Chereads / The Six Guns: The Library / Chapter 81 - Chapter Eighty-One: My Way

Chapter 81 - Chapter Eighty-One: My Way

 Siran and Zia stepped down from the rocky rubble that used to be their arena, as they prepare to face Loki again. Loki prepares for an attack, but then vanishes as he moves in a flash. Siran and Zia turn around and both kick at Loki who appeared behind them. They both kicked Loki in the stomach and sent him flying backwards into a tree. Loki, however, kept getting back up. "It feels like his defenses are lowering..." Siran says.

 "He's tiring himself out, trying to use all of that different magic all at once." Zia says. "Exactly why I keep telling you to stop using that damn shapeshifting spell all day, every day."

 "Get ready, here he comes again." Siran says. Loki creates a large ball of pure endo, drawing from the endo all around them. "So that's why they picked this location to fight. They anticipated being drained, didn't they?"

 "Good thing Silas was left home." Zia says. "He would've been placed in danger for no reason." The endo ball grows larger than Loki, then larger than a tree, and kept growing. Loki then throws the giant ball of pure energy at the two of them. Siran and Zia work together with control magic to stop the ball in its tracks and rip apart all of the energy it's made out of to stop it from destabilizing and exploding. As they do this, Loki appears behind Siran with an endo sword and swiftly strikes at his back. Suddenly, an endo dagger blocks the sword. Zia swung around with the dagger to stop Loki as Siran focused on dispersing the ball. "You think you're the only one allowed to absorb the endo around here?" she asks with a smile. Zia keeps walking closer and closer as she swings the dagger at Loki with an incredible speed, her steps picking up speed as Loki keeps trying to get his distance. Loki keeps backing up but suddenly a rock wall shoots up behind Loki as stops him as Zia plunges the dagger into his stomach. Most of the impact from the reactive energy passed through Loki and caused the rock wall behind him to shatter. While pinned, Loki painstakingly raised his endo sword to bring it down onto Zia's head, but Zia's left hand was gently placed just above the dagger as an enormous wind spell shot out of Zia's hand, causing Loki to fly through what was left of the rock wall and fly towards where Ares was. Loki managed to remove the endo dagger from inside his own stomach before it caused an overload inside his own body and tossed the dagger aside. Before he could get up, a pillar of pure endo that used to be the ball was thrown at him from Siran, pinning Loki to the ground with an immense pressure and force that constantly assaulted Loki. Just as Siran and Zia had thought they were ready to end this fight, they heard a sudden explosion.

 Finn and Rose rushed at Ares from the front as Alex tried to run around one side and Vivi the other side. Ares swung another flaming whip at the whole crew but was stopped by a rock thrown at his face. Finn threw a rock at his face and the surprise opened an opportunity for the crew to easily dodge. The rock bounced off of Ares's head and Finn picked it back up. The rock suddenly changed to a sharp knife as Finn stabbed at Ares. Ares easily dodges and Rose threw another knife at Ares. Ares grabs the knife out of the air and threw it at Finn. Finn rolls on the ground and dodges. When he stands up, the rock he was holding vanishes under an illusion spell as the first illusion spell that made it look like a rock faded and revealed the inhibitor device. However, Ares missed his chance to see it as Vivi and Alex were already behind him and firing at him with their guns, causing him to move back to where he was earlier. As Ares moves and dodges, Finn gives a thumbs up to Benjie and Benjie activates a button that starts absorbing endo from Ares and the surrounding environment. While the devices rapidly fill up, the team just had to keep Ares busy. The team backed Ares into the area where Rose had thrown her knife straight down at Ares before. Here, was the center between the three devices. The devices began rapidly draining Ares as the rest of the team got their distance as to not also lose too much endo to the inhibitors. The team fired rapidly at Ares from all directions and soon after started feeling drained from using too much endo. The firing stopped and the ends of their barrels glowed with an intense heat as their guns struggled to keep up with the raw endo shooting out of the guns. When the firing stopped, they could see a tetrahedron shaped formation of rocks from the ground covering Ares. The firepower, however, tore apart most of the stone and Ares was heavily damaged and began bleeding from the shoulders, back, shins and left wrist. The rocks slowly went back into the ground as Ares used his magic to return the rock as it were. Ares was panting and in pain, but still standing. As they saw Ares still standing, Rose and Finn nodded at each other and put up a black veil in a circle around Ares with the whole crew outside of the veil. Mikoto and Satomi swiftly grabbed the three devices as more shots were fired into the veil at Ares from varying directions. After merely just a couple second, the ground shakes and causes the crew to fall as the veil drops, and Ares still stood. This time, more plates of rock set up in layers that sank back to the ground. Some plates were completely destroyed as others were left untouched from the fire being blocked by additional plates set up in layers ahead of them. Ares had a limp as he started to walk towards the crew, a slight smile appearing on his face. "You've got tenacity, I like that." he says. More fire appears in the ground as more cracks appear in the rocks and the ground around Ares began to sizzle. The fire seemed to raise like embers into the air above Ares, then began to rain down like needles made of sizzling embers. 

