Broken spacetime stitched themselves back into coherency, transporting Zvezdnyy into the middle of a thin dirt road devoid of any grass.
Glancing at her new environment, Zvezdnyy marveled at the strange houses the people in the past lived in. This thin road led to a collection of houses made from a frame of timber, with the spaces between those frames colored in using strips of twigs connected using dried mud.
It was… much dirtier than what Zvezdny expected.
Did the peasants of the past really live like this? Zvezdnyy wondered. Even the poorest fellow in the United Earth Authority had housing more sturdy than the straw shack that seemed to come right out of The Three Little Pigs.
No matter, Zvezdnyy decided, she shall give these people better housing then.
With a single thought, Zvezdnyy appeared in the center of this village, right above the little roof of the water well.
No one noticed her at first, everyone was too busy loading heavy bags of seed and harvested wheat stalks to notice her.
"Hark! Denizens of this era!" Zvezdnyy announced herself, her words were automatically translated into a dialect these natives would understand, "I am the Zvezdnyy Rebenok, the Witch who will save all of humanity!"
Raising her left hand while placing a right on her chest, Zvezdnyy then continued, "I beseech thee, dwellers of this realm; what fervent desires lie within your hearts? Fear not, for I, the Zvezdnyy Rebenok, shall be the bestower of your wishes!"
The girl waited. Dozens of people stopped to look at the Witch who would save all of humanity, yet none made any moves. It was as though an impossible sight had just occurred right in front of their eyes— that their mind required a reset to properly process that impossible event.
Seconds passed with no replies, Zvezdnyy cleared her throat and continued despite the poor reception, "If my words find no depth in your beliefs, then I shall prepare a spectacle, a demonstration that shall dispel all skepticism."
Zvezdnyy looked around, trying to find a subhuman that she could turn into a true human. That always worked. Moreover, her Polkovodets were always proud of her whenever the Zvezdnyy graced a hospital and returned those subhumans their humanity.
With but a thought, those non-humans became whole again. Just as the day they were born.
Hmm… strange, no subhumans to be found. Everyone Zvezdnyy can see retained their four limbs, a pair of eyes, and all their digits.
Just then, the world darkened as a light source that outshone the sun appeared overhead. Tilting her head to look upward, Zvezdnyy saw countless arrows of light up in the sky, enough to blot out the sun with their collective illumination.
The area around her filled with a sound that Zvezdnyy found resembling a soothing rain. Piercing through the soothing sound of rain was a sharp scream coming from one of the villagers, who prompted others to break out of their stupor and start to run.
Perfect. If it was her Polkovodets, she'd probably just vaporize that downpour of arrows. But Zvezndyy isn't Kukulkan. She prefers a more flashier method.
Bringing two fingers in front of her mouth, Zvezdnyy announced; "Stars above and shadows deep. In this realm, our protection seeps. As I speak these words with ardent glee. Grant us Zeshchita and Prikaz. I desire an impenetrable shield!"
At first, it was as though nothing happened. Then, as that torrential rain under the name of catastrophe closed in, ready to decimate this no-name village of dozens of humans… those countless arrows suddenly stopped before they could reach the village.
Those countless arrows of light paused mid-air as though they had struck an invisible target. So numerous were the arrows that they appeared as this solid ceiling of light that blanketed the sky above the village.
"Now, begone!"
Zvezdnyy dramatically swung her arms, acting like a priest banishing a demon.
Those arrows vanished without a trace, like smoke on a windy day.
Stunned looks were directed at Zvezdnyy. The girl basked in it as she let out a large smirk.
"Praise me! For I have saved you all— eep!"
*WHOOSH*
An arrow faster than sound sliced through the air and sailed right past Zvezdnyy's head, completely collapsing a thatched house behind her.
If she had moved more than a single centimeter, that arrow would've nicked her skin.
May not have pierced it, but it would've been scary nonetheless.
Facing the source of that arrow, Zvezdnyy's eyes spotted the archer a kilometer away on a hill overlooking this village. Even despite the distance, Zvezdnyy noticed how the archer was nocking another arrow and drawing it back.
"Come here."
With a single gesture, the archer was brought right into the village and teleported right beside the well.
The archer was a girl with cat features on her head alongside a tail coming down from under her skirt. She was a hunter who wore verdant green and wielded a tall bow.
Zvezdnyy focused on the non-human features.
"Please no… don't let me see them…" The huntress muttered as her body shook, "Get me away! I need to get away!"
Go away? Does she want to run after trying to slay this entire village?
"Very well. I wish you to go away and not bother anyone."
The inhuman huntress was gone, expelled from the grand stage of reality by the wish of one Zvezdnyy Rebenok.
There wasn't even any appearance of gold particles as typical of when a Servant might return to the Throne of Heroes: Atalanta was there in one instant and disappeared in a loud collapse of a vacuum the next. The berserked hero was removed from the world in an illogical, impossible action that was comparable to True Magic.
In an act of nonchalance as though Zvezdnyy hadn't just wished away a famous Greek hero, the well-dressed girl turned her head to face the rest of the village.
