Some Minutes Prior
As the beady eyes of the nearest brutes swiveled toward him, Angar activated Ground Current.
His form dissolved into a surge of charged particles, the world blurring past as he traversed the warped earth in an instant, reappearing a meter or two from the canyon’s lip, plunged into the heart of a teeming cluster of brutes.
Lightning erupted from his emergence, crackling tendrils tearing through the air, searing the closest brutes with furious arcs of electricity that leaped from one to the next.
Their gnarled hides smoldered as the bolts ripped through their flesh, and Angar’s maul sang as he swung it in a wide arc, the head sweeping along the scarred torsos of three brutes.
The impact hurled the creatures over the chasm’s edge, into the abyss alongside others caught in the lightning’s wrath, tumbling over from the stun, their roars fading into the depths. Others fell to the ground around him as the forking finished, twitching in smoking heaps.
Once, their hides had shrugged off his lightning, highly resistant to such damage. When he’d last faced them, his Power Level had been a meager 26 or so.
Now, at 111, their resistance was a moot point, meaningless, crumbling before his sanctified wrath.
The brutes charged with lumbering fury, their massive clubs raised overhead, ready to crush.
Angar infused Energy into his hammer, the graviton-pulse warping the air around the head, driving the weapon into a brute’s scowling face.
The strike detonated in a vortex of plasma and gravitic force, obliterating the beast’s head in a splattering of gore, jagged fragments of skull and teeth scattering across the blighted ground.
The next brute shambled forward, its club swinging in a painfully slow arc. Angar sidestepped with fluid ease, his cybernetic legs grinding as he pivoted, his hammer whipping upward unenhanced, the head connecting with the beast’s own, pulping bone and flesh into a ruined mess.
The creature collapsed, lifeless, a testament to Angar’s advancement, his power, his strength, as even his unenhanced blows killed foes he once struggled to damage, that had often survived Tempest’s full wrath, back in that desperate battle two years past.
To Angar, now the brutes moved as if mired in tar, no longer a threat, only good for skill improvement, whetstones for his martial prowess.
He wove through their sluggish assaults, baiting them into tighter clusters, training pells for sharpening his melee forms, for enhancing his mastery as he carved his way through their profane ranks.
He fought without Abilities, as they’d be overkill, unnecessary and unneeded, relishing the purity of physical carnage, killing as his glorious ancestors had.
A brute’s club blazed through the air where he’d stood a millisecond before. He swung his hammer, caving in the beast’s chest, its ribs splintering like twigs.
Another lunged, and Angar’s gauntlet shot out, seizing its disgusting face. His gauntleted fingers dug into the scarred hide, crushing through bone until the skull erupted in a geyser of viscera.
He truly enjoyed killing like that. It filled him with such pleasure.
But the extra second of effort these durable skulls required in applied force left him exposed, so he couldn’t do so as much as he liked, as it was a risk he could ill afford amid the horde’s relentless press.
And on he fought, laying into the beasts with precision and skill, occasionally unleashing Glory Thunders, not out of necessity but for the sheer pleasure of seeing dozens of his enemies blown away, hurling pieces of brute around in sprays of gore, their bodies torn asunder by the Capstone’s wrath.
He loved it, savoring the massacre, the sight of Hell’s spawn reduced to scattered ruin, a great tithe to sate his Lord’s want.
When the nearest brutes lay broken, Angar pressed north along the chasm’s edge, the very distant clamor of Crusader’s warring reaching him from far off to the southwest and northeast.
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The horde thickened northerly, like a wall of blasphemy and scarred muscle. He charged into their ranks, hammer swinging in arcs, each strike of the slaughter purposeful. Or most of them were.
He reveled in the cleansing of Hell’s filth, such proof of his growth, his power etched in every mangled corpse, every wisp of brimstone and rot curling off a corpse.
He drew his energy-blade pistol from its holster, as he often forgot he had it, and this was a good chance to improve his skill with it.
Pistol in his left hand and the maul in his right, he waded deeper into the fray, dual-wielding with lethal grace.
A burst of searing energy from the pistol blazed through a brute’s shoulder, sizzling as it burned through gnarled flesh, Angar finding a new rhythm to the waste he laid.
Later, he activated the blade attachment, the edge slicing through a brute’s neck with a clean, cauterizing cut, the head sliding off and rolling away as the body toppled.
Another swing of the maul crushed a skull, while a snap-shot from the pistol blew into a brute’s glowing eye, leaving it staggering aimlessly before falling dead.
