SB4 C47: Deadpool (1)

47 - Deadpool (1)

The freezing water bit against my legs and splashed against the room’s brass walls. Salt and seaweed—a stink I’d never smelled on Earth but still recognized as the ocean—overwhelmed the burning metal and ozone I’d grown used to, and steam rose from every flooded surface in the portal. The work floor Sarah, Nathan, and I had been working our way across was coming apart as more and more water pushed in.

“What’s going on!?” I shouted over the roaring flood.

Sarah and Nathan fought across the deluge, pushing back toward where I’d reappeared. “Did you figure out what you needed?” Sarah asked as she drew closer.

“Yes!”

“Great! Now, let’s get moving. We need to climb, or we’ll get caught, and S-Rank doesn’t mean we’re drowning-proof.” Sarah pointed to a long ramp on the room’s far side. “That’s our next target! Let’s go!”

I’d been stupid. I’d asked the wrong questions, tried to learn the wrong things. The path to S-Rank had been critical, but instead of learning how Paragons like the God of Thunder or Placid King ascended, I should have figured out what the Placid King was. If I had, I’d be more prepared for what was coming now. Even so, it only took one look at the seawater—and at the creatures swimming in it—to understand, in general terms, what we were up against.  I fell in behind Sarah and Nathan, and we started climbing the ramp.

As we pushed through the ever-rising water, I coughed, spat salty seawater, and started talking. “There’s a powerful Paragon making a move here. It might show up itself, or it might use servants and disciples, but either way, we won’t be able to fight it.”

“How do you know?” Sarah asked.

Nathan’s eyebrow raised. “The Crone? She wasn’t—“

“No. He calls himself the Placid King, and my…” Now wasn’t the time for secrets or coming up with lies. “My patron’s a power just like him. He told me everything I needed to know.”

That was a lie, and it was keeping secrets. Eugene hadn’t told me anywhere near enough to survive this. He had to be testing me. Maybe the whole thing had been a test. That didn’t matter, though. One way or another, we had to climb.

But we hadn’t even reached the top of the ramp when the first monsters arrived.

Serene Scytheclaw: A-Rank Monster

The good news—as far as good news went—was that the gigantic, chitin-covered monster was ‘only’ A-Rank. The bad news was that its six armored legs held it well out of the waist-deep water, and its disk-shaped body was completely encased in thick plating. Even the two excessively long, crablike claws were made of the bony plate. Those looked less like a crustacean’s weapons and more like a pair of curved, wicked-looking scythes.

I couldn’t find a single weak point on the monster. Even its eyes were tucked below literal inches of plating, and those beady things would be all but impossible to hit at A-Rank speeds.

“Distract it,” Nathan said.

I nodded. “Got it.”

Then I threw myself into battle. Nimbus Edge surged to life as I pushed through the briny water, toward the Scytheclaw. The battle trance filled me. I gritted my teeth, and my vision narrowed onto the monster. Anger and rage built up in me; this thing wanted to…

Wanted to…

Wait. Why was I angry, anyway?

The emotion faded faster than the battle trance had set in, and I nearly missed my Storm Dance as the monster’s massive claw cut the air I’d just stood in. I landed across the room—away from the ramp where Sarah and Nathan had gotten to ankle-depth. Water filled my lungs as I breathed in, and I coughed it out. I’d never fought in a water world. I’d barely even learned to swim. But even so, I couldn’t bring myself to be afraid.

Windwalk. I stepped up through the water and into the ever-shrinking pocket of air, accelerating past the Scytheclaw. Nimbus Edge cut a groove across its chitin, but didn’t penetrate deep enough to draw blood. The rapier flicked across my face to block one claw, and I leaped over the second as it snapped shut.

Then the area I’d been standing in burst into flames—flames and steam.

Nathan Anders, the Phoenix Reborn, was back in the fight.

The Scytheclaw’s eyes grew, then popped as flames coursed across its crablike body. Steam poured from the cracks in the chitin, and the monster collapsed. “Finish it,” Nathan said.

