Chapter 39 Let the Final Act Begin

High Altitude, Above Tokyo

The air outside the Eternal Veil rippled, then tore. From a silent void, Victor Creed stepped out, his grey hair whipping in the high-altitude wind, his scar visible under his hat. He hovered, looking down at the immense military and magical deployment surrounding the barrier.

A slow, appreciative smile spread across his face.

"My, oh my. The Pro Wizard Association is really outdoing themselves this time. They've recalled all their heavy hitters from their little missions around the globe. If someone had told me they'd strip the world's defenses to make a stand here, I wouldn't have believed them. What a bold move. A bold move indeed."

His smile faded as his gaze swept over the city outside the dome—the countless lights, the moving specks of cars and people. A flicker of something like disgust crossed his face.

"And what about the poor people who need protection? Ah, the poor people. No one cares about them. I wonder, did they at least evacuate the people from the war zone this city will soon become?"

To answer his own question, he casually raised a hand. A scythe of condensed darkness, sharper than any blade, materialized and slashed sideways. It sheared through the upper floors of a distant, tall office building a mile from the perimeter. Glass and steel erupted silently in the distance, and tiny, screaming figures tumbled in the air.

Victor watched them fall with disappointment.

 "Ah. What did I expect? It's the government we're talking about. Of course they did not."

He snapped his fingers.

A gentle black mist wrapped around each falling victim. It enveloped them, and with soft pops, they vanished from their deadly plummet, reappearing safely, dazed and unharmed, on a street plaza far from the conflict.

He dusted off his hands.

 "I don't need the deaths of the innocent. After all, what kind of a king will I be without people to rule over? It would be dreadfully boring to sit on an empty throne."

He turned his scarred face back toward the Zenith Tower, his eyes narrowing at the pulsating energy coming from within.

"First, the barrier will fall. Then the rotten-to-the-core government. And when there is no one left to oppose me... I will be the one to rule. Let the final act begin."

A small, sleek console unfolded from a device on his wrist. With a few taps, he remotely activated the system in his hidden sanctum. On the screen, a schematic showed a massive, cannon-like apparatus deep underground, the artifact fragments slotting into its core. A targeting reticule centered on the Eternal Veil's center.

He slid a final command across the screen with a slow swipe.

"And there goes the boom. Bye-bye, barrier. It was annoying knowing ya!"

He waited, a confident smirk on his face.

One second. Two. Five.

Nothing happened. No beam of annihilation. The Veil continued its pulsing.

Victor's smirk vanished. He frowned, checking the console's readout.

 "Hmmm. So. It's not an instantaneous energy beam burst as I initially thought. The fragments need to synchronize and build to a critical mass before discharge. A few minutes to reach full charge and fire. Fine. I can work with that.

But now, there is a problem. The energy signature during the build-up... it will light up every magical scanner in the hemisphere like a supernova. The location will be broadcast to every Pro Wizard here. And it would be such a shame if a group of heroic fools decided to storm the place before it fires. Things could go wrong. Very wrong, if some fool damages the weapon mid-charge.

I suppose I have no choice but to call in my own little alliance."

Victor raised both hands, his body sparking with immense, dark power. 

"Mass Void Portal: Unleash the Horde."

All around the outskirts of Tokyo, outside the failing barrier, the air itself began to scream. Dozens—then hundreds—of swirling black voids ripped open in the sky above the suburbs, in the streets, in the bays. They were gates, each one a yawning mouth.

And from them, his "alliance" poured forth.

S-tier Kaiju's, the lava golems, beasts of lightning, of crystal, of corrosive shadow—crashed into the city's fringe. Behind them, a flooding tide of lesser minions spilled into the streets: skittering horrors, lumbering stone elementals, shrieking winged demons.

 A panicked, human tidal wave began to move towards the only safety they knew. They stampeded, by car and on foot, flooding through the checkpoints and into the shelter of the very Eternal Veil Victor was about to destroy. 

The diversion was perfect. Every Pro Wizard, every soldier, every academy student now had a city to defend from an invading army. No one would be looking for a hidden weapon counting down to zero.

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Zenith Tower Control Room

The high-tech room was in panic. Emergency lights flashing.

