Chapter 43

The cornerstone of harmony

Saiko lays on the ground with her head resting on one of her arms and with one leg crossed over the other and watches the lights of life dance above her.

Although her body continues to scream from the excruciating pain of hovering between life and death as life is constantly sucked out of and reinjected into it, her mind is at peace.

She had already gotten used to the pain a while ago, in fact, rather than her mind being at peace, she is starting to get bored.

Sure, the pain is terrible, she can feel various parts of her body trying to shut down as life is sucked out of them only to be reenergized as the new patch of life that has gotten slightly darker in color after mixing with the lights from the corpses is injected into them, but the pain is only terrible by the standards of normal people.

She, however, is by no means normal.

She had already experienced far worse pains during her time in the living weapon program, and thanks to that, she can brush aside and ignore most forms of pain, and even something as severe as the pain of death only hurts for a little bit before she gets used to it and it just becomes mildly annoying rather than painful.

Out of boredom, Saiko raises her free hand reaching for the dancing lights above her, and tries to command it to move.

There was no rhyme or reason for doing so, it was just an act out of boredom, it was no different from when children reach out toward the clouds, she didn’t expect the lights to respond to her command but to her surprise they did.

Her eyebrows go up in surprise as she watches the lights move following the movements of her hand.

She tries again to confirm and the lights follow her commands once more.

She blinks repeatedly wondering why that might be happening, she figures it might be because it’s “her life” so she can control it and perhaps that’s something everyone could do or perhaps it’s a side effect of the ritual that she is doing, or perhaps it’s something else life is still a mysterious subject that they don’t know much about.

Saiko shrugs her shoulders and decides to forget about it, she probably wouldn’t be able to figure it out even if she thought about it.

She might ask Ken about it later, if anyone could figure it out, it would be him.

For now, all that matters is she now has something to do to pass the time.

Saiko starts playing with the lights above her but makes sure she doesn’t manipulate the lights too much to avoid disrupting the ritual.

after a few minutes, Saiko’s whiskers twitch alerting her to a group of creatures coming her way.

She raises an eyebrow in confusion.

The creatures are large, so she should have heard their footsteps far earlier than she could sense them with her whiskers, especially with how much echo that should be created by the large cave she is in, but the creatures are making no sounds at all.

Maybe these creatures are flying, well, even if they are, she should have heard something, a grunt, a cough, anything.

‘hmmm’

That means they are intentionally being stealthy, maybe they are trying to sneak up on her.

The thought cracks Saiko up and she opens her mouth to chuckle but when she does life rushes out of her mouth drawn by the ritual preventing any sound from coming out.

‘They should know even a blind and deaf cat can still hunt and I am neither of the two’

With a jump, she springs up to her feet and dusts off her coat then the pupils of her eye dilate widely and start to glow brightly.

The bright glow of her cat eyes mixes with the faint glow of life escaping through her eyes resulting in an ominous and eerie reddish violet glow.

Saiko looks in the direction of the incoming creatures and thanks to her enhanced vision is able to see a group of ten reptilian creatures coming toward her.

The creatures resembled horses if horses had snouts with jagged teeth, and antlers and were at least twice as big.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

A group of …

She raises an eyebrow.

what she can only describe as medieval knights covered from head to toe in white armor and carrying large halberds are riding on the backs of the horse like creatures.

No, on a closer look, she can tell that although the armors are made to resemble the ancient armors worn by humans before the cataclysm three thousand years ago, they are undoubtedly biomechanical armors.

‘hmmm, they have a unique taste for sure but I kind of like it’

The group visibly flinches, it seems they are finally close enough to see her.

‘what’s up with that reaction?’

Saiko looks at the group in confusion.

she can’t see their expressions but even without seeing them, she can tell they are scared, and not just the knights, the horse like creatures are scared too.

‘Hey, I am not that scary…wait, do they know I use decay magic? Is that why they are scared? But no one should know… wait! are they from the living weapon program?’

Thoughts quickly race through Saiko’s head.

Her revulsion and hatred toward her own magic made it the first thing she thought to blame, a vile and evil magic that brought misery every time she used it, but for them to know about it would mean-

-Ahm –

The knight riding on the golden creature clears his through pulling Saiko’s attention to him and out of her mind.

-Miss Angel, we are from the royal guards –

‘Angel?’

Saiko tilts her head in confusion.

