“Acceptable quality, but the production time was above the estimated average,” the overseer said in a slightly scolding tone, making the woman bow in apology.
“I’m sorry... the new apprentices assigned to me have taken more time than initially expected, meaning I didn’t have enough time to cultivate as I normally did,” she said.
“I don’t ask for any excuses; just make sure it’s better next time. Even if the speed is lower, you should make up for it with quality. Your level is pretty high, so the herbs you can produce shouldn’t only be of this quality,” the overseer continued in his usual harsh tone.
As the sole C-grade in charge of this greenhouse, he was known as someone who ran a tight ship, and the results of the workers reflected on him, so he couldn’t accept those who were mediocre. Especially not with how things had been recently.
“I understand,” the woman bowed once more as she put her hand on her heart. “May the Celestial Child smile down upon us.”
“May he do so eternally,” the overseer responded with a satisfied nod.
He still couldn’t believe that he would maybe soon have a chance to meet the Celestial Child in person... if his greenhouse performed among the top five, the minister had talked about a ceremony to award those who’d contributed the most during this time of strife, so if he could have the top-performing D-grade greenhouse...
Resolving himself, he began his inspections of the day as he went outside his office to get a proper look at things. He was in charge of a total of thirteen greenhouses, all producing herbs for D-grades that helped train their alchemists primarily, with all these greenhouses placed in their own small complex, not that far outside a large city nearby.
As he walked between two of these greenhouses, he suddenly spotted three workers who were just standing around with a cart they were supposed to transport from one greenhouse to another, making him furious immediately. Storming over, he didn’t hesitate to yell:
“Who authorized you three to take a break, huh!?”The workers were frightened, and one of them even jumped back before the calmest of them pointed toward the sky. “It’s just... that.”
Annoyed, the overseer followed the man’s finger and looked to the sky, where he saw something odd. It looked as if several small dots of light had appeared, almost reminiscent of distant stars... but with it still being day and Sun-Father still blessing them with sunlight, they usually weren’t that visible.
“Is it a meteor shower?” one of the other workers asked.
Another worker suddenly got all giddy as her eyes began to shine. “A celestial event... to be blessed with such a sight...”
The overseer slowly nodded, as seeing such a thing was indeed fortunate. The Celestial Child was the rightful ruler of the skies, and all that lay beyond it, with any celestial event happening only doing so according to his will... who knows, perhaps they were truly being blessed?
At least, he thought so for a moment before one of the other workers began to look worried.
“Is it just me... or are they getting closer?”
Looking more closely, the overseer squinted and saw that... yeah, it did look like they were getting closer?
“Gifts from the celestial heavens...” the overseer muttered, the others also realizing that as it came from the realm of the celestial, it had to be a gift from the Celestial Child.
He couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the small pink-purple glowing objects falling down, accelerating as they got closer to the surface of the planet. Turning, he saw one of the workers point out where the first one would land, and he was nearly jealous he couldn’t be there to receive the celestial blessing of the-
Purple-ish light filled his vision, and as the overseer still stood there smiling, a massive sphere of destructive energy appeared several hundred kilometers away, a shockwave striking him a few seconds later, making the D-grade workers stumble and fall.
“What is-“ one of the workers began as a second flash appeared in another direction... followed by a third, a fourth, and a fifth, as all around them – especially in the direction of the major city, these fragments from heaven fell.
“Did we do wrong?” another worker questioned, not understanding what was going on.
“Is this... the will of the Celestial child?” the man who had first seen the “meteors” asked out loud, not even trying to stand up.
The overseer had no answer as he lifted his head and saw a fragment... the punishment from the heavens descended straight toward them, and all he could do was place a hand on his heart. “If this is the will of the Celestial Child... then we can only be grateful to play a role in his grand vision.”
