Chapter 855. Battle Against The Corrupt Church.

All Corrupt Elders in the separate fleets moved busily. Liu Shu’s counterattack was much stronger than they had expected. Even then, they were not giving up. On the contrary, they all began using their arrays, rune fields, and skills to actively fight back.

In the several node areas where the Corrupt Church was, Liu Shu’s roots, the Corrupt Elders, the high-level starships, and the corruption arrays tangled together in a powerful brawl.

Slightly affected by the S+ Tier array, Liu Shu could not fully exert her full strength. As an array that even Balaya had trouble dealing with, it was impossible for Liu Shu to be unfazed.

Of course, that didn’t mean she was helpless. On the contrary, her response was even more vigorous than when Balaya was affected by it.

The short, handsome Silver Corrupt Elder swung his staff, casting several corruption spells and bombarding the large roots. “Keep it up! Don’t let her get close to the nodes!”

If runic fields were an assortment of letters that twisted and bent both ternary essence and reality, arrays were a bundle of geometrical lines, shapes, and nodes where forces bent with different meanings.

Both were equally useful, but when it came to large-scale effects, arrays were much more practical. It was easier to trace several lines across space with nodes than to create a string of runes that could cover the same distances.

Though, when it came to small-scale effects, runes were much better because of their ability to give much more detailed effects. In weapons, finding arrays was almost unheard of.

Liu Shu counterattacked, her roots becoming damaged due to their very effective attacks. Even with her recent mixing with Obsidianis and having gained deep mastery over Darkness Essence, dealing with skills specifically developed to kill World Trees was not easy.

The skills that fell on her acted like flames finding oil, trying to consume her own energy to damage her. ‘It’s difficult.’

Liu Shu was strong, but her attention was divided far too much. She was checking eight battlefields, covering the empty space for hidden threats, and simultaneously battling with the Corrupt Church.

No matter how strong and vast Liu Shu’s vessel and abilities were, it was impossible for her to cover everything perfectly. ‘But, even if I struggle, I need to do it like this.’

Zaros had told her to forget the other battlefronts, but she naturally couldn’t do that. If she completely looked away, Liu Shu would be unable to react to unexpected pushback.

‘My people are strong, but fighting outnumbered 1 to 10 is not that simple.’

As she was scanning the battlefields, her mind burning from the vast information being processed by her senses, a sharp pain came from three sides. ‘The three Silver Corrupt Elders are no joke.’

She could see several of her roots exploding, spewing large amounts of World Saint Bloodsap. Their attacks were powerful to that extent against World Trees.

‘My defense stacking is working fine, though.’

Even when some of her roots were destroyed, the effort the other side needed to do so was, to put it simply, burdensome. The Silver Corrupt Elder, his breath somewhat ragged, frowned deeply. ‘Why is she so tough?’

He had been on battlefields where Balaya’s roots appeared, and destroying the Level 300+ World Tree’s roots had never been this strenuous. In terms of defense, the Silver Corrupt Elder could swear that Liu Shu ranked at the very top.

‘Perhaps my impression is wrong. The scale of those fights against Balaya was usually led by a Gold Corrupt Elder…’

Was it because of the stress of things not going his way? His heart was thumping with constant unease. “Lord, dodge!”

He snapped out of his small daze, looking to the side and seeing a root accelerating toward him with tremendous speed. With a wave of his staff, several purplish-black giant Aether Mana rings appeared, summoning gargantuan darkness tentacles matching the root’s size.

However, as he was sure that the tentacles would hit and successfully coil, the roots suddenly moved back, up, then forward, and diagonally down toward him. His eyes opened with bewilderment. “W-What happened— OUGH!”

BANG!

[-1,128,456,000,000]!!! (-11,284,560)!!! (-112)!!!

A horrifying, blood-red damage number full of exclamations flashed in his eyes, his mind shaking as all his bones rattled. From the powerful impact, the Silver Corrupt Elder’s body shot back at speed fast enough to leave an afterimage.

Having received a straight, undefended attack from Liu Shu, it had sliced over a third of his boosted <Phoer Star> pool. He could feel some of his organs ruptured and blood pooling inside him, the ribcage and arm bones having fractured from the impact.

‘W-What kind of strength is that!? No, to begin with, what was that movement? Do physics not apply to her movements at all?’

If a root moving at that speed did those maneuvers, it should’ve broken from the strain its own weight created. Moving around as if bouncing off an invisible wall didn’t make sense at all!

Having been hit once, the Silver Corrupt Elder was not stupid enough to charge forward again. Instead, he used the push from Liu Shu’s attack and opened more distance between them.

Glancing around with his dizzy mind, the Corrupt Elder quickly moved and hid in the largest group of Starships and other Corrupt Church members.

It was then that a chilling premonition struck him. ‘I need to move!’

This was an effect of one of his pieces of equipment, telling him to dodge or die. So, without a fraction of hesitation, he took out and broke an instant teleportation tool he cherished to move far away.

