Chapter 36: Devilish Entrance
Hugo stood atop the colossal stone hand of the forgotten statue, its fingers large enough to serve as a plaza. It was eerily similar to the knight statue he and Sunny had used as a refuge during their first days after the solstice. The memory felt strangely distant to Hugo as if it had happened lifetime ago.
Thankfully there was other things he could think about to forget his terrible memories...
For example The fact that he had just vanquished an Awakened Titan was by any objective measure unbelievable. A mere Awakened even one with a divine aspect slaying a Titan? It was the stuff of legends, or more accurately of lies, no one would believe him.
He'd had advantages, of course—the devastating power of a Transcendent Memory weapon and the unexpected augmentation of his [Omni-Kiks] armor—but the victory was still his which caused A fierce cold pride to swelle within him. It was a testament to his strength and a solid step on the path toward his dream of…
'No. That's ridiculous.'
His dream itself, the grand shining ambition that had once fueled him was slowly fading. He could feel it like a photograph left in the sun, its colors bleaching to a featureless white...
Although Hugo couldn't help but wonder why that was...
Was it because the relentless trauma grinding him down into a more pragmatic brutal creature? Was it the slow insidious influence of his Flaw eroding the very foundations of his humanity?
Or was it simply the crushing weight of reality proving his aspirations to be the naive fantasies of a dead man?
He did not know the reason and that ignorance left him feeling hollow. It was as if he was a stranger in his own mind...
'This isn't the time to be thinking about this...' he frowned slightly, burying his flickering emotions...
To get his thoughts off the sensitive subject, Hugo summoned the spells runes
As expected, the Spell offered no rewards for slaying a Titan which was quite ridiculous But his gaze snagged on a new string of text beneath his Echo...
Souls Harvested: [7/100]
A cold trickle of unease ran down his spine as he looked at the glowing runes.
The Spirit Seed still nestled within his soul sea unsummoned and inert had somehow harvested the Titan's soul. It was feeding autonomously like a hungry parasite...
'Creepy,' he thought, the word inadequate for the profound violation he felt...
But the echo was still too valuable to disczrd... an awakened terror with divine origin wasn't something many could possses, not even legacies could claim that...
Hugo summoned the dark seed and clutched it in his gigantic grasp as if inserting his dominance against the lifeless seed.
He sent a mental command towards it, making it activate it's [Soul fruit] ability.
Hugo felt the soul essence within the echo stir as it suddenly circled around in loops within the echo as if on the near of exploding...
then the seed emitted a beautiful golden light causing Hugo to immediately close it off with his hands, not allowing the light to attract any abomination.
The golden light swelled as Hugo felt something materializing in his hands, as if taking form.
Not long after the golden light stopped, Hugo opened his hands to find the seed there... And seven beautiful golden apples near it, each emitting a beautiful light and feeling... Divine.
He frowned slightly looking at the clean, ripe fruit. It's refreshing fragrance making him eager to eat its softsucculent flesh...
He frowned knowing this was not a mind hex considering he was resistant to them... Instead it his hunger.
He hadn't eating anything in... A long time.
He was not sure how long he spent dead but he was just now realizing that he was hungry.
With a look of resignation Hugo brought one of the fruit to his mouth, eating it entirely...
[Your Omnitrix grows Stronger]
'huh?'
He frowned summoning his runes
Soul fragments: [17/4000]
Not believing his eyes, Hugo eat another fruit
[Your Omnitrix grows stronger ]
[18/4000]
'soul fragments... This echo can create fruits that gives soul fragments...' he was suddenly lost in thoughts, thinking of how much of a life saver this echo could be.
The titan he killed has seven soul cores thus seven fruits were made. Now that he was an awakened himself, he would get one fragments from awakened creatures no matter their class.
It saved him the trouble of digging for soul shards, and even then, he could get fragments from soul shards and another fragments from the fruits.
Essentially making saturating his cores, and the cores of other sleepers much easier.
It was truly Worthy of it's title...
———
The long oppressive night stretched on, the Dark Sea churning with unseen horrors below. Then, hours later a sliver of grey light pierced the horizon .
It was weak, diluted, but it was undeniable.
