“Explosives have failed to engage,” cracked a tinny voice from a transceiver, speaking in rapid battle-speak that no mortal could hope to follow.
“No shit,” Snarled the man in a sniper’s crouch, glaring down his sights before caressing the trigger of his deadliest weapon with the most delicate of squeezes. He smiled as his powerful frame effortlessly absorbed even the tiniest of recoils from skewing his shot, before his eyes bulged with dismay.
“The fucking hell, I had that kid dead to rights! How the fuck did he spring back to his feet?”
The woman beside the powerfully built mercenary wearing Shadow-plate and wielding a soul-linked rifle that would never scatter its power over mithril or reflective polymers gave a derisive snort.
“Maybe it’s because you can’t shoot for shit, Bart. Or maybe it’s because this kid isn’t the soft target the shaman swore he was. Him cracking reality and shorting out slave collars and our magno-rail bombs that should have torn him and the bait to puree did sort of give it away.” She then tuned out all distractions and focused on her prey, squeezing the trigger of her rifle the instant she felt triple-perks click into place, her deadly little package slamming that wide-eyed boy’s head right under the lip of his mithril helm.
“Ha! Fucking bulls-eye! Fifty mil is mine, and you shits can split the…”
Her words died off. “No. Fucking. Way.”
Their coms crackled. “Kitten, Bart. All our shielding just went down. What’s the status?”
The jocular humor of just seconds ago was replaced by deathly quiet, when their target suddenly roared.
Kitten exchanged a look with her teammate. “I had that little shit dead to rights.”
“So did eye, Kit. So did I.”
“It was a perfect setup,” she said, glaring down at her target from the force-screen protected sniper’s rest she was perched upon. “He was so caught up staring at those poor fucking saps we used that we got multiple hits on his ass!”
“Yup.” Bart nodded. “Fool was staring at the marks like he actually cared. I got a triple bead on him in the time it took him to do whatever the hell he did. And my bullet should have blasted through his heart, twice over.”
“Report, fuckers!”
Kit smacked her helm. “Shut the fuck up, Horace. We’re trying to figure this… shit!”
Her eyes widened in dismay.
“Report, Kit!”
“The boy’s not even stunned. We had him dead to rights, with multiple snipe-perks in play.”
The sound of a screaming baby could be heard from the ATV.
“Clearly you didn’t, if he’s still walking. Now you got line-of-sight? Quit fucking talking and kill him! We’re ready to shell him if you shitheads can’t even get that much right. But then our cloak is gone, and we’ll have just a minute to grab the body, dump the noisy brat, and clear out before the Velociraptors swarm our ATV!”
Bart cut in with an anxious curse. “Captain, maybe you’d better shell him. He’s coming this way!”
“Impossible. We’ve cloaked the area. And that black tech cost us four hundred K that we’re not getting back without a fucking kill!”
Kit glared and cursed. “Captain’s right. Quit talking and start firing while he’s still disoriented!”
The air rang with the cracks of two focused assassins firing their chosen weapons, light-hearted banter replaced by granite-hard focus, cold-eyed stares zeroing in on their target as they did everything in their power to take him down even though he was weaving and juking with an effortless speed and grace that should have been utterly beyond anyone who wasn’t an Elite Bronze speedster.
“Fuck!” Bart hissed in hyper-speak.
Kit allowed herself a single smile when a quick hot jab of her favorite drug delivered by her implant had time slow to a crawl even as her brain screamed with agony and ecstasy and her heart pounded and she didn’t CARE! She’d live and die for this rush and she’d kill for it as well, just as she had dozens of times before. All the regen pod sessions she needed to claw herself back from burnt-out husk to pristine perfection while savoring one screaming bender and bloodbath after another.
Of course her head-shots had bounced. The target was wearing a fucking mithril helm! She had hit the helm, not the skull, no matter how it had looked at first glance. Black-light was playing tricks on her, just a tiny bit. And the kid was a monster with the heart of a bull. It would take precious seconds for Bart’s body shots to finally take effect. But if her bullet could make him stumble, break his charge, then she’d be the one to get primacy on the kill!
All she needed was that fifty million and she’d be able to freak for a whole DECADE! And she could actually SEE her bullet bursting from the muzzle of her soul-linked baby, tearing through the air to hit not where the boy was but where her guts screamed he was GOING to step. So fast that the air cracked and boomed in slow motion in its passing and she knew better than to gut-shot a berserker after Bart’s fuckup, not when she could cripple him with a single shot to the knee! And the fucker was DOW—
Getting back up with a lurch and no, it was fucking impossible!
