บท 227: Dimension Collapse (2 in 1)
It all makes sense now… one of the things that have been bugging me since the start of this battle was that the number of beasts was too high compared to what the swamp creatures could gather, and it should be the opposite. The ratio of strong to weak beasts in the cow's army was also too high when compared to the swamp creatures.
For a while I thought that it might be because they belong to different species, from what I saw there was a difference between humans and snakes already, but the existence of this place showed me that the Cow herself was a beast factory, any data that I could get from this fight was meaningless because of it. That's why there were so many chimeras and semi-humans among their ranks. Despite the death of the cow, this place was still working, and it would be like that until the whole dimension collapses…
I looked at the mission one more time to see the time.
[Mission: Survive the Whole Collapse
Type: Main
Reward: 500 system points, ???
Time to complete: 01h 10m 14s]
…
I didn't think about it until now.
Collapse?
I looked at the mission completely dumbfounded for a few seconds trying to make sense of it… was this the meaning the whole time?
I always thought about this mission as a survive a month mission but what does the Whole Collapse mean?
Did the system always know that I was going to end here?
But it should say survive the dimension collapse or something like that… if it was the case… why it says, "the Whole Collapse"?
I will need to think about it later. Considering the time conversion for being here, If the mission refers to this dimension collapse it means that we have a little less than 6 hours to leave. If it relates to something else, this place might disappear at any moment.
After the vision ended, I looked at the semi-human for a few seconds, it didn't have an aura but was there a possibility of it waking up and attacking us?...
I wasn't taking my chances. The spearhead pierced through his throat the second later under Hope's surprised gaze.
"Why did you do that? Was he even alive?"
"No… at least not yet…"
She tilted her head in confusion, and then make a scared face.
"Please don't tell me it's a zombie…"
Actually, calling it a zombie wouldn't be entirely inaccurate, but a preferred to avoid the word since I knew that Hope was scared of them, and she is already in a stressful situation without bringing scary creatures. We started to walk again avoiding the area with the rubble without any troubles, I explained to her what I saw with psychometry as we moved forward, I talked about them as homunculus to not terrorize her.
We spend a couple of hours looking at every single wall ready to be attacked… and it happened a couple of times… not from the walls but we usually found the beasts roaming. I had to get a new weapon from the system, and I was really annoyed since this little trip had already cost me about 500 system points.
Besides the feather, 4 shurikens were rotating around Hope, Zak's spearhead was firmly in my off-hand. As for my main hand, once again I chose a scimitar similar to the one I lost against the nightmare.
Not gonna lie, Hope surprised me with her way of fighting. It was wonderful, the perfect balance between attack and defense. It was tough for a melee fighter to go against her. An acid spitting rat gave her a lot of troubles tho.
And like this, we kept looking for the way out…
[Dante requires authorization to use Mind Shield (Y/N)?]
I looked at the notification from the system for a few seconds as I focused on my links…
"They came."
_____________________________
Outside the battle was in full swing once again.
The beast that ran away with the black sheep didn't come back but more, and more beast kept appearing, and unlike at the beginning where they could keep up, now they were appearing at a faster rate than it took them to kill them.
"Someone take down that stupid sheep-rat!!!"
Hayley yelled as she held her head.
'Bueeek!…'
After hours of suffering that constant pain, she already was in the brink of going crazy. She was trying to control herself… Spencer might still be alive inside the cow, and if she lost it again she might kill him, she couldn't make the same mistake again…
After that last scream, silence came… the sound stopped, and the headache slowly started to disappear.
She never had felt as relaxed as now…
'Sorry, it took us too long to come here…'
The familiar and unexpected voice gave her a sense of security. She turned her head just in time to see a big light blue snake with a girl on top of her. Two cats and a bunny were there with her.
'ALL HAIL THE SNAKE GODDESS!!!!'
All the rats that weren't fighting fell on their… knees? And started to pray.
Cai-Cai did her part too as she looked around and stood high and proud with a smile while she licked the air.
The ponytail-girl left the snake's back and almost lost her balance. Luckily the little bunny floated to her side and prevented her fall.
Hayley took this chance and froze the future source of her nightmares.
With her power back, one by one she killed every beast that was supporting the beast side, finally bringing some balance back to the fight.
But Hayley wasn't the only source for that change in the tides of battle.
What really changed everything was Cai-Cai…
She joined the fight, the rat's morale reached a whole new level and became a relentless tide. Even the wounded and maimed rats had to show their strength and courage in front of their goddess.
