MIGHT AS WELL BE OP Chapter 978: Endless Spatial Blade

Lucian gazed at Aaaninja with a massive smile, savoring the way this fight was unfolding. For three full years, he had anticipated this instant, enduring endless days of readying himself in quiet expectation, and now it was right there in front of him at last.

Right then, he refused to restrain himself, not even a tiny bit of his power, since his sole focus was Aaaninja alone, and absolutely nothing could pull his attention from that one goal.

Mana burst from Lucian's center like a bursting levee, fierce and uncontrolled, surging out with brutal force that warped the surrounding air. His dark eyes fixed on Aaaninja as he uttered words while triggering yet another power, his tone steady but echoing, laced with clear murderous vibe that gripped the area like claws.

In the instant that followed, space complied. It warped, cracked, mended, and molded into countless crescent blades. Their numbers swelled every second, growing so fast that eyes could barely follow, as space expanded wildly like it couldn't restrain its own onslaught anymore. Reality's weave shook like taut fabric on the verge of splitting from the intense coercion.

Right after, the strikes launched, all howling toward Aaaninja with ear-piercing wails that ripped the atmosphere like wailing spirits. Aaaninja reacted without pause; his response came quick and sharp, mana wrapping him like a coiled snake, air creasing like folded sheets while time specks swirled to his command as if he ruled them supreme.

All things around him stopped dead—space, light, noise, mana, specks, atoms—they all ceased. The strikes hung motionless just shy of hitting him as space yielded to time, turning into a rigid statue locked in total quiet, caged in an unseen barrier under Aaaninja's sole dominion.

His mana surged once more, bursting out with commanding might. Reality clicked back to normal, yet now the horde of crescent space blades dissolved as if wiped from being, removed so utterly that no trace lingered. As soon as the strikes faded, Lucian was already closing in on Aaaninja, his katana slashing at the Celestial's throat with ruthless accuracy.

Yet Aaaninja had caught future flashes through his Eyes Of Genesis, which supplied details without effort, strands of chance unfolding in his thoughts like a revealed scroll. He lifted his blade to parry, sure of the planned block, but right as the steels neared collision, the katana turned ghostly, slipping past the sword like a specter through fog.

At that, a gruesome rip of flesh rang out as Lucian's edge sliced into Aaaninja's torso from close range, the blow striking true since he couldn't evade or counter the impeccably timed assault.

Crimson sprayed through the sky as the katana rent Aaaninja's body, but it didn't end there. Far from it—Lucian's weapon stayed lodged in Aaaninja's torso, and in seamless flow, Lucian channeled extra force into the thrust, driving his blade down like he aimed to sever a chunk of Aaaninja's frame from the shoulder, set on splitting him in two.

Aaaninja scowled, his free hand gripping the katana to stop its drop. He skipped using Temporal Slip to disappear. Instead, he opted for aggression this round. Mana yielded to his command anew as he unleashed a fresh ability, the specks nearby humming with timeless power.

The very next tick, time specks followed like divine servants to their deity, and in the beat after, a box-like cage forged from packed time particles clamped shut, trapping both Aaaninja and Lucian inside its unseen but unbreakable walls, blocking all ways out with unyielding resolve.

Lucian's dark gaze flicked to the emerging cage. No warning was needed for him to act. Space curved around him as he geared up to warp away before Chrono Imprisonment could trap him, but prior to vanishing, Aaaninja's voice resounded once more, serene but commanding.

In that instant, Lucian's form locked up completely. Then his movements reversed, not only his body but his mana too. He appeared to retreat in time, replaying the exact steps from his recent slash across Aaaninja's torso.

Once ensnared by Temporal Displacement, Chrono Imprisonment finalized, and inside this trap, Lucian Darkheart found himself confined. Chrono Imprisonment went beyond just holding the physical form, or else it'd match Temporal Halt exactly.

Instead, it froze the body, the thoughts, the spirit, ideas, and awareness alike. Ideas turned impossible to spark, as if plunged into flawless suspension, the eerie equilibrium between living and dying where being neither advanced nor concluded.

Aaaninja wasted no time. He struck at once, his sword flashing toward Lucian Darkheart's throat, the gleaming tip mere inches off, poised to lop head from shoulders in a single stroke, but just shy of beheading, utter quiet descended as if being itself had emptied of purpose.

Quiet amplified, then warped into clamor. Light flipped to shadow. Mana turned wild and unstable like the core of existence was rotting at its roots. Then, suddenly, Lucian's figure stuttered like a flaw in the matrix, bits of him blinking like faulty code, until he blinked out of sight entirely, as if Chrono Imprisonment failed to hold him—and truly, it couldn't.

Aaaninja's gaze sharpened as his sword whiffed, slicing only void space and stalled time. He couldn't resist tsking at Lucian's sheer tenacity. Since Lucian had pulled himself from oblivion to reality once before, Aaaninja held no assumptions about what the man could pull off.

Regarding Lucian's breakout from Chrono Imprisonment, the reason was straightforward. Reality Anchor had functioned flawlessly. He had tied himself to reality so that any binding would trigger automatic release via whatever reality conjured, provided it didn't harm him at all.

Aaaninja's sight shot upward as he detected vast mana amassing near Lucian like a tempest, dense and choking, the heavens quaking fiercely as if the skies yearned to crumble from the weight.

’He’s got this much mana left?’ Aaaninja wondered, staring in shock. One must remember that Lucian's moves weren't ordinary strikes. He was deploying world-altering arts in succession, twisting rules and truths without limit. His mana pool ought to be drained hard by this point.

Yet the volume he amassed suggested he hadn't tapped even a fraction of his stores. And truly, he hadn't depleted much, for each time he burned through real mana, he'd quickly deploy Event Rewriting to top off his core fully, resetting to peak state like no loss had occurred.

Thus, he effectively wielded boundless mana, defying natural laws through this outrageous trick, looming as a glitch that reality itself labored to fix.