 "Run!" Benjie yells. "Get out of there now!" The crew scattered and got their distance as the rain of fire kept raining down in a large area, slowly getting closer to Benjie and the twins. Suddenly, Benjie pulls out a new gadget. "Finished!" he yells as he throws the new device at Ares. The three devices packed full of raw endo were taped together with duct tape as another charm was carved into all three of them. Ares looks down in confusion as the fire rain continues and see the charms that were carved into it began to glow white, getting brighter and brighter quickly. Suddenly, the overload process speeds up and the full canisters of endo fully convert into reactive endo, and they explode in a cloud of white fire. Everyone around them stopped, including Siran, Zia and Loki who now lay in pain on the ground closer to where the explosion was. The explosion didn't reach Loki, but it seemed to fully engulf Ares. The crew all turned their attention to the quickly fading white cloud, waiting to see what was next.

 When the large white fire clears, they see several layered rock wall shields in front of Ares, all broken. Ares had his right arm raised, which was now blown off and disintegrated by the reactive endo all the way up to the should, as half of his face look severely burned. Ares pants, then coughs as his stump of an arm lowers and a river of blood falls out of the shoulder. "Heh..." Ares says in exhaustion. "Not... bad." Ares collapses to the ground, defeated as Loki rushes to his side.

 "Did we do it!?" Benjie asks.

 "We did it!" Rose says.

 However, Loki rushed to Ares and stood over him. He raised his one non-robotic arm and builds up reactive endo in his palm. Just as he was about to fire, Siran kicks Loki in the side of the head with a powerful wind spell. "Don't stop just yet!" Siran yells out to the crew. "Loki is still standing. If Loki finishes off Ares, he may try to steal the shards of Chronos to try to finish us all off or worse!"

 "Worse?" Vivi asks. "What do you mean!?"

 "If he gathers those shards, that would be almost every shard of Chronos!" Zia shouts. "I'm not sure, but if he has that much power, we'll be in trouble. Even more, it could result in Chronos himself coming back, with most of his body back in one piece!"

 "Trust me when I say," Siran adds, "we don't want to be in that situation!"

 "What do we do?" Finn asks. "I'm too exhausted to fight someone like Loki..."

 "This fight hasn't been as long as the fight with those Mages." Alex says. "But we definitely went overboard. I don't think I can put up much more of a fight."

