Without warning, another mass of tri-coloured troops rippled into existence, a good distance from the on-going melee. The troops of the great Dark responded immediately, raising their guard against their west, but the abrupt reinforcements had still taken them by surprise. What was once a superior force pressing its numerical advantage against a smaller force occupying a fortified position had turned into one force outflanking another equally sized force.

The tables had turned.

“Reinforcements,” Nero noted. “Is that all?”

“What do you mean?” Dia asked, looking at the Holy Son of the Black God. “It sure is a twist, right?”

“Not the—” Nero froze, and mana erupted outwards from him. As a deadly tremble ran down Dia’s spine, Nero’s burst of mana fell all around them, turning opaque in an instant.

A heartbeat later, terrified screams swept the entire camp. The battle between the high-ranking combatants of both sides in the sky fell silent, and an enormous presence reared its head to Dia’s west, at one of the walls of the Moons’ base camp. Blue light burst out of her in an instant, dying a moment later, but her mind had cleared up.

Cold sweat ran down Dia’s back as she belatedly noticed that the Moons’ presence had vanished. Other than everyone’s frantic breathing, the only thing she could hear now were steady pops and fleeing troops — Moonlit and Shadowed alike, probably — as the horrifying presence walked into the camp. Her heart hammered against her ribcage madly, attempting to burst out of her chest in an attempt to flee.

Even without line of sight, Absolute Terror’s effects could be felt from its owner’s very existence alone. The divinities had withdrawn from the battle, clearly unwilling to be affected by a skill that could reach the realm of the gods, and those that were unfortunate enough to witness terror itself had been completely obliterated.

Within minutes, the battlefield had fallen silent, but Dia could still feel the horrifying presence as it strode into the camp calmly.

“What do we do?” Dia asked, her voice quiet.

“…This person is too much of a threat.” Nero let out a small groan. “Damnit. I feel like my heart’s going to rupture.”

Dia let out a small gasp of air. “I know. How is anyone supposed to fight against this? This is impossible!”

Every step Absolute Terror took seemed to echo in her head, scrambling her words by instigating a primordial fear. One moment, she would be assailed by the terrifying sensation of falling from a height; the next, it would feel like a gigantic monster that would crush her with a single movement had appeared. Each and every fear was novel, new, and it opened her eyes in ways that she never knew possible.

The others weren’t reacting all that well either. Risti was huddled on the ground, mumbling something in silence, while Schwarz’s expression had turned blank. Farah was out of commission entirely — she had fainted. Only she and Nero remained, and the Holy Son of the Black God looked like a wilted flower.

Maybe her upbringing and her experiences meant that the fear she experienced wasn’t all that personalised.

It was a depressing thought, in a sense, but Dia was glad that the sensations of fear in her head moved from point to point so quickly. While terrifying, she hadn’t been forced into an utterly bad state from it, and she patted Nero. “You alright?”

The Holy Son looked at her. “If we’re using you as a standard? I’m definitely not alright. You look…quite normal.”

He grimaced. “For now, just wait it out. Can you kill that person? I don’t know. Are you willing to try? Think about everything yourself.”

Abject terror flickered through his eyes once more, and the Holy Son sank down onto the ground. Multiple different scenarios continued to assail Dia herself, but it was possible that her prior experience with Black God’s Gaze had helped or something.

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That didn’t account for Risti, but Dia wasn’t going to think too hard about this small fortune just yet. For now, however, she was safe. The multiple scenarios that her brain spontaneously generated from Absolute Terror’s mere presence were enough to hamper her every movement, but she wasn’t incapacitated. However, if she were to look at Absolute Terror directly…

She would die.

Clutching her chest, Dia controlled her breathing and began to count her heartbeat. It would be the height of foolishness to confront Absolute Terror right now. However, there were a few advantages she had going for her.

First, Absolute Terror couldn’t be on a skillstick or a skillslip. It had a fixed duration of thirty minutes, no matter what level the skill was, and third, the skill itself had a fixed cooldown of twenty-four hours. Absolute Terror would forever remain at level 0.

