BRRRRMMMM!!!
A heavily armed truck, made to carry heavy loads for the army, approached the gate of an old-looking facility called the Deep Underground Military Base (D.U.M.B.).
"Good evening, mate, how can I help you today?" a guard greeted as the truck stopped.
"Master Sterling asked to deliver this as fast as possible, so I would like you to open the gate," a voice so calm it almost felt hypnotic replied from inside.
"Uff, you didn't even return the greeting, mate," the guard laughed.
ZZZT…
The driver's side window opened.
"I am really sorry for that. Good evening, mate," the driver replied with the same calm tone.
"No need to apologize, I was just kidding. You are new here, aren't you? Never seen you before," the guard asked as he tried to look inside the truck.
"Yeah, it's my first day at work for humans… hahaha," the driver replied flawlessly.
"That happened to me on my first day too," the guard laughed.
"I wish I could talk more, mate, but I am in a hurry. The Chief is waiting," the driver said while checking his watch.
"Oh, then it must be from Master Sterling. You may go." The guard instantly cleared the way.
"Ah… I also desperately want to meet you, but I think the next time will be in hell… hahaha," the driver said before winding up the window.
"You've got a great sense of humor. Get going," the guard giggled.
"But just out of curiosity," the guard stopped him once more, "why are you wearing that black and red cassock in this boiling temperature?"
"Personal choice, mate," the driver said, not even looking at the guard.
"Fair enough." The guard instantly agreed and cleared the way.
KRRRRAAAK…
The gate opened with a loud, echoing sound. Like something was constantly breaking during the opening of the gate, the sound was very uneven and irritating. As the truck rolled inside, the driver spoke one last time.
"Your suspicion at the start was good… but if I were to invade, I would invade from the air." The truck continued forward.
The guard stood there in confusion.
"…Driver number 91…"
Something felt wrong. His mind replayed every word. His eyes slowly moved towards the name stitched onto the collar of that black and red cassock.
His pupils widened.
"KAIRO…"
His heart skipped.
"CLOSE THE GATE!!" he screamed with everything he had.
Too late. The truck came to a stop in the middle of the facility.
The door unlocked.
The driver stepped out.
"You are right," he smiled. "There is no Driver Number 91."
He climbed onto the bonnet of the truck.
"There is only a boy who carries the name his mother gave him… and the work that made that name feared." He cracked his neck.
"Zenith Kairo." Silence spread across the entire facility.
"I'll show you exactly what made this name climb so high."
He closed his eyes. Machine guns, sniper rifles, and every weapon in the facility immediately turned towards him. He never looked at them.
Instead, both his hands moved into a gesture so impossible it looked inhuman.
The environment froze. The air grew colder. Every voice became vulnerable. Everything became heavy. Only one voice became the absolute order.
"BEND PERCEPTION. FRACTURE THE REAL. LET THE UNSEEN NOW BE REVEALED."
The only chant capable of opening the PARALLAX DOMINION.
And it was opened by KAIRO ZENITH himself.
"Everybody prepare yourselves! Kairo Zenith has breached our base! And inform Master Sterling he has cast the Parallax Dominion!" one guard shouted, alerting everyone.
DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!
In a few seconds, the camp became a battlefield against only one arcanist of the modern era. Heavy machine guns, tanks, and snipers were already firing in the same direction with only one motive: to kill Kairo.
But...
"I can see, you filthy humans, you have taken our flux and still have no manners to greet us." Kairo vanished with his sentence.
"Where did he go?" a soldier asked while moving forward.
"Aww, miss me already?" Kairo said from behind him.
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!
Before the guns could take position and resume firing, Kairo snapped the necks of every soldier in front of him without breaking a sweat.
"Ahhhh!" Every soldier in the field became attentive and engaged.
Rat-tat-tat!
Every rifle on the battlefield was working at its fullest, and due to that, they became so hot that they even started burning the soldiers' hands.
But rage was their ultimate fuel to kill Kairo, and the fast-moving bullets were their last hope.
"Hope is the lie given to every soul—not to save them, but to make them fight until their last breath for the one who created the lie," Kairo said before starting the bloodbath.
KRAK! WHAM! BAM! THUD! THUD!
Faster than bullets moved Kairo's hands and legs. Kairo started to fight, giving his opponents only a one-hit chance of dying, which they all accepted at the point of contact.
"Master Sterling, thank god you picked up the call. I was... sniff... sniff..." The soldier tried to hold back tears as Aurthur Sterling picked up the call.
"At least tell me what happened," a very calm voice came from the other side of the phone.
"Arcanists know, they know everything, they have sent Kai..." The soldier failed to complete his sentence.
"Wh... What? How and what happened? Tell me. Hello... Hello..." the person tried to reconnect.
"The person you are trying to connect to has left this world because his heart was ripped out by Zenith Kairo himself," Kairo laughed.
"..." Aurthur hung up the phone.
"You can't win, you damn demon!" yelled a soldier who was covered in bombs.
"Hey, you want to kill me, mate? Really?" Kairo made a cute expression on his blood-soaked face.
BOOOOOOOOM.....
The human bomb blasted a few inches away from Kairo, dying thinking he would have killed Kairo, but as the smoke cleared, there stood a six-foot Kairo currently playing with the heart of the soldier who had just blasted.
But this gave his subordinates a penny's worth of time to call all the backup present and their Chief for directions to kill Kairo.
"Oh! This is very scary," Kairo giggled.
"You have killed only 60 of us, that doesn't prove you're strong enough for us," the backup force shouted.
"Mate, but I think I need to step back," Kairo took a pause and looked at the sky, "and give new stars a chance." Kairo raised his hands in submission.
"What do you mean—" a soldier tried to speak.
