Chapter 189

Chapter 189

Chapter 189

Despite the Rippenvire fleet having been wiped out, at least for the most part, many hundreds of dropships had landed troops across different layers of the stacked city and were continuing to wreak havoc. The royal fleet belonging to Dawn was also decimated, and their forces were already engaged at numerous points. The vampires continued to slaughter civilians as fast as possible, either out of spite or simply because they didn’t know they’d lost yet. But the fact remained that without the surging hordes of allied reinforcements coming up from the lower levels, this city would have certainly been lost. Even now forces from both Brightsville and Deepnest had reclaimed the first three upper levels and two under levels, with another four contested city pieces to go.

Though honestly when Allie had flown over floor 7, there’d been almost nothing left. The entire topside was a ruined husk of what it’d once been, littered with smoking corpses and broken airships, while the academy she’d been attending was nothing but rubble and flame.

Allie’s footsteps echoed through the long hall, the corpses around her twitching and rising in silence as wisps of teal light trickled out of her body to animate the dead. Ahead of her, two more vampiric sets of eyes glared back at her through the dark, leveling pistols her way before firing.

The bullets sizzled and hissed through the air - exploding on contact when Allie’s wand shot forward and eradicated them in an instant. Not speeding up or slowing down, she continued her monotonous walk while more of the bullets continued peppering the walls around her.

“BLOOD TRAITOR!” One of the vampires screamed, drawing out a scimitar and dashing forward when he realized the bullets weren’t doing anything.panion soon joined him in the frontal assault, and Allie conjured four flaming skulls before letting them loose like cannonfire.

The walls on either side of her shuddered in the darkness, only illuminated by the deathly flames as the skulls screeched forward and exploded on impact. The two vampires immediately died, and she effortlessly stepped over their charred remains while casually continuing on towards her goal.

“Insects...” She hissed turning right and approaching a barricaded door where one of the vampiric hounds was digging its way through the old wood into the room. On the other side, screams of civilians and the weeping of children were heard.

The monster didn’t even know she was there, too obsessed with the scent of nearby prey, and it too died in a flash of death mana that left it dropping to the floor with a loud yelp.

“Is this it?” Allie asked, turning to Mara -who was in terrible shape and missing an arm along with half her lower torso.

The ghoul necromancer, along with the skeletal brothers Vin and Nin, all nodded. Mara held up a hand, and out of the darkness a shadow elemental in the form of a rat tore itself off a wall to land on her outstretched palm. “He is here.”

Ignoring the screams and sobbing on the other side of the door, Allie turned back to the old, thick wood and unleashed thin threads of power. They dug into the hinges, the locks, the perimeter of the wooden outline and in a second tore the door off the wall to fling it aside. Then they continued to fling pieces of debris and junk, stuff that the people on the other side of the door had piled up against it as a barricade, and the screaming grew louder.

She stepped inside, looking around the dimly lit room under candle light with red eyes through her skull mask as one man brandished a dagger threateningly towards her. There were a couple dozen people here, all scattered throughout a cellar.

But another pair of people, a middle-aged husband and wife, quickly recognized her with a gasp when she didn’t move to attack anyone. Immediately they got down onto their knees and prostrated themselves, and the woman began to call out to her. “Queen Thane of the Necropolis!”

The mood immediately shifted, but everything else that was said filtered out through one ear and out the other when Allie’s shoulders sagged in relief. In one corner of the room, still alive, was Lahn and his mother Shovi.

They locked eyes, and without another word Allie picked up her pace while taking off her mask. Lahn tried to stand up, but despite his recent affliction being healed he was still weak - and he stumbled to catch himself against the wall right before Allie’s arms were flung around him.

“Good on you for not dying.” Allie said softly, sighing when she felt his returned embrace as the room went silent. “That would have made me very sad.”

Lahn, somewhat speechless with tears welling up under his eyes, nodded just once. “Thanks for coming. But don’t you have better things to do, other than rescue me?”

She smiled, then shook her head. “No. This is the most important thing, and if I hadn’t come you’d have been dead within a few minutes from now when the vampires broke down that door. We need to move you and your mother to a more secure location, then Tyranus and I are going to join Riven in his fight against the harbingers.”

Her red eyes shifted to where one of the people had a system cortex screen up displaying the fight, and already it was becoming a fight of the ages. She ignored that for now, Riven would be fine until she got there.

