Rangers Endgame

Chapter 120: Titans of Decimation

KIYOSHI:

A shower of debris battered against Kiyoshi's shield as Dai came barreling through the ceiling. Maeve's eyes startled open to the sudden shift in commotion, and relief washed over her, Akane still unconscious in her arms. Kakkona's initial surprise dimmed as he chuckled weakly.

"Took him long enough." He winced as he braced Kiyoshi and broke the spike holding him up.

The Savior's multicolored eyes were wide with shock, clearly not expecting reinforcements. Slipping his mask of indifference back on, he raised his palm toward the speeding Sentinel.

The conjurations, once attacking Kiyoshi and the others, redirected their attention and rocketed towards Dai in a hideous conglomeration of earth manifestations. Even as the sickening roar clawed at the air, the calmness in Dai's features never wavered. He raised his war hammer, its alloy splitting to allow the radiance holding its shape to flare out violently, enveloping him within a furnace of gold.

Like a raging comet, he slammed into the Savior's manifestations, hungrily devouring the matter as he approached rapidly. Realizing this, the Savior conjured a barrier.

A shockwave ripped out from the catastrophic collision, practically disintegrating nearby pillars and fracturing the walls of the chamber. For the first time, Kiyoshi saw a hint of worry flash across the Savior's face as his barrier cracked under the overwhelming pressure. Before he could gather himself and mend the barrier, however, it shattered.

The immense force sent him careening into the farthest wall with a deafening explosion of marble and earth.

Movement drew Kiyoshi's fatigued gaze up to the massive hole in the ceiling. Conjurers levitated down to their level and scrambled to aid Kiyoshi and the others. Dai landed on a surviving platform a dozen feet across from them, his battle-hardened gaze still on the smoke cloud. He paid no heed to the rangers as they carefully set the Sentinels, Maeve, and Akane onto the radiant disks they'd come down with.

"Didn't expect you to bring help, big guy." Kakkona coughed as he helped Maeve board the disk before stumbling onto it himself.

Dai glanced their way for the first time since he arrived, then back at the cloud. "Then you should thank Haruka for sending them without my knowledge."

"I wonder why she'd do that..." He responded sarcastically as the lift began to rise.

As they ascended, Kiyoshi looked over at the cloud when it began to disperse. The Savior dragged himself from the crater he'd formed, stumbling to a knee. Though he was relatively unharmed, the thin trail of blood trickling down his face gave the Sentinel a sense of reassurance that this man could, in fact, be hurt.

The afternoon wind was like brisk water to his bruised skin. The fresh grassy air filled his lungs in place of the musty scent of the underground system. The sun hanging overhead blanketed him with its light as if trying to comfort him.

The grass shifted to a gold hue, rising to caress his face as the rangers eased him on his side so they wouldn't disturb the spike still lodged in his chest. Even with their tender support, a bolt of pain still shot through his body. Every breath he gulped shuddered, his expanding lungs pressing against the spike to further torment him with jolts of agony.

He slowly shifted his gaze up to see a conjurer wave his imbued staff. Another radiant platform materialized beneath him and Kakkona. Akane and Maeve were just ahead of them, both lying on their backs atop their own platforms that acted as stretchers. He couldn't tell what their current state was through his failing vision, but he assumed they were in good hands.

"Stop moving so much," Kakkona said from behind him as the platform they were on lifted slightly off the ground and followed behind the others. "You're going to agitate your wounds."

Kiyoshi didn't have the strength to respond. He could only watch the golden bamboo and boulders pass by as the conjurers rushed them to the perimeter. His eyes began to close as he started tilting back.

"Don't you dare rest your eyes either, you hear me?" he said as if he could see his face.

His consciousness went in and out throughout the trip, only coming back when he picked up the distant shouts to stay awake and the occasional gentle pat on the face from the rangers. As an attempt to remain conscious, his thoughts went to their battle.

He'd originally planned to keep the Savior at bay while Dai destroyed the Vault. But, even with two Sentinels and two S-rank Saberclaw members, they couldn't manage that. Now Dai had to face him alone. He hoped the man wouldn't underestimate him even if he managed to injure him.

DAI:

The man he assumed was the Savior touched his face where blood ran and looked at the red on his fingers. He studied it for a long moment as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Dai tightened his guard. To him, this served as an indicator of the Savior's power, as he wasn't used to being injured.

