Randal parked his old Camaro in front of the gas pump, and the guttural roar of the diesel engine subsided. Following Randal, Steve stepped out of the car. Randal took a deep inhale of the fresh mountain air and let out a sigh.
“Welcome to Redmine,” Randal announced as he adjusted his beanie, his voice carrying across the small town. Redmine was an old mining town that was inhabited until recently. Its population stayed at about 50 when it wasn’t skiing season, but was known to rise to the hundreds when the snow was good. Residents began to report missing pets and piles of shredded flesh around the town about four months ago. Then just two weeks after the strange incidents began, a child went missing. PIMP was immediately involved and located a very weak D-tier gate, clearing it immediately. The residents relaxed, believing their home was safe once again. Much to the horror of the residents, the incidents didn’t stop. Fast forward to four days ago, an entire family was found dismembered in their home. The residents had enough and the entire establishment became a ghost town overnight.
Steve absorbed the serene landscape and took in the soft fragrance of pine needles. It was hard to believe something so terrible lurked in such pristine wilderness. The town was a small nook carved out of the countless towering Ponderosa trees that surrounded it.
“You hear that?” Randal asked Steve. Steve did not hear anything out of the ordinary. He could only hear the faint trickle of the creek that flowed by the town.
“No?” Steve replied. Randal must’ve heard something only his heightened senses could pick up.
“Exactly. Not a single bird,” Randal explained grimly. Steve listened closer, realizing that Randal was right. Other than the sound of the wind in the trees and the stream, the town and surrounding wilderness were completely silent. “Telltale sign of scourge. They start with all the warm-blooded creatures. Some will even eat all the vegetation.”
“How does a gate even get to a place like here?” Steve asked.
“Same as all the other ones. A meteor fragment is all it takes. Some take years to hatch,” Randal answered. Steve shivered at the thought of it. There was almost no place on Earth that could conclusively be confirmed to be free of buried meteor fragments.
“So, are we going to find these things?” Steve was getting restless with the eerie stillness of the town. The gas station was ransacked already, with windows smashed in and the entrance ajar. He was also itching to test his spells on the enemy he was destined to fight.
“Judging from how the wildlife hasn’t moved back in, the scourge haven’t moved out of the area. They’re going to come to us,” Randal said quietly. Steve shivered at the sentence and his leg bobbed up and down nervously. The suspense made waiting almost as bad as actually fighting.
“What kind are they?”
“Dunno,” Randal replied, back to his usual nonchalant manner. “Just focus on killing them, If it seems like you’re gonna die I’ll kill them all,” The scruffy man gave Steve a grin. Having a level 9 slayer as backup eliminated a lot of risks that came with combat. Steve felt a little guilty relying on such tactics to gain XP and combat experience.
“Oh. They found us already,” Randal pointed to the treeline across the main road. Several squirming gray shapes emerged from the shadows about 40 meters away. Steve had no intention of letting them get closer than that. He’d spent the last week refining [Kovac Gun] even further, and could now cast it in 9 seconds. He picked up a fist-sized rock from the ground. He had also practiced scaling the spell up as well.
Mana whipped into existence around Steve as he quickly burned through every process with mechanical precision. Using such a large rock raised the mana cost of the spell almost fourfold. The gray shapes crested the ditch and reared their disgusting heads in the light of the morning sun. There were three of them, each about the size of six McDonald’s food trays arranged in a rectangle. They were blobby amalgamations of gray flesh with hundreds of wriggling legs that pulled them across the ground. Steve gulped in anticipation as the rock whirred next to him and aimed for the creature in the center. It was the largest and fastest of the three. Fear clutched his heart, but so did exhilaration.
“Fuckin’ harbleks,” Randal muttered. Steve fired his spell and a monstrous thunderclap rang through the abandoned town. A magnificent explosion bathed the town blue for a fraction of a second, sending a wave of heat at Steve and Randal. The rock connected with the creature and the harblek in the center exploded in a nauseating blossom of dark blue blood and entrails. Blood and guts rained down from the sky and made squelching noises as they collided with the ground. The others hissed in response and quickened their pace toward Steve. Steve winced at the mana the spell burned through. Firing one fist-sized rock took 180 mana, compared to the usual 50-ish.
[You have slain a harblek (Lv. 4) +51 XP]
“Jesus, Steve. Since when could you do that?” Randal asked with an eyebrow raised. Steve grinned but couldn’t respond as he concentrated on hurling his next rock. A single bead of sweat rolled down his forehead as he concentrated and fired the spell once again. A similar thunderclap shook the earth as the reinforced rock tore through the soft flesh of the leftmost harblek. This time the rock didn’t explode and pierced through the creature entirely. Its many legs gave away under its weight and it fell to the ground limply.
