Chapter 91: Arc 6: Angel Fall (2)

Inside the spire of light piercing the cloud was an old man sitting on the throne.

The throne wasn’t inside a palace. There were no walls to hide the majesty of his station. No ceiling was needed to limit his might. That almighty seat of this replicated heavenly realm hung on empty air, glowing with the golden essence of the planet. Pearly aurora surrounded the seat of power like the grace of the all-merciful.

The man older than Acceltra was dreaming of the time long past.

…

He could remember the day he met the king.

As Lord, Maximus was born fully mature from the Void, but that didn’t mean there wasn't hierarchy. More animalistic Lords hounded a more human of their kind. In his earliest memories, he was hunted by the Slime and the Wyrm. They cornered him with no way to escape, preparing to feast on him.

Then his savior arrived.

With wings of light, the handsome man chased the darkness away. He was dominating, powerful, and benevolent. His hair was light. The body of the Lord was strength. Words spoken with his voice were unwavering charisma. Even now that presence of his lighted the fire of purpose inside Maximus.

“Never fear,” The Lord of Heaven, Yumeron, declared. “Come. The others are waiting.”

One after another, Maximus gathered all the human Lord with his overwhelming Authority. Be it Anastasia, Sophia, Borbonsi and Etaceh, they were invited by Yume as his comrades to conquer the Void. Yume united them all and declared a crusade to establish their faction as a rightful ruler of the Universe. For Maximus, it was the time of glory and triumph. Under the wings of Yumeron, prosperity and glory were all but certain.

Sadly, that crusade never happened. Maximus never got to see Yume as the rightful king of the Lord.

All because of that guy.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said a man with black hair standing in the way of the mobs. “I am at a loss for words. This is all it took to make a lynch-mob.”

“Who are you?” Yume commanded.

“The advocate for the Non-violence Society of the Void,” the man replied. “Before you claim I am insane, my society has members.”

From behind the man, a tortoise popped its head and looked fearfully at the mob.

“This is a bad idea, Ciel,” said the reptilian Lord.

“What gives it away?” Ciel said. “Is it the glares or the numbers?”

The tortoise went back into its shell, and Ciel continued his platitude.

“Okay, buddy,” The Unity Lord from eons ago faced the mobs. “I am not the guy to drag the conversation for longer than it has to. Let me answer the question in your mind. Yes, I am a human-type.” Ciel pointed at the tortoise by his feet. “And that guy is Nemo.”

Yume opened his mouth, but Ciel cut in with the answer to the Lord of Heaven’s unspoken question.

“I know you will be asking for my allegiance,” Ciel said, much to the mob's displeasure. “The answer is no. I will not hop on your bandwagon. If you are going to claim the classic ‘if-you-are-not-with-me’, I suggest you hurry with the classic routine.”

Ciel spread his arms, putting up the image of being totally defenseless. 

“Go ahead and kill me, oh Lord of Heaven,” Ciel shrugged. “You won’t gain a single thing.”

Yume cut the Unity Lord in two.

…

Maximus opened his eyes.

Typically, this should be a war of destiny should be waged between two kings with differences of opinions over differing philosophies.

But Ciel was no king.

The Unity Lord was a schemer and trickster; a disgusting jester laughing at them from above. He lacked the courage and dignity to fight them face-to-face. Instead, this satanic being mocked their very ambition. The karma between the two men was that of a devout divine emperor waging war against the devil. One side was committed to the holy war, while the other barely cared about the gravitas.

As the pope of the divine emperor, Maximus the Grand viewed the Unity Lord with fear and contempt.

All this time was for this war to exorcize the devil and avenge the humiliation at the dawn of time.

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…

As Maximus poured the entirety of his motivation into one hated enemy, another less important target faced a grievous but earned setback.

Anyone who knew history would agree Etaceh had it too easy for too long.

The Prime Intelligentsia began her grand campaign as an invincible obstacle in an unbreachable flying fortress. In her patience, she conquered the Magic King of Curtis and transformed it into Intelligentsia. Within less than a year, she destroyed Eleanor and the Montgomery’s Pure Army. Such an impressive round of victories should open a path to the easy conquest of the Eastern Continent.

Unfortunately, Reality didn’t work like that.

Conquest was a long game of intensive preparation. To win the game, the conqueror must know himself and his enemy. One mistake was all it took for the most carefully laid plan to burn.

Where and how did this slide start? The answer was overconfidence.

