AN: I'm back. This is going to be a chapter that introduces a lot of new concepts and will be setting up for each of the battles that will be occurring in the next few chapters. I'll also be experimenting with the lore ever so slightly in the future by giving Veldora a power on par with Rimuru's 'Turn Null' and Milim's 'Stardust' and this chapter will be debuing the 'prototype' of that power, though Veldora still doesn't fully understand it.
.~.~.~.
Rimuru sat on the ground, panting hard. "Damn, she is way too strong!" He complained
Shizu looked down at him with sympathy in her eyes. "She IS the strongest Demon Lord for a reason." She stated as she looked up towards the sky.
Rimuru nodded, concerning the point. "Which makes me wonder just how overpowered Veldora is." He stated, looking toward the sky the next instant too.
In the air, Milim and I were having a 'light' sparing match, though that was 'light' by our standards. Most True Demon Lords would call a battle at this level, a cataclysmic battle to the death. The shockwaves of our unarmed fists striking and blocking each other alone were enough to kill anyone below the rank of 'Superior Majin' if they stood too close.
"Wahahahahaha!!! I forgot how exciting it is to fight you, Veldora!" Milim exclaimed with glee.
Memories of times long past, when Milim would come and spar with me rather than my previous self rampaging about surfaced instantly. We didn't fight nearly as much as when the previous me fought Dagruel, however, we'd often have bouts at this level about once every century or so, but it was clear Milim gained a lot of her high-level fighting experience dealing with the me of the past.
The fact that the me of the past never gained any experience at all from it, like she had, however, made me feel disappointed in myself.
"Alright, we've bled off enough of our aura, time to finish this so we can go back to planning for our assault!" I declared, stopping in mid-air. I felt like a DBZ character whenever I just floated in the air in my human form and couldn't help but smile.
Milim matched my flow, pausing her offense as well. "Alright. I'm curious about this 'Time Barrier' you were talking about, so I'll leave it at that for now." Milim stated.
My smile widened. I threw my fist forward, gathering a large amount of my excess aura within. Pulling back my fist and taking a stance. Milim, in her arrogance, simply puffed up her meager chest and activated her {Invisible Barrier}, a spell reliant on the Star Magic she inherited from my elder brother. It was clear she planned to boast about her defence by taking my attack head-on without dodging.
Seeing this challenge, I decided not to back down. I closed my eyes and began to concentrate my own unique {Storm Magic} energy into my already explosively powerful fist.
Star Magic allowed its user to use a mysterious substance known as Stardust, which was something completely different from the regular magicules and spiritrons that powered most magic. This unique property made Stardust incredibly difficult to deal with, so punching through her defence was going to be tricky. Thankfully, however, I'd been working on a way to defeat these kinds of 'untouchable' people for a while now, and I finally had a solution.
My eyes opened and then narrowed at Milim. "You're going to want to dodge this," I stated plainly, but Milim's smile only deepened, and she said nothing and didn't move. "Your funeral," I finished.
"{|Dragon Pulse|}!!!" I yelled as I threw my fist forward.
This attack combined my considerable aura with the destructive power of {Storm Magic} as well as my own [Dragon Claw] unique ability, which can cut through anything. I noticed that when I combined my the two, something odd happened. It was like my magic power always just... hit. Even if I completely missed, my attack would always damage the target I was aiming for. I'd once used this to destroy one of Rimuru's Clones in a training accident despite him seemingly absorbing my attack with his [Gluttony] Skill.
I was hoping this weird feature would help me knock Milim down a peg or two.
Energy erupted from my fist as it fully extended towards Milim. Black Lightning with embers of Black Flame twisted around a beam of Pure White light as the energy erupted from my fist and struck Milim's {Invisible Barrier}.
[Faust] activated without my consent.
