“What was that?! What was that?! Someone tell me what the fuck that was!”

Thunderous sounds of destruction drowned out any attempts to explain the last images that came through before their connections were cut. All of them. Even the biotracers.

Just as had happened when they lost the Shadow Unit, the retrieval squad, led by Cerberus, the combatant with peak third cleansed strength, had also gone silent.

All that remained were the last images seen from their eyes.

It wasn’t that they were very familiar with the artificial mountain range commonly referred as the Jaws of Madness, but they knew there shouldn’t have been a couple of giants standing in a giant breech through the notoriously difficult to cross black glass mountain range.

No one within the command room of the secret facility had left or made contact with the outside since the search for codename: Legion first began, so no one had any clue as to the identity of the mega structure they were looking at. Except for two conspicuous people in the back.

James sat with his legs crossed, his foot merrily bouncing to a fun little jaunt in his mind, enjoying a pleasant cup of tea as he silently watched his elder brother make a muck of things in his anxiety. The Sixth was running out of time. And the Eighth would hold his tongue.

Standing behind his boss, Danny’s eyes were both vacant and racing in a state of denial and paranoia.

Weren’t those images they watched before coming here prompter generated? Something that bastard came up with and somehow spammed the Nexus for whatever reasons bastards like him come up with.

So why was that giant statue on these screens?

Than those black and red figures that looked familiar? The hundreds of floating red creatures? Jun PUNCHING the fucking mountain?!

What was the meaning of it all? What did James mean about the last live stream? Was there one? Hadn’t he ruined all that? What was he missing?!

“James! Why are you here!” Nosa Vaults, the enraged Sixth Prince, roared when he saw the last person he wanted to see sitting in the back while he was on the verge of a meltdown.

Why was this child even able to access his most heavily protected secret command center like he was strolling through his own home? And with a valet? How many was he going to have to kill this time before people became more competent?

He should start with the idiot making stupid faces behind his brother.

What was that ugly crying smiley face supposed to mean? Was he looking at Nosa like that? Did he want to die now? Cause Nosa could totally do it right now!

“I was just taking a walk and decided to see what all the excitement was about. Brother, you have an interesting process of interior decoration. I thought I was the only one with any taste in this family, but it seems I’ve overlooked your potential. Would you like me to get you your own engraved Smashbar? I’ve got a guy.”

“Get. Out.”

——

Seven children who were robbed of their innocent experiences lay side by side on floating beds, their young faces finally relaxed in sleep as the laws of creation were being bent to offer them rest.

‘Spirit’ referenced the influence of all things spiritual and of the soul. ‘Wellness’ referenced a state of physical being. ‘Peace’ referenced a state of emotional being. And ‘Stable’ referenced the wish.

Lady Cynth used the cyclic order of Spirit, Wellness, Peace, and Stable to become the greatest expert in the realms of spiritual healing in the multiverse, claiming tremendous influence among the different forces that composed the Nexus.

When she allowed the newest Elder to gaze upon her greatest masterpiece as she performed treatment on the tragic one, she understood that the young Elder knew little about the significance of the gesture and expected even less in terms of his accomplishing anything from the experience.

If she could see what he would do at the instigation of a bunny…

A total of twelve origin runes were rotating around the sleeping patients.

The original 2nd tier Origin runes of Spirit, Wellness, Peace, and Stable occupied the main corners.

Lady Cynth created harmony between the four with her mastery of her world’s runes.

Jun stuck in a couple 1st tier Origin runes between the four to make it flow. That’s all he had.

Spirit

Grow

Flow

Wellness

More

Higher

Peace

Strong

Resilient

Stable

Firm

Flexible

It was nothing major. Jun was just working based on intuition and feeling, merely trying it out, and although it was incredibly crude, rather a sketch of an idea than a finished product, it seemed to work alright. He was satisfied.

Then there was a change with his flame.

He was super satisfied.

Jun had just realized that what he had just experienced was an epiphany on the use of Origin runes, and that the range of his Domain had nearly doubled from his enlightenment. It wasn’t until then Jun began suspecting that what he’d done may have been a bigger deal than he thought. It might even be significant. How interesting.

Looking back, he saw his mom holding Ella in her lap as if she were seeking warmth and looking absolutely miserable. His dad, who was standing next to her, didn’t look much better, his concerned fatherly gaze constantly shifting between the sleeping children with his fists balled and agitated and helpless at his sides.

They had spoken with the children and received some answers.

There was only tragedy from those youthful lips that described harrowing lives with complete nonchalance. Pain, isolation, torture, and death were spoken of in terms of obvious absolutes like how a stranger mentioned the weather.

Mary cried.

The children were termed Big Brothers and Big Sisters, but although they were similar, the Big Brothers worked on a different system from the Big Sisters.

Based on Sophie’s findings and the children’s testimonies, Big Brothers were boys with monster souls grafted to their human ones at birth, while Big Sisters were girls grafted with the souls of other girls at an older age.

Why those distinctions, none could say, but that was the state of the matter.

The boys were matched with different demon-beasts that shared rune compatibilities.

The largest and oldest boy at twelve, called Minotaur, who fought with demonic earth elemental armor, was fused with the soul of an earth element demon-bull and had a physique that was already almost fifty percent demonic. His own personal rune was an earth manipulation demonic rune, which seemed to only hasten the encroachment of the demonic soul and the start of his ‘retirement.’

