Chapter 32

Augustine.

She was a 6foot 3 woman with a ton of muscle on her body . This didn't come about through training, but was her true genetic makeup.

From childhood she was made a fun of , called 'boy' by her peers for looking a bit more masculine, and behaving too manly to be feminine and too womanly to be masculine.

She never got to be in a relationship throughout highschool, and didn't have a ton of friends either , this Delta some damage to her confidence in herself.

She looked for anywhere that she could belong and stumbled upon the military. At least the place that was interested in ones strength wouldn't be too focused on her features would they ? , but she was proved wrong , these motherfuckers were worse . More judgemental about an aspect of her she couldn't control, than of her character

This continued to severely damage her mentally, that was until she met Amon , her first true friend and comrade. He treated her like a human , even though he subconsciously still harboured some judgement.

Military training didn't help the matters either , she found out she gained muscle easier than others too , this wasn't fine at all. But there was nothing she could do about it.

Soon she and Amon where luckily assigned to the same division, same company and same platoon. Working under Captain Hudd, the most beautiful man she had ever seen of South East Asian decent.

He treated her right , he treated all his men right . He was perfect in every way possible, young and full of potential. Given a couple of years he would have climbed up the ranks to become a commander or major . She would give her all to support this perfect man . She liked him , romantically.

And then the Apocalypse happened. It was too sudden, without warning , on a normal day like no other . Giant extraterrestrial bugs an entire 4 meters tall popped out of dark rifts in the ground and killed all life they passed by.

Animals , humans local bugs and even plants they eradicated it all .

Their company was given orders by the HQ to protect the shelter they were closest to . She couldn't mentally process the Apocalypse at all . Gun worked on them , but you had to aim for the head . But even after death , they could still move for a while before succumbing. Not to mention, humans couldn't always hit a moving target with accuracy. And on top of that there was the fear of creatures bigger , stronger and faster than themselves.

Many factors compounded onto each other was the reason guns didn't work too well.

And so when the sudden appearance of a rift where they were appeared , the masses hysterically escaped with all their might.

Giant bugs came out in two second intervalsand they were expected to act as the shield to protect civilians. Unlike in the movies were soldiers always defended no matter what , getting killed , real life proved a lot of things. One soldiers were human .

Cowardice.

People dropped their guns and run with the civilians Amon almost did , only to be shaken awake from his fear by a heavy slap from her.

She almost ran , afterall, she hadn't served long enough to get cowardice out of her system . But seeing the others ran woke her up to the fact that if everyone ran , everyone would die . At least some should sacrifice themselves for others to live. And what was her job if not that?

Those grotesque entities stabbed through her comrades, and are the in a bloody mess. She vomited the last meal she had had , and when that was over , she vomited the bitter tasting digestive fluids.

But she was ready to die .

And then their heros appeared a young lady of her early twenties, prettier than her , a 13 year old boy younger than her , a middle aged man in his mid forties .

They used abilities Augustine had never seen in real life but only in movies. The woman had bolts of light come out of her mouth , destroying multiple bugs at once.

The child somehow controlled all of the fallen metal and armaments forming a gigantic 'mecha' like device .

And the man had wind blades come out of his body diving through them . Hope came , and Captain Hudd capitalized on the increased moral to direct his forces to support their heros .

But when things looked like they were getting tilted in the favor of humanity, the end stuck .

A 10 meter high 11 meter long golden shelled beetle emerged . The heros were out of steam having faught hundreds in the course of an hour and 40 minutes.

No matter what they threw at it nothing worked . The defense was out of this world .

First to fall was the young lady , she was stabbed right through.

With her death , the child seemed to have lost his bearings , becoming easy prey , swallowed whole by the golden beetle.

With his two supporters gone , and all hope almost gone , the man in his forties did something Soo matyrical . Sacrificing his life jumping straight into the golden beetles mouth and killing it from within . Dying in the process .

It was also around that time that they lost Captain Hudd after he was stabbed through and fell into the enemy lines(rift)

...

The rift at that point stopped spewing out demons, allowing a breather.

It was then that a car drove in , carrying their future heros . Daniel and Jay's break down truly showed how much they had lost as a collective.

She bore witness to all following events , Daniel training with Jace , their squads top physical combatant and winning a match in just an hour of training .

, Jay and Eric slaughtering the horror they experienced like true bugs , causing her to have hoped they came in time before all went to shit.

The return of Captain Hudd,

The fight between Daniel and the blue bug that she heard about but did not get to see herself.

And she heard that the creature was many times worse than the golden beetle.

She witnessed a human get struck down multiple times in the span of minutes as if the universe was saying that he should never have existed

The coming of the end when the rift spout out a true army consulting of multiple golden bettles and a larger red bug 4 meters higher than the golden beetles.

The process of defeating all that army by a single human named Eric, and the awakening/ manifestation of her power .

Her gun now allowed her an almost 100 percent accuracy. And the only reason it was lesser at the point of her awakening was because of her fear .

She witnessed the true terror of the blue bug as it run through her comrades and civilians who survived.

