“—the heartlands of the Devil King freehold.”
Alistair let out a sigh of relief, and he wasn’t the only one. Even the most eccentric man he knew, Pharaoh, was smiling, though he still hadn’t put on a shirt.
“Heartlands,” William said. “Not at the very edge, like last time. They’re going to try to force it over.”
William’s words turned out to be prescient. Soulnet footage from civilians in the Cursed Lands and Alfred’s drone footage revealed the identity of the third kaiju. Spying didn’t violate the spirit of the truce, apparently, so both sides had an all out warfare on that front.
Somehow, the new kaiju was even larger than the xuanwu. It was a mile-long serpent, with fangs large enough to pierce straight through a blue whale. The aura was unmistakably stronger than the xuanwu, of an entirely different category. Instead of molten rock, the snake exuded a purple miasma of poison that made Alexandra’s stuff look like distilled water.
If you could see the snake, you were likely breathing in its toxic fumes. Without a life force of a Beast Lord, the chance of surviving was slim. Those that didn’t have that needed some other way to filter the toxic air.
Alistair and his team monitored the movement of the snake carefully. He was hoping for an inverse of when he had to use his proto-Domain. Any new abilities that George had to reveal would be essential information.
The snake was different from the xuanwu. The tortoise didn’t want to move. It was a creature of solidity, and the Devil Kings had to push it back against its will.
Right away, the snake slithered in arcs that trampled forests, destroying civilization with not the slightest care. There wasn’t any discernible pattern in its movements. The thousands of civilians it killed by the minute were of little consequence to the Devil Kings.
Over the next few hours, it continued its path of destruction in ever increasing concentric circles. Each time, it would verge closer to the Northeast Order.
Alistair realized one of the flaws in the truce. The way he would have gained an advantage over the Devil Kings was his territories producing more Contribution Score. Now that Contribution Score didn’t matter, George didn’t have to protect his land at all.
If he didn’t have to protect his land at all, then he could let the kaijus… be kaijus. The snake was far more mindless than the Daywalker Ape. It would kill and kill until it ran out of living flesh and move on to the next.
But Alistair couldn’t let the kaiju do that in his lands. He would have to fight it.
That sneaky bastard, Alistair thought. He’s banking on the Land Store items being too large to bring into the final battle. If he doesn’t need the Land Store and he doesn’t need a majority of the subregions, holding onto and protecting territory is literally worthless to someone who doesn’t care about human lives.
Alistair refused to let the snake cross the border. For that, he needed some backup.
----------------------------------------
His muscles strained to their limit as he pushed.
Yes, believe it or not, since the Crystal Ion Cannon was too large to send through a Teleportation Circle, the most effective transportation was pushing.
Alistair hadn’t worked his muscles this hard since in the Holy Ravine. Despite the absurd strength of cultivators, physical labor was considered beneath their dignity. Every muscle fiber in his body strained as he and thousands of others heaved a cache of weapons that even the United States military would blush at.
The cannon had to have weighed at least twenty tons. Alistair’s bulging muscles were on fire, yet his blistering walking pace was faster than a speeding car pre-initiation. With ten assistants on either side, it wasn’t nearly as bad as getting smacked with a sledgehammer in a sweat lodge.
The pathway to the destination had been paved flat thanks to the efforts of those with janitorial Classes. These things were way too heavy for any flight Skill to carry.
“Those things” were three-quarters of the Northeast Order payload. 75% of every gun, sword, laser gun, laser sword, bomb, missile, automated crossbow launcher, RPG, javelin, SAM, and dark matter emitter was being transported to the border between the humans and the Devil Kings.
The majority of their arsenal was unusable against the Daywalker Apes because they were too close to civilization. Also, they were too small and mobile. The snake was a true titan of a beast and made a much easier target.
The march was impossible to hide from Devil King spies. Alistair wasn’t too concerned about that part. George didn’t seem interested in messing with the snake to begin with.
Thankfully, the poisonous snake was a little less than two days before its arc approached the border between the Northeast Freehold and the Cursed Lands. Two days was just enough time to move the bulk of their weaponry from the capital to the border by foot. It was a crazy idea, and one that Alistair was proud of.
“Ahem,” Dev’rox coughed.
“I give us both equal credit.”
“Iniquity leads to fell Karma, my friend. You best hope your merit can withstand the boldness of your lies.”
