Chapter 7202: Oblivion Might This was the second and final charge of the Dark Apostle. Different from his last power moves, his charge attack was filled with dark momentum. So much dark miasma emanated from his raiment and his blast lance that it completely obscured his gigantic form! It looked as if he was being engulfed by a living amorphous mass of darkness, one that seemed to make people feel sick and hopeless just by staring at it through a projection! The thick and cloying miasma did not just evoke disgust and despair in the mind, but also distorted the reality around it to an obvious degree. Light and other forms of radiation grew weaker the closer they got to the darkness. Any specks of space dust crumbled into molecules while the chaotic spatial effects generated by the Ascended Giants became dampened as if they were covered by a dark blanket. Many sensor and scanning systems struggled to make sense on how the large and concentrated convergence of darkness energy was able to distort the laws of reality to such an extent! These kinds of phenomena used to be the exclusive privilege of high-ranking mech pilots until recently. After the start of the Age of Dawn, it became more common for qi cultivators to be able to cast a fireball or counter the force of gravity without the use of conventional technology, but these were relatively simple and straightforward manifestations that could easily be calculated and understood. Even qi formations and more unusual rituals all abided by certain logic that could explain much of what was taking place. Humans still possessed a capacity to understand the relation between input and output. This time was different. They had never witnessed so much darkness-attributed E energy being mobilized and shaped to produce such dramatic effects! Even the Oscillating Fist looked disturbed. He took his opponent a lot more seriously and actually prepared to burn his own phasewater! Doing this would weaken him for quite a while, and it would be difficult to find replenishment as long as the Phase Lord Department remained cut off from any further shipments of phasewater, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to leverage the power of his phasewater organs to the limit in order to block this next attack! As he crossed his gauntlets in front of his fist once again, the Krytak Class A Seashells that covered his entire raiment glistened as they received a mysterious source of reinforcement. The Oscillating Fist was not like the other Ascended Giants. It became increasingly more clear that he received a substantial amount of support from a third party. If that third party happened to be the Cosmopolitan Movement, then who knew what kind of surprises he had in store. Yet for all of his surprises, the Dark Apostle’s momentum vastly exceeded that of the Oscillating Fist at this time! The dark miasma surrounding his form grew larger but also more defined. It increasingly shifted from an amorphous sphere of darkness into the contours of a robed woman. The darkness formed into the silhouette of the Oblivion Empress! The appearance of this form caused the darkness to cease radiating as much malevolence as before. Instead, the Oblivion Empress exerted greater control over this unruly power, causing it to waste considerably less energy than before. Much of the spare power was being concentrated on the front. The Silhouette of the Oblivion Empress mimicked the posture of holding a lance. This energy silhouette happened to overlap perfectly with the real blast lance. More and more energy started to gather at the tip, to the point that it started to resemble a black hole that was on the verge of losing control! Not only that, but the True God further shaped and refined the energies into an unspeakable application. The Dark Apostle tried his best to keep up with his mother and remember as many details as possible. There was no way in hell he could understand or replicate her fine and exquisite E energy manipulation skills, and it was foolish to replicate it considering that her personalized methods only worked well for herself. However, the Dark Apostle recalled the advice she had given. He did his best to let go of the details and remember the feelings and impressions he gained from observing every step of her process. So long as he was able to develop his own methods in the future that imitated these distinct feelings, then he would be able to control the power of the darkness just as well as his mother one day! As the possessed Dark Apostle continued to charge forward, the distance between him and his adversary shrunk rapidly. He had already built up enough momentum, and now that the Oblivion Empress had gathered as much darkness energy that she could manage under the current condition, she performed the final step. "Remember this feeling, my son. When you develop the arts in the future, you must walk across a tightrope. Your dance must be powerful enough to open up a connection, but weak enough to avoid attracting unwelcome attention. This is how it is done." As the final kilometers ticked down, the Dark Apostle suddenly began to make strange but elegant movements. The Oblivion Empress’ concentrated energy manifestation mirrored every move. Anyone who still had the stomach to observe the charging Dark Apostle by remote strangely found it a lot more bearable to keep their eyes on her form. Like a siren luring sailors to their doom, the Oblivion Empress performed a subtle dance with the lance in her arms. Whatever unknown mysteries she evoked with her movements seemed to resonate with the fabric of reality. The mysterious dance sparked a response from the darker and deeper layers of the universe. Neither the Oblivion Empress nor the Dark Apostle uttered any words to evoke this power, yet it came to them in an obedient fashion nonetheless. At the last couple of seconds before impact, the energy-dense tip of the blast lance suddenly turned a little more gray. An entirely different presence emanated from this contaminated concentration of energy! It was as if a bigger predator from an unknowable location had briefly reached out and leaked a small portion of its forbidden aura! Though this window only remained open for a fraction of a second, the changes it wrought to the blast lance and the energies surrounding it was profound. The brief moment of contamination caused much of the darkness energy to express the properties of nihility! This had a strong negation effect