Chapter 235: They Were Cursed
I stood in front of the warehouses as the people from the Bureau came rolling in with their vehicles.
Behind me were my Guardians who were watching over the ones that we had knocked out and tied up since they looked relatively important including the one with the blue aura I dealt with.
Several people in suits jumped out and I could tell that a number of them were obviously not happy to see me there.
With me here, there was no way their organisation was going to be able to claim credit for dealing with this cell without drawing my ire.
Charlotte was leading the group and I couldn’t really tell what her opinions were of finding me here since she kept her face perfectly composed.
"Divine One," She greeted me with a respectful bow. "It seems like we have troubled you again. We are greatly ashamed."
The rest of the people behind her also followed in bowing their heads.
At least they had the decency to act sincere in their apology...
I chose not to say anything here and turned to nod at Olivia to speak for me, sending a clear message that I was definitely not happy with them at the moment.
After all, this was something that they had planned behind my back to try and get some benefits for themselves using my Guardians. There was no need for me to be especially polite with them.
Charlotte might not be involved in this but her organisation definitely was so she’ll have to deal with it.
Olivia stepped forward, "The warehouses have been cleared. We captured who we believe are the ringleaders of this operation. I do hope the Bureau will be able to give us a satisfactory answer on why this was allowed to happen during the summit of all times."
Charlotte only paused for a moment before speaking again, "I will do my best to give Divine One and Miss Olivia a satisfactory explanation of this."
"See that you do. Now clean up this mess."
"At once."
Charlotte straightened herself and started barking orders at the others, prompting them to start rushing into the compound to start sweeping through the area and taking the unconscious terrorists into their custody.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to trust them after they did something like this to us so before they got here, I had my Guardians interrogate those guys before we called them.
Unfortunately, most of them did not know anything much outside of the work this cell was supposed to achieve which we already knew was to kill the three Mortal Gods from this region.
They don’t even know the location of any other bases nor even who are the ones that were really calling the shots behind the scenes. So unless the Bureau has interrogation methods that can draw out information that these people didn’t even know they knew, I doubt they would get any new information that we didn’t already know out of them anyway.
The only reason why I’m even bothering to hand these people over to them is to give them work to do and to get them to have more reasons to apologise to us.
Also, I want these terrorists to suffer for bringing this trouble here to begin with and I hope the Bureau isn’t gentle with them.
Those were my thoughts as I watched the suit wearing guys round up those unconscious terrorist to start bringing them back to the cars, right before I noticed what appeared to be a crack in space.
"My Divine!!!" Ava cried out unexpectedly, pushing her way in front of me.
The crack suddenly exploded open right as a magic circle appeared in front of Ava, the circle expanding to imprint itself in the air in front of us.
From the space, what appeared to be hands shot out from there and grabbed not only the unconscious terrorists but also the agents that were carrying them as well.
The agents reacted pretty swiftly and tried pulling out their guns to shoot at them, their weapons managing to squeeze off a few shots but the bullets seemed to melt into those hands without being able to do any damage.
The agents then suddenly let out screams before their screams were abruptly cut off as dark miasma leaked out from the tear, their bodies suddenly mutating and then deforming to turn into what was unmistakably the forms of Anomalies.
The terrorists were not spared either as the miasma wrapped around them and their bodies spasmed before their skin bubbled and expanded to deform into Anomalies.
Then, as if that was all that it wanted to do, the hands retracted themselves and the tear in space closed itself and disappeared, as though it was never there to begin with.
Now we were suddenly left with a couple of Anomalies that had been transformed right in front of us.
The Anomalies slowly pushed themselves off the ground, the disfigured faces of the former humans could still be seen dangling off to one side from the bulbous and vaguely humanoid body that they had once been shaped after.
"Go," I ordered.
My Guardians moved without hesitation.
An Anomaly that has been transformed from a human is way stronger than normal Anomalies and we cannot underestimate it especially when the human they transformed from had powerful abilities.
To prove my point...
Olivia charged towards the Anomaly that was transformed from the guy with the blue aura, her fist punching forward intending to obliterate it with that single punch.
That Anomaly raised its deformed arm that had been expanded to be extremely muscular, catching her fist with a loud bang and only sliding back a few feet from the impact without receiving any other damage.
Kris brought his sword down on another of the terrorist transformed Anomaly, which should have just crushed it like underneath his weight, but the Anomaly swung its arm and managed to send Kris flying back up into the air instead by striking at his sword.
The Anomalies that had been transformed from the agents were obviously weaker since the agents probably didn’t have strong powers to begin with.
I watched Jia Lian slash her sword through one of them before it could react and Dan tanking the strike from another with his shield without being pushed back.
Valletta shot out her metal balls at the one that attacked Dan, piercing through the head, torso and arms of the Anomaly to kill it.
Another agent turned Anomaly tried to move towards us but Leena shot it down with a burst of machinegun fire, gunning it down in a hail of bullets.
Liliac and Sergei worked together to use their shadow and plants to restrain the two stronger Anomalies, the tendrils of darkness and branches straining against the creatures as they tried to break free from their bindings.
To make sure they remained in place, Ava activated a spell that created a large magic circle underneath them which seemed to have the effect of freezing their movements for a short moment.
That moment was enough for Olivia and Kris however, as they came charging back in and struck the Anomalies while they could not defend themselves.
Olivia’s fist blew through the torso of the Anomaly with lightning sparking around the point of impact, reducing the creature to nothing more than meat paste.
Kris also came slashing down on his target and cleaved the creature into two, slicing through even the plants that had been holding it in place and splitting them like he was cutting through an onion.
We watched as the last Anomaly fell to the ground with a dull thud, staining the ground with its blood as it let out a low groan as it expired.
I frowned at the sight, "What was that?"
Ava seemed to be a little unnerved by the sight as she turned to me, "That’s an ability, my Divine... Someone... Someone had managed to open a localised portal into a miasma afflicted rift..."
"You’re telling me there’s a person with the ability to create portals to rifts and let miasma leak out and change people into Anomalies?"
"I believe that is the case, my Divine..."
I looked around the area, immediately searching for signs of anyone that could have done this.
"I do not believe they are here, my Divine... That seemed to be something similar to a curse that is set to trigger under certain conditions... The person with the ability does not need to be nearby for it to trigger."
I furrowed my brows, "Am I right to assume then... That this was most likely the work of someone within this organisation that had set this up to prevent survivors of this terrorist group from falling into the Bureau’s hands?"
"I believe that is the most likely scenario, my Divine..."
Great... So that means there’s a terrorist out there with the ability to open up portals and transform people into Anomalies...
Yeah, sure, that’s totally great news guys...