The eyes of Primordial gazed down on the city of a puny empire and wept.

Do not mistake the act as the display of misery or gratefulness. The tears were products of sheer ridicule, border-line pity. The all-powerful World Enemy looked down on the puny mortals to the point it pitied the insect.

Deathless Clan’s ritual kept the monster’s attention at bay. For the monster, the bacteria below was but a dream. Still, dream held power. Enough power for the conduit created by innocent souls to siphon. The energy was barely worth a drop of the Dark One’s blood. But even a drop of blood from an almighty, malicious mythologically apocalyptic planet eater birthed from all the malicious force of the universe was enough to send even a well-engineered plan into a spiral.

…

Everyone felt it — the oppressive evil pressure slowly sucking life out of the world.

“What did you do?” Captain Hex glared at Orwell.

“Build my headquarter. Can’t start a war without a command-center.”

Beside him, the Orwell’s Manor shook and disintegrated as a spiral of obsidian grew from the earth. It was a black tower made of black marble transmuted from the bed-rock. Its emergence unleashed earthquake, sending tremor across the entire Water-quarter. Houses collapsed and windows broke as the ominous infrastructure of smooth, glinting obsidian penetrated the sky.

Hex realized the situation had gone out of control

“Attack!”

Hex’s sword lighted on fire.

“Not so fast,” Orwell flicked his finger and black obsidians erupted from the ground. The jutting rock formation, weighting over a ton, smashed Hex with a force of eighteen-wheeler and sent him flying into a row of houses. The army of the royal-knights charged in courageous, but a wall of black rock suddenly erupted, separating them from Orwell.

“[Enma Style: Thousand Fox Flare],” Shyme cast.

Tiny stars sparked around Orwell Mehest and burst into flames, blowing the pavement and setting any burnable object on fire.

“[Air Palace: Billowing Crush],” Shyme cast again.

A down-shaft of high-pressure air fell on Orwell, pressing everything in the circular area to grains of dust.

“[Inferno School: Hell Field],” Shyme cast the spell she copied from Chuang.

The ground heated, turning into a field of searing torrential fire.

It was a testament to her position as 33 Stars for Shyme to launch three advance spells with immense destructive power in less than a second. Most opponent receiving the combo would be dust, but Orwell was above opponent.

The dust and fires cleared to reveal a solid shell of ice, which broke apart to reveal an uninjured Orwell.

“[Hell Field],” Orwell mused. “Isn’t that Chuang’s spell? So, the rumor that the daughter of Xerset Enma can learn advance spell from observation alone is true.”

“Some people got the gift,” Shyme admitted. “But most — start with you — don’t have it.”

Orwell shrugged. His confidence returned as the situation fell back under his control.

“Yes, I don’t have your talent with spell-works,” Orwell stated. “But unlike you, I never fail to give my enemy the credit they deserved. And Shyme, you are in our way.”

Orwell pointed his finger at Shyme.

“[Snowstorm]”

Shyme snorted. A spell with no school to its name like [Snowstorm] was a universally available spell. Such spells were at least intermediate and beginner level. It was how Phantasia’s upper-class controlled the populace, while weaponising the commoner as a viable force against World Enemy. By monopolising the advance, high-power spells to a special institute and restricting the public access to them, the nobility ensured no commoner would grow powerful enough to challenge the status quo.

However — with Remus Breaker the good mastermind seeking to exploit the hell out of the status quo — how far could such ideological feebleness grandstand remain to be seen.

Shyme met the [Snowstorm] with undented assurance. Everyone know intermediate spell had no chance against an advance grade. A slither of caution never graced Shyme’s brain. For her, the distance between herself and Orwell was taller than Mt Vesuvius. A fight between Shyme and Orwell commonly boiled down to Shyme sitting on top of the mountain and raining lava and pyroclastic ash down on Orwell.

But Shyme did not understand she was not a volcano erupting near the Roman. Like many humans before him, Orwell Mehest had climbed the insurmountable mountain and planted his flag of triumph.

“[Enma Style: Haze Turbulence]”

[Fire Turbulence] was a hybrid spell requiring high affinity with but air and fire to control. It generated an invisible, super-heated air-funnel that could attack, crowd-control and defend. In theory, the spell should overwhelm [Snowstorm] in an instant.

But that did not happen.

The haze of heat met the snowstorm and contested for supremacy. The attack churned and clashed, swelling and feasting on each other. It should not happen like this, Shyme realized. There should be no competition. It should only be a slight delay as the snowstorm melted and the heated air swallowed Orwell.

Sadly, the impossible was happening. Shyme’s heated air was losing steam, while the snowstorm was getting stronger. The inevitable victor arose as the wave of snowy wind swallowed the heat and blasted Shyme down the street.

Shyme got up on her feet. Her body quivered from the cold. The magical clashes taught her a lot. She glanced at the ominous tower that was attracting the maelstrom of Mana.

