The so-called elites of the Western Fortress that protected Berlin rushed towards Kain as he in turn moved towards them. The two sides neared each other and right before they clashed, Kain vanished from sight. The elites were alarmed by the sudden disappearance of their foe, and only realized too late that Kain had gotten behind them. The first unlucky soul to die had his backbone and ribcage shattered as Kain unleased a powerful kick into his undefended rear flank. This poor sod was sent flying through the air like a rag doll before hitting the ground and tumbling to a stop, his neck having been broken if not by the recoil than by the fall. Kain then leapt to the downed soldier and grabbed his leg and proceeded to use the dead man as a fleshy flail against his comrades. Partially due to the damage potential and partially due to not wanting to desecrate their fallen companion, the soldiers of the Knightly Junta kept their distance as Kain swung the limp body about like a child having a tantrum.

With each swing of the dead man’s body came the sounds of bone snapping and muscle tearing and eventually the cadaver’s leg detached from its torso and sent a fountain of blood spraying all over the front ranks. Looking at the leg in his hand, Kain tossed it aside with mild annoyance and sped up to another ill-prepared fool. This time he grabbed the stunned man by his neck and lifted him into the air. Black lightning coursed through the soldier and arced into the ground as magic flowed from Kain’s hand to the neck of his victim. The lightning increased in intensity, its crackling complimenting the agonized screams of the person being fried. Kain quickly released the near-dead mand before slamming his free hand palm first into his torso and sending the human sandbag hurtling through the air, trailing obsidian sparks as he flew.

Not missing a beat, Kain’s hand ripped through space and was soon grasping one of his halberds. His now filled hand continued to sweep across the space in front of him and the halberd trailed blood and guts as it followed his movements. Pulling his hand back, Kain then sent the cursed weapon flying like a javelin towards a group of soldiers, spearing through five of them and embedding itself inside the armored body of the sixth. Pursuing his thrown weapon with murderous intent, Kain grasped the human shish-kebab and swung the impaled people about as though he were a five-year-old playing with sparklers. Several dozen Knightly Junta soldiers tried to get close but were quickly batted away by the screaming mass that had been stuck on Kain’s melee implement.

All the while, Kain was grinning like a madman and laughing his head off as his more ancient and destructive side made him experience a twisted taste of pleasure at the misery that he was inflicting upon those around him. The mad cackling that came from the colossus of a man was more than enough to cause fear on its own, butt he fact that six of their comrades were now skewered and being used as a living weapon was what pushed some over the edge and into utter despair. The smell of iron and gore was son complimented by the rank odor of piss and shit as several of the ‘best-of-the-best’ lost their nerve and gave in to the primal terror that was now threatening to overtake everyone aside from the Abominable King himself.

Seemingly bored of swinging around the six-man human pincushion, Kain let his weapon drop to the ground as he let out a massive and horrible war cry. The air shook as his voice echoed across the city like the sound of a MOAB going off, only sounding more human and less like an explosive. Anyone who was not cowering in a mix of their own excretions and ancient terror was now doing so, and Kain was not going to let the opportunity pass him up. He lifted his hand and formed it into a fist, building power into his gauntlet-clad manipulator until he was satisfied with the amount he had gathered.

“HERE COMES THE FIREWORKS!” Kain shouted a last message to the city as he drove his fist into the earth beneath him. His power surged forth and flooded the ground, and soon the mix of man-made and natural materials beneath his feet could not withstand the building energy. One atom split apart, then two, then four, then eight and so on and so on. As if to say, “Fuck you!” to every hippie and pacifist ever to exist on Earth, Kain had effectively turned the very ground below him into a fission explosive. Rather than using materials that were ideal for the job, Kain had thrown the rules out the window and forced a chain reaction to take place by completely shattering the bonds of untold numbers of atoms.

It was on that day that he world first learned of the destructive power of the atom in full. The entire domed area roughly two meters in all directions from his feet had been forced to undergo a complete fission reaction. The effect was not as big as Kain had hoped but seeing as he achieved a world first and got to witness the destructive power of a nuke firsthand and survive, Kain was pretty satisfied. Even as the atomic hellfire scorched the world around him and the pressure wave erased the Western Fortress from the map, Kain was pretty proud of himself in a twisted sort of way. The light of the morning sun had been set loose by the Black Sun itself, a bit ironic, but Kain didn’t mind.

As the residual flames began to eat away at the remnants of the broken festung, Kain merely pulled out a bottle of beer and toasted himself for his achievement. It did not bother him in the slightest that he had just committed a war crime, nor did it bother him that he had almost caught both his army and Piotr in the explosion. What did bother him was that his Zombie Dragon had been caught in the fireball and pressure wave and had been smashed to an unusable state by the forces it had endured.

“Gonna have to work on you.” Kain said with mild annoyance as he looked over at the heavily burned and nearly broken Zombie Dragon. Its metal armor had been fused to what remained of its body, and the intense heat had caused its rotten form to give off a sickening stench that mixed that of a desiccated corpse with the malodorous fumes of burning meat. It had had multiple bones completely shattered and laid limply on the ground where it had fallen, unable to move more than a little. If it wasn’t an undead, it would certainly be dead by now. Its back was broken, its heart was pierced by its own ribs and its head had been bashed open by flying rubble.

Kain downed his drink and looked to the south. There were three more cardinal directions that held yet more people to destroy. Glancing one last time towards the spell that gazed at him, Kain walked over to the edge of the ruined keep and marveled at his own destructive power.

“God damn. Am I a beast or what? I scare myself with how easy this all is...”

Kain wasn’t being narcissistic, he just knew how much more powerful he was in comparison to everyone else. Despite his appearances, Kain was in some small part unnerved by his own capabilities and his utter lack of compassion for those whom he called his foes. The fact that he got his kicks from watching people he didn’t care for struggle and fall was something that made him question if he had much of his humanity left.

“Every time I give in, I lose a bit more of who I was. And to be honest, I am slowly getting to be alright with that, and that is what scares me the most about myself. Not the power, the authority or even the Vampire wife and kids. No, what scares me is that all of this is becoming normal and I am surprisingly on board with that…”

Kain watched the ruined city burn as he stewed in his own thoughts. The magical observer from the Luminas Church could not know the struggle in Kain’s head as he grappled with his twisted self. All they knew was that the Abominable King had just wiped an entire city from the map and was toasting himself for his brutal slaughter. The facts were clear, the need for the Heroes was greater than the need to elect a new High Priestess. If Teutonia could hold out for just a week and a half longer, then they would have the backup they so desperately needed yet vehemently refused. The time for allowing each member of the Confederacy to decide their own fate had passed, now was the time for the invoking of the 1st Amendment of the Confederacy’s United Constitution. From now on, the Church had full control over everything.

The war for the fate of Europa was only getting started.