Chapter 181: A Song Of Fire, String, & Paint!

『"Art is no longer subjective when reality’s the canvas."』

Ishigami’s strings shot forward, attempting to snare Monet’s legs.

In response, her brush swept through the air in a horizontal arc, and a wall suddenly appeared where there had been nothing.

Solid paint had hardened instantly into a barrier that Ishigami’s threads couldn’t penetrate.

"Why does she have to be this fast?" Ishigami sighed.

"Da," Yelena agreed as she vaulted over the painted wall. "Try to keep up."

They continued the chase through the forest, the Painter leading them deeper, while leaving painted obstacles behind.

Trees became abstract shapes that shifted whenever they approached, but they pushed through.

After about a kilometer, Monet stopped running.

It was obvious that she wanted this separation, but neither of them could understand why. The Apostles would have had the advantage if they’d stayed together.

She turned to face them in a clearing. "Far enough," Monet said, four bars sizzling above her cleavage as she raised her brush.

"Wait." Ishigami raised a hand.

Monet’s left eyebrow rose. She paused.

Beside Ishigami, Yelena planted one of her blades firmly into the ground and leaned against it, equally confused.

"Why did you separate from the others?" Ishigami asked. "If you’re trying to escape, running this deep into the forest seems like a strange way to do it."

Monet rested her brush against her shoulder. "Maybe I wanted some privacy."

Yelena looked between them. "Privacy?"

"Yes." Monet’s black lips curled upward. "Unlike most artists, I prefer to keep my audience small. I crave attention in other ways." Her smile widened.

Ishigami stroked his chin nonchalantly. "I guess that makes the two of us lucky."

"I suppose it does." Monet lowered her brush. "Though I’m beginning to wonder which of you will make the better subject."

Yelena’s eyes narrowed. "I don’t like sound of that."

"Neither do I," Ishigami said.

For a moment, they simply stared at one another.

Then Monet’s brush moved in one clean stroke across the air. Deep ocean blue filled the space beneath its tip, and the sky split open, unleashing an ocean.

Thousands of gallons cascaded down from impossible heights, the force of a tidal wave compressed into a single vertical descent.

The volume alone would have drowned them. But there was also the pressure to worry about. A force capable of crushing titanium.

Ishigami’s strings shot upward, piercing clouds, and with a sharp yank, he pulled both himself and Yelena straight up.

They ascended faster than the water could follow, then remained suspended as Ishigami created a web of threads beneath their feet.

At this point, Ishigami’s fingers moved in patterns too complex to follow consciously.

The threads wrapped around Yelena shifted from support to propulsion, and suddenly she was being flung through the air like a ballistic missile.

Monet stood on the surface of the water as Yelena rocketed toward her, both blades descending in a cross-slash.

Her brush moved in three quick strokes—white, gold, crackling blue.

With that, a figure materialized between them. Thirty feet tall, massively muscular, and wrapped in robes that looked like storm clouds given fabric form.

It held a lightning bolt in one massive hand like a spear, its bearded face radiating the kind of divine authority that made lesser beings instinctively kneel.

Zeus. Or a painted approximation of the mythical god.

The construct’s free hand caught Yelena’s descending blades, force meeting force with an impact that sent shockwaves rippling through the clearing.

It thrust its lightning bolt forward, and the air itself ignited with electrical discharge.

Yelena twisted mid-air, maneuvering just enough to avoid the direct strike.

The lightning passed inches from her ribs, close enough to make her skin prickle with static, before detonating against a massive tree behind her, reducing it to charcoal and splinters.

Before she could land on the surface of the water, flames shot from her leg, propelling her upward and evaporating a section of the ocean in the process.

Yelena avoided the lightning bolts raining down from the painted god as she maneuvered through the air.

Then she spun through a full 360-degree front flip, carrying the flames from her leg overhead. The fire curved around her body before descending toward Monet in a blazing crescent.

The painted Zeus crossed both arms in front of Monet, tanking the flames as they evaporated the entire ocean around them.

"Ishigami!" Yelena called, dodging another bolt that blasted into the now-dry ground and cratered it. "Any time you want to contribute!"

"Working on it," Ishigami replied.

His strings were woven into a net that appeared in the path of the next lightning bolt. When the energy struck, the threads absorbed it rather than conducting it.

The bolt’s power distributed across the web’s surface, dispersed into manageable packets, and then reversed.

The lightning shot back toward the Painter at twice its original velocity.

She didn’t need to dodge or even react. The painted god simply caught the lightning bolt and hurled it back at Ishigami, who dove aside.

"Figures..." He scratched the back of his neck.

