[COMPLETED]Jobless Reincarnation x COTE | A Masterpiece

ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ 6, ᴘᴀʀᴛ 4 - ᴇɴᴅɢᴀᴍᴇ: All Out War (II)

『Godsword』

Orsted had at last conjured his ultimate weapon.

With a sweeping motion, he brandished the sword in a seemingly arbitrary direction, causing a colossal fissure to cleave through the ground. He then directed the sword's tip toward Rudeus, a sardonic smirk playing across his face.

"Defend like your life depends on it. Because it does."

Saying that, Orsted's aura expanded. 

However, at the same time, a ripple ran throughout the whole battlefield. Everyone felt it, but the danger of Orsted finally taking them seriously muddled the minor detail out. 

However, Gal was the only one who could sense that he had felt it before. 

The world fractured. Orsted's aura burned as bright as the sun, the motes feeling like they were ethereal shards, lingering in the air like stars on a dark night. Golden shards sprayed across an empty-nothing limitless expanse of a thrumming twilight, refracting the everywhere-from-nowhere light like shattered mirrors.

Rudeus felt it. 

There was a sharp pang of something missing, like he had lost a limb, though he couldn't make sense of it. He was drifting, afloat or maybe falling, but where and in what, he wasn't sure.

"What was I been doing just now?"

He knew he was angry a while ago. Or that he had been angry. Now he was just...out of place. No, not hungry, he considered, his derailed train of thought leaping back to the something in which he was drifting. Just there, but what...

He squinted, his gaze fixed on the enigmatic, hazy golden light that surrounded him. Within this ethereal radiance, he discerned a spectral shadow beneath, an otherworldly terrain of fractured ground, its contours strangely recognizable. 

Driven by instinct, he inclined his head forward, attempting to descend toward the ground. However, to his disconcertment, there was no sensation of movement, and the perplexingly familiar yet unfamiliar landscape remained frustratingly distant, refusing to draw nearer.

"Get yourself together!" Badigadi's voice brought him out of the stupor as he laid on the ground, entirely limbless while the others gathered around Rudeus, trying to reattach his body with whatever healing scrolls they were left with. 

"Aghhhhh, it hurts..." Rudeus screamed, an agonising pain wrecking his whole body. He flailed, like a fish out of water, breathless. He bit on his lower lip, drawing blood from it as a dense metallic taste filled his mouth. 

"So, you finally decided to fight, Badigadi." Orsted mumbled, Godsword shimmering in his hand as the mana around them thrummed, beating like war-drums. Something ominous lingered in the air. 

They could feel it too. But chose to ignore it. 

"HAHAHA! Indeed. You might know this, but do not hold it against me. I am just being thoughtful and doing him a favour." Badigadi spoke and the shimmering, lustrous helmet appeared over his face. 

"Whatever." Orsted shrugged it off. 

His left hand thrust forward, palm outward, and a searing cone of crimson energy seared the space between them. Badigadi hastily stepped backward, vigorously hacking at the swirling mana with his armored fists. However, the unleashed blast pursued him relentlessly, contorting and undulating like a serpent as it continued to expand in size, evolving into a living torrent of unbridled energy, its insatiable appetite eager to consume him entirely.

With no solid ground to shove off of, he could fly but couldn't use any stepping technique to reposition. Still, his mobility far outstripped Orsted's, which seemed limited to spinning in place as Orsted very slowly drifted away from where they'd appeared.