Death encroaches.
A flying form in crimson-red, tank-sized beasts of flesh and metal at its beck and call, with whirling blades and ballistae easily able to run the Hellhound through.
Death encroaches.
The Hellhound sends the call. A simple ping from the Reaper’s Bride is all he received as affirmation that his request has been heard.
Dozens of needles strike close to vital points, they come within milimeters of piercing skin or a vital conduit, poisoning him to death or crippling his armor, but somehow, he survives for long enough to see a golden bullet soaring overhead. It bounces off a window and turns the Red Robe into a shower of pulped viscera. The jagged mass of meat and metal that now resides where the Red Robe had once been snaps back into a sphere and vanishes.
Six more shots follow, each ghostly-green light. Flesh Beasts, Black and Blue Robes, all fall where they stand with no wounds to show for their deaths.
“Hail death, the master!” the Hellhound sends back over the aetherwave, expecting no response.
“Hail,” comes the reply.
The Hellhound continues in his original plan, arriving to find that his comrades were still fighting, though not without a casualty. A pair of flesh-beasts, a Red Robe controller, two Blue Robes, five Black Robes. Bullets and leaden shot both scream down the corridor, his squad’s firepower seemingly sufficient to suppress the enemy, but not much more. There are no Mirror Circles in sight from this position, making it clear why the Reaper’s Bride hasn’t smashed apart the enemy opposition from afar. He resolves himself to tip the scales. A flurry of communications passes between him and his squadmates. A brief argument over his proposed course of action is cut short by the captain’s agreement.
Bolts and knives and needles fly at him without end, grazing and striking his armor. He has already burned out one of the suit’s three capacitors by pushing too hard; it can’t be recharged even with the help of a First-model’s engine, only replaced. Nonetheless, the Hellhound charges ahead, pushing harder and harder. He meets a lunging flesh-beast head on, leaping over its blade by no more than mere centimeters.
His shotgun only has two shots left.
They tear off the flesh beast’s blade, and he drops his gun to grab for it instead.
The Hellhound once more pushes his suit’s output into redline, feeling the heat rise around him, the conduits beginning to scorch his skin, but he cares not. With the beast’s blade in hand, he turns, a Type-Z shell tearing through the air overhead towards the Red Robe while a barrage of well-aimed shotgun slugs suppresses the weaker enemies, even killing two Black Robes. He makes his move, pushing his armor well beyond its limits. It somehow holds, and the Hellhound leaps upward at the Red Robe with such force that the flesh beast under his feet is thrown to the ground and his own shin bones crack under the force. The pain is utterly brilliant and seethes just like the overheated power conduits burning into his skin, but he has done it.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
In the absence of weapons to spare, the Red Robe flares his aura, crimson and swirling like ghostly blood. It collapses in on the Hellhound, trying to crush him, his armor buckling and threatening to burst… And then the pressure falters.
The blade has run his foe through. Stunned, but clearly not dead, the Red Robe struggles, redoubling his defense, but it’s too late. The Hellhound had never meant to kill the Red Robe - just immobilize him.
A high-velocity anti-cultivator round from the squad captain’s Type-Z Anti-cultivation Cannon turns the Red Robe’s head into a fine, glittering mist.
He is closer to Death now, an iota more than human.
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At the center of the city, in the midst of preparations for Elder Third’s breakthrough, tens of thousands of mortals were gathered in the cathedral for the sacrifice ritual. Thousands more, however, were already being sacrificed. A bit over a hundred had been spent to maintain the isolation array, not for lack of the disciples’ ability, but because spending their own energy was a waste by comparison. Several thousand were being used to build up the appropriate energies around the ritual site, ritualistically tormented to death to ensure the maximum yield. Others, still, were prepared to serve as living batteries for the cathedral’s defensive array, in light of the incursion from the Newman Sect. In this, Rosa was put to task, sculpting them into piles of flesh and limbs, connecting them with serpentining umbilical cords, forming a network of nodes around the cathedral.
But then, one by one, she felt pangs of pain. Cries of anguish. Her creations and subordinates alike, being slain by these trash who didn’t know their place. The final straw was when one of those black-armored mortals struck down a rather promising flesh-sculptor, and using one of her precious creations’ blades no less! At least, that was how she saw it. It was obvious that were it not for him, that lumbering golem with the Roaring Thunder Cannon wouldn’t have gotten a direct shot.
Rosa thus, consumed by fury, quickly delegated the rest of her duties to others and set eyes upon the spares, the would-be sacrifices who had been set aside or whose fates hadn’t been determined yet. She reached into her dress and brought out a talisman that was very precious to her, an adamant bronze flesh-sculpting knife gifted to her by none other than Elder Fourth. It carried within it a fraction of the power of Fourth’s own Brass Skinning Knife, a token of the Skinless One.
With it in hand, she began chanting a sublime incantation… And dancing. The knife slipped from her hand, animated by her aura, and it flew at breakneck speeds, slashing necks and wrists, cutting away at flesh where it would be joined.
TORMENT SIGN
PURPOSE TO THE PURPOSELESS
DARK REBIRTH IN THE GARDEN OF FLESH
FLESH-SCULPTING ARTS: CALVES OF THE SLAUGHTER