Camilla…
Both her and Artemis decided that no further words were necessary, and without further delay, the announcer called for the start of the second match.
She summoned Ichor Doru from her blood while Artemis pulled her Black Iron blade from its sheathe as they prepared for battle.
But as the battlefield unfolded around them, Camilla had an unusual feeling that she couldn’t fully understand.
She had heard the announcement that the battlefield had been altered and understood the ways in which it had been, but to be standing in it now was something else entirely.
When she stood in the previous battlefield, it didn’t feel any different to standing on the surface of Erebus. The gravitational pull was centered around the core of the earth and the fabric of space time was curved around the mass of the planet.
In this new battlefield, she could feel the fabric of space around her and how it was shaped compared to how it was normally.
Instead of the spherical mold that space would shaped into around a planet, it felt more like the fabric of space had been shaped into a rope that had been pulled taut.
As she tried to expand her spatial awareness to the edge of the battlefield, when trying to go outwards at the sides, it just kept going and going without any indication of an edge.
Yet when she tried to expand upwards, she could feel the space warp until it looped back up through the ground she was standing on.
This feels so confusing…
“Is there something wrong?” Artemis asked patiently, looking at her with a curious expression on her face as to why she was acting so confused.
“No. I was just put off-” she tried to say but Artemis’s sword arced towards her and stopped a mere inch away from the surface of her skin before the kinetic energy was immediately reflected away form her.
The reflected force from her blade shot up into the sky and split apart the clouds. Having Artemis’s arm jerk back in such a sudden and violent manner caused it to break and left her briefly stunned.
“That was rude,” Camilla said as she frowned, raising up her left hand before swinging it through the air in a chopping motion.
The fabric of space in a straight line in front of her suddenly expanded as if parting an ocean, with the speed of the expansion being so fast that the ground erupted in flames and turned to molten rock, exploding up into the sky.
In the corner of her eye, she spotted Artemis attempting to cut off her head, but Camilla snapped her fingers and she began moving so slowly it was if she was frozen in place.
In reality, Camilla was rapidly transferring the energy of her light based magic away from her so that it couldn’t be used to propel her forward.
Because Camilla had been speeding up her perception of time to adapt to Artemis’s speed, she was now moving so slowly that she appeared to be standing still.
Just as she was starting to wonder if the battle would be won this easily if she could force her magic not to work properly, Artemis vanished and Camilla found herself flat on her back.
The side of her face was now hurting from where she had been kicked in the jaw and her throat had been slit.
“I must have cut too shallow,” Artemis muttered in annoyance as she stood over her.
While Camilla was trying to use Ichor Doru’s power to repair herself, she suddenly felt Artemis’s blade embed itself in her chest.
Dammit, she’s stopping time! I still haven’t figured out how to do that yet!
Due to the fact that she has hated studying ever since she was a child, she was never able to figure out how to stop time even though she knew she was absolutely capable of doing so.
Yet as she tried to find a solution among all of the new information that was put into her mind, she couldn’t find a single scientific explanation for how to stop time the same way everyone else could.
Everyone else seemed to exist on a different dimension by comparison to her with such an ability.
Whenever someone stops time in a fight against her, she can’t use her magic to react to anything as it requires conscious thought to use it.
The only thing keeping her in the fight was Ichor Doru’s power.
She did know, however, that stopping time required an absurd amount of spiritual energy to maintain for extended periods.
That meant that Artemis would not be able to maintain a state of stopped time for very long before exhausting her reserves.
Maybe I can just wait her out, she wondered as she released a shockwave to push Artemis back so that she could get back on her feet.
“Interesting…are you unable to stop time in order to face me? That is quite unfortunate,” she said with a smirk.
Shit…
If she continues to let Artemis do as she pleases in stopped time, then she would be able to end the fight in an instant.
Perhaps I shouldn’t try to react to her in stopped time, but maintain a constant reflection field around me. There’s no reason to assume the field wouldn’t stay active during the state that time had been stopped, she thought to herself as she focused her spiritual energy all around her into a reflective field.
Yet as she did, she knew that maintaining it indefinitely would take a lot of effort and energy out of her if she didn’t release any of her limiters.