As he continued inspecting his finger, Dai glanced around in a quick scan of the environment. It didn't take long for him to spot a large, rune-inscribed iron door across the room through the ruins. Though he'd never seen it, it was likely the Vault. With it, there was a body suspended by spikes.

If he wanted to breach the Vault, he'd have to deal with its security first. He returned his hardened eyes to the Savior. Dai had gotten a glimpse of his power earlier upon arrival. If he wanted to draw out a victory, he'd need to proceed with caution.

"Astounding." The Savior said in cold surprise as he finally lifted his multicolored gaze to meet Dai's with renewed interest. "Such raw power could be magnified. You would become a great asset."

"True strength is forged through dedication and adversity." Dai leveled his hammer at him accusingly. "You bought yours at the cost of integrity, yet you shamelessly flaunt it like some great achievement."

He dropped low, energy writhing from his war hammer in anticipation. Dai wasn't nearly as agile as Kakkona, or even Kiyoshi, so evasion would be tricky. But the solution to that was simple. As he'd done while with the perimeter team, all he needed was one decisive blow. And the fact that the Savior hadn't conjured a spike at Dai's feet to impale him where he stood meant he must've had limited range.

"I'll be sure to leave nothing left of you, as you're not worth the effort of burying," Dai growled, the tamed energy holding his hammer's shape raging in agreement.

Without wasting any more time, he concentrated his power into his conduit, the head blazing with an intensity that might've rivaled that of the sun. He took a wide stance, his muscles clenched, and the joints in his legs locked just to tame the recoil.

With one swing, the focused energy erupted outward in a blinding burst of light that coalesced into a beam. The projectile took the form of a shimmering lance that drilled through the wild obstruction with heedless ferocity as it excavated a trench in its wake.

The Savior shot out his palms, rings glowing with haste as he cast several barriers of thick radiance layered atop one another at an angle. The lance struck the barriers with a brilliant crash, their upward angle causing it to veer off course and into the wall above him.

The powerful lance shattered stone and marble as it speared through the earth and came rocketing out to the surface. Light from outside flickered through the crumbling wall and ceiling as the lance died out somewhere in the clouds.

The fissures slicing across the barriers after redirecting the blow mirrored the cracks in the Savior's expression, allowing a glimpse of anxiety to show. Still, he didn't completely give in to his emotions.

"Perhaps you speak the truth." The Savior spoke with a calmness that contrasted eerily with the odds that were against him. The Savior lifted both hands, palms up. "However, integrity does not concern me when weighed against a grim future."

Dai's brows furrowed in confusion for a second as the ground quivered. His eyes glanced along the ground, looking for any signs of transmutation, but there was nothing. Looking back at the Savior, pebbles shivered as the marble floor snaked up his legs.

It crackled hauntingly, shaping and melding around his form with intertwining patterns that glowed with an amber-white hue. His radiance molded the fusion of stone and marble into plates of armor that swooped and curved elegantly.

A helmet adorned with intricate designs solidified over his head, and the two slits where the eyes should be glowed with the same amber-white. His long, snowy hair cascaded out from the back of the helmet, swaying with the tattered cloak that flowed from his broadened shoulders.

"I did not spend countless grueling hours of research and experimentation building what we have only for you to tear it down." The Savior's powerful voice sounded doubled, his gauntleted hand raising.

Thick pillars and jagged earthen spikes erected with a powerful quake, interlocking with one another in a wild web of defenses.

"Protection upon protection won't change the outcome I've laid before you," Dai said matter-of-factly as he cocked his hammer back again.

Funneling more power from his abundant reserves into his conduit, he fired another howling javelin that easily gored through the tangled protection. Although he'd successfully deflected Dai's attack before, the Savior didn't bother replicating it a second time for some odd reason.

The white slits that were his eyes watched with detached indifference as the javelin closed in aggressively. An explosion of smoky gold rocked the room when the projectile collided, peppering the surroundings with shrapnel in every direction.

When the smoke cleared and the room stilled, an unsettling silence followed. The ruined remains of the Savior's armor lay scattered, but what struck Dai as strange was that there wasn't a trace of blood anywhere.

Suddenly, the ground underneath him trembled, and instinct born from years of experience hurled him back. A spike rocketed from the floor, narrowly missing his head and drawing a red line across his cheek. Another spike shot out, but he was quick to evade as it grazed his foot.

Though Dai stayed on his toes, he wasn't as agile as Kiyoshi, let alone Kakkona. The conjuration speed had caught up to him, and he began taking cuts to the legs.

