The crazed eyes of Storm Hammer were glazed with anger and panic as she could feel the loss of her Core Aura as every moment passed and she was slowly coming to the realization that she was about to be beaten to death by mortals, and not just any mortals, the lowest of the low, the toys she had tormented for the last million years.

A roar deep in her soul kept repeating the same word, “How… how… how… how”

Her thoughts were muddled, but there was something that she could reach for that did not require that she should concentrate, because it was a power outside of herself that she had the authority to access.

It was a river of authority around her that was expressly forbidden to be utilized on the lower continents except for dire reasons, but Storm Hammer thought that she was in a pretty **ing dire strait, and she would rather be mocked for using this power to kill mortals than to be killed by mortals, her name would remain in the annals of infamy forever if that was to be the case.

The pain that was similar to being stabbed repeatedly by thousands of needles assaulting her mind, Storm Kammer shrieked as she called upon the power of the First Dan and she stopped Time.

She did not know about others, but recently it was becoming harder to use her power of control over Time, it was as if her ability earned from reaching the First Dan almost… hated her. Nevertheless, these were concerns that were not going through her mind at this time, she was pissed enough that she did not care if accessing the Dan was becoming more difficult, she needed to sate the fury in her heart with the blood of these **ing mortals.

The pain stopped as suddenly as it began, the golden energy these people were radiating from their bodies was incredibly powerful, but they lacked control to make an effective tool out of it.

They had been using it like a flat board instead of a needle that they could have slipped into her body and then rotated, shredding her Core Aura to pieces. With her powerful soul, Storm Hammer could easily decipher how to properly utilize energy.

It was amazing that such a powerful energy was placed in the hands of mortals who had no idea what to do with this power, like giving a golden crown to a pig. The amount of energy that had blasted against her body if properly utilized should have placed her in a dangerous situation with her Core Aura nearing the bottom, but as it was, she had lost not more than five percent of her entire Core Aura.

Yet this was also extremely amazing for it had not even been three minutes and she was being ganged upon by a bunch of mortals. Anger pushed these thoughts aside and she growled,

“You **ing mongrels, how dare you! You do not deserve whatever power that you have stolen. You use it like it’s a hammer instead of a scalpel, fools!”

Looking up at a fist that had been frozen in place next to her skull, she followed the path of the fist to a young woman who should be in her twenties. The young woman had a snarl of rage on her face, and Storm Hammer who was on her knees went on her full height, seizing the neck of the woman along the way and tearing her head off.

She waited in place bouncing the head on her hand like a ball, if the powers that these people were wielding came from a formation as she had first suspected then the dissonance between the still time zone she had created and the constant power being channeled into their bodies would create a visible pathway that she could follow to the source of the problem.

Despite her rage, not for one moment did she think that these mortals were in charge of this debacle. There was no way in a million instances that these people would be able to rise or acquire power of this nature and in such a short time, what she needed to watch out for was the hidden hand in all of this. She was aware of the history of these people, and if for any reason there was a resurgence in the powerful force that was killed a million years ago, it was her duty to find its root and exterminate it.

Storm Hammer waited for a few seconds and detecting no changes, she chuckled, “This just means that I am not causing enough damage.”

Bringing her palms together a lightning ball began to form, and as she slowly spread her arms apart, the energy inside the lightning ball grew denser and swelled with the motion of her hand, her grin widened, she was going to wipe half their number off the map, these lucky few would be the only one who would die early,

“Let me see how you are going to be surviving this one.”

Storm Hammer suddenly stumbled and she looked around in surprise, and then she noticed that her hands were shaking and creating the minor technique she was about to use was

getting increasingly difficult and she let the lightning ball vanish.

A loud droning sound began to ring in her skull and she held her head right as she moaned in

pain,

“What is happening?”

Her breath was becoming long and labored as if she had been fighting without stopping for a million years, and as the pain that was wrecking her entire body reached a crescendo she suddenly realized the reason for what was happening and she nearly swore aloud.

Storm Hammer could not hold these mortals under the shackles of Time!

She groaned and looked at the head of the woman, and slowly bent down to pick it up. A closer look at the wide-opened eyes of the head revealed that the eyeballs were vibrating. The motion was very slight, so slight that except for an Ascendant, anyone else would miss it. Storm Hammer flinched and tossed the head away, suddenly looking around her at the hundred thousand people that had fully enclosed her, and her horror deepened when she realized that these people were not locked in here with her, she was locked in here with them! The pressure that had been rising inside of her body reached a peak and her chest exploded, flinging Storm Hammer back with a pained cry. This time it felt almost as if her head had been repeatedly crushed and she could not even move, but she could hear the sounds of the people around her, they were free.

It did not take long for the pain to begin again, and this time it was worse, she understood that when she had ranted about how these people could not use their golden energy properly, they had all heard her, and they were not making the same mistakes as before.

The power slamming into her body was no longer flat boards, now the energy dug into her system like many tiny snakes and tore it apart. Storm Hammer in the throes of pain began to scream. The world no longer made sense.