Apocalypse Tamer

Chapter 105: Man vs Lightning

The Gearsman Titan trampled tanks underfoot and fired lasers from its eye.

From afar, the steel colossus appeared similar to a Cyclops of legends. It was almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower and a true giant of rust-tainted steel. Its armor looked vaguely Roman in design, like a centurion of gears and bolts. A cannon burned with energy on its chest. A buzzing swarm of Watcher drones escorted it into battle, ready to defend it with their lives.

However, this creature was no Horseman of Famine. Apollyon had been powerful enough to annihilate the ISS and survive a Fire-empowered nuke to the face. Meanwhile, this machine’s plate armor had fallen off in some places under artillery bombardments. Its laser, while powerful enough to blow monster riders and Bulgarian helicopters out of the sky, paled in comparison with Apollyon’s devastating Gehenna Cannons.

A quick glance at it with Monster Insight gave Basil all the intel he needed.

Basil gritted his teeth. As expected, destroying this machine would detonate its runic core and petrify everyone in the area. Shumen would become a new Bucharest.

Not all was bad. The creature had vulnerabilities that Basil could exploit, and considering how Blackcinders seemed to have made his elimination a priority, he could potentially work as bait.

“Mister?” Rosemarine asked as she rushed across an ashen landscape. Her hastened feet trampled bones and concrete blocks alike. The song of gunfire and artillery shells grew ever closer. “Do I sneak bite it?”

“Can you use your beam?” Basil asked in response. His dear tropidrake shook her head in response. With the dust clouds obscuring the light of the moon and the stars, Rosemarine couldn’t power most of her abilities. This greatly limited the team’s combat effectiveness.

Worse, killing the titan was only half the battle. Since destroying it would activate its self-destruct petrification mechanism, they had to either scrap it in a safe place or neutralize it without exhausting its health points.

“I have an idea,” Basil said. “One for All: summon Steve Roadwonders.”

Unlike his mother, Steve… Steve hadn’t left the Guild. The Steamobile appeared next to Rosemarine in a flash of light, its metal frame drenched in blood and ashen dust. It let out a terrible noise of grinding gears on arrival.

An expression of shame and remorse.

Basil’s stomach lurched, but he suppressed his sorrow to focus on the battle at hand. “I know,” he told his creation. “But for now, lend me your strength. Do you think you can use your Improvement Perk to absorb an immobilized gearsman?”

The Steamobile’s lights lit up at once, and its engines roared. Basil took it as a yes. As a mechanical construct, Steve couldn’t achieve metamorphosis… but it could grow stronger by absorbing other technology into itself.

Hopefully, the titan’s core would be no exception.

Immediately afterward, Basil received a video call through the Logs from Benjamin Leroy. He swiftly opened it, only to find two people staring back at him behind the screen.

“Thank God, Basil, you’re alive.” Neria Elissalde sighed in relief. Benjamin sat at her side, typing on a keyboard faster than a pro gamer on cocaine. “When we saw the beam, we thought–”

“They have put a BFG on the moon,” Basil interrupted her with a frown all over his face. “The goddamn moon.”

Benjamin nodded grimly. “And from what I can see, they’re preparing for a second strike.”

Basil’s heart skipped a beat. He looked up, but struggled to see the glowing moon past the clouds of dust in the sky. Another strike meant the death of every survivor; and probably of Kalki too.

“Can you stop it?” Basil asked.

“General Leblanc has authorized a nuclear strike on the moon with what’s left of NATO’s remaining arsenal,” Neria replied. “There’s no guarantee our missiles can get past the Unity’s orbital defenses, but even if five percent of them hit home, it would be enough to blow up an area the size of Germany.”

Basil doubted the Unity would be mad enough to use a damaged weapon of mass destruction… but after what he had seen today, he couldn’t rule it out. “The sooner, the better,” he said before closing the screen. He had received another message, this time from Vasi.

At this point, Basil was too mentally exhausted to curse his rotten luck. Whenever he thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, the System found a new and novel way to prove him wrong.

I should have never let him get out of my sight, Basil blamed himself. I should have known. I should have known.

Basil wished his girlfriend the same and prayed to God to ensure her safety. Behind him, Shellgirl summoned a Frost Booster from her inventory. “What’s the plan, Partner?”

“Cover me by taking out the smaller drones.” Basil could handle the titan alone, but its escort would complicate matters. “Once I’ve lured the giant away from the city, I’ll use the secret weapon. It should take out a large amount of its health.”

