Chapter 292: Divine Retribution.
A flash of white and the roaring of an object falling faster than the speed of sound led to a crater hundreds of metres wide when Nine crashed into the terrain of The Plane.
He was unfazed by the crash as much as the punch hadn't caused him any damage, what did bother him was how easily he had been forced from one place to another; as the smoke and dust from his crash cleared and he stared into the air it became obvious that he wasn't anywhere he'd ever been before, not a single constellation he could see made any sense.
"This Godslayer," Nine mused, fanning the dust from his face and walking out of the crater he'd made. "At first, I believed he simply had the rare powers of teleportation, which enabled rapid transportation from one place to another, but this isn't just another location; this is inside of another collective entirely."
"Aren't you the perceptive one," Sol walked from behind a cloud of dust with his hair still glowing white. "In order to prevent the entire Khalla-Novan collective from suffering a disaster, I brought you into my Collective," Sol explained, crackling his knuckles.
"This is The Plane; an artificial universe created solely for the sake of fighting people like you, there's no escaping here; this is a closed space where every point of escape leads back to the surface, and that's all there is, and entire half is solid terrain and the other half is full of stars made for the sole purpose of creating light," Sol gestured to the ground and the sky where there were indeed multiple sources of light but each was spread so far apart there was no overlap, simultaneously casting day everywhere.
"A universe where the Void is only a painting and there's breathable air wherever you go..." Nine mused, removing the cloak on his shoulders with a flick of his wrist and staring at Sol as a breeze picked it up and tossed it away. "To create something of this magnitude, you are incomprehensible, Sol Vestic," He admitted.
"Coming from you that feels like an insult, Ninth General," Sol stared at him seriously, balling his fists as his mana began condensing inside of him. "I'll be sure to send your head back to the Emperor wrapped in your cloak as a pre-arrival token, so give it your all, you won't be alive for much longer."
***
"Murderer!" Lana Stark wailed as she tore through mountains with her fists balled in Ikaris's jacket dragging her along.
"Where is your pride as a warrior, you killed her in cold blood!!" She screamed, breaking through the other side of the range and raising her fist to strike, but Ikaris swatted her hand away without fanfare and grabbed hold of the other hand breaking her wrist and freeing herself from her grasp, then raising her knee in her stomach and stepping in her chest sending her plummeting back into the Plane like a beam of light.
"Raaaagh!" Lana roared as soon as she hit the ground. "I'll kill you!"
"You're too weak to even harm a hair on my head," Ikaris brushed off her clothes while staring passively at the woman on the ground as she descended.
"Your dear sister wasn't any better, are you lecturing me about murder when you and your Emporium, have been slaughtering my people for millennia, where were your morals at those times, where was your empathy when you were implanting Godslayer and Vatui cells into your body?" She asked calmly, staring at Lana's white hair and black eyes, and at her snapped wrist as it healed.
"You've slaughtered and tortured billions of my people, you're lucky she got a quick death by my husband's hand, if I had arrived first, she would have suffered, you all deserve to suffer!" Her blue eyes turned grey and then very slowly morphed into a bright glowing crimson.
"You'll burn in a thousand hells for what you did, Ikaris!" Lana lunged with all her might causing chaos as the area of impact with her foot turned to lava as she dashed across the terrain, but her advance came to a sudden halt when out of the blue Cecelia came crashing with her heel in the side of her head sending her in another direction and then looking at Ikaris while the latter nodded and slowly ascended.
"I'll leave her to you," Ikaris glanced once more at Lana and then vanished in a flash of crimson mana.
"Will you be alright on your own?" Alpha asked Cecelia appearing at her side and eating cake again.
"Of course, there is no weight hanging over my head, there's nobody in trouble that I need to be looking out for, Lana was always strong," Cecelia paused when she sensed the approach of the enraged woman, taking the clip from her hair and holding it forward as a massive cannon appeared in her grasp.
"But I have the power to contest with anyone below the 100th rank; I'll deal with her in a snap and rejoin Her Majesty!" She declared, linking her power to the weapon and firing off a concentrated beam that ripped a trench through the ground, blinding Lana as she was struck with the beam dead centre in her chest and sent tunnelling across the terrain for miles.
"She thinks she has the power necessary to defeat me, a retired soldier who has been hiding while her people died off," Viktor floated inches above the ground causing a consistent displacement of dirt and dust beneath his feet. "You are a failure, and I will make an example out of you the same as-"
"Get to the point," Ikaris stared at General Flint with a raised brow. "There are seven of you and only myself to contend, yet you are vastly outmatched," She raised her hands while Alpha appeared behind her and neatly removed her sweater.
"I haven't had a proper fight in nearly a year, try to keep up," Ikaris leaned forward, summoning the sword of the 1789th General and staring at her seven opponents.
