Chapter 219 I Dare You.



When he exited his room after his shower with Ichigo, Sam saw Nino teleport at the end of the hallway. Their eyes met for a moment and she teleported again, appearing right by his side and grabbing his arm.

"I think it's starting." She said. She then teleported him away without elaborating.

Ichigo who was following right behind him watched the whole thing from start to finish, but when the two of them vanished she was left standing there confused.

In the blink of an eye Sam found himself standing near the evacuation site. All it took was a single glance for him to understand the situation.

The adults were in a panic as a number of children were floating in the air, each of them with a halo over their head. Juni was looking left and right unable to decide what to do. When she saw the Doctor walking over with Nino by his side, relief seemed to wash over her as tears gathered in her eyes.

"Doctor!" She cried. "I didn't do it! It wasn't my fault!"

"Calm down." Sam said, patting her on the head. "No one said it was."

He left Nino to handle her fellow Valkyries and turned to the floating children. They seemed to be having a great time, as if gravity had lost its grasp on them, but since they had no experience in controlling the forces that moved their bodies in a three dimensional space they were incapable of going anywhere.

"Interesting..."

The children all seemed to be under the age of ten, with the youngest among them being barely five. All twenty of them were able to create the most basic halo that granted them levitation, something that shouldn't have been possible without a Valkyrie heart, or so Sam thought until a few days ago.

The Olympians were capable of using halos, but they were made out of flesh and bone just like a normal human. They were far from that, of course, but that didn't deter the fact that biological beings could manipulate reality without having to undergo a complete makeover.

"What do you think?"

Sam glanced beside him and saw the old seer being pushed toward him in her wheelchair.

"To be honest, I didn't believe it when you first told me." He replied, his eyes turning back to the children.

Since his attention was directed at the ones above, he failed to notice the large crowd on the ground. As it turns out, only a handful of the children gathered there were able to form the halo. The others were still on the ground, some watching with astonishment while others were still trying to copy the ones floating.

"They're able to create halos, alright." He said. "That means they have force fields of their own, and are now able to manipulate reality to some extent."

"And that means..." The one asking him to elaborate wasn't Ramla but instead it was her assistant.

"They can use magic now."

Sam went on to explain that he only calls it that because they don't really understand how it works. He was aware that the runes, when created using the Force Field, can manifest certain effects. How is it possible for something like that to happen? He could only attribute it to the work of the universe.

The assistant gave him a dumbfounded look. Ramla on the other hand was looking in the children's direction, though since her eyes were closed it was doubtful that she could see anything.

"Magic, huh?" She said in a low voice. "So it's like your girls?"

"Yeah. It seems that one needs to be naturally gifted at it to be able to use it properly." Sam explained his hypothesis. "It took me days to learn how to do this much, and even then I still can't keep it up without exhausting myself."

Creating and maintaining runes required a lot of concentration and mental power so he was always left exhausted after attempting it a few times, something that should be very difficult now that his entire body is made of nanomachines.

After he had his talk with Hela, the first Nephilim, he came to understand that he was missing something every being born through Freyja had, something that allowed them to control and shape the force field as easily as breathing.

The children in front of him had gained what he was missing at some point, and this was his chance to learn more about it.

"Elder..."

As he was observing the children floating above them, a group of adults approached the old woman, their faces portraying distress. They were presumably the parents of the floating children.

"What is happening, Elder?" A woman stepped forward, clearly on the verge of tears. "What's going on with my baby?"

"Calm down, Lesedi, there is nothing to worry about." Ramla replied in a calm voice. "The children are growing up, that's all."

"How can we calm down!?" One of the men snapped at her, his voice shaking. "Our children... they're... they're..."

"They're turning into monsters?" Ramla said, her brows drawn together. "I said to calm down. This just shows that we have survived a lot. The kids have learned something that would help them from now on."

Her words seemed to fall on deaf ears as the concerned parents turned their anger to Sam.

"It's because they came here, isn't it?" Another man said. "It's because you brought your Angels here!"

The man got one stop too close to Sam, and as a result, he found the sharp tip of a spear pointing right at his neck.

"Go on." Said Nino in a cold voice, appearing between Sam and the man. "I dare you."

The man was frozen in place, fearing that his neck would be sliced at the slightest move. Sam placed his hand on Nino's shoulder and silently asked her to lower her weapon. Of course, she was reluctant to do it, but when she saw him glancing at the floating children she realized what he meant, promptly removing her halo and causing the spear to disappear.

The children were able to use the Levitation Runes after seeing them just once. Showing them more halos wouldn't do them anything good.

The man she threatened dropped to the floor, cold sweat drenching his forehead. He saw his life flashing before his eyes, and because of that he understood that the Japanese doll wouldn't have hesitated to kill him if he tried anything back there.