Capítulo 2487: 70
Chapter 70: Promise 7-8
Promise 7.8
Herakles had fought all sorts of monsters during his adventures. Many of the creatures of myth that we heard about today had been on the other end of his fists or his bow or his sword. Many of them had been considered equally as impossible to kill.
None of them were quite like Leviathan.
He was not the strongest Herakles had ever faced, nor perhaps even the fastest. By all accounts, he was not even technically the hardiest, because the Nemean Lion had been immune to weapons and armaments of all kinds and had been killed only by strangulation.
But he was the oddest. The quietest, for certain, because he didn't speak, he didn't howl, he didn't grunt, not even when I had wounded him with Nine Lives. Even his body language was closed off, eerily silent and opaque, like he was more of a machine than a living thing.
Even for a fighting expert, a veteran of many battles and an experienced warrior who was deadly with any and every weapon imaginable, Leviathan was hard to get a read on.
The moment shattered. Leviathan broke contact and leapt high into the air, carried on a thick jet of water that ripped and tore into the Boardwalk. At the apex of his jump, he swept his arms out, and the jet of water flattened out into a wave.
"BRACE!" someone roared.
I didn't. I took two steps forward, carrying me to the very edge of the city, and with a moment's thought, I swapped out the Hydra's Bow for a large Kopis, a monster of a sword that easily put even Siegfried's Balmung to shame with its enormous size. It must have looked more like a slab of iron than a proper sword.
Aside from its size, it really wasn't anything special. It was exactly as it appeared — a sword of extraordinary size, too big for anyone but Herakles himself to lift and wield — and nothing more. It was not even some divine armament, passed to him by an oracle or priest or one of the gods' manifestations on Earth, let alone a Noble Phantasm.
I wound my arm back —
"HA!"
— and with a single swing, I dispersed the wave of water as though it were nothing.
It was as I'd told Piggot and Armsmaster. Siegfried, Gawain, and Herakles were all monstrously strong heroes, so powerful that even the wind stirred by their swings could still be devastating on its own. That night a month ago, when I had first fought Lung, I had swung Siegfried's Balmung without controlling my strength several times, and without realizing exactly what that meant, the collateral damage I had caused would have made me a murderer a dozen times over, if it had happened anywhere else in the city.
Herakles was on that level. He, too, had that kind of raw, overwhelming strength, enough to injure and maim and kill, even with swings that missed. There was enough power and momentum behind his fists and his sword to squash anyone who got too close, and even a glancing blow could be fatal to the likes of a low level Brute.
Any other fight, I would have worried about it. That level of raw strength was too much for an ordinary enemy.
This was not an ordinary fight and not an ordinary enemy.
Leviathan fell like a meteor, all nine tons of crystalline flesh and muscle, and he carried the remnants of his dispersed wave behind him like a cape or a cloak.
Or an echo.
I planted my sword tip-first into the concrete, then leapt up to meet him with strength that cracked the pavement. The wind howled again as I shattered the sound barrier, and I flew like a rocket into the air, moving far faster than Leviathan was falling. I had already crossed the distance before he could make it halfway to the ground.
But I didn't strike him head on.
No, because that would only throw him back into the bay and give him a chance to gather more water to bolster his offense and defense. Instead, I shot past him, sneaking through the gap between his arm and torso, and as I did, I spun, putting all of my momentum behind my body, and delivered a devastating roundhouse kick to his back, just above the base of his tail.
I could feel his flesh splinter and crunch under my foot.
Leviathan, now, rocketed towards the ground, his controlled fall now a tumble, and he crashed to a halt on the pavement below, sprawled out. The cloak of water he'd carried behind him slammed into me, but it was weak and diminished and not at all enough to do more than sting a little. What it did do was slow me down, help me bleed off my momentum and reverse course.
I landed with a thunderous boom, and as I did, Alexandria came down, too, driving her fist into the spot I'd kicked with an equally loud crack. Leviathan's tail whipped out, aiming to strike her and sweep her off — but I was already there, grappling with it and keeping it away from her.
It was a doomed effort from the start, and I'd known it. His tail was nearly two-thirds again as long as he was tall, and that meant it was something like six times my own height, long enough that I couldn't hope to stop him from using it, if he really wanted to. Even gripping it in the middle, even holding it down as much as I could, all I could really do was cut down on his ability to build momentum with it a little.
It would, however, be enough to blunt the blow against Alexandria.
His tail cracked against her like a whip as the tip snapped at her shoulder, enough to send her flying back a dozen yards, but not enough to put her off balance for more than the second it took her to right herself in midair.
I wasn't done, either.
"RAH!"
I dug my fingers into his flesh, securing my grip, and the muscles on my arms bulged as I began to pull.
