Jake had to react quickly to the attacks arriving both from above and right in front of him. Rather than try to retreat as Ell’Hakan would probably expect, Jake dove toward the trident that was stabbing for his chest, narrowly avoiding it while getting out of the way of the sunbeam.
This put him in an awkward position, allowing Ell’Hakan to unleash an inferno blast straight to his front, sending him tumbling back from the impact, his clothes now even more burnt than before. Right as he stabilized himself, the next attack arrived from the sun above as it unleashed yet another powerful beam Jake barely had time to react to while also dealing with the hyper-offensive Ell’Hakan, leaving him with yet more burns.
With the sun having reached its zenith, the momentum of battle had changed entirely, Jake now finding himself constantly on the defensive as he tried to slowly acclimate to the extreme heat while barely holding off Ell’Hakan’s constant assault. The fire spells that before were only a little dangerous had been empowered to new levels by the environment, and were quite frankly far more powerful than just casual spells had any right to be.
However, despite being on the back foot, Jake didn’t panic or even push himself further with his boosting skill quite yet. Sure, things were looking rough right now, but Jake was looking at the fight from a more long-term perspective and seeing the massive sun in the sky and the fact that Ell’Hakan created such a massive and powerful domain...
How long can he keep this up?
The energy consumption had to be utterly insane. Jake had talked to the Sword Saint and Dina quite a lot during their time in Nevermore, seeing as both of them used massive-scale skills at times, and they were always very vocal about the equally massive energy consumption of such skills. Not to mention the consumed mental energy from keeping something of such a large scale active.
All of this is to say that Ell’Hakan had to be draining his resources at an astonishing speed while keeping the domain active. Combined with all the other attacks he kept releasing... yeah, it was only a question of time before he wouldn’t be able to keep up this kind of momentum.
Jake had these thoughts while being hypervigilant if they were truly his own conclusions, but as the logic tracked without any obvious involvement of emotions, Jake chose to go with it. That’s why he was fine being so passive for now, as he felt confident that with every passing moment, Ell’Hakan was slowly burning himself dry like the sun above.
Ell’Hakan also acted as if Jake’s conclusion was correct as he upped the tempo even more. Jake dodged attack after attack without even daring to counter, his scales in a constant state of destruction and regeneration from the fiery assault. He tried to act as cold-headed as possible, but if he kept not attacking, he would-
No. Annoying emotions kept creeping in from the obvious manipulation of his opponent, but Jake suppressed them to not get baited into doing something dumb. He also quickly began to suspect something else as he looked at the sun above and noticed something.
Despite the skill seemingly having reached its peak of power, the sun kept growing brighter and hotter. It wasn’t by a lot and incredibly subtle, but something was definitely happening, which was when Jake reached a quite obvious conclusion:
No day lasts forever.
At some point, the sun would have to set, and the skill come to an end. The skill relied on powerful concepts, concepts far too much for Ell’Hakan to properly control. Him trying to make the sun not act like the sun was like a water mage trying not to make things splashed with water get wet or a wind mage trying to make the wind sturdy and solid like a rock. It simply wasn’t in the realm of C-grades to oppose the natural law of affinities and concepts.
It was with this thought Jake kept engaging Ell’Hakan as Jake tried to keep his distance at all times, defending and dodging when neccecary. As the sun grew more and more intense, Ell’Hakan also kept growing in power, and Jake was forced to keep up with his own boosting skill as he’d long pushed it to a mid-point between the stable 30% and the extreme 60% boost. Arcane Supremacy had raised his resistance to the skill immensely, and by now, he could reach around a 50% boost before the demerits of the boosting skill began to really show themselves.
Minutes kept ticking by, Jake taking more and more damage as he couldn’t dodge everything, but he remained fine with the status quo. Ell’Hakan’s attacks turned more and more desperate, but Jake refused to take any baits and avoided inadvertently opening himself up to taking more damage than he needed to by going on the offensive. Why would he need to when time was on his side?
Why do something so dumb when things were going so well?
Going really well...
Too well.
Jake realized, and as he did, Ell’Hakan smiled as the sun above flashed for a moment, an utterly massive sunbeam descending toward Jake as Ell’Hakan unleashed over a hundred torrents of flames that pushed him back while scorching his scales and sending Jake flying toward the ground.
“What an odd conclusion you reached,” Ell’Hakan spoke, his voice infused with willpower as a giant magic circle appeared above him as he raised his trident. “Why would this scenario be advantageous to you? Did you believe I was naught but a waning candle?” Р𝘈ɴÔʙÊṥ
Quickly getting on his feet in the newly formed crater he’d been thrown into, Jake pulled out his bow as magic manifested all around him.
