Core system of the Golden Peak Mountain sect, twenty minutes earlier.
The sudden appearance of the bulk of the sect’s armies had brought a shift to the meeting between the leaders of the Armada and Elemental Army, and the Patriarch of the Golden Peak Mountain sect. What was before a meeting on equal ground had now turned into a hostage situation, as the armada’s flotilla was now completely surrounded by an uncountable number of the sect’s disciples.
Despite this change being a commander’s worst nightmare, the reactions of Der and Roley to it were hidden underneath the former’s heavy helmet and latter’s baggy hood. Their heads were tilted upwards and towards the sea of cultivators who, thanks to the planet’s lack of atmosphere, could be clearly seen from the surface of the dry red earth the two were standing on.
“We would like to discuss the terms of your surrender.” Said the woman with the clipboard, as she slowly stepped past her bulky leader, and towards the two.
As she walked half of the distance, she stopped. Her attention was once again caught by the clipboard, which she reached for with her free hand. Then, with a few quick motions, she unclipped a bundle of papers, and offered it by stretching her arm towards the two guests.
Unwilling to wait for either of the two to approach her, she then let go of it, causing it to fall on the ground with a faint thudding sound, a noise which prompted the laughter of most of the generals and young masters who were standing proudly behind the impressive figure of their patriarch. The thought of either of the two bending to pick the papers up, gave them a sense of joy.
Yet, neither Der nor Roley seemed bothered by their action. They were proud entities in their own rights, but also lacked the childishness required to start an argument over such petty provocations. To make a move was Der who, still covered in a majestic plated armor which clanked at every step, traveled the half of the distance the woman had not walked.
In a few seconds, he had reached the small pile of papers that, clipped together, had barely struggled to resist being dragged away by the powerful winds. Once in his hands, he shook them clear of the sand every crevice had gathered, then brought them up to his chest. His eyes, daggers sheathed behind two thin openings, scanned the paper’s content carefully.
Despite Der being a prolific reader, the read kept going for several minutes. A detail which implied how long the list of demands of the Golden Peak Mountain sect were. At the end of each request, both Roley and the patriarch could see an almost imperceptible shake of Der’s head, causing them to wonder whether that faint motion was paired with a grim smile of surrender, or an expression of sheer anger.
While curious, the two waited patiently for the warrior to finish, and so he did when, in an oddly calm state of mind, he read the last of the sect’s demands.. After which he turned around and walked back towards his hooded companion, papers in hand.
Der did not say much, and instead pushed the stack of papers on Roley’s chest. “Read it.” he muttered with a voice cold with anger.
Immediately Roley grabbed the papers and began reading out loud. “The leaders of the two armies will be released, and allowed free passage outside the universe under these conditions. Number one, the Immortal Armada has to submit to the Golden Peak Mountain sect completely, that includes the army, its ships, and every non-civilian department, joining its ranks completely.”
“Number two, any form of accumulated wealth in possession of either the Armada’s population or its leaders must be offered to the patriarch of the Golden Peak Mountain sect. Number three, the schematics of the sealing formation have to be handed over, alongside any resource required for the formation to be fully operational. Number four..”
The least seemed infinite, with each point being more outrageous than the previous one. By the time Roley had reached the fourth request, he realized that he had still not gone through half of the list. A series of requests that, if not meant purely to be rejected, and agreed on, would have granted Roley and Der to escape alone, and with little more than their clothes on.
Though this list was outrageous, Roley was not too bothered by it. After all, he had left his planet, shrunk to the size of a ring’s diamond, with one of his followers. With it, even if Roley and Der refused the offer right away and laughed in the Patriarch’s face, he would still be able to protect the two armies from a distance. Of that, he was quite confident.
Luckily, that had not been the case yet.
The anger he had perceived by Der’s tone had escaped his mind, as another thought had taken precedence. They needed to find the location of one of the sect’s young masters. The one infiltrated within the Archive of Blood and Bones of Sacrifice’s domain, and they would not be able to do it, or at least not as quickly, if they simply eradicated the Golden Peak Mountain sect right on the spot. Because of that, he was still willing to talk.
Of the few requests he had bothered to read through, one in particular was not too outrageous, but just slightly exaggerated. That was request number three.
As previously agreed upon before coming to this universe, Der and Roley had decided that the formation created by the scientists of the Armada did not need to exist only for their benefit. It was originally meant to allow mortals to carve a safe space within the multiverse, away from the grubby fingers of the aspects of existence.. And while they did not particularly like the nature of this sect, their existence would not be a problem anymore the moment they would seal themselves within their universe. Away from the eyes, away from the heart, they thought.
