Chapter 129: Handling the Tsunami

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Appearing on the coast of Portugal, Edward coughed as his body tried healing his injuries, it would take a couple of minutes at most.

But he had something else to care about now. Several hundred meters from the coast, a giant wave several tens of meters tall was advancing relentlessly, fully intent on crashing on Portugal's coast.

This was probably the original purpose of the experimental weapon stolen. Although it had hurt Arthur and would kill ordinary people, the waves were not made to directly kill people, but to cause natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.

Quite the deadly weapon, and very much against ethic.

Edward then looked back at the city, Porto, and saw from afar people trying to run, but if this Tsunami reached them, they were far from fast enough to escape from it.

But in their agitation, they were causing quite a lot of accidents, stepping on others to get out first. On one hand, it made Edward feel a little disgusted at human nature, stepping on others to save one's own life.

On the other hand, Edward could also understand that in the face of a sudden disaster, any living being would prioritize their own safety over others.

Those people did not mean to run on those who fell, they probably didn't even notice, and Edward had to admit, if he were to live in a world without any magicians or aliens or gods, he probably would be acting the same as them.

But he wasn't living in such a world, and he wasn't powerless. Infusing his voice with magic, Edward yelled in Portuguese, "Settle down! I have the tsunami handled!"

Simple words, but added with his Royal Aura, it made nearly them all stop and look into the sky. Then came the cheers, making Edward sigh slightly.

They were a little too easy to convince. It wasn't just Edward's power at play, it was also his reputation.

No matter how much Edward tried to ignore it, the whole dynamics of faith had been shifted with the reveal that gods were real, and humans could be even more powerful than them.

Between believing into an ideological god with no physical presence in the world, and believing into a powerful Super who could heal an entire city and fight against the alien invaders, obviously many shifted their faith.

And so cults had started around some Supers, the different countries tried to banish those, but with his great popularity Edward had quite a few believers.

And even for those who did not treat him as a godly figure, they still were reverent to him.

It did bother Edward, not because he had something against being worshipped, of course it was strange at first, but it was still a rather good feeling, although he would always make sure not to indulge in it.

No, what really bothered Edward, was fear. Fear that the theory of the Sphere would act, and that the faith of all those people was going to change him without asking, would force onto him an incomplete divinity when he was on his path to create a complete one. Or several for that matters.

But Edward couldn't just stop what he did for a distant fear. As far as he knew, the god of Christianity hadn't appeared despite so many years of worship from so many people, so maybe the theory of the Sphere was false, or maybe there were hidden conditions he didn't know about.

Back to the situation at hand, Edward wasn't really too troubled with the tidal wave in front of him. For sure it was a massive force of nature, but he had reached a realm where it not only did not really threaten him, he could also deal with it swiftly.

Edward began making different kinds of hand-signs as red runes appeared in the air around the coast, quickly forming a line along the coast.

Then, as the tsunami came closer and closer, to the point it entered his Chi Sense, all the red runes connected together as they formed a giant red wall of red energy, while a second wall of hot flames rose before it.

As the tidal wave crashed into the wall of flames first, quite some water was immediately evaporated, but the sheer size of the wave was way too much for a wall of flame to counter, and thus nearly instantly put out the fire.

However, as the water hit the barrier, it was stopped in place, but that was not all. All the energy carried by the wave was transmitted into the array, and used to fuel the fire wall as much grander flames than before rose from under the water now.

This was quite the clever array Edward had used, and it even had another function, the steam rising from the evaporating water was also absorbed by the array, also sent to fuel the fire wall.

And so the giant wave of water was quite easily stopped by Edward, but it wasn't over.

Farther on the horizon, a second Tsunami was coming, this one even bigger than the one he just stopped. For this one though, Edward wasn't restrained to protect the coast.

With a wave of his hand, the runes making the array flew out of their formation and formed a circle around Edward as he used the remaining energy, which was quite a lot, to fly off toward the incoming wave.

