Chapter 75: The fight against the gods

Before Erebus can think further through his chain of thoughts, the aura from Phanes's body releases a gust of wind that sweeps over the floor of the chamber. Since she knows that talk is not going to make Maya release the souls, she would have to do it by force!

Phanes grips tighter onto the spear of light. She disperses the light from the spear by striking it into the ground. Like the deep sound of a drum, the sound echoes through the room. 

She bursts towards them. With just the time of an eye blink, she closes in, ready to thrust the spear towards Maya. However, in the nick of time, Ian strikes the spear upwards before it reaches the target. 

Phanes widens her eyes in shock as she loses grip on her spear, and the spear flings up while rotating. 

'What a monstrous strength!' Phanes thinks as she tries to regain her balance, 'I have underestimated him due to his shy personality.'

Seeing his opponent without a weapon on hand, Ian takes the chance and dives his sword towards Phanes's abdomen without hesitation.

Erebus intersects, putting up a wall using his animated shadows between them, forcing Ian's sword away from touching Phanes. Ian stumbles back some steps from the backlash of their clash. Usually, Erebus would not do things by force, but seeing Phanes in danger, he inevitably moves to save her.

All of them stand still while looking at their opponent for a moment of weakness. 

[That was close…]

Kyrie gulps hard after seeing the tip of the spear right in front of his eyes while being defenseless. He summons his sword from his palm and puts Maya behind him, shielding her from any possible attacks that could come to her. Since Phanes has decided on Maya's destruction, he would have to fight to save Maya from the enraged goddess. He looks back at Ian quickly to check and calms the anxiety building inside with a deep breath. 

[There must be something that could make them realize that what they see is not everything. However, everything is pointing that Maya is the culprit.]

Phanes, with a single hand motion, attracts back her spear off the ground. Once she grips onto the spear, she strikes again, propelling towards Kyrie. Ian wants to intercept again, but Erebus puts up a wall again using his animated shadows to stop him from interrupting the fight between Kyrie and Phanes.

The point of Phanes's spear meets Kyrie's blade. As the spear runs through the surface of the blade, the scraping of metals produces pitched scratching sounds, causing them to frown from the sound as they move their weapons. 

The spear's tip navigates through the sword, stopping at one point where both hold their strength against each other. However, Kyrie's feet start to slide back from Phanes's strength. His arms experience for the first time a bone-crushing force, like his joints are going to slip at any moment, and the force will crush and break all his bones. 

"Phanes! Believe me that Maya could not have planned this all on her own! All these seem more likely done by Udarr!" Kyrie squeezes his words as he holds against her. 

The veins on his muscles and temple pop out from the exertion of strength to stop himself from sliding back further.

Phanes groans as she releases the standstill, and she stumbles back a couple of steps.

'How in the world are these mortals keeping up?' Phanes rotates her painful shoulder, 'Udarr's doing? How can Udarr be the one doing this when he is in confinement?'

Kyrie's arms shake violently when Phanes backs away. He has overused his muscles, and he cannot correctly grip his sword anymore.

[Fighting directly with Phanes is suicide. There is no smoke without a fire. There must be evidence left behind the pit!]

Ian stabs his sword on the ground as he slides back. He lands on a knee and starts to cough since his breathing got messed up by a punch on his diaphragm. He would never have guessed that Erebus would use his fist against him. 

The animated shadow strikes again, and like an opening mouth of a large beast, it goes down towards Ian. He looks at the dark matter falling on top of him, casting a shadow on his surroundings. The darkness that moves at him makes his heart bump erratically - like the awareness of a nightmare closing in.

However, the view suddenly gets intercepted by Kyrie's body surrounded with light magic. With his sword, Kyrie strikes towards the animated shadow, breaking it easily since he is using an opposing magic element. However, because Kyrie's body is fatigued from those few exchanges with Phanes, he loses grasp on his sword, and the sword flies off from his hand, landing on the inside of the pit. 

Still with light magic, the sword lands and repulses the souls surrounding the area where it landed. Kyrie runs towards the pit. Enveloping himself with an intense light magic, he jumps and lands to grab the hilt of his sword.

"Kid!" Phanes yells as her body stiffens looking at the souls of the pit rushing back to bury Kyrie completely.