Yet she saw the bullet tumbling through the air, bouncing off his knee along with a couple drops of blood from broken skin like his bones were made of mithril and no one had that kind of resistance... NO ONE without a thousand Vitality… MORE than a thousand, and this was absurd and stupid and this was a White-tier child and he was suddenly before her and no he shouldn’t be able to—
Bloodfire Strike!
The words hammered into her brain. Why? How?
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the massive bar of crimson flame that Hyper-Jet painted so fucking clearly. She could SEE That massive twenty foot bar of death roaring through the air and even with her intoxicated mind SCREAMING at her to react, desperately lurching back so fast she could feel her joints burning, muscles ripping, back wrenching as she desperately tried to—
You have been CRITICALLY struck by Unorthodox Heritage Arts!
Bloodfire Strike has been enhanced to 6-fold standard length and damage!
You have suffered CATASTROPHIC damage!
YOU have FAILED to save versus DEATH!
- !!! Goodbye, Kitten >0_0< Thanks for playing !!! -
***
“Kitten!”
A wild-eyed Eric, SEETHING with hate, twisted around to glare at the roaring mercenary stumbling to his feet in armor that flickered and struggled to match the pale sands with the basalt rock underneath, vibro blade whipping around far faster than the Cyber-enhanced M-81 the man had let clang to the ground and it didn’t matter a damned bit even when the snarling fucker’s hand flashed forward, jabbing into Eric with a Piercing Strike attack that FAILED to pierce his mithril, the monstrous force of Bart’s feat-enhanced attack neither straining ribs nor pulling muscles, hurting no worse than his sister jabbing him in the gut.
The man’s eyes bulged in disbelief.
Yet before he could even inhale to say a word, the air was already BLAZING with flame BLEEDING from reality as Eric’s blade screamed through the air as he poured every ounce of hate and fury and willpower into swinging his blade with such force that it was a struggle to move it an inch, for all that it tore through the air at over twice the speed that his foe could manage.
Before cleaving through his foe in a rising slash ripping him open from hip to shoulder, two diagonal halves spraying the ground with viscera and blood as he collapsed in slow motion.
The air, or perhaps the ether, was now ringing with the scream of incoming missiles and Eric’s interface was flooded with messages, even as he ran for dear life.
Because he had absolutely no interest in testing his Physical Resistance against actual artillery fire.
You have catastrophically struck your foe!
FATALITY!
You have slain two highly trained Bronze-tier assassins in mortal combat, using martial techniques and Qi attacks alone.
Eve approves of this battle!
You have gained ONE additional Cultivation level.
Bloodfire Strike is now Rank 20!
Perk feet automatically chosen.
You have successfully infused Power Blow with Bloodfire Strike!
Now, you may transfer a portion of your Might and Quickness into enhancing your Bloodfire Strike directly!
Every 50 points of Strength and Quickness you channel into your blow (which means your swings will be that much slower) will equal a 100% increase in baseline damage!
You may additionally enhance your strike with Burst of Strength!
Eric let the interface messages wash over him, fury and dread quenching whatever rush he would have otherwise gotten from the evolution of an ability he had been on the cusp of understanding, echoing just a tiny fragment of the power he had once used to cleave dreadnoughts in half, in a history that perhaps never was… or had always been. Yet it was an ability he dare not use right now, even as he RACED across sands that held his feet as firm as blacktop, weaving and darting even as the pair of fallen mercenaries and their elite gear were transformed to superheated plasma and shrapnel by shells he sure as shit did not want to be struck by, no matter his resistances.
Yet if there was one boon to the thrumming pulse gun that a desperate crew of mercs was aiming his way, it was that a cannon ideal for taking on abominations wasn’t doing shit against a Contender with Quickness so far beyond their own.
Fast enough that the EM Pulse cannon mounted to the reinforced AFV that was more mechanized tank than transport was unable to get any lock on him at all as three hundred yards became a hundred and then he was right there, able to hear the tiny voices screaming orders to one another inside as a coldly smiling Eric leaped on top of his target, fists blazing with transcendent FURY!
