Pillar Dawns - 15.3% Effective
Estimated Duration - 1:31:33
Pillar Vesper - Inoperational
Estimated Duration - N/A
Pillar Creekwood - Inoperational
Estimated Duration - N/A
Pillar Windvent - 12.6% Effective
Estimated Duration - 1:01:55
Pillar Flares - 9.9% Effective
Estimated Duration - 54:28
Centerpiece (The Encampment) - Inoperational
Estimated Duration - N/A
“ST Three Mountain Summits and Rout, push westward through Lazuli and link up with elements of the Duskhead Creekwood battalion two klicks down. It’s a straight shot north to the Pillar from there; make sure the roads are clear, otherwise our rifles will be dead in the water. This is the best route I can offer that doesn’t put you immediately in someone’s crosshairs but you need to play it by ear.
“Once at the Pillar, stay put. Wonder has no interest in there anymore. Just take care of our people; I’ll send any available aid as they pop up—“
“Conqueror!” clamored one of the artisans belonging to Sage’s team: Deadbolt, who honestly looked too homeless for his own good. He’d just come back from venturing fearlessly into the Encampment but from the look on his face, he did not have good news.
Alexander rushed to finish his statement to the two Slayer Teams—“I’ll get those reinforcements to you.”—then jumped the small set of stairs and onto the main floor, flowing between his moving artisans and meeting Deadbolt in the middle.
“Deadbolt,” he began, combing through the stuffed file cabinet inside his mind. “You’ve spoken to Lieutenant Colonel Park—?”
“He’s refusing our request—” (“What?”) “I’ve told him a hundred times—“ (“Did you inform him about—?”) “About Kreutz, yeah, but he doesn’t care—“ (“Dammit all, where’s he now?”) “He’s here—“ (“I’ll ring him up—“)
Deadbolt raised his voice to reiterate his statement, “Lieutenant Colonel Park’s here. He wants to speak with you directly.”
Alexander was caught mid-sentence, mouth hanging dumbly open, too flabbergasted to speak. I have a dozen different things to keep track of and a conversation with a stubborn colonel shouldn’t be one of them.
Deadbolt stated, “He’s at the entrance of the House—“
“Bring him here.” Alexander pointed at the ground for emphasis as a swarm of sweaty artisans swam around them. A voice said his name and he gave them a look over the shoulder plus a hand raise, as though to say he would get to them in a second. If he wants a conversation with me so badly that he came all the way here for it, then he can take a few more steps.
Once there was physical confirmation from Deadbolt—a short and equally frustrated head nod—Alexander spun on his feet and addressed the artisan behind him: Hearkener, a short woman who had a special headphone-like device clamped over her ears. She received word from the post commander of Pillar Flares—the current destination of the Miracle.
Alexander had already notified him about Wonder’s intentions and they both began an immediate evacuation of all non-essential personnel and civilians from the area. A troubling haunt presided over him after having seen losses with Creekwood’s collapse, but they had time. They couldn’t abandon ship just yet. He recalled what the reports had said: it’ll take about an hour for Wonder to reach Flares at its current pace.
An hour of hope.
From the Comet, though. From other sources? Not so much. That was the bad news from the post commander: an S-Rank fiend stumbled onto the field and they couldn’t take it out. Not with the Slayers present, not when their attention was split between evacuation, defense, and general maintenance. Thus the commander went to Alexander for advice. In other words: people. He needed people.
“It’s a mutated spectre,” said Hearkener, “born from the lost souls of our people and the monsters we’ve slain.”
“A spectre… So they need what? Anti-undead? Does it tie itself to any specific region?” Because there can be a big difference between a western-based ghost and an eastern-based. A blanket anti-undead subjugation works but the more specific the cure, the more effective the treatment.
Hearkener shook her head. “Negative, there’s too much variety to be region-locked.”
“Of course there is.” Alexander sighed and put hand to hip. He thought about this for a second, putting all tidbits of information he'd gathered during his time as a Pseudo-Slayer: “The Big Four has active anti-undead teams: Angels, Spirit Throne; Martials, Six Ethereal Exorcists; Royals, Somerset; and Glory, Arbela.” The Big Four is actively cooperating with me so we’ll experience the least amount of struggle in terms of communication and ordering around and all that bullcrap.
“Then we have smaller guilds. Spooks and Eastern Apparitions are a couple I can name off the top of my head.” People I haven’t came into contact with, so I don’t know how they’ll react being ordered around by me.
“And check with the ESOC units placed in Ordo; if need be, contact Colonel Orozco—”
Another voice interrupted him from behind. Glancing over his shoulder, it was Deadbolt with a uniformed man behind, glowering.