 "Protect Ares's body!" Siran yells. "Don't let him near it!" Siran then charges at Loki and attacks with more reactive endo daggers. Loki dodges Siran's attacks, keeping his distance, until Zia shows up from the side and grabs him by the side of his face and tackles Loki to the ground. Zia tried to throw a punch into Loki's face with a distortion spell, but Loki twists under her and kicks both her and Siran at the same time. Siran and Zia were thrown back from the powerful kick, and as they landed, Loki threw large rock debris from all around at them. Rocks kept raining down at the two of the as Loki kept trying to get closer to the body. As Loki gets close, a sudden shot from a pistol from Vivi hits Loki. Loki was stunned from surprise as a knife covered in armament magic was thrown at his face. Loki deflected the knife with the back of his hand, effortlessly, as he changes his direction to face the rest of the crew. An endo spear flies at Loki from behind and Loki dodges just in time due to a debuff field he deployed after being hit by Vivi. "You're facing me, not them!" Siran says. Loki slowly turns to face Siran, and charges Siran with armament magic coating his robotic arm. Loki kept slashing and clawing at Siran as Siran kept running backwards and dodging. Loki swung at Siran's face and Siran quickly lays on his back to dodge. Just as Loki was about to swing downward at Siran, Siran used the rock to shoot him off of the ground just at waist level and used a wind spell with both of his feet planted into Loki's stomach and sent him flying. While flying, in mid-air, Zia appeared above him and struck him down into the ground with her feet. Loki slammed into the ground at an immense speed and the ground below him cracked. Loki gets up. visible breaks in the skin across his face and chest, with his own blood starting to cover him. Loki let out a roaring cry as he creates another ball of endo. This ball was half of the size as the last one, but this time the ball slowly turned into reactive endo. Loki looked at Siran, then threw the ball the other direction at the rest of the crew. In a flash, Siran ran between the crew and the reactive endo ball, shifting into his bipedal fox form, covered in reactive endo. Coating his hands as well in reactive endo to protect himself and try to rapidly stabilize the energy in the ball to prevent it from exploding, Siran grabbed the ball with his hands and fought to keep it from moving. Siran let out a few painful cries as he fights the ball and tries to keep it from touching anything. Zia runs to his aid and helps by transferring her endo into Siran to help him keep up his strength. However, as he fought the ball, shocks and waves of pain would flow into Siran's body. Siran knew running wouldn't save his crew, as the explosion would be much too big. Zia poured some of her energy into Siran and used her own control magic to try to help push the ball in any way she can. The rest of the crew slowly joined in the fight, except for Benjie who didn't know how to help. "Come on... big bastard!" Siran yells. "Move... Move... Move!" Slowly, the ball began to lift as the team put in all of their effort to prevent their deaths. Bit by bit, the ball began to lift in Siran's arms until it picked up speed. Eventually, Siran was able to lift the ball above his head and gained enough control over the spell with his reactive endo to throw the ball high into the sky. The ball flew up into the clouds at an incredible speed and exploded. The explosion caused a really loud thunderous boom that the crew could feel the soundwaves of flow through their body. In shock from the intensity of the sound alone, the crew averted their gaze and froze as the explosion also cleared out any clouds above this city and caused the sky to be just a little brighter for a split second. When they finally regained their will to fight, the crew looked around for Loki and saw him standing over Ares's body. Loki had his one arm pointing down at Ares again, ready to fire. "No!" Siran yells. 

 Just as the crew expected to see Loki shoot Ares, Ares woke up and dodged the attack. Ares rolled to his side and grabbed Loki by the foot and slammed him into the ground like a hammer. Ares then picks up Loki by the neck and says "I'm not going out... your way... Chronos..." The two of them vanish in a portal suddenly and the air got quiet.

 "Wha... what happened?" Rose asks, tired and confused.

 "Whatever it was..." Alex answers. "Mission accomplished?"

 "I-... I don't know." Siran says in confusion. "Ares was definitely going to die. But if they went to Valhalla... then I guess the rest is up to the gods."

 "Is that a good thing?" Finn asks.

 "Yeah..." Siran says as he collapses on the ground and sits down. "Yeah, it's a good thing. They can handle... their own trash for once..." Siran pants a couple times and stretches out on the ground and lets out an elongated sigh of relief.

 "We did it!?" Mikoto asks.

 "We did it!" Zia confirms. "We beat them! We actually beat them!"

 "I told you before..." Siran says in a tired tone. "We don't need the help... of some random gods. We can handle this ourselves. Now... someone please carry me to the truck. I can't feel my arms or legs."