Aziel revealed himself to the creature, which in turn stared back with those dozen eyes scattered across its form, glimmering faintly like shards of broken glass.
The faint hum rolling from its body sent a chill up his spine, like standing too close to a high-voltage wire.
Then, in the blink of an eye, its body flickered out of existence—gone—only to reappear directly in front of him, the air distorting around its sudden presence.
It let out a piercing screech, high and grating, before coiling its form like a whip and snapping it toward him with terrifying speed.
The pressure alone cut grooves into the ground.
The strike connected, but fortune twisted in his favor.
The creature's body shifted against its own will, its density thinning into something nearly gaseous.
The impact washed over him with far less force than intended, stinging but not bone-breaking.
Aziel didn't waste the opening.
He pressed both palms against its unstable surface and released a burst of wind slashes, forcing the entity away while it still wavered between shapes.
Thump.
Just before the fifth heartbeat, he rushed toward an ominous rock nearby, gathering mana into his legs and propelling himself upward.
His aim was to meet its height, to leverage the fall and dive down upon its body.
And then the rock vanished.
One second it was there beneath his boots, the next it flickered out of existence.
His body lurched downward, balance gone, air tearing at his ears as the ground rushed up to meet him.
"What—?!"
The plasma being surged forward midair, its mass stretching and liquefying before slamming into him all at once, only to solidify into a brittle, crushing weight at the last second.
The blow sent him spiraling. The air was blasted from his lungs, ribs cracking as blood sprayed from his lips.
He hit the ground like a cannonball, skidding and tumbling across jagged stone.
Aziel coughed, choking on copper, until his gaze caught something sharp rising toward his back.
A jagged stalagmite-like structure had formed out of nowhere, waiting to impale him where he landed.
"Fuck—! Even the surroundings are on its side!"
He gritted his teeth and flooded his back with a heavy layer of mana, bracing for the impact.
The shield shattered instantly on contact.
The sound was like glass breaking inside his skull.
But it dulled the point just enough for him to twist free, rolling across the broken ground, dirt and grit grinding into his wounds.
Breath ragged, blood dripping down his chin, Aziel staggered to his feet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
His vision blurred for a moment, but he forced his eyes to focus, scanning frantically for the creature.
But…
It was nowhere to be found.
Not left, not right, not behind.
Then instinct pulled his gaze upward.
High above, aurora-colored gas coiled in the sky, wrapping into the shape of a whirlpool above the creature's raised limb.
The spiral twisted violently, gathering speed, though smaller and less chaotic than the earlier ones.
Aziel's stomach dropped.
The being motioned like it was about to hurl the storm down at him.
And then it did.
The whirlpool descended in a blur, tearing the air apart on its way down.
The shriek of its rotation was sharp enough to rattle his teeth.
Aziel's eyes widened. He darted his gaze around, searching, desperate.
Then his sight caught on the tornado it had created before.
It had moved—displaced a considerable distance—leaving scars and craters across its path.
Almost warping the terrain.
Ripped stone. Warped soil. Entire chunks displaced as if erased from existence, carved open by raw force.
"I have more than one problem to worry about, don't I…" he muttered, a half-laugh strangled in his throat.
He bent low, grabbed a boulder with trembling hands, and hurled it skyward, wrapping it in wind arcs to propel it faster.
His muscles screamed at the strain, already torn and bleeding, but he forced them anyway.
The rock shot into the descending storm...
Only to vanish in an instant.
No shatter, no resistance.
Just erased, atomized into dust and then into nothing at all.
Aziel's heart sank, the pit in his stomach bottoming out.
'It can even blitz through matter… just obliterate anything in its path.'
His mind screamed options at him.
Try dodging? Useless.
Hiding? Impossible.
Blocking? Laughable.
For a second, the absurdity of it all nearly crushed him more than the storm itself.
Then an idea clicked in his mind.
One with no guarantee to work.
Almost something akin to gambling.
A gamble that might just cost his life.
'A little too much, to be honest…' he thought, grinning faintly through bloodied teeth.
He poured as much mana as his legs allowed, forcing them past the point of breaking, and sprinted.
His target wasn't the creature. It wasn't the storm descending on him.
It was the larger tornado still churning in the distance.
It was easily miles away.
There was no way in the world he could reach it, even if he ran at the speed of sound.
That was how frighteningly fast the whirlpool was.
But… that was where his first gamble came into play.
The distance that seemed like miles a heartbeat ago suddenly collapsed down.
The terrain warped again—but this time, in his favor.
What should have been impossible shrank into something terrifyingly close.
He had used the twisted domain to his own advantage.
"There's no time to celebrate—I'm not even one percent safe yet."
Aziel kept running, chest heaving, lungs burning. The tornado loomed closer, less than a hundred meters away now.
But the whirlpool was already upon him, screaming down with unstoppable force.
Fifty metres.
Twenty metres.
Ten.
Aziel felt his flesh sear. Agonizing heat scorched across his hand, tearing it open.
Blood sprayed down his arm, sizzling against the ground as he ran.
Then...
He jumped.
At the very last moment, he hurled himself sideways, throwing everything he had into that single movement.
The whirlpool collided with the tornado.
The two storms crushed against each other, writhing and shrieking, tearing at the fabric of the world.
The impact let out a sound like a gamma ray burst splitting through space, almost deafening.
Aziel staggered, raising his half-devoured hand to shield his eyes.
Blood poured between his fingers, dripping down his arm in sheets, but he couldn't look away.
It was blinding. It was terrifying.
And yet…
He stared in awe.
Because against all odds, his gamble hadn't killed him.
The second gamble had worked.
---
Thanks for reading.
A/N : Should i just create an auxillary chapters of all the dimensions, races and their abilities instead of revealing slowly? Let me know!