MM - Chapter 269 - AN UNEXPECTED SUNDERING

After the regulars were settled and knew where to acquire their classes and weapon masteries, Raine used a Return Stone to leave for Vile Peak Town. If the Gromglenns had more errands for him before progressing the quest to its next phase, he needed to know sooner than later.

The swirl of teleportation lights dissolved, leaving Raine standing on worn cobblestone. It was immediately apparent that he did not arrive in the Vile Peak Town he expected. Shouting, screams, and the thud of distant explosions filled the air. The street was barren, the expected press of bodies unsettlingly absent. Far above, the sky was a bruised and violent purple, its every meter shot through with a web of incandescent lightning that pulsed like the vascular system of some celestial monstrosity.

Within the roiling clouds, illuminated by the occasional outburst of elemental energies, were two silhouettes that flickered in and out of existence—one a humanoid figure, the other a nightmare of writhing tendrils and gargantuan bulk. The fury of their battle spilled to the world below in flashes of energy that wiped acres of the land free from life.

A quick glance at his interface confirmed the obvious. A call-to-arms had been activated.

So much for a quick chat with the Gromglenns. Raine grumped, heading away from their yard and toward the town’s walls.

There was no point seeking out the little buggers until the crisis was resolved; scorn and a loss of reputation were all that awaited any perceived of cowardice. The screams that always accompanied open combat grew as Raine drew nearer. He scanned the contribution leaderboard. The top Travelers had amassed over 100,000 Bonds of Honor, meaning the battle had been raging for some time, and with the 4th-tiers already locked in their final duel, the invasion was bound to conclude shortly. Chasing a top spot at this point was a fool's errand; the percentage-based bonuses for the top three Honorbonded were the only way to turn the bonds into a decent reward. His time was better spent hastening the battle’s end.

With a push of Connection, he took to the air. The soul flame’s cloak wrapped him in light-devouring shadows. From above, the town’s defenses were revealed. Vaaterrans and Travelers crowded the town’s wall, unleashing Blasts and arrows into the fields beyond. A massive, shimmering dome of energy encapsulated the town and beyond, its edge stopping well short of where the fields met the mountain slopes. The shield’s blueish tint was a dead giveaway that it was designed to repel beasts of the 3rd-tier. It offered no resistance to their smaller, more numerous kin, who flooded the fields.

Like Celendine’s Shield, most defensive arrays had such fundamental limitations; they could be tuned to a specific beast tier or damage type, like kinetic, elemental, or celestial. There was no such thing as an absolute defense.

The result was chaos beyond the shield, where the 3rd-tiers fought, and utter bedlam within, where the 1st and 2nd-tiers clashed. Regardless of tier, the monsters were much the same—grotesque fusions of oversized, burrowing moles with the writhing, tentacled faces of an octopus. Their many limbs pulled unfortunates inside ravenous maws of churning teeth that left little more than red paste behind.

Raine ignored the larger beasts clashing with the town’s elite guards. That was not a battlefield he could influence in any way. Inside the dome, however, thousands of smaller variants swarmed the walls.

[Depthmaw Abomination: Level 52 (HP 1,985,000)]

[Highest Attribute: Potency 1,050]

[Average Attribute Score: 850]

[Unique Trait: Soil Manipulation]

The beasts were met by a beleaguered mix of Vaaterrans and Travelers. The motivations of each group were starkly different. The Vaaterrans fought with the desperation of those defending their homes, their families, their very existence. The Travelers, by contrast, fought with the detached efficiency of mercenaries, their eyes constantly scanning for opportunities to maximize their earned honor.

With little fanfare, Raine dropped onto the field amidst the beasts, where few dared tread. Wrapped in darkness, he was an untouchable wraith. He zipped through the battlefield, movements a blur that even Acuity-focused Rogues struggled to track. His purpose was not to kill, not yet. He moved among the fallen, and wherever he passed, the glittering motes of light left behind by the fallen vanished.

Shouts of disbelief and outrage hollered down from the wall at his ghoulish scavenging. A Traveler, shield arm bleeding from a fresh wound, pointed a trembling finger. “Hey! Someone’s breaking the truce! Get ‘em!”

