Strongest Nova: Path of Vengeance

Chapter 326: Novas

"Enough about him. How’s the situation with our other problematic individual?" Gray asked. "Last I saw her, she was being sent here."

"Sister Stella is making steady progress in her powers. She has amazing powers too, so we have been helping her—"

Gray waved his hands. "I don’t care about her powers. Tell me how she is doing," he asked.

Caleb paused, not knowing how to answer that.

"She’s assimilating nicely enough. There are things she has forgotten because of her power, but she is learning them once again. It’s like she was frozen in time for nearly 40 years and was finally brought out now. There are things she knows having lived her life and things that she will have to live through again."

"Any idea about her family?" Gray asked.

"Her parents died long ago, and her husband died during the explosion," Hobb said. "She is sad for them, but... only because she knows she should be sad. She doesn’t even know anything about her husband really."

"No children?" Gray asked. "I heard she was 58 years old."

Hobb shook his head. "You know how it is with female Novas," he said. "Even when they get pregnant, the likelihood of a miscarriage or stillbirth is so high."

Gray nodded. "They absorb the soul of their babies before it can even get to the child," he said. "But she should have still had some kids, right?"

"No," the director said. "She gave up long ago. As far as we know, she had no child."

Gray nodded. "As long as she can get back on her feet. Are we keeping her here? She is no criminal."

"No, but she insists that she stays here," Hobb said. "And I don’t like the idea of sending a young nova back into the open. Especially one that is this powerful."

"Not a bad choice," Gray said. "I think that is it, right? I will go rest for now. I should get something to eat too."

"Yeah, you can leave," Hobb said, standing up himself to walk away.

"No!" Caleb’s voice cut through to the two, stopping them where they stood.

"What?" Gray asked.

"I still have something else to tell you guys," he said.

"We already heard all of it, didn’t we?" Hobb asked.

"No, not all," Caleb said, quickly pressing some things around the holograms. Some pictures started appearing before them all. They began frowning as they couldn’t understand what they were looking at.

"It was all hidden in the depth of the program," Caleb said. "Accessed likely only by this Zern guy."

He pointed at the middle of the hologram where his picture appeared.

"That’s the guy that knew about me," Gray told Hobb. "He said he was the one that found me and set me up with the cult. In a way, he was a sponsor of the cult."

"Not only you," Caleb said. "All of them."

They looked back at the pictures which they first had not recognized, but now they began to. They looked through them, and Caleb began explaining who they were.

He pointed to the first image which was of a young woman with long dark hair and red eyes. She was little more than a child in this picture which was why they hadn’t recognized her so easily.

"Raven Darkwing, leader of the Darkwing clan. The Shadow Nova. She was the first Nova to implement the idea of a farm. This Zern guy was the one who found her."

He pointed to the next person. A young man with a fit body and a stoic look.

"Jackery Dockson. Affiliations unknown. Title, the Life Nova. I have tried to find out more about him, but I can find out that he is rather reclusive and doesn’t come out whenever he wants. But he was seen in the East Vanli before it exploded."

"I’ve never even heard of this man," Hobb said. "Are you sure he’s a Nova at all?"

"Oh, I’m sure. The list is all for Novas."

Caleb pointed at the next picture of a young girl with red hair. "Emilia Fireheart. I cannot tell if that is her actual name or not. I believe it isn’t considering Raven’s name. She belongs to the Burning Cult and is appropriately named the Fire Nova. She was also seen in East Vanli."

Caleb pointed to the next image. "That... should be you as a child, right, brother Gray?" he asked.

Gray looked at his own details. "Paul Swanson, affiliated with the Aura Cult, huh? And he called me the Aura Nova. He most definitely knew my powers then."

"He does," Hobb said. "But he considers you dead. It seems he didn’t have all the information as we might have feared."

"He’s dead now. No need to fear it even if it was true."

Hobb nodded.

Caleb saw that the talk between the two had died and pointed to another one. A child of little more than 6 years of age. "Tommy Spade, member of the Cult of the Abyss. He is nicknamed the Space Nova. He was seen in East Vanli too."

"Spatial manipulations will be troublesome," Gray said. "That guy we forced to teleport us into the ship helped us infiltrate. If there is a Nova out there that can teleport around the same way, we will never be able to catch him ever."

"That is troublesome," Hobb said. "We will have to think about it."

Gray nodded.

Caleb pointed to another picture of a young man with red hair. "Calvin Smodgers, leader of the Blood Cult. The—"

"Blood Nova," Gray said with a seemingly hateful look on his face. "He’s dead. I killed him 6 years ago."

Caleb nodded.

There was also Garren, the Lightning Nova.

"There is also information about Brother Stanley and Sister Stella there, but they don’t seem to know much about their powers except for it being Time and Transformation," Caleb said.

"And then, there is finally this one here," he said, pointing to a picture of a beautiful woman with brown hair and dull green eyes.

"They call her the Super Nova."