Alex groaned in pain as he opened his eyes. "Alexander Carlton Wonder!" He heard a loud call, "Alex Wonder!" The call got louder as someone kicked him in the face. He got up with a concussion and saw Commander Dawson looking at him with contempt in her eyes.
"Get in the boat," she told him with a stern voice. "I'm the Core Crusader?" Alex told her, not quite sure himself why he was saying that. He didn't like being called by his full name, or any name for that matter. "The Core Crusader," he thought it sounded cool, but it didn't. It sounded goofy as hell.
"And I'm someone you don't wanna get on the wrong side of," she replied with coldness in her voice. Before he could make one of his comebacks that he was so proud of, he was dragged away by two soldiers to the boat. Alex yelped in surprise. He soon realized they were all at one of Earth's most important ports, the Madison port.
Alex protested as he was thrown aboard the boat. He found the boat filled with around fifty mercenaries, as well as a squadron of New Dawn soldiers. Soon they were joined by Commander Dawson.
"Some crazy shit back there, brother." Alex was greeted by a fellow mercenary, who had witnessed his lunacy a few hours ago. "Holy shit, dude, you are huge! Do you savor a troll by yourself or leave leftovers?" The man laughed out loud. "Yeah, we should start that, Eh? Let them suffer the same fate."
"These mindless beasts amount to nothing!" A loud booming voice announced. Alex and the man turned around to see a towering old man with a giant core-powered cannon. "They are mere animals, no different from the bears our ancestors hunted, I'm Drew Robinson by the way, grandmaster of the Platinum Fist guild." "Liam Carlos," the other man introduced himself, "independent."
"Oh, we doing this now?" Alex said excitedly, "Alex Wonder, they called me, but I have long since discarded that man. I'm the peacemaker of Midgard, the slayer of Valkyries, mutilator of the Einherjar, destroyer of Trolls, they call me the-" "Core Crusader, yeah, we heard you the first time, nigga," Liam laughed.
"You see that little girl over there?" Drew asked, referring to a young woman carrying a core-powered sword on her back. "That is Serena Tanaka, the Black Spider. She alone is responsible for killing a thousand Valkyries. They call her the Angel of Death."
"Don't look at her, or she'll end you in an instant," a man standing behind them told them; he was another mercenary. Just as he said this, Alex yelled, "Hey!!!!! What's up? I'm the Core Crusader, do you wanna fight, let's fight. I bet you can't kill a thousand trolls, can you? They call me the Core Crusader by the way, in case i forgot to mention that; I'm not sure who, but I'm sure someone does." Serena Tanaka didn't even spare him a glance.
"Quiet down," the Commander's loud voice echoed. "Every single one of you, cease your squabbling. This is a moment of greatness for humanity. Finally, after three decades, we are retaliating. We haven't crossed the Iron Dome this far before. It has been miles since we passed the Iron Dome in case you dumb idiots hadn't noticed.
We are going to land in Antarctica in a few hours, and we are going to destroy the Jotun base there. Stay alert; we will surely face hordes of trolls, but we have never encountered a Jotun in flesh. If one is spotted, then keep your distance, do not act irrationally. Our intel suggests that the Jotnar are no different from the gods in power. If this mission is a success, then there is a chance we, New Dawn, will have secured the Jotunheim portal.
It means, for the first time in history, we could have access to another planet with life, hostile life that intends to end humanity. The threat from Asgard still looms, but even if we are able to reduce the threat by one, it's a small victory for us."
Her speech was cut short by one of the soldiers manning the radar. "There's something strange being spotted by the radar." "What? There isn't supposed to be anything in these waters," the Commander exclaimed. The survey division had made sure for months that the path taken for this operation would be a remote sea route. The beeping got louder. "Ma'am, it's getting closer."
"What the fuck is that?"
Everyone turned their heads towards the voice; they saw Alex pointing towards a massive serpentine creature in the ocean looming above them. It had made no noise whatsoever. It was twisting it's body in a strange manner. It looked hideous and unnatural, and it was ginormous. New Dawn had never seen or heard of such an entity in their intel. The forces were like ants beneath it.
"Open fire!" Yelled Commander Dawson. Immediately all of the forces on the boat opened fire on the creature. The soldiers and mercenaries with core-powered melee weaponry charged and lunged at it. Before they could even comprehend what was happening, trolls started climbing on board from the ocean. They had not been spotted by the radar.
To say that everyone was taken by surprise would be an understatement. "There weren't supposed to be any hostile forces in this part of the ocean. Has the serpent somehow alerted the trolls?" Dawson thought to herself. Robinson charged his huge core-powered cannon towards the serpent in an attempt to blast a whole through it, but suddenly a troll grabbed him from behind and ripped his head off with its jaws, then crushed it with the same jaws.
Alex ignored the serpent and opened fire at the trolls while laughing like a goddamn maniac, ignoring the soldiers and his fellow mercenaries, causing friendly fire. "What the fuck are you doing, you lunatic?" A squad captain shouted. Alex shot and killed a crowd of trolls while also causing collateral damage.
"Focus on the trolls first, forget the serpent, it's dormant!" Carlos yelled and aimed his core-powered machine gun at the trolls, just as he was torn in half by a troll. "What the shit!" Said Alex. "What did you do to my new best friend?" he said. "Liam, my buddy!" He said while grappling the troll's head with one arm and blasting its torso with continuous rounds till it was blown to smithereens.
One by one, more than half of the crew was brutally slaughtered by the trolls. Decapitated, torn open, eaten alive, impaled, and some crushed like ants. It was a massacre. Just as all seemed hopeless, Serena Tanaka slashed through a wave of trolls, killing dozens of them in an instant, she continued to cut through the horde with ease until out of nowhere, a mutated troll, a strange-looking troll that had never been seen before, emerged and ripped her body apart.
"Not the pretty lady!" Alex exclaimed. He tried to fire a shot at the mutant troll as he was slapped in the face by a different troll. He fell to the ground. "Why the fuck does everyone want to knock me out all the time?" Just as he was about to get up, the corpse of a soldier fell on top of him, rendering him unconscious.
For the first time in her life, Victoria Dawson felt afraid. Ninety percent of the crew was dead. She continued to slash through the hordes with her core-powered great sword, but they were endless. Her second-in-command called out to her from the upper deck, "Ma'am, there's no end to them! They keep coming! What do we do, ma'am? Give us your orders!"
She was quiet, unable to say anything, having a panic attack. 'Ma'am! Aaaaaahhhhhh!' he screamed as a troll bisected him, ripping apart his torso and abdomen. Commander Dawson fell to her knees, screams ringing in her ears, feeling hopeless. For the first time in her life, she was genuinely terrified; she was scared. She looked at the sky; the serpent had decided to move, it was heading towards the vessel. The Commander, with her eyes lacking any emotion, put a gun to her jaw and blew her own brains out, just as the serpent swallowed the entire vessel.