With that thought, he smiled, the other workers also calming down instantly... if they were facing doom according to the will of the Celestial Child, then it was an honor they couldn’t possibly be worthy of. Even as the destructive arcane arrow struck only a dozen meters from them, exploding and sending out pure destructive energy that consumed all three, they only felt grateful to take part in the grand design of their god.
--
Jake watched as the orbital bombardment descended upon the planet, each arrow exploding with the impact of a small nuclear warhead, destroying several cities in the process alongside many other complexes. ṞÅɴỘ𝐁ÈṦ
He struck indiscriminately, not caring about who was caught in the explosions, acting as if he was fighting a civilization of mushroom people. Notifications flooded his system as millions instantly died, not a single one of them rewarding even a single experience point, but Jake wasn’t there for the experience in the first place... at least not yet.
As the explosions below subsided, the few survivors began to show themselves. This mainly took the form of mid-tier C-grades who specialized in defense, and with Jake focusing on making his arrows large in scope and not intensity, they’d managed to survive, some of them even looking relatively unharmed.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
There was no sense in trying to finish them off, though, as Jake unleashed another Rain of Arcane Arrows upon another spot on the planet, taking full advantage of the fact he was still a good distance outside the atmosphere.
In truth, Jake had doubted he could even penetrate the atmosphere, but it turned out that Unblemished Arrows worked wonders, resulting in the arrows traveling through unobstructed. Of course, if he had been dealing with an actual planetary defensive barrier, things would have been different... but there wasn’t one, something that genuinely surprised Jake. Even Miranda had tapped into Jake’s World Leader abilities to make sure there was a basic barrier that should help with attacks coming from outside, but Ell’Hakan didn’t even have that, relying purely on the passive defenses supplied by the atmosphere. This was good enough to stop any regular wayward meteor... but not Jake’s arrows.
Was it arrogance from Ell’Hakan to not secure his home more safely? Some other reason? Either way, Jake was betting on him still caring about his homeworld and that the news of it being in peril would make him return.
Nocking another arrow, Jake took aim once more. He sent death raining down again, and not that long after, explosions of light appeared on the planet below. Jake moved again after shooting, not wanting to stay in the same place for too long. He even shot a few arrows that curved weirdly while flying, doing all he could to remain undetected.
He repeatedly activated his stealth skill, as even if he wanted to bait out Ell’Hakan, he also still wanted the advantage of seeing the former Chosen before he saw Jake. If he kept moving and shot arrows would weird angles, pin-pointing his location would be near-impossible, so Jake kept doing it as he functioned like an orbiting satellite that constantly shot down nukes on the planet below.
It took a bit longer than expected, but not that long in retrospect, for countermeasures to begin appearing. From so far up, Jake saw a dozen cities enact powerful barriers, and Jake also finally turned his gaze toward his main target: the capital.
Locating it had been easy, as it was the only place on the planet with entities Jake could see any value in fighting. Even from space, he could feel the collection of auras, and the capital was also the only city to have a powerful barrier constantly active.
Finally... it was really fucking big. Like, not Great Planet city big, but extremely big by any reasonable standards pre-system. If it had been on Earth, it would likely have been the largest one, at least by area.
Population-wise, probably not as much. The city was very spread out from what Jake saw, and based on what he’d heard, the entire city had pretty much survived the initiation as-is, unlike the cities on Earth.
Granted, a big reason why all the cities on Earth had been utterly wrecked was due to all the beasts and other monsters who had free roam with all the enlightened in the Tutorial... but the same had happened on Ell’Hakan’s planet. Yet no beasts had ruined the city. Instead, they’d protected it. Something the natives viewed as just another display of power by the almighty Celestial Child, while to Jake, it was just further proof of how utterly fucked up his Bloodline was. His influence had spread so far that it even included the animals within and around the city before the system, making even them have absolute loyalty toward him.
Even without the system, Ell’Hakan had evidently been a fucked-up existence, with the system only providing him a proper framework to take advantage of this fact. With the system, the entire planet had turned into something quite frankly horrific, and if Ell’Hakan was allowed to continue growing in power... yeah...
