'I was able to put up a fight against Chaos because of my healing ability.' Vivia grimaced as she placed her hand on her blood-soaked chest. 'Now that it is doing nothing to heal this injury, it is only a matter of time before I lose to it.'
Vivia was trying to heal it. Healing energy was continuously emitting from her palm and drilling into her chest, trying to regrow flesh and stop the leakage of blood from her body. But whenever it would close up a little, the wound would burst open again, and she would feel more pained.
'The blood flowing out of it is too much.' Vivia felt lightheaded, and she touched her head, feeling a great headache coming. 'I will faint in a few minutes if it doesn't close up.'
Her vision was getting blurry with each passing second. Tears and droplets of blood were filling up her eyes. She blinked in order to clear up the blurriness and looked up as Chaos's shadow fell on her.
"I only came for Damien." Chaos was hovering right above Vivia. All of its thousand eyes were locked on her. An immense sensation of fear filled her when streaks of chaotic energy flashed in its crimson eyes. Her heart palpitated as she heard its next few sentences. "I didn't expect I would get this lucky. Getting him and killing you is like killing two birds with one stone. Not only will I advance to become a True Being by stealing his godly powers, but I will also avoid unnecessary trouble in the future by putting you down here."
A crater was created in the mountain when she crashed into it.
Vivia was in the middle of it.
The blood gushing out of the unhealable laceration that stretched from one side of her chest to the other and was bone-deep dyed it red and slid down the vertical wall of the mountain, reflecting the unbearable anguish she was experiencing from hearing its words.
"The look of despair on your face." Chaos said in a sickeningly sweet and androgynous voice, "Ah~I love it!"
"Have anyone ever told you?" Vivia scoffed as she raised her head to look at Chaos, "You bark too much like a dog."
"A lot has said that to me as they fell deeper into despair and became my nourishment." Chaos was the type that used words to make its target fall deeper into despair. It does such a thing in order to benefit more from them. After all, it becomes stronger by drawing out negative emotions from its target; the stronger, the better. "And guess what?"
It's also the type of being that chases after perfection. It doesn't mind humiliating others. But it does hate getting humiliated by others. And what it hated the most was getting compared to lowly beings.
"You will meet them when I send you to hell!"
It was enraged, hearing her words, and attacked to seal her fate.
Its divinity rotated and roared. The swirling winds of negativity flowing out of the temple cracked space and changed the weather. Darkness descended on the land as a dark spot manifested in the sky, blocking the moon. It was extremely wide and huge, and when Chaos's divinity of the same name merged with it, countless red lines formed on it. They intertwined with each other, forming complex but intricate patterns that glowed red once they overlapped.
"Malevolent Realm Partial Manifestation: Hell's Reflection."
A crimson shine filled Vivia's eyes. It also attracted the attention of people that were a considerable distance away from them.
"Wha... What's that?"
A crowd of people sighted the changes and the monster in the sky and gaped.
"The end is approaching."
A senile old man fell to his knees and sobbed miserably as seeing the crimson sky and the monster in it reminded him of the prophecy.
"You see this? It is a punishment I use to drag the souls of sinners like you into my hell." As Chaos uttered those words, a rain of blood fell out of the crimson sky. "It's a killing technique that doesn't end until all life in the vicinity is destroyed. Have a taste of it."
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
The red droplets transformed into nail-sized blades, and their sharpness was unmistakable as they whizzed through the air and drizzled down on Vivia like a violent downpour.
'I can't just sit still and wait for my death!'
Seeing them approaching, Vivia mustered up whatever strength she could and slapped the crater to shoot herself out of it, and immediately bolted out of their way.
Boom!
A cluster of explosions set off when they struck the mountain and the ground, raising clouds of dust and creating massive gales of wind.
Vivia looked down, and her eyes widened. Massive sinkholes whose depth couldn't be seen have formed on the ground. Thankfully, they were fighting outside the country, or else it would have been eradicated. The land down below her was ravaged to the point where it could no longer be recognized. The mountains were flattened, and all signs of life were exploded to cinders.
"You dodged it? Amusing." Chaos wasn't annoyed, seeing her dodging them. They failed to harm her, but they succeeded in pushing her back from the place where It didn't want her to reach. At that place, its minions and Damien could be seen. It said, "You are quite fast for a fish out of water."
"I am not a fish out of the water but a bird in the air, you dumbfuck."
Chaos had made a mistake. It had mistaken a water and sky deity, a descendant of a mythical beast that had wings, scales, a fish-like lower body, and a human-like body, for a weak sea beast. Vivia hated racists, especially ones like Chaos. She couldn't help but curse it while dodging the crimson rain.
"Your mouth is really nasty. Let me shred that arrogant, foul-smelling thing into pieces!"
Chaos moved its eyes, and the rain was directed towards Vivia. It focused on only her, and then within the blink of an eye, countless crimson droplets reached her.
