The stars were already impressive.
The aquamarine clouds filled with gemstone fragnts that rained down to the ground and cut through beasts like butter was beautiful to see.
Those starlight shards moved like they had minds of their own, creating intricate patterns in the sky that were impossible to not appreciate.
However, they were only the first preventative asure the Headmaster put in place.
Not long after he summoned them, he ascended almost to the tip of Celestelle and waved his staff again.
[Heavens’ Fall]
VOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The clouds themselves dropped out of the air, making it seem like the sky was falling down.
They molded themselves into huge walls that could only be crossed by flight and assembled in the sky around the academy ruins.
Every student and enemy in the vicinity was encompassed in its shadow, and by the ti they looked up at it...
WHOOOSH!
They dropped to the ground powerfully and embedded themselves in the earth, creating an impenetrable barrier that separated the three sections of the academy ruins from the world around them.
The enemies stuck within the barrier were on their own. Those few dozen beasts and humans had no more reinforcents to help them badger the enemy.
Without the array, that was their only advantage. They were dood the mont it disappeared.
Students who saw the chance to attack joined the teachers and staff mbers who ca to save them. The united front of the new and old generations together drove back and eliminated every threat remaining around the students, allowing them to focus on rescue efforts.
While the inside of the barrier looked like that, the outside was a slaughterfest.
With every wave of the Headmaster’s staff, hundreds of beasts died. The seemingly infinite wave was cut down and cut down. More and more beasts began to flee, and those who remained joined their brethren in hell.
Many people realized in that mont that the First Institute was a much greater place than they had given it credit for.
The academy was run by a Headmaster and three Deans who served under him.
The Headmaster’s activities were clear to see. They were being broadcast across Celestelle on massive holographic screens, after all.
However, his actions went directly against what the Apocalypse Church wanted to display.
His first thought was to rescue people. He brought safety to the students and mobilized people to begin recovery efforts before anything else.
Then, he showed what the power of a Sequencer was. He allowed the ordinary humans watching the broadcasts to see that Sequencers existed to protect them and make them feel safe.
The ones who acted otherwise were not the majority and should never be treated that way. He wanted to spread that ssage to at least one person who was considering the truths within the cult’s ssage.
How could the mbers of the Apocalypse Church let his actions be seen?
They naturally wanted to turn off the projections, but they no longer had that kind of freedom.
The Headmaster and the remaining faculty remained below, but the three Deans imdiately went up to Celestelle when they were freed.
By the ti the walls around the ruins were created, they were in the sky around the cult’s airships.
Several jets had been destroyed by their weaponry. It didn’t stop with just the first wave.
But the sa power that stopped jets couldn’t do anything against the maneuverability of the human body.
The three Deans dodged everything that ca at them and forced their way into the ships.
The first thing they did was cause enough chaos to divert attention from the broadcast.
And once that was taken care of, they cleaned up everyone that had to be cleaned up. Unfortunately for the cultists, they did not have the ans to fight back without killing themselves in the process.
The broadcast remained, showing the rescue and cleanup efforts to the city below. The pilots of the airships were held hostage and forced to keep them flying, which ended up being a more important move than any of them expected.
The attack was already spreading on social dia. There were countless people across the world watching the catastrophe.
It was absolutely vital to show them this scene. Otherwise, they’d be left only with images of massacre.
"Tch!"
Not everyone was happy with their actions, though.
"Does this make sense? How did they stop it so fast?" A man said, sneering over a drink.
He sat at a bar in Celestelle, watching the disaster below the city on the sa screens as everyone else.
"Soone knew. That’s the only answer. That explosion..."
"Yeah, no doubt. The first thing they did was blow it up."
The man conversed with another to his side. Both of them were dressed casually and didn’t stand out much. Their conversation was also drowned out by the noise of the bar.
"Everyone got out?"
"I don’t know who everyone is. Everyone with jobs like ours is fine. The only important person who ca was Archpriest Atenna, but you know he’s probably been gone for a while."
"Yeah. He would’ve considered it a failure just because the kids fought back. I know he’s seething watching this."
The two n shook their heads at the sa ti. Most of the cultists who participated in the attack were sacrifices from the beginning. None of them were ant to make it out alive.
"For a test run, it’s not bad. They proved that it works, at least."
"That’s true," the other man said, furrowing his brows.
