Chapter 263
Exactly thirty minutes before Ryuu’s fateful choice, the city sprawled around two silhouettes like a forgotten corpse, choked by dust and the lingering echoes of conflict.
Every distant boom, every faint, terrified scream, was a brutal prod, urging them onward.
“Make haste, Shakti, or we’ll arrive too late!” Gareth’s voice, rough as a grindstone, grated above the clamour, though his breath came in ragged gasps.
He was a force of nature even in his advanced years, his dwarven frame a blur of purposeful motion, his great axe, gleaming promise of destruction, slung effortlessly over his broad shoulder.
They sprinted through the skeletal remains of the western main street, a jagged canyon of collapsed buildings and shattered dreams.
Word had reached Central Park of a renewed surge of evilus led by Olivas, one of the enemy commanders.
Finn had sent Gareth and Shakti ahead as powerful spearheads to buy time until the main reinforcements could arrive.
It was a desperate gamble, but Gareth lived for such gambles.
Shakti, a vibrant streak, moved with an otherworldly grace, her movements fluid as spilled mercury.
She was the wind personified, her traveling speed leagues above even the fleetest of ordinary adventurers.
“I know! Curses, if only we could send more people!” Her voice, taut with a desperate urgency.
“That would leave Central Park undefended, Shakti!” Gareth bellowed back, glancing over his shoulder.
He pushed harder, his sturdy boots kicking up plumes of grey dust from the rubble-strewn street. The old dwarf grimaced, the exertion evident on his weathered face, though his spirit remained unbroken.
“This one’s for us to shoulder!” The weight of Orario, of countless lives, pressed down on him, a familiar, crushing burden he bore without complaint.
Already, the guttural roars of the evilus and the clash of steel echoed in the distance, a macabre symphony of war that grew louder with every pounding stride.
Gareth felt a primal surge, a warrior’s instinct, as though he could almost see the enemy up ahead to the west, their silhouettes outlined against the perpetual gloom that hung over the ruined district.
“We’re almost there!” he cried, a surge of adrenaline momentarily banishing his fatigue.
His grip tightened on his axe, the familiar weight a comfort in his hand.
“Hurry, we’ll take out all the enemy at the same……!”
However, Gareth never managed to complete his sentence, nor reach his destination.
A tremor, subtle at first, then growing into a seismic shockwave, rippled through the street.
The very air around them seemed to shiver.
Then, with a concussive boom that sent a shockwave through the ground, a figure appeared out of nowhere, a black stain against the grey ruins, blocking their path as if conjured from the very dust.
“Grrrrrhhh!!” Gareth groaned, the sound ripped from his throat not in pain, but in sheer, thunderstruck frustration.
He hadn’t even seen the approach, only the sudden manifestation of a colossal presence.
“Gareth!” Shakti yelled, her voice laced with genuine worry.
She slid to a halt a few meters behind him, her cloak whipping around her like a furious flame.
A dull, earth-shaking thud swept over the streets, as if a mountain had elected to move itself.
A massive, unseen force slammed into them both, not with a precise strike, but with the raw, brutal impact of a charging siege engine.
They were flung backward, like humanoid projectile, their feet gouging deep, ragged furrows in the pulverized ground as they skidded to an agonizing stop.
The momentum had carried them both several meters before they regained their footing, their chests heaving, their eyes wide with disbelief.
They stared down the road, where the newcomer stood, an unmoving, monolithic shape amidst a swirling rain of dust and pebbles.
The air around him seemed to hum with suppressed power, chilling the ruined street despite the faint warmth of distant fires.
“Why must I respond to these worthless requests?”
The voice that came from the figure was a low, resonant rumble, cold and dark as blackened steel, devoid of inflection or emotion.
It carried a hint of weariness, nihilism that seeped into the very marrow of their bones.
“Then again, this entire scheme is a worthless endeavour. It stands to reason that any act carried out in its name is worthless also.”
It was him.
The Conqueror himself.
He stood impossibly tall, clad in obsidian-black plated armour that absorbed the scarce light, making him seem like a void made manifest.
A heavy, helm obscured his eyes, leaving only a shadow where his gaze should have been, turning his face into an expressionless mask of dread.