“I have to admit Artemis, I’m impressed that you’ve already managed to push me far enough that I have to release my limiters,” she said, to which Artemis rose her eyebrows in bewilderment.
In the very next instant, she vanished and reappeared on Camilla’s right side as her sword bounced off of her harmlessly.
“H-How did you-?!” she stammered as her arm broke once again.
Oh thank goodness it worked…
“The Almighty: Release 30%,” she said as she could feel the drain of her reserves from maintaining a constant reflection field lessen considerably.
Artemis’s eyes narrowed in annoyance as she realized that her time stopping counter was no longer going to work.
“Exactly how much force can your magic reflect?” she pondered as she sheathed her sword, took a firm stance as she pulled back her left arm, and began to focus an enormous amount of spiritual energy.
She is definitely about to try another way to work around my reflection. In that case, I can’t depend on reflection alone. I need to muster up a massive amount of kinetic energy to push back against whatever she’s about to throw at me, Camilla thought.
She then took a similar stance but with her right arm pulled back and began to draw in as much matter around her fists as possible, compressing it so much that it began to glow like a star as more and more was pulled in.
Artemis watched her with a smirk, as if the thought of mustering up a resistance to what she was about to do was laughable, but Camilla knew better.
The knowledge implanted into her mind has expanded what she can do with her power to such an absurd degree that the limitation of her power being restricted to what she doesn’t know about is almost certainly meaningless now.
Artemis’s eyes widened just as she rushed forward to throw her punch and Camilla did the same, bending the fabric of space around her to further accelerate her strike.
When their fists collided, the two of them released so much energy that the battlefield underneath them shattered, opening up a vast chasm in which the both of them would fall through.
Yet Camilla simply solidified the air underneath her feet, seemingly levitating as she watched Artemis fall, looking up at her in astonishment at the fact that she had managed to match the output of her strength, but even overpower it to a degree as there were burn marks on her armor.
Artemis then gritted her teeth as she fell, raising her left fist before slamming it down into her palm. As she did, an immense increase of gravity slammed into Camilla and caused her to fall to the into the next layer of the battlefield alongside her.
What the hell? Why didn’t my reflection field work?! It should have ignored the effects of increased gravity! How is she able to bypass it without stopping time?!
She then unfurled her wings to slow down her descent and passively increase the rapid flow of spiritual energy throughout her body. This reinforced her body so that she could stand up even through the increase in gravity, but on top of that, she increased kinetic energy in her body to further push back against it.
Seeing her stand, despite her effort to slam her into the ground with that last attack, made Artemis stammer in amazement as she asked, “H-How can you still stand?!”
“A little increase in gravity is not going to hurt me,” Camilla said proudly.
“It is not gravity. I do not control gravity. I control the moon, for I am the Goddess of the moon. What I did to you was manifest the full weight of the moon on your body. In spite of that, you stand undaunted by it.”
Manifest…? As in manifesting the power of a god? That explains it. Godly manifestation is one of the things I still don’t fully understand and since its not supported by science, I cannot manipulate its vectors, only launch an attack of my own that may or may not be sufficiently powerful enough to match it.
“So manifesting my will against you is the only real counter to your power is it…very well. I’ll show you the full terror of the moon,” Artemis said, unsheathing her sword once again.
As she pointed the tip of her blade at the sky, Camilla could feel the air began to vibrate as Artemis’s power was released.
“Gleaming Moonlight: 50% release,” she said as she swung her sword at her side and the ground under her feet shattered, destroying yet another layer of the battlefield, yet neither of them fell.
Camilla managed to stay afloat, even with the full weight of a moon bearing down on her body, and Artemis, though she had no wings, somehow managed to remain in the air.
“How are you able to fly in the air like that?” she asked her.
Artemis replied, “I’m not. The mass of my body is like that of the moon, meaning I have my own gravity now. I can remain in the air in the same manner the moon does in the sky.”
Oh great…
“Now as for my light magic, the manifested version of it may be a bit slower...,” she said as light began emitting from her body again, despite Camilla’s efforts to snuff it out as she continued to say, “But its power is far greater.”
She then raised her sword once again, and with a single swing, cleaved the entire battlefield in two. The light magic that passed from her blade went so far across the vastness of the battlefield that Camilla could swear that she felt its reach was infinite.
