As I stood on the balcony, I could begin to see energy twisting off in the distance. I let out a sigh. It was time for round two with the Astrologer. Well, if he wanted round 2, I would be running away. Or hobbling away.
I left the window and made my way downstairs and out the entrance. My protection detail didn’t say anything and were on high alert. I was glad they understood not to interfere or contradict my decisions. I was the strongest combatant out of all of them, even wounded. Hobbling my way across the plaza. I kept my eye on the twisting energy. It looked like the start of a hurricane. There was even wind picking up as well along with the energy.
Putting my hands on the pillar, I got a restoration. I needed to do this with how tense things were. I couldn’t wait a day to get a better handle on the brain or hip tumors. The burn damage disappeared. I had become used to pain so I had been ignoring it, but it was a pressure relieved off of my mind. I could also hear things much more clearly now, instead of everything being heavily muffled.
What wasn’t as good was that the tumor in my head went inactive. What the Astrologer did clearly left a physical trigger of some kind. I stood there at the store pillar, focusing and tried to narrow in on the edges. I knew where they were, but with the tumor once again dormant, it was infinitely harder. Still, it wasn’t impossible, and I had an impression of where the tumor was now. The hip tumor was pushed back slightly, and I regained more control over my leg.
Two soldiers rushed up to our group. “Emperor Michael, the Astrologer was located, but he did something. We need you,” one of them said. It could be another trap. But if it was, then I would send some of my soldiers to their death.
“Lead the way. The rest of you spread and out and be ready,” I replied. Captain Francis who was in charge, began issuing orders as we made our way towards the center of the energy vortex. I could already feel the amount of energy increasing as we approached.
I noted my protection detail getting more uncomfortable. Another Captain rushed forward with several soldiers. “Emperor Michael, we couldn’t remain in place any longer.”
“What happened exactly?” I asked as we talked in the middle of the street.
“We entered a building during our sweep of the city. There were several corpses and signs of long term habitation. We would a deformed lump of flesh…it impacted people’s minds in some way. There was blood, more corpses, and one with a fleshy mass for a head.”
“I managed to break free and target the lump of flesh along with the other soldiers. Just before it died, a tear opened and energy rushed out,” he said.
“What building?” I asked. He pointed it out.
“All of you wait here,” I replied. The energy in the air was closing in on a level 3 zone. I made my way to the building he had pointed out. I entered it and the smell of death and blood was in the air. The energy was inching towards level 4 inside the building.
What did you do Astrologer and were you truly dead? I checked the lower rooms, found corpses, a cart, and supplies. Including crafting crystals. That confirmed in my mind the Avatar and the Astrologer had been working together if the combined attack hadn’t. Just more proof of her scheming.
I made my way up the stairs to the second floor. I checked the nearby rooms first before going to the main room with the issue. It was brutal. There were corpses and body parts. A good part of the floor had been wrecked. A tub, which had been filled with blood but partially melted.
A corpse with a twisted mass of flesh for a head. Looking at the chest and the clothing that was probably Ruth. What my eyes had been avoiding was the technicolored jagged edged sphere hanging in the air. The amount of energy it was outputting was immense and made it hard to work out the edges.
The Astrologer had ripped a hole open to another energy layer, and energy was rushing in. “Almighty System, some support please?” I asked out loud and nothing happened. Nothing could ever be easy. Acid Shot.
My attack went into the sphere and kept moving through the technicolored space. Falling in appeared to be a bad idea. I walked around the room, and it was clear that it was a sphere and not just a two-dimensional plane. The physics of this hurt my head as the energy level slowly kept increasing. The city shield was still active, which meant it was either helping or hurting.
I slowly approached and tried to discern how the energy was behaving, but it was like staring into a flashlight to see how the flashlight worked. The very nature of the problem, made it incredibly hard to parse out any of the details.
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There was nothing I could do, and the problem was slowly getting worse. Dammit! The Avatar saved herself once again. If we deactivated the city shield to attack her, there were three possibilities. The hole would go nuclear, wiping out a large chunk of land, possibly the store. This could cause a chain reaction. That wasn’t the worst-case scenario. At least the threat would be over then.
The hole could remain unaffected. That would be far worse. Who knows what would happen at that point? The best outcome was that it would disappear. After all my experiences I had become jaded enough to put this as the least likely outcome.
