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Chapter 140 - Serving Justice
🕑 Added 2020-03-10 19:40:30 +0000 UTC
Other side
Tokomaha lost over a hundred of her clones in an instant without even knowing what killed them. She had just entered the Prichet district and seen a group of people that definitely didn't belong there when something struck them down from above. Thus, the true extent of the danger that awaits them is still unknown.
But Aurelia doesn't feel the need to take any precautions and flies straight across the rooftops toward their destination with a swarm of golden weapons following her. She will crush all opposition with overwhelming power and not let anything slow her down in taking revenge on Shelnir. If not her, then Alverost will get to taste her revenge.
Still, the God of Growth wonders what could have taken out all her clones at once. There couldn't be over a hundred skilled assassins that struck all at the same time without any of her seeing them. There was no wide-range attack that flattened the entire district, and the floating upside-down city had already left the area, which rules out some kind of weapon from there.
The demons will begin to bounce back now that the devils' support has disappeared. Kamii and Hestia stayed behind to clean up the castle of any intruders. It's only a matter of time until those two will finish off the last stragglers. That's why Tokomaha needs to do her part here.
"Out of my way." Without moving her hands, Aurelia rains death onto dozens of devils standing on the rooftops while trying to hurl balls of fire at her. Even though she seems enraged, she has enough control not to damage the buildings with her barrage of golden weapons.
Tokomaha runs at the forefront of an army of clones, washing over the devils in the streets like a tidal wave. Even the elites among them don't stand a chance now that she knows how to circumvent their armor. They quickly make their way through the streets and reach the vicinity of where her earlier copies had been eliminated.
"We are here." The leaf-haired girl speaks into her mind to contact Senka. It took her some time to get used to this, but she's grateful that they can communicate quickly through the living doll.
"Look out for the false gods. Don't try to fight them if they hold something in their hands you have never seen before." Comes Senka's reply, though it sounds more like Chaos said it. In Zohigal, the enemies had weapons that could shoot arrows of light. Chaos said that those were called laser guns, which are as powerful as bolts of lightning.
Tokomaha understands that getting hit by lightning is incredibly deadly. She journeyed with the God of Storm for a time and has seen her handiwork. Even if the laser guns can't compare in visual impact, she knows not to underestimate them.
Aurelia, on the other hand, seems wholly unfazed by the prospect of facing weapons wielded by the false gods and their soldiers. Her body is on a different level compared to anybody else's in the harem of Chaos. Never once has her golden skin been blemished by a scratch, let alone a wound.
The God of Growth is consolidating all her clones in the city and making them converge on the Prichet district from all sides. This time, she will keep many out of range to get a clear picture of what it is that could destroy her copies so quickly. They may be pressed for time, but it's better than to go in blindly with her real body and get hurt.
In the central plaza of the rather affluent district are piles of dead demons and devils alike. At the very center stands a ring of soldiers in black armor, much like those they encountered in Zohigal. Her clones saw some of them earlier while they were still in transit, but this seems to have been their destination.
They're protecting a machine that appears to be drilling into the ground, operated by a group of humans and demons with metal bits sticking out of their bodies. At their center is a boy with golden hair, wearing a shirt, short pants, and a backpack. He looks barely older than twelve, but the calculating intelligence in his green eyes is undeniable.
Tokomaha has seen his face on the big screen floating above Zohigal and earlier above Arkaim. It's Alverost, and this time, it must be the real him.
She watches from the streets and alleyways leading up to the plaza. Aside from the drill, there doesn't seem to be any other contraption that could have eliminated her clones earlier. Last time, the machine hadn't even been set up yet, so it couldn't have come from that.
In either case, that drill puts a time limit on them. No matter what their plan is, it will most likely be completed when it finishes the hole. Before that happens, Tokomaha has to stop them; for that, she can sacrifice any number of clones. More than a thousand of her are ready to storm them from all sides at once.
Just then, a rain of golden weapons falling in a perfectly circular pattern instantly eliminates all the soldiers in black. Even though Aurelia had the chance to kill the false god boy with that volley, she instead decides to reveal herself by landing in the square a dozen steps away from Alverost.
"Finally." She says in a tone that causes Tokomaha's ears to twitch. This is the first time she has heard so much hatred in the golden woman's voice. "You will pay for all your crimes against life, Alverost."
