Chapter 723: Kill THEM ALL
BOOM.
Lucas landed beside Noah and the alien coastline split under his boots, cracks running outward in every direction from the impact point, the stone giving way in a ring that kept expanding until it hit the water and the water jumped.
Valor was in his hand and the sound coming off it was wrong. Not the passive hum of a resting weapon. Something sustained and climbing, an hour of alien storm charge sitting in the blade with nowhere to go, the metal running so hot with stored energy that the air immediately around it distorted.
His eyes were full blue. No iris. No white. Just light.
He looked at Kruel across the crater.
Kruel looked back at him.
"Ahh," Kruel said. "There he is. The one with the lightning."
Lucas looked at Noah on one knee beside him, blood on his chin, the E.N.D armor running its cycles, forty minutes of damage sitting in his body and him still here anyway.
"Let’s end this guy," Lucas said.
He threw Valor directly at Kruel.
The axe left his hand spinning hard, the stored charge building as it traveled, blue-white light streaming behind it in a line that crossed the distance in under a second.
Kruel caught it.
Both hands closed around the handle and the stored charge hit his palms simultaneously and his teeth locked together and his heels started going backward, the momentum of the weapon pushing against everything he had, his entire frame working against it, the muscles in his forearms standing out through the grey hide, two parallel furrows carved into the alien stone by his heels as the force drove him back.
Three meters.
His jaw was tight enough to crack something lesser.
He planted his foot.
Lucas’s uppercut arrived the exact moment the foot found purchase.
Both legs uncoiling from a full crouch, Valor’s entire electrical field wrapping his frame, and it caught Kruel under the jaw with the full force of S rank output plus everything the weapon had been storing since the throw, and Kruel left the ground, his feet briefly not in contact with the alien stone, and Lucas hit him twice more chasing him upward before gravity settled the argument.
A crack ran up the front of Kruel’s chest from sternum to throat. Black blood rising along it.
Kruel’s feet hit the ground.
He looked at Lucas.
Then Noah hit him from the left.
No void energy. No blade. VPT, both hands, and he drove it into the gap between Kruel’s lower ribs and his hip, force concentrated to a point smaller than a fingertip, and the grey hide that distributed everything else had nothing to distribute. The strike went in and the grey opened around it, a depression the width of a finger, black blood welling immediately from a wound the hide had no catalogued response to.
Kruel looked at his side.
Noah hit the same point again.
Another depression. More black welling. The regeneration responding but the residual Gorrauth interference in his tissue still present, the healing working against something it couldn’t fully clear, slower than it should have been.
Noah hit it a third time.
Lucas came from the right simultaneously, Valor driving into Kruel’s shoulder, the discharge going in at contact range, and Kruel took both hits and his feet moved two inches and he turned.
"IS THIS ALL YOU TWO CAN MUSTER," Kruel said.
Noah hit the VPT point again. Fourth time. The depression was deeper now, the black pooling under the surface around it, the tissue trying to close something that kept being opened before it could finish.
"I GROW TIRED OF THIS INCOMPETENCE," Kruel said. His eyes had heat in them now, genuine heat, something that had moved past the cold assessment of the previous hour. "GIVE ME WHAT I WANT OR I MAKE YOU."
Lucas came from above.
Noah came from below simultaneously.
BOOM. BOOM.
The shockwaves from both impacts collided above Kruel’s head and the air between them compressed and released in a visible ring that flattened the alien grass for twenty meters in every direction.
Kruel didn’t move.
But he bled. The crack from Lucas’s uppercut running further up his chest, the VPT depressions on his side darkening as the pooled blood spread under the grey hide, and his body was doing more work than it had been doing at the start of this fight.
Noah blinked behind him. VPT into the back of his knee joint, the point where the tendons connected, and Kruel’s leg buckled slightly before the grey tissue caught it.
Lucas hit him across the jaw from the front at the same moment.
Kruel’s head moved. Actually moved, the rotation visible, and Lucas was already repositioning and Noah was already repositioning and they came back from different angles before Kruel had finished resolving the rotation.
BOOM. BOOM.
"YOU CALL THIS FIGHTING," Kruel said. He grabbed Lucas mid-strike.
His hand closed around Lucas’s arm and he turned and looked up and threw him.
Straight up.
Not sideways. Not across the coastline. Up, the full arc of the throw pointed at the alien sky, and Lucas became a blue streak climbing through the cloud layer, the electrical trail from Valor marking the path of his ascent, and then the clouds closed over him and he was gone.
Kruel turned to Noah.
Noah threw a null strike.
Kruel’s forearm was there before the fist arrived. The grip closed around Noah’s arm at the elbow and stopped the void energy before it made contact for the fifth time this fight and Kruel looked at him and hit him with his free hand.
[-2,400 HP]
The E.N.D took most of it and most wasn’t enough and Noah went backward and corrected with the Void Striders and came back and Kruel hit him again before the correction finished.
