Chapter 104: Interlude: The Reaper's Due

In slightly more than a second, a beam of light hotter than the sun’s surface traveled across the void of space. Nearly four hundred thousand kilometers separated the barrel of the gun from its target.

So many elements were taken into account. The rotation of the Earth. Gravitational interactions. The risk of deadly blowback as power far greater than any atomic bomb was concentrated on a single point. It was a test run, and one did not fire an orbital weapon of such devastating potential lightly. When the Lunar Cannon was unleashed upon the country of Bulgaria, it was at its minimum capabilities.

That was enough.

The beam traveled at the speed of light. Like an arrow piercing chainmail, it punched the magnetic shield protecting the Earth and continued its course through the atmosphere.

The one bad thing about a giant laser cannon from space was that it was never built for accuracy. Blackcinders would have preferred to open fire at Basil Bohen personally. Not knowing his location, and with the local dungeon’s energies interfering, she had her engineers target the city center. Shumen’s train station, used by the Knights of Saint-George to relay supplies and troops to other cities, was selected as ground zero.

Since the apocalypse began, Shumen had become a hub for refugees across Eastern Europe. Populations coming from Romania, Ukraine, Moldova and so many other places thought they had found a safe haven there under the protection of a powerful Guild.

They were wrong.

The station was a place that seemed frozen in time since the fall of communism. It took years to build this building, and a nanosecond to wipe it off the map.

As the beam hit it, the impact generated a ball of plasma more than a kilometer wide.

The light burned hotter than the sun. Everyone touched by it was gone in an instant. Flesh was incinerated. Bones were vaporized. Concrete turned to dust, and iron to ionized particles blown by annihilation winds. There was no screams, no colors nor sound.

Instead, there was light.

The fireball eventually slowed as atmospheric pressure pushed back against the sudden rise in temperature, but the wind couldn’t stop light.

Everyone too close to the explosion was blinded, most of them permanently. The humidity in their eyes evaporated. Their eyelids were scorched. They couldn’t see what was to follow, but they most certainly felt it.

After the initial explosion, a thermal pulse expanded outward and set everything in its vicinity on fire. Plastic, clothes, flesh, wood…everything that could burn, burned.

In this world ruled by the System, those with Fire Resistance and high Vitality were advantaged. This was the case with the Bohens. Nearly four kilometers separated them from ground zero. Bugsy, whose enhanced senses and Hasten buff allowed him to react in time, regained his full size and shielded his friends with his fireproof body. His chitinous carapace absorbed the heat as he coiled around them like a snake. For Shellgirl, who was vulnerable to Fire and all the more at risk due to Dismaker Labs’ latest cruelty, his action meant the difference between life and death.

The civilians around them were all set ablaze. They became candles in a sea of flames.

Roughly one-hundred and a half thousand people took refuge in Shumen. The Unity’s engineers aimed for a fifty-thousand kill count at a minimum for the initial strike.

They exceeded their target.

Bugsy could absorb fire, but not a shockwave.

The System had rewritten the rules of physics to follow its own alien logic. Some things, however, remained the same. A blast of this magnitude always invited a pushback. The atmosphere’s pressure fought back against the sudden increase in temperature from the blast. This resulted in winds stronger than a hurricane spreading outward.

Bulgarian architects were good. Constructors, however, so often prefered to take the easy way. Many paid cheaply for material, chose shortcuts over quality, and ignored safety norms. Shumen was no exception. If most of the city’s buildings had been built according to high-quality standards, some might have resisted. Instead, the wind blew them out away.

Apartment blocks snapped like Kit Kat bars. Concrete towers fell over. Burning trees flew away alongside cars and bicycles. Districts were flattened in an instant. Gas stations detonated, as did army ammo depots. A sandstorm of searing dust and embers spread over the region.

The shockwave weakened as it expanded, but for Shumen it made no difference. Only its dungeon on its silent hill stood strong before the apocalyptic blast. The rest of the city was turned into a smoking pile of rubble as a firestorm covered it all.

The house of Aleskandra Bohen was no exception.

