Rise of the Cosmic_Emperor

'So what, You're telling me Gregory had a Divine Artifact in his vault and had no idea?' Hal asked incredulously 'How stupidly clueless could he be?'

Grimoire gave a mental appropriation of a shrug, 

'Just the core of the Artifact, but yes, he did and he had no idea. That said, you can't really blame him or call him clueless' it said.

'Why not?' Hal chuckled,

'Well, not everything gives off a presence that shows its abilities. Also, Divine Artifacts have 'life'. They can usually choose who wields them. It's probably why the balls caught Svetlana's eyes back then. They called to her.'

Hal furrowed his brow, 

'But wait a minute. She only got the balls. That would mean she completed a Divine Artifact by herself. That, that is insane'

Don't blame Hal for having no other word to equate Svetlana's efforts because that was just the only thing that came to mind that did not really sound like a compliment.

'Well, I wouldn't say that. The big part was already done. The core was already created which would have been impossible without Divine energy. All that really remained was housing the core and fortifying it.' Grimoire waved it off.

'Nothing really impresses you, right?' Hal said in a mildly mocking tone.

Grimoire became a tad bit defensive, 

'Well, it's true. As long as she already had the core and had been chosen by it, she just needed enough sacrifices to create good enough housing for it which would be the Orb.

There is something about the Artifact though' it ended with a musing tone.

'What is it?' Hal asked.

'Well, it's not an attacking Artifact.' 

'It's not?' Hal sounded disbelieving as he had seen beams of light come out of the orb.

Grimoire shook a little, 

'It's not. Look closely when next she attacks and you will notice that she merely passes her attacks through the orb and it fortified them. Makes them stronger. But I would have expected that it would do more than that being a Divine Artifact... But maybe it's just one of those Artifacts that Is more passive.

But if it is only passive, what does it do...' Suddenly, Grimoire paused just as a boom sounded.

In the second Hal's conversation with Grimoire took, another hazardous wind attack was sent to Svetlana to herd towards a large purple claw but she managed to escape its path which resulted in a collision of the two attacks.

Where she had run to, two rune circles appeared on either side of her and they formed a purple oval cage around her in barely a second and once complete, smaller spikes formed from the cage bars from all directions and moved to skewer the duchess but a sudden blast of blue Astral energy and the cage exploded into purple dust but almost immediately, it formed back into a cage.

Once again, it was destroyed by another explosion but reformed barely a second later.

*Booom!*

*Boom!!*

*Boom!!!*

Three consecutive times, Svetlana destroyed the cage, and there times it formed again. Never once did she make a move to leave where she was and the Array took it as a sign that its speed was getting the better of her.

And it indeed was fast.

What the youngsters had barely been able to avoid in terms of the purple spike speed was crawling speed compared to this. 

The Array had not gone all out when it wished to kill them.

Not even close to going all out.

Merely moving at the speed of her cultivation was not enough for Svetlana to move away before the cage reformed.

Svetlana smiled, 

"You're fast" she said just as the spikes came inches from touching her and then a small eerie chime sound rang all around the garden center.

It was mild and yet everyone seemed to hear it sounding right by their side.

Hal was no exception.

Following the chime, the spikes stopped.

They did not stop moving, in fact, looking closely, they seemed to still be in motion, and yet... They were not.

They just... Stopped.

"What the...?" Embry gaped at the display and Svetlana destroyed the cage once again, disregarding the cluelessness the array was feeling at the moment.

This time she had more than enough time to move out of the cloud of purple dust.

The chime sounded again and time resumed for the cage which reformed to capture her and formed spikes to skewer into nothing.

Then with a wave of her hand, she passed energy into the orb and sent it towards Embry who leaped away with the purple rune circle that had seen to his formation still underneath his feet.

In fact, it became a foothold for the Gardener to remain in mid-air and he frowned as two Blue Rune circles former beside him and released beams of Astral energy but the attacks were blocked by purple Rune circles.

At the end of it all, the Blue Rune circles imploded but the Purple circle remained in place.

Two other blue rune circles appeared but this time, they appeared behind the Gardener but the Purple Rune circles changed direction to blast and destroy the blue ones.

Even then, they remained in place looking strong as ever.

A clear sign of the superiority of Divine Rune circles to Rank 8 rune circles. On paper, they were only one rank apart but as can be expressed by the sheer difficulty of becoming a Divine runemaster, they were two different levels.

Svetlana had expected such impressive abilities when she had not been able to view into it with her Astral perception.

She had to say, it was quite fortunate she had been paying attention to the Garden and actually made an effort to view into it to check a certain someone's progress as she did not doubt that if things had persisted, none of those in the garden would have survived.

"Your whole agenda seems silly to me. I mean what would be the point of a garden if no one could enjoy its resources?" Svetlana asked suddenly as Embry stretched his hand to the Rune circles protecting him and touched them.

"And who says I am here for your need? For you to advance in your cultivation? I don't care and I will not stand for anyone coming here anymore.

Once I kill all of them, you included. I'm sure the others out there will finally get the message and stay away." With that, Embry tossed the circles at Svetlana and no one inside her protective Dome saw their movement paths.

The moment they left Embry's hands, they vanished at the same time another chime was heard, and almost immediately, the Rune circles appeared where Svetlana had been but a second before, moving in opposing directions and canceling each other out upon collision.

Everyone looked for where Svetlana was only to see her right beside Embry whose eyes were widened in shock and incomprehension of her speed, 

"Is that what HE would want?" She asked him.

No one understood what she was saying or who 'HE' was, but Embry apparently did as he paused and then he began to shake in anger and yelled just as rune circles appeared all around his body and shot beams at Svetlana who vanished to avoid getting hit, 

"Don't talk about him, HE LEFT ME!"

Following those confusing words came the formation of giants formed from the purple material and wielding the giant hazardous wind swords to attack the Duchess as spikes rose from the ground under the Array Dome to stab its inhabitants.

The spikes shattered before they could rise fully though on account of the layer protecting the inhabitants' feet from actually touching the ground.

Then multiple Rune circles appeared all around the Array Dome and prepared to fire beams that were sure to destroy the Dome and those inside it.

Clearly, Svetlana's words had angered the Array and it was now truly going all out.