Apocalypse with my SSS Harem Beauties-Chapter 74: Giants

The hooded figure kept coming at them with measured and slow steps, the two lanterns swinging with a sound like distant iron on stone.

For a moment it seemed merely human-sized—then suddenly it grew.

The robes stretched into ragged banners, bone fragments lengthened into spines and ribs, and the thing swelled upward until it towered over the bone spires like some twisted giant.

Its head craned back and the lantern light flared, orange lanternfire licking the mist in wide swathes.

Then it made a sound.

It was not a shout or a cry but a deep and resonant vibration that rolled out from the figure and sank into the ground. The note was strange and incomprehensible in every way their ears expected. It sounded and felt like a bell that struck from inside their chest, a chorus of many inhuman voices that layered into one.

The sound hammered their skulls. Their teeth ground together. Some in the group felt nausea spike as if their own blood had turned to static.

Nadine’s spear trembled in her grip. Clara pressed two fingers to her temple as dots of white danced at the edges of her vision.

Myles fought through it. He tried to use his Perception and focus his eye to reach the creature to analyze it.

However, pain flared behind his eyes. His sight doubled and the figure seemed to blur and un-blur like a mirage. Every time he thought he’d lock onto it the resonance erased the outline and folded it away.

"This is not just noise but some kind of psychic attack," he thought.

His focus shredded. He had to force his breath into steady counts just to keep his legs under him. He could not see the figure’s true shape. It was like trying to read a book through water.

The figure did not hurry. It lifted one chain and the lanterns swung wider. The orange light crawled across the gravefield and the bone spikes responded. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The dead—hundreds of small fractures of bone and rot they had already killed—began to rattle.

At first it was like wind through straw, then the movement grew deliberate. Bones scraped against another bone. The fragments the group had cut down twitched and crawled to each other again.

Where the lanternlight touched the fallen skeletons they rose. Then, unnervingly, they did not simply stand.

The handfuls of remnants, the rotten limbs and cracked skulls, were drawn like iron filings to the light, sliding and clattering together.

Bodies that had been shattered seconds before slid across the soil and fused into new things.

The process was loud and grotesquely noisy, full of the grinding sounds of broken joints and sucking flesh as corrupted bone reknit.

When it finished, three colossal figures stood.

One of them had a torso that was a spiral of fused skulls, eyesockets like portholes burning with a cold blue flame.

The other had arms that had become branching maces of limbs that opened into serrated fans of ribs and talons.

The third figure’s body was a twisted column of spine. It has long finger bones that end in hooked spines that dripped with dark ichor.

They moved wrong with too many joints in the wrong places, motion like puppets that have strings pulled from beneath the earth.

The hooded giant—the conductor of this terrible raising—tilted its head and the lanterns swung. Every swing sent a ripple through the three behemoths and the bone spires around them answered with low groans.

Nadine planted her feet and tightened her grip. Victor’s jaw clenched until it showed white at the edges.

Even Sam’s fear had hardened into a tight and sharp focus. She can only saw one thing right now, and that is fighting. So she pushed her fear aside.

"Hold formation and don’t get separated. We can do this!" Myles found his voice. The words were small but sharp enough to cut through the ringing.

No one attacked first. They watched the field of new titans and felt the air thicken with threat.

The lanterns swung steady as metronomes.

Myles swept his gaze over them all—the people who had followed him through the apocalypse, blood and fear, and now stood before these monsters.

His throat tightened.

"We’re not going to run away from this. We can’t." His tone was sharp and firm. "The only way is fighting. Fight with everything you’ve got. You understand?"

Nadine’s eyes burned as she nodded. Victor gave a sharp jerk of his chin. Their weapons gleamed faintly with the unnatural glow of energy.

But Ryan, Kade, George, Daniel, Ethan, Sam, and Clara still gripped makeshift weapons of scavenged junk. Against the lantern giant and its three towering bone-titans, those weapons looked like children’s toys. Their fear was written in their faces and their shaking breaths.

Myles saw it clearly. And for a moment, his chest twisted with the weight of their hopelessness.

He was not good with speeches and stirring fire in others. But silence would kill them faster than any monster.

"You can do this," he told them. "I need you to remember again that in this world, the only way to stay alive is to keep fighting and push yourself. There’s no other path. There is no safety or a way to retreat."

His words hung in the thick tainted air.

Lanternfire flickered across their faces, revealing sweat, grime, and hesitation. And then, one by one, those expressions hardened.

"We have to fight as best as we can," Myles said. "Come on!"

The command cracked like a whip.

"Goddamnit. You’re right!" Daniel let out a curse. His voice carried something close to fury, at the monsters before them.

The others jerked as if waking from a nightmare. Then squared their shoulders.

The resolution was not at the same level, not equal, but it was enough. Fear still coiled in their stomachs but fear could be a fuel for retaliation as well, because they wanted to survive!

Myles saw it, something sparking in them.

The lanterns swung again. The colossal abominations answered with rattling groans, dragging themselves closer.

Myles lifted his weapon, his eyes never leaving the nightmare titans. " Let’s show them."

The group braced as the ground shivered, the first of the bone giants beginning its charge.

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