Chapter 66: Rekka: I~ am~ al~rea~dy~ go~ing~ at~ full~ speed~
"What kind of destructive power is this?"
Gepard gritted his teeth, his boots sliding backward against the frozen earth. He propped up his massive, heavy guitar case with one arm, planting himself firmly in front of his Silvermane Guards to shield them from the blinding, suffocating heatwave tearing toward them.
A burst of heavy, mechanical music violently tore through the freezing air.
Ahead of them, the flames expanded with terrifying ferocity. The ambient temperature spiked from sub-zero to a boiling inferno in a fraction of a second. Within a fifty-meter radius, the perpetual snow of Belobog instantly flashed into thick, blinding steam and billowing white smoke.
Sam stepped directly onto the scorched, glowing ground. The heavy mechanical boots crushed the twisted, crystalline bodies of the Fragmentum monsters with sickening ease. Under the sheer pressure of the high-temperature airflow, those shattered fragments detonated into secondary explosions of raw energy. These were terrifying aberrations—creatures that normally required the Silvermane Guards to execute flawless tactical cooperation, and often demanded the bloody sacrifice of their elite warriors just to bring one down.
Against Sam, they could not survive a single strike.
"The Stellaron Hunters each possess the ability to destroy an entire planet single-handedly. This is just Sam's preferred method."
Rekka spoke casually from his vantage point, his voice cutting through the roar of the flames. Then, he leaned over the edge and shouted down to the captain below.
"Officer Gepard, I highly suggest you order your subordinates to fall back. There is going to be a secondary blast!"
Gepard's eyes widened behind his visor. "Secondary blast?"
The warning barely left Rekka's lips before the scorched earth beneath Sam's metallic feet suddenly caved inward. A blinding ring of concentrated energy condensed around the mecha, and a devastating shockwave erupted outward, using Sam as ground zero.
"Everyone, fall back!"
Gepard's roar sounded incredibly distant, swallowed instantly by the deafening boom of the explosion. He hoisted the heavy guitar case higher, locking his shoulder behind it to form an impenetrable barrier for the trembling guards at his back. The shockwave slammed into his shield like a physical battering ram. A dull, heavy gong echoed across the snowfield as Gepard was pushed back, his armored boots plowing two deep, smoking furrows into the frozen dirt.
Amidst the swirling embers and settling ash, Sam simply shook his metallic hands, shedding the residual heat.
"Mission complete."
By the time the group finally returned to the Administrative District, the sky had already bled into a deep, bruising black.
Rekka and the rest of the Express crew were escorted to the Goethe Hotel to rest, while Gepard immediately marched toward Qlipoth Fort to deliver his report to the Supreme Guardian.
The grand office was suffocatingly quiet. Gepard had just concluded his briefing. He had spared no detail, recounting every single movement of the strange outsiders—how the chaotic one casually detected the invisible boundaries of the Fragmentum, how they openly debated the cosmic origins of the Stellaron, and how that terrifying silver mechanical armor had purged an entire high-threat zone of Fragmentum creatures in the blink of an eye.
Cocolia stood motionless by the towering arched window, her back turned to the heavy oak doors.
"Solved a whole wave of Fragmentum monsters in an instant..."
She repeated the words slowly, letting the sheer absurdity of the statement roll off her tongue.
Deep within the recesses of her mind, the insidious whispers of the Stellaron began to crawl up her spine once more.
'Accept me... accept the power... you can save them... you can make all this end...'
Her jaw locked tight. A sharp pain flared in her temples. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head violently, digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands until the physical sting grounded her.
As utterly infuriating as that chaotic outsider was, he had been absolutely correct about one thing—the Stellaron was the rotting core of this entire disaster.
"Tomorrow," she whispered to the frosted glass. "Let them go tomorrow."
Cocolia had no logical reason left to stop them.
She turned her head slightly, her voice returning to its usual cold, authoritative cadence. "Strengthen the security perimeter around Qlipoth Fort. Tomorrow morning, you will personally lead your squad of Silvermane Guards to escort them to Everwinter Hill. Before then, if they make any attempt to approach the Underworld, you are to stop them by any means necessary."
Gepard struck his chest in a crisp salute. "As you command."
At the stroke of midnight, the central plaza of the Administrative District was entirely deserted, save for two figures sitting on a frozen bench.
Silvermane Guards patrolled the distant perimeter, their boots crunching rhythmically against the snow. Rekka had specifically chosen the wide-open plaza tonight. He needed the space, just in case his daily Path shift decided to turn him into something massive enough to crush the hotel.
Dan Heng sat beside him, his spear resting casually but securely against his knee. "How much longer?"
"About... ten minutes?" Rekka tapped the glowing screen of his terminal, squinting at the countdown. He threw a sideways glance at the stoic guard. "What, are you more nervous than I am?"
"It is not nervousness." Dan Heng kept his gaze fixed on the falling snow. "It is the logical concern that you might turn into something we cannot handle."
"Like what?"
"IX, the Nihility."
Rekka raised an eyebrow, a faint smirk playing on his lips. "Maybe."
"If it is Nihility, it will be a catastrophic problem. The same applies to Voracity."
