Chapter 21: Heavy Metal
We didn't leave Oak Haven immediately. If we were going up against an Iron-level threat known for shattering weapons, we needed to be prepared.
We spent our morning in the Crafters' District. With Aria's vast, decentralized family wealth, we skipped the cheap leather and bought proper armor. I picked up a reinforced, dark-leather combat coat lined with localized kinetic-dampening runes, while Aria purchased a sleek, high-mobility set of chain-mesh that wouldn't restrict her swings.
But armor wouldn't kill a boar. For that, we headed back to the Veil Sanctuary's workshop.
Aria's standard iron war hammer wasn't going to cut it against heavy armor, so we built her a new one. I used my Talent to forge a massive, blocky hammerhead out of ultra-dense Soul-Steel. It was absurdly heavy—far too heavy for a halfling to swing normally.
But Aria didn't swing normally; she used physics. She took the hammerhead and hollowed out the back, inlaying a thick cylinder of the Crystalline Ore we had mined. She etched an intricate array of propulsion runes into the crystal. It was a kinetic accelerator. She could start a slow, leveraged swing, and right before impact, channel her mana into the crystal to violently accelerate the Soul-Steel head mid-air, hitting with the force of a speeding truck.
By the time we rode out of the city gates, we were a completely different team than the one that had arrived a month ago.
We traveled for a few hours, leaving the main highway and taking a rugged, winding path into a jagged, rocky gorge known as the eastern logging roads. The trees here were scarred, the earth torn up by massive, deep hoofprints.
We found our target tearing the bark off a petrified oak tree.
The Corrupted Iron-Tusk Boar was the size of a rhinoceros. Its hide was covered in thick, overlapping plates of granite-like armor, its eyes burning with a sickly red light, and its tusks looked like solid iron spears.
"Engage!" I shouted.
The fight was absolute chaos. The boar was horrifyingly fast for its size. Fenris darted around its flanks, snapping at its legs to draw aggro. Up on the ridge, Bee planted his heavy metallic feet, raising his right arm—a massive, heavy-bore kinetic revolver—and laid down heavy suppressive fire.
I moved in with Azazel, using the scythe's reach and the weapon's crystalline shock-absorbers to deflect the beast's sweeping tusks.
It was a grueling brawl of attrition. The boar shattered boulders and tore up the earth, but our teamwork held. Aria found an opening, using her agility to slide under a wild charge, and brought her new hammer up in a vicious, accelerated uppercut that cracked its armored jaw.
With the beast staggered, I vaulted off Fenris's back, triggered the exhaust ports on Azazel's spine, and brought the glowing sapphire blade down in a brutal, gravity-assisted execution strike, cleaving right through the Corrupted beast's neck.
The boar dissolved into dark ash, leaving behind a massive, heavy Iron Core and two pristine iron tusks.
I hit the dirt, panting heavily, my muscles screaming. But the familiar, objective chime of the System instantly wiped away the fatigue. I felt a surge of energy wash over me, the unmistakable weight of a level up settling in my chest.
"We did it," Aria breathed, leaning heavily on her hammer, wiping a streak of dirt from her forehead. "Level seven. We have the tusks. Let's get back to the Guild."
"Yeah," I gasped, reaching down to grab the Iron Core.
But my fingers never touched it.
The ground beneath us suddenly heaved. A localized earthquake rattled my teeth, and a deafening, metallic squeal echoed through the rocky gorge.
From the shadows of the tree line, a second beast emerged. It wasn't just a Corrupted Boar. It was the Alpha.
It was twice the size of the one we had just killed. Its armor wasn't just stone; it was dark, jagged metal, pulsing with volatile red Corrupted energy. Its tusks were massive, serrated broadswords protruding from its jaw.
It looked at the ash of its fallen pack member, its red eyes locking onto me.
"Bee!" I roared. "Light it up!"
Up on the ridge, the artillery golem didn't hesitate. Bee's blue optics flared, and his heavy right-arm cannon whirred as he charged his primary core. He unleashed a massive, condensed blast of pure kinetic energy.
BOOM.
The shot hit the Alpha dead in the shoulder, an impact that would have vaporized a normal monster. But when the smoke cleared, the beast was still standing. The dark metal armor was barely dented. It just slowly turned its massive, heavy head toward the ridge.
The Alpha charged. The ground shook with every step, tearing up deep trenches in the bedrock.
"Hold the line!" Aria yelled.
She stepped in front of me, planting her boots firmly in the dirt. As the massive beast barreled toward her, she didn't flinch. She swung her war hammer back, her aura flaring silver. Just as the boar was about to trample her, she triggered the Crystalline propulsion drive.
