Chapter 450 - Disappeared

The blob of light that suddenly appeared in front of him said those words and it immediately entered into his body.

"What the hell?!"

Cecil was surprised when he noticed that he somehow couldn't control his body anymore. The suction force of the black hole also began to strengthen and he was slowly moving away from his cover behind the broken wall.

Noticing his peculiar movements, Gabriel urgently called out to him, "Cecil, what's wrong?"

"B-Big bro, I-I can't control my b-b-body!" Cecil said as he struggled to stop himself from taking a step forward.

Whatever came into his body had somehow possessed him and he couldn't control his body as he normally could.

"What's wrong?!"

"H-Help! S-something dove inside me and I can't move normally!"

"Hana, Deuce, go help him!"

"Yes, Commander..."

"Roger."

The two automata came over to Cecil's side and were about to grab onto him but suddenly, Cecil began releasing a large amount of his aura that quickly repelled the two and nearly blew them into the black hole-like portal.

"Cecil?!"

"Th-that wasn't me, big bro!"

"Don't play any games!"

"I'm...not! I told you, I can't control my body! S-Something's inside of me—"

He immediately stopped saying anything in the next instance because he felt something trying to invade his mind.

'There's no need to struggle. Your existence here will bring this world to ruin. I'm only going to return you to a place where you won't cause any harm!'

Hearing the unknown voice echo inside his head, Cecil immediately replied,

'Who the f.u.c.k are you?! Get out of my body!'

'You're the harbinger of the coming calamity. It has already been preordained. For the good of this world, you can't be allowed to stay here any longer!'

'What the hell are you talking about?!'

Cecil felt that his control over his own body was slowly slipping away, however, just before the other entity that had invaded his body was able to thrust him into the portal, a long black tail suddenly wrapped around Cecil's waist holding him in place.

"!"

'What now?!' The ominous voice echoed inside Cecil's head.

"Big bro, hold on! I'll save you!" Angelia yelled out from across the room. She had already made it towards the room's exit and had summoned her monster, Nessie, out in the corridor. She had Nessie extend one of his long tails out to grab onto Cecil before his body was fully exposed from behind the wall.

Angelia was also rescuing everyone else from the room using her monster and it made things much easier. However, because Nessia was large, he had to anchor himself outside of the room with his other numerous tails to keep himself from being dragged into the portal.

The portal's suction force had grown strong enough to pull in large and heavy objects and for some reason, the larger the object, the easier it was to pull in. This was especially true for Nessie who was struggling to hold onto the pillars in the corridor to prevent himself from being dragged into the room and into the portal.

"Nessie, hurry! Once you bring everyone out, you can return!"

Nessie only roared back in response and began pulling out the rest of the people still inside the room into the corridor.

Cecil was also being pulled out but before he even got out, a large explosion suddenly occurred on Nessie's tail and the monster roared in pain, nearly loosening its hold around the other people he had in his tails.

The tail that was directly struck by the explosion was the one that had wrapped around Cecil. The origin of the explosion was from the boy himself who was now holding onto his sword that was stabbed into the ground.

"Big brother?!" Angelia yelled in shock.

"S-sorry! I-I can't control my body!" Cecil yelled out.

"W-we have to save him! Big brother Gabriel, do something!" Angelia frantically called out.

"I know!" Gabriel yelled in reply. He frowned hard after thinking of everything he could. Not everyone was out yet, and Nessie was struggling to even pull back the others it was grasping in its tail from inside the room. "Hana, are there any options?"

Hana was silent for a moment before she answered, "There are no plausible courses of action to save Mr. Cecil."

"What did you say?!"

"The portal is experiencing its last phase of collapse, if we stay here any longer, we'll be caught in the dimensional explosion and we will all perish."

"D-dimensional explosion?!"

"We may have to abandon the sky fortress, Commander. The dimensional explosion will engulf everything in the surrounding tens of kilometers. We have to evacuate immediately!" Hana said robotically. However, her tone held a sense of urgency.

"S-so we abandon my brother?!"

"..."

"Shit! How do we destroy the portal before it collapses?"

"Solution... we can try overloading the portal with mana. However, this will cause one of either two outcomes. One, the portal's collapse destabilizes and it caves in on itself or two, the mana inside the portal compresses and implodes, destroying the portal and causing an even larger dimensional explosion than the initial one."

Hana's suggestion was basically a gamble. Cecil, who heard it from afar, already knew what needed to be done.

"You guys go! Don't worry about me! Gabe, make sure you take everyone and bring them far away from here! I'll take the gamble and inject as much as my mana as I can into the portal. Hurry up and get out of here!"

Hana turned towards Gabriel and said, "Commander, the mortal will explode in less than 15 minutes. If we want to evacuate everyone, we have to do it now."

Gabriel frowned and turned towards Angelia, who was looking anxiously between him and Hana. He made up his mind and said, "Angelia, tell Nessie to hurry up and drag everyone else out. We'll leave Cecil to take care of things here."

