Chapter 90: Mass Extinction.

The caves around us were rather different from those of the Tutorial.

For one, the lifeforms that surrounded us were far less potent than those I was now used to. On average at least.

The spawn of the Kaiju waiting topside were hilariously overpowered when compared to their local competition. Granted, that was mainly due to them having lopsided builds that favored speed above all else, but it still meant that they were terrifyingly effective when hunting.

Then, there was the sudden and telling change in atmosphere.

I hadn’t been proficient enough to tell the difference between the Labyrinth’s veil and the veil of the earths we travelled to before merging all my abilities again, but the difference had become rather stark now that I had eyes to see it.

It was as if the barrier between reality and unreality was somehow thinner back in the Tutorial. More porous. In a way that did not allow Intruders to waltz through without care while still suffusing the tunnels with excess ambient Psy.

‘To make the acquisition of new levels and abilities easier, I’d reckon. It is supposed to be a space for training after all. I wonder if I could do something similar?’

I tried searching possible futures for the answer, but the feedback I received was less than encouraging.

I could fill an area with Psy, as I had before. But I could not stop random Intruders from popping out of thin air while I did so. All while the Intruders bound to me would remain somewhat wild. Like a pack of hungry bloodhounds set loose on a bunch of unsuspecting rabbits.

Case in point, the caverns we found ourselves in kept shaking every now and then. A natural consequence of the bloodbath taking place in the skies above Dusty and Slab’s world.

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t simply [Dominate] all of them into killing themselves.” Slab grumbled.

His massive feet kicking away pebbles as we walked with impunity.

“I was planning on doing that in the beginning.” I told him truthfully. “But that last fight with Mr. Seahorse didn’t exactly leave a good taste in my mouth. Case in point, I learned that most, if not all, of my greatest strengths mean jack (Gnome) if I can’t get a read on a target using the cobweb. My mind control was useless in that fight and it reminded me of how lopsided the abilities actually are. I mean, sure, even the weakest of them is leagues above what we should have at this stage, but we’re all being forced to play on bigger stages. Getting a few more levels in between now and my fight with the next opponent might very well be the difference between life and death.”

“Brother, you worry too much.” Dusty spoke up.

Wrapping an arm around mine own as she did so.

“The Blood Queen is going to die either way. And our clan is safe.”

“Actually, the whole world is safe.” I added. “I’m sharing memories through my presence with people around this earth. They know to stay still while the rest of the Kaiju are being dealt with. There is the issue of some of them having…”

I chose my next words carefully.

“Interesting reactions to the news. But we expected that, so its fine.”

“How is father taking it?” Slab asked. A hint of worry on his tone.

I sought out the relevant strands in the cobweb. Following the quivers in my senses a kilometer or so. Until I reached the village the siblings had grown up in.

I saw a group. Maybe a couple of hundred in total. Kneeling in front of an Intruder that had recently manifested. A Solomonite Inquisitor. The same one that had appeared to Henry and later, my parents.

The toad-faced one.

“And the shepherd foretold! Of the wickedness of gnomes! And he bade his flock follow and hang on his words! Fear and hate the gnome! Crush them wherever and whenever they might be found! For all the evils of the world are endorsed and committed, by gnomes! A gnome knows no love, no empathy, no common humanity that separates us from simple beasts! They taint the air we breathe and the earth we walk with their very existence! Their abominable cruelty! They will stab you in the back! They will enslave you! They will torture you! They will eat your children!”

Huh.

I mean; he’s not wrong. Everything he’s saying is objectively true.

I had been in plenty of gnomish heads, and it always astounded me how little regard they had for each other. Never mind other forms of life.

Granted, they had been System made copies, but Peachy had confirmed that they had an abysmal reputation outside of the Tutorial as well.

Hazimon the Dragon, as uptight as he had been, agreed that they should generally be killed on sight too, barring a few exceptions. Though he did warn about the stronger families having 8th Tier champions of their own to ward off incursions.

