"In position."
It's currently a hot day in the barren high grounds of Bethma, with almost no one wandering around such territory with high air temperature, except one particular crimson-haired female proudly standing on one of the cliffs, aiming her sniper rifle looking for her target to shoot at. Though unfortunately she didn't take aim to increase her kill count, but instead, she's observing something that (hopefully) draws her interest.
"I wonder what's more interesting than staring these barren grounds to death?" she questioned herself as her eyes are still looking in the scope, scanning the terrain "hoping" for some live signatures to be found. It was not long enough until she found four people walking down on the lower ground, seems investigating something that caught their attention.
"Hallelujah." she aligned the scope and observing the group, gathering information about them and studying their accomplishments. "Looks like they're looking for something. It'll be the best for me to keep lookin'."
On the lower ground, Elsword and his party members that consist of Rena, Aisha and Raven scouring through the area, presumably detecting some residual leftover that plagues the entire Elrios after the demon invasion that happens several years ago. The search party keeps scouring the area until they found a weird maroon-colored fissure laying dormant on a dry soil.
"I don't know that Bethma gets the impact of demonic invasion several years ago." Elsword said while looking deep into the fissure.
"I'm not sure, but this one seems to be more than just a leftover. More like another beginning of demonic invasion. I should inform this to others." Rena said as she is about to head down to southeast, but then the fissure seems to grow larger in a small rate, and that's enough to make them alerted. The fissure then getting larger and larger overtime, that it's starting to let out some glitters form the pit, making the search party even more alerted, expecting the worst from it.
It wasn't take long before a burst of demonic energy coming from the fissure, sending a pillar of maroon light to the sky, alerting everyone nearby the region. That was until a silhouette with two pairs of demon wings coming from inside the pillar of light, magnificently floating in the sky. The burst then finally ended, leaving the particular demon stands still before it spotted the fissure and take a dive while hurling the tip of its great sword into the pit, causing the fissure dissolved into glitters of light once again, completely vanishing it on the dry soil.
"Stay sharp. This might be their message to take revenge after their loss." Elsword cautiously said as he readied his sword to engage.
"I've never seen a demon with that kind of color before…" Aisha said while still looking toward the demon itself, almost neglecting the situation they got.
"No time to wonder. Get ready for the worst." Raven also readied his blade and his upgraded Nasod arm just in case if the demon decided to attack them.
But as they still stays alerted on the presence of the demon, it somehow doesn't show any sign of initiating attacks or causing tremor, but it unsummons his sword and directly stared toward the group.
"What kind of demon you're thinking of me?" it asked in a rather bizarre mix of hellish deep voice in a tone of confusion.
"What kind? Do you think there's like a good kind or something? Bet my ass for it." Elsword retorted in an arrogant manner, followed by a smirk while still holding his sword for a possible incoming attack.
"Well, I hate to break your cool manner there, kid, but…" the face helmet starts to dismantle into remnants, revealing a fairly handsome look of a man behind the earlier demonic form. "What makes you so sure you're making up such generalization?"
"No one will believe any reasons you've made, as one of your kind is trying to set this world on fire once." the red-haired knight now sounds extremely serious and is ready to charge toward him.
But before Elsword is about to trigger a conflict with the demon guy, a bullet traveled almost in a subsonic speed passes through near the red-haired knight's side head. Fortunately it was able to get blocked by the demon guy and looked at the bullet. It's a shell with a designated slot for papers to stuff inside. He looked toward the incoming direction of the shot and have himself staring deeply to the front and formed a small smirk before opening the paper.
'Make your move.' as the message on the paper says. He let out a low chuckle and put the paper into his somehow-nonexistent pocket only to get a sort of pistol on his back, though that makes Elsword and his party members alerted even more.
"Hold your damn horses there. This is just a tachyonic flare gun, not something to hurt you all." he blurted as the gun is pointed toward the sky and he fired it upward. Not taking a long time, a particular magic crest appeared in front of him, later letting out voices from another male out of nowhere.
"Signal received. We're on our way to the destination."
Again, not taking a long time a sudden shock of an aircraft appeared behind Elsword and the others, and slowly descending to the ground. The red-haired knight (later followed by others) looked behind them. They were surprised at the scene as the aircraft hovers at such a fairly cramped place.
"It's not a capital ship sized by the way, so don't worry. Unless if we manages to destroy the walls first. If you excuse me…" the male demon was about to step forward but he got stalled by the tip of Elsword's blade.
"You're not going anywhere." he rolled his eyes and decided to stay still on the site, until one of his friends called him as they rappel down from the aircraft.
"I must say, Matt, You look pathetic when a kid like him makes you can't move an inch. If he did that to me, I might gonna flick his damn forehead with this devilish left hand of mine first." the man said, mocking his friend who apparently named 'Matt' by him.
"Oh, shut the hell up, will ya? I'm literally holding myself right now." Matt retorted, refused for being defeated in front of Elsword as the red-haired knight keep pointing his sword to him.
"What? You don't wanna do something to make your way there?" the guy teased him further until another man rappels to the ground.
"Now, now. We know that one should learn self-restraint and make critical decision. After all, we're here not to kick asses. Unless if that kid starts to be a dick then I have no idea what should I do…" he mumbles at the end of his sentence, letting out a soft chuckle while thinking about what he says earlier.
