GOD IS AN IDIOT
Chapter 11 – The Headhunter
One step out of the [Gate], and he sank almost ankle-deep into mud. Momonga had arrived in an earthen crater with walls rising almost 3 meters above, and the thick black smoke waving above allowed only spare glimpses at the blue sky. The air stank like an over-chlorinated pool mixed with rotten flesh, and he would have surely retched had he still been human.
Cocytus, a few meters apart, didn't seem fazed. Neither did he sink into the ground, standing on tiny frozen patches just barely wider than his feet, nor gave he any impression of resenting the aroma. In fact, he deeply beathed of the disgusting air… and almost cheered. "I have. Not. Seen. Yet. The. Humans. Fight. But. I. Can. Already. Tell. They. Are. Not. Children. Fiddling. With. Sticks. The. Atmosphere. Is. Choked. With. The. Uncompromising. Will. To. Win. No. Matter. The. Costs."
"Don't lose yourself in your fandom for war, Cocytus. We are here for a reason, not to sightsee brawling toddlers."
"Yes. We. Came. To. Claim. The. Elf King's. Head."
"While minimizing the elves' casualties," Momonga reminded him, and climbed up the slope till he could just peek over the edge.
He saw only ruin. All the way to the horizon, the landscape was nothing but upturned earth pockmarked by craters, the occasional remains of splintered trees, and the even sprinkle of lacerated corpses no one had bothered or cared to retrieve. Some wore the remains of green-and-brown speckled uniforms, while others had tatters of dirty pelts clinging to them – as far as he could tell, anyway, with the black carpets of flies covering them.
Momonga carfully moved around the edge, while Cocytus spoke from below, "As. You. Wish, Lord. But. I Still. Do. Not. Understand. Why. You. Want. To. Spare. The. Elves. From. Your. Wrath."
"I have no wrath in me, Cocytus," Momonga responded, studying the flat sandbag wall with the barbed wire crown a few hundred meters to the north. "I am perfectly at ease, like a Buddha. As for the elves: They are far too valuable to simply massacre the lot of them. I knew that since I inspected their first cadaver."
Before he could identify the movement behind the wire, a thick screen of smoke waved over and blocked his view.
"You. Wish. To. Use. Them. As. Slaves. Lord? Could. They. Be. Really. Such. Formidable. Warriors?"
Momonga momentarily looked back to the bug. "As far as a pig is slave to its owner. No, the Old Guard serves me well enough in that capacity. The elves are literally cattle of the highest quality. Aura found she could carve excellent magical ammunition from their bones at minimal costs, Mare said he could use their blood to enhance various druidic rituals, and Demiurge is thrilled about the fleshcrafting he could do with them. Seriously, you should go to the 7th Floor and see the amoeba golem he made from their muscles and organs. And the best part is their skin: We can use it to create up to Tier 5 scrolls with minimal investments, or even Tier 6 for enchantments. There's basically nothing useless on an elf! It's almost like they were intended to be animals for slaughter!" He enthused.
"But. A. Pig. Does. Not. Need. A. 140. Years. To. Reach. Maturity. Or. Asks. Where. All. The. Other. Pigs. Have. Gone," Cocytus objected.
"Oh come on, big boy, do you think I have not thought of that? Demiurge is already researching ways to shorten their reproductive cycle and increase the size of their litters, and a little reduction of air right after birth should solve the pesky intellect problem. Besides, I don't need fully-grown specimen. They grow relatively fast in their first years, after all," Momonga brushed off the argument and turned back, just in time to catch a bolt, which would have shattered against his head. He saw a lens briefly flash between the wire, and quickly duck down again.
'We should get moving, before Cocytus reminds me not to idle.'
"Anyway, equip the com aid I made, link up with Demiurge, and let's go. No point in provoking a reaction from the humans." he said, sliding down the slope. Cocytus complied with a nod, and reached into his personal inventory to pull out a set of pilot shades covering his front set of eyes while leaving his peripheral vision free.
"Ice-tea. Reporting. In."
"Coke-Zero reporting in. Dr. Pepper, do you receive?" Momonga mimicked him with his own set of glasses, and promptly heard Demiurge's answer in his head.
'"I hear you loud and clear, Coke-Zero. Linking you up to [Omniscience] now."'
A mini-map appeared in the corner of Momomga's glasses, turning as he moved and zooming in and out as he desired with only a thought. Right next to him was a red cross representing Cocytus, and further away, hundreds of lazy blue ones behind the overhead view of the humans' trenches. Two blue dots raced over them on the map, and as Momonga looked up, the system marked the outline of two humans apparently riding some kind of occluded creature behind the smoke a kilometre above.
'"Please keep in mind I will only be able to provide limited layout information once you have entered the elven blank zone."'
"Understood, Dr. Pepper; just keep updating the map with the glasses' perception and notify us of any noteworthy developments," the End finished the report, and looked to Cocytus. "You ready?"
Cocytus was facing in the direction of the trenches, ever so slightly turning his head on occasion like he was testing out the mini-map himself. After a brief moment, he meekly spoke without matching his master's gaze, "I. Feel. Stupid. Wearing. Those. Things. And. The. Code. Name. Rubs. Me. The. Wrong. Way..."
"Nonsense," Momonga denied, turning towards Cocytus and placing one hand on his shoulders. "You look great, and should appreciate the name I chose for you! I put a lot of thought into it."
"You. Did?" Cocytus hopefully asked, looking down at him.
'Nope.'
"Of course! Now, cheer up and enjoy the ride," Momonga lied without a second thought and clapped on the bug's blue carapace, before casting [Perfect Unknowable] and jumping on his shoulders. At once, the magic covered his improper mount, and he commanded, "Onward, my friend, to shatter realities and rape sanities!"
"At. Once!" Cocytus obeyed with new determination, and Momonga almost slipped off his shoulders on the first bound over the crater's edge.
He landed a hundred meters further away, and immediately stomped, sprinting at break-neck speed. The leafless treeline was more than 3 kilometres away, but the insectoid warrior kept relentlessly accelerating, pulverizing stones, bones and discarded armour without care.
As Demiurge had predicted, the mini-map lost ever more details of the terrain the closer they came to the treeline. Here and there, he heard fainting screams of pain behind them as Cocytus crushed a not-so-dead casualty under the staccato beat of his pounding steps, but Momonga's thoughts were entirely focused on what lay ahead.
