Rangers Endgame

Chapter 122: Desperate Measures

HARUKA:

Her gaze rose up at the earthen titan, disbelief leaking into her features. The "creature's" massive form was a grotesque fusion of soil, rock, vegetation, and steel. Boulders and chunks of dirt dislodged from the gnarled beast and came crashing into the fields below as its legs heaved trenches through the earth simply by walking.

Jagged spikes erupted from the ground wherever it dragged its legs, and waves of soil shot outward, consuming the fields in powdered black and toppling over the remaining bamboo.

From her perch, she whipped around to the rangers below. "Everyone, retreat!"

They all scattered. Conjurers waved platforms and bubbles into existence that would levitate others into the air above the incoming destruction, while others simply ran. Fortunately, the beast was still relatively far, but she questioned why the Savior allowed the rangers' escape.

'To think a single person was capable of such destruction.' She thought.

Specks traveling along the field away from the beast came into view, and she strained her eyes to identify them. Conjurers were using radiant platforms as stretchers to hurry what seemed to be four injured rangers to safety.

As they rushed closer, she realized two of the injured wore white uniforms, indicating Sentinels. She jumped up in shock after seeing the state they were in, especially Kiyoshi. The impulse of leaping down from her position to check on her comrades almost made her abandon the high ground, but she stopped herself. It'd be more beneficial for her to stay put should the beast start gaining on those retreating.

'They're going to be fine.' She told herself as they started to pass her vantage point. It took more willpower than she'd thought to keep herself there. Into her communication artifact, she said, "Dai, do you copy?"

He didn't respond for a long while, and she worried something had happened to him. Then his voice crackled through as if his artifact had been damaged.

["If you're —ing to combat the bea—, be sure your —njurations —on't impede my assault."]

More relieved than annoyed at his willingness to proceed more or less alone, she asked, "I assume you have a plan?"

As he paused again, she strained her keen eyes, looking for any kind of weak points on the beast.

["The Sav—r's range is limited. Even now, all I'd —ve to do is deliver a decisive blow fr— afar."]

Radiance crawled down her arms and seeped into her rifle, filling its contours with seething brilliance. "Shouldn't I be the one to if that's the case?"

["If he's movi— towards your positi—, he doesn't fear you. It's an indication that his defenses are stro— enough to withstand you,"] he reasoned bluntly. ["If you —ve to, push it back."]

Her rifle hummed with an eagerness to release its pent-up power. She'd already expended a large portion of her reserves during the ambush. However, to hold off the massive abomination, she'd need something sizable to match it.

She considered firing the remaining radiance she had to conjure a monster big enough but abandoned the idea since she couldn't afford to be reckless with what little remained. Perhaps the simpler solution was to distract it.

The winged beast tattooed on her arm glowed vibrantly, and she aimed. Pulling the trigger, a sharp explosion reverberated through the ruins as the beam of radiance sped from the barrel.

It warped as it traveled, sprouting with thick legs with gleaming talons at the ends. Scales feathered across its bulging torso, and its neck elongated from its body before ending in a horned head.

The air shook with its mighty roar as it soared towards the towering beast in a blink. The dragon opened its dagger-filled maw as it banked right, unleashing a torrent of raging gold upon the earthen beast. The abomination wailed and swatted at the dragon, but its awkward lumbering mass couldn't keep up.

The dragon drew lines of scorched stone and soil across the giant's body as it used its own mass to deliver a constant stream of energy.

"That should be plenty," Haruka said to herself, relieved to see that her strategy was working better than expected.

Eventually, the beast stopped trying to strike the dragon. Curiously, it planted itself firmly in the earth as tendrils began slithering out of every part of its body. The ends of the tendrils then curled in on themselves to form spheres.

Whatever the Savior was planning, the nimble dragon had no issue evading and weaving through the aerial obstruction to continue its bombardment. She watched intently as the white-amber sheen around the spheres began to shine brighter, and the spheres shrank little by little.

Minutes passed, and the spheres shrank to such an extent that the dragon hardly had to dodge them anymore. However, when the white amber that coated them suddenly disappeared, they all ruptured simultaneously with deafening dry explosions.

The dragon shrieked as it was torn apart in an instant, the fragments of its brilliant form consumed within the collective clouds of dirt and debris.

Her eyes hardened with understanding. The spheres weren't just shrinking; the Savior was compacting matter to such an extent that suddenly releasing that immense pressure would effectively turn them into bombs.

Motes of white amber shimmered back into being throughout the dark cloud and vacuumed the matter back into the creature's bulk. It continued its trudge undeterred.

She looked back at the fleeing rangers, realizing they weren't making any meaningful distance. If she was going to slow it down, she'd need something that could withstand its improvised explosives.

