The Unkillable Cryonic God Emperor.
Cryonic to his friends, allies and anyone that had the balls to call him that.
An unfortunate name chosen when he had been much younger and lamer.
Doubly so that it had stuck.
He had no other name.
All that had known the other one was long dead.
He had no desire to share it with anyone, no matter how close and trusted.
Cold, calculated, rational logic dictated.
He had seen curses, spells and Skills on several occasions use something as seemingly innocuous as a person’s name to do harm.
The sky was on fire.
Enormous flying ships turned wing-armed women into crimson rain.
Droplets of which fell upon him.
However, they marred his long, black hair not.
They slowed, freezing into tiny icicles that hung above the entire city block like Christmas decorations.
Monsters fled from him.
Rather, they tried, but they found their movements, despite the frantic nature, slow and sluggish, as if they moved through honey rather than air.
Then they stopped.
Muscles.
Blood.
Heart.
All movement, even the electrical impulses in their brains, just slowly… stopped.
Every cell froze, turning them into ice-covered sculptures captured in the moment that the liquid in their bodies expanded and erupted violently free.
Frost formed on every surface.
Only he and his clothing were spared.
They came around the corner ahead of him.
Snarling, frothing.
Cal had said that the rabbit people completely lacked a sense of self-preservation.
Cryonic had been skeptical of the claim, despite the hours of video evidence provided and available on the Omninet.
What was on the latter didn’t do their horror justice.
To see the look in their eyes challenged the cold logic with which he approached battles.
He couldn’t help but think of their victims.
Raped, killed, eaten.
Not always in that order.
He extended his powers with vengeance in calculating mind.
For all he had tried and for all his powers had an influence on him, he remained human with human thoughts and emotions.
The rabbit people choked the street, unmoving.
Their white-furred bodies stained by the crimson exploded from within.
Burst eyes stared sightless from behind their glassy cocoons.
He gestured toward them, reversing his powers.
Frozen chunks, pink and white sprayed like shrapnel shredding the still mobile rabbit people behind.
He realized that he was sort of just walking around.
Cal’s people had tried to force their gear on him, but he had refused.
Not out of paranoia, but because of the simple fact that his powers would have destroyed them.
He had acquiesced to a fancy ear piece that allowed two-way communication.
Again, useless, because nothing moved within his aura unless he allowed it.
And he hadn’t lived this long by allowing gaps within his aura while in the middle of a battlefield.
He considered risking it briefly.
They had inserted him in the general vicinity of the demigod he was supposed to fight, but he couldn’t find the demigod, nor did the demigod seek him out.
“I’m going to need to move faster.”
He was reluctant because he needed to control his powers lest he caught civilians.
Once again, he had to admit that open communications would be the solution for that issue.
They had seemed confident that they would be able to minimize human collateral damage.
To their point, he hadn’t come across a single human— Earthian…
Too many changes to the world made him feel every bit his age in a mental, emotional sense.
Physically, he felt infinitely better than when he had been an overweight young man all those years ago.
He certainly looked like his best possible self in the prime of his life even though he was closing in on his sixtieth birthday.
“Hello, anyone there?” He opened up a gap in his field. The smallest he could imagine, which was about the size of a human hair. A cylinder straight from the top of his head to about 10 meters in the air.
“Copy, Cryonic. We’ve been trying to reach you—”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I was trying not to get killed.”
He regarded the frozen statues around him.
“I might’ve been too cautious.”
“Your target—”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m calling for. Where?”
“On the corner of Franklin and 10th. He’s helping defend a school from horde-ing rabbit people.”
“Franklin and 10th…”
“Turn around and walk until you hit Franklin. Turn right and keep going until you see them.”
“Thank you.”
“Remember, right on Franklin. It’s before the freeway. If you go past it, then you’ve gone too far. Oh— hold on a second.”
He shrugged and turned around.
A thin layer of ice had formed over every surface in his range.
He kicked off and began to slide.
The ear piece vibrated slightly as a sign that his liaison was about to return.
“Copy, Cryonic. I’m supposed to tell you to hold off on confrontation until all of the civilians are evacuated.”
He didn’t see how that could be done, but…
“… sure. That’s fine with me.”