“That tower gives your attack extra juices.”

Orwell tutted.

“The proper term is authority,” Orwell said. “As long as my tower stand, the entire Venistalis is my territory. You must know a little of spirit magic right, Enma?”

Shyme flexed her Mana, blasting apart the surrounding pavement. She beat several spirits-expert before. As someone who regularly rattled sabers against Magnolia Drakokia and Arissa Holysworth, she did her homework. The spirit mage contracted with a multidimensional entity representing the natural world — the spirits — to aid them. Spirits could enter the battle to supplement spells or aid the contractor during the battle.

But if Orwell Mehest contracted a Spirit, where was it?

“Searching for my familiar?” Orwell lectured. “Deathless Clan do not pursue a contract with a mere nature spirit. We seek to understand souls and their darkness to further aid mankind.”

“You must be so proud of your commoner heritage, Orwell,” Shyme retorted. Her ingrained habit as noble elitist inflated itself without the specter of terror called Rem hounding her mind.

“I am proud,” Orwell declared. “My clan did something no elves nor demons accomplish. We weaponized a residual fragment of soul and engineered it into a familiar. An artificial spirit conceived by humanity.”

“Still just an imitation,” Shyme muttered. Orwell was using a fake spirit-magic. She only needed to find that thing and removed it.

“Not imitation, but an improvement,” Orwell corrected. “Don’t bother searching for its body. Let me ask you a question: what is a soul?”

“[Enma Style: Falling Dragon],” Shyme cast, dropping a humongous projection of fire-dragon on top of Orwell.

“A soul is an invisible and intangible fragment of life energy with memories,” Orwell impaled the projection with a sword of ice, destroying it in a single move. “When a life end, the dissipating soul left an imprint in a metaphysical plane my clan called the Astral Realm — the collective consciousness of life in the Multiverse.”

Orwell waved his hand and conjured up green fires.

“The Deathless Clan used these imprints in combination with spell-casting art to create amalgam spirit that accomplish more than any spell-crafting of cultivation technique,” Orwell unleashed the emerald fires at Shyme.

Shyme produced a translucent pearl and threw it, shattering the pearl and releasing a pale energy which surrounded her in the bubble. It was a magical artifact that disintegrated any attack from both magic and artifact once, while healing the user. The market price of the pearl ranged in at least a hundred-thousand credits, but for Shyme Enma it was a pocket change.

Tragically, a shield worth hundred-thousands achieved nothing against the green fire. The flame soaked into Shyme, dispensing million of screaming torment inside her mind, and causing the Mana in her body to go berserk. Like a liquid sledgehammer, the rampaging Mana rocked throughout her body’s tissue and blood vessel. Bloody mist burst from Shyme's capillary, signalling the end of the fight.

Shyme shuddered, falling to the shattered pavement in a pool of her blood, gasping in agony.

“Like it?” Orwell smiled. “That one is an amalgam that sent your internal Mana into a berserk state. I make it to fight against the gods and your [Divine Core]. As a member of Enma clan with absurd [Goddess Core] and Mana quantity, it must hurt.”

Shyme struggled to get up, but collapsed. With her body in pain and her mind scrambled, only one question emerged inside Shyme.

“How?” Orwell voiced her question. “How does a mere manifestation of nature scramble the Mana of the beautiful and great Shyme Enma? Simple. Communication. The Astral Realm connect all of us. These fire—these familiars—is an amalgam of soul-imprint and a wrongly sequence [Mana Storm]. It force you to activate [Mana Storm] in a wrong order and injure yourself. Ingenious, isn’t it?”

Shyme tried to rise using her blood-covered hand — she slipped pathetically.

“You must wonder how did my clan fell when we had these powers?” Orwell sighed. “Soul imprint is impressive magic, but extracting resource from the Astral Realm to create these amalgams took time and Mana—the two resources the Grand Empire never gave us. But thank to my preparation, the weakness is no more.”

Orwell conjured a sword of black stone.

“These stones are Spiritium,” Orwell showed Shyme the sword of mysterious black marble. “A condensed alchemical mineral grown by the power of a World Enemy. Its unique property allowed the material to pierce the Astral Realm and extracted soul like and oil-rig. It can even corrupt the natural Mana vein of the planet—the Leyline—like the one under Venistalis.”

Orwell nodded to the tower behind him.

“My base is a literal skyscraper of Spiritium. Don’t you get it, Shyme? With unlimited Mana from Venistalis’ Leyline, a constant supply of souls from the Astral Realm, and the Dark God’s power, I am the most powerful caster in Venistalis.”

Orwell swung the sword, but a meteor of fire cannonball in front of him, cratering the floor and sending the tower of fire into the sky.

Stuart Hex waded out of the flames, his sword struck Orwell with golden fire. Much to the Captain’s expectation, the fire dissipated into harmless nothing.

