NovelChina Chapter 190: Woman On The Cloud
Chapter 190: Woman On The Cloud
Chapter 190: Woman On The Cloud
[Author’s Note: I went on a short break, Sigh… I’m back now though!]
The air in the Outer Zone of Isle Supercity smelled like burnt copper and pulverized concrete.
Usually, the Outer Zone was a sprawling, neglected labyrinth of abandoned infrastructure, towering derelict skyscrapers, and forgotten industrial sectors.
It was a place where low-crest Awakened went to scavenge and where mid-tier monsters occasionally roamed.
But looking at it now, calling it “abandoned” was a severe understatement.
It was gone…
For hundreds of kilometers in every direction, the city didn’t just look destroyed… it looked like it had been erased by the hand of an angry god.
Skyscrapers that had stood for decades were reduced to fine, powdery ash.
The asphalt streets had been melted into smooth, glassy obsidian from incomprehensible heat.
In some places, perfectly spherical craters plunged dozens of meters into the earth, while in other spots, massive trenches had been carved straight through the bedrock, as if invisible, town-sized blades had simply swept through the area.
Standing at the edge of one of these massive, terrifying trenches were four individuals wearing the sleek, reinforced tactical uniforms of the Awakened Department.
They stood in absolute, suffocating silence.
The wind howled mournfully through the desolate wasteland, kicking up clouds of gray dust, but none of the officers moved.
They were veteran investigators, men and women who had seen the aftermath of Gold Class monster stampedes and rogue criminal Awakened.
But this? This defied logic.
A young man with messy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses slid down the steep incline of the trench, his boots crunching against the glassy, melted earth. He was holding a handheld mana-resonance scanner, and the device was currently emitting a high-pitched, frantic whining sound that grated on the nerves.
He stopped at the bottom of the crater and knelt down, his gloved hand reaching out to touch something embedded in the scorched earth.
“Captain,” the brown-haired man called out with his voice trembling slightly.
He adjusted his glasses, his eyes wide behind the lenses. “You need to see this.”
The Captain, a burly, scarred veteran with a prominent Blue Crest glowing faintly on his jawline, slid down the embankment to join him.
The other two officers followed closely behind, their hands resting nervously on the hilts of their standard-issue weapons.
“What is it, Kanda?” the Captain asked gruffly. “Tell me you found a residual mana signature we can actually track. Because right now, command is going to think a nuke went off.”
Kanda didn’t look up and he pointed a trembling finger at the ground.
Scattered across the blackened earth, sparkling in the harsh afternoon sunlight, were hundreds of jagged, crystalline shards. They looked like shattered glass, but they were vibrantly crimson.
The Captain knelt and picked one of the shards up. The moment his fingers brushed against the crystal, he physically flinched.
The residual mana radiating from the small shard was so dense… so aggressively malevolent… that it made his stomach churn with sudden nausea.
“Is that…?” one of the officers behind them muttered, taking a subconscious step backward.
“Blood,” Kanda confirmed, swallowing hard. “It’s crystallized blood. And the mana signature woven into it is off the charts. It’s reading as a stabilized magical construct. Someone… someone fought here using blood.”
A heavy, oppressive silence fell over the trench.
“That’s impossible,” the Captain stated flatly, dropping the crimson shard back onto the ground as if it had burned him. “Blood Magic is a myth. It’s a fairy tale we tell junior cadets to scare them.”
“He’s right,” the female officer chimed in, her voice tight with anxiety. “Nobody awakens a crest for Blood Magic. The elemental affinities don’t allow for it. The only entity in recorded history even theoretically capable of manipulating organic matter like that is the legendary Creation Mage from the Front Lines and they already banned her from using this…!”
“Then how do you explain this?” Kanda argued, gesturing wildly to the endless wasteland of destruction around them. “Look at the sheer scale of this! You think a human did this? Even a Silver Crest powerhouse couldn’t level hundreds of kilometers of city structure so thoroughly. The ambient mana in the air is still vibrating. Whatever fought here, it wasn’t human.”
The Captain crossed his arms with his expression grim.
“A mutation, then. It has to be a newly mutated monster horde. Something that adapted a blood-based biological weapon… A Gold Class calamity, maybe higher.”
“If it’s a monster that can do this,” the female officer said, her face pale, “and it’s heading toward the inner barriers of Isle Supercity… we’re all dead. We need to report this to the top immediately an we need to call in the Generals.”
“Agreed,” the Captain said, reaching for the heavy communication device strapped to his tactical vest. “I’m routing this directly to High Command. We lock down the Outer Zone.”
“Reporting to High Command sounds like an awful lot of paperwork, don’t you think?”
The voice didn’t come from the communication device. It didn’t come from the edge of the crater.
