“How are you doing?” Lilith asked briefly, sticking her head in through the temple entrance.
“Buy a little more time, we’re almost there,” Kragg responded.
Zak kept focused, even though ten minutes had already passed of what he could normally handle stabilizing a rift.
“Calm down, Zak.
This doesn’t wear you out unless you step out of the spell before I give you the signal,” Kragg commented.
“What happens if he steps out?” Mike asked.
“He dies.” The direct words, without a hint of joking, hit Mike, who froze, just like Anna and Dave.
“You didn’t say it was safe!” Anna asked, clearly exalted.
“It’s safe as long as Zak performs the spell correctly,” Kragg explained.
“Shit, Zak… please don’t die,” Anna thought while growling bitterly.
*** “Huh?” Zak thought.
He was in a completely different space.
Everything was dark.
It was just him, concentrating his energy on a rift he had in front of him.
He didn’t feel like wanting to enter it.
He was just waiting for Kragg’s signal to know when to stop.
“How cold…” Zak murmured while turning his head slightly to better see his surroundings.
Out of nowhere, a voice echoed through the entire space: “Don’t you dare die.” “Don’t lose focus.” He could hear Kragg’s and Anna’s voices for some reason.
“Ha, classic Anna with her ‘Don’t you dare die’… Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I died.
What would happen to them?” He couldn’t afford to die, and it wasn’t something he had planned either.
As she told him: “Don’t think too much.” He concentrated again while channeling more energy into the rift, which seemed to change color.
Before monochromatic, now it took on a medium bright cyan tone, like LED light.
*** “What happens if he manages to complete the spell successfully?” Anna asked.
“Apart from helping us, thanks to the spell he’ll also be able to use his AllDither much better and avoid bringing them to dangerous dimensions like this one,” Kragg responded.
“Mmmh, I understand… When will it end?
Because outside it seems things are getting rough,” Anna commented.
Outside, to say it was chaos was to fall short of what was really happening.
“Use the cannons at maximum power and don’t burn yourselves like last time, you pair of idiots!” Lilith ordered.
Two men who were in the middle of the battlefield, with a red scarf tied to their arm, looked at each other smiling.
“Hoho!
As I said…” “Start this Mega Cannon Buster!” the other completed.
They joined their pistols forming a large bazooka with which they aimed at an area where there were many creatures.
From the bazooka came a huge gamma energy beam that vaporized a large number of the creatures.
But as a consequence, the two men, who seemed like brothers, were thrown backwards.
“Woogoo!” both shouted on the way.
“What did I tell you, you pair of idiots!” Lilith said angrily, although it was already too late because they were far away.
Lilith turned her gaze to the other side of the battlefield, where people were starting to gain advantage again after the brothers’ cannon shot, which had eliminated a good number of creatures.
“Oh well…” she murmured while lunging again with her katana shining, cutting the creatures with great ease.
Before continuing forward, she stopped and concentrated upon hearing a loud sound approaching.
She opened her eyes wide while turning around.
“Retreat!
Class 5 Orumas are coming!” Lilith announced.
The people who were fighting animatedly turned serious instantly and began to withdraw towards the outskirts of the temple.
The sound of the sand moving with great roars was so loud that it reached Kragg’s ears.
“Mmhp, at least there’s not much left,” Kragg thought.
Zak kept focused.
The weapon that before was off now radiated a greenish glow through the transparent zones that before were empty.
Only one was missing.
“Now yes!” Lilith murmured to herself.
She began to smile while gripping her katana.
A lock of her hair turned a bright silver color.
She ran in the direction where there seemed to be nothing and gave a jump rising too high.
But at that moment, five Orumas emerged from the sand on different sides.
They were colossal in size.
But for… the Fifth Division General Lilith, no!
Without more, she launched a cut exactly where one of the Orumas had come out.
A great silver-toned air slash shot out, the same size as the Oruma, splitting it in two.
The Oruma’s blood gushed out in large quantities, bathing the sand in a river of blood.
Lilith was plummeting to the ground, but she smiled.
With her same katana, before falling, she gave a blow that generated a small shockwave that cushioned her fall.
As a consequence, it deformed the area, raising a great curtain of sand that made the remaining creatures retreat.
But not the Orumas.
Quite the opposite.
Before they were heading toward the temple, now they were going toward a smiling Lilith.
“COME, YOU PIECES OF SHIT!” Lilith challenged.
She didn’t wait and ran toward the four that were coming at once.
The Orumas, with each jump they made to advance, shook the sand causing great tremors.
At the exact moment the four came out of the sand, Lilith smiled.
“Damuuraakkaa!” she shouted while sending a horizontal air slash.
