C23: Cocoon of Doom

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"Haha, are you finally getting serious you bastard?" I couldn't help but shout out in joy, an enjoyable battle to the death with little threat is what I needed. The stress from paperwork and planning is vanishing without a trace! This is fun!

The feeling of my stomach full of desire, my strength reaching new heights, my swordsmanship approaching perfection, it's all the best! I think I can finally understand all those battle junkies.

"Scanning Nearby Threats. Complete. Copying Battle Styles. Complete. Battle Mode Finalized. Beginning Combat." Akashic Record said in the same emotionless voice before it did something unexpected. It created its own Asuramaru. It was just a cheap copy that look vaguely similar in shape but it was Asuramaru.

Slashing down onto Akashic Record I was met with the same exact slash with both attacks meeting halfway and stopping completely in place. This continued over and over but all of a sudden the sword vanish into blue particles of air and in its place was a spear of ice made of the same blue light.

Throwing the spear in a form that I remember distinctly the spear of light flew towards me, casually passing the speed of sound on its way, instantly reaching directly in front of me due to our short distance.

Deflecting the spear of light towards the sky above us where nobody was I immediately closed the distance between us once more and slashed my sword once more, closely watching its body movements while the others around me did the same.

And just like I guess the body movements of Akashic Records changed once again this time copying the movements of Sirzechs and immediately creating a ball of light blue energy once more, however it was different compared to Sirzechs Power of Destruction. POD destroys anything it comes in contact with including the air while this ball wasn't doing any of that, it was just a ball of pure magic energy. So it can't copy certain bloodline abilities, good to know.

At this point, if we continue fighting it will just continue spiraling downwards until we eventually lose. If Akashic Records can just copy all of our movements it will constantly adapt to any plan we make to counter it meaning everything will only work a single time until eventually, nothing will work anymore. Eventually, Akashic Records will have enough data to know what we'll do before we even think of doing it, not something I want to happen.

Glancing toward the leaders of the three races I can see that they all agree, meaning it's time to end this farce. So far we've been limiting our ability so we can seal it with minimal injury, but truth be told? It doesn't need its limbs to be experimented on.

Once more I approached Akashic Records and slashed down but this time I put some real oomph behind it, enough at least that its copy of Asuramaru couldn't catch up with my sword at all. With a satisfying sound, an arm flew into the air and slowly began falling to the ground, though I don't plan on letting that happen since I don't know what will happen if I touch I have to take drastic measures.

Creating a barrier around my hand I through the severed arm directly at Alaric who was using various supportive spells and helping sustain the barrier with Rufus as they would only get in the way since they are both close combat fighters and Alaric quickly put in a barrier without touching it. In fact, the only reason I'm fighting up close like this is for two reasons. 1, I'm the strongest here currently and 2, I have a huge hole in my chest meaning they can just attack threw me anyways. Combine that with my small frame and I'm not in anyone's way.

But all of that doesn't apply to Rufus and Alaric. Rufus, in general, is too tall and his weapon is huge so he's out and Alaric while small isn't quite agile enough to dodge all the attacks coming his way and fight the bastard in front of me at the same time.

"Left Brachium has been disconnected. Distributing energy to its regeneration. Failed. Not enough energy. Reattaching limb. Failed. Prioritizing Energy Gathering." Akashic Records said once more but who says Brachium anymore?

Anyways, ignoring my own question, I once again approach it while it was in it's weird self-scanning mode and slash down, cutting off it's right arm while its left leg was instantly erased by a ball of crimson destruction the other leg was removed by three weapons of light and caught in a barrier of light with a rope attached to the end that Michael used to pull the arm out of Akashic Records range.

Now that it's a torso with a head it'll be plenty easy to seal it in time. Creating a barrier of pale silver mist surrounding Akashic Record and stopping its flailing around and weird talk about regrowing limbs and all that.

Soon after my barrier was surrounded by various colors of energy creating an extremely pretty but also destructive cocoon. Once the cocoon of ours was formed we all gave a short look at each other before we began the process to freeze the barriers time.

It isn't an easy process and my new 3rds as well as Vali understood that and began standing guard. To freeze the time of the domain inside of a barrier is a challenge that's difficult only scales with size, lucky we're doing it on a smaller scale right now so no harm there but it's still hard. The method we're going with currently is forcing the flow of time in the barrier to stop with purely our energy reserves, energy reserves that were limited by sealing magic and then reduced by a high-level fight.

That's not even mentioning messing with the flow of time. Resisting the flow of time or even destroying or halting it is much easier compared to forcefully stopping it which is why sacred gears like Gaspers are so hard to control but also highly valued.

Anyways it's really hard and I wouldn't have been able to do it alone in this state but shortly after we began the flow of time in the barrier began slowing until a few minutes later our cocoon of doom was completely frozen in time.

Finally, this small war is over. I guess I can finally relax and finalize the process for my new 3rds. Wait… damn it now I need to do paperwork again!