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Chapter 322: Jack Rust vs. Galicia Lonihor
🕑 Added 2023-11-25 17:40:00 +0000 UTCThe Animal Kingdom Ancestor stood on the bridge of the largest starship as the entire fleet shot through interspace. Eva Solvig, the assigned commander of the Hand of God, stood a step ahead of him. Coincidentally, Artus Emberheart was also here. The former Warden of Hell had been gifted to the Hand of God, who assigned him to this fleet.
The Ancestor didn’t give Artus a single glance as they hurtled through space.
Suddenly, they exited teleportation. The Ancestor prepared for battle, but looking around, he saw nothing. No planet, no Jack Rust. Only stars, one of which seemed significantly closer than the rest but still very far away.
“What happened?” Eva Solvig asked the woman manning the helm. “Why did we exit teleportation before reaching the destination?”
“We didn’t,” she replied numbly. “We were forced out.”
Eva frowned. A moment later, she nodded grimly and teleported outside. So did the Ancestor.
Space split before them, revealing a tiny black starship. A man appeared in front of it. He had dark hair and red eyes, as well as a playful smile that seemed completely out of place. The Ancestor scanned him—he was at the late B-Grade.
“Hello, Eva,” he said. “Unfortunately, I cannot let you go any closer.”
Eva didn’t respond immediately, so the Ancestor took charge: “And who the hell do you—”
She slapped him. The sound was crisp, even in the vacuum of space, and the leonine turned to look at her in disbelief. Her wary eyes almost extinguished his anger. Almost.
“Shut up,” she said.
The other man smiled. “I see you recognize me.”
“Heavenly Spoon Sovereign…” She gritted her teeth. “Why would the Black Hole Church send someone like you to this tiny corner of the universe?”
“Just repaying a favor,” the man replied. Reaching into his robes, he took out an inconspicuous silver spoon. “Now, as I said, you cannot go any closer. Well, you can, but you’ll have to beat me first. Think you’re up for it?”
His playful smile remained, fully confident she would refuse. And, indeed, Eva Solvig did not reply.
“Why are you hesitating?” the Animal Kingdom Ancestor said, eager to regain his pride. “You are both late B-Grades, but there is also myself and an entire fleet here. We can take him.”
She snorted. “If you want to throw your life away, go right ahead. I’m not joining.”
“You would shy away from your duty? What would the Immortals say about that?” he retorted.
Instantly, her gaze turned colder than true ice, and a wave of threat radiated off her. “This man is the Head Envoy of the Black Hole Church,” she said. “Since he came personally to stop us, we have no choice but to comply. Our pointless deaths would not help the New World or the Immortals. However, the next time you dare contradict me, I will make sure that your pointless death becomes an act of duty on my part. Am I understood?”
The Ancestor closed his mouth and shut up. He did not recognize this man or the title of “Heavenly Spoon Sovereign,” but he knew exactly what Head Envoy meant. It meant that, before this man, a revered Ancestor of the Animal Kingdom…was just a pile of trash.
“Now, with that out of the way,” said the sovereign, seeming completely relaxed, “wanna watch the battle together? It’s not like you have anything else to do. We could even bet if you want.”
“Bet on what?” Eva retorted. “Since you’re here, your subordinates are already destroying Galicia Lonihor.”
“On the contrary. Nobody is interfering. Jack Rust will fight this battle alone.”
Eva raised a brow. “Really?”
“Do I look like I’m lying?” he said, flashing a bright smile.
Eva considered it for a moment. Finally, greed took her over. “If Jack Rust loses, I want your Saturated Chalice.”
“Oho, tall stakes. Sure. And if he wins, I get one of your Fleet Teleportation Arrays.”
Her face crumped up. A moment later, she bit the bullet to say, “Deal.”
“Excellent! Then, let’s watch. I believe we’re just getting to the good part.”
With a swish of the sovereign’s sleeves, a projection screen appeared in the middle of space, and the three B-Grades stood around it—from a distance—to watch.
***
Galicia paused for a second, too stunned to react. She had been struck by a D-Grade while in her strongest battleform. That was unheard of.
