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Chapter 389: Kathleen Brew Learns a Lesson
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Siva’s group’s flying stopped and he flipped his body, the War God Axe appearing on his hand as he blocked a human figure that dived down from above him.
He was like a steady boulder and the attacker was the ocean battering the rocky wall.
A loud explosive sound rung and four enemies in the same black leather uniform ambushed the four behind Siva.
“Ho?”
Siva pushed the attacker back with a swipe but he flipped and avoided it, hovering back… he wasn’t wearing any flight equipment.
“Riddler’s Guise?!” Cramer exclaimed, “What do you newbies want from us?”
Aside from Kathleen, the three others had blocked their assailants and when she got away from her attacker, there was a big wound that dripped blood from her left flank.
She was stabbed.
XIU!!!
“Eh?”
A blade flew at a staggering speed of 400mps and it hit her attacker, yet, the blade was blocked by a crocodile scale-looking hand-sized item that floats like it has its own mind to protect the attacker.
Three more ‘blades’ flew from three directions and the attacker was forced to flee from Siva’s vicinity.
“Scary.” The attacker said and floated behind the person who ambushed Siva along with the rest.
“To attack without a warning. Your manners are all indications of malice. Who sent you?” Heller’s set of words sounded like some government agent in a protection program to a witness.
No one answered… only, Siva’s voice rung.
“Storm.”
Space rippled around him and countless blades of dark blue color the same as his armour flew in all directions, attacking the people 40m away from them.
“…!!”
“Eh? H-Hey…”
“Crazy bas—”
“Shit… SHIT!!!”
“Get away from that facka!”
Who wouldn’t be frightened by thousands of hand sized blades that travelled at a breakneck speed and had the capability of piercing metal like tofu?
And worst of all, Siva’s [Blade Storm] was going in every direction and covered every path they could take to retreat, even blocking asylum.
The leader, “Wowmali” was Siva’s attacker, and as soon as he saw that there was no escape from the spherical formation the blades took, shouted:
“Hey, man… that was just a prank. A joke! Please don’t take it seriously.”
As he spoke, he materialized a [large metallic arm] on his right arm and blocked the blades that have every intention to shredding him to pieces. It was a wonder how these guys were floating without any flight gear but that wasn’t important.
What was important is that why Siva was intent to actually shredding them to pieces.
Is he really so angry at the greeting that he wanted to chop them up into ten thousand pieces each?
Oder, A.K.A “Wowmali” was really panicking now.
“Dude, I’m really sorry, okay? We were just trying to greet you. We’re just wondering why all of the cannons suddenly activated. That’s all…”
Siva remained quiet.
“Chief!”
Wowmali turned to look at the caller and saw one of his members being shredded into tiny pieces of flesh by Siva’s onslaught.
“No. 3!”
Cold and ruthless, it was the impression anybody would get when witnessing this scene. In fact, on a closer inspection, that person was actually the same person who attacked Kathleen Brew earlier.
Even his victim, Kathleen, raised a brow at the way Siva was slowly torturing the man into shred.
“Stop it, Siva!” Wowmali was incensed. “You have no idea who you are messing with!”
They are still people and Siva was actually brutally torturing one of his ‘friends’ as if he wasn’t some life in the real world. Even if it’s a game, there still must be some barrier between actual brutality and sadistic violence, and just in-game revenge… and yet now, Siva was actually—
“Aaaahhh!!!”
“No. 3!!!”
“H-How brutal!”
“Ch-chief!!”
“No. 2, hold on!”
After a last scream, twenty or so blades danced around the person named “No. 3” and when they were done, only the remains of flesh was left that fell towards the barrier dome below them.
Next to them was the woman, No. 2, fifty blades of horror shredded her to pieces. She was beautiful even to Heller’s standards and yet she was torn to pieces, turned into a morbidly nauseating sight of flesh and gore in front of everyone.
“No. 2!”
“Kisaaaawww!!!”
