"Took you long enough," Michael said, lazily sitting on the throne.
"System, can you disable the formation around me?" he asked the system in his mind. He sensed a dome of pressure around him that prevented him from using Arch energy. Although it would be hard to kill all of them, if the system could disable the formation, he could use the runic teleportation to leave the ship.
"Did you really think if you're inside the void line, we, the guardians cannot catch you?" Peyton snickered.
"You have no idea how we caught you, do you?"
Michael wanted to ask them about it somehow yet Peyton's ego was so big that she herself started to explain without even Michael asking.
"There's a saying in Elon you know" Peyton started to walk around Michael with her hands behind. Her ample chest was puffed up as she felt so proud of herself.
"Guardians can go to places that even the air couldn't"
[Disabling the formation would cost the host 14,000 badass points. Currently, the host lacks the required points. Do you want to take a loan from the system for a measly 30% interest?]
Despite the pickle of a situation he was in, the system had the galls to joke around.
"Yes, do it"
[Oh? Alright then] the system sounded surprised. The system thought Michael would activate the banker function to convert the gold coins into badass points instead of taking a loan. As far as Michael was concerned, earning the required 1.4 million gold coins was harder than earning 18,000 badass points to settle the debt.
[Disabling formation has begun...]
[600 seconds remaining...]
[599 seconds remaining...]
A grin appeared on his face behind the mask.
"You were too busy playing the good guy to notice a guardian hiding in the container with the SilverMoon girls. Gina" Peyton clapped as a girl in ravaged clothes entered the room. She had an oval face smeared with mud, blood, and oil. It was hard to differentiate mud from her brown hair. Michael looked directly into her hazel eyes before taking his eyes away from her.
Michael saw this girl among the SilverMoon girls. Unlike Peyton was thinking, he did anticipate a spy. That was why he kept the girls alone in a separate room, not letting any of his crew except a few. He realized that Gibson failed to count the girls before sending them to Tiberius. Good thing that he always kept his crew away from the girls as Gina probably had not seen their faces.
Without seeing their faces, the chances of capturing them in the Southern continent were zero to none. It seemed that Gina used the darkness of the room to escape Gibson's eyes. She was probably hiding in the room, communicating with the guardians until now.
"So you know what happened to those girls and who was responsible?" Michael asked Peyton but directed his gaze at Noah.
"He will be punished for his crimes, just like you," Peyton calmly said.
"Will? Let me guess, you're still investigating" Michael snickered. He couldnt believe the incompetence of the guardians.
"You don't have to worry about that Lucifer or should I call you the Dark Lord?" Peyton stopped walking to stare him in the eyes.
"We will catch him, just like we caught you. Justice will prevail" Xanali coldly spoke instead of Peyton.
"Hahaha" they were slightly stunned by the sudden laughter escaping Michael's mouth.
"Cut your bullshit, Naga" Xanali clenched her fist as her mouth kept opening and closing in shock. She was quite speechless. Among the people in the room, only Peyton knew about her race. She kept her Naga origin as a well-hidden secret. She couldn't figure out how he saw through her transformation.
"You never caught me. You're here because of him" Michael looked at Noah. If anyone could find him in this room, he knew it would be Noah.
Noah's calmness spoke louder than Peyton's ego-filled words.
"I can tell that you were planning this for months. You might feel proud deep down huh Noah?" Michael completely ignored Peyton and Xanali as he looked at Noah.
"I am feeling proud. Catching an evil bastard like you always makes me proud and happy" Noah walked towards Michael from the corner of the room. He flicked his wrist as a throne made of pure gold appeared before the table, directly opposite to Michael.
Everything around them slowed down, including the time itself. For a moment, Xanali saw a bright light radiating from Noah while pitch-black darkness radiating from Lucifer.
"You just used the girls who were raped, tortured, and killed to catch me. If I'm evil, what do you think makes you? Have you ever tried to catch Minister Magnus? Or you want more dead bodies as evidence before catching him?"
