Shock was always the most important aspect of warfare. From ancient to modern history, it had always been the crux upon which battles changed from utter defeat to overwhelming victory. In the medieval ages, it was provided by the cavalry arm of each faction. Armored lancers, astride massive horses, thundering down upon poor, unfortunate souls that made up the infantry line. The initial impact of thousands of pounds of horse flesh and armored rider inflicted such horrendous damage, such psychological shock, that entire formations of men would break and run.
It would be followed by volleys of arrows shooting from the sky, aiming for the escaping soldiers.
The modern world had changed from cavalry and archers to fighter jets and missiles. A single detonation of the first atomic bomb had ended the war. Biological weapons, nuclear warheads, terrorist sleeper-cells, the methods had evolved but the psychology behind them was always the same.
Shock the enemy into inaction.
So when he had hurled Ultaf out like a dishrag, he inflicted shock on the protectors standing guard in the antechamber. They were in the heart of Shimizu territory surrounded by powerful spiritists and men of power. Never in a hundred years would anyone expect a metal dinosaur exploding out of the walls and tearing them apart with its jaws and fire.
Twelve men. Dead. Just like that. Blob swathed its large tail around, leaving a trail of bifurcated corpses in its path. Wherever its body swung, cloven body parts fell around it in gory rain.
Back when he had found himself in the anomaly, such a thing would’ve paralyzed him. The idea of killing other people, and relishing from the knowledge that their deaths made him just a little bit stronger, would've frozen him. Made him question himself. But back then, he wasn’t aware of just how high staked the game actually was.
That was before he had rampaged through the Crypt of Fiendish Worms.
Before he had traveled across dozens and dozens of worlds, murdering monsters, collecting Experience and if he found them interesting enough, siphoning them into his inner-world, on his path to finding strength.
Even then, it had been easy to justify. Those were monsters, not people.
But didn’t monsters too have lives? Didn’t they also have dreams, a future, a family to call their own? Did they also not seek to grow? When he had committed genocide on several borderlands in his attempt to grow stronger, had he not inadvertently downed the chances of their species’s upliftment? What right did he have to cut them down like so much dead meat, and yet hesitate when asked to kill something that looked like a fellow human being?
He was an anomaly. All creatures — monsters, demons, gods — for an anomaly, they were all prey.
Soldiers killed other soldiers on the battlefield. Religious fanatics butchered in the name of their God. Twisted, yes, but at least, they had something to pass the blame on.
Lukas had no one. Unlike Earth, humanity was not the apex of the food chain, and these people, no matter how much they looked like it, were not humans.
They were bremetans.
And he was an anomaly. Their natural ‘predator’.
There will be time for morality once you reach the apex, Inanna had once told him.
He paused his line of thought and snapped his hand down, snapping a man vertically into two. Two equal, diametrically perfect halves flopped to the ground.
You have crossed the Threshold Barrier
Level-Up Initiated!
And immediately after…
Level-Up Delayed until PRIME HOST is in Stand-By
The ironic thing about the Peak was, for all its defensive fortifications, Mujin Shimizu was its greatest power. Its deterrent against invasion. Very few people would want to infiltrate a place so powerfully warded, only to find a bloodthirsty Warlord residing inside. Not that the protections were weak, but compared to his overwhelming might, they felt like a complementary addition at best.
Getting Mujin away, even if it was for some hours, was a deciding factor in this plan. Shogun Naowa had taken care of that, and Ultaf’s own ego had opened doors to an onslaught he had possibly never imagined happening, even in his worst nightmares.
More guards had arrived and reacted, but it was too late. The fear and confusion had set in. Their power was halved by the utter loss in discipline, as they shouted, screaming and ran around in general confusion. The more experienced ones were attacking, while their partners were busy defending them with shields of force and metal, attacking Blob with weapons that didn’t even scratch his outer shell.
The key was to layer shock on top of Blob’s already imposing stature. To build a sense of invulnerability around this beast of fire and metal while tearing down the opposing side’s confidence of victory. To inflict so much psychological and physical damage that the enemy would be fundamentally incapable of continuing the combat.
That is why, he had derived Blob’s physiological baseline from the giganotosaurus, while adding some extra physiological characteristics, such as the infrasonic roar of the Neothelid, adjusted to a frequency that insta-impaired the sympathetic system, and went perfectly fine with the massively strong vocal chords of the dinosaur prototype. The bylestyr’s ability with fire, and Blob’s own anti-mana constitution only made things worse for the soldiers. The result was a deadly combination that any army would hesitate to take on, even on a good day.
