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Volume 4
Chapter 42: The Third God
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Mefisto was looking down upon all living beings. His anger on his voice is betrayed by the calm look on his visage.
His chest calmly breathed, his jaggy hand that pointed down clenched on the black sphere.
The black sphere's black light escaped the spaces between his fist and at the moment that he opened his fist again, only a pitch black ball was left in there.
"All shall bow before me, the King of Hell."
The calm ghastly voice echoed on Hagrid's ears in three consecutive repetitions and his eyes widened when Mefisto pointed that small palm-sized black ball unto him.
He felt his skin tightened and his hairs stood on ends when everything in his vision was turned instantly black.
"Not good."
He murmured and slashed the axe in his hand.
A 50m wide black beam shot out from the black ball of light while Hagrid's slash brought forth an arching trail of a dim bluish-grey glow.
The arc expanded meeting the black beam of light and a bone-shattering thunderous explosion crushed every building behind Hagrid. Like hearing a 100g C4 explode one meter away from you, the magnitude of the explosive blast wave was enough to actually destroy all bones and crack any wall on your back.
And yet the intensity and destructive scale of Mefisto's black light beam when meeting its opposing element in the form of Hagrid's axe, was like the reaction of a mint candy falling on a drum of coke times 10 billion cubic meters.
Even the running members of The Archangel tumbled.
FlowerLord crashed on Cramer's chest as Loni, Cassiopeia, Samara, and the rest were rolling once or twice from the unexpected explosion.
"My God! Is this still allowed in the game?"
Even FlowerLord who was capable of unleashing an attack that can destroy a building couldn't help but stare wide-eyed at the expanding black fire up in the air.
But the attack wasn't finished. From the distance up in the air, black wings expanded and flapped as a raged voice echoed in all surroundings.
"Terran!"
Following that cry of anger was laughing voice that came from the expanding circle of black fire floating in the air.
"Hahahahaha! I knew it! I knew it! Is that all you're capable of?!"
When the jeering laughter came, the black fire dissipated and two giant arcs of bluish-black color rose to a whopping half kilometer size. It canceled the black fire and flew straight towards Mefisto, his black wings flapping ones and a booming reply echoed in full wrath.
"I will destroy you!"
"Hahahahaha!"
Mefisto threw the black orb of light on his head and it multiplied into ten pieces.
Ten hovering palm-sized orbs flew around him as they all started to emit smaller beads of light in front of them, all pointing down at Hagrid, and all at the same time unleashed fifty-meter sized black cannon fires.
All ten black cannon fires met the two slashes and the black beams of light exploded and made a planet of black fire explode in midair.
Some of the fires reached the buildings while some scorched the lands below.
Hagrid was thrown back and crashed into the ground like a meteor while the angry Mefisto's face distorted into disbelief that he wasn't able to accomplish his goal.
What he can do was just look on, watch in dismay as Hagrid stood up with only a few scratches on his golden armor.
His eyes narrowing, he hissed the words from his mouth.
"So that's the Howling Tiger Armor... and that axe is the Heaven Cleaver..." his words may seem to be delivered calmly but the rage in his chest had reached the maximum. He looked at his demon hands and he spent a few moments there, thinking, until finally he made a smile that turned into a laugh.
That laugh was of bitterness.
It was also layered with the emotion that he had met the 'same' fate again.
But even though he seemed to have lost all his cards, his laughter only intensified as the silence of the explosion drifted across the battlefield, bathing everything in Mefisto's moment of defeat.
"Hahahahahahaha
........."Hahahahahahahaha
............."Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!"
Everything was silent.
Only his laughter could be heard as the wind carried it across the city.
Mefisto floated up and continued to still rise in altitude. Hagrid was heaving, he had expended his cards as well. But unlike Mefisto who seemed to feel that he was defeated although it was merely a draw, Hagrid was frowning as he felt that there was something wrong in the situation.
"Is he still planning to morph?" He thought in alarm.
Right now, the hand that held his giant axe is shaking. Although it can't be seen in the surface of his pose, at most, he can only unleash one last explosive attack of that level before his Mana and his body collapse on the extensive stress that this battle equipment set brought his avatar.
After all, every high-end armor, ability, and even MODs and skills always had a price to pay... especially for Runes.
The silence continued on, Mefisto kept on rising upwards higher and higher, laughing his heart out in a bitter laugh.
And until he was 2km high, he stopped all his actions and then looked down on all creations from above.
His shadow cast over the city, he looked on at the opponent that tested his might.
