Algernon Black

(Chapter 135) Annihilation Stone

"Who would want to be friends with someone like you?" Pecilia whimpered, wiping tears from her face.

Lucy smiled with genuine affection as she pulled Pecilia in tighter.

"How pathetic." Said a man stepping over his accomplice's body to look at his sea of dead comrades. "Defeated by children."

Pecilia and Lucy shot up to their feet, not nearly recuperated enough for another fight, but prepared to try.

"No matter," The man declared, crushing a space stone, "This issue will be simple enough to rectify."

"No!" Pecilia shouted, as the man opened his palm to an orange stone that floated into the air where it began to glow a nuclear ruby red.

The stone was pulsating and drawing in energy, creating a vacuum of noise and oxygen in the radius around it. The air drew so thin Lucy couldn't breathe as she saw the stone ripple and expand. Pecilia screamed but the noise was pulled into the stone.

Punditwood noticed the red light developing in the center of the room, and his heart reeled to the floor. He only read of these stones in old stories. Stones so powerful they could only be made by vessels and level entire kingdoms, or as this one would, obliterate everyone and everything for miles around. It had been over a thousand year since the last annihilation stone was activated and the professor gawked in the terror of the godly power it emanated.

Cecil and Luke stood motionless as they came to realize what they were seeing. They knew there was no way to prevent it. Because no matter how fast either of them was, no person could stop an annihilation stone once it was activated.

Brickwood picked himself off the ground, clutching his injured arm. His mind filled with a ringing as he processed what was happening. He wouldn't be able to get out of the blast radius, no one here would, unless they so happened to have a transportation stone, as most of the attackers came ready with, and now used to beam to safety.

Algernon wheeled away from his fight with the woman when he felt the magic stored inside his weapon suddenly drain away. He shifted towards the incredible surging sensation to see a stone unbridledly whirring on the verge of exploding. Algernon's first instinct was to rush to Lucy, but he could only look to her with the last seconds he had before they all turned to dust.

Loy tried to get off the ground but felt Selice still holding onto him. He knew it was too late anyway, there was no way to stop such a thing, so instead, he buried her into his shoulder so she didn't have to watch it happen. Selice wasn't even fully aware of what was happening, just the high-pitched humming that filled the room as awareness washed over everyone else.

So I won't leave a pretty corpse, after all, Pecilia thought as the stone entered its final stage of detonation. I should have just eaten what I wanted. She looked to Algernon, feeling sudden extensive regret. "We should have lived how we wanted to," She whispered, wondering how different life would have been if they could have. She thought about all her regrets while she watched the energy explode outward from the center of the stone, like a collapsing supernova descending down above them.

Lucy heard Pecilia's whisper and instinctively turned to Algernon. And he looked to her for the very last seconds of his life, which didn't feel at all wasted upon her. Lucy felt the heat of the bomb as an orange color cast over everything in the room to warp into the forages of a sweltering fire.

And at the very start of the annihilation's stone explosion, it froze.

Everyone gaped to the sky, where the energy didn't move, didn't make a sound, it simply stopped. No one could figure out what was happening, not even the man who had set it off.

Selice broke from Loy's hold and spotted the strange foreign man to the side of the explosion. He had his hand outstretched in the direction of the blast and didn't even look like he was struggling as he closed his fist and collapsed the power of the annihilation stone in on itself, dispelling the energy in seconds that would have obliterated everything for miles around.

The entire room fell into deafening silence as they witnessed the man do the impossible, do a miracle, do something only a god could do.

Loy's eyes shot open seeing what this man was capable of, as did Punditwood's, and Brickwood's, and every single person in the room who came to realize what this person was before them.

Lucy was the only one who still gave pause, questioning who this man was. Wondering if he was even a man because to have that much power didn't you have to be a god?

"Yosephine." King Levithan said, being the first and only person in the room to make a sound. "This is not the way." His voice held no anger, only the remnants of a disappointed parent, and everyone in the room reverted back to their childlike self in his presence. But the voice did something else for Lucy, it struck too familiar to her, and she froze.

When Yosephine heard the last good king's voice, she fell to her knees. She gazed up to him with tears in her eyes like she was about to start worshiping, "My king..." She said so softly no one but Algernon heard it while King Leviathan read it on her trembling lips.

The last good king looked at her with a warning in his eyes, before he was suddenly before her. Something no one in the room had ever seen anyone do without a transportation stone.

Yosephine glanced up into the stone eyes of the man, with lips parted in shock. She wanted to speak his name but was paralyzed in his presence.

King Levithan let out a tired sigh, as he pulled her back to her feet. "You're ok child." He sorrowed.

A chill unlike any other went through Lucy's spine and Selice's. Who both had heard that exact incomparable voice speak those exact word before.

Algernon struggled to figure out what was happing and looked over at Lucy, who seemed physically unhurt but completely out of herself as she stared at the man in absolute bewilderment, just as lost as everyone else in the room beside Yopshenine as to who they were in the presence of.

Some of the recovered attendants made their way to Yosephine intending to capture or kill her when she was vulnerable. King Leviathan noticed, and before they could, evaporated away with her in his arms and leaving behind the greatest shock of the last thousand years.