Chapter 485
Chapter 485
With a thought, Jake pulled up the Dead City’s status.
Ravage Contamination Status: Active
City Area Affected: 69%
Titans Remaining: 5 of 10
The last time he had checked was during his first encounter with the Commander. Back then, the Ravage had affected 71% of the city. Now, after he and D had destroyed one nest, the number had dropped by two percent.
Jake returned his attention to the Titan. The huge monster rushed toward the empty shell of the building, extending one pair of arms toward it. Its clawed hands clamped onto a horizontal girder and yanked. For a moment, the structure held.
Then it gave way, and the girder snapped in half. The building shuddered but remained standing. The Titan lurched closer and thrust one hand inside, trying to snatch one of them. Jake and D sprang in opposite directions, and the monstrous fingers closed on nothing but air.
Wasting no time, D jumped onto the monster’s hand. He immediately activated his gravity boots again, making himself cling to the monster’s arm. He sprinted along its length and, a moment later, reached the Titan’s right shoulder.
The monster wasn’t happy about that. It straightened up and snapped one of its left hands toward that shoulder. But D was no longer there. He had already run to the monster’s back, disappearing from Jake’s sight. However D’s gravity boots worked, they clearly made him cling to whatever surface he was on, no matter its shape or how complex it was.
Jake rushed out of the building and jumped high into the air, activating Gravity Leap. As he soared a few stories up, he launched his grappling hook at the Titan. As soon as it latched onto the center of its chest, he pulled himself toward it with a powerful yank.
The moment he hit the Titan’s body, he clung to it with Adhesive Secretion. The enormous monster barely seemed to notice, too busy trying to catch D somewhere on its back. Jake crawled up to the Titan’s shoulder and got a look at what D was doing.
With his power boots still engaged, D was tearing across the monster’s back in a relentless blur, carving at it with his energy claws. Every slash left long, deep furrows in its flesh. While a single slash didn’t deal much damage to the Titan, D had already managed to leave behind over a dozen such injuries.
And the monster clearly wasn’t happy about that. It had been trying to grab D, but so far, it hadn’t been able to do so. Still, since the Titan had four hands, there wasn’t a single point on its back that it couldn’t reach with one of them.
For that reason, D couldn’t allow himself to stay in the same spot for longer than half a second. He had to remain in constant motion, running from one spot to another, lashing out at the monster’s flesh and immediately repositioning again before one of the Titan’s hands could close around him.
So far, D had managed to avoid getting grabbed by the Titan’s hands, but sooner or later, his luck was bound to run out. Jake knew he had to lend his counterpart a hand, but he didn’t think joining D on the monster’s back was a good idea.
While the Titan’s back was wide, providing plenty of room for maneuvering, the two of them would have to avoid colliding or getting in each other’s way. It would slow them down, and even a moment’s hesitation could be fatal. With both of them in the same area, the chance of one being snatched would only increase.
Another option was to do the same thing D was doing but on the Titan’s chest. That way, the monster would be forced to divide its attention, and their chances of avoiding being grabbed would increase significantly. Jake was about to return to the monster’s chest when he spotted something interesting.
He saw that the Titan’s tail was poised for attack. Its enormous stinger tracked D’s chaotic movements, twitching impatiently every now and then. The monster was clearly eager to stab its stinger into the bothersome creature damaging its back, but it was obvious that D’s speed and unpredictability kept spoiling its aim.
Still, every now and then, Jake noticed the stinger jerk toward the back instinctively, only to stop halfway to its target and return to its original position. The Titan was obviously making a conscious effort to stop the tail whenever it became clear it wouldn’t be able to hit its target.
That gave Jake an idea.
So instead of returning to the creature’s chest, he crawled down along the Titan’s side until he reached the lower section of its body. The monster’s body consisted of two parts: the upper half, which looked like a human torso and the lower half, which resembled the body of a scorpion.
While D was running around the back of the Titan’s humanlike torso, Jake made his way to the top of the scorpion-like body. He quickly glanced up to assess the situation. The Titan still seemed oblivious to his presence. Its four hands were still trying to grab D, while the stinger remained poised for attack, trying to line up a clear shot at his counterpart.
As the Titan was about to find out, D wasn’t the one it should have been worried about.
