Leaving For The West

... boo- pooom! ... ... ...

Ciemnosc looked back in time, with the vigilance systems of his commanding vehicle, allowing him to see a clearly projected image from arrays. But it wasn't just that. From the front of where he was now driving to, the entire already lighting up the sky was lit up intensely like the morning could never be brightened up ever before.

From the projection, Ciemnosc was able to see a huge ‘cloud’ that was seemingly either being pinned down or diving into the sky with intensity. But in both, it was a very largely widespread cloud itself and one that reached virtually all of the pursuers. And from the windows, Ciemnosc could see everything growing a pure white color added with a crimson touch like the final touches of a brush in an overly beautified masterpiece.

Trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr.

“...” Ciemnosc didn’t look back. After some shockwaves made his commanding vehicle struggle on its way to the west, everything went awfully calm, and only his image of the two of them was all that remained. He didn’t even bother scanning one last time at the place that had suddenly gained an incredibly large crater out of nowhere.

It wasn’t 2 Mortal weapons being destroyed at the same time and being furthermore ‘enhanced’ by the destruction of another 2 Mortal weapons, nor was it a devastating natural reaction from the Elements that made or caused the explosion. But it was the smallish stone itself who was the ‘perpetrator’ of everything magnifying so much, with the addition that Kinski himself would have his own means to make everything even worse; Ciemnosc felt like it was a disrespecting action of him to even want to look back - so he just drove.

… Not much passed when Ciemnosc. Who was driving with his head looking straight but not necessarily taking care of carefully driving through the road, just driving. Until he went past a certain range from arriving at outpost 2, where he finally stopped the commanding vehicle and began to seemingly connect to a certain other connection other than the sect’s intranet.

While he was organizing such, he had stopped the commanding vehicle for simple reasons, but even as he did all of this dexterously, he felt so numb that even the feeling of being numb wasn’t even being felt by his heart, mind; anything.

Beep beep.

A sound went out from the front of Ciemnosc as he sat in the engineers’ little room right behind the driver and co-driver’s seats. Right away there was a connection available, and it even responded immediately Ciemnosc thought it would all seem pretty fine then, as he then began to show himself to outpost 2, the other outposts, and the stronghold at the same time. But as soon as the projections showed only one of these images with people in them - Ciemnosc felt so strange.

There were 4 different images, but only 1 of them was showing people, and in them were only Makis, and Ernesto. who was seated with the former standing behind him, and a few who looked like guards but were not in their positions. Rather, they seemed to want to take a look at Ciemnosc who now appeared on their screen at a more or less great resolution, to say the least.

“Commander,” Makis spoke. He could visibly be seen with his whole person nervous; perhaps shaky. There was a bit of sweat flowing down his face, and his neck seemed to be tightly hugged by his sect’s uniform. And just then, as footsteps sounded, a pair of little ‘knowns’ showed up way behind Makis and stood there as if to show off a stance.

“It’s been some time since you were last here, Ciemnosc, it’s been long enough for any chang-” Makis continued, feeling more confident as he also saw those 2 behind himself directly through the communication panels, but Ciemnosc interrupted without any taste and swinging the back of his right hand at the projection before him - distorting Makis’s image for a bit of time. “Just speak to the point. What are you doing with Ernesto?”

Ernesto, who was seated on the chair, seemed to be locked on by a certain suspicious skull-like amulet hanging down his neck. And his whole body was sweaty while his mouth was stuffed with some cloth as if he was being an ordinary person that got themselves abducted.

“Oh right,” the stiff smile on Makis’s face relaxed after some time once Ciemnosc finished his words, replying with a bit of a shaky voice still. “There is a change, Commander Ciemnosc, you’ve become a traitor to the sect and everybody here knows it, only some people still think they are in the right! And I’ll show you, just now, what it means to go against the sect, gaaah!”

Makis could suddenly be seen lifting his right hand which was hidden beneath the camera’s angle, showing within its grasp a dagger that was of a notorious top notch quality, before burying it deeply into Ernesto’s chest above his right breast.

