A sky of blue presented itself before him. Endless, glorious blue.

The bloody red he had seen for thirty years straight had been banished, leaving only a cloudless beauty of nature that made Kreig Wiedermann, a man of 147 and a warrior of 130, want to cry.

But if he turned his attention from the sky that seemed to embrace him like a mother hugging her child, he found a number of guns and various other weapons trained on him. He could recognize a few of the weapons, though far from all of them. Guns, rifles, spears and swords all geared for a fight. His grip on the bloodstained sword in his hand tightened. Once, it had been golden. Once, it had possessed a purpose beyond killing. Now, it might as well have been a club.

The muscles in his body that had begun to relax at the great blue sky above now reared in anticipation. It seemed that not even on Earth would he be truly free. Not that he wanted to fight. In all honesty, he was tired. All he wanted to do was sit down and not think and accept this end to his days of fighting. But the people in front of him seemed far from interested in letting him do so. The unmistakable scent of fear exuded from their young, able bodies and he wondered how many he would have to kill before they stopped attacking.

A bespeckled man in a suit seemed to hold the answer.

“W-, wait! Don’t attack, just-,” the speckled suit stepped before Kreig, arms held up placatingly. “Let’s talk, okay? We don’t need to fight, so…” Of all the men collected here, this man was the scrawniest. His suit, as large as it was, only barely hid his bony limbs. He approached closer and Kreig felt a deep-seated emotion grab hold of him. One that told him that enemies shouldn’t get too close. That if they got too close, they would be able to hurt him. That if they hurt him, he might die. And if he died, so did his faith.

Ants crawled alongside his back and he felt his teeth clench.

“Step back, Thomas!” A youth stepped up, his spear pointed in Kreig’s direction. Logically, Kreig knew that such a weapon would seldom be able to harm him. Logically, he should have been able to handle this. But the spear was too close, and the skies were darkening, and the red was creeping up on him like a slimy mudcrawler and he could only smell the blood that clung to his armour like vengeful spirits of the past. “We’ll deal with-,”

In a single, sweeping movement, the upper half of the youth’s face was bisected from the lower at the height of the mouth. Kreig blinked and glanced at his sword, now held straight out. Atop the edge of his mighty sword, a pair of eyes blinked and turned. When Kreig looked back at the youth’s body, he found it still standing, the opened lower jaw working and moving as though to speak. A hissing noise found its way out of the open, staring throat and the tongue flopped like a fish on dry land.

Silence rung heavy across the square as the body took one step away from Kreig, staggered, attempted to right itself and then fell over, its legs still trying to move.

Several dozen eyes turned on Kreig.

“D-, David?” the speckled suit whimpered, his gaze glued to the still blinking half-head on top of Kreig’s blade. In a movement fueled more by disgust than respect, Kreig angled the broadsword to the side, letting the half-head fall to the pavement with a splat. Feeling nothing but cold, muddy numbness at the carnage that would undoubtedly unfold, Kreig watched with seasoned detachment how the speckled suit swung between the need to run and the desire for revenge. In the end, he simply shouted, “Attack!”

By that point, Kreig had already brought up his shield to guard against the oncoming attacks. In truth, he didn’t actually need it, but he knew too little about the compatibility between the system and modern warfare to take the chance. Bullets peppered his shield uselessly, each fired cartridge falling to the ground with a little plink.

Using his defensiveness to advance, the rest of the youth’s comrades rushed him, each fueled by a burning desire for revenge. The first to get close enough to him was a middle-aged man wearing thick, cloth-like armour. Kreig didn’t need to use a single blessing to bisect the man by the waist. A spool of organs escaped the confines of his intestines but by this point, Kreig’s attention had rather been drawn to a woman standing off to the side, mumbling spells. In his head, a simple fact of war repeated itself, always take out the mages first.

Moving to her side quicker than anyone could react, he decapitated her. Her still-mumbling head fell to the ground. As her comrades whirled on their feet to face him, he stepped on her skull, splattering it against his sabatons.

The look of abject terror on her comrades’ faces told him it worked. But perhaps not as advisory as he might have liked it.

“AAAAAHHH!!” Screaming in anger, a woman wielding two smaller knives threw herself at him. He raised his shield. Clearly assuming that he was going on the defensive, she approached, knives drawn and ready.

Once she got in range, Kreig bashed his shield into her midsection, causing her torso to explode outwards in a burst of blood and guts. The only thing that still connected her unscathed head and limbs was a collection of web-like tendons and muscles. Her body, alive only because her intact brain couldn’t understand what had happened, fell to its knees.

