Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 109: The final push

Alea was in dire straits, dodging and movement weren’t her strong suits, and she was further impeded by carrying Janos around. The mage was weakly trying to confuse the last royal guard with illusions after having absorbed enough energy from a Nexus Crystal, but it was as though the huge armored ant was locked onto them.

Zac saw with some surprise that the cracks that appeared when both he and Ogras assaulted the crystal were already closed up, making the chitinous armor look as good as new.

“He has regenerated the damage already,” Zac said, and Ogras only nodded in response.

Zac sighed and readied his axe, but Ogras held up his hand.

“What?” Zac asked, anxious to help Alea and Janos out.

“When we kill this big guy all the Royal Guards will be dead and we’ll be able to attack the Queen’s Core. But we don’t know if the Hive Queen will be able to unleash some sort last desperate attack when the guards are down and the shield is removed. The queen is a true E-Ranked being, while the guards only seem to be elite F-Grade beings on the cusp of evolving,” Ogras said while looking over his wound.

“We should instantly destroy the crystal the second the last guard dies to avoid any unexpected things. If I kill this big fucker, do you have a finisher to use against the crystal?” the demon continued.

Zac thought it sounded like a good idea, and after some hesitation nodded.

“I need ten seconds of time to charge the attack,” Zac said. Actually, he barely needed half that, but the attack he was about to unleash was his current ace in the hole and he didn’t want to give out its details. It put Alea and Janos in danger for an additional five seconds, but he could only make it up to them later.

Ogras nodded and readjusted the grip of his spear.

“Start charging,” the demon said as shadows were starting to gather around him and his eyes turned completely black. Shadows were soon covering every inch of his body, turning him into a being of darkness. Ogras started emanating a sinister pressure that gave even Zac a hair-raising feeling. Whatever the demon was doing was something Zac had never seen before, and it was likely his strongest attack.

Zac didn’t hesitate and started pouring huge amounts of cosmic energy into his right forearm. It was time to unleash [Nature’s Punishment]. The eleven days of mindless killing was more than enough to finish his quest to decapitate 10 000 enemies. Luckily the System considered his kills solo battle even though he was part of the demon army, as long as he was fully responsible for the kills of the insects.

The fractal on his arm was like a bottomless hole, and after seven seconds he already had poured 80% of his remaining cosmic energy into it.

“Get ready,” Ogras hissed in a raspy voice, currently looking like a true denizen of darkness. Two ephemeral black wings had sprouted on his back, softly waving back and forth, each reaching over three meters in length. The spear in his hand was throbbing like it possessed a heart, and as the last seconds passed the heartbeat quickened to a frenzied thumping.

Just before ten seconds passed Ogras punched off from the ground, a wave of darkness flooding out from him. He turned into a large black beam that shot straight toward the chest of the last Royal Guard.

There was no impact and no sound from the clash.

Suddenly there simply was a hole spanning three meters in the last guard’s chest, going straight through the beast. The guard’s head was only attached to its body with a small string, which broke and fell down onto the floor with a thud where Ogras appeared once again. He stabbed a four-meter long lance of darkness into the head to make sure it was dead.

Zac didn’t hesitate and put [Verun’s Bite] into his bag. He pushed his hand forward in a grasping motion as though he was trying to grasp the huge crystal from a distance. It felt like he was trying to push through solid matter with his arm, but he only roared and pushed forward with his arm as he poured the last of his energy into the fractal.

With a large dissonant sound a huge crack appeared in the air, as a gigantic rough brown hand emerged out of nowhere. It was quickly evident that the hand was not of a humanoid, at least not one of flesh and blood, as the hand was wrought from tree and roots.

The fingers didn’t have any nails, and only got thinner and ended in sharp spikes. Its size was huge, each finger being roughly five meters long, and if one looked closely one could actually see that many of the roots formed what looked like fractals all across the limb.

The wooden hand mirrored the movement of Zac’s hand, grasping toward the crystal. The translucent shield that earlier was somewhat visible around it just gave a bright flash before it winked out of existence, showing that the protective layer that stopped them earlier was gone.

The Core wouldn’t simply lay down and give up, as it started to emanate an even greater pressure from before as its green light turned painfully bright. The energy emitted was so great that Zac was starting to get pushed back even though he stood almost fifty meters away, but [Nature’s Punishment] kept moving forward. As the wooden hand pushed toward the crystal it started smoking and steaming due to the light. It looked like the light from the core was burning it, and simultaneously Zac’s hand stared to blister as well.

Zac only grunted and pushed his hand forward, and the enormous hand gripped the Core like a vise and squeezed. A weird screeching echoed throughout the cavern and the whole structure started to shake, while the large hand actually caught a green fire. However, the power in the hand was enormous, and cracks quickly started to appear on the crystal until it completely crumbled with a huge explosion.

