Chapter 1138: Splitting Slice The boy had never fought in a real battle before, but in his mind, he had always imagined that it would be glorious, heart-wrenching, soul-stirring, and so many other beautiful words, but he was wrong, it was... chaotic. Three billion ships opened fire at once, and reality standing in front of the bolts of power shivered and gave way. In front of the boy had once been a clear sky, but in the blink of an eye, it transformed into a seemingly unending field of power that rained down on him with the fury of a million exploding suns. In the history of the entire conflict on Doom Star since the onset of the battle between Ascendancy and Calamity, the time when such massive amounts of ordinances were fired would not surpass a hundred, but the unexpected death of an Ascendant Sun had placed the entire world on edge, and the Ascendants were no longer pulling their punches, even if it meant devastating the entire world alongside it. Lost screamed, "Brace yourself!" just as he covered them in a dome of white flame and activated his Convergence ability to the max. The field of destruction traveled towards them at ridiculous speeds, as energy bolts of all shapes and colors comprised the majority of the ordinance, and scattered within them were various esoteric spells and strange energies that were nearly impossible to describe. The spread of the field of fire covered a hundred miles and for the golden giant, the only thing he could see was destruction, and it slammed into them. He expected a tremendous crash, but all he heard was silence. Everything that touched the flaming shield was absorbed except for the white flame growing increasingly brighter, so much so that the golden giant had to squint, Lost spoke through gritted teeth, "There will be a gap between this volley and the next one, I will make a... oh," About to lay out a plan of attack, the Lost Flames looked down as he was speaking and noticed that the golden giant was already crouching, every line of muscle fibers popping out of his skin, nine blades limbs dug deep into the ground, and it seemed as if only a single spark was needed for him to go off. In twelve seconds the bolts of destruction swept past them, and they kept traveling for another ten thousand miles before they began falling to the ground below, and although nearly ninety-five percent of the bolts dissipated before they reached the ground, the rest that remained turned hundreds of lower continents to ash. All of these occurred three minutes from now. "Boom!" Lost was nearly shaken from the air as the golden giant tore out of the flaming dome the instant the wave of destruction passed, and he cursed aloud and released divergence in the form of a flaming pillar of fire to pursue and overtake the golden giant. The golden giant had crossed half the distance separating it from the ships when the pillar of fire swept past him and impacted against the next volley of fire from the ships, and since Lost was using Divergence, the clash between the two forces was calamitous. A massive mushroom cloud was created that released several powerful shockwaves, and a wave of intense smoke and flames was pushed toward the ships, showing that it was the Lost Flames that won that clash. The wall of fire reached the fleet of ships and hundreds of ships that were at the front of the formation were melted into slag and thousands suffered temporarily inseparable damages, but the real damage was coming from the golden giant who slipped through the formation of ships under the smoke and fire. For the first few seconds, he made no move except heading deeper into the heart of the formation, rapidly zooming past massive ships, the smallest being two thousand feet long, and the biggest reaching a mile long. It was as if the golden giant felt the instant it was detected a few moments before since he stopped his movement, spread his nine Natal Treasure wide apart like wings, and waved them furiously even as he rotated his body. From the edges of the blades thin golden lines that were so sharp or could cut through atoms swept out, creating various mystical shapes in the air before they bloomed like a flower and spread towards the ships around him. He performed all this action in less than a second and he had released thousands of such thin slices before he was detected, but by then it was too late. The ships detecting the presence of the golden giant began turning towards him, but there were tens of thousands of ships around him that did not move and were frozen in place, before this anomaly could be investigated, the tens of thousands of ships all suddenly disintegrated. There was no explosion from these shattered ships, including from the Ascendants within and all the ordinances within the ships. It was because the energy slice had split everything at the atomic level. They collapsed into a cloud of black ash which spread for miles and dissipated a few seconds later, and for a moment it was as if the tens of thousands of ships, holding probably ten million individuals had never existed. Every slice that the golden giant released multiplied many times over when they touched any of the targets, as a single slice multiplied into a million. The golden giant gasped and then he laughed. This move was something that he had inferred months ago by watching the wind blow through the creation-grass. It was such a dangerous move that there was no way he could test its power inside his home, doing so would cause the death of billions. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦 The path for this move was simple, he wanted to make one of his slices to be able to split to infinity when it touched a target, and not only that, each slice would grow exponentially powerfully. His mind worked in a quite linear manner before he began this battle, the boy had created thousands of techniques inside his head, and this splitting-slice as he called it was not even among the top most powerful movesets he had envisioned, but because he had used it first and he loved how it felt, he simply disregarded the rest and became focused on only a single task in the future—which was to bring his splitting-slice to the greatest level possible, and then break that limit, again and again until he saw the theoretical limit to this move. The golden giant suddenly shivered as he felt a premonition of both danger and opportunity bearing down on him and his eyes widened when a flood of blue Ascendant Aura as vast as the ocean erupted from the shattered ships and drowned the golden giant. The source of danger became apparent when the golden giant discovered that he could not move. His body was so efficient in refining energy that with the limited amount of power he had gotten while inside the city, he had reached the fifth point of his star, it was unimaginable what so much amount of energy could do to his bloodline refinement. His Natal Treasure shot into his body, he needed all of their assistance to process the energy pouring into his body, or he would be torn apart at the cellular level, but that was not the immediate danger he was facing, the countless other ships had fully turned towards him, and they were priming their weapons to fire once more, and in his present state, he would not be able to resist. "So, you still want this fight?" Lost drawled sarcastically.