I grabbed my glaive from my inventory as I landed on the ground, in the middle of a rather large pack of entities scratching at the wall behind me. They all turned to look as I landed and switched my glaive to chain mode, channeling a fire enchantment spell on the blade, and before they could do anything I spun in a circle while whipping the chain around, shredding everything around me in a whirlwind of flame and gore. At the very least, these things didn't have any blood. I whipped the blade back and began spinning it in a circle as every entity on the street noticed me and began charging at me.
I lashed out and sliced through an incoming Cloner, sprinting forward and jumping in the air as three entities charged me from different angles, moving my blade psychically so it killed all three at once before pulling the chain back and switching to glaive mode. I spun around and threw it forward, the blades whirling and mowing through a section of the horde as I cast a Firestorm. The entire street was engulfed in flames, incinerating anything that was left, and I started sprinting forward again, grabbing my glaive on the way, shoving it back in my inventory.
I was moving way faster than normal, but it still wasn't fast enough for my liking, so I cast a small explosion spell with every step I took, launching me forward. Sure, it left a bunch of dents in the ground, but that wasn't my problem! As I whipped around a corner, I felt something slam into my head, and I got sent backwards into a building, cracking the wall I hit. It hurt, but not nearly as much as I would have thought, and as I looked up, I saw one of those bear entities had hip checked me once I turned the corner.
"So that's how you wanna play huh? Alright, I can handle that!" I yelled, launching myself towards it with an explosion. I heard Celeste yelling something in the back of my head but ignored it for now as I flew forward. The entity reached out a hand and swiped at me, so I twisted in midair to avoid it, adding an extra spin as I slammed my heel down into its head, knocking it to the ground. I cast another explosion as I landed, sending me forward towards more entities while also killing the one beneath me. This class was the best!
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POV (Fortress)
I was doing my usual thing, flying high enough that most entities couldn't mess with me while shooting out the occasional missile or bomb into the crowd on the street when I got a call. I answered to see Arcs face pop up in the corner of my suits HUD.
"Oh, hey Spark, you doing okay? Also, did I see Petal down there or am I going crazy?" I asked her.
"No time! Look back at where we just saw us, do you see someone running around down there?!" She yelled, clearly in a panic. Confused, I looked down at the street, expecting to have a hard time noticing whoever she was talking about, but it was actually rather easy. I saw a girl with reddish-blond hair sprinting down a street at some pretty crazy speeds. Not as fast as someone like Arc, but pretty quick. That didn't even begin to explain the full oddness of this woman though. She had fox ears and a tail, which wasn't too odd for a Guardian, but she was also glowing. I quickly realized it wasn't magic, she was literally so hot that she put off light.
She was also constantly exploding, or at least that's what it looked like. She was most likely just using magic to create explosions, but still, whoever this woman was had me intrigued. Oh, and not to mention she was absurdly tall. She would probably be taller than me even with my suit, probably damn near eight feet tall. At the moment, it looked like she was just street clearing, absolutely tearing her way through multiple hordes.
"You mean the glowing girl with fox ears? Yeah, I see her. That the person you mentioned earlier?"
"Yes, follow her! Her names Inari, she used some kind of class skill and now she's pretty much gone crazy!" Arc said. That sounded extremely not good, so I turned around and launched towards Inari, following her from a slight distance.
"What kind of crazy? The kind where she's going to kill civilians, or just acting weird?" I asked Arc.
"I don't think she's gonna do anything bad, I'm mostly worried she's gonna get herself killed. I'm on my way right now, just make sure she stays safe, maybe hold her down or something if you have to!"
"Hun, with all due respect, I am not touching that woman."
"This isn't a joke, she's a brand-new Guardian, she could really hurt herself!" She said, and I watched as Inari grabbed an entity double her height and threw it into the air, before ripping a chunk out of a nearby building and launching it into the entity without even touching it.
"Yeah, I think she'll be fine. Don't worry, I'll intervene if anything bad happens. See you soon."
"Alright, I'll be there quick as I can!" She ended the call, and I continued following Inari for a bit, occasionally attacking some passing entities before I heard a screech behind me, and I heard the voice of my contractor through my suit's speaker.
