Agrias looked around, regulating his restored magic after the array was gone. Already, dozens of formations were building up inside of his body. He would need nothing less if he wanted to survive more than a second against what surrounded him.
Aside from Rapture and Rakna Xiorra, the latter's friends were also now visible. Marie was at the side of Flavia and Nyx, worriedly looking at Allan.
The Abyss Ruler silently noted the hundreds of Hosts turning their focus to this location as they finished the straggling Téra. Frankly, his chances of living through this were slim.
"…I can understand that you saw through my spell," he eventually spoke up rather calmly. "But it escapes me how you managed to get here so fast."
"Hmph," Rakna scoffed at him, idly throwing a cubic item over his shoulder. The small Transpith landed on Allan's chest and immediately expanded into a swarm of Eion nanites, enveloping the unconscious blond and bonding with his flesh to heal it. "That's a stupid question."
"…I suppose it is," Agrias muttered, briefly glancing at the handiwork of that cube; he was nearly jealous of that technology. His Nirvana Skill was finical when it came to healing; a prime example being his cursed arm. "It doesn't take a genius to guess he disturbed the time flow I set up in this place with his stolen Authority…"
"Interference; it's quite an interesting skillset you have," the werewolf narrowed his eyes at him, golden crosses ominously peering into all things. "Fascinating Nirvana Skill too. I wonder what kind of feedback it gives you for me."
Agrias shut his mouth tight at that, his hand twitching nervously. He didn't even try answering that. What could he say? Based on the data the White Scorpion had given them of his status, the weakest 'solution' his Nirvana Skill offered him was… Hermes Trismegistus. Unlike the Ichubyr, summoning a God-Class creature was his first option, not his last resort.
"Enoughchattering!" Rapture interjected, stomping the ground with a burst of steam. The force of this movement shook the Plateau's ground. Waves of heat warped the air as the golem's eyes radiated the heat of his core. "You have ten words to plead for your life."
"How unreasonable…"
"Eight."
Agrias sighed and raised his arms in capitulation. "Fine. I surrender," he huffed. "I can't run now anyway," he said and powered down his internal energies.
"…"
Rapture and Rakna glanced at each other before moving simultaneously. Seemingly abandoning the idea of resisting, Agrias didn't move as they respectively put a metal collar around his neck and branded a rune on his back.
Quickly enough, the Abyss Ruler groaned and staggered. In his already weakened state, and with his defenses willfully turned down, both contrivances speedily drained his power. The collar was a contraption made by the Locals of Clockwork; a shackle that restrained matter.
And Agrias could tell the rune on his back would effectively cripple him. From what he could tell, it was the power of a Divine-Class Rune; new information that he unconsciously updated within his mind, once again raising the threat level of Rakna Xiorra. As if it wasn't high enough.
"Haha… did you reach divine proficiency in runecraft?" He asked with a smile, sounding weirdly more relaxed now that he was powerless. "You didn't kill me, huh? How pragmatic."
"Shut it," Rapture's voice echoed alongside the clicking gears. "My city's prisons are the best in all Existence. I will make sure to make use of you from within their walls."
Agrias chuckled but otherwise didn't say anything.
"Orion!" The automaton looked up at the sky where the Machine Emperor's ships could be seen pointing their mounted weaponry at the Téras. "Do me a favor and take him away!"
The response to his words came in the form of a solid light beam that struck Agrias' location and slowly started to pull him up toward one of the ships.
"Ugh…" The Téras groaned from his injuries and cackled. "Haha… am I being abducted by aliens now? What a refreshing day," he smirked and his insectoid eyes glinted. "Well… let's meet again someday," he said and was abruptly pulled up, almost making it seem like he was teleported.
The spaceship above shut the light beam and then flew toward the city to deliver its charge.
Rapture grunted once it was gone.
"We are lucky," Rakna commented. "He didn't use his Abyss Skin."
"So you say," the golem looked at him. "But what even is it?"
"Another Abyss Ruler used it right in front of me before," the werewolf huffed and transformed back into his humanoid form. "It's hard to describe without showing you. Let's say that the Abyss Skin is a 'talent' given to them by Meuro. It makes them shed their physicality. It disintegrates it right off the face of the world and replaces it with something else."
"Withwhat?"
"Have you ever looked into the dark and imagined something that wasn't there?"
"Can't say I have, no," Rapture deadpanned. "Don't compare me to you humans."
"…right," Rakna uttered. "Essentially, by making their body 'empty', they gain the ability to fill it with something completely different. In the case of the Téra, it's Pandora's Curse itself. And with it, they mix their own personal abilities. Roias was… a sea. It was like drowning in cursed water that purged me of my powers and made them join the waves."
Rapture silently listened as he watched the lamia woman arrive and tend to the vampire.
"That guy is probably not different," the therian huffed. "Only that he'd become a horror capable of making you unable to properly look at him, fight him, or even remember him. The spell he had in place earlier was one that interfered with existence itself. If I hadn't met a living example of it before today and didn't have my 'buff' on Allan, it would have taken me a good while to find it."
"…I shall increase the security of his shackles," the golem scoffed, the steam coming out of his body synching with what would have been his breath.
"You do that," Rakna nodded. "My rune should constantly drain Pandora's Curse from him, which is what they use to collect and use magic in the first place, so he shouldn't be able to resist."
"How long will it last?"
The therian grinned lightly. "Ideally? Forever. That's what I do, after all."
