The Arcane Emperor-Chapter 115: Fight or Flight

Chapter 115: Fight or Flight

Francis dodged as several magically-created chains reached out towards him. He Void-walked to the edge of the barrier surrounding the warehouse. Using his Arcane Aura to heal most of the damage to his spine, he tested the strength of the barrier. No amount of power behind [Void-walking] would get through.

Marveling for a brief moment at the sheer strength of it, he used his Void Will to cut through it with a [Blade of the Void], before [Void-walking] away and sprinting with all his strength. He only gave the Mages that had surrounded him a brief glance.

Both he and they had a larger problem to worry about than each other.

“You mortals dare. Do you think this is the limit of my strength!”

He heard the roars of a God behind him and merely smirked at Earth’s Mages stepping into his pile of shit. Using the last of his Void Will, he Void-traveled across Earth, landing in the Amazon. Paying not a single mind to his surroundings, he broke into a dead sprint. It wasn’t hard to figure out the Divine Avatar somehow tracked him by his entry and exit points, so he needed to move away from them as fast as possible.

Once the Divinity dealt with the trap meant for Rainer, how would he escape him? Francis simply ran and ran, using the full limits of his enhanced self.

Francis panted with a ragged breath, a hot desert sun beating down on him. He lost track how many times he Void-traveled. Finally, he felt safe enough to leave a trail of magic and could heal the damage to his face.

“Thatsss unplessant,” He muttered to himself as [Arcane Invigoration] regrew his missing teeth and snapped his nose back in place. It was like a million ants were crawling across his gums. The experience proved far worse than what caused the missing teeth in the first place.

He never really thought about it before, but he imagined that he was extremely resistant to torture. Being able to regrow anything and having so much experience with pain removed most of the negative possibilities. There was no psychological fear of having fingers removed when everything but your brain was considered easily replaceable. Probably Sarah slowly stripping away pieces of his Mana Pool was the only thing that would really work on him. His - or rather Rainer’s - Arcane Power and Mana Pool were intimately connected, so she’d probably take both if she ever tried.

He briefly wondered if a slightly toothless him with a broken nose would still be unreasonably attractive. For some reason, the idea frightened him too much.

Francis snapped back to focus as he thought over his options. He figured the best route was to head to the Abyssal Planes; there was no doubt in his mind that they’d have contingencies for descended Divine Avatars. But he wasn’t going to invite a calamity to them if that wasn’t the case. He needed to fall asleep and contact Talvara.

But without a handy Fairy, there was no way, even in his current exhaustion, he’d fall asleep easily.

Raiding a pharmacy it is.

“Y-you don’t have to do this, you can get help,” the 50-year-old pharmacist mumbled as Francis held him against a wall. With a Divine Avatar likely on his trail, he wasn’t in a patient mood.

The man started screaming as a small charge of lightning ran through him.

“Where. Are. The. Tranquilizers?”

Francis punucated his words with a crackle of lightning over his hand, holding it in front of the frightened man’s eyes.

Seeing something unexplainable seemed to cow the man as he led Francis towards the drugs. Having nothing else to do, his hand reached out and started swiping random things into his Spatial Ring. Who knew what else could be useful?

Francis Void-traveled to a deserted island but froze midway as he was about to down some pills. Was there any guarantee Talvara would pull him into her space instantly? He might lay here for hours, easily captured by the Divine Avatar or the Mages, before she even knew he fell asleep. And without entering the space, he couldn’t force himself awake either.

“Fuck.”

He tossed the bottle back into his ring. Not knowing what to do, he continued his global tour, taking time to use his enhanced body to run and distance himself from any teleportation exit point. He luckily remembered about altitude sickness and healed himself with [Arcane Invigoration] after a Void-travel from a deep point in the ocean.

Left to his thoughts, he couldn’t understand why the Divine Avatar descended. It seemed like such a pointless gesture and everything he learned about Divinities thus far suggested they viewed even the most troublesome mortals as nothing more than bugs. They might get pissed in the moment when bit, but that was it.

Didn’t that mean this Divine Avatar was the equivalent of a man who got bit by a bug and decided to become an exterminator solely for revenge on that one fly? Or was that Chosen more important than even the Divinity claimed? Thinking about it, what if he intentionally hid her on a world that was assumed impossible to safely teleport to?