"To be imprisoned for thousands of years in that place... I have already forgotten how it was to be strong. I was the King in my world... I was supposed to rule everything in every sky...!! Until that war that brought everything to ruin, Terra's children had continued on to infuriate me over and over... I cannot tolerate this any longer. I shall destroy this world and find another world to start the plan..."
As he calmly spoke these words, he also looked up towards the empty sky. His calm words were spoken only to the air and yet, for some reason, it was carried on every ear that listened.
No one had any idea of whom and what he was talking about but they all felt that his words carried with it a deep meaning.
It was a meaning that gave everyone who heard it an even more sinister premonition of danger.
For Volt and Thorn, however, it only added to their guesses...
This world is more than just a game.
Because only the two of them are sure that hidden somewhere underneath that black armored demon skin... is the person that controlled the Avatar of the player called The Destroyer....
And yet as soon as Mefisto spoke the words and looked up, a murderous desire descended from the sky that startled everyone.
"What's he planning now?" Hagrid frowned.
Mefisto's eyed glanced down and in it was no longer the red of his anger but the pure and undeniable blackness of heart. There were no longer any other colors in his eyes except black. Even a red or a yellow in the middle was gone. It was just black.
His black wings expanded as wide as they can, the ten little orbs of black beads that floated around him were absorbed into his chest.
Stretching his hand as if gripping something, a black colored lightning spear was formed instantly into his hand.
When this spear of black lightning appeared, crackling sounds echoed and shattered the wind. Thunder claps rang, the air vibrated, and the spear that formerly sized just in his palm expanded in a size of 20m!
Seeing this made their souls shiver, a cold hand seemed to caress their backs and grip their necks from behind.
"This is just a game!" yelled Samara. "What is happening here? Why... why do I feel that my life is being threatened?"
When Thorn heard Samara, his mind had unwittingly remembered Hanna and her MOD that nobody else knew except for a very select people.
He remembered that as soon as she got that MOD, she quit the game.
"That MOD had the ability to see the Guardian Spirit of an Avatar... if so..." his mind was working on every possible clue but all he could think about... and all he could actually connect it all was not this Mefisto in front of them but the name that they had just learned recently. "Siva."
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Whether it was intentional or not, upon the call of the name, in a place dark with the blackness of loneliness... with the familiar solitary chair beside a bed... sat a disheveled-haired person who raised his head as if hearing a whisper.
His eyes were that of a snake, of a savage nature that goes beyond the limits of human comprehension. His frown was that of a person who chose to be alone not because of persecution nor because the curse of the arena had forced him to do so... no.
This person chose to be here in this dark room because it suits him. After all, just like how 'The Destroyer' can make the people in his cell all crazy just with his presence... he can also put fear into his cellmates just the same as well.
As his vertical iris reflected in the dark, he raised his head towards the battlefield in the surface, a savage smile spearing on his lips.
He whispered, "When I started this game, I chose to put my 100 stat points into the Agility stats, converting it into speed. I had many missions and quests that improved my body... until I landed on that one event where I met that girl. She said that although I am strong, I haven't met that one existence that had the ability to destroy this planet... I wonder... was he this being or is it the one named... Siva?"
Above, the black spear continued to give off that threatening pulse that put everyone else into the edge of their butts.
They all had the notion to run but cannot.
It was as if there was no command being brought from their brains to their avatars.
When Mefisto raised his spear, he calmly said, "I will remember this, Terra." and was about to throw the spear when a crack of lightning came from the heavens.
A massive lightning the size of an entire centipede truck struck Mefisto and his spear crackled into bits within the sound.
The sound of space being rent apart spread in every corner of the lands as the bright flash of lightning 'cleansed' the arm that Mefisto used to hold his black spear.
Volt, Thorn, Samara, everyone... including Hagrid and his henchmen all gasped in surprise as they were put in awe of that crack of lightning. it was just one flash followed by a thunderclap. It wasn't that loud but it was sudden and it viciously 'cleansed' Mefisto's right arm.
"Who?!" In shock, Mefisto raised his head to look at who sent that lightning but from the sky, there was no one.
Instead, when he looked at his arm, his face distorted into a look of fear as it moved without his control and gripped his beck.
The moment he did, from the ones that was looking from below, they all forgot to breathe as they saw a silhouette of a person seeming to stand behind Mefisto.
In Mefisto's shock, he tried to turn his head and when he saw in the corner of his eye who that person was, a rare look of fear was instantly drawn on his face.
"Y-You... you're supposed to be dead!"