“Little demon arhats should watch their speech,” Alistair ribbed back. “You have not lost your attachments to a biting wit. Your next reincarnation would be to a lower plane, but I’m afraid we’ve run out of those.”
“Bah,” Dev’rox said. “You win this time. For a monk, you have such a foul tongue.”
Alistair almost put up his hands in protest, but couldn’t, since he was still pushing the cannon. “I have a foul tongue? I almost never curse. You need to give Alexandra a stern talking to.”
Oliver stood in the distance on one of the slopes of the former Rocky Mountains. The peaks made up the border in this area, a useful geographic marker. It made it more difficult to bring up the arsenal, but with some anti-gravity items and Skills, they made it work.
In all honesty, Alistair was not impressed with the grandiosity of the mountaintop. He had seen way cooler before. But that wasn’t the case for some of the civilians and People’s Legion.
The gawking would have to wait. They could see the snake in the distance. The poisonous aura was too far away to affect them, but its purple corrosion was absolutely devastating. Wherever the serpent went, the world withered away. The poison affinity was a combination of the primary affinities of liquid and death, and it showed.
Alistair took some solace in that his [Ghost Whispers] detected little human death in the region. Not every subregion of the world had permanent inhabitants.
In the far distance, there was another set of mountains. A completely unrelated range to the Rockies, the Andes. The jumbling of the subregions led to plenty of geographical aberrations like that. From summit to summit, they were nearly twenty miles away, and far taller.
Even at that distance, he could feel George’s aura. Being so far, it was slight, no more than a taste. But it was unmistakable. Cold and full of despair, it traveled with the brumal winds.
Ice spears rained down from the clouds, striking at the snake. Those attacks were the equivalent of pinecones dropping on a human, yet the kaiju turned away and charged for the opposite mountain range, anyway.
Alistair snorted. Despite the snake’s overwhelming strength, it was still a snake. Nothing like the tortoise that refused to give away ground unless forced.
“Ready the first wave!” Alistair called out, projecting his voice over hundreds of meters. That snake moved damn fast for its size, approaching the slopes of the mountain in no time at all. Once he was sure it was within their territory, he said the word. “Fire!”
Even Alistair plugged his ears. The initial salvo of missiles was so enormous, it literally blotted the sun. They used a hodgepodge of ammunition, really anything they could find. Bombs from the System Store, Land Store, crafted items, ones made from Skills, Quest and side Quest rewards, and more. There were some that looked like old world military weapons and others that came straight out of a sci-fi book.
The carpet bombing of the third kaiju was the single loudest sound Alistair had ever heard. They totally should have planned ahead for that and brought some ear plugs. Well, that was life. Better some ruptured eardrums than the losing a loved one if the snake crossed the border.
When the smoke and debris cleared, there was a mile-wide swath of destruction in the middle of the forested terrain. A terrifying hiss informed them that the kaiju still lived.
Thankfully, their defenses held against the nue-filled sound. There were a few dozen arrays powered by Beast Cores that absorbed nue, though they became half-saturated with that single hiss. Alistair estimated that ninety percent of the people there would have died on the spot from the hiss without the arrays.
Nue, in Alistair’s opinion, was underrated. A beast roar like that, filled with killing intent, actually caused a natural death. It overloaded the brain’s fight-or-flight response to such a degree that the individual would experience heart failure, literally dying of fright. Dev’rox didn’t seem to share the same opinion. The imp never commented on his psychic abilities.
The serpent lost a few scales, and there were a few minor gashes here or there, but not enough to cause significant harm.
Alistair was in awe at the durability of these Beast Rulers. As a trade-off for lacking a Domain, their bodies were inhumanly tough, but still. That amount of firepower would have wiped him off the face of the earth. Even an Adept realm would find it difficult to take such a bombardment without a superior defensive item or Skill. Cultivators like Atavius Meloi who presented their Dao as equal to the absent Heavenly Dao on the far vestiges of the frontier didn’t count.
Alistair had a chuckle once again as he saw the snake fleeing the site of the bombardment.
“I—”
“Don’t you dare say it.” Dev’rox even made himself visible to shush Alistair. “Imps are nothing like snakes, even if we do have a reputation for… flightiness.”
“B—”
“Shush! Shush!”
The serpent, which Alistair decided to name Dev’rox Jr—he paused mentally at that. No response? His psychic control was way better than even two weeks ago. Gaining the nue clone in his Tier 4 [Dash] really accelerated his learning.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Alistair really liked his ghostly partner, but some things were meant to be private. Plus, segmenting his thoughts would let him defend against mentalists and nue artists better.
