Chapter 118: 118 – Heatshock

Simultaneously, she fired off a burst each into the other Warriors’ faces, their eyes burned from their sockets and their shrunken brains exposed when their skulls were ablated. Freeing her arm from viscera once more, Zel jumped down to the ground and simply tipped the two living warriors over, kicking their arms to pulp and leaving them to die where they lay.

This reliable means of ranged offense that didn’t rely on physical ammunition would become a very, very good friend to her, that much was certain. Already she was considering having modifications done to the arm-cannon to better facilitate this mode of use. 

Another charging Warrior, another raging bull goaded by battle-lust into breaking from the safety of numbers. They were tough, strong, and quite fast for their size, she had to give it to them - they would be optimal bulwarks in combat against relatively normal foot soldiers. She wagered the average sparklock would take a couple shots to punch through their armor, let alone put them down.

To her, though, they were the ideal punching bag. The perfect testing dummy for discovering and testing her own capabilities. Dodge under the right hook, kick its leg out to get it off balance. One shot to blind it, two shots to ablate the chest armor.

“Heartbreaker…” uttered to the sound of her arm plunging into viscera to finish it off. There was a rhythm to it.

Shot after shot, Heartbreaker after Heartbreaker, crushing kick after crushing kick, Zelsys brutally and maliciously put every remaining locust out of commission. When all was said and done, her right arm was thickly coated with viscera whilst her left was nearly pristine, and she was starting to feel the fatigue. With only a few drones left skittering about, she willed both her breathing and heart rate back to normal.

The body-high faded, and two realizations dawned.

First: She had to take a look at the new technique’s details, and if necessary, rename it.

Second, and more excitingly: if it could turn the sparks of a dry-fire to a ball lightning shotgun, what would it do with an actual shell in the chamber?

Eager though she was to find out, Zelsys wasn’t going to just waste ammunition when she could use it against the Sister. After a little while longer mopping up the drones, she scoured the yellow-painted floor for her empty shell and moved on. She moved on not by breaching the hive, but by simply jumping to its roof - there would be time to dispose of the Doormen later. In the distance was her opponent, standing with her legs wide and hands on the pommel of her sword.

An altar could be seen behind her, but her imperious figure obscured what it held. It was the Butcher. Had to be.

Zel sat down atop the hive and pulled out her Tablet, much to the Sister’s apparent bemusement.

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The Inquisitor hated the feeling of traversing a Fog Gate. She felt that unnerving sensation wash over her, unimpeded by clothing or armor. The dungeon’s spiel written in Fog alleviated some of the concerns that arose when she realized all of her weapons were gone, from her sword, to her boot knife, to her sparklocks.

With a sigh into her mask, the Inquisitor took one of her spare Ignis gems, grasping it tightly in a gloved hand. With a breath of Fog and a muttered invocation, she stepped through the door. A long chamber with two side paths, both to the right. A hive blocked off the path down the middle, its Doorman already retreating as drones poured from the entrance.

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Just another day on the job. The Inquisitor took a moment to button up her coat, walking calmly toward her foe. 

Gnashing jaws and swiping claws were met by simple, effective violence. 

A caved-in skull, a broken arm, a steel-toed kick.

The drones weren’t a threat, as long as she didn’t let them pile on. Even their limited offensive capabilities were worthless against her armor, struggling to even score the outer layers that knitted back together in seconds. 

No, the real threat were those that charged out of the hive when the Doorman retreated far enough, four in total.

These chitin-clad gorillas with crushing strength and deceptive speed. She would boil them in their shells. With how huge their arms were, it would be best to either annihilate them from afar or get in too close for their comfort.

She hadn't expected to get an excuse for this, but a small part of her relished the opportunity. Even if she compensated by burning Fog, this technique would drain much of the gem’s charge. That was more than acceptable.

It was rudimentary, crude, and easily countered by anyone with the level of training required to use it. Against foes that had no way to counteract it, however…

“Heatshock,” she invoked in a hushed exhalation, and a crimson-orange corona surrounded her right arm. When she ducked under a Warrior’s punch and delivered a hook to its side, she only had a moment to get out of the way before it toppled over. The creature’s armor was unscathed, yet a mixture of foul steam and bodily fluids gushed out of its mouth as it writhed on the ground.  

As she turned her gaze to the other bugs, the Inquisitor made a mental note, “More vulnerable to Ignis than expected.”

The remainder of the Warriors in this chamber met the same fate, boiled alive from the inside out whilst the Inquisitor remained unscathed. She took quite a few full strikes from drones and glancing blows from Warriors, but much of it was due to her own carelessness. The remaining insects, from Doormen to drones, were dispatched in a much more hands-on and arguably less painful manner, for the sake of resource conservation.

What purpose was there to dodging a strike that could not harm her? It was faster to lean into it and use the opening to dispatch the attacker. The first side path she explored was the one closest to the chamber’s entrance, leading her to a dead end blocked off by a wall of pillars.

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