***(Arin)
Let's say we lure out the heavenly king. Who will be the hero? How exactly will we defeat him even after he exposes himself to the world? I'll be able to kill him... At great cost. It was far better to avoid having me defeat him, even if {Barter} was immensely unfair for my enemies, granting large quantities of magic to attack with... There is still a limit to the things I can sacrifice. This was a relevant example, when the enemy is stronger than I am, I'll have to sacrifice something immensely important to ensure the kill.
If the heavenly king has achieved a level of power that allows themselves to automatically revive after death, then it was all over. It's not hard to see that they stole Eterna's authority, being able to hide from us for so long. I have to be realistic. Our trump card, Yggdrasil died at the beginning of this war, buying a little time. Humans are numerous, it'll take so much time to hunt all of us down that the Trace armies would sooner be wiped out by sentinels.
Humans are to vampires as vampires are to sentinels, that's how weak they are by comparison. Yet they do not share the same numerical advantage. Some vampires will adapt, those that are intelligent will grow stronger and continue to bide their time in the darkness. The vestiges of the Trace army are easily on low priority now, there are also local magical girls at every zone around to help out. The last embers of the setting sun's radiance dies out, giving way to a melancholic blue that swallows the sky.
If the enemy just had nuclear missiles, humanity had sufficiently advance technology, disarming those warheads with an electromagnetic barrier before dismantling them with drones. There was a reason why they went with magic missiles, semi spiritual weapons and mechanisms were undetectable for electronic technology. That is to say... Is this really it? Is this the full extend of the enemy army and arsenal?
In a single day, how many zones had the sentinels sweeped through? In a day maybe 3? It wouldn't take more than a month for the vampires to be fully cleaned up. Will it stay peaceful for a month? After concluding the meeting, we were already approaching night, so everyone went to rest. Spouting that magical girls didn't need rest, I stayed on the couch, mulling into the night.
"Haa~" (Arin)
I couldn't help but sigh. I need to protect humanity in her stead. How many times has this happened, it definitely wasn't the first. Every single time, Lastia ends up sacrificing herself for the greater good. I suppose the fact that the heavenly king didn't descend immediately to slaughter us, was progress on her part. Humanity in the age of abundance is too weak, weaker than the age of ancient origin, and the age of mystery. Oh lord who art in heaven who guides all magical girls, what lies at the end?
Have we been abandoned? Right... We did get abandoned by God... At the end of the age of mystery. There was no other choice, it had to happen for humanity to progress. Though how could any of us have foreseen this? Grudges of the pass from a previous age have grown into something sinister, losing sight of their allegiances and everything else but themselves. To call these heavenly kings grudges of a bygone era was far too lenient and loose with definitions. These are all but husks that remain, yet still they bore strength surpassing the current age of humanity.
They invaded again and again, but never has it been this bad that the existence of magic has to be publicised. In the past the magical girls of various schools would gather under the banner of humanity and venture into the realm of the demon lord to slew evil. Unbeknownst to them all, this realm was not the end all be all, but a mere subdimension that served as the foothold at front of the invasion. Evil came from the outside, beyond even the realm of demons.
The heavenly kings take shape once more, retaining a semblance of their personality each time, now they wage war against humanity having lost their origin. It never ends no matter how many times we kill them, the worse part was that they got stronger while we got weaker each time. It used to at least resemble those magical girl shows from Saturday mornings, valiant girls fighting for the fate of humanity in the depths of shadows, their efforts unthanked but their hearts hold true to themselves. Things have escalated far beyond the periphery of the original plan, I pride myself on my rationality so I must continue to approach the logical end of all things.
Wisdom is a bastion of coherence, a fortress of rationale. It is what kept me sane through the endless loops of reincarnation. While I call it endless, it might not have been many times that I actually reincarnated. It was meant to be endless, but confined to a cycle the occurrence of our existence has become predictable. If there was an opponent beyond the mindless Traces and vengeful aimless heavenly kings, we would easily be defeated.
"... Were you thinking about Tia?" (Sariel)
A familiar voice rises out the depths of the living room, softly oozing into my auditory senses from the right. Having lost Tia, it was a little comforting.
"Yeah, fufu, how could you tell?" (Arin)
A light chuckle slips out, I put on a faint smile to relieve her concern.
"You sighed pretty loudly. Moreover... I've gotten used to seeing your various expressions. You can't blame me for habituating." (Sariel)
She tumbles next to me, once more on the couch too. We lay next to each other in the night of the house, not even the moonlight was visible under the dense clouds of pollutants blocking the sky. She might be able to sense that I didn't want to talk, so she kept quiet as well, merely enjoying the silence between us. This is nice, too...
We need to act quick. Even relaxing like this might spell the end for humanity, every second wasted was every second the heavenly king spent recovering. They must have gotten unbelievably strong with Eterna's authority, unstoppable even. Right... Eterna might have had a hand in repelling the Heavenly kings since the start of the age of abundance. It made sense that we were at a disadvantage now that Eterna couldn't be of use. Yggdrasil must have tried to supplement that role and failed.
We were in the worse possible scenario, an inevitability of Ledaine's {Cocytus}.