Season 3 chapter 83
The Unspecified Era
The timeline was entirely unspecified. It wasn't the present day, nor was it clearly rooted in the distant past. It was just a moment, suspended in an isolated expanse of reality.
The landscape was a massive, desolate stretch of overgrown farmland that extended across thousands of kilometers in every direction. There were no corporate skyscrapers. There were no steam-powered trains or heavily armed military outposts. There was only a single, deeply rutted dirt road cutting through the endless fields of dry, dead crops, beneath a sky painted in the bruising, heavy purple of late evening.
And then, there was the carnage.
Dozens of bodies were scattered across the dirt road and the surrounding fields. Men, women, and children lay motionless in the mud, their forms twisted and broken by an unseen, catastrophic violence. The silence over the farmland was deafening, entirely devoid of life.
Standing perfectly still in the dead center of the slaughter was a single figure.
He was entirely concealed. He wore a long, heavy, frayed grey cloak that draped all the way down to the blood-soaked dirt. A deep hood completely obscured his face in shadow, and thick fabric wrapped around his arms and torso. Not a single inch of his skin or humanity was visible. He looked less like a person and more like an absolute void standing in the middle of a graveyard.
The unknown figure slowly looked around at the bodies surrounding his boots. He let out a long, deeply exhausted, incredibly lazy sigh.
"What a mess," the cloaked figure mumbled.
His voice didn't carry the weight of sorrow or the sharp edge of vengeance. He sounded like a completely desensitized office worker who had just been handed a massive stack of paperwork at 4:55 PM on a Friday.
"This is not my fault at all," the figure complained lazily, kicking a loose pebble away from a corpse. "But I have to fix it. If I don't clean this up, I am literally not going to receive my salary this month. So yeah... I have to do this. Again."
He rolled his hidden shoulders, acting as if he was performing this exact, world-shattering miracle for the hundredth time.
The Resurgence Protocol
The cloaked figure slowly raised his right arm into the purple evening air.
He didn't scream or demand power from the heavens. He just muttered a few words with the same exhausted tone of someone reading a grocery list.
"Aethelgard. Return the thread."
The moment the words left the shadows of his hood, the atmosphere completely shattered.
A blinding, pure white light erupted from the palm of his raised hand. It wasn't just bright; it was heavy. The sheer, terrifying magnitude of the energy violently displaced the air, creating a massive, concussive thrust of pressure that rippled outward. The shockwave flattened the dead crops for miles, kicking up a massive ring of dust and dirt that expanded across the entire agricultural sector.
Slowly, the blinding white light fractured into hundreds of tiny, glowing, ethereal sparkles. The brilliant motes of soul-light drifted down from his hand like glowing snow, hovering over the scattered corpses.
The sparkles sank directly into the flesh of the dead.
Instantly, the catastrophic wounds began to knit themselves back together. Torn flesh sealed, shattered bones audibly snapped back into place, and the suffocating grey pallor of death vanished from their skin.
One by one, the chests of the fallen began to rise and fall. They weren't dead anymore. They were breathing. The graveyard was actively being reversed.
The Unknown Variables
Approximately five kilometers down the same dirt road, entirely separated from the slaughter, two men were walking through the fading evening light.
One was dressed in the crisp, sterile white coat of a high-end medical doctor, carrying a heavy leather bag. The other was walking a half-step behind him, wearing the slightly cheaper, highly stained uniform of a medical assistant.
They were complaining about the heat when the shockwave hit them.
FWOOSH.
A massive, invisible wall of kinetic pressure slammed into them, followed immediately by an overwhelming, terrifying sensation that made the hairs on the back of their necks stand up. It felt like the air itself had just been electrified.
The doctor stopped dead in his tracks, dropping his leather bag in the dirt. He stared wide-eyed toward the horizon, where a faint, fading pillar of white light was still visible against the purple sky.
"What the hell was that?!" the doctor gasped, his heart rate instantly spiking.