Francis knew it would be stupid arrogance to assume only he and the Void Lords could cross worlds. There could even be countries that existed on more than one planet. Who knows what that Divinity was hiding his Chosen from?

He slapped his forehead while falling from mid-air. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier? He had Void-traveled some couple miles above New York and was now in freefall. Moments later, he vanished to an empty desert, his message sent to Rainer, asking him to contact Talvara with a brief explanation that a Divine Avatar was after him.

Standing in an open African desert, Francis looked at Rainer in shock. What had happened in their short-time apart that could cause Rainer to not only approve of his actions in sacrificing a random Chosen but grin menacingly as they prepared to ambush the Divine Avatar? Talvara had told him that, if they had no choice, they could flee to her realm, but he didn’t seem to be interested in that.

Aurora stood off to the side; Rainer had asked Talvara for support. He didn’t know why she didn’t offer one of her Tier 3 Void Lords. Either she didn’t have control over them or they had something else to do so they couldn’t be spared. That contrasted with what the Divinity claimed, but he could have been lying about Talvara being able to steal back Void Will, especially from her more powerful followers.

Rainer slapped his two hands together, a condensed packet of Mana and Arcane Power forming slowly. They were far enough away from anything that there shouldn’t be any damage to bystanders.

“You two will use all your strength to use [Void Hold] on him and I’ll cast [Absolute Frost]. If he’s still struggling we’ll disable him enough afterwards for Jor to eat.”

Said serpent was flying between the two twins, looking at them with confusion. It seemed like it couldn’t decide whose shoulders to rest on.

“Is it wise bringing your main body here?” Francis asked.

“It’s the only way. If Jor needs to retreat, my Avatar doesn’t have the weird rune on his shoulder.”

“What is that?” Aurora finally said, having been staring in a mixture of shock and confusion at the glowing transparent serpent rather than paying attention to anything else.

“It’s Jor, short for Jormungandr,” Francis answered, scratching under its chin as the serpent settled around him.

Aurora got angry at that obvious non-answer, but then again, she was almost permanently angry when around them. He wondered what she would be like without Void Will.

She’d probably die early from an aneurysm.

Rainer frowned for some reason before speaking, “How come Void Lords don’t travel in pairs?”

Francis’ eyes widened as he stared at Aurora. “How could anyone fight against a combination of [Void Hold] and [Void Call]?”

“You can’t use both in the same space. And anyone we’d need to resort to that against has methods to deal with [Void Hold].”

“Still… wouldn’t it make sense to travel with a partner to take advantage of you holding someone?”

Aurora shrugged. She supposed it did make sense.

“We don’t have any combat slaves.”

Further rumination was interrupted by a massive presence appearing in front of them. Teleporting before them instead of attacking at a distance, Francis was sure his arrogance would be his undoing. Just as planned.

“Did you think-”

“Absolute Frost.”

The distorted face of Mana widened in horror as he tried to teleport away. The sheer amount of magic from [Absolute Frost] prevented him from going anywhere along with the two [Void Hold]s. In moments he was covered by a wave of magic that went on for miles, focusing on him.

Both Rainer and Francis manipulated the frost, focusing and empowering it further and further onto the Avatar. Aurora continued her [Void Hold], her face straining as the Divine Avatar seemed to vibrate, heat rapidly melting even the deadly frost around him.

Francis charged forward, a [Blade of the Void] swinging down on the Divine Avatar, slicing horizontally and then vertically, consuming the last of Francis’ 103 Void Will. The attempt at defending against the blade only consumed a large portion of the Avatar’s power. Francis frowned as he lept backwards, knowing if it wasn’t for this they might have failed. He was just too strong.

Jor charged forward moments later, consuming the left half of the Divine Avatar before he could reform the reality-cut parts.

The Divinity managed to escape backwards, but the [Void Hold] prevented him from teleporting even if it couldn’t stop his movements. Both Francis and Rainer continued manipulating the frost to grasp at his half-body, Jor consuming the leaking power as fast as he could. Bit by bit the Avatar lost hold and disappeared into the serpent’s maw.

Jor looked blankly at the empty space and opened his mouth wide, consuming more energy from somewhere. With [Divine Detection], Francis could feel that the remainder of the Divine Avatar was connected to the original, and Jor was abusing that connection. But it was fading.

