CH32

Miles vanished under unnamed aura techniques, allowing Jason and me to cross vast distances in steps. Each step devoured miles down the main highway leading to the convoy. A light, cold rain drizzled down as miasma clouds came into focus. The black particles flowed to me, devoured by my black halo, and the body of a 5th-rank demon quickly followed. We spent moments in the scene of the ambush that forced the death march to take transport directly to the capitol. An execution by the Meister of Death, Charles Samson, was scheduled to happen when the prisoners entered the capitol. With an actual threat on the scene, all pretenses left World Gov.

This was a show of power, a way for World Gov to regain control of the narrative. Or that was the hypothesis I felt fit best. With cheap drones and the backing of some moderates in the VHA, word would get out that leaders had to work with World Gov. The capture, use for entertainment, and execution was to show the rest of the world World Gov could do what it wanted and get away with it. By saving even one member of Emily’s family, we showed that World Gov wasn’t all-powerful.

Our bodies were charged with our full power from the spot; we were 30,000+ at least. I might have recently hidden my power, and Jason probably did the same. Not even a flicker of aura appeared out of our control. The lack of visibility wasn’t an accident; our concealment techniques were mastered, making us undetectable to scanners even when we used a brief flash of aura to step over vast distances. It was to our advantage to appear as Megacity citizens untouched by even a hint of source.

Jason held a hand on his trusty Calvary saber. A curved blade ran and sealed to the gills from the moment it was started in the 3D printer. Even the lasers that bonded the steel were made into ingredients in a small ritual with seals and runes. The merging of the two styles made the saber a weapon that could function off both sources. The sheathe was a thing of beauty covered in seals to conceal the power of the artifact blade. Jason named the blade Civil and could freeze and slice with his aura in equal measures with the weapon.

“We’re about to catch up to them. The plan is to kill the driver and the guards before they know we’re there and drive the carrier back home. I want you to drive while I take care of any pursuers.” Jason said.

I realized we hadn’t discussed a plan before we left; this was all we had, and it felt lacking. Then again, this felt right. A spontaneous plan right at the end of a torturous two-and-a-half months of training. It also had the advantage of being simple enough to work. We only had to be vicious enough that they didn’t dare pursue it.

As the younger brother and a jerk, I had to say the obvious. “What will we do if they are already in the city?” I asked.

Jason didn’t say anything for a moment, then took a long breath and responded. “Unleash your flies upon the city and turn as many Megacity citizens as possible.”

There were automated shields and chemicals to take care of pests like flies. Normally, even fans would work, but I mutated the flies three times and stored them in cubes ready for deployment. I could bring the numbers if we had some bodies to work with.

We crossed over a hill into a kill box. Torrents activated, spitting depleted uranium rounds by the thousands our way. Men ran between the machines, working to get the defenses up and running. Holes were dug, and a few military-grade nanite forges worked to pump out the materials needed to set up a powerful defense.

In the moment between when we arrived on the scene and the bullets flew, I made an assessment.

As the bullets flew, I noticed molten glass from MN particle canons, which only mobile suits could handle. We saw the first ambush, but there was likely a second one. While I didn’t see any blood, that didn’t mean no one died, or another party hadn’t kidnapped one of the girls. Remnants of the inquisitors from the former regime were few in numbers after Grand Inquisitor Ludwig’s purges. There was another party, possibly the same as the demon summoner or another group with another goal.

I lifted my hand and unleashed the full might of my aura for a moment. Tendrils of super-heated energy leaped out and scoured the torrent emplacements. Missiles exploded in their casings long before they could be installed as metal shifted in the light of day before structures crumbled in on themselves. Men burst into flames on contact, their eyes melting out of their heads as the attack stretched for a few heartbeats. Rifts opened in structures, and silver-molten steel waterfalls fell to pool beneath structures. Ammunition fired in their casings, exploding within anti-personnel weapon torrents, bursting and hitting the men manning them. From afar, what appeared to be a handprint covered the defensive point, and everywhere it touched, the world burned. Only little structures loosely protected by Mythril enamel survived but gave no protection to the men hiding behind them.

From my pack, a casing opened, revealing hundreds of thousands of mutant flies emerging and infecting the corpses. Flesh rotted before my eyes as entropy took hold far faster than was natural. Under putrefied skin and muscle, implants sparked as maggots crawled over them. The life cycle that once took 40 days lasted only moments with the right mutations. A new generation of flies emerged, controlled by the black rings placed on their forebears. Energy flowed through the insects, enhancing them in specialized ways that enhanced their ability to reproduce to spread the black rings. Much of the corpses were lost to the hastened process, but in exchange, I reaped hundreds of thousands more flies for the assault on the city.

We left the installation shortly after arriving. The lack of Mythril rounds was a cornerstone of penal soldiers. Why are slaves under punishment with the tools needed to do their jobs well when you have disposable mage killer drones for that purpose?

