Divine Apostasy Book 7 - Chapter 68

Chapter 68

Vibrations saturated the air from the rapid movements of the four combatants, and even these disturbances Ruwen balanced, creating his own pressure waves with the exact opposite frequencies.

Ruwen countered Blind Morning with Lion’s Knee, Dead Seed with Folded Bean, Tumbling Shower with Clay Horse. He had only moved three inches from his starting place and finished each flurry of attacks standing, relaxed and ready.

The Founders activated their Soul abilities, and Ruwen witnessed a Shadow Step for the first time. To his surprise, it wasn’t Dusk, but Thorn that Shadow Stepped first. It made sense that the sisters would master all three branches of their Steps, but the confirmation still provided a small shock.

Ruwen sensed the Shadow Step as two movements. He felt Thorn disappear from her current location, creating an imbalance from the void she left. When she entered the Shadow Realm, she disappeared, but he detected the bulge forming as she displaced the air at her destination. A disturbance that began forming as soon as she arrived in the Shadow Realm.

As Thorn reentered the Material Realm, Ruwen had already balanced her new location, and gently took the gem from around her neck as she appeared.

To Thorn’s credit she didn’t show anger or disappointment or any emotion. Like a Founder with a lifetime of experience, she continued to try her best to reach Ruwen.

The Founders had certainly mastered Probability Waves, and Ruwen thought Dusk glimpsed the state he now called Harmony. Even if they had all mastered Harmony, it wouldn’t have mattered. While everyone on the mountaintop had reached Peak Diamond, he benefited from the Ascendancy Points from his fifty-eight levels of Worker and Fighter Classes. In every way, he surpassed them.

Perhaps not enough to matter in a short fight, but as the seconds turned into minutes the advantage Ruwen had compounded on itself, making the outcome inevitable.

Mist performed a soul move that sent a wave of energy toward Ruwen. The magical wave, powered by the soul, remained a set of vibrations, however, which he balanced with a palm strike that generated the opposite frequencies and nullified her attack.

Harmony exposed the world around Ruwen as an intricate series of vibrations, some large like Mist’s attack, and some incredibly tiny, like the vibrations in the stone under his bare feet. He wondered about the limits of this new state and while balancing the Founder’s attacks began to affect his surrounding as well.

Ruwen started with the wind, using knife-hand strikes and sweeping kicks to create complete stillness around the platform. Wondering about the opposite effect, he used his command of balance to create an imbalance.

With a roundhouse kick, Ruwen created a gust of wind, knocking the three Founders off balance. As Mist recovered, he removed her necklace. When the Founders regained their stances, he kneeled and struck the stone with three fingers. The three sisters jumped away, as one foot stone pillars erupted from the ground under their feet.

Before the Founders could recover, Ruwen stepped forward and struck the stone pillars with knife-hand strikes, turning each to dust.

The Founders looked at each other and Ruwen sensed the vibration of their communication as they spoke to each other mentally. Hey You translated the vibrations but he pushed the words away, not wanting to listen to their conversation. He realized because he could sense the vibrations, it meant he could disrupt them.

The Founders surrounded Ruwen, each taking a one hundred twenty degree arc. He guessed from their communication they had coordinated an ultimate attack to try and best him. They rotated together, clockwise, until Dusk’s shadow touched him.

Harmony detected Mist and Dusk disappearing into the Shadow Realm behind Ruwen. Thorn’s shadow swelled in two locations, one in front of him and one behind. Thorn’s shadow expanded upward as the two Founders began to return to the Material Realm. They intended to sandwich him between the two of them.

Ruwen slid his foot across the stone unbalancing the surroundings and causing the environment to right itself by creating a ten foot stone wall in front of Thorn and cutting off her shadow.

Dusk and Mist materialized near Thorn, not around Ruwen. With a sweep of his other foot, the wall collapsed back into the ground, and he jumped the six feet separating him from the Founders, landing in their midst.

For the first time, Ruwen went on the offensive, disturbing the Harmony of the surroundings and studying how the Founders’ reactions shifted the balance that enveloped all of them. They performed their Steps perfectly, but not always in a way that completely balanced their environment.

