The Gamer's POV-Chapter 269: Battle of the Lords: A Look of Despair
You know when you make a plan for a pitched battle and everything just goes to shit?
Sigh.
That’s exactly what happened.
Everything had gone to shit.
Everywhere was in utter chaos... and nothing went according to plan.
...Dozens of petrified bodies began to appear on the bridge, and even more cadets suddenly began to have green veins snake across their bodies. Before long, their bodies erupted into green acid that burnt everything it touched.
...The cadets that were still alive on the bridge screamed as they tried to defend themselves from the Nagas.
...The cobblestone of the bridge was stained red with blood and green in some places from the cadets who had erupted into goo.
...One cadet screamed for help as she held on to the bridge. Her body was in the water, one hand held onto the stone railing while the other was extended for someone... anyone to pull her out.
Dion, who had just pushed a few Nagas off the bridge back into the water, saw the cadet screaming for help. He ran to help her, but as he got on one knee and reached out a hand, he suddenly saw green fissures split her skin, and in the next moment, the body of the girl began to swell and bulge in places.
"Crap!" He tried to retreat, but before he could, her body exploded into green goo. Unfortunately for Dion, the goo splattered across his forearm and face, and everywhere it touched, the flesh melted... leaving bone.
...In another location on the bridge, another cadet yelled as he tried to run back in the direction of the wall of darkness.
"W-what... what is this?" he stammered, his voice cracking with terror. "T-this... this is hell!"
He was not the only one. Dozens of cadets yelled and tried to retreat as well. Some even managed to get to the wall of darkness, but when they tried to get in, they couldn’t.
It was as if the darkness had suddenly turned into an impenetrable wall, trapping them in this hell!
No cadet could retreat, and all they could do was fight or die.
...Even Aurora had a look of utter despair on her face.
A literal look of despair.
One side of her face had been corroded off, leaving her looking like something utterly alien as she lunged attacks from the air. But no matter how many Nagas she killed, two more surged up to take their place.
She yelled in raw, jagged defiance. She yelled until her throat burned like the acid on her skin. She yelled for the gods that clearly weren’t listening.
And at the end, she yelled to show the cadets that she would not give up until she was dead.
...A few meters from her on the ground was Celeste. God knows how many times she had died. Well, she wouldn’t have died that many times had she not jumped in to save cadets who would only end up as more green goo seconds later.
Her friend Evelyn had managed to reach the shore, but things were worse as could be seen by the mountain of corpses piling at the waterline.
At the moment, she was supposed to be battling a lord, alongside a few others who were with her, but to be honest, none of them were even sure what they were fighting.
This lord was sitting on the ground, sleeping with her eyes closed. A large round halo of blood was spinning slowly around her head and from that halo, whatever horrible monster she dreamt of emerged from it.
"Cover me! I’ll go for her directly!" Evelyn yelled as she fought a large bat-like creature. However, she didn’t get any response from the cadets who were with her.
When she turned around, she saw that all of them were dead.
A look of despair crossed her face as more and more creatures suddenly flocked to her at that moment.
...In the sky above the bridge, a different horrifying battle was taking place.
Apparently, there was a Naga who could fly called the Takshaka. This Naga, who was clearly different and more powerful than the others, was the king of the Nagas. Before the new lords came around, the Takshaka was the old Lord and leader of the first ring.
The cadets who were engaging this ancient beast in the clouds were Audrey and the other thirteen who could fly, but at the moment, eight had already died, leaving Audrey and only five others who were now struggling to survive.
...Now, you may be wondering: what was Cedric doing?
Cedric suddenly appeared behind Alicia, who had just finished killing a Naga on the shore. He, too, looked like a man who had crawled out of a meat grinder. One eye was missing, his armor had been broken, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side. When he appeared, he looked to be in a panic. Quickly grabbing her by the shoulders, he yelled in utmost urgency, "Alicia! Draw us into another dimension or you are all going to die!"
He was not lying.
All the cadets on that shore were one step away from dying because high up in the sky, Lee Lim floated with one hand held high.
Above him, a large dark orb made of the flames of decay was spinning with a violent, rhythmic hum.
The orb kept growing and growing until it was larger than a siege tower, and it kept growing. The energy from the orb was so dense and suffocating that darkness had suddenly fallen on the battlefield.
When Alicia saw that, she collapsed to her knees and stammered.
"I can’t... I can’t, Cedric. I-I don’t have the strength for it."
Cedric looked up from her to the orb, and for the first time since the chaos began, a look of despair also crossed his face. He watched the flickering black flames lick at the edges of the sky, realizing that the "battle" they had planned for was never a fight... it was an execution.
***
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Now, let us rewind to the beginning... to the time before everything went to shit.
