Chapter 485 - Far Future Ch. 195 – You Advance, I Advance (1/2)

There was a big push of Warped coming in, bodies in heavy worksuits that had been painted and stitched with patterns and runes of devotion to the Warped powers, breath masks against fumes dipped in blood and ichor wrought from corpses and making the countenances and auras of those coming even more inhuman and unreal.

I was shooting them, and they were dying in droves.

They were supposed to be following the shelling in yet another drive of death, pitched trench combat that would inevitably end, and they would retreat under the cover of yet more shelling, drawing out this insane war.

Trench warfare, in the far future. The Mekkers needed to be mass exterminated. Factories could be fabbed back easily, all you needed was energy and raw material. Spending lives for something that was going to be sabotaged, ruined, and Tainted, and would likely need to be broken down even if the whole world could somehow be reconsecrated... Mek-heads were barking insane.

The puke grey-brown work gear with the garish yellow and white symbols looked plenty revolting on many levels, but the Warped were just people behind the suits, Human/1's with a Class Level in Expert or Commoner or two, just normal folk laboring for their Empire, their hearts broken under the weight of the demands on them, and the despair of Riggibuhl finding easy purchase.

They were dying at every touch of banefire delivered by strobing rapid-fire impacts, and vivic energies were feasting on the corruption infesting their bodies. I glanced at some corpses as I glided past, seeing the internal boils and lesions running through their flesh, cancers replicating madly, swelling their bodies with foul strength and endurance even as it stole their sanity.

They were tough, and strong, but slow and none too bright, or very accurate.

Paten and Host didn't care. Host replicated Paten's anti-Warp bias, and both of them were delivering killer impacts with the slightest touch, delivered with unstinting accuracy and lethality by my Marksman's Gloves, Enmity, and Greater Soulbound. The average damage of thirty points and higher was fully capable of killing any of the rote soldiers, and as for the Possessed ones a foot taller, with second heads, demonic limbs, tentacles, massive girths, and clouds of flies born from the maggots being spat from their mouths, they got force quarrels on top of it as I held the triggers down and simply calculated all the angles and movements.

It required almost half my attention to do mass slaughter. There was movement in the now, and where I needed to go in the future, tracking and laying off objectives, reading the positions of the enemy, noting the strong and the weak, avoiding incoming fire, directing and redirecting it, focusing on the tough ones, endlessly tracking the weak ones so easily killed, monitoring my arcs of fire, looking endlessly for surprises... like this ill-wrought tank fresh out of the forges and Possessed by a demon, bursting out of a crater hole and surging towards me with its eyes burning with ocher baleflames, swarms of drones crackling with the presence of the demon dispersed among them and directing them like components of its body. Warped pausing and screaming as lightning converged on them and they gave themselves over to fully manifest a demon, bulging and twisting as ectoplasmic mass and Warp energies flooded into them...

My Swarmbane Clasp hummed as my Tails mass-launched five Spikes and my autobows crossed the swarm once. Excess damage was transmitted throughout the cloud of explosive drones, and the demon howled as all the drones detonated in reaction to the impacts.

My Spikes flicked out, and the headlight eyes of the Possessed Tank churning through the muck towards me were shot away as I dodged the explosive shell it launched at me, moving too fast for it to accurately track as it closed, its stubber-guns launching shells burning with hellfire I cut between, skidded up onto its hull as I cut the guns away, and then Lightningphasing flashed as a swathe of electricity burned through the electromagnetic clamps of its hatch, which promptly went flying.

My Tails extended down within, and promptly blew the engine core, ammo dump, controls, and firing controls, all inhabited by the demon's consciousness, into scraps burning with vivus.

The tank ruptured under me, and I rode the impact into the sky, using the opportunity to blow apart nine commanding Possessed officers, arcs of pulsing violet, black, and white lasers crossing them and Spikes and Quarrels finishing them off.

I didn't hit the ground, just sliding down the air and resuming my skating at speed four inches above it, spinning continuously as targets presented themselves and didn't get down in time... and even if they did, I was accurate enough that they weren't going to escape unless they dropped behind cover.

But that was fine, because they were just grains of rice, and I was heading for the cookpot. I was just doing my duty and saving a few soldiers as I did so.

I moved past the demons being brought in, Swordshards flying out with Sun Strikes imbued, slicing into and blowing them apart violently, frequently taking a couple toadies hanging too close to them with them as they died.

Guys on hoverloaders, gravsleds, rovers, troop transports, and the like got picked off in passing, with those manning any cannons or pintel mounts enjoying their deaths first, the engines of their rides second, and those that survived the resulting explosions and fires getting to go last.

A broad swathe of burning vivus was extending for two hundred yards and more to either side of me, and the oncoming rush had completely collapsed, mostly because everything within line of sight of me was dying violently and burning away as I came on.

Grym was the focus on my Halo Crown, not on full display, but giving me full 360 vision, so I didn't actually have to be facing the direction I was shooting in. This would normally give any species accustomed to binocular vision conniption fits, but that Lilitu stuff pumping through me meant I already had the mental architecture in place to deal with seeing with my whole face, not just my eyes, and going from a 200-degree arc of vision to full circle was basically no harder than going from wearing blinders to not.

Forwards was still visible, as the magnifier of my Mask only worked directly forwards, meaning that if I wanted to shoot at something in the far distance, I still had to turn my head. My eyes were keen enough that it wasn't an issue under two hundred yards, but when I was looking for incoming shells, it was kind of important to see them coming some distance away.

I was well under the umbrella of shells now, although their spotters had to be seeing the swathe I was cutting through their own troops. Being Warped and realizing the danger, they would certainly be willing to shell their own troops as I rapidly approached their lines. That was fine by me... as long as I didn't take a direct hit, the damage I took would be trivial and healed away rapidly, Thunder Resistance sloughing off the shockwave and deafening, and damage reduction dealing with any incidental shrapnel.

The lines of the enemy were right ahead, long rows of bunkers and reinforced trenches built up by the enthralled workforce with tireless energy and skill. Some of them started shooting at me as I approached, and I reciprocated happily, threading shots into their bunkhouses with the improbable skill of a +13 RAB base, 50 Dex, and Improved Precise Shot ignoring all but absolute cover just picking them out and killing them. The difference in lighting meant nothing to me; I could see everyone inside through the gaps, and I killed them all unless they went flat to the floor in time.