Samson stared back at me blankly.
"You offer me up and then ask me if I’m up for it. What’s there not to like?"
"Good. Jump down there and use your shockwave attack. It should knock most out, or maybe even kill them. Then I jump down after you, and we kill anything still standing. In the meanwhile, your lady here shoots at anything moving. Except for us. HE shells against groups, and ordinary ammo on single targets. Any questions? Good, move it when Levi’s in position."
"I’m starting to dislike you," Samson murmured as he knelt beside me. "You’re lucky Atlas told me how to use the Seismic shock ability, or I’d tell you to buzz off."
"Is that how you speak to your Commander?" I joked.
"No. But you’ll pardon me for not giving you head just because you came to be in Command. I’ve been here for a couple of years and have gone through all kinds of shit. Once we’ve fought and bled together, I’ll have more respect to throw around."
"Hmpf! Sure thing, soldier. I can’t wait to see them spill your guts all over the deck. Now get your ass down there and clean house."
Samson smirked, showing me two rows of mostly good teeth.
"Yes, sir!"
His body changed slightly, after which the arms turned to meat-grinding machines in mid-drop. He ran up to a barricade and exactly four seconds in, a massive, bright explosion rocked the walls and the air duct. Screams and gunfire picked up immediately after, along with loud curses and growls.
"Can you take care of us?" I asked before I turned to the hole beneath and dropped. I had no idea what she’d replied, but I could only imagine it being snarky when it came to Levi. I took a deep breath and dropped down right on a dead Gebradim, grinning from ear to ear.
I looked around, trying to memorize the layout in one glance and noticed Samson pressed hard to my left. To my other side, was a large group of Gebradim trying to get up from the shockwave. Multiple were thrown on their backs, and it was a damn delight seeing them struggle.
"Need help?" I asked, shooting a harpoon from my left palm and struck two of his attackers. I tried to shoot again but forgot about the damned limiter of fifteen seconds and an energy bar that was at zero. I’d need to pummel some of them to death before I could shoot another. This was something I would need to remember.
"What do you think? There are hundreds of them!"
He was right. No matter how strong we were, I didn’t see a good way out of this. Unless I could get hold of the Admiral and kill him in front of his men, they might lose the will to fight. I looked around again, trying to spot the bastard, but there was no strange-looking Gebradim to be found.
"Khepri, use me for a moment and call the bastard out. Tell him I want to offer him a deal, one he can’t deny."
"Are you sure? I don’t think he’s the kind to risk his skin. Oh, and I know what you’re trying to do, but this particular deity is a scheming bastard, if I may say so."
"Whatever. Just do it," I snapped and hurled a Gebradim claw at another assailant on Samson’s right, then turned to pummel the ones around me. The energy bar raised about a third with each hit, and the moment I was done ripping four of the enemy troopers to shreds, the bar had stopped at 330 percent. Reading my thought, Devil spoke.
"Yes, you can shoot three javelins one after another without the need to build up energy. The highest you can go is five stored javelins."
"Thanks, I appreciate the fact you’re just telling me now," I replied and threw myself at another Gebradim trooper. I felt bad for the bastard as I killed him in two hits.
"Asclepius, I know you’re here! Show yourself!" Khepri shouted in their language. To me, it sounded just as my language, but then again, I had inherited their language after devouring Khepri. An inherited ability from Khepri? He was rather fresh when I ate him.
Nothing happened as the fighting went on. Instead, a minute in, the Gebradim tried even harder shooting their weapons and coming in close and personal. I had no choice but to attack the right half of the room as they were harassing me too badly. Samson would be on his own for a while.
Loud booms reverberated from overhead as Levi started laying down covering fire. Immediately, the stench of burnt flesh took over as Gebradim burned alive by the dozens. It was a good tactic to huddle up, but not when your enemy could attack more than one, and the incendiary rounds were overpowered against ordinary troops.
"Asclepius!" Khepri shouted again. "I’m Khepri! Would you like to take me back to your queen?"