He flicked his eyes when he caught movement in his periphery. Atop a pointed perch, roughly twenty meters away, he spotted the Savior. Or at least what looked like him. His outstretched hand was rigid, but that could've been because of his armor.

Firmly planting his foot, Dai spun around a spike that was meant to impale him through the chest. Using the burst of momentum he'd generated, he launched a javelin at the Savior. Again, the man didn't try to dodge or deflect the projectile. The perch then erupted into a shower of amber and debris.

Although Dai had nailed him, something still felt wrong, and so, he kept mobile. His instincts were proven right once again when a pillar shot from beneath his feet. He crouched to keep himself steady as the pillar curved harshly, heading straight for the outer wall.

He leapt from the pillar as it crashed. His white uniform whipped as he descended into a freefall. Below him, the ground bulged and squirmed as dozens of clawed hands reached out in frenzied eagerness. Dai's hammer swelled with more radiance, turning its shape more vague as he prepared for impact.

With one deliberate swing, amber flames ripped out and devoured the hands bent on reaching him. The single blow tore a wide crater into the earth as he landed, dampening his fall. Still, he had no time to rest.

Shaking off the sting in his arms, he broke into a sprint as tendrils wormed up from the ground. To his left, he saw the Savior at the top of the crater, his icy gaze boring down on him through that emotionless mask of his.

This was the third time he'd seen the man after ripping him apart twice. Dai was obviously missing something. He decided to test a theory.

Constricting the output to his conduit, his hammer dimmed slightly, and the alloy gravitated closer together. Using a premature tendril as a stepping stone, he jumped up and fired a low-caliber projectile at the "Savior."

The projectile tunneled through where his nose would be, and his head burst apart into fragments of marble and earth. No blood. No brains. And the body still stood.

'I see.' Dai thought as this detail basically confirmed his suspicion.

The armor didn't serve as protection but rather as a reference to copy. The Savior likely couldn't replicate human skin with the materials at his disposal. Instead, he clad himself in armor to create clones of the same design to draw Dai's attention while sneakily stepping into conjuration range.

"Your expression is telling," the Savior's doubled voice echoed through the room, sourcing from an unknown position. "Your ally had quite the interesting way of deceiving the mind. Though I will admit this is merely a crude imitation, it served its purpose."

"No matter," Dai responded curtly as he sidestepped a jutting spike from a wall.

He kept up his pace, dodging and smashing through the gradual influx of attacks while keeping a loose lid on his radiance. As he moved, the transformations of his surroundings became more aggressive, but it hardly mattered. He reached the corner of the mangled room, having a clear line of sight of everything around him.

Before, he would've been wailing endlessly at attacks coming from all sides. Now that everything, including the Savior, nestled somewhere within the chaos, was in front of him, it made things much simpler.

Loosening his grip on his radiance, he allowed it to flood his conduit. The golden energy binding the metallic bricks and plates bulged with baleful intensity as he cocked it back.

The terraformed chamber lurched violently towards him in a wave of grotesque manifestations as if the Savior had realized Dai's plan, but it was too late. Locking the muscles in his lower half, Dai swung, producing a thick wave of his own that arced across his body.

The radiance surged forth with a fury that seemed to rend the fabric of reality itself. The twisted conjurations screeched against the ferocity of Dai's power. As the two opposing forces struggled against one another, Dai rushed to his left, using existing platforms to leap over the tsunami. His body was already complaining from exertion, but that didn't concern him as he finally got a visual on the Savior—the real one.

He was standing on a ledge above him. As he pushed his hand forward to force abominable creations through Dai's diminishing wave of radiance, Dai launched himself towards the Savior.

The subtle flinch in the Savior's posture only further confirmed he wasn't a clone. The man conjured a dome around himself several layers thick. As Dai's hammer struck its surface, the shockwave ripping out pierced Dai's ears.

Though his strike didn't break through the barriers, the force of it did hurl the Savior through the gap in the ceiling. Dai tumbled onto the ledge and recalled his radiance from his hammer, using the shaft as support. The devastated chamber tilted as he tried to shake off the effects of thinned reserves.

He looked towards the iron door of the Vault. This was his chance. It was free to crack open, and he had a little more energy to spare.

However, as he picked himself up and began working his way through the tangled mess of the room to reach it, the earth trembled.

He stumbled forward, one hand on the ground to keep him steady. A dry, monstrous roar erupted from behind him. As he looked back towards the outside beyond the ceiling, fear began to seep into him.