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Volume 6: Dead Man Island
Chapter 001: Aftermath
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Alexandria was in ruins…
The city may have safely guarded its citizens in the underground shelters, but the city itself and its military forces… were gravely injured.
Perhaps only a few tens of thousands out of a hundred or two, thousands, may have been left.
Also, the southern quadrant of the city was in a very bad state; buildings were ruined, dead bodies littered everywhere, and even those who had survived the ordeal were either still in shock not knowing if they are alive or have transcended into ghosts of the living..
They have more burned skin than they have flesh untouched by injury. Men and women, those who were alive have unfocused and blank eyes.
If they were behind a building when the superheated air rushed forth like a tidal wave and ignited the wrathful momentum of rapid contraction of cold and hot airs, then they would have been shielded from the crushing onslaught of that attack and may have been the reason why they luckily survived.
But not everyone who was luckily to not get boiled into a living soup or have been crushed by melted debris has intact bodies.
In fact… almost all of them… looked like zombies as they all stopped on their mindless walking; all looking up to see that magnificent magical display high up in their skies.
At least, because of that, they discovered that they were still alive, albeit dying.
BA-BA-BAAAMMMM!!!
The explosion caused by Gabriel’s magic caught everyone’s attentions.
In the air, a monstrously gigantic magic circle that almost measured half the size of Alexandria was spread across the horizons, high above their skies tens of kilometers away.
It was golden-silver in color with a slight tinge of royal blue…
That magic circle, despite its size, was filled with the seemingly endless mysteries of the art and craft of [Magic Circles] as the runes and symbols in the circle were all arranged in a mysterious and grand magical architectural design.
Knowledgeable enchanters and casters should be able to tell just merely from this sight that the more detailed and complicated a magic circle is, the more powerful the resonance becomes.
In a bigger picture, the design was of a circle and yet when seen from another angle, it seemed to look like a giant palm.
One of Gabriel’s ultimate magic spells…
«Space-Rending Expulsing Sword Thrust»
It wasn’t an attack in a godly level, but since his gift was the ability to control space… paired with his many millennia of existence by which is an enormous amount of years allocated to studying magic; and then there’s the additional advantage of his newly acquired Immortal Mana; although he was only just a newly ascended Immortal, his magic arts and spells have all improved in a new and completely different level.
His [magic] wasn’t just a gift anymore; it was a true and downrightly genuine [Magic Art] in itself.
It can even be said to have the right to be called a Legacy if Janus was still alive to see it.
And yet, despite this advantage, the face he was wearing while he looked up in the sky towards the direction he blew away the enemies weren’t to, wasn’t showing the slightest of a smile of victory.
Instead, he was deeply frowning, bordering almost to the appearance of someone who’s undergoing the pain of losing the person closest to you.
“The Gods have fallen. The world… will never be the same again.”
While these words seemed to be like a murmur of trepidation for himself he was actually also saying them to someone else.
That someone was Siva who was lying there looking at the huge magic circle in the sky as if it was reminding him of something.
And yet, when he heard those words, it also made his heart ache for some reason.
Because right at this moment, he recalled the last few important words that Sefirah, the demoness, had said.
“The era of the Gods is over. I am the last…”
He laid there, flat on his back, with only one arm and a tattered body; bones broken, muscles rent, this was just a game yet he was clearly aware that right at this moment, he doesn’t even have the strength to open his mouth.
But he still could move his eyes at least. He rolled his eyeballs at Gabriel on his left and felt a tiny sense of familiarity with his reserved bearing.
He and Siva had met in Warjillis but they didn’t talk much, not even a simple question and answer.
Still, he could recall the meaningful hidden anger that was hidden in Gabriel’s gaze at the time.
Who would’ve thought that he was this powerful?
Who would have thought that he was preparing to ascend to Immortality at that time?
Or has he been transcending his tribulation by the time they met in the Battle City?
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Siva, upon recalling bits and pieces of his vague connection with this universe, could at least find a few very significant reasons why Gabriel was ireful of his existence.
If Gabriel wished it, he could ultimately end the era of the Gods here and now by killing Siva.
That would’ve been a great honor to all mankind.
Mortals and Immortals who slays the Gods get to inherit their abilities, and become the Champions amongst the living creatures in all the worlds.
They become God Slayers, beings who’re capable of summoning the winds and calming the storms…
Just imagine the fame and glory, the endless horde of fawning peasants that will flock at your gates, the powers he could wield in this world… what man would miss this chance?
In fact, even as an Immortal, this was a tempting proposition since the God in question was not just any other God in the list of Divine Beings… he was [Siva, The Destroyer], the beginning, the end, and the calamity of all things.*
Thankfully though, Gabriel wasn’t just some mortal.
His Teacher was Janus who was killed by the demons… Janus was one of the Trinity Gods.
Gabriel’s appearance here wasn’t for killing Siva or for some the reason; he as here because he has a purpose.
“Janus…”
Siva murmured the name with a sense of sadness and loss. He was tired and even breathing was a task in itself, and yet he spoke of his name with all his might as if to call upon a law that can make his voice deliver those unspoken words of farewell to the Fallen God.
Gabriel’s magic circle had begun to dissipate and the effects of its activation began to minimize as well, leaving only the gushing winds and still rippling aftereffects of the Resonance.
The clouds made a large circular hole around the territory of Alexandria, the blue sky of afternoon in a wide display up above, the sol with its bright light slowly being tinged orange… in the center of this circle was the sight of the chipped moon, covering 1/16 of the total size of that visible sky.