The elf country had been the only place the [Omniscience System] had not been able to map. Demiurge was already extrapolating possible terrain by the troop movements, but he was aware those were only rough estimations. Who – or what – protected the forest and lake must had access to potent anti-scrying techniques which proved resistant even to Momonga's extensive collection of divination spells and items.
That, in turn, meant it was either a formidable native of the world, or another high-level immigrant from Yggdrasil, maybe even of comparable power to his own. Then why was the Theocracy slowly gaining ground on elf country? As far as he had seen or been able to draw information from the captain, they had nothing in their arsenal which could truly threaten him, and still, they're slowly winning this war of attrition.
Momonga had concluded the patron of the elves simply did not care about the human efforts. His comrade Punitto Moe would have advised for careful probing before entering enemy territory and then to cautiously advance, taking one rationally-concluded step after another and formulating a plan in detail to counter the enemies measures – and if that was not possible, avoid them.
The End could no longer agree with that notion. He had learned it worked only so long as you could be sure of your own superior intelligence and intellect, or had the chance to flee. But Momonga could not – and would not – log out of this world. There was no were to hide, and simply bidding his time would turn him into a sitting duck instead. Also, his ability for intelligence gathering had proven insufficient, so how was he to approach an obviously-capable foe, whose skills and abilities he had no way to gauge, who was possible smarter and already took any logical attack approach into account?
By mad stupidity, of course. A genius might be able to counter any intricate plan he made, yet one could not outsmart pure chaos and irrationality. Maybe that had also been the approach of the elves' master to the Theocracy's carefully-orchestrated manoeuvrers.
Cocytus had reached the dead trees in less than a minute, and they saw the first tracks of wounded soldiers and carts on their way back from deeper in the forest – but still, Momonga spurred him on.
"Don't let up. Hold this speed; just cut anything down which might slow you down! Our goal is the northern tip of the lake's curvature, where the swarm is thickest."
His mount did just that, and waltzed over the unsuspecting humans, smashed wagons aside with the flat of his halberd, and cut down leafless scrub and brambles with his sword. Thankfully, the airflow was strong enough to blow any residual meat and blood off them before it could really start to cake on.
Momonga absently wondered how the humans would rationalize the straight path Cocytus left when he saw the first arrow pass them. He quickly plucked it out the air and inspected its strange design. The tip resembled a skewed narrow pyramid stuck on a thin bamboo stick. Its green fletching was made from the right elytron of three large bugs so it would spin in flight. It resembled nothing he had seen or thought the humans would use.
He sent the arrow back on its path like a dart and looked around. Soon, his HUD outlined the form of several elves in the tree crowns above them… and they were not alone. Great silver-furred gibbon creatures with camel-like heads held them between their grasping feet. While their sloth-like forelimbs lobbed the beasts from branch to branch, the elves rained arrow after arrow into the convoy.
He did not get to see how the attack played out as Cocytus raced on through the dead forest. Sometimes, he would trample the elven remains of a mass execution; other times, he passed rotting totems of dead humans which looked like silvery branches had grown from their cores directly into the stumps of their arms and feet. He swore he saw one of them still looking frantically around, despite of his eaten-off face, and cry desperate gibberish to the sky.
They sped through the smouldering remains of the first elven village he had seen so far, little more than primitive stone foundations and coal now, when Demiurge called back, '"Coke-Zero, Ice-Tea, do you receive?"'
"We hear you, Dr. Pepper. What do you have?" Momonga answered, as he watched teenagers in camouflage uniform chase and hack down a group of skinny elven children who tried to flee from a hideout in the ground.
'"In another 15 kilometres you will reach the front of the current Slane push. Behind that, you will enter the territory still claimed by elves, about a hundred kilometres away from the shores of Crescent Lake. The maids have effectively crippled the humans' rear lines, and have the support staff and higher command under their complete thrall. You do not have to expect any more human troops than what is already there."'
"Noted. Any update on the elf king's location?"
'"Nothing concrete. I could not identify any hot spot where the elves are gaining significant ground, so I still advise for heading for the swarm's centreat the shore. To do that, I suggest altering your course slightly to the east."'
"Negative. We will hold course and skim along the front before crossing it. I want to get an impression on how these foes fights in earnest."
'"As you wish, Coke-Zero. I will inform you when you have reached an area of the frontline closest to the suggested destination. Cross from there directly through the push, and hold direction."'
"You got that, Cocytus?"
"Aye," The verminlord's minimally replied, as Demiurge cut the connection.
Cocytus kept running and destroying anything which might just slightly obstruct their path. On his shoulders, flat hills turned into moments of weightlessness, small clearings into flashes of light, and any life they encountered into warm gushes before swiftly drying off – all the while thunder and roars could be heard in the distance ahead.
The ever-present chlorine stench became thicker with every kilometre they left behind, and eventually Momonga saw the first real platoons in their camouflage uniforms run in the same direction as Cocytus at his side. On a whim, he let his stretched hand rip the steel-helmed head off of one of the humans they passed and inspected it. She blinked idiotically a few times back behind the glasses of her gas mask, which made her look like a swine with a round box attached to its face's side. Momonga noted the simple but effective enchantment of [Fresh Air] on it, a Level One spell back in Yggdrasil, and once more silently applauded the humans' practical thinking, before letting the girl's remains drop.
They had reached the true front.
They were heading for the back of hundreds of humans cowering behind hastily-piled up logs and sandbags, each one similarly clad in green-and-brown like the troops they just passed, as they duck from an incoming hail of arrows at the edge of a recently-made clearing ahead of a rising slope. The trees had not been felled by ax or saw, but by what appeared to have been heavy explosives, as splinters of wood and still-smoking craters covered all of the free space.
Beyond, sprinkled between the intact pale trees which rose from a silvery mist permeated with faint residual magic, waited the braying elves. They wore no uniforms like the humans, but an eclectic mix of leather and furs. Crude masks had been painted on their faces, and those not pulling their bows roared wild challenges at the humans and drummed their spears, axes, and scimitars against their wooden round shields.
Momonga thought they must have been a fearsome sight for the mortals on his side, shrouded as they were like ghosts in the mist which breathed out by the elven forest. Wiry-muscled and tall, they nocked and launched arrow after arrow without any sign of tiring, while their comrades shook more of the pathetic living banners he had seen before.