“The secret weapon?” Shellgirl choked in surprise. “Weren’t we supposed to use it as a last resort?”

“I’m through with playing nice.” Basil stood atop Rosemarine and prepared to jump. “Steve, stay close. When the titan is down, you’ll only have a short time to absorb its core before it self-destructs.”

Basil leaped from his tropidrake before receiving an answer. Shellgirl activated the Booster to enhance her damage and shared another with Steve. The party roared as they engaged the enemy.

Chaos reigned when they reached the frontline. On the ground, a patchwork defense of Bulgarian soldiers were firing at incoming Gearsmen behind trenches and fortifications. The shockwave from earlier had collapsed multiple watchtowers, but some walls of concrete and steel walls survived enough to offer the Swords of Saint-George protection. Countless corpses and heaps of scrap metal mounted up on the killing zone where Gearsmen lasers met human projectiles.

Shumen’s defenders were a complex lot: artillerymen using machine guns in tandem with rune-powered tanks; mages summoning small meteorites while bolstered by bardic songs; archers raining arrows from behind a shieldwall raised by armored knights. Dozens of classes were present on the battlefield, great in their disparity, yet united in their purpose.

Soldiers held the tide of steel for now… but just barely.

The titan’s shadow covered the battlefield, though it had stopped advancing. A group of wyvern riders, tamed demons, and war helicopters attacked the titan from all sides above the clouds, keeping it busy. At their helm was a winged knight wielding a sword in one hand and a spear of light in the other.

Simeon lived.

The sight gave Basil’s dead heart a little hope. Using Double Jump to join the flying melee, he bounced past Unity drones and slashed at the titan’s chest. “Runestorm: Water!”

Water magic infused his halberd as it cut through steel like paper. Basil’s weapon slashed gears, bolts, and wires before coming out of the titan’s back.

His dazzling entrance was immediately noticed.

“Sir Bohen? You’re alive?!” Simeon waved his spear at his troops. “We are outnumbered ten to one! We need to fall back!”

“No, they’re preparing a second orbital strike as we speak!” Basil shouted back imperiously. Simeon’s eyes blinked in horror behind his helmet. “Our only chance of survival is to push through!”

The Gearsman Titan looked down at Basil with its crimson eye. “Scan…” The machine’s metal voice suddenly shifted in tone, becoming deeper, more focused. “Target identified: Basil Jean-François Bohen. Engaging pursuit.”

“Engaging pursuit!” The Unity Watchers spoke as one. “Self-Destruct!”

They all threw themselves at Basil like a suicidal hornet swarm.

Realizing the danger, Basil and Simeon immediately flew as far from the titan as they could. The Watchers were weak, no stronger than level 2; but there were hundreds of them, and each carried enough explosive charges to inflict damage.

Fortunately, Basil’s allies on the ground rushed to his rescue. Gunmen, archers and mages opened fire at the swarm to support Simeon. Shellgirl’s ice pearls surged across the air faster than bullets, each of them causing a Watcher to detonate on impact. And Steve, bless its heavy artillery, vaporized more robots than anyone else with a single shot of his Gehenna Cannon. A barrier of explosions and fire soon formed between Basil’s allies and the Unity’s forces.

Yet when the Gearsman Titan took a step, the world trembled. The machine lumbered after Basil while trying to catch him with its mighty hand. On the ground, lesser Gearsmen abandoned the fight with soldiers on the ground and instead opened fire at the flyers.

Blackcinders had truly made Basil’s death a priority.

“I will lure the titan and its allies out of Shumen and break the encirclement!” Basil shouted to the troops, his halberd raised to the heavens. “Evacuate everyone you can! At your back, you will only find death! But beyond the horizon, glory awaits! For Bulgaria!”

His words and fearless example inspired the soldiers on the ground, who soon echoed his war cry. “For Bulgaria!”

A halo of light appeared above Simeon’s head and bathed Basil in its light. “God blesses you, Sir Bohen!”

And so Basil retreated away from the city with a giant robot on his tail.

The situation reminded him so much of the fight with Apollyon. However, instead of escaping on foot as he did in Paris, Basil’s Double Jump offered him far better aerial mobility. Empowered by both his buffs and Hasten status, he leaped over the hills around Shumen in a single bound. Smoke and fiery winds glided over his armor.

