[Skill Activation: Heartbreak]

Silver boomed, a thin ray of energy magic cut across the air, pierced through any and all corpses no matter the number, and aimed to pop the Heart’s head like a balloon. Yet nothing could be that easy, of course nothing was that easy. A wall of flesh, automatically it seemed, erected. And while the wall was technically human, it definitely ate like one, completely engulfing the projectile within its many bellies.

Vernon cursed to himself, groaned, wanting to shout at Pereyra or Tewfik or even Kreutz for their knack of making things annoying. He had little knowledge about cursed formations (or cursed beings, cursed spirits, whatever the official term was), but he considered himself to be intelligent. The Heart of the Tormented Flesh was confirmed to be the controller, exposed after Archknell’s artillery. The actual Tormented Flesh itself was nothing more than an AI, operating on predetermined algorithms with codes of magical logic, arcane axioms and enchanting calculus.

That was his ultimate conclusion: that he was intelligent enough to acknowledge the sheer insanity of natural magical phenomena but too stupid to do anything beyond that. “Humor me, would ya?” he complained, charging the next shot. “How’s this?”

How was that? Same as the first, a silver streak tore through. Same as the first, it was met with an erected, lopsided wall of gore, dented it, snapped bones and ripped muscles and skin and tendon—was that a mouth?—and same as the first, his attempt was a light snack. Not only was it demoralizing, but it was also horrifying.

“Tch!” No good then. He could take pot shots all day, eventually finding a lapse within its defenses, but that was not going to happen before he became zombie chowder.

Vernon summoned a blue screen, unmuted himself. The battle had began awkwardly as everyone started on the roof (where he was [Perched] at), and only Problem had the ability to confidently fly (Kaiya could, theoretically). So they went downstairs, Keen included, who had healed.

“Hey!” Vernon greeted them. “I can’t get through the Heart’s initial defenses! Be careful when you approach it! If it can swallow my shots, then it can probably swallow you too. We only got a limited amount of time before it starts yelling again, and when that happens, I won’t be able to cover all of you.” Because the zombies will wake up and eat our brains. “You guys got it?”

Problem dropped in a controlled descent towards the Tormented Flesh, their fall illuminated with magic circles, ten in number. Every circle blasted a thick, bubbling ray of dark energy, and crashed into the Heart, smoke erupting from the accumulating impacts. However as the smoke dissipated, Problem found that their attacks had met the same fate as Vernon’s: eaten whole, did little damage.

They frowned, disappointed. “Well, the idiot’s right!” (“Wha—Hey!”) “Be cautious in your approach! Don’t come on too hastily or you’ll be tormented as well!” (“I figured that out first!”)

Jury laughed a little; it seemed she needed that laugh. “We’ll be fine. Problem, coordinate with me when we enter the field. Vernon, continue watching the battle from above. Assume that Sage is commanding the teams and guiding them; do not interfere. We can’t afford to have communication errors.”

“Yes ma’am. Notify me when you need a good shot taken. Otherwise, I’mma clear some zombies.”

He muted himself, and that left the rest of the combined forces of Team Jury, Uprise, and Problem to conquer the battlefield on their own accord. Jury was uncertain about their prospects, having the experience to know the devastation an S-Rank Horror could cause (the System classed enemies, with Horror-type enemies acting as their namesake). The impediments that both Vernon and Problem faced were expected; however, what mattered most was endurance and determination.

“Rein yourselves in, everyone,” she said as they stopped at the front doors, which were glass. Had been glass. They were simply metal frames now. “This is still an S-Rank, albeit weakened. Stay on your guard and keep constant communication. I’ll lead. Problem and I will dispatch the Heart, and you will prepare for any unexpected events. In the event that it wakes up the zombies, do your best to stick together and thin their numbers. Do you understand?”

They nodded and hummed; here, she took attendance to ensure her numbers: Althea Shen, Damien Fayer, Keen, Delphian, and Uprise. Vernon Hugo was roof-side and Problem was nearest to the Heart. Everyone was accounted for, and judging from her [Map], several teams were minutes away from arrival.

“Good!” She stepped one foot through the open door. “Let’s go! Eliminate any zombies in the way!”

Jury led her Slayers into the fathomless false night, momentarily stunned at the sight it had brought. As though she had stepped into another world recently ravaged. Above the dense, airless crowd of standing corpses (each well into its decay), artificial stars sparkled like chemically-crafted gems, and their creation mattered infinitely less to the beauty they possessed. In that moment, lasting for less than a second, she was reminded of a crystal night, returning to her time as an Otherguard, after her team had successfully neutralized a breakthrough.

