Capítulo 1180: Duel
The lightning bird did not screech, only the strikes of its talons and wings against the skeleton’s staff, sparks flew through the air in excess as lightning crackled upon both of their bodies. The undead and divine beast disappeared and reappeared elsewhere without stop, their every movent was fuelled by copious amounts of divine power, but it was rely with brute strength and skill that they exchanged blows.
Neither of them could use lightning against one another, as they were both basically immune to such attacks. This resulted in Faraday using his magic to cast rain after rain of steel spikes, laying waste to the sub-realm as the great bird evaded and deflected most of the attacks, constantly going for a close-quarters offensive.
The royal advisor blocked a talon strike that sought to grab him with his staff, preventing the avian limb from closing down on him. He manifested rings of steel from his staff, shackling them to the divine creature before imbuing his staff with an incredible amount of magic fuelled with divine energy, hereby turning the staff incredibly heavy as he let go of it and manifested a great, slashing the bird across the chest, managing to draw blood before it was able to turn its talon into lightning for a split second.
This simple action was costly in divine lightning as large portions were drained by Faraday, but the beast was freed, and for a few monts after it backed off, the two combatants stood still.
A drop of blood landed upon Faraday’s bony face.
“Not ichor, heh? I guess it isn’t too far-fetched to think that so non-godly divine beings could be stronger than deities…”
This confird that the bird was not a god with a clear-cut divine attribute or a need for worshippers. It was a beast that had either been born with divinity within or one that had achieved this level through sheer grit and will.
Faraday was inclined to believe the second option. The bird’s combat acuity lent itself best to a creature who had fought and struggled dearly. This would not be the case if it had been born with incredible power from the start.
Holding out his hand, the staff absorbed the still rings back into itself and flew back toward its master as it soon transford into a swordstaff. Alongside this, Faraday manifested gigantic pillars of chromatic steel high in the sky, each of them easily capable of crushing dozens of beings the sa size as the steel bird.
“If you can bleed, I can kill you. Let do you this favour, I would love to be the one to carry out your blessing… Can you speak? You probably can”
The bird stared down at Faraday, seemingly unbothered by the titanic pillars that threatened to fall. Its eyes were like those of a hawk, so rather human-like in shape, but there was nothing anthropomorphic about this creature. It stared like an animal, it moved like an animal, its mannerisms were those of an animal.
By all ans, it was just a giant, divine bird with a body of steel. An oddity, but a beast nonetheless.
The bird seed not to react at all at first, but soon, it rose tall on its talons and spread its wings, flapping them once. This singular action manifested a raging storm and caused the sound of great thunder to roll across the sub-realm.
Its eyes opened wide, flashing with lightning.
No words ca out still. It seed like the bird would rather fight than speak…
___
Loimos and Thor had manifested in a great hall akin to an arena. The seats for spectators were all empty, and despite Thor’s status as a god of lightning and storms, his divine domain was sunny and quiet.
The god’s hamr was still pointed at Loimos.
“You may possess divine energy within, but what do you know of godhood? You are now within my domain. I am at my strongest here, whilst you are suppressed, and yet… I still feel the distinct sensation of threat emanating from you. Usually, I would pull back the weakening effect of my domain, but it seems like I will need it for once”
His face remained obscured by the bear head that he wore as a hood, but his mouth twisted into a smile, revealing white, but not perfectly aligned, teeth. Not all gods believed in trying to be perfect. In fact, Thor and most of the truly great divinities knew well that perfection was not synonymous with godhood.
Those who believed so were the ignorant worshippers. The only god that was truly perfect was the one that existed beyond the worlds and whose simple thoughts were the origin of all that was, is, and will be.
“Show what you can do. We are fighting according to my standards here, aning… We are fighting like real n!”
Thor stomped the ground, clutching his hamr strongly with both hands. His presence surged to a level of oppressiveness capable of crushing cities, despite the weakening effect of the godly domain. The undead seed unbothered by the sheer power pressing down on him.
Indeed, just as Thor had said, the domain was restricting Loimos’s combat options to what Thor believed was acceptable for man to make use of. It was impressive just what a god knowledgeable about the divine way of power was capable of doing.
He had truly bent reality to his will and achieved sothing that even Thanatok Ynigós and Sonnenträger had been hard-pressed to accomplish. Naly, restrict Loimos’s arsenal.
Of course, it was one thing if soone was capable of forcing Loimos to only use his skeletal fists and feet to fight. It was another to actually win even under these conditions.
If his two greatest opponents had been able to do sothing like this, Loimos would most certainly be gone. Now, the question was simple… Could Thor fight with the sa intensity and power as those two had?
The lightning god surged forward at a surprisingly mundane pace. For so reason, Thor seed to also prefer fights where neither opponent was just zooming or teleporting around all the ti, leading to a hefty speed restriction.
Loimos dodged hamr strikes after hamr strikes. Even with restrained senses, he was quickly able to figure out that the arena served as a way to focus and magnify his divine ability to shape reality.
This arena served as the ultimate battleground for Thor to have satisfying duels. Furthermore, by also putting restrictions on himself, he allowed for his powers to go even further than normal.
In short, there were no imdiately exploitable flaws for Loimos to make use of. The skeleton would have to play along with the duel. Not that he cared, breaking the rules set by Thor would have been more efficient to achieve victory, but it did not an that it was the only way to do so. Far from it.
Being done with his analysis, which lasted way longer than usual due to the bent reality, Loimos perford a dodge, accompanied by a push of the hamr’s handle, followed by a palm strike directly to the god’s stomach.
“Ouch…” Thor was of the gods who possessed internal organs despite really having no need for them, so even though he could tell that the strike had ruptured his stomach, he did not care much.
Thor was a tall, broad man. He was about the sa height as Loimos, but very clearly much larger.
“That’s so fancy martial arts you’ve got there” his hamr was charged with lightning as he moved in to attack again. His style hovered between a simplistic, almost brutish usage of his hamr and a far more refined technique that was more akin to him wielding a staff that just happened to have a hamr head attached to one side.
There were plenty of attacks that involved the bottom of his handle, and it was with these that he was seeing the most success.
Unfortunately, every strike he landed resulted in a counterattack. Loimos wasn’t giving him any free hits. Any attack that landed was promptly returned.
One of Thor’s sweeping blows was ducked and chained into a blow to the abdon. The god pushed the undead away and brought his hamr down without delay, but with criminal smoothness, Loimos moved aside, stepped onto the hamr’s handle as it struck the ground, and elbowed Thor straight in the face.
The god laughed, reeling his hamr back and smashing it into the ground, provoking a violent tremor that montarily disrupted the skeleton’s posture, just enough to allow the living to land a heavy right to the undead’s chest, sending Loimos several steps back.
Thor’s brows furrowed slightly as he felt what it was like to actually strike the undead heavily. It felt like everything beneath the corpse’s armour was filled with so sort of muddy, goopy substance that just changed shape when t with physical trauma.
The restrictions eased a little bit.
“I think this calls for more excessive ans, wouldn’t you agree?”
He received no response.
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