When the shockwave hit Shumen, the poor woman was traveling from her home to the Steamobile, a cake in hand. Aleksandra Bohen was an optimist. She had survived communism, poverty, her husband’s death, and the apocalypse. She walked down the street thinking of her son. She hoped he would return soon.

When she saw a Mercedes Benz thrown at her, she could only freeze like a deer in the headlights.

The Germans were good at making cars. When the shockwave sent it flying at bullet speed, the Mercedes stayed in one piece. It seemed so surreal, so sudden, that Aleksandra’s mind came to a screeching halt as it tried to process the situation.

Steve, the brave Steamobile, saw the danger and moved to protect its charge. It put all its energy into its wheels. The colossal machine surged forward at full speed. It is a sentient vehicle that knew no fear. It knew what had to be done, and it acted without thinking.

It worked.

Steve was just quick enough to intercept. The Mercedes Benz bounced off its shielding and missed Aleksandra Bohen. For a second, the Steamobile allowed itself to roar in victory.

But when the shockwave hit, Steve was tossed to the side.

It fell on the very person it was trying to save.

When over a thousand tons of metal crushed her into a bloody paste, Aleksandra Bohen didn’t say a word. In fact, she didn’t think of anything. Like so many across the globe, her life ended so quickly that there was no time for sorrow or regrets.

The reaper rarely waited for last words.

From her base on the moon, Blackcinders observed her grim work on a hundred screens.

Her gearsmen on the ground provided her with a constant live streaming of the situation. Thousands of mechanical soldiers surrounded the burning firestorm that had once been called Shumen.

Other dragon commanders watched the devastation at her side. Some were smiling and laughing. Others were in awe of the Lunar Cannon’s power. Many more, the youngest ones, gasped in shock and horror. Untested dragons were still naïve enough to think the lives of lesser races had individual value beyond their usefulness as a means of production.

Blackcinders was different. She felt neither joy nor remorse at ending thousands of lives; not even a fleeting sense of accomplishment.

In fact, she felt nothing.

Blackcinders had killed millions on countless worlds…and she would do it again.

“General, there are survivors,” one of her officers pointed out.

Blackcinders glanced at a monitor showing the outskirts of Shumen. Human troops deployed far enough from the blast were opening fire at her troops with artillery. She noticed winged apes— paladins—and monster riders engaging her Watchers in the burning skies.

Blackcinders’ apathy swiftly turned into disgust at the sight. They have seen our power, she thought, and they would still rather fight?

There was no cure for foolishness.

“Finish them off,” Blackcinders ordered her troops. “Leave no survivors.”

“General…” one of her younger dragon officers dared to speak up, sweat falling off his scales. Blackcinders didn’t even know that was possible for her kind. “Some could be useful as minions or crafters—”

A glare from Blackcinders silenced him. “We have tried to spare them before,” she reminded her troops. “All it achieved was the loss of gearsmen blueprints. I will take no more chances with these terrorists.”

Death solved all issues.

No manlings, no problems.

“These apes will be more useful to us as a warning to the rest of their species, so I will say it again.” Blackcinders turned back to look at the monitors. “No survivors.”

Knowing some of her untrained officers might balk at doing the job, Blackcinders had only deployed gearsmen and machines around Shumen. One could always trust robots to follow orders. The Unity’s mechanical troops opened fire on the city with a barrage of projectiles. They would extinguish all life with it within hours.

“How long until we can fire again?” Blackcinders asked her engineers.

“Twenty minutes, General, perhaps more,” one of them answered. “We have an overheating issue in engine five.”

Blackcinders snorted. Crafters always underperformed. “Solve this problem and recharge the Lunar Cannon for a second strike,” she ordered. “The bombardments will continue until Basil Bohen’s death is confirmed. I will take no risks with someone of his level.”

Better safe than sorry.

Basil regained consciousness amidst rubbles.

Burning smoke burned his lungs as he breathed. Hot dust had seeped into his armor to the point of heating up the metal. A storm of ashes swirled around him, obscuring his vision, and a familiar shadow loomed over him.

“Mister?” Rosemarine had regained her full size and now stood atop piles of debris. Her leaf-scales were blackened by dust. She wagged her tail to clear off concrete blocks under which Shellgirl had been buried. “Mister!”