Thorn blocked Ruwen’s Hissing Hen strike with a flawless Sleeping Turtle, but after the exchange Harmony revealed a small disturbance remained between them. Thorn had transitioned from Sleeping Turtle into Leafless Tree, a valid shift that raised her right arm. With Harmony however, he now knew had she moved into Angelic Bow, lowering her right arm, she could have returned their surroundings neutral again.

Mist stepped to within two feet of Ruwen, trying to bait him into attacking. Instead, he felt the disturbance Dusk created as she rotated into a crescent kick behind him. He stepped forward, next to Mist, but facing the opposite direction.

Mist’s right arm reached for Ruwen’s hip, her intent to upset his center of gravity, and depending on how successful the attack, either rotate her body against his back to choke him, or sweep one of his legs.

Ruwen rotated away from Mist, grabbed her extended hand, and bent it downward in a joint lock. She knelt to relieve the pressure and brought her right leg around in a sweep. He released her as Dusk transitioned her crescent kick into a roundhouse kick that made the thin air tremble with its power.

Again as Mist twisted herself to a standing position, Ruwen felt the small imbalances scattered around them. The Founders had done nothing wrong, and in fact, their Steps remained perfect, but the effect the Steps had on their surroundings lacked this same perfection.

Dusk’s Roundhouse kick missed and Ruwen stepped forward to attack her supporting leg, but she disappeared in a Shadow Step before he could sweep her, appearing next to Thorn five feet away. The exchange left even larger disturbances in the surroundings.

Thorn attacked as Mist stepped behind Ruwen, and he focused on the fight. Understanding how to take advantage of these tiny disruptions, while important, didn’t need to happen while fighting the Founders. Sometime later, he could practice against opponents with far less skill to understand how to utilize this to his advantage. He could likely finish this fight faster if he knew now, but he didn’t need it. If he ever fought a deity, though, it might save his life, which made it worth pursuing.

Knowing Harmony could improve even more made Ruwen happy.

Ruwen twisted his hips, throwing an elbow toward Mist behind him. As he expected, she pushed his elbow, adding her energy to his, and trying to force him into over rotating. Instead of resisting it, he added even more strength to the turn and Mist reacted accordingly, preparing for a strike from his other hand.

Instead Ruwen pulled his elbows inward, and connected to everything around him, he used the twisting energy to shift the air out of balance around him, creating a powerful gust that lifted him off the ground, launching him into the air.

Ruwen had meant to land quickly behind Thorn and Dusk, but as he fell, his Bamboo Jacket of Falling triggered, slowing his descent considerably. He cursed himself as memories of Overlord and his thousands of Minions punishing Ruwen on Rainbow’s End every time he mistakenly arced through the air.

Ruwen imagined Thorn and Dusk were thrilled as they rushed toward his slowly falling body. With nothing to leverage against, they expected him to be nearly helpless. He rotated himself so he fell headfirst, facing the Founders as they dashed toward him.

Still ten feet in the air, Ruwen waited until Dusk and Thorn had almost reached him, before using a palm strike to push himself suddenly downward.

Instead of Ruwen’s head, the Founders faced his feet, and when his hands touched the ground, he pushed upward in violent handstand, aiming his feet at the two Sisters’ chins.

Dusk and Thorn reacted automatically, dodging the kick, but it forced Dusk to lean outward enough to affect her center of gravity, and Ruwen, still upside down, slammed his hand into her heel. He used the resistance of Dusk’s stance to pull his own body downward, as Dusk’s leg finally gave out.

Dusk fell, and Ruwen stood. As they passed each other, Dusk finished her Shadow Step, and disappeared.

A moment later Dusk appeared next to Thorn as Mist approached Ruwen from behind.

Dusk reached up to touch her bare neck.

Ruwen had snatched the necklace as she’d Shadow Stepped away, and he held up the three gems of innocence.

Mist slowed to a walk and joined her sisters. The Founders formed a line in front of Ruwen and bowed deeply.

The match had ended.