Tetsu kept the second axe spinning throughout the mini distractions, building up speed until he launched it at the Horr'er. Val intervened, saving the Horr'er from a fatal blow, but Tetsu had never aimed to kill, whether facing the living or the undead.
The axe slipped from the Horr'er's hand, positioned to block, as Tetsu's main goal from the start was to reclaim the second axe—his axe. The Horr'er receives a command, shifts its stance to capture the axe, and succeeds.
Tetsu waited for its focus to shift and then tugged at the hand positioned to block the attacking axe. The spinning weapon left a deep wound on the Horr'er's shoulder, and the sudden shock allowed Tetsu to snatch the axe in its position as well.
As the Horr'er limped toward the nearest axe, Tetsu seized another opportunity to rip a chunk of flesh from its knees, finally hitting bone.
"Stupidly sturdy build," Tetsu remarked with amusement.
"How can this be?!" Mor exclaimed. Another one of his visions was lost by a cannonball claiming a lich's life. Despite this, Mor remained focused on the human, unable to discern his strategy, with battle calculations dominated at every turn.
"Don't lose your head so fast. We shall prevail in the end," Val assured, placing a comforting hand on Mor's shoulder. "Focus on other battlefronts. Leave the scrawny lump of fresh flesh to me."
Tarah's predictions had once again gone off the rails. She assumed the human would use the path he cleared, forgetting that the unpredictable nature of the crazy human meant he never thought straight. Not wanting to face another failure, she focused on what could be controlled.
While one lone human continued to elude her, he wasn't her only opponent. If he were, he would have been dead long ago. Luck couldn't begin to describe the human's status, so instead of losing composure, Tarah commanded the cannonier to redirect its focus to Lala. The lich played well, but Tarah saw this as a checkmate.
"Defensive stance," Val commanded, and the Horr'er knelt, covering its weak spots. "Bulk up," he activates another skill, enlarging its muscles, the extra flesh rapidly covering its wounds.
Tetsu smiled and threw one axe, using the other to fend off the other undead.
"How dare he turn his back on me," Val exclaimed, losing control and pushing more mana into the skill.
A Rune shattered over his aura, snapping him back to his senses. Val regulated the flow to focus on himself, causing the muscle to shrink back at a visible rate due to the sudden decrease in mana.
Meanwhile, Tetsu moved around, creating more piles of zombies. He tripped over the approaching horde frontlines to buy more time and space to fight. As the Runes conjured around the Horr'er guided the axe in an arc, it desired to reclaim Val's axe, yet it stood still, obedient to its master's precious order.
The axe left a trail of carnage in its wake, although not an impressive feat, as the undead were crowded close together and too dim-witted to evade. When the axe lost momentum and crashed into the floor, the Horr'er growled at the passing undead to pick up the axe, but they ignored the creature as no skill enforced the command.
"On time. In place." Tetsu leaves the undead pile and darts toward the axe.
Moving past the Horr'er, Tetsu grabbed air, as if it were a tangible object, and pulled the behemoth along his path. Tetsu drops the Horr'er near the axe at a forty-five-degree angle, Runes holding him in the spot as an extra precaution.
Massive clay boulders parted the clouds, raining down on the battlefield. One boulder falls atop the undead pile, squashing them into a paste of flesh. The second guided boulder fell upon the Horr'er, the angle and a well-paced axe snapping the creature's leg and spine in half.
Tetsu flips over a Xome, marking the boulder he has to worry about, and paving a path of service for the rest, to clear the path ahead in his name.
"What is his heading? He has to aim between the open ends," Tarah, Val, and Mor assume.
"No!" Val refocuses. 'If I expect so… he is planning something else.'
'He is planning something else.' Even Tarah forms another perspective and shifts her focus to the castle.
'No, He's coming back.' Mor modifies his plans and sends the last animated Horr'er to the castle, hoping to capture the human while ordering the undead to block the other gaps.
Tetsu moves toward Lala, as Val predicts, or so he assumed. Val orders the Horr'er to change its approach and the Horr'er defies Mor's orders without a second thought.
"My lord!" Mor acknowledges Val's superior tactic.
"NOT Again!" Tarah breaks the array controller in her hands. "Give me another." She gestures.
The Technicians look at each other in bewilderment. "To break?"
"NO!" Tarah yells, throwing the broken controller at them. She controls her anger by taking deep breaths while consoling to her inner ego. 'At least you are smarter than these imbeciles.'
Tetsu twirled, launching both axes, cutting down the undead herd ahead to clear a path for himself. With several boulders raining down and the Claytron adding to the chaos, Tetsu encountered little resistance as he moved ahead.
