Chapter 228: Star Maker and Star Destroyer
Inside the Moon Cell, the battle between Rowe and Sefar resumed with cataclysmic fury.
Although Sefar had been momentarily surprised by Rowe's actions, the hesitation was fleeting. The White Titan underwent a further transformation, forcing an evolution fueled by the energy released from within its own core, a power accumulated by devouring countless civilizations across the stars.
The whip like sensory appendages winding from her head extended, lashing the air. The glowing patterns covering her pale, exposed skin solidified, their density increasing until they resembled tribal tattoos of light.
Sefar spread her hands. The Rubik's Cube suspended in the void at the center of her chest began to rotate violently. She splayed her legs, arching her hips back in a stance that mimicked a heavy wrestler, her abdomen contracting to reveal the taut, powerful definition of her musculature.
It was a stance of absolute stability.
As her feet stomped heavily against the digital ground, her body swelled.
She became taller. Larger.
Stronger!
Previously, the Sefar avatar that had made landfall on Earth had grown to the fifth stage.
Its Primal Structure, designed to match and counter the specific characteristics of any civilization it encountered, had made it invincible.
But her Main Body, here in the Moon Cell, was a seventh stage Star Hunter.
It was a Primal Ultimate Structure, an existence approaching the scale of a Star Creating God.
And now, pushing beyond her limits, she crossed the threshold of the seventh stage. She touched the domain of the eighth stage, rivaling the majestic Authority of a true Star Creating God!
If an ordinary Primordial Human could only affect the surface texture of a planet, a Star Creating God was an existence that could reach directly into the planet's core.
From the surface to the heart of the world.
This was the gulf between manifesting a planetary environment and possessing the Authority to create one.
However, no matter how tall she grew, no matter how vast her mass became.
Rowe's massive Deus body swelled in kind, floating upwards, his scale expanding to match hers, his power rising to meet the Titan's!
Holding fifty one percent of the Moon Cell's Authority, Rowe had also attained the Authority of a Star Creating God within this fleeting window of time.
"If you can do it, so can I."
"Now, let's see who is stronger!"
Fighting Sefar was a process of familiarizing himself with his own newfound power. It was a dangerous method of calibration.
But Rowe welcomed the danger!
"Evil... civ... i... li... za... tion...!"
Amidst a crisp, resonant roar, the Rubik's Cubes in Sefar's chest and the palms of her hands burst with simultaneous light.
Photons gathered before her body.
Intertwining, compressing, and finally collapsing into a rotating sphere of absolute radiance.
It was ultra high concentration energy.
"A new fighting style!"
Rowe's Primordial Human form took a step back, merging seamlessly into the central hub of the Deus's brain.
Sitting in the command interface, he analyzed the shift. He knew the upcoming clash would differ fundamentally from the previous exchange.
The earlier battles had been pure close quarters combat, kinetic and brutal. But the Star Hunter was not limited to physical strikes.
Sefar, an entity that absorbed the concepts and energy of civilizations to optimize herself as a weapon of victory, possessed devastating directed energy attacks.
She had simply not needed them before.
Before reaching the eighth stage, the struggle of converging such vast energy was less efficient than simply crushing the enemy with her fists.
The Star Hunter was an existence that prioritized efficiency above all else.
However, the seventh stage Deus was still bound by the planet's limitations, while the eighth stage Star Hunter, having reached the realm of Star Creation, had vaguely exceeded those boundaries.
Even if one was still inside the doorway while the other had stepped half a foot outside, the difference in perspective was enormous.
The most obvious difference was that a seventh stage Star Hunter would still be targeted by the Counter Force of the stars.
The eighth stage could ignore such defenses.
The energy sphere Sefar converged possessed the power to shake the very essence of a celestial body. It was a Planet Destroyer Cannon in the truest conceptual sense.
Annihilating stars. Devouring chaos cores.
Yet, Rowe's sentiment remained unchanged.
"If it were the previous me, facing this power, I would likely be utterly annihilated without even a speck of dust remaining."
"But now, it is different!"
Rowe's mechanical body clenched its fists.
The Primordial Human sat in the cranial hub, while at his heart, an invisible chaotic mist diffused. It connected to the Chaos Core that enveloped and compressed the Moon Cell's outer shell, actively devouring it.
It was another fusion of the Trinity.
This time, the human form was the Brain, the Chaos Core was the Heart, and the fifty one percent Authority of the Moon Cell served as the blood pumping through his veins.
Operating at critical overload, the massive Deus glowed like cooling lava. The iron wings unfolding behind him were coated in layers of flowing light.
