***
Ducking under the millionth tail swipe, Kevin is now more annoyed than worried.
Each time he cut through a snake, they'd split into two. Meaning he was now dealing with twelve Honkai beasts, four with the power of Emperor-class and the rest with Templar.
'At least the size has been reduced.'
Locking onto weaker templar versions, he dashes towards a group of them in hopes of finally killing some of them.
"Can you bastards just die!" Rather than cutting across the body, these should be weak enough that he can just cut them straight down.
And doing just that, he split one of them straight down the middle. Freezing the ground around him, catching the smaller snakes in place while he fends off the Emperor-Class Honkai beams, deflecting them with the flat side of his great sword towards a poor apartment complex nearby.
–Boom–
He glanced back at the split snake and smirks.
'I knew it~'
Quickly he charges at the still caught snakes and proceeds to do that same.
"Ugh, Thor's gonna kill–" His senses flared and he leapt from his position as some kind of purple liquid spewed from below.
Once he landed, Kevin's eyes were glued to the liquid, "What?" Confused, he turns to the six remaining– 'Wait six? There should be eight–'
His answer came in the form of another large snake.
"You have got to be fucking with me." He bent his knees, tightly gripping his sword he pushed off, skyward.
Contrary to what the Honkai 'thought' Kevin raised his sword above his head, a swirling vortex of purple and blue coiled around his blade. Quickly the snakes open their jaws and multiple beams of Honkai fly out towards Kevin.
"Hmph." Grinning, Kevin brings his sword down as the pressure around them increases to an almost suffocating degree.
"Just die already." The world turned white, then a earth-shattering explosion–
–BOOOOM–
"…"
Silence–
"Woaahh!"
Forgetting he couldn't fly, Kevin falls from grace, crashing into the ground below.
–Crash–
***
"He did alright, no?" Thor said to Aurora, gesturing to Kevin who was pulling himself out of the rubble.
"Why did it take him so long though? If he just used that from the start, there wouldn't have been all this damage." Aurora says, unaware of both Thor and Alter deadpanning at her, not even realising the irony in that statement.
'(You're one to talk.)' Thor and Alter thought in sync.
Grabbing her hand, Thor pulls Aurora with him to meet Kevin.
***
After getting shot with metaphorical arrows, Kevin turned to Su to comfort him.
"..."
"..." Kevin's lip twitched.
"Fine, just you wait Su…" Kevin vowed to get vengeance for this betrayal.
"Kev."
Kevin turned to face him, spotting Aurora cuddling a Seraph like a plushie. He raised a brow at Thor.
"Ignore her, Herrscher's taken care of, Mobius and Vill finished off their judgement-class." Thor's lips then curved upwards. 'I also heard that it ate its own kin and grew stronger.' He might have found the Honkai beast he wants to integrate with.
"Elysia and Eden also dealt with theirs. Hime, Hua and Ein have contained the rest of the outbreaks, all of them are on their way back to HQ." Finishing, Kevin nodded and his greatsword shattered into ice flakes.
He then moved over next to Thor, taking a deep breath and hoping he didn't throw up.
–Crackle–
–Pop–
***
FireMoth Headquarters -
"Owowow." Hua trembled in pain, she had just bumped her broken arm on the corner of the table.
Himeko gently patted her back while sighing, "I told you to be careful, move slowly, just wait until Thor gets back. He'll heal it for you."
With a nervous smile Hua stopped trembling.
–Shhhh–
"Hua?! What happened?" Elysia rushed over to Hua, barraging her with questions, expressing concern.
"She'll be fine Ellie. She was just being a stupid kid, thinking she could take on more than she can." Eden said, grabbing Elysia's shoulder.
Giving a pout to Eden, she sat down next to Hua, giving enough distance not to accidentally bump her hanging broken arm.
"How did it go with you two?" Himeko asked, noticing the small tears in the twos clothing, along with the rubble and dirt all over them.
"Not great," Eden sat down and continued. "Because of how late we got there, casualties had already reached the millions." Both Himeko and Hua noticed Elysia's expression shift to a self-deprecating smile.
"Even with us there, the collateral damage that killed many more, was almost as bad as us not being there at all…" Elysia finished. Silence fell before Elysia's mood changed, then jumping from her seat she started to say how both of them ended up saving people while fighting at the same time.
…
"Compared to us, you actually did something, we just sat back while firing the particle cannons from the Moth outposts. We barely had to fight anything." Throwing a look to Hua, "And that's why Hua here, thought it was a good Idea to go against a two-story Knight-Class honkai… She won, but got a broken arm in return."
