“—Ah—!”
“—Ah—!”
“—Ah—!”
The Heart of the Tormented Flesh sang its deathsong. What did it see? The battlefield was no longer in its favor; the amassed army it built was dwindling. Although it had called Dawns’ dead, the might of both the Army and the Slayers were too great. While small in numbers (comparatively), they had the capacity to kill thousands by themselves with little effort.
The Heart wove tendon-ropes and snatched corpses; through its fleshweaving art, it absorbed the ripe flesh and manufactured tentacles of great girth and horror. However, each iteration was weaker, hastily cobbled together, and the Slayers knew this. They were strong, yes, but quick to adapt most of all.
For example, it slammed one disgusting tentacle onto a small band of them—about seven Slayers total—and they scattered like cockroaches against a roll of newspaper and not a single one was crushed. Like looters, other Slayers descended and casted formidable magick, restrictive chains and nets, then another team cut it into little, useless pieces. Suddenly, a flurry of attacks came from afar. Arrows, magic, bullets even, towards the Heart of the Tormented Flesh. Walls automatically erected and consumed them, yet that too was taken advantage of. Nearly all of the projectiles exploded, having been laced with acid or liquid fire, spiritual and holy magic too, which was mighty effective against curses. Its walls combusted, melting, popping, oozing.
The Heart howled once again, its voice rippling throughout the city in clear, visible shockwaves. It didn’t consume enough mass in time, but this. This will be enough to snatch victory. As seen earlier, the Tormented Flesh was carried by a thousand feet; here, it too was carried, not by human legs but crafted ones. Lifting the Heart, higher, higher, until the center mass rose as tall as the buildings while the living below watched and gawked. It stood on fleshwoven legs that ran long, stretched outwards, each having dozens of arms and legs stitched together. It resembled a jellyfish almost or a spider, and the controller was safe. For now.
“It’s moving!” shouted a Slayer as pink tubes—which seemed to be created out of intestines running hundreds of meters in length—sprang from the main body, targeting piles of corpses. The ends widened and sprayed thick mud-colored acid, turning all organic matter into slush, and slurped them in with a slight vacuum effect. It was feeding. It needed food to evolve further.
[SLAYER SYSTEM ALERT]
The Tormented Flesh has reached Rank S7!
A few more ranks until Rank SS, and the subjugation will fail.
The alert, however, did not demoralize the Slayers; rather, they had confidence. They were the Slayers in the Combative Program who had spent their college years training in one of the greatest colleges in the world: Ordo University. They received the best education and guidance, resources, and most of all: they had created relationships that’d follow them throughout their entire life.
Ultimately, while the Tormented Flesh outnumbered them, it could not triumph over their determination, their anger. As far as they were concerned, this Horror was merely an impediment to the real foe: the Comets.
One siphon crashed onto a scratched-red sedan, oozed the same yawning acid to liquify any corpses, melting them down within moments. Leona Ahn hastily retreated as a few drops splatter too close for comfort. She grimaced, disgusted by the rawness of the sight. Her eyes darted to the environment around her: broken stones, dilapidated cars, she could do this.
Leona breathed in, focused, and lunged forward, hopped on a solid block of fallen concrete then onto a smashed in trunk, using her Slayer-given Agility to launch herself towards the siphon, the feeder. It’d be tough, most likely. Her [Protector’s Shortsword] alone may not be enough; thus, she needed something more. Stronger.
Thus, she focused, concentrating the vibrant mana inside her body, festering inside her Krait, and cycled.
[Skill Activation: Hwaseong First Arte - Red Banner]
Briefly, her body turned hot like passion, and her blade gained this wonderful, gradient red. With a single concentrated, powerful strike—that sounded similarly to a banging of a war drum—she severed the siphon and emerged on the other side unscathed. Acid and pink slush spilled from it, having small whole pieces like eyes and molars and fingers, gathered together like some sort of twisted soup.