"B-but—"

"Just listen to me, Angie. Please remember that your brother is probably the most powerful person on Earth, right now."

"But we're not ON Earth!"

"Deuce, drag my sister out of here if she resists. Everyone, let's go!" Gabriel decisively ordered.

They had mixed feelings about leaving Cecil behind to take care of the collapsing portal, but if they stayed, it wasn't like they could do anything for him. Also, considering that some kind of spirit had possessed his body, there wasn't much they could do if he suddenly attacked them unintentionally.

Right now, Cecil was already doing his utmost to wrap his fingers around the hilt of his gunblade while the administrator, who had possessed him, was trying to make him let go. The internal war going on between the two inside Cecil's body continued for a few minutes.

During this time, Gabriel had brought everyone away from the place and went to pick up the rest to bring them out of the sky fortress. If Cecil couldn't do anything about the sky fortress, they might have to abandon it here on the fifth stage once it was severely damaged by the dimensional explosion caused by the portal's collapse.

Nearly fifteen minutes had passed and nothing happened, however, the suction force of the portal had expanded until it was far outside of the room where the gate is located. This caused even the ambient mana around Gabriel and everyone else to gravitate towards it.

As time continued to tick away and the portal's pull continued to strengthen. Angelia became increasingly worried because her brother still wasn't out yet.

"I-it's still not gone? Big brother, we have to go save Brother Cecil!" Angelia said in distress.

Gabriel was similarly worried but he could only reply with a negative to her pleas while keeping his emotions in check, "If we go back there, we'll only cause unnecessary worry for him! Also, we'll be caught in the dimensional blast if we—"

"Don't say that! It's like you're saying Brother Cecil won't be able to resolve this!"

"..."

As Angelia was about to argue once more, Hana who was next to them suddenly spoke up, "Commander, it appears that the portal has collapsed!"

"What?!"

"The pull from the portal is slowly dissipating. My scanners detected it. Sir Cecil was successful with the gamble!"

Gabriel immediately called for a gondola and the group quickly got onto it and moved back to the room where they had left Cecil and the collapsing portal.

When they got there, the portal was gone, the transfer gate was gone...and so was the entire room. It was like this part of the sky fortress' interior was cut out from existence and only an empty area was left behind.

"B-big brother...where's big brother Cecil?!" Angelia cried out while frantically looking around.

"Scanning...there are no life forms detected within a kilometer radius from this area, Commander," Hana coldly reported.

"W-what? Then where's my brother?!" Gabriel roared in question.

"There are no life forms anywhere, Commander... we can only assume that Sir Cecil is MIA or...KIA..."

"N-No...th-there's no way that my big brother would die!!" Angelia cried. She unconsciously summoned all of the monsters she brought along with her and began scouring the place for her brother.

Perhaps because the administrator was also not here or at least its influence wasn't here any longer, Angelia, who before couldn't summon all of her monsters because they were in some sort of deep hibernation, was finally able to.

A large wave of monsters suddenly jumped out from all over her body and the small pouches she carried around with her. Inside these pouches were the small forms of the monsters Angelia was able to carry around and once they heard her call, they immediately roused from their slumbers and jumped out, quickly transforming into their battle forms.

"Find my brother! Find him now!!!"

This awesome display of might was laid bare for everyone to see. The little girl who they all thought was just a monster tamer turned out to be a monster queen. The numerous young S-ranked and above monsters marched on her orders and began scouring the area.

Any hostile monsters that tried to come close were immediately obliterated by Angelia's horde with Nessie in the lead.

"Brother, what are you doing? Hurry up and find him!" Angelia turned around and glared harshly at Gabriel.

It was Gabriel and Hana's idea to leave Cecil behind so that he could handle things himself. Cecil did give them the go-ahead, and despite knowing that he was very powerful, Angelia knew that her brother was omnipotent.

In the end, Cecil was still just her brother. He was still human just like them and it wasn't like he was a god that could manipulate space and time on a whim to stop the portal from collapsing. He had his limits but it seemed that everyone forgot about all of that because he's only been displaying powers that were far out of reach for them that made him seem omnipotent against all kinds of problems.

"Hurry up! I won't hear anything from you all! You better find him before the day ends or else none of you are leaving this place!"

******

In the crack between the dimensions, Cecil was currently floating in the endless void, accompanied by a small blob of light that was yelling and cursing at him.

"Blah blah blah, you brought this upon yourself! What kind of an idiot possesses another person's body just so that they could kill them or banish them or whatever the heck it is you've been rambling on about?!"

"I was only trying to return you stupid fool! I was trying to prevent you from bringing ruin to your own family and your own people! Why couldn't you just listen to me and stop struggling?! Now we're both stuck in the void because of your stupid and reckless action!!!"

"You think you have the right to be angry?! If I don't find a way back to my family, you can bet that I'll torture you and when that happens, you'll wish that you died back there in the explosion!"

"F.u.c.k you!"

"The f.u.c.k did you just say to me?!"