Mateo

“Come on, don’t be afraid. How bad could the upgrade be?” I urged my teammate Li. He was much more nervous, but he had a decent head on his shoulders and a strong sword arm.

“They said level 6 monsters,” Li replied and I waved that off.

“You have seen the cannons, towers, and everything else around the capital. Plus, Emperor Michael is handling it personally. He defeated a level 7. A bunch of level 6 monsters will be no problem. Li agreed and we snuck into the zone. The soldiers were warning people to stay out, but zones were huge and there was no wall.

They were overstating the risk. This was a once in a lifetime chance. I wanted to see if the higher level monsters really lived up to the hype. We snuck into the zone the morning of. I had learned the soldiers would stop removing people from the zone this morning. Which was perfect. I knew things were dangerous, but as long as we didn’t close it would be fine.

There were several other people who snuck in as well to witness this legendary battle. We all grinned at each other, since we were going to witness history and see if level 6 monsters were all they were cracked up to be.

We made our way through the grasslands, killing off the wolves, and set up about a mile or a kilometer and a half from the city early in the morning. Drinks and snacks were quickly passed around. This was going to be 100 times better than the monster battle arena.

The city shield went up in a blaze of white. I had heard about tests being done at other cities, but this was the first time seeing it myself. That was when the ground began to shake. I kept my eyes peeled at the city wall in the distance.

Hundreds of massive purple tentacles burst out of the ground. I knew how big the walls were and these things were massive. They slammed onto the city shield. It was getting harder to breathe, and a massive headache began to form. I had a hard time focusing on the tentacles in the distances. They were releasing small things that were launching beam attacks everywhere, probably Emperor Michael and the shield.

One person nearby puked out their guts and collapsed to the ground. Everything was spinning and I collapsed as well. One of the people in our group had pulled out a journal. “Oh, how interesting. Gradual energy poisoning. No, poisoning is the wrong word. Corruption. Much better.” It was a slim man with an evil grin on his face.

“Help,” I gasped out. I felt blood began to run down my eyes.

“I am afraid you are suffering from acute energy corruption brought on by elevated energy levels in the zone and not being able to handle it. Don’t worry, I am part of the Imperial Government. With how energy jumps up in discrete amounts per zone and the environmental energy playing a role as well, it is so hard to get good data.”

“I have to thank you for ignoring the Imperial Edict.” The man waved and several soldiers came over. “Set up the research equipment. I want to begin harvesting samples, and begin looking at their brains during this process. Get them strapped in.”

Everything hurt as the man leaned down near me. “Thank you for bragging about your stats earlier, this will be so much better for the data collection,” the man said as I was lifted up and strapped down to a table while the battle raised in the distance. I felt a wave of heat wash over me. “Definitely need to hurry before this is over. Now let’s get that pesky skull off your head so I can take a look.”

I tried to scream, but spat out blood instead.

Clarissa

“Supreme Governor, the shield is failing. Give the order to go cannons free,” General Abdullah asked me.

“We have time General. Our thirty days might be cut down to two at the current draw rate from the tentacles, but Emperor Michael has something planned.” That was when I felt everything shift around me.

One of the communication personnel rushed over. They prioritized messages from the walls and would relay orders given to the various sections. I had assumed direct control over all operations and choices from within the city. General Abdullah was backing me up as my second in command.

While it was tempting to use the cannons right away. The sheer cost was painful. Michael liked to joke about his ship being a money pit that he named the Crystal Vortex, but the real money pit were the defenses of this city and how much had been invested into them. We could afford to wait an hour or so, for Emperor Michael to implement the secret summoning plan.

He was hoping that he wouldn’t have to, keeping it as a trump card, but it would be the best option to deal with this crisis without causing a bankruptcy. “Emergency report, the entire city as tilted. Estimated half a degree and increase,” the communication messenger relayed. Everything shook again.

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Various things were being secured as the entire city began to tilt. That was not within expectations. I let out a sigh of frustration. Even after everything, now I would have to clean up this mess. The City Shield was supposed to prevent a mess from being made.

Perhaps no one would notice. It was never going to happen. The leaning tower of Pisa had a tilt of five and a half degrees, but it was obvious due to the terrain and the surroundings buildings to use as reference. Then I realized the roads would be messed up. This would require a full city reset to fix. That meant clearing everyone out for an entire day.

It was possible. Just very annoying to do. Everything shook some more and the tilt increased slightly. “Supreme Governor,” General Abdullah said.

“General, the shield is holding and now that we are tilting, it will have little impact how much we tilt. Right now the weight of the ground and the buildings is pressing down, if we tilt too much, we will slide back down or something. We are not going to slip suddenly,” I explained. “Estimated time to ten degrees?” I called out.

