Searing blue beams of pure energy ripped through the clouds and struck the behemoth. One time, two times, then five times. Each shot shattered small pieces off of its armor as they drove home.
The Tarrasque stopped and turned its gaze directly toward Reaper. Its lungs heaved as it drew in a massive breath and roared. The ground for thousands of feet in every direction shattered. Calvin’s group was blown off their feat as the terrain bucked and heaved with the powerful roar. Every rune on the massive titan’s body lit up at once. Energy was being sucked from the air around it and dragged into the rune.
“Split up!” Calvin ordered.
The team fanned out in every direction at a full sprint. Whatever the behemoth was planning, being grouped up for it was a recipe for disaster.
As the runes on the behemoth reached their peak, the energy seemed to follow runic pathways directly to the Tarrasque’s wide-open mouth. In a split second, an apocalyptic beam was spat forth. It lanced out from the Tarrasque’s mouth as it dragged the beam across the landscape. Everything it hit was vaporized instantly.
Amy and Freya had narrowly escaped being struck by the beam. Everyone needed to get out of the path of this thing’s mouth.
The one saving grace for this fight was that the creature didn’t seem particularly agile. It didn’t really need to be though. Every single part of its body was weaponized.
Freya, Storm! Calvin ordered.
The mighty pup let out a fierce howl and stirred the heavens into a fury. Calvin marked the behemoth with a storm brand and sprinted to close the distance.
BOOM
BOOM
Two massive projectiles closed the distance to the Tarrasque in under a second. Each of them slammed one after the other into the creature’s face. The impact shattered a few teeth and threw the monster’s head back.
Calvin knew one thing. The only way they were going to defeat this creature was to drag it down to the ground. The claws alone were taller than any of them. Franticly searching for a strategy as he sprinted toward the creature, he activated Stormwalk. Calvin reappeared in the air, high up by the behemoth’s front, left leg. He jammed a fully charged spear into the flesh and activated his boots to pull him toward the ground. His muscles strained and threatened to rip themselves apart as he refused to let go of the spear.
Calvin’s momentum pulled him downward, his spear tore a long gash in the creature’s leg all the way down before it broke free at the ankle and Calvin smashed into the ground below.
The behemoth arched its neck down, threatening to snap Calvin in half with a quick bite. The massive maw opened and slammed down toward Calvin. He activated his second charge of Stormwalk and reappeared on the opposite side of the monster. The confused behemoth stared briefly at the spot where Calvin had been before continuing on its path forward.
BOOM
BOOM
Two more shots tore out from the drones directly into the behemoth. This time, both shots struck the wounded leg, tearing large gouges out as the projectiles punched straight through.
This fight went much like a relay race. Calvin passed Amy as he retreated from the monster and tagged her in the fight. She had seen the wounds being delivered to the Tarrasque’s leg and she made a beeline for it. A dozen blades swirled around her as she activated her Stinging Cyclone. Amy jumped through Death’s Door and reappeared behind the creature's leg. With a thought, large, thorned vines snaked from the ground and wrapped themselves around the massive titan’s paw. The vines were thicker than trees as they snaked their way up the leg. She’d infused them with Blight Bloom, and as the vines started growing into the wound, the toxin took hold.
The behemoth effortlessly lifted the massive paw off the ground, snapping the vines like rubber bands. Toxic mist exploded out from them, bathing the wound in more devastating poison.
BOOM
BOOM
Two more shots blasted the behemoth in the opposite leg. The wounds were slowly starting to stack up on the monster, however, it now recognized the drones as a serious threat. The behemoth ignored everything else and drew in another massive breath. Just like that, Seth’s drones were turned to slag.
If this is how the fight would keep going, then it wouldn’t be so bad. It would be a battle of attrition essentially. They would continue weakening the legs and hope to bring the creature down before it got to New Aspen. They simply needed to avoid the hell beam.
Now if there’s one thing they all knew about the system, and for some reason conveniently ignored until now, is that it never made things simple. To punctuate that point for everyone involved, the behemoth changed tactics.
The runes began pulling in energy again but this time, the energy fed through pathways toward the spikes on its back. The group quickly spread out and put distance from the creature as it channeled whatever new skill it was cooking up.
Immediately, dozens of tower-sized spikes fired from its back. They arced away from the behemoth in all directions and slammed with incredible force into the ground below. Each impact left massive craters, but that was not all. The spikes began pulsing with a malevolent crackle. A web of crimson laser beams sprang from the exposed ends. They sliced through the air like burning threads, weaving a deadly rotating net around the battlefield. These beams were not nearly as destructive as the beams fired from the behemoth’s mouth, but they were still not awesome to get hit by. Calvin and Marshall figured that out real quick. They had been surrounded by the pylons and caught in the net of beams.
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The beams struck Calvin as he desperately tried rolling out of the way. A sizzling wound lanced across his back as the spinning laser seared his flesh. The nanite barrier formed by his armor while in a storm-attuned environment blunted much of the damage. Marshall was much worse off. His wounds were deep and agonizing. He fell to the ground, lying prone beneath the web as he desperately worked to heal himself.
The spikes were drawing energy from the surroundings to feed the lasers, and it looked as if they would continue their destructive activities until they were destroyed.