“Please make sure to keep your powers away from the school. It could interfere with the evac.”
“I can do that.”
Cryonic had good eyes.
A dark night was like a dimly lit room. A few streets away was like an arm’s length.
“That’s one way to do an evacuation.”
He had walked up the side of a building to get a good view of the school.
People— civilians were floating into the night sky.
A lot of children.
A lot of calm children.
Weird.
If he was in their shoes he wouldn’t have been half as calm.
Kids looked like they were just chilling as they floated away.
They slowed.
Then rocks fell out of the clouds.
Suspiciously, all on one spot hidden from his view by the school’s largest building.
The ascent continued until over 500 civilians vanished all at once in a faint flash of light.
“Am I clear to fight?”
“Copy, Cryonic. You are go for launch!”
He frowned.
The girl actually giggled before she cut the comms.
Could the assigned liaison have been a calculated insult?
No.
Cal had never struck him as one for petty power games like the Chinese brother and sister.
The former had always been goal focused in his dealings.
Unlike, the latter, who ran hot, physically and emotionally.
They had skirmished often over the years and only recently eased up on account of an outside factor.
Historical and present day animosity on account of proximity.
He took the energy he had stolen from everything in his aura and used it to push him violently into the air.
Moisture turned into ice underneath his boots.
A slide that crumbled in his wake as sped down toward the school.
What he found when he arrived was the aftermath of a slaughter.
Piles of rabbit people scattered on the streets like small hills covered in pink and white grass.
Darker shapes of varying sizes dotted the landscape.
Monsters.
Sprinkled here and there were camouflage wearing American soldiers. Their weapons at the side of their torn and broken bodies.
A small mountain of rocks stood out even amidst the carnage.
It vibrated, suddenly exploding outward in all directions.
Like a shrapnel filled mine or a machine gun ambush.
Things he had faced more times than he could count.
The deadly projectiles died the moment they crossed into his aura, sapped of all velocity and momentum.
A mountain of muscle emerged with a smile on his broad face.
Cryonic knew everything about this man that Cal did. Assuming the file hadn’t held anything back.
That was always a possibility despite Cal having sworn on a truth gem.
The demigod towered over even other demigods.
He looked wrong.
Not his proportions.
No.
Those were perfect.
They looked wrong because of his size.
365 cm tall.
Almost twice as tall as Cryonic.
Broad shouldered.
Bodybuilder-style muscles without the labored and unathletic movement.
Like a tiger prowling the winter forests of Cryonic’s homeland.
Grace and power given form.
Oh… the demigod also looked wrong on account of skin color as white as the chalk schoolchildren used, along with thick hair and beard of the deepest violet akin to a lion’s mane.
He wore no armor, nor clothing besides a black man skirt embroidered along the hem with swirling patterns in fine gold thread. The black glimmered, seeming to reveal a field of tiny, sparkling lights like the stars in the night sky one moment. Then plain nothing the next.
The ice slide crumbled as Cryonic smoothly stepped off to stand across the street from the demigod.
Gold-colored eyes glittered as they regarded him warily.
For a moment he thought that he could see tiny glittering stars in the demigod’s shadow across the street.
“I am Adrasiades!” the demigod boomed.
Cryonic knew that, but he wasn’t rude enough to interrupt.
“Son Adras. God of… too many things for your mortal mind to comprehend.”
“I can comprehend more than you expect,” he said. But, go ahead and underestimate me anyways, he thought.
“We would be here all night if I were to recite my father’s domains.” Adrasiades chuckled. “And I’m not one to give my opponents advantages carelessly. Just know that my father is the physically strongest of the Gods. He holds everything together with unending endurance. No being in existence surpasses his daring deeds in service of the lesser.”
Adrasiades regarded him with an expectant gaze.
“Unkillable Cryonic God Emperor.” He held his arms out wide. “I can tell you’re going to do your best to put that to the test. However, before we start, I’m required to tell you that you may take this one opportunity to leave our world. You’ve been the least objectionable out of your kind and have not committed any crimes against the people.” He shrugged.
It wasn’t as if he cared about random Americans and former Americans.
Not his land, not his responsibility, not his concern so long as they didn’t threaten his land and people.