When a distant mother’s despairing wail and the feedback of a baby’s cry inside reminded him of the stakes of this battle.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Fortunately, the automated machine gun that whirled to lock on him was effortless to tear off and plop in his storage. And that was the moment he realized he was being an idiot.
You have successfully placed 2 sniper bullets currently lodged in your abdominal wall into your Extradimensional Storage Space.
Enemy perks have been successfully neutralized.
Unified Restoration healing complete. Penalties have been negated.
A speaker whined to life, the baby’s cries magnified a hundred-fold over what his exquisite perception could already make out through the thick armor.
“Get off our vehicle, asshole, or we kill the kid.”
Eric flashed a mirthless smile as the ground rumbled and shook beneath them and they began to rise into the sky.
“I have a counter offer for you. Give me the child unharmed and get out of the AFV. I’ll let you assholes walk. You’ll leave your guns behind but I’ll let you keep your knives. That is, if you don’t want my World Eater to fucking swallow you ehole and grind you all to fucking pulp!”
“Captain, readings are spiking! We’re gaining altitude! Fuck… the kid’s not bluffing!”
“Shut the fuck up, idiot!” Hissed the other man.
Eric held back a smile. Heart pounding, knowing all too well just how fragile a child’s life was. And being exposed to this air… he didn’t dare fuck it up.
“Sorry, asshole, that’s not going to work for us.”
“Then you can die,” Eric said. “Because without the AFV taking everyone home, we both know that the family you were so willing to sacrifice to put me down will be a past tense anyway. And at that point, why the hell shouldn’t I sacrifice you to my revenant’s gut? And don’t worry. Since my revenant obeys my every command, I’ll make sure your deaths are agonizingly slow.”
“Fucking abomination!”
Eric chuckled coldly at that, knocking on the hyper-polymer alloy of the AFV. “So says the ASSHOLES who rigged an innocent family who did NOTHING to you with explosives.”
“Well then, I guess were at an impasse, kid,” sneered the man on the other end of the speaker. “Because sure as shit, we’re not going to stand for any mock trial in a backwater world, judged for taking out trash that any fool knows has a three year life expectancy. Tops.”
“Ah. Just making use of expendable resources. No strain to your conscience at all. Is that it?”
“Exactly.”
Eric clenched his jaw. “So. How much am I worth?”
“That’s the beauty of it. You’re worth nothing at all.” The man paused for a long tense moment. Eric could hear Quilly sobbing and, unexpectedly, what sounded like a female voice cooing even as Quilly’s mother and family screamed and sobbed, some distanced away.
Eric felt a spike of worry. Pretty sure that Kelly’s family was now in dire shape, and if things didn’t change soon…
“A hundred million.”
“Sorry?”
“I said, asshole, that the Bloodtear faction most definitely did NOT offer us a hundred million to take out a target they specifically said not to touch. The uptick on my credit balance is pure coincidence. I was assured of that. You get what I’m saying, kid?”
Eric began to tremble with rage. “Those fuckers.”
This earned a cold chuckle. “No oath or pact was violated. You understand? We were specifically asked not to come for you. So there’s no one to blame but ourselves. Certainly not a trio of shamans who hate Blue Faction to a degree you can’t even fathom.”
“So, I take it that another wing of your operation is going after Blue?” He said the words quietly, like an afterthought, even as his mind raced, mentally typing frantic notes to Caliban.
Surprisingly, the man snorted.
“Hell no, kid. You think we’re stupid? That we’d fuck with the most powerful faction here on Terra? Nope. No way in hell. That’s where we draw the line.”
Eric’s eyes widened, suddenly getting it. “Fuck. You have a Blue Corp Card! That’s how the goblins ‘accidentally’ flipped you a hundred million for no fucking reason at all. Your corp or faction has too much riding to risk antagonizing them directly!”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that statement. But since you have no formal ties to Blue Corp…”
“Are you stupid?” Eric said disbelievingly. “You didn’t even ask why the shamans were so eager NOT to see me dead?”
“Nah, we know who you are. A pawn of Caliban’s business partner. Two steps removed. Removing you is a warning to your prince. Hell, both princes. Without crossing the line. Goblins save face, we get rich. Blue Corp suffers no stain. It’s pure business, kid. That’s all. And hell, it actually works in your favor! The hundred million? Let’s just say we’d be more than happy to sacrifice that as a penalty fee for our… ahem… misunderstanding.”
