Museum Core Chapter 95: … TO BATTLE!

“Goal beast,” Elias said flatly, as he watched the goings-on via the screen Thomas was projecting onto the screen.

“What?” Thomas asked, causing the fairy to sigh.

“It’s a gaol beast,” the fairy repeated, as though that were supposed to mean something … only to remember that he was the one with the answers around five seconds later. “It’s a monster that’s managed to merge with a dungeon core somehow, either by draining all its energy and then swallowing it whole when it’s dry, or what happens when a dungeon core tries to merge with one of their champions. It’s about as well as that ever goes … at least when you aren’t dealing with a sub core.

“They don’t have access to most of the powers a dungeon does … but they’re  full monsters that can spawn minions and reshape the terrain anywhere there aren’t people as long as their energy lasts.”

Thomas winced as he passed the information along to the humans getting ready to fight the Hunger. This was going to be rough. And unlike him, they stood to lose much more than mere time and energy.

As he watched, Abrams threw herself backwards as the dragon opened its jaws while glaring up at her, suddenly causing a massive blast of air to be sucked into its maw and almost caching her in the process. So, that was one power. And he knew that it almost certainly had the Titan’s Physique power held by almost all monsters in the Pacific transformation zone, which would also explain how big the damn thing was.

But that still left two more unknown powers, and he could tell it was at least mid-C-Rank to boot, with all the physical and magical strength that implied.

The Komodo Dragon reared on its back, legs the size of long-haul trucks splaying out as though it were about to embrace an invisible peer, only to bring them down in a slashing motion back into a more normal position before dropping back down onto all fours.

It would have looked silly, like something you’d find on a “silly lizard” YouTube video … except the claws had started to glow as it had drawn back its legs and when it had swiped through the air, it had projected ten incandescent slashes through the air and carved the entire jungle between itself and the Belfast to ribbons.

The Hunger’s third power … identical to Cheshire’s. It wouldn’t be blocked by anything save, perhaps, a dedicated anti-slashing power, and the fact that the monster didn’t have an arena built around maximizing the advantage gained by this ability didn’t weaken it nearly as much as one might expect. It was still massively lethal. He was just glad that the monster didn’t seem to be able to apply the effect to its fangs, nor could it project slashes from them.

But there didn’t seem to be any reason to not open fire right now, so that’s what he did. Make the guns of the Belfast speak in anger for the first time in half a century, roaring to life and making the entire ship rock to port from the recoil while the smoke belching from the guns briefly obscured his view of the monster.

Observing things through the radar, however, revealed the truth as he watched the monster rock backwards, recoiling as shells tore into it, and Thomas allowed him a brief moment of celebration. Then, it surged forward, past the humans, only avoiding trampling them by virtue of its stride length and the fact that it inadvertently stepped over them.

And then, another salvo of cannonfire thundered out into the world, hammering into the face of the dragon, causing it to rear back … and then the primaries unleashed their second salvo, soon followed by the third from the secondaries. An endless staccato of fire, growing more and more disjointed as the guns fell out of sync, ripping open the monster’s hide.

Anti-flesh shells blew out huge chunks, while the armor-piercing weaponry he’d nicknamed the “Devil’s Pinball” punched straight through its hide and went deep, but failed to maintain the momentum needed to bounce around the inside of the monster’s body the way they’d been designed to be.

Thomas immediately began summoning his own monsters. He hadn’t managed to bring any creature up to C-Rank even with how long it had taken to get here, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t created some true beasts.

He summoned a trio of kaiju-rexes, the massive, draconic, tyrannosauruses roaring as they manifested, loudly enough to send shockwaves rippling across the surface of the water. They weren’t fundamentally stronger than monsters without the Titan’s Physique power, but the sheer amount of mass they could throw behind any attack they landed was nothing to sneeze at.

Thomas redirected his forward weaponry to start to blow open a path across the mangroves, while the rest of his guns continued to tear away a the monster. A monster that was once again opening its mouth, inhaling, and in an instant, a massive “gale” tore through the air towards it, except it wasn’t a wind, exactly.

Instead, it was as though the Komodo dragon had magically taken ahold of everything in front of it and janked it into its maw, compressing and crushing it as though a tiny black hole had manifested between its fangs, its exact location clearly visible due to what had happened to the rex that had gotten caught in the effect, pulled in and then, pulled apart.

Flesh tore and bones twisted, blood spraying outwards only to be caught within the inexorable pull and arcing unnaturally back, all straight into a single, now-visible, sphere of compressed air, shredded wood, and brutalized flesh.