The soldiers were finally doing the correct thing. Aeromancers were casting shields to protect themselves and hurl precision attacks to penetrate the metallic hide. Pyromancers taking control of Blob’s flames to conjure their own attacks. But the shock had afflicted them. The sheer atrocity of what was being done to them had turned their ability to logically reason upside down.
The precision missiles came out as brittle things hitting all over the place. Manipulating the flames made the pyromancers sloppy and unaware of how their actions might impact the other spiritists.
Lukas himself completed the ensemble. He stalked through them, like a perverse predator amidst the running, screaming foe. A man wielding a large axe came running at him. He grabbed the axe mid-swing, spun it around and hacked the man through the abdomen, walking through the space as the two halves fell to the ground,all the while smiling at Ultaf who looked like he would have fainted had his mind not been paralyzed by the horror he was witnessing.
Gathered +2141 Experience
The shock in the man’s eyes spoke of a very vital question.
Why was he doing this?
He could have told himself it was to free Zuken, and take vengeance for his sufferings. Ultaf was a madman high on power, who had massacred the svartalfar race. Surely that was enough grounds to kill him and level his army.
Or perhaps it was about Tanya. Tanya who he loved, Tanya who had been mercilessly hunted for years by Ultaf and Mujin. He could have sold himself the story that he was humiliating this bastard, and giving him a taste of his own medicine. That by destroying his men, wasting his castle, and leaving him a downing wreck, he was making an example out of him. Showing the other powers that having power did not make them immortal or above justice.
But he wasn’t there for that either.
Tanya had told him of how the soldiers were turned into flesh puppets that followed Mujin’s will to the letter. For Lukas who valued freedom over all else, who had rejected the goddess Inanna’s offer of vassalage several times in the past, who had spat in the face of yokai, monsters, anomalies, and the shard of an Empress because they wanted to dominate over another’s will — such an existence was absolutely abhorrent. It sickened him, made him want to throw up.
By killing them, he was bestowing an act of mercy. It would not be painless. They wouldn’t even know why he was doing it. They would think of him as a monster until their dying breaths. But…
They would be at peace. In Death. The only peace they would ever know.
Lukas could have sold himself that story as well.
But he didn’t.
The truth was, he was a man seeking power. He was there not to save Zuken, or humiliate or possibly kill Ultaf. He wasn’t here for Tanya’s vengeance, or inflicting justice upon the Shimizu for their vile actions. And despite how much he would have wanted to say it, he wasn’t there to bring a final relief to those tortured souls serving as the protectors of this fortress.
He was here for power. Because somewhere deep in the darkness of his heart, there was a math running that told him that the Peak housed two thousand men and more, plus legions of beasts. That even if he slaughtered a fraction of them, the Level-ups he would gain would be significant. It would enable him to bridge the gap between himself and the Warlord.
Even if it meant he was committing deliberate, calculated murder.
The least thing he could do was own it.
Like Inanna would have said. He’d have all the time to deal with morality once he was at the top. And whatever he needed to do to get there, he would do it.
So he slaughtered them. Just killing the enemy wasn’t enough. He needed to systematically rearrange the landscape to send a message. He needed to make the opposition know that there was no place in this world they could hide where he would not find them and annihilate them. Blob kept slashing and gobbling multiple attackers while smashing through the stone pillars and ornately carved architecture of the garrison.
Killing the enemy was good. Killing the enemy in the most brutal ways possible was better. The shock factor became multiplicative.
Meanwhile the toll kept rising further.
Gathered +7741 Experience
Gathered +12867 Experience
Gathered +8894 Experience
And on and on.
He needed to drive the point home that he was the most dangerous and overwhelming force these men had ever faced. He had to inflict a horror so terrible upon a few, that the rest would immediately lay down their weapons and surrender.
He watched several soldiers whipped blades of intense pressure at Blob’s giant reptilian form. A single hit from even one of those could cut a stone wall in half. A bright red beam of intense flame careened towards the towering figure, a warhammer-wielding warrior capable of knocking his target senseless for a week with a single blow came for it.
The blades slashed against the beast’s neck. The red beam hit through its jaw. The hammer slammed against its knees.
The slashes melded into fluid, metallic skin.
The red, half-molten jaw reformed.
The hammer was pushed back with an equal force, and flung the warrior back.