“If you insist.” I calmly walked through the water and shoved Nimbus Edge through one of the bleeding eye-holes. More steam poured from the wound, carrying grey-green gore and blue blood with it in a disgusting fountain that slowly shrank to a trickle. The stink of burning flesh pushed the salt-and-seaweed smell back.

“Alright, we need to keep moving,” Sarah Cullman said, but the urgency in her voice was gone. We regrouped at the ramp and started climbing.

“What’s going on with my rage?” I asked quietly as we reached the workshop’s next floor.

Sarah stared at me for a minute. Then she shook her head. “I have no idea. I’m more worried about the rest of the team, and about getting ourselves out of this. The only good news is that the flooding should kill the portal boss. Once it does, we’ll just have to survive an hour.”

The water rose behind us, and as I watched it creep upward, I couldn’t help but think that even if the boss did die, we might not have one hour—and that was only if the boss died.

◄▼►

For all that Nathan was back in the fight, his Mana levels weren’t stable, and he’d had the crap beaten out of him. Rebirth or not, he wasn’t fully functional.

And Sarah had used almost everything she had keeping the three of us—Nathan, Cheddar, and me—alive. Between their resource levels and my battle with Deborah burning mine, we didn’t have the Stamina or Mana to line up and fight against the sheer number of monsters flooding the portal.

Worse, it wasn’t just filling from the bottom. As I crested the ramp, I stared down at a gigantic mold that had clearly been used to cast tubing—the kind of pipes I could have walked through without ducking. Salty water filled every inch of it and slopped onto the workroom’s floor.

On the room’s far side, a golden portal stuck out of the wall. It was gigantic—easily large enough to drive a semi truck through. And, even worse, the thing pushing through it filled it completely.

The Placid King: ?-Rank

It was a tentacle. A massive, black tentacle, slime and fetid water dripping from its length. Dozens of glowing eyes, ranging in size from human-like to the size of a dump truck tire, stared unblinkingly from its length. The thing was easily as bulky as any monster I’d fought—the only bigger ones had been a few of the constructs the Craftsman had made, and the gigantic turtle we’d killed during the portal surge so long ago. But this…this was obviously only a small part of the Placid King itself—a single limb of the full monster. It was every bit as powerful as the God of Thunder.

“It’s SS-Plus,” Sarah said as every eye locked onto us.

No, not onto us. The tendril of the Placid King only had eyes for me.

I should have been horrified or angry. Should have felt something—the urge to attack or the overwhelming need to retreat. The battle trance should have taken hold of me, or I should have felt the need to keep my promises to Jessie—or to Ellen.

But I couldn’t bring myself to feel any of it.

Instead, I felt calm. Relaxed. The Placid King’s eyes stared at me, and for a long moment, the tentacle seemed to push even further into the S-Ranked portal world, toward me. I didn’t doubt that the monster in front of me could manifest here. It could enter the Craftsman’s world and take control of it or destroy it as easily as I ripped through a C-Rank portal world. Maybe even easier.

Instead, it withdrew, and seawater poured in through the massive gap.

As it left, fear and fury slammed into me like sledgehammers. I whirled, Nimbus Edge humming in my hand.

Workshop Foreman: S-Rank

Depthsbound Horror-Eater: S-Rank

The first monster was all brass and silk, a familiar typing in a new shape. It was thin, almost skeletal, with limited armor covering only its chest and head. Its hands and arms were little more than metal bars and wire, but as it stalked through the ever-rising water, a long, thin whip of silk formed in one hand. It hung in the salty water, then flicked out with a thunderous crack.

The other was…something.

It was all but impossible to understand it. The thing’s flesh was pink and swollen. Its fins looked twisted and broken, like every stroke it took through the water had to be agony. Four tiny, almost atrophied eyes stared in every direction, glazed and grown over with scales. I doubted it could see more than shadows and light. But the frightening part was its massive jaw. It unhinged, and when it did, it was more than large enough to eat me—or even a fully-armored Deborah—in one bite.

On the other hand, I could feel the fear, so that was…good?

