Ascension of the last Celestial

Valerian disappeared from the sky and in a seamless transition appeared on the meadow where he let the goblin chief cut him into little pieces. When he arrived, the chief noticed him immediately.

When he turned into Valerian’s direction, there was shock and confusion on his face. Even though he didn’t relax during the 10 minutes Valerian was gone for, he didn’t actually think that he would come back alive, much less the way he was now.

When the chief’s black eyes met Valerian’s purple ones that now had a miniature galaxy floating in them, he froze. There was something deep within, something ancient and primordial telling him to bow.

’What is happening? Why do I feel fear?’

As he was confused with these weird feelings, Valerian looked at him with a wicked smile and opened his mouth.

"I’m sorry, big guy, this time I won’t just let you beat me up."

His voice took the goblin out of his thoughts. He understood what Valerian was saying, but he didn’t answer as he didn’t see a reason to hold a conversation, instead readying himself for the incoming battle.

The silence of the chief didn’t change Valerian’s mood as he felt better than ever. All these years he had felt incomplete, like there was something missing, but he just couldn’t name it. So he just ignored it, thinking that what was missing would come to him, and now he could feel it. The weird feeling of missing something was gone and was replaced by pure ecstasy.

Wanting to test the new limits of his body, he also readied himself for the battle.

’Let’s just try without mana for now.’

Unlike the chief who coated himself in a thick layer of darkness mana, Valerian chose not to use any for now as he wanted to see just how far this new body could take him.

Already tired of the staredown, Valerian dashed towards the chief. The sheer power behind his manaless charge destroyed the earth beneath his feet, creating a big crater. In less than a second, he appeared before the chief, who looked at him with a surprised face.

But he was still a SS- rank being that was actively using his mana enhancement, so he brought his massive greatsword up to block the punch that was flying towards him with the flat side of the blade.

As the fist and blade met, the bones in the chief’s arms rattled as the power behind the punch hit his blade. But even then, he wasn’t pushed back and held his ground.

In a swift movement, he swung the blade in a horizontal attack with a speed that looked wrong on such a large and heavy blade.

Valerian simply leaned back his head and the blade went past his face, but not without cutting the tips of Valerian’s white-silver hair.

In one smooth movement, Valerian rotated mid-fall into a kick with his leg. The chief saw straight through the kick and blocked it with his hand, holding the foot in place. But before he could swing Valerian around like a ragdoll, the foot that was tightly in his grip turned into motes of purple mana, and Valerian moved backwards while his foot reformed instantly.

The pure shock and astonishment in the chief’s eyes was out of this world because he knew what had just happened. Valerian’s foot turned into pure mana and reformed instantly.

’It’s a bit like my physique, but I can only heal wounds, not turn my body into pure mana. Is that what he was trying to do the entire time? Copy my physique?’

The hard realization of what Valerian had done settled in. He didn’t just copy the physique the chief spent centuries building in mere hours, he also perfected it to a degree that was even better than his own.

’This boy... isn’t normal.’

Before he could think any more of the uniqueness of Valerian, he was already back in his face with a wide haymaker aimed for his head. Valerian still didn’t use any mana, but was already way faster and stronger than he was before he lost his head.

The goblin chief dodged the punch and, instead of using his sword, turned back to his affinity as the darkness beneath Valerian tried to shoot up in sharp spikes. But before they could even leave the darkness for more than a few centimeters, the darkness that they came out from turned into a deeper shade of black, and like a strong gravity was applied to the spikes, they got pulled back into the darkness.

Even though the chief was shocked that the attack didn’t work, he didn’t let it distract him from Valerian, who was still in melee range. The big goblin gathered a large amount of mana in his empty left hand and punched towards Valerian’s torso. The chief augmented the punch with so much mana plus his physical strength that Valerian was unable to react in time, and the punch connected with his sternum.

His chest exploded into a hole that was larger than Valerian’s head, but instead of blood and organs flying out, motes of dark purple mana with a slight silver tinge left his body, before from nothing the same dark purple, slightly silver mana gathered where the hole was, and the wound that would have killed anyone else closed instantly.

