Museum Core Chapter 112: Hold the LINE

One minute earlier

Flinging himself out of an airplane while dripping wet so that he could use his magical power of close-range hydrokinesis to slow down his fall to something less than lethal was hardly how Colones James Hunter, USMC, had planned to spend the day. But that was how it went. When you were in the military, your time was no longer your own.

Supposedly, that same power of water control was meant to enable true flight, and he could pull it off in brief bursts, but doing so drained his entire mana pool in barely thirty seconds.

But between his durability and the fact that he was going to use the momentum ever so helpfully provided by gravity to enhance his opening strike, his current limitations were then fine. In the recent months, his power had increased explosively.

After the entire affair surrounding the Pacific transformation zone had been taken over by the navy once the aircraft carriers had been shaken loose from coastal defense, an Admiral had taken command of the whole affair, and Hunter had had the chance to finally do some grinding, especially of the combat variety.

He’d only gained C-Rank literally yesterday, barely reaching that point after finally managing to convince the curator of the Georgia aquarium to dive into a few of the tanks. Of course, his status didn’t actually say “C,” or even give a number grade the way some others did, but it seemed like the ranks were analogous to what other systems use, even if one did need a conversion chart to tell where one was at.

If his system was anything like the one in Wyoming, that exploit would be patched out soon, but until it was, “exploring” a collection of plants, animals, and environments from all over the globe gave a metric shit-ton of experience.

Name: James Hunter

Deep Ocean Explorer (0.0001% progress to next Rank)

Health Status: Healthy

Mana Pool: Full

Unlocked Powers

Aquatic Adaptation

Acoustokinesis

Hydrokinetic Cloak

Pressure Forged Body

Research Achievements

Distance swum: 27,913,182 meters

Environments discovered:

Unique Species encountered: 1,783

Distance dived: 23,943 meters

Maximum Depth dived: 5,134 meters

(See full list?)

An impressive collection of powers, though he wished he’d been able to further trim down the number of achievements that showed every time he pulled up the status.

Aquatic Adaptation was simple and basic, letting him breathe underwater and granting an ever-increasing tolerance to pressure.

Acuostokinesis was just a fancy name for sound magic, and Hydrokinetic Cloak was self-explanatory.

But the primary reason he felt okay with leaping out of an aircraft without a parachute was Pressure Forged Body. It massively increased his durability and allowed him to manipulate his mass both in its entirety and by concentrating it in parts of his body to both maximize the force of any punches he may throw, or shift his center of gravity around at will.

“We’re almost there,” the pilot announced, and Hunter reached out to open the side door, feeling the wind and snow whip past.

Holy fuck, that was some nasty weather.

But who cared?

“NOW!” the pilot told him, and he hurled himself out into the white void, mentally grasping and reorienting himself as he plummeted towards where the monster was said to be waiting.

In an instant, the world around him transformed into a sea of emptiness, the airplane disappearing away into the “clouds” that may be either snow so thick as to be impenetrable to his sight or actual clouds, the world below likewise hidden by the falling ice crystals.

Ping!

The sound rang in his ears as he unleashed a burst of sonic magic, waiting a painfully long time before it finally returned, granting a distorted view of the ground below.

Sweet baby Jesus, he was high up.

But he’d managed to nevertheless locate the monster and angled his body towards it, even as energy flowed through him to warp the very fabric of space-time within his body, increasing his mass a dozenfold, and then compressing almost the entirety of the nearly a ton of weight into his right hand, clenched into a fist, while channeling even more sound magic into it, holding the minor shockwaves fast through sheer force of will, endlessly building them up into each other … or at least until he hit the ground.

A final adjustment to his momentum with Hydrokinetic Cloak and Hunter fell into the Winter Queen from above, right fist lashing out straight at the monster’s head and even as his knuckles made contact, the immense power he’d stored into the hand was unleashed as a titanic shockwave that bore the monster down, and they hit the ground together in a tangle of limbs while the dirt around them exploded upwards from the sheer force of the impact.

“Gah, fuck,” he swore as he jumped to his feet, the familiar pain of a broken finger radiating up his right arm … but in exchange for that damage, he’d blown off the monster’s entire head. Which the sumbitch didn’t seem to need, as it was already whirling around, wreathed in frost and ready to strike.

