Chapter 147: William
William looked down, and he saw Ren coming at him.
"I’ll not allow it to end like this, not when I have the belief of every spirit in the forest," he yelled in defiance, throwing both hands forward with all his might. Ice formed like a storm around him, growing in size without stop.
It flowed from behind him and then formed before him into a massive ice sword that swung down, cleaving through the air fast. The air twisted tightly around it, the temperature dropping from it alone.
Ren stopped his descent, eyes pinned to the sword made of ice. He took a deep breath, the air around him all sucked in as his lungs grew in size and glowed a faint red. He hurled out the flames with all his strength, slamming into the incoming blade with all intensity.
Steam rose into the air as the collision happened. The flames did not stop the destruction of the sword. They reduced its speed, but it was not enough. Ren kept the flames going until it was too close to dodge. It slammed into his crossed arms and hurled him down.
William looked down and saw Ren plummeting, his confidence rising. He might be able to do this. With these thoughts in his head, he shot out in chase after Ren.
’Tch, William actually has some skills under his belt, but this game has gone on for too long.’
Ren thought as he fell. He spread his wings and stopped himself midair before shooting forward immediately and flying right past William, who was coming down. He grabbed William by the leg as he rose and then hurled him into the sky.
Ren pulled his hand back, and lightning crackled around his hand, much smaller than what William had been using, but even then, it somehow carried more intensity than what William had shown.
"You cannot stop me, Ren. I have to do this. There is no other way," William yelled. He cast a spell. A massive magical circle formed behind him, spinning like a vortex. It suddenly started pulling energy from all around the forest in streams that entered into his body.
’What is he doing? Those energy streams, where is he pulling them from?’
Suddenly, Ren picked up the cries of many beings in the forest, beings which were having their energy stripped away from them right at this moment.
Ren realized what was happening. His eyes turned into slits, and a cold-blooded look replaced what had been on his face a few seconds ago. He clenched his fist tight and then proceeded to ask.
"William, what are you doing?"
William smiled. He felt his power surging rapidly, getting to his head. His eyes changed into those of a crazed man. Whoever he was before this moment had vanished.
"They all agreed to serve me and help me. They want what I want, and so they’ll be the fuel for what comes. Every spirit in the entire forest is now feeding me their very life essence.
Stand proud, Ren. You managed to push me to this. No one has been able to do that ever," William declared in a completely different personality from what he was known for. His eyes carried a certain glint that was not there before.
"They gave you their trust and faith, and now you want to use them as a fuel source for your craziness?
Tch. To think I respected your drive. I almost felt bad for having to take you down. Guess there is no point in caring anymore," Ren said with a disappointed look in his eyes.
William unleashed everything he had absorbed.
The lightning that came out of him was not a bolt and not a barrage. It was a torrent, a single continuous mass of electricity that consumed the air in front of him and expanded as it traveled, the sound of it not a crack but a sustained roar that shook the clouds above them and bent the trees below.
Ren raised one hand.
He compressed the lightning gathering around his own palm into a single point, tighter and tighter until it was no longer a spreading field but a concentrated beam, and fired it straight into the center of William’s torrent.
It pierced through.
The beam split the torrent down the middle, passing through it as if the mass of William’s attack was simply something to move past rather than something to match, and it hit William in the chest before he finished processing what had happened.
The hole it left was clean.
Blood came immediately, rushing out in a dark torrent as William looked down at it, his hand moving toward it, his expression somewhere between disbelief and the particular confusion of someone whose body had just experienced something his mind had not caught up to yet.
He looked up.
Ren was gone.
The shadow fell over him before he found where Ren had gone, and when William looked up, he saw the full dragon form descending, sixteen feet of Chaos Devouring Dragon blocking out the sky above him, crimson lines blazing, eyes locked on him with the cold, focused fury of something that had run out of patience entirely.
Ren opened his jaws.
The compressed Dragon Breath came down like something dropped from the sky, a single dense column that hit the ice barrier William threw up above himself and cracked through it, the meters of solid ice splitting and melting and giving way until the flame found William underneath and drove him into the ground with a force that left a crater where the impact happened.
William tried to rise.
Another round of flame hit him.
He tried again.
Another round.
Again.
Another, burning him down into the earth, into the magical circle beneath him that was still pulling life essence from every spirit in the forest, scorching it, breaking it apart under the sustained heat until it shattered completely and the streams of stolen energy dissolved into nothing.
Ren transformed back.
He landed beside the burn mark and looked down at William lying in it.
William was alive.
Barely.
Ren looked at him with eyes that carried none of the warmth that had been there at the beginning of this fight, none of the reluctance, none of the almost-respect he had felt before the moment William started pulling the life from every spirit that had trusted him.
That was what had done it.
Not the power. Not the escalation. The fact that William had looked at beings that believed in him and decided they were fuel.
Ren stood over him and said nothing.
There was nothing worth saying.