Time to find out if I can body slam a thirty-foot-tall monster.
Leviathan, however, had no intention of letting me try. He sunk his claws into the pavement and looked back at me over his shoulder with two of his remaining eyes. On a human being, they would have narrowed.
Water rushed in, slamming into my back — a tickle, a paltry thing that couldn't have stopped me, couldn't have stopped Herakles, on a bad day. What it did do was wash down over my body and underfoot, ruining my footing, because his tail moved, dragging me to the side along the slick, watery ground, and then pulling me up and into the air, where I had no leverage at all.
I knew his next move before he did it, and with a lightning fast undulation of his tail, he threw me off and whipped me into a nearby building.
Wood and metal alike snapped under my weight like toothpicks. I crashed through the front wall, through the first room, through the far wall and into a second room, and I made it through another two walls and out the other side, where I tumbled to a halt on the road.
I rolled to my feet an instant later, undamaged. Even the leather cuirass on my chest didn't have so much as a scratch.
You won't escape that easily.
The ground beneath my feet cracked as I leapt, propelling myself up and over the building I'd just been thrown through, and I landed back where I'd started with an echoing thud and splash.
When I turned to look for Leviathan, I found him further on down the street, hunched over. Legend and Purity were both pelting him with lasers, along with smatterings of attacks from other nearby Blasters, while those close-in fighters brave enough to try were hitting him for all they were worth. He simply ignored them like they were nothing, and beneath one hand, he was holding down a struggling woman, a cape dressed all in black, as he tried to drown her in less than a foot of water.
The scene evoked a memory, one of Khepri's. The same situation, with rain and blood and seawater, as Leviathan held down —
Alexandria.
Whatever my feelings, I wasn't about to let her die.
I ripped my sword out of the ground, then took off, racing down the street.
"MOVE!" I roared.
Those fighting jolted at my voice, then the close quarters fighters scrambled out of the way as they saw me barreling towards them at full tilt. I leapt again, closing the last stretch of distance, and with a shout, I sliced and my sword bit deep into the arm holding Alexandria down.
Leviathan reared back as though stung, letting go of Alexandria, who shot up out of the water and gasped in air. I landed with a pair of splashes, digging in my feet and leaning forwards to bleed off my momentum even as I slid further than I meant to on the slick pavement, and then I leapt back in for another attack.
And as I came into range, close enough to reach out and connect with him, I shouted out the name of my Noble Phantasm again.
Shooting the Hundred Heads
"NINE LIVES!"
I swung, and faster than fast, moving like lightning, striking between one blink and the next, my sword cut.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Five strikes in rapid succession, parting glittering green scales with effortless ease.
But I didn't stop at five, I kept going, kept swinging, kept cutting, and my sword sang as it slashed through the air. Faster, faster, and faster still.
Each blow sliced deeper and deeper into Leviathan's body, sending sprays of black ichor and carving out chunks of crystalline flesh.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Faster and faster and faster. My arm moved so swiftly that it looked as though I had grown half a dozen more. Each attack landed with such speed that they seemed to strike simultaneously.
Again, again, again, again, again. Blow after blow rained down.
Eleven. Twelve. Fifteen. Eighteen. Twenty-one.
The world had slowed to a crawl around me. The raindrops fell like molasses, inching towards the ground a millimeter at a time. Any that came within reach of me were split along the ultra-fine edge of my sword.
Twenty-five. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty. Forty-five.
Leviathan himself seemed to be moving just as slowly. He hadn't reacted, was still in the middle of reacting to the first few blows. It was as though he could not keep up with the sheer speed of my swings.
But it was getting harder. Not that I was slowing down, but that each cut was less effective, each slice carved away less flesh than the one previous.
Fifty. Fifty-five. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty.
The damage I was doing was decreasing. No, rather, the durability of the flesh I was cutting was increasing. The thinner surface layers had been carved away and destroyed, the middle, hardier layers obliterated, and I was reaching now the incredibly dense, incredibly durable inner flesh, that which formed the base skeletal structure and, at the deepest parts, the core.
Impossibly dense. Impossibly durable.
It was matter that surpassed the tolerances of the given material, going beyond mere density and strength. It was a material without flaw, without imperfections in the crystalline superstructure that would allow for points of fracture under the stress of my blade or my fists. It was an impossible material that surpassed earthly limits, despite giving no indication of anything like an Authority that would allow it such a property.
It is not divine power derived from Authority or a blessing, nor an exotic material. Its mystical weight is too low.
Then, what made it so durable? If the matter was the same, but the density increased beyond what was possible for this world, how did it manage something like that?
Herakles' incredible mind and intuition had already found the answer.