The slash came out on a large scale, almost two hundred meters, and ended up cutting the four Orumas, who could only roar in pain while their bodies were left lying in the middle of the battlefield.
But the slash continued on its course.
The allies immediately threw themselves to the floor and others rose into the air to avoid being cut.
“It’s heading toward the temple!” one shouted.
Kragg, who was watching Zak calmly, sighed.
“Give me a moment.” He went out and, once outside, angrily ran leaving a curtain of sand behind him while pulling out a giant dagger.
In one jump he launched himself toward the slash that Lilith had sent.
With a hit of his dagger he made it vanish, while a vein clearly swelled with anger.
“Watch where you cut, idiot!” Kragg shouted.
Anna, who had seen the scene, was frozen, sweating cold, because she had just witnessed how he dismantled a slash that seemed to have come straight from hell itself.
Lilith, who was at a great distance, for some reason felt a shiver run down her spine.
“Uhs… Seems like my back hurts again,” she commented carefree while cracking her back by herself.
Kragg, after that, turned around and returned to the temple, where he found an Anna strangely calm and the guys looking around as if something was going to happen.
“Well, that’s enough,” he commented.
“Enough?” Anna asked.
“That’s enough energy, that will be enough,” Kragg responded.
Kragg approached Zak, who was still with his eyes closed and concentrated.
He sighed before speaking in a different language briefly.
…
“It’s time, Zak!” “Huh?” “Stop giving energy and now get out of that zone following the line that will begin to appear behind you.” Zak stopped channeling energy into the rift, which was already keeping itself stable on its own.
He turned and watched how a narrow path began to materialize.
“Follow the path,” Kragg’s voice echoed once more.
Zak sighed and began to walk along the path.
“You couldn’t save them…” “What?” “You let them die…” Strange whispers began to echo in Zak’s ears.
“Who couldn’t I save?
Let die?” Zak thought without noticing that the path began to flicker, threatening to crumble.
“Concentrate!” a voice echoed throughout the entire space.
“Huh?” “Ignore the voices, keep going!” the voice ordered.
Zak slapped himself on the head and then continued.
The whispers began to intensify, causing him a headache.
“Shit, the situation is serious,” Kragg murmured watching a Zak who still hadn’t come out of the trance.
Anna watched everything from afar, trusting that Zak could get out.
Zak threatened to fall to the floor due to how unbearable the whispers were… “No… what?” Zak thought, grabbing his head.
Before he fell into despair, a very familiar voice echoed with a soft tone: “Keep going… you can do it, Zak.” For some reason, Zak regained consciousness while continuing to walk without stopping.
Despite the whispers, he remained firm, he himself didn’t know what was happening.
At the end of the path a light could be seen.
Zak, upon seeing it, didn’t hesitate and advanced faster until finally… “Ahh,” Zak murmured while returning to the temple.
“You did it, kid!
At least you kept going,” Kragg congratulated.
Anna and the others approached, clearly happy that Zak had come out of the spell.
“Anna, a question… did you talk to me?” Zak asked.
“Huh?
No, I wasn’t.
Only Kragg was talking to you,” she responded.
Kragg looked at him briefly before speaking: “Sometimes you can hear voices of family members or people with whom you formed a strong bond, and they talk to you from beyond.
But it only happens on rare occasions.
How strange that it happened to you,” Kragg commented.
“How strange… it seemed like a female voice.” “Sometimes they’re like that, they get distorted by mistake,” Kragg reassured.
“I understand.” Out of nowhere, a clearly smiling but half-irritated Lilith entered the temple.
“I see you already finished!
That’s great, but we have to go now because a Beather tsunami is coming,” Lilith commented.
“Shit…” Kragg murmured.
“What is that?” Anna asked.
“I’ll explain later.
Now we just have to leave quickly,” Kragg ordered.
The six left the temple while the people were already in their cars ready.
“Get in fast!” Lilith ordered while getting into the car through the window.
The guys got in just like Kragg.
“Ready?” Lilith asked.
But before they could answer, she floored it.
The sound of the other engines being turned on echoed.
“What are we running from?
I don’t understand… a Beather tsunami?
What?
This is crazy.
What kind of dimension is this?” Zak questioned himself pensively.
Before he kept thinking, Mike shook him.
“What happens?” he asked.
Mike just pointed at the rear window of the car.
In the distance something unimaginable could be seen.
A kind of tsunami was approaching, but it wasn’t just any… screams could be heard.
It was a tsunami made of creatures that looked like dead humans, but skeletal and horrifying.
“No way!
These look like demons… What kind of dimension is this?!” Zak exclaimed.
Anna and the others were the same, but paralyzed upon seeing such a thing taken from a very bad-taste nightmare.
Only Lilith’s howl began to be heard while the car started jumping again over the sand hills…