The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life

Now Reciting: Reconciliation, by Walt Whitman.

"Distance to target, eight miles," I announced over the speakers. "I'm starting the artillery bombardment. Maintain formation!"

"Wilco!" The rangers said in unison.

Rta just hummed acknowledgment. I was leading the wedge formation, right at the tip. I had a beacon pointing forward and was ready to do something once they started spitting at us. Absorb their goo, counter it with a block of stone, anything. Though these machines were totally expendable, I didn't want to give them the pleasure of wrecking us.

The land shook as the 20-million-pound (9,200 metric tons) machines moved at a normal pace toward the two Global Bosses. Yeah, I know Global means the same as World but these guys were in a category by themselves. Behind us, the artillery units I Replicated started firing. Thousands of 155mm Howitzer shells sang their ode to war in the air, making Walt Whitman weep in his grave.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!

Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soiled world.

[...]

> Sauce: https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1867/poems/228

War. War never changes.

The performance of my Raindrops, the only one carrying a DCSC, was down to almost the same as the original Ranger Ork (including my Stats) because of the ping lag. The DCSC alleviated that a little, but to really cut it off, I would need to be running a vine across a quarter of the country to really have an effect. With my distributed cloud micro-Dungeons, Superconductive Vegetation went into the unused Perk bin and hadn't left it yet.

They flew above us. Soldiers of destruction, heralds of doom. Humanity clarion call, stating we weren't dead yet. Heh. Look at me, calling myself human. I felt as monstrous as the Infernali.

My mind drifted back to the prisoners I was moving into the land wagon, getting ready to evacuate. I didn't want to find myself pinned between two humongous monsters with unknown abilities. Of the children, so innocent and pure, carrying the seeds of that odious grass. I hadn't operated on the children yet. Using my Constitution skin resistance test, I was working my way down, healing the toughest people, the ones with the least odds of dying on the operating table, first.

Unawakened children without the System protection were basically made out of origami paper when compared to the power of my tools of hurt.

The shells struck. The Armagellykulls were so massive they rose from behind the Earth's curvature like wicked gods trudging and judging the land. From all around us, the pillbox bunkers and dirigibles lit up the air with their lasers, tracing a spy's maze of light through the smoke from the shells.

I couldn't see. It was too far from my domain. Yet I knew the cannon shells and the lasers had done fuck all to the monster's health. Despair crept into my heart. Back home, I increased the size of the balloons above the land train, fully intending to make the massive composition float. Perhaps things were better across the pond. What a foolish notion. No doubt these monsters were everywhere. Or at least they were also in Tokyo. It's not a Kaiju horror story if Tokyo is intact.

The smoke cleared. The lasers pierced through the monster's transparent flesh and shone it up from the inside. Plumes of white steam rose from bubbles running up the creature's body and bursting like pimples on its skin. And yet the World Boss wasn't showing any signs of pain. It had bled some crystalline ooze from hundreds of puncture wounds. Of the howitzer shells, nothing. They either ceased to exist or were absorbed.

Armagellykull one got close enough to one of my FOBs. Its tentacles rose hundreds of feet in the air and pointed at the steel bunker. I flared a Domain Beacon at it. Where my Domain touched the monster's flesh, I sensed it. A spark of divinity. Weaker than mine but there. These monsters were demigods.

I cast Banish the Iniquitous as fast as I could at the monster. Pinpricks of light sparkled alongside it, each taking a chunk of flesh the size of a house. Then the monster sprayed its dark goop. Using the Beacon, I tried to absorb it. Nothing happened.

It was like this thing had no substance. No mass. It was the inverse of that. Dark matter? Of course not, silly me. Magic vanished where it touched the goop. My Domain did not exist inside it or in its wake. This was.... antimatter. Antimagic. Antilife but not in the political sense.

I Replicated a block of stone above and in front of it. The block fell and collided with the goop. Wherever they touched, matter ceased to exist. The goop spit became smaller, part of its erasing force vanishing.

I would've thrown up if crystallized apples were capable of vomiting. The goop went unchallenged and I lost another FOB. The wounds caused by my spells were slowly closing.

"Dodge the black spit at all costs. Mind the position of your companions," I typed with my mind on a keyboard. The sound came out of the speakers bereft of emotion.

