"So this is where the party was.. haha." said Daniel before letting out a grim laugh. In front of him were many familiar faces, as well as unknown faces whose affiliation he could guess from the recognizable attires.
To lead this line-up of factions, was a battalion of the universal government's army which would otherwise be busy with defending the area from any possible incursion from the other side of the now closed wormhole. "Would you mind revealing what you were doing on the other side of the wormhole, and why it is now closed?" Asked an oddly muscular old man clad in military attire.
"Does it matter?" Asked Daniel in response, aware that whatever his reasons were, the presence of a few of Iewah's children meant that the only reason for this reunion was him, and not any defensive measure against a possible attack by the alien civilization.
After all, there was no possible way that the government and the factions could have known that Daniel would reappear from that wormhole, and exactly at that time, if not for them. At the same time, if an invasion was about to take place, any of Iewah's children would have predicted it through the use of their systems.
"It does not." Said the old general before tightening the grip around his greatsword that was strapped to his back. "Surrender yourself to us, Outcast. No one needs to get hurt." He then added with an authoritative voice, betrayed by an almost imperceptible amount of nervousness.
"We would rather you don't." Said one of Iewah's children while grinning contently, a boy in his early teens dressed in the most regal clothes that Daniel had ever seen. He was the owner of the inheritance system, a system that allowed its wielder to obtain the experience and abilities of a person, by simply being present during the moment of their death.
Paired with the ability to retain his youth, the ability to obtain a person's legacy had granted him the name of the 'Hereditary Prince'.
Daniel had absolutely no intention of surrendering. His planet was still in the territory of the alien's civilization, and the only reason why he hadn't used his connection to it to recall it, was because of the people that were in front of him. Unfortunately, he did not know how long his planet would remain undetected without him, so it was essential that he managed to escape.
In the eyes of the children of Iewah, he could see the eagerness that they felt at the thought of fighting him, which was only above the withheld desire to fight one another.
"Do not fool yourself, old brat. None of you here has the ability to best me." Said Daniel with a tone filled with mockery, and an unmatched sense of superiority. He then shrugged his shoulders in resignation, and added, "What a shame. I would have gladly taught a lesson to each of you, at some point. If not for the fact that you were too spineless to find me by yourselves."
Mocking words were wasted on the ears of Iewah's children, as their honor was never something they cared about. However, what would hurt them, was the absolute confidence that was relied on by Daniel's words. To him, the fact that the other children of Iewah present were beneath him, was a certainty, despite not even knowing for sure what their powers were.
As he finished speaking, Daniel remembered what his task was, and turned to look at the general with a stern expression. "Before you do anything stupid, you better listen to what I have to say. The aliens.." He said before recounting what he had learned, starting by explaining what the dimensional destroyers were, to the danger that the alien's way of life posed to their dimension's survival, and ending with the importance of joining forces to stop this guaranteed apocalypse.
"ENOUGH!" Shouted the old general who, much more experienced than any other person present, had already assumed what Daniel intended to do. "Surrender without causing any trouble, this is the last warning." he said, ignoring Daniel's revelation.
"You damn idiots, didn't you listen to a single word I have said?!" Asked Daniel with exasperation.
Unfortunately, Daniel's position was not one that would help his case. He was the one being cornered, and as a chosen on Iewah, he was considered part of a group of beings notorious for their cunning, and ability to get out of difficult situations where no one else could. Amongst the opposing group, there was no pair of ears that was willing to listen to any word he said, which was unfortunate, since the very presence of a single Void Dweller could have confirmed his claims.
"We know you are different from your siblings, Outcast. Your powers may be a mystery, but your weakness isn't. As we speak, numerous other groups led by members of your kind are tracking down your friends. Surrender yourself to us, and no harm will befall them." Said the old general in an attempt to force Daniel to concede. However, he would soon come to wish that he could take those words back.
A grim smile appeared on Daniel's face, and at the same time, his hands closed into two frightening fists. "Oh really?.." he said as the space around his fists started to crack.
"ATTACK HIM!" Said the general while moving his greatsword in front of his body, and pointing it upwards.. Ordering his army to start the charge.
Daniel observed as numerous groups which belonged to different factions approached him with weapons in hand. The mental factions were using their powers to hinder his mind, the spiritual faction forced negative emotions into his spirit in hope to cause him to make mistakes, and the ki factions, along with the government's army, charged him with the might of their bodies alone.. But that did not matter.
What caused Daniel's heart to bleed was not the mental pressure that he was easily able to endure, the negative emotions which he was able to ignore, and certainly not the individually weaker cultivators who tried to engulf him with their sheer number. Instead, what hurt him was feeling all of the karmic points that he possessed be halved time after time again, as a result of multiple uses of karmic retribution.
All of these uses were naturally directed at those who posed a threat to him. The children of Iewah.
