Watching the warm glow of Divine presence in the skies, Aren wondered if the Gods expected him to rise heroically, or if they wanted to see him fall. Perhaps Ytra’s curse was a challenge — at least, Aren wanted to think of it that way. Ytra’s curse and the wound still burning in his side had reduced his combat ability to the very brink of what he would consider being an effective combatant in any shape or form. From here, even a minor injury, in the right place, could reduce him to nothing more than a stationary, defenseless target. He needed to execute a flawless combat scenario.

But he didn’t plan on letting things get that far. He didn’t plan on having a battle. Fang said he was a strategic weapon, and until now, he did not really think of himself that way. At first, he thought he was a close combat specialist, with an emphasis on surprise attacks. This made sense to him because he was a melee combatant that delivered arcane attacks through his shadowblade. His advantage was the overwhelming power of arcane magic — full magic — while being able to fight in the melee like a warrior. Damien, for example, was not a close combat specialist, but even more well-versed in the art of the sneak attack.

But ever since that day, when he fought Rider and his band of orcs — and when he discovered [Lightning Driver] — he had doubts about his combat role. These doubts were tiny grains — ephemeral and transient — until he saw Nissa. The way she handled dozens of howlers without putting herself in direct danger resonated with Aren; even now, he thought of himself as inferior to her. The rest of the clan probably thought that Aren was the most valuable — especially because of his Calamity status — but without Nissa’s siege artillery, they would likely all be dead now.

Even Cassandra had abilities to control the battlefield, and though she was kicked out of her previous clan because of them, Aren thought that they were essential to Exalt. In this style of asymmetric warfare, both their abilities were invaluable assets.

Aren thought that all he could do was walk up to the adversary, and hit them with his sword — to put it plainly. Likely, what Fang meant to say with the strategic weapon comment was more like comparing Aren to a nuclear bomb, capable of annihilating any single enemy with one blow.

Aren closed his eyes and focused on the sensation of the bird’s eye view he had over the battlefield. He knew the locations of two important members of Stygian. The closer one was about thirty meters away, across the street from the church, and behind the abandoned store building. The other one was two hundred meters away, and moving to join the first one.

In this modern age, the nuclear bomb was an obsolete weapon. The evolution of armament in the early twenty-first century meant that the strategy of war also evolved. The moniker of strategic weapon belonged to such things like Machine Arsenals: Deucalion, Scylla, Kagutsuchi, Vidar, Mitra, and so on. They were so numerous that they could annihilate the world thousands of times over. But even they, with their railgun batteries capable of orbital bombardment, paled in comparison to weapons of mass destruction like the Autonomous Orbital Assault System, Artemis, the Lunar Mass Driver, Gram, or the Solar Beam Battery, Shiva.

Aren looked at his feet. Why did he know this? Why did he know their names, and not just that, but also their strategic capabilities?

Aren’s favorite — and only — coping mechanism was to think that it ultimately didn’t matter why he knew these things. Coping was the only thing he could do when faced with the challenge of staying sane under these circumstances. This is why he always felt that his time was limited and that he had to go through extreme challenges if he wanted to achieve his one goal. He did not think about what would happen if he did achieve this goal, or what would come after. It does not matter, he told himself. But it didn’t sound as convincing when he could hear the electronic hum of fusion reactors buzzing in his ears, as if he was standing right next to a Machine Arsenal. Every day, the sensation that he could feel the Machine Arsenals grew stronger. His time most likely was limited.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as the night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. Some of Sun Tzu’s wisdom was just as true in the modern age, as it was back in his time.

“Deploying Arcane Territory,” Aren whispered, mimicking the words that Leviathan once used. “Large-scale burst mode.” He repeated those words because Aren had no idea how to operate the [Arcane Territory] skill. But speaking those words felt right. His body remembered how to match the feeling with the same actions he took back then. His buffer began to overflow with traceries of lightning energy.

A glimmering hexagon-patterned barrier appeared in front of Aren, glowing with a pale-blue light.

If they researched Aren at all, they might know that he was a close-combat specialist. Perhaps that is why they did not attack immediately, as fighting within the narrow church would limit their ability to overwhelm him with numbers. Their best strategy was to wait for reinforcements — to throw so many numbers at him that even if they all fought him one on one, he would eventually be too tired to defend himself and die.

Aren had no intention of playing by their rules. After all, he had advantages that others would consider to be extremely unfair. For example, when the [Arcane Territory] deployed, several trajectories appeared in Aren’s vision. These threads were colored light blue and were distinctly different from a death line.

They were artillery firing solutions. Whether it was provided by AGMI, his artificial eye, or even the Divine, did not matter at this moment. He just had to relax, if it could be called that, and let his instinct take over.

The massive chain, easily weighing ten kilograms by itself, lifted off the ground under the influence of [Magnetism] and began to glow dark red, and then deform, twist and snap in the places where the links connected. Aren could even see the metal rust as some of it transitioned phases of matter — from solid to liquid.

When the severed links of the chain — the projectiles — launched forward and hit the barrier of the [Arcane Territory] they became shrouded in electricity and accelerated even faster through the electric and magnetic fields. They accelerated so fast, in fact, and with such violent force that the projectiles became just streams of molten metal. A blast of heat and pressure from the force of this [Lightning Driver] caused the bell tower walls to blacken, and whatever roots and branches crisscrossed its structure to catch fire. Aren, luckily, was protected from the heat impulse by the barrier.

