Forged Legacy

Chapter 159 - No Child Left Behind

Boom!

A conflagration of gold and gore erupted behind the screaming gluthog. They couldn’t see their targets behind the wall of flesh, but kill notifications rolled in one after another. Most were brimfiends, but one for a Level 37 Mortarhorn finally revealed the name of those satanic goats.

“Good hit! Come on, we gotta move!” Harvey cheered, straining to pick up the catapult. For a moment, he worried his Adaptive Inscriptions would interfere with the spatial ring somehow, but it disappeared the moment he got it off the ground. He only had the essence for a few shots, so they couldn’t afford to hit the same area twice.

“We’ve got a few brimfiends incoming!” Steve warned.

Harvey looked up to see 8 of the creatures slowly rising into the air. Two immediately tumbled out of sight, their wounds too severe to fly. The others pressed on, but even at this distance, he could see how scorched they were.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Steve had traded his sword and shield for a rifle and was taking potshots at the creatures. It was a nearly impossible shot without a good scope, but he kept shooting anyway.

“Dad, come on!” Tyler urged.

“I know they’re demons, but I want to put them out of their misery! Just listen!”

Harvey froze, turning back towards the chaos he’d created. The brimfiends were definitely wailing, but he couldn’t hear anything over the deep, bellowing rumble of the gluthog. It was trying to thrash its way out of the ground, but its brothers had it wedged in too tight. From the front, it looked just like any other brick in their unholy wall, but Harvey knew its hind was riddled with hot, holy shrapnel. The bursts of Heaven’s Wrath were short-lived, and with the arrays already spent, there was nothing to end the swine’s suffering.

[Just leave it!] Julius urged.

His teeth began to ache as he clenched his jaw tighter and tighter.

“Agh!” Harvey groaned as he turned around, pulled Rupture from his ring, and loaded three bullets with Echo Forge. A revolver was even worse this far away, but at least he had a bigger target.

The trigger collapsed under his finger as he clenched down, sending his first shot into the dirt 50 feet in front of the beast.

Calm down. Surprise break. Surprise break. He chided himself. Trigger discipline. It was the first thing he learned about shooting. Good aim didn’t mean shit if you pulled yourself off target.

Sinking back into his stance, he struggled to align the sights. For the first time in a long time, his hands began to shake. He could feel his heart thumping faster and faster each moment as he held his breath.

What the hell is wrong with you, Harvey! You’ve killed hundreds of creatures!

[None of those were mercy killings.]

Julius was right. This was his first time shooting something that couldn’t fight back.

[This won’t be the last life we take today. Just take a deep breath and pull the trigger.]

Bang! Bang!

The next shots came in a slow staccato rhythm, and the flash of golden flames erupting from his bullet proved he’d hit his target. The kill notification came a few seconds later, and he gasped for air as his hands dropped to his sides. Looking back at his father, he saw he’d managed to knock one brimfiend out of the sky, but the rest were still coming.

“Wait until they get closer! Harvey, let’s go!” Tyler urged.

Steve grunted with annoyance but followed as the trio sprinted towards the next spot of road clear enough to fit the catapult. The temporary inscriptions remained when it popped out of his ring, so all he needed to do was ratchet down the scoop and load a second shattersmite core. Like the first, this sailed just over the wall, but the resulting explosion was smaller than before. The hellpowder detonated just fine, but it appeared some of the scales containing the burst arrays had shattered before they could activate. He’d known that was a risk, but at least some extra shrapnel was better than nothing.

Hell’s response was growing. Before, only the injured were rising up to face them, but now a tide of fiends was rising out to meet them. Harvey saw a group pointing right at them, and a volley of onyx flame shot into the air. Most wouldn’t land anywhere near them, but there was one coming uncomfortably close.

“Help me pick up the catapult!” Harvey panicked. It wouldn’t fit inside the bunker, and he didn’t trust his dad’s G-Grade shield skill to deal with the attack. Maybe once he evolved his Mark to an Imprint and could start adding Legacy to it, but there was no telling when that would happen. Conjuring one of his own with Innovator’s Arsenal would probably work, but he wanted to save that as a last resort since he needed to save his essence for more Shattersmite Cores.

“I got it!” Tyler announced, hoisting his bat over his shoulder and taking a step forward.

“What? No!” Steve shouted, dropping the corner and leaving Harvey to do it himself. A golden shield sprang up in front of them, but Tyler pushed him away.

