Chapter 79: Man vs Nuke

The city crumbled behind them.

Basil and Plato jumped from one Parisian building’s roof to the next in an epic show of parkour. Century-old houses collapsed in their wake. Walls of stones were crushed under a steel titan’s feet and rusted cars flattened on the pavement.

“He’s gaining ground on us!” Plato warned as the frantic race went on. Indeed, the rumbling noise of Apollyon’s footsteps grew ever closer behind them. “Faster!”

“Gh!” Basil grunted. He was already running as fast as he could while under the influence of Hasten. The world seemed like a blur around him, but his tiny legs could hardly help him outspeed a two hundred meter-tall titan. Apollyon covered more ground in one step than the Bohens in a hundred. “Keep going!”

Basil looked over his shoulder to survey the distance between their pursuer and them. Apollyon was growing closer, but they still had a large head start on him. A squad of monstrous wasps escorted the Horseman of Famine while the rest of the army struggled with Basil’s allies around the rift. Kalki had managed to draw some of the swarm’s forces away to the south and put them in range of Neria’s artillery. Explosions and flashes of light rocked the horizon.

But neither projectiles nor the avatar’s presence would distract Apollyon from his quarry. The colossus shrugged off all bombardments coming his way, his eyes firmly set on Basil himself. Apollyon approached closely enough to trigger Monster Insight, and new information filled Basil’s mind.

Apollyon, Horseman of Famine

Level 60 (70-10) Elite [Bug/Artificial]

Faction: Apocalypse Force.

HP: 38500/39500.

Immune: Critical Hits, Insta-Death, all Ailments.

Resist: Physical, Corrosion, Metal, Earth, Wind, Lightning, Light, Mythic.

Weak: Bugslayer, Artislayer, Wood, Fire.

The ten plagues of Egypt all rolled into one nasty mechanical package, Apollyon is one of the toughest bugs in the multiverse. His exoskeleton shrugs off almost anything and his heavy artillery has laid waste to entire worlds; only crippling both with supereffective attacks will ensure victory.

The good news? Apollyon wasn’t immune to any elemental attack and he feared fire, which Basil appreciated.

The bad news? Everything else.

“I hate raid bosses,” Basil cursed. Apollyon had nearly ten times more health points than his entire party combined. Basil could only hope the neutron bomb would be a powerful enough insecticide.

Although hundreds of meters still separated the hunter from the hunted, Apollyon went on the offensive. His eyes fired lasers of crimson light at Basil and Plato, the duo leaping onto an 18th-century building’s roof to dodge the attack. The house they jumped from was vaporized in an instant.

The monstrous wasps escorting Apollyon opened fire at the duo as well, unleashing lethal poisonous darts. These monsters were below level thirty, just powerful enough to inflict minor wounds but too weak to provide experience. Basil and Plato had little difficulty shrugging off or dodging their attacks. The buildings they ran through, however, trembled from the onslaught. Basil shot the wasps down with his laser pistol while Plato did the same with blades of wind. Each blow killed one of the critters, sometimes two.

“Basil, we have a problem!” Plato shouted, pointing at the path ahead of them. “Look!”

Basil clenched his jaw. They were fast approaching the former Esplanade des Invalides park. Formerly a green landscape in the middle of the urban jungle, the dungeons’ influence had turned it into an open desert of sand bordering the dried-up Seine river. There were no buildings to run on, no place to take cover. Apollyon would have no issues shooting them in it.

“I have an idea.” Basil put his laser pistol back into his inventory, leaving one of his hands free as they leaped into the Invalides desert and landed in a dune of sand. “Elemental Orb: Water!”

A sphere of focused liquid materialized in Basil’s palm. He immediately threw it at the sand beneath their feet. The water evaporated under the searing heat of the desert field, raising a cloud of steam. Basil kept throwing more orbs around to obscure the duo’s movements.

“Follow me,” Basil told Plato, who could rely on his sense of smell to follow his best friend. “Stay close.”

“Clever, Bohen!” Apollyon shouted behind them. The titan flattened the last buildings of the 7th Arrondissement and walked over the Esplanade des Invalides. The sand flowed between his legs’ servos with a screeching noise. “But I do not need to see your monkey face to kill you!”