“On it,” one of the battle analyst leads called out. A minute later they got back to me.

“Supreme Governor, we are tilting at a rate of half a degree every approximately ten minutes. About three hours until we are tilted ten degrees,” they replied and I nodded at this.

“We will wait until the two hour mark and then deploy the cannons. Tell all personnel to conserve their beam attacks and clump togeather to ensure tentacles are destroyed. We need to ensure overkill due their regeneration.” The message was quickly relayed. An assistant passed me a cup of tea that I sipped calmly in the middle of the command center in the bunker built under the Imperial Palace.

It had been a pain to dig out and move everything here, but it was worth it to ensure my safety in the event of an invasion. If the city fell, then so would I. This was my powerbase. Unless there was a looming existential threat like the Divine Empress, I would not retreat. Even then there were methods to deal with her.

“We can deploy the ABS. We worked out the pushback issue to mount it on a small airship.” I considered that option.

“For now no. That is our emergency trump card if the walls fall for the defense of the inner city. It is best to save it for something else and build up the number of small airships and ABS cannons. The Annihilation Beam Shooter, was a combination beam cannon system to shoot annihilation beams. Based on the principles of Doctor Katz worked out long ago to deal with the Divine Empress.

He had downsized for his little guns. But the full ABS System was a huge cost investment. While there was an argument to use cannons the System provided, our method was cheaper, but only single use. Also, the annihilation reaction could happen at the source, rather than at the target, so aim and timing didn’t need to be perfect.

But the airship plan, was for the airships to act as suicide bombers. They would fire the massive beam, and then ram into the target and explode in another reaction. The cost was horrendous, but I was never hiding in the wilderness again. If another Divine Empress showed up, I would ram airships down her throat in a series of explosions until she choked.

It would be the most expensive battle in history, but I was never leaving my fate in Michael’s hands ever again. I trusted him and he trusted me, but I wasn’t about to just role over and put my faith in his abilities. He was good, but against something like 1,000 Tentacled Horrors, their eyeball spawns, and everything else, he just wasn’t good enough. He was one person.

But if I could save points, I would save points. I also winced since purchased buildings wouldn’t be reset. They would most likely remain tilted, and a cost would have to be paid to fix them. At least it would be cheaper than fixing the pillars.

Governor Francis

I stood atop the wall and looked out at the wiggling tentacle in front of me. I had accepted a field commission due to my past military service to handle this section of the wall. I had wanted to see a level 6 monster and its sheer power.

Now that I was here and the wall rippling slightly, I was concerned. A soldier came over me to deliver the latest message from headquarters. “We just go word back. We are to wait until the word is given in two hours to attack or Emperor Michael makes a move outside. For now, to conserve energy and ignore the tilting,” I nodded at this as the city shook again and the tilt got a bit worse.

“Pass the message along,” I told one of my subordinates. Word quickly spread up and down the wall. The beam attacks stopped. Now all we had to do was wait.

“You think we will be alright Governor Francis?” one of the women next to be asked.

“Yes. I am sure Emperor Michael or Supreme Governor Clarissa have a plan. I wouldn’t be here if I thought they would fail?” I said and that brought about a series of relieved chuckles from the nearby soldiers and helped ease the tension everyone was feeling. Time stretched on, then I noticed an airship flying in towards the city.

The glare of the shield made it hard to see outside, but it was the Crystal Vortex, Emperor Michael’s personal large airship. Something went over the side, and it began to move away. Suddenly a massive millipede formed up outside the city. I felt my heart skip a beat just looking at its immense size and burning fire.

The massive millipede spun about and went at the base of the tentacle. It was quickly dusted. “Yeah!” I cheered along with everyone else. The monster quickly began to make its way around the city destroying one tentacle after another.

Some people used beam attacks on the tentacles when there was the next one to be targeted by the massive monster. Everyone was quickly getting organized and ready to support Emperor Michael. The airship flew past our section of the wall, and I saw him standing on top of the airship firing beam attacks to deal with the eyes.

“The eyes! Target the eyes!” I shouted and the word quickly spread along the city wall. Instead of the tentacles all the soldiers quickly adjusted their fire at the eyes that the tentacles had spawned around the city. The weak point wasn’t the summoned monster, but the airship that was trailing behind it. “Relay that to command, we need to target the spawned eyes not the tentacles, so Emperor Michael’s airship can move unmolested,” I quickly said to the soldier who was nearby just for this duty.

I watched as the monsters were destroyed and breathed a sigh of relief. Clarissa was going to be in a bad mood having to deal with a clean up due to the city tilt.