Sarah stared at the two monsters for a moment as the water flooded in through the massive portal. Then she nodded. “Alright. We need to beat the Foreman. The fish doesn’t matter. We can leave it behind, and it can’t see us. It’s going to feel us move through the water, though. Here’s what we’ll do.”

She ran through the plan in seconds as the Foreman stalked through the water on stilt-like legs, silk whip cracking menacingly. When she finished, I nodded and dropped into Cyclone Forms.

Darkness fired first, with Cloudburst, centered on the Foreman. The moment it hit, Sarah dashed right, and Nathan leaped into the air, transforming into his Phoenix form. I started running left, and all three of us watched as the Horror-Eater moved.

It zipped toward Sarah—the worst possible option for us, and the one we’d planned for. Lightning Chain hit the Foreman, and I crashed into the Darkness, sword first, a moment later. Nathan didn’t close the gap. Instead, he rained fire spells down on the entire Darkness, and I danced into Mistwalk stance to activate Mistform. Explosions rained down around me as I stood perfectly still. I couldn’t see them, but even my incorporeal skin felt the heat erupting around me.

Sarah would have to handle the Horror-Eater as best she could. We needed the Foreman dead.

The explosions stopped an instant before Mistform ended, and I dismissed the Darkness and shifted into Thunderbolt Forms.

Rain-Slicked Blade punched into the Foreman’s armored chest, and I followed it up with another blow—but as my arm jerked back for a third, a line of pain wrapped all the way around my sword arm. The silk whip dug into my armor, then through it, burning into my arm; it was ridiculously hot, and steam poured from it.

I jerked back. The Foreman followed me as my feet splashed into the water. I took a second step back—down, into the brass casting mold. My head plunged under the water, and Nimbus Edge disappeared.

Then a red-orange flash erupted at the water’s surface. Cloudburst fell off, and as it did, Nathan Anders slammed into the S-Ranked foreman.

It might’ve been S-Ranked, but it wasn’t built for direct combat. Sarah had recognized that right away. In fact, most of the monsters working in the gigantic forge-works had surprisingly limited combat potential, and I didn’t quite understand why. The ones the Carlsbad Portal had sent against Phoenix had been built for war, but aside from the Overseers, the Steam Hulks, and a few others, nothing the Craftsman had built seemed functional as a combat machine.

By the time I surfaced, it was all over, and Sarah and Nathan were both scrambling into a gigantic pipe—ignoring the residue of still-molten brass coating parts of it. “Come on! We’ve got to go!” Nathan yelled.

Sarah was bleeding from her arm and hip. We climbed up just far enough to be out of the standing seawater, although even more of it flowed down the pipe from above, then stopped. She hissed in pain as she pulled her shredded pants and sleeve free from the wound.

It was hideous.

Dozens of deep punctures dotted her skin, the blood bubbling up from them almost a black color. It seemed to hiss and crackle, almost like it was boiling, and she winced when she poked the dark red skin around it. “That’s going to be a bitch to heal.”

“You can do it, though? Right, Sarah?” Nathan Anders asked.

“Of course I can do it. But I don’t know how long it’ll take. We’ll need to find a safe place. I’ll do a little bit for now, then we can keep moving until we’re secure.” Sarah touched her hip, and the skin turned a bright, almost sunburnt red. Her eyes closed for a second—I thought it was pain, but when they opened again, they just looked sad. “That’s an Angelo trick. I learned the skill from him. Irradiation Therapy. Shouldn’t be any infection left anymore.”

The two S-Rankers went quiet, and I cleared my throat after a second. “You’re in no shape for another fight, Sarah. Next room with an enemy in it, I’m using Stormbreak.”

Sarah stared at me. Then she nodded. “If you’re sure. Just make sure Nathan’s out of the line of fire, and we’ll get through it. And, as much as I hate to put a patient in the line of fire, we’re going to need your monster familiar soon. I’ve got a bad feeling that this place is going to get worse as we climb, not better.”

I couldn’t help but agree with her. It was only a matter of time until one of the Craftsman’s combat monsters found us—or something from the Placid King’s ocean world tracked us down—and the three of us couldn’t handle another Steam Hulk.