The Gearsman Titan did not jump over obstacles as its target did. It simply powered through them. Its legs kicked through stones and concrete alike. A swarm of Watchers followed in the sky like a vicious cloud; on the ground, an army of Gearsmen followed their taller kindred. Simeon and his allies stayed behind as the frontline cleared. Only the Bohens chased after the titan.

All Unity troops fired at Basil.

A hundred lasers targeted him, none larger than the titan’s own. The giant’s eye unleashed a fiery crimson beam that incinerated the land further and caused the very atmosphere to simmer. Basil dodged, jumping up and down, left and right. He avoided most. attacks

Most.

Even while hastened, Basil Bohen couldn’t truly ‘dodge’ light. He had to stay on the move in the hope the lasers would miss his current position. He moved unpredictably enough to avoid most attacks, but a few searing beams hit his legs and tights anyway. His armor mitigated most of the damage, and he was careful to focus on avoiding the titan’s much stronger attack.

His allies did their best to support him on the ground. Shellgirl rode Rosemarine and focused on taking out the remaining Watchers with boosted ice projectiles. Steve buffed itself up, moved at the forefront of the smaller Gearsmen, and released a host of road hazards on their path: iron spikes, sharp rocks, fire mines. Unity machines were blown apart, collapsed on each other, and fell off the path in short order.

But for each that fell, two more would take their place.

They are sending all their troops after us, Basil realized as he noticed more lasers fired at him from the countryside. Blackcinders truly wants me dead.

Perhaps he could exploit the situation and wipe out the army in one strike? The Unity’s troops weren’t immune to their petrification effect after all.

The Gearsmen Titan raised its fist and attempted to punch Basil out of the sky. For all of its massive power, it was slow enough that the Dragonknight had no problem dodging. “This world will be pacified!” the giant shouted a recorded message. “The Unity is inevitable!”

“I’ve heard that before,” Basil replied as he jumped upward and closer to the clouds. “It wasn’t funny the first time either.”

By now Shumen’s city center had become naught but a smoking crater in the distance. Basil had led the titan out of its suburbs and towards its outskirts. The giant machine trampled only ashen trees and shelled grass.

Ten kilometers… twelve maybe, Basil thought. We should be far enough from the city.

He turned around without warning.

The Gearsman Titan shot a beam at him, which he avoided by leaping up and up. Basil positioned himself right above the titan of steel and pointed a free hand at it. Around five hundred meters separated both fighters from each other.

“Open inventory,” Basil said. There was one item he had stored there for emergencies, one that he almost dropped on the head of his girlfriend’s father. A secret weapon he had never tested in the field due to the potential collateral damage.

Weapons of mass destruction were a two-way street.

As a colossal ship of steel materialized under him, Basil realized that he would answer an age-old question that had long puzzled pop culture circles.

Could a two-hundred thousand-ton freighter crush a giant robot?

Kalki’s team had defended their Tamer valiantly.

Their defiant struggle came into display the moment the Bohens walked into the dungeon. Broken gold golems lay dead at the feet of shattered pillars of black stone; soldiers in steel armor melted in puddles of Shesha’s venom; and a dozen more were impaled by Garud’s feathers on cubic-style walls. The entrance hall looked to have been designed for giants, and its spaciousness only helped to display the gruesome scale of the massacre. So many had perished there that Vasi could hardly take a step without staining her feet with blood.

She had no trouble telling apart the dungeon’s defenders from Metal Olympus troops. The latter uniformly wore a form of armor Vasi had never seen before: mechanical, humanoid shells of gears and gilded steel. The cuirasses were as thick as a tank’s outer layers, and the hoplite-style helmets included gas masks and goggle apparatuses. Vasi had even mistaken the wearers for Gearsmen until she noticed the bloodied corpses within the metal frames.

Vasi stored a few of these armors in the Guild Inventory, just in case. Bugsy squinted at opened gates leading into the next room. “Kalki is located right ahead, Vasi,” he warned, his body tense as a bowstring. “With the enemy.”

“Probably Ashok,” Vasi guessed. “Plato, you flank while I distract him. Bugsy, once the battle starts, you go catch Kalki at the first opportunity. There’s no room for failure.”

“Alright,” Plato replied before turning himself invisible and casting another spell on his allies. “Mirage.”

Vasi’s physical features blurred to the point that she left afterimages. After Plato vanished from sight, Bugsy took the lead while the witch followed closely after.