Dawn had come to the World once again..
As the light grew, The vast, black expanse of the Dark Sea began to recede, not like water, but like a living shadow shrinking from the light. It pulled back from the land revealing a bruised and broken landscape but a solid one nonetheless
The sun, a pale, sickly orb, rose fully, banishing the nightmare sea until the next sunset.
Hugo stood and looked west ready to jump off the statue, but just as he did.
he froze.
There it was. Carved into the side of a massive mountain —or at least what resembled it— its structures spilling down the slopes like a stone waterfall, was the city from Cassie's vision. It was immense, wall made of dark onyx stone stretching as far as Hugo could see encasing something a gigantic city within it. And at its very heart, piercing the sky, was a colossal castle, its spires like accusing fingers reaching for the dead heavens.
His destination.
Their promised sanctuary.
Without ceremony, hugo leaped from the giant stone hand, his Chimera Sui Generis form hitting the ground with a cratering impact that sent cracks racing through the rock. He began to run toward the city, his powerful strides eating up the distance.
From anyone else perspective they would have seen a lone monstrous figure moving across the blighted plain but Hugo did not care about he looked right now.
He only cared about reaching the city, to see if there was truly other people inside it.
To see if there truly was a gateway from this cursed land.
Just as he was halfway there, his enhanced peripheral vision caught something in the sky...
Two dots high up descending with an incredible speed downwards in his way.
Hugo frowned instantly thinking about the possibility of a nightmare creatures.
He summoned the [Emerald Spyglass] and raised it to His eyes.
The world zoomed in, details snapping into sharp focus as spyglass revealed the nature of the dots...
They were creatures...
creatures that were terrifyingly.
They had slender humanoid bodies the color of bleached bone with long, segmented limbs that ended in wickedly sharp claws. Their faces were blank masks devoid of features except for a single, vertical red slit where a mouth should be.
Most strikingly, from their backs sprouted four diaphanous insectoid wings that beat with a blurring humming frequency holding them aloft with an impossible grace.
They radiated an aura of cold predatory efficiency that was entirely different from the mindless hunger of most Nightmare Creatured
These two were professional hunters.
And their presence crushed the air around them with a pressure Hugo had only felt once before.
They weren't Awakened.
They were Fallen.
Hugo dismissed the spyglass and summoned [Nothing], the grey mist solidifying in his grip into the form of a long spear.
The two Spire Messengers—though he did not know their name— changed their angle diving toward him like javelins. The air screamed around them as the first one hit the ground with a powerful lung.
The ugly bird reached for him, it's claws slashing in a silver arc meant to decapitate him. Hugo ducked under the blow, the wind of impact passing through. He thrust his spear upward but the creature was already gone, zipping backward with a twitch of its wings. The second was already on his flank. He barely brought his spear around in time to parry a series of lightning-fast strikes, each impact jarring his arms a little.
The speed of a fallen abomination was staggering.
He needed to change his approche, and luckily he was as versatile as they come.
Taking leap back, Hugo brought the dial of his Omnitrix up and slammed down the holographic figure.
A flash of blue. His massive form was replaced by the sleek reptilian body of the Kineceleran. The world snapped into hyper-clarity as Hugo activated [Transcendent Speed] becoming a blur.
He zipped around the diving Messenger, his movements unpredictable, then through his accelerated mind, he saw it, a microsecond where the creature's wing-beat created a slight imbalance in it's form.
Hugo shot forward, [Nothing] now shaped into a razor-edged disc and sliced deep into the membrane of one wing.
The Messenger let out a soundless shriek, its flight turning into a clumsy spinning crash as it tumbled into the rocky ground, one wing mangled.
Then [Nothing] span backward at Hugo's command shifting into a collar that slammed down on the injured abomination.
At that moment Hugo rushed forward, his two clawed hands went down on the bird's face, piercing it's terrifying eyes multiple times untill the long claws reached its brain.
[You have slain a fallen monster: Cursed herald]
'One down...'
The second Messenger having learned, didn't engage directly, instead It hovered back into the sky , its featureless face somehow conveying cold fury As it reached down to bite Hugo.
