Chapter 88: Arc 5: Black Blasphemy (28)

Xia was having a good time reducing Etaceh’s newest fleet of heavy vehicles into scrap when the beam of crescent light sailed past her nose, cutting a path of destruction in its wake.

She caught sight of a familiar figure rolling away from the bulldozer of an attack. The struggling Hikari gave Xia a reason to be concerned. She knew Hikari wasn’t a light-weight and the fact her junior was being pushed this badly proved the deeds of the strongest Archangel weren’t an idle boast.

“Is he that strong?” Xia asked Hikari who came to rest by her feet.

Hikari gathered herself up and answered, “He is insane. I don’t even have an opening to phase any attack.”

Right on cue, the wave of Mana pressed on the two.

Micheal slowly stepped to face them.

It was a hectic chaos. Montgomery's troops scattered around the ground, trying to survive the artillery from the dangerously listing flying city. Screams of beast rang to the air from whatever Ciel was doing to elicit such horror.

Micheal registered all of those happenings, and ignored all of it in favor of the two targets. Nothing else but his goal existed in his mind. It was the mentality consisting of total calmness and absolute efficiency.

“This will be a tough one,” Xia muttered, steeling herself for what was to come.

Hikari agreed by pressing and removing all the limiters on her Battle-suit. Her suit sparkled with greenish electricity, signaling the vast surge in power running through all the hardware.

Both of them rushed into Micheal in the explosion of light and thunder.

…

In the castle of Hecate, Etaceh was gritting her teeth at how the battle was concluding.

Xia had wiped many of her newest toys, while Ciel was turning her own bestial shock-troops against her. Worst was the intense damage the flying city had suffered. This battle was, in all definition, another high-profile failure. Her only hope was to escape from this damage in functional shape and let Ciel and the Pure Army duke it out.

Or not... yes she still had that move left.

Thus, Etaceh decided to order the city of Hecate to unload the most powerful explosive it carried atop the battleground. She never planned to do this. It was a one trick pony of an option born out of total desperation as her back sank into the wall. Those precious ammunitions were meant to be spent strategically in a siege, not dumped away all at once in a Hail Mary.

Originally, Etaceh believed packing that much heat inside her city was an overkill. Those supplies needed time, resources and brain power to procure and weaponize. She needed to design at least twenty iterations of storage to prevent Hecate from ending as a super heated wreck in a lucky shot.

Etaceh did it because she enjoyed the challenge. In hindsight, that bit of intellectual smugness did payout handsomely at flipping the losing board and declaring every a loser.

Smartass might be an ass, but there was no denying they were smart. 

…

Ciel was the first to notice this development.

Handling the army of walking bioweapons had been surprisingly easy. A high-frequency whistle enhanced with several strategically scattered amplifiers was more than enough to send the army of chimeras into chaos. The remaining thing he had to do is collect data. Everything went according to the plan up to the moment a waterfall of dust rained from Etaceh’s fortress.

Ciel squinted. He knew those powders. Holmes taught him about it all.

The Ignis Gunpowder was mined in active volcanoes of the Southern Continent; an area that was an active Red Mana nexus. It could be easily spreadable through the wind with alarming volatility. Few spoonfuls of this powder were more than enough to prime an artillery barrage. His teacher, Holmes, wouldn’t shut about how the intricate line of evolution in storage technology that allowed this harbinger of disaster to be easily shipped.Generation of inventor climbed over their predecessor's accomplishment to create the primer, process, and mechanism for the most explosive substances of Acceltra to be safely transported.

Etaceh just dropped this substance into an active war-zone. That alone would warrant a war crime of outrage, but she had to pour down several thousand metric tonnes of that thing.

Ciel mentally performed a calculation of the size of the resulting explosion.

His brain died from the dread.

The Unity Lord called out through the telepathic channel before creating a master gate for a quick retreat.

…

Ciel: The battlefield is about to get set on fire by several tonnes of Ignis Gunpowder! Everyone drops everything and runs for it!

That was the cue Betty needed. She already saw the powder being dumped into the battle, but her mind had trouble wrapping around the concept.

As a mage who had passion for artifact manufacturing and modification, Betty knew all about Ignis Gunpowder and its many nicknames like the Devil Dust, Sand of Accident, or — her favorite — Ash of Hate. Like many of its enthusiasts, she also experienced the baptism of nearly singeing her eyebrows while she played with a diluted pinches of the exciting substance.

That was why her brain skipped a few mental notes when she saw the mountain of said substance being poured over the area Mana were thrown around like national holidays came early.

Only one question rang the alarm in her mind.

Did that insane bitch know Ignis Gunpowder’s explosion would be amplified by the ambient Mana discharge in the area?

Discharge like spells being flung around in war-zone.

Betty didn’t need to do mental math. She already dove into the Residence's gate the moment her mind supplied her with an answer.

…

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Carolina received Ciel’s message just fine.

