Chapter 240: Chapter 239: The Battle For Humanity Part 3

Tenko Vs Terra

Tenko stood in a strange place, rustic, with large wooden beams and padded furniture. The instant he arrived he created a barrier around himself and growled as he stared down the mother of the one responsible for slaughtering his species.

“Didn’t my daughter have you all killed? I’m not sure how you’re here but I assume you’re responsible for that nasty plague of fox-spirit souls, I had thought it was the mut that the insolent brat started rutting with.”

That little speech of hers gave Tenko all the information he needed; They had no idea what was happening, they had been more affected than the woman likely intended to reveal and she had no idea what was happening outside.

Deciding it would be more fun to toy with her and let her think he was a stray, he kept snarling and growling to act like the feral child he had seen Kyubi become on occasion in her youth when he checked in on the sanctuary.

The delay in her deciding to attack told him she had lost enough power to be unsure of her chances, so he decided to go all-in on his rabid dog act and lowered to all fours ready to dash as he took on a sem-fox form.

The moment he did, she got a boost in confidence and jumped at his bait with no further doubt in her ability to kill a stray mongrel. He used his hyper-awareness to feed her confidence even further, stoke her desires like any good womanising fox, but most importantly he analysed the attack and then when he deemed it safe he let his barrier absorb a bit then shatter to let the attack through.

He threw himself back whimpering, then made his barrier flicker back as though he were struggling to produce it.

“…Awww, the poor little mongrel lost his family, followed the scent back to the wrong person, now he’ll die a fool who achieved nothing. Thank you for being so pathetic, my stupid daughter caused me a lot of trouble, if you had been more, I might have had to destroy one of my back-up vessels.”

’Did this idiot really manage to survive longer than my species? She couldn’t give me any more information to use against her if she tried. Is she trying to make me feel so sorry for her that I let her live?’

As the thoughts circulated his head, he decided to let a couple of bigger hits through to stoke her ego further. It had immediately changed from a stalling game game to a nonsensical interrogation where the one answering questions beat the interrogator with sadistic pleasure.

As Tenko kept up his self-healing just enough to stop any wounds becoming more than a minor nuisance, he took the time to fill Tiamutael in on what he had already learned and told him to keep an ear on the conversation.

In mere minutes, he had achieved a confirmed number of daughters she had, their names, information on the other members and all for the low low price of giving her a false sense of security.

Kyubi Vs Terra’s Daughters

When Kyubi first arrived, she found herself in the bedroom of a girl who seemed no older than twenty, trapping them both in a sensory blocking barrier as she changed into her her true form and began interrogating the daughter in front of her.

To Kyubi’s surprise, she was already pretty battered and beaten. If she was smarter, she could have tried passing herself off as a victim of abuse at her mother’s hands. Rather than try to play victim however, she bravely decided to accept Kyubi’s wrath and do her best to resist.

When the girl launched her first attack, Kyubi appeared next to her and removed the hand she had raised by simply gripping it in her jaws and pulling it away. The girl collapsed screaming.

“Tell me where to find Luna and I’ll kill you quickly.”

Not as quick on the uptake as her mother, that was the first moment she realised that this was the result of her sister’s massacre. Still, she refused to talk and settled for silently cursing her sister as she put her faith in her mother arriving to make a rug of the intruder.

When she continued to refuse to answer, Kyubi saw that as a final answer to the unasked question, “How much do I make them suffer before I kill them?”

The simple fact was, that if having a hand pulled off wasn’t enough to make her talk, any method that would would cost too much time. With a single flowing moving, she wrapped her jaws around her neck and clamped, letting blood fill her mouth and bone splinter between her teeth before her prey’s head made a dull thud as hit the floor.

As she trapped both the head and body in a secondary barrier, she took a few moments to ponder how best to identify her main target and consider how many she had. Unfortunately, Saboteur had found absolutely no data on the daughters at all.

As she began to give up on the idea of giving Luna a particularly gruesome demise, she received a message from her son. ’Mum, the bad woman Tenko is with, is really dumb and giving him loads of information…’

Kyubi gleaned with delight as he told her everything.

“So, judging by my little boy’s message and what I’m sensing, their only real merit is acting as vessels for their mother, which means I don’t need to contain the body as long as I erase them completely.

I also know that the strongest one is my target, which means…”

Kyubi didn’t need to finish talking to herself and didn’t need to worry about concealing her presence any longer, so with that in mind she collected the heads of every one of Terra’s daughters in almost no time at all, before casually chasing her primary target as she fled out from the mass domicile where the daughters lived and toward her mother’s.

Terrified Terra And The Very Feral Fox

As Luna fled towards the home of her mother, which was built to resemble the semi-monochromatic, half-timbered buildings, that were a common sight and iconic staple of the tudor period she had been born to.

Kyubi trailed her, whilst trailed in turn by a bulging spherical barrier filled with severed heads. Skipping with every other step as she tried to control her desire to finish her hunt.