In his hands, he wielded a sword so impossibly thick and massive that Gareth, a dwarf accustomed to oversized weaponry, felt a chill of disbelief.
“Zald?!” Gareth spoke, the single word an expulsion of air, laced with astonishment and a deep sense of betrayal.
The name was a ghost from a past long shattered, a memory of a different Orario.
“So it is true… you chose evil, just like Alfia.”
On the first night of the Great Conflict, Gareth had only run into Alfia, before he was brutally knocked unconscious.
He had heard of Zald’s presence, whispers in the periphery of Orario’s dying breaths, dark rumours among the few surviving adventurers.
But to see him, standing there in the flesh, an undeniable, towering force of destruction, Gareth was forced to wear a bitter scowl beneath his helmet.
The realization was a punch to the gut.
“It has been long since I last saw your weathered face, old dwarf,” replied Zald, his voice still a monotone, though a faint, almost imperceptible hint of a memory seemed to stir within him. “Strangely, though, I only recall it in the trappings of a tavern.”
“Heh, I remember those days,” Gareth retorted, a dry chuckle escaping his lips, a strange, gallows humour in the face of impending doom.
He adjusted his stance, his great axe now firmly in his grasp, its polished surface reflecting the conqueror’s dark form.
“I don’t suppose you’ve come to enjoy a drink like old times? There’s a nice spot near here that serves up some strong dwarven spirits. Best brew this side of the city, or so the regulars claimed.”
“Are you sure about that?” asked Zald, his head tilting ever so slightly, a gesture that was more unnerving than reassuring.
“Have you forgotten already how I used to drink you and that goddess of yours under the table? You, snoring under the communal table, while your deity was reduced to a blubbering mess”
A faint, almost imperceptible tremor, akin to a ghost of a smile, seemed to pass over Zald's features, though his helm remained impassive.
“Pass out this time, and a far worse fate awaits you than the silly pranks from the good old days.”
Even as the pair reminisced over the Orario of eight years past, the tension in the air was a physical weight, pressing down on Gareth, thick and suffocating.
A single bead of sweat, cold and insistent, dripped down Gareth’s face, tracing a path through the dust-streaked grime.
Zald, however, stood unfazed, a statue carved from shadow and indifference.
Meanwhile, Shakti was simply bewildered by this sudden, bizarre trip down memory lane she wasn’t a part of.
Her mind raced, trying to reconcile the terrifying, black-clad behemoth with the image of a boisterous tavern regular.
‘What are those two talking about? Wait, did he just say he beat Gareth in a drinking contest? That’s not possible, is it?’ Shakti debated internally, her brow furrowed in a mixture of confusion and sheer disbelief.
Gareth, the unyielding wall, the legendary drinker of countless tankards? Defeated by him?
Her brain simply went blank when it tried to picture what that scenario might look like.
The black-clad man before her, the very embodiment of terror, scribbling on Gareth’s drunken face like a mischievous child?
The image was too absurd, too contrary to the stark reality of their present peril, and yet… Zald’s words held an undeniable ring of truth, a sliver of something forgotten…..
“Wait, stop it, stop it! We have more important things to worry about right now! Out of our way! We need to……” Shakti’s desperate plea was cut short, a sharp, choked gasp escaping her lips.
Boom!
The earth quaked violently beneath their feet, a deafening roar that swallowed Shakti’s sentence whole.
With an effortless, almost casual motion, Zald thrust the immense, obsidian-like great-sword he held into the ground.
It plunged deep, as if the very street were made of soft clay, the impact sending fissures spider webbing across the cracked pavement and a fresh geyser of dust into the air.
The raw power displayed was staggering, a stark reminder of the chasm in strength between them.
“If you pass this point,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, guttural growl that reverberated in their chests, a chilling bass note to the crumbling cityscape, “then what I drink shall be no dwarven spirits, but a cocktail of your blood.”
“Grh?!” Gareth and Shakti grimaced simultaneously, the bitter taste of fear and defiance filling their mouths.
The playful banter, the brief, unsettling journey into a shared past, evaporated, replaced by the grim reality of their situation.
Gareth tightened his grip on his axe now held defensively across his chest, while Shakti gracefully drew her spear.
