133 King of Hell

While he hadn't reacted to anything that occurred outside, he was still able to fully grasp the situation using his empathic abilities. He could tell that everyone was in a dire situation.

As he stepped out of the car and walked towards the encirclement, he looked extremely out of place in his clean clothes and elegant demeanor. The Variants soon noticed him and began focusing some of their attention towards him as well, correctly identifying him as the enemy. His expression was calm and placid despite seeing his own companions on the ground and many Variants approaching him.

Light simply took out a rainbow colored gem and put it into his mouth. Time seemed to freeze for a second before...

BOOMM!! A loud sonic boom echoed along the mountains as the level 2 mental gem was ingested by Light. The boom was stronger than the previous ones that they had experienced when Rin and Yukio swallowed their gems. It seems Light had purposely consolidated all his psychic abilities and made use of the gem's powers to amplify everything in one go.

Aida had given Light the choice between illusions and precognition. It had been an agonizing decision for him as both were extremely unique and powerful in their own ways. Ultimately, it was their current situation that pushed him to choose the illusion gem over the precognition gem.

The illusion gem had the most direct impact in increasing his offensive abilities as it could easily augment his empathic abilities whereas the precognition gem would have indirectly helped him. However, there was no guarantee the precognition could provide him with all the insights he needed to see this battle through in a timely fashion. Seeing in the future was an arduous task filled with mystery and uncertainty.

Aida who was still in her nothingness state and driven purely by instincts, turned around with a savage, unrestrained grin on her face as she felt the strong force coming from Light. She had continued to fight the Variants and was slowly picking them off. Fortunately, she still had an ounce of control that prevented her from killing her two companions as well.

Light used the illusion gem's powers to create a massive illusion that reached all the Variants in the encirclement, including the ones that were attacking the RV. An image of hell appeared before them as a raging fire surrounded them all. At first, everyone simply stared at the fire curiously and nothing happened.

One of the Variants with fire powers curiously reached out to touch the flames and then began screaming in pain. The illusory fire quickly spread onto him as he rolled on the floor trying to remove the fire. Others approached and tried to help, only to cause the fire to spread even further. They all collectively screamed the moment they made contact with the fire.

Light stared at this scene with extreme calm, this was as expected. The fire that raged around them was soul fire that would burn the soul of anyone it touched. He had condensed the anger, grief and despair that he had experienced and felt from others since the outbreak and amplified those emotions dramatically, redirecting all those emotions towards the Variants before him. The illusion of fire was merely a trigger that allowed the Variants to succumb.

As he walked through the encirclement, the Variants would stumble or run away from him as if they saw the king of hell himself. They parted like the red sea.

Light continued walking without pause as though this reaction was only right. As he approached Aida, she suddenly pounced towards him with great aggression, clearly intent on attacking him. She had long lost her own consciousness and was driven by intent for destruction, she couldn't recognize him as an ally.

Xiao Ai who was watching from the car called out, "AH! Mama no!"

Light's expression changed as Aida's attack approached. However, instead of frowning or getting agitated about her reaction, his face bloomed into a warm smile, completely contrasting the screams of pain and terror around him. He directed waves of gentle and warm energy towards Aida through his enhanced empathic abilities.

Seeing his warm smile, Aida froze and her expression gradually reverted from expressionlessness to her usual cold look again. Somehow, he was able to reawaken Aida. He had successfully nudged Aida's consciousness awake.

Seeing that she was back to normal, Light smiled gently and said, "Let's finish these people off."

Aida took a knowing glance towards Light before turning away. She concentrated her powers onto her knives and threw them out towards all the Variants. Despite having fought for so long, her powers were still not exhausted. This was the quantitative difference between being a level 1 Variant vs. a level 2 Variant.

Although she was no longer in her nothingness state, she still maintained a savage grin on her face as she said, "I'm going to make you all regret what you've done to us."

With their souls being burned, most of the Variants were completely unaware of what was going on outside. They hadn't heard her words nor seen her expression, yet a sudden chill passed by, inducing a collective shiver.

Within 5 minutes, the over 100 Variants were reduced to roughly 15 Variants. Aida didn't allow any of them to die easily. Instead, she disabled them and allowed them to experience true hell for a while longer. She aimed all her metal shards at the Variants limbs, disabling each of them. She even used enough electricity to stimulate the nerves and cause pain while simultaneously cauterizing the wounds so they didn't have the opportunity to bleed out.

Soon, they were down to the last 15 Variants who were still semi aware with the assistance of the psychic. She was surprised to find that the psychic was still conscious, he must have been pretty powerful to be able to launch such a strong attack towards them and still be able to protect these 15 Variants up till now. If he had chosen the wrong side to stand on, she may have even wanted to recruit someone like him. Sadly for him, her only objective now was to kill him and take his gem for re-use.