Chapter 46
When Ashan hears Ark and sees the position they are in, his foot on his chest and the mocking smile on Ark's face, his life hanging by a thread he can't even feel his body anymore, his spine broken in multiple places, his chest caved in, the only thing keeping him alive is the cube's energy.
But when he hears him, something inside of him breaks... 'Aah, why should I keep myself limited to only this level of energy? I don't care anymore; I want to kill him, and I will do whatever it takes.'
Then he starts to scream, but because of his broken jaw, only dying pig-like noises come out, which makes him even angrier. The energy around him turns a bright red, then gradually shifts to black.
Ark flies into the sky and watches him, how he starts to heal. And his body grows in size, his muscles look like they were blown up like a balloon. He reaches the two-and-a-half-meter mark. Now he looks like a big and tall ape.
He raises his hand and looks at it for a moment, opens and closes it a few times, then makes a fist and starts to smile. When he sees the position they are in again, he gets even angrier, he sees how Ark is looking down at him from above, and that really gets to him.
He says:
"Now I don't even have a full three minutes before the cube's energy is depleted, so I will show you despair."
He jumps up and reaches Ark in a millisecond; he punches a right hook. Ark raises his hand to block it, but then he feels something wrong from behind him. Before he manages to turn his head and look, he is hit, and his back burns. His skin is melting, and the muscle is starting to turn black; he is poisoned. Behind him was a magic circle created in a second by Ashan.
Then, because of the pain, he is distracted for a second, and that is a mistake because the hook hits him straight in the jaw and makes him lose his balance even more. Before he can even straighten his body, Ashan interlocks his fingers and makes a fist with both hands. Then he raises his hands up and hits Ark right in the back, sending him straight to the ground like a rocket.
The ground is once again destroyed; Ark's body makes a crater with spiderweb cracks that extend even a few dozen meters away. Now Ark lies with his face up and sees Ashan looking down from above.
Then he sees how all around him magic circles appear, and before he can even manage to get up, he is bombarded by Ashan, the destruction reaching a new level. Every hit from the circles is like a hit from a nuclear weapon. The earth becomes like Swiss cheese. The bombardment continues for an entire ten seconds, making the ground look like an alien landscape, so great is the destruction. Ashan looks down and waits for Ark; he knows that this is not enough to kill him.
Down in the crater and in the middle of the destruction, Ark is still alive, his body still in one piece, no missing limbs. His shield manages to keep him intact. But his body is full of blood; there are a few holes where you can see the other side on several spots, and his wound on the back is still acting up, the poison making healing harder. He gets up and flies up.
When he rises enough to see the devastation caused by Ashan, he is shocked, because the Earth for thousands and thousands of miles is completely dead—only dust, craters, cracks, and holes remain. No life anywhere you look; no plants, no trees, no vegetation—only death in sight. He gets angry; he knows that if they continue this fight for long, they could even destroy this planet. He wants to try and raise his power level even more, so that he can kill him once and for all, but he doesn't know if what he thinks is right. He thinks that Terra could, now in theory, withstand even more of his powers because he fed her his energy when the cores merged. So now she is 100 times more powerful than normally. But if even one mistake is made and she can't withstand the power, the entire dimension is lost, not only Earth.
Ashan looks at him and knows that he can't decide what to do. He doesn't have much time until Melody is killed by the cube, and he can't make little Terra suffer. So he is fighting with himself as well; he has all of that power at his disposal, but he can't use it. He must be going insane right now. The very thing that could save all in a second, is exactly the thing that is forbidden to him.
He flies up to the same level as Ashan and says:
"Your plan, at first sight, seems perfect, almost foolproof, but it has a big flaw, even bigger than your head. Your entire plan relies on the idea that I won't use my powers at a higher level. But let me ask you, what happens if I do use my powers, even if I hurt Terra? And you see the word I used there? I said 'hurt,' not 'destroyed.' And that is a really big difference."
Ashan starts to get even more agitated; if Ark doesn't stay at these weak power levels, then he can't do anything to him, even with the cube's energy.
Then he hears Ark again.
"Little Marshmallow, I am sorry, I will fail you as a big brother. My job was to protect you and keep you safe from any kind of pain. But now I will be the one who will bring that pain upon you. I hope that you will manage to find the strength in your little heart to forgive me someday. I really do."
So Ark turns his head back to Ashan and says:
"Are you ready for the last round? Because I sure am, and don't worry; after I finish with you, I will make sure that your soul knows what despair is."
The last words are spoken with an evil grin and an almost insane look on Ark's face.
Ark raises his hands to his sides and looks toward the sky. An even greater aura rises from his body, starting to lift higher and higher until the sky begins to break like glass. The earth beneath him starts to quake and tremble, like a child face-to-face with a lion. The laws of space, time, and reality start to become destructive and enter a kind of survival mode.
When Ark completes unsealing his powers at... -90%
He hears a scream of pain that feels like a knife slowly pushed into his heart, then another, accompanied by some thrashing on the ground.
Then he hears a laugh and Ashan's voice:
"So, Mister OP, you decided to kill the little girl slowly and painfully? I didn't expect that from you, really."
Ark turns his head toward the little girl and sees her crying blood tears. Her body starts to crack like glass, and from those cracks, blood pours, making her clothes sticky, while dirt sticks to them. Now, from all the thrashing on the ground, Terra looks like a broken doll that fell into dirty water.
Her screams grow louder and more painful because with every second that Ark spends at –90% power level, he inflicts so much more damage to the Earth. The only thing that keeps Terra alive, and not exploding is because Ark's energy. Which he fed her during the merge. But not exploding doesn't mean 'not painful.'
Ark now looks at Ashan, and when Ashan sees those animal-like eyes looking at him, fear unlike any other appears in his soul.
Then, before he even manages to create magic circles or take his staff out, he only sees the afterimage of Ark slowly fading. But the problem is that he can't sense him at all, so before he knows anything, he is struck with a kick to the stomach that sends his body flying like a bullet. But before he can even make sense of what hurts and what doesn't, he feels a hit on his back, and now he is sent flying back from where he came, and again in his flight, he sees Ark at his spot, as if he had not even moved from there.
And then he is stopped mid-flight right in front of Ark. All around his body, it feels like a hand is squeezing him. Then his right arm raises on its own to a lateral position, and he only sees Ark looking at his arm, then he feels a force pulling it. In the next second, his arm is pulled out of his body completely.
Ashan starts screaming, and then he calls even more energy from the cube, making him strong enough to escape from Ark's Telekinesis. Then he backs off with the speed of light while holding his wound. But Ark doesn't give him even one moment, he flies towards him again.