(AN: actually, it’s “kisama” or “damn” in Jap but I added a “w” here to emphasize the flexing of the jaw of the speaker so it should sound like a “kiso” or something —for extreme anger use only)
Within four seconds, two of the five attackers are shredded, diced, and reduced to piles of flesh that fell down to the city.
It was brutal.
For sure, even the observers from afar would be able to know the trauma these players would all be getting.
And yet, as surprising their ambush was, isn’t this way of ‘revenge’ just too brutal for a person?
“SIVAAAAA!!!” Wowmali had lost all his cordial and playful pretenses and he screamed as he charged towards Siva, disregarding all defense.
“Now you say that you’re joking?” Siva’s first set of words to them contained mockery and unrestricted anger. “Funny, I wonder if it’s Gats who sent you or was it you just trying to cause trouble for me.”
Actually, Gats never ordered them to attack Siva.
It was Wowmali, Oder, himself who wanted to test the waters of their future enemy… the enemy that the Heavenly Father had marked with blood debts!
“AAAAAHH!!!” Wowmali was enraged. He was just playing around but who knew Siva was actually this strong and brutal?
He didn’t give them time to explain, nor did he give them time to even regroup. Siva made the first and brutal strike, instantly reducing their numbers by two, and just now… it was three.
[Another batch of cannon fires is coming.]
In their area, thick red lines started to take size as Siva’s group began to cringe and call out to him.
Only they can see it because Cortana was keeping up with the real-time update of the task.
Siva had not given the man the time to use any of his abilities. With a single step, he traversed the gap between the two of them and swung down the War God Axe with so much speed, the man with a stat set of a just a single person… was cleaved in half right at his head.
His eyes are still full of wrath but Siva’s cold voice was colder, the “wrath” within his tone represented a full lifetime of bloodlust and warfare.
“Every member of Blue Card Legion will die.”
It was just a short line.
XIU~XIU~XIU~XIU~XIU…!!!
Within seven seconds, all five of their ambushers have all met the same end. Even Kathleen Brew could not remain still as she started vomiting at the after-sight of their brutal ending.
Even Cramer was silent.
Even Heller… remained still.
This was just a game but they could feel the rage and brutality radiating from Siva. He had his times of approachable moments, but it was at times like these that they realized the gravity of the mission they had agreed to share with him.
Yeah, they were still playing the game, but to Siva, ever obstacle is unacceptable… every enemy had to be brutally killed.
Loni looked on, yes, affected, but she had already accepted it and had prepared herself to support her grandfather’s mission. She was prepared to see how Siva’s development will come to its end and then enter the next phase.
She couldn’t smile but she remained calm within the small moments before Siva spoke again.
“In ten seconds, we will do the jump.”
Siva didn’t give Kathleen Brew the time to utter a single thing. It was their choice to come here with him and he was doing them the favor of actually seeing how he will bring Baal’s end.
It was earlier than expected but they cannot delay for even a second longer.
The last of the ‘spoils’ entered his inventory but he didn’t have the will to smile as the members of the Blue Card Legion ruined his mood and everything.
The blades that formed a sphere of carnage had dissipated, going back to an aura-like slow moving tornado of blades with a 10m-diamter around Siva.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Huuuuuu….” Siva breathed a long breath and bid a forced attempt to activate [Focus].
‘Now.’
BOOM!
He took a step and disappeared from his earlier location along with the four members of his small entourage, the orange beam of plasma bursts too late in reducing him to smithereens.
The observers and curious Joes blinked as they were surprised by his sudden disappearance.
When they all reappeared, they were now 300m deeper into the enemy lines. The sudden go and stop made his passengers almost vomit a second.
And, once again, a tornado of Mobile Suit remains followed Siva as the blades created a defensive perimeter that dealt all other remnants that wanted to use the chance of him having headache to bring him down.
It may be the maximum limit of the distance he can reach for now but once he got used to the pain of using [Focus] and improves the output of Liberty Drones, travelling kilometers within a single instant wouldn’t be just a pipe dream.
“We will fly now.” Siva endured the pain and made Cortana control his movements while he focused on recovering his peak state.
He didn’t wait for any reply and ‘pulled’ the party to the direction of the hole in the chest.