The warning was lost in the din. Raine was too fast, his path too unpredictable. The few attacks sent his way did not even come close. His attention was on the only battle that mattered, the one taking place in the skies. Despite not being able to see those fighting above, subtle changes were all around him. They were most easily noticed beyond the shield, in the way the beasts hesitated, their primal aggression giving way to a nascent fear. They were preparing to flee. 3rd-tier creatures were not the mindless killing machines of lower levels; they possessed a cunning sense of self-preservation.

The window for easy pickings was closing. Most of the drops were low-level gear that would be added to the guild’s armory for purchase. The larger it grew, the more attractive Astra Infernum would be to solo Travelers who couldn’t afford the insane prices of the auction house.

Raine wove toward a lance of Vah-terrans about to be overwhelmed by a pack of Abominations. Bloodlust flowed, cutting the monsters’ attributes. His summoned mace was replaced by Last Chance’s Gambit. He swung the dagger in an upward arc, unleashing a combined Rupture and Great Divide. Before the swing, his intent shifted in the unique way required to trigger Force-Damage Conversion, turning half the force of his combined skills into additional raw damage.

Rupture’s dual waves and Great Divide’s upheaval of energy tore into the beasts, shredding their hides into a bloody mess. Already severely damaged, the dense pack of beasts was completely annihilated. [-467,423] [-1,028,330] The people he’d saved stared at the dark hole of light speeding away. The misery of their countrymen soon drew them back into the thick of it.

Now that Raine had access to Force-Damage Conversion again, he was one step closer to the style of combat he was so intimately familiar with. His completion rates soared by multiple percent as he fell back into old rhythms.

[Great Divide: (Completion - 72% Expert)]

[Rupture: (Completion - 76% Expert)]

The higher-level guards meant there was no Superiority to go around, but that was to plan.

A group of twenty 2nd-tier beasts paused in their charge at the wall to explosively regurgitate a host of pulsing sacs of biomass. The inky projectiles arced over the tall barrier toward a residential district. Connection and Lunge turned Raine into a flicker of motion. He appeared before the attacks, and a Guillotine Slash split the air, creating multiple dark cuts in the fabric of reality. They sucked in the biomass, turning the deadly globs into a foul sprinkle of acidic droplets that fell atop the wall, and the many Travelers watching the battle from its safety.

Fresh curses at the dark shadow chased Raine as he returned to the field and the collection of loot. Throwing caution to the wind, a dozen Travelers followed him into the chaos, collecting their own share of the spoils. Whatever truce they had called beforehand shattered, and nearly a hundred more surged from the walls.

Mere moments later, a heaven-splitting roar of pain echoed through the clouds. The monstrous form plummeted from the sky, wreathed in arcing, lavender lightning. It crashed into the muddy battlefield beyond the shield with the force of a meteor. 

The impact was apocalyptic. The ground buckled, and a titanic wave of electrified soil, rock, and mud erupted outward. It swept outward with the speed of a pyroclastic flow, a wall of death that passed right through the town’s shield. Knowing well the dangers of proximity to 4th-tier Powerhouses, Raine fled the moment he saw the beast pierce the clouds. The Travelers who emulated his looting were caught completely exposed. The mudslide hit them with the force of a freight train, swallowing them whole. Most died before impact, bodies popped from the lightning that stubbornly refused to be grounded.

There was no time. One moment they were there, greedy hands outstretched, and the next they were gone. The wall groaned as the wave struck, but the Vaaterran construction was backed by arrays designed to hold off exactly this kind of damage. It held, stopping the destruction from sweeping over the town. The finer particulate matter, however, continued unabated, clogging sight and stifling sound.

As the dust began to settle, a figure descended from the sky, landing gracefully near the beast’s crater. It was Salamon, the Lightning Overlord, who radiated an intensity that marked him as a pillar of the kingdom’s strength. His body, forged from living lightning, sparked with residual energy.

His opponent clawed its way from the soil with movements so fast its limbs micro-teleported. Half its body was a charred ruin, its tentacled face melted into a slag of blackened flesh. Yet it lived, its single remaining eye burning with undiluted hatred. The ground trembled as it leaped, appearing behind Salamon in a flash. The overlord was cut in half, but a body of lightning was not so easily destroyed. His two halves rejoined as though each bolt comprising him had a will of its own. 

