Chapter 109:

  An unknown entity that had made himself known from out of the blue during the Valley Tournament. He called himself Pride, .

  Daz and the others had looks of utter shock as the beasts among the bleachers exploded one after another. With the citizens in peril and after a failed attempt to subdue Pride with a multicast seal, their focus had been in disarray.

  There, with the red knight and saw blade, the large, yellow-eyed shadow creature with the black hole in its chest, and Polaris, Pride now stood unbothered as the shattered pieces of the Bastille tower and dispersing spells fluttered all around them.

  The dangling silver crosses that hung on the ends of his wide-brimmed hat chimed as he tilted his head and said, “There would be less calamity if you would just let me speak… then I’d also be out of your hair. I only came here to say something after all.”

  Though all of that happened at once, Daz quickly calmed himself after he had sensed that some of the Guilds among the crowd had protected many of the citizens from the explosions.

  “Call off your creatures, and then I’ll let you talk,” Daz responded commandingly.

  “You’re not exactly in a position to negotiate, Arcane King,” Pride responded slyly.

  “If you truly only came here to talk, then why attack and vanish many of my people?”

  “Because. There had to be a demonstration of power… besides,” the air grew tense around them all. It was like a gust of wind had blown through the entire colosseum, “I also wanted to get a glimpse of my long lost in the flesh.”

  Daz said nothing. He knew who Pride was talking about; it had been the same thing that Wrath in Tartarus mentioned as well. But the others did not know this.

  Alphonzo glanced at him from his peripheral as Pride mentioned it; catching his almost unnoticeable hesitancy.

  When the smoke in the bleachers began to clear from the explosions, the Black Wolves crew, the Silver Sharks, Crimson Dragons, Snow Lilies, Purple Panthers, and Green Owl Knights all huddled where they were each sectioned with their own protection spells and the like.

  Code had hardened the air as protection, layered with Star’s bone shield over a group of citizens, and Havoc had fully transformed, using his tough hide to shield a smaller group of citizens under him. And in another section, Alice had taken a house from her Room to temporarily shield Brand and other citizens as well.

  The beasts that exploded began regenerating once more.

  Back in the arena, Lance, Rok, and the others prepared themselves to counter Pride, but they stopped when they saw Daz’s hand raised in the air—signaling an immediate ceasefire.

  When Pride saw this, after letting his beasts reform, they merely stood in place from where they were. No longer attacking the Valley Knights or the people.

  “Very good, Arcane King,” Pride spoke. “You will get your people back after this. I was going to start killing some of them in my Dimensional Territory to make a point if you did not cooperate…”

  “You started with the head of the announcer. Be grateful for my cordiality even after such an act.” Daz’s eyes blazed at him like a warning.

  “Very scary…” Pride mocked.

  Daz lowered his hand, then placed both hands in his coat pockets. He never once took his eyes off Pride as he said, “You have thirty seconds. And if you go beyond that…”—the eyes of all the mages around him and even the Black Wolves and the other Guilds all wore decided looks on their faces in understanding—“then I will order all my Knights to charge you at once. We’ll see just how far your ‘demonstration of power’ really goes.”

  Pride chuckled maniacally then said, “Very well.”

  He began walking ahead of his two servants and Polaris toward Daz. When he was a good few feet away from them, he threw out his hand to his side and instantaneously summoned something next to him through a dimensional rift in the air.

  When Daz and the others saw it, their eyes widened.

  “I have two reasons for my visit… for starters, I came for this…” Pride said as his hand lay on top of a large, crystal blue orb. The Valley Knights and even all the citizens knew what it was. All the Valley knew this sacred item that was now next to this unknown enemy.

  Everyone thought.

  Our … Daz thought next.

  “Over a month ago at your Kingdom’s Guild Draft, a former captain among your ranks—Syemore—had mentioned that you all had a dying orb. It was then that he had borrowed half of an orb from the Mountain to negotiate a pact with you all. The pact might have been a lie to collect all your Zion Orbs and amalgamate the Valley, but the dying Zion Orb was not.”

  Sirus thought. Sweat trailed down his neck.

  “I have everywhere,” Pride said, looking at him as if he had read his thoughts. “Not a traitor among your ranks, no… I’m too straight forward for such acts. … but I digress… The Apostles are now in need of these Zion Orbs for a higher purpose. So, each of us has been tasked to collect as many as we can for that purpose. There are other Apostles across the land, traveling as we speak, who are going to collect at least one Zion Orb from each Kingdom and, in a month from now, each Sub-Kingdom. We do not need all of them, because many of your Zion Orbs are dying anyway… so we will take the strongest from the bunch and leave the rest to you. Consider it mercy.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Lance clenched his fist at his mockery of them and his disrespect.

  “If Zion Orbs are what you need, why not go to the to collect them?” Daz asked.

  “The self-production of Zion Orbs are halting in the mines. … which is why we are coming to the Kingdoms to collect yours for a grander cause.”

  He kept on…

  “The Apostles travel in pairs, and there are a total of twelve of us, not including our devout followers…” he said as Polaris’ face grew a graceful, eerie smile on it, “But I personally wanted to come to the Valley Kingdom… alone.”

  They were all silent, still. Realizing that all this—the beasts and even the servants that were with Pride—was all his doing. “And my second reason…”—the glowing cross at the center of his black veil seemed to flash in this moment—“I’m here to let you know that the Apostles are declaring war against the Great Alliance.”

  Each mage, each citizen, each living soul there had become perplexed at the statement. It was so bold, direct, and unpredicted that no one knew what to make of it.

  “Are you mad?” Daz asked. Hostility manifested in the form of aura all around him.

