Chapter 131: Parley Part 2

The distance between General Phillip and Goddess Viona was now barely three paces.

The four special forces operators maintained their diamond perimeter. Two kept their rifle barrels sweeping toward the ruined archway of the harbor gate, while the two forward operators kept their optics trained directly on the three teenagers standing behind the goddess. Their fingers were rested straight along the trigger guards, safeties off, posture relaxed but alert.

Phillip held out the open leather folder with his left hand, extending the heavy black pen in his right.

"Right along the designated line, Your Divinity," Phillip said evenly. "Sign in your divine name, accompanied by the seal of the imperial office."

Viona reached out with her right hand. Her skin looked pale, smooth, and utterly defenseless against the cold wind.

She did not reach for the pen.

Her slender fingers stopped an inch above the crisp white parchment. Then, her lips curved into a cold, terrifying, and utterly unhinged sneer.

"John Smith really thought he was clever," Viona whispered.

Phillip’s military instincts screamed. Every hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Deep down, he had known this meeting carried immense danger. He and John had talked about the possibility of an assassination. But seeing the white flag snapping on the tower, reading the complete surrender scroll, and standing three feet from an immortal deity who claimed to love her people, Phillip hadn’t truly believed she would throw away her entire realm just to murder an envoy on an open pier. It was irrational. It was suicide for her empire.

Yet, here it was. Pure, unadulterated madness.

"Clear the—" Phillip barked.

"Kill them," Viona commanded telepathically.

The mental trigger detonated through the dark Torment Bands.

Beneath the formal sleeves of the three heroes, the dormant crimson gemstones exploded with violent, blinding light. The black iron bands contracted with a sickening crunch, driving their curved metal thorns straight into the bone marrow of the students’ arms, flooding their nervous systems with pure, agonizing divine frenzy.

Ayanokoji did not speak. He did not yell.

His glassy red eyes flashed with dark, abyssal mana.

SHADOW FLASH!

From four paces away, Ayanokoji moved at a speed that bypassed human perception entirely.

His boots cracked the granite quay beneath him, and his black abyssal spear became a single, razor-thin beam of pure darkness. The travel time across four meters was less than a tenth of a second.

The operator standing to Phillip’s left flank reacted on pure reflex, his combat conditioning taking over as he jerked his carbine up, shouting into his throat mic: "CONTACT! DRAW—"

SHCK!

He never finished the word.

Ayanokoji’s black spear did not target the operator first; it drove straight through the center of General Phillip’s chest.

The S-rank spatial piercing property of the abyssal spear treated the ceramic composite strike-face of Phillip’s plate carrier like thin parchment. The hardened steel and woven Kevlar split with a dull, wet tear. The black spearhead punched clean through Phillip’s sternum, severed his aorta, shattered his spine, and erupted out through the back of his tactical vest in a fountain of crimson gore.

Phillip’s breath left his lungs in a single, wet gasp. His eyes widened in shock, the black fountain pen slipping from his numb fingers and clattering harmlessly against the bloody stone.

At the exact same millisecond, Kenji Sato drew his ceremonial rapier.

POINT-BLANK HOLY ARC!

Kenji’s body blurred into a flash of pure white light. The plain steel rapier, supercharged by an overwhelming surge of S-rank holy mana, extended into a crescent blade of radiant light thirty feet wide.

Kenji executed a single, blinding horizontal slash.

SHING-CRACK!

The radiant wave swept across the quay. The two forward special forces operators, caught mid-pivot as they tried to raise their rifles, were struck head-on. The holy mana wave severed their titanium ballistic plates, their carbines, and their torsos cleanly in two.

Upper torsos, severed rifles, and helmets tumbled backward through the air, spraying thick arterial blood across the hovering helicopter’s windshield.

The two rear operators reacted with superhuman discipline.

Even as their comrades were bisected before their eyes, their training held. They dropped to one knee, bringing their M4A1 carbines to bear directly on Goddess Viona’s face.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

Muzzle flashes erupted in rapid, deafening staccato bursts. Tungsten-core 5.56mm armor-piercing rounds screamed out of the barrels at three thousand feet per second.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

Miyuki stepped forward, driving her plain wooden staff into the stone with both hands.