“I got it!” he repeated, and Harvey spared a glance to see the glint of determination in his eyes. The catapult was safely stowed away in his ring, but he didn’t have time to conjure the bunker. Instinct told him to grab them both and dash away with Booster, but he chose to trust his brother.

The silver bat seemed to double in size as Tyler infused it with his Contact Hitter skill. He’d judged the landing zone well, and like a pro playing slow-pitch softball, he cracked the bat into the beachball-sized inferno. All logic dictated that the bat should’ve passed right through the flames, or at the very least detonated the magical blast that had burned away Harvey’s hair just days earlier. Lucky for them, logic didn’t always apply when it came to skills.

The roiling fireball rocketed away, sailing low over the empty expanse before colliding with the rubble of a burned home. The crack of the bat even sounded like a baseball, making the whole scene seem even more ridiculous. All three stared with mute incomprehension. The skill worked exactly as advertised. Hell, they’d tested it with one of Harvey’s own fireballs. Still, seeing it in action against such a large and powerful attack took a moment to process.

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“Definitely a single,” Harvey said, a slight grin hidden underneath his helmet.

“What? That was an easy double!” Tyler scoffed.

“We want homers. You hit a few bombs over that fence, and you might kill more than Harvey!” Steve chuckled, leaning into the absurdity of using baseball terminology to describe fighting demons.

“I’d like to see him try,” Harvey laughed, just as a smaller red fireball blasting into the mud beside the sidewalk shocked them all back into action. The first batch of scorched fiends was closing in, followed close behind by dozens more who’d yet to get a taste of Harvey’s creation.

“Hold on!” he commanded as he wrapped an arm around each of them. They’d learned not to protest and held on for dear life as Booster rocketed them away from the incoming horde. Harvey stayed just out of range of the Mortarhorns, but one explosion after another sent earth spraying into the air as they continued their barrage. The goats had no way of knowing if more angels had arrived since their brimfiend scouts had left them trapped behind cover, so they were sending everything they had.

When they’d created enough of a gap between themselves and the horde, Harvey set the others down and pulled out the catapult, but instead of aiming at the wall, he pointed it at the swarm.

“Don’t they have to hit something to activate?” Tyler asked as Harvey cranked the winch.

“Usually.”

“What do you mean, usually?”

Harvey grinned as he loaded a core and launched it high into the air. The childlike bodies of the brimfiends scrambled out of the way, intending to let the inscribed cannonball sail right past them. Harvey never gave it the chance, using Modular Array to forcibly activate all the arrays at once.

This close, the explosion was almost deafening. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the agonizing wails of the brimfiends as bodies rained down ahead of them. Less than half of the fallen actually suffered lethal wounds, but the rest were so stunned by the shockwave that they couldn’t maintain their stilted flight.

Tyler’s form blurred as he charged forward, his bat glowing with divine power as he caved in the chest of the closest fiend. Harvey had never seen the limits of Tyler’s Blessed Break skill and was impressed by how easily it let him zip between the dazed enemies. Their bodies were fragile enough as it is, allowing Tyler to kill each with a single heavy swing. Steve followed close behind, plunging his sword through one’s heart while conjuring a barrier above his head.

They’d managed to knock the bulk of the vanguard out of the air, but more were coming to replenish the ranks every moment. Without an army of angels and heavenly creatures to soak up their attention, hundreds of brimfiends were able to focus solely on them. Harvey retrieved the catapult before turning his revolver on the horde, but there was no way they’d get them all.

“Retreat!” Harvey shouted.

Steve started backing away, putting all his attention on maintaining his shield. Tyler kept killing, using boosts of movement to dodge or bat away any incoming fireballs while he searched for more easy targets. Blessed Break and Contact Hitter worked well together, the increased speed helping him whip his bat around to intercept more attacks than Harvey thought possible, but he couldn’t get to them all.

One blast after another slammed into his armor as a tornado of flesh and fire took shape above his head. Harvey shot as fast as he could, but the need to eject his spent casings every five shots really limited his firing speed.

I need a shotgun, Harvey mused.

“Tyler! Run!” Steve commanded.

Either he didn’t hear him, or he didn’t listen. Tyler kept swinging, even as more and more attacks made it through his whirling defense. It was hard to see through the chaos, but Harvey thought he saw a gentle glow begin to emanate around his legs.

