R-a - Volume 3 - Chapter 51

R-a - Chapter 209 (In editing-v3)

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Briefly before this…

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Micheal stood in front of the ripped-open entrance to the Farian secret research base, looking into its dark depths with a slight frown. 

He didn’t like this. 

While he was certain that he had handled all the nearby subordinates of the Celestial Silverback user, that didn’t mean he could travel forth without caution. He wasn’t worried about running into any traps, it was rather unlikely the warrior would’ve left anything like that, but about being detected. 

While Micheal might have dissipated the Celestial Aura that the Beasts warrior had imbued into his two subordinates by killing them, that didn’t mean the fighter knew he was coming. That Aura, by itself, functioned as its own entity, gradually fading over time if its energy was not renewed. 

After some quick thinking, Micheal had come up with a decent, but also somewhat questionable, plan to take on this speed-boosting warrior… but it would only be able to work once. If he got found out ahead of time, the jig would be up for good and he would have to go with his backup plan. 

And he really, really, really did not want to go with his backup plan. 

With a brief sigh, Micheal tapped on his Spatial Ring and brought out two objects: 

Rocks. Two… rocks. 

One of the rocks looked as dull as a rock could look, a plain grey rock about the size of Micheal’s fist. He casually put this rock in a pocket on the left side of his green robe. 

The second rock was slightly smaller and thinner, only the size of Micheal’s palm, and almost completely colorless. It wasn’t crystalline, not like Micheal’s new sword, but instead looked vaguely like a piece of plastic. 

Micheal stared at this rock for a few moments. Before his eyes, as he focused intently on the clear stone, it began to… 

Do absolutely nothing, by all visible indicators. It just sat there, being a rock. A more interesting-looking rock then the plain grey one, to be sure, but still just a boring rock. 

Micheal tucked the rock into a pocket on the right side of his robe, patting it down securely with a satisfied smile. 

He then sprinted over towards a large collection of wood that was located just a few meters from the gaping entrance to the hidden research center. 

With a casual wave, his metal threads wrapped around the wood. Micheal didn’t try to cut them, but instead dragged them behind himself as he sprinted back to the entrance of the underground facility, wasting no time. The pile of heavy wood must’ve weighed at least 3,000 pounds (1360 kg), yet Micheal moved them with only a small amount of effort, his inhuman Strength stat showing its worth. 

As soon as he reached the entrance, he dived through it, pulling the large clump of wood until it completely sealed the opening off. Micheal’s footsteps were silent as death as he rapidly began to traverse down the dark stairs, his eyes rapidly adapting to the light. 

He kept his hands in his pockets as he moved, constantly scanning his surroundings. 

The dark stairway eventually led to what was left of some type of front security checkpoint. A torn metal doorway and a large chunk of a metal wall lay on the cracked tile floor, the remnants of a wooden desk cluttered just behind. This area was dimly lit by a few glowing crystals, some broken and on the floor while others clung weakly to the ceiling. 

At the back of this destroyed room, Micheal found another clear doorway, one that led deeper into the complex. 

He also found the body of a dead Farian, a young male wearing a set of beast-hide armor that did nothing to hide a clearly broken neck, lying right next to the open door. A few steps beyond this, another corpse could be seen, a middle-aged female Farian wearing the remnants of a large grey robe. 

A harsh frown flickered on Micheal’s face when he saw this, vanishing a mere moment later as he returned to his usual veneer of emotionless calm. 

Micheal began to traverse through the ruins of the secret facility, following a long path of destruction to find his target. He was almost, but not quite, grateful for the brutality of the Celestial Silverback user. 

The corpse-scattered trail reduced any ambiguity in where the warrior was headed, not to mention the shattered walls, roofs that were almost caving in, and cratered floors. The warrior was clearly capable of sending out attacks with an incredible amount of force, using Hammer Energy at a level just slightly lesser than the highest amount of Sword Energy Micheal could safely use. 

At this point in time, only unparalleled human geniuses from the Second Wave or prior should be able to reach the highest reaches of the Advanced Tier of any type of Weapon Energy. Extremely talented warriors from the First Wave, if they had an Ability that could boost their comprehension plus a good deal of help from an unparalleled human genius, could also reach this level. 

The Celestial Silverback user’s ability to speed up time, combined with the help of Constantine’s Seed and perhaps something else, likely boosted the leading warrior’s comprehension in a way that sufficed. While faster time did mean you could understand a concept faster, it wasn’t that simple. The faster or slower a rate time flowed, the more difficult it was to clearly sense things like Weapon Energy. 