When she knocked on the door however, Kyubi had an idea that threatened to make feel an ounce of regret later, but she was far too intoxicated by delayed gratification.

She sent the sphere ahead and prepared flames of every kind she had at her disposal. From what she had been told, Tenko was keeping her occupied by playing her punching bag to ring out as much information as possible, sp it was no surprise when she was delayed getting to the door.

The moment it swung open however, the barrier was dismissed and the daughter’ heads rained down on their remaining sibling, who simultaneously found herself burning mind, body and soul from the ground up.

From where Tenko was using his powers to play dead to perfection, he wished he hadn’t given himself a front row seat to Kyubi’s revenge and couldn’t help but throw up a little as he watched the murderer of his species scream in agony as she stood face to face with her mother.

As the flames reached her neck however, the feral fox dashed forward and smashed the head into the witch’s face. Her nose was smashed, and teeth chipped, she stumbled back only to be steadied by a firm hand that gripped her by the back of her neck.

“Kyubi, I mean, wow! I had all kinds of ideas but I bow to your creativity, though after making you mourn the ones who hurt you most, I guess that’s to be expected. Anyway, I’m sure you want to be able to look those kids in the eye later… Oh, sorry Terra, too soon?”

As his words got her riled up and she went to attack, he pressed a clawed finger into the back of her neck and snapped it off as her body went limp.

“That looks painful, make sure you add it to her tab before you collect and remember to keep her encased as you work.”

“Don’t worry, before Amaterasu, I did a lot of dirty work for Tsukuyomi… Time to put that experience to good use. Tiamutael, time for ears only kiddo.”

Kyubi turned and erased what was left of the daughters, then was about to leave when she heard Tenko say something else.

“heads rained down on her

Her daughter screamed in her face

Terra knew Terror

My first Haiku since I was a Kitsune, how’d I do?”

“I hope you’re better at what you should be doing, or I’ll take over.” Kyubi engulfed herself in flames to burn away the remnants of her killing spree then opened a portal to move onto her next target.

Despite her words, she did have a few disjointed memories that referenced his work as Tsukuyomi’s one time enforcer before he defected to Amaterasu’s side.

Klaire Vs Plutinas

It was no mistake that Klaire found herself against Plutinas first, she had specifically asked for him as her first target for two reasons; The first was that she wasn’t certain she could forgive anyone who hurt him if it affected her son in some way, the second was that she was absolutely certain he deserved to die.

She didn’t want to simply defeat him though, she wanted to completely crush him completely in one fell swoop.

To this end, she didn’t stay alone for long. The instant she arrived at the far end of the complex, she opened a portal and beckoned the banshee through en masse

“Kill everyone apart from my prey and then return.” As she gave her order, a howling blanket of black fog swept out from the portal and took her words literally as they drained the world of every trace of life whilst making sure to give their ruler’s prey ample space.

As Klaire predicted, the prey in question didn’t think twice about charging head long into the battle, hurling empty threats and baseless insults.

The moment he saw Klaire, a murderous insanity crept into his mind, a vengeful desire to make the tormentor that had robbed him of the use of his arm suffer by any means necessary.

He had toyed with the idea of chasing the half-breed banshee that first assaulted him, but he had had no luck finding any of them and doubted they would ever meet again.

“Time to die you half-breed bitch! I’ll send you back to that race traitor and savour his anguish.”

Klaire howled and stripped his soul from him, his body immediately failing and suffering substantial damage as it hit the floor. Without delay she then approached and turned him to face the grotesque monument for nauseating excess that he apparently called home.

She let him watch as the black tide washed over his land, through his home, draining the life from everything in their path.

“I’ll thank you for the piece Carl used to make our son for the rest of my life. I really don’t know what made you hate non-humans and half-breeds so much and I don’t really care, but you were happy with your throne that rested on a mountain of corpses, so let me show you the horror of that reality.”

Almost as soon as the last of the banshees entered the home, the first to enter made its way out, dumping the body it had drained dry in the middle of the dead courtyard. With its work done, it returned to Faylorn, soon followed by all of its sisters.

The last to leave the mansion, dragged the shredded remains of a literal throne in one hand and the last corpse in the other, floating to the top of the mountain of bone, it smashed the tattered symbol of power into the bodies until it stood freely, then dumped the body and left as its sisters had done.

The sight was horrific, the dried out husks of a hundred bodies all in the standard military and bodyguard uniforms, whatever juices that had been left behind slowly draining into a puddle beneath them.

Klaire then sent her prey’s body to sit upon the throne, where it slumped to resemble a king bowing his head in forgiveness.

“It’s too late for that now.”

Klair shredded his soul, devoured a single piece, then sent the others to her kin.

As the portal closed, she rose into the sky, then she opened a portal to where Raziel was to take advantage of the insane powerboost Kyubi mentioned. The moment it seeped through to her, she thought Kyubi had undersold it if anything, but produced her rail gun to avoid anything surviving.

