Chapter 899: Environmental Changes
Chapter 899: Environmental Changes
Asher found himself within the deepest part of what seemed to be a pool of boiling lava. He hadn’t even felt the environment change. One moment, he was standing among buildings; the next, he was here, as though the Worldshaper’s Relic’s power had been hijacked.
But this was Arianna’s skill, an ability that allowed her to reshape the environment as she saw fit, and at this moment, she had buried Asher within the largest and fiercest volcano.
Asher felt the heat in real time, trying to devour and tear through his Lightning Armor, but he wasn’t bothered. Through the StellarFlame, he possessed immense resistance to heat and burns; hence, the volcano couldn’t do much to harm him.
Lightning boomed around his body as he swam through the boiling lava as though it were nothing more than an ordinary ocean. The moment he reached the surface, all he saw was Arianna floating in the sky as her Astra energy burned brighter and brighter, flames gathering around her at an outrageous pace.
The next moment, she created a huge fireball, then two, then three, then ten, then fifty, the size of each expanding under her control as every single one possessed more power than Acker’s meteor.
Before Asher could shoot toward the sky, Arianna dropped the attack upon him with a gleeful smile. It was simply an attack capable of erasing everything within a two-hundred-kilometer radius.
Asher’s Star Energy boomed, his chest pounding as he funneled even more power through his body. He tapped into the authority granted by the StellarFlame as he immediately seized control over the enormous fireballs. In that instant, they paused, freezing in space and halting their descent. Then, without missing a beat, he launched them back toward the sky at Arianna’s location.
Arianna’s eyes immediately narrowed to slits as her own attack tore back toward her. But before she could even move, the colossal cluster of fifty fireballs collapsed into one another, and a titanic, sizzling, all-consuming explosion of blazing power erupted outward with apocalyptic fury as the entire sky was immediately consumed. The explosion’s range easily covered over two hundred kilometers.
But it didn’t stop there. The entire volcanic battlefield was also consumed and wiped from existence as the explosion expanded outward. Asher simply tapped into his Light Affinity, his body dissipating into motes of light as he expertly evaded the explosion.
But Arianna seemed to still have enough Astra energy to continue throwing around enormous attacks because, the very next moment, the entire battlefield transformed into an icy landscape. The burning air, the choking smoke, and the sizzling heat all vanished as Arianna manipulated reality itself.
Asher didn’t mind the cold. The moment his body reformed and he returned to his physical state, all that filled his vision were countless enormous icicles. Each one shot toward him from different directions and angles, possessing enough force to effortlessly tear through any Wavestar Life Ranker standing in their path.
Asher’s body immediately went into overdrive, Lightning, Light, and Gravity boosting his speed and power as Virelass blurred within his grasp. His Omni Perception expanded like a dome as he darted from one icicle to another, shattering every single one with effortless precision before any of them could even touch him.
The next moment, Asher saw four different Ariannas closing in from all four directions, but they weren’t actually Arianna, as their bodies were made entirely of pure ice. The instant they reached him, they immediately engaged him in close-quarters combat, none of them wielding weapons. The moment one of them touched Asher’s body, his hand instantly began turning into a solid chunk of ice, the frost racing across his entire body as they attempted to transform him into a frozen statue.
But it was futile. The StellarFlame immediately came alive, effortlessly burning away the ice covering his body without the slightest resistance. But Asher wasn’t done.
White flames immediately engulfed his entire body, overlapping his Lightning Armor as his figure radiated overwhelming heat, as though he had become the progenitor of all flames. With a single thought, Asher pushed his Star Energy to its absolute limit as a nuclear-like burst of frenzied flames erupted from his body, consuming every ice clone, every icicle, and the entire frozen landscape.
As long as it was made of ice, it melted and burned away as the battlefield became covered in nothing but thick mist. The very concept of temperature seemed confused, as one moment it was unbearably cold, and the next it became overwhelmingly hot, as though reality itself could no longer decide upon a single state.
With the amount of firepower Asher and Arianna were unleashing now, if Debro witnessed it, he would probably die from sheer shock. After all, even they had never caused destruction on this level.
Everything was covered in utter ruin, as though hell itself had descended upon the world.
But Arianna wasn’t done. She didn’t mind the heat or the cold. She simply acted as she tapped into her environmental skill once more, her Genesis ability activating as her right eye shone brilliantly. The battlefield blinked, and now they stood within a four-hundred-kilometer-wide forest made of nothing but towering trees stretching endlessly into the distance. The destruction from earlier vanished as though it had never existed.
Arianna stood upon the crown of one of those colossal trees, her eyes meeting Asher’s with a grin. Before Asher could move, she simply clapped her palms together, and the next moment, enormous tentacle-like masses of wood erupted without restraint and lashed out toward Asher.
Asher didn’t run. He simply took a single step forward, and with that step, a towering wave of StellarFlame erupted from beneath his feet, surging forward to meet the attack head-on. But Arianna wasn’t done. From the ground, wooden spikes with razor-sharp edges burst upward, but Asher simply flickered away as his body exploded into a shower of lightning sparks, materializing several hundred meters away in the next instant.
Arianna snapped her fingers again, and the next moment, a colossal wooden dragon appeared beneath her as she stood atop its enormous head. It immediately roared before shooting toward Asher in a blur. But Asher simply waved his hand, his Star Energy answering his call as he summoned his own Lightning Dragon and sent it forward.
Without even the slightest surprise, Asher’s Lightning Dragon tore straight through Arianna’s wooden dragon, as wood simply possessed no advantage against such destructive force. But Arianna had already expected this. Her earlier attack had merely been a distraction because, in the next moment, vines burst from the ground and wrapped tightly around Asher’s ankles.
Asher arched an eyebrow as he sensed his Astra energy being drained in real time, the vines siphoning his power before feeding it directly back to Arianna, replenishing her own reserves. Asher simply allowed lightning to crackle across his body, instantly destroying the Astra-siphoning vines.
As the smoke and dust clouds from the collision between the two elemental dragons finally cleared, a gigantic ten-thousand-armed wooden Buddha statue stood proudly upon the battlefield.
Asher didn’t speak. Since everyone seemed determined to create Buddha constructs, he simply created one of his own. An enormous structure of pure lightning rose from beneath his feet, lifting him toward the sky as he formed his own Buddha, easily matching the immense size and maddening power behind Arianna’s creation.
Even the very person from whom Arianna had copied this skill couldn’t create a Buddha statue of this level. Her control was simply that outrageous. Yet Asher matched her on the spot as his own blazing purple Lightning Buddha towered over the battlefield.
Without a shred of hesitation, the ten thousand arms from each Buddha tore into one another, their speed so astonishingly fast that their colossal size did nothing to hinder their movements.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The air collapsed, the sound barrier shattered repeatedly, and the entire forest Arianna had created was utterly obliterated as the two unleashed absolute madness upon one another, as though they possessed inexhaustible reserves of energy. One could only imagine the astronomical amount of Astra energy required to sustain attacks of such terrifying magnitude.