It was faster than its partner But Hugo could react as he was faster.
For a long moment they played cat and mouse, with Hugo unable to injure it and the herald unable to catch it.
Hugo, getting tired of this situation activated his second ability [Time deal], time around him slowed as he locked eyes with the flying abomination.
Hugo moved towards the dead body, grabbing [Nothing] and shifting it into a spear, then in the next moment he was on top of the abomination thrusting his spear deep within it.
[Time deal] instantly deactivated as he felt his soul essence almost deplete in mere seconds, the ascended ability was too dangerous to use in situations like this.
But that did not matter because Hugo was about to kill the bastard bird.
Then, without warning, the creature raised it's wings violently and shot vertically into the sky.
It did not make any sense considering Hugo was currently cutting it's neck with a transcendant memory.
The ground fell away at a nauseating speed as The wind roared threatening to tear him from its grasp. He quick to understood what the creature was trying to do, it was attempting to kill him by dropping him for a large distance...
Hugo slammed the Omnitrix on his chest, morphing
Fire erupted in the sky as The Kineceleran form vanished replaced by the living inferno of the Pyronite.
The Messenger twisted in the sky attempting to throw the living fire off it's back but Hugo was not going to die so easily . Instead, he used his [nothing ] as an anchor to hold to the creature body.
Then He unleashed his awakened ability [Furnace] stoking the internal conflagration to a white-hot intensity and then focused it through [Pyrokinesis] wrapping the flames around himself and his captor creating a sphere of contained raging sun.
Then, hugo directed it all inward, onto the Messenger's head creating a complex web of fire that was attempting to Pierce it's head.
The creature thrashed violently but Hugo held on like a demonic rider on a steed of bone. He willed [Nothing] to shift again. The mist still partly wrapped around the creature's limbs morphed from a spear into solid unbreakable chains cinching tightly around the Messenger's neck holding its head in place.
The sphere of fire contracted. The Messenger's blank mask began to glow, then blister and lastly it began to melt.
The creature of the Fallen rank, its essence a rank above his Awakened flames which gave it a hard enough skin to resist it for a while But fire was still fire.
And this was no ordinary fire. This was the divine fire of a Pyronite, a flame born from a star And within Hugo, it was synergized, purified and made anathema to corruption by his [Flames of Divinity] attribute.
He'd spent time contemplating how, as a mere Awakened Beast, he had managed to harm the Corrupted Devil that night in the ashen barrow.
Now it all made sense to him, His Pyronite form was a conduit and his innate divinity was the fuel creating a flame that burned the corrupted with disproportionate fury.
This creature was a whole rank below the creature of nothing and so it could not hope to resist it the same way it did.
And so the divine fire burned.
The Messenger's struggles started to grew frantic weakening by the moment then A final, silent convulsion ran through its body as it stopped resisting.
[You have slain a fallen demon: cursed king]
At that moment, Hugo released the dome of fire letting himself and the creature fall from the sky at a terrifying speed.
Hugo fell alongside the charred corpse of the Spire Messenger like a meteorite.
"Now what?!" He panicked slightly trying to find a way to survive the landing.
As an awakened devil his chances of surviving were not that bad but he did not want to test that.
[Nothing] could in theory turn into wings or something soft but that would require a lot of essence which he would drain him dry.
Just as he was thinking about a way to survive the landing, his gaze fell upon the dead creature tumbling beside him. Its terrifying, bleached-bone form was now a ruined husk but the structure was there: the powerful wings, the aerodynamic shape and the ability to fly almost perfectly...
A thought suddenly exploded in his mind, it was insane and devious but it was a plan...
He had just been lamenting his lack of aerial mobility and The solution was falling right beside him.
"fuck it!" Looking deep within, he reached for the core function of his Aspect and activated his innate ability, [Essence Imprint]. A familiar, brilliant yellow energy erupted from the Omnitrix lancing out to scan the falling corpse. It enveloped the dead Messenger in a web of light analyzing and cataloging it's very essence.
[You have gained an Imprint.]
The Omnitrix's voice ran through his mind as he immediately slammed the Omnitrix symbol on his chest not even looking at the imprint runes.
