Chapter 340: A Sad Experiment

Chapter 340: A Sad Experiment

"...what did you just say?" Rakna asked ominously with an increase in temperature that surprised both Astraea and Nyx. He was already starting to manifest his magic without the World and they knew better than most people about how hard that was.

"The Kind Demon is the Téra's Father," Roias repeated himself calmly. "I'm sure that's not quite as flattering as the other titles he has, but it is the truth. We would be quite ungrateful children if we didn't know a bit about our de-facto progenitor, don't you think?"

"..."

"Though, admittedly, we're quite the estranged ones," he added. "The System has isolated us from the main hive mind that connects our entire race. Which led... to some unique evolutions among our kind. An increased rate in the development of individuality amongst our ranks, for instance."

"Are you done?" Rakna snarled. "I get how you knew about me now. Thanks for the info, but I don't care about your little trivia. I'm sure the old man never intended to create you, and I'll make sure you're fucking six feet under before I meet him again."

Roias cackled. "Never intended, you say?"

The werewolf growled with oozing anger. "What are you trying to say?"

"You're right, Eternal Night wasn't willfully involved in our birth. However, you lack one critical piece of information," he smirked. "You see; the Téra are everywhere. Pandora's Curse spread to every corner of Existence, every Reality. This happened when the Téra's hivemind decided to rally all its forces and invade the Mother Realities from which they propagated."

Rakna frowned and faintly glanced at Nyx, trying to convey the unspoken question of if she knew where the Téras was going with this. The Night Goddess could only shake her head stiffly; this was something she had never heard of. She had already been sealed by Perpetua Votum by that time; the Eternal Night Art which Roias mentioned himself and translated into Everlasting Wish.

With a light laugh, the Téras commented on their silent exchange, "Yes, she is unaware. But if I am not wrong... she should know," he uttered and nonchalantly pointed at a nervous-looking Astraea.

The poor girl seemed to be in a conflict with herself, anxiously looking between all of them, trying to decide if she should speak up or keep her mouth closed. When Rakna looked at her, she gulped and was about to speak, but the crimson werewolf surprisingly didn't hound her for an answer.

He recognized her plea and redirected his full attention and anger at Roias once again. Nêww chapters will be fully updated at (n)ov(e)l/bin(.)com

"What a gentleman, even with the whole 'red' thing you have going," the creature quipped. "Now, where was I?" He rubbed his chin. "Oh, yes, the invasion of the Mother Realities by the Téra. It was quite an operation. The spearhead was a Téras powerful enough to equal Mythical-Class Gods."

"But I'm digressing..." Roias trailed and started walking around the Terminal Room with his hands behind his back. "What must be understood here is that crossing Realities is an ability that cannot be harnessed by many people. It is something that requires talent, effort, great life force, and one incredible amount of Existentiality. Téra can't possibly hope to accomplish it on their own, much less when it concerns the five Mother Realities."

"As such, we took an opportunity. One man, that you know very well, opened the gates to the other Mother Realities in his quest to defeat the Original Creators. Of course, we tried to follow and were met with resistance at the entrance," Roias stopped walking and glanced at the werewolf. "Victory was close, but at the most critical time, the Kind Demon returned from his expedition. By that time, he had already ascended into a Primordial God. We had no chance."

"What do you think happened afterward?" The Téras asked.

"...he let you go," Rakna said with a blank tone and both Nyx and Astraea froze. Even Roias himself was slightly surprised, though it was far from enough to knock his grin away.

"Fascinating. You reached that conclusion instantly."

"In front of that old man, there is no running away, no bargaining, no luck, no survival. If you find yourself on the other side of his gun, you die or live based on his inclination alone," Rakna declared with a steely voice.

He then looked up as the radiance of holy light started prickling his skin. He saw Astraea hoisting a spear made out of light, and she promptly threw it at him. Knowing he couldn't take it head-on safely, he used the back of his hand to deflect it, just as smoothly as his every action until this point.

The spear pierced the wall and exploded, sending pieces of unknown metallic material all over the place. Fissures opened across the floor and walls, and the Terminal's screens briefly flickered to white noise.

Roias chuckled throatily and jumped away from the blast, his feet landed on the wall as he began to run vertically. Following right after him, Astraea flashed next to him and swung a wooden staff adorned with vines and flowers at him.

The Téras used his forearm to block it and then stepped back to dodge a palm strike. The goddess stood vertically as he did and began to meet him blow for blow.

"As expected of an Egregore Entity," Roias commented as he ducked under an overhead swing of the staff. He cartwheeled out of the way with one hand and simultaneously tried to kick her, which she withstood with her staff, though that did not spare her from the rebound.

She winced in pain and spread her wings open to mitigate the knockback. Her staff began to glow and she pointed it at the Téras. "[Law of Growth,]" she intoned and the very material composing the room started twisting and growing like tree roots. They sharpened themselves and chased the creature to impale him.

Roias cackled and the curse of Pandora gathered above his hand in a sphere. The dark energy then began to take on a more tangible form, gradually undulating until it turned into a sphere of pristine water.

Astraea widened her eyes as he launched a stream of water at her spell. It quite literally devoured it and seemingly disintegrated it, as if imitating the result of a century-long side-effect of sea waves eroding its surface.

She rapidly caught herself back on the wall, whirling her staff in order to protect herself from the brume released by the stream. She could see that each and every microscopic molecule of water was leaving equally minuscule holes everywhere around it. Behind her, she could hear the rustling of both Nyx and Rakna relocating themselves because of it as well.

'He can use magic...?' Astraea thought briefly until instantly dismissing the idea. 'Of course not. The Téra have no soul, no mana. Calling it magic in the first place is preposterous, but no other word can fit it,' she gritted her teeth and Roias subsequently emerged from the thinning water stream.

Like a fish leaping out, he dashed toward her and she, unfortunately, wasn't fast enough to counter properly and his knee hit her stomach. She gasped and for a second, she felt her anchor to Rakna waver as if she was about to be forcefully repatriated to Egregore.

'Arch-Spiritual Vindicator,' she instantly recognized the specific ability from the vast knowledge of the collective unconscious. 'My divinity is keeping me together but I can't let him hit me further.'

She slid across the wall and used the momentum to spin. Her foot dragged and, in her wake, an arc of holy light was drawn at her feet. Immediately, it surged into a rain of darts from which Roias retreated until one of his eyes abruptly twitched in mild surprise when a red arrow struck a spot right below his solar plexus.

His skin was penetrated shockingly easily and dimensional clefts opened on his flesh. He promptly crushed the projectile in his grip and faced a salvo of red energetic arrows. He swatted them all away with a burst of Pandora's Curse and eyed the crimson werewolf above him, aiming what looked like a red long bow and nocking a new trinity of energy arrows on it.

Roias noncommittally noted how the weapon's energy source had seemingly matched its wielder as well. Before he could consider a retaliation, the shadows twisted in a familiar sight and he was faced with a dozen of strikingly infamous Wilden.

'Skulking Angels,' the Téras was genuinely trepid at the sight of these killers of nature. Those blank and terrifying statues, immobile until you turned your back. He had encountered higher evolution stages of this race of killing machines and he frankly had not come out of it very thrilled.

'That girl's specter necromancy is far more dangerous than I expected,' he thought and for the first time, he dropped his smile a bit.

His eyes reflexively drifted to locate the Night Goddess and when he turned back around, one of the Angels' wide-open maws was an inch away from him. The stupidly stealthy and fast creatures circumvented him and reached out to stab his back with their bare hands.