Tower Apocalypse 3, page 12
She was much faster than a blob of flesh and muscles had any right to be, loping with her thick arms. Instead of running like the elegant darkling we’d battled before, she hurtled herself forward on all fours like a charging gorilla.
“Spread out! Spread out!” Schroder yelled. “Don’t let it catch us all with a single attack! Attack from all directions and keep it off us!”
Tang obeyed his command instantly. The wiry martial artist sprinted in a wide arc around the hole in the ground, moving to flank the strange enemy.
Ben and I glanced at each other, then nodded.
“We’ll take the lead!” Ben shouted. “Wait for me!”
We darted after Tang. The best way to deal with such a nasty creature was to confuse it so it didn’t know who to attack first.
The mole swung at us, the hammerlike fist hurtling through the air like some disgusting fleshy meteorite.
Carnilia slammed into the creature’s chest and the attack went wide. We split up just in case and dodged.
I darted to the left as the other arm came about and Ben buried his feet into the ground, taking the attack head-on. The massive fist punched through his defenses and walloped him right in the face.
Blood spurted and shattered teeth flew through the air.
The enormous fist had squashed Ben’s face, breaking his nose, and leaving him with two rapidly swelling black eyes.
However, his Sword of Heroes absorbed the damage, growing incredibly strong and bright thanks to the direct hit. He wouldn’t be able to take another one like it right away, but he didn’t need to as that one attack was all he needed.
“Now!” Ben roared.
He swung the glowing sword in a vicious downward arc.
Empowered by the added damage, the glowing blade slashed straight through the massive creature’s disgusting hand, cutting through skin, flesh, and bone. Two fingers and part of the hand hung off leathery skin as the creature howled.
“Good one! Hit it again!” I shot back, giving the big guy a grin. He raised his sword again, but before it connected, the hand exploded.
For a brief moment, I saw the inside of the monster’s mangled hand. It looked like that of any living creature on the outside, even the first two layers were flesh, sinew, and bone, but the very center were all old gray gears and coiled springs, just like from a steampunk story.
Instead of blood, thick black oil pumped through the creature’s insides and covered the ground around it.
It was utterly disgusting.
I bit back my repulsion and attacked the weakened limb with a [DOUBLE STRIKE], darting by and slashing with both blades before dodging back to safety.
As the mole creature spun towards me, I aimed carefully and then lanced through its wounded arm with [SNAKE BITE].
SKILL USED
Snake Bite
COST
60 force
DAMAGE INFLICTED
4,890
TARGET
???
DEBUFF INFLICTED
BLEED
DEBUFF DESCRIPTION
Deal 150% of Attack as damage over 5 seconds
That was strange.
The monster’s name wasn’t even listed yet.
Come to think of it, we hadn’t even gotten a Monster Scan.
The beast whirled around again, trying to bring its uninjured arm around, but Carnilia let out a mighty roar and jumped on top of its arm, pulling the gigantic limb back to the ground with her incredible weight and power.
Her transformation’s strength was absurd.
She demonstrated it yet again by sending the monster toppling off balance with a single mighty yank. The spinning top lost balance and then the creature thudded to the ground in a heap of flesh and metal.
“Kill it!” she screamed. “I can’t hold it down for long!”
Allan clapped his hands together, summoning his flame djinn in addition to his wind spirit. The two summons carried him and his sister around to the mole’s backside, then they launched several simultaneous attacks—a swirling pillar of flame and a howling roar of wind that ripped into the less-protected area.
Sonya’s fists glowed and a golden aura enveloped each member of our party right before Allan’s attacks landed.
A notification appeared.
ACTIVE BUFF: BLESSED
Something good will happen soon…
The twin spirits created a blazing conflagration that enveloped the mole monster completely. Normally, that would have been incredibly dangerous—Ben, Tang, Carnilia, and I were all close to the monster.
However, Sonya’s lucky aura glowed around us and the flaming inferno bent around our bodies, ignoring the precise space we occupied. The flames died before they could damage any of us.
I was sure glad to have Sonya on our side. That kind of luck-altering and reality-bending ability could be extremely powerful depending on the scenario.
Allan’s flames bit through the mole’s skin and flesh, searing the whirring cogs and machinery inside.
The second, unintended consequence was the oil lighting up like a bonfire. Explosions ravaged its inside and the whole thing just slumped to the ground. It seemed like Allan’s added luck hadn’t ended just yet.
The creature’s head lolled as it spasmed on the ground. It was clearly in pain and trying to get up, but instead of whimpering, it beeped and dinged like some kind of broken robot.
Emma raised her wand. “My turn!”
I nodded, and then Ben, Carnilia, Tang, and I retreated to a safe distance, but not before Tang kicked the creature for good measure.
Emma started casting her spells, then Allan and Schroder joined in on the bombardment. Alice renewed the buffs, some of which had already run out, and Sonya’s luck spells made sure that every attack did the most damage it possibly could.
Allan kept the beast in place by holding it down with a searing wind.