It came from directly above them.
All four Awakened Department officers practically jumped out of their skin, whipping their heads upward and drawing their weapons in perfect synchronization.
Hovering about twenty feet in the air was a condensed, fluffy white cloud. It looked entirely out of place against the smog-choked, ash-filled sky of the ruined Outer Zone but what was even more jarring was the person occupying it.
A woman was sitting casually on the cloud, her legs crossed in a relaxed, meditative posture.
Except, she was sitting completely upside down.
Gravity seemed to have absolutely no hold on her. She sat on the underside of the cloud, casually looking down at them.
She had striking, vibrant blonde hair with thick, aggressive streaks of neon pink running through it, which hung “upward” toward the ground.
She was wearing an oversized, brightly colored Hawaiian-like shirt unbuttoned over a black sports bra, and worn-in denim shorts.
She exuded an aura of unbothered flamboyance.
The Captain’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief as he recognized the face. He immediately lowered his weapon and barked, “Stand down! Stand down, all of you!”
The other three officers hastily lowered their weapons, though their hands were still shaking.
“Commander!” the Captain shouted up at her, snapping off a crisp salute despite standing in a pile of apocalyptic ash.
The blonde and pink-haired woman let out a long, theatrical yawn, stretching her arms out.
With a lazy flick of her wrist, the gravity around her seemed to instantly correct itself.
She dropped from the underside of the cloud, flipping gracefully mid-air, and landed on her feet in the center of the crater with barely a sound.
She stood up, dusting off her Hawaiian shirt. Up close, the sheer density of her ambient mana was suffocating.
It didn’t feel malicious like the crystallized blood, but it felt overwhelmingly heavy, like standing at the bottom of the ocean.
“At ease, Captain,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. She strolled past them, completely ignoring their rigid salutes, and crouched down to examine the shattered crimson crystals Kanda had been scanning.
She picked one up, rolling it casually between her fingers. Her brightly colored eyes narrowed slightly as she analyzed the texture of the spell.
“A mutated monster horde?” she mused, her tone light and conversational. “No. Monsters don’t weave their mana this tightly. This is refined… Whoever cast this spell had absolute, terrifying mastery over their element.”
She crushed the crystallized blood between her thumb and forefinger.
The incredibly dense magical construct, which was hard enough to cut through steel, simply crumbled into red dust under her grip.
“What strange magic,” she sighed, dusting off her hands.
“Commander,” the Captain started nervously, “if it’s not a monster, then a rogue Awakened of this caliber is a City threat. We need to initiate Protocol—”
“I don’t care,” she interrupted smoothly.
The Captain blinked, completely derailed. “Ma’am?”
She turned to look at the four officers, placing her hands on her hips. “Did the world end today? Is Isle Supercity currently actively sinking into a fiery abyss?”
“Uh… no, Ma’am. The inner barriers are fully intact,” Kanda stammered.
“Great,” she smiled brilliantly. “Then it is entirely none of my concern. I am officially on vacation. I clocked out exactly three hours ago, and I refuse to let an unauthorized apocalyptic death-match ruin my paid time off.”
“But Commander!” the female officer protested, gesturing helplessly at the hundreds of miles of vaporized city around them. “Look at this! We have a duty to—”
“You have a duty to write the report,” the Commander corrected cheerfully, tapping the officer on the nose. “I have a duty to relax. You boys and girls have fun filling out the incident forms… I’ll read them when my vacation is over.”
Before any of the bewildered officers could mount another argument, she hopped lightly backward. The fluffy white cloud shot down from the sky, catching her perfectly.
“Toodles!” she saluted them with two fingers.
BOOM!
The cloud shot forward with such explosive velocity that it instantly broke the sound barrier.
The resulting sonic boom shattered the few remaining panes of glass in the skeletal buildings miles away, kicking up a massive shockwave of dust that completely covered the four coughing, sputtering Awakened Department officers.
High above the clouds, tearing through the stratosphere at Mach 3, the Commander lay back on her fluffy transport with her hands tucked behind her head.
The rushing wind didn’t even ruffle her Hawaiian shirt, perfectly deflected by a passive aerodynamic barrier.
‘Finally…’ she thought, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.
She had just spent the last three months on the absolute worst front lines of the border, slaughtering high-class monsters in a grueling campaign of blood and mud.
She was completely, utterly sick of fighting… She wanted a cold drink, a soft bed, and some actual entertainment that didn’t involve eviscerating giant beasts…
And thankfully, entertainment had practically fallen into her lap.
She pulled out her heavily reinforced luxury smartphone from her pocket and opened her messages. She smiled at the text thread.
Saki had actually texted her about a guy.
