Chapter 496: Konstantine vs Lion Draconic
The gravitational pressure exerted by Leo was an absolute force, a physical law decreed by the will of a god. Diavolo Star Giovanna, now known as Konstantine, felt every pore of his skin screaming under the weight of several hundred tons. His bones emitted sinister crackling sounds, and the white marble beneath him sank, forming a perfectly smooth circular depression. For the Constellation of the Lion, the fight was already over; a simple exercise in molecular compression meant to erase an anomaly.
Yet, in the midst of this agony, Konstantine’s mind remained of a terrifying clarity. His , elevated to a divine paroxysm by the Antichrist, filtered the pain to leave room only for pure analysis. He no longer saw Leo as a god, but as a massive source of energy, a frequency that only needed to be tuned to his own.
His fingers, although trembling, intertwined in a complex esoteric geometry.
"" he murmured, his voice vibrating with a resonance that did not come from his vocal cords, but from the Void itself.
The effect was instantaneous. A gray shockwave, streaked with silver runes, spread from his body. It was not a simple explosion of force, but a local rewriting of the laws of physics. Instantly, the space around him shattered like a window struck by a steel hammer. Cracks of pure void appeared in the air, devouring Leo’s gravitational pressure. Konstantine freed himself, straightening up with a fluid movement, his long blond hair floating in the energetic swirl.
The Constellation narrowed his amber eyes, a glimmer of surprise finally piercing his mask of sovereign boredom. He tilted his head slightly, observing the spatial fractures that were slowly healing.
"Oh... interesting," noted Leo in a voice that made the Corinthian columns vibrate. "This mortal is not completely without skill like the previous ones. You have learned to break the chains of the world. But will you know how to survive... The power of a god?"
Leo still did not leave his throne. He simply snapped the fingers of his right hand. The sound, sharp as a thunderclap, triggered a radical mutation of the sanctuary. Divine telekinesis seized the marble floor, the gold-veined slabs and the debris of pulverized columns. The mineral matter liquefied, swirling in a vortex of stellar dust before transforming into a great dragon of stone and fire.
The creature was an abomination of majesty: a draconic body twenty meters long, whose scales were plates of polished marble, topped with a head similar to that of a lion with magma eyes. The draconic lion opened its maw, and instead of a roar, it was a jet of solar fire, a blast of unbearable temperature, that surged toward the sorcerer.
Konstantine quickly got serious.
With a gesture, he summoned a gray spear, a weapon forged from pure mana of the 13th Constellation, whose tip vibrated at a frequency capable of piercing divine protections.
As the solar flame rushed toward him, he performed a series of mudras at a speed exceeding human perception.
""
Konstantine’s silhouette divided into about twenty identical images, echoes of reality that instantly occupied all the space of the marble clearing. The draconic lion spat the flame, sweeping the area with a devastating breath that should have vaporized any intruder. But the Konstantines kept duplicating, slipping through the flames with supernatural agility, their movements being trails of gray light in the furnace.
"This is not an illusion," analyzed Leo, his fingers drumming on the armrest of his throne. "You shift your temporal frequency to exist in several places at once... Quite Ingenious."
The twenty echoes of Konstantine went on the offensive. They converged on the mineral monster like a pack of hungry wolves. The real Konstantine, at the center of this dance, hurled his gray spear. The weapon pierced the stone shoulder of the dragon, opening a gaping wound from which bluish lava escaped, the blood of solar mana.
The explosions were overpowering. Each paw strike from the lion-draconic shattered the ground, creating shockwaves that should have crushed Konstantine’s organs. However, with his Mystic Art of adaptation, the sorcerer no longer suffered the damages: he assimilated them. With each impact avoided by a hair’s breadth, with each flame absorbed by his aura, he became more and more powerful. His skin, marked with starry runes, began to glow with an increasingly intense silver radiance, absorbing the monster’s attacks to strengthen his own Genesis core.
Konstantine appeared above the beast’s head, his gray spear raised toward the nebular vault.
"Your creation is nothing but a pile of energy for my growth, Leo!" exclaimed Konstantine, his voice resonating with a new authority.
He brought down his spear. The impact was so violent that it cracked the marble skull of the lion-dragon. An explosion of pure mana swept through the sanctuary, projecting incandescent stone shards everywhere. Konstantine landed nimbly in the middle of the smoking debris, his 9-star Genesis aura now vibrating with a frequency close to divinity.
The constellation looked at him with increasing interest. Leo straightened up slightly on his throne, his long white hair floating in the arcanic wind generated by the fight. For the first time in eons, the contempt in his amber eyes gave way to a predatory curiosity.
"Adaptation..." murmured Leo. "You do not just resist, you steal my own power to bridge the abyss that separates us. The Antichrist has chosen his instrument well. You are a virus for the Constellations with this power you could be a serious opponent, if I let you live."
Leo finally left his throne, his divine boots touching the marble with a sound that resonated like the death knell of humanity. He stretched his massive muscles, cracking his neck. The dragon tattoo on his right arm lit up blood red, the lines seeming to come alive under his skin.
The atmosphere of the sanctuary changed radically. The heat became so intense that the oxygen began to burn, creating a respiratory void. Leo raised a single finger toward the sky, and a sphere of white fire, of absolute gravitational density, began to form above him.
Konstantine tightened his grip on his gray spear, his heterochromatic eyes shining with icy resolution. His was running at full capacity, his body mutating every second to withstand the increasing heat. He knew that the real fight was only just beginning.
"If you dare give me more time I will kill you!"