Chapter 283: Breaking The Spatial Barrier

BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!

All four ultimate attacks struck the exact same point on the hexagonal spatial barrier at the exact same microsecond!

For one moment, the entire ruined valley went pure white.

A shockwave of tangled violet lightning, crimson hellfire, golden-pink divine light, and boiling blood exploded outward from the central altar like a detonating star.

The crumbling stone mountains that had stood in the valley for centuries were pulverised into fine powder in an instant. The flagstones across the courtyard were ripped up from the earth and flung hundreds of meters into the dark forest, flattening ancient trees in every direction.

Inside the shimmering hexagonal dome, the masked Enforcer stood with one hand still resting on Sylvia’s unconscious shoulder, his cold grey eyes watching the blinding storm of energy crash against his spatial shield.

"Futile," the Enforcer sneered beneath his black mask, even as the ground beneath the altar shook violently. "I already told you, boy. A barrier woven from the Space Law of a Half-Step Mythical beast exists in a separate dimensional fold. No matter how much brute force four Gold-Tier insects throw at it, your attacks will simply slide off into the void."

"Fifteen seconds," he murmured, glancing down at the spinning silver-blue runes beneath his boots.

The spatial crystals lining the edge of the platform were humming at a deafening pitch now, their light rising in a translucent cylinder that was already beginning to blur the outlines of the Enforcer and Sylvia’s bodies.

Outside the dome, suspended in mid-air against the surface of the barrier, Raiden gritted his teeth so hard that blood leaked from his gums.

His two-handed Executioner’s Greatsword of Blood was pressed flat against the hexagonal shield, right alongside Woolie’s crackling horns, the tip of Neva’s fifty-meter Golden-Pink Poison Greatsword, and Rose’s spinning twenty-meter Ashen-Crimson Blood Drill.

The repulsive force of the spatial barrier was tearing Raiden’s hands open. The skin on his palms split apart, his fractured ribs screamed in agony, and the violent shockwaves rebounding off the dome threatened to throw him backwards across the valley.

Yet he refused to let go.

’Break... Break, damn it!!’ Raiden roared inside his mind, his half-silver hair whipping wildly in the hurricane of clashing energy. ’She’s right there! She’s less than five meters in front of me! I am not losing her here!!’

"Woolie Woo!!" Break for this Emperor, you stupid shiny bubble!!

Woolie’s eyes burned with feral crimson-and-violet light as he refused to bounce off the shield. Instead of rebounding, the little sheep dug his hooves into the very air itself, pouring every last drop of his thirty-seven per cent Fenrir bloodline into his golden horns!

Right above him, Neva let out a sharp, piercing cry.

"Sha Sha!!" Melt!! Melt right now!!

All eight of her eyes bled golden light as the hot-pink spider emblem on her back flared like a miniature sun. The corrosive poison coating her fifty-meter greatsword wasn’t ordinary venom. It carried a trace of the primordial Law of Erasure inherited from her mother, The White Catastrophe! Where the tip of her blade ground against the spatial barrier, the silver dimensional energy didn’t slide off. It began to sizzle and dissolve into nothingness!

At the same time, thirty-meter-long Rose was fighting a brutal war of her own at the base of the altar.

"KREEE-SHAAAA!!"

Trapped inside Rose’s crushing coils and suppressed by Woolie’s thousand-meter Emperor’s Domain, the twelve-meter Void-Cleaver Mantis thrashed with frantic fury. Knowing its master’s barrier was under concentrated assault, the Half-Step Mythical insect tore one of its four silver scythe-arms free and slashed wildly across Rose’s midsection!

SLASH!!

A deep, three-meter gash tore open across Rose’s ruby scales, spraying crimson blood across the ruined flagstones.

"Hiss!!"

Rose didn’t let go. The pain only made her golden vertical pupils contract into murderous pinpoints.

You cut Rose?! Rose will drink you dry!!

Instead of loosening her coils, Rose constricted twice as hard, her muscles creaking against the mantis’s void-metal exoskeleton as she whipped her crowned head forward and sank her fangs straight into the soft joint beneath the mantis’s mirror-like head!

GULP! GULP! GULP!

Silvery-purple blood was violently ripped out of the Half-Step Mythical mantis’s neck!

The moment that high-tier spatial blood hit Rose’s tongue, the ashen-gold veins running down her thirty-meter body flared with blinding radiance. She channelled that stolen spatial vitality straight into the twenty-meter Ashen-Crimson Blood Drill grinding against the hexagonal dome!

CRACK.

The sound was tiny at first, barely audible over the deafening roar of thunder, fire, and grinding light.

Yet the instant that sound rang out, the smug smile beneath the Enforcer’s black mask froze completely.

He looked up at the exact centre of his hexagonal dome, right where the four attacks converged.

There, etched across the supposedly unbreakable dimensional barrier, was a hairline fracture of silver light.

"What...?!" The Enforcer’s breath hitched, his grey eyes widening in sheer disbelief. "Impossible!! That barrier is reinforced by the Space Law! How can Gold-Tier beasts crack a Law barrier?!"

He didn’t know what monsters he was looking at.

He wasn’t looking at ordinary Gold-Tier Terra Beasts from the countryside. He was looking at the bloodline of Fenrir, The God-Killer. He was looking at the daughter of The White Catastrophe. He was looking at the reincarnated Divine Blood Empress purified by the Ashen One’s own blood.

"Ten seconds left on the array!! Hold on!!" the Enforcer snarled, dropping his casual posture completely as he slammed both hands onto the spatial crystals, frantically pumping his own reserve aura into the dome to patch the crack.

"You think ten seconds is enough to save you?!"

Raiden’s bloodshot violet eyes locked onto that tiny fracture in the barrier.

Without a second of hesitation, he bit down on his own tongue and spat a mouthful of glowing, silver-tinged Ashen blood directly onto the blade of his Executioner’s Greatsword!

"EVERYONE, ONE LAST PUSH!! SHATTER IT!!"

"WOOOLIEEE WOOOOO!!"

"SHAAAA!!"

"HISSSSS!!"

CRACK! CRACK! KABOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!

The hairline fracture exploded into a thousand jagged spiderwebs across the entire twenty-meter dome!

With a sound like the sky itself breaking apart, the Half-Step Mythical spatial barrier shattered into millions of glittering silver fragments that rained down over the altar!

The violent backlash from the broken barrier slammed into the Enforcer’s chest, making him stagger half a step backwards as a muffled grunt escaped his throat.

And before a single shard of broken light could even hit the stone floor, a figure blurred straight through the collapsing wall of energy!

[Seven Star Steps: Level 5 MAX!!]

Raiden moved so fast that the air beneath his boots compressed into sonic booms, his muscles tearing from the strain as he crossed the ten-meter distance between the edge of the altar and the Enforcer in less than a blink of an eye!

"DIE!!"

Raiden swung his blood-soaked Executioner’s Greatsword with both hands, aiming straight for the Enforcer’s neck!

The Enforcer’s pupils contracted in shock at the boy’s suicidal speed. With Sylvia still slung over his right shoulder and only three seconds left before the teleportation array activated, he couldn’t dodge without stepping out of the spatial lock.

He jerked his head back by a fraction of an inch and raised his left forearm, coated in a dense layer of silver spatial armour, to block the blade!

CLANG-SLASH!!

Raiden’s blood greatsword sheared clean through the spatial armour on the man’s forearm, spraying bright red blood into the air, while the razor-sharp tip of the crimson blade raked diagonally across the Enforcer’s face!

CRACK!!

The pitch-black mask covering the Enforcer’s face was sliced clean in half!