“The sun rises when the Celestial Child beckons it. Everyone knows that, so why believe something so natural would come at a cost?” Ell’Hakan grinned, a spiral of flames forming above him as nine spirals total slowly began to morph into the familiar forms reminiscent of hydra heads.
Jake prepared himself for the attack as he finally knew where he’d fucked up before, and he couldn’t help but kick himself despite the obvious emotional fuckery done by Ell’Hakan. When Ell’Hakan first used the skill, Jake had noticed an odd kind of energy, and once again, when he’d used the “high noon” part of the skill, this energy had returned.
Yet Jake had seemingly entirely forgotten about it until now, having dismissed it as just another aspect of Yip of Yore’s powers and not something he wanted to or had time to understand. He hadn’t been wrong about it being related to Yip of Yore, but he had entirely dismissed the kind of energy he’d felt... energy he now was certain what was as it permeated the entire domain.
Faith energy.
It was energy usually reserved for gods, but that didn’t mean others couldn’t use it or that it didn’t exist even where there was nobody around to control it. False Gods like the Desolate Child of Loss could be born from faith energy alone, and in many ways, the entire Path of Yip of Yore relied on a variant of faith energy, as he required people to believe in him and what he was capable of.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Jake knew Ell’Hakan truly wasn’t much different, except he used it a lot differently than Yip of Yore. He used the faith energy as fuel for his massive domain skill, relying on what he’d just said before: the belief in him as the Celestial Child from all the natives. They truthfully, genuinely believed he could do all this effortlessly, and through Yip of Yore’s Legacy, the faith energy born from that belief had been manifested into reality.
Needless to say, Jake’s initial assumption had been quite wrong as Jake was also taught the lesson that relying on logic to reach a conclusion didn’t mean that it was completely free of emotional manipulation. It was still entirely possible the data he’d used to reach that conclusion were biased from Ell’Hakan making him downplay certain things. He had fallen into Ell’Hakan’s trap hook, line, and sinker.
Yet, as Jake faced the nine descending hydra heads and the intensifying sun above, he remained relatively calm. While most of his conclusions had been wrong, no amount of emotional fuckery could change the fact that Ell’Hakan couldn’t defeat the laws of the universe when it came to concepts, and the sun would still set soon enough.
Having realized that dragging things out didn’t help Jake, he stopped holding anything back. Arcane Awakening fully activated as arcane energy exploded all around him, his body burning with power. To meet the rapidly descending hydras of sun flames, Jake sent out a barrage of arrows to meet them in mid-air.
This only stopped them briefly, but it was enough for Jake to unleash the second assault. Pride of the Malefic Viper activated as Jake’s own semi-domain skill covered the area around him, and as the heads of flames got closer, Jake raised a hand and spoke.
“Break.”
Clenching his fist, the five heads at the forefront all exploded as Jake crushed the magic keeping them together. With Pride active, Jake could also more easily control the mana in the area around him, allowing him to slightly push off the heat as he summoned a number of powerful barriers of arcane mana to meet the final four hydra heads descending on him.
A shockwave of flames erupted when the barriers and fire hydras met, sending even Ell’Hakan floating back slightly as he prepared to send another attack down. Yet right as he lifted his trident to unleash a scorching beam, an arrow flew out of the blazing inferno below, striking him in the shoulder and sending him flying back as blood sprayed into the air.
Ell’Hakan quickly stabilized right as a second Arcane Powershot flew out of the flames. He barely blocked this one as it still sent him reeling back from the impact, and he didn’t hesitate to retreat as Jake slowly floated up from within the inferno.
Multiple layers of arcane barriers covered him, with several breaking every second, but Jake resummoned them again and again as he kept the flames at bay using Pride. He infused the skill with more mana than ever before to impose his will upon the world and from having done so, not a single lick of flames had touched him.
While it was true that Ell’Hakan was making use of the fanatical populace of the planet to keep the domain active, Jake wasn’t afraid of losing out in the slightest when it came to longevity. He had an utterly massive mana pool, rivaling even genius peak C-grade mages due to his Anomalous Soul and Mask of the Fallen King both giving him 25% extra to his total mana pool, not to mention the mask increasing his mana regeneration substantially.
Nocking yet another arrow, Jake kept shooting toward Ell’Hakan, who was ready to deflect every one of them as he closed in again, his entire body ablaze. The heat from his body alone was pressuring Jake as he broke through the barriers swiftly, but with Pride active and liberal use of mana, Jake didn’t lose out as he and the nahoom clashed a few dozen times as they flew around the sky.
