Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 66: Simulation(II)

With the nimbleness of a cat, he fell from the skies and into the darkness, landing on a large vine.

The vine itself was thick, ridiculously so, as wide as a sidewalk, long thorns tearing out of its fibrous flesh, towering and sharp, dripping with potent poison that corroded everything it touched.

He’d landed quite a distance away from any thorn, yet merely breathing air infected by it made him dizzy, the poison corrupting the aether around him into a twisted mess he couldn’t control.

In a single second, he was already at a disadvantage.

Runes assembled across his gaze and his sense of sight sharpened, allowing him to truly lay eyes on the ball of dark vines in the depths below, and, more importantly, the corpse at its core.

It was entirely naked and featureless, with no genitalia to indicate its former gender, no hair or anything of the like.

Its skin was a dark, rotten purple, lined with emerald veins of pus as parts of its body sagged and bulged like overgrown tumors.

In its solar plexus, a ridiculously large core was embedded into its flesh; radiant gold, covered in emerald runes.

Uriel calmly analysed the creature, but suddenly, just as he landed on its face, it rippled. Its featureless visage ruptured, two eyes forming as flesh tore open to reveal a maw of sharp teeth filled with worms and maggots.

Its beady red eyes were... intelligent.

Too intelligent.

SHAH!

Uriel felt the ambient fabric of aether twist and instinctively moved to teleport, but the poison littering the air made his core lag, his spell refusing to form quickly enough.

A vine tore into his shoulder and out through his body, drawing a roar of pain as its poison invaded his inner flesh.

The pain only worsened when the vine suddenly retreated, its barbed thorns ripping muscle on the way out and painting his blood across the skies.

As if perfectly timed, Uriel’s spell activated then and there. He was teleported away, but with his mind clouded by pain, he failed to control the destination and found himself plunging through darkness, free-falling.

Perfectly aligned with a dozen vines erupting from the depths below, all aiming to end his life in an instant.

’Efficient.’ Despite the pain, Uriel immediately noted the creature’s ridiculous skill.

But he wasn’t at the end of his rope yet.

His natal aether churned and the etched rune system across his body lit up; every layer, from the first to the fifth circle, just as the spell sentry wheel manifested at his back, radiant gold.

His eyes narrowed in extreme focus, his mind emptying of all thought.

PAH!

The first vine pierced through nothing but empty air, Uriel having phased past it. As he reappeared, a cloud of cold fog bloomed outward, engulfing the scene in opaque haze.

The corpse creature below narrowed its beady eyes, noticing. Its core trembled and suddenly thousands of vines manifested, not only barbed with thorns, but entirely soaked in poison from end to end.

They pierced into the fog from all sides, ensuring that no matter where Uriel fled, he would be skewered.

But that wasn’t what happened.

[First Circle: Cool Breeze]

[Fifth Circle: Breath of Tundra]

The fogged area exploded outward, swallowing the darkness in a freezing shockwave that instantly turned every vine into rigid limbs of ice.

It was strangely beautiful, like a piece of avant-garde ice sculpture frozen in an abyss of black.

[Third Circle: Torrential Pillar]

Uriel burst from the fog, his speed amplified by the same spell he’d used during his spar with Ayah and Enoch. His calves bulged as he sprinted across the frozen network of vines, descending deeper into the darkness toward the creature.

Seeing this, a hollow, sharp scoff escaped the corpse.

"Fool."

Its voice was inhuman to the core, like a blend of screeching eagles, and the sound alone shocked Uriel.

In that moment of distraction, he was caught off guard.

The wound the creature had inflicted earlier, the tear in his shoulder, detonated. His blood surged outward and instantly crystallised.

He lost his arm.

Pain rattled him to the bone. His knees buckled, his footing faltered, and his spell shattered as he lost all grip and slipped from the vine beneath his feet.

From the jagged crystal of frozen blood, more poison flooded into his body, fast and vicious. He could feel his limbs numbing, his aether corroding.

His jaw tightened. ’Be decisive or die.’

His fourth circle activated for the first time, rows of spell circles locking into place around his head like a crown as he rapidly analysed his injury and the battlefield.

Aether burned.

A solution surfaced.

KAH!

With vicious resolve and no pity for himself, Uriel tore his entire shoulder free. His jaw clenched so hard his teeth cracked and his gums bled.

Flame erupted over the wound, cauterising it instantly, while a minor healing spell from his first circle ensured nothing remained infected.

His core rippled.

Every time he tried to use the vines as a path, they turned against him.

So he would forge his own.

WHOOOSH!

A small bubble of water formed in the air, immediately swollen by his fifth circle into a massive sphere before stretching, freezing, and solidifying into a direct path leading straight toward the writhing mass of vines.

His body bulged with force as he blurred forward, steps precise and devastating, ivory eyes burning with determination.

More vines lunged for him, but by timing his teleportation and letting his fourth circle analyse and predict every trajectory, he dodged them all, leaving behind a wake of frozen tendrils.

BANG!

He crashed into the depths, bursting through the outer mass of vines and tearing apart walls of fibrous flesh as toxic sap sprayed into the air.

With a heavy, thunderous thud, he landed within a wide clearing where the corpse lay, slumped in the distance, propped against a wall of densely woven vines that writhed like tentacles around it.

The creature tilted its head.

"Fool."