Outrage of the Ancients (LitRPG Apocalypse)

Fionn

No level, no nod to where the System had found the template, no other frills or other description.

Just a name, a few titles, and the simple statement that this thing was meant to be a challenge for the entire world.

Yet … who cared what it called itself? They were going to kill it all the same.

The opening salvo they'd prepared hadn't quite worked out perfectly, some of their aircraft had been too close to survive Cipactli's emergence, others were still incoming, not to mention that several of the spell anchored to the soil around the site of its first appearance had been annihilated as it manifested …yet countless more arcane preparations proceeded to promptly blow up in its face.

Lightning crackled, incandescent bolts of energy as thick as tree trunks leaping through the intervening space to hammer into the monster, blackening iridescent scales.

Balls of fire the size of houses gently struck the sides of the monster, bursting to cover its flesh with clinging flame.

Heat drained from vast areas, turning flesh into blocks of ice that shattered the moment the beast moved, showering shards of frozen blood across the surrounding area.

However, the most powerful spell of them all revealed itself as a vast circle of writing, ten kilometers across, shining the bright white of pure natural lightning. The very same lightning arcing within the immense thunderhead, the vast spell formation was calling down upon the monster that was yet to move outside of the target area.

Yet Fionn gathered his magic to push back against it, holding up the sky's wrath, not because he wished to protect the boss, but because he wished to hold open the door for the technological attack.

***

Drake

Three hundred miles was a distance almost ten times as long the range the Wisconsin's guns were supposed to have.

"Supposed to."

Those kinds of limitations were now more of a suggestion than anything else.

Warships had been able to do things they were never supposed to be capable of from the very instant the System had arrived and granted the first ship-enhancing Skill to the first captain.

Yet eventually, the vessel itself had begun to receive its own enhancements, as the engineers and grease monkeys had gotten their own Skills and poured them into the vessel that carried them into battle.

Of course, enhancing an existing warship was difficult, but when a vessel had been as beaten to hell as the Wisconsin, upgrading was only marginally more complicated than simply rebuilding what had been destroyed.

He had the weapons, he had the targetting solution, he had the magically enhanced armor-piercing shells that were more capable at tearing through mountains.

In fact, he'd been promised they were more than capable of doing what bunker busters could.

What they'd do to flesh was yet to be seen, though it would doubtlessly be horrific.

The seven heavy guns the Wisconsin had remaining roared, the flash of their muzzles bright amidst the darkness of night.

***

Merlin

The "magic" of the modern era, technology, could scarcely compare to the true majesty of the arcane.

It had taken the world thousands of years to reach this point in time, spending hundreds of times the resources Camelot had consumed over the course of its entire existence on experiments and dead ends, and at the end of the day, only computers and nuclear warheads were truly new and unique … what immense effort man had gone to, just to mimic a tiny fraction of magic's power.

Yet, in so many ways, technology was so quintessentially human, innovation being well on the way to rendering the most fundamental strengths of humanity outright obsolete.

However, there was one aspect in which technology was vastly superior to the arcane.

Everyone could use it.

Everyone did use it.

And right now, everyone was bringing the hammer down.

Cipactli found itself wreathed in countless explosions and eruptions of blood, the injuries practically invisible in many places, where the crimson sea the beast had risen out of was still flowing off its body.

Nothing that would kill the monster just yet … but also nothing that could be easily shrugged off. Except for the attacks that landed within the maws. Those … those just went away, vanishing into holes that should have been mere tricks of the light, for the hollow spaces within the joints of the beast's limbs should have made said limbs utterly unusable.

Instead, the space within seemed to exist elsewhere, and any attacks that landed there would find themselves vanishing off into that same plane of existence and most likely wasted.

A small twitch of his finger was all it took to impress that truth upon every targeting computer within his range, ordering them to target places that were actually capable of being damaged.

The second salvo began to trickle in at that point, each weapon firing the moment it had been reloaded rather than waiting for the others to become ready as well, several weapons already firing their third salvo before others had launched their second, a constant rain of technology's wrath tearing up the World Boss' hide.

Fighter jets screamed past, bullets that were meant to be armor-piercing plinking off scales while missiles were able to lunge for existing openings in the beast's exterior … yet even the deepest-penetrating strike, the most spectacular fountain of gore, never amounted to more than a simple scratch on a beast that massive.

Yet every single hit landed granted information, even a complete and total lack of a result was, in and of itself, informative.

But once another minute had passed, the various planes had come and gone, and the magic holding back the storm was released.

Finally.

The collapse of the seal that had been set up to hold back the magic attack that had been forced to be unleashed prematurely before the spreading blood ocean was blindingly obvious and impossible to miss, ringing out like a bell in the metaphysical realm even as he prepared to add his own power to the wrath of the heavens.

***

Arthur

During the planning, it had seemed as though this battle would be tough to fight. Not merely in the sense of their enemy being powerful beyond belief, but because of the simple paradigm of "we're up here, the enemy is down there, and our ranged weapons are nowhere near as strong as we need them to be."

Yet actually seeing the beast … he'd never admit it to anyone, not even Merlin, but Arthur was suddenly exceedingly glad that they were above the plane of battle.

And then, when the beast roared yet again and countless spears of rock burst from the crimson sea, that feeling redoubled.

Most helicopters and planes had been high enough to be clear of that attack, but "most" automatically meant it wasn't "all" that had gotten themselves into a safe position.

He grimaced, then barked an order to the pilot to take him closer. Not too close, but near enough that he could start attacking.

Only for the pilot to shoot back a sharp "look outside!" that made Arthur bristle … until he saw what was incoming.

He'd seen storm magic be used plenty of times in the past. Even in the far past, in his first life, Merlin had tapped into the power of lightning once or twice. And now, in this modern disaster of a world, calling down [Century Storm] seemed to have become the standard approach.