Unfortunately, while willing to share the formation, and even provide help in gathering materials, what the two were unwilling to offer was what they were currently using as materials to fuel the formation, as they themselves did not have enough to maintain a fully functioning one. A lack of resources that had been temporarily solved through the selfless sacrifice of spatial elementals whom, Roley believed, the sect would not bother replacing with inanimate objects.
Nevertheless, in his ingenuity, Roley still believed the offer of the schematics, while paired with help in gathering resources, would be more than enough for the little information they were asking to give out. An exchange, he thought, would sound better when offered eye to eye.
In a graceful motion, his hands rose to his head, grabbing the seam of the hood and pulling it back, revealing the facial features of a young man with black hair, a clean shaved face with scholarly features, and eyes of pure light and darkness. On his face was present a genuine smile, polite and amiable, which he held as he tried to step towards the patriarch of the sect to begin negotiations.
Before he could take a single step, however, a thick armored arm stopped his motion.
Roley turned to the side to notice the figure of Der, who was now looking down on the papers the former was still casually holding. A detail that prompted Roley to, once again, shift his attention to what was written in the list of demands.
As both looked at it, Der’s shiny finger moved to the bottom of the paper, where the last of the demands was worded out in a single sentence. A couple of taps of his fingers were all Roley needed to understand that he needed to read that specific demand, and he needed to do so now.
Once again Roley’s voice played out for all to see as he read the last of the demands. “Number twelve.. All elementals of high or superior tier are to be handed over to the Golden Peak Mountain sect to be used as resources for its disciples’ cultivation, and labor for our universe’s development..” Then absolute silence.
The smile disappeared from Roley’s face, as his eyelids moved into a series of slow blinks. His lips were now pressed together, drained from blood the same ways his fingers were as they tightened up into fists. On his arm’s pale skin, the protruding greenish veins had begun to glow of a yellow color which traveled through his forearms, before disappearing into the flesh of his hand.
*Fwoosh* The pile of papers was instantly set ablaze, and burnt to ashes in a matter of moments. At the same time, the ground that lay solidly at the bottom of Roey’s bare feet, already cracked due to the dry weather, had started to tremble. Then, alongside a continuous cracking noise, the cracks began to stretch, turning into crevices, then rifts of immeasurable depth.
While alerted by this reaction, none of the sect’s members acted. Instead, what they found curious was that while any of them could summon fire and crack the earth, they had not felt any form of immortal essence being released by Roley’s body. In their eyes, Roley’s actions appeared to have happened spontaneously, the way an elemental would make use of the power they controlled.
Soon, the dry planet found itself unable to contain the constant tremors and cracks, and like an apple being thrown from the top of a hundred-story building onto solid concrete, it began falling apart. However, while many expected to feel the heat of the planet’s core wash past them, and the many fragments of the planet they stood on to part ways, nothing of the sort happened. The core had been suppressed, put off like the flame of a candle, and each piece of earth had cracked further, as if aiming to continue falling apart until nothing but dust was left.
“Enough of this!” The patriarch barked in anger, feeling a sort of unease that refused to leave his mind. With a snap of his neck, he turned towards one of his generals with the intention of ordering the bulk of his army to assault the Armada, but as his eyes landed on the closest of his sons, he noticed that he, alongside each of the several hundred cultivators who stood next to him, were all staring at the sky with dumbfounded expressions.
Immediately he followed their gaze to only now notice the gargantuan planet that had appeared out of nowhere. A planet several times the size of the one Roley had just pulverized through the weight of sheer anger, and that was pure, complete, and beautiful.
But, alas, he was only allowed a brief gaze of this paradise before the planet, which had appeared in the area where the Armada and Elemental army were stationed, shrunk to the size of a fingernail. A small pearl that, with the speed of light itself, dove in Roley’s direction and dug into his chest, disappearing from their sight.
As the planet disappeared, the patriarch and his sect realized that nothing was left of either of the two armies, only an empty patch of space surrounded by the menacing forces of the Golden Peak Mountain sect.
Suddenly, an impressive gust of wind capable of stripping the flesh out of a mortal’s bones clashed against the patriarch and his men, pushing them away with waves of heat, electricity and hail, all hidden behind an infinitely powerful light that casually wrestled its existence against an equally as frightening darkness.
Such wind was so powerful that not even the system’s core star was spared from its might, and its gaseous composition was blasted away like a blade of grass by a hurricane. Within these piercing gusts, which had already reaped the lives of countless of the sect’s weakest cultivators, a plain voice echoed. “Your demands are denied.”
Furious by the turn of events, the patriarch’s skin flushed a red color as he ordered in a mind numbingly powerful tone “ATTACK!”
This single word crept into the minds of each of his followers who, just like him, began to shift into beasts of full rage, and together, they charged at the figures of the Lord of Elementals, and Warlord of the Immortal Armada.
