Nova arrived at the upper hall of the plaza where the party was to take place in about 2 hours from now. No one was here yet. No waiter, no staff making preparations, not even robots

Long velvety curtains fell all around the room, bright lights shining down on the floor from above. Multiple small round tables that could fit 6 chairs were scattered across the room, except for near the podium where the host would speak.

And on the podium was Garren, sitting alone, lost in his own world.

Nova didn’t waste a single more minute. Threads of metal flew out from around her arms, slamming onto her brother. However, the shields shone brightly, stopping the threads from piercing through.

Garren looked up in surprise. He hadn’t paid attention to the footsteps because he had expected it to be Ogre or somebody else from his clan, so when he saw that it was his sister, he was astonished.

Learning that she couldn’t attack him through the shield, Nova instead wrapped her brother around in the metal wires, the shield constantly flickering. She tried to constrict it, but it was beyond her power to do so.

The annoying shield was just too strong. Were they always this strong?

"Nova, what are you doing here?" he asked with his eyes narrowed. "Where’s Ogre?"

"Dead for all I care," Nova said. "Same as you."

"Ogre? Dead?" Garren chuckled a little. "Even I would be required to use most of my energy to kill him."

"Then you’re weaker than I thought," Nova said. "Stop the bomb now, brother."

Garren looked at her, seeing so much of the father he hated in her. Alas, he couldn’t hate her. "I won’t," he said as a matter of fact. "You can stop trying to convince me, sister."

"You dare call me your sister still," Nova said with a voice laden with hate. "After what you did to our parents! After what you’re about to do to the millions of people out here."

Garren paused. He was not concerned about the people who were going to die due to the bombs, but the talk of their parents brought back sore memories.

"If I could’ve had it any other way, I would," Garren said. "But there was nothing else I could do."

"You saw no other way than to kill our parents?" Nova scoffed. "Don’t bullshit me, brother."

"I’m not. Our parents, they... They were becoming too commanding. They thought the clan, that was built around me, was theirs. For years they contended every single decision I wanted to make, every choice of mine had to go through them."

"They did not care for me, just the power I brought them," Garren said. "It was too much. I gave them the choice. They could retire, give up their positions in the clan, and live freely. But no... they tried to bite more than they could chew."

"Did you know they were trying to start a coup?" Garren asked Nova.

"What?" Nova looked half confused, half surprised. Her anger disappeared for a moment as her brain tried to process what she had heard. "Coup?"

"They weren’t planning to overthrow me or anything, they couldn’t," Garren continued. "But they had enough influence that they could shut me down from all sides, make my authority useless. Like that poor bastard over at Silent Nexus."

"I couldn’t have that happen. I killed the ones that they had the most influence over, and then..." Garren shrugged. "You were out the day they were imprisoned, so you didn’t realize how much they fought back."

"In the end, I could see only one thing..."

"Letting them die so they could empower me?" Nova asked in unhidden fury. "You thought that would make me happy?"

"Do you think I understood what I was doing any more than you do?" Garren asked. "Did you think it was easy sending my own parents to their death? I did what I had to. I merely got something good out of it by improving your power as well."

"And now, to get even stronger, I will make use of this city and its people," Garren said.

"We will stop you," Nova said, her face darkening with anger.

"I will not fight you, sister," Garren said and took a deep breath. "If you cannot stand my face for what I did, then leave. Go far away. I will say nothing. You were a victim of our parents as much as I was. If you still love them, I can only feel envious of that as I no longer do."

Nova seethed with fury, but she kept her hatred of her brother aside at the moment. Her inner resolve had been shaken a little, hearing how her parents used her brother more than they cared for him, but that still didn’t take away the truth that her brother was a monster.

For now, she had to keep that aside and focus on the task at hand.

"I’ll walk away, and forget about this," Nova said. "But you have to stop the bomb, brother. You can’t let hundreds of thousands of people die just because you want to grow strong."

"Why can’t I?" Garren asked. "I’m doing it already, aren’t I?"

"Stop it then," Nova said.

"No, and I also cannot. You killed our ammunition technician. Without him, I don’t know how to deal with it. And you cannot move it either since it is location-sensitive. If it moves a hundred meters away from this plaza it explodes."

"You..." Nova didn’t know how to reply but to only call him a monster.

"I’m not the only Nova benefiting from this, so I had to put a system so that it can’t be stopped," Garren said. "That’s why you should leave if you want to leave. There is nothing you can do."

"We will do something," Nova said.

Garren was about to say something when he saw something out of the corner of his eyes. Instinctively, he activated his power to process everything faster. And at that moment, he saw Stanley charging at him with a sword ready to cut into him.