"Sir! Energy signature spiking off the charts! Origin point triangulated—subterranean, three miles outside the Veil's western edge! It matches the theoretical output of the World-Severance Array!" 

Another screen lit up with a hundred different disaster feeds. 

"We have multiple Kaiju-class breaches! Minion swarms flooding Districts 7 through 12! Civilian panic is causing a stampede toward the inner barrier checkpoints! We also have a massive magic signature, we suspect it's Victor Creed! He showed up!"

Mr. Shigeto slammed his hands on the central console.

  "Activate ALL defensive systems outside the barrier! All of them! I don't care if we burn out the power grid! Target Victor Creed with every weapon we got and POUR EVERYTHING INTO IT!

Alert the Witch King and the Top Five! The primary threat is the subterranean weapon! The horde is a diversion! They must find and destroy it before it reaches critical mass!"

 The plan to sacrifice Shota was forgotten, the entire city was under siege, and a doomsday clock was ticking silently beneath their feet. Victor Creed had forced them to fight a war on three fronts: the ritual upstairs, the army at the gates, and the cannon aimed at their heart.

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Inside the crystal chamber, encased in his own blue-white barrier bubble, Shota was a world away. His consciousness was submerged in slow spell work Lycoris was conducting.

Suddenly, Lycoris's guiding voice shifted.

"Shota-kun, a real hell has broken loose outside. Victor is here. He has unleashed an army. The city is under full-scale assault. And he activated the weapon, we must hurry. If the beam destroys the Eternal Veil, my body will be gone for good."

"And you're telling me this now?"

"Just a heads up, do not let it distract you. In fact, this works in our favor. Every eye, every scanner, every ounce of their power is now drawn to the invasion and to Victor himself. The likelihood of anyone interrupting our fusion ritual has just dropped significantly. This is our window. We must use it."

“It’s… hard to focus. Knowing… all that.”

"I know. But focusing here is how you help. Completing this is the single greatest thing you can do to change the battlefield. Now, breathe. Trust your friends to hold the line a little longer. We are so close."

Shota took a shuddering breath. 

“Okay, keep going.”

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Victor Creed drifted through the night sky towards the Eternal Veil. He didn't hurry. He was a king surveying his soon-to-be kingdom.

The automated defense grid, stretched to its limits by the kaiju hordes, still had protocols for a high-value target. He was designated Omega-Priority.

From fortified positions on rooftops and streets below, heavy .50 caliber machine guns traced lines of fiery tracers through the dark, a storm of lead that converged on his silhouette. The bullets simply ricocheted, pinging away at wild angles as if hitting an invisible, sloping armor a millimeter from his skin, lighting up the sky with wild, harmless sparks.

Then came the heavier gifts.

Tank shells from hidden emplacements roared upwards. They struck the center of his mass and detonated in mid-air with thunderous explosions of flame and shrapnel. 

From launch bays on roofs, the rocket carriers engaged. Dozens of surface-to-air missiles streaked upwards. They converged and detonated simultaneously in a colossal, rolling fireball that lit up the entire Tokyo skyline, swallowing Victor.

The fireball dissipated.

He was still there. Drifting. A small piece of his coat was smoldering. He patted it out while smiling.

Finally, massive laser cannon arrays swiveled and locked on. They fired.

Thick, continuous beams of white energy, hot enough to cut through battleship armor, lanced through the air and struck Victor Creed dead-on. The energy exploded; a miniature star of pure heat and light enveloping him. The beams held, pouring catastrophic energy into a single point.

Then, impossibly, the beams split. Like light hitting a prism, the single focused lances of destruction fractured into a half-dozen smaller, scattered beams that sprayed harmlessly across the sky and scorched the city below, cutting buildings and streets in half.

The laser cannons, overheating, sputtered and died.

Through the clearing smoke, Victor Creed slowly inhaled. A slow, genuine smile spread across his scarred face.

"My, my. What a warm welcome you've prepared. I'm touched."

He took another deep breath.

 "Ahhh, nothing better than the smell of burning napalm before going to bed. It really... sets the mood. Say, may I have another, please? Come one, don't be shy. Give me your best shot!"

He continued his leisurely glide forward, now close to the Eternal Veil. The defensive grid was silent, batteries smoking, lasers dark. They had thrown everything they had.