“You can just walk away. Go to the spire that brought you here and leave. Or we fight and I make no promise as to your state upon conclusion.”
“I live for my father. His honor is my life.” Adrasiades beckoned him with a hand large enough to engulf his entire head like a baseball. “Come! Recite your deeds so that we may begin a clash of legends!”
The cold, rational mask slipped ever so slightly from Cryonic’s face.
He had always hated the strong, boastful types dating back to his childhood.
For it was them that had always made his life a living hell.
He saw every bully’s face in the smiling demigod.
It was that look with the arched brow, up-tilted head and easy grin.
“I can get away with anything.”
The words they didn’t have to say when everyone knew that’s just how things worked.
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“I already told you my name,” he grinned. “I am he of countless deeds over three decades. I’ve killed every kind of monster and every kind of man. I’ve killed arrogant outworld invaders that boasted of what they’d do to me and my people only to beg and cry as I took their lives. And today… I kill my first demigod.”
“Well said!” Adrasiades’ booming laughter drowned out the sounds of battle in the night sky and surrounding city. “We are similar. I, too, have slain all my enemies. Three decades, you say? I have labored across a dozen worlds. Slaying foul and fair. All for the honor of my father. For three centuries, I have done this! Tonight… well, tonight is a nice break!”
The demigod flipped a rock the size of car with his sandaled foot and kicked it straight into the air.
“When it lands we begin.”
Cryonic smirked.
“Don’t bother. I’ll let you go first. Give me your best shot.”
He spread his hands as though asking for a hug.
The rock fell.
The demigod touched it with a single finger, firing it like a cannonball.
Cryonic stole its energy.
The rock iced over as it came to a dead stop and hung in the air between the two before suddenly exploding.
Adrasiades charged through the frozen shard cloud.
Cryonic saw him coming.
Well… he didn’t see, exactly.
Nope.
The demigod blurred, moving too fast for what one would except from his sheer size.
The mighty glacier rather than the lightning bruiser.
Rather, Cryonic, reluctantly, had to give credit to Cal’s comprehensive scouting report.
Thus, he was ready to compensate for his weakness.
Being at the pinnacle of battle, he knew that speed killed.
A gift he lacked amongst his many.
He simply couldn’t react and perceive speeds past a certain point.
The demigod suddenly appeared in front of him with a fist bigger than his head on a collision course that would’ve turned him into a bloody smear.
He raised a finger and reached toward the smiling statue encased in ice.
The demigod had generated so much energy from a simple lunging punch.
“Somewhat impressive that your body’s cells haven’t explosively ruptured.” Cryonic gazed up at gold eyes beginning to brighten. “Feel the wrath of my frozen eternity.”
A partial lie.
Psychological tactics to keep his opponents guessing and get them angry.
Finger tapped frozen knuckle.
He returned all the energy in one instant.
The demigod vanished from his sight as the boom would’ve sent him flying in the other direction had he not bled it, turning it into a sphere of ice surrounding him.
“So much to work with.”
Like the best, his powerset was not limited.
He shaped the ice into thousands of jagged javelins in two blinks of an eye.
A gesture sent them flying down the street and into the gaping hole in the side of a building.
The demigod emerged like a happy snowman, munching on a handful of icicles.
“They taste pure. I enjoy them with fruity syrups or sweetened milk. Perhaps, I should take you with me. There are two seasons in my homeland. Hot and hotter. The children deserve to taste such purity, do you agree?”
“You can’t afford my rates.”
“Oh? Is it not enough to be of service to the little ones? I have noticed that your world is rather… mercantile…” Adrasiades’ nose wrinkled as though he caught a whiff of stinky tofu.
“You’re a communist.” Cryonic allowed himself a sneer.
What was the point of life if people didn’t have to work for it?
It only bred laziness.
As he had seen firsthand from Relentless’ free supply handouts.
“You have much in common with the Americans. Their faces twist as yours does when I tell them tales of my homeland.”
Cryonic expanded his aura as the demigod strode toward him like an unconcerned lion.
The instant the two met, frost formed on the demigod’s white skin and violet hair.
As expected, the divine energy within prevented rupture.