Facing the Planet Destroyer Cannon Sefar was about to unleash, Rowe extended his hand. The massive steel palm of the Deus reached into the void and pulled a sword from the emptiness.
It was a peculiar weapon. A crimson blade connected to a golden hilt, composed of three cylindrical sections that rotated in opposition, engraved with the complex cuneiform of the Age of Gods.
The moment it was gripped in Rowe's palm, it began to grind the surrounding reality.
A crimson storm spread from its center, rippling like heat haze, causing the surrounding spatial platforms to develop faint, structural wrinkles.
The Sword of Rupture, Ea.
This was the manifestation of the power of the God Ea, the Star Creating God from Mesopotamia, which Rowe had obtained long ago on the Mesopotamian Plain.
He had once helped Rowe clear out the High Heavens Gods of Uruk, leading humanity into a new era. Since then, Rowe had utilized its power but rarely manifested it as a Noble Phantasm to display its full output.
It wasn't just because it hadn't been necessary.
It was because, before this moment, Rowe had struggled to unleash the true potential of the Sword of Rupture.
The power of a Star Creating God could only be fully utilized by an existence that stood in the same realm.
And that was precisely where Rowe stood now.
Though brief. Though fleeting.
Though achieved by external force.
At this moment, using the Moon Cell's authority as a stepping stone, Rowe truly stood within the scope of the primal mechanism, within the realm of Star Creation.
The Sword of Rupture could finally exert its true purpose.
The great power of World Construction!
"Danger. Danger."
Sefar issued a series of mechanical warnings.
Her feedback indicated that the Planet Destroyer Cannon condensing in her chest had become even more concentrated, turning incandescent. Enormous energy continuously flooded the Moon Cell.
The diffusing light and heat carried such terrifying intensity that ordinary Divine Spirits would have been blinded by the mere sight of it.
This was a true confrontation.
The power to annihilate planets versus the power to create them.
A duel of Destruction and Creation!
"Haha... Hahaha... Come on, Devourer of Civilizations."
"Behold the great power that builds the stars!"
The Deus's iron wings spread wide, venting excess mana. Rowe slowly raised the Sword of Rupture. In the hand of the giant machine, the sword appeared logically massive; if placed on Earth, it would resemble a pillar connecting the earth to the zenith.
The three sections of the blade rotated in a misaligned spiral. The crimson storm brewed, retracting and compressing until the blade glowed like the core of a sun.
"Destroy..."
"Evil civilization!"
Sefar thrust her hands forward. Her massive palms struck the energy of the Planet Destroyer Cannon.
With a resounding boom, the cube on her palms rotated violently, transforming the impact into a vector thrust that launched the terrifying energy sphere forward.
Along its path, everything collapsed. The shining sphere of light acted like a black hole, shattering the complex encodings and intricate information layers of the Moon Cell, turning them into nothingness.
Cleared.
Even the backups were utterly deleted.
Rowe raised the Sword of Rupture and swung it down!
One side was Destruction.
The other was Creation.
A crimson storm extended from the tip of Ea.
There was no scene of world shattering devastation, no chaotic explosion.
There was only reassembly. Countless pieces of information moved from chaos to order.
The power of the rotating stars, once wielded by the God Ea, split the chaotic nebula, defining the boundaries of lava, earth veins, and abysses.
Rowe wielded that same authority now.
Chaotic data combined into sky, earth, oceans, and vegetation.
The crimson storm, carrying the weight of a genesis, collided with the oncoming Planet Destroyer Cannon!
A roaring tremor resonated through the digital space.
The Moon Cell's internal core shook violently. Layers of impact shockwaves spread outwards, causing the Spiritron Computer, which was firmly fixed on the far side of the Moon as a giant crystal, to experience massive turbulence.
The chaotic core seized the opportunity.
Amidst the roar, it completely converged!
"What happened!?"
Artemis, suspended above the lunar sky in real space, stared in confusion.
She watched the mist recede.
It collapsed like a dying star.
And finally, it vanished completely!
It was gone.
Rowe, utilizing the momentary tremor and the impact from the inside out, had completely devoured the Moon Cell. He dislodged the object that was originally fixed in standard space.
And then, it fell.
Along with the Chaos Core, the Moon Cell collapsed into Imaginary Number Space.
The process was uncontrollable. It was the Moon Cell's final, instinctive counterattack to being consumed.
"Rowe... Where is my Rowe!?"
Artemis strained her sensors, but she could see nothing.
Even the Moon Goddess found it difficult to observe the scenery within Imaginary Number Space.
