"Mommy, why are the moons red?" A little girl pointed to the red spheres in the sky and swayed her mother's hand.
"Mommy?" She looked up at her mother and realized that she was covering her mouth and gasping as her eyes remained fixed on the moons.
And it wasn't just her.
"W-What the hell is that?" A young man pulled his hair in disbelief. This couldn't be happening.
"Illusion. Must be an illusion." The non-combatant officers observing the abyssal army from the defense rooms shook their heads.
"This is the sign of the end! The arrival of the ultimate verdict! Humanity will pay for its sins. Let's all die toge—!" A lunatic cheered for the end of his race before he was punched in the face and had his five limbs crushed.
The old veteran pulled his bloodied arms back and kicked the unconscious lunatic away and stared at the now red sky. "Spineless cowards. Life can't be given up without a fight."
"Red…blood…" The old veteran was in his twilight and couldn't even use his powers properly. His senses were growing dull with each passing year but
he sensed an unmistakable familiarity in the redness in the sky.
It pulled him back to a familiar place, an area he left decades ago—a battlefield.
The ironish and sweet taste of blood stung his tongue, and the smell of the burning and rotting corpses soured the air but felt just right and normal as did the sounds of elemental explosions, space crunches, and heavy collisions. The tip of his fingers felt wet, warm, and sticky as they broke through an invisible resistance, it was just as if he was slowly piercing into an abyssal's chest and dipping his fingers in their blood.
"Oh dear," The old veteran gasped as he stepped out of his trance and looked at the sky with tears pooling in his eyes.
"What have you gone through…" There was a mix of pride in his deep and disturbed tone as he stared at the figure exuding the scarlet mist on the screen.
"How many millions? One? Too little. Five? Not enough. Ten? Maybe. Twenty? Possible. Thirty…" His words ended in a deep sigh as he realized that purely a number of kills couldn't be responsible for something like this.
This unadulterated, pure, and almost sacred killing intent that oozed off death shouldn't emerge from a living person in the first place.
— — —
The abyssal army that was about to pass by Varian had frozen and most of them fell onto their knees. Gritting their teeth, they tried hard to move and failed spectacularly.
Most of the army was composed of mid awakeners. Even a level 6 abyssal found it suffocating to face the killing intent. There was little physical harm this killing intent could cause, but it gnawed on their minds like a rabid dog and refused to let them fight.
It's not a pure killing intent, of course. It's Varian's intense killing intent mixed with his psychic power, forming a tangible mental field of sorts. Even then, combining these two shouldn't have this much effect by itself or the rest of the mental awakeners would've long figured it out.
The key difference was the perfect fusion of something as intangible as killing intent with very tangible psychic power. The magical ingredient for this process was the profound experience of 'death'. Only those who were killed could feel killing intent to the fullest.
…And Varian did once.
Under this tyrannical killing field, only high awakeners could function properly. In fact, level 7s had problems. Only level 9s remained mostly unaffected along with level 8s.
This created a bizarre and horrifying scene where Varian just stood silently while hundreds of thousands of abyssals kneeled around him as if they were paying him homage.
Compared to moments earlier when he split apart the entire abyss army by himself, this was even scarier.
The fifty level 9s facing him hesitated to attack him. The hundreds of level 8s following them took a step back while the tens of thousands of level 7s retreated back several miles.
"U-Use some purification arrays! This must be one of those cheap illusion treasures! Psychics, Telekinetics, find that formation and destroy the cursed thing!" Archduke Samaron roared.
Like mosquitoes fleeing, groups of abyssals spread across space. A group used some blue beads that invalidated illusions and tried to soothe the minds of the abyssals.
The groups of psychics tried hard to cancel this 'illusion' while the telekinetics racked their brains to search for the 'treasure' on Varian's body or elsewhere. After failing multiple times, they began building a barrier around his body, hoping it'd block the killing intent.
Varian smirked at their attempts and raised his fist. "Dear uninvited guests that overstayed your visit in my realm,"
He punched down, "You're given an eviction notice."
The barriers around him cracked like fragile glass and a shockwave of multicolored light swept these abyssal groups.
"Archdu—"
"Save us ple—"
"My body…"
The hundreds of abyssals that were touched by the colorful shockwave froze and turned to their source of support with blank eyes.
"What happened?" Archduke Samaran reached one of his disciples and grabbed his shoulder to run a check.
But the moment his fingers touched his disciple, his disciple lit up with a multitude of colors before dissolving into a mess of blood and bones.
As if it was a cue, hundreds of abyssals lit up like dying stars and imploded.
"Varian!" Archduke's eyes grew bloodshot as rage consumed his fear of Varian's mysterious methods.
With a wave of his hand, all the fifty level 9s that were secretly channeling their power attacked Varian.
Facing such a huge crowd, especially a very elite one, wasn't easy even for Varian.
As expected, he was hit by fifteen psychics and fell into an illusion. Ten abyssals locked up the space around him and held him in place. Thirty abyssals attacked him with their lightning weapons while the remaining five charged behind the attacks, smashing their fists.