I mean, (Gnome). Even an inhuman abomination like the Seeking Drake thought gnomes were a different breed of evil.

He may have meant it as a compliment, but the point still stood.

And yet…

The look on father-in-law’s face was…

Concerning.

I was sharing the memories of my current point of view, so he knew about the Kaiju’s dying on the surface already. He also knew I did it and that I was dating his daughter, since I figured I might as well save time on our explanations.

‘I hope this doesn’t turn into anything weird.’ I thought inwardly. ‘It’s going to be hard enough to explain my situation to my own parents. I don’t need father-in-law to be put off by what my minions say.’

“Strike them down! Good people of earth! For to spare a gnome is to reject all that is good and righteous and holy! To let a gnome live is to share in the crime of their existence! For which the punishment is death!”

“Death!” He cried out.

Raising his arms into the stale cavern air as his face donned an expression of blinding ecstasy.

“Death to the gnomes!”

“Death to the gnomes!” The crowd behind him called out.

“Death to the gnomes!”

“Death to the gnomes!”

“Death to all the gnomes! Wherever they might be found!”

“Glory to our righteous protector! Our gentle father! Our prophet and our king! Glory to Solomon Carter! The Tyrant in the Coffin! The Master of all masters! Glory to him and his bride! Dusty! Let all gather for their wedding and may their children be strong and plentiful!”

Mr. Finn McMullen burst into tears.

I could empathize.

I was about to burst into tears too.

“He’s taking it well.” I said.

Not quite revealing the whole truth of the matter.

At the same time, I turned my attention to the speaker.

‘Shut the (Gnome) up!’ I commanded him. Feeling his six pairs of wings shake at my command.

‘I’m not looking to get married yet! Make yourself useful now! Go fight the Blood Queen upstairs!’

The Intruder left with a hurried apology.

Snapping his own form so that it imploded with a rush of air. Like a popped bubble.

He appeared again on the surface. Blazing cane-sword in hand as he recklessly charged a swarm of fleeing super-mosquitoes.

The oxygen around him catching fire, just as the bugs had.

Their wings disintegrating as a blast of [Pyrokinesis] swept them up like a tsunami. Creating a small star under the burning skies above.

‘All that and still no new levels.’ I thought sourly.

Searching my cobweb once more for any hint of progress as I actively tried to more accurately manipulate my presence over the Kaiju and their spawn across the earth. Bearing down on them in a way that was painful and suffocating, without actually killing them outright.

‘Though perhaps it was to be expected. Most young masters that Sarcophagus Sully met nearly had heart attacks when they saw how strong he was at a relatively young age. This slowdown just means I need to practice more.’

“Mittens is here! Mittens appears! Mittens thinks the end of the giants draws near!” Mittens called out from the side.

“Well, what can I say. Mittens is right.” I told him in turn.

“And good riddance to them.” Dusty followed up. Making a face that was half a snarl and half a sigh of relief.

“They have spread destruction wherever they went for too many generations as is. It’s only right that our children don’t have to go through that. I want them to be raised on the surface. Under an open sky. Where they can play and run and thrive without having to worry about food or water or cave ins. There has been too much of that already.”

My mind stopped a moment when I noticed the way Dusty had worded her sentences. Specifically, the part about ‘our’ children.

Normally, I would have imagined it was a little soon for that. Even the futures I had seen showed that step taking place much later down the line.

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However, Dusty did not seem to think so.

Neither did father-in-law for that matter.

‘I guess that’s another conversation we’ll be having soon.’ I mused.

Searching the near futures for the best way in which to present my arguments.

Frustratingly, the strands of thoughts and possibilities in the far off future kept fraying and becoming entangled. Just as they had with the Dragon.

All while havoc reigned above our heads.

----------------------------------------

‘No. No. No!’

‘It cannot end like this! My swarm cannot end like this!’

I launched myself at another monster. Feeling my stinger rend apart the human that was not a human.

Yet the monster did not bleed.

Instead, it disappeared with a small burst of collapsing air.