The dance of blade and hammer, or pistol and hammer, became more harmonious, each motion honing his skill, though he needed Glory Thunders to clear space and give him time enough to change the weapon’s power cell.
I love being a Crusader, he thought.
He sliced through a club with the energy blade, then followed with the hammer to launch the new corpse into its kin.
As he battled, a strange, shrill cry pierced the thin, ash-choked air, growing louder and louder, coming from the west, cutting through pounding steps and roars of the brutes.
His maul swept in a low arc to shatter knees, splintering bone with a crack as he pivoted, dodging a club that churned the earth where he’d stood, flicking his optics to zoom, scanning the horizon.
A barracuda screamed through the crimson twilight, flying way too low, its hull wreathed in smoke, Hellspawn swarming over its surface like maggots.
Angar channeled Glory Thunders, his hammer erupted in a shockwave of Divine wrath, the air crackling as the blast tore through the nearest brutes, hurling bloody chunks of monstrous bodies backwards.
With the area cleared, he watched as the ship crashed over a klick to the west, sending plumes of smoke and ash skyward.
His gaze scanned the chasm, snapping south, where the canyon narrowed to its thinnest point. At least from what he could spot. Still a daunting gap, but the only possible path.
The thought of hailing Salvador entered his head, but the Seraph would order him to hold fast, awaiting retrieval.
There was no time. The ship would’ve already called in an emergency hail, but any crew still alive could be dead before help arrived.
Angar was nearby. He had to act now if he hoped to save anyone.
As the brutes closed in, Ground Current dissolved him in a surge of sparks, rematerializing far south beyond the horde, his sprint tearing into the cursed earth, looking for the narrowest gap in the gorge.
At the spot, seeing it up close, the gap was clearly far too vast. Ground Current wouldn’t come close to clearing it. It looked to span almost four-hundred meters.
Still, Ground Current’s range with his Power Level stood at 171 meters. He’d make it less than halfway, leaving him to plummet into the chasm’s shadowed depths.
A desperate plan formed, foolish but bold, promising either glory or a grave in this abyss.
Doubt ate at his resolve, so he steeled his spine. Cowardice was not his creed. He'd always keep to all oaths sworn.
The brutes barreled toward him as he rushed.
Every second raced against the minute-long grace period before his stacked fifty extra Physique, fueled only by constant battle, which would vanish if he lingered untouched or failed to land a blow.
He desperately needed that large boost for this to work.
He secured his hammer to his back, took a few deep breaths, then sprinted, his cybernetics tearing up the earth in powerful, loping strides, hydraulics amplifying each step.
Near the canyon’s lip, he poured every ounce of will into his leap, surging off a tripod-foot, the implants driving him upward in an arcing bound, soaring through the lower gravity and thin air.
As he neared the crest, his armor’s zero-g thrusters flared non-stop, expending Energy Points like mad.
In Terra-normal gravity, they lacked the power to lift his armored mass at all, designed for the vacuum of the void.
Here, in the lower gravity of Abyssalhome, he prayed they did something. And it seemed they did, a fleeting boost, their whine straining as they burned, nudging his trajectory forward.
At the jump’s crest, he activated Ground Current.
The Ability failed to activate, doing nothing.
His heart plummeted as he did too.
He kept trying, frantically invoking Ground Current over and over, his Energy Points bleeding away as the thrusters blazed, clawing for every extra moment, the jets doing nothing noticeable to counter gravity’s inexorable pull.
He lurched downward, his heart hammering against his ribs, trying to burst out of his chest, panic ripping through his mind like a Nofelim’s corruption.
As the deadly descent brought him almost level with the chasm’s far lip, Ground Current flared at last, the desperate salvation alighting every centimeter of his body with relief.
But he appeared unbalanced on the lip, tumbling back, falling.
His hand lashed out, digging into the cliff's wall, halting his fall as his body slammed into the rocky face of the chasm.
He drilled his toes into the rock and dug his free hand in too.
Meters shy of the lip, he clung desperately to the cliff, gulping in panicked breaths, willing his racing heart to still.
Ensuring his grip, he pulled his toes out, spending another Energy Point, the digits extending as they spun, burrowing higher into the canyon’s face.
His gauntleted fingers gouged the stone with a crunch, clawing upward until he hauled himself over the rim, collapsing onto blessed, solid ground once again.
He lay there a moment, calming his nerves.
But only a moment.
There was no time to waste.
