Chapter 7178: The First Spear Throw The duel did not go according to plan. That was okay. Neither Ves nor the Dark Apostle harbored an obsession about following a plan to the letter. Anyone with enough experience in life would know that the future could never be completely calculated. Perhaps the Polymath might disagree, but Ves never assumed he could predict with 100 percent certainty how a sequence of events would play out over time. That did not mean that plans had no value, but people needed to be adaptable and ideally have contingency plans in place to account for accidents and the like. Ves and the Dark Apostle entered the dueling ground knowing that the Unshakeable King was the second-strongest member of the Phase Lord Department. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞 What he had demonstrated so far truly exemplified his combat power. Compared to conceited and close-minded alien phase lords that the Larkinsons had battled over the years, the overall qualities of this human phase lord was undoubtedly superior. His training and his use of tech and equipment already made him considerably stronger than the average lesser phase lord. That made it difficult for the Dark Apostle to outfight the Unshakeable King, especially now that the latter had suffered a soul injury that sent him over the edge. The Unshakeable King was overdrafting his strength. His phasewater concentration burned faster whenever he was actively clashing against the challenger. He seemingly had no other goal left in his mind aside from demolishing the man responsible for killing his companion spirit! The logical response to such an unhinged display of aggression was to back off and let the Unshakeable King tire himself out. The greater the delay, the more his lack of fulfillment put him in a depressed mood. However, the fight had already taken more minutes than it should have. A duel between phase lords could potentially last for days or even weeks depending on how timid they were and how big their bodies had become. The more mass at their disposal, the more hits they could take. While it was possible to kill a phase lord quickly by targeting his brain or his most essential phasewater organs, the Unshakeable King understood this truth extremely well. Even in his deranged state, his excellent fighting instincts and acumen still shone through. He defended his head and his torso against any attempt made by the Dark Apostle to target them directly. The Teragon Plasma Spear had not been able to scorch the helmet once, and only inflicted marginal damage to the torso armor. The Unshakeable King’s raiment had plenty of buffer left to expend. The plasma spear would have to repeatedly scorch the same sections of armor in order to create a breach. Then the Dark Apostle would have to slip in and target this single weak point, which the Unshakeable King would defend with great effort! It was much easier for him to block or redirect the plasma spear strikes when he knew what it was targeting! The only way to overcome this disadvantage was to create other armor breaches, but that would take precious minutes. The Unshakeable King knew that time was on his side. As recklessly as he was fighting at the moment, he had never truly made any risky moves. Whether he did so with or without intention, he had turned his furious display of aggression into a brilliant defensive posture, making it far too dangerous for the Dark Apostle to mount his own offensive. This was why the Dark Apostle wanted to make use of the Sacrificial Spear Throwing Method sooner than they originally planned. They ended to break the situation and strip the Unshakeable King of his signature thick raiment. Now that they had come to this point, the Dark Apostle assumed a static position relative to his adversary and began to grip his weapon in a very different manner. A mechanism hidden in the end of the spear shaft unfolded, exposing an integrated atlatl-like construction that would enable the human phase lord to hurl his spear forward with greater force and leverage. There was nothing wrong with the classical way of throwing a spear, just like there was nothing wrong with building your own rocket if you were stuck on a planet and wanted to launch into space. Ves at least tried to stick to the spirit of primitive warfare and kept it barebones. He did not add any electromagnetic launching mechanism nor did he add any aim assistance or target guidance functions. This meant that there was a larger-than-zero chance that the Dark Apostle could miss his crucial throw. In practice, this should not happen. The Sacrificial Spear Throwing Method was not a joke. It imparted a great amount of expertise to Ves and his alter ego on how to throw spears, to the point where they could probably join a sports competition and achieve good results. Perhaps their real experience may be lacking, but at this distance, the probability of missing was minimal, especially now that the Unshakeable King’s control over the surrounding space had degraded! One of the downsides of losing his cool was that he was unable to maintain enough concentration to shake or solidify the surrounding space with his phasewater organs. He was still able to cause momentary disruptions, but these effects ended far too soon to divert a spear thrown at this distance. As the Dark Apostle assumed the right stance, he utilized his own spatial abilities to anchor himself into position as much as possible. Unlike the Unshakeable King, the Dark Apostle had yet to implant the lesser Tarsei organ, but that did not mean he was unable to pull off this particular trick. Just as phase lords were already capable of teleporting short distances without the use of specialized phasewater organs, the Dark Apostle was able to anchor himself in a specific coordinate in space, though only relative to a nearby satellite