Hua flinched at Himeko's glare, laughing nervously. "I-I did it though… is that bad?"
–Zap–
"Only if you didn't learn from it." Thor appeared behind the chair resting his chin on Eden's shoulder. Pecking her cheek he stepped back as the pink rocket Elysia pulled him into a kiss.
Both Himeko and Hua went red, Himeko as she couldn't believe Elysia was doing that 'I-In-f-front of o-others'. Hua as she was innocent and had only seen tv actors kissing on screen. She was still a child okay.
Finishing the kiss Elysia gave a giggle, while Thor looked at Hua. "So? Did you learn anything from that?"
Going redder Hua thought he meant his and Elysia's kiss.
"Hmm?" Confused, he glanced at Himeko who looked away. 'What could– Oh.'
–Flick–
Flicking Hua's forehead Thor chuckled. "Not that you dummy, your fight against the Honkai."
Rubbing her forehead with her non broken arm, she regains her composure with a cough.
"Y-yeah."
"What did you learn little birb?"
"N-not to, be overconfident… and to go at it alone right?" She saw as Thor's face didn't change, instead he raised his right hand as she closed her eyes preparing for another flick.
–Pat– –Pat–
"Not the best answer, but it's a start I guess." He ruffled her hair a bit before healing her arm without her notice.
Stiff as a board, Hua's confusion became joy as she smiled. "Yeah, I'll be better in future."
"Umu, you better Hua, or no noodles for a month." Feeling struck by lightning Hua promised to herself and any gods she could hear, to be better.
***
Currently Kevin was horrified by Mobius's expression. Thor had dumped him and Aurora off along with the remains of the snake Honkai he fought.
Mobius was also there, Vill collapsed onto the table in the hanger, He could imagine how bumpy a ride is with Mobius dragging you across the ocean.
Aurora ditched them the moment she noticed the atmosphere around Mobius' leaving Kevin to deal with her.
'Damn you Thor!' He cursed in his mind.
…
–Achoo–
"Did you just sneeze?" The redhead asked.
"Someone must be talking about me, or the world's ending hahaha."
"That's not something to laugh about!"
…
"An interesting specimen." Mobius said, her voice laid with curiosity.
"Ahhhh!" Screaming like a little girl, Kevin had not expected Mobius to appear next to him and start analysing the honkai.
"Since when did we allow little girls in Moth?" Vill who was woken up by the scream spotted Kevin, a moment later she covered her mouth.
"Pfft… hahaha." She tried, really tried not to laugh, but the embarrassment on Kevin's face was comedy gold for the magician.
"Move it popsicle, I've got some experiments to do." Mobius picked up the giant carcass and moved it over with the rest of her experimental specimens.
"I uh–Shut up Vill." Grumbling Kevin gave Vill the middle finger, she burst into more laughter while Kevin thought he needed to get outta her before losing his mind.
***
"Mei… How… How many did we lose." Su's expression was one of sorrow, he only saw it briefly, but–
"Too many." Mei answered flatly, she looked over the known casualty list, her brows narrowing at the number.
[Casualty Report - Prometheus V0.2]
[Known Casualties]
[Globally: 874,521,091]
[Unknown]
[Globally: 100,000,000+]
Almost 1 Billion, the Herrscher, judgement-class and the outbreaks. Not all of it could be contained in time to prevent mass casualties, Moth was already spread thin as it is, if not for the extra funding they got, this list might be higher.
Nearby Klein was going through the footage she could find just prior to the 5th's eruption, she was trying to find something, some kind of signal to show what the steps to becoming a Herrscher might be.
Pausing mid-sip, she put her coffee down and rewound the footage, her eyes glued to the screen.
"Dr Mei, Dr Su, you need to see this." Putting it up on the main screen, everyone in the room took the time to watch the footage, and what they saw shocked them.'
***
A/N: First of all, sorry for the delay, been busy IRL. Second, I've decided to write the rest of this Volume and then once I start writing the next volume, I'll upload as normal, I hope anyway.
It's most as I would prefer to be at a point that I can take a break and not leave you guys hanging with well a cliff hanger, or something that is not 'Complete-ish' So I'll give you this chapter.
So yeah, I'll be gone for a few days to a week to finish the volume as there's like 5 chapters left of this volume maybe one more or less, then I'll be onto the last two Volumes of the Previous Era.
Ciao