Eric chuckled coldly. “Unless you’re going to tell me that you actually carry a Blue-Corp certified fund transfer module on you, there’s no way in hell I’m going to believe that—”
“What, are you kidding, kid? Of course I do. What kind of amateur outfit do you think I run? We’re Bronze-tier elites. We deal in all currency and denominations. Ogre Kin, Orc Federation, United Elites… that’s the human faction for those of you not born in a divergent instance… everything except Bloodtear, because I refuse to sign their fucking contracts.”
Eric’s jaw clenched. “You’re that sophisticated… that enlightened… and you were still willing to…” To took a deep breath, steadying his trembling breath. He could not lose his cool. There was a child on the line, and he needed these assholes to think that they were in the clear.
“Fine!” He snapped. “You hand me the baby. Fucking Carefully! I give you my card. Should the balance spike up a 100 million by purest fucking coincidence? Well I’m certainly NOT promising anything. Certainly not like we all walk away like nothing ever happened… you get what I’m saying, captain?”
“Damn right I do, kid.”
Eric whispered a handful of words while the captain gave a rueful chuckle that betrayed just a hint of nervousness.
Why the hell weren’t Caliban or Kelly answering his messages?
Then he blinked. Finally getting it. He was in a wild hot zone. Of course they weren’t getting through!
“But then how the fuck did Elonia’s messages get through?” he whispered to himself.
“Sorry? What was that?”
“Nothing,” Eric snapped as the howling winds died down right over Eric’s head, a swirling breeze of fresh air surrounding him, such that when glaring eyes gazed up from the now open hatch, they flinched before Eric’s Mithril blade now crackling with Higher Order concepts. Because he was not fucking around, the merc revealing himself stumbled for a half second as a child cried out, before slowly raising a shrieking Quilly who smelled of soiled diapers, sweat, and terror.
Eric’s heart swelled in his throat as he gathered the child up in his arms, the mithril blade in his hand disappearing from sight as he gently soothed Quilly and passed down the card. Carefully not showing the baby too much affection or vulnerability when cold-blooded mercs tamed only by fear were just feet away.
“Alright, kid. We’re in business. I still need your pin, and you mind having your pet lower us a bit?”
Eric froze. Wondering if the captain knew exactly how steep a price he would be paying for those words. “No problem on the decline. But I’ve worked with quality mercs before. They were more than happy to transfer a larger sum than this, and they didn’t require any pin from me, whatsoever. So either you plan on fucking me over, or you’re actually stupid enough to try and take on a Contender in the middle of a monster surge, with over 400 Bronze-tier Velociraptors at his beck and call.” Eric said, carefully adjusting Quilly’s swaddling, and more than surprised to find her sobs easing, now gazing up at him with fascinated eyes the color of a summer sky.
The captain barked a nervous laugh. “I guess we have sort of played the fool today… and of course you’re right. We don’t actually need your pin. It just makes things easier, seeing as we’re right now cut off from all… but never mind. I think I know how to backdoor a certain exchange between friends… just sit tight.”
“Go to sleep,” Eric whispered, and by sheerest coincidence, Quilly did just that, a baby pack near instantly forming, thanks to Flesh Sculptor and a spare veloci kill in his es space. Moment’s later, she was snug in a fluff lined baby carrier securely strapped to his back, and thank goodness his inertia perk extended to everything he was carrying, so the poor dear wouldn’t be critically injured if Eric had to move suddenly… at whatever speed, for whatever reason.
“Alright, it looks like we’re in business!” The merc in charge said with a strained chuckle as the AFV jostled upon making contact with the naked ground once more, Wormy II slipping under the basalt waves that flowed like water for it alone.
For all intents and purposes… Eric’s prey should now feel free as birds.
Eric’s jaw clenched, hand on the hilt of the second mithril blade with an affinity for Wind that he had striven so hard to master during this perilous hunt, yet it seemed that such would not be needed. A trembling hand passing up the card through the hatch, which Eric took, before closing his eyes and accessing his interface.
“Just by random chance, I think you’ll find your card up a mysterious 100 million credits.”
Eric smirked, the card getting a green light with his VIP interface status. “I think you’re right. Strange, how that worked out.”
This earned a strained laugh. “So, we good?”
“Sure, we’re good.”
Eric then hopped off the ACV and sauntered over toward the family that had been tied up and left to die of either exposure or EM pulse explosives.
