Justin watched in horror as the ground opened up beneath them. Before any of them could react, writhing green tentacles bearing blades and odorous vents of all kinds and shapes erupted from below. In lightning-fast motions they latched onto the closest member of their party, Heinrich, and pulled him above the pit like prey to be slaughtered.
“Heinrich! No!”
“Elrissa, stay back!”
Justin grabbed his comrade, stopping them from jumping into the pit of tentacles, a certain way to die. Along with Justin, every member of their team cried out in disbelief as Heinrich screamed under the weight of the limbic horror. In the next moment, the man’s body was ripped in two, crumbling in on itself and snapping apart like dry timber. A sickening series of crunches and squelches resounded over the rocky desert as his body was divided and brought under the cracks in the earth to be consumed.
Justin nearly felt physically sick as his next thought wasn’t to comfort his comrade who had just been made a widow, but to prepare for their only path of survival. A series of possible paths ran through his head but only one seemed viable.
“Markus! Get Elrissa to the rear! Jade, with me!”
The Seventh Heaven members were all rocked from their daze as soon as Justin started giving orders. Cloaked in a garb of shadows, the other man in the desert, Markus, pulled the traumatised sniper back while Jade set up alongside Justin.
“I need you to buy time! Two minutes, at maximum. Right now we’re at a disadvantage, but the Herald has yet to fully emerge. We need something potent enough to force it on the defensive. Are you with me?”
Justin made a motion that indicated he was talking about the skill screen in front of him that was only visible to himself, but Jade’s attention was instead focused on the back of their group where Elrissa was entering a catatonic state.
“Jade!”
“Y-ah, Justin?”
The woman seemed rattled, watching her closest friend go through so much in mere moments, but Justin couldn’t afford to act the same way.
“Jade, are you with me?”
Her attention was finally directed back to him. She nodded.
“Then keep it busy for a couple of minutes, I need to be able to focus in order to charge up my skill. Do you understand?”
“Yes!”
The Courser nodded and quickly lunged from her previous point. Bringing the great hammer that was nearly as tall as her and more than several times her weight around and over her head, she slammed down on one of the tentacles.
With a loud boom against it squirmed, temporarily thwarted in its attempt to drag the main body of the monster out from the crack in the earth.
“Don’t let it get out!”
Justin shouted over the roars from below. At the same time his fingers flew across the screen in front of him, splitting all of his remaining free points into his handling ability.
[Level: 98]
[Grade: C]
[Status Effects: Courage Sap, Inhospitality, Mind Poisoning, Decay, Ictus…]
[Main Class: Pugilist]
[Class Rank: Psionic Swordsman]
[Race: Type-L Enhanced Human]
[Attributes: 242 STR, 97 DEX, 384 END, 101 PER, 493 INT, 79 CHA, MYS 8]
[Free Attribute Points: 0]
[Health: 82,174 / 87,323]
[Stamina: 89,449 / 97,243]
[CEL: 309 / 380]
A wreath of bright energy instantly began to swirl through the environment, coalescing into a blade before Justin. As the energy grew brighter and concentrated further, it began forming into the shape of a massive curved sword.
Justin glanced at the fight going on before him.
‘Damn it! Not yet!’
As if their attempts to halt its progress had all been in vain, the herald began to emerge steadily from the fissure in the earth, tearing open the desert’s ground like a chick bursting through eggshell.
In mere moments, it had fully emerged, indifferent to the suppressing attacks of their Courser who was specialized in speed and the Cleric wrapped in shadows.
Its twisting, tumorous body was a bloated mass of pustules and rotting flesh. Tentacles and splayed limbs, hundreds of them from what Justin could guess, fanned out from the singular hulking body mass. The abomination resembled the unborn form of a fetus, drenched in rotting fluids and draped in the remnants of a saccule from its infested mother.
Along with Justin, Markus instantly recognized the rising threat and shouted out one of his clerical abilities for the sake of the others gathered.
“[Eyes of Ambush]!”
[Cleric Ability Recognized. Difference in Grades Detected. Information Revealed Has Been Reduced…]
[Rotting Herald of the Desolate God]
[Race: Prophetic Scourge (Juvenile)]
[Level: 127]
[Grade: C+]
[Health: 1,190,290 / 1,283,300]
The results of the inspection confirmed everyone’s suspicions, but the implication of the creature’s race made the pits in their stomach’s drop even further.
‘This is even worse than the briefings predicted. We need to finish this as soon as possible.’
All the concentration Justin could spare was being focused on gathering the energy in his hands, hopefully to deliver a blow that would allow them to regroup without the festering horror on their tail. But the loss of their most defense-oriented teammate was still felt, even if Justin had to hold off on mourning him as a friend.
BEEP!
“Radio Transmission Detected. Intercept?”
“Not now!”
Justin gritted his teeth as a voice inside his mechanical suit warned him of another party’s existence approaching the desert.
The people living on this planet hadn’t been made aware of their entry, just as they hadn’t been aware of the herald lurking underneath their continental plates. But whatever local government existed in this region had likely caught wind of their conflict by now and was coming to intercept.
