"By all appearances, many lesser species had, in the distant past, and in lands even more distant, achieved sufficient extent to be called an empire as well. And all of them, without fail, had declined, and were eventually reduced to nothing more than ruins long since sunk into swamps, swallowed up by jungle, or worse.
That alone, however, was not the reason why the committee members unanimously agreed to hide such historical artifacts. Throughout the history of human empires, there had been multiple subjects of inferior species who had adopted human customs and titles, after all, despite being comical, this did not surprise the experts.
The real reason why all those passages of history had been covered up was the frightening stage between decline and extinction of those ancient barbarian nations. Even though they were in opposite corners of the Sphere, in completely different eras, even though they had never made contact with each other, not even indirectly, in their last moments of life, when all power was slipping through their fingers, they had all gone through the same isolationist stage with peculiar characteristics: their phenotype underwent extreme changes, sometimes so extreme that it could not even be said that they were still of the same species as their ancestors, their architecture became uniform, and their territory found itself isolated from the rest of the world in such a way that they found themselves alone for thousands of years.
All these changes were sudden, occurring in less than a single generation, and while distorting the culture of their adherents almost beyond recognition, they in fact postponed the inevitable destruction of these false empires. The phenotypic, cultural, and magi-technological changes were merely paltry byproducts of a protective ritual, of a powerful and ancient summoning magic, and if scholars could only replicate it, the human empires would be given enough time to rise again and reclaim what was rightfully theirs...
But the researchers' enthusiasm soon turned to horror as they put the pieces back together, reconstructed the past, and uncovered the true nature of the ritual. The true horror it would invite to the homeland of the human species. An evil so ancient, so impenetrable in its darkness, so immeasurable in its power that it could only be the creator of all reality itself, or the one who would bring about its end. An entity with a thousand names, none of which promised anything good.
'The Great Will,' the committee members dubbed it. And with knives to their throats, the humans were forced to summon it."
- Excerpt from the book Comprehensive Guide to the History of Álfheim, by Elarico Milemario Saudoso.
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The royal castle was in ruins, the city was burning, and the storm was relentless.
— Hahaha... — the usurping Queen laughed, her teeth reddened by her own blood. — I wish you could beat me that hard in bed, Veronico. Who knows, maybe none of this would have happened if that were the case? — she teased, allowing the rain to wash away the red that was running down her nose and mouth.
The Hero ignored his wife.
— Hmph. No fun. You are all no fun. — The smile slowly left the usurping Queen's face, and she looked, almost wearily, at the ruined capital around her. The dwindling remnants of her troops tried desperately to escape the holy forces, but were cornered and massacred at every turn. — You come from nowhere, change nothing, and die, satisfied.
— ...That's enough, Criscina — Veronico held his sword firmly, his face showing only a few scratches and small bruises.
— Why? Are you going to handcuff me, tell everyone I've been bewitched, and lock me in a tower for the rest of my life?
— You know very well that we have already passed that point. There is no prison in this world capable of containing someone of your Level — frowning so hard that his blood spurted with high pressure from the broken veins in his forehead, he promised: — But I can still give you a quick death.
— You know, he promised me to dispel the Tempesternity — Criscina continued to ignore her husband, hoarsely, turning her back on the city and facing the sea on the opposite side. With a weak smile, she continued: — This storm now is nothing more than a drizzle compared to the Tempesternity, and he promised me to dispel it. And in exchange for what? He just wanted me to retreat far away, to be safe! And I... I felt so grateful, I would never allow myself to disappear without doing something in return for him. No, for the first time I feel... even if it's all a lie... — finally facing her husband and opponent again, she touched a metal circle on her chest, and it revealed a compartment little bigger than a fist. — You are strong, Veronico. Ridiculously strong. But if you think the only preparation I took was to wear the equipment of my ancestors, you couldn't be more wrong. — At the same time, with her other arm, she reached into a parallel micro-dimension, her Inventory, and pulled out her mother's heart. — The Shadow King has contact with necromancers, and they are capable of manufacturing incredible things, if you have the necessary materials — she inserted the heart into the compartment of her armor, and black steel spikes dug into the organ and made it beat once more, as if it were still in the chest of its original bearer. — Gyaargh! — she screamed, writhing in pain as red lines, veins of magic, spread across her armor.
— How much more do you plan to tarnish your legacy?! — Veronico reacted too late, and not surprisingly, that was precisely the result of the effect imbued in the equipment modified by the necromancers: the transfer of power from a corpse to a real person, which automatically converted into Attributes. And more specifically, into Potential. — Die like the Princess everyone still thinks you are! — Veronico begged, brandishing his sacred sword against Criscina's neck, and multiple opposing forces collided; my influence in that toy box against the infection of rebellion that a certain person was spreading, my promise not to hold back in my opposition to the end of that game, against this one itself, two attributes of Potential: Unique fighting each other.
The resulting impact shattered the bell tower of the city's cathedral, as Criscina stopped her husband's blade with the claw gauntlets she equipped.