Lukas watched in morbid fascination as his dinosaur snapped a man’s upper body and ate him in a single gulp, leaving the remainder, spurting blood, and painting the floor red. One of the soldiers tried to stick a flaming sword into the beast’s gut, only for the sword to be pulled into it.
Claws wreathed in flames cleaved through him a second later.
Blades of wind, torrents of flames and overpowered bursts of raw power struck it, but could barely manage to halt it for half a second, before a loud roar caused almost half the warriors to fall down to the ground, grabbing their heads and crying in agony.
“It’s a demon! Summoned from the pits of Yomi by that madman!” yelled a guard. “Kill him and the demon will die.”
“Please,” Lukas said. “Believe that with all your hearts. It will only make the end easier.”
The guard roared and came at him, warhammer in hand. He leaped at him mid-air, only to pause, as if frozen. Then, like a marionette with its strings cut, the guard crumpled down to the floor, unmoving.
“Why are you in such a hurry to die?”
Lukas took a moment to register the irony that for someone that went out of his way to avoid a fight, he ended up taking up the mantle of executioner more often than not. First the Crypt, then the borderland and now this…
Despite being wracked up with the realization of what he was about to do, despite the fact that taking another life was absolutely antithetical to everything he stood for — the moment he started massacring the soldiers, something about it blazed lifeforce through him even strongly. More than anything else, it just felt right to be the one slaughtering, to blaze through hordes of armies, tearing through them without care or concern. Was this what Inanna felt like?
His eyes scanned the crowd and found Ultaf gone. Clearly some of the guards had escaped with him. No matter, he’d find him soon enough. Speaking of —
Level-Up Delayed until PRIME HOST is in Stand-By
3 Level-Ups in sequence
“Blob,” he commanded. “Come to me.”
Blob the dinosaur roared again, unleashing a sea of flames from its open maw, killing several dozen more of its prey, before dispersing into liquid metal, and flying up to him, cocooning every inch of his body, melding with it, a fluid suit of armor that concealed him from head to toe. It was like wearing a helmet, if the helmet was fluid and felt like a mask, with Scan and Analyze functions working overdrive to provide him input from all three hundred and sixty degrees.
Aqāru was a far superior conduit for lifeforce and mana, and with his ability to alter its chemical constitution, it could be harder than freaking titanium, so long as he could keep it powered. It channeled the power directly from his Omphalos Reserves and in return, powered up his body to epic proportions. And the weirdest part? It felt strangely alive.
It was just like the Crypt’s Omphalos had predicted. Lukas supposed it was a cruel irony that after rejecting the Crypt’s offer to fuse and become a greater entity, he was on the path of accomplishing the same.
I am not the kind to go gently into the night.
It had told him so in its last moments.
I am becoming you. Becoming us.
I am you. You are me.
Us is the future.
“Really,” said Lukas, laughing. “I hope you’re watching this, Crypt.”
He closed his eyes.
The metal flesh rippled and warped, flexing and changing colours from steel gray to a hybrid gold to an intense burning crimson and then back to steel.
Maximize Sympathization Ratio
Accessing Monster Prototypes based on desired Skills
Altering and repurposing structure while maintaining integrity
The first time he had put on the ‘suit’, it had been a lot easier to deal with. Especially because there was no downside to it all. Killing monsters was fun and mindless. He was siphoning new prototypes, traveling through borderlands, and gaining Levels. But the more he used it, the more he felt schizophrenic. On one side, there was the logical part. The anomaly., Blob — the suit. He saw Scans, patterns, and sequences. He made calculations based on raw information and probability — cause and effect. On the other side was the illogical part — Lukas, the human. He saw hopes and dreams, saw people of faith, saw creatures fighting to save their kin, even if they ended up getting slaughtered. Those two sides were at constant war with each other, fighting over what to do next, who to save, who to spare… who to kill. He wanted to be the best man he could possibly be, be the beacon of hope that could make a difference. And then there was the part of him that whispered that the good human is just an illusion, that the best man he could ever hope to be would tear everything down and start everything from scratch. Rebuild the world in his vision — fairness, logical… cold… inhuman.
The part that whispered that the fates of the hapless soldiers weren’t his to care. He was not trying to grant them salvation. He wasn’t trying to save them either. Victory was meaningless, as were the deaths. They were all part of the process that he must endure to get to his desired End.
He was no soldier, fighting for his nation. He was no fanatic, fighting for his God. Here he was, committing endless slaughter, but neither blessing nor bane would touch him. Sin couldn’t latch upon him either. Every step of his growth, every trial he underwent had no individual meaning, yet they continued to shape the world within him.