"Worry not, inhabitants of this temporal domain; I, your guardian, have delivered salvation unto you all! As I promised as the Zvezdnyy Rebenok, the Witch who will save all of mankind."
"She is the Messiah!" One of the villagers cried out, "The Messiah reborn to save France from the clutches of the accused witch!"
Messiah? What's a 'Messiah'?
As Zvezdnyy pondered about the meaning of that word, the people all around her started bowing, worshipping the strangely dressed girl who appeared out of nowhere, only to save them from a rain of arrows.
Gazing at the groveling people singing out her praise, Zvezdnyy decided to just go along with it. There was this warm feeling in her chest.
"Yes," She said, "Yes I am the Messiah reborn!"
____________
Meanwhile
I flew across the skies of France. The vast untouched countryside was full of uncorrupted greenery.
It was… a sight to behold for sure. For the whole year, much of the planet was still a brown and red desert devoid of life and full of rotted meat. The atmosphere was choked with lethal levels of methane from the rotting corpse of sun-fused flesh.
Greenery was only possible in areas near a city. Trying to recreate an ecosystem is difficult in the sense that it is very fragile. Just one unexpected death of a top predator was enough to throw the whole structure into disarray, leading to a potential ecological collapse as the food web can no longer sustain itself.
I stared at the greenery for much longer than I'd like to admit. Such beauty was nonexistent in the era after Daybreak.
Ahhh.
Seeing this greenery reminded me of my primary mission; to solve death. To avoid that eternal afterlife.
So I raised a hand and sent out a stream of ionized gases; plasma by any other name. The streak of plasma cut across the kilometers of distance between me and the nearest group of wyvern in less than a single second, turning the flying reptiles into charred corpses that soon fell from the sky like flakes of snow.
I could vaporize them entirely. But then that'd be just overkill.
I then turned upward. As the planet's curvature became evident, my eyes turned back down onto the planet. I scoured the whole of France, trying to find that Grail signature.
I couldn't feel it like I could in Fuyuki.
Unlike in the United States, the locations within France were foreign to me. With my eyes, even from the upper atmosphere, I could easily spot clusters of human settlements as small as a castle. Well, castles are easy to spot since they're essentially mounts of stones.
Villages are more difficult, but I can easily discern them by the large fields of wheat and tilled dirt that always surround them.
My focus darted from place to place starting from the northern regions of France and going down south. Every second I peered at hundreds of villages, towns, and small cities. I took in every geographical detail of France from its mighty rivers to the vast plains and the tall mountains that spilled over from the nearby Alps.
I found a single place where the largest gathering of these wyverns lay. Like bees around a nest, these wyverns flew around that walled city. The wyverns were individually small enough that they were difficult to spot from such high up, yet clumped in such large numbers that they were like clouds.
Without a second thought, I dove down towards the earth. I couldn't hear the air screaming as I was now beyond the speed of sound. I appeared as this green meteor coming down from the heavens.
Now deep into the depth of the Troposphere; the base of the Earth's atmosphere, I slowed down, and the plasma sheath that surrounded my body from the orbital reentry also dissipated.
Without that superheated plasma blocking my view, I saw how vast wyvern swarms were approaching me.
Those wyverns numbered in the hundreds. Their opened mouths lit up, becoming brighter and brighter like someone adding more wood to a dying fire. From their mouths full of sharp teeth each the size of daggers came gouts of wyvern fire.
Hundreds of illuminating streaks of wyvern fire came right at me as I hovered a kilometer above Orleans. So numerous, so bright were their collective brilliance that a normal human would've become temporarily blinded.
More than that, I could see based on the infrared emission coming from these wyvern flames they're burning at crispy 3,000 Kelvin, over twice the temperature of freshly spilled lava. The vast distance that should've neutered the effectiveness of a normal fire wasn't applicable to ones that came from a creature as Mystery-charged as a wyvern.
It was a wall of fire, those hundreds of ropes of flame all combined. Destructive enough to instantly melt all the ice off the tip top of Mount Everest.
I closed my eyes as the firewall washed over me and bathed me in its purifying grace.
Seconds later after the flames passed by, I opened my eyes. Disappointment was clear in them.
I could barely feel the heat from those fires. If I were still a human, the heat from those flames would've been as though I touched freshly printed paper.
Before I could do anything else, I spotted an even larger— wait, four limbs alongside a pair of wings, that's a dragon, not a wyvern— in an area that was previously crawling with wyverns.
The black dragon raised its neck and shook off the wyverns that crawled on its skin like a husky getting rid of a coat of snow. It extended its wings fully, allowing me to see how it could cover a whole town in its shadows. It had teeth the size of swords and claws the size of cars, all of such sharpness its edge constantly comes in and out of focus.
The dragon unleashed a powerful roar that passed over me not three seconds later. It was loud enough that the entirety of France could hear it. The white-bluish symbol around its chest glowed alongside that roar like a power-up.
The dragon then flapped its wings, bellowing out a gust of wind that was comparable to a hurricane as it tried to fly.
I don't let it.
