Rebirth of the Phoenix God - Chapter 125

“And now we are all back to being strangers, right?”

Stretching his body while still sitting on the soft grass, Fen watched the delicate movements of the female. Seeing her in the slightly feverish state with her gaze clouded, Fen could easily recognise the symptoms of being overloaded with energy that he experienced himself just a few moments ago.

Despite her clearly not-so-perfect state of mind, this cute girl was dressing herself up while cleaning all the hints about what has happened here.

“That would be for the best. I can’t say how much I would wish I could just keep you by my side, but given how I would have no chance against you in direct combat, I know I’m unable to enslave you. That’s why, as thanks for… helping me out…”

For some reason, despite how wildly she was screaming in his arms just a few moments ago, now that she had to mention what they did, the girl turned slightly embarrassed. She even went as far as to shield her supple breasts with her arms, barring me from this lovely sight as she pulled her upper robe on her back.

“… I will tell you one thing. Judging from your reactions through the day, you have yet to acknowledge how insanely interesting but also dangerous your talent is. To be frank, it’s a first time for me to even hear about being able to infuse someone with energy like that, not to speak about… experiencing it myself? Being the beneficiary of the act?”

Troubled to find the right words that would accurately describe the recent situation, the girl stood still for a moment, clearly trying to find some kind of word.

“Let me repeat it then. Back to the strangers, just like that?”

Fen never had any doubts that this meeting was only a passing one. As soon as they would part their ways, the chances of ever meeting the other were abysmally small, unless they would do some steps to change that future. While fucking with this girl gave birth to some nostalgic sentiments in the young man’s head, he wasn’t as naive as to believe that this innate human drive to settle down was something that this girl would even experience, not to speak about taking into consideration.

“What now, did you really like doing it with me so much?”

With her forehead still burning, the mischievous smile that the girl attempted to put on her lips only made Fen worried whether she would be even capable of reaching the place where her companions waited. Standing up, he was about to offer the girl his hand before nearly forcing her to take a short rest…

But instead of standing up, Fen suddenly fell on his knees.

The world spun around as his vision started to fade away. Everything happened simply too suddenly for the young man to react. Second by second, all the energy that connected his mind to this body seemed to degrade and disappear, plunging him into the senseless void deprived of absolutely any means of experiencing something.

But this strange state only lasted for a short moment too.

All at once, the black, empty reality around the young man shattered into a myriad of glass-like pieces, once again putting him in the shoes of some kind o person. Holding the same, decorated sword that he recently created as his catalyst, Fen looked up at the long lines of formations, stretching across the entire plain.

Raising his eyes towards the distance, Fen felt as if his heart was about to commit suicide by jumping out of the window of his throat. While the look of the troops below him was already impressive and magnificent when seeing their glistering fire armour, just a single look at the opposing force was enough to turn any man into a weeping baby.

Stretching as far as his eye could see, Fen couldn’t even recognise a single being that made up the approaching enemy. Looking like some vile creations made by some crazy sculptor that possessed the power to give life to his creations, those strange beasts lined up in thousands, thousands of thousands against what now looked like a very thin line of the human defence.

“General! Your order!”

For a moment, Fen thought that this feeling was different. That this moment wasn’t the same as the other memories of his bloodline that he got the chance to watch a bit in the past. He thought that he would be forced to take some increasingly important decision… But how would that affect his current self?

If he could change anything about the past, if he could influence it in any way, then what would be future would be bound to change!

Thankfully, the reality saved the young man from attempting to wrap his head around the potential of travelling through the time. With his vision moving to the side, he couldn’t fail notice a simply dressed man whose position Fen could somehow instantly read from the single spare element on his burning uniform – number of stars on his shoulder.

“We will hold the ground. As long as the engineering troops manage to finish the wall in time, our kin will be saved.”

Hearing something that appeared as his own damned voice, Fen could feel the illusory droplets of sweat cooling his forehead down. The look of terror, determination and immense courage that appeared in the officer’s eyes once he heard the order were enough to gauge how serious the situation was.

“Yes, sir!”

Saluting with his fist hitting against his chest, the officer quickly ran off. In just a few moments, his efforts shook the entire line of the army, making the soldiers slightly change their position. Now that they knew there would be no general advance, there wasn’t any point in wasting the advantage of the narrow defence that they had!

Before any of the beasts could react, the entire front line of the human army diffused into a mass of individuals, each using their fire equipment to dig trenches, fallouts and all sorts of traps right in front of them. At some point, before the line of the monsters in front of them would even move, a group in strange robes appeared from the backline, before outstretching their lines above the makeshift fortifications made by their companions.

“FILL!”

Ending some kind of chant with a strong accent on this single world, the hands of this strange group suddenly exploded with fire, only to disappear as a constant stream of some kind of liquid appeared from their palms. Rushing forward and filling the trenches, several droplets of the liquid were bound to crash against some stone, flying up to the air.

And at this moment, Fen recognised just what kind of devious trap the army was preparing for its opponents!