He was a tyrant. He was an invader. A world that took from others and made itself more because of it.
Executing and Forging Complete
Enact.
War came to the Peak.
There was no mercy in any of the weapons or attacks fired all over the castle, even if it was an entire army trying to kill one individual, and neither was there any victory when said weapons shattered and the attacks exploded uselessly, missing their target. Endless sprays of mana-fire perforated the air, piercing endlessly in straight lines through the air while chasing an errant flicker of steel. Slower, but more noticeable were the blasts of fire, mana, lightning, and other ordnance that seemed to track the target’s movements to the point that one could see them autocorrect their paths mid flight.
The sounds of beasts and the warriors fighting with weapons were loudest. The percussive impact of their launches and detonations were powerful enough to scramble a normal human’s organs from anything short of a hundred meters away.
And yet, their target did not fall as it flew and flailed through the air, partially due to the massive castle and its interiors that served as obstacles for the projectiles, and partly because none of them seemed to reach him at all.
Walls crumbled. Pillars shattered. Ceilings collapsed.
Nothing hit the target.
Not that the soldiers were in lack of trying. Their constant barrage of spells and attacks was rearranging the entire terrain, but none connected with him. The himthursars came at him, oversized, frost-coated weapons in hand, a deviation compared to the crude tools the muspel used. No doubt part of the Shimizu monster breeding program.
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“KILL HIM!” The soldiers yelled. “Attack him from all sides!”
Each of those beasts were easily eight to ten feet tall, with massive, fur-outlined bodies and gnarled, muscular limbs, with stag-like horns growing out of their heads and thick, sharp fangs sprouting out of their jaws. Unlike their fire-breathing counterparts, himthursars were quite docile to begin with. However, they could also shift from their normalcy to heightened fury when provoked, and that was when everything changed. Run away from them, face them head on, bea them, drop them unconscious, bind them, get defeated by them… it didn’t matter, since everything seemed to fester more and more anger in them, enriching their madness.
Unbridled, unrestrained, raw rage. And if that wasn’t enough, the angrier they became, the more lifeforce they used and the stronger they got, at the cost of their sanity.
A true berserker.
And the only peace an infuriated himthursar would ever find, was in death.
The least he could do was get them there quickly.
Altering Skill-sets
Accessing Svartalfar prototype
Body function was altered. New skills were rising to the forefront, altering his fighting technique to suit the new targets.
Disappearing in a flash, Lukas appeared right in front of one of them, and drove his hand in their face. His armor extended into a sharp blade, and tore through the creature’s eyes. He spun around, slicing the neck of another creature to his left, before sending a burst of raw force aimed for the knee of a third, blasting its knee off.
“You cocky bastard!” yelled someone. “You won’t escape this place. We’ll—”
It was quick to follow its compatriots in death soon after.
The time for restraint was gone. It was time to end it. After all, if he didn’t stop holding back now…
Increasing Lifeforce Output by 120%
Increasing Mana Output by 270%
Removing Limiters…
Then when?
Seventy-six shards of aqāru ejected out of his armor, altering themselves mid-flight in the shape of thick daggers, each of them floating next to him and aimed at the himthursars.
Asserting Anti-Friction
Altering chemical composition to Vatuatil
Set predetermined constant velocity
Set predetermined targets
“Oh you dirty little shit—”
“Fire.”
As though a cannon had gone off, the seventy-six nigh indestructible daggers fired off en-masse, and tore into man and monster alike indiscriminately. The blades in themselves had little weight to them, but vatuatil was the sharpest thing he had ever come across, able to cut through bone like a hot knife through butter. With the anti-friction lining, and kinetomancy powering their initial momentum to move at a very high speed regardless of external factors, they were an onslaught that had little opposition.
Gathered +48923 Experience!
Large number of prey located within Scan Radius
Lukas whistled. An entire contingent waiting on the other side? What kind of guest would he be if he kept his hosts waiting?
----------------------------------------
“Index and ring fingers,” said Solana, looking at the dispersed remains of stone. “The Asukan and the changeling have rescued Banksi, and they need help, and the Outsider is busy elsewhere.…”
“Of course Olfric’s the first one that gets in over his head,” snapped Tanya, as she looked at the army behind her. “How soon can we move in?”
