Chapter 79: Chapter 79: The Punchline
Chapter 79: The Punchline
The Great Wall of Bastion Seven had withstood centuries of war, weathering the claws of feral beasts and the destructive magic of the Abyss.
But as the earth collapsed ten kilometers away, the impenetrable fortress suddenly felt like it was made of fragile glass.
A hand the size of a Vanguard transport cruiser violently gripped the edge of the massive sinkhole.
The fingers were a horrifying, stitched amalgamation of armored siege-beasts and dead Cultists.
RUUUUMBLE!
The Corpse Titan dragged its apocalyptic mass out of the underground.
It was a moving mountain of rotting meat, weeping veins, and screaming, half-assimilated faces.
It blotted out the bruised sky, casting a dark, suffocating shadow that instantly swallowed the Vanguard’s front lines.
Down on the battlefield, the adrenaline that had fueled the soldiers completely evaporated, instantly replaced by sheer, paralyzing despair.
CLATTER.
A veteran Vanguard Captain dropped his heavy broadsword into the mud.
His knees gave out. He stared up at the monstrosity, his eyes wide and hollow.
"It’s over," the Captain whispered, his voice trembling.
"The Gods have abandoned us."
"Light preserve us... what is that thing?!" a soldier screamed, stumbling backward over the corpses of the Razor-Hounds.
"We can’t fight that! Nothing can fight that!"
"Fall back! FALL BACK!" another knight shrieked in absolute panic, but there was nowhere to run.
The massive gates were sealed.
The inner city was trapped.
Aegon Logcheville stood at the front of the Vanguard, his Blood Fire Spear trembling in his grip.
The Asura’s Crucible flickered and died.
For the first time in his life, the young "Hero" felt his courage completely shatter.
Next to him, Reina Frost lowered her heavy ice axe, her breath catching in her throat.
Estella Everdawn stared down from the top of the wall, her Staff of Ruin feeling entirely useless against a beast that could crush the entire Academy under a single footstep.
The Titan fully breached the surface.
It opened its massive, chest-cavity maw and unleashed a roar that physically shattered the glass viewports in the watchtowers.
It raised its colossal foot and took a single, earth-shaking step toward Bastion Seven.
Three more steps, and the city would be erased.
Suddenly, the deafening, apocalyptic wail of the Class-A Siege Sirens abruptly cut out.
The battlefield was plunged into an eerie, momentary silence.
BZZZZT... SKREEEE!
A sharp, ear-piercing wave of audio feedback suddenly exploded from every single public address speaker across the entire fifty-mile stretch of the Great Wall, echoing all the way into the civilian bunkers of the inner city.
"Testing, testing. Tap, tap. Is this thing on?"
The voice that echoed through the Bastion’s military speakers was not the Lord Commander’s.
It was a light, musical, incredibly theatrical voice that dripped with playful sarcasm.
Every single Vanguard Knight, student, and terrified citizen snapped their heads toward the highest watchtower of the Great Wall.
Standing at the absolute pinnacle of the Command HQ spire, balancing casually on the edge of the lightning rod, was a man in a sleek, dark tactical suit.
He wore a featureless white mask. In his left hand, he held a high-grade military microphone that he had blatantly stolen from Lady Logcheville’s tactical desk.
"Ah, perfect audio quality. My compliments to the Bastion’s engineers," Zero’s voice boomed cheerfully across the panicked city.
He offered a sweeping, exaggerated bow to the terrified masses below.
"Good evening, citizens of Bastion Seven, exhausted Vanguard Knights, and terrified children currently wetting your armor! I am Zero, the First Finger of the Embracing Hands."
Zero tapped the microphone, pacing lazily along the dangerously thin spire.
"We at the Embracing Hands noticed your lovely city has developed a bit of a pest problem. Rotten neighbors, illegal subterranean expansions, poor landscaping... you know how it is. We usually charge a premium for extermination services, but seeing as today is a holiday, we’ve decided to clear the weeds pro bono."
