Bro, I'm not an Undead!-Chapter 1472: Subjugating A Deity (9)

The compromising of their Broader Existences meant that Corrupted Deities weren't sound of mind. In most cases, they became instinctive creatures whose actions were dictated heavily by what had corrupted them in the first place. In fewer cases, the Corrupted Deities would become hinged on a singular purpose – quite queer to all but the Deity themselves – that they pursued with insane passion. But in the pursuit of this purpose, they behaved like mindless drones still, taking the least effective path to achieve the goal.

But there was an even rarer case observed from other Corrupted Deities. It was when they operated on what many would call muscle memory. They would remember their habits before corruption and whatever powers they acquired would be utilised with cunning and tact to trap and skills. That was to say, only in combat would they exhibit any kind of intelligence.

Nunax fell in this category.

As she battled, she didn't see herself facing an enemy seeking to enslave her. Instead, she saw someone she could use to exercise the fullness of her light-based abilities against, nothing more, nothing less. There was no greater goal that drove her.

This one fact emphasised just how brilliant Skullius' feats against the Corrupted Deity were….and would be. After all, he was still fighting a competent Deity.

His ingenuity and skill began when he conjured two rings of Ju`wtte. One, he swiftly threw below him and the other, he threw at the incoming Deity of the Seventy-Seven Moons.

The Corrupted Deity saw the attack coming, but she was moving too fast to dodge it or properly counter. After all, she didn't have the slightest clue what a simple ring of the odd energy bubbling from Skullius was supposed to do to her.

Believing herself to be greater than anything the ring could spawn while she was wreathed in the scarlet-gold light, she pushed on.

That… was a big mistake.

The ring of Ju`wtte expanded in less than an instant and bound Nunax like a merigold rope.

And then it vanished…or rather, it was activated.

All of Nunax's momentum was stolen right then. She came to a complete stop, frozen.

Ju`wtte had a number of uses, as designed by the Warmoth. It was a little like [Just Light] and [Evil Darkness] in a sense. It could bind targets – living and non-living. But of course, it wouldn't have been possible for a simple stroke of Ju`wtte from the future Hybrid to instantly overpower Nunax in her current state.

Skullius had known, of course.

…And thus, he had assigned a Fundamental Barter on the ring of Ju`wtte, empowering its binding properties for a single second and on just Nunax. (A restriction on the number of targets, and the usage of the target ability were required for Fundamental Barter, after all.)

That one second to Skullius was like an eternity.

With a soft smile. He made a U-turn, made an arc, avoiding the still pursuing arrow and streaked towards the immobilised Deity. He cocked his arm back as he approached, and Ju`wtte lathered his fist in a great wad of power that dyed the Fated Reef in a jarring merigold.

'Where to strike…' the future Hybrid considered, but only for an insignificant morsel of time. 'It doesn't matter.'

His fist disappeared the instant he shoved it towards the target.

There were a plethora of factors that decided how fatal the one punch was.

The least of all was the fact Future Skullius had not abandoned the use of Maximum Catalyst's Reversion on types of energy and concepts. In hand-to-hand combat, he employed it on the space between himself and the target before impact, inverting the state of the space hurrying to flee from the force of his blow. The result was a sharp suction that drew his targets to the blow, in some cases breaking down his target's defenses before he could touch them.

But there was more.

Future Skullius had also not abandoned the <Weight> property of his mana, and had continued to groom it past the limits his younger self had currently reached.

Where the younger Skullius was able to take the <Weight> property to measly measures of a billion… his future counterpart could no longer define how to measure the weight he could now impose on a single target. His mastery over mana was greater than that of his younger self and the amount of mana he possessed could not even be defined by the guidance field.

But indeed, there was more.

When using Ju`wtte for physical impacts. Two types of damage applied.

Crush and Shock damage.

The former resulted from the sparks of Ju`wtte that surrounded the target and exploded viciously the instant Skullius hit them. The latter was an aftereffect of these explosions that caused intense disorientation, almost like Uyuniya's Mastered Void Gate aspect.

But the potency of these abilities in future Skullius' hands were not the same as they were in younger Skullius' hands. They were at a level far beyond what a common Divine could fathom. A single application of Shock damage could obliterate a Rich world like Aigas without much resistance.

…And as such, the combination of these three factors – plus Skullius' immense speed – was devastating enough to blow off Nunax's upper physical body. It conflagrated, turning as brilliant as a star in a microsecond and then thinning to something finer than atoms.

Now only her soul remained, indistinguishable from her body… still bound by the effects of the Ju`wtte ring Skullius had used… still being bombarded by the great flashes of Ju`wtte exploding incessantly – Shock damage!

The Corrupted Deity was sent streaking down like a comet. If the impact that flared from the blow had been released on Aigas, every scrap of land and water would have been eroded away until the Under could be seen.

Nunax's suffering was not yet at its end, unfortunately.

She met something as she streaked down.

There was a second ring of Ju`wtte that Skullius had thrown before.

It activated immediately after he struck Nunax, infecting the surrounding space and making it… elastic.

The merigold Ju`wtte indeed had many purposes, some the younger Skullius had not explored yet. One of these was the ability to change the properties of any concept that came into contact with the Ju`wtte.

The Hybrid Warmoth had used it a few times during his battle with his evil self, turning Festos' rising Nitros as he attempted to use Majestic Territory Expulsion, into pure light. He also turned Jiggorrhax's scales into rocks in that battle using this ability.

(A/N: Refer to Ch.1208.)

Now, Future Skullius had used this ability, empowered by Fundamental Barter, to turn a small portion of the space in the Fated Reef, elastic.

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…And Nunax struck against this elastic space and was propelled back where she had come, back into the clutches of the Prisoner of the….