Chapter 546: Massacre (1/2)

Zac looked on with both awe and horror at the carnage that was taking place in the distance. The Anointed were simply terrifying when working together, and Zac doubted that any local faction apart from his own would be able to survive their assault. He suddenly felt a presence to his side though, and he looked over to a neighboring tree as he drew his axe.

“Hey,” Thea said as she landed.

“Was I that easy to spot?” Zac grimaced as he put [Verun's Bite] away.

“Well, I knew the jammer would be placed in this area, and that you would spectate. It was only a matter of time,” Thea said as she turned back to the battlefield. “It’s a massacre.”

There were no two ways about it. The Zhix Crusaders were obviously not interested in taking prisoners or holding any trials to find the true culprits. Everyone in the hive received the same treatment; a swift death.

Only ten minutes had passed since the battle started but less than 1% of the defending warriors remained. They were fighting desperately to prolong the inevitable, and Zac knew they fought for their honor, to prove their strength to their ancestors before they joined their ranks in the afterlife.

“A lot of them seems to have entered the hive, killing the civilians as well,” Thea added after a brief pause.

“I know,” Zac nodded.

“You could stop them. They would back down if you demanded it,” she said.

“I think you underestimate the importance the Zhix put on this war. It’s the very core of their society. Me telling them to stop would probably just give them two targets to fight rather than one,” Zac said, and he added after some hesitation. “But I have no intention of finding out.”

“How are we any different than our enemies if we go down this path?” Thea said as she turned to Zac.

There was no anger simmering in her eyes, nor was there reproach. There was only an almost disturbing tranquility.

“Who’s to say we’re any different?” Zac sighed. “We’re just rival factions fighting in the mud. They must die so that we can live. We’re not the good guys, and they aren’t really the bad guys. At least not most of them. We just have opposing interests.”

“Hmm,” Thea only said, not commenting any further.

The silence stretched on, and Zac felt more and more suffocated as he looked at the increasingly silent mountain in the distance. Should he do something? Millions of lives would be extinguished just so that he could be sure that no karmic threats were lurking on Earth. How could he be so calm while enabling a genocide?

“Someone’s running,” Thea suddenly said, and Zac saw what she was talking about.

A hidden door had appeared just a few hundred meters away from their location, and a group of Zhix was hurrying out through it. It looked to be mostly elders and clergymen, but they were guarded by a squad of elites. It was probably the leaders of the hive, the mouthpieces of the true Dominators. They were the true target, at least for Zac, and if these people managed to fled then the crusade would lose most of its meaning.

The hidden exit was extremely far from the Hive itself, and there was no way that their actions could be spotted by the Anointed. The squad of scouts wouldn't be able to stop these guys either, even if they put their lives on the line.

“I’ll deal with it,” Zac said and immediately flashed away, each step taking him dozens of meters through the forest.

He appeared in front of the group of Zhix just a few seconds later, prompting the group to stop in their tracks. They first looked horrified upon being intercepted, but they soon breathed out in relief when they saw it wasn't an Anointed waiting for him, but rather a human.

“A human?!” one of the elders exclaimed as he took two steps forward. “Did your government send you? Hurry, help us get away from here. Our master is Void Disciple, and we have a working cooperation with your kind. You will be richl-“

The old Zhix didn’t get any further. His body froze for an instant before it fell apart as blood spurted in every direction. A blue wave spread out the next moment, reaping the lives of more than half of the remaining escapees. Only those lucky enough to stand far away survived the attack that seemingly came out of nowhere.

It was Thea who had arrived as well, weaving a tapestry of death all around her. A few of the guards shot toward her with reckless abandon, releasing a terrifying killing intent. They all seemed to have the same class as well, some sort of earthen warrior. Stones grew to cover their whole bodies, and they quickly grew into 3-meter golems with sharp spikes for arms.

Was this perhaps something devised to counter the towering Anointed?

Carrying around a ton of rock on their bodies did nothing to slow them down, and they tried to stab Thea from every direction. However, their rocky exterior was like paper in front of her, and each swing of her new weapon reaped a life. She weaved through the insectoids like a dancer, each of her strikes both beautiful and deadly.

Zac first felt her swordsmanship felt a bit ostentatious, but he soon realized there was meaning behind every movement. Just slightly repositioning her shoulder or lifting her weapon a few degrees caused changes in the battlefield as the warriors instinctively responded. It was like she was a puppeteer who magically created openings in her opponents to deliver instant death.

The battle was over in less than thirty seconds, with Zac only killing two unlucky fellows who ran straight at him in their attempts to flee from Thea. The Marshall scion had done the rest, and her breath wasn’t even labored even though Zac knew she wasn’t in perfect condition at the moment. She looked over at Zac with a small smile, before she shook her head and walked over.

“I’ve told you already, stupid. You’re not alone in wanting to protect Earth,” she said as she swung her sword in the air, causing all blood on it to fly off its edge. “You don’t have to carry this burden alone.”

Two Zhix scouts appeared the next moment ready for battle, but they froze when they saw the carnage. Zac briefly explained the situation, and one of them set off to fetch a regiment that could explore the escape tunnel. Zac and Thea walked back to the spot where the jammer was placed, and they found Triv nervously flitting back and forth until he spotted Zac.

The war was still raging, but there were no more breakouts it seemed. Zac wordlessly watched as the last of the insurgent Zhix fell, his mind repeating Thea's words over and over. It helped him with his confusion a bit, but it was impossible to completely shrug off the weight of sin he had amassed today.