"Large flying entity directly behind you, initiate evasive maneuvers." Prime said, and I rocketed upwards as the entity flew underneath me, charging forward instead of continuing keeping chase. I looked over to see the entity looked ancient, like an animal from thousands of years in the past. It had bone plating surrounding its whole body, which had a lot of reptilian elements. It flew right past me, heading directly for Inari.
"Uh oh. Prime, what was that?"
"Database indicates that is a Aerialudon, an entity at the highest level of MASAL. It is extremely durable, and it can shed its bone plating to use as projectiles, regrowing the plating rather fast." Well, that was bad. There was no way Inari could handle that by herself, I doubted I could even take it on my own. I increased my speed and followed it, trying to gain on it before it reached her.
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POV (Inari)
As I burned one of the giant gorilla entities with a Flame Pillar, I heard a roar behind me. I whipped around at the noise and saw what looked like an armored pterodactyl absolutely tearing through the sky towards me. I turned around and got ready to try and hit it out of the air, but the closer it got the more I realized this was a superbly bad idea. As I was frantically coming up with a plan to get away from this thing, the person I now knew was Fortress slammed into it from the side, knocking it into a nearby park area. As he did, he landed on the ground in front of me. His mech suit was an incredibly deep black color with red and silver accents, as well as grooves all over it presumably hiding things like the bombs he was dropping earlier.
When he landed, the face plate of his mask folded back, revealing his face. He had very dark skin, and his facial features were rather sharp while still looking relatively young, although he did still seem slightly older than me. His thick black hair was braided back into a sort of ponytail, and as I noticed he had a decent few scars mainly over his forehead he gave me a smile.
"Inari, right? Arc's been telling me about you all day." He said, holding out a hand to shake. I reached out and grabbed it, casting a healing spell as thanks while I did.
"Yep, that's me. Nice to finally meet you Fortress, I can see why Arc and Blossom like you so much! Wait, that's not important right now, we gotta kill that thing! Wanna make a bet on it?" I asked him, my mouth moving a mile a minute. He gave me an odd look as I talked, before eventually grinning mischievously.
"I think I'm going to like you. Alright, what's the bet?"
"Whoever does more damage to that thing has to buy the other something nice! Our contractors can track it for us, right Celeste?" I asked her, as her fox form appeared in front of me.
"Oh, so NOW you want to listen to me! You need to stop before- AHHHHH!" Celeste screamed as I lightly smacked her mana made body. It flew into the air, vanishing out of sight after a moment.
"She'll handle it! Now, what's the strongest weapon you've got in that thing?" I asked Fortress, who was still clearly confused by what just happened with Celeste.
"Oh, uh, my railcannon is probably the best I have, its going to take a bit to charge up while we fight though. Is she okay?"
"Yeah, she's fine. Now, get that thing charging. I'm gonna go up there and take this thing on, you shoot some of those missiles or whatever." I said, watching the entity recover off the ground and soar into the air. I slammed my foot down and broke a big enough chunk of the street off that I could stand on. I hopped on top of it and lifted it into the air with gravity manipulation, rocketing towards the entity. As I did, I heard whooshing noises behind me, and after a moment a few projectiles sped past me and connected with the entity, sending it reeling as it began to fall towards the ground.
I hopped off my rock and cast an explosion as I fell towards it, landing on it as I began beating at the now exposed flesh on its body. It let out a howl and regained its balance, shifting to the right and scraping into a side of a building. I felt some extreme pain as my right arm slammed into the wall and I fell off the entity. I quickly pulled out my glaive and switch it to chain mode, throwing out one end so it stabbed into the stomach of the creature. I held on tight as the chain tightened and I swung forward, following along with it.
After I got my bearings, I pulled myself forward, swinging with the chain and looping around, getting back above the creature as I ripped the other end of the chain out. As I dropped down onto it I cast an explosion to propel myself and switched to glaive mode, slamming the handle into its back. This time, it fully lost control of its flight and fell to the ground, landing on the street and crushing a decent amount of entities. As it did, Fortress flew in behind it and grabbed its tail, spinning it around and slamming it into the ground before throwing it back into the air.
I lowered my density and floated back to the ground, but unfortunately the fight wasn't over yet. It somehow still managed to regain its flight control and swung a wing out at us, as multiple of its scales launched out towards the two of us. I caught most of them with gravity manipulation, but a few veered off and slammed into nearby buildings. I realized now we needed to end this quick, if it kept causing damage to buildings it could make one fall over, and at that point a shelter wouldn't matter for the people inside.
