Chapter 0287 - Guardians

"I SAID MOVE!!" Mursayade kicked a soldier away when he didn't understand. Vector's body was swelling, his armor split and his whole body began to stretch. He grew to the size of a football field in the matter of an hour and he hadn't completely finished either.

"I don't know whether you're a thorn in my hands or a thorn in my foot!" Puyai watched Vector go through the changes.

"What do you mean?" Vira was the closest but she didn't make sense of Puyai's comment.

"I've carried that stone my whole life, until the day I met you I never expected it to do something like this." He pointed at Vector's expanding body. "Its good that you tried to remove his armor and your wedding rings, if I had a wife and destroyed mine .. .. Great Gods, how big is he going to get?

"Wedding rings? Yes. Wedding Rings." Vira looked at the group. "How is it? Is he getting better?"

Mursayade came down from above, "He isn't having a problem breathing anymore but.. but now he's this." She didn't like the new size, he was just way too large and he didn't seem to be slowing down the rate that he was growing. Very quickly Vector grew beyond the range of the castle walls, they toppled as he spread. This scales acted like a grinder to all that was caught beneath and his claws dragged on the ground. Martin crawled around her shoulder and burped a bit of fire.

In a matter of hours, he had grown to over a thousand foot long. His eyes widened immediately after they were open, his body shook like a wet dog, scales and ice were flung in every direction. He roared and everyone that was within earshot held their heads in agony.

Kuzunoha, Vira, Mursayade and Noyuki used shields to help the vibrations but Vector's initial breath turned the mountains outside of town into a frozen and silent place.

As Vector fumbled to get up he was so heavy that his feet sank into the soils, penetrating the bedrock. Spreading his wings, the Castle and City were entirely covered. He had to move and he knew it but the soldiers beneath his wings were both captive and terrified by their extreme size.

'Divine Beast!' The Guardian Spirit and Deity of the Sutrali was the Ice Dragon Ste'Dugen. Vector fit the bill in every way according to the old texts, so many of the Sutrali bowed down in reverence and a golden glow flowed from their bodies toward Vector.

"This is beyond my expectation." Puyai fell to his knees and began chanting, thanking his ancestors foresight. "I did not know, when we so blessed.. this is a great day."

Vector looked down. Mursayade was like an ant and he spoke, "This is ridiculous." The air grew crisp and the Castle below him turned to rubble under the ice, his tail swiped slightly and a small woods was swept clear. He stilled himself for a moment. Speaking softly, he held back his breath, "Get back. I do not wish to see you crushed beneath my feet or torn to shreds by my beating wings." Vector was truly worried that he would step on someone he had met and fought alongside, 'If I'm able to exert this much power here and I'm constrained by the laws of the Ultinian Heavens, just how powerful have I really become?'

As the soldiers evacuated the space around Vector, he stood up on his hind legs. There was a moment when he thought about making a joke but his size was no laughing matter. He was incapable of hunting. In such a condition, his foraging for food would be considered to be a natural disaster. The Winds spread out from beneath his wings, stone and trees flew into the air and scattered as he lifted himself into the air.

"I will find somewhere nearby to land. Bring my things." Vector rose higher and when he was at a certain height, he had expected a ceiling but nothing blocked his way. 'So I've advanced again?' He played with his hands while he looked for a landing zone. A few kilometers away, he had found the space where the army had passed, the soil was flat and there was little to knock down. Vector blew Ice across the grasslands and formed a bed to meditate on. Several hours would pass before the battlefield was cleared and there was absolutely nothing else he could do but consolidate his power and cultivate.

Soldiers watched as Vector spread two extremely large wings across the battlefield. From below, they were terrified and struck with awe. Sutrali were devout followers of the Dragon Gods, more specifically, they worshiped the Ice Dragons and Ste'Dugen was a Guardian, One of the first beings to wield great power. As Vector flew across the skies, it was like watching a god returning, they certainly cheered and prayed like it.

Storm clouds move to the south with Vector's position, it brought with it a chilling rain. He had burned a lot of his energy just moving from place to place but as he laid down to cultivate and absorb his energies properly, he was fearful of his change. He was altered, changed from before and whether it was a long term change or not, the results could not be known easily..

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"LET GO!" A prisoner was being escorted back to Japan for questioning, he had been found selling blood.

"Its a pack of six!" The Stealth Corp had caught them in a sting in Havana.

"You Either Step up or get stepped on." One of the Prisoners struggled, he had found a way to filter his blood and pass his traits onto others but in a limited capacity. It caused a serious uptick in crime across the planet. The massive population of Earth had one serious and overflowing vulnerability, they wanted power and some people would do anything for it.