“!...” Ciemnosc’s eyes widened seeing Ernesto, who already seemed at not the best times of his life getting stabbed and pretty much later on killed, and for what Makis said, just because he wasn’t willing to follow whatever Makis’s madness was now doing?!

But right then, from that projection, Ernesto struggled to somewhat stand up on his own with his feet that were behind the table and way out of the camera’s angle. Immediately, Ernesto seemed to know a bit of the cruel tool hanging around his neck as he grabbed it and, with his face colliding with Makis’s face, Ernesto brought the tool up to their chins with both his hands.

At that moment, from behind Makis, who was like a scaredy cat, the 2 traitors of Ciemnosc’s army from before were about to dash forwards and try to save Makis perhaps, but the moment they took a step forward, a gigantic shadowed figure came into view, barely, and immediately forcing those other 2 to stop on their tracks before apprehensively looking backwards.

Then, as Ernesto had enough time to tiredly and unrestrainedly smile, he looked at the camera itself and yelled. He yelled to Ciemnosc, with a still subservient yet proud tone, “Don’t come, Commander, just go to the port. We have our people there so don’t you stop for whatever reason!”

Beep beep.

The connection was cut off then, and according to the readings that the arrays, as the Commander, that Ciemnosc read; this connection cutting off could only be because of a large accident or simply a huge ‘boom’ going on within the command center of outpost 2.

And from far away, Ciemnosc’s ears tickled somewhat as if he could hear something just now, something that seemed to slurp in a large amount of pure energy and then just went off. The simplest but devastating kinds of ‘bombs’ that every major organization would use in the most bloody and cruel scenarios… But now they were, what, being used on his own people?!

“Aiigh,” with a heavy sigh, Ciemnosc sat back down on his driver’s seat and began driving back and forth while also noticing that within the big ol’ sect’s territory, which he now defected from, information about him being right where he was right now was being transmitted to not only anyone who was closer to the Little Lake or even far but somewhat still around; the information was also being transmitted to some ‘upper echelons’!

Trckrr… trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr.

Beginning to drive, Ciemnosc wasn’t going to hear Ernesto out. But he would indeed not go to the other 2 outposts and just go towards outpost 2. Who could ever hurt him when the most there were among them were just some Conflagrate realm at the 4th stage at most? He could have just… ended everything for this so-called ‘rebellion’, but everyone seemed to really think he wasn’t even able to face off those who were at the Spirit Gathering realm 10th stage still…

Resting his back on the seat, his shoulders quite slumped, Ciemnosc had a ‘just annoyed’ tired face while tilting his head all the way to the right as he drove to outpost 2 without there even being a single hint of a scout having passed around here for days. Maybe this wasn’t just now and today and had been going since he arrived at the sect, or even before.

Meanwhile, Ciemnosc began arranging the array and activated it to see the situation in outpost 1 and outpost 3. He couldn’t waste time going over there to check. His time was now even worse than before when hundreds of pelicans abruptly appeared. His whereabouts were known to anyone, but worse than that, it was known to any Obsidiafying realm cultivator that might have survived the sacrifice of yet another.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

And what Ciemnosc saw wasn’t a good sight from any of the other 2 outposts. Outpost 1 seemed to have been the worst off. And from the looks of the corpses and their contents all around the outpost, they had been fighting until only a few hours before Ciemnosc made contact with his army - if it could even be called his anymore, or if there was any in the first place… also ‘anymore’.

There were small hills and rump here and there of corpses that had either the sect’s uniform or that of the mission. All in all, however, there were many more of those that had the sect’s uniform and a much obviously lesser quantity of ‘his people’; but they were all corpses. And even if the sects seemed to be about to form up, to sign a kind of peaceful cooperation, the Little Lake had now become extremely weakened with this sudden infighting whose traces he allowed there to be previously and still afterwards.

Many of the higher ranked subordinates of Ernesto were now confirmed dead by the ‘a child could do it’ intranet that was trying to overlap his previously built intranet, which the ones who built the former either didn’t even know about deleting Ciemnosc’s built intranet or thought they already did; they were incapable of doing so in other words.

