Savage Awakening 384. Total Demolition (III)

Zane felt the exact moment he broke the lion. Felt the force ripple through the Monster, felt the muscles of the heart take the worst of it—and explode. First in force, then in flame. Felt that force charge through, shattering bone after bone…

Its huge mouth fell wide open, wider than its jaw should’ve allowed as it croaked. Its flesh swelled.

It might’ve been a half-step True God. But when he got his hands on it, and his explosions rippled through, it blew like any other beast. 

The Distortion Field flickered out.

And like that, Zane took off the head of the Monster army.

The Rhinos gained heart at the sight.

They roared as one and charged the Monsters again. And broke them for good.

***

The fires were burning out. Distantly, he saw a few Rhinos gore what little of the Monsters were left. He found the battlefield a smoldering wreck—a good deal of it his doing.

Zane was quite fond of the sounds of battle—the clashes, the screeches, the booms. He found it stirred something in his heart, maybe his soul. But there was something nice about the smoldering afterward too, standing in the midst of total destruction. The sound of a job well done.

In the distance, Nog was finishing off the Monster King. The Sage, meanwhile, had chopped off eight of the dragon’s nine heads and sported only a gash in his belly. His laughter still echoed down the Plains, fierce and free.

***

He counted up the Rhinos. A few sported wounds to the hindquarters, and one even had a rather nasty gash over the eye. But not one of them had fallen. This, he was quite proud of. He’d made sure of it—whenever he saw a Rhino in trouble, he charged in and took the worst of it; it was what he’d do for Rhino and man alike.

Then he looked back and saw the warpath he’d carved. Straight through the heart of the army… it went longer than he’d remembered—he’d gone quite some way from where the Empyreans still warred.

They’d thrown an army at him, and there was always something fun about sending clumps of Gods flying with a blow—but it was more tiring than threatening.

His knuckles were rather sore from all the punching. His essence ran nearly empty. But these monsters weren’t capable of pushing him. That half-step True God was the only one to come close, but he’d wrecked it too fast.

He was happy with his new Skills. But there was also a part of him that was a little disappointed.

The Monsters were just too weak.

As he stood there, his newfound regeneration revved up in earnest, bolstered by a cleansing Flare. It’d been working all this time. But now, at rest, it restored several percentage points a second. He felt vibrations crunching up his belly as his ribs cracked back together, as his lesser organs knitted up. He was quickly getting back up to 50% Health.

Now that he felt it, he was a little more banged-up than he realized too—there was a giant bleeding gash running through his chest that was something of a mystery to him. He didn’t remember taking it at all.

…He’d taken quite a lot, hadn’t he?

His health would heal fast. His essence would take a little longer.

But then—

“Look out, dear!” cried Shaman Guri. She aggressively waved her flaming stick.

Its flames grew faint and wispy, and rippled out—more in the Astral world than this one. As it passed, it burned away a haze of shimmers, just a hundred paces off.

A mound of muck came into view, stuck through with rotted logs and bones and carcasses. Its acid-gurgles and steam-hisses sounded not like nature, but like the slobbering of a hungry beast. Two watery eyes floated randomly through the sludge. Its mouth was a jagged maw, leering with bones for teeth. It smelled of sulfur and sewage.

Goloog, the Living Bog (Monster King)

Essence Level 699 Bog Fiend (Monster Prince)

Essence Level 599

Bog Fiend (Monster Prince)

Essence Level 599

That thing was a half-step Empyrean.

Beside it were two lesser clones of itself—both half-step True Gods.

…By the way they were grinning at him, Zane got the sneaking suspicion they were here for him.

The Barbarian Sage wheeled around instantly and let out a furious shout. He made to come help—

Then the Hydra struck him from behind, and he grunted.

Nog tried coming over too, but the dying Hyena-King was there—using its last breaths to block the way, baring a gloating smile.

“Hold on, lad!” yelled the Sage, who’d halfway up.

Then Goloog pounced.

Not at Zane—but at the Barbarian Sage, riding a tidal wave of sewage. At the same time, the Hydra blasted him. He went under.

Zane roared.

He made to go help—

I, will hold, the Old Man, hissed Goloog. Zane Walker, is weakened, and spent! Now is the time… KILL HIM!

***

The half-step True Gods descended on him. Each wielded hundred-thousand-year Bones. One slid over from the front, one from behind, deceptively fast, totally silent.

The Monster was right—Zane’s essence had all but run dry. So had his Asura.

There was no time to fire back up. No time to summon his energies and build—they were already upon him, blotting out the skies, the escapes—

But the Sage falling was still on Zane’s mind. And that thought—that burst of rage—gave him what he needed.