One must know, the closer they are to the area, the more densely packed the defenses are. One could only imagine just how lucky and skilled those who managed to enter the mothership first are.
Still…
“Entering the mothership is just the first of all the problems they had to face here.”
Right now, this giant mothership can be classified as an aerial dungeon.
Dungeons are meant to be raided but raiding it and actually succeeding on the raid are two completely different things.
As higher the rewards are is the more difficult the raid is. Knowledge, luck, but more to ability, these three are the most fundamental aspects needed to successfully raid a dungeon.
“We’ve already opened a path for the defenders of the city, let’s use this chance to slip in and enter the mothership.”
Siva looked over to Kathleen Brew who, despite just in her avatar, looked pale as she continued to give him the glare at the sudden movement just as she was in the middle of throwing up from the sight of a cold-blooded killing.
To those who were trapped in the shackles of the world revolving around order and morality, it will indeed be a shocking sight to witness an enmity being resolved right at the moment it was made.
“I can’t see what good qualities Mandy saw in you aside from your good loo—bweghh.”
One had to admit that Siva do look good when he was on his ‘God’ mode. But aside from that, he’s just a cold blooded killer who never blinks when he kills his enemies.
The scary part was that, this is a game.
Just like how many peace advocates cry out there, RPG: Terroa is a tool of corruption —it promotes a warped sense of enjoyment that centered upon all that is considered violent and ill-mannered in this so called “intellectual society”.
Theft was forgiven or forgotten if the outlaw was too strong, or belonging to a large guild…
A crime was sentenced lost if the criminal escaped into another continent, or was too strong or they belonged to a strong organization…
Sexual abuses and slavery was alright if the victim was an NPC; and even to the female players, there was no actual law that can condemn the lechers to jail, much less seek justice to the indignation and the humiliation suffered…
…and, despite rare, cases of men as the victim of molestation even has laxer and looser avenues to seeking justice; that the line “you should be sorry for being weak” was their sad consolation for the injustice suffered.
In short, in a game world such as Terroa, strength is the law and being weak is a crime.
And such practical display of this law had just been witnessed by Kathleen Brew, who, despite living in the multimedia industry, was still ultimately a citizen and a prisoner of morality that demanded altruistic conduct and humanitarian considerations.
It was as if the “Siva” in front of them in the castle base, Apus Epirus, and the [Siva] of the battlefield she was looking at right now were two ultimately different people.
Unfortunately for her, her operating system was still a mess so her admonishment and release of resentment ended up becoming stale water under the bridge.
Space continued to ripple 20m away from Siva and despite still being awake he was constantly being bombarded by the headache that kept assaulting his consciousness, threatening to snatch him up to falling into the land of oblivion.
‘Cortana, adjust reuse parameters of [Focus] to at least a minute after the first usage. And for the third attempt, add another minute to it, unless the situation is considered a Class-1 danger rating, use this limitation settings on each use of [Focus].’
[Yes sir.]
Cortana continued to take in the victims of the last struggle and on Siva’s vision, there was a counter that indicated the cooldown period of [Focus].
At that time, thick red lines started to form to greet them again but this time, there are eight.
“Enemies up ahead! Same thing as earlier, if you want to enter the mothership, you have to do your best to survive and enter it with me.”
Frankly speaking, they were slow.
If they rely on their flight gear, the best they could keep up with is around 70mph without an obstacle to hinder their paths.
With Siva pulling them, they could reach 300mph if he uses [Focus] and 150mph at normal speeds.
During the ‘pulling’ process, they are responsible for their survival —to dodge and counter enemy fires, and also work their way with Siva around the various obstacles.
To be able to pull them, “Just don’t get out of the immediate 50m area around me.
In short, they have that much area of movement.
When seen from afar, it was even a spectacular sight to behold a group of five speeding through all that hindered them, dodging even cannon fires as if they could predict them, and while doing so kill and then collect the Mobile Suits with a smooth execution that preserved the mechanical body and only focused damages on their pilot cockpits.