George didn’t hold back. No sense in that, since he wasn’t going to fight Alistair any time soon. Arcanous Devil Spell #3: Frygian Arrow flew through the air, growing rapidly as it sucked the cold and moisture out of the atmosphere.
The forest wilted. The spell drew on the moisture within the trees. The moisture within the ground. Frygian Arrow dessicated everything in its path. Once the forest was dry, the fire caught easily.
Tyrian flames seared the earth. The arrow was a growing flash of light, with the top layer separating so that it seemed as though even ice was burning.
The arrow’s impact was not even close to as loud as the carpet bombing, but it still echoed throughout the valley.
Purple ice tried to penetrate the snake’s skin as flames spread down its mile long body. Another attack came arcing down from the mountaintop. A mirror of perfectly circular proportions with no frame reflected a braid of torturous fire. A piece of pseudo-glass appeared opposite to it, shimmering out of nothing like a fractal part of space.
The braid of fire bounced between mirror and shard of space thirteen times. Each time, it grew in luminosity and changed hue. First, it was a violet far darker than George’s ice. The first iteration turned it amethyst. Then a light purple, into blue, and teal, and finally a vibrant white.
When it condensed into a thin spire of fire and collided into Dev’rox Jr., Alistair could not declare it any weaker than George’s spell. If anything, it felt stronger. It went to show that their methods weren’t so weak. Underestimating the enemy was death, Brother Pike liked to say.
When the twin flames faded away, this time the snake was bleeding. The second attack went for the tail. Good reasoning, Alistair had to say. There was a gash in the last tenth of its body that bled red blood.
It wasn’t serious, though. For a human, it was the equivalent of a bad scrape on the shin from a bike fall.
And of course, it was charging right back for Alistair and company.
----------------------------------------
The two opposite sides, each sitting on a mountain peak (though George’s was higher, to Alistair’s dismay), played ping-pong with the cowardly kaiju.
They traded salvo for salvo. Alistair brought a shitton of ammunition, but so did the Devil Kings. By the time they ran out of missiles, the snake had gone back and forth over fifteen times.
George used his Arcanous Devil Spells sparingly. They always seemed to have some new trick. The mirror was what had Alistair scratching his head. Besides amplifying and morphing Jakk’s flames, it also served as a replicator for one of the Shadow Twin’s legion of shadowspawn, and as a tool to transform captured souls into a mega-wraith.
Alistair grew angry, seeing that, though he could not interfere. That was Morgana’s work. The witch. She was the worst of the worst, a mass murderer whose personal kill count dwarfed even George Moulin. Those wraiths she possessed were the real souls of millions of ordinary people. Such an abomination demanded justice that he would mete out one day soon.
His anger turned into contemplation as he failed to understand how one mirror was so versatile and powerful. The more he considered it, he could only think of one thing: the mirror was the Legendary rarity item that the Devil Kings received for the First Through Bonus.
But why would they use it here? Why didn’t they save it for the final battle? Alistair hoped he had just gotten very, very lucky. It looked to be enormous from his vantage point. If it was too large to fit into an inventory, that would explain why they weren’t hiding it.
Whatever it was, it helped them preserve resources. Alistair’s group used their Skills as well, but the problem they had was that they were way more melee-oriented than the Devil Kings. Bartholomew, Whimsy, Marzhan, and Oliver were the only real ranged guys.
Alistair didn’t want to use his Skill again. He had a feeling it was one of those types that one could adapt to, given repeated exposure. That left him with only [Lightning of Justice], which wouldn’t do much. The same was true for Alexandra, General Ryder, Brigid, and Pharaoh.
After the bombs and missile were exhausted, it was onto the ion cannons. They had a ton of them since they were one of the basic artillery units from the Land Store. There were the direct cannons that fired straight beams of energy, and the SAM variants that launched spheres of explosive plasma into the sky and dropped down on the target’s head.
Alistair watched in trepidation as the snake tanked the bombardment. There were some more injuries post the gash near its tail, but nothing major. The Beast Ruler was as difficult to kill as promised.
Yet Alistair was more focused on the other side. There were only so many spells the two mages had. There was only so much the Divine Mirror could do. He was absolutely positive the Devil Kings lacked a similar arsenal to them. How would they keep up?
