The wine glass shattered into sand, the liquid vaporizing instantly as a tremor ran through the mansion.
‘What the hell was that?!’
It made no sense! At first, the kid had rely scread his lungs out like a lunatic: just like he’d done last year. But he hadn’t seed capable of doing any more than that. So… how exactly had the rest of this co to pass?
Thinking back, Rhaziel realized the change had occurred while that teacher held the kid against the ground. It was after that that his entire deanour shifted. One second, he’d been little more than a barking boy, more irritating than harmful. Then, as if possessed by a demon, he’d pulled all sorts of tricks out of thin air, ultimately wrecking the whole place up.
Of course, he didn’t care about the physical damages. The repairs cost peanuts, and they had more than enough slaves left to teach everyone on the planet. Not to ntion that they didn’t even need the slaves, strictly speaking. Granted, the Green-borns he enjoyed putting on display were on limited supply, but he had plenty of those too.
He didn’t really mind the mortals’ opinions either. It was their fault anyway: for failing to capture that runt. Rather, it was the implications of the scandal that angered him. Not only had the boosting art leaked, but the very manner in which that kid had escaped irked him to no end.
‘Those moves… the sa ones those savages used…!’
How long had it even been since he last saw them? It shouldn’t be possible for anyone on Felmara to learn them. Rhaziel had personally scrubbed the spell free of its useless physical components, keeping only its magical essence behind. The slaves that taught the course were always monitored too. They were only supposed to teach Internal and External Flow: nothing else. Very few of them even knew the rest of the technique in the first place.
The only ones who could have taught him were the refugees hiding like rats back on Huehue, or the captured ones fighting in the coliseums. Even so, no mortal could have crossed the vast distance separating the two solar systems without help from a god.
‘No… that still doesn’t explain anything!’
Even if one of those savages sohow made it to Felmara, the body-possession spell couldn’t have co from Huehue. The natives there had no affinities, nor any Decrees, having never given birth to a single titan. In that, they were similar to Felmara, though the reasons for it weren’t.
Despite being blessed with a favourable climate and having co far with their technological advancents, Felmara was a smaller planet. Their low population inevitably led to much fewer gods and, thus, a lower chance of a prodigy erging among them.
Huehue, on the other hand, was much larger. It was their pure affinities that had held them back for most of their history, weakening their warriors and limiting their prospects.
This was why Rhaziel had chosen to attack them in the first place, looking to expand his people’s territory by stealing sobody else’s. And he would have easily succeeded too, if they hadn’t co up with that technique of theirs.
Of course, he could have given up on them at that point, and picked one of the countless worlds without sapients to colonize, had it been just land he wanted. Land alone wasn’t enough, however. What good would it do to expand their living space or their population if they didn’t have enough resources for everyone to advance?
That was why he’d remained fixated on Huehue: it was simply the closest fertile land up for grabs. Besides, even though their boosting art had made them a tougher target, it had also sweetened up the deal in the process. Unable to defeat them by himself, Rhaziel had invited others to aid him in his conquest. All his allies had been in a similar spot, hailing from smaller worlds and seeking to expand.
Of course, sharing the new real estate with others hadn’t been ideal, but the spell had more than made up for it.
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‘Did our allies get greedy?’ he wondered, creasing his brow at the possibility.
He didn’t think any of them had the ans to pull this off, but it did make more sense than the alternatives. Perhaps, they’d grown tired of sharing and sought to claim the rest of Huehue for themselves.
But he quickly shook his head. None of them was stupid enough to do that. The Dance was a lot more valuable than the land. Regardless of their ambitions, everyone in the alliance understood the need to keep the spell under wraps. If it leaked, they would instantly lose an important advantage over the rest of the cosmos.
Besides, there were other elents in the story that didn’t add up. Rewinding the recording, he played it back, starting from a point that had piqued his interest.
‘There… when he stunned the guards. That wasn’t just the boy’s air affinity at play.’