* * *
"A 'General'?" Rakna repeated as he talked to Akronis on the outskirts of the battlefield Allan and Agrias had left behind. Around them, Flavia, Nyx, and Evelyn were also present. The others were either in his territory or out in other Plateaus. As for Marie and Allan, the former was tending to the latter in a safe facility inside the city.
"Yes," the white bat nodded. "That is indeed the word that pest blurted out."
"That's something we've never heard of," Flavia commented, holding Tyran in her arms. "None of the Hosts fighting in the Outer Land reported that kind of title, did they?"
"Maybe it is an avatar of the Empress?" Nyx suggested.
"If that was the case, Agrias wouldn't have said it so casually," Rakna shook his head. "It seems to me that these guys have immense loyalty and respect toward her. To be fair, it's not surprising to hear that there are more like the Rulers. None of the fodders we've been fighting had their race specifically listed as 'Abyss Téra'."
"Well, they should be rare," Natsu commented lazily, lying on his belly atop Evelyn's head. "If we assume they are made to evolve by the Empress' direct involvement, it should demand a number of qualifications, don't you think? An Abyss Téra would not be easy to make."
"Then this General would be something above the Rulers…?" Evelyn muttered.
"But not necessarily stronger," Rakna added. "Perhaps special, in a way. A support? A strategist of some sort or perhaps a 'creator'; a source of items or even new Téra."
"I see. A brooding mother of sorts," Natsu nodded in understanding.
Nyx hummed and looked in the distance. "True, these Téra must come from somewhere. Even if they are made from ambient aura, they shouldn't be this numerous… Something was stimulating their birth to an unnatural degree. It's unclear if Agrias is capable of that on his own."
"…let's call everyone and gather," Rakna said after a moment.
"Why? Did you think of something?"
"No. It's just time," the therian said as his eyes turned to a System window.
❮ ◈ ❯ It's ready, big brother. We can start. ❮ ◈ ❯
* * *
Underground, below the Clocktower of Akhet, there was a massive network of prison cells that stretched on for thousands of meters. Countless kinetic machines were built into the walls and a special material known as the Gianatic Alloy was inlaid on every wall.
Chains, shackles, and cuffs crafted from that material, with a special technique, were capable of stilling the very atoms of creatures it was attached to. Not only did it weaken the prisoner, but it also considerably crippled their mana output, recovery speed, and mental capacity.
Depending on how much was used and how strong the individual was originally, one could even force them into a state of stasis. Interestingly enough, this effect perdured only inside Clockwork and would disappear when going to any other Plateau. But while in its 'locale', Gianatic Alloy was said to be stronger than Vitrenium, the strongest metal known to Existence.
"Akhet's prisons really are something…" Agrias mumbled with dim eyes. His jail was no more or no less than five cubic meters. There were no bars or doors; every corner of this prison network could move independently through gear and railing mechanisms.
The Abyss Ruler had been shackled with three more contraptions of the same type as the one on his neck. He had to spend an inordinate amount of energy just to move his fingers. And that was without counting the gradual decline of his brain power.
"If it was just these shackles, I could have done something…" He uttered. "But this rune… how is it fair for it to take away my power, destroy it, and then fuel itself with it anyway?"
The glowing purple rune kept draining Pandora's Curse faster than he could recover it. While it was true he could free himself from it on principle… that would imply he had enough energy to do so. And at this rate, he would never get enough back.
His magic, Nirvana Skill, and Abyss Skin were essentially sealed. Rakna's eyes were thorough in their analysis; nothing had escaped the werewolf's knowledge.
Typhon's curse still stung too.
"Well… I'm stuck."
"{And what a pathetic display it is,}" a young-sounding male voice echoed in his head.
"Ah, Boss," Agrias blinked. "Wow, you can even get your telepathy through Gianatic Alloy."
"{Don't overestimate that metal. This is tricky, but far from impossible. Physically getting to you would be another matter altogether, I admit. It is nonsensically robust within Clockwork. It uses some type of nuclear dynamism to internally cancel out the impacts it receives.}"
"Heh, if you say so. So, that means you can't break me out?"
"{Obviously. Of all places, you had to get caught in Clockwork.}"
The voice on the other side sighed briefly.
"{Anyway, did you do what I asked?}"
"Yes. In the end, I couldn't go to Blacksteel, but I did it everywhere else."
"{And you properly killed your targets?}"
"Yeah. But really, why did you have me kill so many lower-level Hosts? I think the strongest one was barely Level 600 back in Old Eden. You even coordinated all those attacks as a distraction…"
"{The scorpions made themselves useful. They have a database of nearly every Host and Local in this damn System. A lot of them, although weaker, had annoying abilities for my plan. I gave you enough varied targets to reduce that threat and obfuscate potential trails. Naturally, I didn't ask you to eliminate targets you couldn't deal with in one strike. Which you ruined today.}"
"Haha… my bad. I was simply too curious about our cousin's entourage."
"{Ugh, these idiots and their obsession with the kid,}" the voice groaned. "{Whatever. Afnil Albus will do your work from now on. Kill yourself already; the extraction will take a while, so might as well hurry it up. And who knows, by that time, our Empress may have already attained victory.}"
"Aye, General," Agrias responded in amusement and the telepathy cut off. "Well, looks like we're not going to meet again any time soon, after all," he said to himself and steadily began to build up his life force in a way that no living being should.
"Farewell, for now."
A laugh echoed and the cell was plastered with orange blood.
* * *
Shortly after, when Rapture descended to interrogate the captive, the Téras was found dead. And later, on the same day, Eva sent out her invitations.
❮ ◈ ❯
You have been invited to enter the Forefront Plateau.
Do you accept?
Yes/No
❮ ◈ ❯