“My queen.” Mara said under a black hood, looking over her shoulder where Nin and Vin had left upon the sounds of clashing metal and screams further back. “The vampires are approaching in great numbers. We cannot stay, another of their elite groups are sweeping this part of the city and fighting them would stall you even longer from reaching your brother. We need to leave unless you want to get locked into a drawn out conflict.”

Allie abruptly nodded and let go, seeing Shovi sniffle and give her a wide, shaky smile. “Come on everyone, you heard Mara. We can’t stay, so let’s get going.”

***

Malice.

Hate.

Rage.

These were the feelings coursing through him when his eyes locked onto those who would dare try to rip Athela’s soul apart to acquire her newly found shard of sin. These motherfuckers didn’t know who they were messing with, and there was no way he was about to let these would-be thieves take Athela away from him only after she’d just gotten back.

A giant flaming stag.

A fleshy, fat abomination wielding a morning star flail.

A shadowy, dual-scimitar wielding wraith.

He was going to crush them all into paste.

His foot exited the dome of light, coming into the other side of the five-mile wide system-made arena. His aura roared for blood, shaking the very ground he stood on as his entire being radiated with fury as his eyes locked onto the three interlopers.

[You have entered an event: World Quest Boss Fight - Tikus, Slayfather of Rippenvire, vs. Archdemon Athela, Baby Stomper and Future Conqueror of Worlds.

Warning - This event has been modified. Slayfather Tikus and the forces of Rippenvire have been either devoured or possessed by three Harbingers of Gluttony. This event will not end until either the three harbingers have perished, or Athela dies.]

Oh, there would be some perishing all right.

Wisps of blood condensed around his weapon and a red, gaping jackal’s maw roared ahead of his outstretched weapon. Black and red wisps lit up along his body, smoldering with power under the upgraded version of Blessing of the Crow. The back of his thick ivory plate armor bloomed with torrential amounts of red flames, and a lightning strike five times larger than he was encompassed him in a protective shell as he prepared the move.

Then the city shattered underneath Riven’s feet as he launched himself forward faster than the speed of a hypersonic bullet.

Black Lightning: This staff can passively build up charges of black lightning. Power of black lightning depends on the amount of charge emitted.Jackal’s Lunge: Point this weapon in any direction and activate this innate and unique martial art, charging the blade with blood mana to create the visage of a jackal’s maw and blasting forward. When your blade strikes an enemy, the red jackal will close down on them to deal additional blood and sin damage.Launch: The back of your suit can open up, creating a blast of sin energy that damages enemies and acts as a propulsion method to blast you in a given direction at speeds dependent on how much energy you drain from the stored reservoir of your pauldrons.Blessing of the Crow: Activate this ability up to once per day for an hour’s worth of increased stamina regeneration with a significant boost to agility.

Riven collided with the flaming stag, his jackal’s maw snapping down onto its skull as the blade skewered its brain. But it wasn’t enough to kill the creature even despite this.

The stag roared, blooming with retaliatory fire and forcibly being torn off the ground by the immense impact. The huge monster was sent careening with Riven’s blade impaling it, screeching in pain and rage as a storm of blood magic ripped through its body while it tried to regain a footing against the uncontrolled, thunderous roll it’d spiraled into.

The fight was on.

Thousands of crystalline spiders screeched and rushed forward, swarming towards the fat flesh abomination with hundreds of hungry mouths as it charged her. Meanwhile Athela’s cloud of frost became a blizzard, intermixing with electrified snowflakes that whirled about her as she opened her maw of Gluttony to unleash a cannon blast of fire, ice and lightning at the wraith.

But the wraith vanished, leaving Athela only a moment to counter the incoming scimitars aimed at her neck as the shadowy figure roared with blazing torrents of void energy - smashing into Athela’s outstretched hand that blocked the attack. But her scream of pain as blue blood began pouring out of the deep wound gave Riven pause across the battlefield.

Ripping his weapon out of the stag’s skull and turning only briefly, he saw Azmoth’s armored, flaming figure crash a huge stone maul into the back of the wraith.

“AZMOTH SAVE TINY ATHELA!!!”

The wraith was floored in a shower of shadowy wisps, flames and debris; but immediately recovered even under the enormity of that strike with a quick flip and blur of shadowy blades as it created five more illusions of itself. Snarling, it began the assault - exchanging places with its illusionary bodies from time to time and making it hard for the two demons fighting it to pinpoint its exact location. Each strike it made was met with thunderous claps of discharging shadow, and in turn the frosted scythe-like legs of Athela and Azmoth’s flaming maul creating shockwaves of their own.