The scans had shown their technological progress was still far behind Justin’s own team, so he didn’t fear conflict with them, but that wasn’t the point.
‘If the natives start to interfere now, casualties will skyrocket and the daemon’s abilities will get out of hand. Our mission was to prevent its potential contact with the planet’s inhabitants, but now that we know its capabilities... ’
The casualties would be even worse. The ship’s readings were wrong, and things would quickly devolve into an even more dire state if the others arrived before it was defeated.
Justin began to sweat buckets underneath the visor of his mechanical suit as he attempted to expedite the skill’s charging process. While grinding his teeth to dust, the sword of energy in his hands now more closely represented the unyielding solar flare of a star than it did any weapon forged by man.
After a few more seconds, it was finally ready.
Justin looked up, despairing to find the fighting spirit of his comrades had all been picked apart by the hive entity, its gaping maw at the center of its tumorous body now looming over the horizon of the rocky desert like a mountain that blotted out the sun.
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“Markus! Jade! Behind me!”
He called out to the bruised voltas, who quickly slid out of the way of an incoming fleshy wall of tentacles lined with teeth and jagged bone. They jumped to a place behind him just as he stepped forward.
“[Holy Corona]!”
Justin slashed forward, letting the pillar of fire he could barely hold on to fall forward and through the fetid unborn shape, bisecting it where any semblance of a shoulder might have been.
PFWISSSHHHHHHH
HHHHRRRRRRREEEEEEEEECCCCCCCHHHHHHHH!!!
The members of Justin’s squad grimaced as the ear-rending screech fell over the site of battle. The entity still had the vitality for one last deathcry it seemed.
As the two burning halves of the scourge fell apart, a fissure of steam erupted from its halves, covering the surroundings in a noxious gas. Due to the protection of their suits however, the group looked around with more hatred than worry.
They had won the battle, but one of their own still remained dead. A price that seemed far too terrible to pay. In some of their minds, it wasn’t even outweighed by the defense of this entire world.
None of them spoke for a time.
After a few minutes however, it wasn’t their discomfort that broke them from silence but shock as they felt their hearing beginning to wane to deafness. The cries of the entity had long since silenced, but still their hearing was deteriorating.
“Jade, your ears!”
The courser cupped her ears quickly after taking off her helmet. Looking down at the viscous residue in her hands she gasped in shock.
“What…? Everyone check your status!”
The reflection of illuminated boxes started to show in people’s eyes.
[Status Effects: Mind Poisoning, Decay, Sensory Rot, Hysteria…]
‘This…the effects are still ongoing!’
Justin felt a heat consume him as he read further. This time, he pulled out his actual sword, a striking bit of steel that had been at his waist, and roared.
“It’s still alive! Kill it!”
Fuck regrouping. They had it on the ropes. After bisecting it with its element of weakness, which happened to be fire, or heat as a more general concept, it was surely only half-alive now.
The scourge needed to die, right now, before it could incur more loss to them or anyone who came across it.
Justin turned to give commands to the two who were running along with him.
“You two go over its head, I’ll go for the neck! If cutting it in half wasn’t enough to put it down, we’ll melt the head off next!”
“Aye!”
“Of course.”
Markus and Jade confirmed, separating from his position to jump on top of the monster’s body, a pincer strategy in elevation, rather than planar.
Justin was just about to come from underneath, and swipe at the gurgling neck of the beast when he found all dozen eyes of the horror lock onto him.
Tentacles from the side of its body that it was no longer connected to, which Justin had failed to account for while rushing in, instantly exploded forth with massive force, crashing into his body and piercing through his mechanical suit in several places.
“Fu-!”
“Justin!”
“NO!”
Justin caught a brief glimpse of his teammates atop the progenitor’s head as they screamed his name, before being catapulted through the air like a rag doll.
Shards of bone and tendons so strong they were more akin to steel wire started to come loose in his body as he rolled over the rocky plain, stirring up the insides of his muscles and cutting through organs like tissue paper.
The mechanical suit he wore over his once-toned body did a decent job at absorbing most external attacks, yet in preventing internal injury it was about as useful as the plastic cup around a blender.
With deadly turbulence his body continued to roll for several hundred feet through the rocky desert before coming to a wet smack against a group of large stones.
Justin’s insides had been turned into a soupy broth at once, so it was only by the grace of his high cellular energy level that he held onto consciousness.
“Ah….”
Justin weakly exhaled. He tried to move his neck forward and summon some momentum to get himself off his feet, but found he couldn’t even feel those muscles.
He was paralyzed from the neck down.
In some sense of cosmic irony his brief flight had also positioned him in such a way that he was just able to see the ongoing battle against what was left of the herald.
Elrissa, widow of the butchered Heinrich and a Technical volta, had come to the rest of her teammates' aid as Justin could now see her charging up sniper shots from a distance away, boring large holes in the wounded herald with each round.
