Chapter 421: Disappointment And Regret
The Bug Nest Man kicked his massive leg forward, hitting Laz’s crossed arms and sending him flying backwards, creating a hole right by the door in the back of the church. As the Bug Nest Man stepped up to the hole, he swung a blade like arm in a zig zag pattern, cutting the hole bigger so that he could exit as well. Just as he stepped out and Laz got up, the old church, standing in the same spot for over a hundred years, collapsed behind him as he stretched his freed form.
Laz brushed the dust and wood splinters off his shirt and looked over, taking in the full body of this hateful being for the first time. The Bug Nest Man, as Laz was calling him, stood over eight feet tall. His strange legs were bent in the middle, like an insects but were draped in some weird cloth that prevented Laz from seeing what they actually looked like. The reason Laz thought the cloth looked weird was because he had never seen pants with legs that long. The man’s chest still looked mostly normal size despite looking like it had bent in half and his arms were now massive, sickle like blades that seemed to easily cut through wood and probably other materials. As for the Bug Nest Man’s back, it was still a massive hump that looked like a balloon growing out of a human. The only difference was that it was solid and not jiggly as it moved with the man rather than flapping around freely. The only thing still remotely human was his head and face. While bald and pale, the once dead looking husk who wasn’t even able to move seemed to have been reborn and now just looked ugly. If you ignored the rest of his hideous features, just based on his head alone, he still looked human.
The man looked around and laughed, seeing that many of his weaker bugs had been killed. He then opened his mouth and let loose a strange cry that sounded like a scream mixed with a buzz. Laz watched this go on but didn’t react. Somehow, Laz almost felt somehow let down by this walking nightmare although he didn’t understand why. As such, while the sound emerged which cause the troops in the area to fall over while covering their ears, Laz just let things happen as they would as he tried to place his feelings.
While the solders were on the ground, various different colored creatures started to emerge from the underground nests, obviously stronger than the first batch of creatures that had been released.
Laz noticed this, but the others in the area didn’t.
Mark stood in front of the assembled group of chosen that he had follow behind him. They had split up after arriving with half their number going to assist the troops while the other half made their way to the church from the report to confront Laz. It was here that they had witnessed Laz being smashed through the wall of the church before coming to a stop and standing like nothing had happened. Even more bizarre from their viewpoint was the strange creature who emerged after him.
’Clearly they are enemies... but they are both infected. Does this mean I have to fight them both or can I wait until they are both injured and just clean up the mess after words?" Mark asked himself as he took a measure of the strange bug like man. They hadn’t really found a way to measure the strength of the infected, but the chosen could normally feel a danger sense from them. The more dangerous they were, the more their senses would go haywire and make them want to run away. In fact, a strong enough infected meeting a weak enough chosen would cause the chosen to pass out right then and there. Of course the same was also true if a strong enough chosen met a weak enough infected.
As for this bug man, Mark felt a sense of dread and worry while looking at it. When compared to Laz, the feeling of danger was much more. As for Laz, Mark felt almost nothing from him, a hint of power, but that was it.
"What the fuck?" Mark said out loud before getting strange looks from his fellow chosen.
"What?" A few asked back.
Mark couldn’t understand what he was looking at. Laz had left a powerful impression when he snaped that young man’s neck before. Sure, at the time, Mark hadn’t bee able to get a read on him, no one did. But now that Laz was standing right in front of him, Mark took a closer look at Laz, studying his white hair, grey colored skin and even noticed the golden eyes. While Laz didn’t look human with these changes, Mark had to admit that this was one of the more attractive battle modes he had seen among the infected. It was just a pity that from what Mark could tell, Laz was all look but no strength to back it up.
"Do any of you get a sense of strength from the target?" Mark asked his team.
They looked closer and every one of them ended up with a rather surprised look.
"Nothing. He... he’s there, but that’s about it... How the hell?"
"He’s nothing... I can’t believe we were even afraid of him before."
"Must be his power. Maybe he can make himself appear far stronger than he is when met with a predator? You know, like some various animals do in the wild?"
While they talked back and forth, they all came to the same conclusion; Laz wasn’t a threat.
Since that was the case anyway, Mark decided he wouldn’t wait. Especially because Laz wouldn’t be able to put up a fight. As such, it made more sense to take down and kill the bug man before taking Laz into custody.
