NOVEL NEXT 27 - Breaking (3)
Jessie: Yeah, we're sa it's in here monster monster monster hurry!
My blood ran cold. Some of it ran cold from the wounds that covered my arm as Recovery stitched my face together. I'd unsummoned my Stormsteel breastplate after the fight with the Gemini Demon, trying to preserve what was left of my Mana.
Stamina: 120/190, Mana: 121/250
That'd be enough in the tank. I could do this—could keep my promise and take care of my sister. I just needed a way inside.
I looked around. Every door and roof was covered in steel, but there had to be a way in. There'd been a way in for whatever monster was attacking Jessie right now. I could find that entrance. There wasn't a choice.
But as I sprinted around the building at maximum E-Ranked speed, there was no clear entrance.
My shoulder lowered, and I slammed it into the front door. Then I did it again. And a third time.
And, miraculously, it started opening.
The moment it did, I ran forward, sliding under it. A man with a pistol and a security uniform stood next to the entrance counter, staring at me, his face pale. "What's going on?" he asked. All around him, scared-looking students and adults stood around, packed into the aisles between the displays. I ignored them all. None of them mattered right now.
"D-Rank portal break. Most of it's outside, but something's inside," I said, running.
"I'll cover you," he said. "It'd be the basement. Cameras one and three just went out less than a minute ago."
"Your gun won't do anything. Just keep the door shut unless people come." I ran for the stairs. Took them three at a time. Four. I leaped for the landing, hit the ground in front of a massive door lined with portal metal.
The security man ran down the stairs and scanned his ID, and the door opened. Then he nodded. "Kill it dead, delver."
"That's the plan," I said. The Stormsteel rapier and breastplate appeared as I sprinted down into the archive.
And someone screamed.
Active Skill Learned: Dash
You've gotta go fast. It's in your nature—and more importantly, it makes you hard to hit. After all, if you're there one second and gone the next, no one's going to be able to get a weapon on you. And even better than that? You'll hit them even faster. Consume Stamina to greatly increase movement speed.
Upgrade Effects:
1. Each rank increases the speed of Dash.
2. At C-Rank, can ricochet off of solid structures for an air dash.
As I sprinted through the shelves, I caught my first glimpse of the demon threatening my sister.
Gemini Demon (Darkness): D-Rank
It passed through the shelves without knocking over a single pot or basket; its body seemed to be made from incorporeal shadow in contrast with the Gemini Demon's thick carapace. I tried to follow it toward the screaming, but it disappeared into the rows of shelves.
I followed. My pulse hammered in my ears; the fear I'd been feeling dwindled, dwarfed by an anger I hadn't felt in such a long time. No. Not an anger. A rage. A fury. I didn't want to kill this monster. I needed to kill it. And it needed to hurt.
But first, I had to hunt it down. I followed the screaming; it wasn't just Jessie. The whole group sounded terrified, and cries of pain mixed in with the fear. My sword led, and I followed, blade up and ready to lunge or parry.
So when Lightning Reflexes flared, I was ready. The blade rocketed over my head to cover my back even as I stepped back and pirouetted like a ballerina. The Darkness Gemini's spike slammed into—then through— a set of shelves; my sword left a faint burning smell in the air as a bit of shadowy smoke sheared free from the monster's bulk.
Then I finished my spin. The momentum whipped my sword across the monster's chest. It passed through, and the shadowy demon screamed.
It might've been shadow, but its bile was real, and so was the stench of blood. It splattered across my face and chest even as I ducked. The breastplate's maelstrom ripped apart the chunks of meat, and I tried not to think about what—or who—those chunks belonged to.
The Darkness Gemini's spikes flurried at my chest. I ignored them as they hit my armor, driving wind from my lungs, stabbing back as quickly as I could. Shadowy blood poured from the monster's chest, and my armor screamed and buckled.
Then the Darkness Gemini reared up. It crashed down with all six spikes, and I threw myself to the side, through a shelf filled with what looked like farming tools from the Old West. The shadowy demon hit the ground, spikes sinking through the tiles. It whirled as I picked myself up, then surged through the shelf after me. Unlike my crashing roll, it didn't disrupt anything.
I pressed myself against the shelf, and for almost a second, all I could see was darkness as the monster reformed in the aisle I'd just rolled into. But it didn't hit me.
I used Flareflourish.
The Stormsteel rapier flashed in the darkness.
I didn't find myself driven to the ground, or crushed, or impaled. Instead, I found myself facing two backward human legs and an ass that looked like a horse's. It had missed.
