Chapter 135: Cosmic Lock & Cosmic Punch
On this before Aldaric could reply or react to his voice, something happened, which brought extreme horror to his whole giant body.
The celestial bodies revolving high above the battlefield suddenly changed their paths.
Whoooom...
One after another, they swept behind Luke in perfect synchronization.
They aligned themselves into a single, perfectly straight line.
At the very front floated the smallest celestial bodies—the asteroids.
Behind them came larger fragments.
Then the massive moons.
And at the very end...
The colossal planet silently took its place.
It was as though an entire solar system had been arranged into a single devastating formation.
’What...?!’
Aldaric’s pupils shrank violently.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
An overwhelming sense of danger exploded within his instincts.
Without hesitation, he tried to retreat.
To get as far away from Luke as possible.
But...
He was already too late.
Luke slowly raised one hand.
His calm, emotionless voice echoed throughout the battlefield.
"Cosmic Lock."
HUMMMMMMM...
The aligned celestial bodies shone simultaneously.
Instead of releasing their gravitational force in every direction...
They compressed it.
Focused it.
Condensed the gravitational pull of every celestial body into a single, perfectly straight line.
And that line pointed directly at Aldaric.
The space between Luke and Aldaric visibly distorted.
The air twisted.
The ground cracked before collapsing inward.
Boulders and loose debris were crushed flat as the overwhelming gravitational force converged on a single target.
’I... can’t move!’
Aldaric’s eyes widened in horror.
It wasn’t merely that his body had become heavy.
It was as though an entire planet had descended upon him.
Every muscle screamed.
Every bone groaned beneath the unimaginable pressure.
No matter how desperately he struggled, his body refused to move even a single inch.
Worse still...
He couldn’t even circulate the Aether within his body.
His Aether Core itself seemed to have been pinned down by the overwhelming gravity, leaving him completely powerless.
For the first time since the battle had begun...
True fear appeared in Aldaric’s eyes.
"I don’t have the things which you high-level knights use to bind your opponent." Luke said with a helpless sigh, but Aldaric couldn’t react to his sarcastic remark.
"But this one is also fine." With that, Luke took one step, then another, until he was one step away from Aldaric’s giant bear body.
There Luke could see a huge amount of hatred in those eyes, along with a huge amount of horror.
On that, Luke nodded with satisfaction, as the gravity those bodies emitted was enough to hold even a Peak Golden Knight, and Aldaric was just a Mid-Golden Knight.
Then he recalled the days, where inside the Time Chamber, how many times he almost got killed.
"Luke, as you know. I am the Cosmic Heart Titan, so I can create any type of matter or energy. Life, death, etc..."
Caelith’s small floating body settled down on Luke’s shoulder, while continuing.
"But when the fight occurred during our time, I was left behind by my peers." On that, her voice got a little low, but after a moment she shook her head and continued.
"So after millennia of practice, I developed my own technique. My own fighting method."
"...which is the cosmic system." She paused there, reminiscing about those old days.
"With this I could use the strength of the whole universe, at my peak."
"And from that I created even more methods, to utilize the cosmic system’s power."
After this, she looked straight at Luke’s face and said. "Two of them are Cosmic Lock and the other is Cosmic Impact."
"With the Cosmic Lock, you could use the insane amount of gravity at a single point to hold back anything, mass, matter, energy, even time at one level."
Luke got completely surprised after hearing the last part, but she added something, "Of course, there is more than gravity involved at higher levels, which we are not talking about here."
With that, she continued. "The other one is Cosmic Impact, which is still too much for you, so we will go on a smaller level, which is Cosmic Punch."
Luke nodded and did as she said. So he tried this technique again and again, and many times his arm got pulverized completely.
Fortunately, his Titan body of Caelith allowed him almost instant regeneration because of the huge amount of healing energy the Cosmic Heart was pumping, so he was able to practice this technique more and more, until...
...he didn’t succeed.
"Damn it!" Luke cursed as he lay down on the ground. Seeing this, both Nyx and Caelith shook their heads, while Myrkhal was moving around somewhere.
"Luke, you don’t have a real Titan body, which is why you couldn’t bear even your own planet’s force."
Hearing their words didn’t make him feel any better, but he didn’t give up. "I will master it." So he tried again and again until he found one method, which could help him perform this technique.
Present time...
Luke came out of his thoughts and moved all his inner moons to his right hand, while moving his asteroids into both legs. And then let the planet remain in his chest.
"I never thought about this counter method." Caelith shook her head at Luke’s new creative way to counter the force. Because she never got the need for this.
As Luke was using the moons combined strength to make his attacking arm strong enough to bear the recoil force. While asteriods to hold his legs. And planet for center stability.
’I hope it will work, like earlier in the time chamber.’ Luke thought nervously and took a deep breath to calm himself.
Alarm rang in Aldaric’s mind after seeing Luke’s weird actions. Then came his calm voice.
"Cosmic Punch."
With that, Luke’s punch blurred for a moment and the next moment, there was a big hole in the giant bear’s body, along with his heart missing.
’How!’ Aldaric’s thought process slowed down, as he couldn’t understand how Luke could breach his Peak Mid-Golden Knight defense.
Though the answer didn’t come. Instead came the deafening sound of the earth shattering.
BOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Luke’s punch force, after making a hole in Aldaric’s body, reached the ground.
The result?? The earth shook like an earthquake had come.
BOOM! — The first ring exploded outward.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! — The second ring followed.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! — The third ring split the ground.
KRAAAAAAAAASH! — The fourth ring destroyed everything.
With them at the center, all this destruction happened, then came the rain of debris.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Silence...
...Complete silence remained in the surrounding vicinity and with that, a kilometer of ground was gone...
Only a wide crater remained.