[You have slain a harblek (Lv. 4) +49 XP]
Steve prepared [Magic Missile] as he dashed forward to meet the final harblek. He didn’t have enough time to fully cast [Kovac Gun] before it reached him. The spell almost felt like butter in comparison to his more complicated and amateurishly designed spell, along with the thorough memories he had implanted from learning the spell through the system. Steve frowned in concentration as he fed the spell more and more mana. He wanted to see what the full extent of destruction was possible with the basic spell. Now less than 10 meters away, Steve could see the creature had no eyes. Its body was almost like a tick, smooth and shiny with many legs. He didn’t want to know where its mouth was, or how it tore up the town’s dogs and children. Steve let the spell rip and the blue projectile tore through the air like a very fast bird or perhaps a hamburger. The bolt of magic burned into the creature’s round body before detonating in a vibrant blue bloom. Hot viscera was sent flying in all directions like a claymore mine, coating the sidewalk in monster guts. Steve managed to get away with only getting a few chunks on himself.
[You have slain a harblek (Lv. 4) +44 XP]
“Ow, fuck! That burns,” Steve shouted as he quickly brushed the viscera off of his shoulder. The blood was extremely acidic compared to the rotten liquid human blood inside the thrall.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Nice fuckin’ job, Steve,” Randal praised, still leaning on the hood of his Camaro. He looked Steve up and down, examining the young man. Steve’s eyes held a wild glimmer, like a kind of creature that could not be contained. They were wild in an almost intelligent way, not the crazed look unique to complete lunatics. Something worried Randal about Steve. His compatibility with brutal combat was unheard of in a recruit. He had a calculated recklessness that allowed him to mature at a frightening rate. From what Randal had seen, Steve shrugged off the entire Yakima incident after watching several people horrifically die while almost dying himself. Kayla, the surviving girl was only just released from the mental hospital and still refused to talk. While Jun was still in a medically induced coma. Randal theorized Steve had two options, either he would eventually crack under the pressure like everyone else, or he would become a demon that would stand at the forefront of the war against the scourge. Steve had a frightening potential for both greatness and catastrophic failure. He desperately hoped for the former and would do everything he could to let Steve mature into a full-fledged paragon.
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Randal was uneasy. The signs were numerous and denial wouldn’t get anyone anyway; the second invasion of the scourge was an imminent threat that couldn’t be disregarded. Gate breaches were higher than ever, paragon suicides were at an all-time high, and he’d heard rumors of strange things coming out of overseas gates. Randal steeled his heart, he couldn’t waver, not until the next generation was out of its infancy. He was snapped out of his stupor as Steve extended his fist for a fist bump.
“I don’t sense any more scourge in the area. I’ll let HQ know and they’ll check for nests,” Randal informed Steve. Steve felt proud for not relying on the scruffy man’s strength to defeat the monsters. His power to defeat the scourge had multiplied itself multiple times since he nearly died at the Yakima gate. “Alright, let’s go,” Randal called to Steve who was poking the mangled corpses of the scourge with a stick.
[Present day San Francisco]
Birds did not sing in this place, nor did the crickets chirp. It was a stagnant place, once bustling with activity, everything now stood dead and depleted. Every sign of life had been consumed and torn apart, the aftermath of one of the deadliest symphonies of destruction on Earth. Here, there was no readily available energy left to continue the cycle. Each and every layer of the food chain had been so thoroughly eviscerated that any chance at recovery would take many millennia. The radioactive ash made sure of that. If one collected every remaining chloroplast cell across the entire San Francisco metropolitan area, the volume would be equivalent to a single Big Mac. Here, things lay dormant in their most stable low-energy state with the balance of nature completely decimated.
The thick fog of the bay blended with the thick layer of ash that blanketed the sky in dark gray, creating a thick radioactive fog. Not even the combined payloads of three nuclear missiles and an intense bombing campaign could save the land from the disease once it took root. The once magnificent Golden Gate Bridge now lay mangled and limp in the water. Much of the city was reduced to a charred rubble pile that nothing dared grow on. In the span of a month, the technological hub of the United States had been reduced to a monochromatic wasteland.
There was one spire that ruled over the ruined city like a devilish monarch. One that should not exist according to the laws of physics and biology. An entity titled Spiculum Daemonis by the humans. It stood at nearly six times the height of the Salesforce Tower and pierced the low ash-cloud layer. It was an impossible structure, a terrible fusion of biology and engineering. Not even the cleverest humans could create a structure so tall. It was not majestic, nor was it elegant, it was a gray bulbous monstrosity, a symbol of utter despair and domination. The spire was constructed out of writhing gray flesh with no rules in its construction other than It must go up. Its base occupied 20 square kilometers, its innumerable roots piercing the ground like a foul mimicry of a mangrove tree. Veins both large and small snaked all over its pulsating surface like terrible rivers. Tendrils of flesh stretched in every direction as they clung to everything in the tower’s vicinity. Some hung slack as they sagged under their immense weight, piercing through the cloud layer and connected to the tower’s zenith. For now, the disease lay dormant. There was no more energy to be harvested from the environment, so it sustained its basic functions through the absorption of sun. Such was the purpose of the spire.
The terrible stagnation of the cursed land was interrupted for the first time in a decade as a burning object burst through the clouds. The small object maintained a speed several times faster than terminal velocity as it hurled toward the ground. It collided with the ground in an earthshaking thud and sent plumes of dust and debris in all directions. A small crater was revealed as the ash settled over the course of an hour. In the center of the crater was a slender man of fair skin and long blond hair. Above his head hovered a gray halo that glowed dimly. He was unclothed and expressionless in his unconscious state. The spire observed everything and sent reconnaissance in response to the impact.
