Chương 56: CHAPTER 55 - Lead Maiden

Blood slid through the scientist's teeth as he was hurled into the air by the fury of the woman who had appeared before him. His eyes first pointed toward the sky before finding themselves pinned to the earth. In an almost instantaneous exchange, Grayson's bones snapped and shattered. His limbs went nearly limp, incapable of moving freely. Monica's elbow drove into his shoulder, fracturing it along with his legs. His body sank into the rock, his legs collapsing beneath him.

Monica, locked in an empty, lifeless expression, seized him by the throat and slammed him into the ground. Maliard, Lance, and Jeanne stared at the scene, struck silent. Despite the exhaustion and the constant pain across their skin, they remained fixed on Monica Net in her fight.

"Is that Monica?" Lance murmured, watching the figures move through the dust in disbelief.

"Unfortunately, yes. That woman truly has no grace…" Maliard answered, sitting on the ground. Lance tried to ask him what he was doing, but Maliard ordered him with a gesture to sit as well.

"Should you not be worried?" He asked, sitting beside him. Jeanne followed, sitting directly between them. Maliard shook his head, adjusting the cylinders on his arm.

"Why would I be? The operation is concluded." He answered, ignoring the continual roars across the plain. Lance stared at him, surprised, exchanging a glance with Jeanne, equally confused.

"Concluded? You are not worried about her?!" Maliard turned sharply, giving the boy a flick on the forehead. He studied him through his surprised groans, fixing him sternly.

"If I were you, I would worry about Grayson. Having that woman on our side is practically cheating." During their exchange, a flash of light emerged from the haze, striking Monica's figure. Lance and Jeanne widened their eyes, but Maliard snapped his fingers.

"Before you say anything, watch." The moment the smoke cleared, Monica reappeared before their eyes, completely unscathed. Her hair gleamed with a pale, almost platinum sheen.

"Why… Do you… Not die?" Grayson whispered in a distorted voice. His arm hung loose, twisting in an attempt to reconstitute itself. Monica blinked and took a step forward. Once again, Grayson found himself battered by a barrage of blows, unable to react or even think. In that flurry, Monica's expression did not change for even a second. Her face was becoming stained with blood and crystals, and yet her lips and eyes remained as though frozen in place. The scientist seized her arm, pulling her toward himself.

A blade of light appeared between his fingers, crackling in the morning air.

"Caught you…" He accompanied these words with the slash, sending it sliding rapidly toward her flesh. Monica simply closed her hand around Grayson's wrist. Crack The whole crowd fell silent before the scene. Grayson fell to the ground, kicked away by Monica. Around her hovered a swarm of golden sparks.

"The light has… Been broken?" Jeanne murmured, curious, leaning her face toward the gleam. Maliard nodded, sighing with his hand before his face.

"I hate abilities like that one… They are genuinely unfair." Lance turned toward him, unable to grasp the weight of those words.

"Would you like to know more about the Commander's ability?" Maliard asked the two of them, gesturing without quite looking away from the battle. Both nodded, without taking their eyes off the confrontation for a second.

"Monica is a Stärken. However, her ability differs from the others. For some reason, it evolved at an unsettling pace after the accident, even faster than mine." Far from their conversation, the ground collapsed under the weight of Grayson's authority. Monica found herself pressed into the rock, slowly driven ever deeper.

"That woman's ability is something absurd, even for a Herrscher. Its name is Stoikos." Her hair gleamed again, and suddenly she managed to raise her head. Grayson fixed her with a veil of terror across his face as she drew closer." Stoikos?" Lance asked, feeling the name spin through his mind.

"It is an old folk legend, the Eternal Princess. It was very popular among recruits during the Great War. You may have heard it mentioned somewhere. It concerns a young noblewoman incapable of feeling pain. That is roughly the gist of it." Maliard explained, pointing immediately afterward at Monica.

"Are you a beast?" Grayson asked, before being struck hard by her, directly in the face. Lance watched the woman's strength in astonishment." Stoikos is the condensation of that legend… When active, Monica's Frequency becomes fixed in a single instant, at the cost of her mental fortitude, which is slowly drained." Maliard pointed his index finger at his own brain, circling it in the air.

"So Monica is…" Maliard nodded before Lance could even finish the question.

"Yes… While Stoikos is active, Monica cannot die, or rather, her body loses the very concept of injury." Lance went quiet, limiting himself to watching the confrontation in silence. In what little sanity remained to Grayson, his eyes brought him an image. The figure before him was no longer a woman in a jacket, but something else entirely. To him she had become an enormous marble statue, with long, clawed fingers and black eyes.

Monica seized him by the throat, slamming him into the ground with enough force to raise a column of debris.

"I imagine that is the signal…" The man murmured, letting the cigarette slide from his lips. Slowly he drew his eye away from the small eyepiece of the telescope mounted on the parapet. He fixed his gaze in silence on the black, almost murky sphere, restless inside the black case at his feet. He bent down and seized it, contracting his lips into a disgusted grimace.