[A Mark?]

It’s not worth dying for.

Harvey needed to intervene, but he didn’t have many options without risking his brother getting caught in the crossfire. He could try to tackle him, but that could get them both caught if Tyler struggled. Harvey would win that fight every time, but not before the brimfiends got a chance to pounce.

The best he could think of was conjuring two arc charges imbued with the Architect of the Veils End and tossing them high into the fray. Normally, a single arc charge could last up to 10 seconds, but instead, Harvey used Modular Array to overclock the arrays to the point that the essence crystal exploded, releasing a single burst of devastating lightning. Each killed a few and knocked a dozen more to the ground, creating short windows for his brother to run away.

“Tyler! Get the hell out of there!” Harvey screamed, but his brother kept swinging. Another set of arc charges detonated above his head as Harvey prepared to stop his rampage, but his dad beat him to the punch.

“God help me and my psychotic sons!” Steve prayed as he charged into the fray. Ignoring the many fried and twitching demons on the ground, he tackled his son. It was like Tyler had been consumed by rage and delirium, straining to push their father away and keep fighting. In the end, dad strength reigned supreme, and Steve pinned his son to the ground while conjuring a golden barrier above his head. The shield flickered ominously until a blast of radiance erupted from his father’s chest, and Harvey felt something he didn’t expect to see for weeks.

You’ve got to be kidding me, he thought as he charged in after them.

[An Imprint? Already?]

Steve’s Paternal Aegis skill was filled with his legacy, rebuffing the assault even as more brimfiends joined in. Harvey could feel just how strong it was thanks to his own powerful aura, but he could also sense how fast his father's reserves of mental energy were running dry. As a G-Grade human, he didn’t have the Willpower to maintain such a powerful infusion of legacy for more than a few seconds. It was already beginning to dim by the time Harvey reached it, and he was relieved to see he could push right through the barrier. Something about paternal aegis knew who he was, letting him get straight to filling the greedy sigil of Legacy’s Redoubt. The bunker sprang up around them just as he felt his dad’s shield shatter.

“What the hell were you thinking!” Steve screamed, still pinning Tyler to the floor.

“I… I,” Tyler stammered.

“We don’t have time,” Harvey interrupted. “I need both of you to get up, grab on, and get ready to fly out of here.”

Steve was reluctant to let go, but eventually pushed himself up before extending a hand toward his son. Tyler grabbed it and let out a startled grunt as he was yanked upright.

“How are we supposed to get out of here? We’re surrounded,” Steve seethed.

“I’m going to detonate the bunker. Hopefully, that will clear a path,” Harvey explained. It was the third option he’d considered when creating the skill in the first place. It was the first he’d created since gaining all three of his Imprints, and the System had integrated his planned infusions into the crystal embedded in the center of his redoubt.

Guardian of the Gilded Return added life, slowly healing anyone inside while keeping out any undead, like the tortured souls. Tempered Heart improved its durability and added the occasional gout of fire shot back at anyone who managed to pierce the walls.

Architect of the Veils End was the only one he hadn’t used yet, and it, like many of his other skills, made the whole thing go boom.

All around him, the bunker shattered, blasting shards of steel into the brimfiends clawing at the walls. Multiple kill notifications appeared at the edge of his consciousness, but he ignored them as he put every last drop of essence he had into Booster.

The trio shot like a ballista bolt headed straight for Heaven’s gates. Through his aura, he could feel the brimfiends in hot pursuit, forcing him to decide between landing early and trying to outrun them, or risking an angel sniper shooting them out of the sky. They were all exhausted, both in body and spirit, so he chose to rely on his armor.

Ruins flashed by beneath them, turning into perfect suburban streets when they sailed right over the silver gates. Harvey tried to slow their fall, but ran out of essence. Luckily, they were flying right over a soccer field, so his second crash landing of the week wouldn’t be into another random bedroom.

Pain shot through him as the ground knocked the wind from his lungs. The three tumbled in a mess of flailing limbs before eventually coming to a stop. Each gasped for air as heavy footsteps ran towards them. The sound was then drowned out by gargoyles and bell towers clanging to life, sounding the alarm for all to retreat into their basement bunkers.

The angry face of Celeste appeared above him, rage practically dripping from her eyes. Silver blades were soon leveled at their throats, and they found themselves surrounded.