  “Quite sane, actually. It is the will of the Keeper,” Pride said calmly as he lifted his head to the cloudy, orange sky.

  “We, the Four Kingdoms, W.M.A., and the Maven Lords will not stand against this!” he responded.

  “Ah, but your Maven Lords have already surrendered their Zion Orbs… they were quite generous to the cause.”

  “What?”

  “Aye. They said, and I quote, ‘for our safety and exclusion from your declaration of war, we will submit all our Zion Orbs as a gift,’… end quote. Also, the W.M.A. has just joined forces with the Maven Lords as their personal bodyguards, so naturally, they are excluded as well. So, when I say ‘the Great Alliance’, I really am only talking about the Four Kingdoms… it seems your ‘allies’ have turned their back on you. That makes things a lot easier for us. I was not looking forward to facing the Maven Lords’ during this war anyway.”

  When Pride said all this, everyone there was trembling. Not only did he just declare war against the Four Kingdoms, he just broke the news of the severing alliance with the W.M.A. and the Maven Lords as well.

  “This cannot be!” Sirus shouted. But when he looked at Daz, his glowering face was all he needed to know that Pride was telling the truth.

  They were not going to be getting help from their allies. Instead, they were left to fight alongside other Kingdoms who did not see eye to eye. The only alliance the Valley Kingdom had was with the Ocean Kingdom, but only for trade. Both were enemies to the Mountain Kingdom, and the Sky Kingdom was a wildcard—a neutral zone they did not know whose side they were on.

  This was a prickly situation, one that only led to devastation at the end of the tunnel. And though they knew almost little about the Apostles, the fact that only one of them was here and was already commanding this much cooperation just for him to speak, even against the Arcane King and many of the Valley’s top mages, they could only wonder just how powerful the other eleven were…

  Pride had said his peace. He now left them with one final note before his thirty seconds were up, “That is all for me today. I will be taking this Zion Orb and leaving you with the other two… though… with the condition of those two, you might want to find yourself a whole new batch.”

  Many of them ground their teeth as he continued to speak freely and unpunished. “Ah, yes… your people…” he said as he snapped his fingers and all the ones who vanished suddenly appeared in the sky, hundreds of them, all falling over the colosseum.

  “That slimy fuck!” Jecht shouted as he ordered his Guild to catch those who were falling. Ark did the same, as he ordered some of his members with teleportation or levitating magic to the scene. And Sylva had cast a wide range Gale magic spell as she and the Snow Lilies had begun saving the falling victims.

  Among the falling, Ophelia, Love, and Viper were there. Ophelia, wearing only an oversized white shirt, flew in as the wind had pushed her shirt up, revealing her exposed body underneath. She squealed and pushed it back down just as Love had flown past her, shielding her unintentionally as she screamed from the height they fell.

  Then Viper put her hands together and chanted,

  “Primal Creation Magic: Flying Serpent Clones!”

  Large, winged snakes appeared through cloud portals, catching not only the three girls but also other falling victims. Some of the other mages who were vanished from the Warriors’ Keep also used their magic to help out if they had a spell that could ease the fall or help them suspend temporarily.

  Code snapped his fingers multiple times, replacing some of the victims with small debris or dust when they got close enough. And Alice had made a large section into cushions as Brand quickly caught some and placed them there.

  In the arena, Daz ordered Sirus to assemble sections of the colosseum to catch the falling victims, and Rok had used his sand to do the same or cushion the fall for others.

  Pride chuckled at the struggle of it all.

  “One last thing, Arcane King…”

  As he said this, the large shadow figure with the wild hair, yellow eyes, and black hole center appeared before Daz without a moment's notice. Pride’s voice had become one with it, and it spoke as if it and Pride had shared the same conscience, “I want to see you kneel one last time.”

  The eyes of the large shadow figure widened, and Daz shot down to the ground, kneeling once again. The force brought him down so aggressively that the ground cratered from where he knelt.

  He struggled and could not even look up, forced to face the ground.

  When the others with him saw this, Pride said, interrupting their movements, “Na-uh… another step, and I will let my beasts run freely as they did…” they stopped in their tracks, forced to watch as the strongest mage in the Valley bowed before this new, unfathomed enemy.

  “I want you all to know where you stand in this soon to come war. This is a warning for what is to come. This is a foreshadow to you all… that you do not stand a chance. No… in fact,”—he intensified his power, which Sirus referred to as , and the ground beneath Daz cratered cataclysmically—“you do not stand at all.”

  Right then, a breeze past by them all, and then to Daz who shifted his eyes to get a glimpse. It was only for a second, but just as quickly, the pressure around him was gone and it was followed by a loud punch—like the sound of gun firing.

  When Daz looked up, the large shadow figure had been blown away; its head, followed by its body, flew like a massive force had shot the thing back severely. It flew back to Pride, who swatted the large shadow figure away with his mere arm, landing behind him in a large crash.

  There in the air from where the punch was landed, a familiar figure. His presence, long awaited.

  Tatted on all his neck and all his arms, he wore nothing but a white tank, black jagged pants, and boots. His black hair shone as the messy part of it behind him fluttered with the breeze—silver cross earrings chiming like a song they all knew. His back still faced Daz as he said to him, “Hey Arcane King,” his words caught Daz’s attention.

  And as he said this, other mages made it onto the arena with them: Ryo, Snow, Rex, Zeno even, and also Belle, Jo, and Nash who stood behind Daz himself.

  “You’ve already beaten me once, so don’t you dare kneel to someone who is below you.”

  Pride, though one could not see his face, felt a rush flow through him at the sight of this male. He took on a different form than the last time he had seen him—killed him. But it was undeniably him.

  As if a veil of darkness could smile, he beheld him and said,

  “Long time no see… .”