"But it also makes worry. Regardless of how they found out how the array works, they still found out. I don’t think..."those people" will care about the results at that point."
"That’s also true. I guess there’s no way for us to tell what’ll happen."
They were sowhat important in the cult. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had access to as much information as they knew.
Still, they were just spies. They didn’t have any relation to the cult’s actual decision-making or politics.
As the ones who gathered information, it was only natural for them to be in the know.
And with their information, there were a few things they knew for certain.
Sobody in the academy leaked the array’s functionality. Either that person was a mole inside the cult, a traitor, or a spy so accomplished that they didn’t know of his existence until now.
VNGRD would see this event exactly as it happened. Frankly, it wasn’t a win or a loss for the cult. It was a bit of a mixture of both.
The two n didn’t doubt that the cult’s highest authorities were already eting to discuss the outco of the trial.
"A few of those kids are going to have targets on their backs from now on. You almost have to feel bad for them."
"Yeah, almost," the other man said, standing up.
"Don’t forget what happened to your own kids, Eighteen. People like them need to be the first to go if you want to get your revenge."
The man nad Eighteen nodded and stood up as well. After putting a vault card on the table, he joined his comrade outside.
The Headmaster was always a target. They just didn’t have the tech to handle him yet.
Young Sequencers were different.
They could still be killed by ordinary people as long as they had special ans.
Brennan and Asher were the most obvious targets. Peter and his group were less obvious, but could also be traced through the broadcast.
And finally, the most difficult culprit to find and the most important.
Gio.
Caught as a blurry figure who coordinated all of the previous nas before disappearing was none other than Gio.
But his face was not among those that could be seen in the ruins anymore.
The cultists were left wondering who he was and where he went. anwhile, he was in the first place they’d search if they could.
"Agh...fuck..."
The facility couldn’t be described that way anymore. It was just a hole in the ground with a few vestiges of human activity at this point.
Gio was lucky he was in one of the bigger rooms. As the explosive force filled the world around him, the majority of the dirt that fell into the room as the ceiling caved in was blasted away or incinerated.
Many other parts of the facility had been completely buried.
Other than Gio, there wasn’t a single life signal remaining in the vicinity.
"Arghhh...damn...!"
He gritted his teeth and struggled to turn himself over onto his stomach.
"Huu...huu..."
’I didn’t think it would work this well.’
His breathing appeared as short and ragged gasps. His lungs were too desperate for air to care about long and slow breaths.
Nevertheless, he survived the explosion that killed everyone else and decimated the beast control array.
"Keeeeugh...!"
He felt like there was nothing left in his body. He was just a brain in an empty sack of at.
However, most of the real injuries he had were from his battle with Gasper. The rest were rely cuts and gashes caused by flying debris that grazed him.
’At least that theory is proven true now.’
There was a reason why he had to tag every single energy tank.
’The explosion was started with virtual energy. When the energy in the tanks beca a part of the explosion, they were also turned into virtual energy.’
Even virtual energy that did not belong to Gio could not harm him. That was the property of his Sequence. He would receive phantom injuries equivalent to what he would have suffered in reality, and every ounce of the pain from those injuries was clearly transmitted to his brain.
He was struggling because he experienced the sensation of being ripped into small chunks and separated much more than soone who truly experienced it.
On top of that, his stamina and energy were completely drained. He was in dire need of rest.
’But I can do that later.’
"Hekat, please..."
The snake whirred in protest, making him abundantly aware of his circumstances.
However, he still shook his head.
"Just take to the surface. That’s enough."
Vrrr!
The snake begrudgingly agreed, raising a pillar out of the newly ford crater so Gio could see the current state of the situation.
’Wow...’
As he ascended, the only things he saw were the flashes of blue in the sky. When he reached the surface and witnessed the stars, he couldn’t help but vocalize his admiration.
"That guy is much better than I gave him credit for,’ he thought to himself with a small smile.
’But I’m glad that his character is still living up to expectations.’
He laid back on the pillar, sighing comfortably.
’I don’t know what the numbers look like, but...’
At least according to what he could see, he’d succeeded in lessening the fatality of the disaster.
He’d foiled the Apocalypse Church’s plans to at least so extent, and that was all he could ask for from his current strength.
Eventually, he’d be able to do more. In ti, he’d be able to wipe the cult off the face of the Earth.
But, for now, he was willing to accept the success he achieved.
It was only a matter of seeing how successful he really was.
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