“Not as quickly as you think,” said Solana, frowning. “Nihil and his group were supposed to get at least an hour to open a tear through the wards. Aguilar was supposed to deactivate the ward stones first.”
“Don’t have that much time at our hands,” said Tanya. “For all we know, someone alerted my grandfather. We’re on a time constraint, so I’ll improvise.”
“Improvise?” demanded Solana, annoyed. “You cannot rift before Aguilar clears the central courtyard for you to rift through.”
“Won’t be rifting,” said Tanya. “I’ll tear my way through the wards. Tell your people to get ready to move in.”
“Don’t be stupid. The wards are empowered by ley-lines. Without shutting the wardstones down, nothing short of a Level-5 hit can affect them.”
Tanya smirked. Two weeks ago, she'd been in complete agreement with her words. But Empress Meynte had shown her a different technique. Without bothering to explain anything, she raised both hands forward. Between her palms, a sphere of devastation was born. An orb of tremendous pressure, held in place by a madness just as deadly.
She couldn’t have explained to anyone what she did. She wasn’t sure that she understood it herself, at least on a conscious level. She gathered the essence of Everfrost, and fed it to the wind core in the center, grinning as it began to imbibe it, becoming more and yet less at the same time.
The shot she lined up was perfect. If her father was there, he would have praised her. The stance, the mental draw and the release were fluid and perfect, the only change being the moment between draw and release where she spoke her aria.
“WIND SHEAR!”
The aerodynamic implosion missile cut through the air, and only after it had been gone for half a second did the noise of its passing actually meet the warm a strange warbling howl as it twisted through the air, spinning with impossible intensity, the force of its turning so great that just its passing struck the world around it like a physical blow
It took six more seconds for Wind Shear to cross the distance between her and the ward barrier, the missile arching up, taking a parabolic path that took it far above the highest peak in the area, and then it began its descent, howling its belated war cry as it homed in on its target.
There was no thunderous detonation. No flames reaching towards the skies.
Nothing.
Instead a ripple of something spread from the epicenter of the blast and then —
“There is a… rupture in the ward,” whispered Solana, her intense gaze stuck on her face. “And… it isn’t closing.”
“This is inconceivable,” Maude murmured, shaking her head slowly. The perimeter ward was still up there, but there was a tiny crack where the missile had struck. It was not enough to let even a single person pass, but the fact that the rupture stayed was more than stupefying.
“I only do one thing,” Tanya said softly, preparing her next shot. “But what I do, I am the best at.”
“I see,” said Solana. “From the Empress’s memories?”
“Something like that,” said Tanya, smirking.
“You’ve got to be quick, Tanya,” said Maude. “Aguilar is strong, but he can only hold on for so long.”
Tanya snorted.
“You think he’s too strong?” asked Solana, little flickers of annoyance in her dark eyes. “He defeated the Empress, yes, but do not forget that she was limited by your body’s limitations.”
The top-left portion of the fortress erupted violently with a flash so bright that it put a bolt of lightning to shame. Layers upon layers of protective wards sprung into existence, trying to block the power from escaping, a classic case of an unstoppable force against an immovable object, with the shockwave from the collision blowing the rooftop into splinters.
And then it exploded again.
If the previous explosion was comparable to a brilliant fork of lightning, this one definitely fell in the leagues of an overpowered Level-3 attack. This time the wards didn’t just intercept the might of the attack, they detonated, silvery flames roaring upwards, leaving a sickly, grayish void in the sky.
----------------------------------------
An army of several hundred soldiers met Lukas’s assault.
The battalions around him were spread resourcefully in camps, surrounding him from all three sides. And by ‘camps’, he didn’t mean the types separated by fences, but with the sheer violence of numbers.
The first five rows of soldiers held spear-like things nearly twenty-feet long that required two hands. Lukas had faced them before to know that they could shoot energy blasts out of the pointy end, and were the equivalent of guns for this world. Heavy and not easily maneuverable, but the sheer firepower made up for the lack of flexibility in movement. Analysis told him that the only thing protecting them from any wide-area attacks were the remarkably strong defensive enchantments on their scale mails.
That is, assuming someone could ignore their suppressive fire and get to them first.
And then there were the spiritists — pyromancers with flaming arrows aimed at him, aeromancers with vacuum missiles arched and ready, swordsmen dressed in chainmail from head to toe, rows of igriotts and their tamers. And that was discounting those outside his range of vision, attacking him from afar.
Number of Prey within Scan Radius: 917
Overwhelming through quantity? No doubt they had come up with this after watching him battle. The strategist in him approved.
