Chapter 269
The roar was a sound that broke the world.
It was not the shout of a man or the screech of a beast, but something far more terrifying, a cataclysm given voice.
It tore through the din of battle, silencing the clash of steel and the screams of the dying.
Across the besieged city of Orario, heads turned, gazes lifting toward the factory District.
There, against a sky choked with smoke and the full moonlight, a silhouette blotted out the stars.
A dragon.
A true dragon, its form a masterpiece of menacing power, soared above the industrial rooftops.
Moments later, an unholy light lanced down from its maw, striking the heart of the district.
The detonation was silent for a heartbeat, then a shockwave of pure force erupted outwards, flattening buildings and sending a plume of debris and fire clawing into the heavens.
The gears of the war ground to a halt, seized by bewilderment.
Adventurers, locked in desperate struggles for their lives, paused mid-swing.
Evilus cultists, their faces twisted in fanatical glee moments before, now stared with slack-jawed terror.
The sudden, apocalyptic scale of destruction was an event so far outside the known variables of their conflict that it induced a city-wide paralysis.
This was the chaos born from the Bahamut Familia’s desperate struggle to save their brother, Draco.
And in this chaos, new opportunities, and new despairs, would bloom.
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In the western district, the hallowed silence of a grand church had been desecrated by the sounds of battle.
Inside, standing before a magnificent stained-glass window, the evil god Erebus watched the distant spectacle with the detached fascination of a connoisseur.
The inferno painted the coloured glass in hellish new hues, and he found it breathtaking.
“Hahahahahaha!” a low, resonant chuckle escaped his lips, vibrating through the sacred space. “To think the little dragon-kin would be the one to unleash such a symphony of destruction. What in the world has Bahamut been teaching that child?”
His dark eyes, ancient and filled with ennui, narrowed in thought.
He stroked his chin, the gesture of a philosopher contemplating a grand cosmic riddle.
“But that’s odd. By all accounts, that boy should still be a hatchling, a juvenile at most. The last I saw of him, he was barely a threat. So why… why that form?” the question hung in the air, a puzzle he genuinely savoured.
“Is he fundamentally different from the dragon-kin of old? Or has Bahamut, truly found a way to accelerate his growth? How intriguing.”
His gaze drifted from the distant pillar of fire back to the chaos unfolding just outside the sanctuary.
A sinister smile, thin and sharp as a razor, crept onto his face.
“That aside, I do wonder if Mors can handle things over there. If I recall, his last boast was about hunting himself a dragon.” Erebus’s smile widened.
“It would be deliciously ironic if the hunter became the hunted.”
Outside, the momentary stun caused by the draconic apocalypse was already breaking.
Ryuu had been the first to shatter the trance.
Her mind, processed the shock and filed it away, something she was becoming very good at recently.
The explosion was a new, terrifying variable, but the immediate, tangible danger was right in front of her.
Her friend was slowly dying on the grimy cobblestones.
“Asfi,” Ryuu’s voice was a raw whisper, the sound swallowed by the sudden quiet.
Tears she hadn’t realized she was shedding traced clean paths through the soot on her cheeks as she scrambled from the church’s threshold.
She reached Asfi’s side, her hands gently supporting the weakened frame of the Hermes familia captain.
The sight of their leader in such a state, coupled with Ryuu’s decisive action, jolted the rest of the Hermes familia. Falgar, Lulune, and the others seized the opening.
With a unified roar, they pushed back, breaking free from the swarm of cultists that had them pinned them.
They formed a tight, protective circle around their injured captain and the elven warrior, their weapons a bristling perimeter of defiance.
“Shit!” Olivas, cursed as he saw his advantage evaporate.
The adventurers had been scattered, on the verge of being overwhelmed.
Now, they were a consolidated, defensive bastion.
He levelled his glowing magic sword, its sickly red light illuminating his sneering face.
“Tsk, a brave little stand. But it changes nothing,” he spat, his voice oozing contempt.
“Look around you, elves, humans. You are drowning in a sea of our faithful. You will all die here, protecting your fallen captain!”
Ryuu and the Hermes familia braced, their grips tightening on their weapons.
The cultists began to press in again, a tide of murderous intent.
The air grew thick with the promise of imminent death.
But a voice, calm and almost conversational, yet carrying the weight of a death sentence, cut through the tension from the church window.
“Wait.”
Olivas’s arm quivered, his magic sword dipping slightly.
‘Erebus-sama,’ he thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow.
He had initiated this city-wide assault against his god’s persistent, almost passive warnings.
He expected a reprimand, a command to cease.