The Horseman of Famine’s mandibles vibrated at an insane speed, enough to rival that of the Hasten Spell.

“Sonic Shock!”

Apollyon screeched and Paris trembled.

The air itself vibrated at high speed, spreading a mighty sonic shockwave through the park. Sand and steam alike were blown away, followed by the Bohens themselves.

Basil screamed in agony as the shockwave hit him. The vibrations traveled through his flesh and bones; he could almost feel his bones creak and crack. The terrible, droning noise of the swarm echoed inside his skull like a maddened scream. The pain was indescribable.

Supereffective [Wind] damage! [Madness] Ailment negated by [Lethal Vigil]!

Basil stumbled on the ground, and then it collapsed beneath his feet. The earth beneath the desert crumbled under the power of Apollyon’s attack. Basil and Plato flew down into a waterfall of sand and hit the steel ground underneath.

Basil gritted his teeth to ignore the pain and immediately rose to his feet. He immediately recognized the area as Paris’ sewers. A large hole let the eldritch light of the spatial rift from above and into the tunnel below.

“Plato, are you all right?” Basil glanced at his cat and barely managed to dodge a sword strike. “Plato, what are you doing?!”

His feline friend ignored him. The Rakshasa Kitten hissed at Basil with maddened eyes and swung Joyeuse at him. Although he looked less hurt than his Tamer, Plato still suffered from the Madness ailment.

The irony of being attacked by Plato after doing the same while Berserk wasn’t lost on Basil… but unlike the battle with Tamura, the Tamer had an ace up his sleeve.

“Monster Cure II!” Basil immediately healed Plato of his wounds and Madness ailment. His best friend’s eyes regained a sliver of sanity. “Plato, are you all right?”

“What the…” Plato shook his head. “What happened?”

Basil opened his mouth to answer, but a colossal shadow loomed over the open tunnel before he could say anything.

Acting almost entirely on instinct, the Bohens rushed into the sewer tunnel ahead of them. Apollyon’s colossal hand punched through the hole in the ceiling a second later with enough strength to cause an earthquake. The blow sent a cloud of stones and dust flying through the sewers, with Basil and Plato running through the tunnel to avoid being swallowed by it.

“That’s right, weaklings, scurry away,” Apollyon mocked them before inhaling like an asthmatic Darth Vader. “Bio-Blaster.”

The Horseman of Famine exhaled a cloud of green gas into the tunnels. The noxious toxin swiftly spread through the sewers, rusting steel and consuming the leftover waste. The Horseman of Famine was trying to gas Basil and Plato like cockroaches.

“Keep running!” Basil told Plato as the ceiling trembled above them. Apollyon was walking right above them, trying to locate their position; and the gas cloud continued to spread.

Worse, the world started to slow down around them.

Your [Hasten] buff has run out.

Basil cursed under his breath and looked over his shoulder. Without the speed boost provided by his buff, the toxic cloud gained ground on them. Plato turned around, swung Joyeuse in a circular fashion and unleashed a blast of wind behind them, causing the noxious fumes to recede.

The duo’s happiness was short-lived. The ceiling kept trembling with pieces of steel and stone falling left and right. The tunnel behind them collapsed as Apollyon punched through it. The Horseman of Famine was trying his hand at a deadly game of whac-a-mole.

The Bohens managed to evade him for a time, until they reached the end of the sewer. A metal grate stood between them and the dried Seine River beyond. The Louvre’s ruins awaited on the opposite shore.

“Nowhere to hide,” Basil said with a scowl. The dried riverbanks revealed an open space without any cover. Apollyon would have an easy time shooting them down. “It’ll be suicide without Hasten.”

“I have a plan,” Plato said. “Gimme the bomb. I’m faster than you. I can do this.”

“It’s me he wants,” Basil pointed out.

Plato answered by casting an illusion spell on himself. The feline vanished in the blink of an eye. In his place stood a near-exact mirror of Basil himself. The resemblance was so lifelike that Basil wondered how many of his friends would mistake the two; Plato even managed to mimic his best friend’s more subtle facial expressions.