“Is… is everyone alright?” Basil used his halberd as a crutch to get back up. “Monster Cure… Monster Cure…”

His magic expanded outward to heal his allies’ wounds. As his eyes acclimated to the smoke, he noticed Bugsy’s towering shape emerge from under a pile of stones with Plato atop his head. Vasi emerged from the dust, coughing. “I’m okay,” she said as she cleared her throat. “We’re okay.”

“I’m so… I’m so glad…” Basil took a step forward to comfort his girlfriend and almost stumbled. He looked down at his feet.

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Bones.

Blackened human bones.

His thought process coming to a screeching halt at the sight, Basil went on autopilot mode. He climbed atop a pile of broken concrete and observed his homeland’s cinders.

The horizon was ablaze.

Everywhere he looked, there were fire and corpses; charred meat and charbroiled bones, human candles and piles of dust. Columns of smoke rose so high in the sky that he couldn’t see the moon, let alone the stars. A colossal pillar of pyroclastic ashes swirled in the middle of a blazing crater like a volcanic hurricane.

“Monsters…” Bugsy shed tears of magma and choked on them. “Monsters… so many…”

This… this was Hell.

“Mister.” Rosemarine crumpled like a submissive cat. “I’m scared.”

Was this what the people of Hiroshima had seen when the Americans dropped the A-Bomb? Hell on Earth?

“Mother…” Basil immediately opened his Logs feature and sent her a message. His fingers trembled as he typed. “Mother… please God…”

Your message couldn’t be delivered. Aleksandra Bohen has left the Guild.

Left the Guild? Why? The only time Basil had seen a similar message was when…

When Kuikui…

When Kuikui died.

In the fiery heart of this blazing inferno, Basil Bohen felt cold as ice. His blood froze in his veins. His heart stopped pounding in his chest. His lungs hurt as if stabbed by a cruel dagger. He forgot how to breathe, how to speak, how to think.

For a short moment, Basil Bohen became a corpse with a pulse. Alive on the outside, yet dead inside.

A flame lit up within him.

[Berserk] ailment negated by [Lethal Vigil].

It wasn’t warm, no. The fire was as cold as the bitterest hatred.

[Berserk] ailment negated by [Lethal Vigil].

Basil clenched his fists to the point blood dripped between his fingers. Darkness blacker than the smoke above his head clouded his mind.

[Berserk] ailment negated by [Lethal Vigil].

[Berserk] ailment negated by [Lethal Vigil]!

[Berserk] ailment negated by [Lethal Vigil]!

Once, Basil Bohen would have gone on a rampage. But he was done being a Berserker. He was a knight now. His anger no longer dominated him. He now wielded his fury like a sword: with carefulness and purpose.

[Berserk] ailment negated by [Lethal Vigil].

Basil wanted to cry, but he refused to. He bottled up his tears and sorrow, locking them up in the deepest abyss of his soul.

His Party needed him to keep a clear head.

His people needed him.

For some of his countrymen fought for their lives even in this hellscape. Basil knew it as he watched the horizon. Explosions rocked the outskirts of the city. He could hear them all the way from there. A colossal metal frame as tall as Apollyon walked through the smoke in the distance to the tune of artillery fire.

Gearsman Titan

Elite Level 60 [Artificial]

Faction: Unity.

The same creature that attacked Bucharest now threatened to destroy what little was left of Shumen.

Vasi walked up to her boyfriend’s side, her voice brimming with concern. “Basil–”

“Rosemarine, Shellgirl, with me.” Basil leaped over his beloved dragon’s back. There was no time to waste. “Vasi, Plato, Bugsy, you go after Kalki. Exfiltrate him.”

“You want us to split up?” Plato protested. “This is madness!”

“Our priority for now…” Basil squeezed his halberd so tightly that he heard his knuckles crack. “Our priority is to save as many lives as we can. Kalki must survive or we all perish anyway. We’ll take care of the gearsmen and secure a safe route out of the city for the survivors.”

Vasi nodded slowly before climbing on her broom. After a short moment of hesitation, Plato leaped behind her back. “We’ll rejoin you as soon as we have him,” Vasi said. “Good luck.”

“Good luck.” Basil extended a hand to Shellgirl. “Let’s go.”