Jake had admittedly doubted William a bit when he first talked about just how fucked the planet was. Jake didn’t doubt it would be fucked, sure, but just how fucked it was remained beyond him.
Even outside the atmosphere, Jake could feel something subtly poking away at his emotions. It made thinking about Ell’Hakan incredibly weird, as whenever he had any thoughts regarding the former Chosen, he instantly felt an odd rush of... something. He wasn’t sure what, but it was definitely of a positive nature. Way, way too positive.
Not that long before he headed off to Valhal – back when he was still planning to ambush Ell’Hakan out of nowhere - he had a follow-up talk with William about Ell’Hakan. A talk to expand on the metal mage’s former words about how Ell’Hakan had managed to make his followers have an emotion that went beyond anything else.
It was one that wasn’t even on the normal emotional spectrum but in the realm of psychosis. An absolutely unbreakable delusion that couldn’t be broken by anything due to how ingrained it had become in their minds. What they felt toward Ell’Hakan was a feeling that surpassed regular worship of gods. Surpassed love, adoration, and anything else... for lack of a better word, the emotion was Transcendent in nature.
Walking away from the conversation, Jake had the understanding that if one wanted to break the delusion, there were only two choices. The first one was with one’s own Bloodline or Transcendent skill capable of manipulating emotions at a similar or superior level. Needless to say, no one Jake knew had such a thing handy.
The second one was for the person under the delusion to break out of it themselves. This one was a bit of a paradox, though. Because in order to even be allowed to begin doubting Ell’Hakan, the person needed to not be as delusional as they were in the first place. They would need to have realization from within, with external factors having little effect.
Jake could show them anything fucked up about Ell’Hakan he wanted. He could have the former Chosen show up in person, calling all his followers delusional asshats while explaining how they had all just been manipulated by his Bloodline, and it would be a miracle if just two people managed to break out of their delusion from that.
All of this is to say... death would be the only way for them to lose faith. Seeing as how Ell’Hakan got empowered by having them all believe in him to such a fanatical level, killing them was almost like killing an extension of Ell’Hakan himself.
At least thinking that way made Jake feel less awkward about bombarding large population centers from orbit. He truthfully didn’t like doing something like this. He didn’t like getting flooded with notifications of killing low-level people or monsters. It felt wrong on a fundamental level to kill people that weak, especially when none of them had anything mushroom-related in their names, but sometimes, one had to do something even if it made them a little uncomfortable.
If it managed to draw out Ell’Hakan, it would all be worth it.
With this thought, Jake continued attacking even as the natives below scrambled to form a response. However, they couldn’t defend everywhere, allowing Jake to continue landing solid attacks spread throughout the equivalent of an entire continent, and as with Earth, most of the natives had been condensed to a relatively small area, meaning Jake could hit borderline any city of note on the entire planet.
Also, due to the massive distance, Jake’s Perception was really coming into effect helping the exploding arrows to deal quite a lot of damage despite how much he focused on the scope of the explosions.
As time passed, Jake began to feel that something was wrong... it took way too long. Where the hell was Ell’Hakan at? How long would Jake be allowed to continue raining down death and destruction before Ell’Hakan – or anyone for that matter – would step in and try to stop him? No, Jake didn’t count the C-grades who had flown up as legitimate attempts to stop him, as they frankly weren’t even worth wasting mana on.
On that note... mana or stamina could end up becoming a legitimate concern if something didn’t happen soon, and as more time passed with Jake just flying around and shooting, he began to reconsider if this was really the best way to approach things.
He kept going, but in his mind, a different thought began to form. Jake had considered it before... practiced the methods required... and he now had the tools... so...
Alright... we give him another thirty minutes.
And if he wasn’t back by then, Jake was going to attack something that would make his assault on the planet’s surface meaningless: the Planetary Pylon. Oh, but not to take it over... no, to do something he was sure Villy would be far more approving of.