Then Schroder used the diffracted beams from his [PIERCING RAY] attack to trap it inside a deadly cage of light and punch countless holes through its now-damaged body.
Finally, a pillar of flames rose from beneath the creature as Emma punched a hole right through it, finishing the monster off for good.
“Your teamwork is spectacular,” Carnilia stated matter-of-factly. “It’s no wonder you beat back the princes.”
I turned to her.
The darkling had returned to her usual form—save for her unusual eyes and horn-like ears, she was indistinguishable from anyone else of Nieven’s kind.
She watched the massacre unfold with a faint look of wonder and I once again thought of the demoralized and disjointed darkling soldiers during the World Event battle.
“Heh. It wasn’t always like this,” I chuckled. “It takes a lot of time and patience to learn how to fight as a team, Carnilia. Even now we tend to struggle if something unexpected pops up, but we do our best. We protect each other, and that way we win.”
A part of me was deeply satisfied.
Even though I’d been forced to de-summon my three rowdy children, we still beat a boss that was much stronger than us with teamwork and coordination—and quite easily at that.
I clasped Carnilia’s shoulder and grinned.
She made a confused face. “What? Why do you touch me so?”
“Nothing special. We do this out of a sense of friendship.”
“I see. Maybe we can fight like this one day too. My people rule…differently, and we also fight differently.”
“It will take time, but with someone strong leading them, you’ll make it. I’m sure of it.”
Carnilia stared at me for a long moment, then smiled, revealing row after row of sharklike teeth. The expression was freaky, but I could see the genuine kindness and gratitude beneath—her face was still humanlike, after all. “I hope so, Devin Cain. I sincerely hope so.”
Finally, the mole monster exploded, releasing a blast wave that almost sent us flying. Instead, it shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving a hideous pile of torn skin and steel behind.
The gears, oil, and steel flickered for a brief moment, then vanished, disappearing as if they had never even been there.
I waited for some kind of notification to appear, but nothing happened.
Emma blinked. “What’s going on? Where’s our loot?”
Maxwell scowled. “Not only that…did anyone even get a monster scan analysis? I’d almost pay to know what we just fought.”
I had thought about it in the middle of the battle, but the thought had slipped my mind during the fight.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Not only that, my damage notifications didn’t even list a name. All I got were three question marks.”
“Me too,” Carnilia added.
Her voice was a hushed and confused whisper. She shook her head again.
“What is it?” Emma asked as she leaned in and startled the darkling.
“There’s just something weird with this floor,” Carnilia said. “It’s so different from ours, and I can feel something wrong with the force.”
Emma chuckled. “A disturbance in the force, huh?”
Carnilia just stared at her blankly. I smiled at the reference, but only a little bit.
The secret boss was the first sign something was off, and now the lack of awards, levels, and possible achievements… they didn’t sit right with me.
It was like this floor was designed to kill us with no possible upside.
A grainy notification appeared just as that haunting thought crossed my mind.
CONGRATULATIONS HUMANS (AND ILLEGITIMATE DARKLING): YOU HAVE FINISHED QUEST FLOOR FIVE #2
PLEASE PROCEED TO THE “FLOOR OF THE DEPOSED DEMIGOD”
This notification didn’t even have a box, and the font was like an old-timey GameBoy.
The gaping fissure through which the monster had emerged shifted, transforming into a staircase.
Emma took a step back, grabbing onto my arm for comfort. “What do you think this is, Dev? The Floor of the Deposed Demigod? Who could that be?”
“I don’t know…probably Parfanel,” I said. “He ruled this floor, didn’t he?”
“But why would they get rid of him?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea, but we need to go forward. We’re expected, I guess.”
“Who wants to do the honors?” Maxwell asked. “I’m not quite good with the unknown.”
“Who is,” Allen muttered. “A tank would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
We all looked at Ben.
“What? Why are you all looking at me?” he protested.
“If anyone’s about to get hit, I rather it is you.”
Ben grunted, but then seemingly steeled himself and his expression changed.
“Can I get a rebuff?”
After another minute and a full party re-buff, Ben stepped down the staircase and started walking. We followed like a row of ducklings waddling behind their mother.
The stairwell was inside a dark underground corridor, and we could barely see where we were going.
When we reached the bottom, we found a room filled with corpses.
FLOOR OF THE DEPOSED DEMIGOD
“What is that?” Emma whispered.
Her fingers curled around my wrist, and I knew from her trembling that we were all seeing the same thing—she just didn't want to admit it.
I grimaced, staring at the brutalized bat-like corpses.
Their heads had all been unceremoniously torn off, leaving a ragged stump at the neck. The decapitations were all haphazard and disgusting. Their exposed throats, raw and red, were plainly visible.
Carnilia spat on the floor.
The darkling spittle was white and foamy, almost like a rabid animal's. “The menzil...we freed them, and all for this?”
The darkling's thin arms curled in rage.
Even though she'd earlier pretended that the menzil were just creations of the System, it was obvious that she didn't actually believe that when faced with such a brutal scene. Her wide frog-like eyes glinted with obvious rage.