And extremely humiliating.
“How are you doing this?” she asked in fury. “How are you still standing? Just how ridiculous is that power you have?”
“My regeneration is only a bonus,” Jack said. “If you had landed a strike to instantly kill me, I would have died…but you didn’t. I never let you, and you never really tried, thinking yourself supreme. Now, I suspect you will try…but you’re growing tired, aren’t you? Those hands are getting heavy. Your legs are shaking. Your Dao is turning fainter.” He grinned wildly. “Tell me, overseer; how does it feel to hit someone until you give up?”
“Bullshit!” she shouted. “You’re cheating!”
“Cheating? Since when is endurance cheating?” He laughed out loud. “You thought you were supreme, but you were just an idiot. Come now, what will it be? Strong strikes that I can match, or fast ones I can survive? I can do this all day.”
He could not do this all day. He was bluffing. The energy provided by the Life Drop was already running dry, but she did not know that. He’d already lasted ridiculously long; who was to say he couldn’t go even longer?
Galicia gritted her teeth. Divine light blossomed around her. Her armor glowed. She grabbed her helmet and threw it away, revealing her furious face fully. “In the name of the Animal Kingdom, myself, and my son,” she declared, raising her gauntlet to the sky, “you will not survive this day.”
“I’d like to see you try, overseer.”
She charged. Radiance blossomed all around her as her Dao Domain spread out and encompassed the entire landmass they stood on. Cracks spread across the ground, emitting radiance. The airless sky turned white. Jack was trapped in a holy realm, where she was a goddess.
But he had a domain, too. Purple unfurled. Stars blinked into existence, wrestling it for supremacy. Fist-shaped meteors flew everywhere. Jack donned these purple stars like an armor, dressing himself with a constellation. His fist was cosmic—his might, relentless.
He smashed out a Meteor Punch, sucking in all the holiness of her domain for himself. The stars exploded. His fist met hers, erupting in a cataclysmic explosion that shook the entire moon ever so slightly. Tons of stone went flying into space, forming a wide crater around them. They hovered in its midst.
Galicia really was tired. Her strength and speed had fallen, no longer as extreme as they used to be. They remained at the very edge of Jack’s abilities, but after fighting her for so long and enduring her strikes, he’d grown a bit used to them. If he focused his hardest, he could compete.
Strikes flew wildly. Fist met Supremacy. One wanted to be free and wild—the other, to dominate. It was a clash of both people and Daos.
Jack and the overseer fought equally now. His resilience had been rewarded. They battled on the ground and in the sky, even flying into space and back down. The moon’s surface was ravaged under them. It was carved up. Meteors exploded. Divine spears flew. Body met body, and space itself groaned to the tune of their clashes.
Jack was still losing, but his regeneration allowed him to fight.
However, as Galicia was growing tired, so was Jack. His life energy was running out. At some point, she broke one of his bones, and it did not heal immediately. Her eyes widened, turning from realization into triumph.
“You liar!” she shouted, laughing. “Die!” Her strikes turned fast again. She tried to overwhelm him. Jack defended with all his might, blocking and evading everything, but there was a limit to his abilities. Even exhausted as she was, she remained too fast. A couple strikes slipped by. The damage they caused took longer to regenerate each time. Jack gritted his teeth as he fell into defense.
I cannot fail now! he thought frenziedly. Not when I’ve come this close!
He was attempting the impossible. He was trying to fight a mid C-Grade while at the D-Grade himself. He had lasted this long, used everything he had to survive and drive her to exhaustion. He couldn’t fall first!
I refuse!
But reality was undeniable. She struck his arm, then landed a harsh kick into his shin. He flew into the moon and was nailed into a crater. She fell forward boot-first, and as soon as he dodged, she pounced at him and sank her teeth into his shoulder, pushing them deeper until the tips of her teeth touched each other. His bone shattered completely. He screamed.
With a twist of her neck, she ripped out his muscle and sent him flying. Jack paled. That was the one opportunity she needed. In that moment of weakness, she focused her entire Dao Domain to lock down space around him, rendering him unable to escape. Spitting out his flesh, she charged up a slow but extremely powerful strike.