The transformation was a violent glorious shock. The living flames of his Pyronite form were instantly snuffed out as his bones and muscles began to extend and morph, at the same time A coat of thick jet-black fur sprouted across his expanding body, sleek and dense like that of a predatory raven
From his shoulders, two massive wings of onyx feathers erupted each longer than his body catching the air with an instinctual power that immediately stabilized his fall a little. His torso broadened and two additional powerful arms sprouted beneath his primary ones, each ending in vicious obsidian claws.
His legs elongated twisting into the powerful, taloned limbs of a raptor while His face contorted, it's features stretching and hardening into a long, cruelly curved beak which sharp enough to pierce metal. The Omnitrix symbol, glowing its steady blue, settled on his chest like a badge of office.
He was a giant harpy-eagle like creature that was bigger, bulkier and far more... Holier than the Spire Messengers he had slain, it made sense considering he was of the devil class while also following the path of ascension.
Then, With a single, powerful beat of his new wings, Hugo propelled himself away from the dead Messenger's body. He watched hovering with an effortless grace that felt as natural as breathing as the corpse continued its descent. It struck the towering, ancient wall of the city with a wet crunch. The impact was insignificant against the impossibly durable stone leaving no more than a bloody smudge. The creature was just a bug against the immensity of this place...
Hugo glided downwards, his wings creating small gusts of wind as he moved towards the city wall landing on the very top of the colosol structure, his talons clicking softly against the stone.
He perched there his dark form silhouetted against the pale sky like a mighty predator.
'Finally, a flying Imprint...' Hugo was quite satisfied with this development.
But he was still feeling... Disturbed by the chain of events that had just happened.
The ease with which he accepted this new form and the lack of revulsion at his monstrous appearance was… notable to say the least.
Hugo felt strangley normal about all of this, The human boy who might have been horrified by this feathered, four-armed abomination felt like a distant memory, his reactions muffled by layers of alien psychology and the sheer necessity of survival...
It was confusing, but he had bigger problems right now...
Hugo looked down, his new, keen eyes taking in the city in all of its "glory."
It was not a pretty sight.
The city was a graveyard. The streets, a complex web of stone avenues and staircases were utterly devoid of human life. But that did not mean that it's streets were empty.
Quite the opposite infact, the city was crawling with life, a vile, corrupted life but life nonetheless.
There were hundreds of them, maybe even thousands all trapped within the protective embrace of the colossal walls, waiting with infinite patience for prey that would likely never come...
Hugo's beak tightened into a grim line.
Cassie had them the city would be dangerous but this was a scale of desolation and infestation he hadn't been prepared for.
The sheer number of Nightmare Creatures here could overwhelm the entirety of NQSC even with Awakeneds inculded.
The situation was far worse than he thought.
Then A cold knot tightened in his stomach, making him feel sick
'Could they have really made it through this?' The thought of Sunny, Nephis, and Cassie being torn apart in these monster-choked streets was not just sad, it was a terrifyingly realistic probability. The hope he'd been carrying suddenly felt fragile, like a thin glass rod in a furnace...
Beating his powerful wings once more, Hugo launched himself from the wall, flying low and fast over the rooftops toward the distant castle that crowned on a high hill, It was his only lead, the only place that offered a semblance of sanctuary in this hellscape.
And so He flew with a desperate urgency, his shadow a fleeting blot over the horrors below.
But then, his sharp eyes suddenly caught movement some distance away.
It was Not the mindless wandering of the other abominations but something different. Something more calculated and steady...
Four dots moving with a purpose and formation that spoke of human intelligence, were making their way down a hill near the castle's base.
He changed his course slightly, diving toward them.
---
[Sid POV]
Sid pushed a stray strand of her dirty blond hair from her face, her shimmering blue eyes scanning the broken landscape with a hunter's weary focus.
The air in the dark city was always cold carrying the dust of a dead civilizations and the faint metallic scent of blood.
Behind her, the soft clink of armor and the crunch of gravel underfoot signaled her cohort: Gantry, shim and gorn.
They were moving down the hill from the bright castle, a place that felt less like a sanctuary and more like a gilded cage with each day...
