Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Chapter 1360: ALL Hands (3)



"How do you do it?" Aurolio asked as they looked through the small crevice in space Araeyn had created so that they could have a look at the battle raging on in Aigas.

"What?" Elita asked, not taking her eyes away from the action. "The Void Clot?"

"Nah. I've mostly figured out how you do that, remember? No. I'm more interested in your Mastered Void Gate aspect. You're able to output much more power with it than I can with my own aspect. We're both only Masters, even though..." Aurolio sized her up. Elita was a little buffed up. "Even though I recognise that you've earned strengths outside just your Stage."

Elita sighed.

She had been quite interested in Aurolio when she first heard about him from Skullius. He was the Hybrid Warmoth's only point of reference for Voided Deathforms until Elita and Uyuniya showed up.

To Elita's displeasure, however, Aurolio had turned out to be rather average, though she had half-expected it given that the pale man had had trouble dealing with Skullius before he ascended to Divinity.

"You mind sharing what your aspect does? I could help you from there," she said. Kenno, who was next to Elita, waiting for her to tell him when it was his turn to jump into the fray on Aigas, folded his arms, listening in.

"Sure," Aurolio said. "My aspect interprets the void as boundless strength that can be manifested in different ways. I can conjure clones, I can define defense as strength, I can define speed as strength and so on and so forth."

Aurolio nearly laughed at himself.

The him before fighting Skullius across the Central Boundary wouldn't have shared this information. If he'd met Elita then, he'd have been beaten to oblivion. He preferred the method he had been humbled with in this timeline. Being bested by a dragon, a super necromancer, a King of the Null Verse and a four-armed anomaly amongst anomalies made for a much better tale.

"I see," Elita said, but her brow rose as she turned to him. "You use these aspects interchangeably and whenever you need them, right?"

"Yeah. Doesn't anyone with any unique powers?"

"Not at the Divine-level and not with one-of-a-kind abilities like these," Elita said. "I don't blame you. When I crafted my aspect - which interprets void as strength I can only wield when exercising selflessness - I almost fell into the trap of trying to produce power beyond what I actually had, without any costs. We anomalies don't exist outside every rule."

"I see. So, there was some kind of trade-off. I noticed it especially with that Sif or rather, Sif- like woman," Aurolio said. "The effect of her aspect only applied for a very small window of time. What is it, some kind of Rule or Creed?"n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Sort of," Elita said, and a flash of green light illuminated her face from the hole they were looking through from within the dimension Araeyn had created. "Rules and Creeds are caricature of something that applies in the wider reality to all - Divines and Deities alike: the Fundamental Barter.

"What's that?" Aurolio asked, frowning.

"It's a concept not really considered part of the general cache of Divine qualities and their ranks - the Common Reality Leagues, as they are called - but it was created by one of the Primeval Deities, the strongest Deities in this reality. It's a long story, but there's a queer desire among these super powerful Deities to make interactions between stronger and weaker Divines fair to some extent. So, one of them created the Fundamental Barter."

"It pretty much applies to anyone with Divine power or near-Divine power. For anomalies like us, we are guaranteed access to the Fundamental Barter automatically since our powers bear potential for the Divine from the start. Some powerful experts tend to even use the Fundamental Barter while mistaking it for Creeds or Rules. As long as you meet the conditions, it applies no matter where you are. The Primeval Deity who created the concept isn't particularly interested in recognition, like AKHASHA. No contracts and all. Oh, you wouldn't know who AKHASHA is."

Aurolio rolled his eyes.

"Get to the point. Great, I have access to this Fundamental Barter, but what does it do?" he groused.

Elita didn't mind his tone.

"The Fundamental Barter allows an expert to bolster the power of their abilities by an exponential of 10 if they limit the practical efficiency of an attack in two ways. One, is time. Limiting the duration an opponent is exposed to an ability or the duration you can use said ability. Two, limiting the number of targets who can be attacked with an ability at a time. These two conditions automatically raise the power And efficiency of an ability by the exponential of 5, but adding more restrictions after these two, boosts it even further. Of course, sometimes, this could be detrimental."

Aurolio was immediately swallowed by his thoughts.

The Fundamental Barter. He could see how it was the principle for which Creeds and Rules were based, but those paled in comparison to it. An exponential increase in attack power and efficiency of an ability was insane. If Incandescent Stagers and beyond were capable of that, they would be monstrosities.

