Sage:

Confirmed: Death has been applied to the Comet Pereyra and Comet Tewfik in three separate instances.

Everybody, soaked in ocean water, stared expectantly at the bubbling black demesne where the high-rankers were. The six tremors were Archknell’s doing, caused by arrows that had possessed [Death Chance: 100%]. It was overkill (literally) trying to kill something three times but you couldn’t afford to be cheap when dealing with these things. Ordo couldn’t afford to be cheap.

Alexander shuddered, the chilly air stinging his exposed, vulnerable skin. Salt and metal stained his tongue, blood overwhelmed his smell, yet no chatter had taken his ears. Just wordless silence here. Only the whispers of the wind, the distant yelling and sporadic gunfire, breaths taken in anticipation, and his own heart. Thump, thump thump, thump.

No one had said a word as though their minds had been captured, or their tongues had been stripped from their mouths. Alexander opened his and couldn’t muster a sound. That was it. No one said anything because they couldn’t; how could they verbalize this? Put everything into words, describe how hellish the past twenty-four hours had been? How many comrades they lost, the lives they had built, and now they were agonizingly close to hearing the confirmation. The single, awaited confirmation: the Comets were dead.

In twenty-four hours, Ordo had accomplished days, weeks worth of progress where in Hangzhou, it took nine days before the Chinese government had established safe and secure shelters! And they needed the Otherguards! In twenty-four hours, Ordo had swiftly established order and security; everyday in Hangzhou, Alexander feared for his life and Althea’s, perpetually in danger of death or worse, either from the claws of the otherworldly monsters, the hands of desperate bastards, or under the baton of abusive authority.

In twenty-four hours, Alexander was treated like a Slayer, had gained the respect of peers and professors alike, earned the attention of some of the most well-connected and famous Slayers in the city—things that most would dream of, things that he didn’t particularly think he deserved. Because in Hangzhou, he was a coward who stole and killed, trapped in an endless cycle of weakness and ineptitude.

But he could change things. For the better, after knowing how worse it could get.

Ordo would not be like Hangzhou.

He couldn’t stop himself from hoping, at least. Everybody waited, sharing the same singular, unspoken wish: Please tell me that we won. Sage didn’t announce any further updates. Nothing was heard from the demesne. Not a rumble or a scream or another tremor. Just an eerie, heightened silence, sort of like a payoffs game where the scores were tied, and the seconds were ticking down, and there was one last chance to break it.

A sharp pain dug into Alexander’s chest. A random one, a soreness that most likely stemmed from his previous injuries. He placed a hand over his heart and felt its quickening rhythm: He glanced to his left.

The boys: Vernon and Damien, staring on silently. They held their weapons: rifle and staff respectively in the same cradling manner. To think these chuckleheads had the courage to keep going.

To his right, the girls: Althea and Leona, quivering at the possibility of victory. They held hands and Alexander thought about joining them, but then thought otherwise. There was nothing more he wanted than their happiness.

Behind him was Professor Hei. Although she was an S-Rank, fear and apprehension was visible in her expression, but hope, too, had a place in her eyes. All those students she had lost, they’d be avenged tonight. If…

If it all had went exactly as they fantasized—

[#__+++_^$__[email protected]__`_~_^__*___(___(]

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎ ɹOɹɹƎR error ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

NATURAL ORDER COMPROMISED

COMPLETE SYSTEM FAILURE

INITIATING REPAIR PROTOCOLS…

COMPLETION TIME: 35 MINUTES AND 34 SECONDS

CONDUCTING NATURAL ORDER ANALYSIS…

PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS COMPLETE

DETERMINING DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS…

COMPLETION TIME: UNKNOWN

CHANCE OF COMPLETE NATURAL ORDER COLLAPSE: 50%

THE KREUTZ SUNGRAZERS HAVE NOTICED YOU

Alexander's heart stopped. He tried accessing his [Profile]. The blue screen glitched, spazzed, blinked out of existence. The [Chat]. Glitched, spazzed, blinked. The [Map]. Glitched spazzed blinked. The [Shop], the [Bestiary], the [Notes], every feature was unavailable.

The System was down.

Everyone who relied on the System to use their skills was suddenly handicapped.

The demesne fell. A gash had been cut through the boiling black walls. Problem had implemented automatic regeneration but the damage was too severe, and with a second and third cut, it could no longer sustain itself. It disappeared like a popping balloon put to slow motion.

“Alex…” someone muttered, Leona, tugging on his sleeve. He glanced at her, saw her horrified expression, then turned back to where the demesne had been.

Oh, the area was destroyed. Every building that had been inside the demesne was devastated as though pummeled with heavy artillery, like one of those old war documentaries before the Slayer Emergence. Hollowed out shells of buildings, streets filled with too much rubble, the always lingering smoke dancing in the air.