In that size, the moon’s surface could be seen as if one was looking at it with a telescope. There are no clouds to block their vision, thus, they all could clearly see the damage that Siva had made.
Siva glanced over his direction and their eyes met.
Gabriel still had that constrained anger in his face but he was doing his best to control it as he knew that Siva’s purpose and abilities, albeit sleeping, is still something that was important in order to save his home world.
If it weren’t for that, he would have really killed him right here and now.
Because Siva…. is like a ticking time bomb,
His decision is important to the survival of this world and yet this decision in itself was controlled by his emotions.
If his [authority] came back at the wrong time when he was emotionally unstable, then deciding on the future of this world would be made upon that one single instance as well.
What Gabriel feared, though, is that Siva’s decision is going to be the fall of his home.
Thus, until he was sure that he can’t risk the safety of his home, Gabriel had to control his urge to explode and vent all his resentment to the unreliableness of Siva’s emotions.
Siva, of course, wasn’t stupid as to not sense this shackled hatred in Gabriel’s burning gaze.
When Gabriel withdrew his gaze, he looked at the direction of Alexandria before turning his head to the direction of the castle base Apus Epirus.
After a while, he looked up again and confirmed that the threat had been neutralized before going back to glance over Siva.
“You should heal your wounds.” He said coldly and then stared back at the ruined city. “I won’t be going anywhere for the time being, so look for me at the top of that mountain after you are able to walk.”
Siva didn’t reply.
He couldn’t.
Around Alexandria, there was only that one mountain in the northern side of the city. Siva also knew that the two of them needed to talk but since he wasn’t in the right condition and that the man also had no inclination to heal him, and that he had more pressing matters to take care of in the city, he just sent him away.
With a snap of his fingers, a flash of light came as a magic circle formed beneath Siva, before he vanished within the next moment where a spatial ripple filled the area where Siva once lay.
Gabriel also didn’t linger on as he took a step and also vanished appearing next on the decimated southern quadrant of the city, observing the ruins of what was once a thriving place with melancholy.
*****
Where Siva appeared next was at the wall of Apus Epirus. A look of surprise and shock displayed on the people’s faces but before they could recover, Scion ran at his direction and knelt, not daring to even touch him for fear of actually hurting him instead.
“Rex! Oh my god… oh my god! This injury…”
Her heart clearly broke seeing him almost torn apart like this. One could only imagine just how gruesomely difficult that fight had been.
Or was it even called a fight?
Two God Eaters had just appeared and Siva had just been trashed by one of them like a child fighting an adult, with the world as the witness.
Of course, she would worry about him. Thorn who followed after her, yelled with a loud voice.
“Healers! Someone! Hurry!”
Reacting to his voice, the active call with the marshal buzzed with commands as squads of white-clothed [Healers] flew from each warships to head directly at his direction.
From the people in the wall, a few handfuls of healers also emerged and ran over to cast their spells.
After a round of healing, the healers from the wall exclaimed with each other.
“F*cking… how can he still survive this?”
“This is insane…”
“How’s he still alive with these kinds of injuries?!”
“More importantly, how is he still awake? With this amount of damage, he should have been forcefully logged-out by the system!”
Right.
As part of the security and player-protection protocols of the NLD, once an avatar had received a certain amount of damage or mental stress, it will protect the User and log them out to avoid long lasting damage.
In this game, normally, the only lasting damages players get are the week-long nightmares of seeing the bizarre creatures that’s been made through the superb Real-Alternate-Design rendering.
The healers who came first were shocked to see the level of damage that his avatar had received.
Normally, to heal a heavily injured player, three or four healers were already enough to do the right job but there are five of them and after a round of healing, not only did Siva not heal in a significant manner, it seemed to have no actual effect at all.
Just what level of damage did he receive and how was he still alive?
In RPG: Terroa, once a fatal wound was dealt on a player, it could spell either immediate [Game Over] or prolonged death that can still be salvaged if tended by magic as soon as possible.
In Siva’s case, he was the latter.
They could only recast their healing spells after the cooldown period and while they were doing so, the Support Mages also helped on their cooldown time while the other healers from The Company arrived to lend a hand.
After an hour of extensive healing, Siva’s bodily injuries seemed to have healed significantly but he still couldn’t stand up and could only talk.
Besides that, the [regen] magic spell that can cure a severely injured, or severed limb is a very high class magic spell —bordering to NPC-exclusive spells that only true and elite Healers could use.
It took this group of Healers an entire hour just to regrow his limb and heal his injuries.
“Don’t worry, I’m not hurting anymore.” Siva told the teary-eyed Scion.
“You were always like this… even when you were injured, you saved Baron out of that burning car and never minded your injuries… just… stop making people worry for you, please?”
When she was speaking at this part, Thorn wanted to rush in and stop her mid-sentence but the words were already uttered and he could only glance over the people around them, studying what reactions they would have.
Of course, the only people who knew about Rex’s circumstances except from him and Volt were Rentaw and Debra, and then there’s the marshal.
But just now, Scion had just blurted it out without caring for the consequences. Perhaps she was just honestly concerned but with this one simple blurting of a secret, smart people who are able to connect the dots wouldn’t stay silent.
In the end, once this secret was publicized, Siva’s circumstances would only worsen and Baron’s and his life would be put into jeopardy.
Scion was really reckless just now.
But Siva didn’t mind and tried his best to speak up despite the still hurting muscles and joints.