Every muscle in their bodies tensed, anticipating the inevitable onslaught.
Terror, cold and absolute, bound them like chains, locking their limbs in an agonizing stillness.
The conqueror’s crimson cape, the colour of fresh blood, caught the wind in a sudden, dramatic gust, billowing out behind him like a predatory banner.
It was a stark, vibrant splash of colour against the overwhelming black of his armour, completing the terrifying tableau.
“If that is still your wish,” he said, his voice now laced with an almost jovial, yet utterly terrifying, undertone, “then let us drink. I shall fill a cask with your blood and down every last drop.”
With a smooth, fluid motion, the conqueror lifted his great-sword from the ground, the massive weapon seemingly weightless in his grasp.
He levelled it at the two adventurers, its enormous blade pointing directly at their hearts, a declaration of war as old as time.
The distant sounds of battle seemed to fade, replaced by the pounding of their own hearts, knowing that a force of nature, stood before them, demanding their sacrifice.
The choice was clear: fight, or perish.
Their time, Draco's, Asfi's and Ryuu's, was running out.
………………………………………………………………………..
The air thrummed with a discordant symphony of destruction.
Just a few blocks away, the factory district shrieked with the echoes of colossal clashes, the ground vibrating underfoot like a monstrous drum.
Here, on the northwest main street, the chaos was distilled, focused into a singular, suffocating confrontation.
“Wraaaaaagh!” An uncoordinated roar ripped through the street as a group of adventurers, their faces grim and determined, surged forward.
Their target: a lone woman, cloaked and seemingly unperturbed, who stood dead-center in the cracked cobbled road.
They moved as one, a coordinated wave of steel and magic, aiming for an all-out attack designed to overwhelm.
But the woman merely tilted her head, her unseen eyes conveying an unsettling calmness.
A single word, spoken with a voice that seemed to resonate directly within the bones, vibrated through the very fabric of reality.
“Gospel.”
It wasn't a shout, nor even a command.
It was a pure, resonant tone, an expulsion of sound so strong it manifested as a physical force. The silent, unseeing witch unleashed a wave that was both invisible and utterly devastating.
The charging adventurers, caught mid-stride, were lifted off their feet like discarded dolls, flung backward with sickening force.
Armour groaned, weapons clattered, and cries of pain echoed as their bodies slammed into brick walls and overturned market stalls.
“Gah!”
“Grh…! It’s you again…! Alfia!” Riveria, eyes narrowed into angry slits.
She landed deftly, staff held ready, her long jade hair momentarily obscuring her face as she checked the other members of her party, scattered and groaning.
They were supposed to be the reinforcements, dispatched to aid Gareth and Shakti, who were already embroiled in their own desperate struggle.
But the moment word reached them about the escalating disaster in the factory district, Riveria had intended to rush back, to lend her magic to the fray.
They were so close, the metallic tang of smoke from the industrial district already prickling their throats, yet fate, it seemed, had a cruel sense of irony.
Riveria and her team had unfortunately, or perhaps inevitably, run straight into the second of the three evilus champions.
A brutal counterpoint to the battles raging where Gareth and Shakti confronted the first, and Draco unfortunately tackled the third.
“Once again you appear before me, elf,” Alfia’s voice was as smooth and flat as polished stone, devoid of inflection.
She stood amidst the rising dust, utterly untouched, her closed eyes and dispassionate air a stark contrast to the adventurers' crumpled forms.
“Even eight years ago, you were always the same. How many times do I need to crush you before you give up?”
Riveria’s grip tightened on her gnarled staff, its ancient wood warm beneath her palm.
The sounds of concerning explosions and desperate shouts from the factory district periphery were a constant, nagging reminder of their stalled mission.
“I will always come back, Alfia,” she yelled, her voice cutting through the witch’s weighty cloak of silence, a silence that seemed to absorb ambient noise, making her presence even more unnerving.
“So long as you stand in our way, we will resist! What do you stand to gain by obstructing us like this? What is your goal?!”
Alfia had materialized as soon as any reinforcements attempted to penetrate the city's western district.
Her purpose was crystal clear: to prevent anyone from reaching there, but why?.