"What?" a voice from behind the tallest barricade roared. "My brother is dead?"
"Oh, yes! I ripped his head off clean and feasted on what little brains he had!"
There was no moment of reprieve, and there was no moment of a cease-fire. More guns joined the fire-fight by the second as they awoke and got their hands on a rifle, defending their ship against the intruders. Round after round struck my arms and hardened body, keeping me occupied and on my defense. The pain was slowly getting to me, but I couldn’t give up, or Samson would be overwhelmed.
"How long until you can use Seismic shock?" I asked, shooting a javelin at a particularly nasty trooper, and darted behind a pile of the dead Gebradim. Grenade blasts rocked the area where I’d just been standing and sent a torrent of flame my way.
"I need to sustain enough damage so I can use it again. Maybe a minute or two?"
"How about now?" I asked and shot a Gebradim rifle at him, but it bounced off. "Shit, you’re too hard, my friend. Hold on," I said, aiming my left palm. Five, four—here I go!" I laughed, shooting a javelin at his hip. The projectile scratched his skin’s surface, scraping the outer layer badly, but deflected into a group of Gebradim attacking him. I turned to the enemy and peppered their line with bullets, lunged past the barricade and flew right at them with my left claw out to meet them. I lost myself for a long moment, ripping at limbs and heads as I kept watch over the javelin counter. Again I turned to Samson and released a javelin. He snapped his head around and growled.
"Stop it! That shit hurts!"
"Yeah? See if I care! Use the skill!"
"I can’t!" he shot back and slammed his meaty fist into a wounded trooper’s skull, shattering it.
"Levi. Shoot him with two normal rounds. Now!"
"No! Are you insane?"
"That’s an order, soldier!"
"Fuck you and your order!" she yelled and fired a bullet my way.
"Levi!" I shouted. "I’m going to rip Nyx from your spine once we’re done here!"
"Nyx? Atlas? Did you kill my younger brother and sister as well? Oh, cowards! Oh, monsters! Oh, Demons! I will kill you myself!" Asclepius raged and crashed right through the wall.
I peeked over the dead bodies and gasped. A six-armed gigantic Gebradim stood there with four rifles in his hands and two honest to god katanas. Sure, the edges released a fiery glow and were energy-based, but they looked just like the weapons from old.
"You are one ugly motherfucker!" Samson growled as he grabbed two Gebradim and used them as a living shield against the energy blasts. I used the time to study the creature some more. It was easily two heads taller than the previous Atlas host I fought in the training bay, as well as broader. His orange and brown skin seemed like it was about to burst open as his muscles tore against the black armor.
"Shouldn’t Asclepius be a geek doctor or something? That thing looks more like a Kraken than a fragile doctor!" Levi joked as she fired an HE round at its chest. The bullet exploded, washing him in searing flame, but the Gebradim didn’t seem to feel it.
"The hell do I know? I’m not good with mythologies!" Samson replied, charging the Admiral. Just before contact, Levi shot another HE round against his head. Asclepius staggered backward, flailing his arms around as he tried to steady himself.
Numbers appeared all over his body.
The bastard was far stronger than I was in pure percentage, though I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it all meant. If I were to judge the situation by what experience I had with ga
mes, the lower the percentage, the less life it had. Looking at it that way, it could only be their life pool of which his head was the lowest.
I couldn’t let the two do all the work, so I charged his back and shot out a javelin into the back of his leg.
"You monsters!" Asclepius roared as he dropped to his knee and yanked at the metallic growth. I extended my claw with a roar and ripped at his leg. The captain threw his katana my way, hitting me square in the chest.
"Khepri, activate Retaliation."
The excruciating pain gathered at a single point and shot back at him. His left katana-wielding arm evaporated along with a part of his side armor. Samson charged him head-on and brought the giant to the ground. His leg bent in a strange angle and snapped at the knee joint where the javelin was still stuck.