Happy with his evaluation of the strength of Earth humans, he turned to the remaining three, viewing them less as a bundle of combatants and more as a chore to be dealt with. Perhaps, if he dealt with them soundly enough, there might be no objections left? After all, if he could prove to the world that attacking him was useless, they would stop, wouldn’t they?

Raising his hand, he gestured towards the three stunned combatants.

A single word fell from his lips.

“Smite.”

Wrath of God (X)

The combatants only had a single moment, a realization fueled far more by fighter’s instinct than anything else, to glance up at the sky before a series of what almost appeared to be lances of light rained down upon them, stabbing into them with all the grace and power of a pole stabbing them. These lances were far from merciful, each just so happening to land in a way so as to not pierce the brain. One penetrated through one of the men through his open mouth, through all his internal organs and finally out through his thigh. Another pinned a girl by each limb as though she were a butterfly to be presented. The third had so many lances impaling his back that he appeared more like a hedgehog than a man.

They gave no sounds of pain as every organ and tendon they had was ruptured and severed. Their airways had been cut off, their eyes gouged out, their chests stabbed.

The only thing they could give before dying was a single, regretful glance at their killer.

Then, as life drained from their eyes, the lances quickly dissipated, letting their twisted and mangled bodies drop to the floor. Kreig watched them with endless apathy.

Before he could so much as hope that this could convince the nearby police officers to drop their guns, a bullet hit him in the side of the head. Not even scratching his skin, it fell to the floor with a soft plink. He turned to his right, where he found an officer with his gun drawn, eyes pooling with tears. “A-, ah…” He was young, alright. Going by the softness of his face and the look in his eye, he must’ve been new to all of this. Kreig turned on him, wondering why his overwhelming show of power hadn’t worked. Maybe a show of cruelty might deter them better? Usually, people retreated once they realized they had no hope of survival. So why…

“P-, please, spare him! He’s just a boy!” An older man, wearing the same outfit as the young boy, stepped between the boy and Kreig. His eyes shone with terror and determination. An admirable man, all things considered.

Kreig almost did as he asked only because of the language he spoke. Almost.

Instead, he lightly tossed his broadsword at them, successfully impaling the both of them in one strike. As they fell to their knees, uselessly gripping at the bloodstained sword, the other officers each made a choice between fighting and fleeing. Going by the bullets now peppering his face and armour, it was clear which choice most of them had decided to make. Suddenly feeling very tired of the situation, Kreig wandered over to the dying pair and slid his sword out of their chests. With their chests freed of the weapon, the both of them bled out within seconds.

As for the rest of the officers, he really just wanted to get this over with. If scaring them away wouldn’t work, then there was only one option left.

“We need back-up - Fighters, mages, whatever you can ge-,” the officer wasn’t able to finish his plea for help before Kreig’s armoured fist was firmly lodged in his chest. With the lightest squeeze of his hand, the heart exploded inside his chest. A spray of blood escaped the officer’s mouth, splattering across Kreig’s pale face. He turned to the rest of them.

It was a bloodbath.

By the end of it, Kreig seriously considered putting on the helmet again, if only to shield his face from the blood. But by that point he was already soaked, so it wouldn’t help. Kreig walked easily over the destroyed and mutilated bodies, crushing skulls and bones underfoot. A whirring overhead brought his attention to what seemed to be a massive fly. Or, rather, a helicopter, if his memories weren’t giving out on him.

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A flare of magic flew from the side of the helicopter, hitting Kreig head-on. A lesser armour would have crumbled. A lesser man would have died. Kreig simply stared at the magician up above, silently considering his next move.

In the end, he chose that he would much rather get this over with now than later.

Holding up his arms, he let a series of chants fall from his lips.

White Hole (X)

Between his hands, a small, almost unnoticeable white sphere of light hung in midair. Uncaringly, he clasped his hands around the small thing, bringing it down before his eyes. Then, with all the grace of a professional sportsman, he threw it at the helicopter. Seemingly drawn to it, the white sphere hit the mark perfectly, striking the nose of the helicopter.

It swallowed it.

A dozen lives were snuffed out in an instant, feeding the growing white hole, letting it burst and expand until it was far larger than the helicopter itself. And it just kept growing. From the size of a helicopter to a house, until it finally seemed to dwarf the surrounding skyscrapers. With the greed of a starving tiger, it tore into the roofs of the nearby skyscrapers, consuming steel and glass and concrete and living human beings that had nothing to do with any of this.

With only a single word, Kreig stopped its gluttonous rampage. “Cease.” And so it did.