“We’ve been waiting for you, vagrant,” claimed Ultaf Shimizu, from behind the safety of his armored vehicle. That he was able to talk so soon spoke volumes about his healing skill. Or maybe he had had some healer rejuvenate him. Didn’t matter either way.
“Darling,” said Lukas. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this. This is how the rumors begin.”
“Surrender,” yelled the Shimizu Prince. “You face the might of the Shimizu army. Surrender and your death will be quick.”
“That’s not much of an incentive, is it?”
For someone that was crying like a bitch earlier, he does talk a lot, mused Lukas. Inwardly, he was already scanning the entire area, analyzing what it was he was about to face and what he could work with.
The floor is thick. Too thick. Warded against terramancy, and the energy source is… on the other side. I doubt they planned it for me, which means…. There’s something interesting on the other side.
He ran a deeper Scan.
Energy Drain sources detected
Downward distance: 40 feet
In Screen-speak, energy drain sources could only refer to one thing only — wardstones. If he could access them, he could deactivate the perimeter wards, and let Solana’s forces in.
But digging through forty feet of reinforced stone would take time. Doubly with him having to throw every bit of his strength into defense, should the army around him attack him all at once. He was pretty sure his motion-barrier could hold them off for… five seconds, but it wouldn’t be enough time for him to smash his way through the floor to the other side.
Plus, it lacked style, and…
He paused, and reconsidered what he had just learnt. The more he dwelled on it, the more the discovery took newer meanings and purposes in his eyes. Options that he had not seen before were now available. He could work with this… or not. It would be a nasty thing, and the part of him that still differentiated between right and wrong would be devastated by this but…
But this could be a game changer.
He held his right hand out, and Blob lazily slid away from his entire body, forming a thick metal staff that he clenched his fingers around. Spinning the heavy staff a couple of times, Lukas smashed it down upon the floor, and left it there.
The army took it as a sign of surrender and eased just a little.
Set boundaries, Lukas inwardly commanded. Neutered Earth. Six inches radial diameter. Downward expansion.
Interesting thing about wards. They were quite effective when used right away, but once you figured out their limitations, they were also quite easy to work around. The anti-terramancy barrier would instantly dissipate any and all earth-mana employed within the warded surface, but it did nothing if he did the same the mundane way.
And it didn’t make a distinction if said mundane way was done by hand, or through a living metal operating as an extension of a walking-breathing anomaly.
He regarded Ultaf. “I don’t suppose you are up for a five-minute break, are you?”
Despite himself, Ultaf’s eyes twitched in frustration. “A— are you mocking me, vagrant?”
“I just took out a hundred and fourteen of your guys without breaking a sweat. It’s a legitimate question.”
The funny part was, he actually gave this fifty-fifty odds. The arrogant noble type like him never paid attention to the subtext. He’d refuse the break time, and instead flaunt and mock him and engage in meaningless banter that would cost him a similar time period.
It took a while for Ultaf to get past his indecision. Lukas didn’t know if it was because he was rooted in fear, or if he was just stunned at the proposition.
“Do you take me for a fool, dog?” The Shimizu snapped with a growl. “It’s obvious you’re on your last legs. Fighting my legion of himthursars had to have wasted all your mana. Do not think you can fool me into giving you the chance to recuperate.”
Yes, because someone that wanted to recuperate would willingly land in the middle of an army, and plant his weapon on the ground.
“I see,” Lukas rasped out disapprovingly. It wasn’t hard to fake considering how put off he was with his own plan. “You think I’ll just give up and surrender.”
“You have no choice,” said Ultaf, his usual smugness returning with every passing second. “Give up. Your associates are already captured. Surrender, or they’ll be cut down like swines.”
Liar. Lukas thought. Olfric had sent a signal through the gemstones, and Tanya was already on his side of the fence.
But Ultaf didn’t know that.
He was clearly the kind to grab a mile when offered an inch.
“Captured, you say?” He asked. “And.. Zuken?”
“Still in his prison. Where else?”
“And… if I surrender, you’ll set them free?”
“Of course,” he said in an oily tongue.
Liar, thought Lukas again. The Screen flickered right then.
Energy Drain source detected
Establishing connection…
About time.
“You have some power in you, vagrant,” said Ultaf, his voice reverberating across the arena. “You are young, and powerful, but serving under me could make you stronger. You could become one of our strongest fighters.” He cajoled softly. “There is almost nothing that would be denied you.”