— Raargh! — roaring and drooling like a beast, feeling like a beast while enduring explosive power that her body had not had time to get used to, her vision limited to the target in front of her and tinged red, Criscina scratched against Veronico dozens of times in seconds.
— Tch! — my champion was annoyed, understanding that his wife had received some kind of Strengthening, her hit rate increasing exponentially. — Whatever, die like an animal, then — dodging a handful of claws, Veronico kicked Criscina in the abdomen, throwing her to the ground, and almost five hundred meters away, the woman's armored body dug a deep trench in the cobbled streets of the ruined capital.
— Damn jerk...! — Criscina gritted her teeth, feeling that at least a few meters of entrails had been liquefied inside her with the kick she had received. Watching the Hero raise his sword high above his head as it began to shine more and more, she decided: — Levels, that's the only difference between us... I need more Levels! — she ran at full speed through the streets of the capital towards the nearest holy soldiers.
— No! — Veronico soon realized what his wife intended to do, but there was no way to hit her from that distance without also hitting his own allies; while cutting through the air faster than any flying creature on that continent, he watched Criscina slaughtering his subordinates before they even understood what was happening. And the worst: with each individual she killed, her legs seemed to move just a little faster.
— Telepathy: Saulo. I need help! Keep her away from the soldiers at all costs! — Veronico called for his companions, and they quickly came to the rescue.
— Meddling... — Criscina frowned as she broke through the city gates, but saw a team of three Heroics between her and the bulk of the Holy League army ahead. — Whatever, you'll give me plenty of experience too — she smiled and charged at the four.
A mixture of ancient magic and Spells from my System had been cast against the usurping Queen, but a blast of dark energy from her unholy gauntlets matched the power of the melancholic mage, and the only reason Saulo's skull was not shattered in the next instant was because a powerful strengthening Spell protected him from Cirscina's fist.
— You thug...! — the usurping Queen turned her attention to the Healer. — Do you think I don't know about you and that other bitch!? — Criscina jumped at Mariah, but dozens of clones of the Rogue of the trio prevented her from immediately taking the life of Veronico's new love; instead, Criscina could only throw Landa's unconscious body, with a punch to the stomach, onto her friend with enough force to break her victim's spine, and all of the other's ribs and sternum.
— V-Veronico! — Despite her punctured lungs, Mariah managed to call out to her lover, who was preparing himself as he floated above the battlefield.
— Dawn! — Veronico, enraged, frustrated, confused and experiencing a myriad of sour and corrosive feelings that he had not felt since his last life, in another world, used his strongest attack against his wife, the one destined to be used only as the final blow against the Shadow King, the one who carried the name of his sacred sword: a huge bird of light left the blade of his sword, so clear and thunderous that it partly evaporated, and partly dissipated the rain clouds many kilometers above his head, and revealed a timid dawn, hidden by the storm.
In order to not hit his friends or the soldiers ahead, Veronico had to aim his attack slightly away from them and, consequently, also from his target, but that didn't mean that Criscina came out unscathed: there wasn't so much an explosion as a hole, the power of the attack passing through multiple layers of increasingly harder rock, and just the air displaced by the attack being enough to throw his target four kilometers back, piercing buildings and entire city blocks with her body.
Still, one of the System's favorites wouldn't die from a glancing attack.
Criscina, with the armor she was wearing dented, cracked and looking like it was about to succumb at any moment, found herself in the middle of what had once been the garden where she used to have tea with her husband. Due to its high Potential, the flowers in that place were perfectly intact.
— ...You never loved me — commented the usurping Queen, looking out to sea beyond a bed of flowers.
— ...No — Veronico admitted, landing softly a few meters away from his wife.
— Yes. Neither did I, I never loved you — the Hero allowed himself to follow the woman's gaze and observe the distant blue horizon. There, the storm fought against the strong winds that Alvorada had provoked, resisting with all its strength, shooting even more lightning, making it rain even more water. — If we hadn't gotten married, would things have ended up like this? Would I still need an entire ocean to be happy, if I weren't alone?
The flirtatious instincts I had instilled so deeply into Veronico's soul almost led him to say that she was not alone, but he knew these would be empty words, and he kept quiet. He did not dare to apologize either.
Standing up and putting aside her taciturn expression, the usurping Queen got into a combat stance once more. Veronico responded in kind, holding his sacred sword with both hands, pointing it at Criscina.
— Dawn — he said, his blade gathering the remains of his energy. It wouldn't be as powerful a blow as the last one, but his opponent no longer had the same vigor as before.
— Royal Decree: Death Penalty — In turn, the usurping Queen used her own strongest attack. After her rampage through the city, she had risen a few Levels, and if she hit her husband squarely, she could indeed deliver a fatal blow.
They both looked at each other one last time, eye to eye. And they took action.
The duel lasted less than a second, Veronico's right eyeball was completely destroyed, liquefied, and the Hero fell to his knees in the next step, leaning on his own sword.
Behind him, however, his wife's severed head lay, with such a serene and melancholy expression on a bed of flowers.