He created ice spikes out of the air moisture and sent them flying at the frozen demigod.
They sped up out of his control, but instead of crashing upon the giant they swung around and shot toward him like asteroids slingshotting around a planet.
The frozen golden-eyed grin gazed down at him.
Too much like the bullies of his youth.
The years had done just as much as his powers to move him past the trauma of those dark years.
However, such treatment left indelible stains that could never truly be cleaned.
Much like the stain on his grandmother’s favorite rug.
The red chili paste that had gone into her special noodles didn’t mix well with white.
To this day he found arrogance irksome.
The storm of icicles halted, hanging in the air in violation of physics.
Robbed of kinetic energy they should have simply fallen to the ice-covered street.
There was a lot of that going around.
The demigod’s eyes flashed.
Gold light lanced out.
Well, not light.
Not as Cryonic understood it.
For if it had been like light, he would’ve taken a faceful of the twin beams since the fact that he saw them meant that they hit his eyes.
Instead they were fast like a bullet.
Something he couldn’t react to quick enough at this range.
His power slowed the beams down to about as fast as a tennis serve.
Now, that?
That he could easily react to.
Thus, he ducked.
Cryonic didn’t like moving during battle.
He preferred standing still while his opponents froze around him, dying with the knowledge that he didn’t need to bother raising a finger. That they were too weak to force him to move.
The demigod struck when Cryonic’s concentration slipped for split-second.
Massive fist descended like an industrial hammer.
Cryonic, flat on his back thrust his hands up.
Fist slowed then halted.
Gold light flared.
He rolled desperately as the blast punched through the ice-covered asphalt.
That had been too close.
He found his footing and released some of the stolen energy between him and the frost-covered demigod.
The latter slid a few meters, while he slid down the street like a rocket-powered sled.
Boots with retractable ice skates seemed silly, but he’d throw down with anyone that dared to say it to his face.
The demigod roared.
A hammer of golden light descended casting a wide shadow.
Now that…
That had physical form.
He skidded to a stop and glared at the descending doom.
Both it and the falling demigod slowed, then stopped. Completely suspended in midair.
Cryonic smirked.
“Three hundred years? You fight like you’ve had three years experience. Falling for the same tactic.”
He poked the hammer and sent it and the demigod flying into the night.
The smirk vanished as he found himself rising, picking up speed.
Amateur mistake.
He chastised himself.
The scouting report had been clear.
Adrasiades’ strongest power turned him into something akin to a planet or a moon.
The center of gravity, but not as indiscriminate.
So, only Cryonic flew toward the demigod and awaiting hammer.
He reacted quickly, sapping the energy from his movement.
Ice formed, coating him a finger length away from his body and clothing.
He fell out the back and spun, turning the air moisture into an ice slide beneath his boots.
Golden blasts shattered the slide, sending him skidding across the frozen street.
Twin beams lanced down.
So, he froze the moisture between them.
Many meters worth and as tall as the buildings.
A tiny glacier in the middle of a residential street.
The beams burned through until he made the ice denser.
They vanished only to be replaced by Adrasiades.
The demigod crashed with glowing fists in the traditional flying pose of American superheroes from long-forgotten movies and cartoons.
Cryonic had seen them enough to be vaguely aware of the content.
He had always been a bigger manwha reader and anime watcher.
Western media hadn’t much appealed to him even back then.
The demigod breached the final barrier.
Cryonic could reach out and touch the massive fists.
He focused his power, tying the demigod’s movement to himself.
So, as one punched or tried to grab the other was pushed back a distance equal to the physical energy generated.
Cryonic smirked.
“Three is your number. For you flail like an angry toddler up past his bedtime.”
The grin didn’t falter.
The demigod shoved violently with strength that could topple the row of houses behind Cryonic.
Oh… he thought. Smart…
He barely had any time to react and act.
First, he formed a thick, dense wall of ice behind him. Then he linked its movement to his own.
The ice wall hovered at a constant arm’s length from his back as it crashed into the masonry, plowing through the house like an out of control car.
“No…”
Movement suddenly stilled out of the corner of his eye.
A passing glance at the young family huddled together in a bedroom.
A young family within his aura.
Father, mother and baby.