The multi-mouthed flesh monster was roaring and smashing aside dozens of spiders at a time, only being weighed down temporarily by the swarm of spiders and not taking much if any damage from them - but at least it was being held back for now to buy them time. Clouds of noxious green fumes were spraying from the many mouths and its huge sickly belly jiggled with every thunderous step it took to crush more spiders under foot; flail spiraling in the air and sending out sprays of earth every time the weapon crashed into the ground with storms of arachnid body parts.

Riven didn’t have much more time to look, needing to trust in his two minions to deal with the wraith. He needed to finish off this stag before the abomination laid waste to the arachnid swarm.

Gluttony’s Riptide: Passively builds up an elongated blade of sin energy that can extend by swinging this weapon in an arc. Recharge rate and damage output depend on control and insight concerning Gluttony.

Activating the second stage of his ‘Snipe’ ability, the blood lance was empowered. It sharpened, becoming thinner and sleeker than its previous form, and the tip of the lance darkened. The air around it shimmered, condensed, and the blood lance pulled back on his wretched snare slingshot for an additional boost. Everything else around him still remained frozen, which made him wonder what other people would see when watching this from an external perspective, and then time resumed.

The lance tore through the half-mile almost instantaneously, leaving a long linear tear through space itself as it crashed into the chest of the wraith.

Black goop sprayed out the other side of the creature, causing it to gasp as a hole in its body was left crackling with Riven’s power.

This was capitalized on by his two demons, and they moved in unison to charge the wraith during its staggered moment of vulnerability. Athela’s shriek of glee echoed through the dome as one of her legs ripped into the body of the wraith, leaving a line of frost in her wake just as another flash of light erupted from behind her.

Riven’s heart nearly stopped when he saw that it was the abomination he’d assumed had left. Be it illusion, spatial warping, or some kind of other means to mask its presence - the creature was still here, and its many mouths grinned ominously as the giant morning star flail crashing through all three of the combatants in front of it.

And this time, it imbued the strike with a massive amount of unholy energy.

Azmoth died on the spot.

The wraith died too.

And Athela? Her house-sized body was crushed into the ground - smashing her brains across the rubble as the abomination began to cackle furiously.

Riven screamed, and he blasted forward with what little mana he had left - throwing his arm back and heaving Jackal forward to throw it like a spear.

The weapon was launched forward, smashing into the huge abomination and tearing a hole through its chest that caused it to howl in anger and turn towards him.

*CRACK*

The flail spun around so fast Riven didn’t have time to adjust his trajectory, and he felt his ribs all snap at the same time with the groan of metal when the weapon impacted his armor.

*BOOM*

He landed in a cloud of rubble, gasping for air and watching from a limp, prone position while the abomination began consuming the wraith next.

Unearthly screeches tore out of the wraith’s soul as it tried to escape, but it could not. The huge fleshy, abnormally fat monster roared in victory once again as its maw of Gluttony ripped and tore at yet another shard, sending the monster’s aura spiking even more than it’d done the first time.

The ground underneath it tore apart, pieces of earth and rubble rising into the air all around it while it continued to scream a victory cry - hands raised above while unholy power radiated around it. And soon it turned its attention to Athela next, wanting to consume her soul too, but it paused with a multitude of frowns when it realized she wasn’t there.

Then, appearing beside its neck on top of one massive shoulder, the slender form of Athela’s Arshakai body blipped into existence.

It was the form Riven was most accustomed to now. Long, slender black legs, black hair, two red eyes and a very feminine, humanoid figure. Six arachnoid blades ripped out of her back, and an evil smile focused on one of the fleshy, bloodshot eyes that the creature had stationed along its body. “Looking for me?”

She ripped into the eye and dove into its body, a whirlwind of blades digging a tunnel into the monster’s neck before she ripped out the other side in a spray of gore.

The monster howled, clutching at its neck and swatting her away with a massive slap - but she easily landed with a backflip and gracefully flung the monster’s fluids off of her in a single motion that defied logic.

Riven managed to get to his knees, then pushed himself up with effort to stand. Their eyes locked, and Athela’s wicked grin faltered into something else - having some kind of emotion pass over her that he could not pinpoint.