Above her, silver lines ran across the sky like rising shooting stars; though she knew that it was none other than Vernon, securely positioned high on the rooftops. For him, he wasn’t a murim-in. Wasn’t a conjurer, but he knew how to use a rifle and was pretty damn good at it. However—!
[Skill Activation: Four Elemental Kisses - Earth]
[Skill Activation: Heartbreak]
As one of his carefully groomed shots cracked against one of the Tormented Flesh’s legs, about a third of the way up against a pile of joints, it did little damage. Vernon cursed to himself and blamed his current self: wielding a prototype weapon, was an E-Rank Pseudo, the like. He went to unmute himself to alert the others, but suddenly the roof got a little darker. A lot darker.
“Huh?” Vernon looked up and stared blankly at another foot, which'd noticed him. He realized this now but the Tormented Flesh was one messed-up Horror, because looking at the foot now: it had moving eyes. They were hidden underneath veiny, pink flesh, staring right at him. “Oh, I got nothing funny to say about that,” he muttered.
It was about to crush him to death. He had nothing funny to say about that either.
Vernon ran towards the edge of a rooftop screaming. Here was the plan: he was going to jump off of the roof and pray that something soft would catch him. Horrible plan, yes, but horrible plans were the norm when it came to him.
The foot was coming closer, the sole littered with tiny little spikes as though similar to cleats or something. At the last moment, when the foot was about to crash into the roof, Vernon hopped onto the ledge, prayed, and jumped. He shut his eyes screaming about “catching me” and muttering lots of “pleases”, until something had actually caught him and rust-colored leaves flowed.
There, he was greeted with a beautiful Chinese woman with forest-green hair and mesmerizing white-blue eyes. She wore a flowing, multicolor robe with flower and leaf embroidery, taking multiple shades and stylizing themselves across the fabric. Vernon knew her: Li Chunhua, the Class Representative of Combative Class A1, a cultivator who specialized in hand-to-hand combat and spear techniques.
This technique was…
[Skill Activation: Mastery of the Forest - Autumn Wind Flow]
[Mastery of the Forest] was a toolbox skill (meaning it housed multiple skills into one), and of them, [Autumn Wind Flow] was included. It was a movement technique that allowed Li Chunhua to have pseudo-flight, riding self-made winds and leaving leaves in her wake. Although simple in appearance, it took her great time to learn; even now, she was not a master.
Chunhua rode the autumn winds far away from the building, whose roof had already been destroyed by the foot. Unfortunately for the foot, it had miscalculated: not only did Vernon survive, it was now stuck, ensnared by wires and rebar. She smiled, knowing it was doomed. She put Vernon down. “Are you alright?”
Vernon nodded. A tad shakened up, but he nodded.
“Good.” She opened the System. “One of the foots is trapped at my location! Requesting immediate removal!”
Someone responded. Montana. “Roger!”
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From across the block, he came like a superhero: flying. On the back of his armor were rents, and red-blue fire gushed through them, propelling him. He expertly controlled his back-flames to weave in and out of the legs and siphons like an eagle, increased the intensity when the time was right. His war-axe came back. In one single powerful strike, he cleaved through the middle of the leg effortlessly.
Briefly, he looked back down to Chunhua and Vernon, giving them a thumbs-up before flying towards his next target. That was the beauty of teamwork. Chunhua remembered admonishing Deon about this—who later abandoned his team, one of the most disgraceful acts a Slayer could do. Solo Slayers never lived long, unless you were at minimum an S-Rank.
An example of teamwork occurred not too far away, where a gargantuan siphon decided to target the Slayers themselves instead of the bodies. About a dozen was concentrated in a single area. One of them coincidentally being Damien, who found himself fighting alongside other sorcerers and clearing the area of zombies, allowing the main fighters to focus on the Tormented Flesh itself.
[Primary Mana Crystal: 50%] the System had said; it’d be more than enough mana before the subjugation was over. Damien spun earthen spikes through several corpses and sent waves of fire to scorch others, and sometimes if he felt a little brave, he’d pull an Alexander and smash zombies up using the staff himself.