The line had been drawn, matching the demesne’s perimeter. Ordo was already damaged from the initial invasion but this was something else. Stepping across the line, there’d be nothing for you but death.

“Jesus Christ…” muttered Althea. “Jesus Christ…”

“Hey hey…” Vernon was desperately trying to raise the System, but his blue screens kept blinking out of existence. “It’s not working, it’s not working.”

Alexander gazed into the ruin ahead, shaking his head in denial. “It… It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We thought we could’ve…”

The night glowed red. Thousands of shooting stars littered the skies, each mote exponentially growing in size by the seconds. Alexander blankly stared, his mind too clouded by implications—or rather, realizations.

People began screaming. Running, Fruitlessly using their skills but to no avail. The System aided them in using their skills, yet many were too dependent on it; thus, when disconnected, of course they’d fail. Only those who took the time to master their skills independently were relatively unaffected.

Now though? Alexander felt a familiar helplessness sinking into his heart. The same poison-tipped dagger that’d hurt him so many times before. Again so many times, his own weakness fucked him over.

Suddenly he was suddenly dragged by the arm, frantically, tugged into the nearest alleyway with at least three dozen other people stuffed in here, shielded from the shooting stars. Someone was talking to him but their voice sounded distant. Far away, because right now he was thinking about Hangzhou and how everything turned to shit then. Because the screams and the smells and the sounds, every little sensation pricked him.

The shooting stars fell.

Someone forced him down onto his hands and knees as the air rumbled and split apart, and red bolts zipped by. Out on the main street people dropped, having the falling stars rip through them effortlessly like bullets to paper. Thud, thud, thud, they went limp, folded over in awkward positions and quickly lost color and their eyes distantly shrank, absently admiring the terrific beauty of the false night.

People had dropped like that too, in Hangzhou, when a legion of monsters appeared at the windows with crossbows and bows drawn. Alexander had been shoved under a car with Althea, and they watched men and women and children die, squirming fruitlessly as shit-laced bolts were buried deep into their flesh. Like back in Black Paladin Station.

Mom had died then, some time after.

Someone else called that the rain had stopped, and slowly everyone clamored to their feet. Alexander was helped up by the same person who’d dragged him and rambled to him—Leona, of course it was her.

“Alex, honey,” she called to him and finally he listened. “Are you with us? Say something, please!”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like Hangzhou,” he replied.

The expression she made was haunting. “Snap out of it—!”

“Where’s Hei?!” Damien butted in, being pushed around as a few soldiers and Slayers alike began to filter back into the street. “Not to alarm you but we effectively lost all communications! We need a strategy now before all Hell breaks loose—!”

Something had torn through the air.

Alexander felt it vibrating inside his chest.

Again, he turned to the main street. The people who’d ran back out were tending to the casualties, attempting to re-establish a chain of command, communications, anything. It hadn’t been a full fifteen seconds before the next thing came: a sharp arc of wind pressure.

Without any active shields, they were cut down.

The arc had torn through everything in its path, going down the street. Cutting through street lamps and traffic lights and cars and trees. Then came the aftershock: a tempest-level galeforce. Everything that had been cut down flew wildly in the chaotic winds, blood and detritus flying everywhere.

And Alexander was being dragged again, running in the opposite direction of the street. He squealed, forced along. Finally his body began to feel the sense of urgency and started to run on its own, wherever the group was heading.

Dust was falling on him. Pieces of concrete and bricks too. He looked ahead at the forwardmost people at the front: a team of Slayers with matching bodysuits but of different colors. The leader paused and looked back, waved at the others and his lips mouthed—something like “This way!” or “Over here!”—and as he turned…

He disappeared alongside two other members of his team and several others, when a building fell in front of them. Like a blanket was pulled up and poof, they were gone. A woman’s coarse, far-off scream rattled the air and the group panicked, turned right. Two men had to pull the woman away as she clawed and kicked.

Alexander followed, bewildered about what was going on. Something told him to look up and he had. The buildings were leaning, tilted over like they were giants looking down at the small humans. So that was it: the pressure arc was larger than Alexander thought. It’d taken out the buildings too.

Now everyone was caught in a maze with falling walls.

Like rats, they scurried around this hell of an urban labyrinth, abruptly turning and changing directions each time a road was unexpectedly blocked—a few people would unluckily disappear as a result, just like the first bunch had. Alexander was nearly caught when a solid block of concrete fell a few feet from his right. He stumbled, helped up by a man wearing an iron mask.

Fortunately the pressure arcs could only go so far. The ground wasn’t trembling, the air wasn’t being ripped apart, the assailant had stopped. Eventually the buildings stopped too, and gradually as the group realized this, they could finally breathe. One Slayer, a brave-looking woman with a heavy axe, motioned everyone to follow her.