That brought up another issue. Three of the pillars were still damaged from my attempted upgrade. If the rest of the pillars were destroyed, would I be held responsible? Yes, of course the answer was yes. The Almighty System was a lot of swear words combined together. With the nicest thing I could say about it, was unyielding or possibly uncaring as a second choice for a descriptor.
Making my way out of the building, the energy was slowly going up in the surroundings. The soldiers had retreated while my protection detail had remained where I had left them. They followed me to the group that had grown much larger. “Issue an immediate evacuation order for the zone under my authority. I believe Clarissa has Neo Brasilia as our rally point,” I ordered.
“How much time-“
“As soon as the shield drops most likely. Clarissa will manage the details. Report to her, and begin securing all supplies.” I ordered. The Captain saluted and began issuing orders to the various soldiers and messengers. I began making my way slowly back to the plaza while thinking over the situation.
Clarissa was there along with the senior members of the government. I explained the situation and she nodded. “We can’t take the risk and speed is of the essence. The evacuation was a good decision,” she said. “What of the Avatar?” she finally asked. We all looked up and it was very hard to make out the airship through the city shield.
“We can’t take the risk of remaining here. A response like the Divine Empress unleashed would kill everyone inside the city. We can deal with her another day.” It pained me to say that, but she was too high up for me to reach. I would not lose all the soldiers that could use beam attacks just to take her out as well. I wasn’t even sure if that would blow back on me or not.
The Avatar was an incredibly frustrating thorn in my side to deal with, since I didn’t want to risk killing her. Once again, she escapes due to the circumstances. Was this all part of her plan? Why was she hanging around? Did she have a use for that hole? Could I toss her into it and get away with it?
These were all complicated questions, and I didn’t have any way to get answers. Well, there was one thing I did need to do. I went to each of the three remaining broken pillars and spent a hundred million points. That still left me with around ninety million in my health insurance plan, but it was frustrating that I needed to spend so much right now.
It had honestly been kind of impressive how Clarissa managed to get four of them fixed up. But there had been a lot of crystals from level 3 zones flowing into Purgatory from the teams she had set up. She hadn’t handed control of those teams over to the governors, to supercharge the build up of the capital city.
Now it was all going to be wrecked once again. At least we would be able to get key people and supplies out of the city.
Everyone was already rushing off to purchase carts and evacuate the city. So much waste, so much destruction. Everyone was rapidly rushing out of the city. I let out a sigh as I watched it all happen around me, while trying to deal with the curse damage.
“I am going to try something, and I might fall down. Don’t panic and leave me there,” I told my protective detail. Captain Francis set up a ring of soldiers around me. I took a deep breath. “Gar mar,” I said, and I felt the tumor trigger. I near instantly suppressed it and smiled, only stumbling slightly.
Getting the activation phrase had made this much easier. While it would stress my concentration, it was good to know I could do this. I put my hands on the store pillar and got another restoration, shutting off the tumor and its disabling function.
The soldiers made a gap as Clarissa approached me again. “Michael, everyone is moving out. We should go,” she said.
“Someone should turn off the shield in half an hour, if things go badly, better to know right away, than wait,” I replied. Clarissa was silent.
“That is a suicide mission and we would need someone trustworthy.”
“I volunteer”, Captain Francis said and stepped forward. “I will turn off the shield. Half an hour?” he asked.
“An hour to be safe. Thank you, Captain Francis,” I said and the man gave me a resolute nod. Clarissa quickly escorted him to the shield building while I followed behind her.
Once the Captain was settled, I followed the cart that Clarissa got pulled by as we fled the city. Already the ambient energy was rising, which was not a good sign.
As we cleared the city shield, I couldn’t help but sigh. Another battle in the win column, but with a lot of headaches to go with it. I noted the Avatar’s airship flying high overhead. My resentment for her was quite high and I knew Clarissa felt the same way.
I came to a stop at a hill and looked back at Purgatory in the distance as the time ticked down. I kept watching the city shield intently. Once it disappeared things should quickly go into motion. A shame after Clarissa had spent so much into building it back up.
I couldn’t even yell at her or anyone else about losing the city, like the treasury had been lost in the past. In the end this came down to my decisions to employ a trap strategy against the Astrologer using my capital. Perhaps I shouldn’t do that in the future. The Divine Empress surprisingly had another decent idea. Fortifying her city to hell and back and keeping almost everyone out. Something to consider for the future.
The shield disappeared.