Of course, when the humans saw them attacking with renewed energies couldn't fall behind either. How could they allow for a bunch of rats to be better than them?
Gerhard's hammer fell finally giving the teleporting bull a decent strike.
Both Gerhard and the bull were wounded because of the fight, but until now none of them managed to give the other one a direct hit that caused real damage, so the battle has been extended for a lot of time. Until now.
The bull jumped trying to escape, regroup and attack again, but Gerhard already knew what to expect. After all, it has been repeating this patron the whole time. As the bull jumped again, Gerhard took a leap of faith and tried to guess the direction of the attack, and it worked.
The hammer fell on the bull with Gerhard's full strength leaving it badly hurt… he wasn't able to finish it, but the bull was out of the fight already.
Rose started to look around trying to find Spencer, the link that until a while ago was inexistent was now barely noticeable… she could feel him and knew that he was alive… it was the same for Dante… none of them had fully recovered so they couldn't help in the fight. The mind shield that Dante used on Hayley was already the limit of what he could do for now, and it was because it was in part supported that Spencer.
The black kitten disappeared and joined the fight. Paws was still too little to fight head to head with those big and scary beasts, so he kept ambushing them focusing on the legs supporting Gerhard's attacks.
Another hour went by, the humans and rats managed to push back the beasts, and they discovered that they appeared from somewhere behind the cow…
An ominous aura suddenly fell on all of them…
It was scary… something bad was about to happen, and the pressure came from the already supposedly dead Alpha.
*Crack…*
______________________________________
"Who is here?"
"I mean outside… Dante and Rose are near…"
"How you know that?"
"I can feel them… And Dante asked for authorization for a joint ability… I hope they don't start using their powers left and right…"
"Knowing them… it's possible that it happens. He used that mind thingy you got?"
"Yeah… there must be a beast that can use mind attack out there. "Why are they even here?"
I was worried by the notification… I hope Rose doesn't come and do the same she did to the snake alpha to the cow's body…
"Well, they must have felt that you disappeared and were worried… if he asked to use that ability, it means that they are fighting right?"
"Yeah…"
Hope was looking at me as if she was expecting a follow up after that.
"I thought that when the cow died, we would have won…"
"…"
…
"That's it!!!"
Hope at my side jumped back scared at my reaction
"What?!?!?"
"They are not fighting the previous army…"
"Who are they fighting then?"
"There is an exit here, and this is a beast factory…"
"There really is a way out from here!!!"
… I never doubted that part…
I smiled… and activated my tracking ability if the beast inside here are leaving they should be going in a certain direction right? The caves constantly split but we just followed the path which had more movement until we entered a chamber with hundreds of beasts waiting in front of another tunnel that opens and closes constantly…
"How are we going to pass through them?"
I looked at the system and took out all the grenades that I could buy.
If I cause an explosion somewhere, the beasts are likely going to investigate… since we are covered in blood, they can't pick up our smell so unless they see us they are not going to know we are here. If that doesn't work, I can try to make a path, and we force our way out of here.
"Hide there… I'm throwing a grenade over there to call their attention."
Hope nodded and hid where I told her. I took off the safety pin and saw as the grenade drew an arc until it fell near another tunnel filled with beasts.
By the time it fell I was already on the floor next to Hope
*BOOOOM*
As expected, the notifications appeared one after another, and the beast focused in the place of the explosion.
Silently we started to move towards the exit trying to remain undetected.
Of course, that didn't work as well as I expected.
The grenades flew along the path that we were about to take.
If I wanted points, I could have thrown them in another direction but cleaning a path to the exit was by far more important.
We ran in that direction opening the path mainly thanks to the shurikens that were rotating around us. As we were about to cross the sphincter the whole place trembled, I hold Hope tightly against me, ready to heal her if needed as we crossed the portal back to our world and saw the sphincter closing behind us…
_____________________
*Crack…
One of the Alpha's little horns cracked but instead of falling or breaking as everyone thought it would happen it imploded… as if it was a chain reaction the other horn did the same and collapsed onto itself.
This event was followed by the appearance of two bodies covered in dried blood in the same direction than the other monsters. Dante and Rose looked in there with relief…
Not everyone felt relieved… as soon as Spencer came back, he felt it… the cow was collapsing together with her pocket dimension.