Further to his right, behind a sturdy timber wall facing the clearing, he saw batteries of ballista being readied. The unarmed there screwed together two equal-sized cylinders, with green and blue dots marking each, with a winch.
"Turn left, and spare the mortals this time. I want to see what they can do to each other," Momonga said just before reaching the human line. Cocytus reacted at once, and almost touched the ground as he leaned left and drifted with momentum-countering steps, throwing up great gushes of dirt into the new course.
The ballista started to thud, and just moments after, the noise of explosions and a new wave of chlorine stench filled the air. All along the now-revealed to be kilometres-long front, the cylinders rained down into the silver forest and erupted into great fireballs. At once, some humans – armed with hatchets and double-sided harpoons on their back – rose, cast low-level shields around the small squads accompanying them – almost exclusively [Mass Resistance to Arrows] – and charged together over the field, while the greater rest of the men and women followed with spades and pickaxes.
'What are those crazy apes up to?'
Momonga wondered, as the pioneers all stopped in the middle of the field, although their shielded comrades kept charging on with the occasional lone arrow or spear rebounding off their protection. While the assaults fell over the shell-shocked elves by way of simple hatchets or volleys of smaller grenades like the ballista had fired, the men on the field hacked frantically into earth, each group digging out a hole as fast as humanly possible.
Then, the End saw the first human shields flicker and whisk out as new waves of thick mist rolling over the men from the hill's top. Bestial shrieks, like high-strung bear roars, resounded from their depth, and the combatants quickly placed another kind of cans on the ground, heedless of any elves they were fighting just seconds ago, even if it cost them their lives.
Thick red smoke started streaming from the cans, while the first attackers took cover behind the trees from the new arrow hails falling from uphill. The shrieks came closer with every second, and at last, grotesque leviathans broke through the obscuring mist. The pale worm-like monsters were almost 15 meters long and snaked through the earth like eels through the mud. Three alligator-like maws with a central slitted eye each crushed and swallowed the men whole, as the worms' heads snapped forth like overgrown vipers.
The humans reacted by throwing more grenades after the beasts and trying to dodge the bites by the last possible seconds, letting the maws spear themselves on the harpoons, often sacrificing whole limbs just to incapacitate one of the creatures, but it could only be a stalling tactic. The metallic blood pooling from their wounds coagulated in seconds into ugly silver-coloured scabs which spread even further over their bodies, and proved far more resistant to the Slane's weapons than the already-tough scales. More howling elves joined the close quarter combat like a mad horde, and proved their superior reflexes and nimbleness no normal man or woman could ever match in single combat… yet still, the first human wave held on.
New volleys from the ballista exploded further uphill, cutting off more possible reinforcements for the elves, but the wild knife-ears and monsters would certainly be enough to also massacre the diggers in the field once they had finished off their first victims.
Before Momonga dismissed the battle as a complete loss for the Theocracy, his HUD marked just shy of a hundred pairs of human signatures nearing the battle at speeds far too high for any land-based movement. As he looked up, he saw giant mockingbirds, with antlers and deer hooves for claws, sail a kilometre above, while a lone figure jumped from each one of them and headed straight for the thick of the fight. Stranger still, the jumpers wore not just primitive wing suits, but also chain shirts over what appeared to be incredible thick gambesons.
For a second, he thought they could have been elite troops meant to relieve the assault team. Then, he noticed each one had some kind of deformity: a crippled leg here, a humpback there, or snow-white hair trailing behind them as they fell without making any attempt to slow down. The next moment, they exploded in massive blasts, flattening the trees for a dozen meters around and shredding everything else several times that radius with shrapnel.
"HA HA HA HA HA!" Momonga could no longer hold to himself and clapped in exhilaration his mount's head. "You were absolutely right! Ha ha ha! Those mad mongrels are really going all their way!"
"Even. Counting. The. Slain. Beasts. The. Humans. Lost. Double. What. They. Claimed. In. Elven. Lives: Lord. Is. That. A. Victory?" Cocytus objected, jumping over a group of ballista which were pushed forward into the clearing. The pioneers, meanwhile, had begun bombing the mountain slope which the hill had become by now with grenades of their own, firing from large slingshots behind their improvised dirt walls. Small groups parted from them to the battle site to treat the survivors with healing spells and potions, while the few surviving elves retreated for good. Here and there, a worm still twitched, but the battle was over.
"You are correct, of course, Cocytus. The humans paid indeed with more lives, but you are forgetting your own argument."
"What do you mean, Lord?" Cocytus asked, glancing to the men excavating zig-zag connection trenches between their initial holes.
"They breed as they dig: like rats. A human's life is so much cheaper than an elf's, and their leaders know that. It does not matter if it takes five men to slay one elf. At the end, it is still an unacceptable loss for our future cattle."
"Hmm…" Cocytus wheezed. Momonga could tell his gleeful answer did not sit right with the insectoid warrior, but he was not in the spirit to lecture him on focusing on the amusing absurdity of existence. In time, he would learn on his own to look at the bright side of death.
Even if he had wanted to, he would have been interrupted by Demiurge's call-in.
'"Coke-Zero, Ice-Tea, you will reach the optimal crossing point in 600 meters. Turn hard right on my mark, and follow the line I will send in a moment to your HUD. It will avoid the densest elves cluster till you will reach the shore."'
Said moment barely endured a second before a white, broken line popped up ahead in Momonga's vision, and described a right turn curve across the field into the forest's mist. Without hesitation, Cocytus leaned into it like a walking motorcycle, which narrowly dodged through the blind Slane as they piled up their dead and fortified their new barb-wire miles. In just ten human heartbeats, he had left behind the battlefield and passed the first living trees since entering the elf country.
The tens of meters tall plants were an even mix of conifers and deciduous trees, yet all had the same silver shimmer on their bark and leaves – as did the undergrowth –along with having the same arcane residue clinging to them Momonga had also noticed from afar in the mist.
As the clatter and noise of the humans faded behind them, Momonga lost himself in the ride. Under normal circumstances, his eyes could pierce the blackest night, notice minute changes in the clouds, and consciously appreciate the sun's journey across the sky, but here, the magic-infused mist acted like a wall, limiting his vision to no more than a few dozen meters ahead, all the while Cocytus raced through the undergrowth at over 200 kilometres per hour.
