Apocalypse Tamer - Chapter 135: Man vs Duality

Basil should have guessed the Maleking’s identity long ago.

For who was the fifth horseman but Hell itself, the great Beast of the Apocalypse? Deceiver and destroyer? Each of his steps crushed a house underfoot and a sea of flames spread in his wake. Only a barren land of dust and ash remained of glorious Athens, an inferno burning in the shadow of the great Neurotower.

[Fire] damage negated by Bugsy’s [Alexicacus]! [Terrorking] negated by [Death’s Banner]!

“That’s, ugh…” The Maleking’s sheer size and aura of power unsettled Shellgirl. “That’s a big one.”

“We’ve fought bigger foes before,” Bugsy replied. Though he couldn’t hide the worry in his voice, he remained resolute even in the face of death.

“So many lion heads…” Plato puffed up his chest in an attempt to look brave. “But we can take them! They don’t have sabertooth fangs!”

“Behind me, everyone.” Rosemarine bravely moved in front of the group as if she intended to shield them with her body. Steve let out a cloud of steam on the ground below, ready to do the same. “I will protect you.”

Vasi alone said no word. Instead she nervously chewed her lip and clutched her staff. The creature before them put her own mighty father to shame. The Maleking was no arrogant demon lord eager to please, but a force of torment and destruction. His was the true face of Hell.

But for all of the Maleking’s terrible power, it was Maxwell who bothered Basil the most. His screams of agony grew higher pitched as his glitching cycle hastened. He kept alternating between a healthy and dead state; much like Schrödinger’s Cat, he was both at once, unable to settle on one option or the other.

Does that make him the false prophet? Basil wondered as he observed the dying Maxwell. He remembered that the Book of Revelation announced the coming of three disasters. Only a great red dragon was missing for the trio of evil to be complete.

“A pitiful creature, is he not?” By now, the Maleking had come close enough to address the Bohens with his twin voices rather than his mind. The very earth shook with each sinful word carried by the wind. “A hollow thing so devoid of hope and ambition, that he could only find pleasure in denying the happiness of others. He has no strength of his own, so he steals and deceives. Yet for all of his bluster, he is no more than a slave to this machine that birthed him. A thrall to his instincts.”

To Basil’s disgust, Maxwell managed to raise a hand at him even in his terrible state.

“Don’t… please…” Basil could detect none of Maxwell’s smugness and cruelty in his voice, only panic. The look of utter terror—that of an immortal creature faced with his own approaching death—couldn’t be faked. “Don’t… let him… kill me… please…”

Basil glared at this creature with such disgust, he thought his eyes might boil in his orbits. “After all you’ve done, to us, to the world, you dare beg for our mercy?”

“You see his true self, Basil.” Plato sneered at Maxwell. “More tick than man.”

“I can… bring them back…” Each word sounded like agony to Maxwell, his fidgeting fingers desperately trying to grab someone, anyone foolish enough to help him. “I… older than time… knowledge… power… I can give…”

“Pain.” Basil coldly watched the abomination degrade further. “Nothing but pain.”

“Mistaking me for a mindless brute was the mistake of your life, Mammon.” The Maleking’s four eyes glowed with hellfire. “It is finished.”

The circuits of Dis’ Neurotower flared up with a terrible red glow, blinding the Bohens and bathing all of Athens in its eldritch light. Basil sensed a dark, ancient power traveling through his flesh and bones; a pulse of magic and lightning called from the darkest depths of the universe. It inflicted no harm upon him or his team.

Maxwell wasn’t so lucky.

His screams increased as his flesh fell apart, revealing bones of steel and cable veins. Black oil dripped from his fanged mouth. He looked so small and misshapen without his human guise; a mangled chimera hiding its frailty under a veneer of life, a broken doll held together by aluminum strings.

The brighter the light glowed, the more Maxwell’s body twisted and shrank. He started taller than Basil and ended up smaller than an egg. The red pulse peeled away his body layer by layer like an onion until it reached the core: a tentacled steel bug no bigger than a thumb. A tiny, powerless parasite exposed for any foot to trample.

Maxwell’s shriek echoed into the infinity, and then he was gone.

He did not degrade into particles like a broken dungeon, nor did he leave loot like a common monster. He simply disappeared as if he had never existed. When the light at long last died out, nothing remained of Dismaker Labs’ fallen CEO.

A blue screen appeared before Basil’s eyes as his eyes adapted to the sudden change in luminosity.

