Enigma of Sin

As Kayn made his way towards the missile, he began to hear the sounds of sirens blaring in the distance below him, alerting the citizens to take immediate shelter if they had it available near them and if not to evacuate to the closest bomb shelter.

Japan had prepared several bomb shelters in civilized areas as World War III progressed, even if the war hadn't actually reached their shores yet. The sudden missile attack not only confused Kayn, but the citizens and government officials as well as they shouldn't be the ones being attacked since they weren't a major player.

They were part of the United Nations Tactical Alliance, which was the successor to the original United Nations Kayn was aware of, but Japan hadn't actively participated in the war so far aside from sending some special forces teams to certain defensive positions.

Japan hadn't invaded anywhere with full force nor had they been invaded. The UNTA wanted to utilize the landmass for staging operations as it was a great tactical location, but the Japanese firmly refused as their citizens would be collateral damage if their enemies decided to just blow up the entire island with the technology of modern warfare.

Kayn was curious about who fired the missile and why, but he would only investigate after he dealt with it. Normally he wouldn't interfere with Earth's ongoing battles, but he had a sneaking suspicion that this was launched here because of him.

The missile was moving at incredibly quick speeds, much faster than even Kayn himself could travel currently, but not faster than his eyes could track. Even with the original distance between them being a bit over a hundred kilometers, the missile would reach Kayn's position in about 8 seconds since he was also approached it to intercept at a safe distance above the landmass.

Kayn calmly pulled out the Akikani that was inside of the Void Loop around his finger before adapting an attacking posture with the sword.

With his enhanced senses and extending his own mana out in order to use Mana Sense, he could tell that Japan had launched several land to air interception ordinances, but the speed in which they were traveling versus the WMD would end in Japan's complete and utter loss.

Kayn concentrated on one of the three sword arts he had learned from an inscribed tablet in Takemikazuchi's shrine.

He added the wind element as well as the original lightning element since the Akikani would boost any wind ability used by 100%. The lightning and wind began to coat his body and sword then slowly it began to concentrate around the edge of the Akikani.

In his mind, Kayn thought of the sword art he wanted to use and replicated the movements and mana flow with his body before slicing upward with his blade.

In front of him a massive wave of lightning and wind shot forward intending to completely obliterate the WMD with this single slash. He could have included Extinction Lightning, but Kayn didn't think he would be able to able to use the sword art properly if he did.

The sword art was called Severing Lightning Slash, quite generic, but it was also quite powerful. He had several options to try and negate the explosion, but Kayn cared more about himself and his personal progress than saving the people below him. Sure, he would protect them if everything worked out, but it wasn't his main intent.

Unsurprisingly, the WMD detonated the second Kayn's elemental sword aura began to slice through the front of the missile head. When the slash hit and the explosion began, it was sliced in half, and most of the actual explosive power from the missile was negated.

Seeing that some of the residual blast was still heading towards the land to his sides, Kayn concentrated and took over the fire and wind from the explosion at the same time as forming a massive ball of air around it that he was steadily compressing all together.

The interception missiles finally arrived and exploded when they interacted with the bubble that was containing the original explosion, thus Kayn ended up creating another larger sphere around them to contain these new blasts.

After a few minutes of this, the sphere was compressed to the size of a massive ball before Kayn snuffed it out of existence. He was sweating profusely at this point and had used a much larger portion of his mana on damage control than he expected.

It wasn't for nothing that weapons of mass destruction were feared all over the world at this point. If Kayn had to estimate it, just the left-over explosion was similar if not equal to a tier 9 or 10 spell, something only those in the 5th stage could cast.

The only problem that Kayn had to deal with now was the radiation from the nuclear aspect of the missile. Kayn couldn't just snuff that out with his mana without using Extinction Flames, nor was it something tangible the flames could latch onto.

He still had it all contained within a sphere of mana, so without thinking about it too deeply, he simply threw the sphere of radiation into the atmosphere, setting the ball of mana to disperse once it reached outer space.

The citizens of Japan that weren't able to reach an evacuation site or those with the capability to watch the outside world from the safety of their bunkers had their mouths drop as the events occurred.