"And here I wanted to leave you to rot in that case. Lucas owes me more than one favour for this." He sighed, pulling himself toward the highest point of the roof, directly onto the tiles. He set the sphere down on the ground, drawing a thin razor from his pocket.

"Do your work… Astrea." With a quick motion, he cut his own palm, letting a jet of blood spill onto the relic. After a faint reddish gleam, a black filament pierced his wrist, slowly stitching itself around his flesh. The sphere widened at his feet, shooting outward and coiling around the rest of the filaments. From those roots, a long, square barrel began to form, rotating and contorting toward its end. A thin, grooved, rough cylinder formed close to the squared grip.

"It hurts just as much as the first time I held you…" He let the weapon fall forward, and it promptly extended further roots like a pedestal. Under the weight of the block, the tiles cracked.

"This is Maverick. At the next signal, everything will be ready for detonation." He extended his hand from the stock toward the hole where the magazine would normally sit. An instant later, all the blood from the ground and his wrist began flowing inside, followed by a stream of white lights resembling fireflies. A black cube emerged from the hole, charged with a strange gleam in golden and crimson tones. From the weapon's barrel began a moan, followed by a flow of heat.

He brought his eye close to the sight, observing every movement on the island through the cloudy, restless glass. Monica and Grayson were only a few paces apart, wrapped in a shroud of ash and dust. Maverick slowly slid his finger beneath the weapon, drawing close to the cube-shaped trigger.

"I had not imagined I would do this again…" He thought, applying more pressure steadily with his finger.

"Killing with a firearm is something anyone could manage. Detonating a bullet with the intent of saving someone is a masterwork of the mad or the desperate." These words flooded his ears just before the entire air filled with an unsettling crackle. He smiled at the memory of that motto, spoken years long past.

"I wonder whether I can still live up to those words." His finger pressed the trigger fully. A sound, like the swing of a blade, resounded beside him. A few moments later, the entire weapon lit up red, releasing an extremely thin, almost invisible beam of black light. A small dark stain formed on Grayson's shoulder. Astrea's barrel opened, as the jaws of some monster found only in fairy tales, devouring the air with a red gleam. The entire weapon reverted to a sphere, falling and bleeding from Maverick's wrist.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. On the island, nothing happened for a few moments until Grayson's arm was completely severed. The ground at his feet was perforated, leaving an enormous hole. The invisible force passed clean through the water as well, devouring even the seabed below. Grayson stared in horror at the blood staining his skin, now incapable of regenerating. Monica seized him by the neck, lifting him completely off the ground.

"So Maverick decided to use Astrea …" Maliard said, pointing with something close to satisfaction at the ground, now entirely split open. Lance and Jeanne stared at him with a veil of terror in the face of that display of force and death.

"Is that his relic?" Lance murmured, unable to fully grasp what he had just witnessed. Maliard nodded, pointing toward the horizon, toward the distant Bayork." Astrea is a unique relic, just like Lachesi, but unlike the latter, it does not choose a bearer. Anyone who offers a part of themselves to Astrea can wield it." Maliard now pointed to the drops of blood on his own wrist.

"Its form is that of a long-range weapon, but instead of operating with bullets or pure Frequency, what it does is more akin to a manifestation of a phenomenon of forced submission upon reality." Jeanne and Lance now stared at Maliard in confusion, exchanging glances to make sure neither of them was the only one lost.

"It practically forces the creation of an imaginary line, connecting various Frequencies in the environment, then forces their alteration with a condensed flow of pure energy created by a second connection, detonated directly from the weapon." Maliard fixed the two, still nodding back and forth at one another. He rolled his eyes, then promptly mimed a balloon.

"In simpler terms, it binds everything in its path and then forcibly expands it, compelling it to break or be forcibly damaged." At this point, both of them understood. Lance and Jeanne gazed into the air before smashing their fists on their palms.

"If it is something that operates directly on reality itself…" Maliard nodded before he even heard the question.

"Yes, there is almost nothing that can stop Astrea from striking. Once you are inside the connection, it is over." Lance swallowed, returning his gaze to the hole caused by that blow. Meanwhile, Monica had already seized the dying Grayson by the neck, preparing to finish him.

"Beast…" The scientist whispered with a thread of voice, gripping his only remaining fingers around the woman's wrist. Without moving her stone-like face, she reached into her pocket. A thin vial of violet liquid gleamed between her fingers, catching the first rays of the sun.

"Once you have regained a minimum of consciousness, I can punish you properly, but for now, take a little nap." Monica smiled for the first time, sliding the needle into the side of his neck. The violet veins across his skin began to vanish, replaced by a violent fit of spasms. Grayson slipped from her grip, writhing on the ground with tears in his eyes.

"Phew… Just in time!" Monica smiled, fixing her gaze with satisfaction on the horizon, illuminated by the lights of dawn. Maliard and the rest of the group descended from their shelter, walking toward them Suddenly, however, Lance took a step back, moved by a strange instinct. He seized his companions and pulled them back with all his strength.

