Chapter 7198: Fiery Charge After a long delay, the fourth and final duel was ready to begin. Both sides were already prepared to fight. They had no further demands and had no excuses left to postpone this inevitable fight. Many observers watched closely as they placed their hopes on one Ascended Giant or another. The Oscillating Fist began to rub his large gauntleted hands against each other. This odd motion generated mysterious energies that shook the surrounding space. The fact that he was able to do this just with a casual motion hinted at much greater power if he started to get serious. Ves and the Dark Apostle knew that they could not afford to make any mistakes this time. "This will be a true life-or-death struggle." Ves seriously spoke. "Nobody will come to save us if we are in trouble. We have agreed to participate in an honorable duel out of our own choice. We have no one else to blame but ourselves if we have grossly overestimated our strength and underestimated our opponent." The Dark Apostle refused to think about losing. "We will not lose. Our equipment is too powerful and we have adopted the right strategy. Allowing us to borrow the power of design spirits is a death sentence to the Oscillating Fist. He does not have a good enough understanding of how much this matters." As he communicated with his other self, the Ascended Giant carefully retrieved fire hyper blast lance from his back and gripped the long polearm with a bit of nervous tension. Despite his confident-sounding words, he knew better than to take victory for granted. The Oscillating Fist certainly did not look like he was intimidated by the prospect of facing design spirits. After both duelists transmitted a signal that made it clear that they were ready, a projected countdown appeared in the center. [10] The Dark Apostle began to draw upon the Sacrificial Spear Throwing Method to prime his blast lance for explosion. [9] A large amount of fire hyper energy converged upon the lance. [8] The Minor Demon locked inside the D-arm desperately tried to break out, but was unable to do so due to wielder’s strong control. [7] Flames and the illusion of flames started to flicker on the surface of the blast lance. [6] At the same time, Ves had been calling for a certain spiritual entity to descend upon Blinky. [5] It took a few seconds to forge the connection, but the other party finally picked up on his request. [4] The good news was that the spirit in question found his cause to be worthy enough to lend as much aid as she could. [3] Blinky’s manifestation started to shift from a furry purple cat into a more reddish humanoid form. [2] As the companion spirit turned into the vessel of a different being, Ves felt his consciousness being pushed to the side as a much more powerful being took control! [1] [START!] The Dark Apostle immediately turned around and blasted off into the distance! Instead of charging straight at his adversary, he preferred to build up speed while continuing to prime his lance to explode! The Oscillating Fist knew what his opponent was after and tried his best to chase after the upstart that had insulted him multiple times. While the Oscillating Fist actually proved himself to be almost as fast as the Fiery Axe, his flight system and his ability to form a warp bubble around himself was not enough to make up for the difference! The modern high-quality linear flight system that Ves had especially designed for this final confrontation only needed to do one job well, and that was outspeeding the Oscillating Fist! "COWARD! FACE ME, YOU HUMAN WORM!" The Dark Apostle laughed as he continued to frustrate his opponent. "I am a lancer now! It would be stupid of me to charge at you straight away! If you want me to come to you sooner rather than later, then let me build up more speed." The incumbent leader knew that he could not catch up to his opponent under the current conditions. He eventually ceased his pursuit and began to assume a defensive posture. He knew that he needed to wait for his opponent to come to him before he could land a good punch onto the Dark Apostle. In order to make this brief moment of contact count, the Oscillating Fist began to charge his two fists. His gauntlets began to glow and vibrate as they slowly accumulated an ominous amount of power. Meanwhile, the Dark Apostle calmly began to circle around while building more and more speed and momentum. It was not necessary to build up the highest possible speed before charging at the Oscillating Fist as he did not rely solely on kinetic energy to punch through the stronger Ascended Giant’s defenses. He just needed to close in fast enough to make it difficult for the Oscillating Fist to evade his charge attack in time. He also needed to moderate his speed and make it a little easier for him to perform last-second course corrections in order to ensure the lance struck the right spot. This was why the Dark Apostle began to straighten his flight path after completing a few revolutions. He made sure to start his final approach with plenty of distance between himself and his adversary. As the blast lance in his hands became filled with fire energy, it looked like it had turned into a demonic flaming weapon! The burning lance left behind a trail of excess fire energy as the Ascended Giant that carried it fixated his sights onto his sole adversary. At the same time, the spiritual entity summoned by Ves began to assert her own power! "I can feel your uncompromising commitment to humanity, Ves." Furia’s flaming figure spoke as she continued to inhabit Blinky’s versatile manifestation. "You were right to call upon my aid. This detestable ’Ascended Giant’ is a traitor who is worse than a Cosmopolitan. At least the latter still believes that the galaxy has a place for humans, if only as one among many equal alien races. This fool not only rejects his own humanity, but dreams of a future where he can enslave his own race. There can be no place for him in the Red Ocean!" Furia genuinely grew furious at the Oscillating Fist! She leveraged her anger and her righteous