Chapter Twenty-Nine
CONFRONTING THE ASSAULT
"ARGHHHHH, DAMN!"
Dionysus just took a slab of concrete, around the size of him, straight to the liver. He felt as if his body was about to shatter, but he knew himself well, meaning that he understood he wouldn't collapse from just this.
"You had me surprised at first, I really did think you were just the average person. Sadly, you're still going to die."
Negata had no intention of letting up. After throwing the slab of concrete at Dionysus, who had appeared on another building right next to the one he was on, he dropped down onto his and then quickly made his way to Dionysus.
Meanwhile, during all of this, Dionysus was currently having a very violent session of twitching on the ground, the pain not dispersing.
Before Dionysus could stop having a spasm on the roof of the building, Negata was already standing over him, fist ready to strike down.
"You're mine!"
He was getting ready to bring down his fist upon Dionysus' body, only to hear a shout from down below.
"Hey you, what're you doing up there?"
He had been seen by a person in public. If he went through with killing Dionysus, right here and right now, he could expect nothing good to come of it.
"Hmph."
He put Dionysus' on his left shoulder and began to hop on the buildings in a direction that would lead to the edge of the city. There, where there was plenty of murders, shady deals, and shady people around every corner, another murder would seem like no big deal.
'What do I do? I don't want to die. Do I fight? If I fight, I'll probably be stuck in that alternate dimension forever. Do I wanna die or be stuck forever? I don't want neither, this sucks.'
Dionysus was having a mental breakdown at the moment, and he couldn't come to a decision. On the one hand, if he fought, while it was unlikely, there was a chance he could somehow make it out alive. However, in exchange, the heavens could possibly swoop down right then and there, either killing him off or imprisoning him.
On the other hand, if he did nothing, death was guaranteed.
'My entire right side feels like it's been split in half, it might be too late to decide that I'm going to fight.'
Dionysus' observation wasn't far from reality. His liver had been utterly decimated, along with many of the bones there.
'Aging isn't fun, I would've been able to take that and keep going in the past . . .'
As Dionysus continued to lament the aging process of the human body, Negata arrived at the edge of the city. Here, many buildings were collapsed, homeless could be seen in groups everywhere, and you could see a carcass every now and then, some human, some not.
Once they got to the edge, Negata continued to hop around for around half a minute more before stopping. Below them was a dead-end alleyway with nobody in them. Negata took a quick look around before hopping down.
"Argghhh . . ."
Just the pressure of falling down was able to put Dionysus in excruciating pain. He was, indeed, in no position, or condition, to fight.
THUMP
Negata threw him onto the ground, and as of right now, death seemed to be around the corner. All Dionysus could do was groan in pain as Negata looked down on him.
"You know, if you die like this, I'll never know what Veritas saw in you. Though, if I let you off, I'll never live long enough to see what Veritas saw in you. I'd rather have one over the other. Nothing personal, man."
'The goblet . . .'
The only thing that could fix Dionysus at this point was the goblet that could be found within his alternate dimension behind one of his curtains. The issue was that there was absolutely no way he'd be able to open it and crawl into it before his assailant killed him.
'Me? Bite the dust? That can't be right. Why did I even think that going into that dimension forever was comparable to dying? This is worse.'
At the very least, in his mind, if he wouldn't really age that much within it, there was a chance he could get out. However, being ignorant to the many abilities able to bring back someone on the brink of death, or already past it, Dionysus thought that dying was the end of it all.
"Hey, bro, look!"
A shout reverberated all the way from the entrance of this dead-end alley.
"Oi, punk! This is our gang's territory, who told you that you can go ahead and kill someone here, eh?!"
At the other end of the alleyway, there seemed to be at least ten people, all of them carrying a weapon of sort, who were threatening Negata.
Rather, trying to threaten him.
"Huh? Punk? The hell'd you say to me? I'll give you half a minute to take back what you said and get on the ground."
As expected, the man didn't even hesitate to threaten them right back. Dionysus could already visibly see how the scene would turn out in his mind.
The punks would underestimate Negata, try to beat him down, and he'd whoop all of them in what would most likely not even take five seconds.
'Five seconds? Wait, can I use that to crawl through the curtain?'
"Sorry, but I'm not giving you a chance to escape."
Right before Negata continued his side-conversation with the gangsters, he turned around and lifted his leg over Dionysus' right one, and then . . .
SNAP
"U-AHHH-GUGHHH"
Anything below his knee was equivalent to noodles at this point. His leg had been fully shattered. Dionysus was in such excruciating pain that he was beginning to blank out.
Yet, he wasn't dead.
Negata had underestimated one thing within Dionysus, which was his resilience. After spending three decades in an alternate dimension, shackled to chains that added onto each other's pain, Dionysus had, whether or not he liked it, developed a very pain resilient body.
By now, the average human would���ve long since died. In fact, just the first blow, of a human-sized slab of concrete, to the area where Dionysus had taken it, would've either immediately killed someone, or killed them only a few minutes after.
