Chapter 37: Vanguard
Vicky's Stats (Start of Chapter 37):
Level: 25
XP: 0 / 40,000 (To Lvl 26)
Stat Points Available: 0
STR: 31
SPD: 30
END: 30
Chi: 20 / 20
"Come on then," Vicky breathed, his bloody-toothed grin a mask of defiant insanity.
The shadow of the Colossus's foot blotted out the world. It descended, a mountain of iron and bone falling from the sky, aimed at turning him into a red smear on the black stone. He was out of Chi, his arms were smoking ruins, and his body was screaming for rest. He couldn't dodge. He couldn't block.
So he didn't.
In the final microsecond, as the crushing weight entered his personal space, Vicky did the only thing he could. He slammed his charred, smoking, half-regenerated fists into the ground.
It wasn't a Chi-powered strike. It was a desperate, raw application of 31 Strength.
CRACK!
The stone floor, already destabilized by the beam, his shield-rip, and the molten trench, shattered beneath him.
The Colossus's foot came down.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The sound was absolute. It was a physical, crushing thing, a sound that was felt more than heard. The entire coliseum, already a ruin, gave a final, shuddering groan. The shockwave of the impact was so powerful that it pulverized the remaining stands, creating a crater a hundred yards wide.
Albert Cole, a quarter-mile away, was blown from his feet, his body slamming into the far wall of the chasm. He blacked out for a moment, his entire world a ringing, deafening silence.
The Colossus, standing in the center of its new crater, lifted its foot.
There was nothing there.
No bloodstain. No tattered cloth. No body. Just a pulverized, concave hole in the bedrock.
The monster paused, its violet-lit eyes scanning the devastation. The insect was gone. Annihilated.
It let out a low, rumbling growl, a sound of triumphant finality. Its one leg was crippled, its core was cracked, but its enemy was dead. It turned, its massive body dragging its molten, useless leg, and began to limp back toward the dark, pulsing rift it was born to guard.
Twenty feet beneath the surface, there was only darkness, silence, and the smell of crushed stone.
Vicky was alive. Barely.
His desperate, last-second punch had shattered the floor, creating a foxhole just deep enough. The stomp had landed around him, not on him. The force had collapsed the crypts, burying him alive under tons of rock.
He was in a pocket, a small tomb of his own making. His body was a wreck. Every bone felt fractured. His arms, which had taken the brunt of the impact from the collapsing rock, were pulp.
[Warning: Catastrophic System Trauma.]
[Body Integrity: 12%]
[Vampiric Regeneration Working at Maximum Capacity...]
He lay there, pinned, suffocating. His vision was black.
No... Not here... Not after all this...
His Chi, which had been scraped to absolute zero, finally... ticked.
[Chi: 1 / 20]
It was a single drop of water in a desert. But it was enough.
He didn't use it to heal. He used it to listen. He sent that single thread of energy out, painting a picture of the world around him. He felt the rock pinning his legs, his chest. He felt the open, pulverized arena above him.
And he felt the Colossus.
It was... moving away. Its energy signature was limping. It thought he was dead.
Good.
He lay in the dark, forcing his body to mend. His bones set with audible cracks. His pulped arms began to regain feeling, knitting flesh and sinew.
[Chi: 2 / 20]
[Chi: 3 / 20]
[Chi: 4 / 20]
He waited. One minute. Two. His 30 Endurance, combined with his vampiric nature, meant his regeneration was supernaturally fast. His arms were functional, if not perfect.
[Chi: 10 / 20]
Now.
From his hiding spot, Albert Cole, his ears ringing, watched in utter disbelief as the Colossus limped away from the impact crater. The fight was over. The Progenitor was dead. A cold, alien despair, something even his undeath couldn't numb, began to settle on him.
Then the crater floor exploded.
With a roar that was pure, distilled rage, Vicky burst from his own grave, a black comet of rock and vengeance. He rocketed thirty feet into the air, landing on the lip of the crater, his chest heaving. His arms were raw, red, and steaming, but they were whole. His eyes burned with a cold, silver light.
The Colossus froze. It turned, its movements no longer ponderous, but jerky with
what could only be... shock.
The fly was back.
"You... big... bastard!" Vicky snarled, spitting dust.
The Colossus didn't wait. It opened its jaw, the purple vortex of souls swirling, charging its necrotic beam.
But Vicky was already moving.
He had a new plan. He couldn't break the outside. So he would go inside.