After Lady Changing Star and her cohort had departed on their vague grand mission to bring "salvation" to the sleepers of the forgotten shore, she had left Sid in charge of the outer settlement.
The title was grand but the reality was a grindin thankless ordeal. Gunlaug's men, the so-called "protectors" of the people seemed to take special pleasure in making their lives difficult, hoarding resources and looking for any excuse to exert their authority over them. Her cohort was one of the few groups skilled and desperate enough to hunt the monsters that roamed the city's lower levels bringing back precious food for the struggling settlement.
"Hey, Sid," Gorn's voice was a low and steady breaking the tense silence. "You really got no idea where Lady changing star went? Not even a hint?"
Sid let out a long, tired sigh. The lack of sleep was a constant weight behind her eyes.
"For the hundredth time, Gorn, no. I don't know. She doesn't confide in me that much. She gave me an order and we're following it."
She kept her gaze forward, watching for the tell-tale signs of their quarry.
This time, it was Shim who spoke up, his voice hesitant almost a whisper. "You don't… you don't really think she abandoned us, do you?"
The unspoken fear hung in the air, the fact that they had pinned their survival on a stranger was not something that they particularly liked but there was nothing they could do about it... it was their only chance of survival especially with gunlaug being the cruel tyrant he was...
Sid didn't break her stride but her grip tightened on the hilt of her sword. "No," she said, the word firmer than she felt.
"She's not the type to run. She's Arrogant, cryptic and cold a lot of time, sure But not a deserter, At least… that's what I'm choosing to believe."
She couldn't afford to show her own doubts, the gnawing fear that Nephis's promise was a lie still stung her a little bit but she swallowed her thoughts.
Their faith in Changing Star was a brittle thing as it was something born of despair and need.
Gantry, ever the pragmatist grunted slightly "Faith doesn't fill bellies, This abomination on the other does so Let's focus and keep the whole emotional shit for later"
"Right," Sid said, thankful for his intervention "so just as we planned, we find it's lair, lure it into the trap and put it down. Then we can have this talk all you want over a hot meal."
The cohort nodded, their solemn expressions a mixture of resolve and anxiety.
After a couple minutes of silence, They finally reached the rocky outcrop that served as the abomination's lair. Their target was a terrifying black panther as large as a car, from its hindquarters sprouted seven harrowing prehensile tentacles each tipped with a barbed stinger that dripped with a viscous dark fluid.
Their plan was simple, They would use the single Awakened bow memory that Lady Changing Star had gifted them—one possessing a poten poison enchantment—to lure and injure the beast from a distance.
Then, she, Gorn, and Gantry would move in for the ambush to overwhelm it while Shim would hang back, ready to heal and support them in case things went south.
It was a good plan.
But that plan had failed to account for the skies...
They were in position, arrows nocked as shim readied the awakened bow.
Sid took a steadying breath, ready to give the signal.
Then the world suddenly went dark.
A colossal shadow fell over them, moving with impossible speed. There was no warning roar only the deafening rush of air being displaced.
Before any of them could so much as gasp, something massive slammed into the center of the rocky lair.
The impact was cataclysmic. The ground shuddered and a cloud of dust and rock shards exploded outward. When it cleared, the seven-tailed panther was revealed to be under the shadow, dead and crushed by the impact.
In its place was a crater and in the center of that crater was a pulpy unrecognizable mess of black fur and shattered tentacles.
Their eyes widened as their gazes traveled upward from the crater to the thing that had caused it.
It was a Spire Messenger.
But it was all wrong. It was monstrously larger standing a full twenty feet tall. Its form was thicker, more powerfully built and covered not in smooth bone but in a coat of thick, jet-black fur.
Two immense, raven-like wings were slowly folding against its back. Most horrifying of all, it had four powerfully built arms ending in cruel talons, and its head was a nightmarish fusion of avian and demonic dominated by a long sharp beak.
It stood there, amidst the ruin it had created, radiating an aura of primal, ancient power that made the previous Messenger they feared seem like a child's toy.
Sid's breath caught in her throat. Her mind, reeling from the sudden violence could only form one coherent thought.
'What in the name of the dead gods is that?'