Chapter 94: Finn’s All Out Power, The Linked Defense, Fists of Judgement
They came down on seven of the ten Divine-rank Tears at once, seven pillars of many-colored lightning wide enough to swallow cities, and the sound arrived afterward like the planet clearing its throat. Canyons collapsed. The dead sea beds cracked open. The palace’s outer wings simply ceased to exist, erased under light.
Seventy Final Stage Divine-rank Terrors stood inside those seven strike zones when the storm arrived, and the storm treated them the way Finn’s auroras had once treated an entire world.
Wings tore away. Horned skulls split. Spectral flesh boiled off ancient bone in sheets, and the shrieking that rose out of the light was the sound of things that had not been genuinely hurt in a very long time discovering the sensation all over again.
But Final Stage Divine-rank Terrors did not die easily, and these ones did not panic.
Through the blinding light, seventy ruined silhouettes moved as one. Threads of violet power lashed out between them and wove their energies into a single shared web.
The dying stabilized the dying. Seventy individual deaths became one collective survival, and the storm broke over their linked defense like a wave over a reef.
When Finn’s light finally guttered out, the little fish drifted downward with its scales gone dim and grey, utterly spent, and seventy mangled Terrors still stood beneath the seven smoking Tears.
Barely. Terribly injured. But standing.
[Finn: ...I used everything. Aidan. Finish it.]
’Oh, I’m finishing it.’ Something in Aidan’s chest had gone very cold and very calm. ’Your work doesn’t get wasted, buddy. Not one spark of it.’
"Arthur. Suit up."
Arthur crashed down out of the sky and poured over him in a flood of crimson-gold motes, the Argon Exo-Armor sealing shut around his body, dragon wings unfurling wide. Every one of Arthur’s peak Legendary stats layered onto his own, and beneath the armor, Aidan reached deeper still.
Neonoir Lethal Flow tore up through him, dark wind wrapping the crimson armor in a second skin of silent speed. His aspects rose all together, lightning and metal and burst and wind and every quiet thing he kept in reserve, and above all of it, he reached for the technique he had drilled every single day since a frozen tomb.
Fist of Judgement.
He had trained it mentally and practically until mastery stopped being a question, and mastery had bought him something new.
Where once he could barely hold one, the concept now answered him in multiples. Arthur’s borrowed power fed each one further and swelled their speed and weight past anything he could have gathered alone.
Aidan rose above the canyon, drew back his fist, and the sky changed owners.
Seven gigantic fists of condensed light took shape above the seven ruined Tears. Each one loomed vast enough to shame the Terrors beneath it, and each one came wreathed in wild, razor-sharp arcs of lightning that lashed the clouds apart for kilometers around.
The air across the whole night side of the planet began to howl inward, dragged toward seven separate points of gathering judgment.
Below them, seventy wounded Terrors looked up, and tried to move.
They couldn’t.
The concept had already found them. Every wing-beat, every lunge, every desperate surge of linked violet power froze mid-motion, bound in place by a verdict that did not care how ancient or how connected they were. Seventy apex horrors hung helpless beneath the descending light, granted exactly enough freedom to watch.
’Everything you are, everything you tried, everything you linked together to survive.’ Aidan closed his fist. ’Thanks for the fuel.’
The seven Fists of Judgement fell.
They came down with wild, screaming arcs of lightning trailing off their knuckles, and seven separate thunderclaps merged into one continuous roar. Where each fist met its bound targets, the world went white.
The detonations converted everything at once, every absorbed scrap of hostile intent discharged as absolute, electrocuting judgment, arcing through spectral flesh and ancient bone and the violet web binding seventy lives into one. The web became a conduit. The judgment traveled it end to end.
Just like Vorkapar, they were not simply struck.
They were shredded to oblivion, seventy Final Stage Divine-rank Terrors unraveling into drifting motes beneath seven pillars of dying light, and the seven Tears above them shuddered and began to close over the emptiness where their spawn had been.
The night side of the nameless planet fell silent, lit only by the fading glow of judgment and the ninety-three Tears still weeping violet across the sky.
Aidan hung in the ruined air, chest heaving inside the armor, and looked at what remained of the outbreak.
’Three Divine-rank Tears untouched, with thirty more Final Stage monsters between them. Ninety lesser Tears still open. And whatever’s left alive in that palace.’ He flexed his aching hand, lightning still crawling between the gauntlet’s fingers. ’Round one’s done.’
[Jovan: I suppose I’ll try to let loose some of my Colored King Black’s power.]
’No. Not yet.’ Aidan cracks his neck. ’My spirit art’s fuel is still 38% left thanks to my Divine-10 Health, and Arthur can lend 10% more. Let me spend all I have first and see if I can finish it.’
[Jovan: Alright. That would be better. I am pretty sure I still can’t dominate the Colored King Black’s powers, not even 10% of it, so It’s better I don’t use much of it.]
’Yep.’
[Finn: Master, I need to rest since I spent it all. But I will be ready soon, and then I’ll beat all of them again. I’ve killed a lot of these things before, but without that pond, I am getting tired fast.]
"Haha, no problem, buddy. You already did plenty. So that’s why you went all out like that. This is a familiar scene for you."
That world was providing energy to Finn via the pond, so Finn could tirelessly rain destruction, and the energy would be returned to the pond by the world again.
[Finn: Yesh! I loved destroying them. The most fun activity I could do there.]
[Arthur: They are coming.]
The whle army arrived, and before that, the leader of the palace arrived, and went straight for Jovan instead, perceiving him as a bigger threat.
’You keep him busy. I’ll annihilate these monsters.’ Aidan relayed to Jovan.
[Jovan: This is perfect, actually. I’ll use him as an experiment to utilize powers of Colored King Black stably.]
’Don’t accidentally kill him. I want my Shadow Phantom Genesis to devour him.’