Chapter 86 – Chaos in the Capital 3
Eri POV - Tortus, Heiligh Kingdom Capital City - 2013
I and my Undead Puppets quickly move through the chaotic streets of the Capital City, killing all the members of the Holy Church I find on my way, then I turn them into my Undead Puppets, and use them to find other hidden elements of the Holy Church, while I decide to spare the lives of most of the knights I meet, for a very simple reason, 'Jayr for sure wouldn't kill those that are reluctantly following their orders... But those that are enjoying this situation, or are using it to their own advantage are free game...'.
And as I think that, a pack of skeleton twin-tailed wolves is tearing apart a knight that was using this chaos to have his way with a young girl, unfortunately, the parents of the girl are already dead, but I simply raise them once again as Undead Puppet and leave them here to protect the little girl in distress, and continue to move toward my objective.
At the same time, I notice that Freid's familiars, the Ash Dragons are flying around capturing and restraining the monster-turned people, those tentacle abominations with too many eyes, that remind me of those strange hentai, and see that they are all bringing them back to Freid, that is currently riding Uranos, and chanting something while pointing at the restrained monster-people with his palm.
When he cast his spell, the monster-people are enveloped in a pillar of light, then after the light pillar disperse, in place of the hentai-like monsters, there are some simply naked civilians, and seeing that I nod and mutter, "Just like I thought! These monster-people are the result of the Age of Gods Metamorphosis Magic... This means that the identity of the one that took the place of Yukitoshi Shimizu is the only other one who has also conquered Frost Caverns of Schnee... Jayr's enemy! The other Champion, Maoshi!!".
Realizing this, I raise my guard knowing that he is our enemy, 'From what Freid said he is really strong, and since he is a Champion like Jayr, he could easily still be holding back, or having one or two hidden aces... But that doesn't matter, he will still die, and his death will be a slow and painful one, I'll make sure of that even if I have to kill everyone in this City! For one single reason, he wants to take Jayr away from me!'.
And so I continue to kill priests and rogue knights while saving and calming as many civilians as possible, and soon I encounter the one classmates I wanted to meet the least, Shizuku and Kaori, as they are restraining one of the monster-people, while at the same time, struggling to deal with some priests and knights that are trying to capture them, and not because these enemies are stronger than them, the two of them like the others of the Hero Party were able to conquer the Orcus Great Labyrinth, with our help and have grown a lot stronger than most of the people in this world.
No, the reason, they are struggling is because they can't bring themselves to kill them and also they are too focused on protecting a third person, a beautiful girl with long flowing blonde hair and green eyes.
Her beauty is accentuated by the refined air of royalty that she is enveloped in, something that few other people could hope to match, she is nonother than the princess of the Heiligh Kingdom, Liliana S. B. Heiligh.
(Image Here - Liliana S. B. Heiligh)
But seeing that they can continue holding on, I decide to simply leave them on their own, not caring about their fate, but unfortunately, Kaori notices my presence and while using Heaven Interruption to generate six light shields to protect herself, the monster-person, the princess and Shizuku from the priest magics, she yells "Eri! It's good that you are here help us! I don't know for how long we can hold on!".
At the same time, Shizuku once again deflects and parries the knights' attack with her swords and continues, "We have to hurry! They took Aiko-sensei and the others who couldn't fight to the Royal Place prison we have to get them out of there!", and so I let out a defeated sigh, raise my staff and chant, "Phantom Pain!", and next, a magic circle appears under the feet of all my targets, and as it shines, all the knights and priests fall and roll on the ground screeching in agony, then without giving them any chance, my Undead Puppets come and quickly and efficiently finish them off.
It seems that such a brutal scene, shocked Kaori and Shizuku, as they look at the corpse of the knights and priests in horror with eyes and mouths wide open while the princess surprise me as she seems to be only slightly uncomfortable with the sight but not against it, but not minding their state, I move closer to the corpse and chant, "Does it hurt? Are you sad? Let me hear a pretty scream. Try to resist, curse me in your pain. You'll still be my little puppet. A pathetic little toy! Blessings to all deaths! Ridicule to every sorry soul! Spirit Binding!", and turn them all into Undead Puppets, then under my control, they start to quickly move to other zones to restrain the monster-turned people and help my other classmates that are fighting all around the city to protect the civilians and get away from the Holy Church's forces.
