novelraw Chapter 27: Battle of Titans
Chapter 27: Battle of Titans
Victor launched his assault on Hira 125, moving at a speed I couldn’t precisely calculate. He struck from every angle, leaving no opening for the monster to retaliate. Yet, despite the barrage, his attacks only seemed to aggravate the giant beast. Each blow made it recoil in pain, but Victor couldn’t penetrate its thick hide.
We were not going to defeat him with brute force alone
“Victor, wait!” I halted him, realizing we needed a plan before he exhausted himself.
He skidded to a stop, turning sharply.
“What?” His tone was as abrasive as ever.
“We can’t win like this. We need a strategy before we run out of strength.”
“Speak for yourself!”
“Wait!” I moved toward him. “It’s almost time for another blast! We need to find cover!”
“What blast?”
Before we could take shelter, Hira erupted once more. When the dust settled, I found myself standing safely behind Victor. He had generated a shockwave that neutralized Hira’s energy blast, protecting all three of us—Wardak included. But the island lay in ruins, and Hira had grown even larger, more monstrous.
In that chaotic moment, Abdu suddenly touched Victor’s arm. My curiosity piqued—why repeat that odd gesture?
“Why...” I began, but stopped mid-sentence. I sensed something—Victor’s energy. Inside Wardak.
Confused, I arrived at the only possible conclusion: Wardak had somehow absorbed Victor’s energy signature.
Victor spun around to Wardak.
“What did you do?!” He asked him. He also noticed that something strange had happened.
Wardak ignoring the two of us, grinned.
“Now this is power.” He said, “I’m not letting some aliens have all the fun! With this, I can finally deliver everyone’s sentence!”
With that proclamation, he vanished, matching Victor’s speed. We stood there, bewildered. It dawned on me: Wardak had awakened a special ability—power mimicry.
Victor, unfazed, turned around and resumed his assault on Hira 125. For nearly an hour, he pummeled the monster, his body overheating to over 150 degrees Celsius. I still couldn’t fathom how he sustained such velocity.
Having rested, 2.0 finally activated the Solid State again. And then he urged me to flee the island, but that wasn’t an option. To become a proud hero, I refused to run from any battle!
I was getting the hang of the Solid State. Joining the fight, I still couldn’t inflict much damage on Hira. Our attacks—Victor’s and mine—only made him more aggressive. I jumped back, gathering my thoughts. It was going to explode again in ten minutes, with blasts occurring five minutes apart. After each explosion, its movements slowed as it absorbed more energy for the next one.
That’s when I saw it—a way to defeat it. “Victor, I think I know how to beat this monster! Its cells rely on kinetic energy. Each blast releases it all, slowing its movement. If we prevent it from absorbing energy after it explodes, we’ll win!”
He ignored me, relentlessly attacking Hira 125. He wanted to prove his strength by overpowering the beast with brute strength, but Hira 125 was a monster on his own level—unmatched in raw power.
It exploded again, tearing the island apart and boiling the surrounding water.
That’s when Victor finally faced the truth.
“Okay, how do we stop it from absorbing energy or whatever?”
“We need to change the conditions.” I quickly replied, relieved he was finally ready to litesn to my plan. “We need to take it the coldest place on Earth.”
Putting his ego aside, he stepped closer. “Where’s that? The coldest place on Earth?”
“The Antarctic! The high ridge on the East Antarctica plateau. We need to move it now...”
Before I finished, Victor grabbed Hira and shoved it away, toward Antarctica I presumed. He returned in exactly 80 seconds. Given Hira 125’s size and the terrain, I calculated his speed. The distance from the island to East Antarctica—roughly 20,000 kilometers—meant he hit around Mach 1,460. Factoring in Hira’s weight and air resistance, Victor alone reached speeds up to 0.2% the speed of light.
As he carried me, the Solid State reacted to that velocity. I began to understand his speed. The secret lay in his molecules, converting thermal energy from friction into kinetic energy. It was fascinating. Theoretically, as long as he moved, friction provided endless energy, allowing potential indefinite acceleration. His speed could increase indefinitely.
This sparked an idea to boost my own speed.
In mere moments, we reached East Antarctica.
“What now? It’s still moving!” Victor said
“We need to make it expel all its energy! It shouldn’t be as strong here,” I replied.
I could see worry building up on his face. After all it also his first time, running into such an enemy.
“Trust me! We’ll defeat it here!” I assured him
We battled Hira 125 to drain its energy. The cold slashed Victor’s speed to a quarter, but something strange happened to me. As we fought, I felt stronger, as if chains had snapped free. I didn’t understand it, but it let me fight at my peak longer.
Hira 125 remained formidable. Though slower, each strike cracked the ice and hurled shards everywhere. The fight dragged on until it unleashed another blast. Its speed and movements faltered, and in this frigid wasteland, it couldn’t reabsorb enough energy.
Then I devised a final plan.
“Victor, grab a chain and the heaviest object you can lift,” I said, knowing he’d be back in moments. “We’ll tie it with a sinker and drop it into a subglacial lake. Inside the water at that temperature it won’t have energy to blast. We’ll use its own power against it and drown it!”
And then Hira suddenly screamed at us.
“I told you guys, I’m not a monster!” He exclaimed
Victor blinked, with a dazed expression on his face.
“Wait! It can speak?”
“Yes, but... he’s a criminal turned monster. Imagine him in a town! He needs to be stopped!”
“I’m not a criminal!” Maxwell protested. With his energy low, his sense of self resurfaced. Perhaps due to the cold.
“My name is Maxwell Cole,” he began. “I was fishing on my boat when these lunatic psychopaths kidnapped me! They dragged me to an underground basement, and some mad scientist said I’d be his ‘precious subject.’ I don’t know what’s happening to me! I just want to go home!”
“You can’t go home!” I said bluntly. “You’re a walking nuclear disaster. An energy blast in a city would kill hundreds of thousands!”
But he was quick to reply
“So what? You want me to die? Are you even human?” Maxwell challenged. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t ask for this! Please, I don’t want to die!”
Listening to his pleas, my heart faltered. Before I could respond, Victor turned away.
“This is stupid.” He said, “I’m out of here!”
Before he could leave, I stopped him. “You can’t just leave! Let’s finish this together!”
“My job’s done. Do what you want.”
“Victor, wait!” I run in front of him, “Come back to Fort Vanguard with me! I saw what you did—you’re the strongest member of Class X, maybe even stronger than that. But you can’t fight this war alone. Today proved it. Not even you can be in two places at once. You need allies.”
“I’ve made my point clear,” he snapped. “I’m not a soldier! I’m not here to save anyone! I’m doing this for me—to be the strongest so no one can control me. I only joined your group to find Alessandra. There’s no gain in saving someone for free.”
He looked down, regret in his voice. “I saved her from those brutes, only to become the villain.”
I heard the pain in his voice. He hadn’t moved past the underground bunker incident. Rage had consumed him, eroding his trust. If he stayed in that void, he’d never return. I decided to intervene, proposing a foolproof plan to bring him back to Fort Vanguard.
Then we confronted Maxwell Cole, otherwise known as Hira 125, and forced him to promise to stay in Antarctica, where his destructive power wouldn’t harm anyone.
Another domino fell. Its momentum carried us forward—to what came next.