Tower Apocalypse 3, page 11
“Keep at it!” I shouted.
Emma nodded, then switched up her elements, incinerating a menzil with a fireball to the face. So far, not a single flying monster had managed to fire off a shot yet, and we meant to keep it that way.
Despite the overwhelming forces, my group fought as a single tight unit. I couldn’t see an end to our enemies, but I kept an eye on all my friends, ready to reinforce whatever was needed. With my versatile stats, I could both attack and defend.
Ben started things off with a [TAUNT], hitting the front lines with a wide ray of orange light. He walked to the very front, then hurled himself into the fray, spinning in a wide arc with his Sword of Heroes.
Tang leapt in beside him, sickly purple force emanating from his fist as he activated a new skill. Even without my force recognition, I would have known it was some kind of poison-based ability. Whenever he struck his target, their flesh rippled and bubbled before withering and falling apart.
Carnilia joined our tanks as she finished transforming. Her body turned white and then shifted, almost as if she was an evolving Pokémon. Her face contorted and she grew taller and wider.
By the time the light faded, the beautiful darkling was no more. The only remaining traits were her monstrous ones—her bulging froglike eyes and rows of snapping teeth. Her ears had hardened and lengthened, transforming into a pair of devil-like goat horns. Her arms and legs turned as thick as tree trunks, neck got elongated, and what passed for the head now resembled that of a dinosaur.
Despite her somewhat reptilian appearance, she didn’t have scales. Instead, her skin stretched out, turning thick and baggy.
It reminded me a little of Rhino. However, Rhino at least turned into a recognizable animal. This was some monstrosity I’d never seen before.
Carnilia was a melee hand-to-hand combatant like Tang, but her fighting style was extremely different. Tang used punches and kicks.
On the other hand, Carnilia took full advantage of her monstrous features. She gutted opponents with her razor-sharp nails and horns.
Not only that, she used her high karma stat to her advantage. Her mental influence was so powerful it even worked on the monsters. She would murmur and mutter, temporarily halting their attacks before viciously finishing them off.
Blood spurted through the air whenever she moved.
The dogs’ blood was red save for specks of pus-colored diseased yellow, while the flasgin had sickly green blood that seemed strangely thin. It sprayed all over the place, reminding me of popped water balloons.
“Devin! Step aside!”
I took a step back, and then Alice sent a ray of healing light at our tanks, mending their injuries. I was happy to see that she didn’t discriminate between the two human tanks and Carnilia—Alice healed up Carnilia’s wounds without hesitation. That was probably the best way to keep the darkling renegade happy and fighting hard for us.
I decided to switch my focus. “Emma, Schroder, just keep the menzil off of us. Try to prevent them from dropping on our heads. I’ll use my summons to break through with the tanks.”
They nodded, and I gestured into the air, bringing my full force to bear against the approaching army.
Shai and Reiny appeared like always, but despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but wonder what Tiamat’s summon would look like.
A roar echoed through the air and the sky twisted as Tiamat flew almost like a meteorite. She landed on all her feet, deftly as a cat, and unfurled her limbs, rearing up to her full glory. The three summons aligned themselves between us and the enemies, posing for a brief moment.
Then they joined the fray, not even asking for instructions. Reiny’s hammer sang and Shai spun in a wide arc, using the tail to cut through swaths of enemies.
Tiamat’s back opened, revealing a full swarm of Brood Monsters as she activated her skill [BROOD SWARM].
“Hell yeah!” Tang roared. “Now the numbers are a little more even!”
The swarm split into two groups. The chargers joined me and the tanks on the front lines, whereas the shriekers focused on sniping down the menzil.
With the arrival of Tiamat, the tide of the battle firmly shifted, and the flying creatures paid the biggest price. The shriekers focused fire, killing several of the flying monsters with each attack.
Before, we were merely holding off our opponents. None of the beasts could kill us, but we weren’t advancing either.
Now, we steadily pushed forward, wading through the corpses. Shai made circles, using his body to clear the bridge of the dead and even living enemies.
The menzil quickly realized that they had no chance of shooting us as both our mages and the shriekers did their job extremely efficiently. Every crossbow that did fly our way was deflected by Schroder and Emma.
Instead, they switched to much more direct tactics—suicide bombing our front lines. The creatures wheeled back, then let out a piercing cry as they flew straight towards us.
I readied my sword and prepared to counter with a [DIAGONAL STRIKE].
Once the first monster got close, I could lop off the creature’s head before it delivered its payload.
Force gathered at my blade, but at the very last second, I paused. There was something strange about those helmets.
I angled my attack upwards, going for the menzils’ helmets instead of lopping off their necks. The helmet shattered to pieces, revealing a jabbering and howling menzil beneath. The creature looked sort of like a bat, only its face was more squashed than before. Its eyes were wide and filled with fear. It stared at me, then let out a remorseful howl, flapping its wings as it retreated.
A notification appeared.
THE MENZIL MECHTRALL HAS PAID YOU 1.000 FRES FOR FREEING IT
My eyes widened. I checked my inventory.
Indeed, my stash of money had increased by a thousand fres.
