Lord of Annihilation

"How do you have his blood?" Olivia asked, shocked. "And why are you spilling it!?"

"Whoa, one question at a time, kiddo," Ka'lor'ah answered, throwing the flask aside after emptying its contents. She then opened the second flask and repeated her actions.

"'How do I have his blood?' I asked him. Plain and simple. As for why I'm spilling it," she gestured to the array underneath their feet and explained. "This is a [Cause Tracking Array]. Using it we can find a person; their exact location, status, and even scry at their past and present."

Emptying the fourth and final flask, Ka'lor'ah threw the empty container outside the bounds of the array. She then stamped her feet on the pool of black blood and instructed.

"Now, be a dear and move outside the array. This formation is very temperamental and I don't want to see it fail."

Olivia immediately complied and exited the array. Just to be sure, she further distanced herself from the array lines, settling at around 10m distance. 

"Good. Now let's start this thing," Ka'lor'ah audibly muttered and began to pour her energy.

The lines underneath her feet immediately started to shine, radiating profound energy. The pool of black-colored blood was absorbed into the formation and quickly disappeared. A screen of light appeared around the borders of the array, encompassing Ka'lor'ah and the immense amount of power released by the formation.

Light gathered around Ka'lor'ah arms as her body started to float into the air. Gravity seemed to disappear as her robes and hair began to flutter and float without any weight to weigh them down. 

Her golden-colored eyes shined with divine brilliance as her head raised itself automatically to face the ceiling. Power pulsed through the formation lines underneath her feet, before rushing into her body.

Ka'lor'ah's body quivered as a vast amount of energy and information began to flood into her body. She didn't immediately receive the answer to the question that she was seeking but was slowly getting there.

Soon, she began to see fragments of scenes with Lucius in them. 

A scene where he meditated with his scythe. A scene where he slaughtered a company of Elves. A scene where he was knocked unconscious by a Stage 5 Magi and transported to Tartarus.

At this point, the scene became even more fragmented, as a powerful, foreign force interfered with her scrying. Still, relying on her experience and knowledge, Ka'lor'ah pushed through. 

Being imprisoned inside the deepest cell. Waking up and meeting Prometheus. Their escape. Coming face-to-face with the Warden. The Magi then rewinding time.

It was here that Ka'lor'ah's eyes suddenly widened. An expression of pure terror appeared on her face as she shrieked with horror.

BANG!

The sea of energy around her detonated and the array beneath her feet exploded. A brief flash of white light swallowed Ka'lor'ah, following which…

Everything blew up.

---

The sudden explosion had caught Olivia completely off-guard.

Reacting in the nick of time, Olivia layered dozens of shields constructed from soul power in front of her body. At the same time, she kicked off the ground and retreated backward with full speed.

Unfortunately, it mattered little.

The initial wave of invisible, destructive energy tore through her paper-like shields and crashed against her chest. Olivia instantly felt the fat and muscles on her chest compact, before being outright torn apart. Her ribs were broken and her body was flung backward at incredible speeds.

Crashing against the white-tiled wall did not seem to reduce her momentum as Olivia's body continued to bore through the wall. 

Boring through dozens of meters of solid concrete, metal, and other materials used in the construction of this building, Olivia's body broke through one final layer of glass before feeling a sense of freedom.

And then, she started to fall.

From the eighty-fourth floor.

---

Flinging Olivia off the eighty-fourth floor wasn't the only thing that the wave of destructive energy did. It was just the beginning.

The white tiling used to cover the entirety of this floor was a military-grade explosion dampener created for the very purpose of containing the explosion. This material was so strong that it could tank a full-powered attack from a Peak-Level Stage 3 entity without breaking.

Yet, it could not fully contain the formation's explosion.

Only a few seconds after the initial wave, the subsequent bouts of destruction and heat eroded the military-grade material, reaching into the foundation of the eighty-fourth floor. The foundation stood no chance against the explosion's power and immediately gave way.

Ten seconds after the initial wave, the eighty-fourth floor became non-existent. The entire building quaked immensely, after which it came crashing down.