Rowe had no time to pay attention to the outside world.
His battle with Sefar was still ongoing.
The powers of Destruction and Creation intertwined and annulled each other in the deepest recesses of the falling Moon Cell. As their energy expenditure skyrocketed, both Sefar and Rowe gradually shrank.
Their massive forms were sustained by mana.
The energy they possessed was enormous, but even the stockpile gained from devouring civilizations or holding fifty one percent of the Moon Cell could not be truly inexhaustible.
Inexhaustibility only exists when replenishment exceeds consumption.
When depletion outpaces intake, exhaustion is inevitable. With both combatants at maximum output, the clash was intense enough to destroy a small planet from the inside out. The drain was terrifying.
But even if exhausted, even if depleted, Sefar would not cease her attack.
This was her instinctive duty as a Star Hunter.
Thus, amidst the shattered information torrents and reorganized Spiritron encodings, the Planet Destroyer sphere collapsed. The massive Sword of Rupture also dispersed, the Deus unable to maintain its structural integrity.
The thousands of meters tall White Titan vanished. The thousands of meters tall Deus crumbled away.
Rowe returned to his human form, standing on a floating information platform, bracing for the assault of Sefar, who had also regressed due to energy exhaustion.
Behind him, golden ripples manifested. Within the Gate of Babylon, countless Noble Phantasms prepared to fire.
And Sefar, on the opposite side, had changed.
The pale, alien skin disappeared, replaced by a dark, athletic complexion. The whip like ears were gone. Her chest was bound by a simple strip of white cloth, and her abdomen revealed a flat, toned physique.
Below her slender waist, a black triangular garment hugged her hips, and her legs were long and powerful.
Without the cube, her white hair remained, but beneath the fringe was a heroic, beautiful face with crimson eyes.
She was completely and utterly in a human form.
Mirroring Rowe.
Another silver haired, red eyed figure.
This was the form Sefar simulated at the last moment of energy depletion. It was the configuration calculated to be most likely to defeat a depleted Rowe.
The form of an athletic warrior.
In Sefar's calculations, only a human form could defeat a human form!
"Destroy... evil civilization!"
Sefar lunged forward. A sword woven from tricolored light appeared in her hand—a weapon she had analyzed and favored above all others.
The Sword of the War God. Or perhaps, the Sword of Mars. It was the Main God tier Noble Phantasm held by the hostile Greek machine god, Ares.
She swung the Photon Ray forward, cleaving through the barrage of Noble Phantasms erupting from the Gate of Babylon, charging straight for Rowe through the storm of steel.
Rowe bent his knees. The sword was already upon him.
He stepped onto the information platform, not retreating, but advancing.
He crashed directly into the human shaped Star Hunter's guard, slipping through the gap in Sefar's swing.
In an instant, he raised his hand and clamped down on the Star Hunter's wrist, arresting the blade. The Gate of Babylon was merely suppressive fire; he was the strongest weapon in his own arsenal!
With her sword hand restrained, Sefar reacted instantly. She raised her legs, clamping them around Rowe's waist.
The Star Hunter's slender waist twisted sharply, using the leverage of her legs to throw Rowe upwards.
The hem of the Adjutant's tailored uniform fluttered wildly. Even as he was thrown, Rowe maintained his grip on the tricolored Sword of Mars.
His body flipped in mid-air. His free hand slammed downwards, pressing onto Sefar's shoulder.
The girl's body suddenly sank. Her legs, having just thrown Rowe, had not yet retracted, leaving her suspended and off balance.
With the sudden downward force on her shoulder, she crashed.
With a heavy thud, her exposed back impacted the cold information platform.
The collision jarred her grip, and the Sword of Mars flew from her hand, instantly seized by Rowe.
White hair fanned out across the digital floor.
She was pinned beneath Rowe. Yet, in the blink of an eye, she raised her legs again, locking them around his waist and violently rolling.
Positions reversed.
From being pinned, she became the suppressor. Her curved hips pressed down firmly on his lower abdomen, pinning him to the ground.
And then, another reversal!
From the initial earth shattering clash of titans to the current, intimate grapple, the danger had not receded. The outcome remained undecided.
The primal struggle was still perilous!
Rowe pinned Sefar once more, discarding the stolen sword to suppress both of her wrists, pinning her firmly to the platform.
Sefar's legs remained wrapped around his waist, the touch of her flexible, powerful body rubbing against him like a constrictor snake, carrying a sense of fatal, crushing danger.
However, at this moment-
"The victor is decided, Giant from Beyond the Stars!"