Jake reached the middle of the scorpion-like body and stopped. Morphing his right hand into a drill, he instantly drove it into the chitinous armor beneath him. At first, the shell resisted, but then the tip punched through. Jake bore down harder, and the drill chewed deeper and deeper into the plating.
A moment later, it finally reached the flesh below, plunging deep into it. All the while, he kept one eye on the stinger, so he was ready for what happened next.
The moment he bored through the monster’s armor, the stinger instinctively jerked toward him.
Only this time, it didn’t check itself.
Jake scuttled out of the way, and in the next instant, the massive stinger slammed into the exact spot where he had just been. It easily punched through the shell and buried itself deep in the Titan’s own flesh.
The Titan’s cone-shaped head split open into an X-shape, revealing four long jaws, as the monster unleashed a thunderous cry full of rage and pain. Both D and the Titan were so surprised by what had just happened that they stopped what they were doing for a moment.
D looked back at the lower section of the monster’s body, staring down at Jake and the stinger the creature had just plunged into its own flesh. D had been assaulting the Titan for a couple of minutes now, but Jake had managed to inflict much more damage on their opponent in just a few seconds.
D kept staring down for a second longer, but it was hard to tell what he was thinking. Then he raised a hand and gave Jake a thumbs-up.
Then he went right back to work.
His counterpart lashed out at the monster’s back again and again, tearing its flesh apart and carving out a sizable hole beneath him. The Titan wasn’t happy about that. It emitted another roar that shook the nearby structures and then yanked the stinger out of its scorpion-like body.
Black ichor immediately erupted from the nasty wound. Seemingly without realizing what it was even doing, the Titan speared its stinger toward D, acting on pure instinct. But he was ready for that. He instantly jumped out of the way, and the stinger once again plunged into the creature’s own flesh.
D glanced down at Jake, almost as if expecting approval. Before Jake could do anything, though, the Titan exploded into motion.
The monster spun around, lashing out with all four hands over and over again. At first glance, it seemed like the Titan had lost it, trying to attack invisible enemies that weren’t there. But in the next moment, Jake realized he was wrong.
The monster wasn’t trying to attack anything. Instead, it was employing one of its special abilities, Astral Rend. With every slash through the air, the Titan’s claws left a visible fracture behind.
Each fissure hovered motionlessly in the air, about twelve feet long and five feet wide. They looked like wounds carved into the fabric of reality itself. They were completely dark, devoid of even the faintest trace of light.
A moment later, the Titan stopped. Numerous fractures now floated around it. In the next instant, Jake felt them pull all at once.
The force came from every direction at once, powerful tugs dragging at his body from multiple angles. Without Adhesive Secretion, he would have been ripped free and hurled into the nearest tear.
As for D, he didn’t seem affected at all. He continued to run all over the monster’s back, slashing gashes into its flesh as easily as before, as if he weren’t affected by the pull of the fractures in the slightest. His power boots were definitely an incredible piece of tech.
Unlike D, Jake was in a much worse position. He continued to cling to the same spot with everything he had. He could tell that he needed to stay completely still to remain anchored. If he attempted to move, if he removed even a single limb from the surface of the monster’s body, he would immediately be pulled into one of the fractures.
Adhesive Secretion was now working in overdrive, burning through his mana at a frightening pace. Still, he had no intention of letting go. He didn’t know what waited inside those fractures, and he had no desire to find out.
Unfortunately, the Titan had no intention of leaving Jake alone. Its hands were too short and couldn’t angle back far enough to grab him, so the only way the monster could get to him was with its stinger. Which was about to be put to good use again.
While all four hands kept swiping after D, the tail drew back once more and leveled its point at Jake.
He knew he was in deep trouble now. He couldn’t move from the spot for fear of losing his grip on the monster’s body and being pulled into one of the fractures.
But he also couldn’t stay where he was, because if the Titan managed to stab him with its stinger, he would be done for. There was no way he would survive that.
The stinger aimed at him and plunged.
Jake knew he couldn’t stay in the same spot, so he threw himself to the side. Just as he had feared, the moment he broke contact with the Titan’s body, the nearest fracture caught him.
The pull seized him and ripped him through the air, dragging him straight toward the darkness beyond the interdimensional tear.