The weapon blurred, accelerating mid-swing with a deafening CRACK.
The Soul-Steel head slammed perfectly into the side of the boar's skull. The sheer kinetic shockwave blew the surrounding dirt into the air. But instead of stunning the beast, the Alpha's sheer momentum pushed right through the impact. With a furious squeal, it swept its massive, armored head sideways.
The heavy iron tusk clipped the shaft of Aria's hammer, violently throwing her backward. She tumbled across the dirt, her chain-mesh armor scraping against the stone before she finally skidded to a halt, gasping for breath.
"Aria!" I yelled.
"Fenris, now!" I commanded, pivoting to place myself between the beast and the halfling.
The silver wolf became a streak of pure lightning. Fenris dove onto the Alpha, his massive jaws opening wide. He clamped down hard on the beast's thick, armored front legs, thousands of volts of sapphire electricity pouring into the boar's nervous system.
But the Corrupted metal plating insulated the shock. The Alpha roared, raw red energy flaring from its core, and it violently bucked. Fenris was physically torn from the beast's leg and thrown through the air, crashing hard into the trunk of a petrified oak.
The Alpha lowered its head, its red eyes locking entirely onto me. It scraped its hoof against the stone, preparing to charge.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I dropped into a wide stance, bringing Azazel up. "Come on, then."
It hit me like a freight train.
I barely managed to get the shaft of the scythe horizontal to catch the serrated tusks. The impact sent a shockwave up my arms that nearly dislocated my shoulders. The crystalline shock-absorbers in Azazel's frame shrieked under the pressure. My boots dug into the dirt, but the beast just kept pushing, forcing me backward inch by inch, its putrid breath washing over my face.
"Bee! Suppressive fire! Empty the pods!" I gritted out through clenched teeth, my arms trembling as the metal shaft slowly bent toward my chest.
Up on the ridge, Bee locked onto the target. The heavy metal plating on his head shifted, and the dual mortar canisters mounted on his horn snapped open. With a sharp, synchronized hiss, twin Tracker Rockets launched into the air.
The heat-seeking projectiles traced a perfect, smoke-trailed arc before slamming directly into the boar's face and upper armor with devastating, high-precision explosions.
The sheer kinetic force of the blast blinded the beast and forced it to flinch, dropping its terrible pressure for a fraction of a second.
I used the opening to trigger the exhaust port on Azazel's spine, using the recoil to violently shove myself backward and out of the lock, skidding to a halt just outside the smoke cloud.
"We need to crack that armor!" I yelled. "Fenris! Melt it!"
The silver wolf shook the dizziness from his head and lunged back into the fray. He didn't try to bite this time. He opened his jaws and unleashed Plasma Cocytus. A stream of superheated blue plasma washed over the boar's left flank, targeting the dent Bee's initial cannon shot had made. The dark metal armor glowed cherry-red, hissing and warping under the intense heat.
"Aria!" I called out.
"I'm on it!" she coughed, scrambling to her feet. She didn't have time for a full, leveraged swing. She sprinted toward the beast, waiting for Fenris to cut the plasma stream, and slammed her kinetic hammer directly into the superheated, softened metal plate.
The armor shattered like glass.
The Alpha let out a deafening, agonizing shriek, its side suddenly exposed and bleeding dark, corrupted ash.
Up on the ridge, Bee didn't let up. He raised his left arm—a heavy, rapid-fire machine gun—and unleashed a hail of kinetic rounds directly into the beast's exposed flank, driving it further into the dirt.
The devastating barrage finally brought the beast down. It collapsed onto its front knees, pinned by the gunfire and bleeding out from the massive wound.
But it was still trying to stand. It was still trying to fight.
I stepped back, dropping into a low, incredibly wide stance. I gripped Azazel's reinforced polearm with both hands, feeling the shift in the weapon's center of gravity. The silver raven optics built into the scythe's chassis flared a blinding, predatory blue. I didn't just push my mana into the weapon; I flooded the dual-affinity core with every drop of power in my soul.
The air pressure in the gorge instantly plummeted.
The sharp, heavy scent of ozone choked the wind. Above us, the sky visibly darkened as my Thunderheart Surge bled into the environment, violently pulling the ambient mana into a swirling, localized storm front.
Sapphire lightning erupted from Azazel's crystalline veins, but it didn't just spark—it roared, a deafening cascade of thunder echoing off the rocky walls. The metal edge hissed as pure, superheated plasma bled out, rapidly extending the blade's cutting surface until it was a massive, glowing guillotine of concentrated blue energy, three times its normal size. The air around the blade literally distorted and ripped from the sheer, volatile heat.
