1017 Tears Of A Man
Varian bowed his head in front of the remains of a broken corpse. From time to time, lightning arcs crackled around it, singing the glory of a great warrior.
If possible, Varian would've spent an entire day honoring him but there's no time now.
The ghostship slipped into the secret teleportation formations and headed to Jupiter.
The current situation was disastrous to put it mildly.
Mercury lost its Sovereign. Venus' Sovereign Vianne was under attack by not only her archenemy but some Undead Sovereign and was well on the way of dying. Earth's bastard was missing.
Mars was fine but Jupiter's Micheal Caron was also besieged by his archenemy Fire King and another Undead Sovereign.
And Uranus…
Varian took a deep breath to control the burning anger in his chest.
The army stationed on Uranus planetoids, the space guards, planetary guards—more than 20 million, all dead.
"Fuck!" Varian clenched his forehead and his nails dug into his skin.
After finishing off Neptune, Thunder King and the Undead Leader headed there. Then, they started a brutal slaughter fest.
Despair Queen stalled Sovereign Irene and in front of her, Thunder King and Undead Leader killed the human army in the most brutal ways.
Varian glanced at the screen floating above and saw the video of Sovereign Irene crying as she watched the horror in front of her eyes.
She tried to stop them. She really did. But she alone couldn't stop three Sovereigns.
For a kind person like her, this was the greatest torture.
"Cry! Cry more! Despair more! You bitch! Didn't you foil my plans with that bastard before? Today, I'll revel in your tears!" Despair Queen chortled with maniacal euphoria.
"Please…let them go…" The leader of Uranus begged.
"Please what?" Thunder King laughed as he launched a huge lightning bomb on a planetoid.
The 200,000 soldiers stationed there tried to escape were electrocuted and collapsed. They spasmed violently as blood leaked out of their bodies and violent pain coursed their veins, destroying their nerves and burning their sanity, before death claimed them.
The Undead Leader was worse. He severely injured them with a single off handed strike, then made the Undead feast on them.
The abyssals never did things like eating humans. But Undead were a different breed. The screams from the soldiers as they were eaten alive rocked the sky.
Before he knew it, Varian was staring at the screen with eyes that seemed to spit fire.
"…E-Even if they beg, there will be no mercy. Not even a single abyssal will be alive." Varian swore. "I'll go to their homeland and burnt it to ashes. The abyssal race will cease to exist."
A red mist filled the ghost ship and even Sarah and Sia, the ones that fought by his side the most, flinched at the tyrannical killing intent. It was filled with anger that words couldn't do justice do. It was a volcano waiting to be burst.
Biting her lip, Sia waded through the killing intent even as it felt like her skin was pricked by icy-cold needles.
She placed her hand on Varian's shoulder, causing him to flinch and almost lash out but his fist stopped an inch away from her neck.
Varian stared at her face and froze. The red mist in the ghost ship disappeared and a deep sigh escaped the man's lips.
"I'm sorry. I just…"
Sia stopped his lips with her own and pulled back. With a smile, she said. "On behalf of all the survivors of Neptune, thank you for saving and avenging them."
Varian felt his heart ache with guilt. "No, I shouldn't be thanked. If I woke up earlier—"
"It's not that you didn't want to, but you couldn't." Sarah walked to him and stared at him with a weak smile. "Please, don't beat yourself up. Me and Sarah tried to so hard but we were about to give up. But you saved them. Thank you. If not for you, they..."
Sarah choked and tears spilled out of her eyes, falling like rain. She buried her head on Varian's shoulder and sobbed. Varian patted her back and sighed, his eyes growing red.
The carnage on Neptune was heartbreaking. No matter how many times he told himself that an Emperor should be ready to face these with an iron heart, he couldn't stop the grief welling up in his heart after actually witnessing the horror.
It was the sad, tragic and filled with so much grief that even tears of blood couldn't erase that sense of loss.
Even though he witnessed the carnage only for a few minutes before he stopped it all, it imprinted itself into his mind. He couldn't even begin to imagine what Sarah and Sia were feeling after all they've gone through in those three hours.
The tears of those men and women, children and elderly were still ringing in his ears. The cacophony of their screams as they ran for their lives and the pained yells as the abyssals killed the brutally. The voice of the helpless played in his head again and again.
The cities were littered with corpses. Entire schools were burnt, the charred corpses of the young children still in their classes. The parks were smashed and the broken bodies of the elderly that came for a small walk scrambled unevenly.
The shopping districts filled with the severed torsos of young men and women.
Even…
Varian pressed his eyes shut and tried to not imagine it. But one image he didn't want to imagine haunted him.
It was a hospital destroyed by abyssals. They slaughtered everyone inside. And in one of the wards was a pregnant lady.
Her throat was slit but she died trying to protect the baby in her stomach. But her womb was split open and the baby…not even born…
"Arghh!"
Before he knew it, Varian was hugging Sarah and Sia as a muffled sob escaped his lips. Tears rolled down his cheeks as pain, grief and anger boiled in his heart. Out of everything he had seen, it hit him the hardest.
That one image…that baby…
Varian's body shuddered and he closed his eyes as he let his emotions run free for once. When he opened his eyes again, he'd be the cold-blooded war machine who'd do anything for victory.
But for now, for this brief period, Varian allowed himself to cry.
And as he did, he promised the abyssals with utmost certainty. "You will regret this."
