Chapter 320: Clash Of Titans [II]
Her frame broke into a full sprint with her heavy boots shattered the bedrock beneath her feet, leaving craters with every step.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Brida cocked her massive right fist backward, condensing hundreds of pounds of raw physical muscle, a lot of Vitality, and pure S-Rank momentum directly into her armored glove.
Kassandra didn’t retreat a single inch.
She slammed her pink shield deeper into the dirt, gripping the inner handles with both of her gauntlets as she surged her core output to its maximum limit.
Brida arrived in a flash of silver speed, driving her muscular fist straight into the center of Kassandra’s pink tower shield.
KRA-THOOOOOOOM!
A colossal shockwave of pure physical force detonated directly from the point of impact.
The atmospheric pressure blew away thirty yards of loose dirt in a perfect circle.
It pulverized nearby stone pillars into dust and sent massive clouds of debris soaring into the sky.
However, Brida’s strike did not break through.
The colossal kinetic impact hit the glowing pink barrier and completely stalled.
The entire force of the S-Rank punch was distributed evenly across the glowing runic surface of the shield, completely unable to reach Kassandra’s body.
Behind the glowing pink barrier, Kassandra’s eyes flashed with intense radiant pink light.
A sharp victorious smirk touched her lips as she easily held her ground against the Titan.
Kassandra clamped her gauntlets down tight on her shield with her voice echoing out clear and absolute across the battlefield.
"Shield World!"
...There was silence at first.
And then, there was light.
The pink runic lines etched into the heavy metal of the Divine Aegis flared with blinding incandescent radiance.
In a mere fraction of a second, that absorbed energy was violently expelled outward.
It did not return as a destructive blast of force, but rather as an infinitely expanding spatial domain.
VWOOOOOOM!
A massive translucent dome of solid pink runic light erupted from the center of Kassandra’s shield.
The dome expanded at the speed of sound, sweeping across the torn, bloody mud, completely swallowing Brida, Kassandra, and thirty yards of the surrounding battlefield in a perfect impenetrable hemisphere.
The walls of the dome locked into place with a heavy, resonating hum that vibrated deeply through the crushed bedrock.
The sky above them was instantly tinted in a cold, unforgiving shade of radiant pink.
The ambient noise of the surrounding war zone was completely and utterly severed.
The roaring flames of the distant elemental clashes, the shattering of glaciers, and the screams of dying infantrymen simply ceased to exist.
Inside the Shield World, there was only the heavy breathing of two towering defensive titans, and the soft pulsing hum of defensive magic.
Kassandra stood at the exact center of her domain.
Her pink-tinted runic tower armor gleamed flawlessly under the artificial light of her own making.
Her long pink cape settled softly against the back of her greaves, completely undisturbed by any wind.
She did not look exhausted as her posture was entirely relaxed with her armored hands resting casually on the inner grips of her massive kinetic redirection shield.
She looked at the towering Vanguard Shieldmaiden standing before her with a gaze of unyielding authority.
"I warned you, Titan," Kassandra spoke.
Her voice echoed off the translucent pink walls of the domain, returning with a surreal overlapping resonance that made her sound like a descending deity.
It made Brida’s ears itch.
"Out there in the open world, you might have been able to overwhelm my footing with brute-force mass," Kassandra continued calmly. "You might have been able to crack the earth beneath me and force me to stagger. But in here?"
Kassandra slowly lifted her chin behind her visor.
"In here, the very concept of physical damage no longer applies to me," Kassandra declared proudly. "Every ounce of force you generate within this domain is instantly absorbed by the atmospheric magic circles and fed directly back into my armor. You cannot scratch me. You cannot move me. You have trapped yourself in a cage of your own making..."
Brida stood fifteen feet away.
Her frame cast a massive, dark shadow across the crushed bedrock.
Clad in her heavy plate armor, the S-Rank Grand Titan Bastion looked slowly around the pink glowing dome.
