The Chance to Surpass

Stoodley stood there frozen in terror at what had just happened. Not only had his attack just been completely decimated but the other demigod on scene had been completely decimated in the same breath leaving just him and Rowan left on the battlefield. Rowan was pale in the face due to his mana bottoming out but the massive arm swayed by his side waiting for what was going to happen next. White runes began to appear and crawled along Rowan's body and began to slowly recover his mana as the world became chaos around them.

Feng's shield and sword had withdrawn and the white runes made of light kicked into overdrive to help Rowan recover, making his whole body flash with light. Seconds later he had half of his mana back and Feng popped out. "That's all my mana. It's up to you to finish this one. Be wary, something is still off." Rowan flashed him a knowing gaze, but did not say anything out loud. Feng slowly floated down and Stoodley did nothing, wary of the giant arm that was next to the young human as he started silently casting a spell. They both watched Feng descend like a flag thrown before the start of a race. It would be the moment he touched the ship that the battle would resume.

The black hole was still expanding and had begun to pull large boulders so it took time for Feng to descend but once he did, the ship somehow erected a barrier that protected everyone on top of it while Em appeared and flashed Rowan thumbs up right as Feng's feet touched the top of the ship. Stoodley vanished through a fold in space and smacked out, causing a ripple that connected to the black hole and caused arcs of what looked like black lighting to tear through the sky, decimating space everywhere they passed and shooting towards Rowan. Rowan took a deep breath and exhaled before chopping down with both hands. [Bolt Cleave] In the next moment, time seemed to slow to a crawl as a number of things happened at once. Let's talk about how these events unfolded.

The first thing to happen was that a man in dark robes walked out of space and threw a punch covered in sparkling gray mana right towards the back of Rowans head, the sneak attack of an extra zombie demigod which had been hidden in the folds of space throughout the whole battle waiting for an opportunity to deal a fatal blow to the monstrous Rowan. Now this is where things get dicey because Rowan leaned forward to slash down in the sky and while his swords were pointed forward at some point, the giant arm had turned around and was slashing towards Rowan instead. The sword sheared right through his arm, cutting it from Rowan's body while bisecting the zombie demigod that had appeared in a fatal counter attack. Rowan's arm shook and strands of his blood stretched out and connected it back to his body. His body was cultivated to a sickening degree, a secret that not many fought him long enough to find out, but the people here had. His master had trained him brutally and decimated his entire body several times throughout training him and had stretched the limits of his own body regeneration until it became second nature for his body's natural regeneration to stay in that state at all times.An effect boosted by mana body, among other things, made it so that he was perversely powerful in all aspects of his body for a being not from the same place as his master where the real monsters resided.

Not only that, but Rowan had felt something when he had no arm and if he was right, then and if he was right, it was highly possible that he had found the cultivation route that would allow him to fully rival his master. It was something that he had learned about but not been able to pull off as of yet, but he was now on the cusp of it, a technique that anyone that had the bloodline of the spirit race could use. It was their spirit king's manifestation, a technique that some of the royal wolves had tried to show him, but for the life of him, he could not get it to manifest, but something happened with his berserkers sin when his arm was cut off and the giant arm acted that may have triggered something. Rowan put it all to the back of his mind as the pale man that had executed the sneak attack spoke out while the two pieces of him fell apart. "Well, that was unexpected. Allow me to do you one better."

The man detonated his cultivation in a devastating explosion. A small golden orb appeared, and then it slowly broke and the shockwave blasted out. Rowan slashed both of his swords to buy himself time and shatter the force as it broke around him and reformed behind him, shattering a swathe of space and enlarging the black hole. Then the second shockwave smashed down and he lowered the giant arm in front of himself and then the full explosion rocked into all of them. His mana began to rapidly drain as the arm had to repair itself over and over and eventually it faded and it was like Rowan was standing on the sun as the full heat of the explosion burned him over and over. Finally, it ended and Rowan was smoldering and in one piece, but he was missing most of the skin on over half of his body.

It was slowly regenerating but he had no more mana, he expended all of it defending himself. This was a fact that Stoodley understood well as he grinned and released his strongest spell for good measure. A massive ghost ship formed of spectral green flames smashed down towards Rowan with a force equal to the tendrils from the agitated black hole from earlier. Rowan used a chain of storm points to arrive right beside Stoodley. Once again his instincts screamed at him to act. He slowly reached his hand forward without and channeled from not his mana space but his soul somehow. The skin on his hand flaked away and then so did the muscle and the skeleton and all of his flesh as in its place his hand had been replaced by what it looked like in his complete storm form and as he reached forward the tribal pathway that seemed to bing the galaxy into his hand glowed platinum as it contained the vermillion galaxy creating this beautiful reddish silver glow as his hand slowly reached forward and he gently touched his finger to Stoodley's forehead.

His hand just slid right through, splitting the man's head as easily as pressing in playdoh. He slowly clenched his hand and Stoodley's mouth hung open, but no scream came out of it. He slowly began to collapse in on himself as he collapsed and packed itself into a small diamond shaped object that fell into Rowan's hand. Rowan looked at his new hand and his armament spell formed a glove over his hand and covered the light from it while berserker's sin faded away. He coughed lightly and looked at the black hole that was in front of him and the jewel in his hand. The action he had done had given him more information about Stoodley than even he could have guessed. The information on the skill flashed through his mind. [Soul manipulation] (Use the soul king body to directly touch an opponent's soul and manipulate it. Cost of each use. More of the fleshly body will be refined into the soul king state. Process is irreversible and will affect more of the body each time it is used.)

He realized that he had reached through the man's fleshly body and used this ability on his soul and the second he did he used the only spell that he found interesting. He used the armament spell through it and in the same instant turned the man's entire being into a soul weapon. He looked at the massive black hole and took stock of all of his options as he slid the gem into his pocket. He wasn't ready to take another step into his cultivation but thanks to touching Stoodley's soul he had learned so much about many different things and reached out and gently touched the air and his armament sword appeared and so did his sword of storm in its combined state.

He sighed to himself. Who would have known he would meet such an earthshaking battle that led him into a situation like this? The swords floated behind him as he spoke out [Call of the Fairy King] [Soul Shatter and Manipulation] Rowan's arm slowly started the process once more. The flesh flaked away and was absorbed into the galaxy and formed platinum tribal lines that bound the galaxy. It extended all the way to his shoulder, and he grimaced. The glove he had just formed shattered, and he pointed forward and before the souls could convert into mana, they smashed together and formed a shining platinum drop of soul force. The mana of true gods. It hovered above Rowan's palm and he looked at the destruction the black hole was still wreaking. "I can make this work, I guess. One shot."