His hammers exploded with fresh Flare. He slammed them at his foes.

Then their pseudo-Distortion Fields expanded.

They felt like the Turtle’s Fields—a sticky, slowing quagmire. But these had a nasty twist.

Zane’s hammers began to hiss mid-air, and warbled. His Flares began to hiss, began to corrode, going slightly green, taking on a sick color—he didn’t know Fire could do that. Something about this new reality sickened his essence, his body.

But weakened or not, they were still Solar Flares, and they still flew with the brunt of his strength.

They pounded into the Bog-fiends.

But the fiends had to have expected it. They braced, their forms thickening with Skills—and swallowed his attack whole.

The explosion seemed to come from a long way off. The Monsters bulged; their mouths curved to jagged frowns. Their jelly-like bodies wobbled and shook, and for a moment, it seemed they might explode.

Steam rose from their forms in the Astral Plane. That cost them so much life their gnarled souls flickered.

But Zane had split his powers between them, and it wasn’t enough to end them.

Now they slithered up his Chains. In striking range.

He sensed the danger instantly. But even as he pulled back, he found them stuck to his Chains; and he had to fight this boggy reality, even as he stomped a rocketing step. They moved with a strange slickness, sliding down the air, strangely fast—

They closed on him from both sides. They were on his arms in a blink.

He bellowed, trying to buck them off—and nearly managed to get his left arm loose.

Then a bog closed over his face. The weight of two pseudo-Distortion Fields rolled over him, stacking one atop the other—and he was stuck right where they were strongest. Right at the heart of the field.

Zane fell over.

Instantly he felt his skin melting.

He never stopped fighting. He thrashed, punching and punching, but quite frustratingly he couldn't get much force in it—it was like these Monsters’ bodies were made to disperse force and heat. Made to counter him.

It felt like his body had been cast in steel. He heard his punches booming, felt the shudder of his explosions, but it sounded very distant…

He knew they’d gotten him where they wanted him.

Still—even like this he knew he could hurt them. He was confident he could blast his way out. He lashed out again, and again, and one fist blasted its way to open air—then the Bogs swamped him again….

He was running out of essence.

If it was just one half-step full God, even exhausted, Zane could take it. But two…

Those Fields weighed heavy.

He was starting to go woozy.

His eyes, starting to roll back; he felt his Health crashing.

But even as dark spots stained his vision, his heart beat stronger and stronger.

Warning!

Health under 25%

And somewhere deep in that bog, a bloody light seared down Zane’s body.

He was drowning in the filth. His skin was all melted, baring his muscles to the world, and he’d lost feeling in his entire body. The only thing he had going for him was his mass. With the kind of toxicity, the acidity, two fields’ and two Bog-Fiends were throwing at him, a lesser, smaller man would’ve had their heart burned out already.

There was only one part of his body untouched. A part that went through the skin, through the muscles and bones—that began and ended at his heart.

The runes on his body never melted.

They raged fiercer than ever.

His eyes had rolled almost all the way back when his pupils went bloody-red.

Then a roar came from deep within the Bog-Fiends—a roar that broke through to the surface, that crashed down the Plains—and any creature that heard it would know it could only come from Zane.

***

Mook was eight steps into his Annihilation Charge in his mission to free Zane, when the shaft of bloody light broke through.

He blinked, and skidded to a halt.

Another shaft broke the hold. And another—and suddenly the whole two-Monster bog was shaking, like it was all about to blow….

Mook knew that angry color.

The Bog Fiends’ mouths stretched to horrified, distended O’s, bulging until they started tearing down oozing seams—

Then it all blew to hell.

And there, ablaze in the light of his own destruction, was Zane. But he wasn’t Zane anymore.

His limits had shattered, and all hell broke loose. Broke out of him.

You could hardly see him through the glory of gold and blood—through the searing red of his eyes. So much essence poured out of him he seemed deep in the throes of a Solar Storm.

He had to be near Critical Health—bones showed through smoldering muscles.

It didn’t matter.

You could see his heart through his ribs, and that the Monsters could not touch. That was what made him far more than just a man, Mook always thought.

That heart was the gate to the hell buried deep in him.

Now it was blown wide open.

Zane roared, and slammed straight into an Annihilation Charge.

That first step was like any other Rhino’s tenth.

His second step changed the world.

Mook blinked.

Everyone knew the distance between Minor God and half-step True God was big.

And half-step True God, to True God… that was even bigger.

But when Mook saw Limit Breaker Zane rounding on the Bog-Fiends, he thought his big bro could challenge even a fully-fledged True God.

As Zane erased the Bog Minions’ existences, Mook gave a happy hop.