Soon enough, something that held the command over the front gave its orders, pushing the entire mass of the monsters forward. In what seemed to be just a single second, all of those hellish beasts jumped into a sprint, swallowing the distance between their line and the still messy area filled with the human soldiers in a matter of just a few seconds.

Thankfully, the discipline of the troops proved to be pristine. Instantly backing out as soon as the first signs of the enemy charge appeared, they only required half the time of the monsters approach to get back in line and prepare themselves for the clash.

And the young man sitting on some kind of mount atop a nearby hill could see the exact moment when the two forces clashed. Or rather, when the massacre happened.

At first, the battle was pretty one-sided. No matter how big or devious the beast that approached was, as soon as it would near the rigid lake of the liquid fire, its entire being would stand up in flames, only for the charred corpse to serve as a fuel for the blaze that appeared above the surface of the liquid.

But then, a single beast managed to make it through.

And then, the meaning of a massacre finally appeared.

It wasn’t as if the soldiers were unable to contend with it. The problem lied in fact, that by the time the beast was finally put down, there was a huge breach in the line, with more and more beasts pouring into the human ranks!

Soon, only the memory of the first line was left behind, with the long line of corpses stretching between the two mountains that enclosed the area. Looking back, Fen could see the hints of a wall being built by some insane number of people.

‘No signal… Damn it.’

This though didn’t come from Fen’s ego, but it still appeared in his mind. As if uniting his entire self with the person whose eyes he was borrowing, Fen could feel the wave of uncertainty, hesitation, desperation and extreme dedication fighting for dominance.

In the end, it was the last bit of courage that defeated its opponents, causing Fen’s body to raise along with its mouth as he raised his decorated sword while pointing it at the monsters crashing against the second line of the soldiers. Behind them, only two more remained, spelling the doom for half the continent if the wall wouldn’t be finished in time.

“ADVANCE!”

Stop.

As soon as those words flew through the air, Fen��s perspective changed. In one moment, his entire mind was filled with bloodlust, as his bastard fire sword drew red lines on the monsters vital spots.

Tearing through the battlefield, Fen could feel both an enormous energy screaming within him to let it roam free, fueling his insanely quick moves and attacks. Sadly, the amount of pain that came to his mind indicated that his body was in a state beyond the recovery. All that was left for him was to burn out with passion on the battlefield and hope that the legacy he left in the hands of his descendants would be worth the sacrifice.

Swinging his sword vertically, Fen’s body achieved unspeakable. It broke through time and space!

At first, it appeared as if two scenes were taking place simultaneously, each on its own side of the cut that Fen executed just a moment ago. Even though both of them were starkly different, the young man could in fact see how familiar they were. Yet, in the very next moment, the new scene reigned victorious, taking over Fen’s entire vision.

Blood.

That was the only thing that Fen could think about now. Running between the loose lines of the advancing formation of the enemy, his fire swords was leaving lethal marks on the bodies of the soldiers and mercenaries he passed alike. Each of his steps was marked with several corpses falling to the ground, still unaware of the fact that they were dying.

Covered in blood and intestines, the young man roamed the huge battlefield like some kind of mad monster, killing anyone who was unlucky enough to stand in his path. His fires took a slightly darker colour as if indicating that there was something inherently different from current Fen when compared to his real self or the self of all the people that Fen eavesdropped during his visions.

“Sixty-four!”

Suddenly, a sudden loud voice appeared beside the young man. Not sparking any reaction from Fen, a strangely familiar-looking woman ran by him, only to throw herself at the nearest enemy soldier, sinking the blades of her daggers in his throat.

“This is so much fun!”

With her face only showcasing how mad she was, the female continued her deadly dance, killing scores of people with every turn of her body. Yet, for some reason, Fen knew that nothing was going according to the plan.

“Calm the fuck down. Go to the sixth grenadiers and order them to advance. We need to close the gap as soon as possible.”

Keeping the sense of the entire battlefield despite personally venturing into its boiling pot, Fen showed the girl the direction of the mentioned uni before depriving another two soldiers of the enemy with a rapid slash of his sword.

“While you are on it, you can already go to that bastard and tell him that we won.”

Ending his order with quite an ambiguous line, Fen’s body jerked up, only to speed up the process of the massacre. Now, he was the monster that roamed around the enemy lines, killing anyone who dared to stand on his path. The one difference between the two scenes that Fen could compare, was that the army he was fighting against right now, was nowhere near as disciplined or organised to stop his rapid advance!

And then, everything disappeared once again. The entire battlefield rich in the blood of all the fallen just vanished without even a puff of smoke, replaced by the insides of some kind of huge cavern.

With the unbreakable cover of the darkness, there was only a single point of this cave where Fen could see anything. Even though there were no torches to illuminate it, the thing that he saw resting in chains, locked with bolts as huge as houses to the stone walls of the cave, was enough to make his sanity go away.

And now, one of the chains that held this monstrosity in place, broke apart.