The menzil were being mind controlled. I could have guessed that from the name—a MechThrall suggested they were being brainwashed by technology—but I didn’t know it was possible to free them.
I turned to my group. “Emma! Schroder! Don’t kill those things! They are being forced to fight! Try to hit their helmets! They’ll leave and even give you some fres!”
The tide of the battle shifted even further. Schroder aimed carefully, then fired off a split [PIERCING RAY] that freed a dozen of menzil at once, and the shriekers had a much easier time thinning them out as they didn’t need to kill them.
Beside me, Carnilia chuckled darkly. She tore the head off of a flasgin stormtrooper, then hurled it upwards, aiming for a helmet. It clattered loudly, breaking the visor and freeing the menzil.
“Hah! If I knew these things paid fres, I would have done this a long time ago!”
I glanced briefly at her. “You saw they were being controlled?”
She scoffed. “Of course. It was obvious—I could sense the force from their helmets a mile away. I just thought it’d be better to kill them and maybe fulfill some kind of quest.”
Emma and I often wondered if the enemies we fought in Gaea or on the tower were real or if they were some kind of generated NPCs. It was clear that Carnilia had either never wondered about that question, or never cared.
However, the helmets got me thinking.
After certain tower-specific events, like finishing in the top five on the third floor or completing the fourth floor, I’d seen spaceships that seemed to run on force. These helmets were the same—they were a technology that operated on force.
On the surface, Gaea seemed like a magical world, but small things like that made me wonder.
What exactly was the overlap between force, magic, and technology?
And where did my burgeoning force detection abilities fit into that?
I was still thinking to myself as my allies and I carved our way to the other side of the bridge. After we got rid of the air support, it was simply a matter of time until we forced our way across.
On the other side of the bridge, a white portal was waiting for us—the extraction point.
We hurried and stood on top of it, but nothing happened. Then a loud wrenching voice echoed through the area.
PORTAL LOCKED
BOSS BATTLE (FLOOR 5, #2) INITIATED
FLOOR 5, PART 2
A white line flashed across the center of the bridge, and then the whole thing split in half. The other side slowly withdrew back into the ground. Meanwhile, the side we were on tilted downwards, sending us skidding toward the rocky stones beneath us.
“Master!”
“Help!”
“Shit!”
My three summons were far heavier than the humans. They streaked toward the ground like bricks, and I knew they were dead if they fell.
I clasped my hands together. “De-summon living armors.”
The summons would usually regenerate after death, save for a System penalty I’d incurred for self-destructing them. Nonetheless, I didn’t want to risk it incurring additional penalties if I could help it.
The three of them vanished in a puff of smoke, but that only solved one problem—my friends and I were still falling.
My stomach swooped in my chest.
Beside me, Tang grunted and gathered force in his hands before slamming his fist straight through the concrete, anchoring himself in place. My eyes widened and I quickly did the same, tearing off a chunk of the bridge and holding on tight. The others, seeing what we were doing, scampered to do the same.
Before long, everybody else had caught on.
They punched their hands into the falling bridge, stopping themselves from falling to their doom.
Even the spellcasters like Emma and Schroder easily managed to punch through the stone and hold on—when it came to physical combat against high-level enemies, they were far weaker than the melee fighters like me or Ben. However, the force coursing through their body meant they’d long surpassed a regular human's levels of strength.
For a moment, we all hung there like it was the worst-designed climbing wall in human history.
Then I heard a terrifying creak.
My heart sank and I knew someone was about to fall. I instinctively jerked towards Emma, to try and protect her. Out of all of us, she had the least physical strength.
A voice cried out—shockingly flat despite the terrifying situation. “Shit! Grab me! Help!”
Stone creaked and Carnilia floundered, plummeting toward the ground. Due to her heavy monster transformation, the bridge simply couldn’t support her. She was way too heavy to hold her own weight up.
I lunged towards her, my hand outstretched, but it wasn’t enough. Her fingers briefly grazed mine, and then she continued plummeting, her voice rising in pitch as she cried out.
“I got you!” Allan yelled and the wind obeyed his command. The air around him spiraled and then his near-invisible wind djinn appeared. It shot out and appeared beneath Carnilia in a heartbeat.
An invisible hand gently carried her back towards us, leaving her floating at the same level as the rest of us were hanging.
For a while, we hung there in silence, contemplating what to do next.
Ben uneasily stared at the stakes set in the ground, letting out a relieved sigh. “Shit. I’m glad we’re still alive.”
Emma scowled. “You are? And there I thought you liked being skewered, bro,” she jabbed.
“I’m not you, sis.”
She gasped and stuck her tongue out. “Rude. There’s no need to poke fun at Devin.”
“Wait, what? Why me? What did I do?”
“Nothing, but Ben just insulted your ability to please women.”
“Not women, you,” Ben laughed.
“Wait, is this really the time or place?” Maxwell asked. “I know we’re all adults and stuff, but—”
“Partypooper,” Emma said.
Before she could say anything else, an explosion of force rattled the entire area.
An eerie chill passed through my body and I shuddered, almost losing my grip on the stone. Emma’s mouth jerked shut so quickly I could hear her teeth rattle.
Ben was so shocked he almost let go of the wall.
