Chapter 136
His right shoulder, wrapped in black jarik cloth, lifted the bazooka from the year 4444 AD that he had been holding all this time, its long, cold barrel now aimed straight downward, toward the point where the five-headed Abnormal still stood with its five necks swaying gently, as if unbothered by the rain of bullets pouring into its domain.
Tegar's finger pulled the trigger without hesitation, and the missile shot forward, leaving behind a thin trail of smoke that was immediately swept away by the wind, moving at a speed that, while not as fast as Ashita's bullets, carried an explosive force specially designed for creatures immune to conventional weapons.
But Tegar did not stop there.
With a movement so fast it was nearly invisible, his left hand reached into the pocket at his waist, pulling out six small blades with sharp tips as if they could pierce anything, even time itself.
He threw them one by one, not with ordinary muscle strength, but with an energy-driven force from the glasses on his temple, which he had activated since the beginning of the battle—signature glasses of the 42nd century capable of calculating trajectory, velocity, and momentum with a precision impossible for ordinary humans.
The six blades shot forward, following the missile that had already launched ahead, and whether by strategy or technological miracle, all six managed to attach themselves around the missile, escorting it, protecting it, maintaining a close distance between blade and main projectile, like loyal guards accompanying a king into battle.
Arya, who witnessed all of this from afar, felt something stir in his chest—not because he envied Ashita and Tegar's strength, not because he feared they would win first, but because he sensed something was off about the way they fought, the way they complemented each other, the way they moved like two sides of a single whole.
He turned to Nirma, searching for a reaction, but her face remained as flat as ever, her sharp left eye still fixed on the target below, revealing nothing even though Arya was certain that inside her mind, a civil war between admiration and irritation was taking place.
Arya clenched his hand tightly, not out of anger, but because he knew he had to do something as well, that he could not just stand still while two time travelers from the opposing team demonstrated what they had.
He reached into his shirt pocket with a slow yet deliberate motion, his fingers trembling slightly from adrenaline as they grasped a shirt button, a small object that seemed useless, unremarkable, as if it could fall off at any moment and be lost in the dust.
But Arya knew—he knew this was no ordinary button, that it had been prepared long ago, ever since he realized that one day he would face an enemy that could not be defeated with conventional weapons.
Arya closed his eyes, allowing darkness to envelop his vision, letting his other senses take over.
He felt the wind still blowing, heard the liturgy echoing in the distance, sensed the vibrations of missiles and bullets streaking below, and most importantly, he felt the presence of the Abnormal—the presence of the five-headed creature standing still in the midst of swirling dust, waiting, observing, perhaps smiling with its five mouths that he had never seen yet always felt.
Ten seconds he remained in that silence—ten seconds that felt like ten years—and when he finally opened his eyes, something had changed in his gaze, a clarity that had never been there before, a certainty born from long contemplation.
He shouted a single word, a word that could not be heard by Nirma beside him because it was not meant for human ears, but for the button in his hand, for the technology embedded within it, for the power he had long kept only for the most critical moment.
He threw the button upward, into the gray sky of Heraclea Cybistra, and in the air the small object began to spin—once, twice, ten times, fifty times, until a hundred rotations occurred in an absurd span of time, moving faster than a coin tossed into the air, becoming a small vortex too difficult to follow.
And from that vortex, from behind the button spinning a hundred times, light was born.
Not ordinary light, not a blinding white flash, but a laser of five different colors—red blazing like fire from the depths of hell, yellow bright like a dying sun, pale green like poison coursing through veins, deep blue like an ocean in the midst of a storm, and dark brown like soil that swallows nameless corpses.
The five colors emerged together, merged, separated, and merged again, like a dance of light choreographed by a force beyond any known laws of physics.
The laser shot upward, so high it nearly touched the clouds, surpassing the position of the four of them still hovering in the air, surpassing the boundaries of Heraclea Cybistra now blurred by mist and dust, and for a moment Arya felt that he had released something he could no longer control, that the five-colored laser now had a life of its own, a purpose of its own, a destiny of its own.
But then, precisely when the laser reached its highest point, precisely when Arya began to think he might have made a mistake, it turned—turned with elegance, turned with certainty—and began to descend, began to strike, began moving in the same direction as Ashita's bullets and Tegar's missile, toward the five-headed Abnormal still standing in the Muddy Land, and by coincidence—or perhaps not coincidence at all—the position of the laser was not far from Ashita and Tegar's attacks, as if these three assaults from three different directions had been arranged to meet at the same point, at the same second, at the same target.
Amid the vortex of three attacks streaking from different directions at speeds beyond comprehension, the five-headed Abnormal did not step back even once.
It simply stood there, its small body, barely one meter tall, appearing fragile amidst the approaching waves of destruction, yet its five long necks began to move in a strange rhythm, swaying like hypnotized serpents, and one by one, the mouths on each head opened.
Not ordinary mouths, but openings wider than should be possible, revealing a dark cavity within that had neither teeth nor tongue, only a void vibrating at an unnatural frequency.
And from those five mouths emerged the third liturgy, a sound no longer like whispers or soft melodies, but a perfect chorus—so perfect that Nirma, hearing it from above, nearly forgot that this sound came from the mouth of a creature that should not exist in any universe.
To be continued…