Chapter 15 :An Unwelcome Battle

The conversation has ended.

The battle has begun, the two fight each other for different reasons.

One woman wants to save a misguided youth.

The other wants her to pay for her crimes, although she is quite misguided in her judgement.

Nameless is surely blaming the wrong person. She is not right of mind. The builder knows this. But she knows words will not help her see reason.

Only knocking her out cold will help her mind, unfortunately. All of this happened so quickly, she was not expecting it. But she does what she must. The energy in her hand grows. It then splits into three different colored orbs.

One is green. One is blue. One is red. Colored for different elements. She snaps her fingers. A red dragon made of pure fire emerges, then soars towards Nameless. Nameless begins running forward.

The blue orb forms into a large sphere of dense water. It follows quickly after the red fire. And the green forms green leaves, formed from the wind.

This was some simple, elemental magic. The builder was not only a machine of creation but had the power of creation magic.

Rather elementary magic, unfortunately. She could only harness the basic elements needed to form spells, or to create parts for a core of a planet. She had created terraforming machines that can slowly create star systems by inputting a combination of natural energy and some of her magic. It was a slow process. She knew not how she could do such feats but that she could do them.

She did not have a teacher after all. She had to figure everything out by her lonesome self. Her thoughts draw back towards the battle.

Nameless did not hesitate.

She begins dashing forwards towards the Divine Hammer. The magic floating next to the woman, soars over towards the red-haired woman, a large sound of water, fire, and wind following each respectively. They approach her quickly.

The red-haired youth is unphased. Her sword glows red, with a chaotic energy. She leaps into the air. Her blade rises with her. She raises her arm high into the air.

One slash. Then another. Then a third slash. In three consecutive aerial swings, she easily cuts through the magic, as if it was made of paper.

She lands on the ground afterwards, one knee grazing the ground quickly. She then quickly stands up, running over towards the Divine Hammer. She holds her right hand low, dragging her blade against the ground as she closes the gap between her and her foe. She raises her right shoulder backwards, aiming for a horizontal slash at her chest.

Instead. She is met with a massive blue energy barrier. Her blade collides with it, getting stuck inside of her barrier. She grabs her blade with her other left hand and pushes but she is unable to push through the defense field being projected by the Divine Hammer. She simply lets out a small laugh.

“It won’t be that easy, miss. You are still a human, after all. And one that lacks combat experience, clearly.” She remarks. She was mildly impressed that her blade could so easily cut through her magic. Even though she lacked training, she had quite the bit of natural potential.

And that is what made the builder more cautious. Even in her current state, a strike from her could prove to be fatal.

Not that dying would kill her, anyway.

The divine hammer was truly a god, in function and body. Even if she was killed or her head was severed, she could simply regenerate her body.

Even if her core was smashed to bits.

Killing her permanently would require her to be killed innumerous times, as well as destroying her soul. Not something this red youth was capable of. The builder could sense she did not possess enough spiritual energy and was unable to cause lasting damage. Temporary, though, sure. The thirty thousand year old goddess has gone through worse.

She was not strong enough to overcome the Divine Hammer’s willpower. She had gone through quite a bit more trouble than this. She continues looking at the youth vainly push against her energy barrier. The Divine hammer in a single moment, deactivates her defense field, steps in with her right foot and palm strikes the girl, as she is leaning backwards.

Nameless can only defend herself, drawing her blade close to her body. The palm strike from her right hand hits against her blade, passing through it and reverberates inside of her body. The force launches her into the air and spinning into the ground, rolling about 25 meters away. She rolls to a stop, clutching her chest.

Her breathing is heavy. Her insides are hurt from the attack. But she is not bleeding.

She clearly is holding back; the builder does not want to kill her. She wants to subdue her and knock her out.

The builder was hoping that the strike would knock her out, but she slowly but surely wobbles back to her feet. She sighs.

“I guess I will have to push you a bit more. Until I can knock some sense into you!” She yells. Her right hand forms into a fist. Dark brown energy forms in it.

The builder, who should have ended this battle quickly, is starting to get drawn into it, instead.

Her thoughts waver.

Instead of saving the young girl quickly, she wants to test her strength. A human, with barely any training that can fight a god.

Fascinating, she thought to herself.

She cocks her fist behind her back then rotates her entire body, punching the earth with inhuman force. It causes the ground beneath both of them to quake. Huge rocks erupt from the ground, rising into the air quickly.

Nameless is standing on one said piece. She plants her blade into the rock and holds on for dear life, as the boulder rises about thirty meters into the air.

Many more rocks and boulders quickly rise around the one she is dangling off. She can hear a loud sound. She looks downward.

The builder has teleported into the center of this rock formation.