The words that came next, however, were not for him.
“Leon,” Erebus’s voice boomed, echoing with amplified clarity, addressing Ryuu by surname.
Ryuu froze, her heart seizing in her chest.
“Should I assume this is the answer you wish to give me?” Erebus continued, his tone one of mock disappointment.
He gestured with one elegant hand from his window perch, first towards Ryuu kneeling over Asfi, then towards the other side of the square where a group of terrified civilians huddled behind a barricade.
“Should I take this to mean that you have chosen the few… against the many?”
The words struck Ryuu like a physical blow.
She hadn’t thought.
She had only reacted.
Her mind had been a tunnel, and at the end of it was Asfi, burned and bleeding.
In that singular focus, she had run from the church, towards her friend.
Her subconscious had made a choice, and Erebus, with chilling precision, had just held it up for the world to see.
Falgar and the others went rigid.
The realization dawned on them as well.
First, the evilus leader, the god Erebus himself, was present.
Second, and far more damning, their instinctive rush to defend their captain now looked like a deliberate act of abandonment.
The civilians, who had been watching the standoff with wide, terrified eyes, hadn’t processed the tactical nuance until Erebus spelled it out.
Now, his words planted a seed of poison in their fear-addled minds.
“D-did… did they really abandon us?” a woman stammered, pulling her child closer.
“I knew it!” a man’s voice, sharp with panic and betrayal, cut through the crowd.
“The adventurers… they only care about their own! They can’t be trusted!”
A chain reaction of despair and accusation rippled through the huddled masses.
Their last bastion of hope had just been publicly shamed, their protectors revealed as selfish. Their despair curdled into resentment.
“It’s not like that,” Ryuu wanted to scream, to explain that it was an instinct, not a calculated decision.
But the words caught in her throat, strangled by the truth of her actions. She had chosen.
Erebus watched the scene unfold from his vantage point, a painter admiring his masterpiece.
He had not thrown a single punch, nor cast a single spell, yet he had utterly flipped the board, cornering the righteous elf once more, pushing her to the brink.
Taking his god’s cue, Olivas’s cruel intelligence sparked.
“You heard him!” he roared to his cultists.
“The heroes have forsaken them! Secure the cattle!”
With renewed fervour, the evilus members surged forward, not towards the adventurers, but around them, forming a new, larger circle that now encompassed the civilians.
They became a wall of blades and leering faces separating the desperate townsfolk from their would-be saviours.
A tense, suffocating stalemate descended.
The Hermes familia and Ryuu were trapped in the middle, caught between their duty to their friend and their duty to the innocent, unable to fulfill either.
The tension stretched taut, a string ready to snap.
It was broken not by a shout, but by a series of wet, choked-off gurgles.
Before Olivas could even register the sounds, a flash of movement blurred at the edge of his vision.
A cultist standing guard over the civilians suddenly crumpled, a curved boomerang protruding from his throat.
Another fell, then a third, dispatched with silent, lethal efficiency.
By the time anyone understood what was happening, a group of figures had moved like lightning, dismantling the evilus encirclement around the civilians and forming a new, protective line.
They were all girls, clad in matching cloaks.
“What…” Olivas staggered back a step, his mind reeling from the sheer speed of the assault.
“It can’t be…”
A familiar flame-coloured hair, tied in a vibrant ponytail that danced in the wind, greeted his vision.
It belonged to a girl with a smile that was impossibly bright amidst the gloom, a smile that radiated pure, unadulterated confidence.
She struck an exaggerated, heroic pose, one hand on her hip, the other pointing to the sky.
“Fear not, everyone!” her proud, strong voice rang out, a beacon in the oppressive despair.
“For Justice has arrived!”
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Far to the northwest, on a main street littered with the rubble of a one-sided battle, Alfia clicked her tongue in annoyance.
“Huh. The sound of the battle has changed,” she muttered, her brows narrowed.
“Did someone pass me?”
She stood untouched, a vision of deadly grace amidst the devastation she had single-handedly wrought.
Not a single scratch marred her pristine form, proof of her overwhelming superiority.
Her opponent, Riveria, was another story.
The high elven princess was battered, her robes torn and stained, her breathing ragged.
Yet, a triumphant, knowing smile graced her lips.
“Astraea Familia,” Riveria said, her voice strained but clear.
She followed Alfia’s gaze towards the walls.
“I always knew those girls were resourceful, but I never expected them to be bold enough to assault the northwestern district walls while that thing is rampaging in the factory district.”
Her keen elven eyes had seen and pieced together the grand flow of the surrounding battlefields.
