Atoms come apart swipe

It should go without saying that I didn’t stop there, though—I kept punching. Ruthlessly, relentlessly, incessantly, the three of us hit him again and again, bolstering ourselves as best we could. I Accelerated faster than I ever had before, channeled my Stamina using Qigong, drew from Bai Hu’s magnum opus, and did everything I could to make every hit count. Though I saw his HP slowly decrease, I wasn’t particularly convinced it was really affecting him—but, if nothing else, it was satisfying as all hell. I punch Malkuth in the face about a thousand times and it felt pretty goddamn good.

Then I abruptly felt like I’d been cut in half, which felt less good, and it took me a moment to realize what had happened. With speed that was startling even for me, he waved his arm in an arc that he somehow managed to still make seem casual—and it tore cleanly through my twin and I as though we were no different than the void around us, such that it would have cut us in half if not for the Gamer’s Body.

I knew consciously that my defenses—at least some of them—had reduced the damage, but it was still fairly startling. Sure, my skin had been ‘cut’ but Gilgamesh, but there had at least seemed to be effect involved; Malkuth had simply moved his arm through me.

It took me a moment to realize why, even with Keter sending me information about what he’d witnessed using patterns of light on my skin. Malkuth had altered his body again, shaping his arm into a weapon—or rather, causing it to generate a field of energy that I hadn’t immediately recognized. When he touched me, the molecules of my body, the atoms of it, had started to come apart. I couldn’t simply observe the effect to understand it, but…what? Had he interfered with my molecular bonds somehow, disrupting the electrons in my body? Or had he gone a step further and struck directly at the Strong Force that was keeping my protons and neutrons together? Generally, that would be absurd, but…it was Malkuth, after all. I couldn’t rule anything out.

I backed off for a moment, watching him as he rolled his wrist, the effect around it flickering out after several seconds.