In the meantime, Omar had successfully established a resistance against Margoth, recruiting several comrades who had defected from his oppressive rule. He managed to attack several scattered camps, stealing weapons, equipment, and food. He continued to launch night raids on Margoth's dozens of camps until the Gladious soldiers were struck with terror at the mere mention of his name, a result of the fierce resistance they faced from him.

The number of those fleeing Margoth to join Omar grew daily, driven by the oppression and suffering they endured under the merciless alien colonization. Minora sometimes assisted in the raids, but Omar did not allow her to go out often, lest she fall into their hands and everything come to an end. Omar and his followers from the people of Atlantis made the forests their home, making them difficult to reach despite the daily patrols combing the area for them. Because the forests were vast, sprawling in every direction, the raids could come from anywhere, a fact that greatly unsettled the soldiers.

As for Margoth, he would leave the city for days to carry out missions assigned by Gladious, only to return to see what had changed. When he saw his soldiers' failure to capture Minora and noticed the growing resistance and the bitter losses his troops had suffered, he knew that if things continued this way, they would be forced to withdraw without achieving their goal. He decided to stay and lead the campaigns himself until their objective was met.

His first act was to intensify the policy of oppression, fully opening the camps for torture and rape. The people of Atlantis could hear the screams of the tortured all through the night, which filled them with dread, gave them nightmares, and planted terror in their hearts. When Margoth found that this policy was not enough to make them reveal Minora's location, he began to kill indiscriminately. The number of bodies and heads in the streets increased, and the city's stench became unbearable, as if the specter of death itself now roamed its roads and alleys. But his most extreme act was to start killing children, forcing their parents to give him the information they had to save their sons and daughters from this merciless beast. Only through this method did he begin to close in on the resistance's headquarters, though he had yet to reach his exact target.

The people of Atlantis lost hope of revolting, knowing the terrifying power of the colonizer and that their rebellion would only lead to their complete annihilation. However, whenever they heard of one of the enemy's camps being destroyed, they would celebrate secretly, rejoicing in this small victory that might, in the end, lead to their freedom from Gladious's soldiers. It gave them a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of a dark tunnel.

***

Keno stood watching as Atlantis crumbled before his very eyes, his sorrow deepening over what his hands had wrought. What eased his pain slightly was the arrival of the Enix soldiers to support the human forces and stop this massacre and genocide.

The first member of the Enix stepped forward, his frame broad and solid, radiating immense power. He charged toward the hordes of robots that were destroying everything in sight. As soon as he reached them, he raised his hand and aimed his fist, and the very air shook. The robot hordes before him shattered, and some buildings collapsed. The soldiers were astonished, unable to believe what they were seeing; with a single blow of his hand, he had wiped out dozens of machines. A massive robot then tried to crush him underfoot. The Enix member stopped the robot's foot with just his right hand, not moving an inch. He then pushed the giant robot's leg upward, causing it to fall backward onto the ground, crushing other machines. The Enix member leaped onto it, moved toward its chest, raised his foot a few centimeters, and brought it down. The robot beneath him was shattered, creating a cavity that ran from its chest through its back.

The second member, a woman, soared through the air as if swimming, defying gravity itself. A blue mist swirled around her like a sentient entity, and they noticed it was carrying her as she flew. She approached the robots and began to move her hands through the air. The mist moved toward objects, enveloping them and lifting them into the air. Houses, massive buildings, cars, and rocks floated. She then began to direct them toward the machines, smashing them one by one. After that, she moved above the machines and raised her hands. The great buildings around her shifted, their foundations breaking apart. The mist began to warp them, changing their shapes until they became massive, pointed projectiles that fell upon the machines one after another, destroying dozens. But she was not finished. She turned to the giant robots with immense destructive power and, with her telekinesis, seized control of them, forcing them to attack the smaller robots with their most devastating weapons. This resulted in the downfall of hundreds of robots at once.

