Lord of Annihilation

While the crowd remained frozen in astonishment, Lucius reached into his shadow and pulled out his scythe. 

"How long will it take you to open the channel?" Lucius asked, not turning around his head.

"Depends on when they closed it and by how much? Could take anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty minutes really."

Getting up on his feet, Prometheus dusted his robes and shot a casual gaze at the crowd.

"You have five minutes," Lucius replied and with a short kick, he instantly disappeared from his spot.

"Five minutes!? Are you kidding--!" 

Prometheus' complaints were abruptly cut short when he saw the bloody head of a Magus appear near his feet. The expression of horror and confusion was plain to see on the face.

"No problem!" Instantly replying as such, Prometheus disappeared from his spot and appeared before a terminal, a few meters away. 

His hands typed away at alarming speeds, clanging at the virtual screens of light projected by the terminals. 

"Come on. Come on! Come on!! Keep up you, damn machine!!"

On the other side, Linda…well, Lucius disguised as Linda was having a blast chopping away the heads and bodies of the crowd of Magi. Each time his scythe rose and fell; the count of dead bodies increased by two.

Lucius spared no quarter. His attacks were brutal and relentless and his hands did not rest until his target was completely and utterly dead.

Occasionally, he even sneakily feasted on one or two souls to replenish his wanton use of soul power. Some of the corpses lying on the floor also 'mysteriously' disappeared.

Needless to say, chaos was a good time to seek growth.

Just over two minutes had passed when the tirelessly swinging scythe suddenly came to a halt. A field of incomplete corpses, burn marks, chaotic Rules, spatial tears laid bare, and at the center of it all, stood the disguised Lucius.

His body stood straight and still, fully drenched in blood. His expressionless face looked towards the sky with his eyes closed. A moment of stillness later, his eyes suddenly cracked open. 

Lowering his head, Lucius took a look at his bloody hands. 

Those pale-white hands were colored crimson. His long, flawless fingers dripped with the still-warm blood.

Turning his gaze, Lucius then glanced at his floating scythe. The pitch-black blade remained untainted but the pool of blood underneath it stood witness to the massacre that it had just caused.

Finally, he turned his gaze towards the scene of slaughter. 

'Nothing. I still feel nothing.' He unhesitantly thought.

The Death Energy and Curse Energy that had gathered as a result of his slaughter were nearly concentrated to the point of turning tangible. 

And yet, inhaling deeply that familiar scent of death…he still felt nothing. 

There was no feeling within his heart.

'This is hopeless.'

He shook his head and grabbed the floating scythe. Parting the blood-soaked strands of hair falling on his face, he quietly walked towards Prometheus.

Quietly arriving behind Prometheus, Lucius softly asked, "Are you done?"

"GAH!" Prometheus jumped up in fright and quickly turned around. Seeing that it was his partner, he placed his hand atop his fiercely thumping heart and said, "Can you please stop doing that!?"

"Doing what?" 

Lucius 'innocently' blinked his eyes.

"Sneaking up behind me and softly whispering into my ears! Who does that!? It's creepy and also, very weird when a guy does it to another guy!"

His eyes then fell on the two mounds atop Lucius' chest. 

"Excepting this time." 

Catching his line of sight, Lucius visibly frowned and demanded, "Change me back."

"Not right now. Can't you see that I'm busy?" Prometheus immediately turned around and continued tapping away. 

"Also, this look suits you better. At least now, I don't have to wonder about my sexuality whenever I have a boner looking at you."

"Boner?" Lucius quipped at that unfamiliar word.

"You're seriously…" Prometheus immediately turned around and looked at Lucius' expression of confusion. "…too precious for this world. Please never change." A crooked smile appeared on his face.

Just as Lucius was about to force Prometheus to give him a proper answer, alarm bells started going off. The white-colored lightning within the room suddenly turned red and the exits leading outside the room closed shut.

"Dammit!" Prometheus' expression grew serious as he turned around and tapped away at the terminal. "This is bad!" 

"The placeholders that I set on the secondary verification arrays seemed to have malfunctioned! How did this happen!? Wait! That's it! They were bypassed by the auxiliary system when—"

"Get to the point!" Lucius grabbed Prometheus by his shoulders and exclaimed.

Trapped beneath Lucius' insanely strong grip, Prometheus concluded with a pale face.

"The entire facility knows that we've escaped! In other words, the Ward—"

BANG! BANG! BOOOM!

An explosion rocked the entire Transfer Room. The metal bulkheads closing the main exit suddenly blew up, releasing a cloud of dust and debris. 

The impact wave from the explosion crashed against the duo, knocking Prometheus to his feet and throwing Lucius off-balance. The chaotic energy wreaked havoc amongst the internals of the duo causing them to vomit a mouthful of blood.

Just as the latter released his grasp on Prometheus and was in the process of steadying himself, a cold voice declared.

"So this is where the little rats are hiding, huh?"

An old man with a large hunchback and a cloth covering his eyes tapped his walking cane against the cracked metal floor and declared.

"Release World."

----------

"So I just have to sign here, right?" Olivia asked, holding an elegant-looking quill in her hand.

"That's correct, Lady Olivia." 

"Geez, old man! I've asked you to stop calling me that. Just Olivia or little girl would do!" 

The words 'Olivia Mayer' was neatly signed onto a sheet of paper. Her handwriting wasn't anything exceptional but was clear enough to be considered 'decent.

Staring at her signature, a quiet smile surfaced on her face as she thought to herself, 'Compared to mine, Lucius' handwriting looked like it was written by a professional calligrapher. His class notes were always so neat and ordered.'

His notes were so well-ordered that during their high-school days, Olivia used to secretly make copies and sell them to their other classmates. She had even made a nice profit from this endeavor.

Of course, the technology to digitally record notes also existed and most people indeed did so.

However, Lucius was an odd person who liked to write with a pen and even frequently practiced his handwriting. When asked why he did so, he always used to reply with the same line.

'Only by physically doing it myself, do I feel like it truly belongs to me.'

Olivia had always found this habit of his strange and extremely cute.

"Are you, perhaps…thinking about His Lordship, La—Olivia?" Leon Baltmer, the old man who used to own a small shop in a narrow alleyway in Pectron, asked. 

His aged body was seated in a luxurious leather sofa and his hand, held onto an exquisitely carved teacup in its grasp.

"Yep." Olivia unhesitantly nodded her head.

Her face did not contain the slightest bit of shyness that a maiden in love would feel. Olivia was as resolved in love as she was in battle.

"I was just recalling our childhood together."

"Oh? His Lordship and you spent your childhood together? I did not know that. No wonder. No wonder…" Baltmer nodded his head and sipped at his tea.

Rolling her eyes at his action, Olivia put down the quill in her hand on the table in front of her. Reaching for a similar teacup diffusing a pleasant fragrance, she brought it to her lips and leaned back on the sofa.

"Leaving the matters of my childhood aside…look at you. I would've never imagined that the annoying, nagging small shop owner who always threw nuggets of wisdom at me, would, in fact, actually be a—!!"

The teacup in Olivia's hand suddenly dropped. Jumping up to her feet at an alarming speed, Olivia stuttered while tears fell from her eyes.

"Lu-Lucius!!"

An immense sense of unease and heartbreak filled her heart.