Lightning crackled and popped as I sliced through the monster's shadowy knees and ankles. It started to turn, then collapsed.
Fury filled me. How dare it threaten my sister? How dare it come into my world. "This is my world, and you're not welcome!" I shouted as I stabbed, stepped to the left to stay behind it, and stabbed again. With every thrust, the spinning Lightning Charges ripped gouges in the shadowy monster. With every stab, its movement grew slower. I kept fighting, even as the Darkness Gemini's attacks became more and more pathetic.
One more lunge, and the demon grew still.
Stamina: 46/200, Mana: 31/250
I unsummoned the rapier and armor to preserve what was left of my Mana and Stamina. The wounds I'd suffered were bad, but I'd live; I cut the painkilling and focused on healing, shuddering as a wave of agony passed from my arm and jaw down my chest and into my stomach. I probably looked like I'd been through a meat grinder and then back out the other side, but I'd won.
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Then I started looking for Jessie.
I didn't have to look hard, just follow the sound of crying, hyperventilating kids.
They were in the back of the archive. There was a small room there, with a few half-assembled pots on tables, scrapers, brushes, and tiny blocks of clay on shelves. A reconstruction room—airtight, soundproof before the glass had shattered, and isolated from the rest of the building. A fan hummed softly under the sound of panicking kids.
Jessie was on the ground, leg bent awkwardly under her. For a second, I thought she was hurt—or at least, more hurt than usual. Then she saw me and tried to push herself to her feet. "Hi, Kade. I knew you'd come for me."
"Always, Jessie." I knelt in the blood around her. "What happened?"
"Mr. Farrier's dead." She went quiet. Swallowed down something. Closed her eyes. And when she talked again, it was a different person. "As acting GC rep in charge of the…the portal break at S'edav Va'aki, I'm allowing Delver Noelstra, E-Rank, to do whatever he deems necessary…whatever he deems necessary to defend the civilian survivors from Public School Seventeen."
Her eyes stayed closed. Stephen—at least, I assumed it was Stephen—looked up at me. "Is she alright?" he asked.
"No. She's not alright. But she'll be fine. I'm Kade."
"Stephen." He started to reach up to shake my hand, then stopped. His hand was covered in blood, and so was mine.
"Wish we'd met under better circumstances. Are you hurt?" I asked.
Stephen shook his head. "No. But Mr. Farrier…I tried."
Jessie's eyes opened. "He's over there," she said, pointing. Then they closed again.
I didn't press her. There wasn't any need. He was under a sheet of plastic; the museum had been using it to cover pottery repairs that were drying before being fired. I didn't look. He wouldn't be the only one dead from all of this, and I needed to get back upstairs and make sure I saved whoever I could. The anger and the battle trance were at war again, but with Jessie safe—or at least, as safe as she could be—the trance was winning.
Not that I had much left to give. I had no business fighting against D-Rank monsters without backup, and the sheer amount of Stamina and Mana I'd consumed to hit as hard as I'd had to and survive their hits had left me with a pretty much empty tank. If more Hellbats showed up, I could handle them. But if there was a second Gemini Demon, I doubted I could handle the 'first phase' of it, much less kill it for real. They were just too tough.
"Jessie, I'm going to get back upstairs and follow your directive. There are more people up there, and they need me until something changes and more, stronger delvers show up. I'll be close by, and if my phone goes off, I'll be right back here."
She nodded. But she didn't say anything, and I didn't press her.
"Stephen, take care of her," I said, painfully aware that I was trusting a fifteen-year-old stranger with the same promise Dad had asked of me. Then, without waiting for his response, I jogged through the archives and headed for the stairs.
I was halfway up when I started feeling it. I didn't need Mana Sense—not for something as overwhelming as whatever was up there. I probably didn't even need an awakened system to feel the sheer amount of power that had just arrived. It pushed my aura back, crushed it until all I could do was breathe and keep walking. Whoever—or whatever—was here, I couldn't have fought against them if I'd wanted to.
I opened the stairwell door and stepped into the exhibits.
It was pin-drop quiet. No one was saying anything. The sobbing and crying had completely stopped. It felt like the deep breath before a carnival ride rushed toward the ground.
Then, light—massive, massive amounts of the brightest, whitest light—filled every corner of the building.
The light was blinding. Even through the D-Rated riot shutters. Even near noon. The sun was nothing compared to the hammering, pounding light. It poured in, scouring every centimeter of the museum in white-hot fury. People screamed all around me, not in agony, but in abject, pure terror. My skin crawled from the sheer power of it—and from something underneath it. Something darker, more insidious. Something that would rot me from the inside out if it didn't stop.