A mass of Gebradim troopers swarmed us, pummeling our bodies with their rifles and a sort of batons as they tried to free their leader. Samson finally brought up his hands and slammed them together, releasing a massive shockwave from up close. The troopers scattered and died by the dozens as their armors cracked open, and their bodies absorbed the shock, imploding. Asclepius’ two front limbs broke in multiple places along with the chest armor, revealing the orange skin beneath.
"Fuck, man, you’re a cheater! Why don’t I have such a skill?" I groaned and hurled myself at the captain. Multiple bolts passed through my gut and my side. I started losing my consciousness along with a massive amount of blood, but Devil wasn’t coming out. Instead, I heard him laugh in the deepest depths of my mind. Was he trying to show me who owned whom? Fuck him!
"You wish! This baby is all mine!" Samson laughed slamming his fists against Asclepius’ chest, over and over again. Loud cracks and odd sounds left his body and reverberated in the near vicinity, followed by a green mist rising from the open wounds. Samson staggered back and coughed violently as his arms turned back to his human form.
An HE round struck the chest just when the mist caught up to me. But nothing happened. My arms remained transformed, but my breathing became harder as the vapor filled my lungs. The round exploded, engulfing the Admiral with flames so hot, I could feel them from ten feet away gnawing at my skin. Samson wasn’t moving anymore and lay there on his stomach as Asclepius rose in a sitting position, his chest down to half of his percentage along with the arms. The only limbs still going strong were his legs.
Asclepius opened a small box and picked something out, then poured it over his wounds and drank the rest.
"Now you’ve done it," he said with a low, rumbling voice. His leg snapped back into place while the chest wound closed and the arms healed up to full. The skin and muscle grew back together in mere seconds.
"At least his arm isn’t re-growing," I murmured. But something else happened instead. The bastard started transforming. Growths protruded from his back, arms and chest, doubling his mass twofold. He started twisting and writhing on the ground as his body changed into something even more horrific, a true monster from hell.
The three remaining arms dried up and fell to the ground as two new arms sprouted from the sides, adorned with bony spikes and long claws. The head widened and grew slightly along with his mouth where long, sharp teeth protruded.
Somehow, I doubted he’d be happy with the mutation, or that he’d give us a second chance to fight if we didn’t finish this quickly, so I forced myself up and jumped into the group of dead Gebradim. I started cracking open skulls and prying out the brain matter as fast as I could.
"Keep him busy!" I shouted up at Levi through mouthfuls. "I’m trying to heal up as well!"
"I’m almost out of usable metal!" she replied as two bullets struck him right in his open mouth. One remained stuck inside, while the other exit out the back, splattering gore against the wall.
I dug in again and finished my fourth brain, healing most of my wounds. I could feel my claw itch for blood, for murder, and destruction. Just then, a door to my right opened, letting a female Gebradim out, from what I could tell by their looks. Her head was slightly elongated and had a growth at the back that went down to half of her back. Now that I thought of it, she looked like Nyx, though I hadn’t had the time to observe her during the battle on Devil in detail.
"What’s with all—the ruckus?" she asked, stretching all four arms. "By the Queen! Brother? What’s going on!" she screamed, bringing out dual katanas that looked identical to Asclepius’ ones. It might have been a defensive mechanism, or Devil playing a cruel joke on me, but I shot up and rammed my left claw into her gut, twisted it around and ripped her heart out, killing the Gebradim where she stood.
She shuddered for a moment as our eyes met, and bloody tears streamed down her pink cheeks. The Admiral looked my way in disbelief as if he wasn’t sure of what he’d just seen, and before I could react, released a murderous bellow.
"Eat her, fast!" Devil hissed. "Eat her, or you all die!"
My eyes wandered from the Admiral to his female and back again. With his right hand, he opened up a container, then proceeded taking out large syringes and rammed them into his neck. One by one
"Eat!" Khepri added to Devil’s annoying presence. "Eat her brain!"
I looked down at the female Gebradim and felt disgusted by myself. Was I going to become someone who could destroy life just like that? Yes, if it needed to be so, I would. I would keep my friends and my new family safe, no matter the monster I’d become in the process.