The hand dissipated as an enormous shockwave slammed Zac and his party into the wall of the core room, the force almost enough to knock him unconscious. He shook his head, dizzy from the impact, and looked around. His whole body felt broken and a stinging pain throbbed from his right arm. When he looked down at it he saw that it was completely scalded, looking like he had put his arm into boiling water.

The [Nature’s Punishment] worked out really well, apart from his blistering hand. The Core gave out a force that kept even Zac away unable to approach, but it managed to push forward without any problem. It was a shame that the Core somehow was able to obscure the Dao from him as they fought since Zac had wanted to try the skill with its full power.

He was pretty sure that the attack would be strengthened with the Seed of Trees since the hand was made of wood and roots. Perhaps the attack would be even stronger, or perhaps the hand would have been more resilient, and he wouldn’t have ended up with a burned hand.

At least he gained another level from the fight, as a huge surge of cosmic energy entered him the moment the Core shattered, a far larger amount compared to when he killed the fiend wolf. That was the third level he gained during the ant waves.

It wasn’t the same speed he had during the last waves, but it was still apparently an enormous speed according to Ogras. The others on top of the ladder hadn’t leveled at all, or maybe gained one level during the same period. He was currently level 54 while Salvation was on the second spot with level 43.

Ten levels might not seem like a lot, but Zac knew the horrifying amount of wolves and ants he killed to bridge that gap. It would probably take months for the guy or girl to reach Zac’s stage, and by then who knew what level Zac would be. He put those things aside and took stock of his surroundings.

The others were in bad shape as well. Ogras was out of his shadow-form and coughed some blood as he tried to get back on his feet. Alea and Janos were lying unconscious, blood dripping out of their ears and mouths. One of Janos’ legs was in a weird angle as well, clearly broken.

Zac sat up with a few coughs while he fished out his last E-Grade nexus crystal and started absorbing. He only managed to absorb a smidgeon before he was interrupted though. The whole cavern was shaking ominously, some small cracks already starting to appear on the walls.

He hastily got to his feet with a grunt and stumbled to Janos and Alea, and flung them over his shoulders. He was only running on fumes at the moment, but with his attributes it was no real difficulty carrying two people.

“Whatʼs going on?” Zac croaked at Ogras who finally had got to his feet.

“It feels like the hidden space is cracking, we need to get out of here NOW. We don’t know what parts will remain and what parts will be sucked into oblivion,” Ogras answered while he popped a healing pill into his mouth.

Luckily the tunnels they entered through once again were opened with the hive queen’s death, and they scurried out through one of them. The shaking started to get worse, and there were even cracks in space itself appearing, making the air look like a broken mirror. The two didn’t dare go near any of those widening rifts, afraid to be thrown into the void.

They encountered some ants during the mad dash out, but they were completely immobile, blankly standing still unaware of the surroundings. The two simply ignored them and kept going, the greedy demon not even contemplating stopping to kill the free targets. Ogras usually was in charge of deciding the path, but when he found no clues what to do they simply trusted Zac’s Luck stat, letting him choose at random.

As they ran the cracks in space only got wider and wider until they were starting to get afraid they might not make it out in time. Luckily they finally felt the wind and fresh air in the distance, and reinvigorated they increased their speed. As they turned a corner they were met with the light of the outside, and heedlessly ran out.

The duo stumbled out of the tunnels next to each other, overlooking a vast field of dead ants and panting demons. To Zac surprise, he also saw Sap Trang among the fighters, bloodied but alive. Ilvere and Namys came running up to them and took care of the two unconscious generals, with Namys throwing Zac a baleful glare after seeing Ogras’ state.

Finally safe Zac opened up his quest screen.

Incursion Master (Unique): Close or conquer incursion and protect town from denizens of other alignments for 3 months. Reward: 5 E-Grade Nexus Crystals, Town upgraded to City, status upgraded to Lord. (2/3) [20:02:32:25]

The second part was completed, though the huge carcass of the hive queen remained. The system never teleported away the corpses of the wolves, so Zac guessed that they would have to deal with the huge hive somehow. That would have to wait until a bit until later though, as Zac was completely spent. Besides, entering that thing right now was to toy with death.

Zac was in no mood to help out with the cleanup and slowly started making his way back to his camp. He had already eaten a healing pill, but his arm was still hurting quite badly.

“Good work, young man,” a voice said from his side, and Zac looked up to see Mr. Trang standing some distance.

He was currently using a spear to make sure that the insects on the ground were actually dead. Zac guessed that the experience would be a pretty decent boost if the old fisherman found some live ones still around. Zac didn’t have the energy to chat with the old man and only nodded at him as he continued on.

Zac made his way past the wall and the small town and soon found himself in the comfortable stillness of his camp. There were very few who dared to approach this area without invitation, giving it a stillness. But lately, this stillness was starting to get interrupted more and more.

“You’re the Super Brother-Man, aren’t you?” a voice came from the movie-viewing canopy. It was Emily who was watching a comedy series with a blank face.

Zac sighed and sat down next to her.