She merely floats in the middle of it. As if she is waiting for her to approach her.

Nameless does not hesitate. She digs her feet onto the side of the boulder, then pushes. Taking her blade out right before she jumps onto a nearby rock. She continues jumping between these rocks then jumps towards her, her blade held right in front of her.

The blood red energy is growing stronger on her blade.

The builder raises her right hand. A golden blade of energy forms from it. Then she moves quickly.

The two clash in the air, the Divine hammer striking first. Her energy blade collides with Nameless charge sword. The two energies repulse against each other. They repel each other backwards. They continue this exchange for several more blade collisions, as the builder increases her speed. She teleports backwards. Then again, forwards. Her left leg rises as she roundhouse kicks Nameless off the boulder she landed on and sends her cratering towards the ground.

Nameless, with some inhuman flexibility, forces her body into a ball. She summersaults, spinning in a circular motion as she descends to the ground. She gracefully lands on her feet, skidding backwards quite some distance, as if she has done this before. But she has not.

No, her body is moving with pure instinct.

The power of chaos is drawing out her natural potential. Her instincts. Skills that are far above her own current ability.

The chaos energy is pushing her towards evolution.

Making her evolve to overcome the threat standing before her. Her mind is blank, but her spirit is focused.

Being guided by the chaos within her.

The star of chaos grows larger on her face and her eyes begin to glow red.

The divine hammer is observing. She can feel like something, in this girl, is changing. And not in a way she likes.

“I have let this go on for too long. I need to stop her soon. And I know the perfect way!” She teleports onto the ground. She prepares her unique technique. Her energy blade disappears, replaced with a large golden sphere of energy.

Divine strike. This one will have to be perfectly tuned to knocking her out. A golden sphere forms in her left hand.

The floating boulders, lacking the builder’s focus, now drop in succession.

Creating a pathway of stone between her and the red-haired youth.

The divine hammer moves forward, disappearing from view. Nameless merely prepares herself for the incoming strike.

Her instincts tell her this will be the only opportunity to damage her enemy.

She holds the blade at waist height, positioning her long sword upright and at a slight angle.

The divine hammer has reached her. She teleports behind her, aiming to hit her from behind. Nameless is ready. She turns her body one hundred and eighty degrees in an instant.

She raises her blade and easily parry’s her strike to the side. The unexpected parry pushes the Divine hammer backwards and leaves her defenseless.

Nameless with her right foot, quickly moves forward, sliding her blade from the top right into a vertical slash.

Her first attack slashes straight into her armor, grazing it, luckily not going through. She moves her left foot forward. Her blade rises from her downwards position into her second strike, slashing at an angle.

The second scrapes past the builder’s left shoulder arm and cuts deep into her arm. Blood splashes from the wound.

Nameless continues her series of consecutive attacks. Her right arm spins, rotating her sword. Her shoulder cocks backward, raising her blade to the right side of her body. She performs another diagonal slash, this time cutting through the Divine hammer’s armor. She cuts somewhat shallow, as she only digs into the left side of her chest a bit with her cut.

The divine hammer does not scream but grimaces, letting out no sound from her mouth.

The pain from the wound is immense, yet she is still trying to move backwards, out of the range of her sword.

Nameless does not allow her to do so. She steps forward with her right foot again. She cuts horizontally, attempting to cut her torso in half.

The divine hammer drops her legs, falling down at superhuman speed. The blade just barely whizzes past her head as she lands vertically on the ground. She quickly tucks her legs inwards and rolls backwards. She spins from her roll into the air and lands on her feet.

Unfortunately, this is not out of range of the red-haired youth.

Nameless takes three steps forwards, holding her blade near chest.

She starts moving her right foot behind her and turns, then twists her body forward. She is aiming to behead the Divine hammer with her fifth strike. The blonde-haired woman moves her feet backward. The sword grazes her throat with the tip, causing a small gash on her neck. She just barely avoids being beheaded by Nameless.

The builder had clearly underestimated this youth. Or at least her latent potential.

Whatever was controlling her was making her become more efficient at killing by the second.

Lucky for her, she knew this would not last. Her body, which was human, was forced to move in inhumane ways.

The toll on her must be immense. Especially for someone as untrained as Nameless.

Granted, she was trained by the combat instructor Nathan, but he only instructed her in basic combat skills. He was not a professional mercenary.

Nor did he train her even close to the level the Divine Hammer or Star breaker trained.

So, as expected, Nameless several moments later, drops to the ground, breathing heavily. She plants her sword into the ground.

She coughs up blood. She is damaging herself by fighting the divine hammer like this. At this rate...

The divine hammer’s wounds have healed quickly.

