Chapter 148 - 148: Memories Of A Past Life

Alexander was hunting monsters in the heavens as his thoughts drifted to past experiences from a life he wished he could forget.

Flashes of battles that claimed the lives of dear friends and loved ones, monsters and people who caused pain just for the fun of it, emotions that made him hate himself for feeling them at the time.

Thinking about one specific event that could be close to occurring set his teeth on edge even more than the battles with monsters that could break the mind.

He would never forget the day that he learned about the Cosmic beasts.

~

The armies clashing slowly stopped as the cackling of a madman boomed over the sky, the pope had just finished a spell that was meant to grant him instant victory and as far as he was concerned, he had won.

The armies only knew that a flash of light had blinded them all and suddenly a battle of continental scale was instantly over.

Under the silence of the battlefield and the laughing pope they began to feel it.

Mana was practically exploding like a raging volcano that would wipe the entire army away.

~~~~~~~~~~

Warning!

Warning!

Event forcefully paused due to unexpected threat level!

Event completion requirements have been changed!

Event: Holy War Finale

Quest: ̶W̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶b̶a̶t̶t̶l̶e̶

Survive.

~~~~~~~~~~

A creature that looked like it was ripped straight from the nightmares of a lovecraftian souls like player suddenly slammed the pope out of the sky with so much force that the air quaked.

He saw the sky tearing open with strange rifts and cracks around this creature, a creature with eight limbs and a tail but did not resemble anything he had ever seen.

The creature was as large as an elephant with wings covered in darkness that flowed like smoke and water, at the top of each wing was a bizarre set of clawed hands that gripped the pope as it slammed his body into the ground repeatedly.

The head of the creature had two pairs of horns as well as glowing growths running down the spine and side of the neck, these growths pulsed with mana so dense that it felt like a living mana storm.

The front limbs were covered in warped scales that looked almost molten as they shifted between liquid moment and razor sharp, metallic growths.

These limbs moved in a way that felt unnatural for a beast that seemed to walk on all fours with wings that acted as powerful arms, the limbs seemed to simultaneously move like that of a hound and had the range of motion that could be found in bipeds.

Each slam caused the pope to cough blood into the air while the ground was beginning to crater beneath him, cracks spread through the ground from this crater as if the strikes of this monster were going to shatter the land.

When he saw the fourth set of limbs his blood ran cold, a pair of horrific arms flexed and pulled away from the underside of the wings.

They looked like the limbs of a mantis with that stabbed into the pope while the monster reared back on the hind legs that creaked like armor rubbing against itself.

When standing on just the two legs he saw that it could move between animalistic and bipedal motion at the slightest shift

The clawed hands of the wings rose in the air while the bladed limbs skewered the pope through the chest before pulling him close enough that the clawed hands of the smaller limbs could grab him.

When he saw the face of this monster he saw the two eyes were flanked by three additional pairs that made them seem to be positioned in a diamond pattern, the eyes themselves had the most unsettling predatory shape with the pupils making them look even more bizarre due to their crossed shape.

At first he thought there was no mouth at all until he watched the monster open a pair of lips that stretched all the way to the cheeks like a flat faced reptilian race often had.

Razor sharp teeth in two layers on each jaw came close to the pope before the creature released the most unholy roar he had ever heard in his life.

The roar itself even seemed to be infused with power as the air waves from the roar started to tear the ground apart while the pope fought to free himself.

'Inspect!'

~~~~~~~~~~

Void Beast (Soldier)

Lv ???

Rank: EX 1

Threat Level: very high

This entity does not appear to be concerned with the user, do not get close.

~~~~~~~~~~

The pope blaster the face of the creature with a spell that he had used all throughout his previous battle but to the astonishment of all present the attack did not even leave a mark on this foe.

They had seen this spell erase a mountain during their battle but against this monster it was nothing.

Alexander flew high into the sky to get out of danger and get a better vantage point.

The pope used a spell to teleport himself out of danger but his wounds seemed to be refusing to heal as each wound slowly disintegrated due to an unknown mana coating them.

The creature slowly turned to face the pope who began to channel large quantities of mana with a grimoire open in hand, the spell circle filled the sky like a glowing castle of mana before he cast it.

Pillars or light speared the creature as it walked closer with an unreadable expression on it's alien face, the light had so much power that the ground itself began to be destroyed by the raw magical might being unleashed.

Players caught in the area of this spell had no chance to even question what had happened as they were erased.

The pope laughed and mocked the monster as it stood there taking the damage of the spell until they watched as a single hand shattered the mana constructing one of the pillars.

Then the creature's body blurred with motion and appeared behind the pope with a single clawed wing slapping him back to the ground like a bug.

As the beast raised both limbs into the sky with it standing like a horrific angel of death, the mana in the air surged towards the area between those claws, every last particle of mana and even the mana contained within the mana constructs used by players was consumed for a swirling ball of darkness.

That was when she appeared.

Gaia made her entrance with a flash of light as she raised her hand towards the monster ordering it to stop, demanding to know why a cosmic beast had appeared.

Her words were rose higher and higher in volume until the creature raised a single hand to point at the pope.

She stared down and looked upon the pope with absolute disgust before turning back to the beast.

"This world is under my hand, I am the supreme deity! Whatever this mortal had done will be dealt with by myself not you!"

The creature lowered it's hand but did not lower it's wings as it stared at Gaia.

Then in a flash of dark energy the Void Beast raised a single finger just like before and unleashed a spell that struck Gaia.

Players had attempted to fight the manifestations of deities before, sometimes these manifestations were made weak enough by the deity to actually give the player a chance to survive the fight.

This was not a manifestation, this was the true body of the supreme deity Gaia.

The governing force of the planet.

And now the players watched as the spell ripped through Gaia leaving half of her body reduced to nothingness as she screamed in pain.

The entity then made a strange motion with it's hand as the mana left behind on her body was forced to return to it, the same mana that had made it impossible for the pope to heal.

She cast a spell that made her entire form glow as she rapidly reformed her body through the highest form of healing magic in the world, she stared at the beast in horror upon realizing that she had just been given a warning as it pointed back at the pope.

Her eyes betrayed her fear of this monster as she looked to the sky where subtle changes had begun to take place, changes that soon caught the attention of every player as a strange noise like ripping fabric and shattering glass exploded across the air from above.

Looking up at the sky Alexander saw a clawed hand made of oily blackness gripping the air like a physical object before tendrils reached their way into that same tear in the sky, those tendrils grabbed the edges of the tear before slowly forcing the tear to open wider.

Gaia seemed to panic even more as she waved her hand towards the players, a screen appearing before them all signaling a forced logout.

The last thing Alexander saw before they were forced out was Gaia throwing the pope at the Void Beast and the beast capturing him inside of the massive ball of swirling mana between it's claws.

~

Alexander shivered as he remembered the way the supreme deity of that world looked helpless before the monster that had come for the pope.

After the mana baptism of earth the people who survived would go on to learn that Gaia was not actually an AI created by Yggdrasil but was in reality a true deity capable of shaping the world she controlled in any way she saw fit.

She was nothing before whatever that creature was.

'Cosmic Beasts.... didn't Belial have a race called void beast?'