As he reached it, Edward used another tactic as he created circular current inside the tsunami, and as the force of each current pulled against one another, the wave started dispersing by itself.

This was an even easier method, barely taking any energy from Edward, but he needed a large enough space to pull it off, which he did not have for the first one.

The threat in Europe now dealt with, Edward sighed slightly as he felt his injuries had already completely healed. He couldn't help but form a small grudge with Atlantis too, he had come in peace and even respected their annoying regulations while searching the Atlantic, but they had attacked him without asking any question.

Edward would be angry too if someone targeted his home, but he wouldn't attack the first person he crossed either.

He wouldn't go and crush their whole civilization for such a thing though, he was merely displeased with them, they had attacked him, so he wasn't going to bother with them and their rules any longer.

However, for now they were quite troubling. The Atlantean army wasn't something to take lightly, their technology was many years ahead of the people on the surface, and thus their weapons much more dangerous.

Edward couldn't claim to know everything about their weapons, but they seemed to be firing plasma extremely fast. Fast enough for him to barely be able to dodge at least.

But they were an entire army, and just like they did earlier, if they worked together, they could seal all escape routes for him, and thus hit him. Each shot hurt him quite a bit too, so going back to the entrance of the cave now would be unwise. They should be able to take care of the monster in the cave anyway, Arthur should have explained them what was really happening.

The fight frustrated Edward a bit though, as he felt bothered they could injure him this easily. Granted they launched a surprise attack and had weapons rivalling with some of the middle class space civilisations, it was still annoying.

If only he mastered his teleportation better, then he wouldn't face so many restrictions, and would actually be able to use it in combat.

Unfortunately, he had already reached the peak for his Space Concept, so he would have to evolve it to master his teleportation well enough to actually use it in combat.

Anyway, since Edward couldn't go back under the sea, he decided to go home. But before he could, the Coin he had with him trembled, and a message from Diana was delivered to him.

'Sorry, big starfishes appeared.'

Along with the message, were three locations. One was on the Atlantic Coast of France, another was in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, while the final one was a few kilometers away from Washington DC.

Sighing, Edward did not teleport to any of those locations right away, but instead teleported back to the bottom of the sea.

There, Edward saw the terrain had been devastated, and the Atlantean Army had left quite a few pieces behind.

There was no sign of Arthur, nor of their king, so Edward approached one of the soldiers who had survived and was knocked out, and forcefully woke him up.

Edward bewitched him with mind magic, and asked what had happened.

Not even realizing he was under mind control, the soldier revealed everything that had happened, and each word he said made Edward's face turn grimmer.

The situation was initially under control, but as only two of the giant starfishes were left, one many times bigger than them appeared from the cave, and completely obliterated their army.

Many of the Atlanteans had been mind controlled, and forced to fight their fellow soldiers, while the giant starfish, probably the original body, was strong enough to beat them all.

The Atlantean King, Namor, had decided to fall back after understanding the alien would attack the surface, for whom he held no sympathy.

Still, they all saw with what it and it's two clones had left with.

The main body didn't have anything on it, but one of it's copies had a nuclear bomb with itself, while the other had a strange device, which Edward linked to the experimental weapon.

According to the directions they left in, the starfish clone in France had the experimental weapon with it, the one in Brazil had the nuclear weapon, and the one approaching Washington was the original body.

The alien was definitely intelligent, it had called itself Starro while fighting the Atlantean Army, and so it perfectly understood that mind controlling Washington was the first step to domination of the human world.

So Edward was faced with quite the problem. Three places were in extreme danger, but he couldn't be in three places at once. Edward also refused to focus on a single location, in his eyes the people of the US, Brazil and France were equal, and so saving one and not the others was not something he would accept.

After a moment of thinking, Edward finally decided himself. He couldn't be in three places at the same time, so all he had to do, was to bring all of his enemies in one place.