Everything shimmered in the dispersed glow of the early afternoon sun, trees zipped by as smears of silver light, and the only constant was Demiurge's virtual track which always seemingly lead into a white oblivion. Combined with Cocytus's ridiculous fast but precise steps, the high pitch of the air flowing past, and the natural creaks and calls of a wild forest, it eerily reminded him of a psytrance track.
They had still a hundred kilometers through uncharted lands to cross, and Momonga could not shake off the déjà vu of a high-speed night trip on the autobahn, which was strange since Germany had been annihilated in the nuclear exchange of 2089, and he could not remember ever playing a racing simulator. Cars were not something anyone living in an arcology could afford in the 22nd century.
Absently bobbing his head and wriggling his shoulders to the natural beat of the trip, Momonga watched the mini-map and the orange dots flowing over it as he and Cocytus flew over the land. He felt slight bumps whenever the bug ran over a creature – often enough so to constitute a deeper and slower beat along his pushing steps – and the End shook one fist synchronously with the 'music', while the fingers of his other hand tapped off the dots in the air as they reached the mini-map's lower edge.
For the first time in his life, Momonga understood why people loved to pilgrim night clubs, enjoyed life-threatening sports, and fantasized over high-powered engines. It was a thrilling rush, and he had to shut off his vision – he had no eyelids, after all – to let his fantasy fill the last gaps and perfect the music in his mind, which would forever brand itself into his memory.
"Lord. Momonga. The. Track. Has. Ended."
"I can hear it just fine, Cocytus." Momonga hummed, relishing how the 'bass' intensified.
"But. I. Cannot. See. It. Any-more."
'Eh, what?'
The End briefly wondered, before he felt a massive bump which could not have been intentional by his mount. His eyes lit up again, and he saw no virtual road any-more or anything else of the HUD.
Cocytus must have been running blind, too, as trees and rocks randomly shot at them from the mist which even his formidable reflexes had a hard time reacting to all of them.
"Slow down, Cocytus! Dr. Pepper, what's going on!?" Momonga yelled at both his servants.
Cocytus obeyed as good as he could, but he still had to dodge dozens of rapidly-nearing objects while finding hardly any traction on the loose ground, and Demiurge did not answer.
"Dr. Pepper, do you receive?!" Momonga yelled again. Before he could wonder why he got no answer, an arrow passed by his face by a hand's width, followed by five others he had to avoid by leaning his head left and right. Then, Cocytus slipped on an elf he crushed under his clawed foot. He tumbled forward, but held onto Momonga's legs with his lower pair of arms. The Vermin Lord pushed them with his free upper arm off the ground in another controlled tumble before they could hit it face-first.
What worried Momonga was not the near crash but the remaining five elves they had just stumbled through, who were starting to turn around before fading in the mist behind the two heteromorphs. Cocytus landed stumbling, but still running on his feet again, and tried to smash with his steps through any object which might provide resistance as controlled as possible without sending them flying again.
Meanwhile, Momonga tried contacting Nazarick with [Message], but the spell always stated any recipient he tried to call as 'not available', so he cast [Perfect Spell Mark] – one of Yggdrasil's most thorough magic detection casts – yet it, too, found no countering magic affecting them. [See Arcane] and [Sense Magic] also came up with nothing.
All that was there was mist with its paling magical residue, which there had been not even enough inherent magic or coherent code to fuel a Tier One spell, let alone counter the [Omniscience System].
'What effect is this? The same which blocked the Eyeball Corpses' vision? But it worked just fine a minute ago, and I can't sense anything with my own arcane sense. Think, Momonga… think!' The End's thoughts raced. Ahead of them, a flock of tiny birds took to the sky from the undergrowth and splattered against his and Cocytus' breast, as the latter finally began to noticeably decelerate.
'Could this be a skill of someone who has followed us?' Momonga contemplated, looking around with the minute hope of noticing anything. Left: mist and trees; above: mist and trees; and to the right: more mist and trees. And the rest of the decimated flock…
A flock which now flew in parallel to them. A swarm of birds which all stared back at him, which also had a silver shimmer to their feathers like the leaves and barks.
'Oh, crap.'
"Cocytus, forget what I said; keep running!"
"Lord?"
"Just do it! The elf king knows about us all along!" Momonga barked impatiently. Now that he was aware of it, he could already hear feet and rattling gear all around them, though not one spoken word. Sure enough, a salvo of arrows landed where Cocytus had just accelerated again from.
His guard did not miss the discrepancy and asked, "You. Are. Aware. Lord, The. Trip. Could. Be. Rough. Without. Demiurge. Outlining. A. Path?"
"Yes, yes, I am!" Momonga snapped back while looking around.
"And. Your. Illusion. Does. Not. Seem. To. Work. Anymore."
"You don't say… Yes, I know! Now tell me: do your skills still work?"
A greyish blue gas wave shot forth from Cocytus's palm, and froze the salvo they had been running straight into. "They. Do," Cocytus replied, bisecting two elves from the group they passed at waist-height.
"Then don't waste them on the riff-raff. Something is blocking my spells, and I have a feeling we'll need them," Momonga said as he saw another projectile head for him. He swatted it aside and felt something unexpected: pain. As he looked at his hand, he saw a small cut on his middle finger bone closing.
He shouldn't have taken any damage at all from a simple elf arrow. Even the weapon of the elite Slane warrior could not pass his damage reduction, but all of the sudden, the primitives' tips did. Had his inherent resistances also taken a hit?
'I need one of those arrows!'
He did not have wait for long; the next ambush already waited 200 meters later with more loosened shots. Staying on the safe side, Momonga dodged all of them, as they were only aiming for him, oddly enough, and caught the last one.
It was still of the same design as the arrow he had caught in the dead woods – screwed tip, bamboo shaft and beetle elytrons for fins – but now, it was coated in a thick silver fluid like the one which had bled from the worms. He probed the tip with a finger and felt it sting like he had still been human.
Still unsure if it was him or the weapon responsible for his failing protection, he rammed it a centimetre deep into Cocytus shoulder.
The bug grunted at once. "I. Will. Do. Better. Lord."
"Yeah, whatever," the End ignored Cocytus' misplaced apology.
'So it is the arrows' coating, not me getting sick, which makes them dangerous. That's a relief, but still unsettling. Who or what is providing it needs to be of reasonable high level – at least 80+ – to have a skill which can counter my High-Tier Immunities. Which begs the question: Why don't they get involved in the fight against the humans? Unless...'