Larry rubbed his paws over my Core. Myself. "Contractor, we can do this. You have marvelous friends alongside you," he delivered the magical girl spiel.

Minutes passed. Three other salvos from the howitzers found their home inside the monster's body. We entered the engagement range.

"Railguns!"

The Mecha army leaned forward and aligned their shoulder cannons. A small EMP flashed and a cacophony of sonic booms shook the air as they all fired in almost perfect synchronicity. The shiny Railgun shells caught the sun as they flew and struck home.

Fire for Effect. 35% faster fire rate. Four salvos in the usual time it took to shoot three.

Ripples spread around the monster's body from the point of impact of the railgun shells. The metal cartridges sank into the monster's body like dolphins diving into the ocean and were devoured. The skull made out of skeletons opened its mouth. A shockwave from the creature's scream knocked some shells from the air as it spread seemingly slowly. It was an illusion of our minds driven into overdrive by our System Attributes. It was traveling at the speed of sound. The very earth gave way as the scream washed over it, kicking dust and small rocks away.

Then it reached us. The external microphones were overwhelmed and fried. The superstructure shook but held. The grit thrown at the joints at supersonic speeds did more harm than the sound wave itself. I snapped out of my daze and absorbed the particulate. Without a living pilot inside, these machines were transparent to my Domain.

We fired again. And again. The Railguns reloaded as we advanced, inexorable. Steel versus demon. The giant Mecha were ants to the Armagellykull's imposing size.

Then the spit came. "Ranger Wolf Green, dodge! The others, keep formation!" I warned.

This time, I Replicated a cloud of Tungsten chaff in the path of the spit. Antimatter and matter canceled each other without the fanfare or explosions science fiction told us should be. The energy vanished or was... absorbed? Did the monster use this spit to empower itself?

No matter. "Laser range! Fire!" I ordered.

The sixteen Mecha rose their arms and fired six 300kW laser batteries at the monster. The air smelled of ozone (remember, I can cast five senses anywhere in my Domain) as the UV light crossed the atmosphere unchallenged by the air, dust, or debris. The monster got the nastiest sunburn ever as its skin popped, oozed, and boiled away.

I reached beacon distance. 3.5 miles from the monster. Banish the Iniquitous flashed with all my might. I even invested my own Divinity into the spell.

> Your knowledge and training improved your Divine Spellcaster Skill to rank V

Your harmful Light magic heals believers for (7*Rank)% of the damage that would be dealt instead.

Enemies struck by your wrathful magic lose (0.1*Rank)% of their Attributes per strike. Lost Attributes return after 24 hours.

Believers witnessing your magic gain a (Rank)% combat bonus.

Your divine magic generates pockets of Domain where they strike, that last for (Rank) seconds.

> You learned the spell, Consecrated Ground: Hallow a place in line of sight sqrt (Wisdom) feet in radius and establish your Divine Presence in that location. Demons and heretics treading upon this place suffer sqrt (Intelligence + Willpower) damage every minute they remain there, at least once. A sphere inscribed in this circle counts as your Domain. The ground remains consecrated as long as you pay the upkeep. Cost: 20,000 DM and 20 Divinity Points per day.

> You learned the spell, Call Heaven's Thunder: After a minute of casting, call down mighty tribulation lightning from the true Heavens. Deal armor-ignoring damage equal to sqrt (Wisdom + Willpower + Clarity). This damage is resisted by the target's Constitution or Willpower, whichever is higher. Cost: 100,000 DM and 100 Divinity Points. This spell cannot be reversed upon your believers. Instead, it grants them a permanent boon should they survive the damage. This boon can only be granted to the same believer at most once a year.

For ranks in one go. The Skill hadn't leveled while I excised the seeds but perhaps it was because of my mindset. Feel the wrath of a real deity, Demon!

I capitalized on the pockets of Domain and flashed a Beacon straight at the monster's skull. I sensed every slime-covered skeleton and felt the souls of the dead trapped within their mortal remains. These bones weren't just decoration. They were the monster's food stash. My next spells went there. I shattered the skeletons the burst of Holy magic robbing the monster of control over the souls. I dragged them back to me and cast them to Flkvangr.

Armagellykull didn't like it a single bit. Nine tentacles rose in the air and nine magical mandalas appeared in front of the tips. Nine black holes formed in the blink of an eye and nine Raindrops robots lost their middle.