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"Alright, get that cannon ready! For now, throw me!" I yelled at Fortress.
"Listen, I'm strong, but I don't think I'm strong enough to- oh wow, you are surprisingly light!" He said as I jumped into his arms.
"It changes frequently, now go!" He nodded and spun around a few times before chucking me as hard as he could towards the entity, which had already begun flying down at me. I cast another explosion as I flew, dodging the entity's beak as it tried to bite at me, and I immediately increased my density and slammed into it with my right shoulder. This would prove to be a severe mistake, but in the moment, it worked. Me and the entity both rocketed down to the ground, slamming into the street and leaving a rather large crater. I yelled and cast two more explosions with each hand, this time putting in enough mana that they would deal some real damage.
When the explosions went off, the scales of the creature shattered, and the crater we were in got even deeper. I immediately jumped into the air while decreasing my weight, using gravity manipulation to bury most of the entity in a pile of rubble. It screeched as it tried to get itself unstuck, and I looked back at Fortress.
"Do it now!"
"Got it!" He yelled, flying over as his right arm morphed into an extremely large cannon, glowing light inside of it. He pointed it down at the crater as I soared out of the way, and after a moment a red beam erupted from the cannon, getting larger as it traveled. It reached the entity and began evaporating it, light seeping out through cracks in the ground as it dug the hole in the ground even deeper. Once it finished, Fortress flew over to me, and we both looked at each other.
"So uh, call it a tie?" I asked him, and after a moment he nodded, the two of us clearly exhausted.
"That works for me. Hey, you can heal yourself, right? You don't look too good right now."
"Eh? What's wrong?"
"You're kind of, melting?" He said. I scoffed a bit looking down at myself. Why they hell would I be- oh dear god I was melting. It thankfully wasn't anything like I was actually on fire, instead it looked like I was a cartoon character melting in the heat, my body feeling like liquid. I immediately realized something was wrong and turned off Metamorphosis, casting a healing spell on myself as the exhaustion of battle hit me. I would have collapsed if Fortress didn't catch me, quickly taking off into the air.
"You all good now? You need some more medical attention or can you take care of it? Either way, we're going to go back and see Arc, she's worried about you."
"Ugh, one second." I said, scrolling through my tome options and buying the best healing option I had available.
Medical Tome Tier Aquamarine Purchased for 200 Points and 1 Tier 1 Gem, New Total: 7684 + 6 Tier 1 Gems
Holy shit, I guess I killed more things than I thought. I immediately snagged a couple useful spells and cast them on myself.
Regen Purchased for 130 Points, New Total: 7554
Recover Purchased for 150 Points, New Total: 7404
As I healed myself, the melting from earlier mostly subsided. The regen spell gave constant healing over a period of time, so that would be useful. I turned to look at Fortress as we flew.
"Hey, uh, sorry about all that. I think I kind of got lost there for a bit."
"Not sure that I'm the one you should be apologizing to."
"What do you- oh no, Celeste!" As I said her name, her fox form appeared in front of me.
"You are the absolute worst!"
"Celeste, I'm so sorry! I don't know why I did all that, that skill made me act crazy." I said, and she sighed.
"You are forgiven, if only because I said the skill was fine to use. For now, we are only using that in dire situations, any other times it'll be locked. There was actually another stage of it you could have accessed, but I locked that down the second I realized what was happening. For now, just go check in with the rest of the Guardians."
"Alright, sounds good. Fortress, we almost there?" I asked, and he nodded. I turned to see what looked like a bolt of lightning zipping through the streets, slashing through entities. We landed on the ground as behind us the caravan pulled in, Blossom raising her walls up to block the streets while Arc cleared everything else. I looked around the area, seeing this was clearly the military shelter. There were a ton of soldiers protecting a large doorway that led down into what I assumed was a bunker. As I freed myself from Fortresses arms, Arc ran up to me and proceeded to replace them with her own pair of arms, wrapping herself around me.
"Liara, are you okay?! You went nuts back there, and why are you so hot?!" She said, pulling herself off me. I guess I still had that heat from earlier, that was probably what was causing the melting. Guess I knew what the class downside was now.
