Rise of the Cosmic_Emperor

Hal turned around to look at Phaedra whose eyes were still glinting with the excitement of multiple plans she was coming up with in her head.

"I want to have a quick look around. I want to be absolutely certain that this is not all a trick" Phaedra said and Hal narrowed his eyes at her words but then shrugged,

"Thirty minutes... You can walk about as much as you wish but in thirty minutes, we will return to the Devil Tribe where you will attest to the truth of my claims" Hal said and without waiting for a reply, he vanished.

Try as she might, Phaedra could not sense his location or tell in which direction he had gone... The power of Hal's invisibility.

She stopped searching soon and just donned a cloak that she retrieved from her spatial ring and began her quick exploration.

An exploration that would not go too far past Sapphire city mostly because she wanted to remain in the range of the one who had brought her here who she knew for certain was still in the city... She might not know where exactly but she knew he was in the city.

...

Hal was not too far away from Phaedra and while she could not sense his presence, he was keeping an eye on her mostly through his control over the very structure of Sapphire city.

It was one of the reasons why this was where he had brought her.

With his Devil speed planted, Hal did not have to be close to Phaedra and wherever she traveled using the speed and flight of her cultivation as a Transcendent beast, Hal would be able to sense her.

Nothing exists or stands on Sapphire city ground without Hal knowing about it.

In Sapphire city, Hal had much more control over proceedings and outcomes. It was the location where faith in him was most prevalent... The origin of his gospel.

When Hal had turned invisible to vanish from Phaedra's senses, he had not moved too far away from her but once she donned a cloak from her spatial ring, she left the mansion courtyard she had been in. Leaving Hal behind.

Two minutes after she took off...

*BOOOMMMMM!!!!*

... An explosion rocked Sapphire City and was of such magnitude, that it could not possibly be ignored.

Phaedra stood in the air, flying as easily as any Cosmic Saint/ Transcendent Beast as she cackled,

"HAHAHAHAHA, LET THIS BE THE FIRST TASTE OF DYSTOPIAN INVASION THAT YOU STUPID HUMANS WILL GET!"

Her voice was booming all about the entirety of the City while she held a bag loosely in her hand.

On the ground where the explosion had sounded and rocked the entirety of the city, boulders lined with blood markings began to contort and expand until they became humanoid figures encrusted in rocks lined with blood.

There were about a hundred of these humanoid creatures and the moment they stood upright, their blood-red eyes flashed and they began their charge all about the city.

"HAHAHAHAHA" Phaedra cackled while she thrust her hand into her bad and retrieved small rocks that were similar to the boulders that had formed into the humanoid creatures.

She charged the rocks with a Devil spell so that the moment they hit the ground after she had tossed them, they would explode and become large boulders that would then form the humanoid creatures.

She did all this with a smile on her face... A smile that almost seemed erratic.

Hal, still invisible, narrowed his eyes at her at first but when she kept laughing, he just rolled his eyes.

He had expected her to be much more sensible but this behavior of hers was not exactly what he would consider surprising.

In fact, it was in case of this sort of stupidity that he had chosen Sapphire city as the location to bring her to.

Had he brought her to the Silva Duchy capital or any of the other Duchy capitals he had access to, she would have begun these premature strings of attacks that would give the enemy precedence.

There was understandably panic among the average denizens in the streets at these humanoid creatures charging at them because a majority of those in the part of the city she had attacked were fairly average folk.

"Rarrr" yelled one of the humanoid creatures... A product of the Devil Tribe's experiment which Hal was quite sure had been engineered from human slave base models.

Before the humanoid creature could succeed in touching its target, a figure shrouded in dark fog charged out and struck it with a large fist formed from that dark fog.

The figure was of course one of Hal's emissaries and a prime fitting force of Sapphire city and the growing influence of the Sapphirine Cult.

*Bam!*

*Crack!*

Following the mighty hit that heavily harmed the integrity of the humanoid creature, many other members of the city's fighting force charged out with the most notable of them being the Blood knights.

While the battle quickly broke out and increased in intensity, a good number of experts were directing the denizens towards safer paths of escape they could take.

Phaedra was no longer cackling but she was smiling.

She would have surely preferred that one-any of the denizens get struck down by her minions but the battle that began was not too bad.

While those humanoid creatures could not reason and were reduced to grunt and roars only, they still possessed strength at the Pagoda beast level if even only at the early stage of that level, and were surely forces to Contend with...

... Which she thought would do well in regards to her goal of causing the most chaos imaginable during her short time here.

*BOOM!*

*BANG!*

*KABAM!!!*

*CRACK!*

All this was to give these stupid humans a taste of more terror to come... None of these could compare to the trouble that would be caused by an entire army of Devil tribe experts if the plans for an invasion proved successful but it was a nice teaser.

"Go on, minions of the Devil Tribe... Raze until all is destroyed" Phaedra said as though her words to the humanoid creatures made a difference.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" Hal asked as his large blue Devil wings flapped to take him into the air at the same level as Phaedra.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" she asked just as the sound of another pair of flapping wings sounded and suddenly, there was someone else in the air with them.

That someone was Rita in her Lust Demon form which gave her access to wings with which she could fly even though that was a privilege her cultivation did not yet grant her.

"You are really begging for a beating!" Rita said with her eyes glinting with combative intent she directed at Phaedra while ignoring Hal who she, of course, recognized despite the mask.

"And who are you?" Phaedra asked and while she sounded haughty, she had her eyes roaming over Rita's obviously demonic form in confusion and complete disorientation at what she was observing.

"I'm just one of the many who are ready to band together and beat your cackling stupid ass," Rita said without care or worry that the one she was facing was obviously in a much higher realm of cultivation.

"Look over there and you will see a few of the others" Rita added as she gestured towards Karmen and Marla who were making use of wings to fly as well but were still maintaining a distance from Phaedra, Hal, and Rita.

Karmen and Marla waved with their weapons in hand and wide combat-ready smiles on their faces.

Phaedra recognized Marla after having seen her in the mansion when they had first arrived but now noted that the young lady looked especially different now with her dark smoky feathered wings.

"Where is this place?" Phaedra asked with furrowed brows no longer smiling and now piecing matters together and realizing she might be in an area of fellows who were just like Hal.

"This is Sapphire City," Rita said before flapping her wings to fly closer to Phaedra who looked back at Hal,

"Sapphire City as in..." she began and Hal interrupted,

"Yes, Sapphire city as in Sapphirine Prince.

If you had taken a bit of time to actually explore as you said you were going to, you would have made that connection already.

I do like how things have turned out though"

As he spoke, Hal looked down at the battle on the ground where the humanoid creatures were quickly being overwhelmed by the large swarm of Blood Knights joining hands with other military forces of the city.

The creatures might have possessed the strengths of Pagoda beasts but they lacked proper reasoning and can't even be said to have instincts... They are just programmed to mow down all opposition.

Plus, they have no access to healing, and once damaged, the damage is permanent and in case continuance leads to their complete destruction.

Phaedra who had watched the battle with Hal now eyed him with annoyance as she finally understood that Hal had brought her some sort of 'base' that he had.

"We really shouldn't let you just go after doing all this," Karmen said and she rose in the air and got closer to Phaedra while Marla chimed in,

"I agree," she said before tossing her Armament towards one of the humanoid creatures on the ground.

*Bang!*

The spike of her armament pierced the head of her target but it was the large bulb below the spike that really did impactful damage.

She stretched her hand and summoned her armament back into her grip without ever taking her eyes off Phaedra who took on an attacking stance while sneering at how foolish this bunch was if they thought they could take her in battle.

She had so much more in her arsenal...