Anomaly

Chapter 399 – Worship of the true gods [45]

(POV – Protagonist)

The moment the priest’s body was wrapped in a translucent, shimmering cocoon, an invisible pressure seemed to condense around him, as if the very air itself was being compressed to its limit. In the next instant, that built-up energy burst outward in a violent shockwave, with the priest’s body as its epicenter.

The impact spread with fury, tearing through everything in its path. Glass shattered all at once, forming a rain of glinting shards that echoed throughout the surroundings, while cracks snaked across walls and asphalt like freshly opened wounds. The sound was deafening, a mix of a muffled explosion and the gradual collapse of nearby structures.

Naturally, my body, with its gelatinous nature, didn’t come out unscathed. When the shockwave hit me, I felt a brutal force surge through my entire form, making every part of me vibrate violently, like I was about to come apart. I was thrown backward without any control, spinning wildly through the air, unable to stabilize myself for a few seconds.

The world blurred into a distorted smear as I spun, until, with effort, I managed to regain control. Reshaping myself midair, I absorbed the remaining force and abruptly halted my rotation. Then I descended with precision, landing relatively lightly on the asphalt, though faint ripples still moved across my surface, betraying the recent impact.

When I finally turned my attention back to the priest, the scene before me no longer felt like it belonged to the same world. He floated a few inches above the ground, completely still.

His entire body radiated light, not ordinary illumination, but a dense glow pulsing in uneven waves. Thin streams of brightness leaked from his eyes and his slightly open mouth, as if something inside him was overflowing... or trying to get out.

A massive pillar of light rose around him, piercing the sky in a perfect vertical column. The clouds were torn through effortlessly, scattering as if they were insignificant in the face of that presence. The epicenter of it all was, without a doubt, the priest himself.

Beneath him, the ground could no longer withstand the pressure. Deep cracks spread in chaotic patterns, splitting open with sharp, continuous snaps. Dust and small chunks of debris hovered for a moment before being violently flung away, as if repelled by an unseen force.

A subtle distortion in the air gave it away, like heatwaves, but far denser. As I watched, I realized this wasn’t just random destruction. There was a pattern. Everything around the priest seemed to be pulled in, compressed... and at the same time pushed outward. It was like a warped gravity field was forming, collapsing space around him while the world itself struggled to resist.

Well... what the hell is actually happening? Even in my worst-case scenarios about what might happen if the concepts the priest had sealed got out of control, I definitely didn’t factor in an apocalyptic pillar of light tearing through the sky, let alone some kind of invisible barrier capable of crushing and shredding everything around it. This... this is way beyond anything I predicted.

(Any ideas on how to stop the crazy priest wrapped in that ominous pillar of light?) I asked my Alter Ego mentally.

As always, he was still right there beside me. His completely red “eyes” were fixed on the same scene, the priest, suspended at the center of that pale beam. I tried to read his expression out of reflex, but quickly remembered the obvious... he didn’t have a real face. No furrowed brows or narrowed eyes, just his naturally indistinct form that somehow still conveyed emotions to me.

A dry snort echoed in my mind, followed by a wave of feelings that weren’t mine, yet I understood them perfectly: irritation, impatience... and a faint trace of frustration. He shook his head. The answer was clear.

For a moment, I thought we were equally lost, two idiots staring at something far beyond our ability to handle. But deep down, that wasn’t quite it. It wasn’t a lack of understanding. We understood the situation perfectly.

And that was exactly the problem. There just wasn’t much we could do. My most obvious reaction was to approach the force field, or whatever that expanding thing around the priest was. There was a faint hum, barely noticeable, and the light around him seemed distorted, as if space itself was being bent.

The result? The exact moment my hand touched the barrier... well, let’s just say it was a very educational mistake. The matter simply ceased to exist. No explosion. No resistance. Not even a delay. My hand was erased as if it had never been there.

I guess I should be grateful for my anomalous regenerative abilities, since under normal circumstances, I’d probably still be missing a hand... permanently. And also for not feeling pain, because honestly, having your own arm vaporized doesn’t sound like the kind of experience anyone would call tolerable.

For a brief moment, I stared at the empty space where my hand should’ve been, while the tissue slowly began to reconstruct itself. Well... aside from making it painfully clear that the expanding field around the priest was absolutely lethal, the experience also reinforced another important point:

I had absolutely no idea how to get through it. Believe me, I tried. More than once. My movement through the shadows was completely useless. Whatever this force field is, it’s not just affecting the physical plane, it’s interfering with the shadow domain itself.