Obviously, Dionysus took not only that, but also a leg-shattering blow, yet he didn't even black out from the pain, much less die. Negata didn't hear Dionysus' piercing scream, as he had already rushed the gangsters, who were yelling while fighting him, and he didn't have a blank mind anymore, so his senses weren't heightened. Along with that, the entrance of the alleyway was around fifty feet away from the end of it, which was where Dionysus lied, so the sound died out, just a bit, by the time it reached them.
WHOOSH
A curtain appeared in front of Dionysus, who was dragging himself forward. It was precisely because Negata had underestimated him and saw him as someone not even above average that this opportunity was presented to Dionysus.
Finally, his fruits paid off as he pulled the last piece of his body, his right foot, through the curtain, making it disappear right after. He was now at the center of his glass box, which allowed him to see the surroundings.
Negata was, as hard as he could, trying to figure out just where Dionysus had disappeared to. Dionysus, the target, put a slight smirk on his face before dragging himself to the goblet in the glass box, which was mixed in with a lot of other things.
GULP
He immediately chugged all of it down, and within half a minute, he was standing, where he was previously lying, in perfect condition.
However, Dionysus considered this the easy part of the situation he had been dragged into. Now, the choice to run or fight presented itself to him.
'If I run, I might be able to get away, though the chances are low. Thanks to my awakened ability, I can tell how he was able to land that concrete slab on me. There's a very high possibility that this'll all just repeat, except next time, he'll just put me down for good.'
'If I fight, that might be more doable because of my experience which should outdo his. But, if I do go ahead of it, the heavens might see that I'm a threat, permanently sealing me off in that dimension. Though,
Who's to say that I haven't already attracted too much attention?'
Considering all the pros and cons of each of the choices, Dionysus came to a decision. If he ran, there was a high likelihood that he would easily be captured, and that, once the time comes, Negata would swiftly put an end to him in one strike.
Essentially, he decided to fight. He was still worried about attracting the heaven's attention, but he also considered that he might have already attracted too much attention already, what with all of the events he'd been involved in.
'Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to come up with a third option that can get me out of this safely. So, . . .'
WHOOSH
A curtain appeared atop of Negata, and an arm reached out and grabbed him from within it.
"Wha-?!"
Considering that he wasn't in his heightened form anymore, negata didn't have enough time to throw off the hand that was grabbing his left shoulder. He was quickly, and quietly, dragged into Dionysus' alternate dimension.
However, even there, he had no time to relax.
WHOOSH
The curtain that Dionysus had dragged him through, which was on the ground, disappeared, and a new one appeared at the top of the glass box, which would be the ceiling of it.
SCREECH
Negata put one of his feet on the ground, desperately trying to stop whatever Dionysus was going to do. The glass box's interior floor got scratched up a little, and by the end of it all, it was shattered, and Negata's foot, and only his foot, was visible in the real world.
'I don't know where we are, but I don't seem to have any physical restrictions, and gravity is the same here. I can still beat him!'
"Pathetic."
Although Dionysus had no faith in his physical capabilities, it, once again, did not mean that he was on the level of an average person, or weaker for that matter. Once a person awakens an ability, the body's fibers continue to tear and rebuild themselves so that they can handle it.
Even if someone had what could be considered the weakest of abilities, their physical strength would still be above average. This applied even more to someone who had both a granted and awakened ability, as the body was forced to grow even stronger to harbor both of them.
When Dionysus stated that he was weak, he meant that he was compared to other people that had reached a level where both their granted ability and awakened one were available. However, compared to anyone else . . .
. . . he was far beyond their limits.
QUICH
His muscles made sounds that would make any average person squeamish from hearing, and a large amount of veins could be seen on his left arm, which was gripping Negata's left arm now. Then, right after that,
THEW
Dionysus quickly tossed Negata high into the air.
'What the hell? His body is smaller than mine, so how?'
Even though he had been thrown at least twenty meters into the air, Negata was still relatively calm. In fact, he was even calmer than when Dionysus gripped him, as now, his opponent wasn't in a position to get a hold of him.
"DAMN YOU, FORCING ME TO GET SERIOUS!"
RUMBLE
A large rumbling took place up in the sky. Above Negata, many, many metal rods were formed, and the sun was blocked out from where Dionysus was within the glass box.
The metal rods were very similar to the ones used in the Royal Invasion, and Dionysus picked up on that fact.
'They're smaller than the ones used at the Royal Invasion, but in exchange, there's more of them. Is his ability's law not that he can only have a certain amount, regardless of size and amount, but that he can only have a certain amount of mass, and he can form whatever shape and size he wants with it?'
Dionysus' mind was kicked into high gear. His awakened ability had decrypted around a fifth of Negata's life, but he still had no information on his ability, which meant that he hadn't acquired it at that point in his life.
Negata began to fall, but so too did the dozens of metal rods, each and every one of them coming in the direction of Dionysus. It would be more accurate to say that they were shot at him, instead of falling towards him, as they were launched with extreme speeds.
Unfortunately for Negata, Dionysus closed the curtain faster than the iron rods could move, so none of them made any contact with Dionysus or his alternate dimension.
'This is going to get a bit rough.'
"THIS IS GETTING EXCITING!"