Second Genesis

Chapter 573: A Hole Through the Sky[1000 GT Bonus]

The Boundless froze where he stood, his gaze moving first toward the corpse of The Immovable, then toward Grey, and finally toward Petri, but his disciple only met his eyes with a bitter smile.

Petri had called out for his master to hurry the moment he arrived, and if The Boundless had truly wanted to, he could have crossed the distance almost instantly.

The problem was that even he had underestimated just how much chaos Grey Temolt could create in such a short span of time, which was almost ironic considering chaos was exactly what both master and disciple had wanted from him in the first place.

Petri and The Boundless had long agreed that something rotten had taken root inside the Holy City, something dangerous enough that it needed to be torn out before it spread any farther.

Their disagreement had always been about where that rot ended. The Boundless believed it began and ended with the Pope, while Petri had long since come to believe that it reached all the way to the Goddess herself.

The reason for that difference wasn’t difficult to understand, because Her Holiness was the one who had brought The Boundless into the fold, and three of the Guardians had been personally chosen by the Goddess Empress herself: The Immovable, The Boundless, and The Eternal.

All three had close ties to her, and all three carried warmth and gratitude toward the woman who had elevated them.

Unfortunately, Petri had come to believe that gratitude had blinded them. The Boundless always explained away the Goddess’s mistakes as the consequences of kindness, insisting that the weight she carried forced her into difficult decisions and that no ruler responsible for an entire territory could make the perfect choice every time.

Petri had stopped accepting that explanation long ago, and it was one of the reasons the two of them clashed so frequently despite otherwise seeing many things the same way.

They had both wanted to use Grey as a blade to cut into the rot, but while The Boundless hoped the boy would shake loose a few corrupt subordinates and force the Pope into exposing himself, Petri had always been more willing to let the destruction spread farther.

Neither of them had expected Grey to practically punch a hole through the structure of the Holy City itself.

Guardians were restricted in what affairs they could directly impose themselves upon for a reason, because once Dominion Classes began settling every disagreement personally, there would be very little left standing afterward.

Even The Relentless, furious as he had been after Grey defeated his disciple, had restrained himself until the very end before finally taking action.

Petri had understood better than most that Grey was capable of causing disasters, but even he hadn’t predicted that the boy would kill the Pope, cripple Sister Teresa, and then slaughter The Immovable before anyone could properly contain him.

The Boundless’s aura surged as rage twisted across his face, his voice booming through the catacombs when he roared Grey’s name, but Petri only sighed and looked toward Sister Teresa instead.

The old nun remained nearby, cradling the ruined remains of her hands, and the sight made Petri’s expression darken. Sister Teresa was the greatest healer in the Holy City, yet even she couldn’t repair an injury like this on herself.

Hands were too delicate, filled with too many small bones, tendons, nerves, and moving pieces, and Grey hadn’t simply severed them cleanly. He had smashed them into pulp, almost certainly knowing exactly what that would mean.

That was what bothered Petri most about Grey, because the boy understood people far too well. He had almost certainly done it exactly like that on purpose.

Once the rot was finally removed, the Holy City would still need genuinely good people to rebuild whatever remained, and Sister Teresa was exactly that sort of person. However, she had lived a relatively simple life because talent, prestige, and usefulness had always protected her from the cruelest parts of the world.

She had done everything she could to ease the suffering around her, but she had never truly experienced what happened when people stopped seeing someone as valuable.

Petri wasn’t naive enough to miss what would come next if her hands never recovered. The people who bowed to her today might speak over her tomorrow, and the ones who sought her guidance might eventually decide they had no reason to listen at all.

Grey had spared her life, but in doing so, he had left her with a lesson brutal enough that she would never forget it. Petri almost laughed despite himself as the thought passed through his mind, because Grey really was an insightful, insufferable little bastard.

Before that amusement could settle, however, Grey suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood and stumbled hard enough that Elowen rushed to his side, catching his arm before he could completely lose his balance.

"Grey!" she called, her voice sharpening with panic, but Grey only chuckled and insisted that he was fine even as another wave of weakness moved through him.

The moment he deactivated his Neural Frame and allowed the Quasi Dominion to collapse, everything he had been forcing together seemed to rebel at once. His nervous system felt like it was wilting in real time, every pathway raw and frayed from the strain he had forced through it, and even his limbs were beginning to answer his commands a fraction slower than they should.

Grey dismissed Elowen’s worries with a tired mutter about details while forcing himself upright again.

Before Elowen could argue further, three enormous presences entered the catacombs and changed the atmosphere immediately.

Their auras rolled through the underground chamber like vast oceans pressing into the same enclosed space, heavy enough that even Grey’s exhausted Resonant Sense picked them up without effort.

He slowly turned his head toward the approaching figures, already understanding exactly who they were despite never having seen them in person before.

The Eternal, The Radiant, and The Forsaken had arrived together, which meant the situation had just become even more annoying than it already was.

Grey stared at the three new Guardians for a long moment, then let out a tired breath as Elowen continued holding onto his arm.

"Of course," he muttered, "isn’t my luck just great?"