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992. Cer VS The Avatar of Kratt
🕑 Added 2025-05-02 12:29:25 +0000 UTCA Heart of the City was never supposed to be the final manifestation of an Impuritas.
It, if anything, was no more than the festering of an isolated event. If Qliphoth was a byproduct of cognition, then where did it go? Things with weight were bound to sink. When enough impurities collected, such as Nex, it created a being that personified the collective woe.
But what could have created an Infecta Rot Heart of the City?
Attachment.
The endorsing of Attachment to a twisted level that could not be compared to Caldera Industries’ motto. Where Caldera Industries endorsed the attachment of the self, Infecta Rot sought to attach to something other than themselves.
One was the host.
The other the parasite.
But what about a World Impurity?
They of course represented an unconscious collective woe.
It was the most natural conclusion. Powerful Corrupted were born from the woes of the conscious and experienced events, after all.
But when it came to Impuritas…
“It feels like it’s always been a part of people. Machine or not. I see the parasites of Grandis in it. Those bloodsucking aristocrats that leached off people while trying to pretend to be a good person. Heh. Children from my village aren’t any different from the machines.”
Cer didn’t see Infecta Rot as solely a mechanical phenomenon. Affinities were universal. As dumb as Cer was typically depicted, she truly had the sharp mind of a wolf. So the took what the Heart of the City was – the Impuritas as a whole – an upscaled it.
They were no more than one depiction of a universal whole. Like how the Affinity of Hope was represented by selfish greed at the cost of others (Blood Festival), but also how hope was about realizing one’s belief (herself).
In the end, Cer digressed. She wasn’t the type to think this much. Her body always knew what to do. But her enhanced neural processes gave her time to think.
“Two ways this fight can go. I manage to kill it and all goes well. Or it breaks through and I’ll be looking at playing a defensive battle at the ‘fruit’. In all likeliness, I’ll be waiting for Frost or Jury to take over. My speed outmatches that worm by far. I only have 4 Light left. It’ll be best to reserve it for offensive attacks than defensive given my already high AGI.”
She compiled all of this in a fraction of a second.
Dust picked up as she zapped forward with immense speed.
Lightning storms engulfed the territories around her. The underside of her hair glowed an electric blue as blue stripes ran along her tail. It used to be at the tip, but it could not replace the gold there.
< Wearing Craving Electric Wolf >
< Borrowing Active and Passive Skills of Craving Electric Wolf >
< Craving Electric Wolf has successfully been equipped >
There was one key Ability Cer hadn’t fully been utilizing against the Fallen Beholder.
[Craving Blue Currant]. This enhanced all electric based attacks by 1.5x. Furthermore, due to her official Tempering, Cer was able to equip three out of four of her Corrupted Persona Skills without needing to progress her Emotional State.
This was also likely the direct result of Awakening. How could the Shadow of another hide the light of her Self that had cast away her deepest Shadows?
That being said, a significantly more powerful Corrupted would likely require Emotional States to properly manifest.
Not that it mattered here.
[Bolt of Tasty Levin], [The Bond of Ionic Indulgence] and [Watt Battery]. She was only missing [Feast for the Eyes], and [Watt Battery] had no use against an opponent that did not use electrical attacks to begin with.
She hurled multiple bolts of electricity whilst gnashing at the air, sending numerous [Fangs of the Electric Moon]. They riddled the body of the Avatar of Kratt. A faint forcefield repelled the attacks, minimizing as much damage as possible.
This forcefield was, of course, a Qliphoth Field.
Qliphoth Field
HP : 100,000,000 ATT : 200,000 MAG ATT : 200,000
ATT DEF : 3,000 MAG DEF : 3,000
< EFFECT: Resist physical damage even when the Qliphoth Field is depleted. May only be physically damaged by attacks that bypass the Qliphoth Field. Cannot be damaged by attacks that do not exceed 10x of the DEF provided by the Qliphoth Field >
Cer had attacks that could take it down.
Third State Absolution Attacks were indeed capable of achieving this.
And so, once she was close enough to the Site Core and kilometers away from the Moons – she activated a Third State Absolution version of an iconic Skill.
< [OOO] Galvanized Fields [OOO] >
< EFFECT: Discharge electricity over a 90-meter radius. Deal 6,000 damage per 2 seconds >
It wasn’t much, but it would at least keep annoying Impuritas from interfering.