"How did we manage to end up so close to them?" Sal asked hiding behind a rock with the man from her initial crash staring at Ikaris and General Flint along with the six other generals all below the 500th rank.
"You are indeed quite unlucky, first you betrayed Cecelia who turned out to be your only saving grace as an officer of the Emporium, then you ended up in milady's range, your demise will be a terrible one," Alpha turned and looked at her after appearing in a crouching manner the same as she was hugging her knees and smiling eerily. "You're cooked."
As soon as she saw Alpha a second time, Sally snapped in a fit of fright, bouncing from her crouch and into a full sprint away from them, but after a few seconds of running what was probably a marathon of distance because of her enhancements a wave of shock and destruction collided into the woman's back, throwing her almost a hundred metres forward into a cascade that ended with her getting caught by someone and held upright.
"Wh... Huh?" Sal shook her head and looked upwards, coming into contact with a pair of light greens and glowing pink hair. "Who are you?"
"I wanted to be a part of the main fights, but there's apparently a bunch of Captains headed this way to aid their seven remaining generals, right?" Dina looked to the side, and Alpha nodded while Arla patted herself; along with her, there was Keele, Jenifer, and the host of Arkadian gods who had been summoned to deal with the strays and keep them away from Ikaris so she could focus.
"Apparently, they are supposed to be significantly more powerful than the ones we faced before the grand Collective was opened by Master Vestic," Dr'ul answered and Sal's eyes widened as she witnessed that like Dina, this other woman had glowing hair resembling that of the Godslayer, though hers looked like a cosmic radiation storm taken form after coming into contact with the rings of a planet, at her side was Adonai in his [PREDATOR EVOLUTION] form, with S'mael next to him visibly amped up after witnessing Ikaris's destruction, shifting into his [BLACK JACKAL] transformation with a roar.
"Let them come, I barely managed to scrape by the last time, but we have not been idle, my power after actively nourishing it has grown many times over!" S'mael laughed. "I'll destroy everything hahaha!" He continued laughing.
"Allies..."
"Indeed, your simple mind didn't think for a second that The King and Queen had surrounded themselves with trustworthy allies?" Renia asked, being the last to step out of the portal before it closed behind her.
It had taken a bit of convincing on Dina's part to get the goddess of Chaos to open her mind to the battlefield once more, after her last encounter with the emporium warriors and her devouring the Vatui essence from her enemies, she had sworn never to raise a hand in violence again, but Dina used her status as a hero to persuade her, after all; they didn't want to fight Sitri's demon horde either, but they did it anyway because it wasn't about them, something bigger was at stake.
Sol's prompt was a simple yet serious and time-sensitive one.
Umbra will come, and before he does the Grand Collective needed to be rid of the Emporium, having multiple enemies on multiple fronts was a terrible sensation, they needed to get rid of the ones they could so he could focus on the imminent disaster at hand.
"L-let go..." Sal held on to Dina's hand when she realised the predicament she was in, but it was Renia who stood before her and took a deep whiff of her bleeding forehead from her crash earlier.
"She has Vatui cells in her body, but she is human, she also has traces of PowerPoint inside of her blood, not a lot, but it's there," Renia righted herself and looked at Dina.
"Do with her what you will, I am going to intercept those approaching Captains," Dr'ul turned and took off leaving a pool of magma where she stood, and with her the other gods along with Keele and Jenifer left as well, leaving only Arla.
"Alpha, have you pinpointed the others?" Dina looked at her and the maid daintily curtseyed and nodded.
"Of course, after master marked them with his mana, they are easy to locate, I will create a map for you, amongst the marked, there are several vice-captains who have chosen to band together so you ought to be careful of them, they feign weakness," Alpha answered.
"Alright, Arla, let's get out of Ikaris's way so she can stop holding back." Dina looked to the elf after another concussive wave slammed into them, she held on to Sal and the woman watched shocked as her body limply fanned from the winds yet the two who had remained were perfectly fine, tanking the force like rocks.
"And her?" Arla stared at Sal.
We know who our allies are, it doesn't matter if they fight back or not; Master told us that The Plane should be empty, we will dispose of them all.
"Wait... Please, let me go."
[Casting Divine skill]
"You're the one that betrayed Cecelia," Dina stared at her name as it floated above her head. "There's no mercy for the likes of you."
The skies above them became alive with electricity as portals from a pocket dimension opened up and Arla retreated several hundred feet away.
"Please, help me, I'm sorry!"
[Judgement has been maximised and is undergoing evolution, will you rename the skill?]
"I've lived as a hero," Dina stared at her releasing her to the ground and binding her with a [Mana Spear] through her stomach. "But today I'm not that hero; today I'm punishing those who have wronged my loved ones and their people, this is only the prologue."
[Divine Retribution]
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