Of course, with the siphon now threatening his life, he was confident that he could not smash that up. Absolutely not. Not at all. The others began shouting, calling out the imminent threat. Before Damien had the time to think, a gaggle of mages (three) came together and brought their wits together: one with a staff, one with their hands, and the last one with dozens of bracelets on each arm.
A dome emerged, made of three various colors and shapes: white hexagons, lemon grass triangles, and solid red. The siphon crashed into the dome weakly (as it was made of soft intestines), but that was no cause to celebrate. Soon after, the sickly acid washed over the barrier, ran down the sides, and blocked out the rest of the battle.
Damien chuckled to himself. Why did I decide to fight here again? It wasn’t like Damien could exactly help; he didn’t have the skills nor the magical ability to rescue everyone. Once the barrier fell, the acid will drench them like a warm shower and melt them into slop. Acids and humans were a bad match, he assumed, though he was no chemist.
However, Damien didn’t have to do anything because a fourth mage took command: he recognized her, a blonde-haired woman wielding a golden book. That was Sanctum, heavily predicted to be the fifth B-Rank Slayer. She was in A2 with Deon and Victor, dreaming to join High Dominion—a Slayer Team in Angels specializing in advanced holy magic. And to top it off, Sanctum hated Damien (for good reason).
The barrier cracked, damaged by the acid, but she didn’t flinch nor hesitate. She lifted her book and opened it, allowing for a great light to blind through the group. Damien winced, grasping his chest. He began coughing as his body naturally rejected this magic.
“Hear me!” cried Sanctum, beckoning a massive magic circle that spanned the diameter. “I acknowledge the natural blights casted upon this earth! Of the Primordial Will, I beckon thee!”
A reaching crack formed at the crown.
“Come to me, maledictions! Assign us the mortal whims of woe and plague our skins darkly as an ocean with no sun!”
The crack widened, and the circle rotated with greater enthusiasm.
“I shall vanquish blight upon these lands, for I am the clean one! Listen to my words again, o’ deathbringer!”
The acid didn’t care.
“Listen to my faith, o’ curse! Gaze upon this miracle with ink-welled eyes and be dealt with the living’s indignation!”
[Skill Activation: Miracle - Banish Defilement]
The circle came to life and emitted bright, yet painless, white light as the dome inevitably shattered like clayware. The acid fell yet it lasted not a full second in the miracle’s presence, instead burning like feathers and melting into black wisps. Sanctum had declared this area to be a place of miracles, of sacred magic, so naturally whatever qualms the Tormented Flesh had, it was to be eradicated as a thing of evil.
Damien’s body heated up, not in a good way, so he walked out of the miracle. There, everything went back to normal.
Sanctum collapsed to her knees after, and so did the rest of the mages, all of them exhausted from using such an effective skill; although they were out-ranked by the Tormented Flesh, they had won this bout. That was how Slayers often conquered foes much greater than them: exploiting weaknesses and coming together greater than the sum of the parts.
Damien smiled seeing the siphon. It couldn't stop itself from entering the miracle; as soon as it touched the blessed air, it began smoking like a sinner in confessional, hissing as if being cooked alive. It landed a short distance away from the mages. Acid began pouring from yawning holes uncontrollably.
“Out of the way!” yelled a man, bumping into Damien and knocking him onto the ground. Damien sat up and saw who that man was: Deon, the loner of Class A2.
[Skill Activation: Barrier - Draconic Skin]
Deon’s body shone with orange-red draconic scales from head-to-toe; without hesitation, he ran past the mages and sorcerers and into the growing acidic pool made by the large siphon. The acid did nothing to him. [Draconic Skin] held. He raised his [Talonstrider] above his head and cleaved half-deep into the siphon, pulled back, and sliced through with the second strike.
The siphon shivered, drowning Deon in a bath of acid and guts. It retracted back into the main body, leaving the man there who stood angstily.