She pulled back the bolt and vented the excess radiance from her conduit. 'Seems I have no choice.'

Aiming again, she willed her remaining radiance into her rifle. Her channels throbbed, and a wet cough burst from her mouth. A tattoo of an arthropod-like monster flared to life on her left arm. Her vision blurred as she steadied her swaying rifle.

Once she was confident, she flexed her finger around the trigger, and her radiance blasted through the barrel. The stock punched into her shoulder, nearly throwing her back as her balance was already wavering.

The beam twisted and bulged, broadening into a titanic creature. Thick armor plating fanned across the length of its body, and javelin-like legs grew from its lengthy underbelly. Eight eyes shone with carnivorous intensity, and an earth-splitting roar ripped from the slit in its face.

The behemoth rushed forward, creating a tsunami of rubble on either side of it as it charged heedlessly. The Savior's abomination kept its pace, unfazed.

As the two clashed, it produced a shockwave that split fissures through Haruka's perch, throwing her back. The radiance in her rifle was snuffed out, and she fought to stay conscious as she watched the two colossi struggle for dominance.

Her remaining radiance hindered her ability to create the beast of its actual scale, so the behemoth wasn't as large as she'd liked. But when another colony of deathly spheres manifested and detonated, she was satisfied to see that the improvised bombs didn't completely tear her conjuration apart. However, the sheer force of the explosions gouged chunks out of the behemoth's exoskeleton.

The behemoth screeched as its strength wavered. Its body slid back, dragging up heaps of earth as it held onto its form. The Savior reformed the spheres again. The white amber compressed them into fine points until they were once again released.

Though the behemoth withstood it, the explosions ripped open its body, and radiance began leaking out from the wounds, its size shrinking. The abomination conjured even more spheres this time, practically enveloping itself in them as they shone brightly with white-amber.

Haruka's nerves flared warningly, and she turned to stumble to cover. The distant air was charged with an ominous crystalline sound that continued to grow louder behind her with each passing second.

As she tumbled over a jutting stone for protection, the sound erupted into a world-shattering explosion. She pressed herself against the fracturing stone as the howling winds carved webs into its hard surface. Her braided hair whipped, coming undone as she slammed her eyes shut and dug her palms into her ears.

When the commotion came to a gradual stop, she peeked around the corner, and though there was nothing that remained of her behemoth, she smiled weakly at the sight Dai could take advantage of.

DAI:

The winds calmed, and the earth settled. The rubble he'd originally taken cover behind was reduced to nothing, and he had to pry himself from the ground. His body ached with every movement as soil rolled off his form.

After initiating his battle with the Savior, his reserves had been dropping noticeably. He didn't know how much radiance the Savior had expended prior to their fight, but judging by the state of the vast chamber when he arrived, it was an inconceivable amount. That was the clear advantage the Savior had over him.

Even now, the madman still had enough in the tank to pilot a gargantuan monstrosity. It made him wonder how he'd managed to craft such an elixir.

He wiped the dirt from his face and looked up at the murky cloud obscuring the fleeing beast. He was expecting it to reabsorb the dirt-infused air like before, but for some reason, it let the cloud dissipate naturally. When it did, he immediately realized why.

The smoke thinned out to reveal the stumbling giant with craters littering its abnormal body. One of its disjointed legs snapped in two, and its front seemed to tumble in slow motion before it slammed into the ground with a thundering crash.

The earth shifted into hills of debris as it reoriented itself to lift its body with its remaining legs. But it wasn't the squirming beast he was interested in; it was the exposed Vault tucked deep within its torso.

The Savior, now revealed and bloodied from his reckless action, realized the Vault was exposed because the beast's mass began to contort, slithering across the opening to fill the empty space. But it was already too late.

Dai scooped up a rod from the powdered soil, soft gold rolling off of his forearm and wrapping around the metal upon his touch. As the radiance reached the end of the rod, it split into a dozen tendrils that wriggled along the ground searchingly. They burrowed just beneath the surface of the dirt and pulled out another rod and bricks of alloy.

The radiant tethers reoriented the scarred pieces as they gravitated into their designated places until they came together to resemble the loose shape of his warhammer. He cocked his head back, and his conduit flared with wrathful intensity.

"Even when overcome with desperation, he couldn't escape." He whispered into the whirling air.

His hammer smeared the air with amber as he swung. As he swept the head across his body, a condensed beam of power rocketed outward towards the Vault. A jolt of throbbing pain shot through his aching insides, and the recoil nearly sent him back, but the remaining strength he used to plant himself was barely enough to shake off the effects.

Pillars of earth and weapons burst from the ground to both intercept and mend the missing chunks in the beast's form, but the unstable beam wound through the obstruction with feral grace. The pillars that it couldn't avoid simply tunneled through like a knife through bread, but with each one it struck, the beam thinned.