"I think not." Although his expression suggests that he's nervous, he speaks in a defiant tone while raising his hand. He has a wristband with a cylindrical device at its center, which reflects the light like the windows in the city do.
In the next instant, Aurelia's skin color turns into that of a regular human being, and all the golden weapons floating around her drop to the ground. She falls to her knees and gasps for air, utter confusion on her face as she looks down at her hands.
"What... have you done?" She glares at Alverost, as confusion makes way for disbelief when understanding dawns on her. He sneers at her, judging that he doesn't really need to answer. Even then, he takes the time to do so anyway.
"You rely the most on the Imagination Engine. I'm glad that it was you who came here." He says while showing off the device on his wrist. He then waves his other hand, upon which his backpack opens on its own, and a metallic arm extends over his shoulder. "When you have to shoot... shoot. Don't talk."
Tokomaha's eyes widen, and she instantly rushes forward along with all of her clones. But before she can take even two steps, the sound of a single laser shot rings out across the plaza.
Chaos side
In the end, everything on the ship died without any of them trying to escape. It seems it was really only occupied by mindless slaves and incubating devils. Maybe I should have eaten more before wasting all that biomass, but what's done is done.
To my right, the sun is coming up from the horizon, rising on the last day of this planet - if Tokomaha should fail. Looking up, I find the moon looming close above us, brightly illuminated by the sunlight. The number on its surface has been replaced with a giant grinning grimace painted in red. It's Chaos-Juzual's idea of a joke, and I don't find it funny.
"How is the battle in Arkaim?" I ask Senka in my mind as I ready myself to head back at maximum speed.
"Since the ship above disappeared, the numbers of the devils have been dwindling fast." The doll girl replies. Then she continues in a slightly worried tone. "Tokomaha and Aurelia should have arrived in the Prichet district by now, but they haven't contacted me yet."
"I'll be back in a second." I glance down at the burning wreckage of the city-sized ship once more, then cover myself in shields so that I can withstand the air friction of moving at multiple times the speed of sound.
"Rolan and the others went after them." Senka suddenly adds, and I blink in surprise.
"Understood." It's not like he could do anything against the Old Humans. With that thought, I shoot across the sky, leaving behind a massive sonic shockwave.
Others side
"I made it..." Rolan stands in front of the de-powered Aurelia with the glowing sword Roshanee in his right hand. His left is raised and outstretched, holding an oval barrier that seems to emerge from the back of his hand.
He lost his left arm to one of Kamii's companions, but here he stands with a new one that appears to be made from metal. That must be what Chaos told him to find Kleihn for, and it came just at the right time. The shield deployed from his mechanical hand has blocked the laser shot from Alverost's shoulder weapon and made the Old Human's eyes nearly pop out of their sockets.
"Not this time." The former leader lowers his arm and glares at Alverost.
"You?!" He shouts, then looks at the device on his armband with an incredulous expression. "How?!"
"It seems you did something about this... Imagination Engine in the area." Rolan glances at the surroundings once before returning his gaze to Alverost. "I don't feel Roshanee's empowerment here."
With a flourish of his sword, he steps toward the Old Human while raising his left hand balled into a fist. Since it's mechanical in nature, its abilities aren't inhibited inside the area of effect from Alverost's watch. And even with Roshanee rendered a regular sword that glows from the inside, it's still a blade that can cut through a human's flesh. Judging by the fact that the Old Human used a mechanical weapon himself, the inhibition affects him as well.
"This is for the better." With these words, Rolan charges forward.
"Stay away!" Alverost cries, upon which his backpack opens up on all sides, revealing a multitude of arms carrying guns and blades of light. The mindless drones operating the drill drop their work, upon which the machine comes to a halt, and pick up the laser rifles of the dead elite soldiers in black.
The former leader turns his left wrist, upon which the oval shield grows in size. It covers his whole body from the laser fire shot by the Old Human and the drones alike. Charging forward, he swiftly gets into the range of the latter and lets his natural sword skills do their work.
That's when Tokomaha and her clones charge forward. The way she understood it, there's an area around Alverost where her ability to create copies of herself is rendered useless. But it should prove a useful distraction for her real body to join the fray.
The moment they approach the Old Human within thirty steps, the clones disappear into the dirt that they were created with. But due to their sheer amount and the wind blowing across the city, the dust is scattered across the plaza. It flies in the direction of the drones and Alverost alike, who are stunned for a moment. It's enough for Rolan to cut his way through the enemies and get right up to the Old Human.
