Chapter 265
The full moon hung like a skull in the velvet-black sky, its cold, indifferent light spilling over the city of Orario.
Finn surveyed the city of Orario from the rooftop of the guild headquarters.
The grand, pantheon-like building on adventurers way was the highest point in the area, offering an unparalleled, and tonight, horrifying, view.
Beneath him, the city was a grotesque, bleeding map.
Pillars of black smoke twisted into the night, fed by unseen pyres in every district.
The air, meant to be crisp with the promise of autumn, was thick and acrid with the stench of soot and something metallic that could only be blood.
The symphony of a peaceful night had been replaced by a cacophony of chaos—the distant, high-pitched shrieks of terror, the percussive boom of offensive magic, and the ceaseless, grating clash of steel on steel.
A bead of sweat, cold and sharp, traced a path down Finn’s temple.
He didn’t bother to wipe it away.
His focus was absolute, his mind a whirlwind of calculations and contingencies.
“Captain!” Raul’s voice was a ragged, shaky thing, barely holding itself together.
“Evilus cultists spotted in all districts! They seem to be responding to the attacks in the northwest!”
Finn’s gaze remained fixed on the horizon, his keen eyes picking out the flashes of spell-light that painted the undersides of the smoke clouds.
He hadn’t anticipated this.
Ever since news of Olivas’s initial assault had broken, the situation had been an uncontrolled fall, a cascade from bad to catastrophic.
The fighting was no longer contained to the periphery; it had metastasized, spreading like a cancer through the city’s heart.
“Move to intercept,” Finn commanded, his voice a low, steady counterpoint to the city’s roaring panic.
He turned his head slightly, his gaze finally falling upon the trembling Raul.
“Our top priority is ensuring the civilians safety. Reinforce the shelter zones. I want every non-combatant accounted for.”
Another messenger, a young woman whose face was pale with exhaustion, scurried forward.
"Y-yes, sir!"
Finn pointed towards the factory district, where the glow of a new fire had just emerged, something about it was extremely concerning.
“Send Noir’s unit to go around and assist the Bahamut familia in the factory district! Have the Berbera deploy south to intercept the other enemy force moving in from the southwest!”
“Understood, Captain!” the messenger replied, already pivoting to relay the orders.
To Finn’s strategic eye, the enemy’s city-wide assault was clumsy, almost brutish.
It was a wave of pure aggression, lacking the cunning he associated with their most dangerous commanders.
It couldn’t be Valletta’s work; her plans were always laced with a cruel, intricate poison.
This was different.
This was a sledgehammer.
And yet, there was a ghost of a grander design at play.
A second, invisible hand moving the pieces.
‘This was clearly set in motion by a rogue commander’ he thought, his mind racing faster than any messenger.
But it’s as if there’s a second foe, adding forces to the battle, directing the aether of this conflict.
‘Could it be Erebus?’
He could almost feel it—a subtle, divine pressure pushing against their forces, a malevolent will that sought to contain and constrict them.
It was an attempt to keep them pinned, to prevent them from reaching the true objective.
‘He must be trying to stop us from reaching the northwestern districts!’
The deduction solidified in his mind with chilling certainty.
‘I’ve sent multiple waves of reinforcements, but none of them can get past Zald in the west!’
The skirmishes erupting throughout the city were a smokescreen, a massive, bloody diversion designed to tie up every adventurer, every familia, and bleed them dry before they could even think of reinforcing the true front.
The sudden, shocking return of the three evilus champions—the Conquerors—had shattered their defensive posture.
After their mysterious absence since the start of the great conflict, their appearance was as unexpected as it was devastating.
First, the cataclysmic duel between Draco and Alfia near noon had shaken the city.
Then, as twilight bled into night, all three had emerged.
Gareth and Riveria, two of his strongest executives, were locked in a desperate struggle, their paths blocked by Zald and Alfia.
Then there was the factory district.
Word had reached him of the battle raging there, a solo stand by Draco.
Draco was fending off the evilus champion Mors alone.
The sounds of their clash—thunderous impacts and roars of fury—were so immense they carried for miles.
Despite ordering Noir's unit to circle around the main fronts to aid him, Finn knew it was a bandage on a gaping wound.
It wasn't enough.
‘I can’t spare any more forces! Damn it, there’s not much left I can do!’ Finn’s gloved fist clenched at his side.
The brutal arithmetic of war was unforgiving.
Any sudden, panicked redeployment would create a weakness, a hole in their lines that the enemy would exploit without hesitation.
He had already lost so many of the adventurers he sent to back up Gareth.
He cursed his decision to allow Ottar and the Freya Familia to continue their intensive training; their power was desperately needed.
And Mia Grand, the owner of the Hostess of Fertility, was neck-deep in combat against the Apate and Alecto Familias on another front.
He couldn’t possibly call her back now.
He ran through the options again, a mental checklist of dwindling resources and impossible choices.
One by one, he struck them off.
The only logical, strategic decision was to hold the line, consolidate their defences, and abandon the northwest to its fate.
Raul, who had remained frozen behind him, finally broke.
The fear that had been simmering in his voice boiled over.
“C-Captain!” he stammered, his voice cracking.
“We’re running out of options! At this rate, all those people… they’re all going to die!”
The words, raw and artless, sliced through Finn’s cold calculations.
Raul’s grim prediction wasn’t just fear; it was the callous, impending truth.
If he did nothing, the executors of Erebus’s will would turn the northwest into a slaughterhouse. The balance of the war, perhaps the fate of the world, would tip irrevocably toward darkness.
A long, tense silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the city’s screams.
“No,” Finn said, the single word cutting through the night with the finality of a judge’s gavel.
