Chapter 31: Collaboration

—Before the fight started…—

While Nysilia was distracting Samriel, she created a portal and communicated in Dai’s and Sarah’s minds to tell them to enter, at first they refused so the goddess took control over their bodies and forced them to go away.

“Hide somewhere and conceal your auras. I’ll come searching for you once I finish here.” That was the last message Nysilia left

———

“Man, it felt horrible when she took blocked my body…every time I think about it…” Sarah had some shivers, then looked at Dai “Did you have to deal with that all day?”

“Nah, just two times. The first time while I was training and I wasn’t understanding her instructions, so she controlled my body to show me what to do step by step. The second time happened while I was cooking- or to be fair, I was going to make some instant noodles but she stopped me right before opening the packet and said “You eat way too much of this stuff. Let me teach you how to cook.” and then I almost burned down everything.”

Sarah giggled “Is she your mother or something?”

Dai smiled, finding that question absurd “Is that a serious question? Of course not…” he remained silent for a second thinking “but if I was like her lost son, that would be a decent explanation for some change of mood she had, especially the first days” He sighed “I never actually understood her. There were times were she seemed to like me and others when she wanted me to die…it never felt like she was honest.”

“I feel you on that point. Arismis was never honest with me, probably the only difference between him and Nysilia is that he wasn’t too good at hiding the fact he was an asshole.”

He shook his head “I don’t even think Nysilia is an asshole, I think she’s a pathological liar and if it’s not pathological, she tells too many lies to hide something regarding my memories…I’m tired of this and I guess you are in a similar situation.”

Sarah simply nodded and silence fell as their minds started retracing their stories. They both began without memories and had to kill each other and, while they still don’t have their memories back, now they sit in front of each other in an alley, hiding from a common enemy and talking like good old friends.

Suddenly, Dai asked Sarah “I know this may sound like a weird question. But did you know already about the fracture?”

She shook her head and inclined it a bit “Why?”

“Well, I thought the timing was just too perfect…maybe I’m just thinking too much.”

“Yeah. I bet the situation with Nysilia has left you with some trust issues or similar.”

“Mh…” Dai reflected for a moment “That’s not actually a bad theory” he said with surprise in the end.

“Did you think I was going to say something stupid?” Sarah asked, ready to be irritated depending on his answer

Dai noticed that and went into panic “N-no! I just said that because I should have thought about it before asking you that question- uh?”

Sarah was giggling trying to hold a laugh “Damn, it’s really easy to make you panic. Were you like this with Nysilia the first time you met her?”

Dai shook his head “Only because I didn’t have the time for that since she would terrorize the shit out of me every time.”

“And after that? She seems pretty chill now so I guess she stopped at some point…”

“Yeah, but I still wouldn’t behave like this. This is a wild guess but it can be correlated with those memories we saw; maybe if we gain more of them to complete this puzzle we’ll be able to understand more-”

“I don’t think that would be smart.” A male voice from above them talked and added “Don’t raise your head. Slowly walk out of the alley.” the voice ordered and with that, five auras could now be sensed, they were strong, probably stronger than Dai and Sarah.

Both of them did as the voice said and walked out of the alley with a downward gaze; they were still in Tokyo but far away from Nysilia and even there, the level of destruction was insane, they were lucky to have found a place to hide since most of the buildings collapsed.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Who are you, people?” Sarah asked but the voice immediately silenced her

“SHUT UP! I didn’t permit you to speak!”

‘...I want to kill him already.’ she thought while trying to not go crazy and attack without thinking.

Shortly after the voice spoke again “Ok! Now you can look, but only in front of you”

They did as the voice said and in front of them there were two big people in dark blue military uniforms and had completely white masks, one was a tall and toned woman, almost 2 meters(more or less than 6 and a half feet), with dark skin and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail; the other was a white man, slightly shorter than her but still toned and was bald.

“Now, look at your left, up in the air”

Again, they followed the orders and in the air, there was a metal cube with a girl on top of it, she was of short stature, had blond hair pulled in two long braids laid on her chest and had a blue military uniform with a white mask, equipped with a sniper and pointed at Dai’s head.

“Now, for the grand final! Look back at the alley you came from!”

Dai and Sarah turned towards the alley and in front of them there were two guys, also of short stature but slightly taller than the girl, they both had black hair and the same clothing as the others, the only difference was that they both had a pair of leather gloves.