He sprinted, his 30 Speed a silver blur. He wasn't aiming for the legs or the core. He was aiming for the arm. The monster, enraged, swiped at him, its giant, house-sized hand moving to intercept.
This was what Vicky was waiting for.
He didn't dodge. He leaped.
He landed on the monster's incoming wrist, his fingers, now tipped with fully-formed claws, digging into the gaps between the bone and iron plates. The G-force almost tore him from his perch, but his 31 Strength held.
He was on the monster.
It roared, shaking its arm violently, trying to dislodge him. It was like riding an avalanche. But Vicky was already running. He ran up the arm, a tiny figure scaling a limb of a god. The spectral hands erupted from its body, grasping, tearing, burning him with necrotic frost.
"GET OFF!" he screamed, pulsing his 10 Chi in a constant, defensive flare, vaporizing the spirits as he ran.
He reached the shoulder, a massive, plated pauldron. He leaped, catching the edge of the monster's gorget, and hauled himself up. He was now on its chest, just feet from the target.
The spider-webbed, violet crystal core.
The Colossus, in a panic, brought its other hand up to smash him, to dig him out of its own chest.
Vicky didn't have time.
He saw the mountain-sized hand coming. He had one second.
He pulled his right arm back. He poured every last drop of his 10 Chi, his 31 Strength, and his entire, desperate will into one, single point. His fist, his arm, his entire being.
He didn't punch.
He stabbed.
His hand, formed into a spear-tip, struck the center of the spider-webbed crack.
The CHING from before was replaced by a sickening, crystalline CRUNCH.
His hand, his entire forearm, broke through the crystal. He was inside it.
There was a moment of absolute, deafening silence. The world held its breath. The Colossus's hand, inches from him, stopped.
Vicky felt it. He was touching the inside. He wasn't touching bone or steel. He was touching a swirling, screaming, infinite ocean of energy. The thousands of souls that powered the beast.
"Break," he whispered.
And he tore his hand back out.
He ripped the crystal's core open.
The result was not an explosion. It was an uncorking.
A geyser of pure, violet soul-energy erupted from the monster's chest. It shot a thousand feet into the sky, a brilliant, screaming pillar of light that tore a hole in the purple clouds. The thousands of spirits, trapped for eons, were finally free.
The Colossus reared back, its body convulsing. It made no sound, but the air was filled with a million, overlapping screams of ecstatic release. The light was blinding.
Vicky, at ground zero, was engulfed.
The soul-energy flayed him. It was an agony beyond pain, beyond heat or cold. It was an energy that attacked his very existence. His flesh was vaporized, his muscles torn away, his bones exposed to the raw, spiritual power.
[Warning! SOUL-SHRED DETECTED!]
[Body Integrity: 3%... 2%... 1%...]
He was thrown from the monster's chest, a flaming, skeletal husk, and hit the ground, motionless.
The light faded. The screaming stopped.
The Colossus stood for a second, a hollow, dark silhouette against the hole in the sky. Its violet eyes were dark. Then, with the sound of a mountain collapsing, it crumbled. The bones, the iron, the grave-dirt—all of it, its animating force now gone—clattered to the ground in a thirty-foot-tall pile of inert, dead matter.
Silence.
A single notification, pristine and silent, appeared in Vicky's vision.
[You have slain the Necromantic Colossus (Plane Guardian)!]
[Massive XP Gained: 250,000 XP!]
[You have reached Level 26!]
[You have 3 Stat Points to allocate.]
[You have reached Level 27!]
[You have 3 Stat Points to allocate.]
[You. have reached Level 28!]
[You have 3 Stat Points to allocate.]
[You have reached Level 29!]
[You have 3 Stat Points to allocate.]
[You have reached Level 30!]
[You have 3 Stat Points to allocate.]
[You have 15 Stat Points Available.]
[Your Chi Core has expanded!]
[Chi: 30 / 30]
Vicky lay in the rubble, a blackened skeleton. Then, the power hit him.
It was a flood. A deluge of pure, raw, divine strength. The 15 stat points flooded his being. He didn't even have to allocate them; his body, his will, knew what it needed.
[All Stat Points Allocated.]
[STR: +5]
[SPD: +5]
[END: +5]
His 30 Endurance, now 35, combined with the level-up restoration, was like a biological detonation.
From the pile of charred bones, new, pale flesh grew at a visible rate. Muscle fibers wove themselves, organs regenerated from nothing, and new, unblemished skin covered his form. In three seconds, he went from a corpse to a man at his absolute, terrifying peak.