The moment, my attack made contact with her defenses, the barrier shattered like glass, and Milim suddenly twisted her entire body at a speed faster than even I could fully track, her movement becoming a blur, in order to dodge the direct headshot. That's when it happened, the energy that had shattered the {Invisible Barrier} pierced Milim's shoulder, nearly taking off her arm before it continued past her, leaving the planet's atmosphere and sailing off into space, where it would dissipate over the infinite distance in an eternal timeframe. Milim's body was left floating there with a massive hole in her arm as [Black Flame-Thunder] engulfed her body.
There was nothing but silence for the next moment as no one said anything before... "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?!" Rimuru screamed at the top of his lungs.
I stood there, frozen in my punching pose, looking baffled at my fist. I wasn't expecting it to be THAT effective. I looked over at Milim. She had already dispelled the [Black Flame-Thunder], but I had noticed that my attack had shaved off almost 30% of her magicule reserves. It seemed, despite my attack only piercing her shoulder, she had burned a huge amount of magic power. Way more than what was needed to simply heal her wound. It was almost like the auto-hit feature of the attack had forced her to lose the same amount of energy she would have had if she had taken the hit without dodging.
I, somewhat meekly, stood out of my previous pose and began to scratch the back of my head awkwardly. "Uh... That was... uh..." I couldn't even find the right words for it, but luckily I didn't need to because-
"THAT WAS AWESOME!!!" Milim loudly declared, seemingly not phased by my attack that could have killed her if I'd put a bit more power into it.
"What... even happened?" Hinata, who was watching from the ground, alongside the other members of the Ten Great Saints and Tempest, was flabbergasted.
"It seems like some kind of special attack or property inherent to {Storm Magic}... I wonder if I can do something similar." Charys explained.
Luminous shook her head. "That guy... he's much better about it now, but he's still doing such absurd things." She sighed before looking more seriously at me. "It seems like you don't have full control over that power yet either, do you?"
I nodded my head and agreed. "Yeah, this power seems very... unpredictable. I felt my Ultimate Skill activate too. I'm pretty sure it activated to save Milim, too, since I wasn't intending to kill her, only knock the smug smile off her face." I commented as I descended down to stand next to her.
Luminous nodded slowly. "You'll probably need to get a calculation-type Skill to aid your computational power before you can master that power," Luminous mentioned as she used [Asmodeus] to close up Milim's wound.
"You've got to show that move to Guy! I don't think even HE can defend against it!" Milim said excitedly, looking at me with Stars in her eyes.
I smirked and shook my head. "Nah, Guy likes to steal other people's techniques. If I showed it to him, he'd just try to steal it." I mentioned.
The fire in Milim's eyes died instantly, as she crossed her arms and nodded her head sagely. "Yeah, that's why he is no fun to fight! It makes me want to beat him up whenever he does it!"
That got a chuckle out of me, and I raised my hand and placed it on Milim's head, giving her a headpat without even thinking.
"Waaa~" Milim melted like butter under my gentle headpat, a small blush on her face. She really was a cute kid. I turned back to Luminous to continue talking to her.
"I don't think I can do that computational Skill thing. My Ultimate Skill already has fantastic computational power." I mentioned.
"Yeah, technically its almost on par with my own." Rimuru stated as he walked closer, joining the group.
"Its beyond what mine can do at the Unique Level, so if it isn't working at the Ultimate Level then..." Hinata, who also approached, added.
I closed my eyes and began to think. "Is there anything beyond the Ultimate Skill Level? I don't think my elder brother made something higher than that." I asked, more to myself than anyone else.
(A/N: I am using the Light Novel continuity, not the Web Novel continuity, so there are no 'Origin Skills' here, since they don't exist in the official version of the story).
"Well... to be fair, I think I'm ok with there not being a way to control that power. Maybe then it won't ever be used." Fritz, one of the Ten Great Saints, who were now surrounding me in this impromptu meeting we were having, added.
"It would be very useful on our side, but I must say I agree." Leonard, another one of the Saints, commented.
I sighed in disappointment. "Oh well. If there is no way to control it, I'll just have to keep training and hope to get it down correctly one day. Might take me a few hundred years though." I lamented.
