27 Chapter 27 - A Will to Defy God
They stared in disbelief as Dolian's golden scales shimmered under the illumination of the distant twilight horizon. The leaves above their heads rustled with intense sounds, and the smoke ahead of them dissipated to show a man with a silver mask staring at them coldly with his piercing blue eyes.
Before they can even utter another word, a stream of information surged into their minds, and their eyes rolled to the back of their heads.
Dolian sacrifices himself to save the others and gain enough time for the heroes to arrive and get some reinforcement from the government.
The five were successfully pulled into the good side by Dolian after a near-death experience.
They managed to rally an army to overtake the oppressive Leader of Kryptos.
After an intense war, and a lot of sacrifices, Dolian, One, and Two were the only ones left to fend off against Leader.
Unable to win, they resorted to going back to America and getting their help.
A few days worth of memories were crammed into their heads, ranging from what happened to Leader's abilities, and the plan Dolian concocted to defeat Leader.
'Use a timely illusion, and with enough speed, kill him before he gets to reset his time and live again.'
It was a simple plan, but a plan nonetheless. With their previous failure, the four were more than determined to do their best and follow through with Dolian's plan to its utmost success.
In the receding smoke, Leader smirked under his mask at the same series of events that were unfolding in front of him.
From the same attacks to the same potions and to the same armor, it was something that he had witnessed already. The almighty power to rewind back time was indeed a power that pushes him closer to God than man, and the man knew that clearly.
He waved his arm and bent gravity once more, stopping the piercing lightning from hitting him using his monstrous temporal awareness. Then, he willed the authority of gravity and caused a curvature in space-time, redirecting the bolts of electricity back toward the group of seven.
Even with the extreme difference in numbers, Leader kept up and dealt with whatever tactic they showed with the bountiful life experienced he has accumulated over his long life filled with close brushes with death and as the leader of an underground crime syndicate.
Flashes of lightning, beams of burning light, an army of floating drones, they were all dealt with with just a simple wave of his arm. A mere thought and nothing could get past the barrier of space around his body.
Stolas attempted to approach him. He contracted his muscles and tensed up his entire body. The muscle memory from executing the same move over a billion times, memories that he received from his owner, and the martial arts skill that was transferred over, roared with immense strength.
In response, Leader stomped his feet and caused the ground below him to rupture and form a series of earthly blockades to stop his sudden attack and fierce wind pressure. While doing so, he waved his arm, and all the surrounding pebbles in the air around him flew forward at breakneck speeds.
Two responded swiftly to the situation as their wordless trust in one another gave them the confidence that the other wouldn't mess up. Numerous portals opened up from nowhere in front of those flying pebbles and shifted their destination from Dolian to Leader.
The others also knew to use their numbers to their advantage. Aleksandra fired off her deadly beams, Alastor conjured spears of electricity and blades of wind, Pindle opened up a couple of her vials and caused colored gas to explode out, Luke controlled all of his flying drones to fire off a hail of glowing bullets, and lastly, One ignited a catastrophic explosion that intended to swallow the entire area whole.
'Tsk. Their teamwork is as terrifying as before.' Leader snorted and waved his arm, bending space just a second faster before Stolas could put him into an illusion by using the offset of sounds to make Leader's brain hallucinate.
Without Dolian's quirk, Stolas has limited means to influence the mind. Of course, his ability still crosses the boundaries of mortal means and is at a supernatural level already, albeit his methods were more indirect and weaker in nature compared to Dolian.
Still, his ability to create illusions was more than enough to fool someone like Leader. Unless they have quirks that improve the resistance to the mind, then most entities in this world could be deceived by Stolas' illusions.
Alas, the difference in power between Stolas and Leader was just too much. Easily escaping the barrage of attacks, he appears far away from them and once again bends space to redirect their attacks back at them.
They hastily dodge and activated their thrusters to move out of the way. The reason they were able to respond calmly to the situation was once again due to Stolas' help.
Even without a quirk, he was somehow given the ability to establish a Mind Tether between him and another entity, a power that was created by Dolian that allowed an owl to gain a power akin to a quirk, although unrefined and a lot more crude compared to an actual quirk.
In the same way that Dolian does it, Stolas continuously placate the others to keep them calm and allow them to remain calculative. Then, he establishes a connection between all of them so that they can transmit their thoughts to one another and raise their teamwork to a supernatural level.
The battle continues to rage on, and Leader remains unscathed no matter how hard they tried.
…
Sitting on the branch of a nearby tree, a boy wearing a plain white shirt and black pants stared at the ongoing fight with indifference in his vertical golden eyes. He leaned his body forward and rested his chin on his open palm.
'Strange indeed.' Dolian squinted his eyes and scrutinized the fight with his cunning eyes.
'Fate…' Leader's memories flashed in his mind. His experience with messing with time and his current understanding of fate was given to Dolian on a golden platter, allowing Dolian to further grasp the mysteries of the thing that gave him his untimely death. 'Fate.'
'It's indeed such a mysterious and abstract concept.' Dolian smiled lightly and tapped the wooden branch below him with his other hand. 'To see the arrangement of fate so clearly in front of him, what an eye-opening experience indeed.'
'Even without me intervening directly, Stolas is still putting up a decent fight against Leader and keeping the team together. At this rate, he'll manage to develop the ability I gave him and might even manifest an actual quirk, or to be more exact, a supernatural ability that stems from an unknown source.'