Regardless, whatever combination was present was enough to bring the warrior to the level he was currently at. Even a glancing blow from an attack like this would be enough to obliterate Micheal, shattering his bones with ease. 

Anyone that specialized in direct, frontal combat would have a rough time fighting against this warrior. 

Micheal slunk through a slurry of rooms at a fast, but calculated, pace, moving as quickly as he could while maintaining maximum awareness. The route the Celestial Silverback user had taken seemed to cross through every possible intersection that Micheal could see. The warrior had branched out down all of these intersections several times, but always seemed to return to the one main path. 

Micheal was puzzled by this for a while, before he saw something that made everything clear. 

He had just glanced down one somewhat short branching hallway, damaged and partially destroyed like all the others, when he saw a large spurt of red pooling out from a broken doorway. As soon as he saw that, the gears clicked in his head, and it all came together. 

The warrior was killing Farians that might be able to slip past him as he travelled deeper into the complex, preventing any Farians from escaping upward and sounding the alarm. Apparently, even the fact that he had stationed the entire rest of his team up top did not offer enough reassurance. 

Micheal realized this was probably because of him, something that caused his heart to twist. In the original timeline, the Celestial Silverback’s subordinates had probably taken over this job, clearing out the facility for him. Because Micheal had killed so many of them, and forced the remnants to wait up top, the Celestial Silverback was forced to do it himself. 

The number of Farians in the facility was a fraction of what it would be at full capacity, at times when the Life Festival would not be active, but the death toll was already in the double digits. 

The frown that had vanished from Micheal’s stern visage finally made a permanent reappearance, his eyes hardening alongside it as he continued to track down the killer. 

‘There was no other way.’ He sighed, forcing himself to refuse even a shred of doubt entry into his heart. This was his single best chance to deal a heavy blow to the Beasts of Providence, greatly setting back their plans while working towards a better future for all.  

Every other plan he thought up, from attempting to simply warn the Lord Justiciar, to trying to track down the Beasts of Providence directly and take them out ahead of time, to a dozen other variations, were all ones he had gone over and discarded. Some entailed too much risk and variation, while others required too large a time investment, or held other problems. 

Micheal kept repeating these points in his head as he followed the murderer’s trail, clenching his fists so hard his knuckles turned white every time he passed by a new corpse. 

Because of the non-optimal route that the powerful warrior from the Beasts of Providence was forced to take, the warrior’s movements were notably slowed down. 

It wasn’t a drastic change, the elite leader was capable of moving unnaturally quickly in the first place, but Micheal judged it to be at least a big enough delay to offset the time Micheal had been locked into wasting by wiping out the man’s subordinates. 

As this thought occurred to Micheal, in the midst of running through another ruined doorway, into a room full of crushed wooden desks, the sounds of combat found their way to Micheal’s ears. 

Yells, explosions of energy that shivered in the air, loud grunts and impacts… a veritable plethora of violence pulsed in the air. 

The noise had come out of seemingly nowhere, the walls of the underground facility specially designed to dampen sound. 

Micheal’s gaze sharpened as he picked up on it, the frown on his face lessening slightly. 

‘I might not be too late!’ One worry in his heart slightly eased. 

Even with all the effort he had put forth, because he didn’t know exactly how things went down here in his original timeline, the fact that he might have already failed was a thought that had been hard to dismiss. 

He did know that there had been survivors from this incident, which meant that the Beasts of Providence came in and came out quickly, instead of taking their time to wipe out everyone. 

The fact that the sounds of battle were still ongoing could only mean one thing. 

Myla Hannis had yet to die. 

Micheal slowed down, keeping his eyes trained forward as he silently moved through a decrepit room that was full of shattered glass and metal tables. He had no idea what the room was used for, but paid that no mind as he crossed it, reaching yet another damaged doorway. 

He found himself in a short hallway that was lined with stone pillars, several of them cracked, with a few large boulders of earth sagging down from a badly damaged roof. Flickering crystals lit the way, shuddering as loud explosions shook the air. 

Beyond this hallway, however, rested what Micheal had been searching for.  

A very large, circular room that had been cast a flurry with the clash of energy. 

And in the center of that storm of power, in the middle of that room...

A masked warrior, shrouded in a silver Aura, wielding two glowing hammers with abandon as he nigh annihilated all in his path. 

The Celestial Silverback user. 

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