Broken statues frozen in glass.
Liquids turned solid in a violent instant.
He emerged from another house.
This one mercifully empty.
The demigod bulled through behind him, widening the hole in his wake.
“You—” Cryonic snarled. “You made me—”
Adrasiades appeared surprisingly sympathetic.
“You’re young. That happens in battle. The innocent are often made to pay the costs when we clash.”
“You shoved me into their home!”
“Am I to accept the responsibility for their deaths?” Boulder-sized shoulders shrugged. “Then I do. Will you do the same for failing to control your power? A truly skilled warrior chooses whom their weapons kill. Or perhaps the blame shall be apportioned to a wider swath? To you and your allies for invading this sovereign city? To Suiteonemiades for coming to this world and allying with the Americans? Would you dare blame the Gods? For it is under their authority that we seek control upon your Terminus World. Or would you blame them?” He gestured back to the ruined home. “After all, did they not fail to heed their leader’s command to flee like the others? I sense scant life around us aside from monsters and base creatures.”
“You knew? And you still shoved me into their home!” he snapped.
The demigod’s golden eyes grew as cold as the frigid air around Cryonic.
“And if I did? Who will take me to task? Who will force me to take responsibility? Are any of us to blame? Or do we lay it all at the base of those that made all of this possible?”
“The spires want conflict, but they don’t force it. You’re just making excuses and justifications for the rights you think you have over those weaker than you.”
Just like the bullies.
“That is our existence!” Adrasiades’ booming laughter cut across the night sky as the fireworks show continued. “Come then! You’ve killed three of your enemy. Innocent as they are. Some warriors would carve that number into their belts. Are you that kind of warrior?”
Cryonic froze.
An instant to chill emotions.
He fought with cold, rational, logical.
The demigod burned with golden divinity.
They fought across a now empty neighborhood.
Adrasiades blurred behind Cryonic, hand slashing like a sword.
The latter slowed it to a stop a hand’s width from the side of his head.
He responded by encasing the towering demigod in a block of ice, thicker and denser than a steel bank vault door.
Golden light shattered.
Shards plunged back only to be shoved away.
“Planet’s Grasp.”
Adrasiades clenched a white fist and pulled Cryonic with invisible force.
It wasn’t fair.
Some people had all the gifts.
It was in the scouting report.
Demigods lacked classes, yet they could cast spells like any mage-type using the divine energy that suffused every cell in their bodies.
Cryonic was jealous.
Whenever he named his moves and said them aloud, he just felt like cringing with shame, yet sometimes he indulged that overweight kid that deserved better.
“Field of Zero, Stillness Made Absolute.”
He halted as he siphoned the energy of his movement.
Ice didn’t form this time because he stored it instead of letting it bleed out into his surroundings.
The demigod opened his fist and released the spell.
He raised his hand to the sky and brought it down.
“Meteor Storm.”
Flaming meteors in miniature winked into existence, streaking toward Cryonic.
“Aura of the Frozen God Emperor.”
The fires vanished.
The meteors turned into dark rocks that thunked into the ice at his feet.
“Cryogenic Coffin.”
He pulsed his aura in the blink of the eye to engulf Adrasiades.
The demigod’s grin froze on his face.
Their battle spread out from where it started.
Monsters, soldiers and a few civilians were sucked in as if through the demigod’s power, though he took care to avoid harming the latter two intentionally.
Cryonic saw it and hated to admit that he could’ve done better by following the demigod’s example.
Unfortunately, he was hard-pressed and desperation tended to loosen one’s grip on the controls.
He didn’t mind monsters dying in his aura.
Soldiers?
Well, they signed up to fight and die.
It was the latter that would keep him up for weeks after, assuming he survived.
But that was a thought for another day.
Cryonic lost track of time.
“I Am The Celestial Body Upon Which You Orbit.”
Cryonic’s boots lifted off the ice-covered street.
He struggled.
His power failed like a small child trying to push an adult over.
The demigod glowed bright gold, brighter than at any moment before, bright enough to sear the eyes.
Cryonic began to orbit the demigod.
Right toward a burned out military vehicle.
He formed ice to plow through as the flames licked at his clothing.
Tired.