She examined the smooth, impenetrable walls of runic light.
She looked down at her own massive right fist, which was still radiating wisps of white steam from the sheer friction of her previous completely nullified punch.
She felt the dense earth mana circulating through her Unyielding Bedrock Body, begging to be unleashed.
Then, Brida threw her head back.
"BAHAHAHAHA!"
Brida’s wild, booming unhinged laugh ripped from her throat, completely shattering the quiet sacred serenity of the Shield World.
Her eyes burned with a ferocious lust for battle that bordered on madness.
She didn’t look like a warrior who had just been trapped in an inescapable spatial prison... She looked like a predator who had just been handed a brand new toy.
"Is that it?!" Brida roared, taking a heavy confident step forward that cracked the bedrock beneath her boots. "You built a shiny pink cage so you wouldn’t have to feel the sting of a real woman’s fist?!"
BANG.
Brida slammed her own massive, adamantine tower shield into the bedrock with a deafening crash, completely ignoring Kassandra’s warnings about feedback.
"You think a little spatial trick is going to stop me from breaking your bones?!" Brida bellowed.
She reached over her broad, muscular shoulder.
Her thick, heavy leather gloves clamped down securely around the long, wrapped hilt of her weapon.
SHRRRRRRING.
With a terrifying screech of steel scraping against a heavy leather scabbard, Brida pulled out the Astral-Forged Void Cleaver.
The heavy battleaxe was an absolute monstrosity forged of Tier 3 mythril and abyssal iron.
Its massive broad cutting edge radiated a heavy suffocating aura of earth mana and uncompromising physical weight.
Just holding it caused the air around Brida’s arm to distort from the density of the weapon.
"Let’s see just how much physical momentum this little pink bubble of yours can actually swallow before it pops!" Brida screamed with joy.
Brida didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of a second.
She flooded her boots with massive amounts of physical momentum, actively engaging her Aegis Charge.
KABAAAAAAM!
Her massive frame surged forward like a runaway locomotive.
The physical force of her acceleration tore the bedrock beneath her boots into flying shrapnel.
She lowered her left shoulder securely behind her adamantine tower shield, holding the massive Void Cleaver high in her right hand, turning her entire body into a living battering ram.
’Huh...?’
Kassandra’s eyes narrowed dangerously behind her visor.
Whenever she used her domain, her opponents were usually quick to give up especially seeing the way their attacks had been dispelled but... What was wrong with this woman?
Did she have a complete brain? Why was she charging forward? No the main question was how was she charging forward like that... How the hell did she manage to build such momentum in a limited amount of time?
However...
Kassandra did not retreat a single inch.
She planted her boots firmly into the domain floor, lowering her center of gravity, and raised the Divine Aegis to meet the incoming Titan.
"Come!"
Brida slammed into Kassandra with a force greater than what she could usually handle.
KRA-THOOOOOOM!
The physical impact was apocalyptic as a massive shockwave of displaced air exploded outward from the collision, rippling violently against the inner pink walls of the domain.
However, exactly as Kassandra had promised, the Shield World instantly engaged its defensive mandate.
The second Brida’s adamantine shield crushed against Kassandra’s pink tower shield, the glowing magic circles along the dome’s walls flashed with blinding brilliance.
The kinetic energy generated by Brida’s S-Rank charge simply vanished.
It was absorbed instantly by the pink shield and funneled into the domain, leaving Kassandra completely unmoved with her boots not skidding a single millimeter backward in the dirt.
"I told you," Kassandra stated coldly, her voice echoing perfectly over the ringing sound of the impact. "It is useless."
Using the absorbed momentum, Kassandra immediately executed a brutal efficient counter-attack.
She pushed forward heavily with her shield, forcefully expelling Brida’s own charging energy straight back into the Titan’s chest.
BZZZZZZT!
A massive invisible pulse of pure kinetic force slammed directly into Brida’s breastplate.
The impact was heavy enough to instantly shatter the spine of any normal high-tier heavy infantryman.
