Seconds passed, but no gunfire or crunching leaves sounded near me. I glanced around, looking for clues. I found none. I closed my eyes, listening and smelling the air. The slight scent of the alien’s blood was nearby. Maybe the FearFighter’s hadn’t betrayed me. Maybe the tribals found them first.
There was only one way to find out. I skulked towards the smell, opening my eyes and reaching out with oppression. There was no need for subtlety now that the mission was fucked either way. As oppression grew, trees around me withered and brushes fell. I smirked. They needed some damn good luck to sneak up on me now.
Once I reached the smell, several of the FearFighters were already dead. Cauterized slash marks covered them from head to toe, around their throats and sides. I moved Oppression from them, preventing the auras from melting their flesh. Once I stepped beside them, the dead eyes of Tralis met my own.
They hadn’t betrayed me. The rogue with the plasma knife betrayed them. I leaned back and laughed out loud, first at my paranoia and then at what a shit show this had become. I kept my ascendant mana flared and augments up as I ran through the forest. Oppression cleaved a large portion of it, letting me see far ahead.
What I figured out wasn’t pretty. Off in the distance, past the line of dying trees, a few sets of footprints imprinted into the ground. The tribals already attacked the Freedom Fighters while we were gone. They used the mission as bait for the setup. Sprinting towards the base, my feet left craters in the ground as I accelerated. The wind rushed past my ears as the sounds of the forest turned to silence, my aura killing everything.
Screams shattered the silence, echoes at first then ringing cries. As I reached the camp, fire and hell already consumed it. Yawm’s insects had escaped. Several deformed humans devoured an area around the main cabin. Several of them were the revived corpses of the Enigmatta, their giant eyes revealed in grotesque malformations. The tribals were attacking the left side of the encampment, tearing out throats and scalping skulls.
I could see why they were called tribals. Each wore a primitive mask made of wood. Paint and dyes covered their exposed, gray skin and ragged clothing. The obvious boss was an eight-foot-tall(2.4 meter) man, gray with a glowing red mask. Piercings and wooden sticks were stuck through his body, like he was a human pincushion. From his back, dozens of hands reached out. He slobbered with blood dripping from his maw, more animal than man.
Honestly, he didn’t even look 1% like a human. He was an eldritch, or at the very least a human possessed by one. The information from the FearFighters was incompetent. That’s what led to their demise. They forgot that people could lie to them, and they took a big risk to top it off. Now the insects escaped, the tribals were culling the camp, and the only way to stop them was to kick some ass.
As I ran in, I took a closer look at the boss.
BloodBull, the Cannibal Savage(lvl 1065) – A brutish enemy reliant on power and blood magic, Bloodbull started out as an eldritch hiding as a mask. Once near it, the mask will whisper promises of great power to nearby humans. The weak willed fall to its trap, letting it grow in size and number of arms on the hosts back.
Getting to such a high level was only possible because of how the Freedom Fighters were set up. They offered a convenient and easy feeding source for the eldritch, letting it evolve into a behemoth. Over time, the radiant energy released by the eldritch infected others, creating a group of cannibals. They’ve been slowly whittling away at what’s left of the freedom fighters since.
The level alone was alarming, but even more was to come. The rogue woman who betrayed her comrades walked up to the boss, surrounded by chaos. She spread out her arms. Bloodbull reached towards her, putting a bit of blood on her forehead.
Legs sprouted out of the blood, clawing into her face. Eyes opened from the blood, empty and hollow. The woman screamed, trying to jerk the blood from her face, but it was too late. She already gave herself over. All that was left was to succumb to the parasite she left on her face. Like a giant tick, the blood swelled and peeled the skin from her face.
A moment later, it formed into the wooden mask the other members wore. Moments later, she ran and tore into the throat of a nearby person. She was gone, having let the darkness swallow her. It was crazy seeing someone be so stupid and smart at the same time. Her plan had been genius, likely taking months of setup. Letting that thing touch her face, not her brightest moment.
It had been her last though. Seeing it sent shivers up my spine, but more than that was the potential for death. It had been a while since I faced odds like this. It brought back memories of living in BloodHollow.
Drawing from those same memories, I sprinted towards the infected Enigmatta. While the tribals would pose problems further down the line, eliminating these members took priority. Their sheer malignance alone ensured that.
By the time I reached them, the disease was in full swing. One of the human corpses was bulging, full of the insects. A few deformed humans already clawed for more meat, their bodies warped. The grotesque Enigmatta led the charge, being the highest levels among the group. The situation was spiraling out of control.
My mind gave me a hard choice. The humans running around haphazardly were no more than meat sacks for the insects. If even one of them spread, then the world might be completely fucked. From what I could tell, none of the insects spread out yet. It was a matter of time now though. Once one of the corpses exploded with insects, the world would die.
