Nova activated her suit, turning the thin white cloak into a metallic suit of armour.
The metallic material of the armor wasn't covering her stomach and joints, to provide mobility. Instead, those parts were replaced by another material that was black and stretchy.
Nova blinked from her spot to right in front of the white owl, surprising the cute but not so little beast.
The owl hooted and dashed in the opposite direction. But Nova's outstretched hands still grazed it and pulled off some of it's feathers.
The beast made a face of relief though, as if it had just escaped the grasps of death. Alas, that brief moment of reprieve it had gotten was just that.
BOOM!
Nova suddenly shot towards it with a burst of yellow light.
The bird, with urgency, took a sharp turn to the right only to hear another boom and lose more of its tail feathers.
"Eek!" It shrieked in fear and panic. The human it had stolen from was really fast. The owl looked at the girl behind it and then suddenly threw the white amulet in its beak down into its mouth.
"!!!" Nova's expression twisted horribly in anger as she felt her blood boil. "Raaah!!!" The colour yellow encased her body so much that it was hard to discern if she was still a human or just a burning meteor.
BOOM!!!
[Skill: Photon Blast has been activated.
150EP + 100 Stamina will be consumed per second.]
The air beneath her feet exploded as she activated her fastest mobility skill. And effectively enough, she had reached right in front of the owl in just half a second.
Thrusting her sword at its stomach, she went in for a pierce. She was going to dig out the amulet from the bird's stomach.
The sword pushed through any air resistance, making slight 'bangs' as it moved through the sky. But as the sword made contact with the frightful owl, Nova unexpectedly felt like she was dipping her weapon into a river instead of through flesh and organs.
The feeling she got also had a slight pull on her weapon, and it would most definitely be impossible to be able to sense that pull with the amount of force her sword was thrust. But she did feel it because of how all that immense force disappeared as soon as it touched the owl's feathers.
"...What?" Nova's face depicted the colour of surprise. She looked at the white owl and at that instant, time seemed to stop.
The beast also had a look of wonder and astonishment as it stared at her, but as soon as it tilted its head, its back suddenly crashed into an obstruction.
Both Nova and the owl tumbled down till they finally fell to the foot of a tall cliff. And when the falling rocks and the clouds of dust settled over them, the owl found Nova sitting on it with her legs pressing down it's wings as she stared back into the owl's eyes.
Despite what had just happened, she still had to get her amulet before the owl digested it. As a matter of fact, maybe the owl had an ability that could turn its body into something like a ghost's ectoplasm.
'That must be what caused that sinking effect.' After all she knew a person who also used purple ectoplasm to move through attacks. And she knew how the skill worked.
The owl's face soon started showing a look of nervousness. It didn't like the desperate vibe that was emanating from Nova's body. And it looked like it didn't understand why the human was behaving this intensely when it just taking one of her things.
Of course, the owl didn't know how much trouble she had gone through to reach this far away from home.
For some reason, multiple golden symbols were starting to appear around the owl's body, but Nova couldn't care less about them.
She had spent days on this journey to find something that amulet was leading her to. And although she could say that she enjoyed the engaging journey itself, it was still very frustrating to know that all her efforts were reduced to uselessness right when she had almost accomplished her goal.
The oversized fluff ball had ruined everything just like that, but Nova still had a little hope left.
Maybe she could still see the white path if she took back the amulet. "I'll make this quick."
She pressed down harder on the owl's wings and three white swords of light materialized above it's head.
[Light Molding: Sword]
The owl started to panic even more as it shook it's body helplessly beneath Nova's. It was bigger than her, but didn't have as much strength, it looked like it was built mainly for its speed. But Nova's surpassed that too.
As it looked like it was about to faint out of shock and fear, the cliff above them suddenly broke into two.
BOOM!!!!!!!
The top half of the cliff soon started to fall towards both the owl and Nova.
It was now Nova who had the look of shock as her eyes drifted upwards. She stared at the spaces between the falling chunks of rocks.
And right in the middle of all that destruction was the person she was sure was responsible for it: A beautiful man with sharp looking demonic red eyes.
It was at that moment that Nova realized, she didn't know where this place was.
———
A Few Hours Ago, In Ogmore...
A group of people hiding in one of the mountains were watching closely, at another mountain near it.
Those people were seven in number, six in dark blue battle suits and the final member in an even darker shade of blue.
This mysterious group had actually arrived since over a week ago, and had been staying in the same cave, watching the same person. And the watching itself was only the first part of their mission.
But after spending almost two weeks of doing nothing but stay in a cold and dark cave, questions started to grow in their idle minds. With the dormant and most common one being,
"Are we sure we're not watching a dead person? I mean, he is in a casket."
One of the Squad 1 members asked. He then wrapped his arm around the shoulders of another man who was sitting in front of a computer.
"Get off me Tony." Kai shrugged off the complaining man's arm.
