GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



Things have not been going well for the battle sage monkeys. Things have been bad in that only the battle sage monkeys have suffered carnage and destruction. It looks like meteors and stars have fallen on their side of the battlefield. The spell tower decimated them in the tens of thousands. She really did a number on them. And in less than 2 minutes too.

She didn't know what to expect from the paragons of Vipers despite the fear that has been ingrained within her. She expected them to be fearsome. That is to be expected because the first sage is not someone to be easily scared. There had to be something to make the sage fear for the survival of the battle sage monkeys. She knows what those concerns are today because she has almost died several times in the span of two minutes.

First, it was the speedsters. Those Vipers lashed through their army like whips. She was in the direct path of one of them. It would have been a sure death that she didn't see coming because she couldn't see the speedster at all. If not for her future vision warning her, then she wouldn't have jumped away at the last moment before the speedster reached them.

She saw something hit her in her future vision and then there was darkness. Every fiber in her being screamed danger then, and she jumped sideways and kept running. She warned her company to run. She yelled to them to run. If not for the fact that she is their superior officer and they have to listen to her they wouldn't have obeyed her. 

She must have looked really silly running around and shouting for others to run when the two armies hadn't even met. The ones that didn't listen and the others that didn't hear her must have been bewildered.

They must have asked themselves, "What is going on there?" Or "What are they running from? There is no enemy or attack."

Then they would have thought nothing ever again because a lightning bolt of a green-blue color lanced through the army leaving nothing but dismembered body parts in its wake. 

The ones that died were saved at the last moment and placed in stasis until they healed. Then they were ejected from the competition. That would have been her fate had she not moved. But she would have died if they were in the real world without any assistance. 

She stood no chance whatsoever despite knowing that it was coming. The speedster is just too fast for her to react to. It reminds her of fighting with her brother Salvos. Sometimes, seeing a threat doesn't change the fact that you can't resist the threat. It brings a feeling of hopelessness.

Such a hopeless situation rarely happens to her. But when it does, it makes her feel humble. You can get easily carried away when you can see the future and predict outcomes. All it takes is a dose of inevitable destruction to remind you of your mortality.

The threat of the speedster was flitting. It came quickly and passed just as fast. But next came the spell tower. She flew above the battlefield where she set up shop. Spell matrixes after spell matrixes materialized in the sky above them. They formed so fast that Salvini thought she was imagining things. Her eyes boggled at the sight. It almost made her miss the brutes and the Immortal power.

These paragons did not create the ruckus one will expect from beings of their size as they rushed forward. Their passing was silent despite their humongous size. The brutes towered above every battle sage monkey. Their arms were as thick as some battle sage monkeys and they had four of them. The muscles of their body strained beneath their black and white metallic scales. 

You would expect such calamities made flesh to be as loud as rocks as they passed by but they didn't. The wind didn't howl as they streaked through the air. If not for the sound of flesh impacting flesh as they struck the battle sage monkeys then you wouldn't know that these giants walked among them. 

They were big but they were also very fast. So even though they were seen, they couldn't be avoided by the common battle sage monkeys. 

The speedsters cut through the army and took a thin slice out of it but these ones bulldozed their way through and took a chunk out of them. A battering ram couldn't have done a better job. That is if it were fitted to be used against small moving targets instead of large unmoving obstacles.

Fortunately, they didn't focus on the battle sage monkeys. They were just passing through. Even that thought didn't calm her down. They were just passing through but the damage they did is already sizeable. What if they decide to settle on them? What will happen then? What kind of destruction will they wreak?

Salvini didn't need to look further for the answer to that question to come to her. The spell tower finished her arrangements in the sky and rained down calamity like no other upon them. Fire fell from heaven and consumed them. Rocks dropped on them and crushed them or buried them alive. Water and ice sliced into them and froze them. Wind buffered them and chopped them apart. Worst of all, there was no end to the calamities. It happened again and again over a large area. 

The spell tower came and took them all on and Salvini was helpless. The wave of cascading spells was a threat that she could see but could do nothing about. Soverick had said that they should avoid the paragons and focus on the normal vipers instead.

He said that they shouldn't waste their effort and lives on something so futile. He said the lives of everyone will be worth it if they can kill at least one normal Viper. That's what he asked of them. It is so that they won't die a useless death.