"Cocytus, cast a max-widened [Frost Aura]."
The servant shouted without further comment, "Double-widened [Frost Aura: Level III]!"
Momonga felt a faint breeze wash over him, as the mist in a 100-meter radius crystallized and dropped with a melodic ring like struck glass to the ground, giving them a chance to look around. From all directions, elves were converging on their path, not the position they had been a moment ago. It was obvious whoever commanded them had a clear idea of where they were heading.
But those elves looked different. They still wore their rag-tag leather and fur armours, but their eyes, noses, and mouths were smeared with the same silver fluid coating their arrows, as if they had cried and vomited it forth from within.
"Brace yourself," Momonga warned, and released the full might of his [Despair Aura]. Instantly, the closest foes fell, convulsing and soiling themselves, while the trees and undergrowth dropped all their foliage, exposing all the silver-furred creatures hiding underneath which had also been heading for the undead and the bug. Cocytus stumbled for a moment, yet held himself and kept running on, while those elves at the edge of the aura stopped and tried following them from a safe distance.
'Thought so. This whole forest, the war, the entire nation… is just one giant trap, and I ran right into it. I guess the wisest course would be to retreat.'
'But that also would be expected.'
Cocytus kept running, while the mist parted ahead of them thanks to the cold effect. The elves still followed as well as their own incredible mortal speed allowed them at a safe distance, and more comrades joined them every moment. Momonga thought they would be safe now and could perhaps continue with the original plan, when the natives all suddenly stopped and began seizing where they stood.
More of the silver stuff purred out from every one of their orifices, and quickly dried into an ugly scab armour like he had seen on the worms, while a greenish glow lit up in their eyes.
It took only a few seconds before they righted themselves, focused him like a giant hive mind and charged once more at them, heedless of Cocytus' aura coating them with rim and the occasional dead, dropping member. A creak like a grating, croaking giant door filled the forest as hundreds of the elves in range drew their bows, and thunder echoed like a titan had knocked on said door when they all released at once.
'[Telekinesis]!'
Momonga cast at the descending shadow. He clearly saw the darkness of magic shoot from him to the arrows and form arcane runes on the projectiles… but it failed. Only some of them reversed their direction while others changed material, turned into fish, cans, or, in most cases, were not affected at all.
'What is that effect?'
The End thought with more than a little frustration, and followed with [Gust of Wind]. That spell, on the other hand, worked perfectly and knocked those projectiles off the small window where they would have hit him and Cocytus. A suspicion dawned in Momonga, and he tried casting [Grasp Heart] – one of his favourite spells – at a random elf charging at them.
It dropped at once as his hand closed in the habitual gesture, as did the next he tried it one. It failed on the third, worked on the fourth, failed again on the fifth, and so on at random. Continuing on with the experiment, he cast [Gravitational Beam] from a pointed finger like a mock pistol.
An invisible force shot forth from his fingertip, and annihilated absolutely everything in a perfect line a few meters wide straight to the horizon. He cast it again and again with both hands, like a little boy playing cowboy on his father's shoulders, killing dozens of the elves he could see with each cast… and he was finally certain.
What caused his magic to fail was not a normal spell's effect, but the residual magic in the silver fluid which apparently sullied everything within the forest, including the mist. It contaminated any arcane rune he tried to build on his target, which was why [Telekinesis] and [Grasp Heart] had failed at random, as had [Perfect Unknowable] in time, as he and Cocytus had built up a film of the poisoned water drops floating in the air, or why the elves' coated arrows had the potential to bypass his resistance. But spells with the effect originating directly from within him worked fine enough… for now.
Cocytus bisected the first bunch of mutated elves who tried to block his path, dancing while turning around the next, and broke their backs with a lash of his tail, before landing and jumping off two other knife-ears who tried to spear him with their sullied weapons, while Momonga shot [Shards of Bone] with both hands at any attacker nearing from the side, shredding them in a storm of shrapnel like they had been standing right next to an exploding grenade.
The two were still over 40 kilometres away from the shore and over 70 from the Slane-held edge of the forest, and though Cocytus' aura cleared the area of the damnable mist, Momonga still could not establish contact with Nazarick. The only way they would get out of here was either by defeating whoever controlled the elves or slaughter the whole lot of them. If the latter had been an option to Momonga's plans, he would not have held back and nuked the whole place, but then he would have also wasted a valuable resource, and though Cocytus was formidable death machine, he lacked many of the high resistances and immunities Albedo or Shalltear possessed – most importantly, the one to [Time Stop].
He could not leave the increasingly-crowded battlefield without abandoning Cocytus. No, he needed to face the king. Soon, for the number of elves reached the thousands despite the horrendous losses his spells and Cocytus's blades inflicted on them. Fighting and dodging the surprisingly resilient creatures also notably slowed them down, and each kill was a further waste of valuable life.
Momonga fired more [Gravitational Beams] like he was emptying two revolvers, when a trio of elves jumped him from behind. Cocytus had been busy fending of a pack of worms which broke out from the earth and blocked their path. While he strangulated two with his bare fists and split another along its length at the same time, the elves clung to Momonga's broad back and whacked him with coated clubs and axes, rattling his skull and chopping off two of his fingers. Momonga reached back and ripped off one of their heads, then grabbed the other two's weapon arms and flung them off with enough force to tear the limbs from their sockets.
'This is going nowhere fast enough.'
Momonga thought while his fingers and cracks healed, and squashed a lunging worm with two [Skeleton Wall]s joining into an arc, covering them from the arrow fire following them.
"Cocytus, hand me a corpse!" The End yelled, and the blue warrior beheaded four of the five worm riders who jumped of their gutted mounts, yet simply speared the last one's throat with his halberd's tip to offer him to his masters like a harpooned fish. As he picked the dead thing off the weapon, he cast [Icy Prison], and a 4-meter sphere of blue ice formed around them. Suddenly, the braying of the mad elves and pounding of hundreds of boots became very distant.
Outside, they could see their attackers' shadows piling up, and the sphere rumbled softly with each of their hits, but it would do for now. Then, he cast [Increase Mass] on Cocytus, multiplying his weight by at least a factor of 50. The bug struggled only momentarily before running up the south-facing wall of the sphere, tipping over their centre of mass and squashing half the elves who had been hacking at it.