"Absolute Sanctuary Ward," her hollow, robotic voice rang out.

A hexagonal barrier of pure emerald-gold mana materialized an inch in front of Viona’s nose. The high-velocity rifle bullets struck the shimmering magical honeycomb, flattening instantly into lead pancakes and dropping uselessly to the flags. The anti-kinetic ward held completely firm, absorbing the automatic gunfire without a single crack.

"PULL UP! PULL UP! ABORT! AMBUSH!" the pilot screamed through the helicopter’s intercom.

Inside the hovering Seahawk, the port-side door gunner squeezed the dual spade triggers of the M134 minigun.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

A solid, continuous laser-beam of red tracer fire roared from the six spinning barrels, dumping three thousand rounds per minute of 7.62mm ammunition down onto the quay, chewing the stone pavement into a boiling blizzard of pulverized rock and lead fragments.

Ayanokoji did not even look at the gunner.

Holding the impaled General Phillip with his left hand, Ayanokoji whipped his black spear through the air with his right, ripping the weapon free from Phillip’s chest in a violent spray of blood.

Without breaking momentum, Ayanokoji kicked a detached two-hundred-pound chunk of broken granite off the pavement, driving the heel of his boot into the stone with S-rank physical strength.

BOOM!

The massive boulder shot upward like an artillery shell, slamming directly into the Seahawk’s starboard turbine intake.

CRUNCH!

The jet engine exploded in a violent fireball of burning aviation fuel and spinning compressor blades. The helicopter lurched violently to the right, its tail rotor snapping off against the high masonry of the quay crane.

"MAYDAY! MAYDAY! WE’RE GOING DOWN—"

The burning Seahawk spun out of control, its spinning main rotor blades striking the sea wall and shattering into hundreds of lethal steel shards before the fuselage crashed into the foaming harbor channel with a massive, deafening splash.

On the quay, the remaining two operators were completely exposed.

Kenji closed the distance in a single leap, his holy blade flashing twice.

SHCK! SHCK!

The white light cut through their helmets and throats. The two operators collapsed into the growing pool of blood, their rifles falling from their lifeless hands.

The entire engagement had lasted precisely four point six seconds.

There were no strike fighters diving from the clouds. There were no artillery salvos roaring from the fleet. John had kept the operational posture strictly diplomatic to avoid spooking the goddess before the ink dried, trusting that even a desperate ruler would understand the consequence of breaking a sacred truce.

There was no rescue. There was no counter-ambush.

There was only the quiet lapping of the tide against the ruined pier and the burning wreckage of the helicopter hissing as it sank beneath the dark green water.

The stone quay was completely stained in red.

Brigadier General Phillip lay flat on his back in the center of the pier.

His vision was fading fast, the gray sky above him turning into a dark, narrowing tunnel. Blood poured from his torn chest, pooling warm around his shoulders and soaking the scattered surrender papers lying beside him in the mud. He coughed, a thick crimson froth spilling over his chin.

She really did it, Phillip thought, a bitter, fading realization echoing through his dying mind. The crazy bitch actually chose total annihilation.

Goddess Viona stepped over the butchered corpses of the American soldiers, her silk slippers avoiding the bloodstains with practiced elegance.

She walked up to Phillip, looking down at his dying face with a cold, triumphant sneer.

"A proxy," Viona mocked, her golden eyes burning with cruel satisfaction. "You thought you could insult an immortal goddess by sending an old dog in your place? Did John Smith truly believe I would bow to a piece of paper?"

Phillip stared up at her. He didn’t beg. He didn’t cry out in agony. With the last ounce of strength left in his failing body, he simply stared into her radiant, arrogant face with cold, pitying eyes.

He knew what was coming next. He knew John Smith.

"You..." Phillip whispered, his voice a wet, rattling gasp. "You... have no idea... what you just did..."

His eyes glazed over, staring blankly toward the overcast sky as his final breath rattled out. A cold silence settled over the bloody quay. High above, the Reaper drone circled unseen, transmitting the slaughter live to the fleet. The final boundary had been crossed; total annihilation was now unavoidable.