“Incredible. I have never seen a human fight like you, young warrior. But you are pushing yourself beyond your limits. Keep this up and you won’t survive.” She did not expect this to happen, but she was not upset either.

She always had this side to her.

A side that enjoyed fighting those with great skill. Her sister was frustratingly right.

If this one was properly trained and cultivated, she would probably surpass her in skill with a blade, she thinks.

But for now, she had to do her duty. She walks in front of the youth, looking upon her fatigued form. A sphere of blue energy forms in her right hand. She is preparing to knock her out with an energy blast.

Right as she is about to shoot it. She can hear it. A sound approaching.

A loud sound can be heard and a blue flash is seen.

Divine flash has finally found her sister.

Fighting the divine hammer, of all people. She had a feeling some misunderstanding could happen. But she did not expect this, of all things, to happen.

Her sister was quite unstable when they got separated after the ship crashed.

So, something or someone who could push her in the wrong direction...could make her do something terrible. She had quite the natural insight, similar to her sister.

Another flash. She appears in the air above the builder. She axe kicks the builder. The builder can only barely defend as she does. Right after she axe kicks her, she flash moves. This time kicking her in succession with a hard right kick, then spinning her body, she kicks with the left. These two strikes are defended but send the Divine hammer sliding backwards several feet. Away from her sister.

She flash moves again, picking up her sister off the ground. She then turns, confronting the builder.

“What are you doing! Why are you two fighting, you are supposed to be the good guy! Not beating up people!” She yells at the blonde woman, scolding her for her behavior.

The divine hammer sighs dejected. She slumps onto the ground.

“Ah, you know what. You are right. I did let this escalate far too quickly. Why did I quickly decide I had to fight her instead of subduing her?” Divine hammer thinks out loud. Her mind wasn’t consumed, like that red-haired youth.

But she did feel like...something was swaying her. She is usually not as rash in her decision making.

The blue-haired woman’s word snapped sense back into her brain.

Not only was Nameless being affected by the chaos spirit but the Divine hammer as well. As she realized this, this made this thing far more dangerous than she thought it was to begin with. She begins walking slowly over towards the pair. Raising her hands.

“Look. I know this doesn’t look good but—”

“I can tell! Explain yourself! Now.”

The builder explains what had happened before she had arrived, slightly lessening the frown on her face.

“Okay. I get that you figured out this thing.” Divine flash has grabbed the red spirit off her back and crushes the life out of it with her left hand.

“But why didn’t you knock her out faster? You are trained in combat, as far as I know.” Nameless has passed out, exhausted from her ordeal. Her sister is holding her in her arms gently

The divine hammer now is healing her. A green orb of energy appears in her hand, as she is slowly healing the tired, sleeping youth.

“I am not sure. I wanted to focus on knocking her out then. It felt like something was telling me to prolong this. Something wanted me to make the fight last longer, then it should have. I do not know what it is, but I feel like I was affected too, unknowingly.” She looks crestfallen, staring at Nameless.

What if she had made a mistake? Killed this girl while she was trying to see how far she could go?

Her inner subconscious desire to enjoy the battle made her somewhat lose sight of her objective. She should have just started with her most powerful attack, and subdued her, if she wanted to instantly knock Nameless out. But she prolonged the battle, wanting to see how far this human could go.

The thought made her somewhat ashamed of her behavior, honestly.

She was not keen on this new discovery about herself. But she recognized it was something she had to confront and deal with it. Just like she was dealing with the outcome of the battle. Nameless is stirring too. She awakens, groggy and tired.

“Sis?” She says, looking at her. Then she looks towards the Divine hammer.

“Well, I didn’t expect to see you here.” She simply shrugs.

“You could call it a matter of luck. It is a long story; we will tell you later. For now, rest.” Her gentle words resonate with Nameless and she agrees, resting her head on her sister’s lap. Divine Flash simply looks at the blonde-haired android kneeling next to her.

“Besides all of this. I don’t know. It feels like something is drawing us together. Or someone. We came here with a machine named Omni Knight. He told us we needed to meet with you...and others. Not sure why though.”

“Omni Knight...the name feels familiar. Like I was with him...” She ponders. Divine flash sees the dissatisfaction in her eyes, like she forgot something very important. She continues speaking.

“You don’t remember? When you piloted him and saved your city?” She shakes her head no.

“My assistant, Tony, told me about that. I personally don’t have a recollection of those events. But I believe you. This machine, based on what you told me,” Divine flash had told her what happened to two of them before they got split up.

Telling her about Omni knight’s words. His heroic exploits as he defended innocents and drove away the Chaos knight.

“It sounds like this person wants to help us.”