Lukas feigned a moment of consideration.
“Nothing you say…”
“Absolutely,” Ultaf purred. “Whatever riches and facilities the changeling promised you and Lady Kandra, I can match it and more. Wealth, property, weapons, skills, coin. We are one of the Sacred Eight, after all. You would be welcome among my elite ranks.”
“And I’d get all that by serving you?” Lukas asked doubtfully, tilting his head as he examined him.
Ultaf smiled and spread his arms. “Yes. Absolutely. All I need you to do is surrender.”
Another notification. Blob had already bloated up to seventy percent of its capacity. Just a little more.
Lukas tapped his chin and pretended to consider that. “Tempting, but I believe I’ve a better option.”
The oily smile on the man’s face twisted into a frown of consternation. “Which is?”
“I can just kill you.”
The soldiers tensed, their resolve shaken by the casual ultimatum given by the one man they had surrounded. Ultaf’s eyes narrowed and a sneer was forming on his face even as Lukas delivered his final comment.
“In case it wasn’t clear, that was a threat. For in exactly one minute from now, you and your little hunting party will become the prey. Now based on your previous experiences, you couldn’t manage to hold me down even when I had to hold back because of those two. I’d recommend you heed my warning.”
Initiate Reverse Shift.
And right then, the world seemed to want to contort itself as though it was being sucked through a black hole with no discernable point even if gravity remained unchanged. Lukas almost swore as he experienced vertigo a dozen times over in an instant, even if he wasn’t the target of the Reverse Shift guzzling through raw energy of the World.
Judging from the way the entire structure around him let out a hollow, almost mechanical groan that shook the hallways and the floor itself, it felt it too.
“Well gentlemen,” said Lukas, offering his hand as if for a dance. “Shall we?”
The army took it as provocation and responded with deadly force, as he grabbed his Blob-staff.
It was over in an instant.
Scores of wind blades, dozens of fireballs and flaming arrows, lances of lightning and sharpened blocks of stone were thrust at him. Surrounded, their attack came from every angle, leaving no room to maneuver or escape. There was no hesitation or imperfection in their forms. Their coordination too was perfect, impossibly so.
It didn’t matter.
Before any of them could so much as blink, a bloody mist erupted into the air, painting the floor crimson as the bifurcated corpses of the front row of soldiers fell to the ground, their attacks exploding before they even reached midway.
Gathered +17738 Experience
He could understand their confusion. Even his staff was still rooted to the floor. Before any of them could respond or comprehend what had just happened, Lukas thrust his free hand in an arc, and flames began to erupt around soldiers randomly, scorching and burning them to ashes. They weren’t exactly as potent as the dranzithl’s white flames, but enough to critically injure those without physical toughness above the average Level-2 muspel. It threw the soldiers in a frenzy. Unprepared, they could not decide whether to step away from each other and break formation, or attack him and risk being immolated.
Ultaf let out a bellow of rage and pointed a dagger like him at him, a bolt of furious energy leaping out of the weapon and shooting towards him. It hit the edge of his motion barrier and fizzled out like a wet firecracker.
“Wow,” Lukas drawled. “I knew you were kinda weak, but you didn’t have to go all the way to prove me right.”
“YOU —” the man bellowed. “When I get you captured, I’ll… I’ll…”
“Do nothing,” said Lukas coldly. “Because you can do nothing.” He smirked at his flabbergasted expression, the man’s impotent fury trying to get past his fear. “So listen to my words carefully. Look around, look at the snowy peak, this falling fortress, the dying men, the blood, the fire…. Enjoy these sights. I assure you, they will be your last.”
The army greeted him with a wall of spears, encircling and entrapping him within its unforgiving embrace. They left no gap in their ranks, no weaknesses that could be exploited, and allowed no attack to slip by their guard, while they kept firing elemental blasts from the tip of their spears. Lukas instantly crafted a motion barrier around himself to deflect the incoming barrage from all sides. The strategy was clear.
They would close in on him step by step, shrinking whatever little space he had until he was forced to defend himself with his fullest might, and any attempt to attack would cost him his defense. The ground was warded against terraportation, so he’d be forced to either fly into the air, where he’d be vulnerable from attacks from the spiritists ready to snipe him from all sides, or remain on the ground and be skewered and destroyed by the spears. Either choice would lead to his doom.
It should’ve been a flawless strategy, simple in both plan and execution.
Lukas smiled. They really should’ve ran when they had the chance.
