With cries and screams from inside of Green Haven, which was not even a quarter protected with a gold colour that few are staring at in bewilderment, noise started to rumble…Louder and louder…

Only noise could be heard at first, if there wasn’t so much screaming nearby, but…After a small amount of noise, it turned into louder noise with the earth slightly trembling as well…

Very few knew what this could potentially mean…

It wasn’t like a Divine Beast was unheard of…It wasn’t like they couldn’t be seen on the rare occasion it was just…It was indeed a rare event.

The anti-beast barrier really did tend to drive beasts away and so it was only few that could put a meaning to the noise and rumbling earth beneath them…

 

“What…What is that!?” Someone asked in complete horror, while looking ruffled and had ash on him.

“Does it matter, keep putting out the fires!” Someone else yelled at him in near hysterics.

Another scream was then heard, “No! Jen…No!”

Cries, both women and children and some men even had tears in their eyes. Coughing was almost a constant noise to where the fire was and then there were the wounded. The people caught unaware, and that were still alive to tell the tale, were shocked silly to a loss of a limp or skin that had been completely harmed by fire to the point of them being unrecognizable.

Water users were everywhere, spouting out water to the huge fires within the city, then there were some that were trying to spray earth down, to help douse the fire…One particular person was using an interesting way of sucking out the air…And then there were some people just sitting there in a daze...

“I was just getting water…I was going to make father a cup of tea…Did I do something wrong?”

Mumblings, rantings, crying, screaming and the earth rumbling, filled the entirety of Green Haven!

 

 

“Your Majesty it is…It is the Divine Beast making the earth rumble!” Someone stated, running towards the Emperor.

“…It is real…” The Green Haven Emperor muttered, hardly able to still believe it, even though he had evidence right before him.

“Your Majesty! The north had not been hit, should I go get them to help the south and east with the fires?” A minister asked.

Looking out from beyond the banquet area, the Emperor sighed and shock his head, “Not just yet. If they were to hit the north, who would then look after them?”

“Then the west then?”

“Are you not listening!?” The Emperor yelled, only to be stopped by another minister, who pointed up high in the sky.

“Look, Your Majesty! It’s…It’s gold!”

Looking up in the sky, the Emperor widened his eyes and stared blankly at the golden area that was slowly growing…

Seeing the gold shine in two areas, then in a third, everyone saw how the gold had stopped what seemed to be three more elemental balls coming towards them.

“It’s…It’s a shield! We’re saved!”

 

Green Haven might not be getting hit anymore by the elemental balls, but it didn’t mean that it was all over for them!

They had to put out the two fires to the south and east, that…That seemed to have taken out two entire towns! These towns weren’t small either, they held mostly the noble families and now…Now a lot of the town was literally back to dirt…Like buildings had never been built there in the first place…

The death toll would not be low…

“Can we send reinforcements now, Your Majesty?”

The Emperor nodded, “Send the northerners to the east and westerners to the south! Separate the water cultivators out on the way and get them going straight for the fires!”

“As you command, Your Majesty!”

More orders were spouted out and every now and again, they could see not only the gold shield grow but three ‘hits’ upon the gold, making it look completely unreal…Unreal because it was just so pretty…How can something look so beautiful in the middle of a battle?

 

***

 

“You want us to…To fight a Divine Beast?” The General asked.

Matthew nodded, “Sahara is busy keeping Green Haven from being destroyed, we must stop the beast from the same!”

Seeing the Divine Beast slowly grow bigger and bigger, as it was coming closer and closer, the General let out a whistle and said, “It’s bigger than me…”

Matthew wasn’t really up to joking around and put a hand to his shoulder, “Tell them and get them organized…I’ll try to come up with a plan!”

Joshua had not come yet, so they had absolutely no strategy yet upon how to defeat or at least slow down this big beast…

If only they could know for sure if the Divine Beast would never go into Green Haven, they wouldn’t even bother but…With the Divine Beast being controlled…

 

Was this the right thing to do? Should they go out of their way?

Sahara had told them to worry about the Divine Beast because she was busy, he had to make sure that it would not harm anyone!

Thinking of the pros and cons on going out there with his men or staying inside the anti-beast barrier, Matthew could only feel like it was probably best to go out there to meet up with the beast.

If there was a time where they might have to flee Green Haven, would the beast then stop them?

The past really was something hard to know as…What if the anti-beast barrier really didn’t work…Or maybe the offensive army has some type of ability to make the shield not work?

Simply, there was no choice…They were going to be the vanguard, the ones put out front to give the rest some time to come up with plans and whatnot…

Since that was the case, Matthew tried not to think about anything else besides that of how to go against the big Divine Beast.

 

The General got his men under order and told them what to do, of course that wasn’t easy…The men were practically already in disarray to what was going on, now they had to leave the safety of this shield and go out there!?

