BXBX NOVEL Chapter 162: More To Offer.
"It is happening, it is actually happening!" Arla sat at the edge of her seat staring in anticipation; she was there the day Sol made that challenge, and mocked the goddess of war, she was right there to witness it, she never imagined he would reach the place where he would be able to fight her this soon, but here they were.
With all they needed to say engraved in their actions and movements, Sol and Dr\'ul took their first steps toward each other, and the ground surrounding them was shredded in an instant when their weapons clashed with each other, her Sword versus his hammer.
One would think that having such a heavy weapon would impede his range of movements but Sol showed the goddess of war right there why he was able to subdue several Omni-powerful beings in one day. The sword she held on to shook and trembledd within her grasp, causing her to redirect his blow and spin around it to avoid the full brunt of his strength.
Sol\'s hammer though had the bottom end of a spear, and with the heavier head falling he spun the weapon and struck at her abdomen with the tip, forcing her to summon a small round shield on her left forearm and block the jab and then retreat several steps away from him.
"Strong..." The goddess thought to herself watching Sol fall into a stance again with the head of the hammer poised toward the ground as he frowned. "He is focused." She thought again, but she was no idiot, she knew this strength was merely the trim of the surface, residual at best.
"What the hell did she do to get this powerful?" Sol\'s frown deepened as he tried thinking of a solution, but when his initial ideas met dead ends he shook his head and growled, closing the distance between them and wildly swinging the hammer again.
Her initial thought was to block it like before, but a mere fraction of a second before it connected with her shield she backed off a second time and swung her sword where her body had been.
Sure enough there was more to his attack than meet the eye, her sword rattled and went flying out of her grasp from a phantom force surrounding the head of the hammer, and she had to raise her shield again when that force suddenly expanded, throwing her off balance and sending her cascading on her heels across the endless terrain, while she flew Sol elapsed the distance between them again, raising his hammer high in the air causing a moment of silence as their eyes met, and roaring as he descended with it.
"Raaah!" Dr\'ul stopped herself abruptly and thrust her free fist at the hammer, leaving an inndenture several hundred miles wide when they clashed. Sol flipped and landed with his arms stretched out and then stared up as his hammer like her sword went flying off into space. "That\'s right!" Dr\'ul came at him from the side with her eyes blazing crimson but her hair still in its original state.
"The true essence of a fight is not beauty, it is utter confusion and carnage, compromise and adaptation!" She blocked his backhand with her shield and spun around his second punch, unleashing an uppercut of her own that he too summoned a small shield and blocked as it sent him soaring upward.
"This is... Interesting." Sol sobered and humbled himself. "It is close to the same level of power that Orion had." He looked down at her, halting his ascension and raising his shield again when her image distorted and she appeared above him spinning with an axe kick.
"How odd." Dr\'ul caught the fascinated look in Sol\'s eyes when her heel cracked the shield he was using and sent him crashing back toward their battleground. "It feels like I am being, tested...!" She sneered and summoned her sword again, dismantling her shield and making an arm guard for her sword as she began spinning toward him generating more and more heat until her hair began glowing.
"This will be-" Sol grinned, turning and landing gracefully on one leg.
"An interesting fight!" Dr\'ul stopped just above the ground before him with her sword creating a fiery arc as it descended with all of her charged momentum behind it.
The goddess\'s eyes widened in shock when Sol leaned his head and caught the blade between his index and middle fingers, baring the full brunt of the blow as the flames erupted around them and set of a chain reaction of explosions turning the region into a hellscape in a matter of seconds.
Without relent, Dr\'ul released her sword and spun with a kick destined for Sol\'s neck, but he raised his other hand and casually blocked that as well, and then three more kicks as she alternated between feet.
"Let\'s raise the bar." Sol\'s smile became more evident as he stepped toward her, and just the act of moving left the goddess of war speechless when a wave of mana directed from his body and slammed into her leaving a tear in the very space she crashed through as she hit the ground in a chaotic cascade.
"What the-" She forced herself to stop by slamming her back into the ground and using that halted momentum to raise herself with her legs, but there before her with his eyes shrowded over in shadows and inverted with black and white Sol\'s smile seemed murderous as he swung a punch destined for her jawline.
Dr\'ul caught on immediately and thrust out a punch of her own while catching his punch, and the result of what seemed like a casual exchange made a ball of dense matter form around them, obscuring the viewers for several seconds before it shattered as well, revealing Dr\'ul\'s hair brightly ablaze and Sol\'s hair glowing white while they locked fingers and pushed against each other.
"Where is your true power?" Dr\'ul asked, gaining the advantage as she grit her teeth causing Sol to lose ground to her, but in his rebuttal he ground his teeth as well and started pushing her back exuding raw mana with every breath he exhaled through his nostrils like a wild bull.
"I should ask the same!" Sol stared in her crimson eyes while they clashed exerting so much strength each that the space around them began distorting and bending, forming and shattering several spheres of various colours.
Dr\'ul quickly realised that she was being overpowered here, at some point Sol managed to gain an upper hand, and she was almost completely at his mercy as her legs dug trenches into the ground while he slowly began looming over her.
"Don\'t hold out on me, if you want my everything you have to make me feel like you deserve it!" Sol exclaimed forcing her to arch and fall on one knee as she struggled.
"Holy-" Dina exclaimed, of course she knew Sol was supposed to be way stronger than this, the fact that he wasn\'t using any of his Godslayer abilities was a clear giveaway, but at the same time she knew how Sol was and the fact that he was taking Dr\'ul seriously meant there was more to her than met the eye.
"T-then, I will persist!" Dr\'ul\'s hair flashed a higher hue of crimson and grew twice the length, and the gods in the pantheon went silent as they saw her start exerting more power than she ever had before, to use a comparison, she had already surpassed all the fights that had taken place on Arkadia and D\'ol, Sol was simply freakishly strong after his return from Origin.
"This is better!" Sol continued to press her until he was arching over her as well and her legs were the only thing holding her near parallel to the ground, yet she did not fall, she just kept raising her power to meet his.
"Currently our challenger Dr\'ul is only exerting power on the scale of small systems, but she claimed to be able to exert power akin to destroying an entire universe." Ikaris commented, though the fighters couldn\'t hear, her voice was being broadcasted to everyone else\'s mind. "Was it a lie, or will the goddess continue to be on the defensive for the rest of the fight?"
"Remember viewers, there is no time limit, there are no restrictions, they can fight with as much desperation as they need to gain the upper hand!" She sat far above the fight observing from inside of that cluster with a comfortable smile on her face and a glass of sparkling wine in her grasp.
"I can personally assest their strengths and tell you with a hundred percent confidence, this fight is only in its infancy..." She leaned and stared with a discerning eye, also curious about what she was seeing.
"Dr\'ul is strong, do not lose faith in your goddess, she has much more to offer!"