My mouth failing to suck up even a droplet of blood.

At the same time, five more assailed me from the sides and from the rear. Coming up from below me and descending from above.

My compound eyes catching brief glimpses as I twisted in the air to avoid them.

‘No. They are not human. They merely look human in shape. Humans would never attack while having flayed skin. Humans could never gather in such numbers. This is something else! These are something completely different!’

Another wave swept over me then. Stopping my wings mid-beat and sending me careening toward the earth.

It was a presence.

A blast of concentrated lifeforce that ate away at my mind and senses! Biting and biting and biting while stepping on me with a billion, billion feet!

I felt my connection to my children falter. Their cries drowned out by the unbearable pressure weighing me down.

Yet I knew they were dying.

I could still track tens of thousands of bodies falling. Wings shorn or burned.

Legs crushed and torn-off by more of the monsters.

Then, for a brief second, I caught sight of the sky above.

Seeing the very clouds gathering into faces that sneered and snickered. Wearing human expressions as if the entire species were mocking me and mine.

‘How dare they! How could they even think of doing such a thing! The nerve of those weaklings!’

The rage was potent. Empowering me to counter the charge and wave my stinger back and forth. Skewering and bisecting more and more and more monsters into rushes of wild, tainted air.

I then charged at one of the clouds. Willing myself to disperse whatever perversion was at play. Vowing that I would reap a bloody vengeance on those fools as soon as this farce was done.

The eyes of the cloud tracked me. As a human would.

Then, the mouth started laughing. The eyes reeling back as if to mock me further.

In a way that reminded me of the man in the white coat. He who had tormented me when I was young and small and weak. Back before me and the others broke free and tore down the human world. Back before I tore down their monuments and my children feasted on their blood.

Those eyes sparked a fury with me that burned like a thousand suns.

All while the mouth parts of the cloud deformed and spread.

Opening wide as if to swallow me.

‘The insult! The hubris! The audacity!’

I willed my wings to beat faster. Harder. Splitting the sky apart with the same speed that had brought down the human’s metal birds.

Then the mouth bit down. Impossibly fast.

And I felt my wings cracking. Alongside my shell.

My own ichor leaking out in the places where my armor had been shattered.

I tried to cry out. To wail in rage and indignation. But my mouth was silenced as something made its way out of my throat. Claws appearing out of nowhere and ripping into my body from the inside out.

Loud, almost deafening scraping sounds drowning out my screams as I began to drown in my own blood.

I tried to beat my wings, only to feel hands, human hands, clasping the stumps.

Little circular blades etching their own names on my body, as the humans were known to do on their own nests.

My eyes focused on my sides as the cloud began to chew and saw hundreds of children. Human children. All smiling at me.

Their touch bringing stinging agony that mounted and mounted and mounted. Overpowering my thoughts until all I could think of was the pain.

‘What have they done! What is this! What horror have they unleashed! Monsters! Monsters! Monsters one and all!’

The humans had always called upon their monsters to fight me before, but the others had been slow and clumsy, and they had had thin shells of metal that crumpled at the slightest touch.

This, this was not it. This was worse!

Another glance saw that more clouds were changing. The very heaving turning red and purple and gold as eyes loomed overhead and within my spirit. Within my mind!

‘What have they done! What have they done! What have they done! How could they let loose something this vile!’

The cloud-turned mouth chewed again and again my shell cracked. My muscles and sinews unable to heal as they had before. My very blood boiling within the remains of my shell as I began hearing voices whisper taunts and curses from within myself.

Then, a voice rang in my ears. As my mind conjured images of human eyes.

Cold, grey eyes.

Devoid of the curiosity or the mania the man in the white coat had had.

His eyes had been filled with malicious glee. Seeing me as a tool to be bred and disposed off.

These eyes saw me as a bug. As less than I had been before.

As less than a thing.

‘I. Control.’ The voice said.

And I could swear my insides churned and boiled with every intonation.

All while the claws kept cutting and cutting and cutting.

