Chapter 313. Clash with the Eternal's Mightiest
Vvvu-shhh!
Boom!
The air shrieked as two searing lances of golden cosmic energy erupted from Ikaris's eyes, cutting through the frigid mountain mist with surgical precision. But as the beams tore through the space where the sound had originated, they found only empty air. The target was gone.
The concentrated solar fury slammed instead into the ancient, gnarled trunk of a towering pine, shearing the massive wood in two as if it were a mere twig. With a groan of tortured timber, the fallen giant tumbled down the jagged slope, gaining momentum until it crashed through the frozen crust of the lake below with a deafening, splintering roar.
The violent commotion did not go unnoticed. Down on the ice, the hunched, predatory forms of the Deviants snapped their heads upward. Seeing the radiant figures of Ikaris and Ajak perched upon the precipice, the monsters let out a blood-curdling collective howl—a sound of raw, primal hunger. Scrabbling with obsidian claws, they began to scale the sheer rock face, driven by the singular, desperate urge to feast upon the flesh of the Eternals.
Ikaris, however, didn't spare them a single glance. His jaw tightened, and his golden eyes narrowed, scanning the treeline with predatory focus. A cold knot of unease tightened in his chest; someone had managed to ghost past his superhuman senses, approaching within earshot without triggering a single instinct. He needed to know who—or what—possessed such stealth.
Slowly, the very fabric of reality before him began to ripple.
The air shimmered and buckled like a fractured mirror, catching the pale winter light in a kaleidoscopic swirl. Then, with the chime of breaking glass, the shards of the illusion fell away, dissolving into nothingness to reveal a lone figure standing composed amidst the swirling snow.
Confusion flickered across the faces of both Ikaris and Ajak. The man before them was a stranger, yet he carried himself with an unsettling air of nonchalance. Ikaris didn't care for names; he cared only for intent. This interloper had been lurking in the shadows for far too long—long enough to have overheard the bitter, world-shattering truths he had just confessed to Ajak.
The figure was, of course, Noah. He had remained a silent observer in the periphery of their drama, but as Ikaris prepared to strike the final, treacherous blow against his own leader, Noah knew the time for watching had passed.
"Greetings, Mr. Superman-with-the-laser-eyes," Noah said, his voice smooth and utterly unimpressed as he glanced at the smoldering, blackened stump of the tree. "And to you as well, Mrs. Ajak."
When the beams had first fired, Noah had still been safely tucked within the folds of the Mirror Dimension, his voice the only thing permitted to bleed into the physical world. Now, he stepped fully into the biting cold.
"Who are you?" Ikaris demanded, his brow furrowing into a deep V. He stayed his hand against Ajak for the moment, shifting his lethal focus toward this uninvited guest. The stranger's tone was familiar—too familiar. "You seem to know her?"
"Me? I'm just a passerby. A regular guy, really," Noah replied, offering a casual shrug before pointing a finger toward the matriarch of the Eternals. "Though, to be fair, I did come here specifically for her. Ajak, according to the Ancient One, you were looking to have a word with me?"
Ajak froze, her wise, weathered features clouding with thought. Like Ikaris, she didn't recognize the young man's face, yet he spoke her name with the ease of an old acquaintance. She searched her centuries of memories, trying to place him among the countless souls she had guided on Earth.
But the moment the title 'Ancient One' left his lips, the gears clicked into place. Her eyes widened in realization.
"You...!"
Before she could finish her thought, Ikaris moved. His patience had evaporated.
"It doesn't matter who you are," Ikaris spat, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl. "Being here today was your last and greatest mistake."
He needed to end this quickly. He surmised that this man was likely an illusionist, perhaps some rogue sorcerer or a trickster like Sprite. With the Deviants' guttural snarls drawing closer from the cliffside, he couldn't afford a protracted engagement.
