Chapter 135

Then the creature’s metallic claw came crashing down, smashing through the suit and severing arteries. Blood gushed catastrophically from the wound, my life ebbing away in a final, tragic moment. In that grim instant, my life and dreams flowing from me into nothingness, I just found the breath to croak, Eh… I’m dead.

The voice simply remarked, Well, bollocks.

And then the story ended forever, picking back up with Olaf as the new main character.

No, of course not. That would be unexpected, maybe even darkly amusing in a twisted way. But this is life, not a tidy story. I understand I left you with the perilous image of me trapped beneath the beast’s claws, powerless, awaiting destruction. I won’t pretend I made you wonder if I would survive. Instead, I hope I sparked some curiosity as to how I would survive.

For real this time.

I lay there, both my human muscles and the suit's mechanisms twisting and churning with all their might, futilely struggling against the beast’s overpowering grip. The drooling maw descended, so close that all of reality was completely eclipsed. For all my flippancy, this was the first time I truly expected to die within moments. A strange kind of clarity settled over me.

People say that in such moments, your life flashes before your eyes, or you are overwhelmed with regrets. For me, it was unfortunately the latter. My mind churned with thoughts of the life I hadn’t lived. I flashed to memories of what I could have done with Lauren or Katya, how I might have seized those moments had I only been given the freedom to learn how to speak to women. I thought of the books I hadn’t read, the things I hadn’t done—all because my father had molded my life into an extension of his own ambition. It was his purpose that had placed me here, not mine. And yet, even in this moment, I still wanted nothing more than to keep the suit I wore.

I hated him as the teeth closed in on me.

And then, the inevitable savior arrived.

Blue light flashed, ichor sprayed, and there was a booming impact. Suddenly, the weight pressing down on me disappeared.

As the beast's maw fell sideways and the claw unpinned me, I rolled away, scrambling to my feet. There was an adjustment to the sheer strength of the completed suit. The stream of mystorium trickled to a stop, and I realized I was now fully clad in the suit I hoped to bear for the rest of my life. The surge of power I felt made the previous strength seem pale in comparison, but this new power was still unfamiliar to me.

Morningstar stood on the platform beside me, his sword leveled at the fiend. His blade glowed with an ethereal blue light, a stark contrast to my ruddy red weapon.

Here stood a god. Morningstar was among the finest, if not the finest, Swords in all the lands. Even as relief washed over me, even as I saw the demon finding its feet, I couldn’t help but gape at him in all his glory. This was Lord Morningstar, here to defend me, to fight alongside me.

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His voice was clipped and urgent as he asked, "Can you fight?"

"Uh... yes," I stammered, still trying to gather myself.

"Don’t try to be a hero," he warned. "You’re new to this. I’d send you away, but I don’t know if I can take this thing by myself."

I steadied myself, adopting a fighting stance. "Just tell me what to do."

Even as I spoke, the fiend—an eruption of coiled muscle, bone, and steel—charged towards us. It was pure fury, without thought for tactics or survival. But with its sheer size and ferocity, strategy might not even be necessary.

"FIRE!" Morningstar’s voice boomed.

His sword erupted with BEAM. I had thought I understood the power I wielded, but the searing line of light and energy that lanced from Morningstar’s sword was of apocalyptic magnitude. Against its brilliance, I expected the fiend to be reduced to dust.

The BEAM had a significant effect. The blast hit the beast like a roundhouse punch, momentarily halting its momentum. But as Morningstar’s pulse faded, I saw a claw sweeping towards him.

Had he counted on me to react in time? As I would come to know this man better, I’d wonder if he truly dared that much.

My sword pulsed with energy. What I had once considered a stunning display of power now seemed like a mere trickle compared to Morningstar’s might. But it was enough. I struck the fiend in what I’ll call its bicep, and the arm snapped back, the blow aimed at Morningstar thwarted.

The beast gave us no time to regroup. Its other claw raced towards us. I moved on instinct, surrendering myself to AGILITY. My body flipped away from the attack. As the claw swept through the space I had just vacated, Morningstar remained in its path.

He didn’t leap away.

He parried.

I might not have conveyed well enough the sheer size of this thing—its claw alone was nearly the size of a man. But Morningstar’s CUT blazed with such immense power that it made everything I had ever done seem insignificant. As I watched him move, I was both embarrassed by my own efforts and inspired by his mastery. When the seismic force of the beast’s attack met his sword, it was the beast’s claw that ricocheted away. From behind him, I fired my BEAM at the creature's face. It was a futile effort. Whether I hoped to hurt it, kill it, or merely distract it, didn’t matter. The beast’s mass was so great that my BEAM was absorbed without effect.

Morningstar, however, was a surgeon in combat.

I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but neither he nor I had been using POWER.

Until then.

Morningstar’s helm blazed with light as the creature attacked again. From his left, the side furthest from the wall of the tier, a claw came hurtling. I expected him to evade or counter with his sword. Instead, he showed me the power that could be mine if I leveled up enough. His left hand snapped out and met the beast’s attack head-on. Glowing with the energy of POWER, he grabbed one of the clawed fingers and stopped the blow mid-air. He matched the beast's immense strength with just one arm. The clawed finger, as thick as a man’s arm, writhed in his grip, but he held the gargantuan limb at bay.

The other claw swept in, and this time, his sword ignited with the force of CUT. With a single titanic thrust, he stabbed through the creature's palm and pinned it to the structure beneath him.

For a moment, I was paralyzed by the vision of his strength. One arm outstretched, holding the deathly claw above him, the other bracing him as he used his sword to impale the other limb to the boards. My mind flashed to the legends I had lived through in books. Cuchulain tied to his rock, enemies too fearful to approach his corpse. Jesus, hanging from the cross, an image so iconic that it still persisted in our stories. Atlas, trapped beneath the weight of the sky on his shoulders.

But then I saw the tremors ripple through Morningstar. His power was immense, but finite. He could only hold the creature for so long. The tail of the beast whipped back, poised to strike.

Morningstar turned his helmeted head toward me, his entire body shaking under the strain of holding the fiend immobile. He roared, “For Oracle’s sake, Tiberius, STRIKE! STRIKE NOW!”