He stood, clenching his fists. The power was intoxicating. It was a clean, sharp hum under his skin. His 36 Strength felt like it could shatter the plane. His 35 Speed made the world seem slow. His 35 Endurance made him feel... indestructible.
"Progenitor...?"
Vicky turned. Albert Cole was standing twenty yards away, his crimson eyes wide with a mixture of terror and pure, religious awe. He had seen the soul-bomb. He had seen Vicky die. And he had seen him reborn.
"You... you are a god," Albert whispered, dropping to one knee.
"Get up," Vicky said. His voice was different. Deeper. Resonating with his new power. "I'm no god."
"I... I saw," Albert stammered, rising. "I've never... the power. What... what are you?"
"A survivor," Vicky said, looking down at his new, unmarked hands. "Same as you." He looked at Albert. "You did good. You stayed back. You're alive. That's a victory."
Albert shook his head, a new, fiery resolve in his eyes. "No. That wasn't a victory. That was hiding. I watched you fight a god. I watched you die. I watched you come back. I... I am Level 14. And I am nothing."
"You're not nothing," Vicky said, turning to the pile of rubble. "You're a start."
"No," Albert said, his voice firm. He stepped forward. "You are a warrior. You fight for something. I could feel it. You weren't just killing that thing. You were protecting something. Something far away. Your home."
Vicky froze, his back to Albert.
"That's what I learned," Albert continued, his voice resonating with passion. "Strength isn't for us. It's for them. For the ones who can't fight. You... you are a shield for your people. A vanguard. The one who goes first, who faces the darkness so they don't have to."
He pounded his fist against his own chest. "You've given me and my people a gift. A new life. I won't waste it hiding. I will become a vanguard for my people. I will get strong. Not to conquer. But to protect."
Vicky turned, studying the man. Albert Cole, the farmer, was gone. In his place was a true, nascent vampire lord, a guardian for his lost tribe.
As if summoned by their words, the dark energy rift the Colossus had been guarding began to change. The violent, violet-black energy smoothed, calmed, and brightened. It swirled into a stable, silver-white disc.
[Quest Complete: Defeat the Master of the Necrotic Plane.]
[Time Remaining: 3 Hours, 57 Minutes.]
[Return Portal is now active.]
"It's... it's your way home," Albert said, his voice soft.
Vicky nodded. He walked toward the portal, then stopped. He looked back at Albert. "Good luck, Albert Cole. Make 'Sanctuary' mean something."
"We will," Albert said, bowing his head. "And you... Progenitor... be careful."
Vicky raised an eyebrow.
"The being that destroyed my world... Xylos," Albert said, his voice dropping to a grim whisper. "It wasn't a monster. It was a force. It commanded armies that darkened the sky. I... I saw its mark. On the Colossus."
Vicky's blood ran cold. "What are you saying?"
"That thing," Albert said, pointing to the massive pile of bone and iron, "wasn't the master. It was a minion. A guard dog. A very, very powerful one... but it was still just a slave. The being that destroyed my world... it put it here. This whole plane... it's just an outpost. An abattoir. And it's one of thousands."
He looked Vicky in the eyes, his crimson gaze filled with a terrible, ancient knowledge.
"It consumes worlds, Progenitor. That's what it does. One day... it will find your home. Just as it found mine."
Vicky stood, motionless, the new, heavy weight of this knowledge settling on him. His victory, his five new levels... it all suddenly felt small.
"I'll be ready," Vicky said, his voice hard as steel.
Albert Cole smiled. It was a true, sharp, vampiric grin. "I know. And so will we. When that day comes, find us. We, the Castaways... the Stat-Devourers... we will be strong. I will make us strong. And when that shadow falls on your world, we will be your vanguards."
He gave a warrior's salute. "Thank you, Vicky. For the teeth. And for the purpose."
Vicky looked at him, no longer a starving refugee, but a future king. He nodded once, a gesture of respect.
Then, without a word, Vicky turned and stepped into the silver-white light of the portal. The world dissolved around him.
[Vicky's Stats - End of Chapter 37]
Level: 30
XP: 30,000 / 50,000 (To Lvl 31) (Leftover from 250k)
Stat Points Available: 0
STR: 36 (31 + 5)
SPD: 35 (30 + 5)
END: 35 (30 + 5)
Chi: 30 / 30 (Expanded)