The ground around her exploded. White light came from below, evaporating the stone to escape and surround her. Everything turned white. It was like God himself was roaring at Jack, who floated in the sky above her. He could block, but he could not dodge.
And, facing that skill which seemed like her ultimate attack, blocking was a fool’s errand. It didn’t matter if she was exhausted. He couldn’t strike that hard.
He was a goner.
“For supremacy!” Galicia shouted, shooting herself forward. Her wings folded. The white glow hugged her body, making her the only source of light in the sky, the only power in existence. Her palm headed unerringly for Jack’s head. If it connected, his entire upper torso would evaporate.
Since he could not evade, nor did he have time to break the space lock, he charged up a Meteor Punch himself. Light and sound fell into his fist. His extra two arms also dissipated, turning into more energy. He could sense this was the final clash, and he poured everything into it, driving himself to exhaustion.
Everything disappeared. In the entire sky, the only things remaining were Galicia, covered in dense white light while shooting forward, and Jack’s purple fist, a shining meteor in the darkness. They were headed for a direct collision.
But he could not win. He sensed her power, and it was greater than his. Not by too much, at this point…but so what? This was everything he had. After this punch, he could no longer fight. He had lost. He was dead.
In the final moments, even as he charged up his fist with all of his power, his mind sank in reminiscence. There was no regret. He had done everything right. In the entire year up to now, he had not wasted a single opportunity, not made a single mistake. He was the absolute strongest he could be.
He had also fought this battle perfectly. Everything had gone as great as it possibly could have.
There was nothing he could have done better. If he lost, then it only meant that this goal of defeating the planetary overseer within a year was impossible to begin with.
No, there was one thing, he realized with a wry smile. The supernova. I never comprehended it. If I had, maybe things would have been different.
But was it even possible? The skill feels wrong. It was never suited for me. I couldn’t have used it, no matter how long I tried. Heh. In fact, if I had never tried to comprehend it, maybe I could have used that time to develop my skills better. The tiniest edge would suffice.
Damn. I played myself. What a life.
But still, he felt no regret, only a lingering sense of disappointment before the end. He reached for the unformed skill inside his mind and tore it away, forcing himself to forget it. It was useless. The supernova disappeared from his Dao completely, leaving only a few explosion-related insights that now anchored nowhere. They were equally useless.
Wait. Explosions?
The flash of realization came instantly. It should have been obvious. In that instant before shooting his fist forward, Jack saw things clearly. He was a fool to attempt to learn the supernova. It was clearly not meant for him, he’d felt that since the beginning—but its partial insights were not useless. They were about powerful explosions, and coincidentally, he already had a skill that utilized explosion.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the reason he couldn’t comprehend the supernova was because he already possessed something similar yet different.
What if I…combine them?
Everything was ready. In truth, he had already comprehended the essence of the supernova; he’d just been pushing it in the wrong direction. He laughed, now finally utilizing it the right way. An orange spark appeared on his purple meteor. He shot it out.
Congratulations! Meteor Punch III → Meteor Punch IV
Galicia reached him, moving at speeds he could barely fathom. Her gauntlet was about to disintegrate his head. His Meteor Punch shot right back at it, colored purple, green, and a little bit of orange. Once it met the claws, it would explode—but not as a meteor. As a supernova. He was a Cosmic Fist. He was the ultimate form of primal savagery. It was only apt that his offensive skill would include the most powerful explosion in the universe.
“I am the Fist! I will never lose!” Jack roared, driving his fist forward. “As long as I, Jack Rust, draw breath—THE ANIMAL KINGDOM WILL BOW TO ME!”
The overseer screamed.
Jack’s fist made contact and disappeared. It evaporated like a nuclear warhead at the moment of explosion. Everything below the elbow vanished, and the world was suddenly filled with so much light and sound that his eyes and ears were both destroyed. The recoil hit him like a bomb to the chest.
But the overseer received it even harder. Just before the explosion happened, she must have sensed its power, because she screamed and tried to change her course. But it was too late. Jack’s fist crashed into the center of her chest, stopped her, and pushed her back down. Her world fell away.
