The white claws peeled off, turning into small particles before disappearing into the air. David’s hand fell to his side. Life left his body and the light in his eyes went out.

Nino remained motionless for a moment before returning her sight to the boy above in the sky. Meeting her gaze, the darkness returned to Karim’s eyes, but his expression remained unchanged.

As the Japanese doll grabbed another spear, the boy turned away from her. A moment later he was gone.

“Should I follow him?” She asked.

“No.” Sam replied. “We don’t have the leeway…”

“Tche…”

Nino seemed rather irritated. She had expected the boy to lose control after seeing his father get murdered, however he was able to control his emotions and escape.

Sam stared at David’s corpse for a few seconds then turned his gaze to Nino. She understood what he wanted her to do without him having to say it.

The red spears disintegrated setting the man free. Sam caught him before he fell and slowly lowered his body to the ground, laying him on his back and staring at him once more.

With his emotions suppressed, Sam felt nothing. He felt no remorse, no sadness, no anger. He understood that it was wrong, but he had no choice but to keep everything locked until the situation was under control.

He placed his hand on the man’s eyes and closed his eyelids. After a moment of silence he stood up and faced the mayhem rocking the abandoned airport.

The Fallen had turned their sights to the Valkyries allowing the remaining survivors to escape. Sadly their safety didn’t last as more and more crooked halos appeared, feeding the madness by spreading even more negative emotions.

Sam’s plan of isolating the mad ones seemed to be pointless, the reason being that most of them were now using the barrier breaking ruins, coating their nails, arms and legs in the white glow as they charged at the Valkyries.

Though their attacks were reckless and clumsy, some of them proved that they had the ability to dodge and parry attacks, giving the Valkyries a much harder time simply by not dying from the first strike.

‘They’re learning…’ Sam thought at first, but then he remembered what Karim had said.

The Runes were already in his head, all he needed was for someone to help him understand them.

The strange wave forcefully uploads something into people’s brains. The children said it was incomprehensible gibberish, but apparently it contained the secret to using Runes and halos.

The adults were corrupted by the wave, by the whispers. Even though they lost their minds because of it, they also received the knowledge and the ability to use halos. It was difficult to believe that they were able to copy the Runes and create them while in this state, but that’s exactly what was happening right now.

It seemed like the madness didn’t mean the complete loss of all thoughts.

‘Damn it…’

Sam could only grimace at his situation. It was here, right in front of him. If he still had his human body he would’ve been able to obtain the secret, but that was impossible.

According to the boy, His new brain, made entirely of nanomachines, was protected against outside influence. The whispers can’t reach it simply because it was no longer flesh and blood, even though the ASC were supposed to mimic the functions of his cells perfectly.

For a moment he was tempted to turn his Force Field completely off just to see if he would be influenced as well, but then he gave up on the idea, not wanting to end up like a mindless monster.

“Everyone…” Sam held a hand to his communicator and sent new commands to all of the Valkyries. “Use only physical weapons. Avoid anything energy based.”

The number of Fallen didn’t seem to end. The extreme horror of the massacre led to the other survivors transforming one by one, and each time they seemed more powerful than the last. Some of them even began summoning weapons of their own. They were crude spears and machetes, but the shape didn’t matter. It showed that they were now able to summon the Nameless Element, which meant it was only a matter of time before—

BOOM!

Sam’s fears came to life faster than expected. One of the mad men, dressed in a torn up soldier’s uniform, was able to create a rocket launcher. As the smoke from the explosion dissipated Triska’s figure came to sight. She was perfectly fine, but her wide eyes told that she didn’t expect that last attack.

As if triggered by one of them managing to create a familiar weapon, the other Fallen soldiers tossed their crooked creations and began summoning new ones. Unlike their first attempt, the new creations seemed to have a more stable form, taking on the shape of handguns, rifles and rocket launchers.

The battle became more violent from there on. Explosions shook the airport, and a number of planes were damaged. Juni positioned herself in front of one and used her bat to deflect anything that came in its direction. Sitta and Trenta joined her the next second.𝒪𝐯xt.𝗇t

Unlike the other planes, the one they shielded was special. It contained the equipment from their ship, not to mention B3 and JX9’s unconscious bodies.

Sam watched as his plan caught on fire, but his face remained expressionless.

How to get out of this situation? He didn’t know. The situation was too chaotic for him to come up with anything, and the only solution left was to just kill everyone, whether they succombed to the madness or not.

There was nothing he could do. The survivors were done for. This was the end of the road for them. In his opinion, it was already amazing that they managed to make it this far. They were normal humans, and though they had someone who could see the future, the fact that they avoided several extinction level events showed their resilience.

Unfortunately, this is the end of the road for them. Sam closed his eyes, and with his suppressed emotions threatening to break out, he prepared to make a difficult choice.

Suddenly, the whole airport was enveloped in a pink wave of light. Sam looked up, his eyes shot open as he realized what was happening. But that wasn’t what caught his attention.

The Fallen seemed to freeze, their halos flickering in and out of existence. Their mad screams filled the sky as they dropped their weapons and held their heads, clearly going through some unbearable pain.

Sam turned in Ichigo’s direction and saw that she had her halo out, her hand tightly clasped in front of her chest as if in prayer. Her brows were tightly drawn together, showing that she was struggling to maintain her power over such a large area.

“… We need her equipment…” he said. The next second he turned around and began running toward one of the plane Juni and the others were protecting.

Glancing around he quickly located what he came for; a large container about two and a half meters tall covered in a bright pink paint.

Zero Three and Nino arrived a moment later wondering what he was looking for. Placing his hand on the panel located at the center of the box, Sam turned to the two girls and spoke in a determined tone.

“We need to get these out.”