Yet what he was seeing was not a seemingly apocalyptic deluge of rain and thunder, but a seemingly solid mass of lightning descending from the heavens, compressing down into a vast pillar of white, writhing energy, where raindrops seemed as rare as bursts of lightning were in regular storms.

And it wasn't done compressing. Not by a long shot.

Now merely the width of a city block, the column of lightning continued to descend at a glacially slow yet utterly inexorable pace.

The beam had barely moved a few dozen meters, and it was already down to the width of a house. Then a room. Then it was down to the width of a mere barrel, and so blindingly bright it was almost impossible to look at it, though when Arthur looked away, he caught sight of Fionn, pointing at the ray of condensed power … and then his finger twitched downwards, the projectile following the track in a flash.

Arthur shut his eyes with a loud curse, the flash of the impact searing his eyes even through closed lids, followed by a clap of thunder so loud it almost drowned out Cipactli's roars, the sound unmistakably one of utter agony.

He opened his eyes, the impression of the light still fading from his vision, yet he could still see well enough to pick up on the fact that, judging by Fionn's expression, the attack had perhaps hit a tad harder and been a smidge brighter than anyone involved had expected.

Though collateral damage was an entirely separate issue from the fact that it had worked.

A vast scorchmark covered a massive chunk of Cipactli's torso, jagged arcs of ash having been carved across its scales, and at the center of all that sat a hole the width of a large house, so deep that Arthur would probably have to be right above it to see the bottom.

He began to laugh softly.

The pilot had been absolutely correct; waiting had been the correct choice. Besides, that strike had done more damage than he ever could have, in the same amount of time. Now, though, now he could …

Genghis Khan yelled something, even his voice inaudible over the din of battle, a wave of orange energy washing out and covering everything save the

The world stuttered briefly, suddenly leaving Arthur's helicopter quite a bit further back than it had been a mere moment ago, the beast all the way on the other side of the battlefield …

That was when the nuclear missile struck, the impact of the massive projectile denting the World Boss' hide, creating a crater several meters deep for the split second before it blew, radioactive flames lashing outwards with the full fury of a star.

Yet the incandescent tongues of atomic fire washed off Cipactli like ... honestly, seeing how the blood and viscera coating the monster was being washed off, Arthur could only compare it to a broom sweeping across the floor. The dirt was removed, and the ground beneath remained, utterly untouched.

There was obviously more to it than just raw durability. It had to be something akin to a human's [Ascendant Capstone], which prevented that kind of "low effort" attack from working.

The power hadn't even countered the most powerful weapon of modern humanity; it had just ignored it.

Though the bigger problem was that there'd apparently been a slight timing issue with the planned nuclear strike.

It hadn't been deliberate, [Duplicity Alert] would have let him know otherwise, yet this was a clear-cut example of that idiotic saying about never attributing to malice what could be explained by stupidity.

No harm, no foul?

No, there definitely would be harm, but he'd be the one inflicting it, and the recipient would be the incompetent who'd nearly ruined it all.

They all had their own [Ascendent Capstones], powers more than capable of blocking nuclear strikes, in fact, preventing them from dying to entirely "random" and/or "impersonal" attacks, such as even intentional nuclear strikes on their position seemed to be the primary purpose of those particular Skills … yet if it hadn't been for the khan's intervention, it would have made a titanic mess of the battle.

Still, perhaps now it was also time for the next weapon of mass destruction to be employed, considering how much space there was around the beast now, and how they were still being partially shielded by that orange wave of energy.

He gave the signal.

***

Tristan

There were certain tricks that were obvious but missable, the ones you'd feel like a complete and utter moron if you missed them.

And then, there were tricks that were even more obvious, yet so utterly insane that anyone with even the faintest whiff of common sense immediately dismissed them.

This was one of those tricks. Yet, clearly, the time for this particular insanity had come.

Though then again, if Fionn hadn't decided this particular trick needed to be prepared, then I wouldn't have gotten to go on a rocket …

Reaching out with [Telekinesis], I lifted the tungsten rod that had been crammed into the corner of the Lockheed AC-130 gunship that I'd been stuck in for the entirety of the battle thus far.

Specifically, I was presently located in the largest compartment that could be cleared entirely of loose debris or anyone who might get caught in the crossfire, in preparation for one final insane stunt.

Glancing down, I made sure I was strapped in one final time, mentally going over the targeting data I'd just been fed, and then, finally, opened a portal.

One end was a mere couple of meters from my face.

The other … the other was straight up, high above the Earth, so high that there wasn't even a hint of blue sky remaining, only the ocean below and the harsh glare of the sun without any atmosphere to filter out the flare of the nuclear furnace at the heart of the solar system's star.

Of course, the atmosphere immediately began to flow out of the room in an instant, taking anything that wasn't nailed down with it.

There shouldn't have been anything to go flying, but a pack of cigarettes wound up flashing out from beneath a bench.

Well, there was the tungsten rod, but that was being kept in place by my magic, held back until I managed to square the theoretical targetting data with the very real situation before me … or I suffocated.

Five seconds passed.

Then ten seconds.

I could have easily held my breath for much longer than that, even before the System's physical enhancements, yet I'd started to get a pounding headache the very moment I'd opened the portal, and my heart was beating so quickly that I half-feared it would shatter my ribcage.

Yet then, something clicked, and a flex of my mental muscles hurled the projectile into the void, then I slammed the portal shut and sucked in a huge, heaving gasp of breath.

I reached up to unclip the harness so I could fully collapse onto the deck before me, only my hands and knees, rather than hanging from the straps like a sack of potatoes.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Heart, please stop trying to break my bones.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. That was insane.

I stayed like that for a good moment before rising back to my feet and walking, well, stumbling towards the other repurposed room aboard the aircraft, the command center where Charlemagne had set himself up, complete with screens to show exactly what was happening outside.

***

Arthur

The name "Rod from God" certainly made an arrogant claim … yet it certainly lived up to its name.