Especially their leader who was absorbing all the ‘remains’ of the Mobile Suits, he was like a storm of machine slaughter, the eye of the tornado that took down the armada by himself… head-on!
Seconds ticked by into a minute.
With another prompt, the group of five once again vanished from where they were flying, followed by a muffled explosion of the wind barrier, and the sight of thousands of Mobile Suit remains that fell from the sky.
At the third time this happened, the players and all NPCs had finally learned of Siva’s existence and they also realized that he can’t pick everything all the loot he caused so they contacted their land forces and organized a massive movement to get the falling Mobile Suits… with the help of talented engineers, it wasn’t hard to convert this thing into a humanoid weapon, or even use the useful parts as scraps or even smelt them for materials.
In the meantime, the armada above had collapsed as Siva entered the nearest 2km distance from the mothership.
Four minutes had passed and the repairs had now gone to 50%. The damage he caused, both from the warship ambush and his current intervention had slowed down the repair progress.
The players saw this as an opportunity to launch a head-on assault to the mothership defense.
Siva and his group, of course, joined in on this.
There are around five thousand or so players and NPCs who launched the assault. Their unified cry of victory urged and heightened their morale as they soared like a tide towards the chest opening.
But the demons wouldn’t let them enter. They’ve already let a few in they wouldn’t let all of these bastards get inside and hurt their General further.
As such, wave upon wave of jet planes launched from the opening on the chest of the mothership, they were going to directly use their Mobile Suit’s large metallic bodies to crush the flying ants.
Daylight was already covered by the shadow of the humanoid mothership, but the addition of this tide of sonic booming jet planes brought more things to worry.
The droning hums of their plasma jet engines put together sounded like a giant monster snarling at the approaching impudent crowd.
Wind was cut, the sound covered everything. The cries of help and despair rung from the attackers as they were crushed and chopped in batches, the wings of the jet plane convertibles dyed red with their blood and gores.
“Barrier Mages to the front!” a team leader roared.
Following this command, a group of people that wore Wizard Robes and had wings on their backs raised their staves, wands, orbs, and all other enchanted weapons to channel their barrier spells that created a semi-transparent wall of Mana right in front of their assembly.
P-P-P-PANG!!!
The unlucky jet planes that crashed directly to the wall of Mana exploded and the impacts pushed the Mages, and some even cringed, but they ultimately stood safe and dealt damage to their surrounding adversaries.
“Support Mages!” the same team leader ordered.
Wizards in green and blue magician robes cast the supporting spells onto their allies and the Barrier Mages recovered their health and postures, with the rest of their allies physically carrying them and pushing their effort towards the very frontlines.
It was the old Mobile Fortress Strategy! Crude and unsightly ancient, but it was very effective. Finally, this group pushed through the waves of suicidal jet planes and reached the entrance on the chest.
“We will also go there!”
“For the treasures!”
Seeing the effective stratagem, many groups also copied it and some of them reached the entrance on the chest of the humanoid mothership as well.
Of course, only some of them made it the rest of the aspirants overwhelmed by the repeating wave of the attack.
And would the demons be as stupid to do only a single move to counter them?
Seeing that a few had eventually reached their last line of defense, rows and columns of transformed Mobile Suits held their plasma coils and waited for the approaching Terrans.
The Mobile Fortress Strategy collapsed under the bombardment of plasma bursts from thousands of Mobile Suits, and players and NPCs alike turned to ashes as they were fried in the name of treasures.
In Mobile Suit mode, the Aviators can’t execute an overly intricate set of movements and at best could only hover in place.
As such, the sight of thousands of them blocking the entrance to the mothership something scary, even to the likes of Heller who was nothing more than ant when compared to their number and size.
Of course, the cannon fires still continued to fire at them but Siva and his crew had the advantages of Cortana and a few excellent cameras, predicting the targeting angles and providing visual data to help increase their chance to survive.
“Huuu… I feel like one of my fingers is cut.”
Kathleen Brew had already drunk her Red Potions and recovered from the injury but she still looked pained not because of it but because of the way Siva was using her precious babies.