The short guy on the right started speaking “Now, time for the presentation! My name is Yll.” and bowed, and then the guy on the left said, with the same voice as the guy on the right

“My name is Yeal.” and also bowed, then both of them simultaneously returned with their back straight and Yeal continued presenting the other members.

“The girl with the sniper is Zary, meanwhile the man and the woman behind you are Tyrant and Amore-”

“What do you want from us?” Sarah abruptly interrupted him.

“Whoa.” Yll said in surprise “You are lucky we don’t have to kill you, otherwise you would have been already dead for speaking without permission.”

“Ahem” Yeal cleared his throat to bring attention to him again “To answer your question, we are here to recruit you!”

Hearing that sentence made Dai spontaneously say “What??”

“You heard that right! We want you to work with us and with Samriel to help other Zonnikies! We know you two are really strong and staying with Nysilia wouldn’t benefit you at all.”

But Dai had a big doubt “So, what you are saying is that we should follow someone we don’t know like you or Samriel and stop following Nysilia, who is a literal Goddess and could help us with everything, am I understanding this correctly?”

Yll laughed at what he heard “I’m sorry to tell you, while yes, Nysilia is a Goddess, she can’t use her full powers.”

“...Why?”

“Because she’s just a quarter of a God now! Without the other 3 Gods being fully awake, she’ll never be able to use 100% of her powers. So now, she is just a bitch who likes to talk big in front of the others”

That last phrase made Dai discover something new about himself: he hates when people insult his friends; he looked at Sarah, who staring at him and when their gazes met, it was a clear signal(which Sarah understood this time).

Suddenly, Sarah pointed a finger towards Zary and a ray of light came out and caused an explosion when it touched the girl, meanwhile, Dai jumped backwards and created a knife made of blood, fell on Tyrant’s shoulders and stabbed him in the throat multiple times until he fell on the ground; Amore wanted to defend the man but was stopped by Sarah that froze her feet to the ground and cut her in half with an arm transformed into a blade. Both Yll and Yeal didn’t move at all, but it didn’t matter as Dai, without thinking twice, threw the knife into Yeal’s chest, who immediately fell to the ground and Yll’s head was destroyed by Sarah’s baseball bat made out of rock, thanks to her earth control powers.

“Phew, that wasn’t too hard.” Sarah said while cleaning the sweat on her forehead with the back of a hand

“Or maybe we were lucky, but we won and that’s what matter.” Dai proposed a high five and Sarah smiled and while getting closer to him, a loud bang could be heard and Sarah fell to the ground.

“SARAH-” another bang and Dai fell to the ground too. Both of them weren’t dead but the same was for their enemies; Dai noticed Zary appearing in the distance and Yeal slowly went closer to him while removing the knife.

“I’ll give an 8/10 for the effort but a 4/10 for the execution. You are really lucky we can’t kill you two…” As he walked away, Dai’s eyes slowly closed and before fainting he thought

'Nysilia…hope…you are okay…’

— Meanwhile, the fight between Nysilia and Samriel —

BANG

Nysilia stopped her Scythe right before slicing through Samriel’s neck and touched her own, when she looked at the hand and looked at it, it was full of blood and the same was for her mouth, as blood was coming out of it.

‘Why am I not regenerating…’ She dropped the scythe and, first looked at the sniper who shoot, it was one of three remaining Zonnikies, then looked back at her enemy

“How…is this happening?” she tried to say but the blood gargling made everything difficult to understand.

“Shhh. It’s useless talking now.” with a hand gently pushed Nysilia and she fell to the ground without strength “I know what you wanted to ask. They were special bullets made with the powers extracted from your brothers and sister, but I won’t tell you how we managed to that, it would be pointless.” he turned around and started walking away “I’ll go now, I have Sarah and Dai waiting for me. I’ll make them the perfect soldiers for my army and for other plans. Even, if they don’t want to.”

Nysilia’s eyes were shaking ‘NO! STOP! COME BACK HERE! WE HAVE NOT FINISHED YET’ That’s what Nysilia wanted to shout but she wasn’t even able to speak because her entire body was paralyzed.

“Sleep well.” Samriel said as he disappeared from Nysilia’s sight and she fell into a slumber.