Entire floors, house-sized chunks of solid materials, debris weighing in hundreds of thousands of tonnes came crashing down, instantly extinguishing the life of hundreds of human civilians.

This death count only increased, as the falling building set off dozens of smaller explosions in its vicinity. These explosions further claimed life while propelling the destruction.

After nearly thirty minutes of rumbling, quaking, and sounds of explosions, everything came to a stop and silence descended.

Neither screams nor cries were heard. Only the remnants of a major disaster remained.

---

It took ten minutes for the first batch of first responders to arrive. Multiple teams consisting of humans, androids, and machines arrived in flying ships and landed near the scene of the disaster. 

Like ants working atop an ant-hill, the rescue teams got to work, carefully filtering out the hazardous debris while looking for survivors. It was an arduous job, but thanks to the invention of specific rescue tools, and the mystical force called soul power, evacuation went quick.

Twenty minutes after the first responders came the crowds of curious onlookers and media. Dozens of drones flew in the air, recording and broadcasting the disaster for humans to watch. The QuantumNet (QNet for short) buzzed with discussion as hundreds of thousands of humans analyzed and debated the disaster.

Most were understanding of the terrible disaster and kept most discussions civil. Of course, a group of naysayers and conspiracists existed, but these were in the minority and were largely ignored by the general public.

Thirty minutes after the disaster, a particularly noticeable spaceship arrived at the scene, bearing the mark of the UEM. Landing at the dedicated landing zone, the hatch to this ship opened, and a blonde-haired woman exited.

Ignoring the reporters flooding around her, shoving their mics and whatnots at her face, she navigated through the crowd of people and rescue workers and arrived before a newly constructed tent. 

After showing her ID to the soldiers guarding the construct, she opened the loose flap and entered the tent. 

"Lady Reyna!" 

The authorities inside the tent immediately stopped their duties upon seeing her arrival and greeted her with a salute. After returning a salute of her own, Reyna approached the head table and greeted the leading officer.

"Captain. What's the situation?" She immediately got to the point, dropping the small talk. 

The captain seemed to understand his guest's hurry as he acutely replied, "Lady Reyna, this is the status report."

He clicked on the console before him, causing a holographic screen to appear atop the table. 

"So far, we've excavated around 8% of the total damage. 14 people with varying degrees of injury have been rescued from the debris, while the confirmed death toll is at 98."

Taking a breath, he declared.

"We estimate the total number of deaths to be within the 800-1000 range. Most of them were officers working within the building before it went down while a small minority were residents in the surrounding district."

"Any idea what caused the disaster?" Reyna asked.

"Honestly, we are unsure, Lady Reyna." The man replied before tapping on the console once more. "However, the preliminary investigation points to a sudden explosion on the eighty-forth floor of the building. My men are still processing the data gathered from the cameras and other devices around the district, so nothing is concrete."

His answer weighed on Reyna's mind. The eighty-fourth floor. If he remembered correctly, that was the floor where Ka'lor'ah ran her experiments and tests.

'Could it be that something went wrong? An experiment failure, perhaps?' Reyna could only guess.

But that wasn't the reason for her arrival here. She had come here for a greater, graver matter.

Wearing a grim expression on her face, she asked, "Have you found Olivia yet?"

The captain adopted a similarly grim expression and heavily replied, "We haven't found Captain Mayer yet. The records show her personal ship entering this planet's port and eye-witness accounts put her rushing towards the building. After that, we do not know."

He made a pause and painfully continued.

"However, there is a chance that she was–"

His words remained incomplete as a sudden humming noise drowned out all sounds within the vicinity. A pillar of greyish-white light shot up into the sky, originating from within the debris hundreds of meters away.

The captain and Reyna hurriedly exited the tent and joined the crowd of curious onlookers as they witnessed the pillar of light. It was a curious occurrence that felt as strange as it looked divine.

Viewing that greyish-white pillar made every onlooker feel like they were insignificant ants in its face. While almost everyone looked at this sight speechlessly, the watch on the captain's wrist crackled with radio chatter.

"This is Rescue Team #14. I think we found the Captain, sir!"