"Maliard, move Monica, now!" In that instant, Maliard noticed Lance's unsettled expression, fixed on something high above and behind his shoulder. Maliard turned quickly, pointing his fingers toward his sister. Immediately, a gust of wind lifted Monica into the air, hurling her far away along with Grayson. The solar colour of the sky was replaced by an intense white, followed by what sounded like thunder. Without warning, a column of white light crashed down onto the island, reducing everything in its path to ash.

The sky opened, pouring that mass of energy onto the earth with even greater force.

"Why in the devil is Albus active?!" Maliard ran toward Monica, his face fixed on that column that had plunged from the sky. Monica shook her head, as confused as he was. At their feet, the scientist remained unconscious, foam at his mouth.

"Do you know what this thing is?" Lance joined them, completely ignored by the two. The beam propagated even into the seabed, piercing the island and the entire complex below it. Deep below, in the great plaza where the confrontations had taken place, Edvard and Roman stopped. Between them, dozens of fragments and blocks of rock and mire began to collapse.

"There certainly is quite the racket up above! I might file a complaint with the administrators!" Edvard smiled, wiping the blood from his forehead and settling his cane at his side. From his shoulders and his wounds continued to develop that thick, greyish smoke. Several greyish veins were beginning to spread along his abdomen, visible through the gashes in his clothing.

"I had not imagined a worm of high society would have a sense of humour…" Roman growled, passing a mass of greenish mire across his side, ravaged by wounds. His face creased with pain and exhaustion.

"Well… I imagine my work here is finished." Roman sighed, taking a step back from him. Edvard smiled, also withdrawing. An enormous boulder crashed down between the two, raising a great cloud of dust.

"Already calling a retreat? How impolite…" Edvard joked, adjusting the rags that had once been his suit.

"Malcolm and David already took what interested us. My part is finished…" At these words, followed by the sound of footsteps, his expression changed at once." Grayson was not their objective?!" He shot into the mist, cleaving it with his sharpened cane. Before him gurgled a thick, dark pool, slowly closing in on itself. He stared at it for a moment and clicked his tongue"You really do hate people like me." Edvard murmured before a rock crashed down behind him, bringing him back to reality.

He drew a breath and began running toward where Jeanne had fled, climbing back up the collapsing galleries. On the surface, the sound of steam and engines took hold of the air. The column had vanished, leaving only an enormous crater of vapour and boiling water. Lance raised his gaze, fixing it on the vehicle above their heads. It resembled the ships he had glimpsed in NOIR's hangar, only with a more tapered shape and a strange mechanism of rotating blades on its crown.

The sound grew louder as it drew closer to the ground, raising small waves of dust. The colour and the M-shaped emblem allowed Monica and Maliard to recognise at once who was aboard the vehicle.

"Finally, I can eat something too! For years now you two have always taken the best bites!" A voice resounded from the aircraft, amplified by some strange device. Monica appeared immediately irritated, muttering to herself. The machine touched ground, shutting off almost immediately. A squad of soldiers emerged from the back, each in a uniform decorated with metal plates and red and black helmets. One of them caught sight of Jeanne and immediately hid behind the vehicle.

"Might I ask what you did to terrify him so badly?" Maliard asked the girl, who immediately lowered her head.

"Those are the same ones I found in the underground passages…" Lance pointed out, gesturing at their helmets and weapons. Monica nodded, rubbing her face with her fingers.

"So you are Lance Klint…" Something seized the boy from below, carrying him directly before the front hatch of the airship. At once, a ramp settled onto the ground, immediately trodden upon by a black heel. Thin, dark, almost transparent vines began coiling around the boy.

"I am thoroughly tired of being grabbed like this…" He thought, before one of those threads sealed his mouth shut. Behind him appeared a tall figure, almost made of cloudy, oily glass. It slowly wrapped its arms around his neck, gripping him with force.

"I thought you would be younger. Instead I find you in fine shape!" The owner of the heel presented herself in person, swinging her blue-and-white stole. Her hair, a mix of yellow and white, fell across her ears and forehead. Her outfit gave off an air of wealth, perhaps from the jacket reaching down to her hips and the short skirt that barely touched her knees. Lance grunted something, but the shadow only tightened its grip further.

The woman approached him, caressing his face and bending down to study him from below. Lance noticed she had not bent excessively, perhaps for fear of staining her black stockings.

"Not bad.... Not bad at all…" She smiled, fixing him with those lively blue eyes. Monica threw a rock in their direction, drawing her attention. The stone bent the aircraft hull before crumbling to dust.

"What brings you here… Lexa?" Monica asked, gripping another rock in her hands, this one larger and heavier. Lexa smiled, bringing her hands to her face. She drew a breath, straightening at once.

"What a joy to see you here!" She exclaimed, moving to embrace her. Monica reddened, still trying to use the boulder in her hand.