They all thought that the General had gone mad!

Panic was clearly written on their faces, even after being reminded of their families and friends. Clearly it wouldn’t be their first choice to go out there and fight but…It was what their leader wanted them to do for protection of their Haven…What choice did they have?

While the General was dealing with these terrified people, Matthew could only come up with two ideas, but those ideas could not be achieved without knowing a couple of things first.

The Divine Beast was big, which could mean that it was slow at moving…Matthew also wondered how smart the beast was…

It really did seem like that they needed to fight the beast first, to come up with a real strategy.

If the beast was faster than anticipated, or smarter…

Yes, I suppose the first plan is to test the beast…Isn’t that what you do most of the time anyway?

If this was any other enemy, Matthew would be trying to find a weakness by fighting…So…

Matthew nodded to himself. Find weakness in your opponent, find their flaws and use them to your advantage. He’s just a big…A huge opponent…That’s all…

Walking up to be in front of those who had come, Matthew suddenly felt a chill down his spine…

There was only about two hundred people here…Where was everyone?

 

Even though everyone was silent, it wasn’t quiet. The rumblings were loud now, making it very hard to know if anyone was talking…Of course, the steps didn’t happen all the time but when they did, trying to hear someone became difficult, especially when you could feel the earth move beneath you…

Opening his mouth, Matthew had no choice but to continue to do his job, even if they had a little amount of men.

“All I ask is that you keep your family safe…The future generation…Your home…” Taking a moments silence, Matthew got closer and stated, “Plan A is to trip the beast and attack it while it is immobile! We also need to see how fast it is and how intelligent! Spread the word that we need middle connectors, then either an earth or nature element or metal to connect to them to make a long connection for it to trip over, do you understand!”

Matthew saw the men nod and turn around to speak the words to those behind them. They were shaking and trembling, but they too knew the depths of troubles here…They saw it in the General…

 

While they said all this, Matthew hoped to come up with a Plan B, perhaps taking into the account that the beast was a golem didn’t help…As nothing came to mind. On this planet there existed one type of golem, and that was the Divine Beasts. They really were rare and…And there was not much more about them really.

Matthew wished that he had the chance to at least once to have read more upon these Divine Beasts in the past but just never found anything…Everything known about them was hearsay…

How do you fight against a golem? A huge Golem? Does it have any kind of attack? What else is used as defense besides what looks like impenetrable skin?

Wait…Didn’t, didn’t Sahara state that the beast was getting mind controlled? Could that…Could that also be a plan then?

Even if there was a chance of another plan, it all seemed so impossible! Just the sheer size of the Divine Beast coming closer and closer made Matthew feel completely intimated and he practically forgot everything he just thought about!

 

Already…Sweat dropped from his brow and Matthew swallowed, he hoped that he had enough men to even attempt a Plan B, if Plan A doesn’t work!

Well…They have to make sure that Plan A works then!

Once every man had been told and were ready, they went out…Out into the wilderness, towards the Divine Beast.

Would they even return to the home that they were defending? Would they see their loved ones again? Would they…

Forming up, with ‘connector’ people in between other people, to connect two elements together, a line was being seen that followed a certain person that had a golden sword…

Closer and Closer, they charged towards a Divine Beast that shaman’s rode, and behind them…Was an army still trying to send big things towards Green Haven…Except what they were sending now weren’t that of big elemental balls, but that of people inside something that seemed to prevent them from losing their life’s as it flew through the air and was supposed to hit the ground…

 

There was a whole plan for the army. They were going to get the towns on the outside of the capital in Green Haven, destroying each of them with one lot of elemental balls. After that, the fire, that was being controlled, would entrap the Emperor and the capital! After being ‘trapped’, that was when these people in balls were going to be sent and become their first advance. If they needed to ‘trap’ the Emperor further, to give absolutely no chance for him to flee, they would do that but if they weren’t needed, the advance would then attack from behind and kill as many of the army or bodyguards as possible…

This was all Nate’s idea.

Since he had been there before, he knew what Green Haven was like…He also thought it would be best to just kill all the nobles, letting the peasants survive, if any, simply because they would be easier to walk over when Green Haven was his!

There was a fault in this plan of theirs though, and that problem was that of a golden shield…Of course this type of defense was never even thought of because it had only ever existed when a Golden Emperor was on the throne!

This, in Sahara’s eyes, was actually a really bad down fall towards being an army that was so far away from their goal…They didn’t see what was going on…A lot of them didn’t know that the balls were getting stopped until it was just too late! A force that was supposed to entrap and kill not only the nobles but the Emperor…Simply never happened…

 

(A/N: You can now purchase up to Volume 11 at blurb.com. https://au.blurb.com/b/11963757-the-journey-to-find-the-new-golden-emperor-volume.)