I blitzed down from the sky directly above the dragon, dropping like a falling brick. There, the instant before I physically touched the dragon I violated all laws of inertia and turned to the sides on a dime, looping around the body of the dragon until I was right underneath it.
The scales were a baby's breath away in terms of distance. If I could, I'd probably want to admire this mythological creature because honestly, who wouldn't want to properly see a dragon?
With mere microseconds to spare, I caught the dragon in my hands and took off, shoving and carrying this large reptilian mass with me to somewhere outside of this city.
I didn't want any civilian casualties if at all possible.
While the scales were individually smooth like the surface of a mirror, all of them combined together to give the dragon's skin a rough texture reminiscent of volcanic rocks.
A force from above suddenly impacted my back. It scratched my skin. Several scratches that are only noticeable under a lamp, and were thus easily healed.
The dragon was trying to stab me with its sharp claws. Trying to get me to stop. Trying to get me to drop it.
I don't.
I kept traveling, pushing the dragon along with me, passing rivers, forests, and rolling hills.
Once Orleans had disappeared from view, the tip of its tallest churches going underneath the horizon, only then did I stop.
Like a meteor strike, I adjusted my angle and drove the black dragon right into the ground. Trees snapped like toothpicks with those further away being unturned. Vast sums of dirt and rocks were dug up and thrown into the air as the dragon crashed, sending out tremors comparable to earthquakes in all directions.
The steady settling dirt veiled my line of sight across all spectrums of light except the longer wavelengths.
I hovered amid this cloud of dust, above the fallen dragon. Just as I pushed the dragon into the ground, I could feel how my pushing hands went through its scales and felt the soft wetness of its flesh.
"—?"
There was a massive bloom of intense thermal radiation on the infrared spectrum—
—A dull warmth seared across my whole body.
The dragon let out its fire breath. A torrent of blue-hot flames that could melt a mountain with just half an hour of constant, unending exposure.
Though unbearably hot for any other creature, I had no problem staying inside it permanently.
Nonetheless, I had a Grail to capture, and people to save from the Afterlife.
Flying through this flame uninterrupted, I felt the fire grow hotter the closer I was to the source.
Rearing back my fist, I punched right into the sky and slammed the dragon's jaw shut.
Teeth cracked, the breaking of the jawbone sent out a shockwave, and the dragon roared in pain as the torrent of Dragonfire stopped.
That single punch packed enough force to send the black dragon onto its back alongside breaking its jaw, leaving the lighter-colored belly open.
Let's end this fight.
Multiple orbs of plasma grew into existence alongside me as I neared the fallen dragon, who was whimpering in pain. It didn't move. Its jaw was almost torn off. Muscle strands of varying thickness were all that was left making sure the jaw was still attached.
All of its teeth were gone, shattered into tiny pieces that were embedded in the gum.
I grimaced at the brutality I displayed. That punch was merely meant to stun the dragon, maybe give it a concussion, not almost ripping its jaw off.
I… I have much better control over my strength than I did a year ago when I just signed on with the Company. Yet nonetheless, my control when I want to release somewhere between continent-shattering and wall-breaking-level strength isn't perfect.
It's not intuitive like if I just want to use normal human-level strength.
"I grant you the mercy of euthanasia: the end to that pain," I said while hovering just above it.
By my will, the plasma became so hot that everything that was flammable within a mile radius started burning.
The dragon's blood sizzled. Trees buried in dirt burst into flames. The ashes that came as a result of this dragon's previous fire reignited. The ground underneath the black dragon visibly sank as clouds of vaporized rocks erupted forth like steam from boiling water.
Temperatures that were only possible in stellar bodies made their appearance here on Earth. Thick jets of oxygen, nitrogen, dihydrogen monoxide, carbon dioxide, and iron once trapped in dirt and rocks were now released through thermal decomposition, blocking my view.
Before the dragon could suffer anymore, I blasted it with currents of starstuff that were in the hundreds of thousands of degrees.
In a single second, the dragon was vaporized: disintegrated into nothingness.
By the time I was done, I was hovering above a lake of lava that spanned the length of multiple city blocks. Looking down at where the dragon used to be, I saw a rapidly closing tunnel inside this lake of lava.
The plasma drilled into the ground, vaporizing everything in its path. Now that the plasma was gone, the walls of the hole were coming in. Lava with the consistency of water was flowing in to fill this hole.
In seconds, the tunnel fully closed.
My attention turned elsewhere; to the world around me. Once again, I was reminded of just how destructive I am. The pristine forest that would be invaluable in the aftermath of When Day Break was now a slice of hell itself, slotted into France.
The sky above was choked with curtains of thick black smoke as trees at the edge of the lava lake burned with a ferocity unheard of in a normal wildfire.
At the very least the city was untouched. That much care was needed.
My head turned towards where I came from, turning to face where Orleans should be. Without a second thought, I took off away from this lake of lava.
Time to grab this Grail and end this.
It can't be that hard, can it? Even this dragon was a breeze and this was the largest thing I saw in Orleans.
Surely then, I can just simply take the Grail and end this Singularity. The wisdom that comes from an ancient mage grows ever closer…
_______
AN: Same Beta as always