A simple chunk of something suitably heavy, dropped from sufficiently high up, had always been an impressive weapon, yet Arthur never could have imagined just how immense the difference between launching something into the air with a catapult and dropping something from beyond the atmosphere was.

One moment, Cipactli had been standing in the bloody ocean, looking mildly confused as to why the people it had been fighting were suddenly so far away.

The next, it was at the center of a conflagration that seemed to have set the very air on fire, the ocean around it blown away by the force of the impact, water blasted so far away that the bedrock beneath lay exposed. At least until the liquid flowed back in to fill the void, waves splashing back and forth with a force normally only held by tsunamis.

If they hadn't already been staying clear of the ground, or rather, what the ground used to be, that alone would have wiped out their forces, even kilometers from the site of impact.

Yet the monster itself was, once again, just fine, the force of the metal rod flowing along its hide along with the molten wreckage that was all that remained of that very same projectile, once again wiping off the mess stuck to Cipactli's scales without doing any actual damage.

Arthur's mouth set into a grim line as he glared at the monster.

It seemed they'd have to do this the hard way.

Grand acts of magic could hurt the beast; powerful Skills should be able to do the same, but it seemed as though anything traditionally considered a "weapon of mass destruction" would automatically be ignored outright.

Once again, he turned to the pilot. "Bring us in from behind it, as low over its body as you feel comfortable with."

This time, the pilot complied, granting Arthur the opportunity to hammer it with every Skill he had, doing his part even as the others came up with increasingly insane ways to hurt the monster.

***

Ogier

WMDs didn't work; Skills did.

Tools that could, at least in theory, be mass-produced failed, yet the actions of man struck true.

Impersonal attacks in general might as well not exist … or at least that was the general consensus on how Ascendant Capstones in general worked.

As for Ogier, he felt it was more than that, when the lack of effort involved in the attack was almost offensively disproportionate to the damage it should have inflicted.

But regardless of who was right, he was pretty sure he'd figured out how to circumvent the limitation. Because what could possibly be more personal, more involved, than using oneself as a projectile?

***

Arthur

Not five minutes after the abysmal failure of the initial attempt to hit Cipactli from orbit, the pilot was once more ordered away from the monster due to someone having decided that another try would surely work.

Ridiculous.

Stupid.

And wasn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome?

Also, that sort of disruption should never have been a unilateral deci- …

Then he actually saw the "projectile," ended his internal tirade, sighed, and shook his head. That Dane was crazy.

But once all this was over, they'd seriously have to work on their communication.

Fighting in the same general area had worked fine thus far, but it seemed like they weren't quite ready to be fighting in lockstep with each other.

Every aircraft moved away from the World Boss at whatever speed they could manage as the burning meteor grew ever brighter and closer, flaring with energy, yet rather than the titanic impact of the first impact from above, the strike seemed to be oddly … muted.

The "meteor" winked out before it could hit, yet the monster still bled …

Arthur found himself doing a double-take before he could understand what he'd seen.

A moment before impact, a split second before he'd directly funtion as a projectile, Ogier Danske drew his blade, the oddly short Cortaine that was nevertheless almost on the same rank as Arthur's own Excalibur, held it out in front of himself, let go, and slapped the pommel.

Ordinarily, that wouldn't have achieved anything; the impact of the thrown blade barely noticable compared to the man himself … not that any of that would have been possible under even remotely normal circumstances, since the armor now glowing cherry-red would have cooked Ogier before he could have done anything of the sort.

In this modern madhouse, however, the entirety of his momentum was transfered to the blade, launching it downwards so quickly even Arthur's eyes failed to follow it while stopping the man himself dead in the air, though it was abundantly obvious where the blade had hit.

After all, two immense geysers of blood erupted from the World Boss, one at the back, the second at the stomach, both looking like they contained enough liquid to fill an entire city's worth of swimming pools.

Yet before the knight had impacted the World Boss, a portal opened beneath him to whisk him away.

And then, the Cipacli seemed to freeze up for a couple of seconds, yet before anyone could take advantage of it, the beast shook itself slightly while the corners of all its mouths began to curl up into a macabre facsimile of a grin.

Then it raised its right forearm out of the bloody water and brought it back down, yet before it could dip back down into the liquid, said liquid … well, it vanished, banished by a massive island of dry land that burst up from beneath, then the World Boss dragged itself forward, more dirt and sand rising up to fill whatever space it vacated and spreading rapidly, the monster rapidly dragging itself out of the crimson ocean while its scales seemed to turn into the gemstone they had previously resembled.

In the background, he could hear someone whisper "Phase transition."

That triggered a memory. Of the very first Nation Boss, which had transformed halfway through the fight, to gain entirely new and separate abilities, and how the same term had been bandied about.

Yet Cipactli was not done, its next move just as obvious, as the horizon disappeared beneath a vast cloud of sand that shot skyward, an immense dome that enclosed the entirety of the battlefield, shutting out even the very sun itself, plunging them all into twilight, a particularly bright spot cast upon the sandy barrier by the sun the only sign of anything outside still visible.

A string of small explosions covered the exterior at that point, demonstrating their current situation rather thoroughly. No support, and definitely no reinforcements.

The smirks covering Cipactli's body grew even wider … yet it was only after a couple of seconds that Arthur realized that wasn't due to it having locked them in.

Rather, the realization came form the sudden feeling of weightlessness as the helicopter dropped like a stone, hurled downwards by an invisible, inexorable, force … Arthur hurled himself out of the doomed vehicle, landing heavily upon the dusty, cracked soil of the monster's conjured desert, yet behind him, the helicopeter landed lightly, blades still spinning madly yet utterly unable to lift the machine.

Granted, the ground no longer seemed to be able to be weaponized … but now, they'd be trapped there, in the face of a titanic beast, unable to return to the sky, to safety.

Arthur sneered at Cipactli. This beast likely believed it had them right where it wanted them … yet once he'd made his way over there, it would find out just what happened when you tried to close your hand on a hornet!

