Chapter 174: The Devil in shock
"What are Skills?"
There were thousands of Archaic Scrolls and Modern Books written about this question throughout the Gxy.
But none hade close to verifying the statements mentioned in the infamous book, MANA and RECORD: a philosophical theory.
In it, the author had mentioned, "Mana is like raw numbers. It is an ocean of positive, negative, and imaginary numbers that by itself make no sense. And there are two ways to use these numbers for one''s desired oue."
"The first way is to master Laws. These Laws are nothing but a random congregation of these numbers resulting in a rule that governed the working of the Universe. Some pure element-based Crawlers and Dreamers have such mastery. Yet, other than the First Emperor of the Gxy, there had never been a single Dreamer whopletely mastered more than one Laws."
In modern times, the Skills that originated from thisplete or partial mastery of Laws were known as the Ancient Sayings.
"The second way to use the chaotic Mana for one''s use is RECORD. The RECORD works like the simplest or the mostplicated forms and functions. And simr to addition, subtraction, and multiplication, the RECORD provided the means to bypass the Laws like a shortcut."
In modern times, these types of Skills were divided into many Ranks depending upon theplexity of the forms used by RECORD. A slight change in the variables of these forms could decide the nature of the Skills as Active and Passive.
So, when the Devil proimed the Skill as Aldrich''s original, it truly was unique and one of its kind. As one could master the Law of Darkness and Devil, but it wasn''t necessary that the path they have trodden to reach that insight was the same or not.
*
As thenguage of LAWS came out from the mouth of the DEVIL, a dark globe appeared at the tip of his finger. It was like he had punctured a spherical hole in the space. Everything in the za felt an incredible attraction and heaviness towards the pitch-ck hole. And those who were nearest to it felt the full brunt of it.
All Skills got canceled or disintegrated even before they could hit the Devil. But this wasn''t the end of things. An evil wind howled as twelve unseen discs surrounded the football-sized globe. The presence of those discs could only be felt from the twelve ghostly space fluctuations. The Boss Crawler and even the undead felt the turmoil in emotions as they looked at those fluctuations.
Ha Ha Ha!
The Devil looked at El Cid and let out a mockingugh.
"Itadakimasu."
Zoooo-roooo-ooom!!!
With the Devil as the center, the dark globe expanded outwards, engulfing each and everything. And the twelve unseen discs sucked out the rationality from all beings. The four undead Viscount Ranked Bosses voluntarily came rushing towards the dark globe. All the soldiers that had remained alive and hadn''t moved so far dashed to drown themselves in the expanding mass of ck.
Only El Cid, gripping the two swords at his waist, had remained calm. He neither took the horse away from the Devil nor he ran towards it. Beings at his level could tell that there was no escape from the Devil''s Skill.
The contact was inevitable, like Death.
The dark globe kept expanding and soon engulfed the entire za. It went down into the earth and even the Giants in the sky, as paintings, weren''t out of its reach. Whatever that came in contact with the pitch-ck ball disintegrated and got devoured, leaving no trace behind.
Shooooop!!!
With a sound of arge amount of water suddenly going down a drain, the ck globe vanished. A crater appeared on the ground, but it wasn''t depthless. In the middle of the crater, there was a massive pir going down to hundreds of meters and even beyond into the earth. On top of the pir, the Devil was standing and eyeing the beauty of the destruction that had ravaged the entire za.
Tink
The evil grin on the Devil''s face vanished as he heard a string vibrating in a sweet but unearthly tone. And like a chorus, voices soon followed the single note of music.
"Ra ru ra ra
Thou art King of Kings,
I worship Thee and Thy will
And I pray when we part today,
Thee will be with us,
in this life or the next
For my Cid the Champion!!!"
Thummmmmm!
Thump! Thump!
The high slopes of the crates and the false sky quaked. Tens of thousands of soldiers came bursting out of the earth. In no time, they assembled themselves in neat rows and columns, like an army ready to march. They held their longnces and pounded them onto the earth.
"As long as there are beings who remember me, I can''t die. THIS IS MY LEGEND!!!"
The sentence echoed in the entire Dungeon, along with the thumping sound, and the Devil snapped his head towards his left. Miles away on the, a hand came bursting out of the earth. And along with the hand came out the rest of the body. His entire body was covered in ck armor, his helmet had only two eye-slits, and there was a blue cloak on his back.
He was Count El Cid., the Undefeated King.
The Devil saw El Cid unsheathing the two greatswords at his waist. The left sword was dark red as ifva was about to solidify on it. And the right greatsword was dark blue as if it was a long crystal of ice.
"HAHA! LEGEND?! Mere tricks and nothing else, huh!"
Shuuuu!!
The Devil crouched and was about to touch the Pir in preparation for the fight when from the corner of his he saw a ck and blue blur. The wind had almost stagnated, but even then he heard a flutter of long cloth.
Tink!!
Another sweet but ghastly sound originated just behind the Devil, but this wasn''t the sound of string but the sound of sheathing the swords. The Devil fumbled as the pir''s top he was about to touch had gone down.
"No"
The Devil looked down and found the Pir was still at its ce, but his thick right arm was nowhere to be seen. A hot, sizzling pain came out from his right shoulder and soon he felt a frosty bite of needles on his left. The Devil slowly looked at his left, but even his left arm had been cut off.
"Impossible! This"
The Devil snapped his eyes and looked at the Boss Crawler, but El Cid wasn''t there anymore.
" How can this be?! How can a mere Count use ONE STEP SHUNPO!!!"