She remembers the people from the Living Weapon program liked to use a lot of weird names and acronyms; they used to call her things like the death of the universe, HOTU, the end, evil goddess, etc, but they never called her an angel before.

‘I guess it’s a new name they came up with at some point, it’s been a few years after all’

She also never heard of the royal guards before, but then again, it’s not like they shared any information with her, she wasn’t a scientist or a worker, she was the test subject.

-we are here to capture you, young miss, but please think of it more like us escorting you, we would like to avoid fighting if possible –

She blinks her eyes repeatedly at the odd request.

‘they can’t possibly think I will return if they ask nicely’

She feels tempted to attack them immediately for all the torment she suffered because of them but the unexpected and overly nice way they are “arresting her” is preventing her from attacking.

Saiko opens her mouth to object but life rushes out of her mouth drawn but ritual preventing any sound from coming out.

‘oh right, I can’t talk right now’

Saiko shakes her head at the knight and crosses her arms in an X shape to indicate her refusal.

The knight pauses for a moment then looks at her.

-please miss, don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be –

A hint of hesitation and fear can be heard in his voice.

‘Hey dude, don’t make me sound like the bad gal here’

Saiko shakes her head repeatedly at the knights then makes a shooing gesture at the knights.

The knights respond with a mixture of cringing motions and grunting noises.

Although she can’t see their facial expressions, she can tell many of them were angered by the gesture, which is understandable, what she did can be seen as disrespectful but she can’t talk right now so her options are limited.

-Young miss, you are forcing us to use force –

Saiko raises an eyebrow at the knight riding on the golden creature.

‘Okay, I guess that’s the end of this conversation, I will just flush them out of the cave’

A massive wall of water rises from the ground devouring the sight of knights then rushes at them like a raging tsunami.

Fueled by their sense of dread, The knights momentarily panic and rush toward the exit of the cave but then-

-behind me-

The one on the golden creature shouts pulling the knights out of their panic and causing them to switch their destination from the cave exit to the back of their leader even if he is only inches away from the massive wall of water.

Saiko feels her control over some of the water vanishes as a circular hole is created in the wall of water around the knights.

‘hmmm, I felt that before’

The knights sigh in relief while watching arcs of electricity dance around the one she assumes to be their leader.

It seems the knights came prepared.

Well, she wouldn’t expect anything less from the ones who kept her trapped for years.

- I knew it, the king is wrong, there is no way she is the angel, she is just as barbaric as all the other Therians-

Saiko tilts her head.

‘hey, what’s with the casual racism? …wait!’

Her eyes go wide from realization.

‘Racists, overly nice with criminals, these people are from Kim Sungta’

-you have forced our hand miss, remember, you attacked first-

The leader of the knights points his halberd at Saiko.

‘no, no, wait there’s a misunderstanding’

She opens her mouth to speak but no voice comes out, only life.

She quickly makes the time out gesture to stop the knights but they ignore her plea.

-charge –

The leader of the knights shouts his command and all the horse like creatures rush at her.

‘0Wait, you don’t understand’

She raises her hand to summon a wall of ice to block the knights’ path but their leader runs through it like it isn’t there and the rest of them follow behind him.

‘crap’

*************************************

Location: a world government underground base near the northern border of Kim Sungta.

A large metallic door connected to an underground tunnel slides open and the members of Strike Team 1 enter the base.

-I didn’t know we had bases in Kim Sungta –

-of course, we do, Kim Sunta is one of the most important cornerstones to protecting harmony-

Zim, the youngest member of the strike force, wonders, and Jorden answers him.

-huh? Then why not invade it? –

-listen closely kid-

Claus places a hand on Zim’s head causing the latter to look up at him.

-our goal isn’t world domination, it’s not enforcing the law either, and it’s definitely not following the whims of the government or the oligarchy, our one and only goal is to protect harmony, and the independence of Kim Sungta is necessary for that-

- I wonder what’s going on, it seems they are having some sort of emergency –

Claus hears Davis’ comment and shifts his gaze to scan the base.

He sees multiple soldiers running left and right, some carrying documents, others carrying weapons, and seem to be getting ready for battle.

He turns his gaze to the soldier standing guard at the gate they walked in through.

The soldier corrects his posture and opens his mouth.

-Sir, a Bulgasari was spotted hiding toward a town sir while being lured by an illusion -

Claus’ lips curl up into a grin.

-ho, who wants to bet that our favorite group of thieves is one responsible?-