Alexander held up a finger and continued talking, “Contact the colonel and see if she has anyone to offer. You have that list?” Hearkener nodded. “Good, cross-reference that with Desktop—” He pointed in the general direction where the artisan would be at, “—and eventually you’ll have someone who bites. Tell the post commander and send them to Flares.”
Hearkener nodded and that was enough for Alexander to switch gears, swivel around, and meet Deadbolt and Lieutenant Colonel Park. A middle-aged Korean man, skinny and short, but held himself sternly as his face seemed to be permanently fixed in a resting scowl. He greeted Alexander with unkind eyes, quietly smacked his lips together, and tilted his head high to lock eye contact.
He looked at him with authority and well-built experience. Alexander didn’t doubt that he must’ve felt slighted, or even disrespected, that a man as young and fresh as him was put in this position.
“Conqueror—”
“I need your rifles to reinforce my Baptists against the Caller, sir.” Right now, they’re apart of the defensive force protecting the Encampment. But…
“The Encampment is stretched thin as it is with the Centerpiece’s collapse—” Comically, a nearby explosion punctuated his point. Alexander saw an orange ball puff up in the distance through a window. The lieutenant colonel managed the slightest smile to rub it in.
Alexander whistled. "Okay then. I also have my own obligations, trying to desperately wrangle every man I find to support my own. You have the artillery—" Then another distraction came, this time in the form of a hundred different voices shouting together at once. He ignored them and pushed through: “As I was saying—!”
“Conqueror!” Deadbolt yelled—seemed like he’d been yelling at him a couple times before.
“What the hell is it now?!” He found a finger pointed out the nearest window. Through a sea of heads and bodies, he followed it with his eyes and saw what had gotten everyone so worked up: the sky. It was the sky. Although he could see just a glimpse of the bloated starry night, it was changing. Dissipating, like watching dirty water being filtered clean right before you.
Slowly, but surely.
His mouth dropped. “They’re starting now,” he muttered. “They’re going to break the castle now. Okay.” It took slapping himself a little to get his mind back on the tracks. “Lieutenant Colonel, sir, the situation is rapidly changing.”
~~~
“153rd Constellation, Telescopium,” began Devoy as the two castlebreakers sat together. The Void God faced the Constellation, and the Constellation faced the Void God. By all means, the two of them should be natural enemies. Although Telescopium himself did nothing to slight the god, his presence gave way to an indescribable, boiling emotion. Was it hate? Was it seething hate?
The Constellation did not care for the past and addressed him with only a quiet murmur of his voice, “Compared to the other Constellations, I am quite young. Your grievances are with them, the ones who’d destroyed your Realm in the first place. Of course, I’m speaking to whatever god’s inside of you and not the demon.”
Devoy had a passing glance towards the few Baptists surrounding them like Evenfall and Problem, the ones who had a vested interest in this charade. The others were at the perimeter, ready for the battle ahead of them.
“So you’ve concealed the truth of your history,” chuckled Telescopium, knowing they were in their own isolated bubble to concentrate on their duty.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"I find it irrelevant to indulge the finer details. The Void Continent and its master has been banished to that Pseudo-Universe, where dilated time twisted a second into a year. The Hundred Realms no longer has importance, it is an impactful yet cosmically insignificant edifice. If these humans wish to seek out the Hundred Realms after this tragedy then that is their prerogative. I will not return to this corner of the multiverse.”
“So be it,” declared Telescopium. Finally he gave the god his respect: looking upon him eye-to-eye. Through the wicked mask, the disrespectable elder possessed an old strength in his gaze like a tree enduring storms.
It was time, Devoy gathered.
Devoy returned a small nod to signal his readiness, and Telescopium reciprocated. Their small gestures were acknowledged and taken by the Baptists watching, who then hollered to their comrades, voices muted through the isolation bubble. A collision of action radiated outwards from the humans.
There was nothing else that needed to be said. The two denizens of the Hundred Realms combined their abilities—Void and appraisal—to deconstruct the night that’d been casted over Ordo for nine days.
Devoy implanted his Void throughout the entirety of the Slayer Capital. He had explored the deepest tunnels and the furthest depths of that woman's dungeon, climbed to the spines of the smoking and derelict skyscrapers forever dark, and stretched from seabed-to-seabed. It was a sublime substance, hidden within the seams of creation and made undetectable to the Sungrazer. Then, like a trap sprung, the god activated Void.