Mefisto's scream can be heard even from below and not only Hagrid, but everyone else could see that there was a person who was controlling that 'cleansed' arm of the devil.
His black jagged skin was gone and only a white sleeve with an intricate design of a metal fire was there.
The sleeved arm was gripping the devil by his neck and the look of fear can be seen clearly on the face of the devil.
It was just a silhouette but that person's eyes had a dark shine.
Furthermore, aside from the feeling of an extreme power, Mefisto's threatening aura earlier was dispelled like it didn't exist. And yet, at the next instant, when the shadow image of a man behind Mefisto opened his mouth to speak, an even more frightening pressure descended on all living creatures down below.
All of them, no matter where they are, with no exception, were put into their knees in a forced expression of kneeling.
Not even 'The Predator' in his solitary cell was an exception. Not even the strong but cowardly Cedric that controlled the curse of Dragona hiding in a building at the edge of the city, was an exception.
Monsters in barns, forests, or plains, all animals, all the people that's been fighting in the city, everyone with no exclusion...
...knelt down on all fours!
It was as if they were in a presence of an almighty existence that warranted no one the right to even lift their heads to see.
"What is this?!" Screamed Hagrid as he had found this sensation both alarmingly threatening and also oppressively humiliating. "What... is... this...!!!"
Hagrid tried his best to raise his head but all of them, with no exception to anyone, was being forced to bow their heads and kneel on all fours... this action was a clear indication of a weakling's submission to a supreme existence.
From where he was, Cedric used all his might to cast a spell and his vision was magnified as if the place where Mefisto was a few kilometers away, is just in front of him, including the man behind.
"Who... are you....??!!!" Cedric gritted in between teeth.
And as if to answer his question, the man behind Mefisto looked at Cedric as his eyes widened and the sockets of his eyes was burned with black fire. All Cedric could do was scream in pain as his entire avatar burned and in his vision was the words of the 'end game'.
The man spoke, "You have no right to see me." After that his silhouette parted from the sleeve... no.
What actually happened is that the entity called 'Mefisto' and all his blackness and his being, separated from his body as if it was oil floating in spring water.
The man with an unclear face with black eyes straightened his arm and there was a struggling Mefisto with all his squirming weakness in his hands.
"You're supposed to be dead!" Mefisto yelled towards the man but the man only stared at him nonchalantly as if everything he's doing was a futile struggle.
"Have you forgotten, little one?" a cold and uncaring voice echoed like a sound of a man who whispered through a 10m long 3in wide pipe line. "We were sealed together."
Mefisto's eyes widened as fear was clearly drawn on his face. His struggle became even fiercer as he tried to free himself from the grip that held his neck.
"No! This is not happening! The three gods are dead! The Preserver is dead! I killed Terra! No one else is in possession of the God Hand! I killed her, it belonged to me! I am Mefisto!"
With the words escaping his mouth, Mefisto's black aura surged from his body and ten palm-sized black beads launched pointblank bursts of black plasma.
When Volt and the rest saw this, especially Hagrid, all he thought was that the man was dead.
The explosion echoed and battered the lands below and the black fire engulfed the area closest to the struggling Mefisto.
But the hand that gripped his neck did not loosen nor did it lose the power that gripped his entire being.
Seeing this filled Mefisto with even more dread than before. His eyes widened and he heaved to breathe as the hand that held his neck only got tighter, choking him. Now, he had but lost all his ability to resist as he felt all his power being sealed or sucked away.
The wind blew and the fire dissipated. To everyone's surprise, not even a scratch was put into the white polo clothes of the person holding Mefisto.
As the black fires that burned over his body gradually shrank, it was all clear how it all seemed that the fire was just on the surface. His entire being was unharmed.
"The Fires of Hell doesn't work on me." He said calmly and then drew Mefisto closer to his face that they were eye to eye. "The Hand of God was never with my mother. I am the Hand of God. My name is Siva. I am the third son of The One that created everything and the vessel that holds my will is the one tasked to destroy everything so Genesis will begin."
When his words were spoken, the pressure that made all existence bow down on his presence intensified.
They all heard the words.
...and at the next second, everyone online in RPG: Terroa saw a cinematic video play in their visions.
It was a battlefield that engulfed an entire continent in scale.
For all those who are in the know of some of the history-related quests and missions in the game, they all vaguely recognize this battlefield as the Great War that had occurred 56 years ago...
It was this war that provided the setting of the current timeline of the game.
But to those of The Archangel, or to Hagrid, or to the members of the Alcides Guild currently headed towards Dragona, or to the members of that new uprising group of 'Unique Players' that was on a desperate part of a mission as of the moment... they all recognize this very scene itself.
