Savage Awakening 455. The Beginning of the End (II)

The Gigapedes came on strong. Countless chunks of heavy metals welded together into fat, writhing lines.

Zane took out his axes. He had to cut through that mass first.

Then it was time for the big one.

Goloid the Endbringer.

He sensed the auras of Earth flaring around him, filled with nervousness, hope, and bravery. Then the clashes began—their fighters going to war, shouting battle cries…

He knew it’d be a long game. There wasn't just this giant mob to defeat. This Monster King. Though that was trouble enough.

All the fighters of Earth were counting on him too. All this territory was theirs to defend for a grueling day—maybe more.

If these fighters fell, Earth might fall before the final Boss even got there.

He would not allow that.

Just like before the battle, he’d made a pact, just like before. If they were in trouble, bring the heat to him. And he would defend them.

Last time he’d kept that pact—but that time, he knew he could take all they had to give and more.

This time… there was no knowing the kind of firepower coming for them.

The only thing to do now was have faith. Faith in what he could do—the body and skills he’d built. And execute.

He could do that.

If he meant to get through all this, he couldn’t lose focus. Not for a second.

It was in that state of mind that Zane entered the fray.

***

“Things are really getting underway—and we can't get you shots of every angle, folks, but we’re trying as best we can to keep up!” Tyler had to shout to be heard over the booms. “Out in the northwest sector, things are really heating up—”

A horde of Elder Manticores had rammed the front line.

“Looks like Vanessa and her archmages are just about holding the Monsters to a deadlock! And just beside them, Dos Santos and her amazons are striking back—”

Glaciers crashed through space. Darkness flew like shafts of night, lashing the horde.

“Stampede coming in from the west!” said Becca. “Looks to be a Necromancer horde—goodness, that’s a lot of skeletons…”

“Seems Eze and the Young Elites are taking care of it, though,” said Tyler. They were trying to keep things positive, but even they couldn’t help but be nervous.

The center of the battlefield was where most of the action was going down.

The scene panned back to that horde of Gigapedes. A great forest of shifting steel, too many limbs to count.

Then two massive slashes cut through it all, making an X that could span whole worlds. Devastatingly bright.

A ringing, a tearing.

And a dozen True Gods were sliced in half.

They exploded as they went down.

Zane kept hammering.

In just that opening salvo, he made quick work of the bulk of that horde.

“Hells… did that Slash of his level up?” said Tyler.

“He’s starting hot for sure,” said Becca.

“Guess he’s got to—can’t afford to relax, not when there’s a Monster King coming… look out!”

The Endbringer emerged from the depths—a good few sizes bigger than any of the others. It screeched in fury.

Its head was shaped like the hull of a ship, slicked with metal shine. A great bulwark of Corruption in the astral plane.

“Zane’s wrecked every armor he’s found so far!" said Becca.

“But he’s never faced a Monster King alone…”

“He’s taken in two shards since then. We’ve got to believe in Zane!”

The Endbringer charged him straight-on.

And Zane let it have it.

Two axes rammed into its dome. Destruction crashed through, so strong they saw it blurring the face of that head—saw cracks rippling through…

It trembled.

But he couldn’t break it.

Then it hit him.

Rammed him so hard he blasted through three moon-sized asteroids in a row.

Blood splattered the air.

Then the coils closed in on him.

Zane growled, blinked the dazed look out of his eyes. Then he was fighting back—hammering axe after axe even as the Monster got him in a vice grip, clamping pincers over his chest. Even as its Distortion Field collapsed all over him, thickening, hardening like amber, some grotesque Skill, making a cocoon of pure Corruption.

Zane bucked and slashed. He was still fighting, bellowing, when he vanished beneath the coils.

For a second, all anyone could hear was a sickening crushing.

Then a fiery line sliced through the dark and blasted it wide open.

Goloid spasmed, screaming—its carapace cracked right down the center.

Shattered, all at once.

There stood Zane—badly burned. Ribs smashed, chest crushed… He roared and launched right back into the fray.

Then it was chaos.

Two titans slamming into each other, slamming through other Monster Hordes—hordes that exploded the instant they made contact with those two beasts, struck by powers far out of their league.

Man and Monster King went flying through planet after planet, wrestling and slashing—

“What the hell’s going on down there?!” shouted Tyler.

Then it ground to a halt. Crashed into one final planet and left a crater that sank halfway to its core.

Zane stood on top.

Chains shattered down his physique.

He hammered axe after axe.

The Endbringer lashed him with a tail, but this time it couldn’t knock him off his feet. It tried clamping him with those car-crusher mandibles, managed to crush half the bones in his torso—

He brought a Red Giant Slash right behind its skull and sank that axe clean through.

In that moment, the fight hung on the edge; they heard bones crunching, heard Zane let out one last furious roar—powering his axe deeper in.

