The Harvester

“…what did you just say?” Rakna asked ominously with an increase in temperature that surprised both Astraea and Nyx. He was already starting to manifest his magic without the World and they knew better than most people about how hard that was.

 

“The Kind Demon is the Téra’s Father,” Roias repeated himself calmly. “I’m sure that’s not quite as flattering as the other titles he has, but it is the truth. We would be quite ungrateful children if we didn’t know a bit about our de-facto progenitor, don’t you think?”

 

“…”

 

“Though, admittedly, we’re quite the estranged ones,” he added. “The System has isolated us from the main hive mind that connects our entire race. Which led… to some unique evolutions among our kind. An increased rate in the development of individuality amongst our ranks, for instance.”

 

“Are you done?” Rakna snarled. “I get how you knew about me now. Thanks for the info, but I don’t care about your little trivia. I’m sure the old man never intended to create you, and I’ll make sure you’re fucking six feet under before I meet him again.”

 

Roias cackled. “Never intended, you say?”

 

The werewolf growled with oozing anger. “What are you trying to say?”

 

“You’re right, Eternal Night wasn’t willfully involved in our birth. However, you lack one critical piece of information,” he smirked. “You see; the Téra are everywhere. Pandora’s Curse spread to every corner of Existence, every Reality. This happened when the Téra’s hivemind decided to rally all its forces and invade the Mother Realities from which they propagated.”

 

Rakna frowned and faintly glanced at Nyx, trying to convey the unspoken question of if she knew where the Téras was going with this. The Night Goddess could only shake her head stiffly; this was something she had never heard of. She had already been sealed by Perpetua Votum by that time; the Eternal Night Art which Roias mentioned himself and translated into Everlasting Wish.

 

With a light laugh, the Téras commented on their silent exchange, “Yes, she is unaware. But if I am not wrong… she should know,” he uttered and nonchalantly pointed at a nervous-looking Astraea. 

 

The poor girl seemed to be in a conflict with herself, anxiously looking between all of them, trying to decide if she should speak up or keep her mouth closed. When Rakna looked at her, she gulped and was about to speak, but the crimson werewolf surprisingly didn’t hound her for an answer.

 

He recognized her plea and redirected his full attention and anger at Roias once again.

 

“What a gentleman, even with the whole ‘red’ thing you have going,” the creature quipped. “Now, where was I?” He rubbed his chin. “Oh, yes, the invasion of the Mother Realities by the Téra. It was quite an operation. The spearhead was a Téras powerful enough to equal Mythical-Class Gods.”

 

“But I’m digressing…” Roias trailed and started walking around the Terminal Room with his hands behind his back. “What must be understood here is that crossing Realities is an ability that cannot be harnessed by many people. It is something that requires talent, effort, great life force, and one incredible amount of Existentiality. Téra can’t possibly hope to accomplish it on their own, much less when it concerns the five Mother Realities.”

 

“As such, we took an opportunity. One man, that you know very well, opened the gates to the other Mother Realities in his quest to defeat the Original Creators. Of course, we tried to follow and were met with resistance at the entrance,” Roias stopped walking and glanced at the werewolf. “Victory was close, but at the most critical time, the Kind Demon returned from his expedition. By that time, he had already ascended into a Primordial God. We had no chance.”

 

“What do you think happened afterward?” The Téras asked.

 

“…he let you go,” Rakna said with a blank tone and both Nyx and Astraea froze. Even Roias himself was slightly surprised, though it was far from enough to knock his grin away.

 

“Fascinating. You reached that conclusion instantly.”

 

“In front of that old man, there is no running away, no bargaining, no luck, no survival. If you find yourself on the other side of his gun, you die or live based on his inclination alone,” Rakna declared with a steely voice.

 

“And it doesn’t bother you? That your uncle doomed the world by setting us free? This is rhetorical of course, but did you know, he not only let the Téra go… but usurped our hive mind as well? The Kind Demon is, in a sense, our leader. The Téra are his army, which he refuses to regulate. Whether we kill or are killed, he doesn’t care. Whether we destroy worlds or commit genocides, he doesn’t intervene.” 

 

“Whether a little elven girl dies by our hands or not…” Roias leered as the temperature increased once again. “He does not care.”

 

The room fell silent and had there been people of lesser caliber present, they would have barely been able to keep standing under the natural presence of the werewolf. It was as if his subsided anger was worming its way into the watcher’s soul without incentive.

 

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do…” Rakna eventually spoke up. “But if this is about shaking my faith in him, you won’t succeed.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Arima isn’t exactly what you would call a proper person,” the werewolf used his uncle’s sole and rarely used nickname for the first time. “He commands respect and friendliness, but he is far from a decent man. He’s a kind man… but positively a demon. He’s someone who killed millions so that the world would fear him enough to obey him. His goal was to erase war, and he succeeded.”

 

“But that was not the end of it. After he got rid of war, he ‘experimented’,” Rakna uttered and Nyx at his side scowled at the choice of word. “Conflict is something he couldn’t erase since it was part of human nature. So, he did some experiments. Whether it was using children as sleeper agents in undercover roles, whether it was founding infamous criminal organizations, whether it was killing innocent disrupting elements, or giving rise to a band of assassins, he tried it.”

 

Astraea’s expression devolved into a grimace with each and every example he gave, and Roias had a morbid curiosity plastered on his face, clearly interested in the details he was unaware of.

 

“He didn’t act out of a desire to save people or even a responsibility. For the most part, all he was could be surmised to kindness alone… and revenge. Revenge against the world in a way,” Rakna let out a snicker. “Just as much as he didn’t approve of mine, but took me under his wing, I also did not approve of his, but still followed him. I owe him everything. So, even if you came at me with a story about how he wished to slaughter all living things, I wouldn’t have cared. I owe him too much to judge him.”