It hit Brida dead in the center of her silver plate armor with a deafening ringing sound, carrying the exact same force that Brida had just delivered.
But Brida was not a normal heavy infantryman.
She was the S-Rank Grand Titan Bastion.
She possessed a high five-thousand points in her Vitality stat, and her passive trait, the Unyielding Bedrock Body, granted her total immunity to stagger, physical knockback, and displacement effects from anyone below her own monstrous rank.
Brida took the massive kinetic blast directly to the chest, and she didn’t even blink.
Her massive frame absorbed the shockwave as if a gentle summer breeze had brushed against her armor and she didn’t take a single step back.
"My turn!" Brida roared with a wild, feral grin.
While Kassandra was still recovering her posture from her own shield thrust, Brida pivoted sharply on her right heel.
She swung the colossal Astral-Forged Void Cleaver in a massive, horizontal arc aimed directly for Kassandra’s armored neck!
VWOOOOOOSH!
The heavy battleaxe tore through the air, shrieking like a falling artillery shell, fueled by raw earth mana.
Kassandra’s eyes widened slightly in shock at Brida’s lack of knockback, but her defensive instincts were elite.
She instantly dropped her center of gravity, bringing the thick edge of her pink shield up just in time to intercept the massive axe blade.
CLANGGGGGGG!
The mythril edge of the Void Cleaver slammed into the pink runic shield with a terrifying metallic shriek.
Bright orange and pink sparks showered violently across the interior of the domain.
Once again, the kinetic energy of the swing was completely absorbed by the Shield World.
Kassandra didn’t even feel the weight of the blow behind her shield.
The force was simply eaten by the domain walls, causing the pink light to glow slightly brighter.
"You are just wasting your stamina, Titan!" Kassandra yelled.
She thrust her shield forward again, attempting to bash Brida brutally in the face to create some distance.
Brida easily dodged the shield bash by rolling her thick muscular neck to the side.
She retaliated instantly with a brutal, heavy front kick aimed directly at Kassandra’s knee joint.
THUD!
The kick was instantly absorbed by a pink magic circle that flared into existence over Kassandra’s leg armor, nullifying the bone-breaking force completely.
The two towering defensive juggernauts engaged in a brutal, high-speed melee clash inside the absolute center of the pink dome.
It was an impossible battle of extremes.
Brida represented the unstoppable physical force... a woman whose muscle density and raw Vitality allowed her to swing a multi-ton battleaxe with the speed of a lightweight longsword, never tiring, never slowing down, and never flinching from incoming damage.
Kassandra represented the immovable object.
Her Shield World ensured that no matter how hard Brida swung, no matter how much dense earth mana she pumped into her Void Cleaver, the kinetic energy was simply swallowed by the domain and rendered entirely harmless.
Brida swung the battleaxe in a brutal overhead chop.
WHAM!
Kassandra blocked it effortlessly, the domain walls flaring bright pink to absorb the downward force.
Brida followed up instantly with a massive backhand swing of her adamantine tower shield.
CRASH!
Kassandra caught the edge of the adamantine shield with her own Aegis, entirely nullifying the lateral impact.
Kassandra pushed back aggressively, firing another concentrated blast of stored kinetic energy directly into Brida’s face.
BANG!
Brida simply smiled entirely through the blast.
Her Unyielding Bedrock Body absorbed the kinetic shock without allowing her head to snap back even a single inch.
Her thick neck muscles didn’t even strain.
"Is this really all you can do in your little pink cage?!" Brida laughed mockingly.
Her eyes were wild with exhilaration as she continued her relentless unending assault, treating the Hero like a heavy training dummy.
"You can’t hurt me!" Brida taunted, bringing her axe down again. "And all you’re doing is standing there taking my hits! This is just target practice! Come on, Pinky! Hit me back!"
Kassandra gritted her teeth behind her visor with her patience beginning to wear extremely thin.