***

Sundiata

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Before, the ground had felt dangerous, the bottom of the crimson sea embodying death itself.

Now that it had risen to the surface, however … Cipactli seemed to have lost its ability to control the ground, that particular ability replaced by the power to force a direct confrontation, both by locking down air travel and sealing in the area.

It was a terrifying capability, truly, yet there seemed to be an opening remaining. Moving from one place to another without passing through the intervening space.

He passed his staff into his left hand so he could lay his right against the ground, and began to pull, grasping the connecting between him and the ancient city of Zerzura, tearing it free from the continent that had been its home for millennia, hurling it across the ocean and planting it in this world, created by the beast that sought to devour them all.

Sundiata straightened, pulling his hand back, but after a mere handful of centimeters, he could feel the ground beneath him shake, the cracked and dry surface of this artificial fragment of reality giving way to the very tip of Zerzura's talest tower as it burst through the soil, growing as he stood straighter and straighter and straighter, leaving him there, arm pointed at where the sky used to be, an entire city stretching out beneath him.

A city without civilians, a city without vital infrastructure, a city without anything that needed to be protected, all those things had been removed in anticipation of this exact situation coming about.

Just a mobile fortress, transported here complete with a force of warriors ready to tear even a World Boss apart.

Guns enhanced by the Skills of their wielders, dozens of different kinds of artillery, and, most importantly, mages wielding the secrets of the city to unleash bursts of fire, lightning, and more exotic energies capable of harming even Cipactli.

***

Tristan

"Retreat" seemed to be the order of the day.

Retreat from the ground, retreat from Cipactli's roars, retreat to Zerzura now that it had appeared to offer shelter.

Yet at the same time, this wasn't just us running and turtling up.

For one, Arthur had taken one look at the new circumstances and run straight at the monster, with Dietrich following after less than a second, and Mia beginning the chase so quickly one could have easily mistaken her for having started to move at the same time as they, only having fallen behind due to their sheer speed.

And Ogier was doing the exact same, every one of his heavy footsteps sending huge clouds of dust skywards, rapidly beginning to obscure my view of World Boss.

But I was retreating to Zerzura, because I had an idea.

Yes, the bloody monster had locked us all in and everyone else out, but at the same time, the presence of the city proved that spatial abilities could get around that limitation.

I mean, I probably couldn't drop Ogier on Cipactli again, as that would result in him hitting the sandstorm screen erected by the World Boss, but there were probably other games I could play with portals, considering how versatile they were.

Around me, the entire "headquarters" along with the crew of the AC-130 was moving in the same direction, though the aircrew was bringing along whatever weapons could be carried. Which, under the System, was damn near everything. Even a massive howitzer was carryable with the right Skills, though it was big enough that the man carrying it was forced to stumble all over the place to keep his balance, so I cast [Telekinesis] to hold the damn thing steady.

The downed plane wouldn't be able to protect them against Cipactli, even with its weapons, but Zerzura should be able to offer at least some protection.

As we neared the "walls" of the city, they opened up, the malleable structure of the city allowing the houses that had formed the outermost layer of defenses to slide apart, granting entrance before the welcoming committee even had time to arrive.

Though in this case, considering the man literally tripped off the top of the wall, bellyflopped into the dust … and then he brushed himself off while trying to look like nothing had happened. And doing a shockingly good job at it. If I hadn't seen him hit the ground, I wouldn't have believed anyone who told me what had just occurred.

And it seemed that Charlemagne took the stance of "let's ignore that and be professional about this" as he quickly asked for and received answers as to where he could set up. So he was directed to the city's central tower, which apparently had an even funkier geometry than Zerzura as a whole, not even the size of your average skyscraper on the outside, yet almost ridiculously larger on the inside, a tesseract who was a full third the size of the city as a whole, and that was just the part that had already been explored … or so I'd been told.

I had different concerns, though.

"Where is the emperor?" I asked, and was quickly given directions as well. Though my way of getting up the wall was slightly more complicated than his descent, I merely transformed into a bird, flew up ten meters, then undid the spell to land lightly atop the white marble and walked the rest of the way.

Well, what I did was technically walking, though with how I was hurrying, it was the absolute fastest kind of movement that still deserved the label.

Though when I reached my destination, it would have been abundantly obvious who was in charge even if I hadn't met Sundiata Keita before.

It was the way he held himself, the confidence with which he gave his orders, the way everyone else reacted to them, and him. Not to mention that his entire outfit practically radiated imperial royalty, the understated leather and kevlar armor shining with a luster that just had to stem from a Skill, and his chosen weapon, the staff he was holding in his right hand, one end planted atop the battlements, might have "just" been a length of baobab tree wood he'd picked up at some point, but it had practically been made a part of him by his Skills, radiating power on par with … well, maybe not Excalibur, but defintiely on the same Level as Cortaine, Nagelring or Eckesachs.

Of course, our meetings had always been incredibly brief, but hopefully, he'd also recognize me, and I wouldn't have to prove who I was or anything else in that vein.

"Mr. Vogt," Sundiata said, without ever even having looked in my direction, somehow having managed to sense my presence without having actually seen me.

"Your imperial majesty," I replied, bowing. Not deeply, mind you, but still formally and offering sufficient respect for the situation. "I have an idea for how to slow Cipactli, but I would require a durable wall, plaza, or other surface that can take a casual strike from the monster, and have that surface's temporary destruction be acceptable."

That seemed to warrant more of a reaction.

"You'll fix the damage once you're done," he said, then switched to a language I barely understood to give orders to one of the men around him, telling him to take me somewhere, though I failed to catch the exact description. [Burgeoning Omniglot] was great for learning languages, but whichever one he'd used, I had neither been exposed to sufficiently to learn it, nor had the Skill seen fit to even let me know its name.

Even so, I caught the gist.