On a night barren of urban pollution, stars shone above mountain crags, and the universe beheld splendor and was completely deserving of life. As this thought had pierced her, she had looked around to her friends, comrades-in-arms, and noticed the same shine and promised to maintain that glow, always.

This was why she fought, so she greeted the dead, whose shoulders were pink (which resembled a wind-crested gray sea than a tarnished graveyard), and beyond was the monstrosity, the Horror, recovering. The Heart was a child in the womb, and it needed to be slain.

Although her blade was stained a grayish-brown, having witnessed countless atrocities—deaths of innocents—her pearlsteel champion, the [Arbiter], was inexhaustible. Her sword emerged in a beautiful, bold arc, and it hissed like a lioness. Eleven Jurors were beckoned by the honor [Jury Summons]. They were exact replicas of the original, able to act independently; a mental network connected their minds, thus allowing them to freely coordinate and share information, acting as if one. They possessed a paradoxical quality: simultaneously, all and none of the twelve Jurors were the original. As long as more than a single Juror was active, in other words alive, there was uncertainty. Thus, as seen during Pereyra’s first encounter, the true Jury would always be the last remaining Juror.

The Jurors devised their verdict: slay. They manned the frontal force and gave swift release to the dead, where a single strike freed several souls at once. Their advance matched the path of a steady scythe to an overgrown lawn, and the others carved detours through bright fire conjurations and cutting waters, lightning and psionic energy. Problem took testing shots to gauge the Heart’s defenses. No matter the angle or number, walls erected and consumed them all.

“Problem!” said the frontmost Juror, getting her ally’s attention. “Charge one!” She broke from the group and through the zombic crowd. None of the zombies stopped her—made it easy that way. For now. Her feet suddenly sank, stepping on the soft steeps of the Tormented Flesh. It gave way like a fading yawn.

A wall rose. Had mouths, lots of them, white teeth and yellow ones and rotten blacks. Ears, noses, apart and fused together, and wherever there was a cavity, there was a groan. Dear God.

“Come!” the Juror shouted as she tightened her grip on the [Arbiter], flashed it the brightest white and activated [Great Channel - Aether]; aether was her preferred element. It had the power of fire and the purity of light, and her pearl-steel shone mightily in its warmth.

In a single cleave, the wall was split down the middle, burnt, and melted like dripping ice cream. She broke through, and the true defenses awakened. The ground sprouted rope sinews and bone tendrils and altogether lunged like a flurry of arrows.

The Juror slipped the initial barrage, dodged the next—she had always prided herself on her dexterity—and silenced the third with aether, splitting bones through a wide arc. Jury was fast, yes, but she was in the Tormented Flesh’s territory. The ground groaned as though reacting, frustrated, irritated, desperate.

The attacks grew in numbers. From behind, a thin spine pierced through the Juror’s side. She groaned, snapped it by a twist of her hip. Another piece of bone scratched her cheek. From below, the sinking flesh slowed her, so she couldn’t avoid a rope pulling her left arm back, but she was of superior strength and tore the thing from its socket.

Less than fifteen meters. Close, yet the trek was mountainous. This ground was not made for humans. A third in, the terrain engulfed her feet, this thick pink sickly mud.

The Juror charged in with high steps and high blows, clashing against the intensifying attacks. Every inch she gained, another wound she had. Legs, arms, torso, neck and face, she was scratched bloody and raw—pain, too, was shared amongst Jurors. Two meters further, a jagged bone impaled her right shoulder.

This pain was nothing compared to what Ordo had felt.

She pushed, going step-by-step until the Heart was in full-view, attached to intestines.

It really was a ruined child. Skinless. Eyeless. Having visible, stretching muscles, and hands with no fingers and a mouth with no teeth. It was a small inky thing, uglier than a fetus, absent of its youthful charms. And when the Juror thought to raise her [Arbiter], the child turned its head.

“—Ah—“

Bone stakes impaled Jury and forced her standing. She went slack and gargled a chuckle. She tried calling for Problem, found only blood filling her lungs, but that was as good of a signal as any.

“Here!” called Problem. They raised their sleeves high, magic circles rotating like clocks, four beautiful, enchanting pieces. At once they bellowed and blasted a beam of dark energy, converging at the center.

