Chapter 79: One of The Five Supreme Angels

Pieces of wood flew toward me as the tree erupted into a thousand or so fragments, dark splinters teared through the air like shrapnel, each one trailed thin threads of white light that dimmed and died before they hit the ground.

The ground beneath me shook, hard enough that I felt it in my teeth.

Above us, the dark clouds began to swirl, gathering into a slow, deliberate spiral, and from somewhere deep inside that churning mass, thin streaks of dark crimson rain began to fall, thick and heavy, more like blood than water.

It felt, absurdly, like the sky itself had started crying, and the ground, shuddered beneath my feet with every fresh tremor, seeming to be grieving right along with it.

The force of the blast caught me before I could brace for it, and for one weightless, terrifying second, I was airborne, the hilltop and the shattered remains of the tree spinned wildly beneath me.

Then a vine caught my ankle.

’Arthur.’

Well of course it was Arthur, our polite Mr. Houseplant.

He had already anchored the vine to the edge of the hill, and the sudden, violent snap of momentum yanked me sideways instead of down, spinning the two of us in a tight, dizzying arc around the hill’s rim until the worst of the blast had rolled past beneath us.

My stomach lurched somewhere up into my throat, and I did not even have the breath left to complain about the lack of warning this time.

Below, I caught a glimpse of the others, Sera, Theodore, and Mary, sealed inside a dome of pale light, Mary’s spears already dissolved into a solid, curved barrier that shimmered faintly with every impact of falling debris.

It held. Barely, but well it held.

Crimson lightning tore down from the swirling clouds and struck the hill dead center, bright enough to burn an afterimage into my vision even through closed eyes.

Somewhere in the chaos, I heard something. It was a low, drawn-out sound and it sounded almost human, it felt like someonewas finally allowed to stretch after being folded into too small a space for far too long.

Then, all at once, everything stopped.

The ground stopped shaking and the crimson rain stopped falling.

The lightning like them didn’t strike again.

Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, while the whole clearing settling into a silence so total it felt louder than the destruction that had just torn through it.

Arthur pulled the vine taut again, and we swung back toward the hill, back toward whatever remained of it.

Smoke hung thick over the ruined crown of the hilltop, curling slowly upward in grey ribbons, obscuring most of what used to be the tree.

Splintered black wood lay scattered everywhere, some pieces still smoldered faintly at the edges, and where Ouroboros had coiled itself for what felt like an eternity, there was nothing left at all.

A figure stepped out of the smoke.

And as soon as it did, my heart went cold. It was not fear that made me feel that way but rather inferiority.

I wanted to prostrate.

The Spiritual Power radiating from him was so Divine that my spirit trembled against it.

My head throbbed, it felt as if a sword had pierced through it.

My Spiritual Intuition screamed at me, all of some little ego I had seemed to crush. I feared that my spirit might get split into two pieces because of the immense pressure.

Even though the spiritual power made me look at the floor, I struggled to finally look at him.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, he moved with an unhurried, deliberate grace that made the destruction around him look almost incidental, it felt like an afterthought he had not particularly cared about causing.

His eyes were crimson and looked like two moons: they were bright and burning even through the haze, and his hair fell in vivid, blood-red waves past his shoulders.

He was, in the plainest and most unsettling sense of the word: beautiful. His features were sharp and precise in a way that felt less like a face and more like a weapon someone had deliberately designed to be looked at.

He wore an armor that was pitch black in color, it was molded into the shape of a coiling dragon across his chest and shoulders, and threaded through every seam and plate ran thin, intricate lines that shimmered wet and red, like fresh blood traced along the metal by some incredibly patient hand.

Every line of his build and every sharp angle of his jaw, spoke of something intensely, almost violently masculine, he felt like a kind of martial beauty that felt less like a person and more like an idea given form.

I didn’t need the notification that flickered into the corner of my vision a heartbeat later to know, on some deep, instinctive level, I did not need to know that we were no longer standing in front of anything close to a monster.

[You Are Looking At One of Five Supreme Angels: Ouroboros]

Beside me, I heard Arthur’s breath loudly. I thought whether he had even even breathed since Ouroboros came in front of us...

For a long moment, none of us moved.

And of course, none of us spoke.

The figure standing amid the wreckage of the tree was simply looking around at the ruin surrounding him, he was unhurried and looked almost curious, he felt the way someone might survey a room they had not visited in a very long time.

Then his deep and bright crimson eyes settled on me.

And he smiled with certainty.

It wasn’t a cruel smile and it felt somehow worse.

It was warm and almost fond, he gave the kind of expression you might give someone you had been waiting a very long time to finally meet.

"Well," he said, his voice low and resonant, carrying easily across the ruined hilltop without seeming to raise itself at all. "That took longer than I expected."