The reason for such a blockade remained shrouded in the witch’s cryptic silence.
“I act on the orders of a god,” Alfia finally responded, her voice a low murmur that somehow carried across the debris-strewn street.
“He said to let no soul pass beyond this point, so that is precisely what I shall do.” A faint, almost imperceptible tilt of her head indicated a fleeting thought.
“Perhaps you could say I am simply following the whims of a god poisoned by tedium.”
What happened next came not from Riveria, but from an unexpected angle.
Alfia remained centred in the middle of the road, her perception seemingly focused straight ahead.
But there was one line of approach she hadn’t fully accounted for, a vertical trajectory.
A blur of golden hair and glinting steel, a figure detached itself from the urban landscape.
Leaping from the jagged edge of a shattered rooftop, an assailant descended like a hawk, a sword almost as large as her entire body held aloft.
It glimmered, reflecting the smoke-tinged moonlight, its trajectory aimed true at Alfia’s head.
“Hup!” It was Ais.
She acted without a hint of fear or hesitation, her entire existence honed into a singular devotion: eliminating the immediate threat.
Every fibre of her being screamed for this strike to land.
However, it still wasn’t enough.
“If you wanted to take me by surprise, child,” Alfia’s voice, calm and unhurried, sliced through the air just as Ais’s blade whistled down, “then you should have learned how to hide your intent better.”
With a movement so fluid it was almost imperceptible, Alfia raised a bare hand.
Without sacrificing a shred of her inherent grace, she deftly parried the flat of Ais’s enormous sword, knocking it aside with effortless ease.
The clash of metal against flesh was disturbingly muted.
Ais’s eyes, widened in the fraction of a second before the next blow.
As if swinging an invisible fan, Alfia lightly aimed her other hand at the girl’s chest.
A pure concussive force erupted.
Ais, with sharp instincts, barely managed to throw up her wrist-guards just in time.
The devastating impact of the casual blow slammed into her, a bone-jarring attack that sent her spiraling to the ground instead of tearing her apart.
“Rghh!” Ais gasped, her body momentarily seizing up, every muscle protesting.
The blow was far more powerful than she had anticipated, a casual flick of the wrist carrying the force of a battering ram.
“Ais!” Riveria screamed, nearly dropping her staff and starting forward, her maternal instincts overriding tactical caution.
But Alfia ignored her, her focus now entirely on the crumpled form of the girl.
Slowly, deliberately, the witch began moving toward the girl.
“Do not think I will show mercy to a child,” she said, her palm held out, ready to unleash her magic, a silent promise of complete destruction.
Ais flinched, bracing herself for the inevitable, for complete and utter obliteration.
Her mind raced, searching for an escape, a hidden skill, anything, but the raw power emanating from Alfia was overwhelming.
Every cell in her body screamed in protest.
But the spell never came.
Slowly, almost tentatively, Ais unbraced her arms, her golden eyes blinking open in confusion. Alfia stood over her, hand still outstretched, but motionless.
Ais looked up at the witch, expecting the final, annihilating blow, but instead saw something that made her heart skip a beat.
“You…” Alfia’s voice was softer, a hint of something unreadable in its tone.
Her closed eyes opened a sliver, revealing a glimpse of a piercing chilling gaze.
It was the second time she had appeared genuinely taken aback in recent memory, the first having been during her confrontation with Draco, and now, meeting Ais.
Ais didn’t dare breathe, trapped beneath the gaze of the remnant of the Hera Familia, waiting for her next words.
“You…” Alfia repeated at last, the word drawn out, a question more than a statement.
“The Dungeon girl?”
“!!”
Ais’s and Riveria’s eyes went wide simultaneously, a shared shock rippling through them.
The implications of that simple, cryptic question were staggering.
Before long, however, that fleeting glimpse of emotion vanished.
Alfia’s expression returned to that of the silent, dispassionate witch once more, her eyes once again closed.
“I see,” she said, a chilling finality in her tone.
“I do not know how you managed it, Loki Familia, but it seems the girl is now yours. I presume this means Ouranos has not given up on that……” Her words trailed off, a cryptic declaration that left Riveria’s mind reeling, grappling with the unspoken meaning.