The projectiles of molten, but rapidly cooling metal went in four different directions. Their destinations were the estimated positions of enemies based on things Aren was consciously aware of, like the fact that Aren knew where one of them was, because of his [Arcane Predator] ability, but also based on where he heard them, where the roads in the vicinity led to, and then positions they could take to maximize their advantage. But there were also factors in this estimate that Aren was not consciously aware of. Tracks, tiny flickers of light, shadows, the fact that a window was slightly open when it should be entirely closed, and many more. With each item on the list that factored into the estimate, Aren became more and more aware of why Ermin Saltzer and even the military officer Voyrin were so excited about this technology. The applications were endless and not just in military warfare.

Many of the projectiles had to blast through entire buildings to reach their targets as they did not have parabolic trajectories. In their wake, Aren could see holes, with the diameter of an entire meter, rims glowing with molten slag. On impact, the projectiles exploded with the lightning energy that they absorbed from the [Arcane Territory] barriers, which were essentially batteries and external buffers of arcane energy.

It was because of this that Aren saw one of the houses practically explode when several projectiles plowed through the outer wall and hit the ground. Ground-to-cloud lightning struck at the moment of impact, illuminating the darkening ruins and broken, flaming furniture flung out into the streets through the debris of collapsing walls. Even the shingles were launched out onto the streets below. Then the roof collapsed, bringing the rest of the house down with it, leaving only one corner of the outer wall standing over the ruins and the corpses of three adventurers. One of them was critically wounded, but that was before the building collapsed onto them.

The other targets did not fare any better. There was a series of flashes, and then notifications about outcomes — eleven fatal strikes and three mortal wounds. All that was left of those sites were collapsed, burning ruins. Then the sound reached him and it was rolling thunder that lasted for several seconds and completely deafened everything. It was so loud it made his organs tremble, and he could even feel it vibrating in his bones. In those few seconds, it was difficult to even breathe.

Simply put, this was the power of [Arcane Territory] and its type of ability. It was what turned full casters from mediocre to absolutely essential in large-scale warfare. However, melting and then launching such a heavy projectile blew three of the five external buffers and now only two hexagonal barriers remained to orbit around Aren. The violence of the acceleration itself could not be overstated — the energy released from that alone was enough to melt the surface of the church’s outer walls. If the barriers were not present, Aren would’ve likely died on the spot — vaporized by the heat impulse of his own ability.

Then, as if to remind him that his initial triumph was short-lived, he coughed up a mouthful of blood and wheezed. Once his bones were done being rattled by the explosive sound, all that remained was the throbbing, unhealing wound in his side. And worst of all, he did not eliminate every adversary.

He looked at the building across, where the other important member was. He did not bombard this building for several reasons. The fact that he would’ve likely been caught in the shockwave of the explosion was one of them, but that was not the main reason.

Aren inhaled deeply, held his breath, and closed his eyes. The scent of burning had not reached him yet, but he could taste the ozone in the air.

Then he climbed up on the wall of the bell tower and stepped forward. The hexagon-barrier immediately positioned itself under his foot, providing a platform — in mid-air — for him to walk on. And he walked. Step after step, the two hexagon pieces interchanging to provide a sloping path towards the building across the street.

[ Your reputation with Aurora, Lady of Dawn, has improved to Favored. ]

Aren looked towards the sky, where the glow of Divine presence cast its soothing glow on him. Impressing the Goddess of War and Luck was not that surprising. Right then, Aren walked like a conqueror towards his next battleground — the one where he would deliver the finishing blow on any ideas of attacking Rakab without an army.

But what did Ytra think of this, he wondered. Did she curse him then not just because he attacked her followers, but also because she knew that he was surrounded and outnumbered? Were Gods even allowed to interfere to such an extent, to the point of almost directly being the cause of an adventurer’s death?

Then he heard her voice resonating in his mind.

[ Spare my followers, mortal, do my Holy Task, and I will forgive your transgressions against nature. ]

[ Quest received: The Bane of Rakab. ]

“Spare them?” he asked, as he stopped on the floating barrier, directly above the roof of the building where his opponents were. His glare towards the sky was now challenging; his form ruthless. “Why would I do that?”

[ Quest rejected. ]

His reputation probably could not get any worse, but he could still feel the Goddess’ displeasure.

Aren’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. “It does not matter to me if You are a mortal, or Divine. If You stand in my way, I will show no mercy. I will stop at nothing. I will defile and desecrate everything You hold dear. I will burn Your temples to the ground and I will raze Your holy sites. I will poison the earth until nothing of Yours will ever grow again. I will slaughter every one of Your followers until not even the foolish nor the brave will pray to You anymore.”

Aren looked at the roof below, where the last remaining adventurers were, and Camille’s bloodforged sword came to hover over his head. “And why should they pray to You? Nature always has and always will be second to Man. Nature is ours to control and dominate.”

The sequence then came together in Aren’s buffer, and like a lightning bolt, Camille’s bloodforged sword launched through the roof, obliterating the wood and stone in its path.

“You have shown me Your fury,” Aren said, glancing once more towards the sky — as if he could see the Goddess of Nature there — and he leaned forward, and past the point of his balance equilibrium, initiating a dive off the arcane platform.

“Now You will see mine,” he said calmly, as he plummeted through the air, and through the hole Camille’s sword made with the [Lightning Driver].

< Index requirement met. Mind-Machine Interface Synchronization: 56%. Delta phase initiated. Stage II Code. >