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Chapter 1269
🕑 Added 2020-01-13 06:18:59 +0000 UTCToC: https://www.patreon.com/posts/23899958
Kiersty narrowed her eyes when she felt the obvious power of the creator of the bloodbeasts. She couldn’t exactly tell what Skill he used in his punch and palm, but they were certainly potent. And that image of the empty-eyed monster made her wary. But she snorted and gathered herself for another attack. As a Priestess of Arbor, she had a responsibility to step forward, despite the danger. She pulled back the first Divine branched and raised her left hand in preparation to make a second one.
But before she could move, Straud continued to speak. From his pocket, he pulled two objects. One was a drop of blood and the other was a coin. “First, let’s clear the way for our Lord to descend. With the formation, God has given me… With this Coin of Territory in my right hand, I claim this area in thy name!”
There was a strange ripple of the air. A breeze wandered through the stadium, touching upon the exposed skin of everyone gathered. Shivering, Kiersty was filled with a strange sense of deja vu from the sudden gust of air. She sensed an extremely familiar feeling that somehow felt dangerously foreign as it pressed down over the stadium. It wasn’t truly an image, but it was something close. The sense of strangeness seemed to reach out and grip the entirety of the structure.
Kiersty pressed her mouth into a thin line; she could sense that a strange barrier surrounded the stadium now that would prevent people from leaving.
Realizing that she couldn’t keep giving Straud more time to follow through with his plan, Kiersty raised her hands. Yet the opponent moved faster. Straud smirked over at her and said, “And as the new liege of this place… that being’s influence is banished!”
Kiersty yelped as the scion of Arbor beneath her rapidly began to wither. The blow struck her just as firmly as it struck Arbor’s incarnation. She tumbled to the ground and rolled for a few rotations before popping back up to her feet. Her expression twisted as she saw the Bandit King had bounded gleefully toward her to strike while she was down. And to her horror, when she reached for the power of Arbor, she felt that same strangeness in the air blocking her from reaching her Priestess Skills. Yet even as Kiersty’s heart began to pound at the danger, a voice cut in from the side.
“Do you really think the people of Earth are just gonna let you get away with this?”
The Bandit King cursed and rolled clumsily to the side as a huge, spiked sphere of iron smashed into the place where he had been about to step. Tykes hopped out of the stands and landed next to Kiersty. He beckoned and the huge metal sphere flew back to smack into his hand. His eyes were grim as he looked at the assembled Nemesai. The air became heavy as Tyke’s image spread out to fill the surrounding air. “Just come all at once. That will make things quicker.”
Yet Straud continued to seem serene as he looked down at the two people who had jumped onto the field. “And in my left hand… a drop of blood from a true God. With it… shatter the shackles and free our images!”
His left hand tightened into a fist. There was a strange rumbling and the air seemed to press down on them in an entirely different manner than the strange feeling from before. Kiersty only frowned from the weight, but she could feel that the individuals who hadn’t ever encountered an image before directly passed out beneath its pressure.
It was a ripple of boneless bodies collapsing in the stands. The crowd, which had been largely dumbstruck by the conflict on the field, began to scream and panic as its weaker members fell onto those fortunate enough to endure the attack. Chaos ensued as different groups began to try and help the unconscious while other people just fled. The Order Valorem guards surged into motion, but that was also the very moment that bloodbeasts began to pour forward out of the interior of the stadium and strike at their backs.
Before they could respond to the new threat, Kiersty could sense that almost a dozen of the guards had been killed. As their blood splattered on the ground, more bloodbeasts poured out of the bowels of the stadium.
As the crowd’s screams grew even louder, Kiersty looked grimly up at a towering figure that appeared in the sky along with the vast pressure. Because that figure was a weapon bared, but not wielded. The pressure they felt was simply the existence of the image.
The figure was a man. He was hairless and disdainful, sneering down at the world. His eyes swept across the stadium without seeing anything, more of a recording than a true intelligent entity. Which would help them survive it, but it still didn’t give Kiersty any good ideas of how to deal with its power.
