NOVPUBChapter 205: Eight Remained
The moment the fourth eye exploded in a storm of code and blood, the Devourer of Light let out a scream that split the air and tore the clouds asunder.
Ben’s expression hardened.
Up above, the remaining ten golden eyes flared open in sync. The glyphs inside them spun faster, forming rings of code so dense they looked like halos made of divine fire. System warnings flashed across the sky in broken fragments, too fast to read.
Then, FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!
Three eyes blinked in perfect sequence.
Three beams fired, at once.
“MOVE!!” Ben roared, grabbing Apophis and pulling her down just as the sky tore open.
A trio of law-beams slashed through the battlefield in wide arcs. Entire area in the distance simply vanished. The clouds above were sucked inward, vaporized by pure conceptual erasure.
Ben crashed into the ground, his gravitational field cushioning Apophis just in time. The knight blurred beside them in a streak of lightning, panting, sparks flying from his heels.
Ben coughed once, then looked back, there was nothing behind them. Just void. Three curved scars in the sky where reality had been sliced away.
“It’s adapting faster than I expected,” Apophis said, clutching her ribs.
Another roar. Five eyes began to glow, bright, golden energy swirling inside their cores.
Ben’s eyes narrowed, scanning the motion. Then he saw it, a pattern.
Just before firing, the energy inside each eye flared once, just a second before the beam released. Like a pulse. “There it is…” he whispered. “It charges first, gathers energy.”
He reached out, seizing Apophis’s wrist. “Look at the glow inside the eyes! That’s the tell. When it pulses gold, it’s about to fire.”
Apophis’s lips curled. “Predictive movement… got it.”
The knight raised his blade again, face grim. “Then don’t stop moving.”
Above, the five glowing eyes pulsed. Ben shouted, “Incoming!”
The trio scattered as five beams tore through the air. But this time, they were already in motion.
Ben dove left, dragging space with him.
Apophis twisted midair, her wings folding in and creating a ripple of shadow she slipped through.
The knight flash-stepped twice in succession, the last beam narrowly grazing his shoulder guard.
The world behind them was once again erased, but they were already moving.
Ben hit the air running, gravitational footholds forming under each step. “Target the seventh!” he called. “Knight, draw fire from eye five! Apophis, rotate with me, double strike again!”
The knight didn’t hesitate. He fired a bolt of lightning into the sky, forcing the fifth eye to focus on him. It blinked, and the glow began.
The seventh eye dimmed, unguarded. Ben and Apophis blinked into position in perfect sync.
Ben’s appendages curled into spears, swirling with crushing force. Apophis compressed three spheres of gravitational water, laced with reversed current.
“Go!”
Ben struck first, his appendages piercing the outer lens. Apophis followed a breath later, her spheres detonating on impact.
CRUNCH!!!
The seventh eye exploded in a scream of golden light and black mist. But there was no time to breathe.
Six eyes began glowing in unison.
Ben’s pupils contracted. “Six…?!”
They moved again, just ahead of the beams.
One sliced through Apophis’s wing, she growled in pain but twisted away. One scraped Ben’s side, tearing through his armor like paper.
The knight was clipped mid-dash, he tumbled, landing hard, blade skidding across the battlefield.
Ben turned and caught the movement just in time, Another eye pulsing gold. About to fire. He hurled an appendage, it hit just before the beam could form.
The eye twitched, the code inside scrambling.
The beam misfired, erupting sideways into the clouds.
Ben landed beside the knight, helping him up. “Don’t just dodge, interrupt the charge if you can!”
Apophis joined them, limping slightly. “How many more of these do we have to break?”
Ben looked up at the nine remaining eyes. “Too many.”
He raised a hand, dark aether surging around him again, heavier than ever. “But if we stop moving now, we don’t live long enough to count.”
The Devourer roared again. Four of its eyes pulsed at once, each one glowing with spiraling golden energy.
Ben didn’t flinch. “Split and rotate!” he barked. “I’ll take lead bait, Knight, right flank! Apophis, backstrike!”
They moved. Ben shot forward with a burst of gravitational force, his body twisting midair, forming two afterimages as appendages unfurled like coiling scythes. He zipped past the first and fifth eyes, throwing lances of aether at both just to provoke them.
The first eye blinked. A beam tore across the sky, but missed. Ben had already vanished into a spatial rift left behind by Apophis’s lingering gravity field.
Meanwhile, Apophis was already setting the stage. She flew in a wide arc behind the Devourer, dragging with her a storm of black water and broken light.
The moment the eighth eye began to glow, she snapped her fingers, and detonated a web of condensed water mines, blocking its charge with a cascade of explosions. “I’ve stalled one!” she shouted. “Ben, now!”
Ben saw the opening. The fifth eye had been baited. The eighth was suppressed. And right between them, the ninth eye flickered for just a moment, exposed, unshielded, not yet reacting.
He reached toward the knight. “Toss me!”
The knight grunted, nodded, then crouched and launched Ben upward with a surge of lightning from his palm.
Ben spun midair, both hands gathering a black spiral of crushing force. He roared, appendages aligning behind him like a spearhead.
“NINTH EYE!”
The Devourer started to shift, but too slow. The eye began to blink, golden eyelid sliding into place, But Apophis appeared beneath it, a flash of warped gravity holding it open.
“Let’s see you try that trick twice,” she hissed.
Ben crashed down with all his momentum.
BOOOOM!!!
A singularity detonated point-blank.
The ninth eye exploded in a burst of jagged code, golden fluid, and shattered light. Fragments rained across the sky like burning meteors.
Four eyes down. Eight remained.
The Devourer twisted in agony, its roar now laced with fury. Sparks of system code streamed from its broken eye sockets as its coils lashed against the air, flattening mountaintops in the distance with sheer force.
Ben landed hard, skidding across fractured terrain, breathing raggedly.
“Another one down,” he gasped. “And we’re not dead yet.”
Apophis landed beside him, black mist rising from her wings. “That trick won’t work again.”
The knight approached slowly, blade still glowing. “Then we’ll need a new one.”
Ben’s gaze rose to the sky again.
Eight golden eyes stared back, burning brighter now, swirling with new layers of code. And in that moment… five of them began to glow.