 

Roias tilted his head with an eyebrow raised in curiosity, “Interesting phrasing. You say you would not have judged him. But you would have done something other than that?”

 

“Stopping him would have also been part of my debt,” Rakna declared and adopted a stance, with his Guandao whistling in his hand. At his movements, Astraea and Nyx tensed in preparation while a message from Ceres arrived into the werewolf’s ears.

 

[I am inside. Countdown resumed. Five minutes and thirty-six seconds, Rakna.]

 

He silently acknowledged her words and spoke toward Roias one final time, “But you wanna know what I see right now?” He asked and the Téras furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “Just one more sad experiment among many.”

 

Roias’ eyes widened a bit but it was soon followed by a terribly chilling chuckle, which eventually grew into full-blown laughter. “Hahahahaha! Is that so? I am a mere experiment, you say?” He said gleefully and a torrent of black mist erupted out of his body.

 

It was far stronger than an aura, much darker, and equally dangerous.

 

“Then, let’s see if you can scrap me!”

 

As soon as he yelled, Astraea burst with energy, and Rakna grunted as he felt the drain of his mana fueling her. The angel took flight and waved her hand at Roias from the left. Following her gesture, the wall of the room cracked and a giant root grew out of nowhere and swatted at the Téras.

 

Roias wordlessly used his palm to meet the attack and channeled his internal energy. Before the root even came in contact with his hand, it broke into two parts, one of them falling to the ground.

 

He then looked up as the radiance of holy light started prickling his skin. He saw Astraea hoisting a spear made out of light, and she promptly threw it at him. Knowing he couldn’t take it head-on safely, he used the back of his hand to deflect it, just as smoothly as his every action until this point.

 

The spear pierced the wall and exploded, sending pieces of unknown metallic material all over the place. Fissures opened across the floor and walls, and the Terminal’s screens briefly flickered to white noise.

 

Roias chuckled throatily and jumped away from the blast, his feet landed on the wall as he began to run vertically. Following right after him, Astraea flashed next to him and swung a wooden staff adorned with vines and flowers at him.

 

The Téras used his forearm to block it and then stepped back to dodge a palm strike. The goddess stood vertically as he did and began to meet him blow for blow.

 

“As expected of an Egregore Entity,” Roias commented as he ducked under an overhead swing of the staff. He cartwheeled out of the way with one hand and simultaneously tried to kick her, which she withstood with her staff, though that did not spare her from the rebound.

 

She winced in pain and spread her wings open to mitigate the knockback. Her staff began to glow and she pointed it at the Téras. “[Law of Growth,]” she intoned and the very material composing the room started twisting and growing like tree roots. They sharpened themselves and chased the creature to impale him.

 

Roias cackled and the curse of Pandora gathered above his hand in a sphere. The dark energy then began to take on a more tangible form, gradually undulating until it turned into a sphere of pristine water.

 

Astraea widened her eyes as he launched a stream of water at her spell. It quite literally devoured it and seemingly disintegrated it, as if imitating the result of a century-long side-effect of sea waves eroding its surface.

 

She rapidly caught herself back on the wall, whirling her staff in order to protect herself from the brume released by the stream. She could see that each and every microscopic molecule of water was leaving equally minuscule holes everywhere around it. Behind her, she could hear the rustling of both Nyx and Rakna relocating themselves because of it as well.

 

‘He can use magic…?’ Astraea thought briefly until instantly dismissing the idea. ‘Of course not. The Téra have no soul, no mana. Calling it magic in the first place is preposterous, but no other word can fit it,’ she gritted her teeth and Roias subsequently emerged from the thinning water stream.

 

Like a fish leaping out, he dashed toward her and she, unfortunately, wasn’t fast enough to counter properly and his knee hit her stomach. She gasped and for a second, she felt her anchor to Rakna waver as if she was about to be forcefully repatriated to Egregore.

 

‘Arch-Spiritual Vindicator,’ she instantly recognized the specific ability from the vast knowledge of the collective unconscious. ‘My divinity is keeping me together but I can’t let him hit me further.’ 

 

She slid across the wall and used the momentum to spin. Her foot dragged and, in her wake, an arc of holy light was drawn at her feet. Immediately, it surged into a rain of darts from which Roias retreated until one of his eyes abruptly twitched in mild surprise when a red arrow struck a spot right below his solar plexus. 

 

His skin was penetrated shockingly easily and dimensional clefts opened on his flesh. He promptly crushed the projectile in his grip and faced a salvo of red energetic arrows. He swatted them all away with a burst of Pandora’s Curse and eyed the crimson werewolf above him, aiming what looked like a red long bow and nocking a new trinity of energy arrows on it.

 

Roias noncommittally noted how the weapon’s energy source had seemingly matched its wielder as well. Before he could consider a retaliation, the shadows twisted in a familiar sight and he was faced with a dozen of strikingly infamous Wilden.

 

‘Skulking Angels,’ the Téras was genuinely trepid at the sight of these killers of nature. Those blank and terrifying statues, immobile until you turned your back. He had encountered higher evolution stages of this race of killing machines and he frankly had not come out of it very thrilled. 

 

‘That girl’s specter necromancy is far more dangerous than I expected,’ he thought and for the first time, he dropped his smile a bit. 

 

His eyes reflexively drifted to locate the Night Goddess and when he turned back around, one of the Angels’ wide-open maws was an inch away from him. The stupidly stealthy and fast creatures circumvented him and reached out to stab his back with their bare hands.