"..." The monster charges straight at Alice, who also seems to sense something wrong. The creature that had previously fought almost entirely on the defensive now begins to press forward.
An unpleasant buzzing sound reaches our ears, making Alice try to leap back, but before she can dodge, the monster releases a shockwave so powerful it hits both of us.
I’m hurled against a wall, but thanks to the moon state, the damage is minimal, and by spinning my whole body I manage to slow down the speed at which I was thrown.
’That was... kinetic energy?’ Sensing the vectors around us, I feel that it was a violent wave of kinetic energy, or rather a shockwave born from kinetic energy.
’Was he absorbing the damage he took and storing it as energy?... but he didn’t use heat... maybe he can only absorb different types of energy and send them back...’ I watch the dust cloud begin to settle.
The monster, still wounded, is running, and I can hear the sound, but it’s moving away. I switch on the communicator in my ear to speak with Alice.
"Are you okay?"
"[I-I’m... fine... h-he’s here, could you give me a little help?]" Her voice doesn’t sound good. I quickly start leaping to cut the distance faster as I head toward where she might have fallen.
’He didn’t return the heat. So if he can only absorb energy, we can attack with the cannons...’ I change the communicator frequency, an idea forming.
"Cecilia, prepare the cannon, but switch the load. Change from energy to a sonic frequency." Sound isn’t energy, but a mechanical wave that transports energy. Heat also isn’t exactly energy, but the transfer of thermal energy. So if my theory is correct, a sonic blast powerful enough could destroy this monster.
I look up and see the cannon shifting its position. Some parts are uncoupled and new ones are reattached, switching the cannon’s load type.
"..." In a few seconds, I arrive where Alice is fighting the monster. I quickly notice an iron bar piercing through one side of her belly and out the other.
"Looks like you had bad luck," I say to her, drawing the machine gun and firing at the monster, which jumps to the right to dodge. Alice defends and deflects the shots aside with her sword, despite gasping in pain.
"Yeah... I got thrown against a steel bar... I can still fight. It’s better to leave it in and take it out later," she says as the monster runs toward me.
’I can’t predict this monster. Sometimes it has stupid ideas, and sometimes ideas that are far too clever...’ I kick a rock at the monster, and it dodges.
’It dodged a rock...’ It reaches me. It has too many hands for normal hand-to-hand combat, so I switch from the moon state to the sun state, releasing an intense heat wave that makes the monster stop and let out a high-pitched screech of pain.
"!!!" I seize the moment to drive a knife into it, and focusing the heat wave at the blade’s tip, I release the heat inside the monster. This makes its entire exterior vibrate and pulse violently before bursting, drenching me in black goo as my knife melts completely.
"Urgh!" I’m hit by a punch and sent flying, seeing the "true" form of the monster. Alice approaches, staring down this thing that proves far more disturbing than just a ball with arms.
It has a gray humanoid torso, but with six legs and seventeen arms spread across the torso, along with multiple eyes and mouths. It looks like this won’t end so easily. It’s easily eleven feet tall.
’This is exactly why we needed two more Kairas...’ Alice was unfortunately injured, so her potential to help has dropped. If she makes very broad movements, it will worsen her wounds.
"kikikikiGHHRAAAAAHHH!!!" The monster lets out a scream, running toward me, clearly enraged. Alice throws her sword with all her strength, hitting the monster from the side and piercing through its body from one side to the other, embedding the blade in its torso.
"We’re even now, you ugly freak. Nexus, open blades," Alice says with blood trickling from her mouth. Her sword immediately expands at the sides, tearing the monster apart until the blade stops growing.
The monster loses its balance, falling to the ground as all its arms writhe in agony. Even so, the monster still grabs the sword and pulls it out of its torso, leaving a gigantic wound in it.
"Alice, remind me never to piss you off." What a vengeful woman.
"Of course, Commander Nadir. I won’t be dead weight in this fight, so you can be damn sure I’ll keep fighting hard," she says, breaking off a piece of the iron bar to reduce how much it interferes.
’...’ I don’t know how much kinetic energy the monster stored, so I ignore it for now and move closer to Alice.
"I’m going to burn your stomach and back. It’s going to hurt a lot, okay?" We need to cauterize the wound, which is bleeding heavily. It won’t stop completely, but it will reduce the blood loss.
"Go ahead." She doesn’t stall, keeping her attention on the monster trying to get up. I quickly use the sun state to burn around the iron bar. Her flesh gains burns, fusing to the iron bar and closing the wound the best way possible. I even make an effort to heat inside and do the same to the perforated stomach.