"Thank you, your imperial majesty," I said, and hurried after my temporary guide.

Hurrying through the streets of Zerzura, it was becoming all the more obvious how the city had been reshaped.

Patterns in the paving stones that weren't alligned, randomly interspersed with other patterns that were usually seen elsewhere in the city, buildings literally stacked together like a child building a tower out of blocks, purely to get them out of the way and compress the city, unused smithy's and what had to be a tanner's workshop randomly mashed together, the pools normally filled with certain substances that saw the latter banished to the outside of cities instead inverted and sitting atop the combination …

Civil engineering wasn't exactly a skillset I'd spent too much time cultivating, yet I did have some knowledge of the subject.

All in all, the city was clearly on a war footing, but also trying to adapt to the modern age, with certain workshops and pieces of infrastructure less vital in the modern day having been not merely mothballed but actively dismantled, while modern technology was starting to be installed … but only in the places that were being inhabited, and even then, the focus was on immediate utility, not comfort.

Based on what I'd seen elsewhere, that sort of stuff was left in cities that weren't dragged across the globe and into active warzones on the regular.

And then, we arrived in a vast plaza, the largest open area I'd seen thus far, and my guide gestured at the ground.

I guessed this was it. So got ready to open a portal.

Unfortunately, one limitation that turned out to be a pretty massive issue now, of all times, was the fact that one end of my portals needed to be very close to me. If I could randomly connect two places in the world, that would be amazing … but I couldn't.

No, if I wanted to trip up Cipactli, I'd have to do so while right next to the spatial gateway's exit …

Now, my portals weren't big enough to trap any part of the monster's body, in any way, shape, or form. Otherwise, I'd have used them to trap the feet of kaiju-sized opponents a long, long, long time ago.

But I could open portals in front of Cipactli's toes. Specifically, right in front of one of its claw tips, with the other end sitting flush against the nearby slab of magically reinforced rock that was the plaza's pavement.

Of course, there was precisely zero chance of that rock actually surviving contact with the body of a World Boss, but it didn't have to. It simply needed to act as the wall that the portal couldn't be, and last long enough to trip up the monster.

Transforming back into a falcon, I flew a few meters up, as high as I could without losing the ability to lay the portal against the plaza, looked at the monster … and triggered the Skill at the worst possible time.

For the monster, that was.

***

Fionn

Cipactli was bleeding like a stuck pig.

Unfortunately, it had a lot of blood to bleed, especially since it was truly titanic, to the point where the dried-out ground that had emerged from the ocean was rapidly turning into a crimson swamp instead, enough of the ground having become mud that Ossian had nearly slipped in it.

The World Boss didn't even seem to be able to properly target individual humans, instead marching over the densest concentration of people, crushing them either underfoot, or by dragging its tail over them … it had to be like a human trying to pick out individual ants to crush. Possible, but difficult, especially in the heat of battle.

Although with how powerful Cipactli was, no one needed to be targeted in particular, especially when it roared.

Nine parts out of ten in this battle were just a whole lot of repositioning, so you could hit the monster without getting crushed before you could get far enough away.

The monster might take a good twenty seconds to take a single step, yet with how far each of those steps took it, even the helicopters would have trouble escaping if they had still been able to fly.

Five seconds of hurling magic, followed by nearly a minute of running at full tilt, pushed forward by [Tailwind], and even that got dicey at times.

Flying turned out to be possible, but getting ten meters off the ground before the inexorable force of the World Boss power began to force you back down hardly made much of a difference, compared to the size of the beast. It wasn't as though getting above the beast was at all possible.

Fionn spun, once again having reached a "safe" distance, and attempted to cast [Absolute Geokinesis], to try and pry open a deep pit beneath one of the monster's feet …

The spell hit a wall the moment it triggered, the backlash leaving him feeling as though he'd rammed his forehead into the side of a mountain.

He'd known there was likely some kind of protection in place, the probability of a monster that was the embodiment of the Earth being vulnerable, or even allowing earth manipulation was low, but that had been worse than he'd expected.

Would they really have to bleed the beast out?

Between Gae Buidhe and Gae Daerg and their ability to strike wounds that were impossible to heal, he'd already caused significant injury, and would kill it in time … but even if they continued to inflict damage at the same pace they were currently achieving, didn't take any further casualties, and without taking even a single second of rest, they would have to keep this up for a week.

Arthur was attempting to sever the hind right leg, and Dietrich was systematically going after the tendons and muscles, but all told, neither was getting very far against an enemy that big.

And it wasn't like they could easily reach targets such as the neck or eyes, as even while climbing its body, the height limit was still present.

The math was simple, clear, and unforgiving.

If they didn't come up with something clever, even if they won, the losses would be horrific.

Cipactli's foot was raised once again and moved forward, ready to stomp down upon a concentration of soldiers armed with anti-tank armament … and then, the foot connected with … something. A white plane of what looked like rock, which began to splinter and cave in the moment the claws had made contact, raining fragments, yet whatever it was, it held.

Fionn stared as he continued to backpedal, already raising the thumb of wisdom towards his mouth in preparation to scry out the truth, but then he saw how the claw was penetrating into the barrier, yet not emerging out the other side, and everything became clear.

He grinned.

Clever trick, Tristan.

Cipactli continued to move forward, apparently having decided against conceding, until the monster's center of gravity went past the place where its claw was still held fast by the rock of wherever the other end of the portal lay, and promptly lost its balance, falling flat on its chest with an impact that made the ground shake.

Of course, the portal had shattered at some point in the process, but it had done its job.

Fionn raised a hand above his head and began pouring magic into a lance of lightning that even that monster would be unable to ignore.

***

Tristan

Okay, that had worked. Cipactli had fallen flat on its face and was only slowly getting back on its feet.

Step one of my "masterplan," done.

Step two … waste a whole lot of portals trying to find a hollow area in the monster's body while it wasn't moving around as much.

