Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 139: Solution

But none of that was as bad as expected.

His body was meant to survive the worst of conditions and endure the cruelest odds.

As for aether, if with all his talent he still couldn’t find a solution, then perhaps, as his grandmother had once said, it would be better if he died then and there.

None of these points were why he roared so loudly and found himself entirely paralysed and helpless.

It hurt.

So much so that Uriel instantly understood the reason he was in such abnormal agony.

’Stupid fucking Sin!’

His Sin had already made him mentally unstable, and now it suddenly made him utterly intolerant to pain?

’What a stupid fucking Sin, just focusing on being so mildly inconvenient that it becomes entirely debilitating... damn it!’

Filled with more rage than pain, Uriel forcefully pulled on the aether in his core, ignoring the agony and the chaotic booms, and directed it all into his runic scar.

Instantly, he felt his mind gain clarity. The pain was still there, but he found himself able to focus, think, and ignore it.

As long as he could think, he could survive.

SHAH!

His wood element surged and, from the sandy ground, vines tore free, rising to wrap around his body and finally bring his momentum to an end.

In a blink, dozens upon dozens of vines had risen to coil around Uriel and anchor him in place, leaving him suspended above a dune he had just crashed through.

The sudden stop made his insides churn, and unable to help it, he spat out mouthfuls of blood, the frigid wind rapidly turning it into blood crystals that drifted away in moments.

"Huff... huff..."

Finally given a moment of respite, he regained his breath, taking the time to properly analyse his surroundings.

He was battered, eyes teary, mouth dry and filled with a thick metallic taste, lungs screaming for relief, but he pushed himself nonetheless.

All there was were endless dunes of white sand and a grey sky.

But now, finally given the time to truly observe his surroundings, he began to grasp just how gigantic the world around him was.

It was strange to explain, but everything simply felt disproportionately large. The dunes rose so high he couldn’t see their peaks, each grain of sand much larger than normal.

The clouds above seemed thicker, denser, and in this stretching expanse he felt like an ant, just as he had in the titanic cave.

’...why is everything made for titans...’

His vision was obscured by sand in the air, a haze formed by the howling winds, yet still, very far in the distance, kilometres upon kilometres away, he could vaguely see the outline of a world-sized structure that rose and vanished into the skies above.

A statue.

Gazing at the hazy and indistinct structure, he felt a... call.

’I have to get moving.’

The vines shook and lowered him into a small valley nestled between two tall, broken dunes, slightly shielded from the tyrannical winds.

His feet made contact with the sand, sinking just the slightest bit, his body swaying harshly with the still ever-present gusts that threatened to pull him off his feet and send him flying once again, but he managed to resist.

His vines held him in place, anchored deep into the ground. The pressure still dawned on him, building so rapidly he felt like his body would soon implode.

He clenched his jaw hard and his gaze hardened.

’Move.’

A vine wrapped around his arm, reinforcing it, and his hand moved. His nails, sharp and long, reached to his stomach, tearing past his ruined tunic and digging into his flesh, peeling his shell away and etching a set of runes across his skin.

Blood spilled as he winced, the sand stinging his eyes nearly as much as the pain did.

In the span of a breath, though it was laborious, he had etched a formation onto his stomach, the wounds fresh and surprisingly clean due to his shell’s ability to prevent blood loss.

With great struggle, his mind extended and his core shook, a sliver of stable aether being summoned to fuel the formation.

The formation immediately activated and his body shuddered, then visibly relaxed as relief washed over him.

Using his runic knowledge, linked to his past sensorial and formation rings, he had come up with this, a formation that acted directly on the body itself.

A simple formation that dulled all pain at the cost of his senses losing part of their reach.

The pain was now entirely manageable and almost irrelevant as long as his runic scar remained active, but in turn he couldn’t see as far anymore or hear as well.

But it truly didn’t matter in the desert he had been dropped into. The sand blinded him, barring him from seeing anything long- or mid-distance, and the winds clashed so violently that their booms deafened him.

Finally entirely calm, Uriel turned to the next great issue at hand: his core and its sudden chaotic tendencies.

His core was nearly indestructible, even more so after his evolutions, so the explosions did not damage it in the least, but the rest...

’The air is saturated with a composite aether of wind and ice that is chaotic in nature. This composite is so potent it has entirely dwarfed the regular atmospheric aether... and the little bit left in the air is now chaotic as well...’

His gaze sharpened.

’And the sand... somehow has the ability to make all aether it comes into contact with, directly or indirectly, chaotic and unsubtle, thus unusable.’

His head tilted upward, staring at the grey skies with a grim expression.

’So, while in this desert, I can’t use atmospheric aether. I can’t use the elemental aether in the air. I can only use my natal aether or natal elements...’

His grim expression deepened.

To activate his runic scar and the pain-dulling formation, he had been able to brute-force through the agony the chaotic aether inflicted on him and summon his own aether to fuel both.

But that was no longer a viable option.

Not because he feared the pain that would come with the act, but because he simply could not control his own aether anymore.

His core contained such a massive pool of energy that it took the sand several long moments to turn all of it into a chaotic and unusable mess.

The time it took for it to be fully corrupted had been enough to let him pull the small portion that was still stable into his runic scar and pain-dulling formation.

But now, all his aether was chaotic.

And worse still, he could tell his shell would not last much longer before he literally exploded.

He had the body of an S-Rank tank, yes, but he also had the aether reserves of ten S-Rank energy specialists.

If the two warred, the winner was obvious.

’I... how am I...’

He was at a loss for words.

Time was ticking. And he couldn’t find a solution.