Chapter 51: The Ashen Maw

The subterranean temple reeked of sulfur and old blood.

Below us, the high priest raised his jagged purple crystal staff, preparing to condemn the terrified factory worker to the starving juvenile Slag-Crawlers in the pit.

The chanting of the cultists reached a fever pitch.

They thought they were the predators in the dark.

It was time to correct that misconception.

I did not waste time with a grand entrance or a heroic speech. I engaged the pneumatic valves in my left shoulder. The heavy brass plates of my Vanguard Arm hissed softly.

Hssssssss.

Steam pressure flooded the internal chambers.

I looked around the ledge and spotted a discarded, rusted iron gear the size of a wagon wheel lying in the muck.

I grabbed it with my mechanical hand.

CLANG!

The brass fingers dented the solid iron upon impact.

I hoisted it up, feeling the immense weight vanish under the sheer power of the [Kinetic Charge].

"Rolf, the pit," I whispered, my voice cold and precise. "Kaelith, silence the casters."

With a sudden, violent twist of my hips, I unleashed the pent-up steam pressure and hurled the massive iron gear over the edge.

WHOOSH!

It flew through the cavernous space like a cannonball.

It struck the two heavily armored cultists dragging the worker with a deafening noise.

CRUNCH!

Shattering metal and bone echoed loudly in the cavern.

They were instantly pulverized, thrown completely off the platform, leaving the factory worker trembling and covered in dust.

The chanting stopped dead.

The high priest whipped his head around, his eyes wide with shock.

"The offering!" the priest shrieked, pointing his staff into the shadows.

"Intruders! Kill them!"

"Too late," Rolf roared.

The werewolf did not bother taking the stairs. He leapt directly off the fifty-foot ledge, plummeting like a meteor.

He landed right in the center of the pit with a ground-shaking impact.

BOOOOOOM!

A shockwave of pure, untamed Beast-Aura exploded outward.

The juvenile Slag-Crawlers hissed.

Sssssss!

They turned their attention from the worker to the colossal man in their territory.

Rolf grinned, gripping his double-bladed battleaxe with both hands.

"Come here, you ugly bugs! Let me show you how a real predator hunts!"

He swung the axe in a devastating horizontal arc.

SWOOSH! SHLUCK!

He cleaved the first two mutated insects in half before they could even snap their mandibles.

Up on the outer rings, panic set in among the robed cultists.

Several of them raised their hands, their palms glowing with sickly green offensive magic.

They began to chant, attempting to lock onto Rolf.

They never finished their spells.

Kaelith was a phantom.

She melted through the shadows cast by the flickering torches.

A silver flash caught the dim light, followed by the soft, wet sound of a throat being slit.

SLICK.

Then another.

SCHLUCK.

And another.

The spellcasters dropped to the cold stone floor in total silence, their green magic fizzling out before it could even form.

Thud. Thud.

I drew my steel longsword and dropped down to the main platform.

I landed in a crouch, locking eyes with the high priest.

The fanatic took a step back, realizing his outer defenses were being systematically dismantled in seconds.

His eyes darted to the corpses of his followers, then to me.

A look of pure, unhinged madness twisted his features.

"You cannot stop the Smog!" the priest screamed.

He raised his purple crystal staff high above his head and slammed the base into the metal floor.

CLANG!

"If we cannot feed the Maw with the weak, we will feed it with the faithful! AWAKEN!"

The purple crystal pulsed with a blinding, toxic light.

The surviving cultists on the platform stopped running.

Their eyes rolled into the back of their heads, and they began to scream as the purple runes tattooed on their necks flared to life.

Their bodies violently burst apart.

SQUELCH! SPLAT!

Their blood and life force siphoned directly into the massive pile of scrap metal forming the idol.

The ground shuddered violently.

RUUUMMBLE.

The mountain of rusted gears and pipes began to heave and shift.

With a deafening, metallic roar, the true idol burst forth from the debris.

SKREEEECH!

{

[Target Scanned: Alpha Slag-Crawler]

>Level: 15

>Class: Mutated Apex Guardian>?Warning: Entity possesses extreme armor density and an integrated Arcane Core.

}

It was a nightmare of twisted biology and industrial waste.

The Alpha was three times the size of a normal Slag-Crawler.

Its back was fused with thick boiler plates and jagged iron spikes.

Glowing purple runes pulsed along its legs, binding it completely to the high priest’s will.