Without saying anything to the people that were surprised to see them he just yelled one word…
"RUNNNNNNN!!!!"
Not everyone had noticed him until now. Hayley was ready to run to him with her eyes covered in tears, but his warning and the growing bad feeling that came from the cow told her otherwise.
Most of them didn't need to be told twice to run away, and even the beast seemed to agree with Spencer as they started to run away as they felt the danger coming from the cow.
The head was the next to implode. A suction force created a little gale centered around the cow. For now, just a soft breeze and dust were sucked by it. The dust was spinning around it blocking the vision of what was happening to the cow.
Most people didn't care about it anyway, they just wanted to run as far away as possible in panic as they heard the following cracks that told us that the body started to implode.
Everyone did their best to take the wounded with them. A big group of rats got around Cai-Cai protecting her as she dashed away from the little storm that was growing around the Alpha.
The cow disappeared entirely in a wall of dust swirling around, the sounds around made it impossible to know if the whole cow already collapse or the worst had yet to come.
The east of the city was slowly being eaten by the storm that was getting bigger every second.
They could only helplessly see as some rats and a couple of wounded people were being sucked into the storm. Spencer just checked that none of his friends was sucked by the cyclone. Rose was safe in the top of Cai-Cai way ahead of them, Gerhard and Hayley were also running in front of them, with the help of Blake and Mark.
One more minute…
'Would this stop in one more minute?'
Spencer looked a car being sucked by the storm and thought that it seemed unlikely.
Spencer and Hope were the ones closest to the storm, and the wind was so strong that it was trying to stop him from going forward.
He was holding Hope's hand with all he got…
'After all, we went through. I'm not losing her now."
Piercing the floor with the scimitar helped him as he now had something to hold on to… it was the point when the storm was so strong that they couldn't move forward anymore… He could barely open his eyes and Hope was surrounding his torso with her arms.
…
_________________
The sucking force was too strong and kept growing. I was holding hope with all I had.
Not like this…. This can't be the end…
If the storm grows, more it will be impossible for me to keep holding the scimitar…
[Ding!]
[Mission: Survive the Whole Collapse
Reward: 500 system points, Upgrade ticket]
…
The notification filled me with happiness, it was like if everything was over… but the storm didn't disappear…
I had to struggle no not being sucked by it, but at least the intensity wasn't growing anymore. Once I got used to it, with extreme difficulty I was able to take a step forward and move the scimitar, I could hold on my own enough time to nail the scimitar to the floor again.
A smile appeared on my face. I got used to it an repeated the procedure, advance, pierce the floor, hold tight…. And repeat… this time faster than before…
I could feel Hope hugging me with all her strength. I did the same as I was pressing her back against me.
"Everything is going to be fine we are going to make it…"
I'm not sure if I said that for myself or to calm my sister, but it wasn't important. I used adrenaline burst, and with the help of the scimitar, I moved forward one step at the time until I couldn't feel the pressure from the storm anymore.
Only to be sure I went farther I didn't forget about the weakened state and I don't want to die for something that stupid after all that happened.
I walked forward for a while before being able to stop and fall on my knees. Hope fell at my side and started to look in every direction with her surprised big watery eyes.
[Weakened state -50% on all physical stats and Esper Abilities - 1h 25m 13s left]
Far away I could see Hayley and Rose with their eyes full of tears running at me, Gerhard was trying to act tough too, but the result was a horrible sight to behold… I saw in their eyes that they were all ready to jump on us.
Unfortunately for them, someone got ahead.
"*WAAAAAAAAAAAAA!*"
Hope jumped on my arms crying her eyes out… for most of the people here, those couple of hours were horrible, but we spent almost an entire day inside the cow surrounded by danger.
This was the point where she couldn't contain her emotions anymore…
"I tho-ught that.. never goin' to see any - ag-ain… I -#$-!$% scared.. i-i-I waaaaa*."
She cried and cried, sometimes I could understand what she said, but most of the time I'm sure that she was just throwing random noises…
I just gave my girlfriend and friends a helpless look. I could see G's wry smile.
Both Hayley and Rose were still debating with themselves if it was a good idea to jump on my arms despite Hope's presence or not…
I pated Hope's back until she calmed down and fell asleep in my arms.
It was finally over…
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SongWeaver
SongWeaver Chapters 7/7+0/5
(It was a 2 in 1 chapter)
Tomorrow there is no chapter(I have to work on character sheets...) but I plan to move the Christmas special.
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