Then I turn around to look at them, and as nothing happened, I say, "Come on! We have some people to save, right...?", which, bring them out of their stunned state, and soon they quickly start to move, and now together with them I move toward the Royal Palace.
On our way there, we meet with Ryutarou, Kouki, and the others from the Hero Party that are slowly moving toward the Royal Palace to save the ones that were captured after my and Freid's forces relieved them from the pressure of fighting the kingdom and the Holy Church's forces while protecting the civilians and the monster-people, and so once we reach the Royal Palace's gate, the full Hero Party is present, of course, minus, Yukitoshi Shimizu, since the enemy took his place it is probable that he is dead, not that I care much about him, or any of them, the only one that matters to me is Jayr.
Standing in front of the shut gates, Kouki asks, "So... How do we open them? We blow them away?", but Liliana shakes her head and replies, "It is impossible, the Royal Palace is protected by a really strong barrier created by a magic artifact, and the magic power is constantly supplied by 30 magicians... Not only it is very hard to bring it down, but any damage they receive will be repaired as long as there is some magic power in the artifact... Maybe-".
But she stops as suddenly a loud explosion is heard in the distance, and from here we can clearly see smoke raising from a certain location in the Divine Mountain.
Seeing that I smile and say, "It seems that Jayr is almost done over there... better hurry... I don't want to leave him alone with that Dragon girl, something about her ticks me off!", then I start to chant to summon one of my Undead Puppet from my Shadow Dimension, but it seems that Liliana thinks that I ignore what she said, as she looks at me and chides, "I said that it is useless, you'll need the power comparable to a regiment of magicians to overcome this barrier! It is use-".
But I finish my chant with, "...Rise!", and a huge figure rises from my shadow that stuns the princess with its overwhelming presence, it is a huge skeletal serpentine figure with seven heads, it is the Hydra, the last guardian of the Orcus Great Labyrinth, that under my command with a silent roar, it releases different colored beams from all its seven heads, that joins together into a rainbow-colored aurora that easily pierces through the barrier and erases the gate in one single sweep.
Following that, a deafening silence envelopes the area, at least until, princess Liliana snaps out and yells, "What kind of monster is this!? The artifact barrier was never breached until now! If something like this exists out there then humanity is doomed! There is no way we can fight against something like that!", but then Shizuku explains to her what the Hydra is and where one can find it, but before we could be sidetracked even more, Kouki of all the people says, "Come on! We have no time for that now! Aiko-sensei and the others are still waiting for us to save them".
And so we rush inside the palace, but what we find isn't what we expected, we were ready for a regiment of knights ready to stop our advance with all their forces, but the first thing that we notice is the thick iron smell of blood, then all we can see is a sea of blood and mangled corpses, moreover, I can clearly hear sounds of fighting coming from all over the palace, 'It is clear that here the knights are fighting and dying against something...'.
The first to move is Kouki who quickly rushes forward, and soon we all follow him, everywhere we go, all we see are dead knights, magicians, and servants, their bodies butchered in a gruesome manner, no one is spared in this massacre, and soon we reach the place where the sounds of fighting are the loudest, we are now standing in front of the doors that leads to the throne room.
Without hesitation, Ryutarou kicks the doors open, and we all start to rush inside but what greets us on the other side, is the sight of a blood-painted throne room, and standing in front of the throne is what I can only describe as a Demon from hell, 3 meters tall, crimson red skin with some golden tribal tattoo on his arms, shoulders, head, and horn, a pair of huge curved horns, and sharp tusks, a really long tail that ends with a triangle shaped sharp golden tip.
(Image Here - Maoshi)
In front of him, there is a headless corpse, but from the regal attire he is wearing, I can only think of him as the King of this kingdom, Eliheid S. B. Heiligh, and indeed, in the demon's hand there is the head of a middle-aged man with long dark-blond hair and blue eyes, his expression frozen into one of pure terror, moreover, I can clearly see that the bloody spine is still attached to the severed head, making me think that the demon literally ripped off the head from the king's body.