“I’m with you,” Shellgirl replied. Basil seized her hand and pulled her to Rosemarine’s back.

They charged into battle without a word.

Fire.

Everywhere Vasi looked, she could only see fire. Flames spread across the ruins of the city, carried by warm winds and dust storms. Vasi put her scarf over her mouth to help herself breathe through the smoke. Plato looked around at the sea of fire as they ascended towards Shumen’s dungeon; Bugsy climbed up the hill on foot, his legs digging into stone like clay.

The most terrible thing was the smell.

Vasi couldn’t hear any screams coming from the sea of flames, but the stench of calcined meat was ever-present. The smell reminded her of Basil’s cooking, of warm meat roasting in an oven. Once she had found it appetizing.

Now?

Now she struggled not to throw up.

“They must pay.” It was the first time Plato had sounded so calm, so dead inside. “They must pay for this.”

“They will,” Vasi agreed. There were crimes too great to be atoned for.

What happened today was one of them.

In her childhood, she had been told about the historic Battle of Crom Cruach, where the armies of Outremonde gathered to prevent their world’s destruction at the hands of a powermad Fomor queen. This tyrant had threatened to destroy the land with Arrows of Light that could scorch the land to cinders, or so her mother told her. Vasi had never connected to this story before. Tales of burning cities and widespread destruction were words to the wind. She could imagine them, assemble them into a picture, but they couldn’t disturb her; no more than a breeze could.

Experiencing the destruction, the pointless devastation, the utter loss of life, was something else entirely. Now Vasi understood why tales failed to properly represent the horror of ancient battles.

There were no words in the multiverse that could properly describe such tragedy.

Shumen’s dungeon oversaw the city from atop a hill. The fortress of steel and concrete had weathered the apocalyptic destruction well, though its surface was now blackened by dust and embers. There were no defenders patrolling in the skies around it, nor shielding its ramparts.

That alone was cause for alarm.

Dungeon: Founders of the Bulgarian State Monument

Level: 45.

Faction: Swords of Saint-George

Field Type: [OVERRIDDEN].

Overridden? By what?

By whom?

The dungeon only had one entrance: a set of iron gates surrounded by giant, cubical statues of ancient warriors. The shockwaves had defaced half of them and the doors laid wide open. It wasn’t what caught Vasi’s attention.

The feathered corpse burning on the threshold did.

“Garud?” Vasi’s eyes widened in shock as she recognized Kalki’s mount. “Garud!”

The magnificent bird lay on his back atop a broken steel door, his wings broken. A smoking hole burned where his chest should have been. His eyes, usually so bright and confident, were now devoid of life.

When Vasi landed her broom next to Garud, Plato leaped off to examine the corpse anyway. The witch didn’t say a word. She already knew it was too late.

“Garud!” Bugsy shouted in horror as he finished climbing the hill. “Is he…”

“Yes,” Plato confirmed. The feline sat next to the corpse with a mournful look. “He’s… he isn’t breathing.”

Vasi touched the creature’s beak and immediately pulled back her hand after a jolt of electricity coursed through her hand. The corpse was still charged with electricity.

Lightning.

Garud hadn’t been killed by fire or wind, but by lightning. And from the way the corpse lay on the ground, he had been thrown through the doors from inside.

“I hear thunder within the building,” Bugsy warned. “And… and screams.”

There was only one Faction that could possibly know Kalki’s location at all times and enter a dungeon through a backdoor.

“No,” Vasi whispered. She took a step towards the steel gates. “No, no, no.”

A System notification flashed before her eyes the moment she crossed the threshold, confirming her worst fears.

Zeus-Ashok’s [God-Field: Titanomachy] changed the field to [ThunderOlympus].

[Physical], [Lightning], [Fire], [Wind], [Light] and [Mythic] elements are strengthened.[Soul], [Earth], [Water], and [Darkness] elements are weakened.All [Lightning] attacks will be [Charged] and inflict twice more damage.[Xenia]: Non-[Metal Olympus] factions cannot make use of the Logs feature or use teleportation effects within the [God-Field].

The Unity wasn’t the only of their enemies to make its move tonight.

Metal Olympus had come to collect Kalki.

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