The assistant stumbled backward, completely overwhelmed by the sheer density of the aura pressing against his skin.
"Yeah, I absolutely do not think that is normal out here," the assistant panicked, pointing a shaking finger toward the distant farm. "How the fuck is that much massive energy emitting from a dirt road?! Who is emitting that?! What is happening around there?!"
The assistant, trying entirely too hard to mask his genuine terror with terrible humor, let out a nervous chuckle.
"You know, Doctor," the assistant joked weakly. "I thought it was some kind of massive fart energy. Like a literal fart reactor just exploded over the hills. Because it smells like—"
"Oh, you fucking idiot!" the doctor roared, smacking the assistant on the back of the head. "Can you please stop talking about this absolute shit right now?! Do you not feel the weight of this?!"
The doctor looked back toward the horizon, his medical logic completely shattering against the incomprehensible power he had just felt.
"Let's go and check this out immediately," the doctor ordered, his voice trembling slightly. "I have never sensed this kind of energy before in my entire life. It is highly unusual. It is so utterly powerful and humongous that I cannot even comprehend what variable could produce it. We need to see exactly what just happened over there."
The Speed of the Anomaly
The doctor and his assistant stood on the dirt road, the sheer, crushing weight of the distant energy pressing against their lungs.
"Let's check this out immediately," the doctor ordered, his eyes locked onto the fading white light.
They didn't run. The air around them suddenly warped, rippling with a localized, high-frequency distortion. In less than a fraction of a microsecond, the dirt road completely vanished from beneath their boots.
FZT.
They instantly materialized in the dead center of the graveyard.
The doctor appeared directly behind the tall, heavily cloaked figure, his movements an absolute blur of lethal precision. Before the dust from their teleportation even settled, the doctor had drawn a long, perfectly forged steel sword. The cold, razor-sharp edge of the blade was pressed flush against the unknown figure's throat, ready to sever it in a single motion.
The assistant materialized right beside the doctor, his posture low, hand hovering over his hip, completely ready for any counterattack.
Despite having a lethal blade pressed against his windpipe, the unknown figure didn't even flinch. He didn't turn around. His hands remained deep inside the folds of his grey cloak.
"You cannot do anything about it, man," the unknown figure sighed lazily, sounding thoroughly annoyed by the interruption. "Just let me do my work. Do not disturb me. I really do not want a war here. I don't want any kind of mess, so yeah, just back off."
The doctor narrowed his eyes. "You aren't calling the shots here."
With a swift, aggressive motion, the doctor pulled his arm back, fully intending to slice the figure's head completely off.
The Absolute Defense
But before the blade could even bite into the fabric of the hood, the unknown figure casually raised his hand from his cloak.
He didn't dodge. He didn't block. He simply tapped the flat edge of the doctor's incoming sword with the tip of his index finger.
PING—CRASH!
The reaction was instantaneous and physically impossible. The moment his finger touched the steel, the entire length of the doctor's sword violently shattered into a thousand tiny, jagged metal fragments, completely turning into dust in the air.
The doctor stumbled backward, staring at the empty hilt in his hand with absolute, unfiltered shock.
The assistant didn't hesitate. His hands glowed with a faint, rapid energy. In a split second, the metallic dust hovering in the air violently pulled itself back together, seamlessly fusing back onto the hilt. The sword was instantly, flawlessly repaired.
But the damage to their morale was already done. The doctor took a cautious, highly defensive step back. The assistant mirrored him, retreating to maintain a safe distance.
The assistant glared at the doctor, thoroughly unimpressed by the failed execution.
"You are really useless, Doctor," the assistant insulted, shaking his head. "I literally never expected that level of failure from you. Your sword is kind of weak. Honestly, we should have used a Kavilson's Steel. Their steel holds up better."
"Don't talk shit right now!" the doctor snapped, his eyes never leaving the cloaked figure. "We are in the middle of a highly serious fight! Pay attention!"