He was tiring.
The safety his power automatically provided had shrunk to centimeters away from his skin.
The flapping ends of his jacket caught fire briefly.
The orbit decayed.
Round and round the demigod he went.
He plowed through buildings.
Through piles of monster corpses.
Rabbit people.
Frozen statues.
Wet mounds.
He couldn’t stop his movements.
Planetary orbits tended to be inexorable or so he thought.
He wasn’t an astronomer.
So, he changed tactic, gathering the immense energy generated by his rapid spiraling instead.
The broad grinning face grew larger.
Framed by the wild mane of violet hair and beard frosted by ice as if the demigod had taken a stroll across Antarctica.
A giant hand reached.
Cryonic tapped it with a finger, releasing the energy.
The explosion of force blew him away down the street.
The faithful ice wall kept him from turning into a smear across the asphalt and one splattered against the side of a building.
His instinctive protections failed.
Pain for the first time in a long time filled him, radiating from his hand.
He regarded it with confusion.
The fingers and thumb were bent in all directions.
Most of them the wrong ones.
The demigod landed a short distance from him.
None the worse for wear, aside from thin trickles of gold blood flowing from his nose.
“Is that your best?”
Cryonic smirked through the pain.
“The Unkillable Cryonic God Emperor Rises.”
Their battle raged.
Bones broke.
Organs burst.
Eyes blinded.
Fingers lost.
A frozen storm formed, raging across several city blocks.
The death toll rose and would have been catastrophic had the evacuation efforts been less effective.
Until it ended with a sigh.
Cryonic slumped against a dead monster.
Some kind of mix between a bull, a tiger, a snake and a skunk, judging by the stench.
He regarded the looming demigod through a blurry eye.
Adrasiades stood, but only just.
His hair was more gold than violet.
His white skin resembled that Japanese art with its many branching streaks of gold.
Man skirt torn.
One sandal gone.
Toes twisted.
He raised a stump, conjuring a blade of golden light in place of a hand.
“And so you meet your end. Valiant and well-fought. Your legend will be recorded, stories will be written, songs will be sung.”
The blade rose and fell…
And halted.
Massive muscles grew taut like steel cables beneath the white skin.
Teeth bared in a rictus.
Gold spittle sprayed down on Cryonic.
Adrasiades spat.
Then one golden eye widened.
“How— impossible! Dead? Slain by the gray child?” The golden blade vanished as Adrasiades stepped back. The stunned look gave way to booming laughter. “Well-fought! Well-deserved. I’ve respect for Suiteonemiades, but no love. Though they are brothers, our Godly fathers can’t be said to be brotherly in any sense of the word. But, why? I am weakened by the champion you sent against me. You or another, perhaps the Relentless One, could slain me as you will. So, you would send me back as a mere messenger? As an example and a warning. Very well. I’ve no great hatred for you or concern for this world beyond its status as a terminus. I serve my God and Adras would’ve have preferred to take you and yours into his embrace. Alas, the others decided to follow a different path. Suiteonemiades is— was the oldest among the demigods. His words carried great weight. His death will carry greater. What? Yes, you may take that as a warning. I caution you against warring with the entire pantheon.”
Cryonic would've scowled if his face hadn’t hurt so much.
Was there a hole in his cheek?
Did a golden blur just—?
It didn’t matter.
It had been too quick to steal, perhaps if he hadn’t been spent by the fight.
“I spare your life, Unkillable Cryonic God Emperor. It seems you’ve lived up to your name this day. Perhaps, our next battle shall prove conclusive.”
“It’s over. Just leave.”
Adrasiades laughed.
“This war is over, but there will be another. We simply cannot allow a Terminus World to be taken by any of the other great powers, known and unknown, out in the blind infinity of the spires worlds.”
The demigod leapt away.
“—nic, do you copy?”
The ear piece had somehow survived.
“Are you still alive? Damn it… this is why we should’ve made him at least wear a health monitor.”
His annoying liaison sounded more like a girl than before.
“I’m still alive. Please, send help.”
The Unkillable Cryonic God Emperor closed his eye and let the soothing darkness envelope him.
He needed rest.
There was a long, grueling training arc in front of him.