[-2,100 HP]
And again.
[-1,900 HP]
He was going backward without choosing to, each hit landing before his body resolved the previous one, and Kruel’s strikes had left behind the calibrated measurement of the previous hour entirely. Noah’s back hit a ruin wall and Kruel’s fist hit Noah and the wall ceased to be a wall, the ancient stone coming apart at the impact point and continuing to come apart outward, and Noah went through it and through the space behind it and through the next wall and came to rest in what had been an interior room and was now open to the alien sky.
[HP: 61,200/147,600]
Kruel came through the wall after him.
He picked Noah up by the chest plate of the E.N.D armor, both hands, and hit him.
KIAAAAAK.
The back plates of the E.N.D didn’t crack. They popped, the housing points failing simultaneously, the plates spinning away into the alien air catching the light as they went, and Noah’s spine was suddenly between Kruel’s fist and nothing.
The vertebrae ground against each other.
And he felt something.
Not pain yet, the regeneration intercepting the signal before it could complete, but the awareness of it, the bone communicating damage that the system underneath was trying to manage and couldn’t manage fast enough.
Kruel hit him again.
The ribs. The gap where the back plates had been let the force in without negotiation and three ribs on his left side broke, the wet crack of them audible from inside his own chest, and something in his midsection shifted that wasn’t supposed to shift and warmth spread through him that had nothing to do with temperature.
His vision went white.
Came back.
Kruel’s fist was still moving.
THRUUUKOOOM.
It hit his stomach and his body folded around it, the E.N.D chest plate separating at the impact point, the plating blowing outward in fragments that embedded in the alien stone around him, and what was behind the plating came out with the fragments. Blood, dark and a lot of it. His intestines, partially, the force of the punch having resolved the question of inside and outside, the grey-pink of them visible against the alien stone. His ribs on the left side had given fully and the broken ends stuck through the gap, white against dark, pointing wrong.
Noah hit the alien stone.
He lay there.
[HP: 31,400/147,600]
[CRITICAL — MULTIPLE ORGAN DAMAGE DETECTED]
[REGENERATION PRIORITY: CRITICAL SYSTEMS]
[VOID ENERGY CONVERTING TO REGENERATION]
Then the sky broke open.
THRUUUKOOOM.
Lucas came back through the cloud layer like something the atmosphere had rejected, screaming, the sound of it carrying across the coastline before he arrived, and he hit Kruel across the back with both fists and the discharge from Valor detonated on contact and Kruel staggered forward one step.
One step.
Lucas hit him again before he resolved it.
And again.
"I’M GOING TO KILL YOU," Lucas screamed, his voice raw, and he grabbed Kruel and drove upward, both legs firing, the electricity from Valor wrapping both of them as they left the ground together, and Lucas hit Kruel in the air, once, twice, three times, chasing him upward, punching him through the alien sky without stopping, and they climbed and climbed and the battlefield shrank below them and the cloud layer swallowed them and they were gone.
Noah lay on the alien stone.
The alien sky above him was empty where they had been.
He looked at his hands.
He told himself to get up.
His body sent information back about that request.
"Get up," he said feintly even though he knew he’d need a working, perfectly functional back bone to do that.
He tried to move his left arm. It moved. Slowly. The signal taking longer than it should, something in the path between his brain and the arm not working at full capacity, but it moved.
"Get up," he said again.
He pushed.
His body gave him a response that was mostly no and partly not yet and he lay back against the alien stone and looked at the sky and breathed and felt the regeneration working through the damage like something trying to drain a flooding room with a small bucket and an earnest attitude.
"Stand up"
He blinked.
---
The southern ruins materialized around him and the alien coastline was loud and wrong and the first thing he registered was the scale of the fight still happening here, Eclipse members and Ares soldiers and Harbingers moving through the ruins in a battle that had been going for over an hour and showed no sign of having found its conclusion.
The second thing he registered was Lucas.
Twenty meters away. On the ground. Kruel above him, both hands working, the impacts driving Lucas into the alien stone with the steady relentless rhythm of something that had decided this was the pace and the pace was not going to change.
The crater around Lucas was deep. The repeated hits had driven the alien stone down under him until he was lying at the bottom of a bowl, the edges of it smooth from the force of the strikes, and Lucas’s hands were no longer coming up between hits.
His eyes were open.
Barely.
Around Kruel’s position, three horns. Not fighting the wider battle. Just standing between everything and here, blocking every approach, making sure nothing reached this specific point. Eclipse members hitting them and being hit back. Ares soldiers engaging and not getting through. The three horns holding the perimeter with the commitment of things that had been given one instruction and were following it.
From somewhere in the chaos, Sophie’s voice.
She was trying to reach them, the King’s Gaze in her hand, the eye running blue, and she opened her mouth and a command came out of her, Royal Decree.
"Give me space,"
The word landed on the three horn between her and Kruel’s position and it moved awa from her.