And his brain, ever helpful, apparently decided that now was the best time to remind him of the fact that there was a specific term for objects being ripped apart like that by gravitational forces: Spagettification.

Utterly. Useless.

Couldn’t he have gotten a fight-winning, unique piece of seemingly random trivia instead? Or something even remotely useful?

The dragon’s jaws snapped shut, and it swallowed, then glared at the now-retreating form of the Belfast, entirely ignoring the countless magic spells that slammed into its back, courtesy of his human allies.

It really was huge, wasn’t it? Thomas had referred to his monsters as “kaijus,” but they both had the exact same power, with the exact same scaling alongside their Rank. Even with different “base” sizes, Thomas’ monsters looked like hounds trying to fight a grizzly.

And even as he watched, the BPA was forced to turn around to fight the minions that had been summoned in the crater left behind by the monster’s emergence, leaving Thomas fighting the anchor beast almost on his own.

They were both C-Rank, but the monster was much further along in that category, and the sheer amount of power gained with every step taken at this point boggled the mind.

Not to mention that they were now so close to each other that they were cancelling out each other’s manifestation abilities, something that hurt him far more than it did the gaol beast.

Right now, he was even down to just the Belfast’s internal munitions stores, stuck with what he’d already summoned in both amount and type. Granted, the cruiser had a lot of shells remaining … but his supply was now limited, and the monster was so close that he wasn’t sure he’d even be able to use it up in its entirety before the ship was destroyed.

And then, it was driven face-first into the mud as Abrams slammed into its head like a meteor.

***

Three powers known … one unknown.

Not great, but better than she could have hoped for, this early in the fight.

Gigantic size, lethal claws, an even more lethal maw.

And it was currently succeeding in chasing off their heavy backup.

Won-der-ful.

Jaclyn glanced down to where the others were currently engaging the monster’s minions and swore. They hadn’t counted on it having minions, and now it was biting them in the ass.

But the others were mostly handlign themselves, if they lost the Belfast instead … shit, she had to go save the hunk of animated metal instead of her men. And she hated that fact.

A couple more wingbeats carried her further skywards, then she flipped herself upside down and began furiously flapping the spectral limbs, launching herself downwards at ludicrous speeds, surpassing terminal velocity in a matter of seconds, fist already cocked back and with her new bracelet burning on her wrist.

The impact came and went so quickly she was barely even aware of it, yet her reflexes were as effective as they had always been, and her hand hammered into the top of the Hunger’s head and hurling it downwards, its jaw slamming into the ground hard enough to leave behind a massive crater.

With a frustrated growl, the Komodo rose back to its feet, muzzle splattered with and dripping mud … and just went right after the Belfast. It was ignoring her.

Sodd off, beastie, Jaclyn sighed internally, her wrist twinging with pain. That hit had perhaps been a little harder than she should have thrown, though her regeneration was already patching her up.

She glanced back towards where the others were fighting. The entire area had been devastated, which let her see that the monsters had been largely wiped out; several people who should have been there … weren’t. All of them D-Ranks who, in a sane world, wouldn’t have had to be anywhere even remotely close to this fight.

But they had been. Because this monster was a threat, a monster that had devoured every animal within almost a hundred miles. And it might yet win.

She launched herself back into the sky and repeated her earlier maneuver. Let’s see it laugh that off twice!

This time, she felt something crunch as she smashed into the monster, driving its head fully underwater.

Actually, it had been two things that had broken. Bone splinters were now protruding from the top of the monster’s head, but she could clearly see that there were further bony layers beneath that; she hadn’t managed to gain easy access to its brain with that strike.

And as for the second thing … well, the fact that the blood dripping from her now-shattered wrist was going to poison the monster didn’t make up for the fact that she was down a hand for the next several minutes.

Cursing herself, she hurled herself off the monster, barely managing to avoid its snapping jaws.

Was it just her, or had that thing gotten faster?

But before it could make another attempt, Henderson crashed into it, in the form a gigantic ankylosaurus covered in burning feathers, knocking its head aside and when it slashed at him with its foreleg, well, he simply transformed into a phoenix and the attack whiffed, only for him to shift back into a titan for only enough time to kick it in the eye.

Again and again, it tried to rip him in half, but a simple shift of his body put his center of gravity elsewhere, and in an instant, he shrank in an entirely separate direction, forcing the monster to miss.