It only helped to confirm her decision the moment she saw the waterfall of high explosive mineral dropped from the sky. As a necromancer she had fun with the Ignis Gunpowder before, she understood the danger. Once upon the time, she tried to incorporate it into a composite zombie. That idea went awry almost instantly. Ignis Gunpowder powered necrotic weapon was too wallet destroying to maintain and operate. Anyone who decided to pour that material in the drain couldn’t be trusted in a casino.

Positively confirming the reckless splurging of her enemy, feeling ashamed that she lost to this idiot, Carolina aptly walked through the crack in the air back to her home.

In her haste, the Agent of Black forgot to collect the corpse of the Archangel she just killed. Worst of all, she didn’t notice the trickling of light seeping from his wound.

…

Hikari was getting up from a sucker-punch when the order arrived.

Micheal proved himself a beast beyond their expectation. Sure, they wore him down by going two-on-one. White Magics clashed as two different Sanctions in the air fought for supremacy. Hikari helped when she could, phasing through a lethal beam of Smite and even scored a cut across Micheal's back.

The White Archangel relentlessly combined speed, endurance, and power. Even when stimulated with a performance-enhancing drug on top of her suit’s limiter removal, Hikari was struggling to keep up with him.

Xia was having a better time, and that didn’t make Hikari’s days any easier.

[Deific Wing] clashed countless times against the sword of light wielded by Micheal. The two masters of White Magic traded blows against each other without stopping. Will and physical force pushed against each other, enhanced under Strengthen. Their wounds healed by their Magic as Auras clashed and drew blood.

Hikari never believed she would see a man capable of withstanding a point-blank air-quake that ripped to building to smithereens until Micheal did it. That was the clue which convinced her there was something fishy about the Archangel.

Xia’s power was enhanced by her Battle-suit on top of the Skill of her contract with Ciel. No one should be able to take her power at this distance and call themselves normal. Hikari herself couldn’t even get close to the fight.

Intense as it was, Xia had scored a critical victory. It was right after Micheal knocked away Hikari with a punch in the gut. Seizing the opportunity, Xia activated the Gospel Grasp’s Holy Blade function and unleashed it on Micheal. The blade of light carved a body path across his chest and demolished its way into the internal organ. Impressive as he was, even a monstrous being like Micheal couldn’t take two formidable enemies together without slipping up.

Contrary to all expectations, Micheal was chuckling.

“Good,” he cracked his neck. The wound across the Archangel's chest was rapidly healing. “Very well. You have proven yourself a worthy threat. It's time for me to take this seriously.”

Micheal’s body began to shimmer with light. A blinding pair of wings emerged from his back to mark his ascension.

Hikari and Xia shared one singular thought: oh god, this guy had a second form.

Luckily, that was when Ciel’s warning arrived.

“Xia!” Hikari grabbed Xia and opened the gate back home.

“Wait,” Xia was still shaken by the sudden information. “How many tonnes of Ignis Gunpowder are we dealing with?”

Micheal rushed toward the two.

“Don’t you dare escape, heathens!”

That was when the explosion commenced.

…

Calling the disaster closing out the climactic battle at the White Plain as an explosion was a criminal understatement.

The flames erupted in a way that defied description. The powder ignited upon collision. Each droplet of solidified unearthly inferno ignited in the mind-numbing plume. Like a well-designed machine, the chain of ignition ran upward, transforming the flow of sands into a waterfall of fire. Like the drop of creation, the flaming judgment slammed into the ground, and rippled outward into a tidal wave of fire.

Anyone within the range of the hellish epicenter was reduced to white sandy ash. The tidal wave of fire liquified everything it touches, boiling blood and rupturing organs. Not many would experience this agony, the force from the explosion was already enough to render the would-be victim a hot dead corpse.

The flames engulfed the entirety of the White Plains. Every officer of Montgomery, the various equipment and machines on all sides, were reduced to the burning skeleton of what it was. The Plains rich with white sandy grasses bathed in the inforno and never again would regain the face of what it once was.

Tomorrow, the raging fire would die leaving behind only a devastated ground stretching from more than kilometers. It would soon become infamous as the aftermath of the great battle — the Plain of Death.

…

The force of the explosion knocked the severely damaged city of Hecate turbulently in the air.

At the seat of her power, Etaceh grimaced at the damage report as her flying fortress started to fall apart. She believed she might make far enough to do the repair, but the damage she took in this battle would be smarting for months.

She lost nearly every back-up — the magi-tech tank and Chimera army. Still, it was a good trade-off given that she managed to take out Montgomery's army.

Today was a victory. However, the cost greatly set her back. She needed months to patch things up. She doubted that the explosion would kill Ciel. Still, she was confident she could egg out a win against Maximus in her current condition, but attempting to do so with Ciel around was a death sentence.

It was clear she couldn’t stroll into Montgomery as planned. She needed to construct a beach, using Hecate as an outpost and loaded supplies and numbers from Intelligentsia to prepare for a siege.

Those were an issue for tomorrow. For today, the Prime Intelligentsia could sink into her cushy throne and chalked this battle as her victory.

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