The 153rd Constellation of the Almagest, Telescopium, followed. In this world, he was internationally renowned for many things: his knowledge regarding the multiverse, his wisdom and life philosophy, his awful personality and pillories against the Society, and then there was [Discovery]. It was an appraisal skill that made an enemy out of mystery. Mankind's greatest arrogance was the desire for knowledge no matter the dimensions. Wisdom was knowing which questions to pursue and which questions to make peace over. Telescopium abandoned such nuance in his youth and foolishly categorized all of existence into two sets: known and unknown.
His [Discovery] was a rebellion against the multiverse itself, then. It tasted the foul cosmic demesne belonging to the Miracle and sunk its teeth inside, deconstructing the castle like how saliva broke down food.
This was it.
Reverberating across the borough of Flares, the Guild Master of Angels Guild fought tirelessly against the Sungrazer alongside her allies: Firebrand, Monarch and Levin, her closest friend Rector, Silverhonor and her Slayers. As an encroaching shadow, the Miracle swooned over the burning and acrid urban canvas. Its presence was not taken kindly by the Ordoians there, introducing themselves through rivers of lead and magick and explosives and implements. The high-rankers moved in a coordinated yet structurally weak formation, sort of like a migrating flock of starving birds.
After seeing Firebrand loose a ring of flames which pattered off into weak wisps slapping the Comet, Seraph stepped in.
[Skill Activation: Heavenly Host - Splitting Sea]
Born from [Ascalon Creed], a divine white slash came. It was taller than the buildings, booming down main street for the entire length if it could. In its path, nothing was damaged nor harmed. Like many of Seraph's skills, she had the ability to prevent collateral damage to the environment and her allies. Only her enemies would be hurt.
Like Wonder.
As though God had rung a bell, the impact sounded for miles throughout the borough, creating a white pillar of light that lasted for a few seconds. Distantly Seraph swore she heard a satisfying cry of pain as the pillar decayed, revealing Wonder in its horrible splendor, having its body cracked. She couldn't stop herself from smiling. Finally, noteworthy damage. Far from what she needed for a complete subjugation, but progress was progress.
“Prepare!” cried the Guild Master, knowing what would come next.
A familiar whine gradually increased in intensity. Abyss blue petals of the cosmic flower spun as gears to the engine. The ominous song climbed the registers, each jump in octave causing waves of panic to flush through the Slayers as they prepared defenses. A devastating laser would come, chopping through the buildings like a machete to thick bushes.
Then a new sight distracted everyone including the Comet itself.
The twisting sky.
At first Seraph thought she was seeing an optical illusion, where your eyes were tricked into seeing movement in a still image. However, as she squinted, she realized this wasn't an image at all. The sky was genuinely changing. Did the Sungrazers have another trick up their sleeve? No, she concluded, because she remembered her Baptists. They had done this. The permanent night that'd tormented Ordo was being washed away like a stubborn stain. Colors dimmed, small stars and star systems winked out of being. Their larger counterparts remained but struggled to confirm their existence.
A sudden pressure was lifted off her shoulders, a pressure she just acknowledged was there.
The Miracle stopped whatever it was doing. The petals slammed into a halt. Likewise, so had the Ordoians, amazed by the beautiful sight before them. Through the muddy watercolors of the false night were glimpses of a natural phenomenon they hadn't seen in a long time: an afternoon in the dawn of spring with white clouds rolled back.
As for the Sungrazer, Wonder turned to the direction of the disturbance. Where they kneeled, the Void God and the Constellation. They were not just disrupting the demesne, they were attempting to destroy the entirety of the long-standing night that plagued and demoralized the humans.
There. They were in Remembrance Plaza.
They had to be destroyed.
“I hear them,” Celestial War Empress said as she kneeled behind a barricade constructed from the broken pieces of the monoliths within the memorial. The rifles and swords beside her did not need further warning.
They anticipated a horde as soon as the castlebreaking started, and they were correct.
Monsters hawked from the skies above. They leapt from windows and broke through walls. From the streets and backalleys, they stormed like an unstoppable flood.
It seemed the Comets retained their ability to control—or influence—monsters. Empress heard reports behind her: according to them, monster pods throughout the borough had broken off from their skirmishes and spontaneously decided to flee in a random direction. That direction, of course, was here.
Once again, a battle between humanity and otherworldly invaders began. One side was fueled by a primal urge to devour and kill and conquer and maim. The other was driven by vengeance and anger and sorrow, and upon seeing the inkling of normalcy beyond the Barrier, hope came to them.
Like seeing the revived Firebrand emerge from the ashes, like seeing the shooting star Archknell had made out of the Watcher, these emotions dispersed over the city.
