765. Eye See You

765. Eye See You

“Galia. Is that supposed to be… a Corrupted…?” Jury could not contain her voice.

Disbelief filled eyes as fear clawed at her throat.

“Trust your eyes. That’s the Punishing Bird. If size mattered with the Corrupted, then that would be stronger than a Paradise Lost Corrupted.”

“It’s larger than the Icon of Judgement?”

“Far larger.” Galia assured her. “I suggest you don’t try to wrap your mind around it. It’ll lead to self-destructive thoughts. Do you notice it now, Jury? The throes of the Oblivion Locks?”

The high-pitched screech of what sounded like one hundred thousand souls whizzed past the smoke. Occasionally, she would find a slit along the pale sky. The moving sky gradually came to a stop, revealing a long slit like someone had stabbed it.

Then, in the next instant, that slit trembled.

“The Corrupted is not our only threat.” Galia pronounced.

A teardrop formed in the corner of the slit before it split open, revealing a colossal, golden eye. It gazed down at them with such contempt that their clothes began to fizzle away as if being torn apart at the microscopic level.

Angel hair fell from the skies as more holes formed above. Many more eyes made themselves known, each as large as the moon it shielded.

The being was so massive that it eclipsed the entire city. How much more of it was hidden was not a thought that Jury could process.

Finally, she received the stats of the Punishing Bird.

//////// ////////

Castigation Bird

AFFINITY: Judgement

LEVEL : 300

ORIGIN : Folklore

HP : 750,000,000

ATT : 150,000

MAG ATT :

150,000

ATT DEF : 120,000

MAG DEF : 120,000

MP : 1,200,000

RESIST : 2,500

AGI : 12

“Galia… how is that not our only threat?”

“The chains, Jury. They’re shattering.”

At once, a brilliant beam of light descended upon all 2,000 Repenters and 2,000 Impuritas. It was fired meters away from the pupil of the eye, emerging from a single orb of light. The column was more than 50 meters wide. Only the buildings of the city remained intact, although they were destroyed initially, as everything caught within was erased and ripped apart atom from atom.

It seemed instantaneous to Jury, but she sensed that they had experienced a lifetime’s worth of suffering in that once instant.

But more than that –

“… Why does it look just like [Retrocausality – Smite]?” Jury asked herself.

“Do the birds not relate to you and the Arbiter?”

“It was mostly the Arbiter, aside from the One Thousand Eyed Bird and the Icon of Judgement!”

“It’ll be best to expect that it does.” Galia said, but before Jury could retort, she added: “It will be up to you to prove it wrong… Now then.”

Galia reached into the Isolation Sphere. The barrier was taken down in an instant, revealing the entirety of their forces. The clock tower fast forwarded to midnight, and as soon as the bell rang – the chains snapped.

“It’s time to use your version of that beam, don’t you think?” Galia said as streaks of light ran through the air in the direction of the Corrupted.

The violet glow transformed to a shade of scarlet. A fountain of blood spilled from the dimensional tears. The pools of blood quickly transformed into a shallow sea. Shards of blood jumped out like flying fish, and soon, blood coagulated around it, forming angel-like entities.

“Vexed Consanguinity… Sins. The same thing Frost saw.” Jury was the first to read their stats, thankfully from a distance.

She turned to the others and smashed the earth with her tail to gather their attention.

“SINS ARE COMING OUT OF THE SUBCUT! THEY ARE VEXED CONSANGUINITIES! DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THEM! THEY’RE MONSOON LEVELED AT WORSE!”

This name spread across their army like a wildfire.

“Andra! Deal with the leak from the Subcut! Do not let anyone near the bird’s gazes of contempt!” Galia ordered. “Search for the Phylactery. The complex should shield you from its gaze.”

Andra looked back at her 2nd Branch. A commander in this scenario would have dreaded looking back at the faces of their troops. But Andra was filled with expectation, and when she saw their flushed, ecstatic faces –

“It will be done. My 2nd Branch was made for this. With all that blood, how can we not succeed?”

– She knew that the Impuritas… no, the Sins were at a severe disadvantage.

“As for the chains?” Andra questioned, right as a band of Black Moons and Iron Stars approached them.

“Doth will require our aid to seal the leak. Thy will provide support to us, no matter how unsanitary thou methods are.” An Iron Star uttered, extending a hand that formed the same violet light found in the cracks earlier.

A dark glow also surrounded their hand.

“But there’s alooooot of leaks!” A Black Moon chirped. “Our link to the Nexus is gone, so there won’t be a lot to work with~! Still, with enough Nex – anything can happen!”

They were all eager to fight, even in the face of death. The Iron Stars, the Black Moons, the 2nd Branch, and even Jury’s own Moons were unfazed. It was just the Aspiring Moons who trembled at the sight, unable to detach their gazes from those giant, all-judging eyes.

“Beholder Jury. Your orders?” A Seci Response Moon asked, bowing before her.

“Stay alive. Those are my only orders.” Jury calmly said.

Andra smirked in response.

“As for my Branch – Enjoy yourself to the fullest!”

* * *

The dimensional leak did not just occur in The First Bastion.

Midnight had finally struck.

Cracks and fissures formed across the Bellum Empire as chains shattered, creating tears into the Subcut Layer. The Underflow turned red in an instant as Sins poured into the waterways, the crevice’s, the caverns… there was no place untouched by the Sins beneath the Bellum Empire.

The fissures appeared even in the skies, dropping wrathful Sins crafted by the blood of man into Grandis. It was as though the fabric of the world had been stabbed, allowing its blood to pour into the world.

It appeared over mountains, drenching them red. No river was left untouched as waves of scarlet sloshed into three tree lines at the base of the mountains. Soon, they would reach the bastions of civilization, and an untold number of lives would be lost.

The flow was powerful, and it moved like a tidal wave, but it would take hours before it could reach these cities, and perhaps several days before it could consume all of Grandis.

One massive tear appeared over the skies of Mount Saris. The largest downpour spilled from the sacred mountain, the runaway forming coagulated Sins wherever it passed.

Finally, a bright, crimson light shone at the top of the mountain.

Four great, crimson wings spread across like a giant cross in the sky. They extend beyond the mountain ranges as three tails dug into space like they were reaching into a Dimensional Storage.

Sins and blood fell from those wings like waterfalls.

“One of the rare places in this world without Umbra’s bothersome Chains.” Uriel scoffed as she admired the fruition of her efforts.

Nothing pleased her more than seeing everything turn to the shade of red.

“You would’ve loved this too. But mankind tainted you. I wish I could share this sight with you before your kin took your life. Love? Compassion? Such a waste for things that aren’t elevated… Mankind was your undoing, my fallen Creator.”

Uriel and her colossal wings descended onto the peak of Mount Sairs. The summit was so large that it was like a plateau. She sunk her silver great blade into the stone, and with a single twist, it was engulfed by a red flame.

It erased the rock that entombed it.

Not even magma was left behind.

“Humanity will not get a second chance under my reign.”