A dimensional folding phenomenon. Increasing the durability of the flesh in the same manner as certain kinds of sword techniques by folding multiple instances of a singular event or object over each other through extra-dimensional manipulation. It was not simply a matter of coming up against more matter as it was that the matter was folded over itself by refracting it through multiple higher dimensions.
A frustrating defense mechanism.
I gritted my teeth and delivered the final blow.
One-hundred.
With a crack like thunder, it landed, and Leviathan was thrown backwards as the accumulated force slammed into him like a freight train. The concentrated boom of the sound barrier shattering a hundred consecutive times — or maybe only once, magnified a hundredfold — echoed, and for a short moment, pushed away the falling rain as it rippled outwards.
I was right earlier, then, I thought as my feet touched back upon the ground. Herakles could not defeat Leviathan in a single blow or a single use of his Noble Phantasm. It would be possible, eventually, to do enough damage and reach the core at the center. With enough time and effort, killing Leviathan was possible.
But it would take too long. It would be a drawn out, protracted battle, where the goal of both sides would be to finish the other off before losing to attrition. In that case, Leviathan was more likely to either flee once I hurt him enough or just make me lose automatically by sinking the city under my feet.
If I could keep him focused on me, prevent him from hurting or killing anyone else by monopolizing his attention, then the former was an acceptable outcome. The latter, obviously, was not.
Leviathan had barely touched the ground with an echoing boom and a heavy splash before he was on his feet again, the wounds I'd delivered leaking the same ooze that counted for his blood by the gallon. They were all deep, very, very deep, and they exposed something that looked like an approximation of muscle and even something that might have counted as bone.
They didn't, however, seem to slow him down at all.
His three good eyes found me, even as the fourth that I'd injured in my opening salvo continued to heal, and his claws braced him against the ground.
Very well, beast. Come.
I had just enough time to swap out my sword for something heavier, with more heft and weight behind it: an ax, a gilded thing with a wicked-looking blade. Then, he kicked off, racing towards me with such speed that his feet never actually touched the ground, only the shallow layer of water that coated the street.
I deflected the swipe of his clawed hand down and into the asphalt, shrugging off the impact of his echo as though it was nothing — because it was nothing, little more than a tingle that I could easily ignore. With Godhand: The Twelve Labors, it didn't even bruise.
I hefted up my ax and swung it down towards his hand, aiming to try and take off one of his fingers, but he pulled it back with speed, lashing out with the other hand. I ducked under it, using my own fist to push it high so that it missed completely. Again, the echo hit me in the wake of his missed strike, but again, it was easily ignored.
My ax was easily yanked free, and once more, Leviathan came after me, swiping at me with increasing quickness as he tried to land a solid, appreciable blow. I dodged and parried each, avoiding the sharp points of his claws, and with each exchange, I tried to get in an attack of my own, something that might let me blunt them.
But Leviathan himself was avoiding my return blows, angling his hands such that the best I could manage was shallow cuts, and with his enormous size and lightning fast attacks, he forced me to give ground, to dodge further and further back in order to keep out of range of the claws some instinct or intuition told me would be able to pierce my skin.
Back, I realized after a moment, and further into the city. Further away from the bay, and further away from my trap.
I am not so easily led by the nose!
I leapt back further to give myself a little more room as Leviathan's claws swept through the spot where I'd been standing. My arm cocked back, I hefted my ax, and then I swung forward and threw it, directly at Leviathan's chest.
The air cracked and howled and whooped as the ax flew, and Leviathan came to a sudden halt long enough to whip out a hand and swat it away and to the ground — and distract himself long enough for me to leap up and over his head, aiming to take hold of his tail so I could try to drag him back to the trap.
Except his tail swung out of the way and snaked up, lightning fast, to curl itself around my middle.
Herakles' grudging respect resonated in my belly, even as I brought my hands down to grip at the slim cord of scaly flesh that had wrapped twice around me with room still left over. Even with the utterly inhuman strength I had, now, I had difficulty wedging my fingers in between my cuirass and Leviathan's tail.
Then, I started to rise as he lifted me higher, and I realized a second before it happened exactly what it was he intended.
His tail whipped down and slammed me into the road, cracking, shattering the pavement like a rotten egg, and the impact rumbled through me and shook my bones — to no avail. It wasn't enough to get through Godhand.
That didn't stop him from trying again.
I didn't have even a moment to get my bearings before he whipped me back around and dragged me through a nearby building, through the glass windows whose jagged shards glanced off my skin, through the concrete and steel support beams that bent and snapped under my bulk, through the sturdy floors and the electrical wires that sparked impotently against my bare arms and legs, and then around again through another building. Then, he slammed me twice more into the ground with earth-shattering force, as though I was a hammer he was using to pound in a particularly stubborn nail.