"Yeah, sorry, that skill came with some downsides. Hey, at least we have an idea of what it does now! Fortress helped me out and I managed to get myself all healed up."
"What about your arm though?" She asked. Puzzled, I looked down at my right arm to see it was still in the same melted state as before.
"Huh, that's odd. One second, let me check something." I cast Diagnosis on my arm, and while my arm clearly looked messed up, it seemed like it should be healing. However, a pop up appeared in my vision as I used the spell.
Injury too severe for this tier of healing. Recommendation: Replace arm with prosthetic as soon as possible if higher tier medical care is not avaliable.
"Oh fuck, that's not good." I said as Blossom and Nianshi led everyone inside the bunker. Fortress bent down and took a look at my arm. Now that I was back to normal, I could tell he was probably about the same height as me without his suit.
"I'm guessing you're getting the same readings as I am?" He said. I nodded, assuming he must have some way to get medical information with his suit.
"Yeah. I may have damaged this arm a bit too much."
"So, what does that mean? They have a medical office down there, we can have them take a look at it." Arc said. I nodded and followed her down. Fortress waved as we walked away.
"I'll do some more cleaning up here, see you in a bit!" He said, rocketing off again. I already liked that guy a lot. Arc and I stepped down the stairs down to the bunker, squeezing past the citizens also heading down. As we hit the bottom, I realized it was essentially another version of the shelters in buildings, but absurdly large. Arc asked a soldier for directions, and he nodded, leading us towards the medical area. There were a ton of people in beds in various states of injury, and as I walked in a male medic in proper medical gear looked up at us.
"We can't take any more patients that aren't dying right now, so... what the hell happened to you?" He asked, turning away from the patient he was working on, who seemed rather annoyed. I walked up and tried to cast a spell with my right arm, but I realized it now wasn't even responding, the feeling in it having faded. I quickly just cast the spell with my left hand and saw as the persons scrapes and cuts began mending themselves. They smiled and gave me a thanks as they stood up, and I immediately sat down in their place on the bed they had occupied as the doctor began taking a look at me.
"So, you want to answer my question?" He asked.
"Oh, sorry. I have a skill that makes me stronger, but it has some drawbacks. Turns out, one of those drawbacks is making me melt, and I took some damage on my arm while I was fighting. I tried healing it myself, but it wasn't working, apparently the healing wasn't strong enough."
"Yeah, I would imagine so, you absolutely wrecked your shoulder. I don't know how your arm is even attached right now! I'm more of a scientist then a doctor, I mostly just fill in during invasions, but this is still one of the worst injuries I've ever seen. I mean, if you just pulled on this too hard it-" I heard a thud as he examined my arm, and everything went silent for a moment. I slowly looked down to my right to see nothing. There's, usually supposed to be an arm there. Oh, there it was! On the floor!
I instantly vomited, barely able to move so it didn't land on myself, and the whole room went into a panic. People started yelling, Arc was screaming at the doctor as pain started shooting up what was left of my shoulder, blood practically gushing out of it.
"CELESTE!” I screamed through the pain as she appeared in front of us.
"Alright, I'm getting the highest quality prosthetic possible! This is going to hurt, someone get her some painkillers!" She yelled to the medics around us.
Prosthetics Catalogue Tier Aquamarine Unlocked for 300 Points + 1 Tier 1 Gem, New Total: 7104 + 5 Tier 1 Gems
SB Enhanced Limb Replacement (Right Arm) Purchased for 400 Points, New Total: 6704
I felt someone inject something into my left arm as a wiry looking piece of metal appeared in front of me, Arc grabbing it immediately while my body went numb.
"Hold it up to her right arm and click that button, it will do the rest!" Celeste said. Arc followed her orders, and as she clicked the button the arm shot out multiple steel wires, digging into my shoulder. Even through the painkillers, this still hurt like hell, but I just sat through it as I watched the arm begin implanting itself into my body, before it eventually began changing its color and texture to replicate skin and muscle. I think a few people passed out watching it, but in the end, it looked almost like my old arm. It wasn't perfectly sized or colored, but it looked about right. I turned to Arc as it finished, the full weight of the day catching up to me.
"I'm just, gonna take a nap now. Wake me up in a flower." I wasn't sure that was the right word, but it didn't matter, as I passed out, thankfully falling backwards away from the puddle of vomit on the ground. Then everything went black.