She witnessed he crush and Captain be made into an unwilling puppet by their enemies.

She witnessed his death by decapitation.

She witnessed the diamond hand that formed a rift in the building trying to squash Eric to death!

She witnessed as when all hope seemed to be lost , Daniel through some means invited the presence of a great and terrifying entity

Which froze time apart from their consciousness broke Daniels body to pieces and reformed him into a more built person .

Then turned their hopeless situation on its head , erasing the army of their end , and turning the building the stayed in into an impenetrable fortress .

She witnessed when the three hero declared themselves kings of this building, but couldnt argue with it , because she would be dead three times over were it not for them( Jay made that declaration, Daniel wasn't present and Eric was out)

She had witnessed Soo many extraordinary events in the course of a month that each of them was enough for a single life time.

And now there was a new development.

" Your Eminence , there is something that needs your attention. His Grace Jay said it is very important " this weird way of talking was 'suggested' by Jay .

During the course of 5 days he 'suggested' a lot of reforms, too many to be mentioned in one sitting.

But to put into understanding

Eminence was to Daniel

Grace was to Jay

Majesty was to Eric

Somehow though Jay caught the vibe that Daniel and Eric could accept.

Had he been called Grace or Majesty, Daniel might have shut it down permanently, with the 'Eminence ' though , Daniel was just exasperated.

But it did feel nice deep down .

For the members in the building thou, the felt Daniel was more majestic looking, but they did not challenge it .

To them he was 'brutish' looking and physically the strongest. Therefore majestic.

But if Daniel was called majesty, they didn't know what Eric would get , because he did not act like an 'Eminence ' but his Grace Jay had already given the 'suggestion' , Soo why think further. The naming was already weird.

" Hmm, can it wait , I'm about to go on some errands?"

* I'm afraid not , the visitors according to his Grace are not easy"

A frown emerged on Daniels forehead. Who could not be easy for Jay alone to deal with ?, it seems he has to postpone his trip just a bit longer.

" Okay lead the way "

" Yes "

As they walked down the stairs. Augustine looked like she wasted to say stuff , bug she held it in .

" You can ask me what you want to after I'm done with this important matter , and finished with my errands " Daniel immediately cut to the chase .

Augustine was shocked but got back her bearings,

" Yes ,your Eminence " Jay 'suggested' to bow when replying, but she kind of forgot to do it, and doing it later might bring attention to it , and make it look weird .

They got to the last floor and saw a very small congregation of 19 standing behind a beautiful/ handsome youth with blonde hair blue eyes wearing a white silk trenchcoat and white trousuer with an inner blue shirt .

Very classy

When the congregation saw Daniel , the bowed

" Greetings to his Eminence".

On the opposite side of Jay, outside the building stood a group on camp . Each had beyond human features or personas , definitely manifested humans /superhumans.

To the uninvited guests , they watched as the very tall very buff, very imposing 'man' came down the steps in almost nude. Really his attire was too skimpy.

But the respected directed at him was even stronger than that of the person called

' his Grace '

After all , compared to his Grace, his Eminence had more fears under his belt.

" Daniel , these visitors say they want to speak with us about something of grave importance .should we let them in ? "

Before Daniel could answer one of them that had a kind of viscous golden liquid revolving around their head tried to enter only to be pushed back by an unknown force .

" You can not enter without permission, don't try harder or you will push back harder ."Daniel said to the visitors

" Let them in , I'm confident nothing would happen out of our control"

This statement seemed to subdue the visitors mild arrogance. The night before they had indeed tried to sneak in and gather intelligence, but no method they tried , superhuman or technological seemed to work at all.

" Are you sure, have you noticed it too ?" Jay asked , causing Daniel to take a second look at them , this time breaking down all the information he could gather .

" What is that? It isn't human" Daniel pointed at a humanoid figure . Out of all of the visitors present 5 in fact , that one looked the most human . But according to Daniel , all the others were humans but that .

" You noticed ? "A voice came out of the man .

" How can I not , it's behavior is inhuman to begin with , I'm not surprised Jay figured you out long before I did , afterall he is a master in all things human . But what are you ? You are made too perfectly to be considered a product of han ingenuity"

" Hahahahah I see , I don't think I'm interested in making these things more human than they already are , leaving some flaws to differentiate us from them should be a necessity in my opinion. " The voice said again . Even though the things mouth was moving with the words both Daniel and Jay along with all those present could tell this was a voice from far far away, speaking through a conduit of sorts

" But you are mistaken about one thing , this is infact a product of human technology. I'm not surprised that you don't know this, but humanities high technology is more developed than what was on the market and with the coming of the 'end' and superhuman powers emergence, some chosen humans recieved the gift of superhuman intelligence, furthering the limits of what was once possible by magnitudes in only a couple of months, I am one of those chosen, you can call me professor Stanley,head of the state of Kansas research division "

Daniel received a. Great shock !

If what professor Stanley says is true and there are others like him, already versed in the human high technologybefore the beginning of the 'end ', then humanity wasn't doomed, moreover he wasn't special like he'd assumed .

There was more to the world than Eric's experiences