Slowly, but inexorably so, Cocytus' hamster ball gained speed and waltzed over the onslaught of knife-ears and worms, turning them into silver-red paste under its several tons of effective mass, but Momonga knew it would hold only a few minutes under the repeated hits of the elves' imbued weapons.
'[Create Middle Tier Undead].'
The elf's corpse's flesh he held turned into a bubbling necrotic sludge, before rapidly expanding into an emaciated, yet still massive warrior wight, covered in dark plate armour and armed with a tower shield and flamberge. Momonga instantly felt a mental connection form to his servant, as if he had just discovered a new limb.
He shifted his weight on Cocytus's back to hold on with one hand to his shoulder crystal, and placed his creation, the [Death Knight], down like a giant stuffed toy on the other side to maintain balance.
"Cocytus, when I give the signal, you will change course and head back for the Slane' lines in a wide arc. I'll proceed alone from now on," Momonga said, and began pulling off his baroque robe. The Death Knight mimicked him with his own gear and accepted the cloth in exchange for his chest plate.
"Lord, forgive. My. Rudeness, but. Is. That. Wise? You. Are. Probably. Facing. Tens. Of. Thousands. More. Of. These. Mongrels. I know. Your. Power. Is. Absolute. But. The. Sheer. Numbers..." Cocytus trailed off.
"I'll be fine… because you will be Plan B," Momonga said, donning the Death Knight's horned helm. The cracks in the sphere were spreading, and the collected blood on its outer surface blocked all vision to the outside. By now, they were blind, and only sheer momentum kept them on course.
"What. Is. Plan. B, Lord? I. Was. Not. Informed. By. Demiurge. Of. Such. A. Contingency."
"I just came up with it," the End stated, and cast [Body of Effulgent Beryl] as well as [Ifrit's Coat] on all three of them. Both spells were 10th-Tier defensive magic which massively boosted resistance to blunt trauma and negated once-per-cast fire damage respectively. Seeing the other undead had finished donning his robe and glasses, and holding the summon's weapons, he explained, "The B stands for 'bait'. Maximized [Plasmaball]."
A tiny flickering ball of flame over his open palm exploded inside the confined space. For an endless split second, the sphere held, while millions of spider web cracks formed on its inside. The ice it was made of was strong enough to resist even several hits from a warrior like Cocytus, but the power he had invested in the fireball would have been enough to eradicate a whole village in an instant. If not for the extra protection he had cast on them, both he and Cocytus would have taken tremendous damage from it, and the Death Knight would have just been outright deleted in the confines of their cell.
Momonga canceled the [Increase Mass] spell on Cocytus just before the ice could no longer contain the force. It exploded in a devastating release of steam, flames, and ice shards, killing anything within several hundred meters.
Momonga shot up to the sky like an artillery shell and cast [Fly], trailing with steam and smoke like so many other fragments raining down upon the forest. As he stopped his acceleration just short of the speed of sound, he looked back at the rising mushroom cloud looming like a white giant over the silver-green sea. He still felt the connection to his Death Knight, so he assumed Cocytus also made it out in one piece.
So far, the mission had only partly gone according to plan. He had hoped to gain more insight into the workings of elf country while he watched from the shadows – he had not even planned to fight himself. If Momonga had his way, he would have stayed in the shadows and let Cocytus dirty his hands, so as to keep any traces of his existence at a minimum. Obviously, that part of his plan was moot by now. The master of the elves was well aware of his existence, and was apparently even specifically interested in him.
Ahead, he saw the pastel-blue horizon of the Crescent Lake near, and began casting his usual repertoire of defensive spells and augments he used in Yggdrasil whenever he did not know what he was up against.
'[Breath Ward], [Bless of Magic Caster], [Complete Vision], [Freedom], [Greater Hardening], [Body of Effulgent Beryl], Widened [Teleportation Delay], [False Data: Life], [False Data: Mana], [Greater Luck], [Greater Magic Shield]...'
He had reached number 83 when he crashed feet-first into the gravel of the shore. While the flung-up stones and earth trickled down, Momonga took in the surroundings. Contrary to his expectations, there was no great palace or city here, nor any kind of artistic expressions like statues or a temple. Just a seemingly-endless gravel shore under a low cover of mist, bordering the highest trees he had seen in the forest yet. The old giants did not just have a silver shine like the plants he saw before, they looked as if they were made of actual silver, and tiny green lights and circuits shimmered all over them.
As he walked on the crunching ground, no animal sound disturbed the quiet. Only the wind pushing flat waves to the shore provided a soft contrast to the clatter of the Death Knight's plate armour.
Then, he noticed a rustle in the tree line from the corner of his eye.
Momonga lazily turned his head at the newcomers: More mutated elves riding on owl-bears the size of hippos stormed out of the mist, and hefted their black wood lances under their armpits, while the leading figure – an imposing humanoid utterly consumed by the corruption and sporting a jagged crown – whirled a thin blade as long a grown man in a display of martial prowess. Its polished armour glistened in the sun and mirrored the isolated clouds in the sky. Even the beast it rode wore a leather harness with engravings of leaves and mountains, glowing with arcane might.
Momonga erased the whole group with a cast of [Gravitational Beam]. He had enough, and shouted, "Come now! I tire of the killing!"
No one answered, and he walked on.
"I know. You know. There is no point in it!"
He rammed the flamberge right into the ground before him, producing a pitiful bestial whimper, and hammered down the rising bulge in the gravel behind him with the flat of his shield before it could break the surface.
"I can go on like this all day, but where would that leave us?!" Momonga yelled at the deserted shore and sent the shield spinning like a frisbee into the trees, cutting down several of them and, judging by the following screams, more elf riders alongside. "In the end, it will still come down to you and me – with all the lovely elves dead, and neither of us wants that. Or do you?"
He stretched one arm without looking at the forest and continuously cast [Hellfire], burning the trees and all life between them in blood-red flames without a care, as he calmly walked on.
"Okay, okay, I admit I'm a deeply flawed individual. I'm the last one to deny I'm a social catastrophe, but at least I am creative! I could carve my countenance into your realm so you could see it from space, or have your future spawn cursed to always be born as twins fused together at their forehead, hands and feet in random order. Or maybe I'll just give all your men chin balls and women dicks for clits? Who knows when the day drags on?"
The waves hitting the shore became an actual surf, and Momonga stopped to look out at the water, while still throwing the flames in his arm in a slow curve. Something hidden under the surface neared from the lake's centre. Something large.