“Rainer, use [Soul Manipulation] on whatever Jor’s consuming. Keep the connection open!” Francis yelled, laughing as he did the same.

He could feel his twin helping him rather than doing anything himself. That was good enough.

Jor grew in size, his scales solidifying to the point where he lost his see-through quality, though the violet serpent still seemed to be something beyond physical.

Francis could almost detect the anger that formed on the other side of the connection. As if it was a tangible rage. If it wasn’t for the [One who Defies Divinity] title, Francis was sure this Divinity would pay any cost to kill them. This was a yellow fever bug bite.

Too bad he couldn’t find them. And now that Francis knew he could use his [Blade of the Void] to make [Void-walking] far easier, it was time to take his parents into the system. His grandfather would eventually be enough to protect their interests on that planet, even if the Divine Avatar connects him to the new group of rebel mages.

The connection finally broke and Jor let out a loud hiss of joy before shrinking and returning into Rainer’s shoulder.

“Before Earth’s Mages get here, let’s vanish.”

Rainer frowned, and Francis guessed what he was doing. Francis did the same as he used [Void Seer] on ‘his’ Earth [Soul Mark]s. No response.

Instead, with his new knowledge of [Void-traveling], Francis managed to use [Void Seer] on the warehouse.

The warehouse itself was gone, nothing left at all except charred ground. Clearly the Divine Avatar expended quite a bit of strength on escaping the trap. No wonder he seemed weaker.

Rainer closed his eyes and sighed. He may not be able to see them like Francis could, but the lack of the marks made it obvious what happened.

“It wasn’t as if you are to blame,” Francis said sinking a bit into his Void Will. The joy of killing and devouring a Divine Avatar quickly vanished from him. They didn’t even know who they’d marked, so they couldn’t even try to alleviate their guilt with some token restitutions.

He knew that it was both the Council’s and Divine Avatar’s fault, but the original him was still the one who set the dominos up by marking random people to use as connections to Earth. And then leading a rampaging monster straight to them. How did a bit of fun turn into this?

“We can use mom’s blood to get a connection back here, she has plenty of close blood relatives who cut ties with her when she married dad,” Francis said; he had asked about them during his time with her. Or rather, asked if any existed. Apparently, they faked a big public blow up and distanced themselves so that they couldn’t be used as hostages. She wanted to bring them to the system as well.

Rainer nodded before turning to Aurora, who seemed to be staring off into space.

“Jump us around randomly until we recover enough Mana to head back.” Rainer had put everything into the [Absolute Frost], and Francis was no less out; manipulating the frost was harder for him than its caster, despite their connection.

A split-off consciousness of the Divinity, Augost, used Divine Sight around Earth in a rage. The Divinity did all he could to try to find them and descend another Avatar, but he could not. He couldn’t even use sight on that Elf as she seemed to have disappeared from his vision for her given aid. Not that it mattered as he remembered nothing about her due to the closeness to the magic of the Defiers.

The accursed system! At least his Avatar shouldn’t have provided them experience; having descended in a systemless world, it would be [Classless]. Sending three people to Tier 2 level 25 would have been more than he could handle.

When had he ever suffered so much? Not only had he spent much on his Avatar, but that impossible creature stole so much from him. And then his carefully raised Chosen… a true godling! An eventual permanent body for him to exist in the physical world. He had hidden her so well from the others, yet such a random event took her from him?

He decided to finish off the Mages who had trapped him; maybe he’d find a clue there. Having already spent so much Divine Power, what was a bit more? However, before he descended, he overheard a conversation.

Just when he thought his rage had reached his limit, he was proven wrong. He wasn’t the target of the trap?! The barrier that trapped him was beyond impressive, far stronger than anything he’d ever seen when considering the power it took to form it. Had it not been for that fight, how could he have lost to that ice spell?

Though that blade… was it both a skill and a spell? Breaking through his barrier was one thing, how did it just ignore it? And to use magic to cross the Void… why did that abomination get such a treasure?

He scanned the planet several more times with his Divine Sight, looking for any signs of another Divinity. Other than the ancient thing protecting against the encroaching of the system in this corner of the universe, there was nothing else.

There seemed to be many followers of the ancient aspect, or at least their versions of it, but there was no way it encouraged or cared about the faith sent its way. It was too powerful to bother with such things.

An entire world of advanced Magi for the taking.

It was time for them to follow a new Lord.