Until at last…

The Gigapede sagged. Fell away. And Zane sank to a knee.

“He won,” breathed Becca.

“He took some hard shots in there,” said Tyler. “But he looks to be shaking it off—atta boy, Zane! He can’t be too far under 50%...”

“He still looks to be in fighting shape!” said Becca.

A good thing, too.

He barely had time to take a breath before—

“Incoming!” called Gaia high command.

And Zane staggered up to face the next threat.

***

World Rank #3 Jason Walker was inundated with True God Greathounds.

His scythe reaped life after life; his eyes had gone fully crimson. Monstrous powers burned through his veins.

But he was running out of limbs to swing—a fact he greeted with a wrinkle of the nose.

A hound had latched onto his arm, and another was crumpling up a leg. He was quickly being dragged under. He laughed, hacking them off—but more piled on…

“Jason!” World Rank #9 D’Angelo Hall roared.

But Jason looked too far deep. D’Angelo didn’t have the firepower to get through that horde.

World Rank #2 Emeka Eze was fighting his own horde just a few miles off. He saw Jason go under—and for a second, D’Angelo thought the man might let Jason sink. It was no secret how much he disliked the man.

But Eze donned his gauntlets, set his jaw, and attacked.

On the far side of that horde, reality shuddered; the weight of dozens of planets crashed through.

Eze punched a bloody line through that horde, leaving crushed corpses in his wake. A force of nature.

He forced that horde to crack wide open; it was all the encouragement Jason needed. He let out a howl; the two of them destroyed the rest.

Jason wiped some blood off his face. He grinned. “Thanks.”

Eze barely spared him a glance. “You're careless. Get ahold of yourself.” He blasted off.

Jason blinked, snorted. “Prick.”

***

“Steady!” cried Vanessa.

A vast glacier held back a herd of stampeding Hellmammoths. But they were burrowing their bones deep into the ice, bellowing, shooting vibrations through the ice, lacing it deep with cracks.

Her dozen top-ranked Mages—mostly of the Volkova family—held up that glacier shield. Their ace was her little sister Ana, standing at the very front, looking pale yet stubborn.

It was dangerous letting her on, and they argued fiercely about it, but Vanessa couldn’t deny her in the end. They were their mother’s daughters after all.

Cristina Dos Santos’s elites threw spear after spear, but they couldn’t break those Hellmammoth hides fast enough.

The glacier was starting to shatter…

Vanessa gritted her teeth. It hurt her pride to admit it, but she couldn’t hold these things off. They’d have to fall back—

Then she felt an incredible heat on the left side of her face.

An axe breaking through—cleaving a bloody line through that horde, and leaving a string of incredible explosions in its wake…

One blow sent every Hellmammoth to its knees.

She whirled around and saw the man who’d thrown it far in the distance—she gave him a grateful nod. But he was already blasting after the next challenge.

When she turned back, she found the Hellmammoths cut to half their herd. And the ones that were left were somehow frail, trembling—shot through with some invisible breaking power.

Cristina Dos Santos gave a shout and vanished in a streak of thunder and lightning, charging the horde head-on. One by one, the fighters of Earth gained heart and went for it.

***

On another chunk of battlefield, 30 Top-Rankers—mostly from the Australian and Nordic coalitions—were pinned behind heavy fire.

It was the Bog-Fiends. A sea of them crawling over, swamping, pressing in from all sides, spewing gunk-cannons as they came—

“This is rank 71 Geralt Vin—our tanks are all at half-health!” shouted a gray-bearded man, struggling behind his shield. “Looks like we’re about to be surrounded!”

“Zane’s swamped right now!” Gaia central command called back. “He’s already fighting three more hordes than he should be. You’ll have to hold a little longer, soldier.”

But there was no holding any longer.

Another gunk wave struck and staggered him. Beside him, he watched World Rank #44 Gunnar Beck go to a knee.

His heart dropped.

That was their chief down.

And with him, their front line broke.

But just as the Bog-Fiends were about to pour in, he caught a blur at the corner of his eye—impossibly fast.

Then he saw something he couldn’t quite understand.

A single giant, furry line charging that horde at mach speed.

Then it leaped. And for an instant, they all saw one Avery Lively soaring through the air on the back of a very excited Chomper.

“Chaaaaaaaarge!” she cried.

It was as much flailing as it was soaring. She wasn't holding the reins. She was barely even sitting on the saddle. It appeared like she was just about to fall off Chomper every moment—and yet, by some miracle, she didn’t.

Evan Armstrong scampered right behind, blasting as fast as he could.

Somehow, it sent the Fiends reeling. It was possible it confused the Fiends as much as it did the humans.

“What the…” someone croaked.

They decided not to think too hard on it.

They roared and struck back.