Arthur Olvasen POV:
"Technique Deployment: Thunderforge Coffin."
Blue, crimson, amethyst and white sparks frayed between my father's fingertips that were interlocked in the shape of a Tesla Coil as they formed a complex layout, rippling outwards and creating a shimmering, electric armature in the air.
The air crackled, sky darkened, and a low hum of a thunder, not yet manifested, completely filled the atmosphere.
His spell had ripped open a space into Jayden's Technique Deployment.
As soon as the words left Aksel's mouth, his Technique Deployment started to overpower what remained of Jayden's half-destroyed TD as it manifested in a peculiar space amongst an infinite lattice of interlocking electric fields and lightning bolts that left my senses reeling.
The environment seems to stretch and fold in impossible ways, with arcs of electricity dancing between invisible points in space.
As the extremes of the TD began to close, everything started to feel disorienting.
The "walls," if they can be called that, seemed to extend and contort in ways that defied Euclidean geometry.
An invisible force gently pushed me back to the precipice, away from the hammering bolts of lightning that scorched and seared everything with touch of a mere second.
My back touched something that was solid, liquid and…gaseous at the same time.
When I reached out, my hand vanished into what appeared to be empty space, only to reappear in an entirely different location.
This was odd. I knew my father—Aksel Olvasen was the first one in the past 12 generations to finally manifest a Technique Deployment, and I knew it was a complicated phenomenon. But I had never even fathomed it would be this complex…and jarring.
While Ed's TD was much more brutish, sealing away the target's Arcanum to slowly make the body eat itself, Aksel's felt much more technical.
Which is quite ironic if you think about the fact that this man can't think straight for any more than a few fleeting seconds. Generously speaking.
My attention returned back to the boundary as I receded my hand.
It was like observing a shadow that doesn't correspond to its object as every surface around me exhibited the same anomalous behaviour.
With my senses still disoriented and my mind struggling to comprehend the odd space I was in, I tried to take a step forward.
The surroundings shifted, suddenly and seamlessly.
It was extremely jarring and I almost got hit by a stray bolt of crimson lightning.
Usually stepping forward decreases the distance to the target destination.
However, as I stepped forward it resulted in the manifestation of new walls which further morphed…expanding like some complex geometrical shape. A weird series of ever-evolving chambers, each transiently stable before transforming into another.
Electrical energy surges coursed like frenzied snakes through the ground, creating a web of glowing, conductive paths that all converged and met right underneath Aksel's feet that were now touching the ground of his half-manifested Technique Deployment.
The air was charged with static electricity causing our hair to stand on edge.
And just as Jayden's Arcanum was about to combust like the column of lava from a mountain's funnel, the lattice of electricity expanded rapidly in a bright white glow.
With a sudden, forceful pull, the lattice contracted and then exploded outward, creating a blinding flash of light.
I snapped my eyes shut on a pure reflex, the blinding light causing my eyes to feel like burning coals were placed on them. Even when I snapped them shut, the area behind my eyes seemed to be flooded with a bright white light, as if seeping through my skin.
A minute passed. And then another. I wasn't even sure if I was alive. Everything was...white. Like standing in a sterile, white room. After a few moments of using magnetic fields to push away the bombardment of light waves, I finally saw it.
The surreal, augmented dimension of interlocking electric fields and lightning bolts.
Electrical columns warped and twisted, forming pathways that looped back on themselves. Aksel stood at the centre acting as a conductor of the immense electric energy that made the air drum.
I looked around myself.
Cubes within cubes, each embedded within layers of space that folded onto themselves. The whole structure appeared alive, convulsing with an eerie rhythm.
He glanced in my direction, nodded and then looked down at Jayden, frowning. "The nerve of you is applaudable." He hissed, his killing intent giving way to more lightning to crash in random places, leaving charred ground and burning the air itself with the sheer heat of the lightning bolts.
Jayden looked in my direction, "You were quite right." He laughed and turned his direction towards him. "Surely your son doesn't take after you in smarts!"
With a wide sneer he raised his own hand and brought the ring-shaped hand sign close to his eye.
"Technique Deployment: Requiem of Eternal Rest."
As he spoke, a murky black darkness started to fill the air from his side. Like a tidal wave, it started as a slight ripple right behind him before starting its crawl upwards, fighting against the lacerations caused by crimson lightning into the rising inner barrier of his own Technique Deployment.
He can use it more than once…this is bad.
A sickly green aura rose like mist all around Jayden and the familiar sound of bones creaking intermingled with the constant backdrop of thunderclaps.
"Save your breath." Aksel seethed through his teeth as he raised his hand. A spear made of pure lightning started to form in his palm. Like knitting a sweater, threads of multi-coloured streaks coiled like sentient beings, moulding...shaping themselves.
Aksel's fingers tightened around the long base of the spear as the sparks solidified, taking a coherent shape rather than the ethereal state they were in while knitting themselves together.
"Fascinating." Jayden smirked as he raised his hands to the side. The giant cross behind him glowed and at the same time the stench of death grew increasingly overwhelming.
