Awakened: Evolving to Godhood

Not only the humans but the beasts, too, raised their heads to look at the source of the voice, only to see a bright golden figure with two angel-like wings.

"Jesus Christ?"

"Are you blind? He is Elliot!"

"Why does he look so different?"

"When did humans started growing wings behind their back?!"

"Is he here to help us?"

The eyes of Oliver Charlotte and seven others around him opened so wide in surprise that their eyeballs almost threatened to pop out of their sockets. One of them mistook him for someone else entirely, but the rest took him for who he was, and that's what surprised them the most.

In the very next moment, another wave of surprise washed over them.

"What the hell is that?!"

"Are we seeing things?"

"Is that the power of a god?!"

A few moments after they saw Elliot hovering above their heads, an act performable by only a magic grandmaster, four gigantic hands suddenly manifested in mid-air, overshadowing everything beneath them.

"Smash them to bits!" Elliot lowered his raised hand towards the group of nightmare panthers, signifying the start of their doom.

Oliver Charlotte and his teammates stood speechlessly on their spots, watching with mouth agape and eyes widened in shock as the four gigantic fists came crashing down at the beasts around them.

The four fists descending from the sky weren't only extremely wide but extremely fast too, so fast that the panthers didn't even get the chance to move out of their way before they reached just above them.

Although they were scampering away at the top of their speed, they were unable to avoid getting crushed by them!

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

It sounded as if the world had come to an end; the wind wailed as if God's anger had descended from the high heavens and onto the land of mortals; the ground creaked and turned into fine specks of dust as if the angels had started to announce the beginning of the end.

The godly fists smashing nearly all of them, squatting them into meat pastes, plastering them into the ground that had also given in under their overwhelming might, was merely something that happened in the middle of it all.

At the same time, several gusts of wind blasted outward from the point of impact, smashing down onto the holy shield, causing it to burst open, and introducing Oliver and his teammates to clouds of dust that raised after the fists crashed on the clearing.

"Cough. Cough." Suddenly introduced to a large dosage of dust, they started wheezing, coughing their lungs out.

Oliver was unaffected by this all as he had stopped breathing before the dust reached him. He put his hands on Lucy's mouth, stopping her from unconsciously taking in harmful substance, and hurried to rush out of the dusty area.

He moved with such speed that he reached a place with fresh air in a couple of seconds, then he took his hands off of Lucy's mouth and nose and placed her on the soft grassy ground.

Right at that very moment, his remaining teammates also rushed out of the cloud of dust and came towards him.

"Man, what the hell was that? How come he was able to release an attack more powerful than a lord of magic?!"

"Maybe he had been faking his strength all along?"

"You telling me that he is a fake stager?! Aren't those guys super rare?"

"That's not possible! Did you forget that only magicians below the grandmaster stage can enter this place?"

"Whatever it is, we should be glad that he decided to help us, that we are still alive thanks to his help," Julian said.

"What should we do now?"

"Let's wait for him," Oliver said.

They looked towards the clearing the moment some of the dust cleared up, their eyes widening as they noticed that the once beautiful clearing had transformed into a land of devastation, large craters replacing it.

Hovering above this devastation was their savior but also someone they feared, Elliot.

"How can someone be so damn strong?" Oliver chuckled self-mockingly and dropped to the ground in defeat. Heck, he could give away his life for his lady. However, the difference between him and Elliot was something he could never hope to bridge. There was no way that he could win against him!

The bet was as good as a loss.

…

"Master, a few of them managed to escape!" The horrifying nightmare said, "They are hiding behind the nearby trees."

"Oh, really?" Elliot's lips stretched back into a devilish smile as he willed the divine hands hovering alongside him to capture and kill everyone that had managed to escape their destructive might.

In a couple of seconds, his hands grabbed the rest of the beasts that managed to survive the first wave of attacks.

Oliver Charlotte and his teammates saw that the hands completely immobilized the remnants of the group of beasts within the blink of an eye, almost as if the eight or so two-meter-long panthers were nothing more than babies.

"We were having a hard time surviving against them, but he subdued them so easily. Just what is his true evolutionary stage?!" Julian said.

"That's something only he can tell us," Oliver said.

"Bursts their heads open like watermelons!" Elliot snapped his fingers, appearing extremely handsome and evil at the moment.

Following his command, they tossed them back and forth continuously, introducing them face-first to the ground again and again until their heads burst open, blood and brain matter splashing all over the place.

[You've killed more than a dozen nightmare panthers]

[You've gained the right to extract the essence of life from their bodies]

[Would you like to do it?]

"Yes." Elliot wordlessly remained hovering at his spot while looking down at the carnage he just committed.

[Congratulations! You've gained 12000 units of the essence of life]

The horrifying nightmare saw vitality leaving the flesh of those monsters that died with a body, causing their carcasses to thin until only dried bones were left.