The army of soldiers and warriors approached his position, but just as their attacks, supported by their immortal essence and ki could reach his body, the cracked space suddenly shattered, causing for a large number of soldiers to be split into hundreds of pieces, and form a cloud of small pearls of blood and chunks of flesh which covered a large portion of the surrounding area.
Most of those who had survived were ki warriors, who thanks to their more resistant bodies, were able to survive the sudden shattering of space, and retreat with only a few injuries. "We cannot get closer! Stabilize the space around him!" Said the leader of the ki warriors, an extremely muscular man dressed in simple clothes, to the spiritual warriors.
In response to this order, Daniel started to feel numerous spiritual powers take over the large area of space that he was controlling, causing his true essence to lose ground bit by bit.
Forced to struggle over the control of the surrounding space, Daniel could only watch as two ki warriors charged in his direction, and swung their swords at his neck, and the middle of his chest. Two bloody wounds appeared in a moment on his body, and almost as fast as they were opened, quickly closed thanks to Daniel's powerful regenerative abilities.
These attacks did not stop coming, forcing Daniel to take a defensive stance in order to protect his eyes. He took one attack after the other, waiting for his true essence to condense within the small area which he was able to maintain.. And after around two hundred exchanges, he acted.
He used his true essence to create numerous metallic needles which he positioned in front of his body. He then moved his right hand behind his back, and retrieved one of the objects stored in his spatial ring.
"STOP WHATEVER IT IS THAT HE IS DOING!" Shouted the general, suspicious of Daniel's movements.. Unfortunately, it was already too late.
Daniel's lips curved into a wide smile as he suddenly brought three metallic sphere in front of his chest. He then injected a potion of his power into them to activate them, before releasing them. Only moments after leaving his hand, three gigantic explosion took place one after the other, with a blast supported by a hundred times the full capacity of someone at Daniel's level of cultivation.
These three explosions were so massive, that nothing of the ki warriors, the government's soldiers, or even Daniel had remained. Or at least, so it seemed.
Only seconds after the incredible blast, the scattered particles of Daniel's disintegrated body started to merge together, and in a few more seconds, from what appeared like a clump of burnt dirt, his body was restored to the peak of his power.
After recovering, Daniel did not wait for the survivors to regroup, or for the general to order another attack, and instead disappeared using his mental power of teleportation. When he reappeared, he was right in the middle of the group of spiritual warriors, who were barely able to turn the surface of their bodies into metal in the very moment Daniel's sword-like left arm had turned into a blade.
An incredible amount of sparks flashed by as his sword cut through the layer of metal, and into their spirits, either cutting the bodies of a few of them in half and forcing their spirits to go back to the spiritual plain, or injuring them severely.
Suddenly, the pressure against which Daniel's power of mental fortitude struggled against became twice as heavy, and from a few kilometers in the distance, came a loud voice that said, "DO WHAT YOU WERE BROUGHT HERE TO DO!"
As soon as the general finished calling for support, Daniel noticed that at least half of the children of Iewah present had started to move. To lead the attack were the Hereditary Prince, and a short middle aged man with a significant amount of muscles hidden underneath a visible layer of fat.
Luckily, Daniel was prepared, and met their charge with two more of Virgil's bombs. The two bombs exploded creating a massive cloud of fumes, and multicolored lights.
Daniel had already used karmic redemption on both of these children of Iewah, so when he created a chance for it to work, he expected them to be damaged.. But unfortunately that was only half the case.
The Hereditary prince was thrown back in the opposite direction with a few injuries that marked his young body, while the stout man, contrary to his disintegrated clothes, was completely unharmed. The man's abnormal defence was a consequence of his gift, the tank system, which granted him an impenetrable body, and had granted him the name of 'the Unmovable'.
The Unmovable approached him at great speed with a shoulder cocked back, and a fist as big as kid's head, seemingly ready to destroy Daniel's body with a single punch, but just before his punch could hit, Daniel's body bent backwards, and wrapped his arms and legs around his thick arm.
Without thinking twice about it, he forced a portion of his power down the Unmovable's lungs, and immediately turned into a fingertip-sized sphere of collapsed space.. But to his shock, not even collapsed space was able to damage his impenetrable body.
Forced to let go of his arm to avoid being grabbed, Daniel was unable to see the bolt that had suddenly appear from out of nowhere, and pierced his throat, emerging from the other side. The burning sensation he felt was that of a poison to which, luckily, he was immune to.
This bolt had been shot by the markswoman, a child of Iewah covered in animal pelts, and that carried an illusory crossbow and bolts. Her sight was legendary, and her ranged attacks were known to hit the target from one star to another. Named as the Viewfinder, thanks to her precision system, she was known as the second best ranged attacker, right after one of her older brothers, the Killshot.
After managing to damage Daniel's body, the six children of Iewah approached him, and floated next to him in silence, showing to him their sadistic nature, and their willingness to continue to fight for as long as it pleased them.