As the liches surrounding Lala took a defensive stance, Tetsu pulled the group closer with Runes and rammed into them buttocks-first. "This is becoming my signature move," he frowned, summoning his axes. "This, on the other hand…" he remarked as he swung the axe down on Lala. "… is freaking cool."
"NOo...!" Mor watched in disbelief as the human swung down to end their third in command. In the span of five minutes, another top warrior was gone.
A boulder crashed beside the human, obstructing Mor's view. He wished—or rather, he knew—the boulders hadn't ended that slippery human's life.
How could they?
How dare they?
That human's demise had already been written, and Mor vowed to take all the time left in the tutorial to torture him.
"Now stay down," Tetsu spat, wiping the axe blades on the side of his pants while eyeing Tarah.
Four boulders landed beside Tetsu, obstructing him from prying eyes.
An axe lodged itself into the animated Horr'er's calf. The Claytron beside it took advantage of the sudden strike and locked the Horr'er in a puddle.
"Thanks," Tetsu said as he landed on the Horr'er's head and chopped away at its arms.
The Claytron holding the Horr'er considered the Horr'er to be a bigger threat and helped Tetsu by not attacking him.
Boulders blocked Mor's vision, and Val couldn't do anything but sense his creation getting chopped down.
"That was his plan all along!" the Trio exclaimed as one, pulling on their hair. "Just attack." They gave up on trying to figure out Tetsu and stuck to direct, simple attacks.
"What? Three openings out of four is recommended," Tetsu remarked to the Claytron while lounging on the crippled Horr'er.
The Claytrons tried and failed to absorb the limbs made of dead flesh, so they stood still, dumbfounded, awaiting an orb for further instructions.
"I might have gone overboard here, don't you think?" The Claytron moved in what Tetsu assumed was a shrug. "Eh, he is already dead anyhow. Not like he will die again, will you?" This time he assumed the Horr'er shrugged. Without any limbs, it was hard to tell.
The first barrage of boulders halted, and a powerful vacuum within the Castle, working in tandem with the liches' void skill, cleared the dust.
"I'm coming for you," Tetsu taunted Tarah as he headed toward Val instead.
"Can't he see me? Or does he want me to follow?" Tarah glanced at her general, who mimicked the Claytron's shrug. "What are you looking at, Fire?" She yells at the cannonier.
"Fire!" the scout shouted.
"I just said..." Tarah followed the scout's finger to the sky. "Ah, freck's!"
Huge spheres of fire accompanied the clay boulders, engulfing the sky in a mix of brown and orange hues. The clay boulders cracked and burst into a muddy mist that doused the fireballs. The vacuum and skills worked overtime, yet the residue of two titans clashing at a distance was more than enough to threaten two armies.
"Monsters," Tetsu couldn't help but smile, a stupid skill robbing him of tears in his final moments.
A massive cloud of fire clashed with the mountain made of clay. Two monsters, two leaders, two titans duking it out for supremacy.
The undead had no fear to control, or aura to suppress, so they moved unimpeded. The risen and Tech'savy, however, faced the full brunt of the supreme aura. Mor crashed to the floor while Val struggled to stay upright. The Krantz's fell one by one, with only Tarah kneeling, thanks to her grip on the railing.
The Hive Mind held a unique advantage for such tactics. The Claytrons followed orders to the letter, and even though the aura suppressed their very being, they squirmed forward to complete their tasks.
Myriad species of ants, each carrying a unique way to handle the most destructive techniques of the multiverse, moved with coordinated precision. The Ant Queen reclaimed her control over her subjects and activated a berserker skill. The ants crawling away regained their composure, with a surge of adrenaline coursing through their minds.
"Nothing ever goes as planned," Krovath sighed, cracking his neck.
The room shrank to fit his stature. As he leaned back, the entire space curved to form a chair. Screen tiles shrank into tiny motes of light, forming a forty-inch curved holographic screen.
Removing his gloves, Krovath directed four blue bolts to join the first bolt within the artifact, causing it to glow like a beacon of hope. "Where did it all go wrong?" he muttered, squinting as his pupil expanded, zooming in on a speck of light—a miniature screen among the millions. Within it, a human ran with a smile, challenging the monsters to do their worst, unimpeded by two supreme auras.
"Access Reel," Krovath activated a skill, snatching away the castle's access he shared with the troops. "Overwrite." The screen covered his entire field of vision, and the Castle's arrays joined the screen, expanding it further.
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