such as Jotunheim. It was much more difficult to pull off this technique well outside of any nearby gravity wells. Though the Dark Apostle had to strain himself a lot more to keep his position fixed, it was more than worth it as he could leverage the full power of his leg and back muscles into his throw. At the same time he relied on his acquired skills in spear throwing to execute the correct throwing posture, he also used the more esoteric side of the method to pump the Teragon Plasma Spear full of fire energy. They did not blindly mingle with the hyper materials, but they also activated the D-arm’s ability to saturate itself with far more fire energy than was safe! As the fire continued to absorb more fire energy, it grew increasingly hotter and less stable. Heat and light wafted from the shaft as an excess of energy induced greater strain onto the structure of the weapon. Even if it was designed to contain all of this fire energy, it did not mean that it was able to maintain this state forever. Once the Dark Apostle chose to sacrifice the spear, he started an irreversible process that could only end with the weapon destroyed. There was no going back at this point. The Minor Demon that had been forcibly reshaped to serve as its artifact spirit also knew what was going on. It had previously cooperated perfectly with the Dark Apostle. It facilitated the offensive by powering up the plasma edge just before the moment of impact and lowering it when it was not being used to burn through anything. The demon also helped to regulate the flow of fire energy and prevented it from burning anything that was not supposed to endure so much heat and fire. Yet now that the Minor Demon knew that its vessel and likely itself would become sacrificed to fuel a powerful explosion, all thoughts of cooperation disappeared. He resisted with all his might! Spikes grew out of the spear as he sacrificed portions of his own strength to sting the hand that held the spear. The Minor Demon also tried to sabotage the priming process by creating malfunctions and redirecting fire energy elsewhere. Yet before he could go any further, Blinky appeared and brutally used one of the more forceful demonology techniques to suppress and immobilize the Minor Demon. "You shall do nothing to ruin this moment. Know that in the short time of your second existence, your life shall be used to fuel the redemption of hundreds of human phase lords." With that complication settled, the Dark Apostle was ready to execute the Sacrificial Spear Throwing Method in reality for the first time. His eyes and his other senses locked onto the Unshakeable King. There was no hiding the Dark Apostle’s intention. In response to this imminent throwing attack, the Unshakeable King first decided to charge forward and whack the Dark Apostle into concussion before he could complete his throwing attack, but suddenly thought better of this foolish course of action. He stopped and hunkered down instead. He did not anchor himself in space, but he hunched his body and held his hammers across his chest in preparation to block the incoming spear as possible. A short moment of stasis passed. Both human phase lords appeared frozen as they faced each other in orbit of a frozen planet. Many observers held their breaths as they awaited the outcome of this critical move. They knew nothing of what was about to come, but most of them were smart enough to deduce that throwing a plasma spear that had performed so well up to this point was not a trivial move. This was especially the case when it was absolutely stuffed with far more fire energy than any hyper weapon had any right to contain! Just a few seconds passed in reality, but to those involved in the fight, it felt as if an eternity had whizzed past their gazes. Then, the moment passed, and both Ascended Giants grew tense as they knew that the time of action had come. As the Dark Apostle stretched his body backwards just a bit further, he finally uttered the decisive words. "THE FLAMES OF HELL HAVE COME TO PUNISH YOU OF YOUR SINS." The Dark Apostle’s armored body made an exaggerated bow-like motion as he hurled the Teragon Plasma Spear forward with great force! The atlatl construction enabled him to exert extra leverage into his throw, causing the volatile D-arm to soar towards the Unshakeable King with enough speed to ensure a hit. The plasma spear seemed to scream as it rapidly crossed the distance! This was not a scream that was audible to normal ears, as space did not carry any air that was capable of transmitting sound. The scream was of a more spiritual nature. What the people in the vicinity managed to hear was the deathcry of a Minor Demon who knew he was racing directly towards his demise! This silent scream cut off almost as soon as it started, for the Teragon Plasma Spear struck the Unshakeable King head-on without any deviations! A massive explosion erupted instantly afterwards, causing the armored form of the strategos and the immediate surroundings to become engulfed in an expanding fireblast! An excess of heat and force completely consumed the local area. Even the Dark Apostle who made sure he was well outside the danger zone had to back off a bit further in order to remain unaffected! The fireball continued to blaze well after the initial explosion had ended. The excess concentration of fire energy took its time to disperse. There was just so much of it that they continued to fuel the flames! The Dark Apostle and Blinky both watched on with astonishment at the magnitude of the explosion. "That is more powerful than you described." "My calculations were... off. I failed to account for a number of variables. I think that the conversion into a D-arm is the biggest mutating factor. I simply had no way to determine how it would interact with the Sacrificial Spear Throwing Method." "Now you know." "Yes."