A zone of annihilation surrounded her. Stones hidden beneath the sands began levitating as lightning storms ripped through the world. Colossal shards that were launched her way were torn apart the moment they entered this field.
She paired it with [Enigmatic Current], boosting her AGI to a jaw dropping 453. Then, she leaped up to the drilling machine. Her body twisted mid air as she channeled electricity throughout her tail.
And with a somersault, her tail hardened with a vibrant blue glow as it lengthened to over twenty meters temporarily.
“HAVE A TASTE OF MY ARTS!”
She did not use a Skill to strengthen her tail. It bit into the barrier surrounding the worm. Her tail managed to crack through, nearly reaching the metal beneath.
[Galvanized Arts: Vertical Slice]. It was a primitive Galvanized Art that channeled her natural electrogenesis into a single part of her body.
In this case, it was her tail. It cost roughly 20,000 MP to use, which was an exorbitant cost since she only had 600,000 MP to her name.
However, she had developed another Art that alleviated this to a degree.
Her body glowed brightly. The moment her tail reached the metal, and after a follow up [Maw of the Electric Moon], her mana reached an all-time low of 10,000.
But this was where [Galvanized Art: Overcharge] came into play.
*
This Art enabled Cer to convert HP into MP whilst increasing her ATT by an additional 2x for exactly one minute. If used twice in a row, then her HP would be reduced to 1, as just one use of this Art reduced her HP by 50%.
But this was precisely what she was after. Once she reached 50% HP, [Craving Blue Currant]’s second effect kicked in and she gained 25 Defibrillation Stacks.
Anytime she used an electric-based Skill or Art she could gain 25% HP and MP back, as well as further increasing the effects of her Skills by an additional 50% for 30 seconds. Therefore, she could only use one Defibrilation stack per 30 seconds.
However, she had to wait 1 minute to replenish just one Stack back.
*
Cer smirked as she ran along the length of the worm, dragging an electric fang along its body like a cleaver. It sank into its metal, creating sparks and rolls of steel. It did not dig as deeply as she would have liked.
After all, this thing’s HP and size were so immense that it was as though she was running along a living landmass.
“This doesn’t even feel like a fight at all!” She proclaimed, weaving through spires the size of buildings across the beast’s body.
Unavoidable spires were cut down. She had a feeling that crashing through them would deal significant damage to her body. It did not help that the Avatar of Kratt’s body segments were spinning, which meant that she had to move diagonally.
If she didn’t, then her attacks would have been deflected or worse, she would be flung aside.
Qliphoth Field | HP: 97,200,00
The Avatar of Kratt | HP: 783,000,000
“Must all conflicts revolve a physical plight?”
“You have touched the crystals.”
“Odd. Peculiar that you cannot begin to be harmonized.”
The Avatar of Kratt spoke directly to Cer using a voice much too similar to Nav’s. A machine, no doubt. But it didn’t have the same soul that Nav’s voice did. There wasn’t an ounce of curiosity. Just a voice derived of all emotion other than an unnatural obsession.
Indeed. Cer knew right away that it didn’t want to kill her.
That was voice no different from the lecherous ones of the humans of Grandis.
“I’ve heard about your kind! You’re after a Soul, huh!? What’s the big deal if you soul or not!? Sounds to me like you need a way to justify living cause you got nothing!”
“Yes. Nothing. We started from nothing. From ores. Minerals. As did humans from clay.”
“Clay? Who in their right mind thinks humans come from clay!? Aren’t you forgetting about us!? Human this, human that – How about you get over your obsession and make do with what you already have without resorting to spreading Silicon Rot!”
An unbelievable claim.
It must have seemed to be that way in the perspective of a machine.
But even so, why did it believe in this?
“Humans become ashes when they burn.”
“Is that not proof enough? That we are compatible?”
“Why are they allowed to have it all alone?”
“Don’t you ever wonder what the difference between you – a Demi-Human – is to a Human?”
“Nothing. It’s a spiel and lies by idiots.”
Cer upped her offensive and began focusing on using high-yield Third State Absolution Skills. They cost a large chunk of her mana to use, but the existence of Defibrillation Stacks ensured that she was constantly topped up.
Taking damage was a part of her battle strategy.
Although here, it was mostly self-inflicted to reap the benefits of her Defibrilation Stacks.