Jaclyn then took that as her chance to hurl herself at its face, punching and kicking with all three healthy limbs while waving her injured arm at its wounds, spraying toxic blood into the flesh shredded by the Belfast’s shells.

Summoning tokens flashed down below as her allies began to burn their consumable items as they were ripping into the monster with magic and enchanted weapons, trusting in her and Henderson to hold the Hunger’s attention.

And it was working. For a while. Until it suddenly stopped.

The monster had been steadily growing more accurate, getting closer and closer, until it suddenly struck Henderson clean on the chest and blasted straight through, sending him flying with his right arm and most of his chest gone.

It hadn’t even hit him with a claw … and even just eyeballing it made it abundantly clear that there had been more than just physical power in play.

Jaclyn hurled herself forward at the monster and kicked at it, barely missing its eye, and forcing it to return its focus to her, rather than managing to chomp down on Henderson, who was currently regenerating the damage amidst a massive conflagration. As horrific as the injury had been, the damage had been sufficiently concentrated to erase in one go.

The Hunger returned its focus onto her, and began trying to slash or bite her out of the air, but its accuracy had gone back down the shitter, even though it was returning quickly.

Almost as if it were constantly locking onto a target, with the effect vanishing the moment it managed to hit someone.

“It has an aiming skill that resets for everyone at once,” Müller shouted, having come to the same realization as her. She had no idea where he was, his cloak hiding him almost perfectly even from her senses. And she didn’t want to look for him as he’d lose the effect and all the charge he’d gathered since if located.

“As long as the power has been used enough to trigger, any hit it lands will restart all countdowns.”

So that was the weakness of the monster’s nastiest power … it was bigger than expected, but it still required someone to take the hit to work. A full, clean, direct strike from a bloody kaiju, a power-boosted one to boot. How long would that work before it killed someone?

But was that the only thing that would cancel the effect? What about distance? What about time? And how could they check that safely?

Actually, she had an idea. There was a guy who could see what would happen in certain conditions without actually forcing anyone to suffer the consequences of the experimentation.

“If you shout a distance, I’ll fly that far and return,” Jaclyn yelled towards where she thought Müller was as she flashed past. “Check if that disrupts the effect.”

She’d never actually have to do that, but setting that “expectation” should ensure that the German man’s precognition allowed him to simulate the effect of the power, until they would hopefully be able to break the power. Assuming it could be broken.

***

Major Johan Müller had done a lot of insane things in his life, and arguably, his choice of profession was at the very top of this list.

What he was doing now … didn’t even qualify. But it was weird. The weirdest task he’d ever undertaken and, most likely, the most important one as well.

One hundred meters, no effect. In fact, if Abrams turned around at that distance and flew back at that moment, she’d have gotten reduced to paste before the vision had even ended.

Two hundred, two hundred and fifty, three hundred … his mana level was dropping like a stone, plummeting as it flooded into his cloak while also endlessly spiralling off into the void as he attempted to glean the future’s knowledge until eventually, things reached the point where even Abrams wouldn’t be able to return before the vision ended.

And his mana was close to hitting rock bottom. If his mana bottomed out before he used the second effect of his Apex Cloak … that would be a damn shame. The went for if he drew too much attention to himself by shouting.

So, he began to ask a different question.

What if I pull the trigger right now?

Or now?

What about this time?

Until suddenly, he found a point in time when the monster was moving in a predictable direction, at a constant speed. And pulled the trigger.

His rifle surged back, smashing into his shoulder with enough force to cause him to lose his balance and pitch back out of the tree he’d been waiting in, forcing him to fall straight into the tangle of mangrove roots below. He even landed on his head in a way he’d have survived without his enhancements.

Scheiße. Recoil caught me off guard, he cursed internally.

But he could also easily see that he hadn’t sacrificed his one shot, as well as his dignity, without reason.

Because the bullet had hammered into the right eye of the Hunger like the fist of an angry god, popped that organ like a water balloon, and even managed to shatter the surrounding orbital bone from the force of the detonation.

Unsurprisingly, the monster didn’t like that.

It roared in fury and pain, whipped its head around to where he’d been sitting mere moments before, and was presently running away from … then it inhaled. And half the world seemed to vanish in an instant.

***

Well, wasn’t that thing overpowered? Just a touch?

Oh, the things he could do with its powers once he’d gotten his hands on them … they’d require him to, you know, get his hands on them. And that was looking less and less likely with every passing moment.

It had already recharged its accuracy power to the point where it was all but guaranteed to hit Abrams, and while its ability to strike Henderson was much lower, he was also out of recovery charges and potions, well, they weren’t quite the second life they’d been a couple of ranks ago.