Swallowing the guilt, I rushed in with oppression spread out to its maximum size. The enormous aura killed any human that contacted it. I gritted my teeth, my hands shaking as their corpses disintegrated in seconds. I hated myself, but there just wasn’t time for self-loathing. There was only time for doing what had to be done.
And so, I erased the camp from existence. I sprinted in all directions and committed genocide, killing the people and disintegrating the corpses they left behind. As I did so, I rallied the zombies, drawing them in to attack me. The process took less than a full minute, oppression's aura being so large and powerful. The tribals helped the process, taking out the western side of the camp on their own.
Once I finished killing the camp, I redoubled my efforts on the zombies. One of the bulging corpses exploded. I leapt over the group of zombies. Midway through my flight, I used a pad of telekinesis on the ground to help push me further. It took far more strength, but I made it across the group before landing in the swarm of crawling legs.
They snagged onto me from all sides. Legs like wood tried pricking and piercing my armor. In desperation, they crawled over me, searching for a weakness in my armor. They found none. My armor retaliated in violence, stabbing and piercing them by the dozen. Seconds later, I pulled the rest of the horde towards me with a wave of telekinetic energy.
It took a tenth of my health for it, but none of the insects escaped from my armor’s hunger. Turning back, the zombies reached me. The first tried snapping at my arm. I punched towards its gut. My telekinetic pad landed on its chest. My fist stopped, converting the force into a smaller surface area.
The result was the back of the zombie exploding outward. Before my fist blew backwards, tendrils of armor slid into the monster. Using the recoil, my armor ripped the monster to shreds. Nothing was left but chunks of meat. Another deformed monster leapt towards me, vomiting a stream of blood.
I waved the blood away with my left hand, using a telekinetic field. I stomped a heel into the ground. Driving the force through my core, I spun an overhead right down into the zombie. Once again, my fist struck the new telekinetic augments, and the monster detonated from both sides. My fists became cannons. My armor became meat hooks. The combination proved unstoppable.
Unique skill gained! Telekinetic Augmenter (Apply telekinetic augments even at full strength, do so without needing mana) No skills fused. 100 tree points rewarded for learning involved.
Telekinetic Augmenter(lvl 1) – You battle with both your mind and your body. Both cannot be broken. Increases strength and effective force transfer for telekinetic augments that don’t use mana.
I didn’t plan on gaining a unique skill like this, but I appreciated it nonetheless. I hadn’t realized, but my other, more complex augments required a bit of mana with each strike. Not much, but some. The new build only transferred the force to a smaller surface area. That made the process stronger and more efficient at the same time. I didn’t have time to dwell on the feat.
With a wide hook, another zombie detonated as I struck its shoulder. A zombie opened it’s chest, firing its ribs at me one at a time. I clenched my fist, sending out spikes of my armor to intersect each bone. Whenever one fired towards my eye slit, a mouth formed from my armor and chomped into the bolt, crushing it.
The savagery continued. The fodder zombies fell like flies, unable to withstand my onslaught. Moments later, I stood at the center of a sea of blood. The only zombies left were the Enigmatta. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything left to distract the tribals. They reached me as I charged into the Enigmatta, and both groups averaged levels over 600.
I gritted my teeth and clasped my fists. Desperation took hold as an Enigmatta sliced its left arm ending in a horn at me. I ducked underneath it, countering with a right hook towards the body. A shockwave of force ebbed from its body, but the monster withstood the impact. It didn’t withstand the tendrils of metal.
The wires sliced through the flesh, blood spraying from the creature. Soaked in the red, I slid under a strike from its left arm, the clawed hand scraping my armor. Sparks cracked form my armor as I twisted on my heels. The ground fractured beneath me, the weight of my fist building. My runes hummed with a violent power. The true might of my fist collided with the monster’s torso.
The ribs on the other side of it exploded. My fist recoiled backwards, slicing it apart. Stepping backwards, I used the momentum of my left arm to elbow a tribal leaping towards me. Pulling with all my might, I slammed the bony joint into the mask of the tribal. As my elbow contacted its face, the same telekinetic augment formed.
The wooden mask snapped before crushing the skull open. The body kept charging forward, but I sidestepped to my right. The tattoo covered man shot past my left side before I stepped forward and launched a kick with my right leg towards its stomach. Fissures formed under my left foot as my right leg slammed into the person’s stomach.
Once more, telekinetic augments formed before impact. My foot bounced off the telekinetic pad, causing the tribal’s spine to snap. The person’s back split open, drenching me in organs and blood. Another Enigmatta reached me. The suit no longer covered the glowing eye. It glanced at me, the glowing eye turning into a blinding sun.
Everything went dark, my eyes failing me. Using my sense of hearing, I raised my left shoulder, deflecting a horned arm above me. I twisted on my hips as I did so, drilling force up my feet and through my core. As my fist flew, I pulled my arms close, keeping the hook compact.