“I see,” Captain Hex squinted. “An amalgam that consume Mana in a spell.”

“Bingo.”

Hex stabbed his sword to the ground and unleashed a plume of fire to the sky. Without looking back, he picked the injured Shyme like a sack of potato and took into the sky as a fiery comet.

Orwell Mehest dispersed the fire with a clap and glanced at the fleeing royal-knight.

“He cut his loss, huh,” Orwell said. “Excellent strategy.”

Orwell walked into the tower, grimacing from his bullet-wound.

…

Shyme was rampaging over her wounded self-esteemed

“Let me go!” Shyme shouted. “I refused to lose to that guy!”

“That is not an issue, Enma,” Captain Hex scolded. “Looked around us.”

Shyme listened to that suggestion ans she saw the reality at hand.

She saw the royal-knights retreating with their tail mangled. Several knights hung by their comrade’s shoulder. Most already fainted on the floor and wheezing in pain. Vice-Captain Chamomile leaned against a wall in tears, trembling. Several denizens of the Water-quarter already emerged from their houses to witness the carnage.

Then Shyme saw the barrier.

A dome of swirling night was covering the entire like a curtain of black liquid. Its diameter severed all 800-kilometer squares of Venistalis from the world. Then there were the eyes.

Shyme fell to her knees in fear.

“What is that?”

A pale green moon suspended at the amplitude of the swirling black dome, dispensing the liquid night sustaining the barrier. But the celestial object was no moon. It was a circular sphere covered with eyes, blinking, moving and observing the world. A fragment of the World Enemy so powerful looking at it inspired madness.

Hex looked at the sky.

“Dammit,” he cursed. “How do we come back from this?”

…

Inside Horizon Dawn’s warehouse, an alarming development was taking place.

Scathach felt the wrongness the moment it noticed her. It was also the moment the hole in the sky tore opened to reveal the creepy moon with countless eyes. Cytortia yelped the moment the fragment appeared and trembled like someone dropped her from a trap-hole and into a room full of dynamite.

“Scathach!” Cytortia screamed. “You can do something now, right? This is beyond kiddie fight, right? You are a war goddess, right? You can save us, right?”

Scathach grunted as darkness swallowed her.

“Space-time spells,” the warrior maid groaned. Someone was teleporting her away from Venistalis.

And with that, the S-ranker Scathach disappeared without an opportunity to throw a single spear.

…

Orwell Mehest grunted from the tower.

Hal Jordan got him good. His original planned to wipe Venistalis in one ritual was now dirt. Now, he got forced into his back-up plan. Originally, he supposed to level the Grand Empire, finish his business and disappear within a week, leaving nothing but ash behind.

Henceforth, he needed to improvise.

The Dark One was the major concern. One slip and the entire Phantasia would get obliterated. The ritual advised against suggesting a malicious act to the World Enemy because World Enemy was infamous for being trigger-happy. Despite the setback, he still leeched enough influence to create an amalgam barrier that teleported away those with higher power-level than him. Orwell would love to teleport away all his opposition, but the ritual suggested against arousing the semi-slumbering World Enemy’s suspicion. Getting it to pay attention to detail would be a splendid way to start an apocalypse.

In conclusion, subtle suggestions such as cordoned the city with an impenetrable barrier, grew the stone tower, and banished anything above a power-level was a preferable choice.

Gave it order to banish his enemy would be a marvellous way to get it interested in why this particular person was so troublesome. The World Enemy believed it was dreaming, and everyone realized nitpicking and dreaming mixed like a catastrophe of mayo and coffee.

…

“Rem!” A voice yelled from the communicator. “Scathach disappeared in a ball of darkness. What the hell is happening!”

Rem held the device lofty as he looked at the monstrous moon in the black sky. As expected, Orwell had a redundancy. Good new: his group was alive. Bad new: he got no clue what happened to his allies. For all he knew, Orwell already got the luxury to enjoy Shyme the Chair.

Worse news: Orwell’s back-up plan went off without a hitch. This operation went FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition) with no hope of a comeback.

Rem played Evil Overlord Advisor in his head. As an evil adviser, he would advise Darth Mehest to destroy the enemy kill chain, then nutted up their chain of command. Rem would trade an arm to bet that Scathach was not the only S-rank to get BTFO. The Liberator in Venistalis would hyperventilate like a pack of kleptomaniac chipmunk with Marley the Magpie dragged into the pot of Leprechaun’s gold and flew away to dreamland.

Rem frowned. With the royalties and the generals on border visit, the commanding authority fell to Captain of of royal-mages and royal-knights.

Rem played the Evil Overlord Advisor again. He did not like what his imagination suggested.

“Cy. Call the Madam and tell her we are pulling a Giorno Giovanna,” Rem talked calmly. “And tell Lux to save the Earth-quarter.”