His heart was pounding. Breaking before the despairing thousand yard stare of the mother, Kelly in tears, still struggling against her bonds, Megan having collapsed, face and skin covered in boils, the father grimly holding on, as if praying for a miracle.
And he couldn’t deny the look of undisguised hope and joy he saw in their eyes when Kelly’s hawk-like vision zeroed in on him… her exhausted mother crying with either anguish or tears of joy.
Certainly, 500+ Perception was clued in on the combat-speak conversation the surviving mercenaries were uttering in the bowels of their tank.
Though Eric’s smile did curl delightfully when his danger sense began to tingle once more.
“I got a lock on that cocky ass motherfucker. Just say when, Captain.”
“Fucker just cost me a hundred mil and two of my finest. Now send him into orb—”
And with a silent command the mercenary’s voices broke off in desperate screams when a titan wyrm burst from the ground all around them, fifty foot wide tri-fold jaws snapping shut even as it exploded upwards, soaring into the heavens as a Bronze-tier EM Pulse cannon blasted against the sides of their cage to absolutely no effect at all, Tier-II resilience utterly beyond any high-end magitech so far brought to earth, save perhaps for X-class Hyperion artillery shells.
Which, come to think of it, hadn’t done shit either to his latest Underlord.
Eric broke off eye contact with his friends just long enough to appreciate Wormy soaring so absurdly high, imagining he could hear the desperate shrieks and doomed wales of those backstabbing, piece-of-shit mercs.
“I love it when a plan comes together.”
Eric couldn’t quite wipe the grin off his face when he made his way to the panicked family desperately sobbing and begging and crying out for help. Only for their cries to be replaced by awed curses when Wormy’s massive frame tore through the air to plunge right into the ground as if it were mist.
“Holy fuck! Did I just see… Ernest! Oh thank god you’re here!” Kelly sobbed. “Please! Cut us down, please!”
With slow, gentle movements, considering the package he held, Eric cut them all free, being extremely careful around the EM pulse minds that he claimed with a touch, and the neck collars which he immediately put into storage. And much to his relief, all it took was a few sips of one of his very few precious healing potions that he refused to worry about using to quickly restore what would have been a handful of crippling injuries, not that long ago.
“My baby. You saved my baby!”
Eric’s heart swelled at the sight of Quilly cooing happily in her mother’s arms once more.
Kelly gave him an awed look as she held her sister close, eyes glittering with warmth, gratitude, and so much more.
“Ernest, thank you!” She smiled through her tears. “I thought we were goners, and all I could feel was pain and despair and fury and when those assholes mocked us, said the last thing I’d see was my boyfriend’s confused eyes before they blew the top of his skull off…” Her grateful demeanor flashed with rage that made her exhausted sister whimper, life-threatening mana radiation burns reduced, but not completely eliminated, by the potion Eric had given them.
“Sorry, Megan,” Kelly whispered, tenderly holding her whimpering sister as they quickly made their way to Eric’s Titan Wyrm. “Point is, when I saw their fancy tank get snapped up by this wonderful monster here, I felt so fucking GLAD that they were going to savor at least a few seconds going through the same terror they put us all through for hours!”
Eric lurched at that, eyes filled with sudden horror. “DID you say hours?”
“Yup. I did. And what makes it worse was that they slathered our faces and arms with cream that they said would protect us, a little bit, from the mana radiation… but they didn’t care to protect us completely, didn’t care enough not to severe something important in our tongues so they could do more than flop like a dead fish in our mouth and that was so HORRIBLE! Feeling like I was on the border of choking for fucking hours!” She sobbed, tenderly rocking her sister as they stepped where Eric directed, protected in a graceful swirl of calm soothing air no matter the swirling sand storm all around them. And it said something they not a single one of them seemed bothered when they gently rose in the air, Eric directing them all to cushioned seats made of bone and leather, including straps so comfortable that they could sleep right on them, before they began racing across the desert flatlands as easily effortlessly as coasting through a dream.
Eric gently cupped Kelly’s cheek. “I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart, that those assholes used the relationship they thought we had, taking advantage of the desperate power nap I took that I guess was more like six hours, to set up a trap that almost worked.”
Kelly gulped, before clasping Eric’s tender hand and leaning against it, her parents not saying a word. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. All you did was save our lives from terror dino birds trying to kill us.”
Eric frowned thoughtfully, before nodding to himself. “So, Kelly...”
“Yes, hero?”
He smirked at that. “How’d you like to level up?”