To the core elders of the Blue Card Legion where currently, Hubert was standing in their midst and an unconscious Scion lay beside him, they all saw this scene of the battlefield and couldn't help but smile as they praised Hubert with a nod.
This battlefield was the deciding factor that ended the war between the invading Demons and the Terrans that defended their homeland.
In this war, nine heroes stood at the frontlines as they fought directly against Mefisto in his most powerful form.
And then, from the clouds, their visions descended into a scene where a beautiful girl held an unconscious man in her embrace.
From where she was looking at, with the background of devastation and still burning fires and floating fogs of war, where dead bodies lay in heaps and mountains, where all was dead and only a single man remains... she called.
"Siva, please, stop this...." The girl cried.
The man had his back against her and in one of his hand is Mefisto. Dead. He slowly turned his head and the players all saw his eyes painted with savagery and the intense desire for destruction. It was not a person's expression, calm and very composed, but that of an existence that had a sole existence and nothing more.
Not speaking a word, the man threw Mefisto like a dead rug and then rushed towards the girl like a beast of carnage.
From behind the girl, eight shadows ran and faced the man but all of them were not a match as they were all thrown away by the sheer force of an arm.
The eight warriors were blown away and the man reached and towered against the girl who didn't try to even move a bit.
He said, "Mother... my purpose is nigh. I cannot fight my destiny."
These words surprised all those in the know because this was a part of the written Terran history that is not included in any Book of Legends. Not even the original book held by the Council of Elders of the greatest city in the world, the Castle City of Jeremiah had any information regarding this part of history.
Who is this man? They could only ask.
But more than these questions, Volt and the rest, especially FlowerLord... and if Scion was even awake, she would have fainted again.
It's because the man held in the girl's embrace and the man looming over and is now kneeling with severe reverence like a good child had the same face...
Rex Kingsley's face.
The girl, with tears, raised her hand up and caressed the man's cheeks.
"You don't have to. You've done enough. Your task has long been completed. I was there when the true Genesis began. You don't have to carry this burden again... Brahma, in order to give you, the youngest, a chance for a life you wish, he split his soul and is now the pillar that supports and protects this world against the other side. Your task has long been completed you don't have to do this. Let your mother carry this burden for you and let the world flow not impeded by anyone's hands."
When she spoke, Siva closed his eyes as he gave her a nod. A bright golden light came from that hand that gently touched his face and a look of pleasant emotion, like being freed of something sticking at one's side can be seen on Siva's face.
From the distance, Mefisto's body floated and came forth towards their direction. The kneeling Siva on one corner and the unconscious 'Rex Kingsley' laying there on her lap were in the middle of them.
"Let me use my life to preserve the flow of time, to make all living beings live and be guided by their wills. From the curse of the past (Mefisto) to the judgment of the future (Siva), let these two opposing elements live in a single body... to exist as the balance of life... to persist until the day that the vessel learns of the truth of this world... and judge it according to his will."
When she spoke, Siva lowered his head and the aura of destruction retreated from his body and he became a drop of metallic sphere while his body vanished.
His voice rang, "Mother, I will entrust my task to this mortal. I am tired. I will erase my will as I lock this curse of the demons along with yours. But when the day comes that he is not able to accomplish his mission, then I shall emerge again and fulfill The One's destiny bestowed on me."
Terra replied somberly, "If that day do ever comes, then I will trust this boy is ready to face the task and decide with the right decision for all's sake."
When the words were spoken, the three of them vanished. Only 'Rex Kingsley' was left there as the right sleeve of his long white polo was possessed by Siva's will. This was the Hand of God... the hand of destruction.
From this moment on, the Hand of God was passed down.
The curse averted...
The invasion thwarted...
The war ended and only nine people had remained to tell the tale.
From here, everyone who was watching this scene was brought back to their own places and minds. Some remained in a daze, some of them were even ecstatic. Some remembered missions that were connected to this cinematic that they left whatever they were doing before it and poured all their efforts to searching for clues.
Then, to the people that watched the battle in Dragona...
When they looked up, they saw how Mefisto was turned to ashes as crackling lightning exploded on Siva's hands that burned the demon alive.
It was only a matter of a few breaths and nothing was even remained of the all-powerful him.
When he died, Siva looked down on them as he smiled with bitterness and looked up to the sky, whispering in a defeated tone.
"Mother... you failed."
After he spoke, he closed his eyes and the veil of Godly power that escaped his body vanished as he fell down straight to the ground below.