Then the light faded. Afterimages filled my eyes; I tried to blink them away, but even the afterimages had their own afterimages. I'd never experienced anything so bright. So filled with…malice. Hatred. The will to exterminate anything its controller found unworthy of existence.
Only one man in Phoenix had that kind of power: The Light of Dawn. The S-Ranked leader of the Roadrunners, and a living legend.
Angelo Lawrence.
I kept blinking back the afterimages. And then, there he was. The man himself. He stepped through the door as the riot shutter raised.
His hair was gray, perfectly slicked back, and his mustache and beard matched the hair perfectly. Rumor had it that he'd been close to sixty when the Portal Blitz started. Rumor also had it that, when you reached A-Rank, your aging slowed. And Angelo had been one of the first S-Ranks in Phoenix, or maybe on the entire continent.
He wore armor so high-ranked I couldn't even identify it; it had to be worth a decade of E-Ranked dungeon clears—or maybe more.
The fact that the Carlsbad Portal Break still existed was a testament to how strong an S-Ranked monster was, because, as far as I could tell, The Light of Dawn had ended this C-Rank break with a single, overwhelming spell.
I stared at his aura. It didn't look like it had even faded, much less started to flicker.
I wanted that kind of power. S-Ranked power. That was how I'd fulfill my promise to Dad. To reach the pinnacle of strength, earn my title, and become unbeatable like him. I watched as he looked around, ignoring the suddenly gasping, crying students that huddled on the floor between exhibits and the two real Governing Council reps who followed him in.
One of them cleared her throat nervously. "Sir? Sir, you can't be in here so soon after a full-power unleash. It'll affect—"
"Veronica Little, I appreciate your concern for your fellow people," Angelo said. His voice was cultured, calm, and totally in control. "I can assure you that what I just did represents less than five percent of my full potential, and that everyone in this room is safe from the fallout as long as they stay indoors for the next five to ten minutes. I am not a hazard to them, and Roadrunner healers are on the way for the people trapped outside."
But even as the rebuked representative flinched and looked away, the Light of Dawn's eyes locked on me. He raised an eyebrow for a moment, then waved me over. "You were the first delver to respond to the portal break, correct?"
I nodded slowly.
"Then you have a claim on the portal. Come, walk with me. We can talk outside and discuss business."
Before I could stop myself, I was following him. He stepped through the door; the rest of the shutters were slowly lifting, revealing a sickly green portal that hung in the air on the far side of the ruins. It was almost yellow—nearly C-Rank—and I stared at it. The bile-colored light clashed painfully with dozens of flashing red and blue emergency vehicles, and GC reps and guild delvers were everywhere.
I stopped walking. Jessie had nearly died here.
Angelo turned. He stared at me, piercing eyes locked on my face, a look of annoyance playing across it. "I said, 'Walk with me.' Or is there something more important to you than talking with the leader of the Roadrunners?"
I did. But…
This was Angelo Lawrence. He wasn't the kind of man you said 'no' to, at least not without a very good reason. The most powerful delver in Phoenix—or at the very least, in the top four or five—and the leader of the Roadrunners. I was still upset from my run-in with their E-Rankers a couple of weeks back, but that wasn't a good enough reason to tell the Light of Dawn to shove it.
But even so, I found myself saying, "I can't. My sister's inside. That's all I care about right now."
And, to my surprise, Angelo's face softened. He nodded slowly. "Family is important."
"It is," I said. "Can you wait a few? I'll be out when I'm done checking on her."
"No. I cannot afford to wait. Sign over your portal rights to our farm team. I will send someone to handle your share of the portal's earnings tomorrow. Give me your number and address, and she will meet you there." Angelo reached for a pocket in his armored robes and pulled out a completely normal phone; when he handed it to me, it was the same model as mine, just a year or two newer.
I put my information in and handed the device back to Angelo—back to the Light of Dawn.
He nodded and slipped the phone back into his robes. Then he turned on a heel and walked back to a waiting helicopter.
I didn't expect a phone call or text from him. He had more important things to do than talk to an E-Ranker, after all. So, after watching the helicopter take off and rocket back toward the glass-and-steel skyscrapers nearby, I turned back to the building. I'd have time to think about my growth later.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something metal and rubber. It took me a second to recognize it, but when the wheels and seat finally made sense in my head, I righted Jessie's wheelchair and pushed it inside.