“What is this pressure?” he groaned. “It feels like my head is about to explode!”
It wasn’t quite as bad for me.
I’d fought on the World Boss’s back, after all.
However, I knew that a powerful enemy was coming.
The ground slowly shifted.
Something was rumbling beneath the ground, causing a miniature earthquake that caused the deadly stakes to shake themselves apart and crumble. Several stayed in place, but most easily disappeared to the ground-shaking rumble.
“We need to get down. I don’t like dangling here like a freaking leaf in the wind,” I murmured.
The words sprang unbidden to my lips, and I only realized what I said after I’d finished speaking.
Ben scowled at me. “What? Do you want us to go down? Why in the world would we do that?”
Emma shook her head. “No, I think Dev is right. We—”
She bit her lip, closely scanning the roiling earth.
“We what?” Ben asked.
“I think there’s a boss beneath the bridge,” Emma said. “We need to kill it to finish the fifth floor.”
“A boss? I just see an earthquake!”
“Devin!” Allan yelled from below. “I think we need to reach the bottom of the bridge! Do you want me to carry us down with my djinn?”
So it wasn’t just me and Emma.
Allan also thought we needed to go to the bottom.
Carnilia, who was still floating on Allan’s djinn, just muttered to herself in disbelief.
“What is this…this is nothing like the level we had. If all your levels were like this, no wonder your progress was so slow.”
It seemed like she was having a hard time dealing with the unusual situation. I just hoped she’d recover rather sooner than later, as we needed her power.
I glanced back at Allan, then nodded. “Get us down there!”
He gestured dramatically with his hand, curling his fingers into the semblance of a hawk’s talon.
The wind whirled around us, providing a gentle cushion leading down to the ground.
Even though I trusted Allan and his magical abilities, I still took a deep breath before letting go. I might have been brought to this new world of magic, but I’d spent the last thirty-odd years of my life on Earth—letting go above a cliff didn’t come naturally to me.
The wind embraced us, gently carrying us to the ground below one by one.
Most of the stakes had shaken themselves apart, but some were still standing and very sharp. However, Allan’s gradually controlled descent was as safe as any descent off a cliff could be. It beat free-falling for sure.
As we landed safely on the ground, the ominous wave of force crescendoed into an explosive force that erupted from the ground and shot into the sky. For a moment, all that rose was pure force, and nothing else, but then the ground exploded.
Stones flew haphazardly through the air, hitting the cliff sides and the remnants of the bridge.
“Get behind me!” Schroder roared. His Darmagil scepter glowed and a wave of white energy exploded around him, creating a shining barrier of holy light that absorbed several stray chunks of debris.
The stones smashed forcefully into the barrier. At first, the rocks dissolved into sediment, but as they continued barreling toward us, a tinkling sound echoed through the air.
I raised my swords and stepped in front of my friends. If the stones broke through, I could use my [QUICKDRAW] ability to block at least one of them. It wasn’t much, but considering their size, any one of them would probably kill our weaker members outright.
Cracks formed along the barrier, but Schroder poured ever more force into it, and the cracks regenerated, smoothing the dome over. To our luck, the bombardment let up and the dome held all the way through.
The ground stopped shaking, leaving a gaping pitch-black hole.
A hideous human-like hand emerged from the fissure.
The hand was large, hairy, and covered in warts like its owner had some kind of debilitating skin disease. The creature’s five fingers were big and fat, almost like overstuffed sausages. Its sharpened nails were dirty and pitch black.
A glowing metal band covered the creature’s wrist. It was mostly silver, but lime green lights flashed along the edges, reminding me of some kind of high-tech watch. Like some of the tower’s other enemies, this creature combined flesh with technology.
The second hand—identical to the first—emerged on the other side of the hole, pulling the creature out of the darkness and into the light.
“Fuck!” Emma hissed. “What the hell is that thing?”
Maxwell raised his greataxe, scowling. “It’s a troll. A troll under the bridge. Go figure.”
I lifted both my swords.
Maxwell was right—sort of.
Parts of the creature resembled a troll. The creature had a mostly human-like upper body, with broad apelike arms and a thick beard of matted hair. A pair of tusks protruded from its mouth, and its eyes glinted with malice and low cunning.
However, its head was more mole-like than human.
It had a long pig-like snout and save for parts of the face, its whole body was covered in course black hair.
The scariest thing was the creature’s base, which was neither mole-like nor troll-like. The boss monster’s legs had been replaced by a gigantic whirling drill.
There was an awkward pause as the beast leered at us, but I wasn’t going to wait for it to attack.
I gathered force in Muramasa, then stepped forward, slashing and releasing a long-ranged [FORCE WAVE].
The energy blade whirled towards the strange mole-troll monstrosity, which burst into action. It stretched its arms out wide then swung like a top.
There was a shrieking clang and then the attack was deflected right back at us. My left arm twitched in response, jerking the White Kinun Wakizashi through the air. [QUICKDRAW] automatically deflected the attack, but I was sent stumbling backward and fell on my back.
I got back to my feet as Carnilia let out a guttural grunt, then charged forward. “The metal is indestructible! We must hit the flesh parts!”
