Lifeless City (2)

The Fifth Step existences looked down scornfully at the man begging before them.

Styx, viewing everything through Aura, found it odd. This person, despite the appearance of a mortal from his old world, had no strength to speak of. Despite this, he was capable of not only seeing mana, but even separating it from his body and serving it to others in the form of a dish.

Was he a weakling?

Was he so powerful he could manipulate mana with such finesse?

This was the debacle Styx was wrangling over.

Adam, as an exceedingly powerful six-winged angel, snorted contemptuously and stated, "Ridiculous, you are not going to receive grace by begging. Only the pious are rewarded."

The flat of his sword still pressed against the back of the man's neck, even drawing some blood, but the latter didn't care at all. He desperately tried to cling to the angel's leg only to be kicked away.

Styx wanted to ask some questions, but the situation had already devolved to this and it didn't appear salvageable.

"Just… Give… GIVE IT TO ME!!!"

The man's face distorted as he struggled out from the bottom of Adam's sword. He didn't care as his skin was sliced, instead forcing himself to attack the angel, even if it was from all fours.

"GIVE ME YOUR MANA!!"

A cold light of metal flickered through the air like a spark and the maniacal person's head silently departed his shoulders. His face was still twisted in madness and greed as it rolled across the living room floor.

His body lifelessly slumped to the ground, blood staining the synthetic carpet.

"Let's go," Illidiath looked at the lifeless corpse in disgust while walking around it with a wide berth. "This depraved human is twisted. Even his soul stinks like foul eggs."

Outside the house, almost forty people were standing along the pavement like manikins in a department store, silently watching the expedition group walking out of the house.

They were ordinary people in t-shirts, gardeners hats, or tracksuits. One even had a luggage bag, although it appeared to be empty.

Their stares unnerved the party, who frowned at the strange people.

As Aura and the others walked of the front gate of the property, one person broke free from the group and entered into the house. He ran out immediately with a strange expression of both fear and greed.

"Dead! He was killed! They committed murder!"

A collection of hisses sounded, but everyone broke up immediately and fled back to their homes. Two people had seemingly lost their minds as they tore off each other's clothing and begun having sex in the front garden of the recently deceased.

Aura sniffed the air and looked back in shock, not understanding why these people had immediately fallen into procreation at the sight of a dead person. The others were also taken aback, able to hear the rising moans from the garden.

Without any warning, an air raid siren that found overly nostalgic sounded across the city.

"What is that?" Illidiath commented whilst squinting her eyes.

From the center of the city where giant tower stood, a squad of five aircraft flew out from one of the towering buildings and flew towards them extremely fast.

Mana circulated in the air around them, allowing them to travel at extremely fast speeds whilst using very little mana.

The man and woman who were fornicating in the front garden fled immediately upon hearing this sound, the woman ignoring the seeping mess on her inner thighs whilst neither caring to even wear pants as they ran.

"These people are all crazy," Styx spoke into Aura's mind, who nodded in agreement with her.

Aura had a history of liking to just watch humans, occasionally snacking on a few, so she also felt the people here were extremely strange.

The group stopped and waited as the black aircraft's approached. Aura snapped off one of the steel light poles on the side of the street and even threw it at the aircraft.

The light pole flew faster than a bullet, but the aircraft deftly dodged it and allowed it to fly across the city, causing unknown destruction somewhere several dozen miles away.

Adam also attacked, sending a sword wave that the craft's deployed a strange muzzle that sucked it up.

"Be careful," Styx said in Aura's mind, "These aircraft can absorb mana."

""Halt! You are under arrest! Place your hands in the air and turn around!""

""Resistance is futile!""

Annoyed that their attack was blocked, the angels and Illidiath attacked again, this time with much more power.

""Illegal use of mana detected, deploying advanced tactics. Target elimination approved!""

The crafts were in fact very powerful despite using so little mana.

Aura attacked with her bare hands and managed to tear one to pieces with more effort than it should have taken, whilst the others deployed gun barrels that automatically targeted the group.

*ta* *ta* *ta* *ta*

Small sounds were made as supersonic bullets flew through the air.

Aura cried in pain as several tore through her reinforced skin and punctured holes in her body, forcing her to launch her Phantasmagoria and escape the onslaught. Adam and the other angel wielded their weapon to deflect the bullets, while Illidiath deflected them with her bare hands.

They were heavily restricted as they had to also protect the Fourth Step assistants they brought along.

"Why are these bullets so powerful?!" Adam asked in pure shock, not believing a Fifth Step angel like him was forced on the defensive by bullets.

"I will protect the helpers, you take out these annoying flies!" Illidiath snarled before directing all the Fourth Step members to take cover behind her before she turned into a 20 foot giantess with scale-like skin. Her eyes glowed eerily whilst she used her body to act as an impenetrable meat shield.

Adam and the other six-winged angel took this opportunity to unfurl their wings and turned into streaks of white and gold in the air.

The aircraft expertly dodged laterally and tried to avoid their attack, but holy hymns seemed to sound in the air as the two shifted mid flight in a seemingly impossible manoeuvre that made space distort around them before sliced the aircraft into two piece.

"Foolish, you were destined to be destroyed the moment the attack was launched. You cannot hide from fate."

The other angel looked down at the broken machines as if they were stupid.

Aura had just appeared again, fully healed, and attacked another one. Styx, who saw the angels attack, banged his hand on his throne back in the dungeon in excitement and shouted in excitement.