So he lashed out with his left fist instead, aiming at the largest crack he could reach, and ice flew while more splintering cracks shot throughout the monster’s body even as it lashed out with a dripping foot that was very clearly not wet with water, which would have been obvious to his power, but liquid nitrogen or something even colder.

Hunter threw himself backwards while dialing his weight down as far as he possibly could, the strength of a trained soldier fuelled by literal superpowers moving a mass less than that of a newborn baby.

In other words, he all but flew out of the path of the attack, a blast of cold magic scything across the field with such power that the air in its path splattered across the ground as liquid.

For a brief second, they both froze, him from shock, it from seeming exhausting.

And then Hunter charged right back into the fray.

There was little grace or finesse to how he was fighting. Punch with every scrap of mass possible concentrated into his fist, at the most vulnerable point possible, amplify with sound magic … in other words, every strike was as lethal as he could possibly make it, and based on the fresh cracks radiating across the monster’s body with every blow that hit, it was working.

And as for defense, dodge either the normal way or by manipulating his wet clothing using Hydrokinetic Cloak and yanking himself out of the path of an attack in an emergency.

And all the while, he was endlessly pulsing sound into his sodden BDUs, creating heat and preventing the whole affair from icing over, trapping him in a frozen straitjacket.

There might have been a massive power gap between them despite the fact that they were technically at the same rank, and he was spending mana like there was no tomorrow to cross that gulf, but he was fresh while his foe had been fighting for hours and lost a leg to boot.

This wasn’t going to be an easy fight, and not one he could have won alone … but he wasn’t alone. Never alone. It was that while he’d been the closest person with Pressureforged Body, he wasn’t the only one. In fact, he wasn’t even the strongest of the Marines who’d stayed back in the Pacific transformation zone to train.

Even as his mana fell below the twenty-five percent mark, another figure slammed down into the monster, sending it sprawling, and high above, others flew down more slowly, using their own hydrokinetic cloaks to slow down what would otherwise have likely been a fatal fall.

Clawing itself back onto its feet, liquified gases pouring off it, the monster began to unleash its magic, ice spears flying, frost elementals pulling themselves from the ground, waves of cold washing off it and forcing everyone to run … but they were playing it safe, staying as far back as possible to avoid getting turned into icicles.

And while it was focusing on someone other than Hunter, he acted.

His mass bled away to nearly nothing, and he leaped into the air, easily clearing the height of some smaller skyscrapers, then dialed it back up as far as it would go while further accelerating by yanking himself down by his BDUs with hydrokinetic cloak. He felt more than saw several seams of the clothing pop, but thankfully, everything stayed where it was.

And before the damage could get any worse, Hunter hammered into the monster’s back like a meteor, a second built-up shockwave hitting a split-second after his fist, hammering into the cracks he’d created with the first strike, shattering its entire torso as it fell.

This time, the Winter Queen did not get back up.

***

The aftermath of the battle was … well, a clusterfuck for the ages. Radio communications were a mess, the people who were still around were, to a one, superhumans, and unless one counted Major General Fuller, who was currently on an isolated cot on the far side of camp while setting off every Geiger counter within ten meters, Hunter was both the highest-ranking officer present, and the highest ranking one in radio communications range.

The old man really had pulled off something truly incredible, and utterly shattered every record for leveling speed ever created, but also pushed himself too far by half. That he was even breathing was a bona fide miracle.

And between all that had been done, all that needed to be done, and the number of things they needed to know but didn’t know they had to do, well, he’d have preferred to herd an entire battalion of cats over any of this.

But he had to do what he had to do, and was standing in the middle of the camp, barking orders.

It was at this point that yet another group arrived, led by a figure he very much recognized. Jaclyn Abrams.

“We heard the fight’s over,” she said immediately. “Where do you need us? Granger can cleanse radiation, Harper’s the chief of our medical division, me and everyone else should be helpful in search and rescue.”

Now that was an attitude Hunter could appreciate.

“We’ve got radiation victims in that camp over there. any help would be appreciated. And I don’t suppose any of you know how to restore comms?” he asked. Because being able to dump command into the lap of someone who had a full overview of the situation was sounding damn tempting right about now.

As it turned out, the Europeans hadn’t brought a magical fix for all his problems. But they were still helpful.