[Skill Activation: Records of the Master - Thousand Cascade Destruction]
Over in what remained of Bronzehall Avenue in Dawns, Master Jin Junjie was breaking. Drinking the [Sacrifice] that Catalyst had brewed for him performed the expected results: delivering great pain and certain death in exchange for great powers and certain victory. Yet he felt the peak of exhilaration, dwarfing that when he’d fought the Mortal Dragon for the Cultivator Chair.
The [Thousand Cascade Destruction] struck a thousand times, each barrage of force strikes amplified by the last. The air itself became whips and lashed against the Diminutive Cosmic Beast that’d consumed Ikeya; and every impact turned the arena cloudy and utterly obscured to anyone other than the two contestants.
“Hah!” exhaled the Master as his feet fluttered, his senses honed to the point of premonition beyond a level where Slayers could readily achieve. He knew what the Beast would do as though they were interconnected.
The arrows of cosmic light. The furious slam of its torn and battered body. The layering of a dark cloud and the arms within.
Avoided, dodged, dispelled.
Jin Junjie’s heart lurched violently, temporarily paralyzing him in great pain. Through willpower—and general fury aimed at the Beast—he endured and drove a fist into its mass, launched it back a few dozen meters away, watching the thing roll and tumble around and around until friction halted it.
The smoke cleared enough so he could see his own right hand.
“Ha,” an amused chuckle left him.
Most of his arm was darkened to a bluish-black like a bruise. His skin was flaking off to reveal an infected pink underneath. Jin Junjie opened his hand and saw that his palm had completely peeled off and his fingernails were gone. In these areas, there was a numbing pain but nothing compared to other parts of his body.
Parts where he couldn’t see but knew they looked just as bad if not worse than his hand.
With his grotesque appearance, it was a miracle that he was alive for this long.
It meant he had little time remaining.
The Guild Master of Martials Guild stepped towards the recovering Cosmic Beast. Above him, he noticed the sky was changing and saw a spring afternoon behind the current clutter. Despite the pain it would bring, he smiled.
A newfound surge of energy overcame him. [I will surpass heaven with you, imbecile. Make my throne!]
The Void God and the 153rd Constellation had given Ordo a reunion, but the Sungrazers did not surrender that easily. Everyone thought the night would be reversed with enough time, the Baptists believed the combined strength of the two castlebreakers would be able to do it. However, the night did not disappear. It swirled and swirled, brightened and brightened, but at some point it stopped.
The castlebreakers had reached a wall that they could not penetrate.
The Sungrazers had arrived to this battle through attrition, and they were willing to extend the same courtesy to the two outworlders.
Telescopium gasped and hunched over, his mask almost touching the ground, sweat dripping from his chin. Devoy was furiously frowning, his body tense and stiff like a metal beam. Occasionally he twitched as though a jolt of electricity ran through him. They both knew the outcome. It was impossible to outlast the Sungrazers. Not Wonder even though it fought the high-rankers, not Kreutz either. Telescopium would fall first and set Devoy miles back in progress, then the god was helpless to what would come next. An inevitable series of events.
But they had to continue, lest their effort would be for nothing.
Seraph realized this after a while, when she glimpsed at the changing twilight and saw that no movement had been made. Wonder was dedicating a portion of its concentration to maintaining its demesne (and perhaps to the night itself) but it held onto a stubborn defiance that the Slayers couldn't break.
She could order Echo Team to fire the Superweapon, but it had only one shot.
At the prospect of this, she hesitated. She had to be absolutely certain that it’d turn the tide. Yet, after everything that happened, a single thought pierced through all rationality: Would this even work?
Unfortunately, she didn't need to think because something had drawn Rector's and Firebrand's attention.
“Hey…” Firebrand began, his eyes wide and horrified, shaking his head in disbelief. “Why is…?”
“Seraph!” Rector called to her in mad panic. “Seraph, Conqueror’s not answering me! I haven’t heard from her all this time and…!”
She saw the one responsible for their grief. He was right. Seraph hadn’t heard from her for a long time and she never noticed until now.
Leaning over a ledge of a rooftop was a short, out-of-breath young woman who had no business being in the middle of the battlefield. It’d taken her a long time to reach their position with all the changes and unexpected obstacles. She was a hikikomori, one of those NEETs who spent their time playing video games, and she had a good reason to stay inside.
It was dangerous for her to exert herself so much. Her body was weak like Nathan's before he became Kosmos. And if she was here now…
“Chie…?”
Despite her exhaustion, Chie climbed onto the ledge and inhaled deeply.
She was…
She was going to…!
Seraph screamed, “CHIE—!”
[Honor Exhibition: Shinsei Izanami-no-Mikoto (新生 伊邪那美命)]
Nascent Creator God of Japan