Chapter 183: Crescendo "You actually let them get you," Thalassa quipped snarkily, eliciting a hiss from Nocturne, who had a scowl on his face. He launched forward again, this time with more intensity and focus. Himothy met him head-on, creating a shockwave from the impact. They exchanged blow for blow, blurring with immense speed across the entire floor, equally matched. The scowl on Nocturne’s face deepened with each blow Himothy parried. The fact that Himothy could keep up with him baffled him thoroughly. Just seconds ago, he had dominated the Glory bearer in a fight, and yet here he was matching him in every regard. And it wasn’t only him. Even Thalassa was affected. She attacked from long range, hurling spears and arrows of lightning at the other Transcendents, but her attacks lacked the previous lethality. With each passing second, the Transcendents adapted, predicting her attacks, matching them. Until eventually, they began to gain the upper hand. "What is happening?!" Thalassa yelled in frustration. "It’s this guy!" Nocturne called, coughing as he crawled out of a wall he’d impacted after taking a brutal hit from Himothy. "He’s doing something to us somehow..." Nocturne wheezed. And he wasn’t wrong. Throughout the fight, Himothy’s aura had been rising steadily. He’d made consecutive declarations, and with every declaration he’d achieved, his invulnerability was further cemented by reality. The odds kept tilting in his favour, robbing the two divine beings of the certainty their attacks carried. The Transcendents had sensed this from the start, knowing how Himothy’s Glory worked. And they had played it to their benefit expertly. Each time he made a declaration, they subtly helped him achieve that result, making Thalassa focus on them while Himothy faced Nocturne. They made sure to witness his Glory too, further enhancing the result. At this point, Himothy was so favored by odds that he became the focal point of the entire fight, looking more glorious than the two beings who brimmed with divinity. And at the peak of this rising aura, Himothy roared. "Glory Declaration: My Next Strike Ends This!" Reality shuddered. This time, Nocturne and Thalassa felt it clearly — probability bending and warping, the world itself preparing to accommodate Himothy’s will. He charged, fist cocked back, lightning and Glory and absolute certainty wrapped around it. Nocturne tried to dodge, but he couldn’t, Himothy’s Glory had reached a peak, and his declaration made dodging impossible. Thalassa tried to break his stride by intercepting with an attack from long range, but her movements became sluggish, her attack slow. Too slow. Himothy’s Glory declaration demanded he reach his target. And there was nothing they could do but watch it happen. His fist approached like judgement, filling these divine beings with a fear they hadn’t felt in ages. It connected with Nocturne’s chest. And the impact... Finn had witnessed powerful attacks before. Arcane, Soul-based, Transcendent, and Divine. But this was something entirely different. This was an attack borne of the world rejecting the existence of the two divine. Himothy’s fist represented the will of the world, a symbolic manifestation of when favored odds congealed into something concrete. It was apocalyptic. The shockwave expanded in a blinding white perfect sphere, vaporizing stone, turning air to plasma, converting everything in its path to raw energy. Nocturne and Thalassa were caught in the epicenter, bodies ragdolling backward like toys thrown by a petulant giant. They smashed through the pit wall with enough force to carve tunnels through solid rock, disappearing into the newly created caverns. The hole itself began collapsing. The platforms above disintegrating, support beams snapping, the entire carefully constructed descent route coming apart. The direction of Himothy’s punch — straight along the breach’s axis — turned to molten stone. Magma flowed where solid rock had been seconds ago. The temperature spiked instantly to oven-like intensity. Above, the surface structures began crumbling. Temples groaned and tilted as their foundations crumbled. Thousands of tons of stone and wood started the long fall into the expanding hole. Lives ended by the dozens as buildings collapsed. Screams echoed from above, quickly cut off by crushing weight or fatal falls. "Go!" Casmir roared, charging with the others straight for the breach that flickered wildly with unstable energy. They needed to cross now or be doomed with the chaos Himothy had wreaked. A chaos that had shocked Finn to his core. What kind of power is this? He thought in trepidation as he charged along with the others, leaping over floor flash-heated to boiling plasma. It’s almost like he grew so strong because he was up against divine beings. That was the only explanation Finn could come up with. Considering the fight had lasted barely minutes, Finn couldn’t think of any other reason Himothy’s power could have scaled up to such terrifying levels in such a short time. Himothy’s Glory became more potent the stronger his opponent was. So long as his declarations actualized without fail, the rise in his strength scaled monumentally. And the two divine beings were strong, extremely so. Finn had come to classify them as incarnations. Their strength was near-absolute. Much greater than someone like Solarius, for example. But not on the level he had felt of the Radiant One when He tried to descend. These two had to be incarnations. But that realization only made Finn wary. It was the reason why throughout the fight, he hadn’t activated his divine essence once. Fighting purely with his mana-based error spells, pushing them to their limits. He had cast invalidations, corrupt inputs, he had frame skipped and reverted attack states... Just like everyone else, he had fought like a mad man simply to keep pace with the incarnations. Because, make no mistake, even when nerfed by Himothy’s Glory effect, the incarnations’ attacks had still been very powerful. Not just anyone could tank divine-essence backed lightning spears that came in waves unendingly. It had been a tough fight regardless of Himothy’s effect. Finn could only wonder how it would have been otherwise. But that was not his main worry. The fact that those two were incarnations was what bothered him so much. From what Finn could infer, incarnations were vessels for their Gods. Besides their own strength, their status as vessels was the defining difference between them and someone like Solarius. Their Gods could descend physically through their bodies. And when was the best time to descend if not now that their incarnates had been beaten so thoroughly, perhaps to the verge of death with such an attack. An attack that had crested its peak. Whose momentum was now dissipated. Finn could hear Himothy panting hard as he joined them in dashing towards the breach. His Glory attack had achieved its intended effect. And reality had reverted back to its normal state. The odds were no longer skewed in his favor like before. If anything happened, Himothy would have to build up to that state again by making declarations and achieving them. And Finn knew something was going to happen. He could feel it deep in his bones. It might’ve looked like much time had passed, but in reality, barely a second or two had. The Transcendents had only begun charging for the breach as these thoughts roiled in Finn’s head rapidly. When suddenly, two figures appeared directly in front of them. Fuck! Finn’s blood ran cold. It was Nocturne and Thalassa. Fully healed. Without as much as a scratch visible despite the devastating blow that should have liquefied their bodies. But that wasn’t what made Finn’s blood run cold. It was the presence emanating from them. Before, they’d felt powerful. Divine and dangerous, yes. But manageable with the right tactics. Now, however... They felt like True Gods. Beings on the level of the Radiant One. Full divine manifestations. Absolute authority made flesh. The weight of their regard pressed down on every Transcendent like a physical thing. Finn’s divinity — the little amount that remained — flared wildly in response, recognizing the terror of the existences before him. The signature pale bone mask morphed out of his skin instinctively, covering his face slowly as his divine essence manifested in full. "Hmm?" A cacophonic hum escaped Nocturne’s throat. "A new-born divine...?" He turned to face Thalassa, whose now-ancient, deeply unsettling, storm-filled eyes, gazed solely at Finn’s divine form. "It would seem you were right, Storm. This barrier was truly the work of a Great One. Is this perhaps related to how true new-born divines are made?"