Spurred by his desires, the white hole shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until it was barely the size of a golf ball. It fell into his gloved hand and he snuffed it out.

“F-, freeze!” Turning towards where the voice came from, Kreig saw another group of young people, each more frightened than the next. Silently, their gazes hopped between his face and something just above it, likely his level. To return the favour, he glanced at theirs.

Human, Lv.57

Human, Lv.43

Human, Lv.51

Pathetic.

“I-, if you can understand us, please surrender!” The boy now shouting at him must have been their leader, despite his obvious youth. As a matter of fact, his level wasn’t even the highest among them. Kreig almost sneered.

If the boy had expressed it in any other way, Kreig might have laid down his weapons. The simple fact that he was encouraged to ‘surrender’ was what sealed their fates.

The captain of the royal guard never surrendered. An Oracle of God never surrendered. To surrender was to die.

Kreig could not allow himself to die.

Elsewhere in the city, Gerald ran. He ran, and he ran, and he ran, and he didn’t want to die.

He was lucky War had gotten distracted by all those strange people. Otherwise he would have realized that Gerald had survived and he would have killed him. That was the simple fact of the matter. Gerald had only barely survived because everyone was distracted by War but now everything was going to hell and Gerald wasn’t sure he would survive this at all.

This place, this city… Whatever this place was, in a matter of minutes, it wouldn’t be here anymore. War would make sure of it.

Glancing back, Gerald was given a great view of how a massive white sphere swallowed nearby buildings. It was like looking at a second sun. For a second Gerald felt breathless and strange, but then the sun disappeared, replaced by the endless sounds of a thousand people screaming. Gerald kept running.

His breath burnt in his throat. Around him, the streets were mostly empty, but in the buildings, he could sometimes see terrified gazes peering out. He tried to ignore them. If he stopped to warn them, he would die. If he stopped running, he would die.

Gerald had always been good at running. That was why he survived hopeless battles while others died. The trick was to never stop to help. If you stopped, then the people who were already dead but still moving would grab you and drag you down into the mud and dirt and beg you to stay at their side while they died but if you did that, you would also perish. It was selfish and it made Gerald feel sick but here he was again, running and running and running and ignoring all those eyes pleading for him to tell them what to do.

He ran and ran until he met a group of people wielding weapons and armour. They stared at him strangely and he looked at them with equal apprehension. But none of them were directly hostile.

And, for once, Gerald stopped. Because deep in his teenage mind, he still carried hope. Hope that War could be stopped. Hope that he could survive. Hope that he might yet be able to set the world right.

And so, he called out to them. “P-, please! You need to-, War is…”

They shared strange looks. “H992w? Ue 9&% sLE0+ kYG-T!3?”

Gerald blinked at them. “I’m sorry?”

Clearly as confused as he felt, they began talking amongst themselves, sharing strange mumbles and odd phrases. In the end, one of them stepped up. She was a fairly young woman, a fair bit older than Gerald but far from fully adult. Her red hair burnt gorgeously and her bright green eyes fell on him. “H-, hello, I h- have the name Samantha, but you-, but you…” She ummed and aahed for a few seconds. “Sam. Sam name. Me - Sam. What name you?”

Her speaking was horrible and her pronunciation was off, but Gerald could still mostly understand her. “I’m-, we don’t have time! War is coming, and you need to stop him! Or-, or escape!” He bit his lip. “And-, and take me with you…”

Sam made a strange facial expression. The others asked her something and she replied uncertainly. Gerald chanced a glance behind himself. Only a few blocks down, an explosion of some sort rung out. He was close.

Gerald gulped.

As before, the group had died remarkably easy, now little more than piles of flesh and bones. A few had been killed mercifully with their necks crushed into pulp while others had received a more cruel punishment for suggesting he give up his life.

But throughout it all, it occurred to him that something was missing. There was some little detail here that he had forgotten about, some grudge left unfulfilled…

He sniffed the air. Ah, yes, that was it.

The soldier boy.

Lost in his surprise at returning home, he had forgotten all about the rat of the Empire. Perhaps, had none of this happened, he might have chosen to spare the boy - to let bygones be bygones. Forgiveness was a virtue, after all.

But could he really let such a dangerous creature roam his homeworld? Even more so, could he allow that little thing to tarnish his name?

All Kreig wanted was to return to the life that his younger self had been removed from. With that possibility facing him, was he really about to let a simple soldier ruin it all?

Kreig took a deep breath, letting the scent of fear and blood filter through his system. Above the general fear and panic permeating the area around him, he could smell a fear much deeper than the rest, one birthed of personal experience rather than impersonal catastrophe. That’s where he was.