Not only that, but the notion of its speed being slower than the regular version of her light magic was a bluff. The moment her sword begun its path when it was swung, the speed in which it traveled was instantaneous.
The only thing slow about it was the movement of Artemis’s own body when she swung the blade.
Camilla then looked at the right side of her body and noticed that part of her leg and everything beyond her shoulder had been severed and were falling to the ground.
“Is this the first time that you’ve ever suffered this much damage to your body?” Artemis asked her.
“Admittedly, yes. However, its still nothing I cannot repair easily on my own,” she said as her limbs regenerated in less than a second.
“You say that your mass is that of a moon now, yes? How well does it stand up against that of a black hole?”
The goddess’s eyes furrowed in confusion as she asked, “A what? What is a black hole?”
She then swept her left arm to her side for the goddess to watch as she took hold of an entire solar system’s worth of spacetime, and collapsed it.
Witnessing its enormity, Artemis took several steps back, or whatever resembled steps as a celestial body contained within a human form, and stared at it in horror.
“What kind of monstrosity is this?” she exclaimed.
“This is the most powerful singular kind of celestial body imaginable. A black hole, of which its gravity is so enormous that it drags in everything unfortunate enough to wind up in its path. Once you cross the barrier of the event horizon, nothing can escape it, not even light itself. Your power falls at the mercy of this augur of darkness and destruction.”
Artemis looked back at her suddenly in shock before turning back to look at the black hole as she raised her sword and swung it down in an attempt to destroy it.
The light from her sword did indeed strike it, yet nothing happened.
Try as she might, her power did nothing to effect it in any way as it continued to grow more and more massive by the second, dragging in more and more matter into its gravitational field and burning up as it began to form an accretion disc around it.
Realizing that nothing she did to it would be enough to destroy it, she turned around and tried to run away but Camilla immediately caught her as she grabbed her by the back of the neck and turned her around to face the black hole.
“Raum warned me about your power to destroy timelines and erase people from existence by cleaving off the time that they have spent alive. Unfortunately, no one has likely ever warned you of the dangers of a black hole. If you fall into one, you will not survive. You will fall and the more you struggle, the close you get before you reach the singularity. Once you do, you will be stretched into an infinitesimally small plasma and die. I doubt even the magic of this battlefield would be enough to bring you back to life from being killed like that,” she said as she pushed Artemis towards the black hole at a rapid pace.
While grabbing her by the neck, she made it so that Artemis could not move her arms or legs to fight back or struggle against being pushed into the event horizon.
Yet just before she was sent hurtling into oblivion, Artemis let out a bloodcurdling scream and the universe shattered into nothingness.
Artemis…
When she found herself within the new timeline, she realized that her power had been entirely contained within the battlefield and hadn’t expanded beyond it in any way.
Is this new battlefield Ruvick’s doing? she pondered as she collected herself after the dread she felt while nearly being thrown into that chasm of pure darkness.
Right about now, Camilla should be looking around at the battlefield confused about its properties. I doubt that she would be able to sense the changes-
In the very next moment, she heard a warrior cry as the spearhead of Ichor Doru embedded itself in her chest as Camilla stabbed her through the heart, raised her off the ground, and then slammed her back into the dirt.
“Full rele-” Artemis tried to force out just as Camilla planted her foot into her face and made a deep crater from the impact as she was held in place.
“Y-You remembered?” she said while struggling to get from underneath her heel.
“Of course not. I don’t know how to manipulate time the same way others like you do, but I was expecting you to do destroy a timeline when backed into a corner like that. I put a curse on you that if you did destroy a timeline, your memories of the events would be copied into my own mind after everything reset. The only issue with erasing and resetting a timeline is that you would still suffer the loss of whatever spiritual energy you used during the previous fight while I would not.”
As Artemis tried to use her light magic to fight back, it failed to respond as Camilla was once again, interfering with it somehow.
“On top of everything I’ve mentioned, there is one more thing that you’ve failed to take into account when fighting someone like me,” she said, twisting the spearhead deeper into her gut as she looked down on her.
Grunting through the pain, she decided to humor her as she asked, “W-What could…that be?”
“That fact of the matter that, while you may be a god, I alone am Almighty.”