Apophis opened his eyes.

Below him, the ground had turned to purple plasma.

The once great city of Nokful had been wiped off the map, replaced with a veritable sea of plasma. It was both beautiful and terrifying.

Above him, the sky had turned black. Huge rain clouds had formed from the incredible heat and then had burst, cooling the molten ground.

Apophis was overcome with a cold sweat. Had he destroyed the planet? And he'd only compressed his attack to a relatively small degree compared to his full potential. Apophis had originally wanted to compress the attack by billions more times, but had he done that, he might have destroyed the entire solar system!

The power of this flame outpaced everything that he'd anticipated.

Mechanically, purely by reflex, Apophis opened the planet's general chat to see what people were saying about this event. It wasn't until the chat window was already opening that he realized everyone else might be dead.

But apparently, there were still many players alive and talking about this huge shock wave followed by a white flash. So the blast hadn't been quite as severe as Apophis had thought.

However, he noticed something strange. The chat channel tagged each player name with the continent that player was located on

But despite the hundreds of messages scrolling past each minute, not a single one came from the northern continent, where Apophis was located.

The explosion had swept across the entire northern continent, killing every player in its path.

Apophis hastily opened his player menu.

***

Name: "Apophis"

Bounty: 115,000,000 Galactic Coins

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Soul: "Enclabossa"

Guild: Eclipse (Supreme Leader)

Race: Fallen Zetark ( evolution lvl: 3 [mutated] ) ( Next Evolution: lvl 50 )

Gender: Male

Class: Esper

LvL: 31 ( 20 Skill Points available )

Rank: B ( SuperSoldier )

Alignment: -2500 (Darkness)

***

He had gained four levels by killing players!

Apophis made a quick calculation. His heart nearly stopped.

He'd killed at least six million players with one attack. So much for improving his reputation...

Next, Apophis contacted ThreeDog and Jiraya.

Jiraya answered immediately. "Leader, is that you?! Are you alright? The planetary capital suffered heavy damage from the explosion! From what we could tell, the explosion came from the north! Where were you?!"

Apophis sent, "I'm fine, thank you. I, uh, might have been the cause of the explosion..."

The latest_epi_sodes are on_the . website.

Jiraya answered, "Oh. That's problematic. Weren't you planning to negotiate with the coalition? Did it go poorly?"

Apophis responded, "Yes! I just wanted to demonstrate my firepower, so they'd realize they have no choice but to listen. Then I made a mistake in power multiplication but that's a long story."

Jiraya took a moment to respond. "Well, that's rather annoying. I hope they'll still be willing to negotiate after all the devastation you've done."

Apophis said, "I hope so too. Well, I'll join up with you so we can try to defend what's left of the Planetary Capital."

Apophis activated his ~Demonic Wing~ skill and took off at an incredible speed.

As he flew, his vantage from the sky gave him a good picture of the destruction he had caused with his super-compressed black star.

Yes, there was a roiling sea of purple plasma below, one which burned the edges of stone and ground that it touched, expanding slowly while every molecule was still full to the brim with energy

But there was so much more carnage beyond.

The explosion had leveled the greater part of a mountain range, and had turned the remaining jagged peaks to soft, red-orange slag that was rapidly cooling.

Forests had burned in an instant, turning to charcoal and ash and raising a sweeping bank of black smoke from residual flames that could not yet be quenched by the torrential rain.

Corpses lay everywhere.

That was perhaps the most disturbing part.

After all, so much of the land had been incinerated by pure energy the fact that blackened bones remained at all was bizarre. Apophis quickly realized that these corpses had belonged to high-level players far away from the center of the blast, ones who had enough defensive abilities to resist the initial burst of energy before it consumed them.

The further Apophis flew, the more smoldering corpses were visible. As the blast had weakened, so had the required level of players strong enough not to crumble immediately into ash.

The destruction was a smoking black halo of death, like rings orbiting a glowing purple planet, like the arms of the God of Death emanating from a body that killed every living thing it touched.

The latest_epi_sodes are on_the . website.

And in these arms of ash and magma, countless players' corpses were cradled like burnt sacrifices.

It took a long time for Apophis to leave the immediate evidence of his attack. Even past the point where mountains and sand had melted, where forests had caught ablaze, the energy wave had still caused destruction.

Entire villages smoldered and so much steam rose from the sands beneath these buildings that Apophis knew the desert was far hotter now than it had even been before.

Whatever Geoils had once lived in it had they been fortunate enough to die immediately, or had they roasted alive on sands so hot that there was no hope of escape?

More than anything else, one simple fact stood out to Apophis as he flew:

There was not a single bird in the sky.

Not unless humans or aliens brought life from somewhere else, or unless migrations brought flying creatures from another continent altogether, would birdsong ever again grace these skies.

And why would any bird choose to live here again?

There was no longer any life, no longer anywhere to live, no longer any reason to sing.

***

Apophis finally reached the Planetary Capital and flew above it, observing the scene. He was relieved, at last, to see living things again.

It was quite damaged across a distance of several thousand kilometers, but what was even more problematic was that it seemed the entire planet had experienced intense rain following his explosion, and the Planetary Capital hadn't escaped it.

Apophis noticed ThreeDog and Jiraya, who were still in Zeus's company, and descended to meet them.

Zeus, who suspected that the earlier explosion was not of natural origin, shook Apophis's hand and looked at him with suspicion.

"Pleased to meet you, Apophis, despite the circumstances."

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However, before Apophis could respond, a huge laser beam hit him in the back, sending Apophis spinning through the air to crash into a building!