Chapter 575 - 575: Ice-Make: True Several Thousand Hands — Summit Enlightenment

Although August was briefly startled by the sudden, violent detonation of Noah's magical core, his combat instincts took over instantly. He waved his hand, launching a rapid-fire sequence of high-tier spells at Noah, but Noah mirrored the action, firing an intercepting barrage that neutralized the attack in mid-air.

Noah didn't stop there. He allowed his golden Ethernano to flow completely uninhibited. A colossal, blindingly bright golden aura violently flared around his body, generating a catastrophic gravitational pressure that weighed down the entire region.

The ocean directly beneath Noah was violently crushed downward, forming a massive, bowl-shaped crater in the sea. Towering tidal waves erupted from the edges of the depression, roaring outward in every direction.

Seeing Noah elevate his power to such an extreme, August halted his advance. He grounded his stance, and an equally apocalyptic, suffocating crimson aura violently erupted from his core.

BOOOOOOM!

The ocean beneath August was similarly crushed into a massive crater. The displaced water violently surged outward, crashing head-on into Noah's tidal waves. The resulting collision generated a deafening, thunderous roar that shook the very atmosphere.

The sheer pressure radiating from their respective auras warped the air, generating localized hurricanes that violently swept away the remaining pulverized ice floes, clearing the battlefield entirely.

Far in the distance, Mavis felt the terrifying atmospheric shift. Realizing that the intensity of the clash was about to skyrocket to an apocalyptic level, she immediately cast a flight spell and rapidly retreated even further into the sky. She absolutely did not want to become collateral damage in whatever was about to happen.

Looking across the churning ocean, August perfectly understood Noah's intent. Noah was preparing to unleash everything he had in a single, decisive strike.

And honestly, August completely agreed with the strategy.

While the Magic King had held the upper hand during the initial skirmishes, he had quickly realized that Noah's physical stamina and magical regeneration were utterly monstrous. If this dragged out into a prolonged war of attrition, August would eventually be at a disadvantage.

This was the most intense battle he had fought in decades. Despite the constant nourishment of his vast Ethernano reserves, he was still an eighty-eight-year-old man; his physical endurance simply wasn't what it used to be. A drawn-out, agonizing slugfest wasn't ideal. Since Noah wanted to settle this with one final, apocalyptic clash, August was more than happy to oblige.

By unspoken mutual agreement, both mages temporarily ceased their attacks, focusing entirely on continuously drawing out and compressing their magical reserves.

Their auras expanded exponentially, violently clashing in the dead center of the ocean between them, generating continuous, deafening thunderclaps.

While compressing his magic, August raised his right hand and casually traced a complex runic sequence in the air. A massive, invisible array briefly materialized over the entire battlefield before fading into the atmosphere.

Noah instantly recognized the formula. It was a high-tier Spatial Lockdown array.

Noah mentally nudged his connection to his spatial pocket. Nothing happened. The dimensional fabric had been completely sealed.

He understood exactly why August had done it. Since both of them were currently charging their ultimate, all-or-nothing attacks, the worst possible outcome would be if one of them simply used Spatial Magic to teleport out of the blast radius at the last second. By locking down the spatial coordinates, August was forcing a direct, unavoidable confrontation.

Noah couldn't help but smirk. He raised his own hand, tracing a similar sequence in the air, layering a second Spatial Lockdown directly over August's.

Just to be absolutely certain the Magic King couldn't slip away, Noah simultaneously channeled a burst of Ice-Make magic, conjuring several specialized, rune-inscribed ice pillars that plunged into the ocean, acting as physical anchors to further reinforce the dimensional seal.

Seeing Noah's blatant paranoia, August just shook his head and chuckled warmly.

As the two mages continued to compress their power, their massive external auras slowly began to retract, drawing tightly into their physical bodies.

The violent shockwaves and hurricane-force winds abruptly ceased. The churning ocean suddenly fell eerily, terrifyingly calm.

However, deep beneath the surface, marine life was frantically fleeing the area in droves. Their primal instincts screamed that an apocalyptic event was imminent.

Even Mavis, who was hovering miles away in the stratosphere, felt the suffocating, heavy pressure settling over the ocean. Frowning in deep concern, she backed up another few miles, realizing her current vantage point was still dangerously close to the blast zone.

Suddenly, Noah's eyes snapped open, blazing with intense golden light. He slammed his palms together in front of his chest and roared.

"RISE!"

RUMBLE... BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The ocean beneath Noah instantly flash-froze, violently erupting upward.

First, a colossal, roughly sculpted head of solid ice breached the surface—measuring over five hundred meters in height. The facial features were relatively simple, clearly prioritizing sheer mass over artistic detail. But the sheer, unimaginable scale of the construct made it utterly terrifying.

As the head continued to rise, a massive torso and thick limbs followed. Within seconds, a colossal, two-thousand-meter-tall Ice Golem—sculpted in the image of a massive Buddha sitting cross-legged—towered over the ocean.

But it didn't stop there.

The surrounding seawater violently rushed toward the Buddha's back, rapidly freezing and forming colossal, thousand-meter-long arms.

Ten arms. A hundred arms. A thousand arms.

The ocean level visibly dropped as millions of tons of seawater were aggressively drained to construct the spell. Layer upon layer of massive ice arms violently erupted from the Buddha's back, fanning out in a terrifying, god-like halo.

When the spell finally stabilized, the highest hands reached nearly eight kilometers into the sky, effortlessly piercing the cloud layer.