Stupid and sudden like that. The arms and head fell down and crashed on the ground. Back in Speranza, nine rangers suffered massive damage from some sort of conceptual feedback.

I cast Banish the Iniquitous on the rangers. Reversed, the magic healed them. But I wouldn't risk exposing these teens a second time. They were out of combat and I alerted the medical staff to take them to the infirmary. Which meant administering healing potions to them.

*

*

The battle raged. Armagellykull was just playing with us until I struck at its food supply, the skeletons. We fired our conventional weapons and I seared its flesh with my magic. Futile as it was, we presented our token resistance. The monster moved forward, inexorable. Though mosquito bites may swell and hurt, the wounds by themselves wouldn't hinder a determined person.

A tentacle sped at impossible speeds and Physics-Chan screeched something to the tune of terminal velocity. Armagellykull, the asshole, ignored her. It caught Ranger Dino Red's robot and even the red paint didn't save it. The Mecha was lifted in the air and tossed a hundred yards away. The pilot cursed and beat down on his power armor, back in my inner Realm. Ranger Wolf yellow failed to completely dodge a spit. His Raindrops lost its legs and the mecha fell on its face.

Just like that, we were reduced to five. Then a shower of goop spit rained on the artillery behind us, destroying the cannons. Armagellykull was done playing. I decided toy robots wouldn't do against a creature that crossed two atmospheric zones at once.

"Everyone, disconnect," I ordered and cast Consecrated Ground where my Mecha stood. A sphere of Domain 152 feet across appeared. Four Mecha were surrendered to my control after some protests from the pilots. I programmed them to keep shooting at maximum speed, basically condemning the machines to destruction in a few seconds.

Then I cast a beacon at the Demon. Finding the black mass inside the skull of skeletons, I cast Consecrated Ground again. Though the spell had "Ground" in its name, it never mentioned the need to be cast upon firm land.

"Establish your Divine Presence" meant exactly what it hinted at. The first spell where my Mecha stood was exactly to test that. It was as if I was right there, everywhere, and anywhere inside that sphere. Omnipresent like a true Deity ought to be. And now, I was inside the creature's head. Or at least part of it.

I equipped the Perk, Sturdy Domain. My effective Willpower became 40,000 as I touched the black mass and the skeletons. I fought against the creature's aura and will as our powers clashed. Like a Warhammer, I wielded those 40,000 points of willpower to bash the bones and make them mine. Even at that level, things were mostly even. But the monster was taking damage straight to its nogging.

Call the Heaven's Thunder. Shazam. The skies split open and silvery lightning fell upon the Earth, using Armagellykull as a lightning rod. Its whole mass quaked. The dozens of tentacles sprayed black goop all over the land, creating a new crater somewhere in Northern Kentucky or southern Ohio. Not sure about that one.

And another. My stores of Divinity plummeted. But I used the distraction to push the monster's aura aside and remove hundreds of skeletons from its grasp. Armagellykull screamed and exploded.

My consciousness snapped back to my Core and I felt the worst head... fruit-ache ever. I was stunned and wasted, barely able to reason.

For a hundred miles around the monster, all my dirigibles, FOB, and the people that refused to evacuate vanished. A black sphere blocked sight of the west, stretching from the bottom of the Michigan peninsula all the way to West Virginia and down to Nashville. Also, all the way up to space.

It took me an hour to recover my wits.

Had I done it?

Had I killed at least one of the monsters?

I checked my notifications. Nothing. If I had scored a kill, the System hadn't acknowledged it. I asked Rta and the rangers that remained awake. They too didn't get any kill notifications. I had to assume the monster was still alive.

One Armagellykull caused 650 miles of land to vanish. Planet Earth now had a black pimple on its American cheek reaching all the way up to low orbit. And all the way down to the mantle.

I just had to jinx it. Torn asunder, the continental plate decided it wouldn't stay put and cracked under its own weight.

One monster broke America in half by throwing a tantrum. I had a dozen or so of them running amok.

Fuck.

The demon grass started to flail and detach from the ground. Massive roots cracked Manhattan open and tossed buildings aside like LEGO bricks by an angry toddler.

All of my uncleaned prisoners started to convulse.

Double fuck.

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