Yet just as Kiersty began to fear how the image would attack, the image quickly faded away.
At the same time, Kiersty twisted to look in shock at the Nemesai as images far more powerful than any she had seen from them in the past erupted from their bodies. Straud glanced over toward the Winged Serpent. “There, it is done. You are freed from your shackles by the grace of my God. Now, do your part.”
“As it was agreed, so it shall be.” The eyes of the Winged Serpent began to glow. A huge stone wheel appeared in the sky, constructed by a series of consecutively larger circles of stone that moved independently of each other. Each circle was covered in carefully spaced runes with rigid designs. It was a thing of constant motion, filling the surrounding space with the noise of stone rubbing against stone.
And gradually, the different circles shuddered to a stop. The light in the Winged Serpent’s eyes increased. The screams grew even louder as the bloodbeasts finally managed to escape around the guards and cut into the vulnerable crowd. After a series of grinding clicks, each portion of the huge wheel aligned.
A line of runes spreading from the interior to the edge began to glow.
The Bandit King grinned over at Tykes as his image blasted outward and pushed away Tykes’ image. “Still want to act cool? Then how about-”
Bang!
“Ow! Fuck!” Again, the Bandit King stumbled backward while cursing. But Kiersty saw how his suddenly more powerful image had dispersed most of the force of the bullet. After using only a second to recover, the Bandit King turned and glared over to the side. Out of the tunnel to the Vipers' locker room walked Hank Howard. He idly spun his repeater in his left hand and his revolver in his right.
Behind him, the hunched form of the Dragon Broodmother Wivyana cantered forward with Alana upon her back. Alana shared a glance with Hank and frowned. “They broke the image shackle on Earth all in one go? Well then… I suppose there is no more reason to carefully suppress our own power.”
Chuckling, Hank Howard nodded. And immediately the image pressure rolling off both of them increased. Yet Kiersty couldn’t help but worry; although the two’s strength did jump upward a fair amount, it was only a small increase compared to how much the Nemesai improved. They perhaps now possessed half the strength of the Nemesai’s image.
The situation in the stands was becoming increasingly chaotic. People rushed toward the exits, but they skidded to a stop as bloodbeasts began to pour out and start to kill everyone in sight. Hundreds of people were helplessly cut to pieces before the crowd pushing behind them realized the danger. Some of the audience had enough strength to resist, but they were a minority.
Very few people seemed to have brought their weapons to the inaugural football game. Or if they did, they were content to protect themselves and their family while avoiding the bloodbeasts that sought out easier prey.
The Order Valorem guards quickly moved to help, but as they finally made a counter-attack, half of them were possessed by Straud and attacked their fellows in the back. The new ambush wounded the guards from the Order Valorem even further, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Order from acting. That situation gradually stabilized, because those who were possessed were basically just physical puppets, but the guards couldn’t get through the crowds to stem the tied of bloodbeasts rushing out into the stands.
Again and again, Kiersty used her will to hammer at the strange otherness in the air that prevented her from wielding Arbor’s power. But it seemed the other side really had been prepared for her. She could only bite her lip and produce a javelin from her interspatial ring.
“Still plan on hiding? Everyone should come out to play.” Straud glanced coolly over toward the Stallion’s locker room. After a few seconds passed, there was movement from within that area too.
A heavy iron square of a vehicle rolled slowly out of the tunnel. Standing on top of the vehicle with his arms crossed was someone who looked like a teenager, but wore a crown of jade. And that teenager was perhaps the owner the most potent image that Kiersty had felt today, aside from Straud himself and that figure that was conjured from the drop of blood.
To have another fighter who could stand against the Nemesai brought a surge of joy to Kiersty’s chest. It seemed that Zone 1 really had prepared everything for this day. The Jade Prince clenched his fists and looked coldly out at the assembled Nemesai. “Did you think I would allow you to simply run rampant in my Zone?”