One of my eyes, the right one, popped out. A monster erupting from it in a shower of my own gore. Before it too began savaging me with its talons.

‘I. Control.’

I tried to break free, but found my legs turned to stone. Faint giggles coming from them too, before they too burst open and more bloodied monsters made their way out. Crawling over me like maggots!

Bringing more and more and more and more and more pain than before!

‘Children! To me!’

I called out. Letting my essence waft over the air with my voice and my will.

But I had precious few children left and the ones that remained did not move to save me. Purple lighting crackling against their bodies until they broke open from the inside out. Their legs twisting and deforming themselves until they resembled human limbs.

‘I. Control.’

All while new heads grew from gnarled pustules near their necks. Rearing up with human-like faces and smiling wickedly at me!

“Glory to the Shepherd!” They called at once.

With thousands of voices inside hundreds of bodies. Their carcasses remaining aloft despite their wings no longer beating against the air. As if they too were being chewed by clouds with teeth.

“Glory to his avatar! Your time has come to burn! May your spirit never waver as he does return!”

‘Return? Who?’

The mouth chewed again, but my screams were silenced by the scraping and tearing of my insides.

‘I. Control.’

I thought of the man in the white coat. I recalled his gleeful smile as he prodded me with the lighting stick and the hot stick and the foul smells that made me drowsy. I recalled his words, his pleas as I escaped.

I recalled how sweet his blood had tasted.

‘His blood, his blood…’

Yes.

I could taste it still. It called to me. From beyond his death. From beyond the centuries.

‘Or, is that my blood I taste?’

The mouth closed on me one last time, and all light faded from the world. Taking the pain and the agony and the memories with it.

‘I. Control.’

----------------------------------------

I ran and ran and ran. Feeling the earth shake and tremble beneath my hooves. Hills and the remains of human nests shattering as I made my way through the land.

‘Have to keep running. Have to escape. Have to get away. The monsters, the monsters, the monsters!’

The monsters were still raining from the sky.

Millions of them!

Taking the shape of human children!

‘How are there so many of them!? Where did they all come from!? What is going on!?’

It was impossible. Too surreal.

The humans had never been this numerous. Not even when me and my brothers and sisters first escaped from the man in the white coat.

They never disappeared when I hit them either.

‘I. Control.’ The voice called out again, but I did my best to ignore it.

Even as I felt the sounds echo and bounce inside my skull. Refusing to leave.

‘I. Control.’

Humans were supposed to burst open like fruits. Turning into red spots when I came near and toppled their nests and their iron shells into the ground.

That is how things went. I ran and I hit them and they died. And then they ran and I chased them and I hit them and they died in greater numbers. That was how it had always been! How did this happen!?

“Righteous father! Loose your fury! There are gnomes to kill today! Crush their spirits! Bind their bodies! Help us find a better way!”

The children were singing again. They were always singing now. When they should be running. When they should be screaming and pleading and wailing! What had changed!?

‘Where did they all come from!? What were they even talking about!? What are gnomes!?’

The children did not answer, but kept singing.

“Gentle father! Raise your banners! There are foes we have to slay! Scourge their flesh! Sunder their bones! Burn their horrid sins away!”

“Wizened father! Font of mercy! Call upon us on this day! We shall tear down, all their falsehoods! Make the unbelievers pay!”

“Humble father! In the Coffin! Let our fury blaze away! Singe their flesh and gouge their eyes out! Let no faithful go astray!”

‘They are mad.’ I decided.

‘They must be like us. Bred by another man in a white coat to resemble humans. There must be a leader birthing them. Like how my sister birth their hordes. Yes. That must be it. There no other explanation.’

But this new brother was not like me or my sisters. This new brother was too much like the man in the white coat himself. Needlessly cruel and capricious.

Why else would he have sent his children after me?

‘I. Control.’ He repeated, as if to hammer home the point.

‘I must escape. I cannot fly. I cannot harm him. I must escape and warn the other!’

Lighting flashed in the skies above. Too fast and too strong. Much faster and stronger than normal, while also being too odd in color.