This was a good thing though, this meant that very few ever got to betray Ernesto, and only those who did and cowardly fled outpost 1 and went back to outpost 3 managed to survive. But outpost 3 was an even worse set of images and even past recordings, which was the only precaution Ciemnosc left for in case Makis went crazy - a thing he indeed did. Ciemnosc didn’t know which devil tempted Makis with a deal nor with what, but it surely worked for them.

There were many fewer corpses, it was almost negligible even, but what did that mean? Ciemnosc had been the most betrayed by sooo many people all within outpost 3, he had been abandoned, and those very few who still believed in him were not shy nor afraid to show it, ending up dying after countless humiliations. Without even mentioning the females of several distinct ages that decided to still follow him despite him not being here, even males were raped and played with for hours nonstop.

‘Couldn’t they have just pretended to listen to Makis? Even if they show reluctance, Makis would hope to get them to cross over to his side, it’s typical of these people. Couldn’t they just…?’

Ciemnosc ‘held’ his forehead with his right wrist, still feeling the headache from before when experimented with the whole Preferential Light Justice Sect’s encampment ‘eating’ away all of their emotions and thoughts with his Spirit Sense, even becoming extra proficient in those ‘methods’ unprecedentedly.

But now, Ciemnosc feels as if he had fucked himself over by getting so vulnerable with a method he already understood wasn’t going to be easy for him and would even affect him. He was feeling something similar to headache, and hell, also heartache. Never could he have imagined that his own people would even not care and die for simply showing they were loyal to him and be killed… also by his own people.

“...” Ciemnosc stared blankly at the road while driving, ending up jumping a few times a couple or just 1 meter above the air because of that after colliding with some steep large stones, boulders and from where snow piled up too much before a tiny hill or rump around its way to outpost 2.

… After a little over an hour, Ciemnosc finally came to see where outpost 2 was already visible from afar. It wasn’t huge and it didn’t have such incredibly tall structures like the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect’s territory. So it had to be around a 10 km distance before he was able to see it while driving on these plains. And from so far away he was already able to see a huge, grotesque foul color in the main building of the outpost as it seemed to have imploded way before he arrived.

But even worse than that was the fact that there wasn’t any sound nor movement from outpost 2 even after he had gotten close enough to smell the burn Power Energy from the main building, with a burnt, dark color all showing in whatever was still remaining from that building.

Trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr… trckrr.

Parking outside the gates and storing his commanding vehicle, Ciemnosc made sure to send over some more meat from some other Creatures he had picked up in the past and made into chunks of flesh for later. He entered his outpost 2. The moment he entered, he could already see that another, ‘last’ battle had occurred and that the side that followed him still managed to make a last attempt to kill the traitorous side instead.

‘Why.’ Ciemnosc thought he just couldn’t ever imagine there would ever be people who could behave like this, and even less so for himself. Was he that influential to them? Or was it his handsomeness? No, that’s plain stupid. Perhaps his strength? That was too little. They didn’t even know of his real strength to begin with, still thinking he was a Link Consolidation realm cultivator… He just didn’t know it would have been like this.

When he came close to the main building, Ciemnosc simply scanned all over it 5 times in a row before finally departing. There were corpses all over. He wished he could fly so that he wouldn’t hop around a little to not step on any of them. Though he didn’t check for every corner of this place to look for survivors, allies, or enemies, he couldn’t be bothered, and he was also out of time already, so he simply left and once again took his commanding vehicle out.

. . .

The stronghold was already in the middle of the morning.

Trckrr trckrr trckrr trckrr… crrrkkrrtt.

Ciemnosc, for the umpteenth time, parked in what seemed a desolate place without any life around. As he stepped out of his vehicle but didn’t store it this time, he simply made it follow him as he walked to the gates, which were burned to the ground with what seemed to be one of those ‘bombs’ that are marginally used for how costly they are and powerful as well.

Shaking his head as he made his way into his stronghold, Ciemnosc couldn’t help having his pair of darkest eyes turn into flawlessly lifeless bottomless pools. Barely entering the stronghold, he could see many buildings being torn apart, debris around the walls at the floor level of the streets surrounding each building, and there was also a large number of armored cars.

