Chapter 18 - Ethena's rage.
"Certainly, Lord Alcheus. Or she will grow too powerful to become incontestable." One of the people bowing before the towering man covered in numerous thick layers of a particularly bright and strongly raging flame, said with both awe and respect in his tone.
"Hmm. This is what we would do." Lord Alcheus said with his flaming, deep-red brows furrowed.
He then spoke further, "Since I can't leave my Fire God Hall, or I will totally draw the attention of the Scarlet God Hall and that of the many other Immortal Halls that are allies with them, I want you to secretively gather the best combative talent from all over our Immortal World and tell them to go either in groups or individually after Princess Ethena. Then anyone of them that is capable of returning with her head or severely mangled corpse, will get ten billion Gold Immortal Crystals from me."
"Wow! Alright, Lord Alcheus. We will certainly do as you have said." Another of the men bowing in serious adoration at Lord Alcheus, said with great astonishment but unbreakable resolve in his tone.
"Alright. Go now. Go do your jobs. And remember, 'secretively'. I don't want news of this getting to the Scarlet God Hall or their damned allies, or you will cause them to direct their attention towards the activities of my hall or that of my allies. Am I clear?!" Lord Alcheus asked loudly.
"Very clear, Lord Alcheus." The men who had straightened themselves responded loudly in unison.
"Good!" Lord Alcheus said with the nod of his head.
"Princess Ethena, your doom awaits you. I really can't wait for the day of your inevitable destruction." Lord Alcheus said darkly.
He then said further, "You should have been born as a normal Immortal from the Scarlet God Hall who are my strongest enemy rival. But since you chose to come to this world with a kind of incomprehensible power that will become a really great disturbance to me and my expanding vassal forces in the nearest future, you have damned yourself for death and destruction."
"When they hear of your death, I wonder how they would feel? And at the moment of deeply mourning your dispiriting, inglorious death, I will come to gruesomely slaughter them one after the other and then take total control of the entire Immortal World. The world, as we know it, will be in my grasp soon enough. Hahaha!!" Alcheus said and cackled in a rather unbridled manner, causing the utterly magnificent and grand building that he was in to tremble like some gargantuan beast wanted to break out from the earth directly beneath it.
...
A few hours later, the horse-drawn carriage arrived at the small village that Sharon and her son, Jake lived at.
When they finally appeared at the village, with everyone of them getting down from the carriage while Aerracles chose to feed the horse since it would be tired and hungry after all the movement that it had engaged in, Sharon took Ethena to their place and showed her where she would be staying till she decided to leave.
"Thank you, Mrs. Sharon." Ethena said appreciatively, while Sharon only nodded her head, as she didn't it see it as anything important to thank her for.
She then said with concern in her voice, "Let me go prepare something for all of us to eat. I am sure that we would all be tired and hungry by now."
"Right." Ethena said with the agreeing nod of her head.
Sharon then left Ethena's presence to go cook something for everyone of them to eat.
As soon as Sharon left, Aerracles arrived before Ethena and looked at her in the face with a smile that actually sent cold shivers down her spine.
"What is it?" Ethena asked, looking at Aerracles who came with the likely aim to stare admirably at her.
"Well, you are one beautiful celestial creature." Aerracles said while Ethena only looked at him with an indifferent expression in her face.
"I have heard that from several male Immortals from the Scarlet God Hall and many other Immortal Halls that I visited in the past. So, you should do better than that." Ethena said with a smile in her face.
"Oh. You are one ugly unearthly thing then." Aerracles said with a playful smile appearing in his face, while Ethena who was astonished that he could actually say such a thing, stared dead at him for a few moments before a rather negligible fuming expression manifested in her seraphic face.
"How dare you say that to me?" Ethena questioned as she gazed straight at Aerracles who only grinned because of the fuming expression that had surprisingly appeared in Ethena's previously calm face.
'So, she could get angry by saying just that? I guess she understands that she is really beautiful and wouldn't tolerate words fashioned to tarnish her beautiful and elegant appearance.'
'Marvelous!' Aerracles said loudly within himself and then smiled broadly.
Now, he was ready to go all out in mentioning things that will cause her to be rather angry at him. Though he had to be careful with his wordings, or she could turn his enemy in his very sight.
"Well, it's true. Or did I say wrong? Why don't you look at a mirror to see how discernibly ugly you are, Ethena?" Aerracles seriously said and then crossed his arms, waiting for Ethena's reaction which he had already predicted.
"I see. So, this is how you want to pursue me? Good luck with that." Ethena said and prepared to wrathfully leave his presence.
