Chapter 175: Siege Breaker
His wings snapped out from his back with a popping sound. Dark, sleek bone struts spread wide as the thin, indestructible membrane stretched tight between them, humming with deep abyssal energy. They caught the wind and held him steady in the air.
The soldiers nearest to him stopped firing and stared.
Renna’s jaw dropped. "He can FLY? Since when can he FLY?! Did everyone know he could fly?! Emric, did you know he could fly?!"
"I was not aware of this capability."
"HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW?!"
Holden stepped off the wall.
He didn’t fall. The wings beat once, then twice, and he shot upward. The acceleration was violent, displacing enough air to send a shockwave across the wall and knock dust and loose equipment sideways.
whoooosh.
He climbed fast, straight up, cutting through the smoke layer like a blade. The black air swallowed him, and for a moment he was in absolute darkness. Then he broke through the top of the smoke.
Above it, the sky was enormous, with grey storm clouds stretching in every direction, churning with rain and wind. The Outpost below was a small smudge of light in a sea of darkness, while the portal pulsed on the horizon like a dark star.
And the turtle. From up here, it looked small, a black dot crawling across the mud toward the walls. But the energy signature radiating from it was massive, a second sun of dark energy burning in the grey landscape.
Maeve’s voice crackled in his ear. "Holden, the cannon is at sixty percent charge. You have about fifty seconds."
"Copy."
He angled his wings and flew. Not toward the turtle. Above it. He climbed higher, pushing the Abyssal-Bone Wings to their maximum speed as the wind screamed past him. Rain hit his face like needles, and the temperature dropped with every second.
He went up. Five hundred feet. A thousand. Fifteen hundred.
The Outpost was a speck. The turtle was a grain of rice. The portal was a dark stain.
"Holden, cannon at eighty percent. Thirty seconds."
"I’m in position."
He hovered fifteen hundred feet above the turtle. The wind howled around him, pushing and pulling at his wings, but his Rank 3 body held steady.
He summoned his sword.
The Solar-Forged blade appeared in his right hand.
He gripped it with both hands and pointed the tip straight down.
"Holden, cannon at ninety percent. Fifteen seconds."
He smiled.
"Let’s see what’s inside this shell."
He ignited.
Not Hellfire Cleave. Something else. Something older. The full, unrestrained output of his Rank 3 energy, channeled through the Solar-Forged Steel and igniting every fiber of the blade simultaneously. The sword didn’t glow. It exploded, sending a pillar of white-hot crimson fire downward in a column of concentrated destruction.
tssssssss.
The fire wrapped around him. His body, his wings, his sword, all engulfed in blazing red light. From the ground, it looked like a star had appeared in the sky.
Then he stopped flying.
He dropped.
Gravity took him. Fifteen hundred feet of free fall, accelerated by his Rank 3 strength pushing downward, with his wings folded tight against his body to reduce drag and his sword pointed at the earth like the tip of a spear.
The air screamed past him. Rain evaporated in his wake, leaving a trail of steam that cut a perfect line from the clouds to the ground.
From the wall, Renna saw him fall.
"Is that him? He’s on fire and falling! Why is he on fire and falling?!"
"Because he’s insane," Emric said.
The turtle’s cannon reached full charge. The dark energy peaked. The weapon was about to fire.
Holden hit the shell.
BOOOOOOM!
The Solar-Forged blade, driven by fifteen hundred feet of accelerated free fall and Rank 3 force, coated in a sheath of white-hot crimson fire, punched through the obsidian shell effortlessly. The energy mesh that Maeve said had no flaws didn’t break. It evaporated. The fire consumed it, the chitin liquefied, and the obsidian shattered into a million pieces that shot outward like shrapnel from a grenade.
Holden blasted right through the shell without slowing down. He cut through the outer layer, the inner core, the cannon mount, and the base of the armor before driving deep into the ground.
The turtle split.
It literally split in half. The shell cracked down the center, each side falling away like the halves of a cracked egg. The body inside, corrupted and pulsing with dark energy, was exposed to the air for exactly one second before the fire hit it.
The fire didn’t burn the turtle. It erased it. The concentrated Rank 3 energy, amplified by the Solar-Forged blade and the momentum of the drop, converted every molecule of the beast’s body into ash and light. The cannon on its back melted into a puddle of glowing slag that sizzled in the mud.
tssssss.
The shockwave hit the Outpost five seconds later.
WOOOOSH!
The blast of displaced air knocked soldiers off their feet. Cannon crews ducked behind their guns. The mud around the impact site was thrown thirty feet into the air, raining down in a dirty brown mist.
Then silence.
Holden stood in a crater. The crater was thirty feet wide and ten feet deep, carved into the earth by the force of his impact. The mud around it was baked solid, turned to cracked clay by the heat, while steam rose from the ground in thick white columns.
The turtle was gone.
There was no body, no shell, no corpse. Just ash. A perfect circle of grey ash where a building-sized monster had been standing a moment ago.
Holden stood in the center of the ash circle. His sword steamed in his hand, the blade still glowing faint orange, while his Abyssal-Bone Wings folded against his back, dripping with condensation.
He was completely untouched.
The soldiers on the wall stared. Renna’s mouth was open so wide her jaw could have dislocated.
Maeve’s voice came through the earpiece, quiet, almost reverent.
"Target eliminated."
[Obsidian Siege Turtle (Rank 3, 4-Star) Defeated!]
[+20,000 KP!]
[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]
[+40,000 KP!]
[Current KP: 582,290]
[Multiplier: 10,000x]
[KP Booster: 2x Active]
He dismissed the wings and walked out of the crater. The soldiers on the wall were still staring. Some of them were cheering, a few were crying, and one was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.
Venus’s voice crackled over the compound speakers, his tone raw with disbelief.
"Target... eliminated. All units stand down. Stand down."
Holden walked toward the wall. Ash swirled around his boots as the rain started again, washing it into the mud and turning the battlefield into a grey, dirty soup.
He looked up at his team on the wall.
Renna was jumping up and down, both fists in the air. "THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE! DO IT AGAIN!"
Emric was writing furiously in his notebook, his glasses fogged up. "The kinetic energy alone, factoring in the mass and acceleration..."
He trailed off. The numbers didn’t work. He tore the page out and started over.
Lyra watched him walk toward the wall. Her frost-spear rested against her shoulder, and her glowing blue eyes tracked him across the field with the focus of someone who had never doubted him for a second.
The faintest smile touched her lips.
Holden reached the wall, vaulted over the broken section, and landed in the mud beside his team before dismissing his sword.
Renna grabbed his arm. "You just dropped out of the SKY! Like a METEOR! A fire meteor! I didn’t know you could do that! Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?!"
"It didn’t come up."
"It DIDN’T COME UP?! How does FLYING not come up?!"
Emric looked at him over his notebook. "For the record, the probability of surviving that impact was approximately fourteen percent. I would appreciate advance warning before you attempt something with a survival rate that low again."
"I’ll take it under advisement."
"Seriously, Holden."
"Seriously. I’ll tell you next time."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
He wouldn’t promise.
Lyra walked up beside him. She didn’t grab his arm or cheer or demand explanations. She just stood next to him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
"You could have died," she said quietly.
"I didn’t."
"You could have."
"Then it’s a good thing I didn’t."
She shook her head, but she didn’t step away.