I broke into a sprint. I didn't hold the weapon up; I let the heavy head of the scythe drop and drag along the earth behind me. The oversized plasma blade carved a scorched, glowing trench through the solid bedrock. It wasn't just throwing a rooster-tail of sparks; it was leaving a jagged trail of static fire, sounding like a continuous, rolling thunderclap with every furious step I took.
I didn't fight the absurd weight of the weapon. I let the storm lead.
Three steps away from the struggling Alpha, I triggered the exhaust ports on the scythe's spine.
A concentrated blast of blue fire shot out with the concussive force of a lightning strike, violently ripping the weapon forward. Instead of bracing against it, I surrendered to the momentum. I let the raw centrifugal force pull my entire body off the ground.
I vaulted into the air, using the weapon's massive recoil to spin myself in a rapid, vertical, mid-air cartwheel. Once. Twice. The sheer speed of the oversized plasma blade whipped the surrounding air into a howling cyclone. I wasn't just a spinning sawblade anymore; I was the epicenter of a sapphire hurricane, actively drawing the dark, crackling storm clouds above down into the vortex of my strike.
At the apex of the spin, everything went completely, eerily silent—the eye of the storm. My body inverted, perfectly parallel to the ground, the entire weight of the tempest gathered in the glowing blade directly above my head.
"Witchhunter!" I roared, my voice shattering the silence a fraction of a second before the thunder caught up.
I brought the massive, extended plasma crescent down in a flawless, gravity-assisted execution arc. It wasn't just a physical strike; it was a localized cataclysm.
The heavens tore open. A blinding pillar of sapphire lightning crashed down from the sky, striking Azazel's blade at the exact millisecond it bit into the back of the Alpha's thick, metallic neck.
There was zero resistance.
The Witchhunter strike cleaved straight through the Corrupted armor, the dense muscle, and the heavy bone. The blade didn't stop there; it slammed into the bedrock below, violently detonating the pillar of lightning and all of its stored kinetic energy deep into the earth.
With a blinding flash of blue light and a sickening crunch, the Alpha Iron-Tusk Boar was completely decapitated. The resulting shockwave blew a massive crater into the gorge, sending a torrential wave of dust, shattered stone, and residual plasma washing over the battlefield.
The massive, headless body slumped to the earth, the corrupted energy holding it together instantly failing. In seconds, the colossal beast dissolved into a mountain of dark, heavy ash.
I landed in a heavy crouch at the bottom of the fresh crater, my boots sinking into the scorched earth. My arms were completely, terrifyingly numb. The heavy metal shaft of the scythe rested across my shoulders, supporting my weight. Azazel hummed in my hands, the oversized plasma blade slowly retracting and venting the last of its intense heat into the cool air with a soft, dying hiss.
Above us, the swirling storm clouds began to break, letting the late afternoon sun filter back into the gorge.
Silence fell over the battlefield.
Then, the System chimed. It wasn't the standard, objective ping. It was a heavy, resonant toll that echoed directly in my mind.
I ignored the rush of energy, too exhausted to even process the jump in levels.
I stood up, my legs shaking visibly, and rolled my shoulders to pop the tension out of my joints. I looked up at the ridge. Smoke was still rising from Bee's horn pods and the barrel of his left gun-arm, but his blue optics were steady. Fenris was shaking the ash out of his silver fur, nursing a deep scratch across his shoulder plating, but otherwise intact.
Finally, I looked at Aria.
The halfling engineer was standing at the edge of the crater, covered head-to-toe in dirt and clutching her bruised ribs. She wasn't looking at me. She was staring down into the center of the blast zone.
Resting in the center of the ash pile was a colossal, violently pulsing red Alpha Core, easily the size of a melon. Lying right next to it were the beast's two primary tusks—massive, unshattered blades of dark, serrated iron.
Aria planted her heavy Soul-Steel hammer on the ground to support herself. Slowly, a huge, exhausted, entirely triumphant smile broke across her face.
"Iron Rank," she said, her voice trembling slightly with the last fading spikes of adrenaline.
"Iron Rank," I agreed.
I let Azazel slip from my numb fingers. The scythe mechanically folded back into its silver raven form before it even hit the ground, hopping up to perch on a piece of shattered bedrock.
My legs finally gave out. I collapsed straight backward into the dirt, staring up at the clearing sky, and started laughing at the sheer, ridiculous, beautiful scale of what we had just pulled off.