I felt it the way I felt everything through Herakles' invulnerable skin: as pressure, as the sensation of impact, as the rumble of vibration through my body and bones, but there was no pain, no broken bones, no cuts and scrapes and bruises that dug deep into my skin and muscles, because this? This wasn't enough.
When he seemed to have thought he had finally gotten me, he swung me around to his front, still dangling from his tail, to examine me.
It gave me the time and the stability to finally slip my fingers between us and get a solid grip on his tail. With great effort, I started to pry it off of me, grunting, even as he tried just as hard to squeeze tighter.
Eventually, he might squeeze tight enough to hurt me, to damage me, maybe even to take one of the stock of lives that made Herakles nearly invincible. I had no intention of letting him get that far.
At that moment, while he was distracted with me, a coruscating beam of blinding white light struck him in the back, followed shortly by a black blur that collided with him with a thunderous CRACK. Leviathan reeled from the blow, swinging his arm backwards as though to swat Alexandria out of the sky, but she ducked under it, weathering the follow-up from his echo without trouble, and landed a calculated strike in one of the wounds I'd caused earlier, like it would actually hurt him the way it would a person to attack an open wound.
It wouldn't, it shouldn't, but Leviathan behaved as though it did, swinging at her with wild, almost panicked motions as she flitted about, darting in between Purity and Legend's lasers to strike at other wounds.
And while his attention was elsewhere, I summoned back up the Hydra's Bow, pulled back on the bowstring, and took aim for the deep, still bleeding wound carved into the center of his chest, where, if I was right, his core was hidden.
The circumstances weren't the best, but at this range? I couldn't miss.
Shooting the Hundred —
"Nine —"
Leviathan, however, seemed to have learned from the last two times I'd hit him with this Noble Phantasm, and rather than let me get it off a third time, he swung me around, putting me, momentarily, in the path of Legend and Purity's lasers, long enough to force them to stop, then swung me around again, whipped his tail out, and sent me flying.
For a fraction of a second, I was soaring helplessly through the air, hair streaming wildly around my face and the wind whistling in my ears. The city was a blur of muted, grayed color, washed out by the rain, flashing past me as I went.
Then, I crashed through a building, tumbling through desks and office equipment that hardly seemed to slow me down at all. I burst through another wall, then another, and another, and each wall must have been concrete or cement, because it crumbled and cracked instead of snapping, exploding into rubble under my momentum.
I finally came to a stop in what must have been some executive's office, because I landed at last on an expensive looking desk that broke in half beneath my weight. I pulled myself back to my feet a moment later, shaking my head to dispel the brief bout of dizziness that made the world tilt for a second.
When I raced back out through the hole I'd made, however, looking down at the street where I'd been fighting, Leviathan was nowhere to be seen.
I looked instead towards the armband that had made the transition with me, because my power hadn't counted it as part of my costume to transform with the rest of me. Somehow, it had survived all of the punishment Leviathan had put me through; Armsmaster and Dragon built these things to last, it seemed.
With two hilariously oversized fingers, I pressed the buttons on the armband.
"Urgent priority," I said. "I need a location on Leviathan."
"Please wait," said the pleasant voice of my armband. For several seconds that felt like an eternity, there was nothing else from it.
Useless.
I glanced back towards the bay, but the only people still there at the edge of the city were the barrier teams who were ready and waiting in case Leviathan tried to call in a wave and the stragglers from other teams who hadn't been able to keep up with Leviathan's speed. There was no point in asking them if they knew where he'd gone; most of them weren't even looking in this direction, and they were too far away to hear me clearly over the rain.
I stepped off of the edge of the building and plummeted onto the street below, taking a moment to retrieve my ax from where it had been thrown by Leviathan's swipe.
There was little indication of where he'd gone. Damage to the buildings, either from him bulldozing through them as he passed or attacks that had targeted him and missed, a burst fire hydrant or two, some chunks torn out of the street, but no obvious trail of mass destruction and crumpled infrastructure.
With nothing else to follow, it would have to —
"Leviathan sighted, CA-3," my armband announced.
I jammed my fingers into the buttons, again. "Give me a route!"
In response, my armband lit up with a big, red dot on the map, showing Leviathan's location. A smaller blue dot highlighted mine. A jagged yellow line connected them, showing me the quickest path to him that didn't involve going through — or over — the buildings in the way.
A bare moment later, it announced, "Leviathan engaged, CA-3."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Four-thousand words of mostly action. And we've still got two more chapters of it to go for this fight.
That feeling when you realize Herk's brain is actually kinda scarier than his brawn. And his brawn is plenty scary on its own.
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