But there was one plant that should be doable, and he’d just gotten far enough away from the Hunger to start creating monsters. Of course, in all likelihood, the same would enable the monster to do the same, but this state wouldn’t exist for more than a couple of seconds, so he started summoning monkeys and healing potions to provide medical support even as he yanked the ship around.

“Abrams, plan Ajax!” he yelled even as he poured out all his mana into summoning as many creatures as he could, a swarm of poisonous and toxic monstrosities meant to weaken it as much as possible. He couldn’t create something capable of truly hurting or hindering this thing … endlessly stacking debuffs onto the Komodo Dragon was most likely the best he could do at the moment.

For the rest, he’d be forced to rely on his guns and the BPA.

It wouldn’t be too much fun for her, but the situation seemed to call for it, and it would also hopefully negate most of the issues that damn power caused.

At least he’d managed to get back before the Hunger realized what was going on and summoned something.

***

Plan Ajax.

Damn.

This was going to be a right pain.

But there was a reason they had a name for this particular harebrained scheme, they’d known it might be needed and planned for how to make it as useful and effective as it could possibly be.

Yet that didn’t mean that it would not be absolutely hellish. For her, specifically.

And yet … Jaclyn couldn’t help but get a little excited. This thing was about to learn just how far she could go if pressed. How far, of the two of them, only she could go, because unlike the gaol beast, she wasn’t alone. She had backup. She could afford to give all she could and more on top of it, secure in the knowledge that when the effort inevitably knocked her on her ass, the others get her our out of the line of fire, assuming there was still “fire” she needed to be protected from by the time she exhausted herself.

She flung herself a the monster which was currently devouring the landscape in huge bursts, and kicked it in its other eye, managing to send the gelatin rippling across the surface without rupturing the organ. Damn, weren’t those things supposed to be vulnerable?

And then, when it backhanded her, she let it hit. Hit her foot, to be specific, already wincing in anticipation of the pain, even as she shifted her position to both ensure the strike would be survivable and direct the inevitable spray of blood straight into the monster’s open wounds.

Bamm!

From one moment to the next, her body suddenly ended just below her pelvis.

It hurt so bad that in the end, she didn’t even feel the pain, her body desperately trying to prevent her from shutting down while her powers fought to keep her sane and stem the bleeding … and then she brought the B-Rank potion to her lips and drank.

Her legs regrew almost instantly, but that wasn’t where it ended. She could feel her body thrumming with power, energy that hadn’t been regained but added, as the fury of an ancient, practically primordial, serpent flowed through her.

And the monster? It fell back, recoiling as its flesh blistered, granting Granger a clean shot at its other eye with some kind of truly titanic spell he’d likely been building for several minutes, taking full advantage of his newest power to create some kind of arcane WMD that erased the eye and a sizeable chunk of its skull.

It should have killed the monster instantly, but ultimately … the world had lost its bloody mind.

So Jaclyn threw herself back into the fray, only to learn all too soon that the Hunger was able to track her the instant it managed to tag her with that accuracy power. The buildup was much slower, but it happened anyway.

Until she forced the issue and let it hit her in a way that was eminently survivable while also sufficiently dangerous that her hydra bond kicked in the instant she swallowed a point. And once again, it was seriously regretting its success as her blood began to blacken and burn its flesh.

Back and forth they went, until it hit her a third time, and she found herself coughing blood as she went spiraling, something clearly having gone much worse than on the previous occasions.

If the monster had still had its eyes, it would have smashed her at this point… but it didn’t. And a renewed effort from the Belfast made it roar in fury, fire off a blind gravity chomp, and stop paying attention to her entirely. Though it probably wouldn’t have been able to see her anyway, since the “bond” had been broken.

This time, she didn’t heal herself, however, a monkey with a potion took care of that and handed her a spare, leaving her with two more potions worth their weight in gold ten thousandfold. And here she was, drinking them like cheap shots.

Jaclyn shook her head, chasing away the innane thought, launching herself once more into the monster, only to catch its tail to the face and find herself at the bottom of a crater.

Yet despite the pain, somehow, she grinned. Every time this thing hit her, the gap between them closed just that little bit more.

So she kept going, losing an arm to a near miss from a gravity chomp a couple of minutes later. And then it grew right back.

The Hunger was lashing out wildly now, seemingly having lost even its animal cunning, bleeding from thousands of injuries while the necrotic patches caused by her blood, Gula’s Tatzelwyrm’s, or Granger’s spells covered just about every other available surface, plus the corpses of all the serpents Daedalus had covered the monster with, each surruonded by an area of ruined flesh.