"Come on man, my pits don't smell that bad." Tony said with a chuckled.
"No one's talking about your pits boy!" Another man joined in. He was named Aaron. "It's your speech hole that stinks!" He added.
Saying that, the other members of the squad burst into laughter.
Seconds later though and they all turned to look in the computer Kai was using.
Although Tony had bad mouth hygiene, he still made a point. The person they were watching had been lying in that same spot since they came to Ogmore some days ago. And so far, his muscles hadn't even twitched, much less moved.
It was like the man was in a state of coma. If comas didn't involve the beating of the victim's heart that is.
"It's fascinating really." Kai suddenly broke the silence.
"None of his organs seem to be working at all and yet there's an unnatural flow of Energy moving around his system still keeping him alive, preserving them."
His teammates stared at him, clueless at his new discovery.
"Don't you see?" Kai continued.
"If a person like me and you could do the same, we could increase our stats just by hibernating, and we'd be able to live forever!
If our organs grow too old to not work anymore, we could just use Energy, it's literally everywhere in the atmosphere, so it'll be like an infinite lifeline."
He finished after catching a breath from too much excitement. "This is practically immortality, outside of the Sacred Monarchs' Sanctum!"
[A/ N:
S-rank - Lord's Sanctum,
SS-rank - Sacred Monarchs' Sanctum.]
Hearing this, the rest of his teammates opened their eyes wide in shock and with dilated pupils. For about thirty seconds the six of them didn't break eye contact with Kai.
But soon Tony asked a critical question,
"Hold up, does being an 'Infected' mean being normal, or naturally messed up in the head." Tony raised. He didn't know whether the title, 'Infected', meant the sleeping person would be automatically bad, but it was highly likely.
A few days ago, they found a half dead body in the area. And although they were unable to tell if it was it, it was probably the Infected that put the man in that state.
"I... don't know, but at least it can't harm anybody out here." Kai answered.
The leader of the team placed his hand on Kai's shoulder and continued. "I have trust in our strength, but even I don't know if we can take that thing down at its wake. So if things start to go south, we evacuate."
"Yeah about that, wouldn't it be better to get rid of it now? It's still sleeping isn't it, if we could just —"
Harry, the leader stared at Tony with a frown. "This is what the Dean has ordered, and you of all people should know not to disobey his orders."
Hearing that, Tony clenched his fists as he seemed to be recalling a certain past event. "Yeah, I understand."
The cave went silent for a while, before everyone eventually went back to doing their own thing for now.
However before they could fully engage in their various activities, an alarm rang out within the dark and gloomy cave.
BEEP BEEP!!! BEEP BEEP!!! BEEP BEEP!!!
"What?!" Kai sprung up from his seat.
From the look of panic on his face, the others made a common guess of why he was acting like that.
"Is it..." Aaron didn't finish his sentence, but it was pretty obvious what he was going to ask.
"No no. He's still asleep." Kai answered, much to their relief. They had been preparing for a fight, but for some reason, they were still scared of that possibility. They might have even preferred it if it never woke up.
However...
"But look at this footage. There's somebody else inside the cave with him."
From the feed of the cameras placed in the Infected's cave the group could see a man walking cautiously towards the figure on the floor.
But there shouldn't be other people apart from them around these mountains. They had given an order to the province at the center of the highlands to avoid just that. But it seemed like some people couldn't stand being told what to do.
Harry sighed and shook his head. "Let's go get that idiot out of there."
"Captain... I think you might want to stay here." Kai's voice sounded distant.
Harry turned to look back at the computer, and at the very instant he did, his heart froze over.
———
In the other building, the man who had been lying in the same spot for who knows how long suddenly opened his eyes.
The imposter was startled by the abrupt action. But the feeling of surprise quickly turned into one of horror as he stared into the man's eyes.
He felt the overwhelming presence of death looming over him, from just looking at the person in the casket.
'No no. I'm a level 40!' The man couldn't believe that even after 70 years of him gathering power, he could still get this shaken just from the gaze of a kid.
"You're an abomination! An abominatio... *Cough*"
The imposters pride wouldn't let him bow to a younger superhuman, so he tensed his muscles and mustered all of his strength to run away. Unfortunately, resistance only caused him more pain and to cough out blood.
Suddenly, the man in the casket split into two, with one of him standing behind the imposter and the other still in the same position. At least that was how it looked like, when in fact the one on the floor was just an afterimage.
The Infected lifted its left hand to touch the imposter's shoulder, and with no time difference in between...
The imposter's body suddenly started breaking and folding in on itself.
KAKA! KRAKA! KA!
After the traumatic scene, the imposter was finally put out of his misery by turning into a red ball.
As the Infected placed the ball on its lips, it suddenly looked up at the direction of the blue squad's cave.
An hypnotic grin slowly formed on its face.