Not half a mile behind the penal soldiers, a dozen mage-killer drones rolled after us. Even rolling their barriers and lasers fired with accuracy. Despite my best efforts, the drone’s AI improved its battle tactics.

Instead of stationary drones firing lasers, tanking hits, and absorbing energy, they moved like wrecking balls, throwing up dust and constantly moving. A laser came in, and I cartwheeled away, sensing for a sniper. I ducked under a laser while Jason tanked them with small blue flares of his aura.

One laser hit me then suddenly, all 72 concentrated on me for as long as the drones could keep their components from firing.

They hit us like ships of old, exposing their broadside to fire their canons. Each pass cost us a little in our mental concentration and Jason’s energy capacity. Time would recover Jason’s stamina, but we wouldn’t have much of it when we reached the city.

A decision had to be made. Each pass turned the sand around us to glass from super-heated lasers taxing our barriers to their breaking points. The drones could each fire 6 lasers while moving, and 12 fired an even 72, interchanging between us.

They focused on Jason once they figured out my barrier wasn’t losing power. Each drone closed in with a constant stream of laser fire, draining its inbuilt MN drive to finally end us.

I felt a change in the air when Jason had finally had enough.

Jason drew his blade, and it glowed blue with his aura filling out the seals and runes covering the blade. My brother stabbed down on the spinning drone, slicing between plates into the delicate circuitry within. The moment stopped dead as the machine lost power.

“Just like that, the AI will adjust and request a different makeup for its chassis,” I said.

Jason smirked because he didn’t wear a helmet. I raised a finger and repeated his actions with a beam of my own. The barrier flashed around my beam for a moment before the alternator within fried, and my beam slid between plates. The others were cleaned up once we had a strategy to take care of the drones. I took one of the drones home, giving us all the time we needed to take it apart and search out its weaknesses.

Once the last drone fell, I broke the weld, keeping their spheres together, and stacked them. Some of my flies had already found hosts to drop their parasites in. Those brought into the way of our culture through the black rings received a quest to get the Mythril chassis somewhere we could retrieve them later. I trashed the tracker in the drones to ensure there would be no retrieval.

Defeating the drones, while an accomplishment for a mage, was meaningless to us. Still, I took a moment to suck in a breath and get my bearings. We were much stronger, but the drones had advanced their tactics. Who was to say they wouldn’t have upgrades to deal with us next time we fought them?

“Get ready. More are on the way.” Jason said.

I raised my gun and fired, hitting gaps, welds, and shallow spots in the Mythril frames, taking out the drones before they could pose a threat. Even the barriers were bypassed outright by the Mythril. Seals let me put more bullets in a magazine than should be possible.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the skill needed to do the same to create a bag of holding yet. An inventory would be great. Father had one and even left his notes on its development. Seeing the instructions and making one were two different things. There were techniques involved higher than the Construct technique.

So, I made do with 75 Mythril rounds in a magazine built for 10. The drones were never a real problem as much as World Gov seemed to want to make them their backbone. They were incredibly dangerous against pure mage types, but my brother and I were different. At the end of the day, the drones were far too specialized.

When my rifle clicked empty, I raised a finger and took out the last drone. Unlike the drones, my lasers weren’t determined by fragile components.

We rushed forward over the expensive Mythril chassis of the drones and crossed the vast distance between us and the convoy. A particle beam hit my barrier, driving me into a nearby hill as a mobile suit dropped out of the sky. I felt the ground quake as 90ft of angry black mech landed in an explosion of sand, glass, and steel.

“Surrender in the name of the Government of mankind.” A male voice said. “I am Siege Warner Magna Meister of the State of Mississippi. You are under arrest on the grounds of sorcery; surrender into my custody, and you will have a fair trial.” Siege said.

I burst out of the hill as an underground spring burst from the pressure, shooting mud and cool water in the air. Blue particles filled my vision from the mech that surprised me. I knew intellectually that it was on the field, so to speak, but the odds of it detecting us fully concealed were astronomically low. Motion capture had to be secondary to source sensing technology when expecting attacks from mages. Motion sensing was for missiles and other technology from other city-states. That led me to believe I was dealing with a mobile suit from the times of the rebellion in the 2620s.

“Reconstruction is a bitch, isn’t it. How much of that suit is Mythril?” I asked while my cube sent a few scans, and my AI attempted to hack his systems. While I had an estimated composition of the material of Siege’s mobile suit. “What is a government-sponsored soldier following a corporation for?” I asked.

“For your own good, get out of here, or I’ll be forced to neutralize you,” Siege said.