The menzil hadn't just been decapitated. Their bodies had been mutilated. Their wings were pinned onto the walls with large screws and some of them looked like deflated bags of skin after the blood had been drained from their bodies.
A message was scrawled in blood on the walls.
TRAITORS
I heard a loud retching noise.
Sonya had thrown up, and Allan was holding her hair up so she didn’t get it dirty. He whispered something to her and she nodded, but then she threw up again.
The red-haired woman's face was sadder than I'd ever seen it before, but despite her brother's attempts, she wouldn't stop looking at the corpses. Her cheeks had gone red and so had her eyes.
“What's the point?” Allan asked, his voice low and full of pain. He threw his hands up in disbelief. “What's the point of letting us save them if the System was just going to kill them!”
Maxwell was equally angry, and so were the rest. “Because it can,” he hissed. “It does everything just because it can.”
“I don't think it's the System,” Tang murmured. “The letters were different.”
It seemed like he'd caught up on the same weird trend I'd noticed.
I doubted this was the same sarcastic voice that’d made fun of us. Whoever was in charge now just felt weird and much more dangerous. Unhinged even.
Tang glanced furtively around us, then pointed ahead into the darkness. “I think we'll find out more if we keep going. Schroder, do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Schroder replied.
He raised his staff, then knocked the butt against the ground. Though he activated the ability wordlessly, my force detection told me that this was a spell called [ILLUMINATE]. It was a low-level support ability any character with the holy class could use.
Perhaps if my first karma had been positive instead of negative, I would have had an ability just like it.
Warm white light emanated from the gem on top of the German’s staff. The light didn’t just heat up the area around us. It also warmed our souls, providing a small buff that stirred our spirits.
ACTIVE BUFF: WARM LIGHT
You are bathed in warm and relaxing light, slightly improving your mental state and reducing all debuffs by 5%
The wide ray of light reminded me a little of the laminated projectors from my elementary school. However, the sight it illuminated wasn’t fit for kids…it was more like something from an R-rated movie.
The menzil weren’t the only corpses in the room.
They were just the freshest.
A rabbit-human in a suit lay on the ground. Half of its face was rotten, revealing yellowed bones and a skull with big buck teeth.
It lay next to an almost human-like skeleton, save for its four arms. The arms at the top were slowly rotting and soggy, while the ones at the base had decayed to the bone.
“The rotting pattern is weird,” Schroder noted, pointing at the corpses. “I’ve been on the battlefield before. There’s no way the rot would be divided so neatly. Something’s definitely wrong here.”
“It’s almost a decoration,” Tang muttered. “As if someone has been placing the rot in certain places.”
Emma grabbed my shoulder and pointed ahead of us. “Look…is that a Darmagil?”
I frowned.
At the end of the room, lying against the wall, was a massive eight-foot-tall corpse. Its head was twisted awkwardly to the side and its limbs were slack.
The beast was clearly dead, but I could still feel my skin crawl.
“It’s just like the one from the Prahna mission…” Sonya whispered.
I nodded. “Yeah. What do you think is happening here? Are these…”
I frowned, thinking back to the ‘cutscenes’ I’d seen after fighting past previous floors of the tower.
We’d seen giant spaceships abduct aliens from different worlds, just like what’d happened to us back on Earth. Those same gunships had also obliterated fleeing citizens with pure white energy blasts, eliminating them without mercy.
Schroder took the words right out of my mouth. “I think the other creatures we encountered—enemies and allies—are being forced to play their roles. There’s some sort of devil’s work at play here. Mind control, or worse. I can’t say for certain, but these aren’t just…simulations or whatever you want to call them. This is real.”
“Look at the walls,” Tang whispered.
I glanced at the wall closest to me, then took an inadvertent step back. “Shit. What the hell are those things…”
The walls were lined with thin metal wires. The wires flickered, the silver energy trapped inside radiating with a strange malignant joy.
When I took a closer look at the corpses, I saw that the wires were plugged into the various bodies. Some of the wires had plunged directly into their victim’s brains. Others had snaked into their necks.
“Dev…Dev…” the voice was a faint whisper filled with fear.
I turned and found Emma staring horror-struck at the walls.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The wires,” she replied. “The energy flowing through them…it’s just like your minus karma. I can feel it!”
Tang jolted so abruptly that he almost fell over.
“You’re right!” he exclaimed. Tang was so shocked that he practically shouted, his voice echoing through the corridor.
Schroder’s eyes widened and he nodded. “The energy in the wires…it’s just like what I felt outside the Siege of Prahna, at the end of our battle. When the darkness flowed from your body, Devin.”
My mind whirled as I started putting two and two together.
The most obvious clue was the earlier Menzil MechThralls, who’d flown away as soon as we destroyed their helmets…
However, there were countless other signs.
The way most enemies on Gaea charged relentlessly, with no concern for their lives. Even when they sustained great damage, all they did was attack.