Dev’rox Jr.’s demise was slow. Perhaps the Pathfinder AI gave it a special power through its modifications. Perhaps the “Worldeater Snake (Corrupted Ancestry - Lower Descent)” possessed it natally. Alistair identified “Lower Descent” with his peon bloodline. Maybe if bloodlines had stages, ancestries had descents. Peon was certainly sounded low.
“Like the dirt under a sinner’s sole,” Dev’rox added. “I’ve caught on to your little Dev’rox Jr. name.”
Not getting sidetracked, they first witnessed the power four hours in. One of the most expensive weapons within his arsenal, the dark matter emitter, actually created a twenty-meter long cut on its back. While it wasn’t deadly, the snake roared so loud that some of his soldiers fainted even with the array formation.
Afterward, it coiled up, a rocky crust growing from its scales, the same color as underneath. Once the process was finished, the Worldeater Snake looked like a watercolor impressionist painting.
They tried to attack it while it laid dormant, but Alistair quickly held back their arsenal. The earthly skin was unbreakable to their methods. Waiting was the only thing that could be done.
Another eight hours passed before it became active again. Then it was another war of attrition. This went on for several days. Bombard, stone form, bombard, stone form.
“It’s growing sturdier,” Caren remarked after four long days. By Earth’s seasons, it was winter, though so high up, the mountain split the rays of the sun in twain like the chiaroscuro of Baroque magnum opus. “I don’t think that bodes well for us.”
“It’s growing slower, too. The injuries are catching up.” Alistair said this, but he also recognized the truth in Caren’s words.
A terrified looking young man approached Alistair and Caren. He had on the Information Branch’s uniform—the white edition of his robes with the tri-colored fist over the heart. Now they even got updated to have the Peach Blossom Land chengyu on the back, plus a little universal symbol of computer code above the characters to signify Information Branch.
“Ryan Zeal, sir, sirs, I mean,” the skinny recruit stammered out. “Ss-ss-stockpiles of mundane classification weapons, 10%. Ss-stockpiles of arcane classification weapons, 21%. Stockpiles of future tech classification weapons, 30%. Stockpiles of unclassified weapons, 19%. Crystal Ion Cannon and Twin Silk Slicer remain unused.”
Alistair liked that this Ryan Zeal became more confident over time, losing the stutter. Despite his meek appearance, he had to be a level 40 cultivator to be a soldier under Caren.
“Thank you, Ryan,” Alistair said. “Good work.”
The younger man blushed—wait, younger man? Alistair was only twenty-two, turning twenty-three in January. Ryan didn’t look that young, not like Oliver, though he had matured a lot in the nearly seven months he had known him. The experience of the initiation had molded them both into real men.
“Why have a recruit feed us the information?” Alistair asked, scratching his head. “You have [Paper Tongue]. And the Soulnet.”
Caren chuckled. “Keeps them busy. Makes them feel important, creates team bonds. If there was something essential, I wouldn’t entertain it, but most of them are just waiting by the weapons to fire them. Since we have an excess of people, why not? Seeds now are trees later.”
“Wisely spoken there, Mr. Locasta. You’ll be a great cultivator. How can it be that you don’t have a sponsor?”
“Perhaps my Blood Hierocrat Subclass verges too much on the side of the unorthodox.” Caren shrugged. “I thought I’d either make my name here, during the predations, climbing up the ranks of the Harmonious Note System. There’s much to protect here. I did receive an invitation to the Annalist Academy of the Final Frontier Empire.”
“That’s huge!” Alistair exclaimed. All he knew about Annalists was that they had eidetic memories, likely from intensive genetic augmentation. They were a protocol of the Sublimed Machine, imported to the frontier. “You’re thinking of accepting, aren’t you?”
“If I survive, of course,” Caren said. “Nothing in this life is guaranteed.”
“You’ll survive,” Alistair promised.
“When I hear it from you, it does feel better.” Caren smiled. “Sometimes you make me think that there are guarantees.”
“Can I promise you that someday, there will be guarantees? That’s kind of a guarantee.”
“Now you’ve made it sound like guarantee isn’t a word.”
Alistair smelled the stirring first. The change from casual to serious was instant. He shouted for everyone to assume their position, as the Worldeater Snake erupted from its craggy cage.
Thankfully, the serpent went for the Devil King side first, giving them more time to prepare.