Ikaris acted with the suddenness of a lightning strike. He stepped forward, his boot shattering the permafrost, and launched himself across the few yards of space between them. To a normal eye, he was nothing more than a golden blur. He drew back a heavy fist, channeling the weight of a demigod into a blow meant to pulp the bones of this 'ordinary' human.
As the preeminent warrior of the Eternals, Ikaris might not have possessed the raw, planet-cracking strength of some of his kin, but he was still a titan compared to the mortals of this world.
Boom!
The expected wet crunch of breaking ribs never came. Instead, a dull, heavy thud echoed through the clearing. To Ikaris's utter shock, the man hadn't even flinched. Noah had simply raised a single hand, his palm catching the Eternal's fist as if he were catching a slow-tossed ball.
The sheer kinetic energy of the impact rippled outward, the air between them screaming as it was displaced.
"What?" Ikaris gasped, his eyes wide. Behind him, the force of his sudden dash had left a deep, scorched furrow in the snow, a testament to the velocity he had achieved. Yet here he was, halted mid-flight by a single hand.
The shockwave from the collision sent a cascade of powder flying from the surrounding trees. Down on the slopes, the climbing Deviants lost their grip as the very mountain groaned under the vibration, the rock face crumbling beneath their claws and sending them tumbling back into the icy depths of the lake.
Noah felt the surge of Ikaris's strength vibrating through his arm. It was formidable, certainly—roughly equivalent to the raw, unbridled power of the Hulk, though perhaps Ikaris was holding back out of arrogance.
A flying Hulk, Noah thought with a dry inner smile. Now that's a terrifying prospect.
Beneath his skin, the Rune of Bravery hummed with golden light, and his vast reserves of mana surged to reinforce his skeletal structure and muscles. He wasn't even tapping into the rune's true potential yet; he was merely using his magic as a structural reinforcement. For a man like Ikaris, he didn't need to show his full hand just yet.
"Mrs. Ajak, if you would be so kind as to find a sturdy rock to hide behind," Noah said, his voice eerily calm despite the tectonic struggle occurring at his fingertips. "I'd like to see for myself if the 'mightiest warrior of the Eternals' lives up to the brochure."
The sheer coldness of Noah's confidence stung worse than any physical blow. Ikaris felt a hot flash of indignity. For millennia, humans had knelt in the dirt and called them gods. To be spoken to with such casual condescension by a mere mortal was an insult that demanded blood.
His rage boiled over. His eyes began to glow with a terrifying, incandescent light. "You wish to know the power of the Eternals? Then look closely, mortal!"
Ikaris pulled back, pouring every ounce of his celestial essence into his left hand. This wasn't a measured strike; fueled by wounded pride, he put 120% of his might into a haymaker aimed squarely at Noah's jaw.
"Is that all? Just the old 'left-right' routine?" Noah mocked. Even as the air distorted around Ikaris's fist, Noah's hand shot out, his fingers clamping like iron bands around the Eternal's wrist, stopping the blow inches from his face. "Left and right hooks... I know a few of those too."
Suddenly, a phantom itch began to burn in Noah's knuckles—the "Fist Power" effect was taking hold, a primal hunger for combat rising in his chest. He balled his left hand into a fist, the air around it beginning to shimmer with a dangerous, golden heat.
Before the punch even began its arc, Ikaris felt a chill run down his spine. His warrior's instinct, honed over thousands of years of slaughtering Deviants, screamed at him to move. Danger.
Igniting his cosmic energy, Ikaris wrenched his captured limbs free with a violent burst of light. Using his flight to ignore the laws of inertia, he pirouetted through the air, disappearing from Noah's front and reappearing behind him in a blur of gold and blue.
He hovered inches off the ground, his eyes already recharging for a point-blank blast. He would burn this arrogant creature to ash from behind.
But Noah was faster. He didn't even turn his body; he simply felt the displacement in the air. His next strike was already coiled and ready to spring.
Golden energy swirled around Noah's right arm, condensing into the ethereal, translucent silhouette of a snarling, prehistoric dragon.
"Conundrum!"
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