It landed, the wet squelch mixed with cracking bones. I stepped forward, slamming another hook into the source of the sound. My fist met a bony skull before I shot out another compact hook with my right hand. It missed before I lunged forward with another left hook.
The blow sunk into something soft on the monster. The wet squelch and slicing wires sang out like music to my ears. That is, before a set of teeth crunched into the side of my helmet. Another set of teeth burrowed into my left leg. Another into my chest.
I bent down, two more bodies jumping onto me. With an explosion of ascendant mana, spikes discharged from my armor. A hundred spines, more than I’ve ever made, butchered the nearby enemies. After that, I ran forward into the darkness, trying to buy time for my eyes to heal.
They wouldn’t let me. A hand latched onto my leg. I dragged it with me before another snatched my leg. I fell forward, crushing into the ground. The pounding thump of footsteps ebbed into my eardrum. Hungry howls and drooling mouths clamped around me. They were upon me.
Before the others caught me, my mind frenzied and my arms stabbed into the ground. From my arms, I grew spines into the ground. They moved sideways, upturning the earth at a rapid pace, digging me down. As the spines drug me forward, I condensed oppression right below me legs. Despite that difficulty, desperation drove me. It gave me the strength to snap my limits.
The searing aura compressed until it melted the fleshy hands holding onto me. As it did, I burrowed into the ground. Once dirt surrounded me at all sides, I shifted myself downwards with my armored spines pulling me along. The sound of clawing hands scrapped above me. I let my ascendant mana wane, my health flying upwards. It was strange that I could see my status even when blind, but it sure as hell was useful.
After that, I condensed oppression into a sphere above me, where the zombie dug. I drilled down, sweat pouring down my face, the only part of me not coated in armor. Claws of the monsters nipped my heels, but I gritted my teeth till they cracked. My burrowing intensified, and none of the Enigmatta or tribals got a good grip. A minute later, and the digging above me stopped. Oppression did them in.
It hadn’t slain them all. A cataclysmic explosion radiated above me. Another followed. After the third one, dirt no longer smothered my legs. A giant’s hand grabbed me before throwing me from the ground. Despite soaring through the sky, I was almost happy to see the clouds above me spinning in my vision. At least I could fucking see again.
I flipped through the air, adjusting with a few telekinetic pads. Landing on my feet and a single arm, I slid the length of car, my feet digging trenches through the ground. Glancing up, the damn plasma knife wielding chick was sprinting towards me. Her level increased by two hundred by the mask. It wouldn’t be enough.
With a surge of anger, I bolted towards her. We clashed with her slamming her hands against my own. I dragged her backwards before pushing her to her knees. From behind the wooden mask, a warped voice of frustration echoed out,
“Just…blurgh…die already.”
My helm split, opening a set of jagged teeth leading into a crimson void. The teeth disappeared into the meat of her face, above and below the wooden mask. I snapped her arms, breaking the bones and mushing them to her shoulders. I pushed her away, my teeth riving her mask from her face.
A terrified set of eyes met my own. Tears poured from them as she wept,
“Please…I didn’t mean too. I was forc-“
I bit into her face, the teeth of my armor sliding into the bone and flesh. They dug deeper as she screamed in agony. I kept pressing her shoulders together, my ascendant mana flowing like a raging hurricane. She gurgled on her own blood before I crushed her in my hands. Glancing upwards from the carnage, I met the eyes of Bloodbull, a bus’s length away.
The mask on his face grinned at me, the legs of the supposed mask digging into the sides of his skull. Hearing like it was right beside my ear, it whispered,
“You are a grand warrior. I can grant you great power.”
Buying time, I humored the little shit, “I saw what you did to her. What makes me so different.”
It whispered with power in its voice and weight in its words, “She was weak minded, unable to compose herself under the rush of the gift. You will rise above.”
My health and stamina regenerated as I spoke, “How will you do it?”
The mask grinned from ear to ear, “I will wipe you with the blood distilled from my shell. It will grant you the frenzy of battle and the might of many.”
My stamina capped out, my health not far behind. I stepped onto the corpse of the woman, my armor mopping it up. I glanced up and cupped my chin. Once my health capped out, I glanced down at the raging monster,
“Eh, I’ll do it after you go fuck yourself.”
The mask frowned, “Then so be it. Resist temptation, and swallow the grim reaper’s scythe, little lamb.”
I opened my status screen, putting all my points into willpower. I still needed that perk. A surge of mental acuity passed through me, the arcane bonds in my flesh strengthening too. As I finished, Bloodbull charged towards me, his steps quaking the ground. Chunks of earth splintered upward with each step. He smiled at the sight of me.
My ascendant mana blazed like carmine fire radiating under my armor. The drool leaking from his jaw and the hunger in his eyes, he expected an easy meal. I grinned with my armor.
So did I.