'There's also the study that quirks affect the personality and characteristics of humans. For example, a person with a fire-related quirk would have a fiery personality, while a person with an ice-related quirk would have a cold personality.'
'It's indeed a solid study that has a lot of proof, but I do wonder…' Dolian deepened his grin and stared at Alastor in the distance. 'Are our personalities affected by our quirks, or is our personality and characteristic the one that affects the quirk we manifest?'
'An ability specifically created to suit us best. Even the most strange quirks like an extra limb have been found to be specifically useful to that person, giving them an extra edge to things like their jobs or hobbies.'
'If that's the case, then what could be that factor that influences the ability we gain after manifesting our quirks?'
'Maybe…' Dolian chuckled and stared at his chest. 'Maybe it's our soul?'
'No, it should be something deeper than that.' Dolian shook his head and ignored the roaring explosions beneath him. 'It should be something that makes us unique in this vast universe with innumerable souls.'
'Something that defines who we "are", something that makes Dolian Dolian, something that makes us us, you you, or we as we.'
Chuckling at the absurd sentence he just whipped in his mind, Dolian relaxed his eyes and muttered, "Origin."
'I'll call it the Origin.'
'Then, is my Origin intrinsically connected with the concept of Mind? Is that what caused my rebirth to be the son of a pair of psychiatrists, and to manifest a quirk related to the mind?'
'Or maybe the supernatural ability we manifest is affected by other matters. Maybe my quirk is like this not just because I'm the son of two psychiatrists, but also because I was a psychiatrist in my previous life.'
'It's indeed such a mysterious matter to research on.' Dolian scratched his chin and stared at the ongoing fight with the same relaxed smile.
…
'JUST DIE ALREADY!' Alastor roared within his heart as another bolt of electricity crackled with immense strength.
On the other hand, Leader snorted once again and wagged his finger, causing gravity to pull down and causing Alastor to lose his focus and make the spear of electricity disappear. This seemed to have made the strangely angry Alastor get more irritated.
After a certain point, his blood boiled with a tyrannical anger that longed to dominate and kill the man in front of him without mercy.
His previous failure continuously replayed in his mind as if to endlessly taunt him of his weakness. It was like a mistake engraved on his very soul that defied his nature of being dominating and tyrannical.
If he doesn't quell his anger, Alastor felt he would go insane and mad to the point of breaking down. Even he didn't understand why he felt this way all of a sudden. It didn't appear out of nowhere, he knew that much, but it was instead a gradual change that started to occur the longer the fight went on and the more powerless he felt.
His previously managed anger and irascibility started to pour out in full force, like a small crack in a dam transformed into numerous ruptures that leaked out an endless stream of water.
Responding to his anger, his quirk started to turn stronger and stronger, albeit with the cost of lagging mental stability. He threw an endless barrage of attacks, not caring whether they were effective or not, whether they were efficient or not, or if they worked with the others and their attacks. The thing Alastor wanted most right now was to see his attack just break through all that defied it and land on its target and kill Leader.
The boiling anger within him bubbled at an exponential rate, and so did his quirk.
The clouds above him started to darken as if a storm was about to form. Flashes of light boomed from the heavens while strong winds gushed and caused the leaves above to rustle.
"Alastor!" Aleksandra called out, "Are you okay? Why is your quirk-"
"SHUT UP!" Alastor clenched his fingers and caused multiple bolts of electricity and endless blades of wind to appear. The clouds above him swirled and formed a gassy vortex. "IF YOU DON'T WANNA DIE, THEN DON'T INTERFERE!"
His anger rose to a terrifying degree that his muscle convulsed.
On the other hand, Leader stared at Alastor with widened eyes as he easily noticed the sudden shift, 'Is he undergoing a quirk awakening right now?!'
'But how?'
Without the time to ask more questions, Leader was about to bend space and rush forward to deal with Alastor before he awakens, but Stolas noticed the same thing.
"Stop him!" Stolas shouted and the others acted without hesitation.
Using his expertise in space, Two interfered with Leader's teleportation, while the others attacked to stall for time.
Thunder crackled and the wind roared. In the eye of the storm, Alastor raised his hand into the sky as endless strength burgeoned forth.
A tyrannical aura exploded out of his body and caused the surrounding wildlife to bow down in his presence. Even the others felt the unnatural urge to kneel down from the pressure he emitted, and the same goes for Stolas.
"DIE!" A stream of lightning came crashing down to the earth, smiting Leader.
…
'There it is.' Dolian smiled as he saw the lightning crash down from the heavens above. But strangely enough, the place it came crashing down on was a few meters away from where Leader stood.
Then, with an obvious sign of leisure to his steps, he approached Leader and tapped his forehead with his index finger.
"Let's explore the mysteries of fate, shall we?"
And so, amidst the sound of thunder and wind, Leader activated his quirk, and space-time was once again tampered with by mortal hands that wanted to defy God's will.
AN: This chapter has 2140 words.
Damn, I pulled a fucking Kaleido with this story. That's why you shouldn't mess with time, kids. You don't wanna be this guy that suffers from his own plot because it's hard as fuck to handle.
Huhuhu, next chapter is gonna be the culmination of my regret and how this story went from madman goes mad to a galaxy brain schemer gaining control over fate and opening the path of almighty. You'll probably understand the weird terms I'm gonna use for the power system by browsing Soul of Negary's power system, but I will explain more of it later on.
(April 28, 2023 - 519th day of writing)