System reboot completed. Anomalies detected and purged.

Inventory and menu features have been re-established.

“Is he… gone?” Vasi flew near the spot where Maxwell used to stand, and found nothing. “For good?”

“Yes,” two voices answered at once.

Basil glanced at the ruins of Athens, his halberd raised for the kill. Out of the frying pan, and now into the fire.

The Maleking was now only a hundred meters away from the Neurotower, though he did not advance further. Rosemarine pointed her Eden Guns at him, and Steve did the same with the Gehenna Cannon.

“Dis rebooted to deal with the glitches, and no host remained to house his programming.” Much to Basil’s surprise, the Maleking did not initiate battle immediately. “My flames and the grasping void have seen to it.”

Shellgirl’s eyes widened in horror. “If there are no more hosts left…”

“The world is just us and here, now.” The Maleking waved a hand at the devastation around them. The boiling Aegean Sea was quickly evaporating, with the withered shores crumbling as the land collapsed under its own weight. A terrible wind carried storms of ashes over burning trees and dusty ruins. “In this barren land… there are no other survivors.”

After Shumen, Basil had seen enough horrors for a lifetime. Perhaps it was why his mind remained resolute. After watching Neria, Leblanc, and so many people perish, his heart had finally grown numb to death and destruction.

But the Maleking was lying. There were other survivors: great towers of steel continued to rise across the horizon, piercing through the void and reaching out to distant worlds.

“Boss, the process isn’t stopping.” Bugsy fidgeted around in panic. “I feel cables growing beneath the earth!”

The Mammon Virus had been purged from the Trimurti System, but Dis continued to encroach into the Multiverse. Its expansion was well underway. Kalki and Padma remained petrified, silent gods sitting atop a throne of steel.

“Why?” Basil wondered. “Why is Dis still active?”

“Don’t you see?” The Maleking pointed at the paralyzed avatars. “Only these two are necessary for the Trimurti System to function. Dis and its Neurotowers simply subvert it. The dungeons, monsters, all the destruction that you have witnessed… None of this was intended by the Trimurti.”

Vasi tightened her grip on her staff, ready to fire a spell at the first sign of hostility. “The System was never meant to reward only the strong. Had the Trimurti been summoned correctly, the System would have been similar to Outremonde.”

“It’s why Shiva destroys the world when the Avatars are slain,” Basil whispered as all pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. “He wrestles back control and tries to eliminate Dis. To put an end to this cycle of despair.”

“And end it shall,” the Maleking confirmed. “Without Mammon to interfere, Dis is no more than a mindless animal. A machine that will follow its directives. Its power requires a steady hand to guide it. This throne of steel sits empty, waiting for a king.”

The war continued.

“Once one of us reaches level 100, Dis shall crown them as Overgod.” The Maleking’s left hand moved to grab the sword embedded in one of his bestial lower heads. “Master of the great machine, whose roots stretch into the infinity. The Cosmocrator whose grasp shall expand to countless worlds.”

That was the Maleking’s plan. To become Overgod and use Dis to rampage across the multiverse, staining the stars red with blood. Earth would be destroyed for good, the souls of the dead sacrificed on Hell’s altar, and so many more would follow.

But there was another path. Basil remembered Benjamin’s promise. Whoever won the tournament would meet with the Trimurti and recreate the world.

Basil exchanged a glance with his team. All of them returned it with a look of resolve. There was no need for words or speech.

They all knew the final battle was upon them.

Final Quest: The End of All Things.

Recommended Level: 99.

The final battle is upon you. Your hope awaits beyond order and chaos. Slay your two rivals for the throne of Overgod and seize the dawn.

Reward: 220,000,000 EXP.

Basil’s resolve turned to doubt as he read.

Two rivals?

“Mister!” Rosemarine shouted a warning, her guns turning away from the Maleking and toward the horizon. “Over there!”

As his gaze followed Rosemarine’s line of fire, Basil suddenly realized why the Maleking had delayed his attack.

“Finally.” The great demon king chuckled with two voices full of glee. “My distinguished competition has arrived.”

Another challenger had entered the ring, and he did not wish to leave an opening.

The creature could have been mistaken for a dragon from afar, the same way one could mistake a sinister moth for a gentle butterfly in the dark. The beast had a complex layer of silver and porcelain plates for scales. Wings of interwoven luminous fibers carried it across the sky, both flapping faster than a hummingbird’s. Her claws were steel razors and her eyes were made of glass. Her telescopic tail ended with a stinger. Spikes running along her spine buzzed with rainbow-colored lightning.