Then another three horn turned, rushed toward her and grabbed her.
Both hands, fast, and it kicked her in the midsection and she folded around its foot and hit the alien ground hard and the King’s Gaze skidded away from her hand and she lay there trying to get air back into her lungs.
Kelvin’s suit was firing in sequences from the north side, all four hands running, the auxiliary arms directing separate systems while his main hands worked the suit’s weapons, carving toward Kruel’s position meter by meter, and the three horns on that side were responding and the carving was slow.
Nyx came from the sky.
Two three horns jumped him before he got close, hitting him from either side simultaneously, and he fought them and the sounds of it were enormous and he didn’t reach Kruel.
Ares came from the water.
A three horn from below the surface, something that had been waiting in the shallows, grabbed his foreleg and pulled and two more hit him from above and the Molten Core flared and he fought all three and didn’t reach Kruel.
Noah looked at Lucas on the ground.
At Kruel’s fist coming down.
He blinked to Lucas’s position.
[Reciprocal Swap Activated]
Lucas was somewhere else.
Noah was where Lucas had been, at the bottom of the crater, looking up at Kruel’s fist mid-descent.
Kruel looked down.
Noah looked up.
Kruel’s fist didn’t stop.
[-2,600 HP — CRITICAL]
[HP: 14,800/147,600]
The hit landed and the stone under Noah cracked further and he lay there and Kruel hit him again. And again. The stone jumping with each impact, small fragments of alien rock lifting off the ground around Noah’s body and resettling, the crater getting deeper with every exchange.
"YOU," Kruel said. He hit him. "You swap yourself in for him. Every time. Every single time you choose them over what you could become." Another hit. The crater was six inches deeper than it had been thirty seconds ago. "Concern is your ceiling. It is the only ceiling you will never grow past." Another hit. "I came here for what you could be and in turn what that could make me and yet you keep choosing to be what you are."
BOOM.
Noah’s vision pulsed. In. Out.
He looked at his right hand flat on the alien stone beside him.
He moved his fingers.
They moved.
Somewhere above him Sophie was yelling. Kelvin’s suit was firing closer. Nyx was fighting three horns twenty meters away and couldn’t reach. Ares was in the water and couldn’t reach. Lucas was on the ground somewhere nearby and breathing, the chest moving, but done for now. Angel, Seraleth, king Aurelius and everyone was getting overwhelmed by the sheer concentration of three horns everywhere.
In an hour of Noah’s absence, there were more harbingers than when he’d left.
Nobody was getting through.
"FIGHT BACK," Kruel said. He hit him. "RAISE YOUR HANDS. DO SOMETHING." The frustration in it was real now, genuine, the thing that lived underneath the cold assessment finally surface level. "THE STRONGEST HUMAN I HAVE ENCOUNTERED AND YOU ARE LYING IN A HOLE."
BOOM.
The stone jumped.
Noah looked at Kruel above him.
At the chest.
At the hole in the rhythm.
The gap between this hit and the last one was longer than the gap between the last one and the one before it. Despite himself, kruel had been slowing. He’d been slowing down without even realizing.
Noah’s body had been counting them without his instruction, the way bodies counted things when the information mattered, and the fraction was real and it was growing.
The Gorrauth wounds were mostly healed. But mostly wasn’t completely. The residual interference still in his tissue, the biology still spending something to manage it even with the cuts closed, and an hour of that running underneath everything else had a cost that was showing up now in the fractions between hits. Not to mention, those VPT hits were now starting to take full toll on Kruel. And yet, the four horn had no idea.
Kruel’s fist came up.
Noah’s right hand moved.
Two fingers extended.
Kruel’s fist started down.
The four horn fist stopped.
Kruel looked down.
A hole. Two finger-sized. Clean edges, the tissue ending where the void erasure had passed through, no blood at the border because the void left absence not damage. The darkness inside it going deeper than a chest had any right to go.
Noah’s arm extended below it.
Fingers still glowing. Fading now. The purple light at the edges of them dimming as the void energy that had gone into the strike found its destination and finished.
"Got you," Noah said.
[Null Strike Activated]
Kruel looked at the hole.
He stood there looking at it for a long time.
His raised fist came down slowly. Not a hit. Just lowering, the momentum leaving it, his arm dropping to his side.
Blood came to his mouth. Dark. It welled at the corner and ran down his chin and fell onto Noah’s chest in drops that hit the alien stone around the gaps in the E.N.D armor and spread there.
His shoulders started shaking.
His fists clenched at his sides, the knuckles going lighter grey, the tendons in his forearms standing out through the hide, his whole body trembling.
He laughed.
And laughed.
And the alien coastline was quiet around him except for that sound.
Sophie who was dazed and disoriented from the Harbinger’s kick suddenly jolted with her eyes turning deep blue.
And the king’s gaze, a few meters from her was glowing blue too.
"HE’S GONNA KILL US ALL,"