But he brings all his mechanical arms to bear, turning into a whirlwind of laser shots and glowing blades that causes the former leader to fall back in surprise. His shield can block the storm of hits, but one heavy strike from an arm sends him flying backward into the midst of the drones. Tumbling to the ground while taking several with him, he disappears out of sight.
Tokomaha jumps back when a stray laser shot hits the ground in front of her. Chaos already warned her that these weapons could seriously hurt or kill her. But she realizes that without the Imagination Engine, she's only a regular human. Until it happened to Aurelia before her eyes, she wouldn't have believed it. She spent centuries as a goddess, and it's hard to think like a human now. But her instincts honed in the wild are now holding her back.
She's afraid to die, and her legs won't move as she wills them to.
That's when several people run past her. She notices the bald head of the tallest one and realizes that they're the humans that were almost always around Rolan. They are Gram, Svanhild, and Halthor, each wearing their armors. But the unique pieces of equipment they carry all look similar to their leader's new arm.
At the sight of the newcomers, the drones begin to shoot at them. Gram takes the front and slams his shield down, upon which a huge barrier of light expands from it. It blocks the laser shots coming for him and those behind him.
When the barrage ends, Halthor jumps through the shield and extends his gauntlet toward the enemies. Lightning arcs between his fingers and one of the drones before jumping over to the others in the vicinity. The mechanical parts sticking out of their bodies explode, causing them to drop to the ground, sizzling and unmoving.
With the line of enemies out of the way, Svanhild charges forward with the lance in her hand. It's smaller than the one she used to wield on the back of the dragonkin she rode, but it's segmented into three parts. The center opens like an umbrella and turns into a shield. Then the cover over her arm lights up with two flames that shoot backward. If she didn't wear her crimson dragon armor, she would be burned by those jets.
With wheels under her greaves, she shoots forward as if hovering an inch above the ground. The lance is trained on Alverost, who stares at the approaching point like a mouse under the gaze of a snake.
Then he raises his hands in front of his face in panic. As if that was a signal, a translucent shield of blue emerges from an attachment on the shoulder straps of his backpack. It stops the lance dead in its tracks, causing Svanhild to almost lose her grip on the weapon.
But instead of trying a different angle, she stays in place with the jet still active, aiming to punch through with brute force. Then, the tip of her lance breaks, and the entire first section snaps into four pieces. In reality, it was only a cover that opened to reveal a drill head, which begins to spin with such intensity that the air around it seems to get pulled in.
The noise is overwhelming, as sparks fly and the barrier shatters alongside the drill. Shooting forward, Svanhild very nearly impales Alverost, whose mechanical arms swing forward to deflect the broken lance coming for his chest. In doing so, they break under the impact, but turns aside the former Dragon Knight and send her tumbling into the giant machine behind the Old Human.
Gram takes the opening to rush forward with the intent to slam into Alverost. One of the latter's two remaining mechanical arms stab forward with a glowing blade and penetrate the physical part of his shield. But the big man already expected this and lets go of his only weapon to grab the other arm and direct its laser fire up into the sky.
Halthor appears from behind Gram, gets behind the Old Human, and plunges his gauntleted fist into the open backpack before discharging his electric attack. The shoulder straps snap open on their own and launch the backpack away to spare the wearer from the explosion that sends the former Lightning Knight flying backward.
Alverost, disarmed and alone, moves to deactivate the Imagination Engine inhibitor. Anything is better than dying here while rendered powerless by his own invention. He would let the world die and return after as a creator of new life; this time, he would make sure to program any kind of rebellious tendencies out of everything.
But before he can finish inputting the command, a glowing blade cuts through his forearm and severs his wrist. Rolan, having bid his time until now, has rushed in at the right moment and swung Roshanee without a hint of hesitation.
With an ear-splitting scream, Alverost falls backward onto his bottom and holds the cauterized stump of his left arm. The former leader raises his sword to deliver the finishing blow, but a sudden burst of air followed by a massive sonic boom stops him. When he looks up, he finds a figure floating down from above, enter the area of the inhibition field, and fall flat on her face.
It's Chaos.
Chaos side
I push myself off the ground and look down at my hands in surprise. Willing a flame to appear doesn't work, and neither does floating. But I'm still in my human appearance, so I haven't lost all my abilities. Looking ahead, I find the boy Alverost sitting on the ground, screaming and holding his cauterized stump of a wrist.