An old chant fell from his lips and a pair of snowy-white wings sprouted from his backs.

Wings of a Dove (X)

He took to the skies, anxious to put this all behind him.

“What’d he say?” Jones asked her, his voice tinged with a worry she understood all too well.

“I-, I’m not too sure, something about some guy called Kreig going over here to-,” A pang of emotional pain struck her heart at the mention of the familiar name. “To… I don’t know, I can’t really understand him.” Sam hadn’t been a Fighter for all that long. Getting her life together after those aimless years following the death of everyone but George had taken longer than she’d ever let on. Even now, she still wasn’t sure if she’d ever fully recover.

At least her rudimentary German had come into use somehow. Though, why a German kid wearing medieval armour was here was beyond her.

Jones cursed softly and she honestly wanted to do the same, but crouched down in front of the kid so as to not scare him was kind of hindering that.

The city was on fire. That she knew. Those explosions just now…

They had been called in on an emergency. She had been busy at home, but with the city suddenly attacked by what was currently considered a disaster on the level of Famine of the East, she’d had no choice. Not that they actually knew what it was. The reports of what was going on were, at the moment, vague at best. For example, no voice on the comms had seen or described the massive white hole that appeared mere minutes earlier, swallowing entire buildings before disappearing.

Whatever this was, Sam sure as hell wasn’t there to defeat it. Her role, and the role of her comrades, was as simple and common as a distraction.

Sirens and emergency broadcasts were blaring all across the smouldering city, telling every able person that they should run as fast as they could. George hadn’t told her a lot before they both split for their own stations, but the current plan was just to stall for as long as possible to allow as many people to escape as they could. After that, unless the specialist team could help, they would go in with nukes. With a creature as clearly volatile as this, they had no other choice.

Sam had accepted this all. Sure, she didn’t want to die or anything, but if it let a child and its mother escape, then it might just be worth it. That was what she signed up for. The only part that she despised was that she might have to leave George alone.

Unless the creature decided to take down the entire city somehow.

But nothing could be that strong, right?

She turned back to the kid. “Listen, Gerald, we…” He seemed awfully distracted. He wouldn’t even meet her gaze.

Looking to the sky, she understood why.

Framed by the endless blue sky, she watched breathlessly as an angel descended from the heavens.

They hadn’t been told anything about what they would face - not if it was human or monster or spirit, but looking at the being floating gracefully like a herald of the end, she knew instantly that this was it. This was how she died.

It wore an armour of deep red, parts of it glistening and glittering in the pale light of the sun. It occurred to her that this was probably not a trick of the light, but instead patches of blood that remained wet. They were simply the exact same shade of his armour. His face, too, was covered in splattered blood. Droplets of red clung to his long, black hair, dripping down on the pavement as his winged form approached.

An angel of death.

Divine Human, Lv.???

His white eyes fell on her and she knew that this was it. This was the last thing she would ever see. She couldn’t even bring herself to raise her sword. Not a single person made a sound.

He stepped down on the ground, blood splattering from the chinks in his armour. She knew in an instant that it wasn’t his.

Gerald turned to her. His blue eyes trembled and tears began to pool in them. She wanted to say something to him but nothing came out. He was so young. He was only a boy, barely of age.

Moving with heavy strides, the angel of death came to stand behind Gerald, only a meter or so in front of Sam. The air hummed with electric power. Gerald’s eyes remained glued to her even as the angel death rose his hand towards the back of his head. “I don’t want to-,”

The angel’s hand clasped the back of Gerald’s head and with a sickening crunch crushed it within his hand. The boy’s face, still complete despite lacking everything behind it, stared blankly at Sam. His gaze glanced away, mouth floundering open, and then he fell into Sam’s arms. The back of his head was simply gone, replaced with a cavity filled only with brain mush and skull fragments. Blood spluttered out of the half-opened neck to the beat of his still-beating heart. The warm wetness struck her face and began to mingle with her now flowing tears. Slowly, the blood began to recede.

She placed a hand on the kid’s back, feeling how it was still warm even though he was dead. She looked up at the angel of death. “Ah…”

He looked at her, and for just a second, she could sense some form of consideration, a stray thought in the back of his mind.

Then, a fireball hit the side of his head. It wasn’t a strong spell, certainly not one used by any proficient spellcasters, but at this moment, its purpose was clearly not to injure the angel.

He turned to the side.

A small group of Fighters met his gaze.

Human, Lv.343

Human, Lv.137

Human, Lv.???