indignation towards the human traitor by diving into the blast lance! Once there, she began to channel additional fire energy from herself as well as the Blinkyverse! The blast lance looked as if a conflagration had erupted from its structure. It rapidly grew hotter and more potent as the weapon contained even more energies than before! Furia did not just limit herself to raising the quantity of fire energy. She also began to improve the artifact’s utilization of fire energy by a considerable degree! Even if she was not too familiar with the strange way that Ves had designed the sacrificial blast lance, she was intuitively able to increase its efficiency by reducing waste. As the distance from the target rapidly began to shrink, all three minds began to converge as they all sought to destroy the Oscillating Fist in a single blow. Many observers held their breath as they awaited the outcome of this powerful collusion. "C’mon." "He has to succeed." "That blast lance looks lethal." As the lance-wielding giant crossed the final kilometers to his target, everything around the Dark Apostle turned into a blur. His tunnel vision did not allow him to acknowledge anything else aside from his hated enemy! "EXPLODE!" At the same time, Furia also wielded her control over fire energy to ignite a powerful detonation! "DEATH TO ALL TRAITORS OF HUMANITY!" While the Oscillating Fist chose to meet the incoming charge attack with crossed gauntlets, the the blast lance successfully struck and even pierce through the spatial barrier before exploding immediately afterwards! It was as if a new star had appeared in the outskirts of the Yernstall Central Star Node. If not for the extensive measures undertaken by the Red Collective, the appearance of such a powerful outburst of energy would have alarmed the rest of Yernstall in time! Many sensor systems failed to collect any data aside from ones that could tell them how powerful the explosion turned out. Many became astounded by how much more powerful it was compared to the previous uses of the Sacrificial Spear Throwing Method! Even if the Dark Apostle did not actually toss his polearm this time, the blast lance had done its job and discharged multiple potent energies at once! The biggest concern that many people had at the moment was not how much damage the Oscillating Fist incurred, but how much the Dark Apostle suffered from his own attack! After all, he was way too close to the explosion generated by his own lance. There was no way for him to avoid suffering damage in return! It took a bit longer than most people felt comfortable with, but his body eventually emerged from the spherical blast looking a little more scuffed than usual. His energy defenses had done a good job of blocking the power of the explosion, but his spatial barrier still failed to remain active in the end. The Dark Apostle had fought multiple different duels against different opponents. His spatial barrier broke numerous times in a row, and that took a toll on his physique. He was not able to keep his subsequent spatial barriers fresh enough to perform as optimally as before. At least it lasted long enough to spare the Dark Apostle of any further damage. His azure energy still remained intact, though it would not take much to pop it entirely. Seeing how much damage the Dark Apostle sustained from a blast lance that did not explode in the face at point-blank range made many observers eager to study the victim’s condition. As the fireball finally faded away, many people reacted in surprise that he was still in one piece. His strange scaled armor only bore minor scorch marks, but looked otherwise intact. His gauntlets also looked scorched and dented, but otherwise proved remarkably resistant against the first explosion. The Oscillating Fist managed to withstand the combined power of the Ves, the Dark Apostle and Furia. That was impressive. "Damn." Ves quietly cursed as he beheld the results. "Our enemy’s raiment is anything but ordinary. Even if the first blast lance has wasted a lot of energy into stripping him of his energy defenses, there should have been enough power left to breach or fracture his physical defenses. Instead, they have absorbed the remainder of the blast as if they endured a gentle storm." "Do you think we will have trouble penetrating his raiment with our second blast lance?" "Not necessarily. I think our second spiritual guest may be able to offer a solution against this problem. Anyway, thank you for your service, Furia." The spiritual lady looked upset at the results. "I wish I could have done more. I sensed that as the flames threatened to engulf the traitor’s armor, those strange shells blocked and neutralized much of our energies. I am afraid that this material is highly resistant towards my power and that of others." "Mhmm. That matches my suspicions." Furia let go of her hold onto Blinky, causing her to disappear. The companion spirit returned to his original purple shape. Meanwhile, the Dark Apostle had retrieved the second and last blast lance from his back. "We need to go all-out this time." Ves agreed. "We should be ready to expend all of the Worclaw energy that we have left. Even then, there is no guarantee that we can breach his raiment. The more I look at it, the more I suspect it has a very special origin. However I think our next source of assistance may be able to crack this defense." Though a part of him felt reluctant to draw upon the second source, there was no one else he could think of that could offer him greater help under the circumstances. He silently sent out a request to an ancestral spirit and soon received a response. Blinky’s manifestation transformed yet again. He slowly contorted back into a tall humanoid form that looked just as feminine as the last guest. The difference this time was that the new form exuded a much stronger sense of motherhood. The Superior Mother had descended onto Blinky. That was not enough. Cynthia Larkinson chose to descend upon her incarnation so that she could directly monitor what Ves was up to this time. "My... sons..."