Were it not for its organic fangs and the red tongue slithering in between them, Basil would have thought the Unity had unleashed a new kind of machine upon Earth. Monster Insight swiftly confirmed the creature’s identity.

Grandmaster Wyrde, Machine Empress

Elite Level 92 [Dragon/Artificial]

Faction: Unity (High Command)

HP: 38100/38100.

Immune: All Ailments, Insta-Death, Critical Hits, Mind, Light, Time Effects.

Resist: Physical, Metal, Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Frost, Lightning, Mythic.

Weak: Dragonslayer, Artislayer, Corrosion, Wood, Darkness.

The Unity’s Grandmaster, who has undergone extensive surgery to become the ultimate dragon war machine. She packs up a deadly combination of Tier X support spells with an armored dragon’s biology, and deadly drones capable of covering elemental weaknesses. She will stop at nothing to dominate all reality.

The Unity’s Grandmaster did not come alone. A dense swarm of Unity drones orbited around her like satellites around a planet, each of them a disc-shaped machine topped with a central glass eye. Eight of her drones formed a red forcefield shielding their master from the Maleking’s hellfire field. The rest flew in a wing formation.

Wyrde surveyed the battlefield from afar, her cold glass eyes briefly meeting Basil’s. The dragon’s tongue flickered when she noticed Rosemarine, but it was the Maleking she focused on the longest. Whereas the demon lord brimmed with bloodlust, Wyrde looked back at him with cold hatred and disdain.

All of her enemies were gathered in one place.

Wyrde spoke a word Basil couldn’t catch, and her drones swiftly aimed at both the Bohens and Maleking.

“Vasi, open a portal!” Basil said, immediately elaborating a backup plan. “I’ll take Wyrde from behind.”

“No, I have a better idea!” Vasi gathered power in her staff. “Give me the card, Basil!”

Basil’s eyes widened as his hand scrambled to open his newly working inventory feature. He immediately grabbed the fabled God Card.

But both their foes were quicker to the draw.

The Maleking unsheathed his sword, whose bloodied blade was long enough to behead a whale in a single blow. He executed a swing whose blinding speed would put a samurai to shame. Space itself rippled along his sword’s edge before unleashing a crescent wave of dark energy destroying all in its path.

Wyrde’s countless drones opened fire at the same time, aiming at everyone but their mistress. A hundred beams of colored light flew across the devastated landscape in a rain of destruction.

“Picky Spell!” Vasi shouted, activating the power of her staff. “Za Warudo!”

The flow of time halted abruptly for all but the Bohens. The flames consuming the world turned gray, and both the Maleking’s reality-bending swing and the drones’ energy barrage stopped dead in their tracks. Basil’s allies exploited the opening to fire back at their foes, while he slipped the God Card to Vasi.

But unlike the Maleking, Wyrde’s flight continued unimpeded in the frozen time.

“Accelerated Timebreaker.” The Grandmaster’s voice was as soft as silk, yet her words cut sharper than any blade. “Perfect Petrify.”

Grandmaster Wyrde [hastened] all her allies!

[Perfect Petrify] bypassed item’s [Petrification] immunity!

Time abruptly resumed, and the God Card turned to stone.

Basil could only blink in shock as countless attacks collided. Steve’s Gehenna Cannon fired a beam of thundering lightning at the Maleking’s wave of darkness. Rosemarine’s Eden Guns and Bugsy’s plasma breath connected with a hundred destructive rays. All sounds were swallowed by encroaching silence.

And then there was light.

The shockwave propelled her across the sky.

Vasi was within reach of Basil one second and thrown back a hundred meters the next; she barely managed to hang onto the stone card in her hand while she watched Basil and Plato be flung against the Neurotower. An ashen firestorm swallowed Rosemarine and Steve, threw Shellgirl off Bugsy’s back, and drowned the world in a thick cloud of dust. Vasi’s skin ruptured in half a dozen places and shed golden blood.

[Fire] and [Light] damage negated by Bugsy’s [Alexicacus]! [Lightning] damage negated by [Aegis of Zeus]! 50 [Frost] damage! 50 [Earth] damage! 50 [Wind] damage! 50 [Water] damage! Damaged halved by [Fomor Lifeforce]!