“We must leave now, Lord Vishnu,” a voice said deeper inside the dungeon. “The Unity’s next attack could wipe out this dungeon any minute now.”

Vasi made herself as stealthy as she could upon entering the next room. A stone dome carved with glowing runes stood atop the new chamber; one large enough to put a cathedral to shame. A dozen busts of stern, intimidating cubic-style figures rested along the walls. Basil would have probably been able to recognize these people, but Vasi didn’t. She noticed stairways of granite west and east, both heavily damaged. Swirling dungeon particles gathered already to repair the broken stones.

No magic would revive the dead, however. A dozen more calcined corpses lay dispersed all over the floor; with Kalki’s familiar Shesha among them. The golden cobra had had its head caved into the ground with enough force to crack the skull.

The killer hadn’t walked away unscathed, however.

“Must we truly resort to pointless violence, Lord Vishnu?” A humanoid twice taller than Vasi stood in the center of the chamber. She mistook him for a platinum statue at first glance, until she noticed golden blood flowing out of two fang-shaped holes in his metal chest. “I take no joy in this. Too many of my men could have lived if you had come along peacefully.”

Out of all the false gods of Metal Olympus, Ashok embodied his faction’s name the best. He resembled a cross between an ancient golem and a modern robot. He was as muscled as a bull, yet his muscles were woven metal fibers instead of flesh. He wore no clothing of any sort and lacked any sexual organs, though platinum plates covered nearly every inch of his body like armor; all of them showed claw marks and bullet impacts. A silver, bearded funerary mask covered his face, one representing a cross between an idealized patriarch and a middle-aged man. Electricity coursed through his circuit veins, and his golden eyes looked down on his victim squirming at his feet with frustration.

“You shot first…” Kalki had been brought to his knees, his left leg twisted in a sick way that shouldn’t be biologically possible, his hands so broken he had to use his elbows to lift his chest up. His silver flute’s broken remnants gathered dust on the floor. “Shesha… Garud…”

“One man’s house burns so that another may warm himself.” Ashok replied with a cordial tone. He watched Kalki cough blood with a serenity Vasi couldn’t help but find deeply, deeply unnerving. “All I have done was in your name, though you may not remember it yet.”

Vasi and Bugsy exchanged a glance. She pointed to her left, the volcanipede nodding without a word. After facing so many trials, the group didn’t need words to coordinate.

“I ask you for the last time,” Ashok said. “Will you come with me quietly, Lord Vishnu?”

“The eyes do not see…” Kalki looked up and glared defiantly at the false god. “What the mind does not want.”

Ashok let out a grinding sound that could pass for a sigh. “A pity.”

He savagely punched Kalki’s head into the pavement.

Ashok’s attack was so sudden, so brutal, that Vasi’s eyes struggled to see him move. The false god hit Kalki hard enough to dislocate his jaw. For a brief second, Vasi thought her traveling companion had been killed on the spot; dooming Earth to destruction. Fortunately—if the witch could call watching a friend beaten so brutally fortunate—Kalki’s chest rose slightly. He still breathed, but no longer moved.

Bugsy’s eyes burned in outrage, though he was wise enough not to give Ashok a warning. Vasi incanted a spell as her insectoid friend charged to rescue Kalki.

“I hear you.” Ashok suddenly turned around, his bloodied hand shining with electricity. “Astrapios!”

He shot Plato with lightning and killed him on the spot.

Vasi had no idea how Ashok managed to detect the feline’s presence, but he did. A blinding thunderbolt surged from his fingers and targeted an empty spot at the witch’s left. Plato became briefly visible as a bolt incinerated him to dust; he hadn’t expected the enemy to see him and thus failed to dodge.

Vasi gasped upon seeing the number. With the System doubling damage for the next twenty-four hours, a single bolt meant death.

But this worked in reverse too. If they could blitz Ashok, they could kill him in minutes.

“Murderer!” Bugsy charged at Ashok with dazzling speed. “Fire Up!”

Since Kalki was too close to Ashok for her to risk using her most destructive spells, Vasi opened with a precise volley of ice shards. Ashok shielded himself by raising his arms, to little avail. Vasi’s ice shards, empowered by the New Year Event’s effect, might as well have been made of steel. They cut the false god’s metal body and left marks all over his platinum armor.

Vasi’s attack allowed Bugsy to close in on them. The volcanipede swooped at Kalki in an attempt to grab him and run, but Ashok saw the rescue attempt coming.

