Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 117: Judgement

Zac walked barefoot through the streets looking like a thundercloud given human form. The air was distorting around him as torrential amounts of cosmic energy ran amok through his pathways. He was making a beeline for the core of the town, where a second wall was erected around what was formerly a posh neighborhood.

His mind was of a singular purpose as he moved forward, guided by the description from Ryan. There were no what-if’s moral conundrums at the moment, only a seething rage. The thought of his father being cut down by some cultivator as he was trying to find Kenzie and him was almost enough to drive him insane with anger and he had trouble concealing his aura at the moment.

In the distance the gates appeared, guarded by a small group of what appeared to be soldiers each armed with an assault rifle. Zac didn’t stop as he moved forward, which alerted the guard who lifted their guns as they closed the gates.

“Halt! This is private government property, entrance is prohibited,” one of them shouted at him, but Zac’s mind was clouded by rage and he pushed forward.

The guards didn’t hesitate and opened fire at him when he came within 30 meters of the gate, but Zac simply activated his movement skill. He was pretty sure he’d survive the weapons, but didn’t want to try it out at the moment. He moved like a phantom, and within a second he was right among the guards with [Verun’s Bite] in his hands.

A few quick swings left a pile of bisected corpses and a pool of blood as he turned toward the large wooden gate. Zac simply walked up to it and infused his fist with the Dao of heaviness and cosmic energy, and with a guttural growl punched it.

It was as though a bomb had exploded as Zac’s fist hit the gate. The force destroyed the hinges and pushed the door, or rather the splinters that were left of it, inward. Shrapnel flew tens of meters in all directions like a fragmentation grenade.

Zac’s anger was still at its peak as he walked through the wreckage and found himself on a mostly clean and well-maintained street. A quick glance around let him see a fleeing middle-aged man, and with a few steps he caught up and grabbed him by the neck.

“Where are Thom Sullivan and the 4 other councilmen?” he asked with a growl.

“Don’t Kill me! They should be at the meeting with Mayor Whitfield at his mansion,” he hurriedly said.

Mayor Whitfield was the highest government official in the town, and according to both Ryan and the information missive, corrupt through and through. As long as the cultivators provided him with a lavish lifestyle he let the cultivators run rampant in the town, shielding them from any repercussions.

“Lead me there and you can live,” Zac said, still holding the man by his neck.

The man was eager to please and immeadietly pointed the direction. Zac continuously used his movement skill, which seemed to almost make his captive pass out. A quick walk later led him to a huge compound, composed of three sprawling mansions.

“The house to the right is for business meetings, and they should be in there. The middle is his home, and the left one is… For his activities,” the man said hesitantly between heaves.

Zac nodded and threw the man away after knocking him out. With a few steps he was at the right house, but just as he was about to destroy the door and walk in he was fired upon by multiple hidden soldiers.

A stinging sensation on his neck finally confirmed that he was bullet-proof. Still, the bullets from the AR-15’s hurt almost as much as a bee sting when they hit his bare skin. Zac quickly incapacitated the soldiers with a few throws with daggers from his pouch. Since he looted the mountain he had hundreds and hundreds of throwing knives, and he didn’t even bother to gather them up.

He had somewhat regained rationality by now, and tried to avoid causing any more undue casualties. These soldiers weren’t the real perpetrators and perhaps didn’t deserve a death sentence. Still, whether they survived or not would likely depend on how quickly they got medical assistance, going by the damage he caused.

There were more soldiers inside the house, but Zac was unstoppable. After a short while it was clear that the soldiers had had enough and weren’t about to throw their lives away, so they started to avoid him instead. Zac welcomed their retreat and kept moving through the building, and it was as though like a storm swept through the house until he found a large ballroom that was refitted into a meeting room.

Just as he slammed open the door and entered a sword imbued with freezing energy wooshed toward his head as an arrow flew straight toward his heart. Even the floorboards deformed and turned into spears aiming toward his guts, and some heavy mental pressure descended on him.

Zac was relieved since the attacks meant that his targets still hadn’t fled. He readjusted his grip of [Verun’s Bite] and slammed it at the incoming sword. The sword was immediately cut in two, and the axe continued unimpeded right into the head of a dour-looing man hiding right around the edge of the door. His scalp and brain went flying as the axe finished its trajectory, blood staining an expensive-looking painting hanging on the wall.

Zac simply ignored the other three attacks as he proceeded into the ballroom. They couldn’t even impede him or leave a mark on his clothes, as Zac knew that none of the leaders in the town were even rankers. He looked around and saw seven men with either fear or anger on their faces. Four of them were the cultivator councilmen, with the fifth lying dead behind him. Another man was the Mayor, accompanied by was looked like two deputies.

There were also about a dozen young girls in various states of undress who had fled to a corner. The table was laden with all sorts of foods and liquors, and by all accounts Zac felt he had walked into a bacchanalia rather than a government meeting.

From the descriptions he possessed of the council every one of his targets was accounted for, which was a great relief to him. From his quick scan he knew this would be a quick and dirty slaughter. He was a bit disappointed as he’d almost hoped for an epic battle to vent his anger. But crushing the council like dried twigs worked as well.

Zac’s slowly walked through the room, each of his step causing a deep thump that echoed through the room. Each step was as though a hammer forcing a nail into everyone’s chests. It only got worse as an inhuman aura started emerging from Zac’s body, the very air around him distorting. Waves of power billowed out and inundated the room in suffocating murderous intent. The large windows in the room shook as it felt like an earthquake.

