"You…." Julius stared at the abyssal who appeared with unprecedented vigilance.
The abyssal in front of him was in a quite sorry state.
His left arm was bent at a strange angle, a whole chunk of flesh on his right chest was missing, and there were large cuts on his abdomen and legs. His face, like the rest of his body, was covered by dried blood and scabs. What's more, the injuries continued to bleed and drench him in the warm liquid, keeping him miserable.
But Julius' soul screamed at him even as his instincts put him in a defensive posture.
It told him that if he let his guard down, he'd be over. The one standing in front of him wasn't as weak as he looked. He was stronger than anyone he ever faced.
Julius could bet his power on it.
This abyssal was powerful, dangerous, and a veritable predator.
Julius rightly wondered if the only reason he was able to gauge his enemy's threat was his heavy injuries.
If the abyssal wasn't injured and confronted him at his peak, would he even have the strength to resist?
"Who are you?" Julius growled with bloodshot eyes and a raging aura tornado around him.
Haedon didn't speak. He kept an eye on Julius but he focused on looking around. He seemed to confirm that he really reached the place he should.
"An Abyssal this strong…" Julius' eyes flashed and his mind went blank as a name flashed across his thoughts.
No word was spoken as the space cracks slowly disappeared and the space stabilized once again but this peace hung on a layer of fragile peace ready to be blown away by the boiling tension.
"Emperor of the Abyssals." Julius narrowed his eyes dangerously as his aura exploded like a bursting volcano and locked onto Haedon.
Julius knew about the Abyss Emperor though he never saw him. But there were enough clues to guess this abyssal's identity. The insane strength of this abyssal as well as the lack of any marks on his face.
Any abyssal would have tattoos on their faces indicating their level. When Julius just 'betrayed', Demon King bragged and threatened Julius about the 'Celestial Rankers' in the main abyss. Beings that would have a single tattoo. Offhandedly, he also said only the Emperor wouldn't have a tattoo.
With his insane perception, Julius was damn sure that the man in front of him wasn't one of the 'hundreds' of celestial rankers in the abyss, but the Emperor himself.
And if his hunch was right, then abyssals had only a few celestial rankers.
'I'll kill them all. Starting with him.'
A little spark of scarlet light lit up around Julius and in a blink, the twinkling scarlet light was pouring out of him.
Julius' body flashed and he morphed into a giant hundreds of meters tall. It was his transformation into a golden giant as a morpher. But the form now began to shrink back and Julius turned into a mere three-meter form that looked not much different from an oversized human.
However, the golden giant was now red and its body was sucking everything toward it like a blackhole.
When morphers reached the Celestial ranks, they turned into 'Famine'.
Julius reached the Abyss Emperor hundreds of miles away in less than a blink.
The space around him twisted due to the insane speed and the shockwaves from his movement exploded the asteroids to bits.
Julius' fist, strong enough to break a planet, reached the Abyss Emperor. And Haedon tilted his neck in time and dodged the attack.
Then the Abyss Emperor's body glowed with purer, brighter, and denser golden starlight. And he shot forward.
Julius instinctively put up a defensive position but the attack never came.
"Huh?"
Haedon was standing in the far distance, carrying the final abyssal survivors with him. He stored them away in a small but durable spaceship. For the first time since his arrival, his face showed an expression.
"You are the last seeds of our race." Haedon addressed the abyssal teenagers.
"E-Emperor?!"
"No, what are you saying?"
"Last? What about out our 100 billion brethren in our homeland?"
They were the best of geniuses in the abyss kind. They still couldn't believe that the Emperor they only heard in tales and legends arrived and saved them. It's a miracle.
It felt like a dream they didn't want to wake out of. But before they could rejoice, his ominous words set their hearts on fire. Even their leader, the calmest among them asked through gritted teeth. "But we're only ten, what can we even do, Your Majesty?"
"Six females, four males." Haedon nodded to himself in an almost mechanical manner. "Legacies have great treasures, enough to create a thousand newborns from the vitality of a single couple. Perhaps it'll take a millennium. Perhaps more. But you'll do your duty till death."
"Bu—"
"No." Haedon's stare caused the young man to bite his tongue to the point it bled.
"Last of you? A 100 billion abyssals died? What a wonderful piece of news." Julius' amused voice rang.
Haedon waved away the spaceship and faced the human with indifferent eyes. No, those eyes only seemed indifferent but underneath them was a fury that'd set the sky on fire and a grief that'd drown the earth.
Julius knew that the man in front of him was the Emperor of abyssals. But he didn't know Haedon. He never learned about the abyssal warrior that ascended to the peak in the turbulent times of his race. He didn't know about the legend that became the sole pillar of his race.
Julius knew Haedon lost his race. But he didn't know, he couldn't know what the man in front of him was going through and had already gone through. The raw emotions of watching the destruction of his race for months in a brutal war, the sheer pressure as everything came crashing down, the heartbreak at the death of his dearest.
Julius knew Haedon would fight. But he didn't have the slightest clue about the fight that burned in the Emperor who lost everything.
"I killed barely ten billion but it was a feast. Rather than a massacre, it's a quick death, a merciful one, I must say." Julius continued his crass words.
He wasn't one to get too talkative with his enemies. But now he's trying to get on the abyssal's nerves.
Haedon slowly clenched his fists and his aura locked onto Julius. But he didn't attack. He remained steady and waited.
Julius smirked and pointed to the spaceship that was getting away. "If these worms are the last survivors, then everyone else is dead, right? Even your…lovers and children."
Haedon's indifferent eyes lit up with fury and the space around him twisted.
A golden starlight flashed and the next moment, Julius clashed with Haedon.