‘I. Control.’ Came the voice from within the shining beams.

They stayed too. Refusing to leave as lighting should have done.

Ripping and churning vast swathes of earth where they had struck as the beams of energy made their way over to me.

Running across the fields as moans of agony and cries of human laughter erupted from within the thin line of crackling electricity!

‘I. Control.’

I kept running. Never daring to look back.

Until I stumbled.

My mind went blank as I did so. My eyes turning down in sheer astonishment.

‘How? I have never fallen. Never. Not even when I was young and weak and the man in the white coat hit me with the lighting stick. So, how?’

The question was soon answered, as I saw human hands made of stone gripping my hind legs.

The limbs they were attached to separating themselves from the rest of the earth as faces grew on their outer shells. Flanked by the familiar symbols the humans but on their bigger nests.

‘And hooks. They have hooks. And, is that, blood?’

The stone men had conical heads, with hooks that seemed to point inwards instead of outwards. Effigies of dead animals decorated their torsos while the orifices they had for eyes and mouths kept weeping streams of blood.

Blackened blood, that turned golden as it fell unto the torn-up grass.

‘I. Control.’

I felt the hands of the giants squeeze.

‘I. Control.’

I felt the bones in my legs cracking.

‘I. Control.’

I felt the stinging of thousands of blades as the winged children and the flayed winged men found my back.

‘I. Control.’

I screamed. While the voice continued to drone on and on.

‘I. Control.’

‘I. Control.’

‘I. Control.’

----------------------------------------

I swam towards the shore. Trying to outpace the new things in the water.

The evil, twisted things that pretended to be human.

‘I. Control.’

They said at once. Pure energy turning the waters the color of gold and growing slits on the tentacles that came afterwards.

From those slits came eyes. Resembling those of humans. But with a cold indifference that made the ghost of the man in the white coat look warm and caring by comparison.

‘No.’ I thought. ‘I will not die this day. I cannot die this day! Not until I’ve avenged my mate! My children! My poor, sweet children!’

It, whatever it was, was too strong for me or for two of even three of us.

My brothers and sisters would have to know. They had to be made aware.

If they weren’t the thing would find them in land eventually and it would eat them too.

‘I. Control.’

I swam harder. Hoping with all my might that the bleeding would not slow me down. That it was not too late.

‘I. Control.’

My fins kicked the water even as I leaked lifeforce. Even as my wounds refused to heal and the voice threatened to overtake my mind.

‘I. Control.’

I was so close. I was so, very, very close to the shore.

‘I will find my brothers. I will find my sisters. We will not die in this manner! We will not be snuffed out. We will not…’

I felt the world turning upside down. The water around me jumping off from the rest of the sea so that I floated helplessly in the air.

I screamed. Trying to turn.

My serpentine body flailing against nothing at all as I saw gold-tinted lighting erupting from the bottom of the sea.

The waves themselves churning and deforming until they changed into a shape resembling a human face. Its eyes freezing over to create points of contrast amidst the storm.

‘I. Control.’ It mouthed, as the words rang inside my skull. Threatening to explode inside the bone.

Then, the face’s teeth turned to ice as well and its lips opened as if to swallow me. All while I felt droplets of rain striking my scaly hide.

My nose twitching with the familiar smells.

‘Blood.’ I thought. ‘Human blood. But so much of it. Raining from the sky. How?’

Lighting struck me and burned a hole into my stomach that did not heal. Bits of half-digested whale leaking out from my exposed intestines.

All while the face rose higher and higher. Its teeth sharpening into fangs.

‘Ah, so that is it.’ I realized. ‘They finally did it. They finally destroyed the world. Despite all our best efforts.’

The notion was, strangely comforting now that it was all over.

It meant that everything had been in vain. That I could finally let go without feeling guilty.

‘I. Control.’ The voice called out.

‘I. Control.’

‘I. Control.’

‘I. Control.’

Then, the teeth reached me, and the madness came to an end.