"You were lucky. Looks like it just pierced your stomach and passed very close to your spine," I tell her, and she gives me a smile.
"What a fucked-up monster, giving me a scar. After this fight, you owe me dinner, Commander," she says in a light tone, trying not to cry from the pain.
"At the most expensive restaurant," I tell her, accepting that. At least it means she doesn’t plan on dying here. That’s good.
"Now I’m motivated." The two of us start to approach the monster, which managed to get up by using more of its hands to maintain balance and other hands to hold its wounds in place. Alice picks up her sword from the ground while the monster watches us more cautiously.
"..." I hear a faint buzzing sound and quickly grab the second knife from my boot, throwing it at one of the monster’s eyes and preventing it from detonating everything around us again.
Alice wastes no time, running straight at the monster and trying to strike. It grabs the blade, but she uses her physically smaller body to spin, using the sword as a lever to deliver an upward kick to the monster’s arm, breaking it horribly.
I use the last cartridge of machine gun bullets to aim at all the monster’s eyes, destroying some of them by using the sun state to make the bullets extremely hot.
’It seems the monster isn’t used to fighting in this form. It lacks experience. Now the mistakes make sense. This is good for us.’
The monster throws Alice at me, but instead of letting her fall, I grab her leg and with great effort spin my entire body in a full circle, throwing her back at the monster. Alice spins in the air and moves her sword for a violent vertical downward slash.
The monster dodges by jumping, and while it’s in the air, I kick a metal bar from the ground, obtaining a staff that I hurl at the monster.
Alice uses more of her powers, making her muscles expand aggressively, even causing fissures that generate bleeding in her skin.
’She’s overdoing it... but I understand why.’ This monster is anything but normal. We have the "advantage," but any normal monster would already be dead. This thing literally has a wound almost three feet long from one side of its torso to the other.
It would be like having a cut the size of a small wall, yet it moves as if it were fine.
’He still hasn’t used heat. My theory was right. This monster can only use certain types of energy and send them back after storing enough...’
"Alice, don’t be reckless," I criticize her. Alice, to finish this faster, advances against the monster. The monster tries to grab her blade, but the force is so great that it’s pushed back completely.
’I can’t keep up with Alice.’ She’s far too fast for that, so I keep running after the two of them, marking the monster with the sun state to make it heavier and reduce its mobility, even if it prevents me from using the moon state.
"[Commander Nadir, the sonic cannon is ready, but it’s dangerous for both of you down there,]" Cecilia communicates with me, making me think for a few seconds.
"This will have to do." I find a relatively sturdy, thin metal beam. Even though it’s ten feet long and makes running difficult, I still grab it and run as fast as I can, catching up to the two of them exchanging blows.
The monster has the advantage, landing violent strikes all over Alice’s body as she tries to crush it with her strength.
"Alice, pin him to the ground with this!" I throw the bar at Alice, who catches it without even looking. She quickly uses all her strength, expanding her muscles further, and drives the bar through the monster’s chest, fixing it to the ground. The monster screams in pain, writhing and trying to wound Alice, who gasps from exhaustion.
I quickly switch off the sun state, losing the sun mark, and activate the moon state. I grab Alice’s hand, and she, trusting me, deactivates her powers, becoming much lighter.
I hold onto the bar and spin my body to climb on top of it, then gather all my strength to jump upward. The force is so great that the bar is driven a little deeper into the ground. The monster, still trying to pull it out, stays in the perfect spot.
"Cecilia, fire." Because of the lack of gravity’s influence on me, I rise high enough to leave the most dangerous area.
The Aurora island’s cannon immediately fires a violent sonic wave. The sonic wave is so intense it becomes visible, distorting the air. It hits the monster full force, vibrating its body so violently that in just five seconds of attack, its body explodes completely. Cecilia keeps firing for five more seconds as I begin to fall. Only then does she deactivate the cannon.
’What an unpleasant buzzing...’ I remove the communicator, which was damaged by the awful sound we heard even though we were far from the effect area.
"I-I’m feeling sick, Commander... s-sorry I fell. Y-you know how it is, right? I-I screwed up with that iron bar," she speaks, sweating cold and drawing my attention. She has significant bleeding from the strain on her body.
"It’s fine. It was a very sudden shockwave. You did well not to die." This is our life. She barely survived, even being experienced. We had no way of knowing what the monster was capable of.
"T-The dinner... is it still on?"
"Of course. So see to it that you don’t die in the infirmary."
"H-Hahaha... sure... I won’t."
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