The sheer, apocalyptic mass of the construct was awe-inspiring. The wind pressure generated by its ascension had completely blown away the clouds, allowing the sunlight to strike the pristine, crystalline ice, making the colossal Buddha glow with a blinding, divine radiance.

Standing atop the Buddha's head, Noah was panting heavily, thick beads of sweat rolling down his face.

Even with his monstrous magical capacity, conjuring a construct of this magnitude was incredibly taxing.

This wasn't just a giant block of ice. Through their earlier exchanges, Noah had confirmed that August's Copy Magic could only nullify a spell if it made direct contact with his body. If Noah simply dropped a giant ice block on him, August's magic might just passively dissolve it.

To completely bypass the Magic King's nullification, Noah had meticulously engineered the entire two-thousand-meter Buddha as a singular, hyper-complex magical conduit. The interior of the ice was lined with billions of microscopic runic circuits.

Its sole function was absolute, unyielding structural integrity and kinetic force. It was the ultimate, apocalyptic Holder-Type weapon.

"This is truly magnificent," August whispered, staring up at the colossal, sky-piercing Ice Buddha in genuine awe.

He could have easily created a construct of a similar scale, but he had never actually seen one deployed in combat. The sheer, suffocating physical pressure radiating from the two-thousand-meter giant was breathtaking.

"To go to such extreme lengths to engineer a workaround for my magic... your ingenuity is peerless," August praised, nodding in profound respect.

"Haaa... Bring it on, August! Let's finish this!" Noah roared from the top of the Buddha, his battle lust burning brighter than ever as his monstrous regeneration rapidly replenished his spent Ethernano.

"Very well. I look forward to the climax of this duel," August smiled, his own eyes burning with intense anticipation.

August floated higher into the air. He extended both his hands forward, palms open.

A tiny, hyper-condensed point of dark crimson magic materialized between his palms. As he slowly pushed his hands further apart, the crimson point rapidly expanded.

One meter. Ten meters. A hundred meters.

Eventually, it swelled into a colossal, two-hundred-meter-wide sphere of ultra-dense crimson Ethernano. Multiple complex runic arrays orbited the sphere, humming with terrifying, destructive power.

Compared to the towering, multi-kilometer Ice Buddha, the two-hundred-meter sphere looked incredibly small.

But Noah didn't dare underestimate it. He could feel the suffocating, apocalyptic threat radiating from the crimson sun. If that sphere hit him directly, he would be gravely injured, if not outright vaporized.

Generating the sphere clearly took a toll on August as well; the Magic King's breathing grew slightly ragged as he finalized the spell.

"Come, Noah! Let us decide the victor!" August roared, completely abandoning his usual stoicism as he fully embraced the thrill of the battle.

"LET'S GO!" Noah roared back.

He maintained his hand seal, pumping every ounce of his active magic directly into the colossal construct beneath his feet.

The Ice Buddha groaned, slowly leaning forward. The thousands of colossal arms arrayed behind its back violently snapped into motion, pulling back into massive, hundred-meter-wide fists.

"Ice-Make: True Several Thousand Hands — Summit Enlightenment!" Noah bellowed.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Thousands of colossal ice fists violently launched forward, screaming through the air like a relentless, apocalyptic meteor shower directly toward August.

"Detonate," August commanded, shoving his palms forward.

He pumped another massive surge of Ethernano into the crimson sphere, expanding its diameter to over three hundred meters, and hurled it directly toward Noah.

Seeing the apocalyptic crimson sun approaching, Noah instantly mentally commanded a dozen of the massive ice arms to bypass the sphere and strike August directly. If he could knock out the caster, the sphere would lose its momentum.

But the moment the colossal ice fists neared August, a hyper-dense, impenetrable elemental shield materialized around the Magic King, completely enveloping him.

BANG! BANG!

The massive ice fists slammed into the shield, but it didn't even crack.

Realizing that August had perfectly fortified his position and breaking the shield would take too long, Noah immediately shifted his strategy. If he didn't stop the crimson sphere, he was going to lose.

Noah redirected the entire barrage. Thousands of colossal ice fists violently converged on the three-hundred-meter crimson sun.

KABOOOOOOOOOM!

The first wave of fists slammed into the crimson sphere. The sheer kinetic and magical impact generated a deafening explosion that rippled across dozens of miles.

Massive shockwaves violently tore through the atmosphere, whipping the ocean into a chaotic frenzy.

CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

Fist after fist slammed into the crimson sphere, violently shattering into millions of tons of pulverized ice upon impact. The shattered ice rained down upon the ocean, triggering massive tidal waves, but the crimson sphere continued to slowly, relentlessly push forward.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Noah aggressively ramped up the attack. Hundreds of fists battered the sphere every single second.

His strategy was working. Noah keenly observed that the sphere's forward momentum was drastically slowing down under the relentless kinetic bombardment. Furthermore, the overall magical density of the crimson sun was slightly diminishing as it actively burned energy to vaporize the incoming ice.

Sensing the shift in momentum, August's aura flared violently. He channeled a massive, continuous stream of crimson Ethernano directly into the sphere from behind his shield.

Empowered by the fresh influx of magic, the crimson sun stabilized, accelerating its relentless march toward the Ice Buddha once again.

Seeing the sphere picking up speed, Noah gritted his teeth and poured even more Ethernano into his construct. The thousands of arms blurred, drastically increasing their punching frequency, battering the apocalyptic sun in a desperate, earth-shattering struggle for supremacy.

~~~

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