Chapter 105: Gravity Star (2)
Reinhard gritted his teeth as he pushed himself out of the wall. He ignored the pain in his back and arms as he gripped Zenuken together.
Then he stepped inside the Gravity Star’s reach, sacrificing defense for offense. Zenuken became a blur, hacking and chopping into the beast’s body. The blade found the creature’s joints, its waist, and its head.
Each strike made it glow brighter, and energy was building within the weapon.
The Gravity Star tried to create distance, but Reinhard stayed close, matching its movements. Another gravity well formed around its foot, but Reinhard was ready this time.
He used Shadow Striker, creating spears from his own shadow that punctured through the ground and disrupted the technique before it could fully activate.
They fought across the underground facility, moving between cages, both instinctively avoiding areas where sleeping beasts might be disturbed. Reinhard’s clothing was torn, blood seeping from multiple wounds, and his breathing came harder.
But Zenuken was fully charged now, illuminating the area in a black-purple light.
The Gravity Star sensed the danger. Its eye blazed crimson as it waved both hands, creating a dozen collapsing stars simultaneously, the most it had manifested yet.
They rushed toward Reinhard from all angles and expanded rapidly.
Ragnarok.
Reinhard swung Zenuken.
The blade became a blur as fifteen separate slashes appeared around the collapsing stars.
Each slash cut through a sphere, disrupting its gravity well and causing premature detonation. The explosions created a chain reaction of warped space, but Reinhard was already moving through the chaos.
He flipped over an explosion before rolling under another one and pushing himself up as he continued moving.
He emerged from the explosions with new cuts across his face and arms, his black suit scorched in places. But he was fine with the Gravity Star, which was directly ahead of him and only a bit away.
The Phantasm Beast tried its grab technique one final time, both hands surging with gravity energy as it lunged.
Drasil Step.
Time began slowing down and allowing Reinhard to see the grab coming in extreme slow motion. He could trace exactly where each claw would be, and so he moved his body to slip past the reaching hands.
Before he released Drasil Step, time returned to normal.
The grab missed completely while Reinhard was already hacking upwards with Zenuken toward the massive central eye.
The Gravity Star’s foot surged with energy, and then it utilized gravity at point-blank range. The pull was overwhelming, dragging Reinhard’s entire body toward the concentrated gravity well even as he tried to complete his strike.
His sword scraped along the creature’s form but failed to hit the crimson eye. Then the step activated, and he was hurled backward with catastrophic force.
Reinhard smashed into the wall’s floor twenty feet away. The impact drove the air from his lungs, sending pain shooting through his ribs as he fell down to the ground with rocks falling over him.
He grit his teeth as he pushed himself up, but the Gravity Star was already moving.
It loomed over him, that single red eye burning with triumph. Its clawed hands spread wide, preparing to tear him apart or crush him with gravity.
The creature’s head lowered as its crimson eyes stared at Reinhard, but it only gave it a beaming smile.
Reinhard tapped into the necklace and touched Marie’s magic. Light exploded around his body, a golden-white radiance that illuminated the entire underground facility with painful intensity. But this also led to the appearance of new darkness beyond the light’s reach.
And where there was darkness, his shadow spears would appear.
Shadow Striker.
Countless black spears erupted from every shadow simultaneously. They burst from the darkness behind cages, beneath equipment, along walls.
Dozens of them appeared all around before rushing at the Gravity Star from every conceivable angle.
The creature tried to move, but then it trembled as it felt Zenuken pierce into it while Reinhard grinned. Then spears punctured through its form from all directions, pinning it in place, with black splashing out as more and more spears struck it.
Then Reinhard’s fist drove upward, still glowing with Purging Lance’s light. His knuckles connected with the Gravity Star’s massive central eye while more shadow spears pierced through the back of its eyes.
The eye exploded as it struck from both sides.
Light and darkness mixed in a collision, creating a sphere of gold and black that consumed the creature’s head entirely. The Gravity Star shrieked one final time before its form began disintegrating as its body began unraveling into wisps.
It tried to reach its hand out to Reinhard, but then paused and fully burst apart.
Reinhard sighed before turning around and lying on his back.