The calms rang out in a rattling voice. Mobile suits weren’t hard to get, not really. Any idiot, us included, with a nanite forge and the right blueprints could build them. MN engines aren’t new technology, even if the suit in front of me had a Generation 8 engine powering it. The pod in the back encased in armor was a dead giveaway that the pilot was a government-sponsored soldier trained by World Gov. This pilot had no mutations or culture to speak of. He was pure, and that was a weakness I would exploit.

I took a step a flashed to the side of automated particle canons on the mobile suit’s shoulders. AI assist could only go so far when all it hit was a series of after images. My vampire walk had improved with my increased power. A beam sword slashed in a wide horizontal blur to my eyes, only caught by my energy sense.

Jumping in the air would have left me open to the particle canons on the suit’s shoulders. A metal blade still sheathed on the suit’s side was the real threat. The particle cannon and beam sword were all used to gather data on my movements to plot a line of predictability. Once the suit’s AI was able to predict how I moved with certainty, it would draw its barrier-piercing sword and go for the kill.

Every move I made taught the machine how to fight my culture, improving its capabilities against others like me. If I destroyed it, the AI’s black box would be picked up and integrated into a new suit or the drones to improve their capabilities against those like me.

I fired off a series of lasers, rapidly slamming into the unit’s barrier and raising the heat. What grass remained around us quickly caught fire as I got a feel for the barrier. Maybe I should have made a Mythril sword instead of going for defense.

My aura was red, which meant I excelled at increasing temperatures. Fire was the element I was best at, but that didn’t mean I was limited to the element. While our culture wasn’t crazy about the elements like mages, we had affinities. Evocation was the technique used to use our aura in its most offensive ways. Fireballs, lasers, and energy blades were some highlights of my arsenal. While my energy blade could be considered a construct, my lasers were far more temporary. They were built to handle large swaths of enemies with as little focus as possible. Against a strong enemy, lasers weren’t going to cut it.

Arias were both weaknesses and strengths of mages; they were an obvious tell, but they helped a mage save mental space for their spells. It was easier to remember a few words rather than form complex techniques with mana on a battlefield. So, mages are trained to associate certain words with the formations of spells in their training. Many spells are universal, so speaking them can make mages predictable.

I raised two fingers and caught the beam sword. A slightly denser barrier appeared above my fingertips, stopping the attack cold. The engine kicked it into high gear, and I felt the suit bear down on me with all its strength. My hand didn’t move with all the machine’s engines flaring. The canons aimed down at me and fired, filling my vision with particle emissions. My barrier barely flickered, but the beam stopped by my fingers was getting hotter.

My right hand extended in a familiar motion that I trained for hours of daily practice. Sweat and blood from extreme gravity training had made a technique entirely natural. An energy blade extended, and I used it to cut through the small line used to produce the beam sword, causing the weapon to short-circuit before cutting out. I pointed my blade at the mobile suit and extended it.

The Magna Suit’s barrier lasted a moment as the suit dipped. I missed the center of the suit’s mass, and my blade cut through one of the shoulder-mounted canons. The piece of equipment ran like wax in front of a roaring fire as the Mythril coating the weapon flowed away. My blade pierced through the titanium beneath, causing a small explosion from the suit as nanite chains struggled with damage control. The sudden burst of heat traveling through the suit had to go somewhere, and I hoped it would go to the pilot.

A sudden burst of speed brought the machine dozens of feet in the air as I withdrew my blade. A missile panel opened up and fired as I took a step. The explosions behind me sent tiny pieces of Mythril flying; it was the obvious response in a world filled with barrier-using entities.

“You are making a mistake. Nothing good will come of going any further.” Siege said.

A black energy beam from the other mobile suit blasted Jason away from the transport, flying for the open gates to the Megacity. I could see the wall, a massive construction over a thousand feet in the air. Drones flew in the sky in the thousands, ready to commit suicide or intercept any attack on the city. Sparkling lights from an uncountable number of MN reactors gave the appearance of a shining Utopia in the darkness.

I moved to intercept when panels opened in the wall surrounding the Megacity. Bodies poured out in the hundreds of thousands, thrown out like trash and covered with bits of metal. Mutants stood filled to the brim with military-grade nanites and charged. A tidal wave of flesh had been thrown out of the city like trash to intercept and slow us down.

Rats the size of horses with needles instead of fur and a human face instead of a snout charged. Humans made of countless corpses slithered like a snake with faces instead of scales, with each face screaming a death rattle. Mountainous men made of muscle standing nearly 10ft tall, charged with heads like helmets and bones like power armor. On and on it went; mutants lab grown considered failures to be disposed of had been dumped to deal with us for convenience.

The city could keep doing it almost endlessly with the technology at its disposal. Energy could be used to grow anything within the labs of the undercity. Who knew what was being experimented on, whether legal or not, in the city’s depths?

As the mobile suits fled inside, Jason appeared beside me. His teeth were gnashed, and he looked ready to kill everything that moved. In contrast, I was nothing but smiles. A great gift had been given to me.