"There is one way... never mind. I'll tell you about it later." Luminous chimmed in before quickly changing the subject. "Veldora, enough about the uncontrollable doomsday power. You were saying you'd created something to help us all prepare for the fight against the Rosso Family and the Clerics of the Seven Luminaries. What is it?"
I quickly dropped the topic and smiled widely before looking to Hinata and then Rimuru. "Remember Dragon Ball?" I asked.
Hinata looked confused and looked over to Rimuru, who had already widened his eyes. "When you said 'Time Barrier', you meant-"
"Yes! My {|Hyperbolic Time Barrier|}!!!" I declared as I activated [Faust]'s [Space-Time Manipulation], having paired the control I had over time with the [Unlimited Imprisonment] to create a barrier where time moved much faster on the inside than outside.
The world around our group faded to complete blackness as though we were all suddenly placed within a void of nothingness. That's why I had Milim and I fight so much. I then activated my other unique ability, tied to my Divine Protection of the Storm Crest [Fertile Paradox].
Using the magicules of Milim and myself in the air as fuel, I created a large forest several kilometers across that exists within the barrier, powered by Milim's Ultimate Skill [Satanael,] which she'd told me allows her to create infinite magic power... You know, because being the daughter of God didn't make her OP enough, she also had infinite MP to work with, too.
Milim looked around. "I see. So this place allows for several weeks to pass by in only a few hours."
I nodded. "It allows time to pass 1000 times faster inside than outside, so 1 day out there is a little more than 41 days in here. Perfect for training." I stated.
Luminous raised an eyebrow at me. "We are attacking them tomorrow. Are you sure 41 days is enough to get everyone trained up?"
I smiled again. "Thats where you come in, my lovely waifu," I explained
"Waifu?" Luminous asked, looking to Hinata, who shrugged. I sometimes forget she got isekai'ed here in the early 2,000s when most people didn't know common internet lingo.
'Shame, I have a feeling she'd be killer shitposter... although with how beautiful she is, maybe she'd just sell her feet pics on OnlyFans.' I thought to myself before continuing my explanation to Luminous.
"You're Ultimate Skill allows you to reconstruct your body into a more powerful form using my energy, right?" I explained.
"Yes, but... are you saying-"
"Yup, we are going to make your Ten Great Saints into actual Saints using your Ultimate Skill as a Cheat! This will make them powerful enough to not so useless in the fights to come!" I declared.
"Useless?" Saare asked, sounding defeated.
"Oh yeah, you were standing right there..." I said, laughing awkwardly while Hinata facepalmed.
Luminous nodded her head and waved to the Saints to follow her, which they did. It seems she's going to get started right away.
"So, what about us? Not to brag, but we are already pretty powerful. More powerful than the Saints anyway." Benimaru asked once the Ten Great Saints were out of earshot.
I shrugged my shoulders. "I'm not sure. Rimuru said he wanted to bring you all along. Something about furthering your evolution?" I replied.
Rimuru then smirked and stepped forward. "I've come up with a way to use the 3 Million Souls Veldora has collected over his lifetime to evolve you all into Demon Lords like me!"
"""...""" Everyone present was stunned into silence.
I facepalmed. "And people think that 'I' was the threat," I muttered to myself, shaking my head in disbelief.
.~.~.~.
A/N: So I wanted to add a little bit of an aside down here to clear up certain things. First, the power that Veldora is tapping into is NOT Turn Null, it is an entirely different power set.
I was thinking, Star Magic from the Star Dragon allows the user to use Stardust. Rimuru, is essentially the Void True Dragon and can use Turn Null (or at least eventually will be able to), so what if every True Dragon has a special substance/power unique to them? This would explain why Velzard is so much more powerful than Veldora and Velgrynd in the Light Novel; she has unlocked her special essence of Fixation/Time Energy, which is superior to the regular energy used by Veldora, and why, even after all his training, he is still one-shot by her.
That's just a theory, though, but it's what I will be running with for this fanfic. Feel free to disagree.