I tried using shadow teleportation several times, but the result was always the same: the moment I begin the transition, it’s like slamming into an invisible wall, solid enough to block even something that’s supposed to ignore the normal laws of space.

My Anomalous Presence didn’t prove effective either. In theory, completely erasing my perceptible existence and slightly distorting reality should allow me to pass through obstacles... but in practice, it was nothing more than a failed attempt. I had tested this before, and the result now was no different, this field simply doesn’t “allow” itself to be bypassed that way.

That left my Thermonuclear Pulse. A raw, destructive option, capable of reducing entire structures to ash in seconds. However, aside from the spectacle of light and energy expanding around me, there was no real impact. Not even a fluctuation. It was as if I were trying to break nothing... or worse, something that doesn’t even respond to the normal laws of cause and effect.

My “Eyes” only confirmed what I already suspected. What’s happening to the priest isn’t natural, it’s being sustained by some kind of anomalous phenomenon, something that completely defies conventional logic.

In short... I’m dealing with a barrier whose nature I don’t understand, one that ignores my abilities and invalidates any direct attempt at interference. And to make matters worse, it’s still expanding slowly, like an inevitable tide. In other words, I have absolutely no idea how to stop this.

***

(POV – Emily Parker)

Setting aside the small detail that Emily had, quite unexpectedly, stumbled upon one of science’s oldest and most unsettling questions, what existed before the Big Bang, she chose not to dwell on it. Not now. There were far more urgent, immediate problems... and ones with an undeniably apocalyptic appearance demanding her attention.

On the horizon, a pillar of light tore through the sky like an open wound in reality. Its brightness was intense, pulsing at irregular intervals. The energy radiating from it slightly warped the air around it, creating nearly imperceptible distortions, subtle, but enough to trigger an instinctive sense of unease in anyone who stared at it for too long.

It wasn’t just visible, it was oppressive. A silent yet deafening warning that something was deeply wrong. Emily shut her eyes briefly, organizing her thoughts. This wasn’t the time for philosophical speculation or existential crises. She needed concrete answers.

Taking control of the situation, her posture straightened, even as a subtle tension ran through her shoulders. Her gaze swept across the anomalies around her, as if trying to extract some kind of answer from them, any clue that might help.

“Alright... you can all clearly see that ominous pillar of light cutting through the sky” Emily began, her voice controlled but edged with urgency. Her eyes shifted between them, almost pleading for reliable information: “So tell me... how bad is the situation, in human terms?”

She paused briefly, as if hesitating for a fraction of a second before asking what really mattered: “Is that thing... lethal?”

The sisters exchanged a quick glance, too brief to be casual, too long to be meaningless, and that only left Emily even more on edge. A faint chill ran down her spine.

She couldn’t understand why the hell those entities had to be so dramatic just to answer something simple. Why look at each other like that? An unsettling suspicion crept in: was there some kind of conversation happening beyond what her senses could perceive?

Emily tightened her fingers slightly, trying to contain the growing unease. Her attention snapped back when one of the sisters finally spoke, specifically, the one who stood out from the rest. Among the improbable group of absurdly powerful entities capable of distorting reality itself as if they were merely changing the weather, she seemed... shy.

“N-Normally... it’s not this... u-unstable...” The voice came out hesitant, fragmented, as if each word had to be forced out.

As she spoke, the anomaly’s face flushed, and her eyes drifted away, unable to maintain eye contact. Her fingers intertwined nervously, a stark contrast to the kind of existence she represented. Emily blinked, confused.

She genuinely couldn’t process it. How could something that embodied chaos, something that, in theory, should be unpredictable, violent, absolute, act with such timidity? It was like watching the very logic of the world unravel before her eyes, replaced by a completely arbitrary set of rules. Or maybe... there were no rules at all.

As Emily’s gaze trembled in response to an answer that, in practice, answered absolutely nothing, another voice cut through the air with firm presence. The one who spoke carried an aristocratic arrogance, and was, without a doubt, one of the most eccentric among them. Her movements were subtle, as though every gesture had been rehearsed for centuries.

“What my dear little sister, Nyara, is trying to say...” she began, tilting her head slightly, drawing all attention to herself like nobility in her own court. There was a faint condescension in her tone, as if explaining this were a favor.

“... is that this time, the phenomenon is significantly more unstable. Far more... out of control than when we used it to create the universe, or at least what you humans are capable of understanding as such” For a brief moment, her eyes seemed to gleam with something ancient and unfathomable.

Then she slowly turned to Emily, holding her gaze with unsettling calm, a subtle smile forming at the corner of her lips: “So yes” she concluded, with elegant indifference: “I would say that is... considerably lethal for you humans”