Monsters—giant worms, centipedes, wyrms, Orcs—and sentient creatures—young and old demons, trolls, dwarves…a few elves—alike began to reanimate behind him, forming a giant wave of unintelligent, dead beings that locked their dead gazes on Aksel's electrified form.
Perhaps I was wrong about the interpretation of his Technique Deployment, since there were monsters in his army as well. And since the man he was facing never encountered a monster, it was impossible for my theory to be correct.
As if realising my confusion, he glanced at me. "Inside my Technique Deployment I can summon anything. Even those that are bound to fail." He smirked. "When you plucked the Queen's prongs out and destroyed the entire adjacent skin, did you have a specific reason for it?"
Aksel's eyes shifted from him to me. It didn't look like he understood anything that was happening, but his eyes were inquisitive, as if curious about what Ed was referring to.
"Back at the Keep…" I began, "…when I casted Hailstorm and escaped afterwards, I was fishing for something." I paused and saw him tilt his head. No one attacked. Both Ed and Aksel—father's barriers were clashing, fighting for dominance and space-time continued to flip in and out, causing discordance everywhere, but they themselves remained still amidst this God forsaken phenomenon.
"Your resurrection...necromancy, it isn't exactly bringing the dead back to life, or specifically, just yours is different." I pointed at Gunnar who was still visible from my vantage point, his form spilling in and out of existence as the cuboid…no, tesseract-like inner-domain of Aksel began to gain dominance. "You are them… and they are you." I paused once again, letting my own words sink in. So, I, myself, could make sense of it. "A Divine Covenant. A sacrifice of the resurrected servants' half-alive will in exchange for you to inherit their share of…skills. Powers. Or a portion of their memories. I couldn't understand it back then and that was why I went all out against the Wujin army to destroy the Queen. To render her unable in any form to be resurrected later on and be used to control millions of mindless, blood-thirsty soldiers. Since the soldiers, even after being resurrected, are unable to function without a Queen."
A bitter taste filled my mouth. "I suppose all that was for nothing. You can steal its commandeering skill in exchange for the loss of intelligence from the Queen. Even though it is only inside the Technique Deployment."
Jayden's smile only widened. "I knew it!" He hid his face behind his hands and looked up, as if revelling in some kind of ecstasy. "Not only strength that far surpasses Category 4, you have something mysterious as well. Deep within you. Something far more ominous than that intuition of yours!" He cackled as father shifted.
The lightning spear in his hand vibrated subtly, not just humming with the familiar sound of a spark manifesting, crackling through the air and then fizzling out, but resonating with a frequency that tingled through my entire body even after the distance between us that seemed to stretch for miles on end, yet felt to be situated at an arm's length.
The echo of the cracks, the shadow of its path that could have been taken, or perhaps will be taken, invisible to me, created a lattice of motion that folded back on itself. It was extremely jarring.
I tried to not focus on the twisted dimensions. But it cleared a few things. Ed was holding back on his Technique Deployment back then. To not kill me immediately. The reason why he erected it was so Michael's brash nature won't cause any problems for our discussion.
"Ah, right!" Jayden's golden eyes gleamed. "I said it before. You're just like him." He paused. "Adam. You're just like him!"
"Shut your mouth, demon." Father's voice bloomed like an explosion inside a vacuum. Silent, but sharp. Destructive. Searing hot against the skin.
"I do not really wish to fight." Jayden spoke up, his voice—amplified by Arcanum—drowning out the hullabaloo of lightning swooshing everywhere like a whip. He then looked between me and Aksel. "But you humans…you are way too interesting! Let's entertain each other! Peace negotiations can wait!" The mention of negotiations caused Aksel's ears to perk as he looked at me.
"Wait, what? You were discussing about—"
He was interrupted as hordes of creatures started to make their first moves towards Aksel.
"You might want to exclude the pup before we fully manifest our Techniques. As much as you might love him, as a father, I, as well, do not want someone so interesting to die as a mere collateral."
I was about to talk but some kind of pressure…super compressed, built up around me, like the very fabric of the space rejecting me. It didn't seem to be limited to me, my physical body, but the general concept of me. Of Arthur Olvasen.
I had no idea how to put it exactly into words, but it was strange.
I wanted to stay, observe this once in a lifetime phenomenon of a fight between Technique Deployment users, but the push was relentless. It felt like being squeezed through an impossibly small gap, forced through a pinhole.
Overwhelming would be an understatement.
A tidal wave of spatial distortion fuelled by Arcanum pushed against me.
I could feel my physical…no, my essence that felt like a wisp drifting into ether, being compressed, twisted, forced into an alien form that didn't fit in this makeshift world or that.
The dimensions around me started to collapse, the intricate lattice of the tesseract tightening, lightning forming a net all around me, constricting and then green aura overlapping like the final layer of a gift wrap until there was no room left for me.
Every atom of my being screamed in protest; every molecule stretched to its limit as I was expelled.
And then, I was falling.
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A/N:
Ok, so this is the first time a, or rather, two technique deployments have been showcased one after another. The key mechanics behind them -- if you have been thinking it's like domain expansion from JJK -- might sound same but they are a little different.
I tried my best to explain or hint at it...will flesh it out slowly and gradually.