Chapter I46: Recounting The Fire-lord Experience!

Chapter 146: Recounting The Fire-lord Experience!

What greeted Tessa's sight as she arrived at the battlefield was a scene of utter devastation. Dismembered bodies lay scattered across the ground, strewn and mingled with piles of ashes blowing away in the wind. Her heart pounded wildly as dread filled her mind. Had Adrian made it out alive?

Ignoring her own fear, she steeled herself and began to search through the carnage, her gaze flicking from one broken body to another. Severed heads lay grotesquely separated from their bodies, like a battlefield where chaos had ruled with surgical precision. She struggled to comprehend the sheer brutality.

"Who could've done this? Was it Adrian?" she wondered aloud, a shiver running down her spine. Had he somehow unlocked the elusive second level? The control required to inflict such precise, calculated damage was far beyond anything she thought him capable of. "Maybe he did level up…" she muttered, pressing onward as she continued her search.

Finally, she spotted a soldier barely clinging to life, slumped against a rock, a gaping wound exposing his heart, naked before any onlooker as it desperately beat as if that was the only way to survive. His heartbeat was faint and erratic, as if he were only moments away from slipping away completely.

She knelt beside him, and he looked at her through bleary, pain-filled eyes, a glimmer of hope sparking as he realized he was not alone. "Please… can you… help me?" he whispered, his voice so weak it barely carried any substance.

Without a word, Tessa placed her hand over the wound. Energy surged through her fingers, and the tissue around his chest began to knit itself together. Veins reappeared, arteries reconnected, and muscles and skin fused seamlessly, closing until nothing remained but smooth, unblemished skin. As she removed her hand, the soldier took in a deep, grateful breath, looking at her in awe.

He felt rejuvenated and alive. He could shout out from the roof top, he was alive.

"Thank you," he breathed, his voice filled with disbelief as he sat up, energy and life returning to his body.

"What happened here?" Tessa demanded, eyes sharp as she watched him intently.

The man looked at her with a mix of reverence and fear. "You… saved my life," he began, then dropped to his knees in a gesture of loyalty. "I know who you are—the Moon Goddess. I've heard whispers for years, and now that I've seen your power, I pledge my life to you. I would have died here today, discarded like cannon fodder by Lord Rhemon. He could have saved me, but he left me to die." His voice hardened with resentment, his eyes flashing with a vow of vengeance.

"I told myself that if I died here, I would become a wandering ghost and return to haunt him till his dying breath. But the universe had other plans and thus chose differently, and in a way, has answered my request and I have a second lease on life...This is all thanks to you, moon goddess, I will live my life righteously from now on– following only your cause, you're gracious..."

As he continued, rambling about his loyalty, Tessa raised a hand to silence him. "Enough. Where is my brother?" Her voice was cold and controlled, though her fury simmered just beneath the surface.

The man blinked, still trying to absorb everything. "The… fire guy… he's your brother?" he asked, recalling the image of Adrian—a blazing force of destruction, like a lord of doom wielding fire as his instrument of justice. The memory left him shaken, as if he had glimpsed something beyond human, a force that couldn't be contained.

Tessa's patience was thinning. "Yes. Now answer me."

He swallowed hard, his memory beginning to return in fragments. "Before I lost my ability to move and was more like a observer on his final dying moments, he… he blasted me with a solar beam," he stammered.

"Wait—solar beam?" she interjected, narrowing her eyes. 'That definitely sounds like level 2,' She surmised.

The soldier nodded. "Yes… He was producing those blasts effortlessly, like he was some sort of powered super gun"

Tessa's heart skipped a beat. So, he really has leveled up… She felt a surge of fierce pride, mixed with an even greater urgency to find him.

"Go on," she urged, her voice as sharp as a blade. The man nodded quickly, desperate to please her as he prepared to continue his tale.

The man's voice trembled as he continued, piecing together fragments of the battle he'd witnessed, almost as if speaking about a nightmare. "After that, it was pure destruction. He became... like some fire overlord, raining down hell on everything in his path," he murmured, eyes wide with the memory. "Agent Wali made the mistake of mentioning you—mocking you, actually—and that seemed to set him off like I've never seen before. It was as if every ounce of anger he had ignited in that one moment. He didn't stop until Agent Wali was nothing but an empty shell, holes burnt through his skull and chest." The man shuddered, his hands shaking as he relived the horror.

"And then…" He paused, swallowing hard. "He killed almost everyone else—only six of us survived his onslaught. But by the time he reduced Agent Wali to ashes, he'd used up everything he had in him. He collapsed right there, completely drained."

Tessa's heart raced, an icy fear wrapping around her chest. "What happened next?" she demanded, her voice sharp with urgency.

The man hesitated, then looked away, his face pale. "Just when we thought it was over, Lord Rhemon appeared. He walked through the carnage like it was nothing. I thought he'd come to finish off the survivors, but… no. He just picked up your brother, put him in a hovercraft, and took him away without a second glance." He let out a long, shaky breath. "It was as if we were less than ants to him. He didn't even look back."

Tessa let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, a stream of warm air escaping her lips as relief washed over her. Adrian was alive, at least—for now. Her fists unclenched slightly, and the fierce tension in her shoulders eased, though her heart still beat rapidly at the thought of him in Lord Rhemon's clutches.

The man, seeming to draw strength from her presence, scratched his head, a shadow passing over his face as he continued. "Yeah… Lord Rhemon took the six who were still standing. But the rest of us? Those like me, barely hanging on with injuries that were more than just scrapes and bruises—he left us behind like we were nothing. Just bodies to rot in the dirt."

He looked down, swallowing back the bitterness, and his voice softened as if reliving the helplessness he'd felt. "We were just… left there, watching the hovercraft disappear into the horizon, knowing that our lives meant less than nothing. The other survivors, they could only look on in silence, too weak to protest, while I lay there with this gaping wound, feeling my life slip away."

His eyes lifted to Tessa, gratitude and awe mingling in his gaze. "If you hadn't found me, I would've died here, abandoned like some... expendable pawn."

Tessa's jaw clenched, anger simmering under her skin. She couldn't let that go unpunished. Rhemon had taken her brother. He will know what it means to cross the moon goddess!

The man, sensing her resolve, nodded fervently. "I'll help you however I can, Moon Goddess. I owe you my life… and I want a chance to repay it."