Yeah, that was a thing too. They all got very bad feelings every time it was mentioned. ‘Retirement.’

Griffin was merged with some kind of wind elemental creature and Cyclops, a detection specializing demon beast.

The only boy with more than a single monster soul was Cerberus himself. He had three fire element demon-wolves yapping in his brain 24/7. The physical feedback of fusing with three demon-wolves was of course tremendous, but the strain on his soul was only second to the oldest Minotaur, even though he was one of the youngest.

On the surface, these boys seemed to have gotten a great deal. As hosts, they gained a strengthened physical body with powerful demonic traits and even had an extra personal rune that was more than a simple addition in strength. It opened up entirely new tactics to explore that perfectly synergized with their new physiques.

The only problem was that two souls were being forced to co-exist in a single body when one side was very set on devouring the other. Only the ones with demonic sides that understood the necessity of the human soul to function in a human body lived long enough to have discussions about them.

Those special demonic physical traits were the demonic soul’s slow and steady approach to devouring their hosts by taking a nibble and filling the gaps until all that remained was demonic.

Unfortunately for them, according to Sophie’s calculations, the breakdown of life-sustaining functions would have long killed the body before the demonic soul could completely claim a body. How crazy would that be if they could? The implications would have been terrifying.

At least for now, all that was accomplished was shortening the lifespans of children to their tweens in exchange for novel strength that didn’t have any future.

Even the double runes were a situation waiting to unfold.

The host had his demonic personal rune that synergized so well with the demon-beast’s personal rune, but what would happen when the system was restored and their world was able to sustain the blessing of world runes again?

Could a world rune and a demonic rune even co-exist in the same body?

Personal runes were vital to the building of the present world and were vital to the setting of a person’s Path. But one couldn’t base that Path on runes that weren’t of the same origin as the practitioner. Especially because the demonic runes used on Earth originated from the enemy.

Earth’s situation of the Nexus presenting demonic runes as personal runes wasn’t a common occurrence, but it did happen under certain tragic circumstances. Like, right before the world died.

The Earth’s Spirit was so weak that it was a miracle humans were still able to reproduce at all. As the only lifeforms left in the universe, the Spirit could still allow humanity to crawl forward, but it wasn’t in any condition to give out rune blessings, which would have been pointless with the complete lack of world energies, so the Nexus handed out demonic ones instead, because demonic energy was everywhere, might as well use it.

Their mission was to get the Spirit breathing and healthy again, which would change all their personal runes to their rightful world runes. Only then could the Awakened solidify their centers and step into the 5th realm, the realm of the First Step.

When these children had their personal runes converted to world runes, would the demonic souls also change into world runes, or retain their demonic nature? If they didn’t change, would there be a conflict? Of course, there would be a conflict, but what to do about it?

The Big Sisters also had multiple personal runes, but the source of theirs wasn’t from fusing with monsters, but with their own kin.

They were termed the Three Sisters, not because the three were sisters, because they weren’t, but because each of the three girls were more than one ‘sister.’

These evil bastards took siblings and ‘condensed’ them down to a single body, resulting in individuals with multiple personal runes and multiple personalities that weren’t psychological manifestations.

Two had two souls and two personal runes, while the Eldest was once the eldest of three now had three personal runes. The voices of their sisters still existed inside them and sometimes those voices would be their voices.

Sophie gave them three years.

Three years before their minds would collapse under the burden of multiple psyches.

At least, it would have been before they found Jun.

Looking at the little bundle that had crawled into his lap, Jun realized that Ella had been very attentive to the Eldest girl since a while back. Did she recognize her? It triggered a memory.

Ella once said something about becoming a Big Sister. And how they got beds.

And it all clicked into place.

These older children were the tests, the steps they took, to get to Ella.

They were older and more experienced and more powerful, but the scales of manipulation to their souls couldn’t even be compared. They were fusions of two to three souls while Ella was at least five main souls, with evidence of thousands of others having been used as nourishment. Of course, their conditions were far inferior to Ella’s. He refused to believe they could sacrifice as many souls on these girls as they did on Ella.

What they learned about their objectives also strengthened his conjecture.

Their directive was to retrieve the escaped ‘subject’ at all costs and elimination of all who’d made contact with her.

They called his Ella, Legion.

What kind of name was that to give a little girl?

It was kinda badass, but it was a name for a fate that he couldn’t bear for his child.

The unprecedented scale of their operation also indicated that Legion was important to them.

Jun looked at the sleeping kids, living weapons who lived and died at the mercy of others, and saw what his Ella was once fated to be.

He couldn’t accept that.

He couldn’t accept that for these children, either.

Jun sighed and everyone looked at him.

“Well, it looks like our family just got a whole lot bigger. You think we can afford to feed them?”

“Yes! I can share my food with them, daddy! We can do it!”

 

 

---

 

...was it you? 

Did you take them out? Are they safe? What did you do to the 14th 5 star?!

Is it retaliation? For standing up against your tyranny? Than you should have come to me! 

Instead you went after poor, innocent little 14th. Like a coward. 

The one with the 1 star.

This is a warning.

If any harm comes to the 14th 5 star.... I'm gonna write a strongly worded letter. 

You will not enjoy it. 

Beware.