Accompanied by a cold laugh, light bloomed in Rowe's golden and crimson eyes as he stared down at her.
Behind Rowe, the golden ripples spread once more. Point blank.
Countless blades emerged from the Gate of Babylon. Divine constructs and legendary armaments, all aimed at the girl beneath him.
Sefar's eyes widened.
She sensed it. Approaching death.
Having exhausted her energy, this simulated human form possessed none of the defensive negation of her Titan form.
If she was hit, she would be deleted.
But she was powerless to escape the pin.
Hum.
The Noble Phantasms fired!
Suddenly, the Moon Cell vibrated violently.
The Chaos Core, which anchored the Moon Cell, was still falling through Imaginary Number Space!
It was plummeting.
This was unexpected for Rowe. The aftershocks of the Moon Cell's final struggle were still ripping through the environment.
Even with fifty one percent authority, Rowe could not fully arrest the automatic counterattack of the core system during the transition.
With a resounding crash, the spatial tremors threw the aim of the Gate of Babylon off. The weapons struck the platform beside Sefar, missing their mark by inches.
A cloud of digital dust and fragmented information debris rose into the air.
"Evil civilization"
Sefar opened her mouth. Unable to determine the victor through combat, she executed her final, instinctive protocol.
The dark skinned girl lunged up and bit Rowe on the mouth.
Softness pressed against him. Lips invaded.
A shimmering cube appeared in her wide, crimson eyes.
Information Assimilation.
Corrosion!
This was the Star Hunter's final mechanism. By merging their auras and establishing a direct I/O connection between the enemy and herself, she would activate a self-destruction mechanism to drag the opponent into oblivion with her!
A one time, single use deletion program.
Boom!
The Moon Cell vibrated again. The Chaos Core continued to fall, piercing through the dimensional layers of Imaginary Number Space and returning to Reality. It breached the atmosphere of the Earth.
Finally back…
You succeeded, but it seems you need help now?
Alright, alright, what a troublesome fellow!
The voices of the Counter Force echoed in Rowe's ears simultaneously.
The sudden emergence of the Counter Force's starlight—the signature of the entity that had destroyed Sefar's clone in the past—caused Sefar to stiffen abruptly.
Seizing that moment of stiffness, Rowe reversed the connection.
He invaded her system in return!
The impact of the Great Expedition had long since dissipated.
If he died here... he wouldn't be able to ascend to the Throne of Heroes!
A hum echoed across the sky. The Chaos Core, having fallen back to Earth from the void, floated in the atmosphere. Within it, the shining Moon Cell bloomed like a mechanical heart.
From the ground, it appeared as a new star in the daylight sky.
"Tengri... has manifested!"
On the Eurasian continent, nomads dressed in felt clothing looked up at the sky, exclaiming in awe.
"Tengri has manifested!"
"The Huns have hope!"
The wind swept across the wilderness. The light in the sky flickered and disappeared, leaving only the vast emptiness of the blue.
After an unknown period, Sefar, still simulating her human form and now clad in a long white skirt and armor, slowly opened her eyes.
Amidst the swirling sand of the steppe, she grasped the Sword of Mars lying beside her.
Am I not dead...?
Was I... expelled from the Moon Cell?
At the end of the battle, it had been Rowe's reverse invasion of her core programming.
A counterattack delivered through intertwined lips and a hardline data connection.
It was... puzzling.
Feeling the imprint left in her mind by the reverse hack—a co-existence program anchored with Rowe as the primary administrator—she recalled the sensation of being violently ejected from the Moon Cell immediately after the connection was established.
Sefar remained silent for a long time.
Her body's power was empty. The strength that a Tier 1 Star Hunter could exert in this form was not significant, though still superior to mortals.
Therefore—
"Come out."
"I will destroy you."
"Destroy the Evil civilization!"
She had a new directive. Destroy civilization, regain biomass and mana, and then find that man again.
She would reclaim her primary program.
Sefar subconsciously licked her lips, tasting the phantom data of the encounter.
…
After the Son ascended to the heavens, the army of the Great Expedition trekked back to Rome.
After a long time, the Huns, exiled to this desolate place, encountered the aurora blooming in the sky on their return journey.
In this year, a great figure who would influence the world was born in the Hunnic tribe.
It was also in this year that the exiled Hunnic tribes suddenly rose, embarking from East to West along the route of the expeditionary army, conquering countless Western empires and destroying countless Western civilizations like a whirlwind.
The person born was named 'Attila'.
The one who led the Huns' rise was also named 'Altera'.
Altera, King of the Huns.
A conqueror born to destroy civilization.
.....
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