Success was a poor teacher. Etaceh’s victory in Intelligentsia did net her a massive power, but the true casualties were her prudence. Like a true smart-ass, her newfound might got into her head and the old ‘pride-before-fall’ adage flew to its natural conclusion.

Instead of consolidating her power and revising her logistics, Etaceh decided to make the most of the opportunity and bolstered her military reputation by attacking the Mercenary Port Elanor. Sadly, war wasn’t romance. True, many empires had been forged from successive victories, and rapid blitzkrieg was an excellent tactic. However, in her rush for quick glory, Etaceh disregarded the logistic contribution Eleanor played in her rise to power.

By burning the Mercenary Port, causing its sailors, bureaucrats, and engineers to flee into the four winds, Etaceh destroyed her greatest supply lines. It was akin to burning her camp before a war.

Either she won or she fell; retreat was no longer possible.

Not that Etaceh would fall quietly. Even without the Lord of Commerce resupplying her warehouse, Etaceh had enough assets in the bank to put up a fight.

Sadly, it wasn’t enough to win all those fights. The Lord of Mechanical Magic had committed another cardinal flaw. She underestimated her opponent.

Yes, Maximus was a fanatic who worshiped the very ground Yume walked, but he was far from a pushover. The resource the Papal White State of Montgomery amassed over generations was a sky-scrapping wall to cross and its Pure Army was well-trained and powerful. The five Archangels were experts in their field. In all honesty, if Ciel hadn’t intervened, Etaceh could have lost outright. She also caught a fairly lucky break when Maximus the Grand interfered with the Blue Archangel's more conservative planning and met her in an open conflict.

But luck running out was the law of the world and no Smart-ass could escape from self-made disaster.

Etaceh won the Battle of White Plains only to discover the reality the Unity Lord already knew — winning a battle and winning a war was a different concept. Yes, the Pure Army was routed. Montgomery’s secret weapons such as the Execution of Miharl and the Oleg-Regina were destroyed. The Archangel as an operating organization was annihilated. Judging by the result, Etaceh should be awarded the highest possible honors and be a Valedictorian.

Sadly, war wasn’t an examination. In conflicts, a general could lose nine out of ten battles but clinched the belt by winning the tenth that mattered.

Etaceh operated on the opposite spectrum of such logic. She won all the battles that left her worst off. The skirmish in the White Plains (now the Plain of Death) was a prime example. It costed Etaceh all her Ignis Gunpowder and damaged Hecate irreversibly. Although an Etaceh’s sympathizer could argue the trade-off of destroying Maximus’ Pure Army was worth it, reality painted a different picture in a single master-stroke called the Angel Fall.

To spell it short, Etaceh barely had the time to celebrate her victory when she was assaulted by a swarm of Angels. It was there that she was hit with a realization.

She had used all her trump cards against a disposable army. Now, the real deal was knocking on her door.

…

The first minute of the Angel Fall saw Etaceh’s protection crumple like a shield made of cardboard.

After the battle at White Plains, the floating city of Hecate was forced to park on the flat land in Montgomery for a lengthy repair. With the flight stabilizer and propulsion damaged by the attack of the Sorceress of Athenaeum, it was impossible for Hecate to continue flying for a foreseeable future.

That wasn’t an issue. The proud jewel of the Prime Intelligentsia would never fly again anyway.

Angels dropped from the shining skies and laid down a bombardment of light upon the city. There was no forewarning or hint of the attack. An army of luminous winged beings just lowered themselves from the glowing clouds and rained ordinance against the Hecate’s barrier.

It wouldn’t be so bad if this was the barrier from a few months ago. Etaceh’s original fortification could hold out for hours against such an assault, providing the Prime Intelligentsia with ample of opportunity to counter-attack. Unfortunately, that impregnable past was a price the Lord of Mechanical Magic had to pay for her string of victories. The flaw created by Borbonsi’s life, widened by the Execution of Miharl and prided even further by the Tear of Immortal, had reduced the artistic piece of defense into brittle paper cutout. The barrier barely reaching 12% of its original spec faced the angelic ordinance for exactly two seconds before crumbling into shards of crying speck.

Etaceh barely had a chance to blink when her damaged fortress was torn apart. Some intact anti-air defense still managed to return fire before getting wiped from existence by raw firepower. The architectural marvels called Hecate were being torn asunder by waves after waves of light-spear.

To make the matter worse was the monster who landed upon the fortress from the sky with the force of breaking the entire city in half.

Etaceh tumbled from her throne inside the grand palace. She glanced at what the surveillance system delivered and felt despair.

Etaceh had never seen that monster before, but she instantly her time on top was up.

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