Before the hole was fully healed, Valerian was already moving. Finally using his mana, a black-purple flame gathered in his fist and he delivered a shattering punch to the side of the chief.

Because he was distracted by the rapidly healing hole, the chief couldn’t react in time and was launched back by the cosmic fire punch.

The punch sent him flying more than a hundred meters, destroying everything that was in his path and sending his giant sword flying away.

Valerian looked into the distance and felt the region where he sent the goblin flying with his spatial perception.

’Of course he didn’t die, haa, and he’s already healing.’

Indeed, while Valerian did damage the chief, he still had a physique that was made from mana—a lesser version of Valerian’s, but still, it made him nearly immortal with insane regeneration.

Slipping through space, Valerian teleported to the chief. He appeared mid-air, as he didn’t even wait for the dust to settle, he punched towards where he felt the chief.

The goblin was ready as he was waiting for Valerian to engage him. Now, after he realized what Valerian had done with his body, he was more cautious and wasn’t willing to just blindly rush towards him, especially without his sword.

Creating a gauntlet from darkness, the chief met Valerian’s punch with one of his own. As the fists met, the surrounding dust was blown away by the shockwave of the connecting attacks. Valerian could feel the pressure inside his arm, but after he came out of the cocoon, he noticed a few things.

Like he didn’t need to breathe, or even the slight hunger he felt after not eating for hours was completely gone. And Valerian knew why that was the case: he reformed his entire body from mana, so his stomach or lungs don’t really exist anymore, and the only thing this new body needed was mana. That was also the case for his bones; before, the punch of the chief would have broken his arm, but now there was nothing. That also meant that his body was as strong as his mana could make it and could fight forever without ever getting tired, as long as he could provide it with mana.

Right after the punch connected, they both didn’t back down and went towards each other. The chief was stronger and faster than Valerian. Even with his new body, he couldn’t completely bridge the gap between S- and SS-. Fighting someone that was the same general rank was easy, even if the opponent was S+ it wasn’t much of a problem. But the higher the ranks go, the bigger the differences got. So that even Valerian, who seemed to be heaven’s favorite child, could barely hold his own against a random goblin that achieved SS- rank.

The fact that the chief was an intelligent fighter with centuries of experience didn’t make it easier for Valerian.

He was losing ground, as there was no way for him to win in a physical fight against someone so much stronger. Again and again wounds appeared on his body. Even though they healed instantly, the mana cost was adding up and he was now at barely 20%.

’I think I tested this body enough.’

Finally done with the test drive, Valerian wanted to end the fight, and he knew if it couldn’t be done in a melee fight, he would just revert to the thing he was best at: magic.

As a punch of the chief was nearing his head, Valerian teleported away and appeared about a hundred meters away, flying in the sky.

Looking down on the chief with the cold eyes of a sovereign, he called upon his mana and channeled his affinities. High up in the clouds, purple lightning began to thunder.

Valerian raised his right hand and the world held its breath. The wind stilled and goosebumps rose up the spine of the chief.

’Move!’

He wanted to move, to flee, but it was too late. There is nothing that can outrun space itself.

A bolt of purple lightning descended from the heavens, but mid-strike it disappeared. Before the chief could wonder where it went, he felt the agonizing nothingness of the void touch him as the bolt of void lightning was teleported from the sky directly into his body.

His physique, that would normally be able to heal any wound, didn’t know how to handle nothingness, so it didn’t do anything. It couldn’t do anything as the purple void lightning tore through his body. Wherever the lightning touched, his body disappeared.

In less than ten seconds, the void lightning swallowed him whole, and the chief that had ruled the cave goblins for more than a hundred years vanished into the emptiness of the void.

Valerian was now completely drained of mana. The little trick of teleporting the lightning directly into the body of a SS- rank being took all his remaining mana away, and he fell from the sky like a shooting star.