Chapter 62 12:
The improvised metal, wielded with the brute force of a Viltrumite, severed limbs as though they were dry branches.
One lithari lost all four arms in a single spinning motion, left as a humanoid trunk staring at his stumps in disbelief before collapsing.
Another received a vertical slash that split him from shoulder to groin, his organs spilling onto the floor with a wet and repulsive sound.
Korr shattered, dismembered, and annihilated every living being with lithari characteristics without feeling the slightest tremor in his hand when it came to carrying out and unleashing such unrestrained violence.
Lithari blood soaked the grayish ground until it became a crimson swamp, and the bodies piled around him like offerings to omnipresent and indifferent death.
The lithari of the elite group, those five hundred soldiers who had remained behind to protect the leader and the cube, fell one after another, cut down like grass.
The lithari were extraordinarily strong beings, considered a superior power even in other galaxies when comparing humanoid physiologies.
But compared to the Viltrumites they were pitifully inferior, far too much so.
They were not strong enough, nor even one thousandth as fast compared to a Viltrumite, even a nato.
The cruel reality was that they could not stand against that demon of flesh and blood who moved like death itself personified.
Korr drove his sharpened club through the throat of one, the metal emerging from the back of the neck in an explosion of cartilage.
Then he used the body as a battering ram to knock down two others, stomping their skulls beneath smoking boots.
Next, he hurled the improvised metal like a projectile, impaling three lithari who had been trying to flee, their bodies skewered like bloody kebabs.
He recovered the weapon a fraction of a second later and continued the slaughter.
When one lithari managed to evade his first strike and counterattack with a vibratory knife, Korr simply caught the blade with his bare palm.
The edge cut him, but only across the surface.
He clenched his fingers, ripped the weapon from its owner's hands, and drove it into the creature's eye socket with a swift and brutal motion.
The lithari collapsed gargling, while Korr retrieved his club and pressed onward.
Thus passed minutes in which there was only blood, death, and destruction.
One after another, the five hundred elite soldiers were exterminated. Some attempted to flee, but Korr reached them before they could even take three steps.
As for the rest of the legion, they did not even dare fire in his direction.
For the cube was within the vicinity, and a single instance of damage to that device would nullify all the effort and all the death they had chosen to unleash in that risky maneuver.
When the last lithari of the group fell, Korr finally stopped.
Korr breathed with difficulty, and his body seemed to exist only for pain.
He was wounded, gravely, but not mortally.
Viltrumites did not die so easily, even when it appeared they should.
His uniform had almost completely disappeared, leaving exposed a torso covered in burns, cuts, and scorched bruises.
His right hand, the one with which he had wielded the improvised metal, was an amorphous mass of torn flesh.
But he was alive, the cube remained intact, and no one had dared activate it.
Korr turned toward it, staggering, his legs threatening to give out at any moment.
He took one step and then another, while his bloodshot eyes examined the surface of the artifact in search of any sign of damage.
But at that very instant...
ZAAAAAAASSS!
A high-intensity plasma shot, far greater than anything he had received before, pierced straight through his left leg from side to side.
And this time that shot had been different from the previous ones.
That blast did not merely burn, it carbonized the muscle tissue along its trajectory.
Korr watched as a hole the size of a fist appeared in his thigh.
From the smoking edges, blood burst forth in a pressurized stream that splattered the ground at his feet.
This time he truly screamed.
"¡¡¡AAAAGHHHH!!!"
The scream spread throughout the dorymathos, rebounding off the metallic walls, reaching all the way to the barricade where the children shrank back in fear. Vespera paled.
The tall boy clenched his fists.
But before Korr could fall, before he could process who had attacked him or even endure the agony, something enormous and heavy slammed into his side.
Puuuum!
That impact was like the charge of a train at full carrying capacity.
Korr flew through the air, his body spinning uncontrollably, tracing an absurd parabola that carried him several meters backward.
Then he crashed against a support column, which shattered beneath the impact, and afterward rebounded against the ground with a violence that tore the breath from him.
From the floor, he lost consciousness for an instant before coming back to himself, though his vision was blurred.
His ears rang, and the pain in his skull was strong and constant.
But even so, he could still make out the vague silhouette of someone approaching.
The largest lithari, the bionic-eyed leader. The one he had believed he had thrown far away with his initial assault.
And he was furious.
His armor, once imposing, was now riddled with cracks everywhere, yet it still functioned, and it made him strong, stronger than Korr could imagine.
He was a mutated lithari, cybernetically modified to become the equivalent of his race's "superman."
He was at least ten or twenty times stronger than his own people, and together with his armor, that strength could increase even further.
But even with all that he had almost lost.
The armor itself was in terrible condition and the plasma turret hung uselessly from a cable.
But the lithari did not need it.
His fists, each one the size of Korr's head, were enough to finally finish that nato once and for all.
"You little demon!" roared the lithari, his voice distorted by the armor's amplifier.
"You ruined everything, everything! You cannot comprehend the pain of my people and everything they have had to endure beneath the surface of this hell of a planet. Filthy race, traitors without honor, destroyers of civilizations and enslavers of thousands more. There will not even be a hell for you! Your existence shall be erased even from the afterlife itself!"
With that cry of rage he launched a kick that sent Korr flying once more.
Korr crashed again against a gigantic heap of rubble where he remained seated, breathing profusely.
His ribs, they had broken his ribs and he was drowning.
"YEARS! Of planning... CENTURIES! Of tortures and torments at the hands of your race! Treated like scum and lowered beneath animals, like rats! Our children are dying from diseases and our elders rotting in the underground streets, isolated from a future, isolated from a tomorrow! You stole our hope!"
He walked until he was close by, screaming.
"Even now, after sacrificing so much, after giving everything and sacrificing what little we have left, our deepest and most perverse hatred, still we are incapable of facing our executioners even if the will exists!" He remained silent for a few moments before adding, "It is humiliating that you, a mere nato, a pup barely learning to fly, were capable of massacring my finest soldiers."
Korr tried to rise, but his left leg did not respond. The hole in his thigh had turned the limb into useless dead weight.
"That is why I am going to kill you. But it will not be pleasant. Even if you are only a nato, your race is far too evil to grant you the mercy of a quick death. I am going to tear you apart, rip your skin away piece by piece! I will tear out your entrails and eat your heart while you watch me! And I will watch with satisfaction as the light of life escapes from your eyes!"