“At least, that is my gut feeling. I am sure we will meet him again soon.” Divine flash nods, agreeing with her.

“I hope so. He is a bit stoic, but quite friendly.” As she speaks, her stomach growls. She is hungry.

She just ran about fifty kilometers in one day. The builder laughs.

“Shall I make you some food? Your reward for your ‘help,’ mmm.” She shrugs. The Divine hammer stands up; the red-haired girl is fully healed. Now all that is left is her fatigue from their battle.

She waves her left hand in the air. The space around them shifts and some kind of fridge appears, landing a couple feet away from them.

“How on earth do you have a fridge, full of food, appearing outta nowhere?” The builder chuckles. She opens the fridge and takes out some fruit that is inside of it, among other things. She tosses a couple apples and bananas at divine flash, who catches them with her arms quickly.

“You are questioning the person who made the storage device you are wearing. I created warp Gates around each realm, as well as created spaceships in my free time. I think you are asking the wrong question, haha! But to properly answer you would require an hour. I can create a personal pocket dimension, where time is dilated, around me that can hold. Let us say objects roughly around the size of my body mass. It is a product of science and my research.” The Divine hammer was a creation god. Even if she wasn’t fully adept at it, yet.

She could tell. She had a lot more practice and refinement to go. She ponders these thoughts for a moment, then returns to the matter at hand.

As she begins to talk about the specifications for her personal pocket dimension, the two of them can hear a rumbling in the distance. They turn their eyes and can see it.

Something. Something massive is rising through the desert, kilometers away from them. But still in sight.

A massive, white tower, made of crystal, is slowly rising. It first clears the ground, then rises into the air. The tower continues rising in height, the top of it reaching above the clouds. As it reaches its zenith, the ground stops shaking, only leaving a cloud of dust and rock around it.

A mysterious tower indeed, the Divine hammer thinks as she gazes upon it. It is forged out of a crystal-like material she has never seen in her life.

Something that she will investigate. Something is drawing her towards that crystal tower.

“What is that thing? A massive building, appearing out of the ground? I have never seen anything like that, sis.” Nameless ponders as the shaking ends.

The crystals on the tower are made out of a material she has never seen. They seemed to be translucent but inside of them, some kind of strange energy was in the center of each crystal. There are thousands of these crystals, of different sizes and shapes, that are all seemingly held perfectly in place. Around the tower, birds attempt to fly inside of it but simply bounce off the exterior. It is held together with a mysterious force.

“I don’t know, Nam. I am a bit curious. But I think we can investigate that place anothr’ day. I am tired from running and well, stopping you two from murderin’ each other. Rest is on the menu, not exploration!” The two laugh, enjoying the moment.

The Divine Hammer chuckles as well, eating some fruit she has pulled out of her portable fridge. She gives some to Nam, then sits next to the two on the ground, also pondering the object in the distance.

“I concur. There is one large city, not too far from here. I will guide us there, we should be able to reach it by nightfall. There, I can arrange a proper place for us to rest. I am tired of sleeping in the desert and I want to perform some uh...self maintenance. If you know what I mean.” The builder is covered in sand, dirt, and filth. So are the sisters. The two happily agree and a little later, the party starts walking briskly towards the only city on Exora called Viana.

The desert winds blow harshly behind them as they walk away.

Another figure appears. This one’s cloaking device deactivates once the three star warriors are out of view. It is an android, shaped like a teenage girl. She has blue hair, cat ears, and a tail that is cybernetic, which is glowing with blue energy.

The woman has cat-like eyes and is wearing some kind of one-piece black dress. It is covering her robotic body. The ancient machine growls, making cat-like noises.

“Meoooowwww. Unit #008, Phantasmal Blade, is here. I am still observing Star Units, Divine Hammer, Divine Flash, and Nameless. Do you copy, War Goddess?” As she says this, a digital video call opens up in front of her. The war goddess is using the same communication line that she requested earlier from the O.R.B.

“I copy. Communication received. Anything to report?”

“Not much, it looks like the party is progressing smoothly to the town~”

“Roger. Report back to me two weeks from now, with an updated status report. Oh and don’t go causing trouble...I’m aware of your bad habits.” Phantasmal Blade groans but then cheerfully responds.

“If I act good, will you reward me later? With a kiss on the cheek?”

“Sure. I’ll even give you your favorite dessert, strawberry yogurt. I’m counting on you, 008. Over and out.” The call ends and the digital screen vanishes. Phantasmal Blade giddily hops around and turns her cloaking device back on, casually following the three girls.

Like her equal, the War Goddess, Phantasmal Blade also has an important role to play. Keeping track of the final batch of star warriors is part of her duties. Everything depends on their triumphant success, she thinks.