Rhaziel couldn’t use Mana Sense through the recording, but his experienced eyes still caught many details sobody else might have missed. Not a drop of blood had escaped from the wounds. That, coupled with the guards’ pained expressions pointed towards a soul attack. But that wasn’t all. The spell had done way too little damage for a Yellow.
‘Orange? Is the actual culprit even weaker than the darn kid?’
There was more. Soul users weren’t that common, but Rhaziel had still encountered several throughout his long life. That wasn’t soul mana. At least, not entirely.
‘Affinity fusion?! With pure or water mana, perhaps?!’ the colour drained from Rhaziel’s face, as he felt more than re shock or anger for the first ti today. ‘Don’t tell the Moirais are involved!’
His hair stood on end, a shiver running down his spine as he pondered the implications. If the Moirais had chosen to back Huehue, it was all over for Felmara.
‘No… I’m getting ahead of myself.’ he grabbed his trembling hand, forcing himself to calm down.
The Moirais didn’t need to sneak around. If they wanted them gone, they could obliterate them in a heartbeat. But why would they? The only thing they might possibly want from either Felmara or Huehue would be Mana Flow. Everything else, they already had in spades.
‘If that’s the case, then the matter is already over. They have what they want, so they should leave us alone.’
Still, this couldn’t be the whole picture. Even if news about the boosting art had leaked to the Moirais, they could have demanded it directly. He would have been forced to hand it over willingly. Why go about it in such a roundabout manner?
Then, there was what had happened at the very end.
That portal had ford way too smoothly, with minimal preparation, no visible effort and without leaving any unnecessary distortions around it. No mortal could have produced it. Certainly no Yellow or Orange.
Plus, Rhaziel had personally investigated the scene later. The trail hadn’t led him far, though he’d seen enough to know the runts had left the planet already. Any god talented in space magic could have accomplished sothing similar, but not nearly as… cleanly.
‘tatron’s Decree too?!’
While the Vault wasn’t quite at the Moirais’ level, it was still often regarded as a peak faction. tatron didn’t need to sneak around like this either…
No matter how much he scrambled his brain, Rhaziel just couldn’t understand how everything was connected. Huehue, the Moirais and the Vault… The culprit was related to all of them, sohow, but not from any of those places directly.
‘No… that look he gave … He was acting alone: not on anyone’s orders! He was too emotional! Everything he did was just a montary impulse…’
Rhaziel felt his blood boil at the re mory. What sort of joke was this?! A mortal, threatening a god?! There hadn’t been an ounce of fear in the boy’s eyes… Just rage!
When was the last ti a mortal had dared to look at him like that?! No, it hadn’t happened! Even before his ascension, everyone had treated him with utmost respect! Of course they had: he’d been a Green-born! The pride of their world!
That kind of unconcealed hatred aid towards him… He’d only seen it from other gods!
Rhaziel clenched his fists, the temperature in the room rising by a thousand degrees. Half the furniture was incinerated in an instant, the rest already lting. The sliver of pressure leaking out of his body shattered the walls into dust. Even his clothes burned, the jewels covering him vaporizing as the enchantnts failed to protect them. His mane flared up, dancing furiously in the air.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” his eyes teared up as he broke into sardonic laughter, each pang slamming into the building like a teor.
Floor after floor ca crashing down, the marble tiles disintegrating before they even neared him. Soon, the entire mansion was wiped off the face of Felmara. But the destruction didn’t end, only continuing to spread to his surroundings.
The ground beneath him cracked, deep chasms splitting the land into islands as magma rose from the depths. A ripple of red ran through the grass, leaving only ashes in its passing. A lake in the distance boiled into plus of white, the clouds above rolling and tumbling. Sparks of lightning coursed through them, the very sky roaring alongside him.
“Co then, you insolent worm!” he bellowed. “Whoever you are! Whatever hole you’ve crawled from!”
Blood dripped down his knuckles, his chest heaving up and down.
“I’LL WAIT FOR YOU!!”
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