Volume 1: Path – [Awakening Arc]
Chapter 12: Mist Demon Vs Tiger Mask
In the idle of the space, Caelus stood on the ground of flesh, his entire body drenched in blood.
His body didn't reek of blood, though it was as if the red substance wasn't truly blood at all.
The world around him began to fracture like cracked porcelain, spiderwebs of damage stretching through the sky and ground alike. Shhhrrkkk... splinter... crack...
He didn't notice. He couldn't. The strength had drained from his limbs, and every drop of adrenaline had burned out.
He was dead.
His body, broken and beaten beyond function, remained upright. Even though some parts regenerated during his desperate chewing on the sphere, it had only restored his teeth not his arms, not his spine, not his ruined insides.
No ordinary person could survive this. If anyone did, they had escaped death by defying it.
The entire realm shattered further glasslike shards drifting and disintegrating. Tink... tink... whoosh...
Then, a portal opened beneath Caelus. His body, still standing but hollow, collapsed and dropped into the glowing rift.
Above him, another body fell which belonged to Uriel. Her form descended with eerie grace, still intact. Her soul and body were one. There was no such thing as bright orb in it was her.
It had all been a lie, the deception of the Thousand-Faced Creature.
The illusion vanished the moment the sphere was devoured. The creature couldn't survive without it.
And so, it died.
…
Back in the center of the Park, chaos erupted.
Tiger Mask faced off against a figure cloaked in mist Mist Demon, as he'd called him aloud.
Each seemed to arrive with a clear goal. Tiger Mask had come to protect Uriel, referred to as "the young lady" by his faction. The Mist Demon's motives, however, remained a mystery.
The entire park had split.
One side swallowed in thick, curling mist. The other consumed by flickering, orange-red flames.
The ground hissed under the heat. Fffsssshhh... The mist whispered, low and dense. Hsssshh...
A voice rang out across the battlefield, harsh and grating, "It's been a long time since we met again, hasn't it, Calix?"
Calix, the man in the tiger mask, stepped forward with disgust curling his lip. "I don't know why you're here stirring up chaos, but seriously you need some help. Your voice is so goddamn awful it's making me nauseous. Maybe that's why your wife ended her life."
"Shut up, Calix, she died becasue you tortured her to know information about me today is the day I am going to kill you, with the rank 5 stage I reached with being on the same rank as you, I can finally defeat you and get my revenege." The voice sounded in the battlefield loudly.
As the voice was over, the mist in the air began to condense into swords, spears, bows, etc... all of them are in gray mist, the whole sky is filled with these mist weapons.
All of them are as huge a 10 story foot tall buidlings, there are more than 1000 weapons, at the same shape and sizes.
"Bitch, your mist doesn't work on fire. Didn't you study basic science? Hah, and here I thought you were smarter than that," Calix sneered, his entire body erupting in vibrant orange-red flames.
The blaze didn't scorch the earth it danced across the ground, clinging to the park's surface like a living tide, sparing the land but consuming all else. The flames could not reach the sky, though. Above, the mist still reigned. Mist, a sub-affinity of air, possessed fluid properties by mimicking the nature of vapor and airflow. It made the sky its stronghold.
But every element has a counter. And for mist, fire was its nemesis.
The sky rippled.
Weapons formed like swords, spears, colossal bows crafted from dense, condensed fog, each towering over ten stories high. The arsenal hovered, darkening the sky like a coming apocalypse.
They descended down to the ground in two blinks of an eye.
BOOM!
The weapons slammed toward the earth.
Fire clashed with mist in a hissing explosion—SHHHHHKK!—ripples of steam burst outward. The flames roared in defiance, evaporating the ethereal weapons one by one. SSSSHHH! But some denser, and heavier pierced through the fire.
CRACK!
They struck the earth with terrifying force, splintering it open. Fissures raced through the park, stretching like hungry mouths toward the nearby city.
Calix stomped.
Tendrils of fire unfurled from beneath his boots—WHIP!—crawling into the cracks like serpents seeking prey. Hiss... fwoom... crackle... Each rift hissed as flames sealed it shut, stitching the ground with blazing thread.
The earthquake calmed, stabilized.
The remaining mist weapons hissed violently as they, too, evaporated—pshhhhh...—their presence erased by Calix's dominance.
