章 22: The Birth Of The Celestial Hero (6)

Previously

A large explosion ran out. The demons no longer giggled. The people no longer fled in terror. From that explosion of warmth and light, the world stood in silence. Father John had a smile on his face, seeing the familiar unconscious face of the village chief beside him and the last images of the young girl in gold transitioned to darkness.

Hope had arrived.

"E. . lm?" Leonard heard from his wife. His heart squeezed in fear but his stomach rolled with happiness and hope. Did he dare? With how he had abandoned her, did he dare to call himself a father, open his eyes and utter her name. Oh, he couldn't believe his eyes.

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Doubt, regret and guilt flooded through his system. Voices shamed him, telling him he no longer had the right but Leonard didn't care.

The Gods may not forgive him, but he had the shamelessness and audacity to open his eyes, to witness the daughter he had casted aside and to see with his own two eyes, thus braving the understandable look of disgust that should have been on Elm's face.

Yet, there was no such look.

Oh, what he had witnessed upon opening his eyes made him see that his daughter, yes that was his daughter, had been dressed in gold and white, the holy colours favorited by the gods and the authority of power granted by the gods. For a split second, he could see an aura of light, a halo crowning her head and a chorus of angels from the heavens - heralding the coming of a messiah as a blanket of healing energy, a barrier of holy light far stronger than the one Father John casted, washed over the people, healing them of minor injuries and reinvigorating them so that they may pay witness upon their saviour.

That was his daughter. He didn't know how he knew but he could hear the title and mantle of power his daughter had been blessed with.

In front of him and the victims of evil, stood the righteous back of the Celestial Hero of this generation, Elm.

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GET RID OF EMBLEM RANKS.

Elm scanned her surroundings. She had seen that her parents were mostly alright but just to be safe, she had healed them and the rest of the people as well. To be honest, she shouldn't have the prana reserves for that yet she felt full of energy, full of the desire to exact judgement upon evil, full of the desire to hunt.

The familiar rush of power and adrenaline started to pump through her veins. Her ears throbbed loudly with every heartbeat. Elm knew then why she felt full of energy, like the origin to why most of her powers worked, it was due to her constitution as a Celestial Hero, or otherwise known as the ultimate anti-demon being in all of existence.

Being the ultimate positive to the negative, she had been granted an assortment of abilities within her right to punish evil - one such skill making it so that the more negatives there were in a place, i.e the demons, the more power she would be granted which also made her an anti-army personnel.

She heard the mutters behind her, the look of fear on the flies's faces when they burned upon contact with her aura of light and the look of absolute disgust on the strong one's face. Was he really that strong though? Elm re-checked and compared their power levels, and despite being considerably weaker before, as she is now, she was in no way inferior.

She glanced backwards, seeing the look of non-comprehensible guilt and turmoil in her father's eyes. The way he looked, you would have thought he killed his mother. Her mother on the other hand looked as if she wanted to cry, to yell and speak but couldn't find the words to begin with.

Even further behind were the people of her town in such ragged, bloody - the ones still stuck on their clothes - conditions and torn clothes that they might as well look like wandering vagrants.

It filled her with a dragon's rage. Her heart had never beaten so fast yet her face still held that same impassive look. She counted the hovering demons but stopped soon after they numbered around the triple digits. Good. She didn't think a single target could quell the holy bloodlust seeping through her heart.

With that, she looked at her parents and uttered three words, "I'll be back." She just barely caught the looks on their face before she disappeared in a flash of light.

****

Elm reappeared behind two flying demons, instantly beheading them and moving onto the next of her targets before their heads even rolled off their shoulders. One blink was all it took for the next few demons to realize that their visions were warped as half of their heads had been cleanly sliced through.

The few flying demons near them had been granted enough time to react, shrieking loudly as their giggles turned to that of fear, some of them wildly thrashing their forks about as the others tried to regroup or flee away. The ones that did flee in horror found themselves dead, their bodies quickly shrivelled as if all the black blood in their body had been sucked away instantly.

A quick look at the giant, swirling black mass above the Tepes's head told Elm where the fleeing demons's blood had gone. She didn't mind the vampiric demon yet - she could tell from it's arrogant look that he regarded himself high enough that he didn't even consider ambushing her or assassinating her from behind. Little did the blood-sucking demon know, that was exactly what Elm had been hoping for.

She teleported quickly, reappearing in a flash of light behind a demon look-like of the strong one she had to use her giant arrow against. Amusingly, the demon didn't look so tough now as it attempted to scream but a quick blade to the throat stopped it, killing it in a burst of white flames. She scanned her surroundings quickly, assessing the quickest path to killing as many demons as quickly and efficiently as possible.

"[Construct]," Elm muttered, summoning tens of light swords behind her. It was showtime.