"Jules, can you get me out of here? I really, really don't wanna punch some meat bags right now.."
"Easy there, Matt. I'll help you a bit." the man who Matt call him 'Jules' took a step forward, though he had another thought about getting Matt out of the gang's arrest. Jules summoned his sword and throw it forward, only to push the edge of the hilt with his left arm, literally launching it towards Matt, causing it to impale his chest. Elsword widened his eyes, cannot believe what happened in front of his eyes.
"W-what did you do to him…?" he asked in shock after the event that made the entire party members dropping their jaw.
"Oh, I thought you despised him for having such ominous aura." Jules gave Elsword a weird face, didn't expect the red-haired knight still pay attention to Matt (as their potential threat)
"Wait, they despise me?" Matt out of nowhere suddenly talks as if he doesn't get hurt from what Jules did to him.
"H-how are you still alive?!" Aisha shrieked, didn't expect he isn't killed yet.
"He's a demon, duh. Also he's the Herald from the Abyss, for sure too." the other man (with his devilish left arm) chirped while looking at Matt with funny expression.
"Ernst, I swear to God, I'll beat the hell out of you if you call me that." Matt retorted, followed by a low growl and a fist formed toward the guy named Ernst.
"Oh, come on Matty. I know you're happy you've been called like that."
"It's embarrassing, goddammit!"
Jules, who were the only sane person left when the two other guys bickering each other like a kid remains silent and tapping his fingers to wait them finished arguing
"Here I'm wondering when they'll completely grown up…" a soft sigh came out of his mouth as he shook his head lightly. "Sorry to interrupt your bickering moment, but I'll "disintegrate" you right away to help you getting out of there."
"Oh right… I guess that's the purpose of you stabbing your sword onto me." Jules literally snapped his fingers (like Thanos cause I'm lacking of ideas as for now lmao), later starting to make Matt turned into dusts..
"Thanks for making me feel like shit, Jules." the last thing Matt said before completely disappeared. Jules could just grinned and shook his head again.
"Knock it off." he later returned to his original position before he planned to bring Matt back. "I know you all are happy that the demon isn't here anymore though… I hate to break the ice since I'm about to summon it again." he took off his white glove, revealing what seems to be another infested hand the party members didn't expect.
"Are you… making a deal with the demons…?" Rena asked in disbelieve after seeing the crest she did saw when Matt got a call from some strangers she didn't know.
"Making a deal? Haha no, I'm absorbing their power directly from the source. I know every single secret they have and how to use it as well."
"Void Archmage… or how he's dubbed by his opponents." Ernst snapped and giving a smirk to Jules as he already know what he's planning to.
"I never call myself with that title, though… I like it, not gonna lie."
"Of course you like it. You're like making people disappeared in the most weirdest way ever." Jules give him a stare and making an 'are you serious' face.
"I hope you quit with the joke cause I don't have 6 infinity stones on my hand now. Plus this isn't even Avengers fan-fiction to begin with." he said while literally breaking the 4th wall on purpose.
"But I know how to get those—"
"Stop it."
Jules later performed some gestures to summon a circle then creating the same fissure that appears in the canyon several moments ago and create the same burst of maroon pillar of light to the sky, successfully summoned the demon once again. Replicating the scene where he arrives for the first time in Bethma, he spreads his wings in glory and later take a nose dive with his great sword—pretty much causing deja vu for himself.
"Wait, I've done this before." Matt said, with his growling demonic voice though mixed in a different tone.
"Well, I think you've done this while facing these 4 guys standing in alert cause I've summoned a devil that will put an end of this realm." Matt then dismantled his helmet again and gave Jules a confused stare.
"...am I an Antichrist?" Jules facepalmed at his friend's unintentional stupidity and groaned a bit.
"Get back on the line, will you? Anyways, let's go back to the ship. We have papers to work for before we head back to the station."
"Aye sir." Ernst responded and heading to the aircraft first, followed by Matt and Jules before turning his back on Elsword.
"I'll see you around, kid. You know where you can find me." the last thing he said before jerking the rope to tell other operators pull him up and soon taking off from the canyon, leaving Elsword and his party members puzzled to the core.
"Are they…?" Aisha asked to the red-haired knight, seemingly confused at what just happened to them.
"I have to be honest, I'm lost when they're like… running on some jokes I nearly able to understand." he said while half-deadpanned. "But, I think I misjudged that demon though. He seem to be a funny being to befriend with."
"What's more funny is that you need to sharpen your wit first before telling us whether he's an enemy or not." Raven chirped, ridiculed Elsword's sense of danger and over-cautiousness… or some kind of it (I'm sorry).
"Well fuck you. You could've just tell me earlier that he's not a danger." Aisha and Rena laughed along at him as the red-haired knight gets embarrassed at his action last time.
Well I guess it has been so long since I make fanfictions over the last 4 years. Now I've been indulging myself inside this hell called real life while slightly enjoying my life without bothering to make this kind of stuff... and playing a ton of games as well (though mostly it's Visual Novels and any kind of erotic shit I liked lol)
Also for those who were wondering "Are you gonna update Romance, Darkness and Blackout?", yes, but give me some more time to think the theme that would fit in that story first.
And oh, a little bit disclaimer; Elsword isn't my game, but the OCs that is included in here is all mine.
I'll see you guys soon