“Okay Tiamutael, send me to the next target in, 3, 2, 1…” She pulled the trigger and he recovered her instantly, she wasn’t sure how big the impact or blast would be and with a portal open to Raziel, she didn’t want to risk anything making it through.

In her absence, the metallic superconductor her railgun fired had immediately vaporised, the shockwave and energy release tore apart the planet’s gravitational binding energy as it was reduced to nothing more than an expanding cloud of plasma.

’Mum, just letting you know, that planet doesn’t exist anymore.’

Sol-Devourer Vs Sol

A vein in Sol’s forehead throbbed as the half-angler fish, half-human, completely abominable form of Sol-Devourer appeared in his halls. The thick metal sheets were clearly in place for just such a time, some manner of proofing that would allow Sol to defend his home without destroying it.

“Are you one of that boy’s children? Seriously? The boy shames the human race calling such abominations kin.”

“I am not one of the creator’s children, just a friend robbed of purpose he saw fit to renew. You may call me Sol-Devourer.”

A red circle began to glow around Sol, one which stretched outward as the inner most section turned a searing white that seemed to chase away the red. Sol used his heating up as an opportunity to boast of his victory against the countless swarms of The Carrion that once infested the worlds of mankind and suggest a fishman might not fare so well.

Sol-Devourer laughed, confident in his friend’s ability to create him a body that was fit for purpose and took a step forward onto the burning surface, digging his clawed foot into the metal sheet.

“…Stop your boasting. You yet burn cold, do you need kindling to stoke the flames I was promised, or should I douse you and eat you raw?”

Sol immediately ignited under the mockery spat at him, turning the entire hallway white in an instant, but Sol-Devourer just laughed and charged forward. Despite the obliterating power at his disposal, Sol had refrained from relying on it wholly and continued to train in conventional combat.

He had learned the error of that hubris the moment he met Gilgamesh and had been forced to accept that his heat wouldn’t be enough to win every fight, so as the monster charged he slid into stance and after picking his time, attacked.

The fist found nothing but vaporising air, he sensed the creature behind him, repositioned and spun back to strike with the back of his fist only to find nothing but thin air once again.

A deep dread filled Sol, he was far from reaching his top temperature, but the creature seemed entirely unaffected and undoubtedly exceeded his physical ability. He was no coward, but he was pragmatic and logical, which gave him the wherewithal to realise that this wasn’t a fight he could win.

“Damn it, I admit it, okay? Carl made a monster I have no chance of beating in hand-to-hand. My only chance is to reach my top temperature and it takes too long to build.”

Sol-Devourer deflated with disappointment. “Perhaps too good a job… I wanted to enjoy my first meal in eons. Fine, reach your top temperature, it’s far more civil to cook meat first.”

The flames of Sol’s body began to crackle as the flesh and bone man broke out in a nervous sweat, but he had been given a chance of surviving at least. He wanted to use the chance to either call for reinforcements or escape to let Gilgamesh know what was happening.

’Damn it all, those abominations yesterday somehow knocked out my ability to exert divinity externally. I had a feeling they were plotting something like this, but how the hell did the fox get so powerful?’

As the rant circled his mind, Sol-Devourer laughed, making him immediately aware that his thoughts weren’t private.

“Sorry to disappoint you, it was not Lady Kyubi or either Lady Klaire or Carl. That was but a rambunctious child with no other option than to protect her family, family you segregated, villainised and instigated violence against…”

Sol knew then why he was still alive, this wasn’t the war he thought it was, it was simply a spiteful retaliation for personal grudges. It was ignoble, petty and twisted, but that is how children acted and it was a child they had antagonised, it was a type of combat they had no experience in and hadn’t foreseen in the slightest.

“I won’t beg for my life, but why do you serve him?”

“He is a man that wants the best outcome for selfish reasons, it is a rare combination, but one that makes for the most magnificent leader. He wants to enjoy life without others’ conflicts annoying him, he will happily be considered a tyrant, but a tyrant that demands people treat each other with respect and dignity without fail hardly sounds undesirable.”

“What happens when power corrupts him, as it does all those who possess it?”

“He has two wives and many children, he would never get permission to become corrupt.” Sol-Devourer sensed that it was the end of the fight and stepped forward as the temperature cooled off.

His words made Sol laugh, though the laughter caught in his throat as the monster made towards him. “…So we made an enemy we had no chance of beating and were prepared to break all restraints in our ignorance? Fuck you Gilgamesh, you weren’t even a match for a child.”

Sol’s words practically echoed around Sol-Devourer’s jaws as the living weapon practically purpose built to end him prepared to bite down. To his surprise, the jaws ground to a halt as Sol-Devourer pulled back, leaving Sol without any sense of what was happening.

“Damn… Would you be willing to sign a contract?…”

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