that directly neutralized the Oscillating Fist’s attempts to interfere with the Dark Apostle’s flight path! The dark lance continued to pierce through visible and invisible obstacles as it unerringly closed towards the Oscillating Fist. Though the polemarchos made a sudden burst movement that abruptly pushed him to the side, the Oblivion Empress immediately corrected for this move and slightly shifted the angle of the blast lance so that it bypassed the crossed arms and eventually struck the Oscillating Fist right in the middle of his abdomen! Ves paid great attention to the impact. Though it happened too fast for him to properly register with his senses, he believed that he had definitely managed to catch the tip of the empowered blast lance sapping the power of the nearby Krytak Class A Seashells before piercing through them as if they were brittle bones! Then, he was no longer able to perceive anything, because the ordinary and extraordinary payloads of the blast lance exploded at the same time! The conventional payload most definitely inflicted a lot of damage, but its blast became completely overshadowed by the silent eruption of darkness! A much more overpowering orb of darkness enveloped the Oscillating Fist’s location. The entire space seemed to descend into an unnatural form of darkness that made it impossible for any sensors to observe anything cohesive in the surrounding kilometers! As the excess quantity of darkness energy finally faded away, the two duelists finally became visible again. The Dark Apostle’s appearance was not good. An empowered sacrificial blast lance had exploded a short distance away from his true body, so it was inevitable for him to suffer serious damage, just like the last time. Even with the protection offered by the Oblivion Empress, his raiment could not escape the fate of weakening and falling apart due to the backlash of darkness energy. Even now, the Dark Apostle awkwardly shook and tore away the remains of his raiment. All of the expensive materials and tech had become undone, but at least they managed to do their jobs. The Dark Apostle himself remained relatively unscathed. His true body only had to resist a fraction of the invasion of hostile darkness energy as his raiment. Though he was sad to see his raiment and more importantly the attached powerful linear flight system crumble into pieces, he at least managed to salvage at least one piece of equipment. His Murder Knife originally remained sheathed in the small of his back, just underneath the flight system. This was the most protected portion of his body in the event of encountering an attack from the front. Relatively little darkness energy had managed to reach this part of his armored form, and what little managed to touch the small D-arm instantly got absorbed without incident. The Dark Apostle gripped the Murder Knife as fast as possible as he turned around to see the results of the earlier attack. Though he was confident that the charge attack had inflicted an immense amount of damage, who knew how many trump cards the Oscillating Fist had left. "Damn." Ves quietly cursed. As the darkness from the impact site completely faded away, the humanoid form of the Oscillating Fist became visible yet again. The fact that he hadn’t been torn to pieces or lost his extremities indicated that he had most likely survived the second charge attack! "..." Words escaped from his lips without sound. He no longer possessed a functional helmet or raiment to transmit his words. "At least he has lost his Krytal Seashell raiment." The Dark Apostle looked on the bright side. The Oscillating Fist incurred much more damage, to the point where there was nothing left of his old raiment aside from his greaves and parts of his abnormally thick and heavy gauntlets! Even these components had become compromised due to the thin miasma that had completely impregnated their structure. The Oscillating Fist’s true body was not that much better off. His stomach had been rent open and a large amount of darkness energy had spread inside his partially folded true body. Even if the actual size and mass of his true body made the contamination of darkness energy more manageable than normal, the human phase lord was definitely not in a good condition! Yet aside from the hole in his abdomen area, the Oscillating Fist did not bear any other open wounds! Sure, much of his head, his torso, his upper arms and his upper legs bore dark splotches that grew feebler and more vulnerable by the second, but these were all surface injuries that only marginally decreased his combat readiness. Seeing how he was still able to move his arms and legs, if slower and more painfully, it became clear that he could still put up a fight! Even now, he slowly turned around and faced the Dark Apostle with bruised but defiant eyes. The surviving polemarchos slowly raised his naked and darkened fists before grinning with a bleeding and darkened lip. "..." He did not need to rely on words to convey his intention. When Ves compared the condition of his true body with the condition of the Oscillating Fist, he immediately grew suspicious. He had a growing feeling that it was not a coincidence that both of them ended up this way. "Mother... tell me the truth. Could you have killed the Oscillating Fist in a single blow?" "Yes." she plainly admitted with a satisfied smile. "Then why did you not finish him off!?" He practically roared before he suddenly felt a very painful intangible smack! "Ouch! What was that for, mother?!" "You spoiled brat. Do I have to do everything for the two of you? I agreed to lend a hand. I did not promise to solve this problem entirely. The Oscillating Fist has lost his powerful gauntlets and his Krytak Class A Seashell raiment. I have even inflicted enough damage to his true body to level the playing field. Dark Apostle, I shall leave the rest up to you, and only you. Take up your knife and claim your kill. Only after your blade takes away the life of the giant that you wish to usurp will you truly be able to complete the ritual in the most orthodox fashion. Your leadership challenge will be a complete success. The remaining Ascended Giants will pledge their allegiance to you without fail." The Superior Mother seduced her latest son with her words. The Dark Apostle became pumped up as he looked forward to the final fight! He gripped his Murder Knife with a bit of unfamiliarity but plenty of enthusiasm! "I will finish this myself." He declared!