In a last-ditch effort, the Savior outstretched a shivering hand, radiance shuddering in front of him to hastily form a barrier to protect the Vault. But during its formation, the beam struck its premature structure with a deafening crack, fracturing its surface.

The Savior staggered back with dawning realization as blades of turbulent energy jostled through the crevices, carving wild patterns across the Vault behind it.

The iron door let out a pained screech as its reinforced defenses began to give way. The Savior's arms quaked, and his radiance wavered as he fought to hold the barrier's shape. He looked over at the Vault, and something in his expression changed. It wasn't rage from his years of hard work being slowly destroyed before his eyes. It wasn't fear of his creation being ripped away from him.

It was perhaps something more akin to...silent acceptance.

Figuring he no longer had the strength to hold back Dai's projectile, the trembling in his hands stopped as he released the barrier. The glow in his rings snuffed out, and the barrier's integrity gave in.

A harsh shatter pierced the air, and the beam was allowed passage, slamming into the Vault. Both the Savior and the Vault became lost within a blinding light of gold and drowned in a crystalline grinding shriek, which Dai could only assume was the Vault being torn apart.

Moments later, the beast's back exploded in a violent cloud of harsh red entangled with white that settled across the scarred meadow. The white-amber coating the earthen monstrosity receded, and its grotesque appendages crumbled. Its misshapen body followed, and soon the creature collapsed within a mountain of its own demise, spewing a cloud of dust and dirt into the atmosphere.

Dai took a moment to gather the last bit of strength he had just to put his feet under him. His warhammer was once again in fragments. He strained himself as he focused inward, salvaging every drop of radiance he had left to conjure tethers that sprouted weakly from the shaft he still held onto.

He ignored his channels' protests as the searching tethers heaved themselves along the ground. Wrapping themselves around the chunks of alloy, they lugged them to the shaft and snapped them back into place. With his warhammer intact, he began his painful march towards the fallen giant.

It gradually darkened as the sunlight struggled to reach him through the thickening smoke. Red moisture accumulated across his bruised skin as the damp air clashed with the gritty dryness of the cloud. His boots sank into the red-tinged ground with every step as he trudged through ruins.

Waving pockets of somewhat clean air for his nose as he coughed, he scanned the grainy cloud but couldn't see much past ten feet. He stopped when he stepped on something cylindrical. Lifting his foot, he found a cracked vial with a bit of elixir still inside. How it miraculously endured his final assault, he didn't know, but there was a simple solution.

He raised the head of his hammer over it, preparing to drop its bulk when his periphery caught a faint figure to his right. Straining his eyes through the gloom, the smoke thinned out just enough for him to make out the silhouette of a man brought to his knees within a crater.

His dirty white hair was undone and disheveled, his once tidy robes now torn and bloodied, and shattered blades of steel and stone littered his body. Shards of broken weaponry protruded from the gaping wound in the ground around him, and the weight of defeat seemed to press down on his shoulders.

When the smoke cleared further, his hanging head and closed eyes almost made Dai believe he was dead if it weren't for the subtle rise and fall of his chest. His eyes then opened, his azure irises shifting to sky blue, and grave resignation crossed his features. Though his defeated gaze stayed on the ground, something in his body language told Dai he had acknowledged the Sentinel's presence.

His fingers pressed tenderly into the red-tinged soil. "After everything." The Savior's words came out breathy as he lifted his hand, the red in his palm slipping from his grasp and falling back into the crater. "All of my efforts...just for the same outcome."

"What are you babbling about?" Dai asked, setting his hammer down beside the vial.

The Savior swayed, the light in his cool eyes flickering as he teetered on the edge of consciousness. He coughed to clear his throat of blood. "I'm afraid you will need to attain that information from your comrades who tried to stop me after Sentinel Kiyoshi blatantly ignored my warning."

Dai looked at him with a hint of curiosity as he continued. "If you truly wish to purge my work from this world...then I ask that you consider the cautionary words I gave to them." His hand slumped back down, and it seemed like he wanted to raise his head but lacked the strength. "Though you have dismantled my plan, I do not despise you or your comrades for doing so. It is only natural for you and your allies to gift tranquility to those tucked safely behind thick walls."

His cool eyes raised, but it wasn't enough to meet Dai's gaze. "But if you strive for true peace, your desire must transcend the immediacy of a fleeting moment. Otherwise, the chaotic storm of tomorrow will overtake you."

He didn’t try to fight the inevitable this time but instead came to terms with it with a peaceful smile that quivered on his lips. With one final breath, he finally let go.

His eyes faded to a dull and empty blue and fell again. His ragged breathing ceased, and his blade-impaled body went limp while still on his knees, blood dripping from his slightly ajar mouth.

He was gone.