"Don't worry, after dealing with you. I'm going straight to Minister Magnus. He will pay for what he did, just like you"
"What about his partners? Do you know the containers they were using to smuggle girls had the symbol of guardians, not just the one Gina was in?"
Michael's question stunned Noah. Unlike Michael who lived two lives, Noah was still naive compared to him.
"The Guardian Guild is not how it used to be, Andreas" the moment Michael uttered the name, Noah's eyes went wide. Subconsciously he touched his ring. The very next moment, a faint whistling sound reverberated the room. A sudden pressure enveloped the room.
Thop!
Thop!
Thop!
One by one, the Core Strengthening warriors around Michael started to fall down. In a few moments, only Michael remained conscious as even Noah's eyes were shut closed. Soon, an ethereal figure appeared beside Noah. The figure was a man in his early forties. He had shoulder-length white hair, stubble beard, broad shoulders as well as a mark of the rising sun right between his eyes.
"We finally meet Dark Lord"
"Supreme Guardian Andreas McLeod," Michael said. When he was on the treacherous island, the sliver of soul left behind Andreas talked about his successor. It was just a guess that Noah would be the successor. He always doubted that something weird going on with Noah yet Michael never expected he had a ring with an OP grandpa in it. Moreover, the Supreme Guardian actually revealed himself to Michael instead of doing the opposite. It was a stupid move to reveal his successor to Michael, at least Michael thought that way.
[Warning!]
[Warning!]
[The host cannot kill Noah!]
[The target has a powerful mark on him. At the current system level, the system cannot protect the host from dying if you killed Noah!]
The moment Michael thought about ending Noah's life here and now, the system began to scream in his mind. His eyesight was filled with red flashes of warnings.
"I was searching for you for more than three thousand years Dark Lord"
"You shouldn't go searching for death, Andreas"
"Humph" with a snicker, the ethereal form of Andreas faded into Noah's body. The very next moment, the ethereal form disappeared, Noah opened his eyes. However, his pupils were not black but shone in bright white. His white robes glimmered like they were made of white gold. Even Noah's black hair slowly changed white. It wouldn't take a genius to see that Andreas just took over Noah's body.
"I'm not the one who searched for death, Dark Lord. The moment you chose to go against the Guardian Guild, you signed your death warrant. I'm glad we stopped you before you could start a war"
Michael slightly leaned forward but the Supreme Guardian flicked his wrist as numerous spikes made of Celestial energy materialized around Michael, ready to skew his body.
"Don't even think about it. This ends now" Michael could feel any one of these spikes could end his life if Andreas wished.
"You were right about one thing though. The guardians are indeed becoming idiots, they still haven't unmasked you yet. I want to see if you're really the devil or a traitor of the human race" an ethereal hand moved towards Michael's mask,
"I wouldn't do that if I were you" The hand stopped for a second,
"System, connect the video feed of Noah's home to the orb before me"
Teleporting away from the room was one of his plans, it was plan A. However, at this moment, he chose to go with plan B. The moment he saw Noah, he plotted this plan in his mind.
[With pleasure]
Andreas noticed the orb on the table between them suddenly glowed. Soon, the glass orb started to show him a familiar place, Noah's home. The bright glow in Noah's eyes flickered.
"I made your entire guild piss their pants before even I came to this world. I'm THE DARK LORD '' the moment the words dark lord escaped his mouth, he willed the system to activate the cloud of darkness and the eyes of darkness, showing his complete Lucifer form to the supreme guardian.
"You have no idea what I'm capable of" His crimson red eyes moved away from Noah to Gina who was lying on the ground unconsciously. The supreme guardian turned his neck to see Gina. Michael controlled the Spyders in the room to move to Gina. He controlled the Spyders telepathically to inject her with their poison.
A few seconds after, at first, her body twitched. Then the supreme guardian saw a white form coming out of her mouth as her body started to twitch violently. The form quickly turned white to red while her eyes rolled back.
[Ding! Congratulations to the host for successfully being a badass. The reward is 5000 badass points]
[Ding! Congratulations to the host for successfully being a badass. The reward is 4000 badass points]
....