And then the space in front of him began to twist, and a crack appeared before a purple-black orb slowly drifted out of it.
Is that its soul? Or the souls of others that were used to make it descend? Reinhard thought after blinking.
With a sigh, he pushed himself up before stretching his hand out. Then, grasping onto the purple-black sphere, his body began to tremble.
The sphere broke open.
Black-blue light erupted from his hand, crawling across his skin like fire. His veins glowed with the same color, pulsing and writhing as the soul began forcing its way into him.
The orb started to shrink, collapsing inward as it was drawn into Reinhard’s palm. The soul flooded through his arms, spreading through his chest, his back, and his neck.
Then came the emotions.
They came in like waves, raw and unfiltered. He felt curiosity first toward the unknown and a pull towards an area he had never been to or traveled to.
Then he felt annoyance, which shifted into fury at being interrupted and being dragged into this place. And then wonder as he gazes at this place around it, while also feeling pity for it.
Reinhard gasped as he clutched his chest and felt his muscles tremble. Every nerve in his body screamed as conflicting sensations tore through him. His vision blurred between the colors of violet, crimson, blue, and gold.
The orb’s light dimmed, shrinking further as it continued rushing into him, but the sensations only grew stronger.
He saw images.
At first, they came like fragments that were disconnected and dreamlike. He saw himself running through a forest with the streets turning into blurs. Then another image of a place with its shapes warped by darkness and starlight.
Then images of himself trapped in iron bars with countless eyes watched from beyond, studying and dissecting. He could feel its rage, its humiliation, and the urge to crush everything around.
Another image came where he was falling through a sea of stars while the void stretched forever, filled with the hum of distant galaxies. Below him was a massive sphere that dwarfed anything he had ever seen, swirling with colors and gravity so immense that even thought bent around it.
The images shifted again.
He stood upon a plain where suns and galaxies orbited like dust motes. Black holes bloomed and died in the distance, swallowing entire constellations in silence. And then ahead, a crack opened that stretched from horizon to horizon before he paused and then stepped inside.
Then the images stopped as Reinhard staggered backward after clutching his head. His eyes open with cold sweat dripping down his face. The pain slowly receded, and he felt a lot better now as he clenched his fist.
Reinhard straightened slowly, his muscles twitching as faint trails of black-blue light pulsed beneath his skin. Then he focused, he sensed the number that had entered his body from the Gravity Star, which was thirty.
Reinhard was already able to digest eight of them, and that pushed him to 96 souls, as previously he was at 89 from devouring ten. A small, faint smile tugged at his lips, but then he blinked in surprise as he felt the Gravity Star Beast.
Why could I feel its soul but not the Star Walker? Reinhard thought in confusion before shaking his head and then closing his eyes.
In the darkness of his mind, he saw his Beast Symbol that was floating in front of him. At its side was the gauge which shined, with each small ball of light representing the souls he had consumed.
Reinhard focused, recalling the soul of the Gravity Star and the memory of that devastating technique surfaced in his mind.
The Gravity Step.
He remembered the moment vividly, how the Gravity Star’s foot had sunk into the ground. Then the crushing wave of pressure that followed, the pull so absolute it felt like the world itself had turned against him.
He remembered the helpless and unstoppable before he felt an invisible force sending him flying back towards the wall.
In response, the light of his Beast Symbol flared.
A new brilliance pulsed deep within the gauge on the side, a single orb glowing brighter than the rest. Reinhard walked towards and saw the sphere bore the mark of the Gravity Star. A swirling core of darkness with a crimson eye at its center, encircled by faint threads of purple, blue, and gold.
Reinhard smiled as he reached out and touched the symbol. When his hand touched it, light flooded the darkness. The sphere rushed upwards from the others and then settled next to the Werefang symbols.
Then golden lines burst from the orb and rushed through the air before touching the Beast Symbol.
The contact sent a vibration through him before he saw golden threads connecting the Gravity Star and his Beast Symbol.
And then silence.
Reinhard opened his eyes before he raised his hand slowly. On the back of it, his main Beast Symbol glowed faintly. Around it, three smaller dots now shimmered with the newest mark being the Gravity Star Beast.