He would not allow it.
He lifted a hand, his finger pointing not towards the chaos of the west, but to the northeast, towards a district that was, for the moment, relatively quiet.
“We still have them,” Finn declared, a flicker of determination in his eyes.
“Raul, get ready.”
“Them?” Raul repeated, his brow furrowing in confusion.
A dawning, incredulous realization spread across his face.
“Y-you don’t mean…”
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
The heavy oak door of stardust garden, the Astraea familia’s home, was thrown open with such force that it slammed against the stone wall.
Astraea, her divine grace momentarily eclipsed by a mother’s frantic worry, ran out into the front yard.
The air here was still sweet with the scent of night-blooming jasmine, a fragile sanctuary against the city’s encroaching stench of destruction.
Two of her children were there, laid out on the manicured lawn.
The rest of the familia hovered around them, a constellation of anxious faces illuminated by the pale moonlight and the soft glow of healing magic.
Draco had brought them here around noon, a grim delivery from the front lines.
“Lyra! Kaguya!” Astraea cried, her voice catching in her throat as she knelt beside them.
“Gah, couldn’t you have given us enough time to do our hair, at least?” Lyra managed a weak, sarcastic quip.
“We ain’t exactly presentable right now…”
Her attempt at levity couldn't mask the reality.
A thin trickle of blood ran from her ear, staining the collar of her battered tunic.
Her usual energy was gone, replaced by a deep-set weariness that seemed to ache in her very bones.
Her forced smile was a painful, brittle thing.
Seated on the grass, she looked as though she had been caught in a landslide.
Astraea’s heart clenched.
She turned to the Amazonian girl diligently tending to Lyra.
“How are they, Iska?”
Iska wiped a sheen of sweat from her brow, her other hand holding onto a vial of healing potion.
“Of the two, I think Lyra got off the lightest. If Draco had brought them any later…” She trailed off, the unspoken words hanging heavy in the air.
“I’ve given them every potion we could scrounge up. I just wish we had some more decent supplies.”
Her gaze shifted to Kaguya, who lay deathly still on the ground.
Maryuu, was hunched over her, chanting softly as a more potent magical light flowed into the far-eastern girl’s broken body.
Kaguya’s silky black hair was fanned out around her head, a stark contrast to her ashen face.
She hadn’t stirred since her arrival.
“Lyra… what exactly happened?” Astraea asked, her voice gentle but firm.
Lyra winced, shifting her weight.
“We ran into that dipshit god and Hera’s chick. She whooped our asses. Then Draco apparently saved us after we fell unconscious.”
“Erebus… and Alfia,” Astraea breathed.
All around her, the other girls who hadn’t heard Draco’s hurried explanation gasped.
To have faced not only the mastermind of their suffering but also the legendary Level 7 powerhouse… it was a miracle they were alive at all.
Even with Draco’s intervention, surviving an encounter with Alfia was a feat bordering on the impossible.
“And that ain’t the only bit of bad news,” Lyra continued, her voice growing grave.
“In fact, this one’s the real clincher. Turns out that bastard’s after Leon.”
“!!” This time, even Astraea could not conceal her shock.
Of course, Ryuu had confessed to them all that the dark god, disguised as the civilian Eren, had appeared before her several times.
It was a cruel game gods sometimes played, testing the resolve and character of mortals who caught their fickle interest.
But for Erebus to single out Ryuu, to make her the focus of his twisted machinations during this war… it was a chilling revelation.
He was no longer just testing her; he was hunting her.
Astraea wanted to know everything, every word that had passed between them.
But before she could press for details, the human girl Noin came sprinting into the garden, her chest heaving.
“We’ve just gotten word from the Loki Familia!” she announced, her voice strained.
“The city is under attack in all districts! Finn wants us to head to the northwest to break the enemy line!”
“Northwest?” Lyra’s head snapped up.
“But that’s where we got our asses handed to us! You don’t think…?”
As if summoned by her awful premonition, a groan escaped the still form on the grass.
Kaguya’s fingers dug into the soft earth, and with a shuddering effort, she began to push herself up.
“That must be where that stupid elf is,” she rasped, her voice thick with pain but burning with an unholy fire.
“That bastard won’t rest until he’s had his fun.”
“Kaguya!” Astraea cried, moving to her side.
“Sit yourself back down, you walking corpse!” Maryuu scolded, her concern overriding her deference.
“I’ve only just healed you up. Any sudden movement is only going to tear your insides apart again!”
“Don’t worry about me, Maryuu,” Kaguya replied, climbing shakily to her feet.
She swayed, but her gaze was sharp, fixed on the distant horizon.
“I’ll do a lot better fighting out there than rotting away here.”
She wore a ferocious grin, but the sheen of sweat coating her pale skin betrayed the immense agony she was enduring.
“I’d listen to the doc if I were you,” Lyra chuckled weakly, before her own expression hardened into a frown of grim determination.
She used a stick as a crutch to rise, her legs trembling.
“But I get your point. Ryuu’s out there. Alone with them.” She looked around at the faces of her sisters—Iska, Noin, Maryuu, and all the others.
She saw her own resolve reflected in their eyes.
“Let’s all go get her. Let’s bring our girl back home.”
Her gaze finally settled on her goddess.
“You’re not gonna try to stop us, are you?” she asked, her tone a mix of challenge and plea.
Astraea looked at her children—battered, bleeding, but unbroken.
Their spirits blazed brighter than any fire ravaging the city.
To deny them this, to chain them here for their own safety, would be to break the very essence of who they were.
A sad, proud smile touched her lips.
“Do as you wish,” Astraea replied, her voice filled with an unshakeable love.
“But allow me to pray for your safe return instead.”
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