Part 6

"Is that all that you have to report, Eduard Andrejs?" A voice spoke out in the large room.

"…………"

Eduard did not answer, as his throat felt dry.

A feeling of fear washed over him.

"…I…"

"I asked you a question. Was that all you had to report? Eduard Andrejs”

The leader named Nereus stressed every word in that last sentence with a passive-threatening tone.

He could tell that Nereus was upset with him.

Eduard kept his face downward toward the tile floor beneath him, scared to look up.

Eduard gulped.

"……I literally had the girl and her power in the palm of my hands, but this boy kept getting in my way.”

"But you do not have her right now, do you?"

The man could not answer. He felt an ominous force looming over him even as he kneeled down.

"I ask this of you: did your ideals begin to waver?"

Eduard Andrejs looked up but did not answer the question.

Nereus leant forward on his throne and held out his palm towards Eduard.

Eduard's body began to twitch as he started gasping for air. It was as if his whole body was being sucked out from inside.

"…..Wa…wait…."

Eduard, through his pained and gasping breaths that filled the room, attempted to speak out, still kneeling towards the ground.

"I waited far too long," Nereus said calmly as he closed his palm.

Something twisted inside of him as he was unable to move.

His veins.

His blood.

"When we lost our home, I gathered the few of us that had remained because I knew what was needed to survive in a new world. A clear and cut way of thinking, one not corrupted by the outside world or its people, and for that, we have survived in this new world for 5000 years, but our survival relies on the fact that we all have the same goal in mind. Any deviations from that jeopardize all that we have been striving for. So, I ask this of you again: "Did your ideals begin to waver?"

Eduard was struggling to reply or say a single word.

One of the empty knight armor suits at the end of the aisle lifted its sword out of the ground and began walking towards the man kneeling on the floor.

Each step sounded heavy as it moved closer to the man.

As he was kneeling, his face was pressed into the ground, and he saw a large shadow looming over him as it stood next to his side.

Eduard could not move his head; the back of his neck was bare to the world. He stopped moving around when he felt cold metal on the back of his neck. It came to him as a shock as the empty suit held the sword around his neck.

He knew what was coming next.

An execution.

The empty suit of armor raised the sword into the air.

With him looking at the ground, he saw the shadow from the suit of armor lift the sword.

He wanted to yell out and move, but he could not.

This was the fate that awaited him.

In one fell swoop, the suit of armor brought its arm and the sword downward to the back of Eduard’s bare neck, separating head from body with a sickening noise that broke out in the large room, followed by several thuds as the head rolled on the floor.

The room was quiet.

Nereus lowered his hand and turned his gaze to the deceased body of Eduard Andrejs on the tiled floor.

"Are you sure that's wise, your majesty?"

The sound of heels clicking along the tiled floor

Nereus eyes glanced slightly to the left.

"Regardless of his incompetence, Eduard was a valuable ally and follower."

"Failure should never be tolerated, not when we are so close to our new world."

Nereus grabbed both of the armrests on his throne and began to lift himself up.

The hollow knights began to kneel with a loud klang that echoed throughout the large room.

The man began walking down the stairs to the throne. Both his hair and dark blue cloak swayed behind him. As he continued walking, he stepped over Eduard's dead body without a second thought.

As he walked down the aisle of the kneeling suit of armor, Elora called out to him.

"Where are you going, your majesty?"

"I waited far too long to let this chance slip away from my fingertips; I will retrieve both the girl and her power with my own hands," he said, not stopping.

"And about the boy that is with her?"

"Does that aforementioned boy concern you that much, Elora?"

"Hardly, it's just that I would hate that everything that we had worked for would fall apart because we had overlooked something. Regardless, the boy was able to beat Eduard."

There was silence in the large room as Nereus stopped walking.

The silence echoed throughout the large room.

"The girl is our upmost priority, but I suppose you may be right; very well then, I will allow you to take care of him if you believe he is such a threat. I am going to meet someone, then I will go after the girl, you or me; whichever one gets to him first, then it will be fair game."

As Nereus started walking, the two sliding doors opened.

"Ad Novus Orbis (to the new world.)," he said to himself as he left the room and the sliding doors closed behind him.