Entering Apocalypse in Easy-Mode
Chapter 301: Rest First

Chapter 301: Rest First

The three scouts exchanged uneasy glances, the weight of Michael’s words settling over them like an oppressive fog. None of them spoke at first hoping one of the others had understood something they had missed. But they could see the confusion in each other’s eyes that was the same as their own.

Elsa finally broke the silence. "What... what are they, my lord?"

Michael’s gaze remained distant and unreadable.

"They are the existence that has long been forgotten," he said. "As I told you before, they are older than us. Older than the Celestials, older than the Demons. Before our kind took dominion over creation they slumbered. And they have continued to sleep and buried beneath the fabric of reality itself."

A shiver ran down Elsa’s spine. "And now... they’re waking up?"

Michael nodded. "In time, they will rise and reclaim what was belong to them." He turned his piercing eyes toward them. "Do not try to understand them. You cannot. Even for beings such as us they are beyond comprehension. To gaze too deeply into their nature is to invite ruin upon your soul."

Aelarin, Kassiel, and Elsa felt their minds spiraling, struggling to grasp the enormity of what they were hearing. Each answer only spawned more questions.

Aelarin clenched his jaw, forcing himself to breathe through the suffocating atmosphere. The air felt heavy and wrong but it was all he had. He exhaled sharply, grounding himself.

"All right, my lord," he said, swallowing down his unease. "Then we won’t try to understand. But if our mission is done here... can we leave now?"

Michael’s lips curled into a faint smirk. "Leave?" He tilted his head slightly, amusement flickering in his ethereal eyes. "Your work is not done, though."

Aelarin’s expression darkened. "You mean to say that we must surrender our minds and bodies to whatever force you speak of?"

"Yes." Michael’s response was chilling in its simplicity.

Silence.

Aelarin’s fingers twitched toward his daggers. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, his body screaming at him to run.

"No," he said firmly with sharpness in his voice. "I will not allow this. I will inform Lord Gabriel at once!"

Without hesitation, he turned and sprinted toward the path they had come from, his mind set on escape.

He barely made it two steps.

However, in a single impossible instant Michael appeared before him and blocking his way like a mountain suddenly materializing in his path. There had been no sound or shift in the air, just sudden inevitability of his strength.

Aelarin’s daggers were already in his hands before he even registered the movement, he already knew that this would happen. Pure instinct drove him as he slashed twice and releasing twin arcs of violet energy aimed directly at Michael’s chest.

The attacks never landed.

Michael raised a single hand and the energy vanished. Not blocked or absorbed. Simply unmade

Aelarin staggered back, catching his breath.

Michael’s expression remained calm, almost disappointed.

"You still believe you have a choice," he murmured.

Michael’s gaze swept over Aelarin, then Kassiel, and finally Elsa. The three scouts felt an unnatural chill take root in their hearts. It wasn’t the cold of fear alone. It was the creeping suffocating dread of inevitability.

They couldn’t escape from Michael.

It was becoming painfully clear. Every fiber of their being screamed to run or resist or fight for their survival but standing before Michael felt like standing before an unmovable force of nature.

Did they truly have no choice? Was their only fate to submit?

Michael took a single step forward. The very act sent a ripple through reality and made the ground tremble beneath them.

Then, he moved.

Aelarin barely had time to react before a golden light flared from Michael’s fingertips, surging toward him.

---

Far away, in a vast, endless plain of green grass, Clyde stood amidst devastation.

The once-pristine landscape around him had been destroyed. Great craters marred the earth, the grasslands torn asunder by the sheer force of his full power. The air shimmered with his lingering magic energy.

Clyde suddenly stop and stood still in the middle of those destruction.

His hands clenched into fists at his sides and his breathing become heavy.

He was feeling that feeling again.

A strange sensation like a whisper at the edge of his mind. A disturbance that gnawed at his thoughts but always elusive and formless that he couldn’t figure out what it was.

It wasn’t fear or pain. It was something else.

His sharp eyes scanned the horizon, but there was nothing but the empty expanse of his personal training grounds, untouched by any other presence. He had made it very clear that no one can come near while he trained. The level of power he unleashed was too dangerous for them.

"I have to find out about this quickly," Clyde muttered to himself.

Clyde exhaled, then soared through the air and heading toward the ancient portal at the edge of the plains. Below, the battlefield filled with deep craters and shattered earth stretching in every direction in a about two kilometers radius.

Around the portal, warriors trained relentlessly. They glanced at him briefly but said nothing. They knew better than to disturb him.

Without hesitation, Clyde stepped through the swirling blue energy and vanished.

He emerged in the main portal in the middle of the city then moved toward his private living quarter. The door slid open with a soft hiss, revealing his simple living space.

Clyde sat at the edge of the bed, exhaling slowly. He didn’t tired but his mind was restless. That strange sensation gnawed at him again. A whisper in the back of his thoughts.

Something was shifting in the world somewhere.

He lay back, eyes closing. Rest was necessary for now.

The Ruins. A forgotten world buried beneath the remnants of time from when Asmodeus himself burned it. Within it lay an artifact once belonging to Demon King Asmodeus.

He was going to claim it soon. But for that he have to rest first for now.

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