Starlight appendages increased in size and sharpness as I poured more of my energy into them and began glowing an ominous red. Numerous additional chains and swords emerged from my back; the physical connection increased their power as their flow was connected to me.

I jumped off the arm and swung my body and directed myself to where I felt the flow of energy was moving towards the mech. Crashing into the side, I roared as I stuck my body in the machine and tore its scrap off its iron body. The energy tried to push me back, but the fact that it was still standing annoyed me far too much to care, and now it had the audacity to try and explode and take out everyone within the vicinity?

Drilling through the large structure as its body weakened due to the effect of Nina’s moonlight and the fact its own defensive capabilities weakened made my job easier.

Reaching their centre, I could feel the mana gathering but couldn’t find what would make it go boom.

Absorbing the energy was a no-go. I had learned that trying to take in energies that belonged to Existence was no longer possible. So instead, I just had to tear it apart.

More Starlight blades emerged from my body and I slashed and stabbed through everything. Creating holes in everything and shattering whatever stability it had. The mana that was moving only made this easier, as the metal was no longer reinforced by it and instead became weak as the mana was thrown away as it was trapped into the metal I carved out from the mech’s stomach.

From outside, I could see Craftalot looking down, almost worried as metal was being ejected from the mech like it was a wood chipper.

“...I need to be careful. She might actually take my head…”

“Yeah… Don’t get on her bad side.”