With voices rising in anger, they demanded to know why the Amphitheatre had turned on them as well.
|What the fuck just happened?! Why the hell is the Amphitheatre attacking us too?!|
|Are you trying to kill us all?!|
The Leader of the Creator Society, his coat half-burned and law energy nding his wounded shoulder, opened his mouth to retort, but the Vice-Leader, Elandorr, beat him to it.
|You think we have full control over every part of the Amphitheatre right now?!|
Elandorr shouted the words mid-battle, staff in hand as he evaded blast after blast of law energy. He was under attack by a trio of chanical upper-body golems, each one floating around him and unleashing concussive beams of extinction law energy.
He conjured a shield of creation law energy to absorb one of the incoming blasts, then retaliated with a counter-blast aid at the nearest golem, before darting aside to evade a piercing lance targeting his chest.
His body then transford into a streak of light that zapped forward, closing the gap in an instant and slamming his staff into the head of the golem still reeling from his earlier strike, driving it back in a shower of sparks.
Even while mid-fight, he still turned his head back and shouted again.
|You’re all blasting out your power like fucking lunatics with zero thought about the people around you!|
Another beam lanced toward him from behind the mont he spoke. He spun and raised a layered shield that cracked violently under the pressure while still shouting.
|And after that, you think the defence systems won’t mark you as threats?!|
One of the Race Emperors hovering overhead pointed an accusing hand and roared back.
|Then shut the systems down! And you better watch your tone, boy!|
|Exactly! If you can’t control it, shut your damn defence system before it kills soone it’s not supposed to!|
Elandorr’s brows twitched at their audacity, and he snapped back at them without hesitation.
|Shut down the defence systems!? What, so we all get slaughtered by the space beasts flooding towards the arena?!|
You’re throwing your attacks everywhere like wild animals, hitting evacuating civilians, destroying the arena walls, and still have the guts to act surprised when the system flags you as enemies?!|
There wasn’t a shred of the usual respect he reserved for Race Emperors in his voice, and even the Leader of the Creator Society stared at him in stunned surprise.
Just then, Elandorr’s shield shattered, and the extinction beam hurtled toward him.
But before it could hit, he erupted into a pillar of light and vanished, reappearing behind the golem and then stabbing his staff straight into its back.
Firing a burst of concentrated law energy from the tip of his staff, he made the golem explode mid-air.
Elandorr spun in place, swinging his staff to release an arcing wave of raw magic that sent the remaining golems spinning back in a chaotic tumble.
At that mont, so of the Amphitheatre’s cannons locked onto one of them, unleashing a focused barrage that annihilated the golem in a brilliant explosion of cosmic energy.
Elandorr pointed at the blast with his staff, then turned to the foreign Race Emperors and shouted.
|It’s helping because I’m not fighting like a lunatic! If you don’t want to get marked as enemies, then stop acting like it and control your damn attacks!|
Suddenly, the area around him transford into a raging blizzard, instantly freezing the third golem that had tried to ambush him while he spoke.
Elandorr then spun around, bringing his staff down and blasting the golem’s head in a concentrated blast of creation law energy—more than enough power to ignite several hundred stars focused at the point of impact.
As the Amphitheatre repaired the damaged space, Elandorr, breathing heavily, glared at the Race Emperors and shouted one last ti.
|You want the Amphitheatre not to target you? Then make it easy for it to recognise you’re not the threat.
Because right now, it can’t tell the damn difference between you...| —he pointed at one of the masked figures locked in battle with a foreign galactic Deity—|...and them.|
Elandorr didn’t wait for any response to his words. He turned and dashed toward the Puppet Master who was controlling the golems that had been hounding him.
They were encircled by shield-bearing, armoured golems that defended them as they continued controlling other golems to attack different targets.
But just before Elandorr could reach them, and before any of the other Race Emperors could even open their mouths to shout, sothing happened.