That was the problem. There was no Devil King side. Not anymore. They were gone. Alistair hadn’t noticed it. His ultra-sensitive nose found the poisonous aura of the snake hard to penetrate. He could feel their presence, but noticing the lack of it was more difficult.
None of the scouts reported it yet, meaning that it had to have been recently. And when Alistair paid close attention, he found one Devil King left. Or should he say, Devil Queen?
Morgana was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen except for perhaps Gu Fuhao. When a shard of pink glass hummed and multiplied, he almost wanted to join it so he could look at her forever.
Alistair shook his head. What a seductive promise. His Dao Path was too strong for such a trick, however.
With a nue-filled shout, he ordered everyone to close their eyes. The killing intent should have disrupted anyone who was temporarily overtaken by the madness. Shard of Madness. He knew the spell from Oracle’s memories, and he knew well enough that they were not the target, despite being hit with some incidental effects.
The kaiju was her prey.
Powerful beasts had innate protections against mind control, an evolutionary defensive mechanism built up since the beginning of time. Cultivators always thought they could tame the wild.
Morgana was not strong enough on her own to thrust the snake into a controllable madness. Maybe if she sacrificed those millions of souls she’d eaten, but she didn’t. But by fleeing the scene, it had a similar effect.
Since the Devil Kings were gone, there was only one viable target left.
Us, Alistair thought.
The snake charged with more speed than ever before. Its simple mind was a singularity of rage, its red eyes lightened to a shade of pink.
Alistair knew what he had to do.
“EVERYONE! Get to your positions, NOW! UNLEASH EVERY WEAPON WE HAVE!”
They didn’t need to be told twice. Alistair readied himself. If he had to use his finishing Skill, he would. But first, it was time to see what his stockpile could do.
The Crystal Ion Cannon whirred to life. Shaped like an enormous telescope, its fuel tanks glowed blue as it siphoned off the entirety of its reserves for one blast.
The Twin Silk Slicer readied its launcher. It almost looked like an enormous fan, with a stand and four pointed spikes, each with a slit that glowed a soft orange. Each curved blade would produce a single strand of impossibly strong silk. Together they formed x-shape that could carve even the hardest materials apart.
Annihilation. Alistair defended his people from the overwhelming shockwave of their air strike with [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment]. It was mainly to put something, anything, in the way.
The palms of justice that shot forth collided with the blast, dispersing it so that it wasn’t deadly. The snake never should have gotten that close, but they didn’t anticipate its faster speed or that they would have to use everything at once.
Still, it destroyed his eardrums. That was one of the downsides to using weapons that worked on a physical level rather than the Dao. Cultivators at least had some control over the aftermath of their expressions.
There was a ringing in his ears as he coughed up dust. It was hard to see anything. People were panicking, unable to hear and unable to see.
Alistair jumped up and out of the fray. His Skills weren’t that helpful, but Pharaoh was there to save the day. He manipulated the dust like it was sand, settling it down where it came.
The soldiers were trained well. After an initial moment of panic, people popped Health pills and got healers for the seriously injured. No one died, as far Alistair could tell. Their life forces were strong and healthy.
Alistair looked down at their destruction. It was so encompassing that he didn’t even see the explosion. An entire five mile-radius of the forest was gone, taking up almost half the valley between the two mountain ranges. There was a crater and two gouges at the very center. The devastation caused by the Crystal Ion Cannon and Twin Silk Slicer.
And at the very center, sat the kaiju. The Worldeater Snake, the mile-long poisonous monstrosity. It was dead. In a testament to its durability, it wasn’t a complete skeleton. Most of its flesh was still intact, with smoking pieces missing here and there revealing its bones.
Alistair breathed a sigh of relief. They had done it. The third kaiju was conquered, with zero civilian casualties. He starting laughing out loud, and as his eardrums began to heal, he heard the elated cries of victory.
No one cared that five kaijus were coming in a matter of three days. People had learned to live in the moment. This victory—it was a good one.
So good that Alistair almost didn’t hear the message, despite it being a mental message sent to every human on Earth.
“Be humbled, all those who hear. In the sanctified name of Grand Imperator Praetei Dai Kezlan, I, her unpresuming servant, Marcus Auror, declare an end to Kaiju Break. There is to be an emergency meeting in one hour on Sharizak. All sects, corporations, and nobility, yes, including Progenitors, shall bring their sponsees. This meeting is mandatory and binding with the full force of the Fell Emperor’s authority. May you serve him well and do Heaven’s bidding.”