The demon notices us and turns his head to look at us with his creepy white pupilless eyes, and with a grin that sends a shiver down my spine he says, "Good! There are some more toys to play with...", then he starts to talk with himself, "Well, Ehit said that he needs the Hero and some others as a backup in case his plan fails... But the others are fair play, and it isn't like I have to follow all his orders, I just need to use him so that I can reach my objective faster...", then he throws away the king's head, and with a toothy grin, he says "I'm going to enjoy this...".
Jayr POV - Tortus, Divine Mountain - 2013
I don't have any more time to look at Tio as she decimates the Holy Church's forces, as Noint begins to once again attack me by shooting those annoying silver feathers, but this time, the priests' debuff is gone as they just received Tio's Dragon Breath, so I'm easily able to bring up my Gatling and shoot down all the feathers.
Seeing that her attack was easily blocked, Noint decides to charge toward and use a frontal attack, or that appears to be, but once she reaches a certain distance, she spreads her silver wings, and the next moment, from them a blinding light is emitted, but I calmly close my eyes, and while still sensing her movements, I think 'Such a classic move won't work on me! I grew up watching Dragon Ball! I trained hard so that I could be prepared for this!'.
Immediately, I feel the presence of Noint's Mana behind me, and I'm about to turn around, but then I notice that behind there is only a bundle of harmless feathers imbued with Noint's Mana, and quickly realize, 'A decoy!', and the next moment, I feel the movement of air in front of me, so without hesitation, I aim with my Gatling, using my sense to pinpoint her position and pulling the trigger, with a loud roar, I release a barrage of bullets.
Some of the shoot bullets, quickly fly towards Noint's head, but she easily evades by ducking her head, while she blocks the others with one of her swords, at the same time, she gets closer and slashes at me with the other.
But I use the time I brought by shooting, to change the Tactical Weapon to its Sword Form, while at the same time, I use Aeredynamic to create small barrier-like plates of compressed air under my feet, to use as a firm foothold to move around in the air, then I use the sword to parry Noint's attack.
Then I use the force of her attack to spin around and build up more momentum and hit her with a spinning heel kick, but Noint is able to once again react in time, and use her swords to block the attack, but the power behind the kick, flings Noint back toward one of the towers of the cathedral, that with the sound of the impact, it starts to rattle and then quickly starts to collapse.
Seeing that I have a few seconds before she recovers and comes out from the crumbling tower, I quickly check my weapon, and as I thought, there is a small nick on it, 'Just like I suspected, even if I used the hardest material available to make the blade, Noint's sword enhanced with Disintegration Magic are still able to damage it... I have to be careful... Luckily it seems that I can use Reinforcement Magic to somewhat counter the effects, but it is a stop-gap measure at best...'.
Then the tower which Nointo plunged into blows off from the ground with a roaring sound raising a thick cloud of dust that dance around in the air, but the dust is blown away by the wind pressure of Noint's silver wings, showing me her unhurt form.
Not wanting to waste any more time, I quickly charge at her and once close enough, I cast the water spell Rupture, generating in front of me a magic circle, from which, a strong jet of water comes out and tries to slice Noint's head off as a high-speed cleaver, but as expected, Noint twist her body as she falls and avoids the sharp jet of water which went over right above her head, then she rushes at me at a dreadful speed.
However, I'm ready for it, and I quickly cast a small volley of Gravity enhanced Sagitta Magica, Series Obscuri, and Noint who notices the dark black rays coming at her, and knowing that her silver wings won't make it in time, she is forced to use her large swords to intercept them.
And so swinging her swords at hypersonic speed, she is able to cut through all the Sagitta Magica, however, she wasn't able to cut the after-effects of them that upon impact releases a strong shockwave from all the sides, which hit Noint directly and momentarily stops her movements.
And I take advantage of that moment to activate Limit Break, and as my body is enveloped in a crimson-red light, I rush toward her and attack her with a horizontal swing of my sword.