But just before she could turn around and leave, Aerracles abruptly appeared right in front of her using his distance-crossing power and immediately grabbed her by her two soft but powerful arms.
"Leave me alone." Ethena said once she realized what Aerracles had done.
"No, I won't. I want to tell you something that you need to know before you leave." Aerracles said with a smile in his face.
"I don't need to know anything. I no longer want to hear anything from you. Now, take your filthy hands off me this moment!" Ethena said and tried to release her arms from Aerracles's tight grasp. But she saw to her shock that Aerracles was actually, far physically stronger than her and that there was nothing that she could really do to release herself from Aerracles's insanely tight grip.
Feeling quickly defeated on just this basis, which then sparked rage within her for only that, Ethena suddenly unleashed a small-sized blast of her deathly bizarre power against Aerracles who wasn't expecting her to do what she did.
BANG!
Aerracles was instantly hurled like a catapulted stone to a distance of twelve feet away. Then he heavily landed with his back to the surface of the earth and still forcefully dragged across it for several feet more before coming to a complete halt.
"Ugh!" Aerracles said with the slightly displeased shake of his head.
Then when he tried getting back on his feet, he realized that he had been injured. The pocket-sized blast of majestic dark-purple power that Ethena angrily unleashed at him, had caused him numerous injuries, since his entire abdomen and chest were covered with shallow wounds that were beginning to actually deepen and rapidly fester.
"Ugh! Come on." Aerracles said with slight pain in his voice.
However, he wasn't angry, as he understood that he was the one who brought these upon himself.
Realizing what she had done out of rage as a result of her defeat during their physical strength showdown, Ethena quickly shot into the air and landed just before Aerracles who produced a delighted smile in his face.
"So, you do actually care about me." Aerracles said when Ethena landed right beside him to do something about the quickly-deteriorating wounds that he had sustained from the powerful lethal blast that she lashed out at him.
"Just shut up, you fool. Or I will hit you with another blast of my power." Ethena threatened. But her threat carried no impact, as there was no emotion behind it.
"Please, go ahead. It's totally worth it." Aerracles said and relaxed himself on the earth that his body was knocked to.
Ethena only shook her head and began to pull away the many slivers of her dark-purple power that unceasingly ravage Aerracles's flesh to a hand that she placed just above his abdomen and then dispersed them completely into the atmosphere in the next instant.
Once she finished doing that, the wounds that Aerracles sustained and somewhat refused to heal, began to rapidly regenerate.
"Wow! You have an exceedingly tough body, Aerracles. Is heightened body toughness one of your numerous passive abilities?" Ethena asked in shock, seeing how the strongly adhering, smoke-like slivers of her peculiar and purely destructive, dark-purple power were partially blocked from eating through the flesh of his abdomen and into the innards of his body where they will cause much more damages to his body and cause death.
"Well, I don't know about that. But what I do understand is that I have a very hard body, which is why I like engaging myself in hand-to-hand combat with my opponents because I believe they can't really hurt me." Aerracles said as he was being helped to his feet by Ethena who nodded her head in understanding as he spoke.
"Well, I will advise that you be careful around me. Or you won't really know how you ended." Ethena said with seriousness in her face and then left Aerracles's presence to return to the place that Sharon and her son resided.
...
Somewhere in the Immortal World, a deserted valley to be precise, were a group of people standing with powerful and suffocating auras exuding unstoppably from their towering and hefty, marred bodies.
These people, without surprise, were fugitive Immortals that the men from the Fire God Hall had gone searching for to go after Ethena and destroy her.
"Which of you Immortals are willing to go on a really dangerous errand for the Fire God Hall?" An Immortal from the Fire God Hall and was called Ljourne, asked with utmost seriousness in his face.
"Fire God Hall?! Hmm. What errand is that? Well, as long as there will be something nice to come out from it for me, then I am willing to do anything for the Fire God Hall." One of the Immortals in that group said.
"Good! Anyone else willing to be sent on a rather lethal mission for the Fire God Hall? I promise, something great is going to come out from it for you people." Ljourne said with deep suspense in his tone.
"Hmm. Something like what? We want to know. Do tell us." Another Immortal from that group said with intense curiosity in his face.
"Okay. To go After Princess Ethena, the Holy Daughter of the Scarlet God hall, we will reward anyone of you that is capable of returning with her battered head or badly strewn corpse with ten billion Gold Immortal crystals. That's a lot of money that I wouldn't dare to miss out on, fellow outcast Immortals. Just imagine what you could do with it." Ljourne said and looked at the dumbfounded outlawed immortals standing right before him with a confident but devilish grin in his face.