A second after he moved, Liu Shu’s voice shook the very fabric of the void.

“<Aetherlord’s Elemental Catastrophe: True Sun Catastrophe>.”

Light condensed in the area where the Corrupt Elder had previously moved and then superheated the surroundings into a plasma that resembled a mini-scale sun. The light washed the surroundings, blinding many people.

The Corrupt Elder could feel the scorching temperature even from his far-away distance, his heart trembling fiercely. If he had been in the very center of that attack, he might’ve truly burned away the remaining 150 or so <Phoer Stars>.

Meanwhile, Liu Shu also noticed the spatial distortion and the Silver Corrupt elder escaping. She couldn’t help but feel a moment of pity. She had been careful with her attacks, lowering his guard and slowly pulling him in deeper into the battlefield. Once he was in range, she used several methods and tried to get rid of him.

Sadly, he somehow detected her attack and dodged in the very last second. ‘I can repeat it, but now his guard is at an all-time high.’

Liu Shu knew that there were plenty of pieces of equipment and other treasures that could be used to save one’s life in a harsh moment. Naturally, someone at the Silver Corrupt Elder’s position would not lack such things. Killing someone important from almost any organization was as hard as dealing with resilient cockroaches in a dirty kitchen.

‘Sigh, I’ll have to target the other two.’

There were three Silver Corrupt Elders. The short, handsome man was one. Then there was a tall, elegant woman and an old-looking, calm man with deep eyes.

The handsome man was fighting rather close, using expert aethermancy and also having quite a high level of physical strength. Meanwhile, the woman was a full-blown physical powerhouse, fighting with a giant cross-like weapon and attacking her roots straightforwardly.

Her strength was not that high, but she was sturdy enough to heal quickly after each clash. Finally, the old man was a master animamancer. Soul spells constantly prickling her consciousness came mostly from that one old man. Thankfully, her willpower, when fully strengthened, had reached a brutal number of over 50 million.

To damage her with soul attacks, the enemy would need soul attacks that could one-shot kill average willpower-focused <Second Ascension> powerhouses. Anything less than that only counted as an annoyance toward Liu Shu.

“The one that I can trap the easiest is the woman. However, killing her feels the most difficult.”

It was a gut feeling, but Liu Shu would not ignore her instincts. “It seems that I have no other choice but to drag out the fight.”

With a sigh, she changed tactics and began focusing more on defense and chipping away at their forces and arrays. “The <Dimensional Corruption Array> is truly masterful.”

Having completely cracked the <Corruption Of Stars> array they previously used, Liu Shu was somewhat knowledgeable of their crafting methods. She had even evolved her empire skill through those insights, developing a somewhat unique Runic Array. A mix of both schools that, while still somewhat new, was showing incredible promise.

“This array is both stronger and weaker than <Corruption Of Stars>.”

<Dimensional Corruption Array> was focused on extremely large distance effects. So, when compared in effects, it lost to <Corruption Of Stars> at its maximum output. The advantage was the surefire effects and weakening of World Tree domains.

Without their domains, which helped World Trees slightly cheat distances, their expansion speed and ability to manipulate distant roots would decrease sharply. While Liu Shu covered several light-years of distance with her roots, that didn’t mean that her roots were that long. It was the <Realm>, a subdimension that helped Liu Shu compress distances to a certain extent, which helped Liu Shu stretch that far away.

Of course, eventually, Liu Shu would expand her roots to several light-years in size. Like any other World Tree could.

“Hm…” Liu Shu had been fighting with the Corrupt Church for a while and analyzing their array during this time. Instead of dealing with them, Liu Shu used <World Purity> and her natural resources to keep the array’s effects in check.

She was losing ground, but at their current pace of advance, it would take them several decades to reach Ceperet. So, she was not anxious even when she was being pushed back by the Corrupt Church.

‘These effects… I am not really feeling them.’

She was somewhat confused. Her <Realm> had been damaged; that was for sure. Yet she was not having difficulty moving her faraway roots. There was indeed a slight increase in difficulty. However, if she had read correctly into the effects, Liu Shu should’ve been feeling like moving her faraway roots was impossible. Feeling as if they had been tied down by heavy chains.

After analyzing the reason, she realized why. ‘I see. My corruption resistance is the biggest contributor, but the reason for the lack of resistance even after taking that into account is my Perfect Energy Cycle.’

Liu Shu’s root net, as mentioned before, was effectively flawless. Calling something perfect was hard, since everything could be optimized further, but what Liu Shu built was entirely free of flaws. In terms that are easier to understand, a perfect programming language doesn’t guarantee perfect software. However, Liu Shu guaranteed one that worked flawlessly and without bugs.

This flawless inner working helped Liu Shu cover the strain and move almost as if it didn’t affect her. ‘As long as I keep purifying it, it’s an almost infinite source of damage for <World Purity>.’

Her lips arched in a rather cold smile. The Nexus had effectively given her a battery capable of powering her large-scale, high-damage attacks through corruption conversion.