Saki-chan, who normally only cared about wanting to kill monsters before she was hired by ALI, was genuinely interested in a student.
And not just any student, but some absolute anomaly who had apparently been turning the entire Academy upside down.
‘I’ve got to see this kid for myself,’ the Commander thought with a wicked flamboyant grin spreading across her face. ‘If a guy has actually managed to thaw out the Ice Queen then the gossip alone is going to be worth an entire year of vacation time.’
She patted her cloud, feeding it a surge of mana.
“Come on, buddy,” she laughed, as the cloud accelerated even faster, tearing a clean white line through the dark horizon. “Let’s go meet Saki-chan!”
Miles away from the apocalyptic wastelands of the Outer Zone, in the pristine, ridiculously wealthy residential district of Keropolis Supercity, a sleek, custom-built black luxury car glided smoothly up to a massive set of towering iron gates.
The maids at the gates, emblazoned with the grand crest of Star Mansion, detected the vehicle’s approach and swung open to the sprawling manicured estate.
Inside the car, Koya let out a long, deeply contented sigh as he leaned back against the plush leather passenger seat.
He was absolutely exhausted, but it was a good kind of exhaustion… The date with Nami had been amazing.
Right now, he was just incredibly happy to be doing something aggressively normal.
Nami shifted the car into park near the grand marble steps of the mansion’s entrance and cut the heavy purring engine.
The blonde-haired young woman turned to him with her bright eyes shining with affection.
Ever since Hakai had essentially forced Nami’s awakening by granting her the Blue Crest status, Nami carried herself with a new kind of confidence.
She wasn’t just his nervous, overworked KCAC manager anymore; she was an Awakened, and she looked beautiful doing it.
“We bought way too much…” Nami laughed, looking at the backseat.
“There’s no such thing as too much when it comes to keeping everyone in this house fed,” Koya replied, unbuckling his seatbelt.
They both stepped out of the car.
Koya popped the trunk, and they began pulling out massive paper bags bearing the logos of the most expensive, high-tier pastry shops and commercial snack boutiques in the city.
There were premium chocolates, artisanal cakes, imported fruits, and dozens of savory treats.
Koya grabbed four of the heaviest bags, effortlessly balancing them with his newly acquired Vampire God constitution, while Nami grabbed the remaining two.
“I made sure to get the dark chocolate truffles you liked from that shop in the commercial district,” Nami said softly, walking close beside him as they headed up the marble steps.
She bumped her shoulder playfully against his arm. “I bought the extra sweet ones, just for you.”
Koya smiled warmly, looking down at her. “I appreciate it, Nami. Really. Today was a good day.”
“We should do it again,” she murmured with a small blush dusting her cheeks.
They reached the massive wooden double doors of the mansion. Koya was just about to shift the bags in his arms to reach for the handle when the doors suddenly burst open with explosive force.
“Koya-kun! SAVE ME!”
Koya blinked, completely caught off guard.
Sprinting out of the mansion at absolute full speed was Aozora Miyuki.
The usually shy, timid, soft-spoken blue-haired heiress was running for her absolute life but what made the scene completely absurd was her outfit.
Miyuki was wearing a massive, outrageously frilly, floor-length pink princess gown.
It had puff sleeves, a ridiculously wide hoop skirt, and layers upon layers of sparkling tulle. It looked like a costume ripped straight out of a children’s fairy tale book.
Miyuki was desperately hiking up the heavy skirts with both hands, her face flushed red with exertion and pure panic as her high heels clicked frantically against the marble porch.
“Miyuki?” Koya asked, standing frozen with four bags of premium pastries in his arms. “What in the world are you wearing—”
“Kyahahaha! You can’t escape the evil dragon, Princess!”
Bursting out of the doorway right behind her was Mable.
She was flying.
Two small, beautiful draconic wings had sprouted from her back, flapping rapidly and keeping her hovering about three feet off the ground.
Mable was laughing maniacally, holding her small hands up like claws as she zoomed through the air, chasing the terrified Aozora heiress across the porch.
“Come back here!” Mable shouted gleefully, doing a mid-air barrel roll that showed off entirely too much aerial agility for a child. “The evil dragon needs to kidnap you and lock you in the tall tower so Papa can come rescue you! It’s the rules!”
“I don’t want to be locked in the tower!” Miyuki shrieked, practically diving behind Koya’s tall frame and using him as a human shield.
She gripped the back of his shirt tightly, trembling in her massive pink gown.
He let out a slow, deep breath, looking up at the afternoon sky.
“Papa! You’re home!” Mable cheered, abandoning her pursuit of the princess entirely as she noticed the bags in his hands.
Koya just sighed with a fond tired smile breaking through.
“Yeah, Mable,” Koya said. “I’m home.”