They stepped out onto a new street, one Alexander couldn’t recognize.

Not until he stepped in a thin layer of blood, the same blood that had been used to conceal the massive demesne ritual.

Gallery. They’d reached Gallery.

What he had seen earlier was just a glimpse. War had truly ravaged this place beyond recognition: everything had a distinct gray palette, lifeless and ominous. Bodies, or what was left of them, was scattered throughout, still warm probably. These were Slayers that had volunteered to defeat the Comets. Only they knew what happened shortly after Archknell had inflicted Death.

Alexander stepped forward mindlessly and accidentally kicked something, it rolled over. It was a large, furry hand with a few of its fingers broken, some missing a joint or two. He looked down, saw a trail of black blood dripping from the amputated end, leading to somewhere. Don’t follow it, his mind had instantly thought but his legs moved anyway.

He climbed over small mounds of debris, stepped over a few limbs and organs, until he reached a picked apart place with crumbling walls and peeling plaster, and a sign half-falling over and half-broken. Something sat against a wall next to the collapsed entrance. A werewolf, whose legs were crushed and its chest caved in. His head was split in half down the center, like a watermelon.

The wind picked up, carrying the smoke of the streets beyond. All the ashes and blood and tears, Alexander had sensed them, tasted them, and his mind gained a subtle, sobering clarity. He rubbed his mouth, bit his lips hard where he'd bleed.

He was in Ordo now, not Hangzhou.

“Your students…” Alexander began, quivering, “...wouldn’t want to see you like this, Professor Kastellanos.” He wanted to ask Kastellanos about what happened here but what good would that do? “You always did like hearing stories about Dad. I got annoyed every time… I’m sorry about that.”

An S-Rank Slayer, one of the most beloved professors in Ordo University, was dead. Just like that.

“It really is him.” Leona startled Alexander, causing him to jump up and instinctively move his hand towards his [Captain’s Broadsword]. She gasped and flashed a quick apology with her eyes.

“Sorry,” he muttered, easing. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

She didn’t respond, instead staring intently at Kastellanos’s body. “We found Ichiken about a block away.”

The implication made his chest hurt. “I can’t count how many times he’d offered to teach me a thing or two about Kyokushin Karate. I always turned him down. Maybe I should’ve indulged him once or twice.”

Leona didn’t respond.

A block away, people shouted. They had to leave Kastellanos here; hopefully, his body will remain untouched until the fight is over. Though it’d be closed-casket anyway.

Alexander and Leona said their last farewells to Kastellanos and Ichiken, and left, hurrying to the commotion. A handful of Slayers were there, lifting debris and throwing them onto the roads, splashing blood with every toss. Someone was buried. A couple reached into the pile, fetched bloody arms, and pulled the survivor out.

A middle-aged man wearing a discolored bodysuit, tight to the skin and frictionless. Half his scalp was gone, dark brown strands sticking to the rawness of his skull. In fact, much of his body was skinless, exposed through holes in the suit. Bones stuck out of his arms and legs; as soon as the Slayers had pulled him, he collapsed immediately due to his injuries.

Alexander winced, unsettled by the gore. That man couldn’t make it.

Leona gasped. “That’s Carvalho.”

“Huh?” Alexander looked closer and stiffened. It was him.

Guilherme Carvalho, admin of Combative B2, whose [Honor] was [Across the Seas], where he ran across the Mediterranean with speed-enhancing magic. Carvalho had innovated the field, theb, taking what he knew from mutational magic and proper cultivation techniques to better condition the body when pushed to its higher limits.

The two dashed over, pushing through the group as Carvalho absently looked around. His mouth opened, eyes gray, but he seemed to acknowledge them—Alexander and Leona.

He muttered something, probably in Portuguese.

“Professor, where’s Archknell? Luster? Levin?” Leona hurriedly asked.

Some of the Slayers tried to tell her off, but Alexander shot them a glare. Leona was about to ask again but he laid a hand over hers, leaning over Carvalho. “Don’t talk. You can rest now.”

He blinked, a scratching gasp leaving him.

“We’ll take care of everyone. Go and enter the gates of Heaven, and wait for us there.”

Carvalho said nothing and turned to the false night, staring until his eyes lost that last gloss of life, and the color vanished.

Everybody was silent.

Alexander and Leona stood.

How am I going to do that? thought Alexander, thinking back to Kastellanos’s body and knowing Ichiken was here somewhere. They’d been kind to him, treated him something like an equal although he never belonged to Systemic Works. And Carvalho was dead too. If they, three S-Ranks, were gone…

Distantly, the battle raged north of their position. Just minutes ago, the Comets had been here, breaking through the Death affliction that Archknell dealt.

Whatever they did, they were stronger now. And Ordo was losing.

What can I do?