Free Web NovelChapter 35: World Ending Strike (1/3)
The sky became an arena.
Exactly one hour before the deadline, the Cloud Whirl Galactic Alliance flooded every screen, every wristwatch, every public projection on the planet with a single feed. Nobody chose to watch it. It simply arrived, in every home and every street at once, unblockable, a courtesy that was really a leash.
A vast circular field of hard light unfolded high above the atmosphere, ringed by the silent fleet, hanging in the black where the whole world could see it. The battleground was the sky itself, and eight billion people looked up at the same time.
...
In the Association spire, the mood was a held breath.
The First Director stood at the head of the chamber, and behind her, ten figures waited to ascend. Ten of Earth’s thirteen Legendary Hunters, chosen through a night of argument, calculation, and quiet dread.
"Let’s go through it one more time," she said. "For the record. In case the record is all that survives."
A tall woman in white stepped forward first, frost curling off her shoulders. "Seraphine Vale. Tundral Sovereign. I anchor the middle. I can stall anything I can’t beat."
"You’re our wall," the Director said. "Good."
A heavyset older man with burn-scarred hands nodded next. "Gorran Ash. Cinderlord, Seventh Guild. I hit hard and I don’t tire. Put me against whatever needs to fall fast."
One by one they named themselves, and with each name the chamber felt the weight of it.
Kaelen Drextaris, the Stormpierce, blademaster of the First Guild, the single strongest Hunter humanity had. Lysandra Corvain, the Hollow Song, who unmade minds. Old Baruch Volent, the Ironroot, immovable. Ines Falk, the Association’s own Silverhound, fast enough to be in two places. Names that had held the line against Terror Generals for decades.
But the Director’s face never lightened, and one of the younger directors finally said what the room was avoiding.
"They’re all early-stage," he said quietly. "Every one of them. Legendary-rank in name. But early Legendary."
Nobody argued.
"That’s not a criticism," the First Director said. "It’s the truth of our world. To climb within the Legendary rank, you need Legendary-rank resources. Legendary Terror Tears. Legendary Terrorized Dimensions. And those appear, what, once in a decade? Twice?" She shook her head. "We have thirteen Legendaries because thirteen people survived long enough and got lucky enough to break through at all. None of them have had the food to grow past the doorway."
"And theirs?" someone asked.
The Stormpierce, Kaelen, answered from where he stood, calm and grim. "A civilization that spans worlds harvests those resources at a scale we can’t imagine. Their Legendaries won’t be standing in the doorway." He looked up at the light-arena in the sky. "They’ll be deep inside the rank. Every one of them."
The chamber went quiet.
"We need six wins out of ten," the First Director said at last. "That is the whole of it. Six. Go up there and get me six."
The ten rose into the sky.
...
The first match began, and hope lasted almost four minutes.
Gorran Ash, the Cinderlord, went first, a mountain of fire and fury, and for those four minutes he traded blows with a lean Alliance swordsman and the world cheered itself hoarse.
Then the swordsman stopped playing.
He moved in a way Gorran’s eyes could not follow, and the fire guttered, and the Cinderlord fell out of the arena’s edge, caught by an Alliance safety field, alive and utterly beaten.
[Match One. Alliance wins.]
The cheering thinned.
Seraphine Vale, the Tundral Sovereign, lasted longer. She built walls of ice the size of mountains and buried her opponent under a winter that would have ended any war on Earth. The Alliance fighter walked out of it, brushing frost from a coat that hadn’t frozen, and put her down with something that looked almost gentle.
[Match Two. Alliance.]
The world stopped cheering.
Match three fell. Match four fell. Each of Earth’s champions was magnificent, and each of them was a child fighting an adult who had decided, out of politeness, to make it look close for a little while before it wasn’t.
The Alliance fighters were early Legendaries too. That was the cruelest part. The First Director had been right about everything except the size of the gap. These were the Alliance’s low cards, their equivalent of Earth’s peak, and they were still years of Legendary-rank resources ahead, and it showed in every exchange.
Kaelen Drextaris, the Stormpierce, humanity’s strongest, took the fifth match.
He was beautiful to watch. He pushed his opponent further than anyone, drew blood, made the sky scream with lightning, and for ninety seconds the planet dared to breathe.
Then he lost too.
[Match Five. Alliance.]
Five to zero.
And across the whole of Earth, eight billion people did the same arithmetic at the same moment.
One more loss. One more, and half of them, half of everyone, every other person they loved, became property to be shipped into the dark.
The despair rose off the planet like a tide.
...
At a quiet estate, in a room facing a pond, Aidan’s eyes snapped open.
He had been deep in meditation, building technique after technique in the dark of his own mind, trying to solve the copy that had beaten him, when it hit him.
Not a sound. Not a message.
Despair.
It slammed into him from every direction at once, the collected dread of an entire species watching itself lose, and his title drank it in whether he wanted it to or not.
[The One Beyond Despair.]
’No,’ Aidan thought, gripping the floor. ’No, not this much, not all at once.’
He had felt the despair of a trapped city before. Of thirty dying Hunters. This was a planet. Eight billion voices of it, pouring into a title built to convert exactly this into rage.
And the rage answered.
It rose up his spine like magma, the billion years of it, the leash he wore every waking hour groaning under a load it was never meant to hold. He clamped down. He breathed. He tried every discipline he had spent this whole life learning.
It wasn’t enough.
Down in the sky-arena, the sixth match had started, and Earth’s sixth champion was already losing. Aidan could feel it through the despair, the exact moment hope died in another billion hearts, feeding the tide, feeding the fire in him, higher and higher. fгeewebnovёl.com
’If I lose it,’ the cold part of his mind said, even as the rest of him shook, ’my frequency tears Terror Tears open. Not one. Not near a mansion.’
He saw it with awful clarity. ’Everywhere. All over the world. On top of all this despair. It would end them.’
He saw it. The whole planet becoming a lair of Terrors. Then the next planet. Then another one.
Until they devoured this universe of Nine Realms Tree, ending quadrillions of lives, and birthing quadrillions of Terrors.
’Fuck.’
He could not hold it in.
And he could not let it out where it lived.
So he did the only thing left.
He aimed it before his mind completely lost it in rage.
