Shit. Today involves a lot of sprinting. I can change into combat armor while running thanks to my cool inventory. Intellectually I know that without my instinctive aim I would have died long ago. But I love it less. I need to change my priorities. Caring about people seems to get us all killed right now. Our cannon is opening up. Well, one of the twin mounts. Have we lost the other mount? This is bad.
Unless the crew were taken out by gas or something, we should have heard something, though. But that could be the case. So the mask comes out of the inventory, be it comfortable or not. Do we have a lot of monsters with gas based attacks because we are living in a highly urbanized continent with hundreds of millions of vehicles, most of which carry a catalytic converter? Or is this a shade of WW1? If you have my perception power, the statement that the past is over and done with is very hard to make.
That question should have been answered years ago. God damn the GDN for their traitorous secrecy.
I am getting strange flashes through my aura sense, feeling of fire and weakness.
Coming onto the deck I see two men down, one with a blanket over the body and the other with a crew member on top of him doing CPR. The monster is going for the ship behind us if the tentacles coming out of the water are a reliable indication. They are ripping off and opening refrigerated containers revealing meat. I think those were halves of bovine carcasses. There was, however, also a crew member shrieking horrendously while the claw on the tip of a tentacle has pierced him through the lower abdomen and he is being dragged along the deck towards the water. Closer observation reveals two kinds of tentacles, thick and short versus thin and long. Only our frontal gun has a clear line of fire, as the deckhouse blocks the hind gun from firing backwards. This ship is a conversion. A military riverine vessel designed as such would look differently.
The guns are opening up again. The monster has made the mistake of stretching tentacles into the air at some distance from the ship, so our gun can fire without perforating the other ship too badly. I am sure the splinters are still doing damage. The aura flashes coincide with impacts of incendiary ammunition mixed into the burst. Those lead to permanent wounds. The others arm the tentacles, but they heal quickly.
The monster needs to get away from the ship or the ship needs to be abandoned and the crew taken off it, so that we can use torpedoes or depth charges or call in air support or something. I would like some answers to what I was supposed to do. But I have gotten no instructions. So I conjure my anti-materiel rifle and methodically began to pump out shots, until at least my affliction would stick.
What else remains to do? Sending in a flyer to drop a hand grenade onto something that periodically is taking a 35mm grenade with magic effects makes no sense. I need something that is not stopped by water. But bullets won’t do that. I am stupid.
I am going to start this slowly. I am aiming for the point below the waterline where a thick arm enters the water. A pink beam. The sailors are going to make jokes about that. But this is a cooperative effort of combined arms. I need three shots to make it stick. I get the feeling that these grenades are doing something. That explains how the convoys have survived so far.
It is getting angry. The thin tentacles have begun a spirit dance through the air. That is a mistake. It allows our gun and the guns of the now approaching tailguard ship to go for continous fire. Multiple tentacles are severed and a trail of blood is coming through the water.
That leaves the main body, assuming the tentacles are attached to the head right about … there.
I go for pink + green. A jet of water errupts alongside the other ship, followed by a loud bang a few seconds later but on our ship.
This ship holds my friends. I teleport to the shore and trow a hand grenade to distract the monster. Then I work to make my aura as bright as I can and concentrate on my anger, determination and defiance.
Something leaps half out of the canal. Do you know certain Japanese movies? Now image the human half of the couple staring in it is replaced by a walrus and the encounter has consequences.
A few seconds more on the countdown. I pump bullets from my assault rifle into it. The ships are retraining their cannons. Then I go all out on my spell. Our combined forces kill the monster.
This is a bronze rank monster and a strong one. I am going to loot it. Getting people to help you kill monsters really fills your slots.
--
The Seitenhuber Facility
E: Death was caused by extensive cranial trauma due to resonating force damage. The body also shows damage to the facial area already partially healed and burns to the right hand side of the body and the right hand consistent with an uncontrolled deflagration of a magical weapon, as well as numeous bruises already partially healed.
K: Got that.
E: The cranial cavity shows deformation to the sides and the long axis of the body.
K: Odd. So he was hit when he was already down?
E: Not necessarily. The deformation may have happened when he hit the ground during or immediately after his death. I see no way to check for that.
K: The soil samples. They took soil samples to check for neutron activation. We can check for stones cracked due to resonating force.
--
The captain is not happy. The commodore is not happy. I can understand that. I can even understand that they are not happy with me. I don’t care.
Captain: Why did you leave your post?
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
P: Because I had to get medical aid for a friend.
There is a point I am finished with an organisation. When they want to blame me for caring for a pregnant friend that limit is reached. I feel rage.
Captain: Very well. For the duration of this voyage while the ship is not moving you will be confined to your quarters, unless performing your duties as a ritualist.
--
A man, a vampire and a cyclops are meeting in a bar. Unfortunately nobody will make a joke out of this because they all have excellent aura control.
C: They have found the vial. Will it point to us?
V: Not with enough confidence to depend on it. But it will make them suspicious.
C: What is to be done?
V: We will not give up our long term penetration for one agent.
M: Am I to write him off?
V: No, on the contrary, give him the means to be really dangerous. The only bad option for us is them taking him alife.
--
I am doing the night rituals. My navy guards are not about to press somebody who made a monster’s head vanish into a black void to hurry up. In addition to the detection ritual I do the stone.
Gun: [Tools of the Magister] Special Ability Iron 0 (99%) [Joy of Sustained Fire] Blood Special Attack Iron 1 (11%) [This is my Gun] Myriad Special Attack/Conjuration
Iron 0 (90%)
(unused)
0%
(unused) 0% Vast: [Giant Form of the Ancestors] Special Ability Iron 0 (26%) [Immortality] Tree Special Ability Iron 0 (6%) [Nebelwerfer 42] Focus Special Attack/Conjuration Iron 0 (0%) (unused) 0% (unused) 0% Dimension: [Teleport] Special Ability Iron 0 (19%) [Dance by my Will] Dance Aura Ability Iron 1 (17%) [Eternal Moment] Reach Special Ability Iron 0 (19%) [Path in Time] Hunt Perception Ability Iron 0 (75%) [Wrath of the Magister] Corruption Special Attack/Spell Iron 0 (4%) Battlefield: [Equip the Army] Special Ability Iron 1 (36%) [Robotic Servant of War] Magotech Special Attack/Conjuration Iron 0 (44%) (unused) 0% (unused) 0% (unused) 0%
I am a living artillery piece now.