Even as they zood into the air, the words from the Commander had not been forgotten as he looked at the forest below. Now that he was a Fury Forge and his perception was better, in addition to the fact that he had not been thrown down from the sky, Elias could properly see everything that was happening below.
Six hundred years of labor had produced a forest that was tens of miles in circumference, and Elias could see that sections of these forests had been cleared, and in each of those clearings, numbering in the hundreds, were thousands of bodies.
From the air, it was as if he were looking at ants, as the cannibals below were stacking bodies into piles, and creating altars made from bones and flesh.
He sucked in a deep breath at the scale of this devastation. He had fought for hours, and barely killed one Mist Phantom and the hundred or so subordinates under him, but across the forests were hundreds of such similar clearings.
Even from the air, he could hear cries of pain and the sound of slaughter that ca from the depths of nightmare, and it was odd that he could not hear all of these before. The Commander must have blocked his perception from hearing all of these sounds or knowing the full scope of the terrain where she dropped him.
What did that an? Hundreds of Mist Phantom Flesh Maulers, plus tens of thousands of cannibals, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, had surrounded him, and he had been dropped right in their midst.
Across all these Mist Phantoms, there must be those who had unique talents or used a more powerful Lumina Art than the Common Art that Ngukyi, the Flesh Mauler, had been using.
This was not even taking into consideration the fact that below the ground, at the oasis, there must be a more powerful Siphon at the Amber Exile Stage, or even stronger.
This test he had just undergone had been dangerous, but Elias would be foolish not to acknowledge that if not for the presence of Commander Yseult, he would not have survived it.
Ngukyi had been powerful, but not far from his position had been dozens of similar clearings, and sohow, they had not detected the battle between Elias and the Flesh Mauler, despite all the commotion that was caused by the battle.
"Master, what is happening below us?" Elias whispered, wishing to know more even when he knew that he most likely would not be returning to this place anyti soon.
"What is happening below is the way of the world, and I brought you here to glimpse a small part of it." Commander Yseult replied, and then she sighed, "I have it on good authority that the eldest chief of this oasis, a talented man, was on the verge of breaking into the Void Sentinel Stage after a re three hundred years of life. He had begun looking around for Relics and Fragnts of Divinities for years, and in desperation, he stole one of the principal relics of the Flesh Mauler tribe. However, the problem was that he failed his breakthrough, and he beca injured, and now, the work of his ancestors and all of his people is being laid to waste."
Elias looked down at the rapidly vanishing forest, which was becoming a green dot in his sight. A mont before, he had been brought to the brink of death inside that forest, and now it was shrinking to a dot, and all of the battles and the suffering he had endured inside that place, now seed a bit... aningless.
The Commander had brought him to the scene of a massacre, just to test his battle talent, and she was leaving just as easily, almost as if all the struggles of those below her were aningless.
They reached high in the sky, and suddenly the Commander stopped, and Elias was left standing in midair. As she stood by his side, he noticed that the body of the sleeping woman was gone, and he assud that the Commander must have teleported her away.
Elias did not turn his head to look at her, even though she was standing beside him, because an instinct blaring at him from the depths of his being made him aware that doing so was perilous, and even his Elder Talent did not even pressure him to turn his head a few inches to the right.
"Do you think I’m cruel for not helping, Elias?" Commander Yseult said, "After all, even though you do not know the full reach of my strength, you must assu that I am powerful enough to rescue those below with a snap of my fingers."
Elias was quiet for a while as he contemplated the words from his Master, then he replied,
"Master, you are an Angel, you are divine, and from all I know of divinities, they are cruel. And so, my answer is yes, I find you cruel, but there is no maliciousness in your cruelty, only cold logic."
"Oh, how interesting," Commander Yseult crooned, "And what logic would there be for to allow these people to die when I could easily save them?"
Elias closed his eyes for a mont to gather his thoughts, and then he raised his hand and began counting off, raising up one finger every ti he made a point, "There is a reason you raised in ignorance, even while knowing that I am very important to your plans because of my void attribute... There is a reason that the mont I stepped outside the Fragnt, there was soone waiting for that could challenge your authority... There is a reason you brought all the way to this place outside of Stormfall to barely witness the extinction of an entire tribe..."
Elias raised up his fifth finger, "There is a reason that you stay inside the Heavenly Restriction in Stormfall, and I can hardly imagine how uncomfortable it must be for soone of your power."
Taking a deep breath, Elias finished his thought, "I believe that reason is that you are weak."
There was silence for a mont, and then the Commander burst into laughter, and the slight feeling of tension in Elias’s heart dissipated. There were many ways that could have gone wrong, and Elias would not have been surprised if he had been slapped to death, instead of hearing pearly laughter beside him.
"So, you think I am weak, disciple?" she finally spoke out when she finished laughing.
Elias shrugged, "I do not doubt that perhaps in my lifeti, you may be the strongest being I have ever seen... but, there are many that are stronger than you, and they have imposed their rules upon reality, and even you can only follow them."
Elias pointed at the green speck below, "I can assu that those people who made these laws do not want a place like that to exist. Sowhere outside the Heavenly Restriction, and outside their control. If the leader of this oasis had been wise, he would have known that the six hundred years of freedom they had was because they were too weak to draw attention, but the mont he reached for sothing higher, he had drawn the attention of those that would make even a mighty Angel like you, chain yourself down to a small place like Stormfall."
Reviews
All reviews (0)