Its movement looked sluggish from afar, like a drifting flat island, but as it neared, he realized it was an optical illusion created by scale. Whatever it was shimmering beneath the surface was not just large – it was enormous, a leviathan, and pushing a huge bow wave in front of it.
'I just hope I didn't bite off more than I can chew…'
Momonga thought as he finished burning the forest in a wide arc, hopefully cutting off any ground-based reinforcements his opponent would call upon. It was still over a kilometer away when he carefully took aim with his index for what he hoped was its center of mass.
'Maximized [Gravitational Beam].'
The beams intensity ignited the air molecules with the friction of the hurled-away mass, basking the whole shore in a red light as it cut into the water, no doubt about to cause a cataclysmic tsunami on the other side of the lakes in a few minutes. Momonga spent no more thought on it, for 'it' seemingly shrugged of the attack and simply accelerated. He fired three more shots, creating huge underwater explosions, where it must have penetrated the creature and hit the lake's floor.
Dozens of smaller-yet-still-huge ripples shot forth from it when it had crossed half the distance. He managed to shoot two of them when a beautiful, car-sized, silver head on a long-segmented neck broke the water's surface. It looked like an oversized hairless doll of an androgynous elf's face, but its eyes were instead six smaller, green glowing rotating sets of lenses.
He barely had time to jump out of the way before it smashed like a giant club into the gravel. He fired another red beam through its forehead, but although it penetrated one of the doll's eyes and head's back, it did not tear it completely off or even stop it as he had hoped.
Momonga was about to take another shot at the silver fluid-leaking thing facing him, when suddenly, another one shot out of the ground near the forests' edge and slammed down on him. If not for [Body for Effulgent Beryl], he would have been severely hurt by the attack, but his carelessness still cost him his one-time protection from blunt damage – one of the traditional weaknesses of skeletal undead.
Casting [Fly], he shot out of the earth to its side at the speed of a jet plane, and saw he was facing not just a duo of the mechanical snake dolls, but eight! Some rose from the water, other rose from fresh holes in the ground –all lunging for him.
Momonga twisted and turned in air in the frantic attempt to avoid the snakes and to get higher, but the dolls opened their mouths to spit hundreds of finer whip-like tentacles at him. He cast [Reality Slash], and the universe itself seemed to unhinge for a moment at the fleshy part between the neck segments of the closest doll head, before it dropped to the earth, but the move took too long and the first tentacle slung around his arm, then another around his feet, his neck, and other limbs.
They dragged him toward the blunt teeth of one doll seeking to eat him.
'Enough playing around. [Time Stop]!'
The world froze. Stone sent flying stayed in the air, no wave spread or flame in the forest flickered. He had ripped off the tentacle from his neck when he was yanked forward again.
'Oh, what the hell!'
The damn beasts suddenly ignored his spell and surrounded him, watching him with trashing mouth whips as he was dragged forward to the waiting mouth despite all his efforts, while the remaining outside reality still held its breaths.
Just before his skull entered the space between its incisors, he cast Triple [Reduce Person], shrunk to the size of a tin soldier and escaped the snapping down teeth. Yet, the 84 remaining eyes did not lose track of him and followed his path. They opened their mouths wider than any real elf ever could and spat thick silver vapours, blanking the whole area and coating him in a sticky paint.
Momonga dropped to the earth, as time started flowing again and the world shrunk back from his perspective to proper size. Looking up, he saw the whips shoot for him and cast [Skeleton Wall], but nothing happened. He rolled out of the way of the first tentacles ripping into the ground and jumped again into the air, only to drop. [Fly] also had not activated.
'This is bad.'
The End desperately dodged more slamming down tentacles and crashing heads. He could not stop them from slowly driving him to the fires of the forest's edge, despite knowing what they intended.
He jumped a last time out of the way of snapping doll face, before he could retreat no further. He felt the intense heat of the hellfire he had unleashed behind him since the creatures' ink had corrupted all his protection spells to a useless state. Yet, strangely, they stopped and formed a ring around him.
"It has been a while, Momonga," the hollow echoing words came from all heads at once, the first sound they made since the start of the fight. The voice leaked with spiteful hatred, though he did not recognize it. The dolls' necks rising from the sand broke fully to the surface, revealing a common centre off the shore.
Once more, the water churned, and the largest creature he had seen yet in the New World rose out of the lake on three pairs of outward-facing mechanical chicken legs. A comb of blinking antennas sprouted from the back of its blimp-shaped body and eight rows of thick armour plates, with gnarled silver skin between them, corresponded to the ring of arms which ended in the dolls' heads.
It resembled nothing so much as a cross between a robot chicken, a crab, and a squid, but where a cephalopod would have sported a beak, a wide disk of flesh fused with bright green glowing circuitry festered, and in it hang what he assumed was the elf king, connected to too many cables of varying thickness and dripping silver fluid
Even in the sickly light shining upon him, his features were divine. His long white hair, regally carved chin, and long thin nose were perfectly proportioned. Only the tired, but satisfied, heterochromatic eyes – the left white, the right green – marred the absolute symmetry of his face.
But, apart from the six-pack abdomen, it was the only flesh on him. All the other parts of his humanoid body, right down to the neck which looked like the face had been imposed upon it, was a poor mechanical facsimile of the elven body, with wires and steel cords giving only a vague idea of muscles and bone. Even compared to Momonga, he was a perversion of life.
"Eh, do I know you?" Momonga asked cluelessly. Although he had PK-ed hundreds, if not thousands of other Players in Yggdrasil, he was sure he would have remembered someone like him. The only thing he was certain of was he was not one of the guild leaders he had hunted. Those he remembered by heart.
The elf king did not from his part show a sign of taking special offence by it, as the crab-squid leaned closer and said with just as much hate as before, "I doubt it, but you knew my wife."
"Your wife?"
"Yes. She used to be a guild master like you, before you manipulated our guild's champion into a coup so you could slay him later. Oh, yes, Momonga, I know all about your history," hissed the king, still moving closer.
"Oh, come on, it was all just fun and games back then; typical Yggdrasil play. You really can't hold that old story against me." Momonga joked in a half-hearted attempt to defuse the situation. He was well aware it would not end well for one of them. The king agreed on the notion, as he loomed only a few meters apart over Momonga and growled.