Riveria stood stock-still, staff firmly in hand, refusing to either confirm or deny Alfia’s startling theory.
The implications were too vast, too dangerous to acknowledge.
“So,” Alfia went on, her gaze returning to Ais, who still lay prone, observing her with an unnerving intensity.
“Tell me. Is this what you intend to make of your prize? A martyr?”
“Grr! Silence!!” The high elf’s eyebrows seesawed in pure, unadulterated anger.
The witch's words struck a nerve, touching upon secrets and fears Riveria guarded.
Giving herself over to emotion, she pounced at her foe, staff held not for magic, but as a blunt weapon.
Knowing her foe was capable of nullifying magical attacks, she temporarily discarded her training as a spell caster and called upon her proficiency in hand-to-hand combat, a rarely used skill.
“Krh!!” Ais, spurred by Riveria’s ferocity and a renewed surge of defiance, joined her.
She scrambled to her feet, sword again held high, its edge singing as she moved.
Like a mother and child, this mage and sword maiden wove their attacks in a desperate collaboration.
Riveria, utilizing her staff like a quarterstaff, hooked at Alfia’s legs with surprising agility, while Ais, a blur of motion, swung her massive blade at the witch’s arm, aiming to cleave it off.
However, even this seemingly flawless coordination, posed little more danger than the wind itself to Alfia.
With a single, almost imperceptible step or a subtle tilt of her head, she dodged each and every blow.
The pair of adventurers, for all their combined might and skill, never even grazed her simple, dark dress.
For eleven exchanges, the silent witch and her determined opponents swapped positions, a dance of deadly intent.
Each time, Riveria’s staff and Ais’s sword reached only thin air, slicing through the space where Alfia had been just a moment before.
The air crackled with their frustrated efforts.
Then, on the twelfth exchange, Alfia moved with decisive speed.
She reached out, her left hand effortlessly grabbing Riveria’s staff mid-hook, and her right hand closing around the flat of Ais’s sword just as it swished past her.
“What?!” Riveria gasped, pulling back with all her strength, but Alfia’s grip was unyielding.
Ais, too, found her blade inexplicably snagged, unable to move it.
“Even noise must be listened to,” Alfia said, her voice a low hum against the straining weapons. “Once in a while, it teaches you something new… Not something that can ever give rise to hope, unfortunately.”
With unimaginable force, given her slender frame, she wrenched the weapons from their owners’ grasp and then, with a shocking, almost casual shove, threw Riveria and Ais backward.
Their bodies sailed through the air, landing in a heap of dust and debris.
“Our fate remains unchanged, and our goal is the same. We will bring an end to the age of the gods.”
She thrust out her right arm, the posture of a conductor bringing an orchestra to a crescendo.
This time, the word was a release of raw, unbridled power that tore through the street.
Her spell unleashed untold destruction, not just of physical objects, but of the very air, vibrating with a force that threatened to shatter the world.
When all the sound had died down at last, leaving behind an eerie, ringing silence, Alfia was the only one remaining within the immediate vicinity of the blast zone, untouched and serene.
Riveria, with quick thinking born of desperation, had somehow managed to tuck Ais under her arm and leap somewhere out of the cataclysmic range, but her long, sensitive ears ran red with blood, a thin stream tracing down her jawline.
A pure note, like a tuning fork struck directly inside her head, rang incessantly, deafening her to all but its agonizing frequency.
“This is ridiculous!” she cried, screwing up her dust-caked features, her voice hoarse, barely a whisper over the ringing.
Ais, dangling precariously from Riveria’s arms, trembled, her body still absorbing the shockwaves.
“She’s strong!” Ais remarked, her voice a reedy gasp, laced with a fear Riveria had rarely seen in the usually stoic sword princess.
“Stronger than Finn! Stronger than anyone I’ve ever fought!” Her armor, once pristine, was now riddled with cracks, and her lips trembled as tiny shards of metal flaked from her damaged wrist-guards and chest plate.
As she stared at the fearsome, unmoving witch, a chilling, realization dawned on Ais.
It was a reflection of heroes from another, bygone time.
“She’s…just like Father and the others!”
A/N: Feel free to read ahead on pat3on and donate.