"Alright. A few of you go take him out and tie him up. The rest of us need to kill this hideous fucking thing before we head on back. Any objections?" Mark asked his team. None of them responded.
Just as they were about to start launching attacks, a scream tore through the air and drew their attention. Turning back, they noticed one of the chosen who had split off getting his body torn in half by one of the giant black beetle like creatures while another one was bisected by a giant purple mantis.
"What the fuck?" Mark said, confused. They had torn through the encirclement with no trouble while killing these bugs left and right. Now that they are a different color, none of them could understand why they would suddenly be so much stronger. After all, there hadn’t been much effort to study the demon beasts since the tree appeared. Most chosen were solely focused on themselves while the government had been focused on gathering what fire power and chosen they could while making the infected the enemy.
As such, the learnings about demon beasts in general were lacking as information was hard to come by. From the government’s perspective, demon beasts attacking humans in waves was a rather new concept and even when it did happen, a few well placed missiles usually took care of the problem. Therefore there was no reason to look into why animals were going crazy.
"Go. Let’s gather everyone up. I’ll call for reinforcements," Mark said, taking command of the situation. While he might not have understood just what had happened, he was actually a pretty competent guy and made the best decision with what he knew.
"Mark. If we pull back now, Tommy’s going to kill us." One of the older chosen said, pointing out a flaw in Mark’s plan.
"It’s either that or we all die right now," Mark shot back while waving the other’s to follow him.
Laz and the Bug Nest Man let them go and instead turned to face each other.
Laz still didn’t know where his feeling of disappointment came from, but that didn’t matter much right now. Since it was time to fight, Laz would do so and put an end to this Chapter of his life.
"Time to die," the Bug Nest Man said in it’s harsh voice. With a quick movement of it’s massive legs, it disappeared from view before appearing again in front of Laz, almost like it teleported. Whipping one of it’s massive legs forward, it again slammed into Laz’s arms, intent on breaking it this time.
Surprisingly though, Laz didn’t even move back an inch as he took the blow, startling the Bug Nest Man.
"What?" it said, before disappearing and reappearing, this time behind Laz. Within a fraction of a second of it reappearing, it swung it’s blade like arm at the back of Laz’s head, deciding it would end this quickly.
Laz sighed as he brought his left palm up, catching the underside of the blade and adjusting it upward, causing it to arch over his head and miss him entirely. Laz then turned around to face the human head of the bug monster and said,
"Now I understand."
The Bug Nest Man didn’t answer back. Instead, it swung both it’s arms in a cross slash, attempting to cut Laz into four pieces.
Laz leaned back casually, before stepping forward. Directing his world energy from within to flow along his left arm and explode out of his fist, Laz timed it to hit right when the two slashes met, causing one fist to meet two blades.
The Bug Nest Man smiled, thinking of how it would look when he cut off Laz’s arm, only to be met with the feeling that he had been hit by a train. Both of his blade arms shattered as his body went flying backwards, hitting several of the larger black beetles who had begun circling their fight at their master’s order.
Only after killing four of them by crashing into them did the Bug Nest Man come to a stop and stand up, looking at his destroyed arms.
Laz started to walk towards him, step by step.
"Ever since you killed Kat, you’ve been on my mind like a nightmare. You were my first failure and my biggest regret. Ever since then, I have been trying to grow stronger for the day I would meet you again, so that I could have my revenge. Even when I lost my memories, I would see you in my dreams, haunting me, laughing at me. Every time I fought, I fought with the desire to survive, to live. Because until I had the chance to destroy you, I couldn’t die. And yet now, as I’m meeting you again... I never once thought what I would do if you turned out to be this much weaker than me...." Laz lamented.
He had lived his life with the constant memory of holding Kat in his arms, feeling the life leave her and knowing there was nothing he could do. Because of that incident, he always thought of this Bug Nest Man as an enemy he would have to do everything he could to defeat, even if that meant his own death.
But now that he had met him again, he understood that it wasn’t that the Bug Nest Man was strong back then... the problem was Laz was just too weak.
As such, he could no longer blame Kat’s death on the Bug Nest Man.
Kat’s death... had been totally his fault and his alone.
