Executing with the Power of Science

"The rain is nice, isn't it?" Artemis looked down on the Count. 

He was the only person left on the platform that was about to be executed. The other nobles had their heads chopped off already.

The rain wasn't going to be friendly with him either. Artemis had a rod of metal built specifically on top of where the Count knelt.

"You see this metal rod?" Artemis asked him.

"Y-Yes," Tyrian said.

"Then you know it's made of metal right? I'm sure a Count like you is at least educated in the ways of smiths?" Artemis said.

"Of... course!" Tyrian said. 

"Then be wowed," Artemis stepped away from the Count and ordered everyone to leave the platform except for the Count.

The Count, sensing that his death was coming, began to struggle against his chains and begged for mercy.

"Wait! Wait! Please! Please don't do this to me!" Tyrian begged.

Artemis stared at him and the angry mob cheered his wails on. 

"Die bastard!" They all shouted. 

Even the little children among the peasantry cheered for his death. Artemis took a liking with their bloodlust. 

The death of the Count would bring Wart his needed legitimacy among the people. Since nobody was going to mess with the King whose subordinate single handedly instigated a rebellion, defeated a Paladin with one hit, and did not fear to execute the nobility within the city itself.

The crowd was excited as to what Artemis was going to do now. Reinhard and Jord looked anxious as they waited.

Toby, on the other hand, sensed a disturbance with the magic forming on the platform and the sky. It seemed as if the magical molecules were forming a sort of pillar from the sky to the Count.

"Could this be his magic?" Toby looked at the man in black.

Wart and Pandora sensed it too. The accumulation of magic in a pillar-like formation over the Count.

"How is he able to manipulate lightning like this?" Pandora whispered. She looked at Wart, Wart had his mouth open throughout the entire ordeal. 

"Erik…" Pandora leaned forward over the balcony. 

An instant later, a bright flash of light appeared and temporarily blinded everyone looking at the Count. The soldiers instinctively raised their weapons mistaken for being attack by enemy mages while other soldiers covered their eyes from the bright light and so did the peasantry and everyone else who was watching.

Artemis, however, had his eyes wide open when the light flashed. It wasn't just some ordinary light, it was a light that came from the heavens that brought forth the same energy that powered humanity back on Earth since the industrial revolution.

Lightning. 

The metal rod acted as a sort of beacon wherein the lightning would strike. However, he did not expect that the magic in this world would also be the cause for lightning.

And then he asked himself.

Does this world have positively and negatively charged particles? 

The temporary blindness caused by the bright flash of light had begun to fade and everyone was soon greeted by the smell that resembled that of roasted meat.

"What happened?" Jord asked Reinhard after the Lightning Strike.

"Why the hell are you asking me?" Reinhard said.

"He... he..." While the two converse, Toby stuttered beside them.

"Toby, what did he do?" Jord asked Toby who noticed his expression.

"He just summoned lightning like that..." Toby said.

William and Jorn's faces went blank at what Toby said.

"Oh my God…" One of the peasants was shocked, not the lightning but the current state of the Count in front of them. The other peasantry did the same and were all  shocked.

The Count, the same Count that was begging for his life a few seconds ago, the same Count that oppressed them for his own greed a few days prior, was reduced to nothing more than a burnt husk of his former self.

His teeth were charred and jaw open. He looked like a demon that even hell had decided to reject for entry. 

"Not even the Demons would accept him, he's too ugly even for them," Toby commented, not noticing he was just literally roasting the poor man.

Everyone then looked at Artemis who then walked to the platform and grabbed Tyrian's burnt and lifeless body. He then held it up in front of him for everyone to see.

"This is the man who took everything away from you," Artemis announced.

"But look at him now, everything has been taken from him. His woman, his treasures, his allies, his power," Artemis said.

He then threw it over the platform. The body bounced a bit when it hit the stone ground below. 

He then looked up towards the balcony where King Wart and Pandora were standing.

"I hereby give that man over there, my liege, my lord and my sworn King, that power. Let it be known throughout the surrounding lands that his Kingdom shall prosper and the people of which shall not suffer!" Artemis announced.

"Aye!" The peasantry shouted.

"And let it be known, on this day, on this very hour, that justice, the long thirsted justice that the people yearned for, has been fulfilled!" 

"Aye!" The soldiers shouted with them as well.

Reinhard and Jord held their swords up high against the wind and the rain that poured. Everyone was drenched in rain water, the peasants, the soldiers, but not Artemis. 

Reinhard had just noticed. The man in black's clothes deflected the water drops from sticking. As if it was a magical item that had a passive magical skill.

But not just that, beside his dark aura that even made an A-rank like Reinhard sweat in fear, he also has an unnatural aura that seems not to belong to this world.

"He is dangerous," Reinhard whispered.

With the ability to shoot a pillar and waves of energy from his hands to stop the rain and summon lightning from the sky without magic in him, he was probably one of the most strange and mysterious beings Reinhard has encountered or maybe will encounter.

He had heard the stories and the rumors that circulate about the great Demigods, Archmages and the Mages who had formed pacts with exiled Gods for more strength, like the Private Organization known as the Church of the Midnight Kairos for example.

But he had also heard about the new race that took the entire Eastern Region by surprise. A race of creatures who resembled men but had neither flesh nor fur. Their skins are made of metal, their eyes glowed red, they had a leader who was said to be a man who wore jet black clothes, the same man that took out the best of the Senadate Theocracy alone.

Reinhard looked at Artemis closely from the side. 

"He must be one of them, no.....

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...the leader of them."