With a nod, she blurred forward again, being far faster than she’d ever been and crashing into the flash abomination with whirlwinds of strikes - using her long black tongue, necrotic poisons, claws, blades, and blood thread needles to attack the larger monster mercilessly. All the while, she dodged attack after attack as the abomination spewed clouds of acidic smog, smashed down with its flail and tried to body slam or stomp her to death.

From what Riven could tell just by watching, Athela’s current body had mostly remained the same with two key differences. The first was that it was far faster and more agile than she’d been previously, by a scale of double or triple her previous power - while the second change was a little less obvious.

From time to time Riven caught glimpses of Gluttony’s visage on her body, opening up along random places in various sizes to suck away the smog or lash out with necrotic tendrils - before the maw would vanish into her body like it’d never been there before.

If he had to guess, it was somehow utilizing her ‘shapeshifting’ abilities this body had to hide itself and appear as needed in different places.

He held out his hand and Jackal soared back into its rightful place. Spinning the weapon around once and having let his vampiric regeneration fully heal him once again, he charged.

*CRASH*

*THUD*

*BOOM*

He struck and slashed at the monster over and over again, drawing its attention away from Athela as best he could to provide a less mobile but sturdier target for the monster to focus on.

And the enraged monster took the bait.

Roaring and giving up on catching Athela for now, the creature tried body slamming Riven underneath a mountain of flesh - crashing into the floor with a resounding boom that shook the earth right after Riven riftwalked away to put distance between them.

He re-engaged, smashing down with Jackal into the creature’s exposed shoulder and tearing out a good chunk of flesh before the flail connected with him yet again in a blurring crash.

But reinforcing himself with crimson ice that kept him in place, gluing his legs to the ground, he was able to take the hit head on by bracing himself. The weapon smashed against Messenger, and despite feeling his legs snap - so too did the spiked ball.

The flail shattered amidst Riven’s scream, and Athela took the moment to go for the monster’s brain.

Rapidly digging with the ‘Flurry’ martial art on repeat, she was able to carve a five-meter hole into the monster before another cloud of acidic gas caused her to retreat. Flipping up over the monster’s back, she dove for the backside as it lay prone and activated the martial art ‘Backstab’ with all six of her sharpened blade-like legs.

The effect was immense, far more than she’d anticipated. Critical strike notifications bloomed before her eyes and torrents of kinetic energy mixed with shadow energy rippled along the monster’s back - causing it to scream and flail. Internal organs ruptured and she quickly dove off when the abomination rolled - only to be flung sideways with a shockwave of force when the creature simultaneously belched of all things from all its mouths.

“Shit!” Riven cursed when he saw Athela thrown aside, and he began charging up another snipe with a conjured blood lance when a ripple in the dome above caught his attention.

And with a roar, Tyranus dove through the dome.

The giant skeletal drake dive-bombed the other monster with outstretched claws, deathly flames billowing from its mouth while Allie summoned hundreds of deathly globes that shot forward to bombard the creature below. The drake roared, sending one martial art after the other as it activated ‘Pulsating Roar’ in waves of kinetic energy to knock the struggling creature back down - flattening it and sending ripples of its fat belly jiggling to all sides. Then the ‘Deathfire Blast’ came next, barreling towards the creature after Allie’s bombardment in an immense storm of teal and black flames.

The hundreds of death balls peppered the monster with tiny explosions and the drake’s fireblast smashed into the screaming monster, burning it alive before Allie and her drake crashed into the smoldering wreckage of the beast underneath.

Claws and teeth tore into it, and Allie’s wand lifted to send out lacerating strike of death mana ripping all across the beast’s surface.

Riven didn’t think twice and immediately started firing off more of his bloody razors, and Athela dove back in with a scream of glee.

The flesh abomination struggled against the equally large drake atop its body, but it was weakened now. Even despite being higher leveled and more powerful than the drake would be in most circumstances, the damage the flesh abomination had taken was too great.

Acid spewed up onto Tryanus’s bone claws, but the undead drake ignored it and continued tearing into the monster with wreckless abandon while its wings pinned down the abomination’s arms. Then, when the large gluttonous maw across the abomiantion’s chest opened up to let loose dozens of tendrils to try and combat the drake - Tyranus reared back and fired a blast of flame directly into the maw.

The abomination bellowed, puffed up, and exploded in a shower of gore that threw smoldering body parts everywhere.

Then as the victory notifications began to seep in and the dome began to fade away; Tyranus with Allie on his back lifted his enormous body up on his hind legs - spread his wings, and roared to the heavens in victory as black and teal death energies burned all around it.