Strongest Among the Heavens
Chapter 356: Punishment

Chapter 356: Punishment

The moment her arms lifted, his front foot drifted back, his hips dropped, and he threw the broken sword forward.

’Super Spark Strike Thrown!’

Lightning followed the sword, akin to a stroke of lightning. It was fast. Kazi was faster, jumping to the wall and running along it. Otohime, occupied with the thrown strike, that she noticed too late. She blocked the sword and he was already to her left, having outpaced the automatic whips of water.

He leapt from the wall and at her, instincts taking over to dodge and weave her desperate last-second blasts of water. Kazi materialized a sword in his hand. A raw, jagged nearly unrecognizable piece of weaponry made of raw mana. Although not remotely on the same level as Stormedge, he could create a fine replacement with Godly Shape Control and his electrified mana.

Boom!

Debris rained down. The once-majestic structure lost wall after wall, support after support. So many rooms, so much space. Kazi and Otohime rocketed through the crumbling castle and its walls and rooms, propelled by their clash. Kazi spared a fleeting thought for Akihiko and Kenzo, hoping they had managed to escape the ensuing destruction.

After this, he doubted the castle could support itself.

The princess was no easy prey. Fighting at high speeds, fighting through the walls of the castle, she blocked with her kimono and hurled whips of water at him. Kazi coolly dodged and struck back at her face with his formless mana blade. Stunned, it granted him an opportunity. He kicked, punched, and struck the princess with his superior speed. At

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

He didn’t have Stormedge? He shouldn’t have been able to do the same amount of damage? That did not matter when he went from thirty strikes to a hundred. When this was close and with a sword that was so flexible, he was systemically countering and destroying her kimono and flesh. She gasped. She tried to hurl and slow down. He did not allow that. Anything she did or tried, he punished her for it.

That was what Kazi did here. He delivered brutal punishment after brutal punishment. Mistakes could not be allowed or else she might escape, so didn’t make them.

She smacked into the ground and bounced off of it repeatedly, and at high-speeds, she was still keeping up with him. Princess Otohime tried another desperate counter. Kazi grabbed the whip of water she had hurled at him, reeled himself in and slammed his feet into her heart.

At last, there was a crunch. At last, he had penetrated her flesh and struck her down. He kept his feet down on her, grinding her across the floor and through the walls until they burst out of the castle.

Otohime bounced and landed on the shore outside the castle. Kazi’s own feet slid across the sand, keeping a keen eye on her. His hands were already materializing two swords made of dark blue mana. He was ready to strike even though she was rolling and tumbling. Even though there was a clear opportunity to strike.

’Huh?’

But then his left eye pulsed. Immediately, he stopped himself from his grind.

The body of Princess Otohime lurched to a stop as well. She lay on the sand, her sleeve twitching. Kazi’s eyes were stuck to her. He couldn’t believe what he saw.

’The future I just saw...’ He jumped back. ’More distance! More!’

He jumped and jumped as far away as he could.

Princess Otohime rose from the sand, the skin on her face growing dark. Triangular and hexagonal shapes of black and blue manifested and spread. "Eye...of...Odin...! You...!"

A faint ripple disturbed the lake’s surface, as though the waters were responding to an unspoken command. The water then stilled. Her control of the surrounding water had ceased. The first physical change was her aura. It expanded outward like an ocean tide, an immense, palpable wave of energy that pressed against the surroundings. Kazi actually had to brace himself.

And even when bracing himself, he was pushed.

Her complexion was a deep, dark shade of green and her legs fused together seamlessly, reshaping into the powerful, scaled tail of a sea creature. The water from the shores touched her and her form grew larger, her petite human frame expanding with every passing second. The sound of cracking echoed through the air as a hard, glossy shell began to emerge, forming around her torso and back. It was a deep jade green, streaked with veins of gold and silver, as though carved from precious minerals.

Her transformation accelerated. Her arms thickened and reshaped into massive paddle-like appendages. Her neck extended, long and graceful, before becoming thicker, her head reshaping and morphing itself.

The sun was blocked by the growing divine creature.

’What the hell...?’

Her size was staggering—her shell alone could have shielded the entire shore. Through some divine miracle he did not understand, the princess had morphed into a colossal turtle that towered over three hundred feet. A verdant turtle creature that screamed upon the finalization of its existence. Not from rage but determination. This was not a woman that had lost herself to her fury. This was a princess seeking victory. A monster that discarded beauty for what it sought: the left eye of Kazi Hossain.

That brief understanding caused his heart to race and his survival instincts to flare up.

This was no longer just a battle between a mortal and a goddess; it was a confrontation with a being of myth and legend, a force of nature given flesh.

Suddenly, it all made sense. All of it.

Gods were sponsors. God held influence over the creation of the Heavenly Tower. The Heavenly Tower itself was created for some inexplicable reason. Perhaps it was for this. To place threats or punishments within the confines of the Heavenly Games. Princess Otohime, Yamata-no-Orochi, Tiamat...

’Her father, the great dragon god Ryūjin, must have put Otohime here. As a gift, as a punishment, maybe both. He wanted her to do something here: whether it was to kill Urashima’s descendants or bond with them. Ultimately though...’

The giant turtle’s form cast a shadow over Kazi and the landscape. His back was close to the castle and yet her shadow touched him. She was that massive and that powerful. Half of her was in the water, the other half was on the shore. Her paddle-like arms left deep gouges in the sand. Kazi took a step back despite how pointless it was.

For the first time in a long time, his heart pounded and he assessed the new threat before him.

Yes, it truly made sense to him now.

’We’re not supposed to kill Otohime. Ryūjin would never have placed her here otherwise. For those on Urashima’s side, this raid is supposed to be impossible to complete.’