Calvin and Marshall were trapped in the field of lasers. Calvin’s stormwalk was down for the moment, and he was carefully trying to navigate the beams while keeping a careful eye on the behemoth.
This was Ian’s time to shine. He’d come out of the last missive with quite a few upgrades. Not only did he have evolution points to spend and a new skill he picked up, but all of his skills gained through the Echo of Ragnarok class were naturally evolving, so the upgrades came in quite a nice package. Stalagmite and Supercell had evolved.
Stalagmite has evolved to Fissure
Fissure: The Echo of Ragnarok commands the terrain of any battlefield. With a single command, the earth tears itself asunder, erupting in devastating earthen spikes. The size of the fissure is controlled by the amount of energy fed into the skill. This is a continuously evolving skill, having many options to evolve and grow with the wielder.
Supercell has evolved to Typhoon
Typhoon: The Echo of Ragnarok generates a massive environmental cataclysm on the battlefield. The storm generated from this skill generates a high amount of storm essence, infusing the surroundings with wind, lightning, and ice attunement. The storm generates high winds, frequent lightning strikes, and damaging hail on the battlefield. The storm persists at the cost of continued expenditure of energy. This is a continuously evolving skill, having many options to evolve and grow with the wielder.
In addition to the evolutions, he’d spent a point evolving Nanoweave allowing him to weave three spells together for triple the total cost.
Finally, the skill he picked up went on to supplement all of these.
Energy Rift: The Echo of Ragnarok is apocalypse incarnate. They can briefly tap into the space between dimensions and constantly draw upon the energies within. Activating this skill floods the caster with immense amounts of energy that must be utilized immediately. The duration of this skill is based upon the caster’s control.
This was exactly the moment he was built for. He waved his hand to his side, slicing a rift between dimensions. A torrent of energy flowed from the rift and enveloped him. His skin began to bubble and burn as the energies threatened to overwhelm him. He closed his eyes and focused deeply on chaining three skills together. Typhoon, Fissure, and Combust.
Multiple orbs of highly energetic, pulsing light began orbiting around him as he fed energy into the spells. They spun faster and faster as their orbits brought them closer together until they merged into one above his head and fired off into the sky above the Behemoth.
A massive swirling storm erupted from the orb. Thousands of bolts of lightning struck the ground as furious winds kicked up in a frenzy. The sounds were absolutely deafening as the world seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Hailstones and flaming meteors rained from the clouds in a torrential downpour of destruction. Each hailstone was easily the size of Freya. Every spike that was struck with a hailstone was absolutely obliterated. The meteors were a whole other story. Each impact generated massive fissures, tearing the entire battlefield asunder. The ones that impacted the behemoth tore large chunks of armor and spikes from its back. The massive titan shuddered with each strike as its armor was torn to shreds. A massive rune-inscribed plate was ripped from the front left shoulder of the creature, and it slammed to the ground, immediately going inert and destroying that particular runic pathway.
The skill was a massive success. Most of the spikes on the battlefield had been destroyed and the ones that remained had no energy into the air to draw from. It was all being consumed by the massive storm, which immediately winked out of existence as if it had never been there. Ian collapsed.
The group that had been out on the battlefield witnessed the calamity that Ian brought down on the behemoth and then witnessed his fall. They immediately retreated to regroup.
Marshall quickly had Ian back up on his feet, but his energy was spent. They fell back toward new Aspen and posted up several miles away from where they’d just fought.
“Ian, holy crap man. What was that out there?” Calvin asked.
Ian was still very weak, and his voice barely came out as a rasping whisper. “A little something I cooked up with my new skill selections. It’s pretty hard on me to go all out like that though. I’m going to need to see if Seth can help out with some augments in that regard.”
“I hate to ask, but, can you do it again? And would it be safe?”
“I think so. I’d need a couple of hours to recharge and heal up.”
And with that, a plan began forming. They knew they could wound the beast because they’d just done so. While none of the wounds were devastating to the massive behemoth, they certainly chipped away at it pretty good. The drones, Calvin and Amy had devastated its leg and Ian’s show of force destroyed a large amount of its armor and at least one of the energy-gathering runes they could see.
Ian would head back to Olympus and recharge. In two hours, they would crack open a portal for him to return with more of Seth’s goodies. Tank’s crew would assault the legs from range during that time, slowing the creature’s approach.
“Harlon. Can you supply your strongest support classes? Anyone who can buff or heal. They’ll stay out of harm’s way but we’re going to need them to keep Ian from torching himself.”
Harlon had witnessed the last exchange and just stood slack jawed for a moment before reconnecting with reality as Calvin’s words finally made their way through his brain.
“Uh, yeah… yeah. I can do that. My god you guys are monsters.”
“It’s been tough over our way, we can give you a quick rundown shortly. For now, we’re going to work on slowing that thing down and regrouping. Also, if you have any particularly powerful ranged damage dealers, we’ll need them too.
“I’ll see what we can round up. Nobody here is going to be able to match anything close to what I just witnessed.”
“Do what you can. Alright everyone, take a few minutes to rest up.”
And so it continued for the next two hours. They assaulted the legs when it was safe, avoided the massive death beams fired from its mouth, and retreated when it fired spikes.
At the current speed, the creature would arrive at New Aspen within 8 hours, however, the group feared that it would be able to target the settlement with its beam much sooner than that. Now, it was time to call in the reinforcements.