It is extremely easy to absorb the raw Celestial Energy pouring out from the broken building behind me.
There is no need to channel it through my energy pathways, or grab onto the raw particles with my Royal Vibrations and Primordial Aura bubble from far away. Now, my ether pool is present on the outer side of my Sacred Body, so just the physical contact alone is enough to instantly siphon it into my energy stores.
I feel the entire bottom half of this building activate countless arrays once it feels our presence, and more white-hot energy flows upward from the many floors below that we haven't even crashed through.
By the time my back hits the wall on the other side of the tower, and breaks it open too, I feel my ether pools become saturated with multiple times more ether than they had moments ago at their peak when this battle started.
The momentum pushes me back, flying over the roof of two more buildings.
I watch plumes of excess Celestial Energy flow out from the building Maria and I broke in half, then slam into the side of another.
This one we don't burst all the way through, we've slowed down enough to only leave demon and angel-shaped imprints in its side. Cracks splinter all the way through this tower's side, and I feel Celestial Energy pouring out again.
We don't move, and the streams of pure white power continue to flow into our veins.
In front of us, there is only the presence of a Demon floating in place with wide-open eyes, and an emotion of anger held in its Primordial Aura as it ripples through the entire settlement.
"Why do you not run? Do you truly believe you have the power to defeat a First Blood? The most powerful lifeform to grace this galaxy for billions of years? Lesser races like you cannot comprehend the difference between us. " its voice echoes through the air.
I can't tell if it's speaking these words out loud, or if they're being transmitted into my mind. The Demon is becoming harder to see again, like the Primordial Aura right around its demonic form is becoming denser. Even its Vibrations seem to be compressing and becoming stronger than any normal Royal's should.
The pressure and gravity become even more intense, but we begin summoning far more Glyphs around us while taking advantage of this dense source of energy.
I watch the laser pointer of demonic essence it holds in one hand finish its journey across the settlement, then compress back into a single point in the First Blood's palm. When he throws his arm forward again, it looks like a long purple rope with some slack is being whipped out.
The travel speed is slower than the near-instant hit the laser had, but it is far too fast for us to react with a dodge.
The end of this whip hits the center of our combined blue and red protection arrays and shatters half of them to mist instantly.
The other half all show signs of cracking and fractures, making sure the Demon's growing aura seeps through and touches our souls.
The building behind us explodes from the impact pressure, and gushes with excess Celestial Energy again. There's enough force for us to break through a second building behind it, then eventually stop ourselves on the edge of a roof behind it.
Each time, more and more pure Celestial Energy bursts into the atmosphere, and I feel the sensation of a Dryad's old glyphs waking up within the towers.
My ether stores surge up, breaking 20 times their previous limits, and with my Sacred Body activated, I can summon compression glyphs all over the outside of my soul to siphon energy into creating High Quality Glyphs much faster. There is no need to only form them from my palms.
Tens of millions of Glyphs form around Maria and me, and we even stack a massive amount of impact cushions beneath our feet, merging with the root of this building as it fractures and breaks apart.
When a whip of Demonic Essence slices through the clouds of Celestial Energy and falling towers before us, as the First Blood Demon extends its arm again to attack, we take its strike head-on.
A shockwave of red, blue, white, and purple High Quality Ether bursts out from the impact zone with far greater pressure than any of the others. This is because the force isn't relieved by our momentum backward, this time we stay steady in place.
More of the building below us breaks, but we stay steady in the air between tons of shattering protective arrays both in front and behind. It gives us enough stability, and time stuck in a single place, to take advantage of the plumes of Celestial Energy pouring out of the tower below us.
We only touched the others for milliseconds at most. Now, we get over a full second standing in the center of this growing white cloud.
The angered Demon's roar transmits into our minds at the same instant the shockwave of this exchange creates fractures like frail glass in the outside of every single building in this settlement.
Maria pulls out her Soul Sword, and it shines so bright with a countless number of refracting points of source resin. When she points it forward, more and more blue glyphs start to form around it, creating structural arrays to keep it steady and sharpening arrays to enhance its power once used.
All I can do is focus more and more on creating protective glyphs, as now, my blade still lies dormant, not reacting to the aura of the battle going on outside my soul at all.
I grit my teeth while I witness another purple whip coming our way. "Now would be a great time to wake up..." I send through a one-way telepathy link, but get only silence back.
When the whip collides with our barriers again this time, it shatters through the newly summoned arrays. Once it does, the rope-like collection of arrays surrounded by Demonic Essence goes slack for a fraction of a second.
This is when Maria jumps forward, and swings her blade against its end.
Another relentless shockwave bursts through the settlement, but a small area of this rope, about 100 billion kilometers long, turns icy blue, and becomes infested by streams of reflective rainbow light.
It shatters and breaks off, but the majority of the whip is pulled back the instant the attack is noticed.
My eyes widen as I watch the Demon's other hand raise, and it summons a ball of dark purple energy that extends into a straight line. Instantly, it's swung like a bat, and a second beam of Demonic Essence starts slicing through every building in this settlement like the first rigid laser-like wave from the first attack it sent.
I trigger explosive glyphs beneath my feet and join Maria in the air in time to fuse our arrays together to block. We're both blasted backward in an entirely different direction, destroying half a dozen towers behind us. The last impacts have made most of their outer walls weak, but this fills the air with more and more of the raw Celestial Energy, acting as a small positive in our favor.
Before we even manage to get our footing and stop flying back, two purple whips of Demonic Energy come flying our way with pinpoint accuracy aimed toward our chests.
We summon just enough glyphs to fend them off, but even the whip that Maria sliced through with her blade looks as good as new. More and more Demonic Essence just flows out from this Demon's core to fuel them, losing such a small amount seems to not have affected its strength at all.
So, when there is an opportunity to strike again, Maria does not jump.
At the same time, I've given up connecting with my sleeping sword, but begin to search in the depths of my Soul for another alternative.
The only times my blade has refused to fight in the past is when the opponent before it was not strong enough to pique its interest. In this new form it forcefully upgraded itself to... maybe it isn't entirely injured or dormant. It just does not believe that this Demon is a big enough threat to show itself.
"Fine... if that's the way things are... I'll have to improvise." I send into the dark abyss in my soul, but get nothing back again.
I just begin forming as many protective arrays as I possibly can while the whips retract and get ready to strike again. Maria does the same, filling the air with layers upon layers of red and blue text that spins and sparkles in an ancient dialect.
"If you can block this next attack yourself, and give me a moment to concentrate... I can give us the edge we need to fight back!" I call out to Maria, simultaneously sharing the thought process I just went through after having an epiphany yelling at my non-responsive sword.
Her eyes grow more determined, and as the two whips come flying through the clouds of mist and broken towers again, she grins and nods. "I can hold on."
With full trust, I release my grasp on the protective arrays, and stop forming more to replace the ones that will certainly shatter upon impact.
Instead, I take a step back, and pull out all of the soul weapons and Demon horns we collected from the Outer Guards. Then, pour my full focus into activating my Celestial Grade Craftsmanship.
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Author's Note:
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