Bru'li had never felt so small in the face of an enemy that could only be said to be a fraction of his size. He had been so focused on following the trail of Little Gem that he hadn't even bothered to waste time on the human she had been in the arms of. As far as he was concerned, considering the kind of weakened state their Princess would have been in when she was born and how weak this world was in general, how could he ever believe that there would be any sort of challenge waiting for him from Ryu?
But the moment Ryu spoke, the moment he had decided on something, it was as though the world itself had shifted, as though the Heavens themselves had decided to back his choices and act as a witness to his actions.
The skies rumbled, the earth quaked, the air solidified and qi surged. Ryu's hair fluttered, his silver eyes brightening until they vanished into orbs of sparking lightning.
With a flip of his palm, a bow appeared, a bolt of blue falling from the skies and landing upon the palm of his hand as his fingers pulled back. It concentrated into a beam under Ryu's control, the volatile qi becoming as obedient as a child under his whims.
"I've heard so much about you Ancestral Beasts. It could be said that I spent an entire lifetime researching and learning about you all. But, I have to say that you all have given me nothing but disappointment.
"Show me. Show me why it is that you were chosen as the warriors of Heaven."
Bru'li felt a spark light within his heart, the gem that took the center of his forehead sparking.
A human brat of the mere Path Extinction Realm was actually challenging him, a beast of the Ninth Order.
Bru'li's neck proudly raised into the skies, flexing and arching his head forward. He looked as though he carried the deified air of an Emperor, pulsing lights beginning to radiate off of his body as his wings spread.
"Come die, human."
The other two griffins shot backward, a wall of pressure sending them spiraling away. They realized in that moment that Bru'li had been provoked. Let alone them participating to help, even just the slightest intention on their part to do so may very well result in him turning his fury toward them.
Ryu grinned, his body vanishing in the very same instant that Bru'li struck forward.
BANG!
A ripple of wind and shards of space spread out in all directions as arrow and paw met. Bru'li slapped downward, the pressure of his strike causing a tsunami of snow and land to rise beneath them.
Ryu's fingers plucked at the air, forming a second and third volley of arrows, each more powerful than the last.
A roar left Bru'li, concentric circles of rippling air and concentrated shockwaves knocking them out of the sky.
"Distance."
Bru'li spoke out a simple word in an obscure and ancient language just as Ryu shot out a fourth volley. In that moment, it looked as though Ryu's arrows had been frozen in mid-air unable to move. However, what was most shocking was that Ryu could tell that this wasn't what had happened. The truth was that the distance between himself and Bru'li had suddenly been multiplied several hundredfold, making a distance that was now barely a kilometer countless times that.
The shimmer of Bru'li's gem became more like a bright beacon of light, his irises blossoming with a reflection that contained the depths of the stars.
The grin on Ryu's face only became wider. He liked this, less of a waste of time. Bru'li brought out the true power of his Griffin Race almost immediately.
Not every member of the Griffin Clan would awaken the World Pupils. However, so long as your Bloodline concentration met a certain standard, you would have some of the more basic abilities of them without fail. There was no doubt that Bru'li met this standard. In fact, he was likely among those closest to reflecting the true abilities of the Number Two Ranked Heavenly Pupils without having actually awakened them.
Ryu could feel his blood boiling, his pupils pulsing as though they were being instigated by something.
It had been too long since the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils had appeared in the world. Then, when they did finally appear, their wielder was a cripple who was forced to commit suicide and vanished for another several hundred million years.
It could be said that as a result of this, the number one position had never been so vulnerable, and maybe now that Ryu's Pupils had been fully unsealed, he was more keenly aware of this than he ever had been before.
Ryu had realized that he liked this feeling of pushback, that feeling of uncertainty and doubt. It fueled him in a way that few others things could.
'To be threatened by number two like this, even to the point of warning me to go all out…' Ryu almost wanted to throw his head back and laugh.
Were these really the Pupils that he had placed so much pride in? He was Ryu Tatsuya, but he was actually so arrogant because of a Talent so many others in history had already been born with. He almost felt embarrassed for his past self.
'Those that I, Ryu Tatsuya, have passed, shouldn't dream of ever catching up. Enjoy the view of this back of mine that will one day carry the weight of all of Existence!'
If it was a battle of Heavenly Pupils this Griffin wanted, it was a battle of Heavenly Pupils that Ryu would give him.
"<Lines of Fate>."
The world disappeared into an assortment of colored Karmic Strings. It felt in that moment that everything was in the palm of Ryu's hands, that there was nothing that could hide from him, nothing that he could see through.
But this was exactly why Bru'li felt so antagonized.
While the Truth Pupils seemed similar to the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils, there was only one true life and death rival of Ryu's Heavenly Pupils. The Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils and the Sovereign Dominion – World Pupils. These were two behemoths constantly vying for supremacy upon the mountain peak that was the martial world.
The former saw through all things and read the world as it was. There was nothing that could be hidden or distorted beneath its gaze, nothing that couldn't be stripped down to its barest bones and reconstructed beneath its will. However, the latter…
It molded the world as it saw fit. It brought things into being, gave things without form, form. It could turn the skies from blue to red, and dye blood black or gold depending on its whim. It could make life, death and death, life.
As for which was truly better than the other…
Ryu would say that second place had no right to speak, and the Griffins would say that they had spent countless Eras in seclusion, hidden away from the world. Who was truly number one seemed to be a matter of opinion…
However.
Ryu vanished, appearing above Bru'li's head. He vanished through the flaw in the griffin's created Distance, slicing through his world construct as though a hot knife through butter.
Bru'li accelerated backward, but it was at that moment that an arc of lightning fell from the rumbling skies, intercepting his path.
"<Death Acupoint>."
Ryu had been using his Lightning God Talent to concentrate the lightning his Storm Talent produced, holding it back and making it seem as though the first strike was nothing more than a coincidence.
He could read the movements of Bru'li as though he was reading a book beneath the prowess of <Lines of Fate>. Layering this atop of <Death Acupoint> was like painting his enemy into a trap they had no choice but to step into.
Bru'li felt the sent of death overwhelming him. He made a sharp change in direction, halting his backward progress. But, that choice left him with a perfect no-man's-land for Ryu to exploit.
The fiendish grin on Ryu's face didn't fade for even the slightest moment.
"Dragon Soul."
A flourishing coat of illusory red scales coated Ryu's arm, expanding it to ten times its usual size as he rose it into the air. The momentum of its formation alone caused space to bend and whine, as though the arm of a Dragon was truly manifesting into reality, the kind of arm that could sunder a world on its whim.
"Dragon Claw."
At that instant, the skies rumbled, five arcs of lightning striking downward at the same time as the downward swing of Ryu's claw. They perfectly fused with Ryu's five claws, following their path as they…
Tore the world in six.
Ryu's claw descended upon Bru'li's head. By the time claw met griffin, the former had expanded to hundreds of times, rivaling the enormous size of the creature it targeted.
BANG!
The sound of bone and flesh being torn apart followed by the collapse of the earth below sung within the heart.
Ryu stood in the skies, the mangled corpse of a griffin beneath his feet. The clouds above rumbled, the earth below surged like tides, and he stood in the middle of it all as the only stabilizing force.
He roared into the skies, the mighty fury of a Red Dragon painting the dome of the world crimson.
If he wanted to turn the sky red, he could do it too.