Hikari: Rise Of The Weapons Master

[ What the hell did you just do?! ] Lance shouted inside Zack's head yet it didn't seem to make any effect on him.

Zack was instead staring at the stone statue before taking a deep breath and recalling Chastiefol.

"I am sorry Lance but you are not going to tell about this to anyone." Zack suddenly said before focusing on the connection between him and Lance.

The reality was that Zack had the upper hand in the connection while Lance didn't have the same benefits as him.

Both of them knew about this but Lance never protested. After all, it was only due to Zack and his father's help that the Phoenix was able to survive.

Zack had also treated Lance like a brother and had never did anything bad with him due to which the Phoenix had almost forgotten about the unfairness of the connection.

But today was a day where something was wrong with Zack. He immediately severed all the ways for Lance to contact anyone on the outside and locked the Phoenix inside his body too.

Lance tried to send a message to Eva or anyone in the palace but his voice never left Zack's mind. The next second, Lance felt something crashing down on him as black chains bound him inside Zack's mind.

"I am sorry but this is necessary." Zack spoke in a regretful tone before he closed his eyes and felt the raw power that had been transfered to him by Xelor.

He felt the raw power surging through his veins as he twisted his hands in front of him. A swirling purple portal appeared right in front of him.

[ Where are you going… ] Lance asked while panting heavily inside Zack's mind.

He realized that something was definitely wrong with Zack and that there was no way for him to do anything to him.

The Phoenix decided to just go along with Zack and see where he went. Lance almost expected Zack to go towards some sort of hell but instead they appeared in front of a closed up entrance to a cave.

'This was the place where me and Emma died for the first time. This place is called the silk spider cave and in my last life, I thought that this was just a hidden dungeon. Little did I know that I was completely wrong.'

Zack replied while walking inside the cave. His eyes were blazing with power as he recalled how the spiders had overrun him and Emma and had forced both of them to kill themselves.

But this time, things were different.

"Domain expand." Zack suddenly spoke as the sound of a drop of water falling on the ground echoed around the entire cave.

The spider queen who had been calmly sleeping in the middle of the place was woken up by the noise before it felt fear creeping up its veins.

The spider queen immediately ordered the strongest warriors she had given birth to to go and attack whoever had stepped foot inside the cave.

But before any of them could move out, Zack suddenly appeared in front of them and the area around them changed to a wide open war field.

Broken armor lay around the field alongside rivers of blood flowing all around. However, no dead body or even a single soul was present in the place.

"Athena, I know that you are here. The spider queen is just your cover to make sure that the entrance to heaven remains protected." Zack suddenly spoke up as he raised his hand a bolt of fire appeared in his hands.

He then threw the bolt at the spider queen before vanishing from his place and going behind her.

The time it took for the spider queen to deal with the firebolt, which she did by wrapping it in layers of silk, was the same amount of time taken by Zack to kill every single spider present there.

He then appeared in front of the spider queen again before he freed the chains around Lance.

[ Bro, you do remember that I can't go in other beasts' domains uninvited? ] Lance slowly asked as he realized that he couldn't contact anyone on the outside despite being free from all the chains.

'Don't worry, Lance. This spider queen is a goddess and I much stronger then her anyways. Also, I am sorry for doing that but it was necessary to make sure that you didn't contact anyone.'

After explaining everything, Zack stared directly into the spider queen's eyes before he saw her changing shape. The next second, the spider queen had turned into a beautiful smart looking woman.

"How did you know?" The woman asked while pushing her gray hair behind her head. They automatically tied themselves into a ponytail while her gray eyes stared directly into Zack's purple ones.

The woman was floating a few feet over the ground and Zack was also doing the same.

"It was due to Xelor. To think that you guys have fallen so low to use humans in such a way." Zack replied while sneering before he shot forward and stopped inches away from Athena's face.

"Methods to do things change with time." The goddess replied boldly yet she still felt that something wrong was about to happen.

She had felt the same thing back in the past too when she had first met Zack. Athena didn't want to admit but a war goddess like her had been scared in her life for the first time and that too at the hands of a mortal.

"Then I guess I have changed as well. Get aside and let me enter heaven." Zack replied before rising a few feet in the air. Eirias suddenly appeared in his hand as he sent the raw energy inside it and saw purple flames wrapping around the sword.

This was no new experience for him as the color of his flames had always been purple. It had only changed to blue in his current life.

Athena went silent as she tried to think of a way to stall long enough to ask for help. Her attempts proved out to be worthless as Zack suddenly swung her sword in her direction and a purple flames slash came flying in her direction.

"Athena, you have ten seconds. You either reply or I will show you once again why I was called the God Destroyer." Zack said in a deadly voice as he held the sword in her direction.

Despite how generic and cringe the name sounded, Athena knew why Zack had been called with that. She sent a cry of help towards the heavens before deciding to reply to Zack.

"Why do you even want to pass into the heavens? You think you can beat him this easily?" Athena asked as a smile appeared on Zack's face.

"None of your business and your time is over." He replied before shooting forward once again. This time, he put Eirias directly in front of him and in the blink of an eye, passed it through Athena's body.

Zack however knew that the body he had passed the sword through was just a clone and that the real Athena was actually standing behind him.

He turned back to see the goddess looking at him with a poker face but Zack could tell that she was genuinely afraid of him.

"You think that it would be that easy to kill a goddess?"

"I know that killing a goddess is not easy but who said that capturing them is difficult?" He asked with a grin before snapping his fingers.

Athena suddenly realized that she had made a huge mistake by going behind Zack and that she had fallen directly into his trap.

"Xelor always said that its not easy to kill those at the top but its easy to trick and capture them since they would be arrogant of the position and power they held." He said with a magic circle appeared right below Athena.

The circle ignited the next second as a column of light descended on Athena and covered her body from head to toe.

Zack then walked closer to her before touching her forehead with his index finger. He then chanted a few words under his breath as Athena's breathing suddenly turned heavier.

"Bye." Zack said once before Athena's body suddenly turned into light particles and was absorbed by Zack.

He then retracted the domain he had opened up and started making his way deeper inside the cave.

Lance on the other hand was left so stunned that he didn't know what to say. He had expected to see a huge fight break out between Zack and Athena yet it had ended almost as soon as it had started.

Lance had no idea what kind of power Zack had gotten his hand or what he had unlocked but it shocked him to see such a thing.

'Zack, what happened to you?' Lance thought silently before deciding to ask Zack who was the 'him' Athena had talked about.

[ The him is the ruler of heavens and the one and only being to take control of the darkness. ]