Of course, as much as she grumbled, she knew that without the cameras she lent, they wouldn’t have been able to predict the fire trajectories of all those cannons that seemed to only fire at them.
And, looking around at the continuous and never-ending waves of suicidal jet planes and Mobile Suits that went after their tiny group, she never stopped moving even for a moment because if she stayed still, she would surely get blasted off and knocked out of the sky.
Loni looked like an aerial acrobat, bow and arrow in her hands, jumping and turning and countering on every instances that she found as an opening.
Cramer was the most direct. His Godhammer is a natural counter to the plasma bursts and as such, he used it to parry the plasma bursts.
He sometimes even threw out the Godhammer to a close by target, smashing the pilot cockpit, and stretching his hand to recall the hammer. He was repeating this cycle endlessly.
The most relaxed of the four was Heller.
He displayed the reason why he was an Archmage as he showcased his trademark shield magic, while casting spells one after another using the [Leaf Blade] that served as a Magic Staff in his hand.
All of this was happening while they traversed the distance until the last 1km stretch of the battlefield in the sky.
[Boss, I’ve detected land invaders entering the defensive zone of the Grand Mansion.]
Siva was startled by this news and he had to stop and take a look down at them. The sight of the city down below and the battlefield all around him was enough to take away his breath.
But his gaze pierced through all that as Cortana projected to him the camera feed of one of the Liberty Drones he left above Scion’s location, 4km towards the sky.
A few hundreds of “Pawns” free-falled from some unknown origins and they were clearly headed to the Grand Mansion.
“That’s a Supreme Demon Commander.” The one leading this group of bravoes is a vampire-looking handsome man with a sleek hairstyle.
—no, actually, he really does look like that.
The difference between an ordinary Commander of the demon armada and a “Supreme” is clearly in display here. That ‘man’ is a true unholy existence, a corrupted son of light. And one proof of it is the fact that despite the influence of corruption, there was still dignity and class on its bearing.
His ears were pointy and his gaze disdainful, any other women would fall for him if not for the fact that he was surrounded by a dark gaseous miasma distinctive of a high-ranking corrupted being.
In fact, if his skin was black, it wouldn’t be weird to lump him as on the same species as the currently cursed Siva.
‘Cortana, contact Lily.’
[Done.]
Siva didn’t waste time, “Lily, I leave her safety to your care. Don’t let me down.”
In front of Siva was the “(||_||)” faced Real@D Lily.
[Who are you?]
Siva choked. He couldn’t let Cortana control her all the time to give a chance for Lily’s AI to grow up.
“That’s not important. Just protect you master.”
[She’s outside… looking up.]
“Tell the people around her to prepare for trouble and you should also use your capabilities to link up to the Scan Data of the Liberty Drones.”
[I will. Is there anything else?]
“…”
[Goodbye.]
Siva was speechless. It was hard to think she was programmed to act like a kid… or was it a grownup he was talking to just now?
Anyways, this was a chance to test Lily’s abilities.
“Cortana…”
[Don’t worry boss. I will take over the Puppets if I find her performance lacking.]
Siva fought with himself and didn’t contact the guys down there. In fact, he was now prepared to dash forth and break through the barrier of plasma bursts by those Mobile Suits.
The entire battlefield itself looked like an ant when compared to the grand size of the 15km large Baal that floated there as if sleeping.
The hole in its chest wasn’t that large, only a few hundred meters wide.
But it was deep and it reaches far deeper into the core of the mothership.
The colossal warships acted like a solvent that are stuck at the skin of the mothership, repairing the damages done by Siva’s ambush.
“We will up the pace.” Siva said to the four.
He didn’t wait for their reply. He commanded the blades to form the [Storm] again. This time, he will charge through the front and use [Focus] to rush up inside at the most opportune time.
‘Cortana I will leave the rest up to you after that.’
[Leave it to me boss!]
“Alright then, get ready!”
*****
[Uhh… Master?]
“Hm? What is it Lily?”
[The boss said there are bad guys coming.]
“Eh?! B-Bad guys?!”
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Is it a struggle?
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