NOVEL WEB Chapter 920: Graven Harvest
Even without being able to truly transform himself into all sorts of shapes and creatures, and with a good portion of his capabilities either off-limits or greatly weakened, Loimos's Harbinger's Harvest remained a most exquisite combat style, even in his current awakened state, overflowing with gold and able to cast refined spells based on naught but instinct, Milo found it distinctively difficult to truly keep up with the undead, only able to rely on his high durability and regenerative capabilities to try and strike back at the corpse.
Using the banners hanging from his weapons as a distraction, the undead landed a high-kick straight at the living's mouth, his foot sinking into Milo's face, rupturing flesh and shattering teeth before encountering gold-reinforced bones, leading to Milo being flung upward into the air.
For the living, maintaining his focus was complicated, the undead would infuse his attacks with different aspects of death, sometimes it would be Agony, causing untold suffering to befell Milo, and it went being physical pain, even his psyche was affected, using the awful state he had just seen Helena in to try and hurt him on psychological level…
Sometimes it would be Fear instead, similarly using his worries and turning them many times worse, Milo could resist thanks to his strong will and the mind-clearing effects of the gold, but Loimos only needed a brief instant to strike again, the living had been instinctively moving away every time an aspect of death of channelled into him, certainly aiming to make the skeleton lose his opportunity to strike by going out of range.
However, that would underestimate the apocalyptic aspect of war, with a flash of divine death melded with festering death, Loimos seemed to glide forward in an instant, swinging the the scythe in his left with perfect precision, severing Milo's right leg right at the knee joint…
Most of the time, when Loimos manifested a weapon, it wasn't really anything special, as it would be an extension of him, it would have the exact same capabilities as his own body as the weapon would be manifested out of primeval rot- Naturally, that simple fact made it an incredible weapon, whatever it may be, a weapon that was on the exact same level and could be used to manifest all of the abilities of the user without any drawback was what every blacksmith would dream of being capable of forging.
The Harvest Scythe and Graven Scythe are different in that regard however, they are the most primal manifestation of weapons, they are more than meets the eye, they aren't just fancy arms that he was calls upon whenever he pulls onto powers of the apocalypse, they actually allow him to channel his strength better compared to normal.
They were especially valuable right now, when he was weakened.
When the Harvest Scythe severed Milo's leg, Loimos was able to do more than normal, momentarily overpowering the gold and slashing right through even the living's soul in that instant, injecting not only famine and pestilence into him, but also channeling two aspects of death at once, Decay and Destruction.
Two types of locusts emerged from the wound, the slashed off portion falling to putrescence, and Milo fell backwards, not able to swiftly regrow his lost limb like before, once again, he channelled gold into his brain and mind, feeling as though the world was frozen for a moment, yet, despite less than second having passed in between the attack and Milo doing that, he could already see Loimos going another blow, the Graven Scythe was bring thrust right as his chest- No, it was more than that.
Milo could see multiple Loimos striking at him from different directions, the real one was clearly right in front of his eyes, the other were somewhat translucent, seemingly made out of coalesced energies, this was but an expression of the aspect of war, but Milo did not really care for what exactly was the source of this particular ability, he cared more about the fact that he was on the verge of having his heart pierced and body slashed apart.
Dealing with his severed leg would take at least thirty whole seconds if he focused on it, though, even if he had to put that on the sideline for now, he still add to dedicate some attention, as the combination of the Harvest Scythe, with the aspects of Decay and Destruction made for a most virulent cocktail, if he dared to ignore it all togethers, the the rot would spread and his body would become a breeding ground for those locusts of famine and pestilence.
'Crap… Maintaining that spell consumes too much energy…' being able to make himself think so fast that time seemed frozen was handy, but it did not come without a cost, even in his current state, he was unwilling to waste anything…
Time flowed again normally for Milo, and he executed his plan, with a leg missing, he couldn't allow himself to be sloppy, he directed just the right amount of gold required to stop the spread of rot, and casted blasts of gold toward the undeads made out of energy, with the gold, disrupting and making them disappear was not too difficult, but that meant that he couldn't just focus forward and blast Loimos back, instead, he had to direct gold toward his hands, catching the war scythe thrust at his chest right at the tip drew blood.
The living expected Loimos to proceed to attack with his other scythe, but the undead much have guessed that Milo would think like this, and instead used the fact that Milo basically had no footing and was only held in place due to holding the blade of his scythe, and just lifted the man up in the air, slamming right into the ground, which swiftly turned into a swamp of black blood, with tendrils surging to drag him deeper.
Milo extracted himself from there with a blast of gold behind his back, sending him rolling onto the ground, decisively focusing his gold toward his severed leg, once again, he expected something to happen, only for the undead to surprise him.
Instead of rushing him down whilst busy healing, Loimos fused the Graven Scythe into the Harvest Scythe, wielding the latter with both hands as the locusts that were just summoned rushed toward the weapon, seemingly being consumed by it as Loimos assumed a stance, moving and spinning the scythe into some sort of weapon dance.
Instantly, Milo felt a chill course through his body, whenever Loimos did something wholly unnecessary, it meant that, for a lack of more refined words, you were deep in shit.
The battle art ended with Loimos swinging the scythe sending forth a rapid slash right at Milo, who just managed to recover his leg after battling the putrescence gnawing at it.
The regrown leg wasn't quite in top condition from the get-go however, so Milo could only brace himself, focusing his golden energy into his right fist, striking back against the flying slash in hopes that the gold would be able to overcome it.