"I’m sorry," I whispered and cracked open her skull with my claw. Closing my eyes, I dug in. A sensation so rich, so powerful flooded over me. It was as if I was high, and all my senses were working in pure overdrive. It was unlike anything I’d felt up to the point, and even stronger than after I consumed Khepri. Then, my whole body started rearranging itself again, discarding my bones through my flesh and skin. The last remnants of what had ‘made’ me human evaporated into thin air, replaced by a thick, sturdy skeleton made from—something I had no idea what it was.
Then pain disappeared and was replaced by a rush of raw, primordial power.
"Finally tier two again," Devil smirked.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Time crawled to a halt as the now already familiar skill trees and my image appeared before my eyes. Nothing much had changed, except for the tier two branches which had lit up, as well as the percentages on my body. They were now more similar to Asclepius in his first form.
I was rather happy to see the new changes tier two brought me, especially the resistances. It was only logical that I was much stronger when transformed, but the rise in power when not transformed came as a welcome bonus.
I looked to the right and observed the skill trees. The view was strange and not entirely like a picture, but more like a memory or a video recording. Focusing on one gave me information about what it would do, so I examined the Devil branch first.
It was quite hard to make the right choice, as I’d have the unique properties of both an offensive and defensive armament. First, I thought hard about the situations I could find myself in. Random skill wasn’t something I’d opt for, so I took the Broken Wings skill in the Devil tree. Khepri’s choice was much harder. Her tier two skills were both excellent and made me want to cry. The energy blast was a killer, but so was hyper regeneration in the thick of battle.
"You have only nine seconds left," Khepri said. "Your mind will go back to normal speed once your time buffer is up."
Eight—seven—six—
I sighed and chose Energy Blast. If I survived an encounter, the limbs would grow back no matter what, so that was it then. As time picked up again and the Admiral started mutating even further, I thought back at the decisions.
A new flood of pain struck me like a sledgehammer when my body started changing along with the arms. Growths sprouted from my back that looked like plucked wings, sharp and hard. My pitch-black metallic body felt like it could take on the whole world. And one day it would, that much I was sure off.
"You can rearrange us now freely. Just lett
ing you know," Devil said.
"Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that one. Khepri, you’re in charge from my head down to my hips. Devil, I want both of your arms and legs."
"Right on it," Devil replied. Just as the transformation started, Asclepius charged me and slammed his massive fists right against my chest. Even though I was one large bastard after getting up to tier two, it didn’t mean a thing to the Admiral and his power. Just before I slammed against the wall, I couldn’t help but think about how badly it would hurt. But it didn’t, at least not as much as I thought it would. My body came crashing through one wall, a second, and then a massive door. I only stopped when my spine hit a metallic beam at the center of wherever I was.
"Oh, fuck! That hurt!" I groaned, getting up and readying myself for a renewed attack. To my advantage, the giant didn’t fit through the door. He tried to squeeze through, but his massive bulk wouldn’t let him. And apparently He had become too dumb to punch through the wall as well.
I looked down to my status percentages, only to find myself having lost a couple to the attack. The physical resistance sure did make a change.
"Come out, or I’ll kill your friends! Fight me, you Human scum!" he bellowed, finally coming to the idea of slamming his fists against the wall. I didn’t know how long they would hold, but by how everything shook under the blows, it wouldn’t be that long obviously.
"Sure. Mind giving me some room to get out there? It’s cramped in—"
"No! I want to get my hands on you right now!" It roared and turned from me for a slight moment.
"Gotcha," I whispered and lunged forward, launching two javelins one from each hand. They struck the Admiral’s back and neck, but the beast just shrugged it off like it was nothing. At least I’d gained a couple of precious seconds to close the gap. With a battle-cry, I plunged both of my claws into his sides and tried to activate Decaying Touch. Luckily for me, it went through and started spreading rot and disease through his body. The status percentage on his chest started changing and showed me as 2,991 points and was steadily declining.
Legion of Steel Page 18