It was a performance only a lifelong friend could achieve. One that could fool almost anyone… including the giant monster outside.

“No,” the real Basil said immediately, as he understood his best friend’s plan. “No way.”

“It’s fine, just teleport me back to you before the bomb hits,” Plato said using Basil’s voice. His smile was almost too life-like. “Besides, you’re fragile. You can only die once, while I have six deaths to go.”

Basil held his best friend’s gaze, before realizing he wouldn’t budge on the matter. Plato was ready to give his life—one of them at least—for the cause. Although it bothered Basil to send him away on a suicide mission, he had no choice but to respect it.

“Send me a message through the Logs the moment you need an emergency evacuation,” Basil said as he unstored the Baguette from his Inventory. The black briefcase appeared in a flash and snapped open. The antenna rose up and the screen booted up.

Basil entered Neria’s code on the keypad, unlocking the device. The Magitek refinement option appeared in response on his System screen, much to his surprise.

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“How is it possible?” Basil wondered. “It’s just the detonator, not the bomb itself. Would empowering it with a rune affect the device on the other end?”

Dismaker Labs wishes you a happy apocalypse.

At this point, Basil decided to ignore logic and embrace the absurd. Empowering a nuke probably violated all disarmament treaties in the world, but you couldn’t really do war crimes halfway.

“Magitek: Fire Rune,” Basil said as he empowered the Baguette. Burning symbols appeared on the detonator’s surface, radiating warmth and light.

Refinement attempt successful! The [Neutron Bomb] will now inflict additional [Fire] damage.

Basil set the timer to ten minutes. The keypad glittered as the words ‘Package Armed’ appeared on the screen alongside a countdown.

Quest: Goodbye Geneva, complete! Your party earned 30,000 Bonus EXP (5000 for you) and learned the [Mustard Gas] Alchemical Recipe! Dismaker Labs wish you happy war crimes!

“I had forgotten this Quest.” Basil squinted at the message. “I thought I needed to create the weapon in the first place?”

Refining a weapon counts as creating it.

“Less questions, more action,” Plato said as he closed the briefcase and grabbed it. He needed to use both hands to do so; his spell granted him Basil’s appearance, but not his strength. “I think you should run in the other direction after I’ve distracted the Bug Godzilla.”

“Yeah.” The neutron bomb’s radius would cover two kilometers according to General Leblanc; enough to wipe out a whole district. “Remember, send me a message when the timer is close to zero.”

“Pinky swear, dog,” Plato realized with a grin before cutting his way through the metal grate. “Wish me luck.”

Basil did. He watched his best friend jump into the dried up Seine River and run through the desert faster than the wind. Apollyon immediately noticed the disguised feline and jumped after him, blowing dust in all directions.

“You will not escape me, Bohen!” the Horseman shouted as he ran after the disguised Plato. He whipped up so much sand with his steps that Basil could barely see him through it. “There you are!”

Basil winced as he watched the steel titan run after Plato… and he could do little more than that.

With Apollyon distracted, Basil emerged from one of the holes left by the Horseman and walked under the shining sky. He glanced at the pillar of light, which Rosemarine, the Steamobile, and Neria’s CAESAR cannons kept bombarding from afar. Vasi, Leroy, and other flyers dueled the insect drones in the sky. The dead bugs formed hills of corpses, and yet they gained ground in spite of their catastrophic losses. Basil’s allies only had so many artillery shells to fire and SP to spend, whereas the bugs came in an unceasing tide of flesh. Eventually, the swarm would overwhelm their opposition under the weight of their limitless numbers.

There would be no victory so long as Apollyon lived.

Basil ran down the Esplanade des Invalides and towards the southern part of Paris, as far away from the Louvre as he could. The earth shook as Apollyon fired his Gehenna Cannons at the Seine River and scorched the sand to glass. Basil desperately checked on Plato’s vitals through the Party system, and sighed in relief upon finding him unharmed.

With the Baguette’s countdown nearing its end, Basil leaped atop the ruins of a destroyed building. He had a good view of the area from there and watched Apollyon reach the Louvre’s remains. The titan blasted the district left and right, oblivious to the fact he had been tricked.