Finally, the skill itself occupied two skill slots. Once Absolute Terror ended, the enemy would have four skills to use, and whatever other skill media that he or she may have. However, Claud’s little book had a few pieces of advice when going after someone, and one section touched on their habits. Absolute Terror, to Dia, looked like a person who did things alone. Most of his or her skills were probably lifestyle ones, or life-saving ones.

Only people with logistical support could use their skill slots like Dia, after all. This put her at a combat advantage. More importantly, there were only so many mid-ranked folders, but given the surveillance of the Moons and the ubiquity of intelligence organisations, mid-folders who have displayed four skills or less were almost certainly the subject of surveillance.

Could someone become a tetra-folder in a single year? Possible, but that person had to be monstrously talented and supported, like Dia herself. Therefore, Dia couldn’t help but think that the target was probably at best a tri-folder like her, or perhaps even weaker.

Without the support of Absolute Terror…

Of course, all this was her own conjecture. More importantly, Absolute Terror definitely had a goal here; why else would he or she show up in the base camp of the Moons itself?

“That person should escape before Absolute Terror wears off, right?” Dia muttered, before thinking about what had played out in the opening battle. “Wait. No. The Dark will hamper the Moons and prevent them from doing anything to Absolute Terror.”

As those words roiled through the air, Nero let out another groan, and the barrier he was supporting rippled. Dia started once, before pulling out a barrier artefact to replace his own efforts.

“Rest first,” Dia whispered. “I’ll handle this menace.”

This walking zone of trauma and death had to be a menace, after all. If someone like this walked into a town…everyone would probably die.

Dia felt her drumming heart crawl to a stop at that thought. Was it really their fault? To begin with, all evidence pointed at the Absolute skills as being something that the owners themselves couldn’t remove. It defined a good part of their life and their future, and it probably had many other subtle influences on their owners’ psyche as well.

Yet, she was about to execute someone for it.

Or maybe she was trying to serve in her capacity as a mercenary, as a warrior on the other team. She wasn’t too sure about what she was thinking, but right now, the Moons and the Dark were at war. Even if she pitied the Bearers of Destiny…

“Heh.” Dia let out a small chuckle at the absurdity of pitying a Bearer of Destiny, despite the ongoing waves of fear that were attempting to drown out her consciousness. Like a tiny grain of sand, the waves of fear lifted her up and down, batted her mind around…but they could not overpower her.

It would seem that Absolute Terror didn’t quite force onto her the most effective fear. Was there something specific about it? Or did the user intend for it to be this way?

“No,” Dia muttered. “It’s just because we weren’t affected directly.”

She gripped her blade tightly, and then continued to condition herself. The effects of Absolute Terror were strong, but she was only receiving a small fraction of it. The blue light that had appeared around her for a brief moment had clearly done something. Furthermore, the absence of an actual trauma in her childhood probably helped in this regard, turning her into a uniquely suitable being to take down the person that was moving towards the depths of the camp.

Time slipped by in silence, which Dia used to settle the others in more comfortable positions. Sometimes, she would be assailed by some new fear, but it wasn’t anything particularly paralysing.

It was quite different from Black God’s Gaze, now that she thought about it.

After a few more mind-numbing minutes, the horrifying, palpitation-inducing presence began to fade away, and Dia got up.

To date, it seemed like Bearers of Destiny had been killed by other Bearers of Destiny. Today, however, for everyone’s sake…

Dia got up and left the barrier. She could see red running everywhere — the mercenaries that had died, the Moonlit troops and the troops of the great Dark. Absolute Terror never discriminated against anyone — all who had caught sight of the impossibly terrifying being had their hearts rupture on the spot.

She, and the rest of the Seekers of Life, were the only survivors of this battle.

Taking in the bloody sight for a moment, Dia unsheathed her sword slowly and headed west, where she had last detected Absolute Terror.