'It's able to control them and increase their speed using its eyes.'
Vivia realized that too late.
The chaotic rain has already painted her red.
Boom!
The explosions hurled her all the way back to the County.
Thud!
This was the sound of her crashing into the barrier.
"Kaugh!"
She groaned and weakly opened her eyes, only to see it raising a tsunami and dumping it towards her.
'I can't dodge it.'
Because if she did, the barrier around the County would shatter, and countless lives will be lost.
'I need to make a stand right here, right now!' Vivia roared in her mind.
Gritting her teeth, she raised her hand. Endless divine power surged out of her in the shape of blue streams, looking quite pathetic when compared to the tsunami that was dropping down toward them like hell's fire. Her divine power allowed her to gain control over some atoms. She didn't know that they were atoms. According to what she was taught, they were called spiritual elements. And she could see them. An atom of oxygen was like a blue color dot to her, and an atom of hydrogen was like a green colored dot. And when two green dots mix with one blue dot, a droplet of water gets created.
She controlled all such elements in the air and fused hundreds of thousands of hydrogen atoms with half that number of oxygen atoms, creating a massive and thick wall of water that reached the sky.
"Celestial art. Cough*" she spurted out blood but still forced it. "Sheer cold."
It transformed into a wall of ice that ran across the road leading to the County, from one mountain to another. The crimson tsunami collided with it, setting off a massive explosion.
Boom!
A mushroom cloud made of smoke reached the sky. A violent tremor was felt throughout the northern region as an incredibly powerful shockwave burst outwards in all directions from the point of impact. Whatever it washed over was pulverized. But even a majority of that was blocked by the wall erected by Vivia. The rest was taken head-on by Vivia. This caused her to smash into the barrier, cracks forming in it.
The wall of ice she had created by over-exhausting herself and overdrawing her divinity blocked off everything that Chaos sent their way and protected everyone inside the County.
The dust and smoke dissipated with time, revealing a shattered wall and a blood-soaked princess.
"You can dodge it once by putting your life on the line and exhausting your divinity. But what about twice or thrice?" Chaos smiled, seeing her in that state. It could feel her rank dropping. If before she was a deity, then now she was close to becoming a mere mortal.
Vivia: "??!"
She felt shocked upon hearing its laughter, and her eyes narrowed to the size of needles as she saw what was taking place in front of her.
The crimson sky materialized by Chaos was growing. It was eating the clear, blue sky of the Far West Major Realm to grow!
"It might be a mere reflection of my hell, but it is still not something that can be looked down upon. It grows by consuming despair and destruction. Since it was summoned, countless wildlife has been lost. An entire forest was destroyed." Chaos said, "It isn't going to run out anytime soon. And it will grow once I eradicate you and what you tried to protect. This is a fate you will never be able to dodge!"
Chaos's divine spell was strengthened so much that it didn't face any trouble creating a bloody river. It was so much bigger than the tsunami could ever be, and its target was Vivia, the entire County, and all its inhabitants.
'Is this how I die?'
What was left of Vivia was a bloody mess. She couldn't move her lips or twitch her fingers. Throwing off the fastly approaching chaotic river that was flying in the air was a pipe dream.
She closed her eyes, feeling disappointed in herself.
She had tried her best but failed to protect her son or the people she had come to cherish.
The pain she was expecting never came.
Instead, she heard a powerful shout.
It emerged from the center of the County, and it was full of anger!
"Miniature World Manifestation: Spiritual Sword Realm!"
Vivia's eyes snapped open, and she saw something amazing.
A silver streak flashed in the darkness. The roar of a tyrant subdued everything and defeated everyone, and it came from a single weapon. The crimson river was split apart and frozen by a creamy white sword that stabbed Chaos.
"You have served me well." A man appeared before Vivia. Looking at the sword embedded into Chaos, he made a sign with his hand and muttered, "Explode."
The sword twisted to shower Chaos with more pain before it exploded.
As a result, Chaos burst like a balloon.
Pieces of its flesh scattered throughout the air but didn't fall down.
This was the most damaged it had been since it descended on this world.
The man turned to Vivia, saying to her, "You did a great job," before he hurled a scroll toward her. "Catch."
Vivia didn't have the strength to catch it, so it slapped her face.
"Sorry." The man's face fell when he saw that, and the hand he was using to grab a cloaked person by the neck tightened, causing the said person to croak like a frog. It seemed like he feared her. "I didn't know your condition was so serious."
"Little brat, what is this?" Vivia asked as she bit the scroll to stop it from falling down. She was resting on the barrier, lying on top of it.
"A sealing scroll. Sis, press it against your wound." Badulf explained, "Then, you will be able to heal yourself."
The one who had saved her was the Fierce Sword Count!
Author here:-
Two more chapters and we are done with Damien's past.
They will be 1.5-3k words long.