There were many of such that was as such: one large group of armored cars was seemingly driving with a large hill of corpses behind them when another large amount of armored cars came to the former’s front and clashed directly with them; some explosions went out from such powerful collision with the latter gong at maximum speed.

Corpses littered all around as well, with those at the large hill belonging to subordinate cultivators and those in armored cars that killed those forming the elite of Ciemnosc’s previous army, while those who came enraged to face off the traitorous elite were Ciemnosc’s combination of elite and subordinate cultivators - nothing else but corpses remained.

Step step step-... step step…

“...” At a certain moment, Ciemnosc arrived at the last road before arriving at the check for entering the port section of the stronghold, where the worst situations of all had already unfolded, and for no more than possible a couple tens of minutes before he arrived.

The road right before the check to enter the port also had a large plaza, it was circular, and it could allow for much more than 1,000 to stand on it at the same time together, but not more than 2,000.

And on it, several corpses he could but wished not - to recognize - were lying on the floor mixing rawly with the rest of the other troopers of his army. As he kneeled over a pair of them, he held the ‘girl’s’ right cheek with his left hand and the right shoulder of the ‘boy’ who was at her left lying on the ground without an ounce of life in them.

‘I’m sorry, it was all my fault.’ Ciemnosc looked at Shidar’s brown obscure skin, without much color left on it, and the slight grimace on her face seemed to ease up. Looking below at the rest of her body, he saw her waist cut off in half. But looking rightwards, Ciemnosc saw Li Saer with his legs all cut off on several occasions and even the whole left side of his body gone, with only his neck remaining while his leg and arm, as well as left-sided torso, were all gone.

‘Well, you protected her until you no longer could anymore.’ With his Spirit Sense, and with his senses as well - altogether, Ciemnosc silently thought out and praised; somewhat.

Standing up, Ciemnosc then began to reattach their bodies, looking for Li Saer’s body parts as he easily found them in less than a minute. They weren’t far off. It was also destiny that their deaths were so close together, he even found Li Saer’s heart full, only that it was trampled a couple of times, but Ciemnosc also found it under one of his who seemed to be covering it with their bodies in their deathbed with their ass up - under their stomach.

After finding Li Saer’s body parts and making a little space for both of them to lie together as corpses, Ciemnosc wasted another 20 seconds to find Situ Shi’s corpse. It had several long, thin blades, large arrows, and polearms all penetrated into his chest and with every single one of them aiming at his heart - none really failing to land a hit on such thought.

Ciemnosc found his body surrounded by the most number of enemies, of which many were the elite of the sect, while he was surrounded by ally subordinate cultivators who died with a ferocious expression on their faces; their uniforms from the mission and not even from their sects.

It seemed as if a sort of sudden change really happened around, but it was also a couple days of time before it all started to go off; allowing them enough time to be transported to outpost 1, outpost 2, and stronghold. But doing so in all outposts that didn’t raise their voice for Makis ended up in tragedy, and only the stronghold seemed to hold off well enough while Ernesto even seemed to take a heavy toll himself, sacrificing his safety to take away some of the numbers that would’ve otherwise have gone to the stronghold.

After picking Situ Shi’s pale body and placing it close but not beside the lovely dead birds, Ciemnosc looked at them severely before beginning to reflect from his darkest eyes a dark flame with small portions of ordinary red-orange in it.

“... Who is it?!” Suddenly, Ciemnosc spoke in a loud voice as he turned his head slightly to the right, his eyes gazing at a blurry figure who ended up in a kneel right before him. Schnell directly spoke out as he pointed at the port’s check which remained practically untouched, and its gates were only somewhat damaged but still standing strong.

“Commander! I’ve just arrived after hearing from the rest about someone arriving. Forgive them for not recognizing you, they are coming already at my orders. Commander, please, we must leave in case they know you’re here!”

“They already know,” Ciemnosc said. And with those words, Schnell looked up with desperation in his eyes as he practically begged Ciemnosc to start fleeing then!

…