78 Ash

"So, you are finally getting serious? Too bad it's useless now." And as Marcus said those words, the sky lit up. Clouds o flames coved every inch of it. The fire from the forest intensified and rose and formed pillars connecting to the sky, and in between them was Mei. Floating in the air, wearing the armour of fire and fire wings three times her size on her back.

Taking out three more beads, Marcus crushed them in his hand. Space shook, as the lightning energy filled, the surrounding. The view was amazing, lightning falling like rain from clouds of fire. And as Mei approached Marcus, he looked behind her and saw the leaders of the human alliance following behind her.

And with that the fight begone.

"Cough! cough, cough… "

Feeling the ash on his face, Marcus wanted to use his hands to clear it up, but as he moved it, he remembered that he lost them in a fight a while ago. With difficulty he put himself up and got on his feet. Looking around a desert made of ashes, spanning far beyond the horizon, not too far away from him he found Mei, buried in ash.

While making his way over to her, he moved all the everlasting soma he still had left and started to regenerate his hands. When he was standing in front of her, his hands were only the size of baby hand. But he slowly moved the ash from her face. With his eyes, he confirmed that her body wasn't in a critical state, and with a sigh of relief he woke her up. Immediately she tried to get up, but Marcus stopped her.

"Hey, don't move too fast. Your muscle tissue is not in the best state. There are few broken bones, including one that we have to snap back into place, but other then that, the heling factor you have will take care of it soon."

"Is HE…" She tried to speak.

"It was close, but we didn't get him. In the last second, he got away, and he also took my hands with him…"

The news was a bit shocking, but the baby hands only made her laugh out in pain. Tears dripped down her cheeks, as she laughed. And after laughing for a long time, a serious expression came back, and her voice filled the space around them.

"It was close. It bought us some time, but sooner or later he will come back, and we lost one person already. Ares can help us fight the army's, but the demon king… we have to kill him by ourselves."

He didn't expect… that when the demon king gets serious all of them together won't be able to kill him. He even used three beads to establish a domain, but that didn't help at all. The worst thing is, that he is on a verge of a breakthrough. The demon king is about to Breakthrough to a Godhood realm. If that happens they won't have a chance to win.

"There is still time left, first let's find everyone and get out of here."

Taking one more bead Marcus used it to replenish his energy, sitting on top of Jörmungandr they flew around until noon before they found everyone. From there they made their way back to the capital city. Both Mei's and Marcus's phones were busted, they will contact the Ares form the ship that Mei used to get here.

When they landed Loki woke up from his daze he was since they found him and looked around. "Where is Wong Bao?"

Liu Yang looked at him and with grim eyes said "He died after the demon king knocked you out. Split into two." She suddenly shivered remembering the scene of the demon king enjoying the blood of Wong Bao.

"What do we do now?" Chu Ai asked. She was now the only representative of the ancient clans. In the past she would celebrate, but now… there was only fear in her eyes.

Everyone knew what she meant, the fight they had with the demon king… was devastating to them.

"We have time, our wounds will heal in a month, the demon king will take not much longer than that. We will have to come up with a plan before that." Liu Yang said. But she wasn't finished. "Mr. Marcus, and Miss Xiao Mei. I want to plea for help from the two of you. I know that the alliance isn't officially made yet, but without your help, we will all die."

"Don't worry little lady, we will help, that's why we came back." Marcus replied with a wide smile. And Mei followed. "The formalities are one thing, and we will sign them sooner or later. Saving people is our priority."

Hope. These two were now the hope of the humanity. Their last chance for survival.

"Both I and Mei will heal soon. And when that happens we will start to move, we need to find all the gates that that are connected to the demon dimension and destroy them. If you know their location, tell us now and we will destroy them."

"Destroy them? We can't even get close to… wait… that weapon. With it all the killing formations they made are useless. Then the only problem will be the ones hiding formations. We only have a location for one hidden gate. I will give you the locations soon. For now, let's rest." Xiao Zhi said.

So there are hidden ones. Those will be a problem if we can't locate them using the satellites. Let's then make that our next stop. We can get a science team too come down and analyse the hiding formation, if we can detect it, the destruction of the gates form the orbit won't be a problem.