Jake eventually got a good opening as he straight-up smacked Ell’Hakan in the face with his bow using one hand as he stabbed Ell’Hakan in the stomach with the other using Piercing Fang, penetrating to the handle with his Void Katar. The Usurper quickly attacked to get Jake away, but not before a pulse of arcane energy was released, sending a shockwave of pure destruction through the nahoom’s internals and making him stumble back as he spat up blood.
Despite Ell’Hakan continuously growing in power, Jake still had the stat advantage. Pushing forward, he landed several more blows on his opponent, soon enough getting another major chance. With one hand, he caught the handle of the trident and once more stabbed Ell’hakan through the chest with his katar, this time penetrating even deeper as-
Jake’s danger sense instantly exploded as Ell’Hakan smirked despite having Jake’s hand halfway buried in his chest. Chains of flames erupted from thin air all around them as these chains wrapped around Ell’Hakan and Jake, effectively tying them together. The nahoom used both his hands to hold onto Jake, even letting go of his weapon as it disappeared.
The chains burned into Jake’s back as Ell’Hakan burned his front, the hunter quickly responding to the massive switch-up of an attack. Letting go of his katar, Jake gritted his teeth and placed a hand directly on Ell’Hakan’s face as he used the hand inside Ell’Hakan to do even more damage. Both of them began to glow a dark green from Touch of the Malefic Viper, but Ell’Hakan still grinned as his eyes glowed golden, and his gaze met Jake’s.
“The harshness of the sun knows no mercy.”
Jake’s danger sense went even more wild as the sun’s glow intensified at an extreme pace and he knew something big was coming. He quickly switched the hand inside Ell’Hakan to hold one of the chains as he began to break it down and get loose, never once breaking eye contact with Ell’Hakan.
To buy a bit more time, Jake even used Primal Gaze, but all it did was buy Jake a fraction of a second... but it didn’t look like it would be enough.
The sun’s rays burned the world all around them, and Ell’Hakan didn’t let his eyes leave Jake for even a moment as he spoke a single more word.
“Sundown.”
Jake broke the chain and kicked his body off Ell’hakan’s right as the sun above exploded into a singular pillar of pure sunlight more than a kilometer in radius that descended upon the planet with enough power to genuinely threaten Jake’s life.
Ell’Hakan felt the beam of the sun strike him as he saw the hunter also get hit. The pure light consumed the Chosen of the Malefic Viper’s form entirely as he disappeared from sight, the last thing Ell’Hakan saw being the human’s scales explode and the skin below vaporize from the Sundown.
Contrarily, Ell’Hakan felt the intense sunlight enter his body as his wounds rapidly healed. Nearly all of the damage he’d taken in the fight so far was restored, and even if doing so had consumed a lot of his vital energy, the sunlight was powerful enough to replenish his pools a little.
The beam of sunlight continued for several seconds more before slowly fading away, yet the world remained bright as if a second sun had been born. Below him, the pillar had burned a hole into the ground several hundred kilometers deep, and from within it, the light kept shining as the walls of stone and soil had been turned into white-hot lava, and at the very bottom, all the remnant energy had gathered.
Ell’Hakan looked down into this hole as he felt the aura of the Chosen of the Malefic Viper remained all the way toward the bottom, having survived the attack. Not entirely unsuspected, but Ell’Hakan felt confident he wouldn’t be in a very good state.
Not that he himself was in peak condition. Yes, the sunlight had healed him, but his face still had a visible handprint that radiated poison, and what he’d been inflicted with throughout the fight also still remained.
To fight off this poison, Ell’Hakan consumed a potion he had pre-prepared for this fight, functioning both as a general anti-toxin and a healing potion at the same time. The vital energy washed through his body and battled the poison as it also rejuvenated his body and got him back in a more than acceptable condition. Certainly a better one than the hunter.
He kept feeling for what his opponent was doing down in the hole and even retreated away to not be directly above it lest he’d start shooting arrows from below. Yet as over a minute passed, there was no movement, and Ell’Hakan even felt the aura weaken over time, making him frown.
Yes, Sundown had been far more powerful than expected after upgrading to mythical rarity, but it still shouldn’t have been enough. No, it was far more probable the Chosen was simply hiding his own presence to-
Ell’Hakan’s eyes flashed open as he felt it. An overwhelming emotion flooded his mind, not from below but above. It was unnatural, simplistic, raw... primal. He felt extremely malnourished as if he hadn’t eaten for a century, as a pang of pure hunger dominated every corner of his being.
Despite everything, the shock from the emotion didn’t stun Ell’Hakan entirely as he barely managed to lean his head to the side and try to dodge as something struck him from above, yet even as the pain and panic would normally set in, all he could feel was an intense, seemingly eternal hunger.