Most of the girls could barely remain standing and the faces of the men visibly paled. Zac slowly moved forward like inevitable doom, and his eyes stopped on a swarthy black-haired man with a large beard and a thick hammer. Thom Sullivan. Zac was just about to go to work when someone finally managed to speak up.

“Who are you? Salvation? Why are you doing this?” one of the cultivators squeezed out through clattering teeth.

Zac only looked into his eyes for a few seconds, remembering his father. Perhaps he stood in this very room when he was killed by the men in front of him.

“Salvation? No, I am Judgement.”

“Judgement? You are making yourself an enemy of the government with your brazen actions. If you surrender yourself now th-“ the fat middle-aged mayor managed to wheeze out, but was abruptly interrupted by a dagger slamming into his gut, throwing him into the wall next to the scared girls.

“The government won’t mind me killing trash like you all,” Zac said as he looked over the perpetrators of his father’s death. “Every debt has a debtor. The day you slaughtered innocent civilians to take control of Greenworth you accepted the fact that one day someone like me could arrive.”

He said no more as he winked out of existence as he pushed [Loamwalker] to its maximum. A growl and whooshing of air was heard, as one of the men by the table was cut in two, his upper torso slamming into the wall with a wet thud. The growls of Zac’s axe kept echoing in the room as body-parts kept getting chopped off, Zac’s figure barely registering in the eyes of the helpless onlookers.

The rulers of Greenworth desperately tried to flee or mount resistance but it was a joke in front of Zac’s wrath. It was not a battle, it was a slaughter. Their attacks were even weaker compared to the ants back on the island, and as soon as someone moved to flee they were instantly bisected into multiple pieces.

In less than a minute only Thom Sullivan and the mayor were left alive, though the mayor was barely conscious due to the dagger. When Zac entered through the door there had been some fight and brutality left in Thoms eye’s but that was long gone, replaced with abject fear.

“Take the town, it’s yours! And I have treasure the townspeople and government have collected over the month. You can have it all. Just let me go!” the leader said, any semblance of might long gone.

Zac simply snorted, as he charged up [Chop] far beyond his limit and swung down. The edge tore straight through the whole building as it fell down upon the leader of Greenworth.

In a last-ditch effort to survive Thom erected a defense that almost looked like a prismatic diamond, but it was like paper in front of the enormous edge. The axe pushed down and completely destroyed the man, leaving only bits and pieces intact. The strike continued into the ground, tearing a huge jagged scar through the whole building.

There was no satisfaction or emotional relief from the deed, only a deep and soul-crushing emptiness. He was too late. If he’d left the island immediately he might have been able to stop this. There was a small voice in him that told him that it wasn’t true, but it was scant reprieve to his current pain.

New Washington and Greenworth were located almost in the heartland of Pangea, the new continent. Any body of water that could hold Zac’s island was an insurmountable distance away. Still, his feelings weren’t about logic.

Strained wheezing interrupted his train of thought, and he turned around with a frown. It was the mayor, who had managed to remove the dagger from his abdomen. The man had a surprisingly high vitality, as he was still holding on, even with the huge pool of blood beneath him. However, he was sweating and panting, his face completely pallid.

“Help me. I have strong connections, I can tell the officials these men were corrupt, and I hired you to bring justice. You will become a government-sanctioned leader of the town,” he wheezed out.

He was considering what to do about this man. He did not care one bit about his offer. He had no plans on taking over this town, as it would likely completely make him fall out with the government. Besides, he wasn’t sure if some sort of quest would trigger if he took hold of the Nexus Crystal, such as a test of sorts. He had no time or desire to fight beast hordes on two fronts.

He was planning on leaving the town to the army, and have the government decide a new leader. He had no desire to stay on here since his father was dead and his sister somewhere else. That still left him with the mayor. From the man’s actions Zac felt he should be killed with the rest of the cultivators, but he was a high official of the government.

He had already got off to a slightly rocky start with the leaders of New Washington, and he was reluctant to keep killing their people. There was still a hope that Port Atwood could cooperate with the rest of the world, and he felt that the government was a good tool for that.

Though they hadn’t really tackled the invader threat as of yet, their progress in just four months was startling. They had created a network of towns, such as Fairfield, and was slowly starting to adapt to the new world. Perhaps their speed was too slow as Zac knew the invaders weren’t lazing around.

The invaders were simply preparing and accumulating while they waited for the limiters to lift, after which they would explode in violence. The reports he read in the information crystal from Ogras was truly horrifying, and humanity wasn’t really prepared.

Still, with the help of him and the demons, humanity’s odds of surviving and reclaiming the world would be a lot higher. With him and a few other Rankers taking the lead they could keep the leaders under control. Zac knew that none of the Invaders would be able to break through to E-Rank yet due to the System still restricting them.

That gave the defenders a window of opportunity to clear out the incursions before their power started to get out of hand. Zac finally decided to keep the man alive and bring him to the government. Their handling of this criminal would also be a good gauge of how they did things.

However, fate has a sense of humor as just a second after Zac decided what to do one of the scared girls in the corner leaped forward with a piece of broken-off piece of wood in her hand. With an almost feral snarl she stabbed it straight in Mayor Whitfield’s throat.

The man tried to defend himself, but between him losing most of his blood and the boundless anger of the girl it was to no avail. She kept slamming the wooden spike down into the body creating grisly wounds, most centered around his groin. There was no coming back from that, pill or no pill, and he simply bled out in a matter of seconds.

“Uh…” was all Zac could think of saying as he looked at the panting woman in front of him.