My initial assumption had been that I could just target any sufficiently large monster's mouth, or mouths, in Cipactli's case, but according to Merlin, those had turned out to be dimensional constructs of some kind, their insides an impenetrable barrier to any and all forms of attack.

Which left … what exactly?

The lungs had seemed like an obvious choice, but then I'd actually looked into that and found out that those were generally made up of densely packed bubbles to maximize the available surface area, meaning there was basically no chance of there being sufficient space available to stick a portal in.

The stomach and intestines might work as well, though all of those were, in essence, tubes of muscles that endlessly undulated to crush, grind, and move along the food within, which meant that even if the monster itself was standing still, the movement of the organ itself might just smash the portal to flinders anyway.

And the heart? Same exact problem.

Though, considering how weird Cipactli's mouths were, it was entirely possible the beast didn't have anything even remotely resembling a "normal" digestive tract either, so maybe not the same problem after all.

Perhaps the abdominal cavity itself?

Anatomically speaking, was it anything other than a big sack of fluid, organs, and connective tissue, shouldn't there be enough space between the organs for a portal, considering how big the monster was?

Maybe.

But it wasn't something I could rely on.

Which was why I had one final idea.

I could try to hit whatever that thing's equivalent of the abdominal aorta was, the major blood vessel that carried blood down from the heart towards the rear of its body, running parallel to the spine.

Of course, there was still a big question mark as to where it was, or even how many blood vessels like this there were, all the more so since Ciplactli was a mixture of a frog, which had one such vessel, and crocodile, a genus of animals that had two major arteries running towards the rear of their body …

There were questions to be answered, and between using Ogier as a living projectile, tripping up the World Boss, and several futile attempts at opening a portal inside the monster, I only had forty-seven portals left.

Which was a lot, but I still needed to retain some for emergencies, and others so I could use them when I actually had the targetting down pat. Ultimately, that was nowhere near enough to start blindly guessing.

Mentally, I reached out to Charlemagne through the communications network he'd set up.

It was, bluntly put, a complete and utter mess, a system meant to allow him to sit in the heart of his empire and give orders failing to adapt to the current situation, with far too many present who themselves claimed the position of "top dog," their refusal to consider him to be in charge disrupting everything, not to mention their own subordinates also only having a tenuous connection to the shared web of information …

We desperately needed a way to make that work, but there was no way to, realistically, fix it in the middle of a battle.

Yet even with how chaotic it was, I could still draw some use out of it, knowledge that could be funneled towards myself, observations that could not be made from my current position but were clearly visible from other places on the battlefield …

There were limits as to what I could do with that. Major ones.

Yet it wasn't like I had anything else to go on.

So, where did it bleed the most heavily? Where had an injury "further up" a blood vessel made a cut further along the line, bleed less, as the blood had already been spilled elsehwere? Would a split blood vessel have gotten caught up in Ogier's strike, thereby determining the position as being straight down the middle?

I opened a portal. Tried to, at any rate, as the moment I tried to activate the Skill, I flinched as the sound of shattering glass rang out in my mind. It actually sounded as though it were real, but I'd learned a while ago that the response existed solely in my mind.

I'd hit something solid … but was I too high, too low, too far to the left or right, or had the damn monster just moved?

Deep breath in, deep breath out, try again.

And again.

And try some more.

Thirty portals left.

Twenty portals left.

Ten portals left … and then I was knocked from the sky by something while my vision went black, leaving me tumbling in darkness until my chin slammed into the unyielding stone of the plaza, my tongue flaring with agony, something that let me, belatedly, realize that not only had I turned back into human without meaning to, but also recognize the importance of keeping my tongue out from between my teeth while I went careening somewhere.

Ow. And I still couldn't see. Fucking hell …

Though now that I was lying spread-eagled on the ground, rather than tumbling through the air, my mind could properly catch up to what was going on.

I hadn't gone blind; it was just that there was something covering my eyes. Well, actually, something was covering my entire body, and the ground to boot, which was too slippery for me to be willing to risk another spill by standing up just yet.

Sticky and metallic, though the latter may be down to me having bitten my tongue instead.

Instead of trying out anything else, I cast [Restoration of the Old] on myself and the area around me.

Instantly, I was able to open my eyes, not even having realized I'd shut them, gazing out onto a scene of utter carnage … or maybe not. It was certainly a mess, the area around me, everything within a good twenty meters clean, a perfect circle of smooth white stone amidst an entire plaza painted crimson, the metallic stench of blood now obviously coming from, well, that, not the tiny injury I'd manged to inflict onto myself, never mind the fact that I wasn't even sure I'd actually managed to hurt myself, considering the physical boost I'd hit by reaching Level 60.

Just what the hell had happened?

I mean, the portal had clearly opened, I hadn't gotten the "stop trying to open a portal into solid matter … moron" feedback when trying to use it. So had I … had I actually managed it, and then wound up getting blasted out of the air when blood had flooded through it?

One more try … but one that had me safely out of every possible path the blood could take, either directly or by bouncing off a surface. Once again, there was a massive geysir of crimson liquid that cut out after a couple of seconds as the edge of the portal impacted something … or perhaps the portal had already reached its throughput maximum.

Either way, I certainly had found a point in the monster's body where a major blood vessel lay. Any time that it was in a place I'd passed through, of which there were many, considering how many hours I'd spent going back and forth across the place that had become this battlefield, at many different heights, I could make this thing bleed.

Though with only eight portals left, there were limits to that strategy, despite them replenishing thanks to [Escape Plan]. There had to be a way to improve upon this … and I could think of one plan in particular.

***

Fionn

An arm the size of a skyscraper crashed down right next to where he'd been, the wind created by the movement striking and picking him off his feet just as the trembling ground sent him stumbling, leaving him to go flying until the monster's flight interdiction power forced him back down a moment later, leaving him to go tumbling across the dusty floor.