"It was in Yggdrasil, but not in the real world. Not when the stress of guild politics causes your love to give premature birth. Not when your only son is born a cripple due to it and your soul mate breaks."
"How was I supposed to know that? Look, I am willing to say sorry for your loss..." The elf king's frown only deepened at the insincere apology, but the End continued, "...but I really needed a werepug for my hit list. A bunny girl just wouldn't do."
The angry grimace suddenly turned into a look of confusion. "A bunny girl?"
"Yeah."
"She was a proud high elf priestess," said the king, but Momonga shook his head and imitated with his hands behind his head large ears, explaining:
"Noooo, she was a bunny girl. Long ears, little tail, and a mean temper. Had those ridiculous big eyes, too."
"We were the proud warriors of Tamshin Groove! We had no bunny girl in our guild nor a werepug!"
'Tamshin Groove?'
"Tamshin Groove... Tamshin Groove... Now, where do I know that name from?" Momonga let roll the name on his tongue while scratching his silver-ink dripping helm.
The elf king growled indignantly. "Are you telling me you don't remember Middenheim's exemplars of honour and valour?"
'Didn't that apply to all guilds of... Wait, he didn't say 'Asgard'...'
"Hold on a moment. You said Middenheim?"
"Yes!"
"And your guild was elves only?"
"Yes, we were!"
"Guild base in a giant, gold-coloured tree?"
"Yes, for fucks sake, do you at last remember?!" The king snarled with balled fists.
Momonga did and apologized, in earnest this time, with a friendly raised hand. "Yeah, sorry. I forgot about my scheme test run."
"AAAAAAAAHHHHH!" The royal exploded in a blood-curdling scream, and punched with all eight arms at once at him.
Momonga had expected the reaction and jumped forward at the last moment, thinking, 'Works like a charm every time.'
He rammed his hand in the neck of one doll, as his opponent pulled back for another swing, and released his grip at the highest point so he flew in a ballistic arc towards the sea. He quickly looked back and saw the elf king's monstrous body already turning around, faster than any creature the size of a daikaiju ought to, and screamed after him, "I have endured twelve hundred years in this accursed existence, and thought every second of this moment! This entire nation was conceived as your coffin!"
With a thrust of his all his arms, he propelled himself in a terrifying display of pure physical power forward. Momonga crashed into the water just seconds before, and was chaotically hurled forward by the shock wave of the elf king's impact. While he tumbled through the water, the monster taunted in dulled but rapidly louder words, "There is no place in a hundred kilometres you are safe, least of all in my depths!"
Momonga saw the giant shadow head for him at tremendous speed, and felt with every bone he had to act now or should forget about anything which came after. He thrust his hands away from the monster and activated his inventory.
Not to get a new item which could protect him, and neither to receive a weapon which might be capable of slaying the leviathan.
He used it to store water.
All of it.
Momonga shot forward like a bullet and barely avoided a snapping doll's jaw, whose eyes tracked him like dancing flood lights. Faster than Cocytus ever ran through the forest, he flew over the lake's floor, but the elf king was right on his heels. Just slightly adjusting his hands position, he narrowly avoided the elf king's attacks again and again and headed ever deeper, while the cyborg promised:
"I'll break every single bone of your carcass! I will grind them to dust and plough them into the mud where you belong! Not even an unmarked grave is fit for you freak! No one will ever find your remains! NO ONE!"
'Maybe I gave my opponent too much credit. That guy is simply… simple. Basic, even. I bet next he will tell me how I will be forgotten.'
"NO ONE WILL REMEMBER YOU!"
'Bingo. Alright, I've almost reached the bottom; that should be enough. Giant boss with glowing spots, my ass – it's high time to end this fake.'
Momonga threw back his arms and let the elf king shoot past under him and crash into the muddy ground, while he shot straight back up to the surface. After a few seconds, he saw the sun shimmer beyond the surface again and closed the inventory.
He broke through the waves and fell toward the sky, before slowly being retarded by gravity. Under him, the water churned and the elf king emerged in a ring of his curling doll arms, with a manic grin upon his beautiful features. "Where do you think you are going? Without magic, you will fall down anyway into my kind lap!" The elf yelled at Momonga as he reached his jump's zenith.
"Patience! I'll be right with you!" The End shouted back and opened his inventory again, this time with his hands to his side facing the ground.
The king was only partially right. He had no access to his spells, including [Fly], due to the ink still clinging onto him, but Momonga had absorbed thousands of tons of liquid during his short trip through the depths – almost nothing compared to the billions of cubic meters the lake contained – but when he rearranged the mass's form in inventory and the manner of its release...
...it became a frighteningly powerful engine. The water molecules broke up under the ionizing pressure of the release, and recombined almost instantly again in a directed hydrogen-oxygen reaction, and Momonga shot up with a fiery exhaust which would have shamed any of the Saturn rockets from the mid- 20th century.
The vibrations and noise were far too great even for his senses, that he could have understood what the elf king might have retorted as he left the last of the lonely clouds behind. The pastel sky quickly turned dark blue, and the horizon curved more with each second till he saw the whole world as a large blue-white disc below him.
He had never seen something so beautiful in his life. Sure, he had watched pictures of Earth before mankind had turned it into a polluted dump, but those never could compare to precious jewel below him. For minutes, he simply gazed upon it while he adjusted the water-inventory-engine, before he finally turned it off and summoned a brush from his inventory, trusting his calculations to take him to his destination.
Hours later – and more than 35.000 kilometres away from Crescent Lake – his feet lightly touched down in the darkness soundlessly. How it be not, in the practical vacuum of space? Momonga had landed on what seemed to be a large, dust-caked throne, drifting lonely through space, and fired a tiny thrust of water from his hand so he would not bounce off again.
He leaned down and brushed with his now-clean hand over the arm rest. After just a few swipes, he saw the reflection of his glowing eyes on a glass cylinder, and in it floated a severed, gnarled underarm attached to several wires and tubes. His hand moved further up along the throne and revealed another tube with the corresponding severed upper arm. Finally, he swiped over the topmost backrest.
Even if he did not have only a flesh-stripped skull for a head, he would have grinned. An ancient elf head glared back with impotent hatred and gnashing teeth as he scratched a mirror message into the glass with his index's claw, before tapping his temple.
'Like gimp, like son hides the crab in its crib.'
For a while, Momonga enjoyed his silent screams, but in the end, he screwed him out.