As Anos pulled away from him to observe, Vahn reached up to touch his neck, a look of confusion adorning his face as he tried to make sense of what had happened. He wasn't using his Aura of Karmic Protection since it wouldn't be fair to his opponents, but Anos's imperceptibly fast attack had barely grazed him.
Undaunted by his failure, Anos extended his left hand to produce his peculiar Magic Circle before saying, "
Forcing a smile, Vahn telepathically remarked, 'I'm not sure what you just tried to do, but my body naturally repulses foreign energies, regardless of their potency.'
"So it would appear..." responded Anos, raising his planet-formed blade and pointing it upward before slicing down. Strangely, even though what followed was one of the fastest attacks he had encountered, Vahn had no trouble following its trajectory. On the other hand, he wasn't able to move so much as a Planck length before his body and pace itself were sliced in two from crown to crotch.
'Well done...' stated Vahn, his body dispersing into golden motes as he simultaneously wondered what kind of principles enabled Anos's casual-seeming, reality-splitting strike. Across from him, Anos looked confused, ostensibly not expecting his attack to be effective...
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"That was a heck of a sword slash..." remarked Vahn, setting a whiskey glass with a spherical ball of ice and a spicy, cinnamon-based alcohol on the bar separating him and a thoughtful-looking Anos.
"It was nothing special..." countered Anos, accepting the glass and taking a sip of its contents before remarking, "What I don't understand is why my first attack was ineffective. Do you possess an ability that blocks damage below a certain threshold?"
"I do," confirmed Vahn, smiling wryly as he revealed, "But I didn't utilize it during our match. I thought I could at least dodge and tank a few attacks before I was defeated, but I couldn't even process your first attack."
"I see..." muttered Anos, his red-and-black eyes narrowing slightly as he outwardly speculated, "For an attack to harm you, you need to be able to perceive and accordingly accept that you've been harmed. The Gods from my world enjoy a similar boon, but yours feels more complete and doesn't appear to originate from a place of condescension."
"Is that a compliment?" asked Vahn, preparing a glass for himself as Anos confirmed, "It is..." with a curt nod. From there, he went on to explain how the Gods of his world, particularly the God of Creation, were arrogant and exceedingly petty. Their very words shaped the world and the fates of all who heard them, forcing him to clean up their messes and cut them down time and again. As for his request, he asked only that the Pavilion remain humble and continue to connect people from across Invirtua, irrespective of factors such as social status or background. He approved of what they were doing, and so long as they didn't lose sight of the ideals that drove them to form their organization, he would not need to show them why he was called the Demon King of Tyranny...
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'Alright...I may be able to win this one...' thought Vahn, weaving between and periodically deflecting hundreds of disintegrating purple beams that curved and abruptly changed direction at sharp angles to try and encircle him from all directions.
"And here I was thinking this was going to be easy," sighed Vahn's ninth opponent, a strikingly beautiful woman with dark purple hair that framed the right side of her face, dark yellow eyes, and a curvaceous figure that was on full display in a scant, purple, fur-collared top with a long tail and tight bottoms that covered about as much as the average bikini. Her only other garments were stockings with three holes along the sides, straining to contain her thick thighs and long legs, flowing into off-white heels with three white ribbons on their tops. Notably, she also had a crimson tattoo depicting a pig's head on the left side of her neck, as well as three beauty marks under her right eye.
"Maybe I just want to show off a bit in front of a beautiful woman," joked Vahn, cracking a genuine smile as he was enjoying his battle against the beauty, Merlin, quite a bit. She was the first among A-Rank Ascendees to challenge him, so while she was able to pressure him with her functionally infinite Magic Power, he didn't feel nearly as pressured.
"Oh? Shall I be the next maiden sacrificed to the slate the Dragon God's endless hunger for beautiful women~?" hummed Merlin, standing cross-armed in the air as the purple Magic Circle she was using to fire hundreds of magical beams shifted in structure, its center changing to resemble an hourglass.
Though the world around him lost its color as a monochromatic pulse emanated from Merlin's body, Vahn's movements weren't inhibited, his brow rising as he asked, "You can stop time?"
"And you can evidently resist it," noted Merlin, uncrossing her arms and making a triangle with her hands. As she did, the Magic Circle behind her shifted, vaguely resembling the crest of House Sitri as several serpentine dragons formed of glowing water shot out of it at extreme speed.
"Hmm...I guess I can't accuse others of stealing when I do the same thing..." remarked Vahn, his hair gaining an inky black sheen and his eyes glowing violet as he extended his left hand. Merlin's multiple dragons had converged into one, but by emulating Sona's power, Vahn was able to will the nearly five-meter-wide dragon to disperse as it opened its mouth and tried to draw him into its highly pressurized gullet.
"All paths eventually converge toward the same end~" hummed Merlin, appearing behind Vahn using a form of teleportation. Then, with a dark green crystal sphere that glistened with rainbow hues floating in front of her, she brought the tips of her fingers together and chimed, "Six-Wheel Samsara Tribulation."
