The town was under siege and it had been since morning light.

The enemy was a rival Bronze Class Settlement that had been absorbing one smaller neighbour after another in recent years.

Corpses already filled the streets, buildings burned and collapsed.

Three men dressed better than the rest led the march.

The men defending the small town fell before their enemy’s greater numbers, others knelt down, hoping to save themselves with surrender.

The women were dragged out of their homes if they were still alive. When all was said and done they’d be taken away by these men back to their own settlement.

Children cried, hugged their heads in the corner as men with bloodied blades approached them.

These scenes were commonplace among the Bronze Class Settlements that littered the continent of Muspelheim.

This was the scene that Rapture witnessed as he dragged his heels wet with blood and mud through the streets.

That blood, of course, did not belong to him.

The smell of death was thick in the air but there was not enough of it to overpower the stench of burning straw, mud and wood from the crumbling buildings.

The enemy numbered about eighty men, with three of them just barely qualified to slip into the lowest leagues of the Silver Class leading the rest of the group.

The boy stumbled forward. His bloodshot eyes beheld those helpless women as the female soldiers of Venus and their attackers meanwhile became the cruel Knights of Cain.

The wall beside him collapsed, a woman with torn garment fell through it. Her body was strong to an extent, after all she was a bearer of Ash, even if it was only on the lower end of the lowly Bronze Class; that allowed her to survive the shrapnel and splinter laced floor she collided with.

She tried then to scurry away, blood on her knuckles as a man stomped out of the building behind her. He grasped at her leg, she screamed and kicked at him as he pulled her over.

The man then stopped moving as he noticed Rapture. The boy snatched him by the wrist swiftly and suddenly. The man’s first thought then was to draw his sword and kill the young boy just the same as all the others, but his second thought was the far opposite.

Cracking sounds entered his ears, it took a moment for him to realise that his wrist had been broken by the grip of the boy.

The shock yielded to pain soon enough, and then he tried to get away. He tried and tried, but he couldn’t extricate himself. He fell to his knees and then paled with fright as an overwhelming darkness covered all in his sight.

Rapture’s pitch black Ash bathed the man’s body, pulverised it until nothing remained.

The woman slowly turned her head. She saw it all from start to finish. Yet what Rapture saw in her eyes was not gratitude or anything of the sort, but fear. She feared the ‘monster’ that was before her and sat frozen in place. She did not think him her savior, at most he was just a stronger man who, like the one he’d just slain, had designs on her.

The boy’s shell shocked mind sobered from the sight of her. She looked to him like a mouse that had caught sight of a cat.

She sat up then only as Rapture turned on his heels. Her trembling calmed as she watched his departing back waltz away into the distance. Slowly but surely she then came to her senses, she finally realised she’d been saved. She covered herself and fled, fled as far and fast as she could. She fled the town that had until today been her home.

________________________________________________ 

Lucretia stared wide-eyed at the scene off in the distance.

On one side of the town, opposite of where the invader’s main force stood, there was a familiar black glow slowly advancing towards them.

She closed her scarlet lips into a frown and rubbed her temple in dismay. There was only one person she knew of in the area that could generate such an unholy aura dripping with self loathing and despair, and that was Rapture.

The women around her had mixed feelings at the sight of it, they weren’t sure what to do.

Should they follow his example and join in the massacre, or should they do what they were always told to?

This would after all not be the first time they had suffered to bear witness to such a tragic scene nor did they believe it would be the last.

Conflicts like this were hardly uncommon among the Bronze Class Settlements, especially if they could get a Silver Class Settlement for a sponsor.

After all those same Silver Class Settlements didn’t want their lessers getting stronger anymore than the Gold Class Settlements above them wanted for them to grow in power either.

Nothing good was likely to come from them sticking their noses into this matter. They would’ve walked away today too, just as they had countless times before, if Rapture hadn’t gone and gotten himself involved.

Soon the Princess felt her fifty four subordinates place their gazes upon her. They were looking to her for permission. She closed her eyes to ponder, and then she relented to them with a very defeated look.

“You know, those people down there aren’t necessarily innocent either,” She said, and the women of Venus did not argue her point.

Indeed there was no reason to think that the settlement being besieged today wasn’t the one doing the besieging yesterday. They probably weren’t innocent, in fact any one of the soldiers of Venus could bet her life on that being the case.

“Even still,” One of the women struggled to say. Her heart ached at the scene before her. She was one of the younger few, the few who couldn’t yet understand why they should be expected to ignore this.

They wondered furthermore, how anyone could stomach the scene after what had happened to they themselves in Venus, in their own city, just a few days before?

Lucretia combed the masses with her eyes. She knew that they should just grab Rapture and go, they had no reason to get involved. She knew this, she knew it but even so.

“Fine,” She gave in, “Let the Bronze Class stay here with me and help pack up. As for everyone else...I’m going to be busy, so I will not be able to keep an eye on you.”

The women glanced upon Lucretia’s back with looks ranging from gratitude to exhaustion on their faces. There was nothing for it now, nothing left but to take action.

The four Gold Class soldiers of Venus leapt forward first, they led the rest of the group into battle same as countless times before.

Ash erupted from their bodies, cladded itself over their uniforms and then congealed into the shape of a solid suit of armour.

This was Advanced Manifestation, the third among Ash’s granted powers that was usable at the Gold Class and above. This was a power which allowed the Ash from Manifestation to form more complex structures.

The Silver Class women followed after them. Ash erupted from their bodies as well to bathe their weapons, and then they began shelling the land down low.

They leapt forward into the fray just as the black light reached the invader’s front line.

 _________________________________________________

“Who are you?” One of the three Silver Class men said. He raised his sword and clad its steel frame with the burning aura of his Ash.

He was in a panic, sweat fell from his brow as Rapture approached him at a brisk walking pace.

He was feeling overwhelmed, for while they were both using Manifestation the quality of Rapture’s compared to his own made it clear that the boy stood in a superior class.

Indeed the man felt like he was a lit candle standing before a raging fire.

The difference in volume between each Class was said to be double that of the class just before it, yet the difference in power was said to be fourfold, not two.

For the Gold Class, it was said you’d need ten of them to defeat a Platinum Class, just as a rule of thumb.

These were all just conjecture, just legend and rumour, but they still served to show that the gap between a Peak Platinum like Rapture and a Lower Silver like this man was a nearly insurmountable divide.

Rapture stumbled forward. The enemy before him was trembling, his followers had even begun to drop their weapons and run away.

The boy’s fingers twitched just a bit, that simple gesture alone was all it took for the flood of black matter behind him to leap into the fray.

The Silver Class man screamed in horror, he thrust forward with his own Ash bathing his blade.

He was hoping to retaliate, he was hoping to cut the power Rapture had sent flooding towards him. Naturally it didn’t work, his feeble resistance was crushed alongside the man himself.

The flood of darkness thundered forward through the street, yet truth be told the scale of Rapture’s Ash was less massive than it might seem, the streets here were pretty narrow and not all that long after all.

That just meant however that as the boy stumbled forward he didn’t have much ground left to cover.

His power receded steadily until finally it enveloped only his outline. He looked back upon the scene of desolation that was behind him.

What had he really accomplished here? Honestly, he wondered if he’d achieved anything at all.

However, in the next breath, he concluded that it didn't matter. He was angry, and these men were scum.

The difference in whether he was being a hero or just venting his frustrations no longer swayed him, and indeed he didn't think it relevant at all.