He rose, barely even aware of the fresh scrapes and bruises he'd acquired just now, and triggered the spell formation he'd been in the middle of preparing when he'd gotten thrown by the attack.

A pillar of light blew skyward, stripping off scales as though it were cleaning a fish rather than striking a World Boss, then flaying the flesh beneath, blood beginning to drench the ground, turning it into a swamp in a matter of seconds.

Yes!

Fionn clenched a fist in triumph as Cipactli stumbled backwards. That, at least, had landed, though judging by how the monster turned its glare to him, enormous eyes fixing his, he'd be spending the next several hours running … so where could he lead it that would be most disadvantageous for it?

Anywhere save wherever Merlin chose to set up a similar spell. And the wizard would be doing so, he'd have seen Fionn's success and copy it, or, at the very least, prepare his own attack, refined by the new information he'd have gained by observing the damage the World Boss had just taken.

He was already turning when a hawk landed heavily next to him, transforming into Tristan in an instant, who yelled, "Attack through the portal!"

And before Fionn could ask for clarification, said portal appeared, though it was more a mid-air geysir of blood than anything resembling a normal gate in space.

Huh. So he had pulled off that trick during actual combat.

A savage grin emerged across his face as he called out Gae Bolg, the barbed crimson spear gleaming wetly even in the dim twilight of this realm, and hurled it into the portal with all his strength.

It was barely two seconds after the weapon had vanished that the gateway to the monster's innards likewise disappeared, yet the results of the strike were immediate and apparent.

Cipactli stiffened, seemingly not yet having grasped just how horrific an injury that weapon had to have caused, as its barbs spread and grew, puncturing organs and erupting from its back like grotesque porcupine quills …

And then, Fionn raised his palm out towards the monster and activated [Artifact Recall].

The Skill might have, in general, made retrieving Gae Bolg infinitely easier, considering how one had to cut it out of the enemy before it would let itself be shrunk back down to a more manageable size, but when used while the spear was still in a living enemy, things got messy. Very messy.

This time, when he ran, he wasn't fleeing the monster's attacks, avoiding death, but rather to prevent himself from getting swept up in a literal wave of blood, gore, and the contents of the beast's intestines.

***

Dietrich

It had taken hours of fighting and all the deaths that entailed when going up against a World Boss, but he'd finally gotten the surprisingly simple answer to a very simple question: how on Earth were they meant to kill Cipactli?

Especially without using nuclear weaponry, and considering how the monster had survived getting its side ripped open like that?

He was literally marching through ankle-deep … uh … unspeakable mess, though thankfully, the level of it was dropping as it continued to spread.

In the last two minutes, almost as many people had dropped out of the fight due to nausea as had been injured or killed over the course of the entire battle.

They'd better man up before the end of the fight, or he'd be making sure they all got some exposure therapy before the next World Boss battle.

Their current state was perfectly understandable … but that hardly made it any less unacceptable or detrimental to the war effort.

So, how to kill Cipactli within a reasonable timeframe?

[Slayer of Myths] was telling him to just keep attacking, to target its internal organs and overall tear it to pieces until it stopped moving … an answer that was simple, something he could have guessed on his own, and. Utterly. Useless.

So what … something in the distance caught his gaze. The tower in the center of Zerzura, which had people atop it, was firing at the World Boss.

That seemed to be the one place where he could get above the monster. And from there, he should be able to strike right at the now-exposed insides of the monster.

Triggering [Instant Repositioning], he vanished from the battlefield, emerging ten meters to the side of the Malian emperor. It still turned out to be slightly too close, though, considering how at least half the people present jumped in surprise at his emergence, and even squeezed off a shot, though Dietrich managed to sidestep the bullet while slicing it in half with Mimung, smoothly sheathing the blade in the same motion.

"Emperor Sundiata," he greeted, barely inclining his head. Enough to acknowledge that he was standing on another's land, but not to indicate even the tiniest dreg of submission. "Are you able to move the central tower closer to the wall, perhaps even next to the monster?"

Polite, but brief.

"What is your plan?"

And there was the reply, equally brief.

"I want to jump into that," Dietrich said, gesturing towards the monster with a thumb over one shoulder.

The only sign of surprise shown by the Malian emperor was a sudden blink, while most of his assistants, courtiers, bodyguards, or whoever his entourage was made up of, lacked quite the same degree of composure.

A moment passed, then Sundiata nodded, the tower already sliding through the city, the buildings parting to allow its passage. "Good luck."

"Thank you."

Dietrich turned towards the monumental construction, then noticing a rather large section of the city that had just, straight up, been drenched in blood. What on Earth had happened there?

If there'd been just a little bit less, he might have assumed it had been the site of a massacre, but the entire area was so thoroughly dyed red that that had to have been the result of something else … or maybe a tank of red paint had exploded, something of that kind.

Yet none of that was important, merely a distraction that had crept in while he was awaiting the tower's arrival.

Speaking of, the immense tower arrived after a mere minute, an entrance forming on the side facing him, allowing Dietrich to enter as it slid through a short-lived gap in the outer wall and continued outwards, though he ceased being able to see the building's progression as the door closed behind him.

The inside of the tower was made from the same white marble as everything else in Zerzura, oddly plain and unadorned compared to the rest of the city, a hall wider the tower's outside lying directly ahead, more plain than even the vast stone warehouses of the Untersberg, though the stairs were easy enough to find, the way up being located directly to the left of him, and the stairs down on his right.

Of course, he headed left, trusting there would be a way to navigate higher up, as the staircase was similarly lacking in any distinguishing features.

In fact, the stairs themselves looked to be entirely untouched, as though he were the very first one to walk through these halls, which was impossible.

He headed upstairs, yet after barely thirty seconds, reached an open door straight ahead, through which the open sky was visible.

Dietrich shook his head in bewilderment. He couldn't possibly have walked that far, yet at the same time, that sort of weirdness fit perfectly with everything else the tower had shown thus far.