“Useless!” Powering through Vasi’s spell, Ashok engaged Bugsy in melee. "Panhellenion!”

Ashok’s fists started moving so fast Vasi’s eyes struggled to see them. He unleashed a volley of punches at Bugsy, hitting the much larger Volcanipede in multiple places. Each blow caused an aftershock as it surged through the air.

Strong as he was, Bugsy was still thrown back across the room and hit one of the statues. Vasi prepared to cast another spell, only for Ashok to swiftly grab Kalki by the head. Unable to hit Ashok without harming her friend, the witch hesitated.

And it cost them everything.

“Teleport,” Ashok said.

Kalki vanished in a flash of red light.

“Cheater!” Vasi cursed as Plato revived at her side, weakened but alive. “I thought teleportation effects didn’t work in dungeons!”

Ashok didn’t bother answering. He instead turned in her direction and charged her with murder on his mind. With no reason to hold back anymore, Vasi completed her spell and nailed him with a volley of ice shards. A pleasant sensation flowed in her body as she fired her magic, strengthening her.

Neat.

“Not again!” Plato screeched as he swung his sword and unleashed a blade of wind. The Regen effect healed his wounds, curbed his revival’s disorientation effect, and brought him back into the fight. “I’ve lost half of my lives! Half of them!”josei

“Tallaios!” Ashok swung his arms. A dozen melting meteors materialized in his wake and flew straight at his enemies. Half the projectiles exploded upon meeting the Bohen’s own attacks; the rest continued their course at them. Vasi and Plato had to run in two directions to dodge.

“Ashok Acharya, I suppose?” Vasi tried to distract the false god to give her ally a chance to flank him. “I see. You sensed Hypathia’s essences, didn’t you? Is that why you sent her to die at our hands?”

“Sin: Pride,” Ashok replied, a golden aura glowing around his body as he ran towards Vasi.

He crossed the gap between them in a single bound.

Vasi ducked to the side to dodge. Ashok punched through one of her afterimages, hitting the ground with enough strength to leave a small crater on the floor. He chased after Vasi without wasting a breath, only for one of Bugsy’s magma bombs to force him to retreat. The lava spilled over the stone ground, and the false god immediately ran around it in an attempt to catch the witch.

This one is not like his teammates, Vasi thought. Tamura had been inexperienced in using his powers; Hypathia’s arrogance had made her misuse her gifts; and Benjamin Leroy was deranged enough to waste time trying to convince others of his righteousness. Ashok showed no such weakness. None of his attacks were wasted, and all of them aimed to kill. He knows I’m a long-range mage, so he engages me in melee. He’s a professional.

“You’re not really the talkative type, are you?” Vasi asked before deciding to use her trump card. She had wanted to give herself more time to think over her choice, but this man did not fuck around. She couldn’t afford to hold back.

This time Ashok deigned to answer her. “Chitchat is wasted on the dead, Mrs. Yaga.”

Vasi couldn’t agree more.

“Metamorphosis,” she said. “Glaistig Fomor.”

The power coursed through her veins the moment she finished her sentence. Her skin glowed with otherworldly energies. She felt her body change as her ancestors’ magic molded her flesh into a form that fit it.

Realizing the danger, Ashok raised a hand in her direction. “Astrap–AH!”

A vengeful Plato had leaped on Ashok’s back and sliced his metal neck with Joyeuse. The attack would have severed a mortal’s head, but though the false god’s throat ripped open and shed a fountain of blood, his skull did not fall from his shoulders. The infuriated Ashok turned around and punched the weakened feline, sending the feline crashing against a wall. His body exploded in a shower of blood and bones on impact.

Her friend’s sacrifice was well worth it.

Vasi felt wings burst from her back and tear through her sorceress robes. Her feet became hooves. Her horns grew longer. None of this mattered. Physical changes paled before the cosmic power empowering her and the otherworldly knowledge filling her mind.

Her father was a demon lord and her mother a mighty Fomor. Of the two sides of her ancestry, the latter swiftly became dominant. As primeval magic reshaped her into a true fairy lord, Vasi let out a laugh. A spell inherent to her mother’s race was engraving itself in her mind; a mighty weapon she had herself suffered from not so long ago.

Vasi pointed a finger at Ashok and uttered two words. Two simple words that would extinguish even a god’s hopes.

“Darkest Fear!”