Sam grimaced, and started to hammer at the creature’s knee joint, knowing that he would never reach the top in time. His hammer barely penetrated the surface of the beast, its bone harder than metal. However, Sam was not deterred. He could see where the knee joint met the rest of the leg, and knew that if he took it out, the monster would fall. Perhaps it would take too long, but he did not really have a choice. The others seemed to pick up on this, and were attacking the lower part of the Titan’s leg with all of their might. Sam cleared his mind, and began to whale on the knee joint with all of his power. Dao energy circled through his body as he went, empowering his strikes beyond the norm. Pure mana hissed around his weapon as he brought it down in a never ending flurry of strikes. A series of attacks that would have taken out a village only managed to create a small hole in the Titan’s leg, revealing a dense sponge of marrow beneath.
Sam gritted his teeth and summoned as much of his elemental energy and Dao energy as he could. He pressed his right hand to the hole, and started to send Sky Splitting Wrath projectiles off with wild abandon. With nowhere to go save for the hole, they detonated with incredible ferocity within the beast’s knee joint. Comparatively weak marrow exploded in a spray of reddish black, far easier to destroy than the much harder outer layer. Sam groaned as he began to overtax his reserves, but he could feel something changing in the cadence of the beast’s stride. A few more strikes, and he would have it.
Then it was too late. Sensing the assault on its leg, the Titan raced across the last mile, slamming its fist into the shield. There was a groaning noise, and the wall flickered, almost failing. Sam felt a wrench at his mana reserves as the shield desperately fought against failure. The Titan withdrew its fist, and Sam could only watch as it thundered forwards. This time, the wall fell. With a deafening groan, the shield buckled and shattered, exploding into a storm of glass-like shards. They quickly melted away into the air, leaving the Titan with a clear route into the city. Sam roared in rage, and kept sending bolts of energy into the knee joint, desperately trying to stop the Titan before it could do more damage.
With a noise that sounded like laughter, it drove its foot through the wall, blasting it apart. Blocks of stone flew like missiles, carving great gouges into the rich earth of the farming district. Fields of corn were reduced to blasted minefields, and rice paddies turned into churned up hellholes of mud and blood. Many of the flying chunks of rock struck the farmers nearby, taking them to the next world with them. Sam screamed in rage, pumping the feeling into his Dao. His corresponding Dao core surged, and he directed the power into his hands. With a roar, he sent a pillar of reddish light into the Corpse Titan’s knee joint. As the monster was so large, it was unable to direct its Dao across its entire body as effectively as Sam was. Although it possessed a higher order Dao, when it came to specific points on its body, its utilization of it was actually weaker.
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Sam’s attack broke through the barrier, and for the first time, meaningful damage was dealt. As the foot came down, the monster stumbled, almost falling. Further down the leg, the other captains were doing the same thing to its ankle, albeit with less efficiency. For the first time, the Titan took notice of the passengers on its body. A screech of rage erupted from the beast’s mouth like a foghorn, and one hand came plummeting down, creating clouds as it compressed the water vapor in the air. Sam scrambled away from the impact zone, teleporting around the Titan’s knee. The hand hit a few seconds later, and a tremor ran through the leg. Sam felt vibrations fracture his bones and reduce his muscles to quivering jelly, taking a large chunk of his health away. Blood ran out of his ears and nose, and he almost fell. However, he had dealt with worse.
He gritted his teeth and grabbed on tighter, holding himself there until the tremors were gone. With a sigh of relief, he closed his eyes, resting for a moment. Then he got up and started to repeat the process on this side of the knee joint. At some point, the Titan started moving again, leaving a trail of destruction through the outer environs of the city.
A rain of projectiles exploded against its body, but most of them barely left dents, if even that. Many of the Manthrox sect fighter craft zipped around the Titan, sending pulses of power from their weapons at the monster. Those did more damage, but not by much. If the Titan reached the city center and destroyed the Metropolis Core, it would all be over for the faction. Even if it was slain, the future of the Arbiters of Justice would be over.
Sam worked like a machine, digging into the bony coating of the Corpse Titan’s body. As soon as he hit the marrow within, he began to pour an ocean of purified mana into the joint. It reacted with the matter like acid, eating away at the bone marrow like it was nothing. However, given the massive size of the Titan, it was working far too slowly.
Sam condensed the mana down into a single basketball sized sphere of power, and then thrust it forwards. The sphere flew hundreds of feet through the marrow substrate, before detonating. A tide of marrow washed out of the hole, nearly tearing Sam off his perch. He clambered away in the nick of time, watching as the knee joint buckled. The Corpse Titan stumbled and slowly began to fall.
As it fell, the monster set its far off eyes on Sam, before grinning. A moment later, its entire body pulsed with dark light, and a wave of Death energy exploded outwards. Sam was picked up like a leaf on the wind and propelled away, his bones shattering. Below, the ground was torn away for miles in every direction, leaving a blasted crater behind. Everyone in that radius, save for Sam and his captains, were dead.