The priest scrambled up the beast’s jagged leg, securing himself on a makeshift saddle of fused metal behind its head.

"HAHAHAHAHA!! It was your greatest mistake to have interfered with us, YOU RATS!!" the priest roared.

"Crush him!" the priest commanded, pointing his staff at me.

The Alpha let out a screech that rattled my teeth.

SKREEEEE!

It charged, its massive, scythe-like front legs tearing up the stone floor.

CRACK! SCRAPE!

It opened its jaws, preparing to unleash a torrent of highly pressurized, corrosive acid.

I did not retreat.

I inhaled sharply, triggering [The Sovereign’s Conduit].

The ambient mana flooded my system, converting instantly into a dense Martial Aura.

"You think you are tough, huh?," I muttered.

I activated the [Shadow-Weave Sword Technique]. My body became weightless.

As the Alpha lunged, snapping its massive jaws where I had just been standing, I glided to the side with impossible smoothness.

SWISH.

I did not strike its armored face. I aimed for the glowing purple runes tethering the beast.

Using the creature’s own momentum, I vaulted off its armored knee joint.

I scaled the side of the monstrous insect in three rapid, gravity-defying steps, my steel sword carving a deep groove through the corrupted runes along its carapace.

SCREEEEEEECH!

The Alpha shrieked in agony as the magical binding was damaged, but it kept thrashing.

I reached the top of the carapace, sliding across the slick metal plates right toward the high priest.

The fanatic’s eyes widened in terror.

He frantically raised his purple staff, attempting to cast a point-blank necrotic blast.

I did not give him the time.

I swung my longsword, parrying the staff with a shower of sparks and knocking it wide.

CLANG!

I stepped directly into his guard.

The steam valves in my Vanguard Arm screamed as they reached critical pressure limits.

HSSSS-WHEEEEE!

I pulled my left arm back and drove it forward with everything I had.

The brass fist struck the center of the priest’s chest.

KRA-KOOM!

The kinetic explosion was catastrophic.

The impact shattered the priest’s ribs.

CRUNCH!

It obliterated the central control rune grafted to the beast’s spine simultaneously.

The shockwave blew the fanatic completely off the back of the monster, sending his broken body tumbling down into the dark abyss of the pit below.

Without the high priest’s magic and the central rune anchoring its unnatural size, the Alpha Slag-Crawler let out one final, pathetic whine.

Its glowing green eyes went dark.

The massive beast collapsed forward, sliding across the stone floor before coming to a dead, heavy halt.

THUUUD. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

{

[Combat Concluded]

>Experience Gained: +2500 XP

}

I landed gracefully on the stone platform, shaking the acidic blood off my steel blade before sheathing it.

SHING.

The cavern fell silent, save for the heavy breathing of Rolf as he pulled his axe from the skull of the last juvenile crawler in the pit.

SCHLUCK.

He reached down and effortlessly hauled the terrified factory worker to his feet, snapping the iron chains with his bare hands.

Kaelith dropped down from the upper shadows, landing lightly beside me.

Tap.

She looked at the massive, dead Alpha beast without batting an eye.

"Clean work," she noted, her voice steady.

"It gets the job done," I replied. I walked over to where the priest’s staff had fallen during the struggle.

I picked up the purple crystal staff.

The dark magic within it was fading, but the craftsmanship of the metal casing caught my eye.

It was far too intricate and expensive for a sewer-dwelling cultist.

I inspected the base of the staff.

Engraved into the polished silver was a very distinct, very recognizable crest.

It was a stylized falcon clutching a gear.

I ran my thumb over the crest, a cold, calculating smile spreading across my face. It was the sigil of House Vane.

The same noble house that had tried to murder Nyssa and Rolf in the Zenith tournament.

The same house that held heavy political sway in the Upper District of the Forge.

"What did you find, boss?" Rolf asked as he climbed out of the pit, dusting off his leather armor.

I tossed the staff to Kaelith, who caught it effortlessly.

Smack.

"We found the people funding this little underground army," I said, my baritone voice echoing in the damp cavern.

"The Upper District nobles think they can breed monsters in the dark to destabilize the Prime Minister’s rule."

I looked toward the tunnel leading back to the surface, my mind already mapping out the political battlefield.

"Looks like we just found our golden ticket to completely dismantle House Vane. Let us go pay the Prime Minister a visit."