“—Ah, haa—!” cried the Heart. It erected a dome around itself and the Juror. The energy felled the first layer then the second and third, smashing what fleshweaving it had, and when the final layer was stripped so too was Problem’s anticipated attack, withering.

“Ah—!” it cried again, thinking of a counterattack, then its skull was split in half.

But it did not die.

The [Arbiter] could not kill it, not even when it was distracted. It was a good plan, simply lacking in strength was all. The Juror chuckled, watched as the Heart turned even when liquid brain oozed from its head, and it screamed once more.

“Ah—!” And the Juror was swallowed whole by the Tormented Flesh, consumed. Its scream was haunting, speaking of the dead and calling to them in a language not understood. The streets opened in groans, in festering hate to the living, and aimed to feast upon them while they breathed.

The zombies were awake once more, and they swarmed. In an instant, the main team was seized upon by the ravenous, assailed on all fronts.

“Stay together!” cried a Juror, taking greater care in her slaying, yelling above the ignited combat. “We anticipated this! Stand your ground!”

Vernon called in, “Team Killian from the north and Team Mistlurk from the east are coming in about two minutes! Team Derelict and Team Errant to the south, ETA three! Zombies all over Dawns are coming here; it’ll be a madhouse! Expect delays!”

“I—shit! Damien! I lost sight of Delphian! Do you have eyes on her?!”

“Do I?!” Damien widened his focus. His [Protector’s Stave] was ignited in a bright torch conjuration, scorching any presumptuous lot. Between rotting legs, he saw a woman who was very much alive, unfortunately surrounded by people who weren’t, frantically casting water ring conjurations with little effect.

Ten meters out, he could do this. Always making my life a bit more tedious, don’t you?

Damien sighed and pointed his stave towards the ground, and concentrated on the image of earth: unmoving, steadfast.

[Skill Activation: Conjure - Mountains]

From underneath, he rose one feet in the air, lifted by a moving platform of earth as though he stood on the helm of a ship. He stepped up, powered the conjuration with mana, and plowed through the horde while they clawed, scratched, grabbed at, and nothing. Nothing touched him.

“Clear!” Damien shouted as loud as he could, hoping Delphian had heard him.

He twisted the earth conjuration like a skater on ice, turned, but an unfortunate realization struck him: he was not a skater on ice. The opposite really. Almost immediately, he lost his concentration and the conjuration decasted, stumbled and fell, skidding and rolling until his embarrassing little stunt had brought him to Delphian.

She stared blankly at him.

He waved. “Hi.”

The zombies converged on them like carrions. They ate fools after all, and two were here. Delphian fought them off with a cutting, radiating, pulsing water ring. Damien fumbled hold of his stave, hastily fired unfocused mud blobs, standing.

An arm shot out, tugged him close suddenly, but he wrestled free and spun his staff (sloppily), bashing the hard mana-crystal against skull and splattering brains.

Delphian yelled something at him but she couldn’t be heard over the zombies. He turned and saw a heavy water-arc coming. Coming scarily fast. Damien swore and ducked, avoiding an early decapitation. He heard bodies drop and that was that.

Then a shadow darkened the area. At first, it shadowed him. Then Delphian, the zombies, everyone. It had casted over everyone. A malformed tentacle rose from the mound of the Tormented Flesh, strung together with limbs and body parts as if by design of a sadistic, cruel child. Like a surgeon who only knew how to hurt, to bastardize.

Problem engaged with a prattle of dark shards, chopping chunks off of the tentacle. It swung out and struck them in the gut. They attempted to recover but folded backwards on an unexpected street lamp, flipped over, spun rapidly out-of-control and crashed hard.

[EXPEDITION STATUS]

INCAPICTATED: Problem

“Shit!” cried Althea. “Problem’s down!“

She whipped her [Channeling Chain] across her front, empowered by lightning, ripping through zombies. Althea was closest to Problem; they were cradled against the side of a building, black arcanic chains wrapping them to the wall. A skill perhaps? Althea dared to force herself through the horde, yet the world got darker. Darker than the false night.

Something tackled her to the ground and the ground sunk, or was it her who hopped? Althea gritted her teeth and swung her chain-arm back, but saw a living man on her, Keen. “You alright?!”

In front of them was that exact tentacle. Would’ve smashed her dead if it wasn’t for him. “Yeah!” she said, shoving him off (she was grateful though). “I—Oh shit!”

