Requiem Of A Failed Hero



"Are you sure you want to go in now?" Kaiser asked.

"Yes," Raith nodded.

"And you want to go alone?"

"Yes."

"Hunter Raven, don't you think that will be too reckless of you?" Kaiser put forth to him, even in the manner in which he spoke it was plain that he was struggling to gather the audacity to question Raith any further.

He flinched as Raith turned his gaze to him.

Raith coldly stared away the next minute, he didn't know how to convince the guy he just wanted to go on a rampage hence he was put in another bind.

Fortunately for him, his cold glare was more than enough to allow the hunter to accept out of fear.

It was not that Kaiser thought himself inferior to Raith. But was rather because he was strong that he could feel it.

When he saw Raith in person, the presence that Rairh carried far exceeded all that he had thought beforehand. He had anticipated how the strong South Korean catastrophe-rank hunter was going to be.

And the first instance in that limousine, as Raith entered, an overwhelming humility dawned on him. Because he had never in his life, met anyone this strong.

Kaiser was a good judge of strength and even amidst all the catastrophe ranks of the world, he had met four including Turner and he confidently said that Turner was not the strongest, which was later found to be so. When he saw Raith, he doubted if there was going to be any hunter as strong as he is in the entire world. There is a certain possibility that lies in the unranked but those are too old to be active.

"I can do it alone," Raith affirmed to him again.

He was about to contest when his phone rang. He picked up and a grim expression filled his face, Raith could already guess what was going on from his face.

As he dropped the call Raith spoke.

"Another attack?"

"Yes." Kaiser nodded.

"Stop the car." Raith requested with a tone that intimidated the atmosphere. Without Kaiser projecting his request to the driver, the car came to a drifting stop. Raith opened the car and was taken up into the sky by a massive blur of darkness that only became clear when it fully spread its gigantic wings abroad in the clouds and went further away faster than time could tell.

"What the hell is that?" Kaiser stuck his head out of the car window, looking up with a confused yet amused facing.

"Sir, where do I go?" The driver asked.

Kaiser looked down and sighed. "I don't even know...' He muttered and chuckled.

...

From the sky, the desolate landscape spread beneath Raith's eyes- the entire place had become reminisced of destruction in just a day of the gate's emergence and now the ants were going beyond the marked zone plunging attacks of hunters that stood guard to protect them from nearby civilian.

Nearby Civilian.

No one could blame them for not knowing the gratifying impact of not evacuating citizens, the gate could not be measured by any device whatsoever– all the German association in collusion with guilds did was to pour an enormous amount of hunter to take shift protecting the place.

A rank, B rank could fight off the monsters effectively, but C ranks depending on the experience of the hunter found it difficult to overpower them, while lower ranks died like ants themselves.

The air was thick with an eerie stillness, broken only by distant, anguished cries of hunters as they fell prey to the ants. A pall of smoke and dust hung in the air, obscuring the feeble rays of sunlight struggling to penetrate the gloom.

Raith's nostrils were filled with the acrid scent of destruction that mingled with the metallic tang of spilled blood. The very essence of despair seemed to linger as if the land itself mourned the lives lost to this monstrous invasion.

Raith lifted his face towards the front, the enormous gate, bigger than any he had seen and comparable to the one in India that he saw on the phone, stood like a menacing portal and from it came and went several ants, it was as if they were securing food. The flying ants were carrying heads, while the creeping ones were dragging bodies on the floor.

Raith had been briefed but the only information he found interesting was the fact that the gate dejected whoever tried to enter except S ranks and the two S ranks that entered while Kaiser was not around have not been found, even though they entered as scouts and were supposed to survey things and get out quickly.

And so they had naturally said that the gate was not meant for weak hunters, other information was said

but none of them interested Raith, it didn't matter to him anyways. What he just wanted to find out was how that red humanoid ant that he saw in the video had a torn cloth with the emblem of Bluezlion guild back from Therut.

Raith crouched and gently touched the head of his wyvern ride.

"Noir..."

"Yes, my lord" 

The wyvern's response was swift, with a resounding screech, its jaws parted, spewing forth a primal gust of icy breath, an arctic tempest that carried with it a symphony of crystalline whispers. The very air crystallized, suspended in time, as delicate ice particles pirouetted in a graceful ballet.

In that fleeting moment, the scenery that was once a desolation of destruction was now locked in the grip of frost-born enchantment. The ethereal touch of winter unfurled its icy tendrils, nuzzling everything with its wintry embrace.

The frenzied march of the ants had halted and even the ants themselves were trapped in the snare of Noir's frozen lullaby, ice encased their writhing form– all of them were caught in the ice grip of this newfound dominion.

Hunters around that were lucky to be saved by the ice just in the nick of time shivered with thanks as they endlessly gazed at the massive frozen ants they would have harvested their heads should that attack come in later than a second. They looked up to the black thing that was in the sky, according to their minds– they looked at him like he was some god of salvation.