When he stepped out onto the roof, he was greeted with the source of the long-range fire he'd been seeing previously, mostly artillery, though there was also a trio of mages hurling magic missiles straight into the gaping wound atop the World Boss' torso.

So yes, he was indeed that high up, hundreds of meters off the ground, despite him only having walked a mere fraction of that.

A problem for those who cared, he supposed. Dietrich's priorities were instead identifying the new position of the tower and locating the monster itself, neither of which was particularly difficult.

The former was much further out than he ever could have expected, the city having partially "unfurled" from its compacted form to cover a much larger area, and Cipactli was about ten seconds from smashing the tower to dust, the wound torn open by the weapon whose name could easily be read as "spear of mortal pain."

Looking at the monster, that name seemed horrifyingly appropriate, though it was downright miraculous that the World Boss hadn't died yet. And frustrating.

Most monsters with immortality had some kind of limit. The hydra had its weakness to fire, the giantess Hilde may be able to reconstitute even after being split in half, yet could be kept dead by putting anything between the halves, stepping between the parts had wound up killing her, and even Abhartach had been killable by Excalibur, a weapon whose core function was putting down immortals.

Cipactli had none of those conceptual weaknesses.

It was tough, plain and simple, capable of continuing to move even half dead … and on a second look, it was, in fact, dying, yet at the same time, that could take hours. Or even days.

And with them being locked in with it, there was a lot of damage it could do, a lot of people it could kill.

Dietrich took a couple of steps away from the edge, then charged forward, planting one foot on the wheel of an artillery piece to gain some height, then his second came down on the wall itself and then he was out in the open, nothing between him and the ground save air even as he could feel the monster's power begin to force him down, the churned-up earth flashing towards him at unreal speeds … yet he'd jumped off with enough force.

Despite the name, [Master of the Wilderness] saved him from being hurt in a fall, even if the surface he landed upon was far from any actual wilderness.

The mess of blood and shredded organs squished beneath him as he landed, even his stomach beginning to churn … yet he'd already experienced more disgusting experiences than any single human should ever have to.

Even if he felt like throwing up, even if he did throw up, nothing of the sort would happen until the monster was dead.

Taking a moment to plant his feet as best as he could, letting [Slayer of Myths] guide him towards the heart, he raised Mimung over his head and activated everything.

[Sword Art: Giantsplitter]

[Titan Strike]

[Grand Slash]

[Sever]

[Eviscerate]

A wave of power streamed off the sword as it carved through flesh as though it were paper, a wedge of energy crushing everything not caught directly, anything that was struck getting torn apart, even while corrosive energy whose sole purpose was to annihilate the very exposed innards of this beast began to spread into every nook and cranny.

By the time Mimung passed by his leg, [Endless Cut] had activated, re-accelerating the blade and allowing him to bring it back down in the same arc.

[Double Tap]!

And every Skill he'd activated in the last five seconds recast as one, tearing through what was left of the monster's innards.

And once again, [Endless Cut] let him seamlessly transition into the next strike even with the weapon having been slowed by everything he'd cut through … and then [Second Wind] recharged every Skill he'd used, a third strike, empowered just as strongly as the previous two was brought down on … whatever was left. He'd long since stopped being able to see, his face so drenched in blood that even when he did have his eyes open, all he could see was red.

Was he continuing to carve his way through the innards of a monster that was mere seconds from killing a whole lot of people … or was he just turning the insides of a beast mere seconds from death into soup?

Even so … he cast [Double Tap], carving through the monster's torso for the fourth time.

Dietrich reached up, about to push up his helmet so he could wipe at his eyes, when he suddenly felt his stomach lurch, followed by a sensation of weightlessness.

He redoubled his efforts, attempting to regain the ability to see, when he hammered into the ground like a catapult stone.

Oof.

So he'd managed to tear apart whatever he was standing on so thoroughly that he'd just fallen through?

A thorough wipe at his face allowed him to regain his sight … just in time for the entire monster to fall on his head.

Darkness.

Even with his ability to see in extreme low light conditions, there was nothing to see, but he was clearly still alive, further evidenced by the voice of the System.

[King of Combat, Champion of Monster Hunting Lv. 89 -> King of Combat, Champion of Monster Hunting Lv. 92]

[Physical Limit Breaker gained]

[Skill gained: Spatial Divide]

[Skill Boost gained]

Well … he was still stuck, though.

Dietrich sat down and pulled a flashlight from his storage, deciding not to try anything to free himself until he knew where the others were located. It would be far too easy to hurt someone with an errant Skill.

Which, upon checking the description of [Spatial Divide], he decided was a very real risk. The ability to split space in a localized area could form both a near-impenetrable shield and an impossibly sharp blade, depending on whether or not it struck side- or edge-on. was powerful, but could also easily hurt or kill someone on the other side of the monster as he cut himself out.

And even all the power he could feel boiling beneath his skin, just waiting to be unleashed, hardly seemed up to the task of lifting the monster above. [Physical Limit Breaker] was powerful; that much was obvious even without ever having used it, but he'd managed to get himself stuck somewhere, even that power wasn't going to achieve anything.

Even so, being stuck beneath the corpse of a true titan, an ankle-deep blood swamp forming underfoot, was hardly his favorite place to be …

***

Mia

Cipactli hadn't even been dead five minutes, and its corpse was already reeking something awful.

And the World Boss was definitely dead, the nameplate had vanished, and she'd already gained Levels for it … but there would be no resting until they got Dietrich out from under that corpse.

[Saintess of the Blade, Lady of Steel Lv. 78 -> Saintess of the Blade, Lady of Steel Lv. 82]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Sundering Stride]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Magnificent Poise]

They certainly couldn't just start randomly ripping into Cipactli's carcass; they had no real idea where exactly he was, and even with his toughness, he could get hurt.

And now, onto trying to find him.

***

They did get Dietrich out. After an hour. He was not amused.