But Althea wasn’t fast enough. Neither of them was. They could not stand before the tentacle swept towards them like a rushing, polluted tide. Althea panicked and kicked Keen off, braced herself, but she heard only bone-cracks. She opened her eyes (she didn’t realize she had shut them), and the tentacle was enveloped in a thick ocean-blue aura.

Kaiya appeared gushing blood from her ears, nose, and eyes. The psionic energy wavered, stabilized and took a more solid form. She raised her off-hand and tossed it behind her, shooting glass shards through nearby zombies who thought to capitalize.

The tentacle advanced in an inch, then another one—Kaiya couldn’t hold it forever. Keen got up, Althea too, and she had a stupid idea. Stupid ideas, contrary to one may believe, was the best kind of ideas. It made success sweeter. She ran past Kaiya and touched the tentacle directly, doing her best to ignore the revolting feeling.

[Skill Activation: Runecraft - Gravity]

It fruitlessly resisted, trying but failing to sweep her away. Kaiya had a strong hold. While the tentacle was too large to write a proportional rune—it took too much time as well—such a thing wasn’t needed. All she needed was a rune that was just good enough.

[Rune: Increase Gravitational Pull]

And the tentacle was grounded as long as the rune lasted.

“Jury!” called Althea, and two Jurors blitzed in before she could explain further. Both channeled, different from aether as this one was distinctly sky blue. They came together and cleaved down, hacking the tentacle until the tail-end was severed.

The two Jurors had cut the weighted end, but that meant the rest of the tentacle was free from the gravitational rune. It rose, casting the same ominous shadow over them. That was when the tentacle was pierced by a speeding ebony bolt, cut through, and popped out the other end. Not Archknell, his were sharper and better defined in shape. It was Problem, who had used their body as a projectile, emerging on the other end with their cloak bloody. It was a reckless move, considering they were incapacitated earlier. Did the trick though.

They nodded, then collapsed, in the safety of an approaching Slayer Team. Reinforcements were here.

Althea finally looked up. She saw several other Slayers engaging in the same battle, fighting the same zombies and tentacles. In fact, the enemies were thinning. Less of those horrible faces were staring at her. The tide was turning to their favor. As she relished this fact, another shadow draped her—a tentacle, again. She opened her mouth to call out but a spinning ring of fire gallantly tumbled through the air, struck the tentacle directly, bisecting it down the length like good calamari.

The Slayer landed, a large man in knight armor, wielding a greataxe. Montana. Another armored man cut through the hordes swinging a copper greatsword, and she saw that one asshole Alexander hated: Victor Victor, who had a quaint white glow enveloping him and all nearby allies.

Althea saw Kaiya on her hands and knees, dazed, and ran over. “Kaiya, hey! You doing alright?”

“The fight…” She waved a hand. “The…The thing, are we…winning?“

Althea nodded. “We are. Can we get your bleeding under control?“

Kaiya laughed, having a conflicting bright smile against her bloody face. “Nah… This happens when you…overuse…”

“Heh, thanks for saving my ass.”

“That’s our job…”

Our job… Those words stirred a mixture of pride and melancholy from her. Before she dwelled on her feelings any second longer, a hand reached out for them. It was scarred, his knuckles having a dull color.

“Yeah,” Alexander said as zombies were taken out by an invisible blade behind him—Hidden’s work. “That’s our job. Get some rest now, alright Kaiya? The cavalry's here. Don’t know if we can do anything but we’ll fucking try.“

Kaiya looked up and bowed her head, nodding. “Don’t act so cool…”

Althea took Alexander’s hand and stood. “Took you long enough, Alex. Where’s Leo?”

When she asked, Leona cut through the masses with swift, graceful strokes, slicing through without mercy and without malice. The gaps between the zombies widened, thinning in number. Machine gun fire was heard in the distance; the Army was coming too.

Leona waved, albeit bloodied and covered in guts. “I’m sorry for being late, sweetheart.”

Althea tried to find the words to respond, but all she could muster was a smile.

Alexander accessed the System. “Vernon. Damien. You guys ready to finish this?”

“Mhm,” said Vernon.

“More than ready,” next Damien.

“Good. Slayer Team Alba…” He paused as if he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth. A second passed, then Alexander laughed like it was the silliest thing in the world. “You know the job.

“Help the other Slayers when needed; given how much firepower we have, it won’t take long, and the first stage of Operation Scorcher will be a success.”