Chapter 1081: The Skyrender [part 2]
Raven’s blast of searing light collided with the monster, giving birth to a vicious explosion that swallowed the world whole. Everyone went blind as white light consumed everything.
It lasted barely a second before the world returned to normal—and the monster was still moving.
Eli stared with widening eyes as the creature continued its relentless march forward after taking a hit from a ray of light powerful enough to disintegrate an entire settlement.
He wasn’t surprised. The creature seemed capable of destroying a nation by simply walking. And in fact, that was all it was doing.
It was simply walking. The ridges of its head appeared to be bending the very sky and causing essence to pour out.
It took Eli a moment to figure it out, but that was what was happening. At first, the ridges looked like they were producing the potent energy, but apparently they weren’t—the creature was tearing the sky as it moved.
They couldn’t see behind it because the sheer massiveness of its body blocked their view. The beast seemed to march with destruction itself; all that was visible was a storm of earthquakes and devastation left in the wake of its mountain-sized steps.
Eli’s eyes sharpened.
"Everyone, focus on those ridges. Give it your best shot. We must break those ridges at all costs."
If they had any chance at all, Eli believed it had to be there.
The monster, despite having been attacked, did not retaliate and simply kept moving. Eli knew a little about Leviathans from history.
They were a strange phenomenon, not driven by the vicious hunger that consumed human souls. The human soul was, in fact, too insignificant to satisfy them. They were driven by a purpose that no Drifter had ever been able to understand.
Because of this, Leviathans couldn’t be dealt with through conventional means—only a Luminary could understand how to bring one down.
What sucked for all of them right now was that there was no Luminary at their disposal. So they had to do what worked.
Just as he commanded, all of them followed his lead. Thalen, standing upon his back, summoned a strange wooden bow.
The bow spiraled out like sentient branches, forming an intricate webbed pattern—an interwoven tree of bows. As he pulled the string and nocked one arrow of purple light, multiple spectral hands appeared behind him, each drawing an arrow of purple light.
A vicious storm of purple arrows materialized. With cold focus and eyes locked onto the target, he released his grip. A rain of luminous arrows blotted the sky and bombarded the leftward ridge of the Skyrender with explosive force.
Lynus released a pot of mercury—large enough to swallow a building, yet before the expansive rightward ridge of the Skyrender, it looked like a toothpick.
The pot boiled the mercury and sent it cascading down.
Jeci from below unleashed a shield of her ability, making it as expansive as she could, but it barely covered the right-side forelimb looming before her.
Raven this time unleashed several orbs that populated the air, each blooming with sixteen petals. A flood of light pillars blasted forward with explosive power, striking the leftward ridge and causing an even more catastrophic explosion.
Eli added his own assault. He commanded the very sky, and the heavens darkened with indignation as golden lightning rumbled overhead, bombarding the leftward ridges. All of this poured down and hammered the Skyrender simultaneously, causing an explosion that made the world shudder.
The explosion was magnificent—a crescendo of purple lightning, mercury fire, blazing light, and golden thunder that painted the sky in violent hues. For a breathless moment, it seemed as though they might have accomplished something.
Then the smoke cleared.
The Skyrender continued its inexorable march forward, completely unaffected. Not a single scale had been disturbed. Not one ridge showed even a hairline crack. The creature moved as though their devastating attack had been nothing more than a gentle summer breeze.
Eli felt his heart plummet into his stomach. The reality of their situation crashed down on him like a collapsing mountain.
They had thrown everything they had at this monstrosity—attacks that could level cities, that could obliterate armies—and it hadn’t even noticed.
"Impossible..."
Thalen whispered, his bow still trembling in his hands. The spectral arms behind him flickered and faded, as if his very will had been shattered by the creature’s indifference.
Lynus stared in stunned silence as his mercury pooled uselessly around the Skyrender’s feet, hissing against its scales like raindrops on hot stone. Jeci’s shield of erasure had done nothing more than brush against the creature’s limb—it might as well have been made of paper.
The Skyrender’s massive head turned slightly, and for one terrifying moment, Eli thought those furnace eyes would focus on them. Instead, the creature simply continued its march, each thunderous step bringing it closer to whatever destination drove its ancient purpose.
The ridges along its skull continued to tear at reality itself, creating cascading streams of weaponized essence that carved through the air. The very fabric of existence seemed to buckle and strain under the creature’s presence.
Raven floated there, suspended by her dark wing, her face a mask of grim acceptance. She had known, deep down, that this would be the result. A Leviathan was beyond them—beyond any Paragon, no matter how skilled or determined.
"We’re insects trying to stop a landslide with our bare hands," Eli said quietly, his voice barely audible over the creature’s earth-shaking footsteps. "What did I even expect?"
The hopelessness of it all settled over them like a suffocating blanket. They could follow the creature, they could continue their futile attacks, but the truth was undeniable: they were powerless to stop this walking apocalypse.
Raven stared for a few seconds, then sighed.
"I guess there’s no choice."
She closed her eyes, and suddenly something strange began to happen. Her hair changed completely to white, as did her black wing. Her crimson eyes became pale gold. Another pair of white wings sprouted from her waist, elongating downward.
Eli frowned, puzzled and intrigued at the same time.
"What a strange essence manifestation."