“Ahh, my neck,” He groaned in ancient Sumerian as he sat up in the crater. Not even the ash that covered the man could suppress the radiance his skin emitted. His eyelids fluttered open, revealing brilliant iridescent eyes that magnified the light they reflected. “Now, who am I again?” He realized something was amiss as he failed to recall his memories. “No, no, no, this is bad,” He clutched his head as he wracked his brain for answers. “Bad? Why is this bad again?” He shrugged off the last remnants of the sense of duty left in his head before the impact. He stood up gracefully, radiating the only elegance to be found in the filthy wasteland. Without much thought he chose a random direction to walk in, unfazed by the destruction that surrounded him. Unbeknownst to him, the direction he had chosen was South East.
“I think I’m remembering my name!” He exclaimed as he walked. There was a new sensation in his abdomen caused by walking. The sensation grew stronger and slowly traveled down the more he walked. “My name is—,” But instead of remembering, he was greeted with a loud stream of flatulence escaping from his lower rectum. “No, that’s not right. Hmm,” He possessed no memories, but he knew what felt right and that didn’t seem to be his name. Before he could ponder any further, he was met by four massive creatures, each about three meters high. Each was a walking pillar of flesh carried by thousands of squirming legs. The natural impulse of disgust filled the man who wasn’t a mortal. The scourge scouts sensed a powerful energy from the man and marked him as a threat. They sent electromagnetic pulses from their antenna that were quickly picked up by the tendrils connected to the spire. He tried to walk around them but was immediately attacked by a tentacle. Confused, the man let the tentacle strike him in the center of his chest. The force of the strike had several thousand kilograms of force behind it and naturally sent him crashing to the ground.
“Ouch,” He cried more of out instinct and surprise than pain. He stood up unperturbed, still faintly glowing. The man with the halo became irritated for the first time. Despite having no memories, he had a fundamental understanding ingrained into his being that told him he was superior to these creatures. This fundamental understanding awakened another aspect of himself. Since he was better, he could control things as he saw fit, that was his right. So, he did.
“Begone,” The single word he uttered carried an unfathomable primordial power. They commanded an authority that matter could not disobey. At that moment, every particle in a four-kilometer radius felt that power as a fraction of their energy was taken. It was not borrowed energy because that implied it would be returned. No, he had the authority to take without giving anything at all in return. As a result, the average temperature in the area dropped by 16 degrees Celsius in an instant. A fraction of a fraction of energy taken from a trillion trillion trillion trillion particles amounted to a ludicrous sum. That energy was then instantly redistributed to a point in front of the man’s focus of ire, the scourge that faced him. One megaton of energy exploded outwards into a cone from a single point in front of the man. For one moment, the explosion was hotter and brighter than the surface of the sun. It released a roaring shock wave of super-heated air that tore up everything in its path like a hurricane. The deafening roar that followed would rupture the eardrums of anything in a twenty-kilometer radius. Fortunately, the next inhabited establishment was almost 200 kilometers away. The searing energy leveled everything in front of the man, leaving only a smoldering indentation in the soil that stretched almost ten kilometers in one direction. Not a trace of the creatures that irked the man with the halo existed.
“Hm,” He said as he wiped a drop of blood from his nose. Curious. Before the back of his hand could even leave his face, the surface of his entire body began to writhe. Blood leaked from his every orifice starting from a trickle. The man crumpled to the ground in true agony. The trickles grew stronger and stronger until his human body tore itself apart from the inside, exploding into a shower of crimson that splattered against everything. Red mist rained from the sky, the only splash of color in the monochromatic wasteland.
One day passed and the spire sent more scouts to the blast sight, only to find a thinly spread blanket of meat and blood. The otherworldly organic matter was not edible to the scourge so they left it to rot. Things began to change as the 24th hour passed. Every cell of blood, bone, and flesh that lay spread out over the destroyed ground began to inch toward the epicenter of the bloody detonation. Slowly, the cells began to recombine with each other, accumulating into bloody chunks. Each cell took the shortest path to its designated location, regardless of gravity. Trails of liquid blood re-hydrated themselves from the moisture in the air while they floated. Tendrils of pink writhed as the flesh pulled itself back together. An entire human body was reconstructed over the course of an hour. Falling from space could not scratch the man, but this mysterious force had disintegrated all of his cells nearly instantly. Not a speck of blood was left unused, it all returned to one complete form.
The blond man’s iridescent eyes fluttered open for the second time. He sat up and leaned his chin on his arm as he pondered, amending his understanding of his position in the world.
“I think… I think there are some rules,” He muttered to himself. While he was better than most things, he guessed it wasn’t his place to enact his will upon everything as he saw fit. He did not have to pay a direct price to control energy, but it still did affect him. It was more like he had the right to borrow a credit card and pay a discounted price. Such things did not interest the man, so after coming to a conclusion he continued walking South East.