"You’re not really giving muse," Monet said as her brush swept upward in broad strokes, painting yellow, white, jagged lines that were difficult to track visually.

Without warning, the sky itself became hostile as a storm brewed.

Lightning rained down in sheets, dozens of strikes per second, each one guided toward them like heat-seeking missiles.

"Get down," Ishigami called, and Yelena dropped flat as his strings erupted overhead in a dome formation.

The lightning hammered into the web, and Ishigami’s face went pale with effort as he channeled the accumulated energy away from them and into the ground.

"Can’t maintain this," Ishigami said through gritted teeth. "We need to—"

The ground beneath them suddenly turned crimson, as though someone had painted over reality itself.

The color deepened to orange, yellow, white, and suddenly they were standing on molten lava that bubbled and hissed.

"Up!" Yelena yelled, but there was nowhere to go. Lightning above, lava below, and Monet was already painting more threats into existence.

The trees around the clearing ignited from her brush strokes, transforming bark into kindling with a casual flick.

Within seconds they were surrounded by a ring of fire that closed inward.

Lightning above. Lava below. Fire closing from all sides.

"This is objectively bad." He looked at Yelena, already pushing off the ground and creating leverage beneath his feet to remain suspended. "Right?"

"Heat is no consequence to Yelena." She glanced at Ishigami as her feet sank deeper into the molten rock. "But it does ruin good pants." She stared down at her singed clothes.

Ishigami maintained the string dome. "...I can see... that..."

Yelena looked at his pale face and sighed. Then she drove both blades into the ground.

Tempest released an expanding gale-force burst that cooled and flash-froze the lava while dispersing the storm clouds and flames.

They landed on the newly solidified ground, and Ishigami’s strings exploded outward in every direction.

"Heads up," he said.

The Painter realized too late what she was seeing.

The threads had been deployed during every exchange, every dodge, every moment since the fight began. An advantage that wouldn’t become apparent until the trap had already closed.

Now those threads, thousands of them, each one thinner than spider silk and nearly invisible unless you knew exactly where to look, filled the entire clearing.

Ishigami’s fingers moved, and the strings responded. They contracted simultaneously, pulling inward from every direction with enough force to cut through steel.

Monet had a fraction of a second to recognize the danger before the threads wrapped around her throat, limbs, and torso, tightening with inexorable pressure that should have severed flesh from bone.

Instead, her body rippled.

They realized then that she was nothing more than paint given temporary form.

When the strings cut through her neck, her head simply flowed back together like liquid reforming after being scattered.

"Clever," Monet acknowledged, her body solidifying again with no apparent damage. "But I’m not actually here in the way you’re thinking."

She fiddled with her brush. "This body is just a painted representation... and you can’t even manage to kill that." A satisfied grin spread across her face.

"Noted," Yelena said, and pointed Pyra toward the sky.

Flames converged overhead in a spiral that compressed and intensified until a miniature sun hung above the clearing. Then she released it.

The fireball descended with the force of divine judgment, its temperature approaching four thousand kelvin, and its light blinding.

The Painter’s brush moved in frantic strokes—black, deep purple, absolute void.

Suddenly, the space around her transformed into something resembling deep space.

Temperature dropped to near absolute zero. Pressure vanished as atmosphere evacuated into nothing. Gravity became zero.

The descending fireball entered the space and was snuffed out as its heat dispersed into the vacuum.

Yelena felt her lungs seize as air became unavailable. Frost formed on her skin as her body heat radiated into emptiness. Her blood began to boil as the pressure differential tried to turn her inside out.

She responded by superheating her body, warming the air around her while generating enough oxygen to create a pocket of breathable atmosphere.

Ishigami, meanwhile, had gone very still.

His expression, already looking disappointed at everything, took on an additional layer of profound melancholy that made even Yelena glance at him with concern.

"I suppose I have no choice," he said quietly. "This is depressing. It makes me question the nature of existence."

Monet, or at least her representation, raised an eyebrow, clearly confused by his rambling.

Ishigami awkwardly pulled off his shirt. It got stuck around his head, and he sighed, wiggling his arms until he finally freed himself.

Then his fingers found a single thread glowing faintly gold, clearly different from his normal strings. "It needs to be felt for." He glanced at both women. "I hope this isn’t awkward?"

Monet only grew more perplexed. "Sorry, love, but you’re not my type. Her grin slowly disappeared. "I think I’m more into the skinny one with the messy hairdo."

Yelena was equally confused.

But then both Yelena and Monet’s eyes widened as they finally saw Ishigami’s back.

Ishigami tugged on the string and muttered, "String Theory."

He announced with the enthusiasm of someone describing a funeral.

Immediately, the localized deep space vanished.