There was the sound of engines engaging and the Jade Prince hopped down off of the heavy vehicle. There was a sound of locks disengaging and steam vented out through the breaks in the paneling along the iron square. Metal screeched against metal and the vehicle slowly unfolded on itself. The unfolding portions twisted and opened, revealing metallic hands. The treads that had carried the vehicle into the stadium bent and split to become legs. A hatch opened and a head slid upwards.
A humanoid mecha that was wreathed in venting steam slowly pressed its large steel hands into the ground and slowly straightened. Its limbs were covered with dense Engravings that pulsed with power. A portion of its back popped off and a large metal sword fell into its waiting hand. The sword was even more densely filled with Engravings than the mech itself, to the point that the sword seemed to constantly glow.
Ghost’s voice boomed out over the stadium. “Let’s see then which of our sides made better preparations then.”
The shoulders of Ghost’s mech opened and a dozen small and sleek drones shot outward into the sky. They rapidly twisted midair and shot out beams of energy toward the concentrating Winged Serpent who stood beneath its image of the stone wheel. But before the beams could land, Straud waved his hand and conjured a large crimson dome that protected the Winged Serpent. The beams shot by the drones caused the dome to flicker, but it quickly recovered its bright color after that attacks ran their course.
Across the stadium, the screams slowly transformed into sobbing and whimpers as more and more people were butchered by the bloodbeasts without the chance to resist. The Order Valorem guards were being slowly hemmed in by the bloodbeasts, but luckily almost a hundred of the ape variety of drone loped out of the locker room behind Ghost and leapt up to the stands. People noticed the reinforcements and hurried down to the lower portions of the stands. The bloodbeasts finally began to be beaten back.
On the ground, the individuals who possessed images powerful enough to near the image of Straud all lowered their heads and charged forward at the same moment. The light emanating from the grinding stone wheel that floated above the Winged Serpent’s head was growing larger every second.
And with the increase in the brightness, the scent of blood in the air grew positively stifling. Kiersty didn’t need a Skill to tell her that they needed to get to the Winged Serpent before it finished whatever it was doing.
“Ah… God will certainly love your passion…” Straud flexed his hands. The Nemesai moved to engage the group from Earth.
Tykes gave Kiersty a questioning look. Kiersty shook her head and gestured Tykes forward. With gleaming eyes, Tykes charged forward toward the Bandit King.
Comments
saba
You are right, and such characters are much more interesting.
ElectricintheForest
I'm seeing a ton of whining on these chapters by readers who.... don't seem to understand character motivation? Like guys, sometimes people do things for reasons other than, "be strong, fuck shit up."
Fiazba Baran
She did that? Literally last chapter, Kiersty attacked first rather than let the enemies dictate the flow of the battle. Tykes commented on it explicitly. She got smacked down for her trouble. This chapter was her deciding that it might be worth getting smacked again (and using up some unknown but probably limited supply of delegated Arbor power) in order to stop them. Unfortunately, the other team had the same thought, and their "stop the enemy before they power up" card beat Kiersty's.
Augustus
He had a choice between going to the football game where something may happen and harm a lot of people and going to meet the ogres who were definitely coming and would definitely harm a lot of people. He left the Nemesai around so that they can act as rivals to earth so they get stronger so earth can survive when he is not around. Imagine a MMO where a top level player goes around killing all of the mobs in tutorial town, the noobs will never level up and subsequently get slaughtered in the next town.