Holding on to her staff with one hand and to the card with the other, Vasi attempted to adjust her trajectory. She flapped her wings as fast as she could and moved up, up, up. She emerged from the dust storm, which now obscured Athens all the way to the Neurotower’s tip. The petrified Avatars peacefully oversaw the devastation from their perch, unperturbed.

A great dragon and her metal flock fell upon Vasi the moment she emerged.

“I know your plan, fairy lord. I won’t let you summon reinforcements.” Grandmaster Wyrde pointed a claw at Vasi. “Accelerated Elemental Rainbow, Accel Prismatic Orb.”

Grandmaster Wyrde greatly enhanced the power of [Fire], [Water], [Wind], [Earth], [Frost], [Lightning], and [Light] elemental attacks for her allies! The same elements will inflict 50% less damage against Grandmaster Wyrde and her allies!

An elephant-sized orb of rainbow-colored light surged from the dragon’s claw at supersonic speed.

Reacting quickly, Vasi activated her staff’s doublecast feature. “Grimalkin Gate, Accel Black Rainbow!”

A rift in the fabric of space intercepted Wyrde’s projectile before swiftly redirecting it at the dragon. A beam of eldritch black shadows surged from Vasi’s staff at the same time and aimed in the same direction.

Half of the Grandmaster’s drones immediately formed rings around her. They linked up together like a net and projected various layers of forcefield whose colors ran from black to yellow. Both Wyrde’s own redirected projectile and Vasi’s darkness spell impacted on them without inflicting damage.

Grandmaster Wyrde’s [Magik Barrier] shifted her elemental immunities!

The other half of the swarm bombarded Vasi from all sides with beams of light. Icy blue, fiery red, windy green, luminous yellow, all the rainbow’s colors were represented in this rain of death. Each carried a different element’s power.

Vasi was lightning fast when hastened, but so were the drones. She zigzagged across the sky the best she could, dodging a dozen beams and getting hit by half as many. One ray left bloody frostbites and another turned her flesh to stone. The lasers that cut her flesh open along the waist deep enough to expose the bone

200 [Frost] damage! 200 [Earth] damage! 200 [Wind] damage! 200 [Water] damage! Damaged halved by [Fomor Lifeforce]!

Warning: You have lost a third of your HP!

I can’t hold her back for long, Vasi thought grimly, her mind quickly trying to figure out a solution. I’ve got to escape her and regroup!

“Accelerated Ancient Meteor,” Wyrde spellcast as she chased Vasi relentlessly. “Accel Ancient Meteor.”

Space ripened above Vasi. Two fiery, elephant-sized bullets of stone emerged from the breach, each moving so fast that a booming sonic boom followed in their wake.

Grimalkin– Vasi’s eyes widened in terror as the two asteroids closed the distance between her and them in seconds. She had no time to think of a teleportation destination, and instinct took over. “Ancient Meteor!”

Her staff’s Doublecast feature miraculously activated just in time. Two meteors half-materialized between Vasi and Wyrde’s projectiles; though they failed to fully manifest, they appeared just in time to intercept the attack. The asteroids collided together in a disastrous blast that sent stones flying in all directions. Vasi took a fist sized rock to the chest and heard one of her ribs crack under the pressure.

234 [Earth] damage!

The drones were at her throat before the meteors’ remains even hit the ground. Vasi barely had time to dive down to dodge a new volley.

As a child, Vasi had dreamed of engaging a talented archmage in a spellcasting battle. She now rued her wish with every fiber of her being. She had hoped the God Card would prove an ace in the hole, but Wyrde wouldn’t give her the time to unpetrify it. Without reinforcements, Vasi would perish within minutes.

Thankfully, no member of her party was ever truly alone.

A mighty ray of lightning surged from the raging dust storm and aimed straight for Wyrde. The dragon swiftly altered her forcefield to protect herself, but the blast annihilated half a dozen drones attacking Vasi. A mighty, winged dragon with scales of leaves emerged from the chaos.

“I weep for you, my child,” Wyrde told the newcomer, though there was no sorrow in her voice. “To see a noble dragon led astray by fairykind is truly shameful.”

“I am Mister’s houseplant first.” Rosemarine pointed her firearms at Wyrde, while her roots carried Steve into the air. “And a dragon second!”

Once upon a time in Outremonde, dragons and fairy lords had waged a terrible war against each other.

Perhaps it was karma that they would stand together on this day.