A beautiful woman in golden armor kneels on the ground with labored breathing and unable to move. With one look, I can tell that this is Aurelia, who has somehow lost her powers. Tokomaha is standing a distance away as if bolted to the ground. Judging by the fact that the human party complete with Svanhild and Halthor is surrounding Alverost, it's safe to say that he's responsible for de-powering people in the area.
"Don't kill him yet." I walk over to Aurelia and see if she's alright.
"Why? He's responsible for all this!" Rolan raises his voice while using his new left arm to gesture at our surroundings. The plaza is filled with dead bodies from demons and devils alike.
"I said yet." Giving the former leader a displeased look, I kneel beside the golden girl who seems to have difficulties breathing. "Hard, isn't it? When you don't need to breathe for centuries, and it all comes back to you."
"Mind... your own... business." Weakly smacking my extended hand away, Aurelia musters the strength to reply. If she can do that, she's alright. "That... armband."
I follow where she points and find Alverost's severed hand on the ground a short distance from him. There's a large watch still attached to the wrist, and understand that this must be what's inhibiting the Imagination Engine in this area. It explains why the humans were able to overpower an Old Human while Aurelia and Tokomaha couldn't participate.
"Somebody shut him up." I gesture at the still screaming boy. It must hurt to lose a limb, but that's nothing compared to the suffering he has caused, so I have not a shred of sympathy for him. But the humans around him seem to pity the childlike Old Human. It doesn't seem like he has anything more he can do at this point, so he really is nothing but a little boy barely in his teens. They don't move and only stare at him with complicated expressions.
Walking over to the severed hand and picking it up, I pull his wrist out of the watch and toss it aside before looking at the device. It appears simple enough, with a touchscreen in the center that shows the word 'on' in green. When I bring my finger to it, nothing happens.
"Nobody... but me... can use that!" Alverost finally stops screaming to glare at me while breathlessly yelling in my direction triumphantly. It must give him a sense of a silver lining to know that nobody but he can operate his technology.
"Is that so." I turn my hand into a tentacle and snatch up Alverost's severed hand that I carelessly dropped just now. But instead of using his finger to operate it as he expected I would do, I toss the piece of the Old Human into my mouth. It causes the humans to look at me in shock, but I ignore their gazes.
In the next moment, I transform into another Alverost. Everybody is stunned, but the one most surprised is the person himself. Then he raises his voice once again, sounding less convinced than before but still spiteful.
"Transforming into me isn't enough!" He laughs, and I wonder where he's getting the idea from that this device is the only thing keeping us from killing him. It's nothing more than an interesting gimmick that I think could come in handy to blindside Shelnir or even Chaos-Juzual and Mataku.
I touch the screen with a finger, upon which the word on it changes to display a request for confirmation by moving a virtual knob across a star-shaped pattern. Apparently, Alverost built in a failsafe so that it wouldn't release the inhibition field on accident.
"How long does the battery last on this?" I walk over to Alverost, who stares at me blankly while holding his stump of a hand. "Tell me or lose your other hand."
To demonstrate how serious my threat is, I grow a tentacle from my back and turn it into a giant pair of scissors. Snipping once in front of the boy's face, I drive home that the next time he hears this sound, it will have severed his remaining wrist. His eyes widen in realization, but then he smiles nervously.
"Y-you have nothing... nothing to threaten me with." He stutters, trying to act fearless. At least he understands that his end is coming soon, regardless of whether or not he answers my question. That's why being defiant and denying me the use of his device is his final act of resistance.
"Oh, well." I shrug and draw the pattern on the screen to unlock the Imagination Engine in the area. That's when Alverost's eyes widen in surprise before he laughs almost maniacally.
"You idiot! You just gave me a way out!" He raises his hand as if grasping something in the air. But when nothing happens, he blinks once before realizing that he was tricked.
"Is that so." I show him the screen, which still displays the big green 'on' sign. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, and this self-proclaimed genius fell for it. "Do tell what your way out would have been."
"That would be me." A familiar voice suddenly speaks above me, and I look up to find a figure faintly glowing from the inside floating in the air. Pearl-white skin, a radiant halo behind her back, and a cleavage that is truly the bounty of Mother Sun.
Areteniha has arrived, and her gaze is anything but motherly upon seeing the state her son is in.