Touching such a man carried consequences. Flashing damage indicators appeared above both their heads, the numbers well into the tens of millions.

Just as Salamon turned for another exchange, a thunderous boom echoed from within the town. A metallic behemoth soared through the air. The Gromglenn Rattlemecka landed squarely on the wounded beast’s back. Two rugged metal fists slammed into the Abomination’s skull, driving its ugly face deep into the mud with a sickening crunch. Before the monster could recover, the Rattlemecka’s arms split open with mechanical precision, revealing wide-barreled shotguns. It unloaded a deafening volley of explosive shells into the creature’s spine, each blast gouging out craters of gore. With a final, powerful kick, the mech leaped away as the beast thrashed violently.

The air grew thick with condensed energy as Salamon’s raised hands unleashed a beam of pure, concentrated lightning two meters thick. Simultaneously, the Rattlemecka’s chest plates slid open, revealing a glowing core that fired a beam of brilliant crimson shot through with currents of sickly green energy, a river of poisoned annihilation. The twin beams converged at the monster’s hideous face.

When the light faded enough to see, half of the beast’s torso was gone, vaporized by the sheer destructive forces. Yet, a 4th-tier monster was not so easily felled. It let out a piercing, mind-shattering screech that was not a sound of pain, but a command. In an instant, every Abomination on the battlefield, surviving or not, convulsed, then dissolved into streams of sticky, brown biomass. The liquid defied gravity, flowing through the air like grotesque serpents and seeping into the boss’s gaping wounds. Flesh, hide, and tentacles regenerated at a visible rate. [+1,477,000,000]

A second volley of beams lanced out from Salamon and the Rattlemecka. The revitalized beast met them with a roar, slamming its thickest tentacles together to create a concussive shockwave. The beams were deflected, their combined energy tore by to splash against a nearby mountain peak. It promptly disintegrated, followed by a landslide of epic proportions that promised to reshape the horizon.

Its tentacles spread wide, and a massive ball of darkness began to coalesce. Soil, and even huge boulders, were rapidly sucked inside where they were compressed into fractions of their former glory.

Beyond the shield, a low growl emanated from Salamon. With the town at his back, he was done playing. His body glowed with an unbearable light, his physical form ballooning into a genie of barely tamed lightning. Raine recognized the Berserk skill and was beyond thankful for the flickering shield that kept him from dying to the proximity damage.

Salamon raised arms of crackling energy, becoming a conduit for the storm still raging above. He pulled the ambient electrical energy into his being. The purple clouds swirled, drawn into a gigantic vortex centered on him. The pull was so immense that it drained energy from the town's survivors as well. Vaaterrans and Travelers alike cried out in alarm as their Elemental Power was siphoned away against their will.

Raine felt the pull as well, though he did not fight it. He opened the floodgates, willingly feeding Salamon’s efforts. He went a step further, actively converting his Discipline, Celestial, and Demonic Power with Flawed Conversion, offering it all to the raging storm that was the Lightning Overlord. Even his Horn of the Galactic Ancient was emptied. This was no time to hold back. If the town were lost here, that would not only ruin his questline but also represent a significant blow to the Silvergate Kingdom as a whole.

While Salamon gathered his ultimate attack, the Rattlemecka underwent its own transformation. Its metallic frame unfolded like a deadly flower. Missile pods emerged from its shoulders and back, smaller beam emitters popped out from its chest, and grenade launchers from its legs. Its two arms fused, then extended into a single, massive cannon to amplify the dangerously radiating energy from its core.

As if that were not enough, a second Rattlemecka vaulted over the wall, its weapons systems already deployed and glowing. It landed beside its twin, adding its firepower to the impending barrage. All four powers peaked at the same instant. With a toss of its thick neck, the Abomination released its ball of gravity capable of destroying a town twice the size of Vile Peak. Salamon unleashed a bolt of lightning so vast it turned the entire landscape white. The two Rattlemeckas fired in unison, their combined beams merging with a torrent of missiles and grenades.

There was no explosion, no final roar of defiance. There was only light. An all-consuming, absolute whiteness. When vision returned, there was nothing left of the beast. No ash, no gore, and no mountain that had once been its backdrop.

This was the might of those known as powerhouses: the 4th-tier, where legends were created, and armies torn asunder.