The Corpse Titan let out another deafening roar, ignoring the tiny man on the wall.
It took a second, catastrophic step forward.
The ground splintered.
The massive shadow fell directly over Aegon, Reina, and the Vanguard Knights.
It raised its colossal, battleship-sized fist, preparing to bring it down directly onto the main gates.
Aegon squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact of a million tons of rotting flesh.
Up on the spire, Zero didn’t flinch.
He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a silver pocket watch, checking the time with a dramatic sigh.
"My, my. Look at the time," Zero’s voice echoed smoothly through the speakers, devoid of even a fraction of fear.
"I’m afraid this concludes your free trial of Cult-brand apocalypse."
Zero looked up from his watch, locking his pitch-black eyes directly onto the towering monstrosity.
"You’ve got a lot of stolen heart in you, big guy," Zero declared, his voice dropping into a cold, lethal, and devastatingly badass register.
"Let’s see if it can handle the pressure."
Zero raised his right hand high into the air.
SNAP.
The sound of his fingers snapping was amplified a thousand times through the Bastion’s speakers, ringing out like a gunshot.
Deep inside the colossal, beating chest cavity of the Corpse Titan, the six Void-Core Charges activated.
It didn’t start with an explosion.
It started with an implosion.
FWOOMP.
The air across the entire battlefield was violently sucked toward the Titan.
The colossal monster froze mid-swing. Its massive chest violently caved inward as a localized, artificial vacuum instantly swallowed all the oxygen, mana, and blood in its core.
The Titan let out a pathetic, choked wheeze as its internal organs were instantly crushed into the size of a marble.
And then, the vacuum violently expelled the pressure.
KRA-BOOOOOOOM!
The explosion defied logic.
The Corpse Titan violently erupted from the inside out.
A blinding flash of kinetic energy shattered the beast’s spine, instantly vaporizing millions of tons of stitched flesh and demonic bone.
A massive monsoon of pulverized black blood and ash washed over the Wildlands, harmlessly misting against the Vanguard’s magical barriers like heavy rain.
The sheer concussive shockwave knocked the Vanguard Knights off their feet, sending Aegon sliding backward through the mud.
Silence slammed back down onto the battlefield.
The dust slowly cleared.
The Corpse Titan, the world-ending threat that had paralyzed the entire Bastion, was completely, utterly gone.
Nothing remained but a massive, smoking crater of red mist.
---
Aegon, covered in blood and mud, slowly pushed himself up off the ground.
He stared at the empty space where the Titan had been just seconds prior.
His jaw hung completely slack.
Reina Frost lowered her axe, her eyes wide with absolute awe as she remembered the masked man’s words to her earlier.
’The Embracing Hands. Just what kind of Monstrocity are they?’
The Vanguard Knights slowly picked up their swords.
They looked at the red mist, and then, as one unified body, they slowly tilted their heads up toward the highest spire of the Great Wall.
Zero was still standing there.
His dark suit was completely spotless.
The masked man slowly raised his hand to his head.
He pinched the brim of an invisible hat, offering the millions of awestruck, terrified soldiers one final, theatrical bow.
"The Embracing Hands bid you a good evening," Zero’s musical voice echoed through the microphone one last time.
"Don’t forget to tip your waitstaff."
VWOOM.
The space around him warped, and Zero completely vanished into the wind, leaving the stolen microphone to clatter uselessly onto the roof tiles.
---
For a long moment, nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
And then, a single Vanguard Knight raised his sword into the air.
"WE’RE ALIVE! WE WON!!" the knight screamed, tears streaming down his soot-covered face.
The cheer that erupted from the Vanguard army shook the very foundations of the Bastion.
They didn’t care that the masked man was absolutely crazy.
They didn’t care about the dark jokes.
The First Finger of the Embracing Hands had just saved millions of lives with a literal snap of his fingers.
Standing on the wall, Estella Everdawn gripped her staff.
Her heart was pounding a million miles a minute.
She stared at the empty spire where Zero had stood.
’Zero?’