Damien awkwardly smiled. Emotions were something of an enigma to him. He couldn’t begin to imagine what went on inside Deon’s head, and he didn’t want to. Deon aside, he looked around and heard the rapid tappings of gunfire; in the distance, a familiar woman whipped through zombies with her electrified chain, determined.
Althea couldn’t fight the Tormented Flesh herself, so she delegated herself with clearing the zombies like many of the other Slayers did. Her [Channeling Chain] ate through the bodies exactly as it had when the subjugation began, when she had first discovered the Tormented Flesh with the others.
She was envious of how easily some dispatched the zombies however. Like Hidden for example, who could turn invisible at will. As though white death, she had zipped through at least three dozen zombies within a few seconds; immediately, she reappeared, saw Althea, and winked. With a snap of her fingers, every single zombie collapsed with stab wounds to their hearts and brains.
Yeah, Althea couldn’t do that. She only had [Blur] and this chain; she continued whipping, pushing the thought that these had been real people. Ordoians just like her. The fleeting feeling gave way to a moment of hesitation, and something grabbed her shoulder from behind. A rotting, peeling hand. Before she could punch it to death, a man shoulder-tackled the zombie onto the ground, then stomped its head in. A single stomp killed it.
“You alright?” Alexander asked, acting so casually after doing such a brutal thing.
Althea nodded. “Yup.”
Alexander returned the nod and gestured around to the nearest zombies. “Focus, Althea. I’m watching you.”
She groaned. “I know, I know. Don’t be such a nagging asshole.”
“Don’t be such a brat then,” he retorted, nonchalantly decapitating the closest zombie to him: a woman with more bones than flesh. Alexander had told Althea and Vernon that if they became a burden even once, they will go to Primordial Zero. Simple as that.
Alexander focused on himself currently. The zombies were airing out; though on the eastern street, he saw a horde shambling in. Uninvited guests unfortunately, so they needed to be kicked out. A group of Slayers were already forming to intercept them. Alexander gestured towards Althea, and they went to join them.
At the front was a bastard that he hated especially: Victor, who was channeling something. He held his prized spear in front of his chest. Hanging off the guard, two red tassels danced. Then, he slammed the butt against the ground, and light ushered in from the cracks between the asphalt.
[Skill Activation: Area Channel - Brightfire]
[Your weapons have been imbued with Brightfire for five minutes!]
Brightfire…? Alexander looked down at his hands. Both his [Ironcloth Gauntlets] and [Hobgoblin Steel] were lamped in a harmless, yet dancing white fire. It felt as if these weapons could chop down a tree, break a rib cage in a single punch, whatever he desired. If he equipped his S68, then no doubt the bullets will be imbued with the same enchantment.
He glanced over to Althea, who lightly whipped her [Channeling Chain] around. It was both engrossed in Brightfire and Lightning; fire crackling with electricity. While she was only an F-Rank, he thought her weapon could do more damage than his.
Victor pointed his spear towards the zombies. “Everyone, clear them out! Don’t leave a single one behind!”
The Slayers charged in, Althea included, who seemed to have a surge of confidence after the enchantment.
Alexander decided to stick closely with Victor because he felt a little confident too. He waved his brightfire-infused sword and asked him, “New trick?”
Victor saw him and scowled. “What the hell is that thing?”
“My sword. Stole it from a goblin.”
“Ugh.” Victor shook his head and looked forward. “Wanna make a bet? Whoever kills the most zombies has to admit the other one’s better.”
Alexander raised his [Hobgoblin Steel]. “Motherfucker, you’re a B-Rank.”
“Yup.” Without elaborating any further, Victor joined his comrades, effortlessly piercing through the dead with his spear, which was obviously superior to Alexander’s chipped and nasty sword.
He sighed and joined him, fighting alongside the people he never thought he’d do it with.
The Heart of the Tormented Flesh cried once more, but it was a pained cry. All the zombies, too, let out a groan. The undead had been Ordoians once, killed from the initial chaos and rendered unrecognizable. Every Slayer here knew that: that the enemy had been humans just like them.
Above all, the Heart, too, had been human.