SKREEE!
A single eagle's cry echoed across the camp, and every conversation stopped.
"What are you guys seeing? It's just an eagle! Kill the target, shoot Kairo!" the Chief shouted from the sniper tower.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Every soldier's grip became so weak that their weapons started dropping to the floor. They tried over and over again, but they lost the hope of holding them.
"What happened?! Pick up the damn weapons and kill him!" the Chief shouted, tearing his throat.
"Ch... Chief, it's a HARPY EAGLE," one guard said in a low voice.
"So what? It is not gonna hunt you!" the Chief shouted again.
"It is a companion, not an untamed one... rather, a trained companion to announce death." The guard's blood went cold, but no response came from the other side.
VMMMMMMM...
From an airplane flying at a distance, a message came to the sniper tower:
"YOU'VE ALREADY DIED. TIME IS SIMPLY TOO SLOW TO TELL YOU."
ROOOOOAR....
Just after the message, the airplane seemed to have slowed in the air itself.
CLACK! KCHNK!
The cargo doors on its back seemed to have loosened to open.
WHRRRR.... FWOOOSH!
In the next second, the door opened as if to unload goods in mid-air, or for someone to dive.
"Your turn, Raiden. Kairo has done his work," the Handler said, hanging by the door.
DASH! KICK!
Before he could turn, something was already out there, falling.
"They were right to name you after a curse... AKIRA RAIDEN," the Handler said plainly.
"Now let me also see what Mitsuya no Sabaki (Three arrows of judgement) is," the Handler said to himself.
Passing between the clouds, tearing the air, was a young girl not more than 18 years of age. She wore a suit that was black in color and mimicked her physique.
The most remarkable detail about her was the bow she held in her dominant hand, which for her was the left, and the tattoo on her neck which read:
Veni, Vidi, Transfixi
I came, I saw, I pierced.
"Your turn, Kurōya (BLACK ARROW)," she said while grabbing something in the air.
The moment she closed her grip, an arrow burning with black flames appeared in her palm.
TWAAAAANG!
As she released the string of the bow, the arrow flew with a speed invisible to the human eye.
"Look, a person is falling from the aircraft!" a soldier on the ground said, pointing at the airplane.
VRAAAAAAMM!!
The black flame arrow flew over everyone's head. It did not pierce or attack a single person, but flew over the heads of everyone present.
"I wanted to say that black thing was approaching, but it was very fast; it came already," another guard said.
"Ahhhhhh!" a soldier shouted from inside the crowd.
"What happened?!" everyone shouted, completely forgetting about their target, Kairo.
"The mark... The mark, it... Ahh!" another soldier shouted.
At that very moment, every armed soldier, every man present in the backup army, had a mark on their forehead, except the 5 soldiers inside the sniper tower and their own Chief.
In the air, she was still falling closer to the ground, but moving more towards her own companion.
"You are next, Hakuyā (WHITE ARROW)," she said, pulling her string.
A sudden glowing arrow with white flames appeared on the bow, with even her hands catching fire, though the flames did not burn her skin.
ZIIIIIING!
The string released the arrow in a different way than before, with a speed that was on a whole different level and a trajectory that was impossible for any human to shoot.
"Ahhhh, another one is approaching!" the soldier said while running in the opposite direction the arrow was approaching.
BWOOOOOOMMM!!
The white-flamed arrow flew over only 7 people, which included Kairo and the 6 men in the sniper tower, including the Chief of the army.
"What do you think, does this look good on my forehead?" Kairo asked everyone present while cleaning blood off his body.
"What?! Now even the Chief has a mark!" one soldier shouted from inside the sniper tower.
At that very moment, everyone was marked on their forehead. Seven from the white-flamed arrow, and all the other soldiers making up the battlefield were marked by the black-flamed arrow.
"This is the last breath of your world, RAIETSU (THUNDER END)!" Akira shouted for the first time, seeing the land approaching.
Another arrow manifested on her bow, firing even before her landing could be stable and the soldiers could understand what was going on.
CRACKLE!
As the arrow approached the ground, it brought the lightning from the heavens with it while sending people to hell.
KRRRAAATHOOOM!
It flew over everyone marked, with a sound that tore ordinary people's eardrums.
"No... Nothing happened," one soldier said.
"Yeah! Yeah, nothing happened!" every soldier shouted in happiness.
"I can't believe I am—" Their happiness was short-lived as they all paused.
"HAHAHA! A 15-second delay! HAHA, AKIRA, YOU ARE STILL A COLD-HEARTED PERSON!" KAIRO LAUGHED HIS HEART OUT.
SSPLLLUUURRRTTT!!!
Then came the sound—a hundred bodies bursting as one, a deafening chorus of flesh and bone tearing apart in perfect unison. Blood rain swallowed the battlefield, washing away the living beneath the remains of the dead.
"Aww, Chief Shien, the protector of humanity, where are you? See, I am alone here," Kairo, washed in the blood of everyone, shouted just to mock the Chief.
THOK!
The Chief's hand shot out instinctively, landing on the edge of the table.
"What are you doing, soldier?" the Chief asked one of his five soldiers inside the tower.
"Cleaning this rifle, Chief, just like everyone," he answered flawlessly.
"We can't win against this power, we—" the Chief stopped as he was interrupted.
KRA-BOOM!
All five shot themselves with their rifles, leaving only the Chief.
"You are here, Chief, see Akira, he is our beloved Chief," Kairo said in a sympathetic tone.
"Don't come near me!" the Chief shouted.
But then, Kairo and Akira felt something from behind.
"You are late, Master Sterling." Kairo moved forward.
"KAMI WA SHINDA (GOD IS DEAD)," Kairo laughed.