Elita must have mistaken Aurolio's silence for confusion.

"If it's too hard to grasp, just think of time. In the wider reality, the flow of events are measured in Consternals and Consterns which-"

"I get it, damn it. I'm not fucking stupid," Aurolio snapped. "How do you invoke this Fundamental Barter?"

***

The Doom Knight attacked before Skullius replenished an amount of Amras worth noting. The tip of its great sword sparked and it swiped across, its hand a blur that neither Skullius nor Uyuniya saw quite as well.

Even if they did see it, they would have expected a dreadful, generic slash that cut across the Void Clot, but instead, what assaulted them was a rather complex sword technique.

Pale blue, ethereal boxes appeared around both Uyuniya and Skullius, and at once, their ability to move was revoked.

...!!!

Within the boxes, tiny, sword-shaped needles, shining in white could be seen. They drilled into the two's bodies immediately after the boxes appeared, affecting neither flesh nor armour, but the soul.

Skullius immediately felt a slightly ticklish sensations on many points around his soul, and they grew less pleasant by the instant, but Uyuniya screeched in agony. He sensed her soul getting borne through by the needles, but...

They didn't simply cut into her soul. Once they pinched in, they were set ablaze, bathed in Undeath energy, and Skullius noted the activation of a second Andori with that energy source! 'Damn it! There's nothing stopping this thing from corrupting our souls with Undeath, is there?' Skullius noted in a panic, recalling how he had been agonizing over why Uyuniya's Voided Death Essence was stronger than Elita's. If the Doom Knight's Undeath energy had that much more intensity than either his or Uyuniya's energies...

But Skullius' Immortal Physical shielded him from the full force of the needles, at least for now. Quickly, Skullius focused his [Vision of Calamity] on the Doom Knight. A dreadful pulse of energy zoomed and slammed into it, but the Doom Knight only staggered back, and kept

its Andori active.

'Damn it! Why aren't these eyes doing anything?' Skullius thought, frustrated.

But right then... what he expected his mutant eyes to do was done. Just not by him.

The boxes around him and Uyuniya flickered and vanished. The Doom Knight suddenly

groaned. Its leg quivered ever so slightly and then its eyes burned fiercer in red. Whatever had happened to it passed in less than a blink.

Skullius was confused.

He turned to Uyuniya. She was wheezing and her Void Clot suddenly dissipated. Had she done

something?

"Wait. Did you use your-"

"Don't let him use that Andori again!" she cried.

'Right!' thought Skullius, but the Doom Knight had already raised its sword again, sparks

brimming from its tip.

An Andori of this calibre was likely higher than even Skullius' [Vision of Calamity] eyes at the Ascendant Tier. If it was used again, especially by an enemy with so much Amras while his and Uyuniya's reserves were depleting...

"Majestic Territory Expulsion, Bandit King's Boundless Collection!" came Kenno's sudden

call, and his Territory erupted, wide and quick. A nervous grin was on his face. Quite honestly, neither he nor Elita could have predicted when exactly to jump in since the battle in Aigas was moving at a pace hard for either of them to comprehend. It had been sheer luck. Skullius was pleased all the same. The Doom Knight, on the other hand, seemed to switch

from the sword-type Andori it had been about to use, to another. It meant to dismantle the Territory... and it succeeded.

What appeared to be tentacles of ugly, red, rough flesh whipped from the joints of its arms and smacked the Territory's edges with extraordinary force right as its GeoScape was

finishing its formation.

The Territory might as well have been sack cloth.

Yet... it held.

Skullius' Noboboyama imbued with the Womb held the Territory together while Skullius

filled the Territory with [Evil Darkness]. And then the Territory forged back into one.

Kenno was already sacrificing more of his dwindling Creeds by then.

"Majestic Territory Expulsion, Bandit King's Boundless Collection... Bandit King's Boundless Collection... Bandit King's Boundless Collection... Bandit King's Boundless Collection!"

The Territory thrummed, empowered by one of the tricks the possessed Skullius had left

behind.

"Thirty-fourth time's charm!" roared Kenno with a grin and he made way for Uyuniya and Skullius streaking towards the Doom Knight with swords of darkness and light.