The Leader of Earth's Stealth Corp was Hiano Gaun, she took her job quite seriously and among humans that chose to stay on Earth, she was considered in the top ten fastest. "the perks of having the right kinds of eyes is that they never fail you." She twirled an injection device in her fingertips. Among the evidence they had found, there were dozens of dialysis machines that had been converted for his purposes.

"Captain Hiano, there are a still people at the hospital that have been afflicted, their sick, its some sort of bacterial infection, look." He brought up a hologram of the virus. "As they were slicing open the tumor that was growing on one of their arms, small bits could be seen falling out."

The Officer shook his head, "No, Sir. Look, they moved."

"Check to see if they've been implanted." Hiano was no fool, she had been through some tough training by the Mi family. It was nothing like the special forces training she had gone through for the military.

"Implanted?" The Stealth Corp Officers began to search the prisoners bodies and found that all of them had a scar that led to their hearts.

"So, I was right. Get everyone out of the Transport." Hiano pushed several levers and then hit a switchboard with her fist. "Out.. Now!"

The Officers bailed out of the transport.

"You're a real bastard, you know that.." The Leader bit down on his tongue, as he would eventually bleed out, his heart would also stop in time.

Hiano threw herself out of the transport without watching further, she got about a hundred meters away and then it exploded. Bits of the ship blew out of the hatch but there were no compartments for the prisoners to hide themselves in, without a controller and its inner mechanisms working, the transport was act like a cannon loaded with powder. It shot their mangled remains out across some farmland. Thankfully, there were no houses nearby, the ship had landed near a river bank.

Parachutes were standard pack for transports, many Espers could fly but most humans would still die from falls. As the group touched down, an Officers came up to Captain Hiano, "Sir. Report, all our people have landed safely. The Ship is 2.4 kilometers away, roughly."

Hiano had them all dip into the shadows and they raced to the crash site. 'Secure perimeter' Using hand signs, she directed the forces to gather around the wreckage.

A sealing kit materialized in Hiano's hands, there was the possibility of the entire scene being orchestrated. A bomb implanted in a chest took more than a single person. She threw the formation plate and a bunch of elemental essence she had been collecting. The plate covered the crash and put out the flames, then, it took the air away.

Inside was a perfect vacuum. The Empire's sealing plates were reserved for special deployments only, the only exceptions to the rules were third tier officers and above. Admiring the craftsmanship, she put on a breathing apparatus and walked inside the array.

The vacuum was rough on her skin but the shadows inside the array allowed her a distinct advantage, searching the ship she found what was left of the prisoner's corpse. A femur and half of his skull were some of the largest bits, the rest had been scattered in the blast out of the airlock door.

Corpses were much easier to clean up than bits but Hiano waved her hand and took them all into storage for later. She would be forced into filing a report because of the loss of the ship, it too was taken into her ring. When everything was secured, she called for an extraction.

Captain Hiano was not happy with the outcome but she was glad she hadn't lost anyone, it was one of her first assignments as Captain and losses like that one had to be investigated.

In Japan, at a hospital in Tokyo, a group of children were laying in beds. They had been rescued from a HRMM remnant facility, they were experimenting on them. One of the catalysts was contained in the six vials and without it the children would die like all the others that had been found.

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"In the end, they are just receptacles bound for the mill at maximum speed. Only once their spirits are broken can they implant a custom soul completely." Puyai helped excavate the ruins of Anzone, they had stumbled across a few chambers with modified monster cores.

"So they just keep harvesting them for food or energy?" Noyuki was doing her best to help but manual labor was difficult and no one was digging with spacial rings.

Puyai nodded. "for the sake of control, it is as easy as cutting grass to them."

"What sort of Oil is this?" A laboratory that was mostly in tact had several vats of fluids.

"An oil they need as the catalyst, its packed with anti-neutrinos that bombard the body and it spreads out in waves from the contact point. They observe it with something that looks like a microphone, its also the key ingredient in the implants, it is what eventually kills the soul." Puyai spoke like he knew everything about the chemical.

"How do you know all of this?" Noyuki saw him turn the corner and she confiscated it all.

Puyai continued down the hallway and kept talking, "Rafael was my younger brother, he was taken too, he was among the dead when we raided the first facility. Don't worry, if your friend is anywhere near as powerful as your three friends.."

He was about to continue speaking but Noyuki interrupted him. "He's stronger than them combined."

"Oh, combined.. then he will take a considerably longer time to be drained of spirit. It took them several years to kill Rafael and he was just a child." Puyai felt like he had given her hope but Noyuki was not impressed.

More light came from her palm as they descended. "That isn't suppose to make me feel better is it? Years? Just how long do you think it takes to attack someone?" Noyuki heard some muffled coughs down the corridor and to the left then gestured for silence. "Shh. I hear someone."