A heavy silence settled between them, broken only by the howling wind sweeping through the empty streets.
"What you said on the observation tower today..." Dan Heng finally spoke, his voice dropping lower. "About your conjectures regarding the Stellaron. How certain are you?"
"This topic isn't exactly suitable for a deep conversation right now." Rekka leaned back, stretching his arms over the back of the bench. "Once we leave this frozen rock, I'll compile a complete set of data for the Express."
Time bled away, minute by agonizing minute.
Rekka checked his terminal one last time. Sixty seconds remained.
"Dan Heng."
"Hmm?"
"If I turn into Nihility or Voracity... remember to grab everyone and run as far away as possible. Don't worry about me. I can handle it myself."
Dan Heng's grip tightened imperceptibly on his spear shaft. "...Understood."
"I'm serious." Rekka stood up, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck, preparing his body for the impending cosmic shift. "No matter what terrifying monstrosity I become, I'm still me inside. It's just that sometimes... it's not very convenient to communicate."
"Like when you turned into a bug?"
"Yes, exactly like turning into a bug."
"Oi, aren't you guys sleeping? It's the middle of the night!"
March 7th and Stelle suddenly popped out from behind a snow-covered monument, startling the quiet atmosphere.
Rekka blinked, looking past them. Sam stood silently in the deep shadows of an alleyway, while Delta crouched on top of a nearby streetlamp, staring unblinkingly down at the mecha from the opposite side of the plaza.
"Why is everyone here?" Rekka asked, genuinely bewildered.
"That's the best part about walking the Path of Trailblaze. We can stay awake for a ridiculously long time, or just accumulate all our fatigue and sleep for three days straight." March 7th grinned, spreading her hands in a grand gesture.
Snowflakes swirled down, catching the dim, amber glow of the streetlights. Rekka stood dead center in the plaza, looking up at the heavy gray sky, waiting for that familiar, reality-bending sensation to wash over him.
"Do you think if everyone comes out to accompany you at this exact time every single day, it would count as some kind of ritual?" March mused, tapping her chin.
"It definitely counts," Stelle nodded in absolute seriousness. "Let's call it the 'Accompanying Rekka's Big Transformation Ritual'."
"That name is way too long," March complained.
"Then how about we just call it the 'Great Change Ritual'?"
"That sounds even weirder, okay! Why does everything have to be related to 'Great Change'?"
The Supreme Guardian had not slept a single second. She had spent the entire night pacing the cold marble floors of Qlipoth Fort, her mind spiraling over the outsiders, the Stellaron, and the fate of Belobog.
When the first pale light of dawn finally broke, she walked over to the towering windows and grabbed the heavy velvet curtains.
She pulled them open.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her knees instantly buckled, and she had to grab the windowsill to stop herself from collapsing straight to the floor.
Outside the window, blotting out the morning sun entirely, was a figure of absolute, beyond understanding scale. Cocolia had never seen it with her own eyes, but the moment she looked upon it, her soul recognized it with absolute, terrifying certainty. This was not an abstract collection of lines. This was not a vague, romanticized depiction carved into the ancient texts of the Architects.
This was a real, sun-blotting, world-dwarfing existence that commanded absolute awe just by existing.
"Preservation..." she breathed, her voice trembling.
The colossal entity, forged of glowing amber and cosmic stone, held a massive celestial hammer. It was simply standing there, silently watching the tiny, fragile city of Belobog.
The Aeon of Preservation was watching them.
Down below, Rekka was currently experiencing the bizarre sensation of piloting a small fraction of Qlipoth's divine body.
He felt a bit strange. Fortunately, the Path of Preservation did not carry the same violent, mind-altering bloodlust as the Path of Destruction. It didn't make him want to annihilate galaxies. At most, his massive, rocky hands just felt incredibly itchy, and he had an overwhelming, burning desire to pour industrial amounts of concrete.
Down in the plaza, Stelle was already swinging around a blazing, incredibly cool red greatsword-like lance. That was the Blessing of Preservation Rekka had casually handed her right at the crack of dawn.
Yes, Rekka could hand out divine blessings now!
The Aeon's smurf account came with full administrative privileges.
Feeling the itch in his hands reach its peak, Rekka casually raised his cosmic hammer and brought it down against the edge of the atmosphere, effortlessly adding a massive, shimmering Crystal Wall to the entire planet of Jarilo-VI.
He paused, his tectonic mind churning. A Crystal Wall wouldn't work if it didn't have a door. If the Astral Express couldn't get back in, Pom-Pom would have to crash the train into the planet all over again. He carefully carved out a designated entry point in the barrier.
In truth, Rekka's current physical form was actually considered quite small for an Aeon. He was currently only about the size of the planet Jarilo-VI itself. If he really pushed it, it wasn't impossible to grow even larger.
Moving with the agonizing, grinding slowness of shifting tectonic plates, Rekka turned his massive, amber-glowing head and looked down at the impossibly tiny speck that was the Astral Express crew.
His voice echoed across the atmosphere, vibrating through the very bedrock of the planet in a slow, booming, devastating drawl.
"Good~ mor~ning~ eve~ry~one~. I~ am~ al~rea~dy~ go~ing~ at~ full~ speed~"
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