Nointo immediately uses her 2 large swords as a shield, however, she isn't able to suppress the power, and as the sound of colliding of metal resounds out with a terrible roar, Noint is blown away by the intense force, meanwhile, I notice that her swords cracks under the force of my attack and seems about to completely break.
So I don't relax and continue my pursuit by once again casting Sagitta Magica, Series Obscuri, and a volley of dark flashes quickly move through the night sky to reach my target, who once again crosses her swords in a defensive stance to block them.
Noint lets out a groan of pain, "Kuh!!", as my magic impacts the swords one after another, with super pin-point precision, every magic arrow lands in the same place further cracking the two swords, who despise the assault aren't broken yet, at the same time, Noint is blown away even further and crashes against some others facilities that were solemnly decorated by the church and remain buried in the rumbles.
I take this time to land on the ground and check over Tio and see that she is fighting against Ishtar and his priest, she is totally overwhelming them and she lays waste of everything in her way, 'Well another few blows like that and the cathedral is going to collapse... In fact, it can already be considered in a state of ruin...', but then I stop as I sense that Noint used her magic to move underground and is now right below me about to lunch a surprise attack.
Then, at the moment of the attack, I calmly jamp away, and look as the ground where I stood a few seconds ago explodes, then Noint flaps her wings and flies out of the hole, then she starts to attack me with a large number of silver feathers that are shot out like a machinegun, while also releasing a bombardment of silver light beams, the Disintegration Magic.
But I dodge all the beams, while at the same time, I change my weapon to its Sword Arm Form, and using the blades, I deflect all the feathers she shot, while at the same time, I charge at her, quickly closing the distance.
But then something changes, and I notice that Noint's attacks have become a lot stronger, they are basically in a whole new dimension compared to before, and looking closely at her, I see that every part of Noint's body is clad in silver magic and is releasing overwhelming pressure, 'It looks like she is also using Limit Break... she not only is stronger than before but also faster... but still, this isn't enough!'.
I decide that it is finally time to end this and stop holding back, I quickly move behind Noint, so fast that she is barely able to react, and like a spinning top, I swing my twin large swords that gather immense power thanks to the centrifugal force.
Noint surprises me as she moves faster than ever before, and is able to put up her swords as a shield at the last moment, but it isn't enough, as my blades split her already damaged swords in half, but that does buy her some time, while I spin one more time, and gather even more force while focusing all the magic power of Limit Break into my swords that start to shine in bright red light.
And in a last effort to block my attack, Noint leaks out a bitter voice and wraps herself with her silver wings like a cocoon.
Silver magic containing Disintegration Magic shines out brightly, it looks exactly like a moon, at the same time, the bright red magical power of Limit Break shines more and more on my body and sword, soon the silver moon is completely cut into halves by two bright red lines.
My swords easily cut through Noint's magic, wings, and body, leaving behind a bright red trail in the air, then blood starts to leak out of her body, and soon the upper part starts to slide off and fall on the ground.
Then as the two halves of her body fall on the ground, Noint looks at me in shock as she asks, "How... could you be... this strong? Are all the Irregular like you... Wait... You aren't an Irregular... You... are... an... Invader...", but even in this state there is no emotion in her voice, and I can't help but feel pity for this creature in front of me, 'For a moment she was truly surprised... She has the potential to be a living being, but all she knows is how to serve her creator... There is no happiness, no sadness, only emptiness and following commands, even if somewhere inside her the potential to feel emotions and be something more is there... Only it is suppressed because that is what Ehit needs, a Soulless Puppet...'.
Soon Noint's eyes return back to the soulless almost mechanical ones, then they quickly lose their lights and become hollows, and her body falls down onto a remote hillside nearby the church building.
I move to her side and look at her body unsure of what to do, 'Should I keep the body so that I can revive her once I deal with Ehit and give her a chance to truly live? Leave it here? Burn it? Follow the #2 rule of Zombieland and double tap?', but as I was about to decide, all of the sudden, a huge explosion roars out and causes the Divine Mountain to shake severely.