She and Alfia were positioned between the besieged northwestern walls and the western part of the city.
Since the appearance of the dragon, Alfia had grown subtly impatient, her attention constantly drifting, towards the factory district.
Riveria didn’t know the exact reason, but she could make several educated assumptions.
One, the dragon was not an ally of evilus.
Alfia’s agitation proved that.
Two, she knew Draco was fighting the evilus champion, Mors, in the factory district; it was the only logical reason for such concentrated enemy forces along the wall there.
Three, while the specifics of his race were a mystery to her, she knew Draco was a dragon-kin.
It was no great leap to surmise the dragon was a manifestation of his power.
The fact that the beast hadn't left the factory district reinforced her theory—it was tied to the battle happening there.
From her vantage point, Riveria had watched the Astraea familia exploit the chaos.
The wall defenders, their nerves shattered by the dragon’s roar and its cataclysmic breath attack, had been easy prey for a swift, coordinated ambush.
The girls of justice had secured the walls, and were now cutting their way into the western battlefront.
Alfia, it seemed, wasn't interested in finishing her off, only in pinning her here, preventing her from reinforcing other fronts.
Riveria’s only true concern now was the small, trembling girl in her arms.
Ais was shivering uncontrollably, her face pale, her gaze locked on the distant, terrible silhouette in the sky.
She was silent, but her body screamed in terror.
It was as if a monster from her deepest nightmares had clawed its way into reality.
Riveria knew, with a sinking certainty, what the child was seeing.
So she held Ais firmly, feeling the girl’s desperate urge to run towards the monstrosity, an instinct Riveria had to suppress.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she detected a shift in Alfia’s stance, a gathering of power.
The silent witch was preparing to move, to intervene with the Astraea familia.
“Don’t even think about it, Witch,” Riveria warned, her voice hardening.
She readied a chant, magic power beginning to coalesce around her.
“My long-range magic can reach that battlefield from here.”
Alfia paused, her eyes flashing with irritation.
“It will probably incinerate a good portion of the district, of course,” Riveria pressed, her smile turning sharp.
“But the city is already in shambles, thanks to you, your god, and that monster you seem so concerned about. A little more collateral damage to stop you from interfering seems a fair trade.”
It was a perfect checkmate.
If Alfia truly intended to uphold Erebus’s twisted will, she couldn't allow a high-level mage like Riveria to act freely.
While Alfia possessed the power to unleash her full magic and annihilate the elf princess in an instant, the cost was too high.
It would aggravate her mysterious illness, introducing yet another uncontrolled variable into Erebus’s meticulously crafted scenario.
She was bound by the very plan she served.
“Impudent woman,” Alfia hissed, her voice a low growl of frustration.
She retracted her gaze from the distant battle, her power receding.
The two most powerful women on the battlefield remained locked in their own stalemate, one of power and one of will, as the tides of the war in Orario began to turn in ways none of them could have ever predicted.
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Meanwhile, on the western main street, Zald cast a casual glance to the northwest, the moon glinting off his great-sword.
“I could butcher the two of you right here,” he taunted, a sharp grin revealing his teeth.
“But it seems my appetite has turned towards something more enticing.”
His gaze flickered back to Gareth and Shakti, who stood weary and battered at the edge of defeat.
Their armour lay dented and scorched, their weapons clutched tightly, but their resolve remained.
“Eight years have passed since Zeus abandoned this city; I suppose even baby chicks must grow,” Zald mocked, admiration lacing his tone for their resilience.
“Will you let us leave?” Gareth asked, his voice steady despite the tremor in his limbs.
He noted Zald’s interest in the factory district.
“I cannot,” Zald replied without hesitation.
“Erebus instructed me that no adventurer shall pass. I am bound by this decree.”
He stepped forward menacingly, his sword raised, casting a long shadow.
Just then, a silken voice cut through the tension.
“If I’m not an adventurer, can I pass?”
Gareth and Shakti turned, shock dawning in their eyes.
Emerging from the alley was a gleaming figure, draped in a silk cloak that reflected the moonlight.
Zald’s expression shifted, surprised recognition flickering across his face.
“So it’s you…” he murmured, weighing his options.
A sly smile danced upon his lips.
“Very well, only you may pass. I suspect Erebus will be both surprised and thrilled to see you, although I doubt he was expecting a meeting with you, especially not at this time.”
The air crackled with anticipation as the enigmatic figure stepped forward, leaving Gareth and Shakti in a whirlwind of uncertainty, their battle momentarily forgotten.
A/N: Feel free to read ahead on pat3on and donate.