The overseer flew downward, instantly reaching the surface of the moon and getting nailed deep into it. The ground shattered for a hundred miles in every direction. Cracks appeared for a thousand. Mountains crumbled. Earthquakes spread across the entire moon. Fire burned on its surface, then was instantly extinguished by lack of oxygen. Dust covered the world.
Space shook before it stabilized.
Congratulations! For defeating an opponent of a higher Grade than you in single combat, you have been awarded the title Grade Defier.
Grade Defier: A title awarded to those who can jump Grades to fight. Efficacy of all stats +10%.
It was suspicious that he’d only gotten this title now and not when he defeated Old Man Spirit, but he couldn’t care less at this point. The extra rush of stats was the only thing that kept him from fainting.
When all was said and done, Jack floated over the surface of a ruined moon. His sight and hearing were just coming back, the final sputters of his regeneration. The extra hands had dissipated.
Below him, destruction spread to the horizon. He had just destroyed a landmass greater than a small country. He was spent, completely exhausted, and heavily injured. His hand was regenerating very, very slowly, and the pain was killing him.
But he had won.
Jack raised his remaining fist into the air and cried out in triumph. He didn’t even remember he was being watched by the projection stone, nor did he care; he had won. He had succeeded. And that was all that mattered.
Everyone across the galaxy was stunned. Jaws dropped. People gaped. When Jack Rust defeated Maximus Lonihor and challenged the entire Animal Kingdom, it had been sensational. But this… This was just unheard of!
The entire galaxy bore witness to the legend of Jack Rust!
Eva Solvig and the Animal Kingdom Ancestor had extremely ugly looks on their faces. The Heavenly Spoon Sovereign laughed. “Well, a bet is a bet,” he said. “Pay up.”
Eva didn’t even look at him. She tossed out a small pouch, then dove back into her starship. The Animal Kingdom Ancestor followed suit. The moment he entered, Artus Emberheart, the former Warden of Hell, rushed up to him and said, “Ancestor, Jack Rust is extremely weakened now! This is the perfect time to—”
The ancestor’s slap echoed across the entire starship. Artus’s head was almost unscrewed from the force, and he fell to the floor with a mortified look on his face.
“Shut up!” the ancestor screamed. “You think I don’t want to go? I just can’t! You completely useless moron, this is all your fault!”
The former Warden tried to reply but couldn’t. He was overtaken by intense shame and anger, but he couldn’t go against the B-Grade Ancestor. Instead, he bottled up all his feelings and swore to himself:
Jack Rust, if I don’t destroy everything you love and make you curse me for eternity, I will not be a man!
“We go,” Eva Solvig said coldly, and the entire fleet of starships disappeared.
The Heavenly Spoon Sovereign laughed. He cheerfully waved them goodbye, then grabbed the pouch Eva had tossed away and also disappeared.
***
Back on Earth, the entire Integration Starship echoed with loud, relieved cheers. The alliance shouted with all the power of their lungs. People hugged each other and cried, while the Ice Peak and Animal Kingdom captives wore ugly looks on their faces.
“He did it!” people shouted across the Earth. “He did it! Jack Rust did it!”
***
Jack fell to the surface of the moon and landed on his back. He couldn’t move a muscle, but he was so happy he didn’t care.
A moment later, however, he had a thought.
Wait. How am I getting back?
The moon was far away from Earth, and he couldn’t perform long-range teleportation like the overseer had. He didn’t even carry the bromobile—he’d left it behind to protect it from the battle.
Suddenly, space opened before him like a door, and a homeless-looking man with a big smile walked out. “Great job, Jack,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “That was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever witnessed—-and trust me, that’s a high bar.”
Jack smiled back. “Thanks, Sage.”
“Now, follow me and let’s get out of here. We have a planet to poach.”
Comments
IndyBart
One thing I’m confused about is why the system is both trying to kill him and it’s rewarding him? Wouldn’t it lock itself or something instead of giving him more power?
Michael Meyer
first! again. also a very satisfying ending to the first year-ish of his journey. great job!