And looking back, the spectacle that greets my eyes is the church and its cathedral collapsing while a huge mushroom cloud forms from it with a roaring sound and mutter "Well, looks like Tio is done too... But isn't that an overkill?", then I unconsciously pick up Noint's body and put it into my S.T. where I freeze it with a Freezing Coffin, then I rush toward what remains of the cathedral.
Once there, I see that Tio is flying over the ruins in her Dragon From, it seems that she notices me as she quickly lands in front of me and transforms back into her human form then with a timid smile she asks, "Ma, master... how are things on your side?", and I reply with, "I'm done... And it seems that you too finished, I'm glad you are fine... But isn't a little too much?".
Tio seems embarrassed as she explains what happened, basically, my and Noint's fight did cause more damage than I thought as it brought down many of the barriers that the Holy Church erected all around the cathedral and weakened many others, one of which, kept the most volatile and dangerous substances safe and separated, and the fight between Tio and the Pope's group was the final spark, well, final Dragon Breath needed to bring down that precise barrier, that caused the substances to mix cause an explosion so strong that if seen by a certain ninja with too many mouths would cause him to have an orgasm while yelling, "Art... is an EXPLOSION!".
Then Tio says, "It isn't this one fault... This one didn't think that the Holy Church would have such dangerous substances in such a place... But on the good side, the entire Holy Church is eradicated, no one survived the explosion!", and as she says this, my eyes wander toward the cathedral ruins, and as Tio does the same, I say, "Yup, they were likely blown away with it...", and Tio adds, "The church just put too much faith in their barrier. It was also a surprise attack, completely defenseless against that blast, it's likely none are alive".
Then Tio notices something and says, "Master. There's a person. He clearly doesn't seem to be ordinary...", I quickly turn to look where Tio is pointing and see that there is definitely a man with a bald head and wearing white vestments descending, his body is transparent and he is swinging waveringly.
The man with the bald head seems to realize that we saw him as he turns around and starts heading back, he is moving as if gravity doesn't exist and slips and slides to the other side of the mountain rubble.
And he turns around just before he disappeared to glance over at us, and seeing that Tio warily asks, "What should we do, master?", but I understood what is going on, and say, "Let's follow him... He will lead us to the Age of Gods magic", and so we start to follow the soul/ghost/residual image, and step into the place where the bald man had just disappeared.
The bald man's figure shows himself once in a while as we advance through the ruins, and after 5 minutes of walking we finally reach our destination, the bald man stood quietly while looking straight at Tio and me.
Then the bald man silently points at some heap of rubble, his glance seems to tell us to advance, so I look at Tio, who nods back and both go toward that location.
And once there, the rubble begins to levitate and the ground underneath it begins to shine faintly, I can also see the crest of the Liberator shining slightly, confirming my suspicion, then the light that the ground emitted wraps us, and in the next instant, we are standing in a completely unknown strange space.
It isn't that big, the room is painted lustrously black, a magic formation is drawn in the center, and there is an antique book on the pedestal by its side, this is clearly the last room of the Labyrinth, then I look at Tio who nods and without hesitation, we move inside the magic formation.
As the magic formation lights up, it isn't the usual feeling of my memories being examined, but there is a sense of something going deeper inside, quite an unpleasant one, so much that Tio lets out a groan, but it last for only a moment as the knowledge of magic is implanted directly into my head, then I hear Tio say, "...Spirit Magic?", and I comment, "Yes, a magic that lets you manipulate the soul...", then I ignore the book on the pedestal as for sure will tell the same story I have already heard, plus maybe some details of the liberator's life, and only take the ring from the pedestal, then we quickly leave the place using the ring.
Done here, we quickly fly back to the Capital City and see that Freid's familiar are still flying around catching monster-turned people, but the majority of the unrest in the city's streets is quelled, but the Royal Palace is totally on fire, and so without hesitation, we hurry toward it.
Once there, I see something that makes my blood freeze while a fury I have never felt before almost takes control of my whole being.
What I saw through the destroyed roof of the place is the sight of a 3 meters tall demon-like being with red skin, all around him are the bodies of the Hero Party most of them broken almost unrecognizable, and he is holding in his huge hand Eri's bleeding torso, the lower half of her body ripped apart and bleeding.