First, a massive line of lightning shot through the air before the bright light of an explosion filled the sky, only for the light to vanish soon after. The fire from the explosion was then seemingly sucked back into a single point in the air as more explosions occurred only for those explosions to be sucked in as well.

Finally, the once giant ball in the sky completely vanished and they were not able to see anything in the surrounding sky, not even a cloud.

However, as the lightning attack had come from the area near the shrine of Takemikazuchi, the citizens of Japan all loudly shouted and screamed out his name, fervently thanking him for saving them from certain death.

Kayn chuckled as he was once again mistaken for another god of old, but ignored it and flew further into the sky, following the trajectory of the missile to find where it was launched from.

He soon discovered that he was going to have to pass through Earth's atmosphere and enter into the unknown depths of space. This made him quite nervous as he didn't know if he was strong enough to actually be able to survive in space.

On Talgonoth, there were several records of 6th stage mages attempting to fly into the sky and the outer reaches of their planet, but they would all perish as soon as they passed through the planet's atmosphere for unknown reasons.

Kayn hadn't used even half of his mana even though he was stopping a bomb equivalent to a tier 9 or 10 spell, but it was still more than he expected to. While he should be able to at least survive long enough to get back into Earth's atmosphere, he estimated that he might come dangerously low to having no mana once again if he did this.

Carefully considering the risk he was about to take simply for curiosity's sake had him second guessing his choice. However, if that missile was indeed aiming for him and they could somehow predict his movements, it might happen again, but next time he could be in meditation and wouldn't be of the mind to stop it.

Or it could all just be a coincidence and he was overthinking everything, but he wouldn't know unless he could figure out who actually launched that missile.

Some of the temples he wanted to visit next were in heavily populated areas and he had no intention of bringing doom upon the people who lived near them if he was indeed being targeted.

Making up his mind to at least test the waters or more accurately, vacuum of space, he coated his entire body in a barrier made of pure mana and then layered more barriers on top of it, each consisting of a different element, including the deviant elements he knew how to use so far.

The only elements he left out were the extinction related elements as he didn't think they would have any use in this case, not to mention they were extremely taxing on his mana, even after his mana increased in potency.

The odd thing about the extinction related elements that he discovered while testing as he traveled around Earth was that regardless of how much mana his core held or its potency, a standard 5% of his mana was used for every spell.

This made absolutely no sense to Kayn, so he was going to have to address this issue in the future. They may be his strongest elements, but if he ran out of mana from 20 spells, he would rather cast hundreds if not thousands of other spells of various other elements.

Frustrated at his own ineptitude and understanding, he focused that frustration into his determination to explore space, or at least the area inside of Earth's orbit to find the station or satellite that launched the missile.

Fortunately, Kayn didn't actually have to leave the exosphere of the atmosphere to find what he was looking for, so all of his worries were for naught. It was actually pretty hot inside of the exosphere as a contrast to all the movies he watched as a kid where the astronaut would freeze instantly. Though this could be attributed to the sun brightly shining on him from the distance.

There was also no air, but he could create oxygen from nothing but mana and a little could go a long way for his survival, so that affected him very little.

In front of Kayn's floating figure was a massive metal amalgamation with several missile tube openings visible on the side facing Earth. In big letters on the top of the orbital missile base was the acronym UNTA.

Kayn became stupefied as this meant that the group had launched a missile capable of destroying a good portion of Japan and irradiating the rest of it at their own allies. This made Kayn angered as he hated betrayal since that's how his family died.

He didn't know where the UNTA's main base was, but he would definitely find out. In the meantime, he was going to bite back. Not only was he going to destroy the UNTA's orbital stations, he was going to destroy any and all stations that he could find.

The Earth didn't need these floating around as a constant death threat to its people, so he was planning to get rid of them, and that's exactly what he spent the next couple of months doing.

Flying around the greater radius of Earth's exosphere took time for Kayn as he didn't want to use much mana, but in the case that he was running low, he would just go down to a temple and absorb mana from it without absorbing the part he called the inheritance.

All he had to do was not enter the central formation; it wasn't as complicated as one might think. He learned this at Takemikazuchi's temple as he was inside for quite a while. As long as the main formation was active, the mana would continuously replenish inside.

With his job completed, he decided to go back to absorbing the inheritances from temples, adopting a wait and see attitude as to what they would do next.