Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix-Chapter 1517: Good riddance

Rain assumed his guard and then prepared to attack; sensing danger, Arel stopped causing the solar flares, but much to her surprise, Rain tried to attack the portal with an insanely charged Palm Strike...

The portal shook thanks to the impact, but Rain’s arm suddenly trembled as well... the spell truly rejected him like it had a physical form, and his right hand got numb for several seconds... several holes appeared in it as well.

"The portal must be working like a domain... whatever is on the other side, it can only work inside this area," Rain thought. "This battle feels more like a game of chess than a real battle."

Arel didn’t have any idea of what would happen if the portal were to suffer too much damage, and she wasn’t willing to find out either... with that in mind, she fired several solar flares toward Rain and increased their frequency to keep him busy and wasting energy... she could tell that his reserves were decreasing.

However, Rain soon opened his palms and assumed the stance to use the Rain technique... using that in such an environment was supposed to be useless, so she didn’t mind it that much, but when the palms collided, the space began to tremble in response thanks to the powerful attack and a sound barrier repelled the solar flares that were about to hit him.

Arel didn’t give up, and Rain used the same technique over and over again to block the attacks until he moved the position of his hands a bit, and then the space trembled until Arel felt the vibrations in the air... her core trembled and was moved a bit as well.

"You..."

"You need a vacation," Rain said. "My travelling company is willing to offer you a cruise to another universe completely free of charge. Begone since we don’t need you here."

Rain intensified the palm strikes and Arel’s core was slowly pushed away... Still, as if responding to her will, the dark portal began to shake, and the claws slowly began to crawl out from it... now, they looked pretty visible...

The claws pointed a single finger toward Rain, and then he felt his body being pulled toward it... he was sick and tired of being controlled like that, so he put his hands backward with his fists closed and then used Origin Punch.

At first, the attacks didn’t do anything, but Rain used the technique a bunch of times, and then the flesh of the creature began to dissipate in the air like dust...

Arel tried to intervene by bombarding Rain with a rain of solar flares, but he ignored them all and kept attacking while his body was burning.

Eventually, the whole claw was turned into nothing, and when Rain stopped attacking, his arms were gone as well... while breathing roughly, he tried to heal himself as fast as possible.

"The fuck was that?" Rain asked. "I always knew that you guys were retarded, but to think that you would mess with something that you don’t understand... can you even use your experiments on that thing?"

Rain used the skills of the Void Path and the Information Path on the claw of whatever the hell that was. It felt like a creature that came out from a nightmare... Still, as his consciousness delved deeper into the cryptic recesses of the entity’s essence, Rain encountered a maelstrom of chaotic imagery. Dark and twisted, the images danced before his mind’s eye, defying any attempts at rationalization. Shapes contorted, and colors melded in a nightmarish display, evoking a sense of profound unease within Rain’s mind.

Straining against the overwhelming dissonance of the visuals, Rain attempted to glean some semblance of meaning from the data. Yet, despite his best efforts, the images remained stubbornly inscrutable, resisting all attempts at interpretation.

With a sinking realization, Rain understood that the entity contained within the body was unlike anything he had encountered before. Its very existence defied the laws of their universe, its essence shrouded in a veil of incomprehensibility.

"You can’t learn anything without taking some risks, and while we can learn new things here for a while longer, the speed at which we can learn will be too slow. It is time for us to take the next step and check beyond the confines of our universe."

"Not on my watch, crazy bitch," Rain said. "It seems that your little friend doesn’t want to face me either... I would say that it is a pity, but I am actually relieved."

The dark portal began to close very slowly, and eventually, Rain felt a gaze coming from it. When the portal was about to close, Rain saw some enormous eyes filled with emotions that Rain couldn’t describe.

The eye emerged from the darkness of the closing portal, its appearance sending shivers down Rain’s spine. It was not like any eye he had ever seen before; its sheer size dwarfed anything he had encountered. The iris, a swirling vortex of darkness, seemed to draw in all light around it, leaving only an abyssal void where the pupil should have been.

The sclera, instead of the usual white, appeared to be a shifting mass of shadows, constantly undulating and pulsating with otherworldly energy. Veins of eerie luminescence traced intricate patterns across its surface, casting an eerie glow that illuminated the surrounding darkness.

As Rain gazed into the eye, he felt an overwhelming sense of dread wash over him. It was as if the eye held within it the collective horrors of a thousand nightmares, each one more terrifying than the last. Its gaze seemed to pierce through his very soul, probing deep into the darkest recesses of his mind.

"Good riddance..." Rain said.

"It is rare for that to close the portal like this and stop its meal... I suppose even that recognized that you are a menace. Very well, no more games. It is time to dispose of you like the nuisance that you are."