The soldiers stood in awe of the strangers' power. They noticed the third member had remained still, watching them for a moment, his gaze particularly fixed on Keno, who returned the look. But soon, he too moved. The soldiers saw that he was a cyborg, like Keno, but possessed far superior power. A small hatch opened in his chest, and dozens of small rockets launched at once, blowing up scores of robots. Small, triangular drones flew around him, firing laser beams that incinerated everything they touched. On top of that, his speed in moving across the ground and through the air was astonishing. He would fly over the robots, dropping bombs on them, then land on the ground amidst dozens of them, and the earth would explode around him, taking the robots with it. He would then clap his hands together, and they would break apart and merge, forming a large cannon that fired a beam of energy, vaporizing hundreds of robots before him, while his hand-sized drones flew everywhere, destroying machines and feeding him information and a view of the entire city, showing robot locations, threat levels, and more.

Keno felt he knew him but couldn't place the feeling. He noticed that many humans were fleeing amid this insane battle, falling dead from the sheer destructive power of the Enix, who paid no attention to human lives. They only wanted to stop the machines' advance, even if it meant killing the humans present on the battlefield. This drove Keno to join the fray, rushing to save the civilians. He dashed through the wreckage, dodging flames, falling debris, and the relentless bombardment, picking up a small child here, an elderly woman there, or a young man, carrying them to safety and telling them to run, then rushing back to save more, praying he could rescue as many as possible from this unprecedented massacre.

Keno's soldiers, seeing their leader's actions and emboldened by the power of the Enix, decided they too must intervene. They charged in, destroying machines and saving as many people as they could, feeling there was now hope to save half the city, or perhaps a quarter of it.

The army joined them, setting up barriers and shields as war machines spread across Atlantis, hunting down robots and tearing them apart with their destructive tools, while aircraft circled the sky, destroying as many of the robotic bees as they could. The army devised a plan to rescue the civilians caught in the middle of this fierce war, sending small groups secured by war machines and helicopters. They worked tirelessly throughout the day, pulling people from under the rubble and out of the line of fire. Some soldiers were injured and killed in the process. Unlike some ancient armies that enslaved their people and sacrificed them to remain in power, the army of Atlantis had a more ethical dimension than previous modern armies. Those armies had a different structure, one that leaned toward domination and power, setting aside morality in a world dominated by decentralization and amoral materialism. But the army of Atlantis knew well the importance of every human life in this city, for humanity was on the brink of extinction.

The war raged all day, but with the overwhelming power of the Enix and the intervention of the army, they managed to destroy most of the machines by day's end. However, the city that was humanity's last fortress was destroyed along with them, becoming a ruin, save for a few places and buildings that had withstood the storm. The army managed to rescue hundreds of the wounded and injured, transferring them to military camps in the west, which housed all who survived this annihilation that would have wiped them out if not for the Enix. On that day, a tragedy befell humanity that they would never forget. For the first time, they felt they were on the verge of extinction. For the first time, their arrogance and their sense that they were the center of the world—the smartest, the strongest, the best—diminished. They saw that they were now in a state of unprecedented weakness. This experience fostered within their very being a new sense of humility and tolerance for one another, for they were all on the same sinking ship.

***

Omar returned from one of his raids crowned with victory. He was celebrated by those who had escaped the tyranny of Margoth and the Gladious soldiers, and they rejoiced greatly in his triumphs. Minora greeted him with a bright, beautiful smile that touched his heart and made him smile back at her automatically, without hiding it.

The resistance was hiding at the far end of the forest-filled continent, on the outskirts near some lakes. The city was located right in the middle of the continent, where the colonizers resided, weighing heavily on the hearts of the poor Astra.

Because the resistance was on the edge of the forest, it was difficult to pinpoint their location, as the forests surrounded the Gladious soldiers from every direction. Searching in all directions for them was an arduous and difficult task. Omar and his comrades had managed to help many of the poor souls in Atlantis escape and join them, until their camp was filled with hundreds of Astra—women, children, and the elderly. The young men went to fight with Omar, filled with an overwhelming desire to liberate their families and their land. After that, they would have to liberate their land from Gaia, and then they would look into the matter of the humans and return them to their blue planet. They knew that countless hardships and difficulties lay ahead and that their once peaceful, beautiful planet had been turned into colonies fought over by tyrants, leaving them unable to decide their own fate.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.