"Did they just telegraph their attacks!? Fuck! It feels good when it's not enemy bosses launching those bullshit attacks!"

Back in the strange enclosed city, the final aircraft crashed into the ground and created a large dust cloud.

The howling of another air raid siren sounded at this point, seemingly louder and more aggressive that the first.

A group of several hundred aircraft departed the skyscraper in the core of the city and charged towards the battlefield where the former squad was destroyed.

"…" Aura silently looked at this large force heading their way.

"…Let's leave." Illidiath wryly smiled and commented as she returned to her more peaceful looking human form.

Even as Fifth Step existences, they couldn't restore their mana here whilst these aircraft were oddly formidable. Whilst they were not afraid of them by any account, that didn't mean they wanted to fight such an annoying battle.

Most attacks of theirs used mana, whilst Adam and the other angel used mana just to fly. Negligible amounts, but even those all added up into a significant amount in the end.

Aura opened her Phantasmagoria and led the group, alongside the Fourth Step helpers, away from the area and without being detected by whatever tracked them. They may detect her usage of mana to start the skill, but travelling through the phantasm realm was completely untraceable to those not inside of it.

~~~~~

⠀

Aura and the others emerged in a distant part of the city. An interesting matter that Aura came across was that even in the phantasm realm, the city was isolated from the outside world. She couldn't travel beyond the city enclosing walls no matter what she tried.

The group walked out of a dark alley and into a busy market district closer to the inner city. What was "busy" was determined relative to the city though, so it was only a hundred or so people in the market.

"Come up, come up!" A tall man with a curly moustache and dressed as a circus ringmaster with an exceedingly tall hat called out to others from a bidding platform. "We are offering the chance to have a child!"

The man immediately attracted attention as he pulled off a sheet to reveal an elderly man sitting in a barber's chair. The elder had a big grin on his face, nodding to the increasing crowd as if pleased.

"Max has placed his life for sale to give you the chance to purchase a life for your own. He is already old and ready to go, but wants to provide for his own child first. This opportunity does not come around often, so don't miss out!"

The members of the crowd whispered excitedly and pushed themselves as close to the stage as a group of security allowed them.

"Me! Me! I will buy him, please!"

"Now don't be in a rush. His life will go to the highest bidder!"

Aura and the others blended into the crowd, mainly because Styx wanted to watch this event in accordance with his own thoughts.

"The starting bid is 20 mana, does anyone have 20 mana?!"

"I!"

"20 mana to number 9, do we have 22 mana?!"

"I!"

The bidding for this man's life continued for almost 20 minutes, before he was sold to a rather well dressed lady in her 40s, if appearance was anything to go by.

She paid 42 mana for him, which she transferred to the seller with a strange hand print device. Aura and the others secretly watched as the mana was extracted from her body and stored in the tablet.

The elder was strapped to a wheelchair before the woman happily wheeled him away towards an equally excited man.

"Follow them," Styx said to Aura, who then relayed that to the others.

The crowd returned to their shopping, occasionally spending a few mana points for various articles.

~~~~~

⠀

The woman returned to a very extravagant mansion with several manikins dressed as butlers and maids. It was a strange sight as she hung her coat over one before giving orders to the others.

It was so surreal, Styx almost felt their gazes follow the woman. A normal human butler then came out and took the woman's prize upstairs.

Sneaking around outside, Aura and the others watched in secret as the woman's husband tied her up and did bdsm play before the roles were reversed. The strangest part was that the old man was forced to watch it all as they did it in front of him.

The butler also watched, but the strange grin on the old man's face was unnerving even for Styx.

"I'm cumming, I'm cumming!" The husband cried out loud and his wife moaned.

The two slammed their hips together and at the exact moment of climaxing, the butler took out a curved dagger and stabbed it through the heart of the old man tied to the chair.

Perhaps he didn't understand it the first time, but after a pattern had appeared, Styx caught onto what was happening.

Adam, the other angel, and Illidiath also seemed to understand as their brows raised in shock. Aura was the only Fifth Step existence amoung the group that remained oblivious.

"What is it?" The wolf girl asked, her wolf ears twitching in annoyance.

Adam didn't avert his gaze from the scene and stated, "A soul for a soul. The soul of the old man is returned to the cycle of reincarnation, in return a soul for the baby is born."

Aura still didn't understand, so Styx calmly explained it into her mind.

"This world is dead, cut off from mana and likely the entire natural cycle of reincarnation. I had wondered why a seemingly artificial river of souls existed. It is to allow the souls of the dead, in the dead world, to be recycled into new life."

"That river is devoid of souls, so even if people try to reproduce, souls aren't produced and babies aren't formed. The only way to generate a new soul for a new life, is to send one back into the cycle of reincarnation, washed clean and returned to its primal state to pass through before then returning to life as a newborn person."

Aura seemed to understand but still asked, "What about all the husks and strange knights? Didn't we kill them? There should be lots of souls."

"The souls of those things are damaged well beyond repair. Nothing can ever be as perfect as the natural cycle, so these souls inside this city become more and more weathered with ever rebirth. Eventually, they are so damaged, all that is left is a shell of what is called human or life. Their souls can no longer return."

Aura adopted a sad look whilst tenderly rubbing her lower abdomen.

"Are you thinking about having kids?" Styx asked in her head in a tone that belayed a sly grin.

Aura didn't answer, but the abrupt turmoil in her emotions feeding back to Styx across their bond told him all that he needed to know.