She could stop now, she could let the others finish this, she could spare herself the pain … but she had the immense power of her latest bond blasting through her, and it was only growing.

Stopping was possible, but never going to happen. Badger claws and eagle talons and a spectral jaw that seemingly randomly swapped between a furious serpent’s maw and a snarling badger’s visage, causing Komodo Dragon flesh to fall like rain, her own skin popping in places as she cut herself on random bone fragments sitting beneath the monster’s flesh, left behind by previous attacks … yet all that managed to do was tack on further damage.

Again and again, she struck, her vision growing dim at the edges. Oh …

Jaclyn dismissed her wings and let herself fall into the monster’s already half-dead body, then kicked off it to hurl herself backwards as far as she could get before …

***

Thomas’ heart clenched while he watched Abrams fall from the sky, clearly and decidedly unconscious.

If she had gone down, apparently to exhaustion, the others couldn’t be far behind.

“Back up, I’m going in!” he loudly announced, yelling not from the ship but via a speaker-parrot that was promptly obliterated by another gravity chomp. Yep, it had been the correct decision to use that thing.

And then, he gunned the throttle, activating every speed enchantment he had available while the Belfast’s bow began to glow red-hot as he poured energy into it.

But noisy as his approach was, the monster only noticed him at the very last moment, and by then, it was far too late. The ship’s bow sliced across the monster’s left paw and cut it in half, then its top dug into the top of its stomach until all three barrels of the forward gun found themselves buried in the creature’s guts.

He fired.

Guts were pulverized and blood misted into the sky.

And the Hunger died.

The less said about the damage to his ship, the better.

***

“Did we get it?” Jaclyn groaned as she woke up, finding herself atop a fairly dry patch of ground, surrounded by everyone else.

Everyone who was left. She grimaced, only then seeing that the Belfast had been practically destroyed at some point after she’d passed out, the front of the ship peeled away as though it were some kind of bizarre combination of popcorn kernel and modern art. There was a story there … but one that could wait.

“Yep,” Henderson nodded. “Check your status sheet.”

Jaclyn glanced at it.

Name: Jaclyn Abrams

Race: Human

Class: Anima Monk

C-Rank, Level 1-> 3/20

Class Abilities

Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)

Spirit Projection (E-Rank)

Ancient Bond: Haast’s Eagle (D-Rank)

Mythic Bond: Lernean Hydra (C-Rank)

Statistics (150 points available)

Body: 360

Magic: 40

Mind: 254

Spirit: 360

Skills

Pugilism 40 -> 41

Fist of the Indomitable Badger 40 -> 41

Athletics 40 -> 41

Situational Awareness 40

Bullshit Radar 33

Martial Arts 40 -> 41

Alternate Skill Set (currently inactive, switch available)

Mana Control 13

Utility Magic 15

Ballance 16

Breathing 12

Inspect 16

Movement 10

***

Sooo … couple of things to take away there.

Firstly, regardless of how ridiculous that number was, every Level in C-Rank gave a full 75 stat points, three times as effective as one in D-Rank, to the point where the two levels she’d just gotten were more valuable than the five she’d gained from Alaxia. She wound up splitting them evenly between Body, Mind, and Spirit.

And second was the fact that not only had she gotten a mere single level in four of her Skills where she’d normally have leveled all except Bullshit Radar multiple times, but the sheer difference each Level made at this point was likewise immense.

She sat up a dnmoved a little.

Simply clenching her fist and doing a couple of jabs into the air let her feel the difference.

It was as though she had her bracelet active at more than half power, as though the sheer force and mass she could throw behind her strikes had trippled without her even doing anything, while Martial Arts was actively feeding energy into her, her other fist flashing forward practically on its own, a small shockwave washing out from it.

Everything about her felt so light, her movements smooth and powerful in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with her sheer strength. And while she wasn’t willing to test it anytime soon, she knew that her ability to mitigate attacks had likewise exploded in capability.

But none of that had come freely, and that mere thought immediately brought her back down to Earth. This was netiher the place nor the time for this

She looked around once again, noting the absences. Half the group had died, and the fact that she hadn’t really known any of the dead somehow managed to make her feel oh so much worse. There’d be no more chances to change that, not anymore.

Jaclyn hoped all this had been worth it. And that Daedalus would indeed be able to use this monster’s body to create something that could stabilize the next merge.