A massive tree branch with leaves and flowers literally spawned from thin air and pierced right through the Puppet Master’s back, bypassing the ring of shield-bearing golems as if they didn’t exist.
It burst out through his chest a second later, and impaled on the tip of the branch—still twitching—was his heart.
Elandorr froze, stunned into silence. And he wasn’t alone—everyone around the area was gripped by collective shock.
Then, a playful rang out across the entire Amphitheatre, casual, but echoing with power that sent chills down the spine of almost everyone who heard.
|Wow, wow, wow... looks like everyone’s having quite so fun, aren’t they?|
And then she appeared.
She didn’t descend from above, or step out of so portal. She was simply suddenly there, right beside the barely alive puppet master, who stared in horror at the bloody organ dangling in front of him.
The woman reached out with a single finger, brushed it across the bloodied heart, and sared so of the blood onto her lip.
|Ugh... disgusting. Looks like my tastes have changed lately.|
This ti, Elandorr and the others weren’t frozen from shock, but fear. Even those farther away, who rely felt the overwhelming sense of danger her presence carried, were left montarily speechless.
A great many of the attacking Space Beasts were paralysed by instinctive dread, and the defenders with wills strong enough to move under the oppressive presence, took advantage of the opening, launching waves of attacks that wiped out swathes of the frozen creatures.
anwhile, the newcor—Rowena Striqane, one of Jamie’s First-Gen disciples—spat out the blood she had just tasted and spoke.
|Activate Level 1 Sub-Administrator Authority. Confirm Amphitheatre structural damage |
In response, a black-and-white holographic tablet materialized in front of her, displaying real-ti statistics and diagnostics of the Amphitheatre’s current condition.
The sight of it caused the higher-ups of the Creator Society to stiffen in disbelief.
Elandorr, especially, was shell-shocked.
He didn’t know who this woman was, and he definitely didn’t know why she had a higher level of Authority in the Amphitheatre than he did.
Rowena sensed Elandorr’s stunned gaze, but she ignored it completely, not even raising her gaze after she slightly suppressed her aura.
She seed utterly uninterested in the chaotic fights going on around her as she continued scanning the data with her head down.
anwhile, high above, the five masked cosmic superiors who had been silently observing from the start finally made a move. One of them raised a hand and spoke into a small receiver strapped to his wrist.
"A troubleso one has appeared. We are moving in. Just keep the ASB on track."
With that, both he and the others released a fraction of their auras and charged down towards Rowena.
Faced with this charge, Rowena silently dismissed the holographic tablet in front of her and then casually snapped her fingers.
| AAAAAAHHHHKKK!!|
|HRRRAAAUUUGHHHH!!|
Agonized screams suddenly began echoing from every direction, halting the charging figures in their tracks. They turned around, only to be t with a scene so horrifying that even they were montarily stunned into silence.
From within the bodies of dozens of Monarch Realm masked assailants—each one a being on par with a Race Emperor—branches violently erupted.
They shot out through their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths... even the holes down below.
The branches pierced out, then twisted back in, only to burst out again from the exact sa spots. Within seconds, their bodies began to wither and collapse, their life force drawn out through their blood, which was absorbed into the branches and manifested as blooming crimson leaves.
At the grueso sight, so of the cosmic superiors charged towards Rowena in fury, while others activated their Authorities to interfere with her technique and kill the seeds she’d planted in the bodies of the screaming Monarchs.
As for when she’d planted said seeds, it was when everyone was distracted by her dramatic entrance.
No one had paid attention to the delicate flowers adorning the branch she used to impale the puppet master through the heart.
Those flowers had released a fine, near-invisible pollen into the air, and when Rowena released her aura, it wasn’t to intimidate anyone, but to guide the pollen toward her chosen targets.
Once inside, that pollen was fertilized by the blood of its hosts, and at her command, those seeds germinated, tearing through their bodies and consuming them from within.
Still, the process wasn’t unstoppable.
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