"Merry! You technophile!" Nero shouted after the automatic door opened for him as he entered the room. "Quit drooling over the hologram and open your bloody notification, dammit!"
The room that he entered was large in terms of space, with numerous screens on the tall white wall of white and hundreds of personnel working on many holograms and devices presented within the enclosed space.
Most of the hologram could be seen to be showcasing all sorts of schematics. From the schematic of an entire new soon-to-be-built facility, to a physical manifestation of spell schematic for psycast users. All of the personnel there seemed to be unfazed with the lousy entrance that Nero made.
"Well, well, if it isn't the autistic Nero." A woman with a name tag that read 'Merry' laughed sinisterly, and excessively, even though she didn't even give the arrival of her old friend a single glance. "Are you attempting to impede my work again? Do you want a brand new desk? Or maybe you want a new flavor of E-cigarette? Even though countless refugees on the outskirts of the citadel's border are waiting for their warm food and drinks alongside a proper housing to protect themselves from all of the extreme elements of the outside world?"
Merry then let out another dramatic laughter from the top of her lungs, before she abruptly stopped and then finally faced Nero with a wide smug face, slowly walking toward him, as her long wavy green hair swayed left and right alongside her extravagant way of walking. "So what could it be, dear Nero? You better make the best of your time, lest you want the head of Research and Development to waste her precious moments dealing with your insignificant tomfoolery."
"You're being an asshole today, what give?" Nero asked nonchalantly as he started to lit an electric cigarette inside the 'Schematic Creation Room'.
"Not in the mood."
"And they say that I'm the asshole." Nero blew a puff of smoke right in front of Merry's face. "I'll be quick then. We got an SED unit taking a bombastic movie of an unrecorded humanoid individual capable of fighting toe to toe with a highly mutated 'cyclop'." He then gestured his hand to have the device on his wrist to send the file to the R&D network. The hand gesture ended up with a middle finger.
"Huh." Merry tilted, still with the smug on her face unchanging. She then turned around onto one of the personnel. "Darling! Play that scrumptious video that our lovely Nero sent. Use the main screen! It might be worth wasting our valuable space, oxygen, and time that can be used to perform a greater good."
The personnel stopped what they were doing and raised the holographic control for the biggest screen in the room. But before the video that Nero sent was played, a catchy tune echoed through the room with playful jolly.
"Restocking now, now! Get 'em while the ink's still hot! Such sweet goodies that your tongue is caught!"
"Seriously?" Nero faced the grinning Merry with contempt. "We're running ads now? In the apocalypse?"
"Quick, easy, and ready to be deployed! The Psycast Prefabs are here for you to enjoy! Hey, hey! Plenty more to buy and sell! For fast service better ring that bell!"
"Heh, that cat girl is really cute." Merry mischievously caressed her chin.
"You really never stop contradicting yourself."
After a quick 30 seconds of advertisement, the high resolution video caught by the SED unit was finally shown. The screen started with the view of the entirety of a certain former city in asia. With a small finger gesture from Merry, the personnel abided and quickly zoomed in on the location that was hinted by Nero.
There, two humanoid entities could be facing an onslaught of calamities that were rushing towards them.
Merry then paused the video before anything could happen.
"Really? You want me to see these two getting murked by those monsters like some sort of a banquet?" Merry glanced at Nero with disgust. "I might be crazy, but I'm not sadistic! Actually, that person in coat and bunny suit is mad cute."
"Shut up, and just let the video talk."
As the video continued, the person with a mask started to warp his surroundings into an inkish, tainting red. As if out of sheer will, the man manifested a burning crimson scythe on his hand.
No, there was no scythe at all, but the image of death was so painted in this scene, that his wrathful hand began to resemble the scythe that the reaper held.
By the time they knew it, half of the onslaught was reaped away.
"That's not a psycast," Merry uttered, "Huh, didn't think that we would be finding this soon before a year passed since the invasion."
Not only Merry and Nero, but almost everyone within the room was glued to the screen. Some were awestruck, some were terrified, and some were curious about what in the world is happening there.
"The damned 'sign', this soon." Nero exhaled with annoyance. "I knew that something important was wrong when the apocalypse came earlier than the supposed date."
"Uhm, what do you mean by the 'sign', sir," asked a curious personnel that just happened to hear Nero's muttering.
"You see, darling." Merry giggled. "Us Deosah are given the prophecy of the potential future in the form of scattered hints and messages that's happening throughout the world." The bloody carnage and domination on the screen became the background music as Merry's words were ingested with diligence. "One of them is a very strict yet loose requirement for the appearance of unidentified magic, different from the psycast knowledge that we used for the good of humanity!
"The moment a calamity displays a foreign sign of paracausality, it means that the pieces are starting to come into place." Merry then casually leaned her wrist on the personnel's shoulder, showing how tall she actually was in comparison to normal humans. "And how do we identify this particular sign, you may ask, Knowing that our psycasts are paracausal in itself? And there are many monstrosities out there that already bend the law of physics anyway!
"Simple, the sign will always come in the form of a single dominating force, an apex monster capable of something beyond our comprehension, while also donning a familiar appearance, yet abnormal behavior.
"They come from alternate universes and realms where a different mixture of humanity and nature are formed beyond our original possibility~!
"A world where sentient washing machines found the wonder of nuclear energy! A world where elemental magic is used in everyday life! The infinite potential is there, waiting to arrive in this humble floating rock of ours…
"Hehehe. Are they friends? Or are they enemies? Nobody knows! But when one of them is stranded here on Earth, many of them will follow in the future, and that's will this planet get a little bit crowded and merry by the end of the new year." Merry snickered sinisterly.
The screen showcased the brutal fight between the masked man and the highly mutated cyclop. Mountains were riddled with holes, as hurricanes were halted by the sheer power of their stray projectile of shockwaves produced from their sheer physical prowess.
And just before the fight could reach a conclusion, the man with a mask hunched forward and sprouted numerous tendrils from his back, decimating everything in the sky alongside the SED unit.