Did he suspect a trap? Or was he arrogant enough to think he would survive whatever Basil had in store for him?

“Come on, Plato,” Basil whispered as he checked his Logs. “Give me the signal…”

His heartbeat quickened and his body trembled in anticipation. The seconds stretched on, and yet Plato didn’t send any message.

“Come on!” Basil cursed, watching the horizon with concern and impatience. “What are you waiting for–”

The world was set ablaze.

An ocean of blinding light swallowed the horizon in the blink of an eye. Apollyon, the Louvre, and all of Paris’ 1st Arrondissement vanished in its ethereal phosphorescence. Time slowed down and all sound ceased.

Basil didn’t see the ICBM hit. He didn’t even notice it falling upon the Louvre. The weapon, fired from Bordeaux, had traveled across France in seconds and reached its target faster than the human eye could follow. It didn’t even make a sound.

The blast did, however. Basil covered his eyes as a mighty sphere of energy expanded in the heart of the light. The spectacle was as dizzyingly beautiful as it was terrifying, like the roar of a newborn star. Basil couldn’t help but stare at it in awe and silence. The sphere expanded until it consumed all of the Louvre. The earth erupted like an open wound under it, the heat convection blowing up dust into the air.

When the light receded, a powerful shockwave of hot wind and sand washed over the city. Although Basil was at a safe distance, the boom made him wince. A massive cloud rose in the fireball’s place in a familiar mushroom shape.

Basil lowered his halberd in horror. The resulting devastation frightened him more than the next System’s notification.

Rakshasa Kitten [Plato] has lost a life! Five remain!

Basil immediately summoned Plato through One for All. The Rakshasa Kitten appeared at his feet in a terrible shape, enough to fill his best friend’s heart with dread. Flames had burned off his beautiful fur and exposed the skin underneath to melted radioactive glass. He had gone blind, and probably deaf too. Even though Plato’s Nine Lives Perk had let him survive the blast by recreating him afterward, he could barely breathe. Worse, his status screen showed an ‘Irradiated’ ailment affecting him.

“Monster Cure II!” Basil wasted no time in healing his best friend. “Monster Cure II!”

A green aura covered Plato, lifting the Irradiated ailment and regrowing his fur. The Rakshasa Kitten groaned as the magic let him shed off the melted glass attached to his body and helped return his eyes to normal.

“Why?” Basil asked as he kept applying his Perk again and over again. “Why didn’t you let me teleport you? Did Apollyon block it?”

“The bug… would have sensed a trap otherwise…” Plato coughed. “Had to do it… that hurt…”

“You brave fool…” Basil shook his head as he treated his best friend. “If we both live through the day, I’ll serve you as much fish as you want.”

“Way to make me hang on to life,” Plato replied with a grin. He had recovered enough strength to rise back to his feet and raise Joyeuse. “Did we get him?”

Basil glanced at the horizon and cursed under his breath.

The neutron cloud had raised a sandstorm around the Louvre’s ruins, but Apollyon’s body shape remained clearly visible in its midst. The giant bug still stood proud and tall, though burning like a torch.

“He’s still alive,” Plato whispered in shock. “He’s… That cockroach is still alive after this?”

Monster Insight provided more intel.

Apollyon, Horseman of Famine

HP: 3503/39500 (critical health).

“Barely,” Basil whispered back. The Horseman of Famine walked the thin edge between life and death. “He’s barely hanging on.”

The neutron bomb had failed to kill Apollyon… but it had made him vulnerable. It had made him beatable.

“Handsome!”

Basil raised his eyes and smiled. Vasi was floating down from the sky on her broomstick with an audacious grin.

“Need a lift?” she asked, all but begging for a fight date.

It was time to finish this.

“With pleasure,” Basil replied, his halberd heavy in his hand. “Let’s squash him for good.”

“Then let’s go,” she replied as she lowered her broom. Basil sat behind his girlfriend, with Plato leaping on his shoulders like a wild squirrel. The trio flew up in the sky and into the sandstorm.

Into the jaws of Hell itself.

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