Markus and Jade had also found a way to finish without him. Each of Markus’ daggers cloaked in a shadowy membrane buried themselves into the fetus’ glazed eyes as Jade found purchase on her hammer and struck the entity across its membranous jaw.
In several minutes, his three comrades were able to finish the job he couldn’t, and eventually with tears in his eyes, he watched them prevail over the bloated herald.
Their cries of victory could hardly be heard all the way over to Justin, but their body language clearly showed their exhausted celebrations.
When the smoldering mountain of a corpse was truly that, Justin tried calling out to them.
“G…guys! Guys I’m over here!”
Justin shouted as loud as he could, but his voice had grown as raspy as it had weak. Damn, had he really rolled that far?
The fighting had taken his team further out into the desert than they had started, but he could still see them, so why couldn’t they see him?
There weren’t even any obstructions around him!
Aside from the rock he was propped against, he should have been totally visible.
“Justin. Justin? Come in. Come in, Justin.”
All of a sudden Justin heard the warbly voice of Markus come in over the comms of his suit’s helmet. A feeling of relief flushed throughout him.
“Oh thank god. Markus, I’m behind you, against the rocks. Do you see me?”
‘...’
“Justin? Come in if you can hear this frequency. We’re standing by the herald.”
“Justin, please come in.”
‘What? No…they can’t hear me?’
“Guys? GUYS! Hello? Markus, Jade, Elrissa? Can you guys not hear me?!”
Justin shouted, both aloud and through his helmet’s comms, but there was no response. His helmet must have been broken along with his suit, that was the only explanation. Why else couldn’t they hear him?
Justin struggled for a few minutes of their calling, straining to figure out another way he could get their attention when a voice suddenly came over the comms.
“Markus, we might have to consider that Justin is MIA, if not worse.”
‘What is she saying?’
“What are you saying Jade?”
Markus’ disbelieving voice reflected his own sentiments.
“It’s hard to believe, but if we don’t leave soon, the natives are going to show up, and we can’t risk interference with them. It’s law, Markus!”
The voice of Jade came onto the team’s open comms. It was perfect logic, but from the warble of her voice it was clear she was also having difficulty accepting the fact that they might have lost not just one, but two of their team members during this mission.
“I-I don’t think I can accept that, Jade. We need to at least take a look around to see if the leader is somewhere out here.”
“We can’t risk it! Besides, you saw the size of that hit he took! Whatever is left of him is likely scattered out here, incapable of being resuscitated by Harriet back at the ship.”
“Elrissa! How can you say that!”
Jade threw a furious glance toward the other woman.
“Markus, she’s right! We can’t risk exposure more than we already have. We need to leave.”
Markus looked gravely at them both before sighing. He spoke solemnly, still over the intercom, unknowingly allowing Justin to hear every part of the conversation.
“Markus, it's no easy decision. But Justin would have wanted you to lead, so it's still yours to make. What do we do?”
Markus swallowed. Looking at the two of them, his will to lead in the stead of his friend faltered for a moment.
Briefly, he entertained the idea of transferring leadership over to one of them before sighing, letting the new and unwanted responsibility sink in. He knew on some level, Justin would have wanted him to rise to the occasion if he had died.
Without speaking, Markus dialed something on his suit’s arm pad. Before long, a whispering noise started to grow louder above them before the stones of the desert were blown away. The sight of a sleek carrier ship appeared above them as its hexagonal camouflage turned off.
“What about the corpse?”
“We don’t have the space. We’ll have to leave it. Besides, without CEL it’s not a danger to this planet anymore.”
“No…t-they’re not going to leave me here are they?”
Listening to their conversation, Justin’s eyes shook as a frenzy of panic overwhelmed him. He needed to shout out more, make noise of some kind, maybe even use an ability? Yes, yes he could do that!
His last furious actions had taken most of the energy out of his cells for the moment, but thanks to his innate high level of cell control, they had been able to regenerate just enough energy for a simple spark. Which is what he attempted.
A simple, brief spark of colorless energy flickered into the surroundings around Justin and his pool of blood, before being snuffed out. Unfortunately Justin was a pugilist, which meant his energy manifestation was poor unless he could base it around a weapon, or in the form of one. Justin cursed repeatedly in his mind, which was now starting to black out.
If only he had saved enough energy! Just a single shred more. He should have held off on one of his infused-swipes or put a little less into that useless slash that had earned him this place on the ground. Maybe then he could…wait!
Justin’s eyes widened. Just as his teammates started to somberly board the ramp upward into the ship, his ship, one of them looked back in his direction.
‘Elrissa! Of course, she of all people would be the most sensitive to energy! She must see me!’
Justin’s fractured face smiled with hope. Not all had been lost! He had been seen!
Yet his expression turned to horror as he realized Elrissa had locked eyes with him, not with recognition and joy, but something else. The look she gave him was one of condemnation, of revilement.
Her single expression before turning back to the ship was the last thing Justin saw before he fell unconscious. It would be forever burned into his memory.
He had been left behind.