The Luminary hovered in silence, her gaze cast down into the depths of the dark Newborn territory—an underground labyrinth of tunnels, caves, and death.
Her robes, which had flowed with the divine fire's trailing, now lay tossed in a weird calm.
With tens of thousands of the chariots from the domain of judgement grinding to a halt behind her like a divine army... frozen mid-charge.
The air, charged with the heat of battle not moments ago, turned chill.
Anna's eyes narrowed.
"Why does this unease keep resurfacing?"
It had started when she agreed to the Council of Kings' assignment.
A whisper of unease. A tremor in her soul core...
She'd put it off at the time, blamed it on the sheer scope of the mission, the ridiculousness of being sent to a distant, frozen hell to exterminate half a billion Newborns— alone.
Even though to her, the Newborns were comparable to ants....
Ants in numbers could drown giants.
She had been battling for nearly three days and almost three nights. Not just fought, she had endured. Her soul core ran low on essence on more than one occasion.
Forcing her to retreat, recharge, meditate, and draw different resources from the storm clouds' vault.
Charity never comes cheap...
Millions of lives she had saved with her domain, so much as her appearing in one place could mend broken bones and seal wounds shut.
She had been in charge of rescue efforts across the three besieged cities.
Within Avarock, she had rescued over seventy million survivors, leading them across the crumbling infrastructure and protecting them from the crimson beasts with her divine chariots.
In Skyfall, where the devastation had been near total, she had found two million survivors sheltered in well-placed subterranean strongholds.
Well-planned by paranoid architects who had long anticipated the possible wide-scale calamity.
Albeit no mortal was given a quota, truly despicable wretches...
Their survival had been a miracle, and she had been their savior.
Storm Cloud, strongest of the three, had suffered the least—twenty million killed, a staggering slaughter, yet lower by far than the other two cities.
The cursed Hunters, Favourites, and military that inhabited the city had done a good job of holding the line until she made her way there and reinforced their defenses.
She had assumed the mission to be over...
But then, the bastard brought her here.
The Angel.
She clenched her jaw.
Grey...
Just the name made her blood boil. In her heart, she hated them all, every male that the dirty clan had sired.
Arrogant, stuffy, and behind their mighty high clouds...
If from the beginning, he had just taken action — tapped into his supernatural powers... this entire mission would have been concluded in minutes.
"All Greys are bastards", she reiterated bitterly.
But he was an Angel.
And she was not such a fool as to provoke one without reason. To offend an Angel without a warrant could mean the annihilation of her entire clan.
So, she followed...
And her unease kept increasing...
It had first appeared to her when she arrived in the Land of Forever Ice.
She had brushed it off...
It returned once more when she ventured into the underground labyrinth of the newborn territory.
She ignored it...
"What's there to fear with an Angel nearby?... Even if it's one of those you detest."
"A God..."
"Abyss... and..."
"Maybe a demon of parallel Rank to yourself."
But now, after covering over 500 kilometers in scarcely an hour—slaughtering creatures, saving people, and plunging ever deeper into the labyrinth, the silent unease had turned into a deafening scream.
She couldn't brush it off anymore... So, she abruptly halted in mid-air, after taking three more strides.
The chariots behind her came to a screeching halt, their fiery wheels scorching the void.
Anna's divine sense hyper-focused in only one direction—down.
... seven kilometers deep.
She examined every pebble, every tunnel, every sigil-etched ceiling...
But found nothing...
"Just the usual carnage."
"This isn't enough."
She drew thousands of energy stones from her subconscious sea, boosting her soul essence, without regard for the extravagant expenditure.
Her soul core filled to the brim with energy shone like a star, revealing all corners of her subconscious sea as she reached out.
Ten kilometers... Twenty... Forty... Fifty.
"Still nothing."
Just the same cat-and-mouse games... The same slaughter... The same madness.
"Strange..."
Beasts at the border of her domain range roared in anger, but they were nothing to her.
She advanced one step further... and they retreated one step back...
The unease surged.
She froze.
"Something is wrong."
She delved into her sea of subconscious and brought forth a cherished relic...
[Pigeon Heart], It was like a tiny carrier pigeon, its surface tissued with purple courses of blood.
She infused it with some essence and read the encoded mission brief from the Council.
[Silent Night], [Land of Forever Ice], [Favourites Needed], [Three Cities Under Siege]
[500M Newborns], [Dread Possibility], [Infant or Demon leader Status Unconfirmed]
She read it again... And again.
Everything matched.
Only an Infant or Demon Dread could command so few minions with such limited precision.
However, a demon would have more infants among their minions compared to newborns.
So, given what she has seen, it was only right to assume the pinnacle beast was an Infant creature... by birthright.
She'd thought it was strange that no one had claimed the mission when it was posted. She'd put it down to the fact that it was so remote that it was regarded as a backwater nation.
They called her names... when she accepted it.
She wouldn't have taken it either, if not for the need to stay away from her clan for official reasons.
Complicated reasons...
With a sigh, she deactivated the favourite artifact and stored it back into her sea of subconscious.
Still, the unease clawed at her.
"Based on all facts, this should only be the workings of a Demon Dread at most."
"After all, there are always exceptions. Perhaps I have encountered one that prefers to have more newborns as its minions."
"Even if there was an oversight, it couldn't be above Doom rank."
"That would be tricky, yes. But survivable..."
She hung there, her mind racing.
"The only other time I felt this level of unease..."
Her eyes widened in horror... as her soul core trembled.
"No!"
Her face paled, drained of all blood... The once beautiful, terrible goddess was now like an ice queen.
Her fire had dimmed, her wrath frozen, and in its place stood a fragile woman haunted by her darkest memory.
Without wasting a beat, she materialized another favourite artifact... one for communication between the mighty Favourite clans, from her subconscious.
[Favourite Song]: A glowing disk of light, etched with ancient runes, pulsed in her palm.
This was no time for pride... Not the time to hold on old grudges...
She drained every last bit of essence... all energy stones in her possession...
...She even channeled every bit of energy from those faint wisps lingering in the newborn territory and propelled herself up like a mad beast.
She tore through matter, like a bullet through paper.
The poor bastards who were saved earlier and left above in different tunnels and passages... were now thrown all over the place.
... the charging beast not giving a damn at all.
"I have to pray... I have to pray," Her voice shaking.
Her thoughts... not with the Council, not even with her clan... but towards the nearby Angel.
She closed her eyes... clasped her hands, and like a pious child, prayed.
O Favourite Child of Time,
Keeper of Forgotten Secrets,
Bane of the Underworld.
Let your mercy fall upon this hour,
shield me from what hunts in silence...
I pray for your intervention.
I pray for your protection.