Mist is composed not only of the air element but also water. Mist consists of minuscule water droplets called liquid-phase molecules formed when water vapor condenses in cooler air. Suspended in the atmosphere, this mist is a heterogeneous mixture of air and condensed water.
In simpler terms, it's both air and water combined into a visible, drifting form. Air contains gases like nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor and mist is what happens when vapor condenses into droplets and lingers in air.
That's why the Mist Demon's previous attack worked, those tiny water droplets acted as carriers, letting the mist penetrate flames. But fire, especially Calix's, burns hotter than what mist can handle. It's like tossing a few drops on a bonfire it won't change anything.
Unless, of course, those drops become a flood.
The Mist Demon compressed the atmosphere, thickening it into dense mist until the very moonlight was swallowed. The mist curled and wove itself into a spherical mass so dense that even moonlight vanished behind it.
Within that massive orb, water began to accumulate, held in place by a cocoon of swirling vapor. Slowly, the mist orb compressed further, pressure condensing the water within like an imploding tide.
From mountain-sized to car-sized to palm-sized, the ball shrank.
In the span of seconds, it became a marble an impossibly dense globe filled with over 100 billion tons of liquid, compressed beyond logic.
"Here, take this Calix, you're dead now," Mist Demon bellowed as the marble descended, dragging the sky with it.
'That's more than enough water to drown an entire city... now let's see, Calix will you save them or strike me down?' (a 100 billion maybe a lot some may think but you guys still don't know about the power system so need to stay quiet about that)
The sky twisted unnaturally as the gravity around the descending sphere began to distort space itself.
Calix, standing firm on the scorched earth, clenched his jaw as a sharp spike of pain shot through his skull. His mind was racing, he knows about the Mist Demon, a notorious assassin with a trail of destruction behind him. The research files were clear: he had two primary weaknesses. First his wife, a sore and delicate wound in his past. Second his temper. That same temper could turn him into a berserker, forcing him to throw out all his trump cards in a fit of rage. It made him more powerful, yes, but recklessly so.
"Damn it all, I can't let a single civilian die," Calix muttered, his eyes narrowing. He slammed his foot down.
[Solar Apex-Crimson Huntground]
Crack!
The realm around him ruptured, folding and peeling away to reveal a domain forged in vengeance and flame. The sky above burned gold and crimson like a never-ending dusk streaked with molten rivers of light that bled across the heavens. No clouds hovered, only glowing embers drifting slowly downward like dying fireflies.
The ground was cracked basalt, blackened and jagged, glowing from within with pulses of magma that throbbed brighter with every step Calix took. The terrain exhaled unbearable heat, warping the air in shimmering waves and pressing on intruders like a second gravity.
Obsidian trees sprouted from the landscape gnarled and leafed with flame-colored foliage that hissed and crackled like burning parchment. Each time the wind blew, sparks trailed from their branches, hissing as they landed.
Calix's eyes blazed.
The sphere, a marble of annihilation, plummeted into the molten earth—
BOOOOOOOM!
An infernal blossom erupted outward, but the immense thermal field Calix projected wrapped around the blast like a living shield. The pressure was contained. Diminished. Tempered by the temperature.
Still, what remained was cataclysmic. A tectonic upheaval that would've erased a city block from existence.
Basalt shattered. Magma geysered. Flame and steam intertwined as the superheated atmosphere absorbed the worst of the detonation.
...
After several minutes, nothing remained of the once sprawling park. The mist had dissipated completely, the flames extinguished.
Calix stood barely conscious, his body mangled. From the left side of his ribs to the right edge of his waist, a deep gash split his torso, as if his flesh had been flayed and seared away. The exposed skin was raw, glistening like wet parchment. Merely brushing against it would invite a pain so intense it could knock a man out cold.
His subordinates, clad in reinforced field gear, rushed to his side. They had been scouring the area while Calix bought them time with his battle against the Mist Demon.
"Sir! We've located the young lady and the boy she's usually seen with," one of them reported, panting.
Calix's charred eyes flicked toward the speaker, a shadow of relief crossing his face.
"Good," he rasped, voice cracked from heat and effort. "Take them and Secure them. Then report the boy to the Association and revive young lady immediately. I need to go to report the situation to Master."
[End of Chapter 12]