Chapter 322 – His will be done

Chapter 322 – His will be done

... it stopped.

It stopped. The force to eradicate not just a city but to make the entirety of smaller countries completely uninhabitable, it just stopped. Energy condensed in its purest form, a small sun in the middle of the arena, now surrounded by a dome of silver energy. How would one just stop this?

“There is no need to fear anything!” the deep voice boomed through the stadium with relentless conviction; “As long as I am here!” John turned to see the form of everyone’s saviour. He was tall, immensely so, muscle-bound arms reaching out of a white toga. His brown-haired head was crowned with an olive branch, and his middle-aged face burst with vitality and rage.

His left hand glowed with the silver of the full moon while his right was engulfed in the golden blazing of the sun. Sol and Luna also followed behind him, on their respective sides, all three of them working the magic that worked this miracle.

“Ah, the great enslaver himself arrives,” Alexej mocked, the fact that he still was unmoved despite this attempt not having worked whatsoever made John’s hairs stand on end below his clothes.

“You will be dealt with once this concludes,” Romulus dismissed it without a care.“Knights of Rome!” his voice once more echoed through the arena; “Do good by your oath, protect my people and protect me.”

“Oh, the great emperor himself needs help, sh-“

“Shut – Up.” Maximillian said, pressing his former friend’s air from his lungs by nailing him to the floor with his powers.

“He has a point,” Romulus’ voice no longer echoed through the arena; “I may be able to contain it for now, but while I neutralize the bomb, I will be defenceless.” Just as the emperor said that, the gap in the sky spewed forth a swarm of dots that quickly closed in.

It only took John a moment to realize what he was looking at. A small-scale invasion of elite forces, a hundred people, some flying, others simply diving down or getting carried. They wanted to push their momentum while they could.

“So that was their plan,” John mumbled. They wanted to distract Romulus with a hydrogen bomb and then kill him while he was busy containing the explosion. The fact that this was the plan made John gulp.

What kind of being must be distracted with the strongest weapon science produced to date just to be defenceless. “We begin with the neutralization now; the quicker we get this over with, the quicker we can get back to protecting our city!” Romulus instructed his two sworn goddesses.

“”As you command, Rom!”” both of them answered simultaneously and began to increase the amount of energy they expended.

The barrier thickened as the explosion on the inside unfroze and played out. They were causing a perfectly controlled detonation while also localizing the radiation.

‘And they tell me I will be on that level one day?’ John’s eyes went wide as the soldiers raining from the sky landed all around.Fiind updated novels on no/v/elbin(.)co/m

“I will take care of Alexej,” Maximillian told John. “Go make yourself useful... you are stronger than me!” The king muttered the last words reluctantly but he uttered them all the same.

“Thank you. Everyone, let’s go!” the elementals and Momo followed after him as he went towards his first target.

“We got this,” Momo told him even as Shadowflame parted into Siena and Salamander again, “Just go get her! She will be great help in cleaning up this mess!”

“Go!” Undine urged him as well, flowing off his arm.

“Thank you!” John said and made a break for it.

As he bridged the last few metres, he checked on the platform through Jack. It was empty; in all likelihood they were somewhere in the chaotic battlefield below as well. A battlefield that, as John noted, didn’t look all that well for them at the moment.

The Blood’s soldiers being able to disregard any injury made it so that they got an edge whenever they landed a hit. Morale also must have been a factor; not everyone had a skill that allowed them to just check why their enemies simply weren’t dying.

He finally reached Thana and kneeled down by her side. He tried to reach out to her, but she was thrashing, mumbling something too quiet for him to hear. Hitting her head on the floor and seemingly trying desperately to look away from the still unfolding nuclear hellfire behind the silver screen.

“Talk to me,” he finally managed to get a hold on her by the arms. He turned her so she had to look at him. The dots in her eyes were like a broken clock, ticking in illogical distances or backwards at times. Her eyes were wide in shock, barely seeing him. They were only filled with terror.

“Jo-h...n,” her lips barely formed before her whole body was gripped by a shudder and she went back to chanting what he didn’t understand earlier. “No, stay inside, stay inside, stay inside,” she said over and over again.

“What is it? What do you need? Please, talk to me,” John pleaded and shook her, “Stay with me, Thana!” The quivering stopped. She looked back at him. Her violet eyes reflected his relief. She raised her left arm, John saw four numbers appear slowly, as if they had to fight against some last resistance. 0-0-0-1. It was the first set of many, carved into skin by bursting blood vessels. They disappeared as quickly as they came, replaced by new ones.

The dots stopped moving and then stretched into seven thin lines, crossing the golden ring. A smile appeared on Thana’s face, one completely devoid of all of her usual insanity. The voice that spoke eventually clearly was Thana’s, yet that tone... it wasn’t hers whatsoever.

It was uncaring, rough, primal beyond sanity or insanity. John doubted that these concepts even meant anything to someone who sounded like this, like a hungry wolf that managed to form words.

“I am here, this body is mine, I am here, this body is mine, I am here, this body is mine. I am here, speak my name, I am here, speak my name. The humans all need annihilation, the humans all need annihilation. I am here, the human anathema, I am here. Finally. I can end this farce myself.”

Before he could ask anything, a strike to his shoulder flung him to the air faster than he realized, and then he had already crashed against the wall with all of his mana instantly annihilated and health reduced by a third. ‘It hurts,’ John thought, his right shoulder clearly broken several times, making his whole arm useless. He waited for it to fade as all physical agony did when it was healed away. It didn’t. It continued to pulsate in pain, no matter how long he waited.

A window appeared before him that had him look up and at the unknown girl inhabiting Thana’s body. Observe revealed a terrible truth to him: that the name Thana, which the faces had whispered to her, had never been meant for the girl he knew.





Everyone else was still busy fighting; none of them noticed the imminent doom that had just awoken in their midst. Not yet. In mere moments they would learn.

And the clock strikes midnight.