Rapid-Installing Monster Prototype DRANZITHL
“Maximum Boundary Limit. Use Decay effect. Expansion.”
And a little over four hundred soldiers of the fortress’s army….
… were robbed of their lives in an instant.
417 prey Eliminated!
Gathered +4,59,754 Experience!
Host Body Placed in Stand-By
Number of Level-Ups: 10
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Tanya didn’t so much as blink at the pain searing through her arms right then as she exposed herself once again to the antithesis of potential that was assaulting her body and mind as she squirreled just a tiny amount of it into Reality. Her blood was both freezing and boiling at the same time, the Taboo punishing her very being as she shot it in the form of another missile.
Just like before, no sound, no explosion. Only the rupture enlarged. This was her third hit, and the rupture already looked large enough to allow two people to pass through it at a time. And the best part? The hole remained, despite the rest of the wards staying up and active all around.
Accumulation of Aberrance. That was how Meynte had put it. The more exceptions to a Rule of the World existed in one place, the magnified their effects became.
Such a lopsided thing Everfrost was. When applied to a living being, it sucked its lifeforce, and consumed their potential. When exposed to mana, it acted like a natural counter to it, regardless of the element involved. And when facing the tyrant that was the raw natural energy of the world, it acted like an insulated brick — allowing nothing to pass through it, and instead deflecting it in a more feasible direction.
Overall, it was pretty stale and boring compared to the kind of explosions her lover was causing inside, but Tanya was happy to contribute things her way. The presentation needed work, but in the end… All that mattered was results.
She breathed in and out slowly, her arms feeling like someone had replaced them with heavy chubs of metal. Her ears were popping and protesting from the violent pressure, and it even hurt to keep her eyes open.
She didn’t pay it any mind.
“Are you alright?” asked Maude.
Tanya took the moment to breathe, seeing the yokai army filter through the hole into the impregnable fortress. “I… I need to go help Elena and Olfric.” She looked at Solana. “Make sure to get everything you want and get out before Lukas gives the final signal.”
“Anything I should take care of?” asked Solana.
“Tell them not to get in Lukas’s way.”
A tick formed on Solana’s forehead. “Your faith in the Outsider’s abilities will someday bring you ruin, girl.”
Tanya chuckled. “My grandfather had a saying. Encountering people of extraordinary power changes people. Fighting them, surviving them, even more so. Lukas, more than anyone else I know, has lived through that experience in a very small time period. Less than a year ago, he’d have perished from a single stab to his neck. And look at him now.”
As if to emphasize her point, the entire mountain housing the fortress groaned. Nobody could tell if it is stronger or louder than the previous explosions, as the standard eardrum was not designed to take in violently chaotic sounds at this range, but it struck hard all the same.
“This is just the beginning, you know,” said Tanya, smirking as she prepared to shoot into the sky and join her lover in battle. “From here on, Lukas will only grow dangerous and terrible. And the things that oppose him will try harder, and he will only be more dangerous and more terrible for it. If you all have the sense, and I know you do, you have seen it. You have felt it. I might be the one to wield Ezzeron, and the future Lady of the Shimizu after all this is over, but make no mistake, it will be Lukas who’d have defeated my grandfather in battle, shattered his bones, torn his kami away from him. I might be the one to strike the killing blow, but the deed will be his.”
“Are you claiming he’s a threat to us?” asked Solana.
“I’m saying no such thing,” said Tanya. “Lukas is a kind person. Too kind for the shit he’s dealing with. To the point of being a flat out fool. But he isn’t unreasonable, and likes to help people if they ask for help, even without expecting anything in return. You have tricked and deceived him from the start, captured him, forced him to fight for his life, bound him in unreasonable contracts and tricked me, someone he cares for, into being possessed by Meynte. And yet, he’s being civil with you. That’s just the person he is.”
Solana glared back at her with irritation.
“We both know how he was when he first arrived in our world, Solana. And in this tiny time frame, he has battled more things that most people face in their lifetimes. Yes, he has his own priorities, priorities that he will go to the end of the world and spit in the face of monsters, yokai, asukans, bylestyrs, emperors, kings, even gods, to achieve. They are not unreasonable, immoral or unrealistic, at least for him. But that hasn’t changed the fact that he faced everything he did, passed through every impossible obstacle that this world threw on his path, just to stay true to his goals. And he won.”
She smirked at the skinwalker’s caustic expression, as her feet left the ground. “Food for thought.”
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