Whole situation feels forced. Randidly decides its okay to let hundreds maybe thousands of people die, including possibly some of his friends (maybe he knows they all have plot armor) so that he can go toy with some weaksauce ogre elder that seemed happy to sit and wait for him anyways. Seems totally reasonable? Not to mention completely ignoring his great fate piece in the hands of someone else, yeah that's not gonna cause any trouble, no rush. I better go hold myself back against ogre guy first to "test his strength", what could go wrong? The Nemesai and Straud are literally murdering people to weaken Earth and he could have curbstomped them at any point but instead decides its not his problem. Nah I just wanna show off how cool my walking city is, could help but nah
Tristan A
Ezekiel is working against Straud too, so I dont see him killing Dinesh unless a misunderstanding comes up. Also I think the Grim Chimera should be able to break in either with pure strength or by using Chimeric Avoidance. Also even though Kiersty mentions how Hank and Alana aren't at the level of image as the Nemesai I imagine that now since they aren't suppressing themselves their images will quickly grow against these stronger enemies to match them. Ace is definitely the wild card in this. I think he is going to stop Straud but also take this opportunity to strengthen his own position. Also I was wondering if this is possibly a duplicated version of Decklan. I said also too many times and because of that I'm going to jump off a cliff.
Faruel
"Realizing that she couldn’t keep giving Straud more time to follow through with his plan"... this is why I hate so many of these stories lately. why the hell are any of the people sent by Randidly or half-decent fighters giving them ANY time at all. it takes a special kind of stupid to stand there and watch the antagonist cast a spell or in this case walk out into the open and give a speech while in plain sight like it's some kind of in-game cut scene especially when there are people with superpowers and weapons that could reach them BEFORE they finish. every time I see one of these bad guys succeed purely because of the good guy's moronic inaction it makes me want to just file the book under "no longer worth reading" and walk away. stories can still have the bad guys succeed but at least try to make it seem like the good guys attempted something to stop it instead of standing there watching like useless pieces of wood!
So, when is Randidly going to use his territory coin on Kharon?
Fiazba Baran
So on the side of the Red Revival: Straud, numerous low tier bloodbeasts, Decklan, Thea and Chrysanthemum, obsidian Duke, winged serpent, bandit king, and the Grey lich. On the side of humanity: Alana and dragon, Hank, Tykes and Dinesh, Kiersty (nerfed), Nathan, Jade Prince, Ghost, numerous low tier Order Valorem fighters, Order Ducis. Simon? Unaligned: Ace, Rose, Ezekiel. Unfortunately, I don't think humanity has anyone to match Straud without Randidly, and the Grim Chimera will be blocked from entry without the Philosopher Key. Say the Jade prince stalls against Straud. Alana handles Thea. Tykes fights Decklan. Order Ducis takes the Lich. Ghost handles the Obsidian Prince. Hank handles the Bandit King. Without Arbor, can Nathan and Kiersty break through to attack the Serpent? Will Thea betray the Nemesai to kidnap one of them? What will Ace/Ezekiel do? I suspect Ezekiel will kill Dinesh. If so, every member of team Humanity except Alana is in a losing match up until Randidly arrives, since by Kiersty's estimate Alana and Hank had about half the power of a Nemesis. If Dinesh and Nathan had stayed, I'd have said the 4 of them would definitely win against anyone but Straud, since nobody can defend against Nathan's soul-based attacks and Tykes and Dinesh have presumably good teamwork and lots of experience defending against stronger enemies. I'd also assume the Order Ducis team can hold out just due to the numbers/teamwork advantage. Maybe Simon can interfere, but all I'd expect from him is to confuse the bloodbeasts to minimize casualties. It really looks like team Humanity needs Ace, but he also wants to be a villain, so who knows what he'll do.
Elayda
Probably not, the image lock seems more like it is designed to stop nemesai from stomping the locals. The big advantage the nemesai have is that they can group up against the entire world unlike champions who are more static defenders with local backing.
CentaureHeart
Now that the restriction has been lifted, will the Champions do something productive ? Hopefully with the restriction gone they too can move from zone to zone.
Chris
If his feet match then he must avoid dances.
I guess hank has two left hands since he twirls his revolver and repeater in his left
Joshua Little
Won't say I love all the Alt POVs but I do like most of them and they help the story greatly.
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
Seanpna
The other POVs aren't bad its just that the Randidly portions are so much more interesting...
Grayson
Am I the only one who really only reads the Randidly portions? Not that other POVs are bad, just wondering.