As Vahn wondered what effect Merlin's spell would have, the sky above him opened like a mouth, its interior filled with nebulous black and purple energy. From within, bands of bluish-white lightning began arcing toward his crown as if it were a lightning rod. The first few were easily deflected and didn't faze him in the slightest, but he was evidently receiving stacks of a debuff called Heavenly Tribulation, increasing the amount of damage he received by 1% with each strike.
"Infinity—" incanted Merlin, drawing a quick infinity symbol with her right index and middle fingers. From that moment on, the lightning relentlessly striking at Vahn's head would continue until destroyed.
'This is kind of annoying...' thought Vahn, briefly allowing the lightning to strike him directly as he unleashed a ki blast directed at the eerie tear in space. Packed within was enough power to destroy the top of a mountain, but instead of exploding as he expected it to, it traveled into the tear and continued going.
As Vahn was distracted, Merlin spread her hands and produced a pair of yellow-gold Magic Circles more than twenty meters in diameter, her eyes glistening with amusement as she chimed, "Ragnarok," in a naturally sultry tone. From the centers of the two magic circles, jagged blades of polished brown stone emerged, their surfaces inscribed with glowing golden runes as they accelerated from a snail's pace to Mach 20 in an instant.
'Laev-tan isn't going to be happy...' thought Vahn, noticing Merlin's attack and equipping his Legendary Spear to oppose it with a broad, air-tearing sweep. The blades she had produced were formed from faux orichalcum, but even without striking them directly, the spatial fluctuations produced by Vahn's attack caused them to shatter.
"Such power...you should invite me for a drink sometime. I wouldn't mind getting to know much more about you..." teased Merlin, her alluring smile broadening as she slowly raised her spread hands. As she did, the Magic Circles at her side divided, two becoming six, six becoming eighteen, and eighteen becoming fifty-four.
"Enchant Infinity. Apocalypse Rain," incanted Merlin, the size of her Magic Circles suddenly growing in size as jagged blades the size of skyscrapers shot out at extreme speeds.
'This must be the result of her becoming an Ascendee. She was nowhere near this strong in the anime...' noted Vahn, referring to the setting Merlin originated from, Nanatsu no Taizai. He hadn't completed the series, but he couldn't recall anyone demonstrating power even remotely close to what she was currently displaying.
Gripping his spear with both hands, ignoring the lightning striking the top of his head, Vahn became a veritable tempest, his attacks leaving behind intersecting trails of golden light as he tore apart Merlin's attack and tried to close in on her position. She flew backward at a comparable speed, but the distance between them steadily decreased until she made a series of hand gestures, culminating in a nebulous mass of dark purple, violet-hued energy enveloping her body.
Seeing the energy take the form of a massive cartoonish pig with violet eyes and nostrils, Vahn's curiosity was piqued. At the same time, he was determined to destroy it, his velocity more than tripling as he appeared to teleport forward, slashing at both the mass of energy and Merlin floating within.
Leaving Vahn a little confused, the energy-formed pig opened its mouth, its interior violet producing a powerful suction as it closed around him. His body felt like it had been submerged in liquid metal, but it had little effect on his attack, the pale golden blade of his Legendary Spear slicing cleanly through Merlin's skinny and tight waist as her brows rose, ostensibly from shock.
'Was she some kind of clone...?' Vahn asked himself, feeling hardly any feedback as his spear cleaved through Merlin's body, causing it to twist and disperse into neon pink mist. The energy around him appeared to be trying to dissolve him, but as the lightning from her ongoing attack struck it from the top, it rapidly lost its integrity.
Swiveling around and detecting no traces of Merlin, even with his Domain expanded to cover tens of kilometers, Vahn grimaced slightly and turned his attention to the spatial tear overhead. He had converted his body into lightning using the power of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, but he was unable to absorb the tribulatory lightning, which caused a sharp, intensifying pain to radiate across his scalp and body.
Accelerating toward the spatial tear, Vahn intended to try to annihilate or slip past it. Most spatial tears only opened in one direction, so if he could get behind it, it shouldn't be able to target him...
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Observing Vahn from afar using her crystalline sphere as a scrying orb, Merlin, sitting at a cafe table and enjoying a cup of coffee that was more sugar than beverage, outwardly mused, "Hmm...I had planned to keep my distance, but his powers are fascinating. I have met opponents who could resist my Deconstruction Spell, but never any that were impervious. Does his body naturally repel Magic...?"
As the battles projected to the spectators didn't convey what was said between participants, Merlin was unaware of the casual revelations Vahn had made to his previous opponents. If she had, she may have been able to prepare a countermeasure or two before their bout.
"Well, no matter..." hummed Merlin, closing her eyes and taking her time finishing off her coffee before setting it down, raising her gaze to the sky, and casually calling out, "Excuse me, Referee-chan, but I'd like to declare my intention to surrender. Even if I'm able to respawn, I would prefer not to experience being sliced in half for real."
Though she was somewhat surprised by Merlin's rather abrupt surrender, Tiamat did her duty and announced it to the spectators. They were just as confused, but since it was clear Vahn wouldn't be going down as easily as he had in previous matches, they concluded his durability was around the peak of A-Rank even if his official classification was B...
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