Museum Core Chapter 122: Crystal vs Machine

The plan was both simple, and ridiculously complicated. And had far too many points of failure. If they fell short, at all, anywhere, everything beyond that would devolve into dogpiling the kaiju and praying they’d already done enough damage to win.

And the two of them had the “honor” of striking the first blow.

Her and Elias, who was currently using a water-breathing amulet, were descending into the depths of the ocean, ahead of everyone and everything else, four golden, metalic stakes held in a bandolier across her chest.

The inscrutable, dark, emptiness of the ocean surrounding her was still far from pleasant, but being able to see the ground thanks to the “depthfinder” that didn’t actually give her a numerical value for how deep the ocean was, she at least had something to orient herself by.

And then they just had to figure out a way to lure out the monster without getting too close.

“Any ideas?” she asked, her voice distorted to the point of near-incomprehensibility by the water.

In lieu of a verbal response, Elias pulled a couple of glowsticks from his spatial storage and waved them.

Yes, perhaps the light would cau- …

The thought cut off halfway as the city rumbled, the water between them helpfully transferring all that vibration so that she could feel it right against her skin, the force of even the smallest motion the anchor beast triggered both sides of her fight-or-flight instinct.

Fighting underwater … the very idea of it made her want to vomit. But an opponent that big, that was just a big challenge, wasn’t it?

Jaclyn could hear, she could feel, her heart beat faster, the exact reason no longer mattering. She reoriented herself in the water and began to swim, not with her arms and legs the way a human would but instead in the “slithering” motion she knew would manifest a spectral serpent’s tail behind her, allowing her to plow through the water at speeds Elias could only dream off, his advantage experience doing precisely nothing to offset that.

Also she drew a small capsule from a pocket on her belt and popped it into her mouth. Blood replenishment potion, because she was about to do something monumentally dumb. Yet it should also thoroughly ruin that thing’s day.

The Guardian of Atlantis was exactly as terrifying as she’d been told.

Originally, she’d only seen a single crab claw through the tidal wave of silt the monster’s emergence had thrown up and assumed she was facing some kind of city-sized crab.

The real thing, this fusion of monster and machine, a cybernetic Lovecraftian nightmare born of the twisted mind of someone who made Dr. Frankenstein look like an amateur entirely devoid of creative vision.

In the light of the glowsticks, Elias had started dropping by the hundreds, she could only see flashes of the beast as it entered the range of their illumination … but it was still terrifying. And then every hair on her body stood up for an entirely separate reason.

Jaclyn wasn’t sure whether or not she imagined the flash of light around the monster’s body, but there was no mistaking the flare of energy around her middle finger as the ring sitting there began to gobble up all the electricity that would have otherwise fried her nervous system while heating up to the point where it started to hurt.

She grimaced.

That thing would not be able to protect her against too many more of those.

But it didn’t have to.

Jacyln dove straight at the monster’s body, weaving past a tentacle that jabbed at her, then let a second, this one bladed, lash across her shoulder, the emerald blood of the Lernean Hydra immediately beginning to pump into the water as though shot from a fire hose.

Those blood replenishment potions, they weren’t supposed to be taken when they weren’t needed, unless … unless you felt like cutting yourself and letting it bleed for several minutes to prevent your blood pressure from ratcheting up to the point where it would crush your brain into mush.

All around her, the forest of thrashing limbs recoiled, those closest actually curling up and dying from sheer proximity. And that was on a B-Rank!

Jaclyn found herself grinning viciously as she plunged the first of the stakes into the oddly scaly flesh of the monster’s main body, which didn’t even seem to notice, so she rammed home the other three before she spun around and fled, retreating in the expectation that Elias would attack and bombs would drop.

***

There were actually two targets for Elias.

One, plant the beacons.

Two, get rid of these damn tentacles.

Not the big, giant, aircraft-carrier thick monsters tipped with crab claws that could obliterate the Belfast with a single strike, but the carpet of limbs that lined every square meter of skin, acting as an extra layer of armor that would intercept the sub’s torpedoes.

And while the water they were all submerged in would do an admirable job minimizing the loss of force due to that, but that would do little to help the more exotic weapons, and certainly couldn’t hold a candle to the damage a torpedo would do if it exploded inside its body.

But as impressive and effective as the little trick with the blood replenishment potion had been, his own powerset was far more applicable to the current problem than Abrams’. If he had enough time/enemies/blood to really get ramped up, he could get nasty.

Another lightning wave washed over him, flowing off his armor like water off a duck’s back, while the spear in his hands began to glow with crimson light before he hurled it.

Normally, throwing things underwater was an abysmal idea; it would run out of steam after a couple of meters. But this wasn’t just “a thing.” This was the Spear of Longinus, a weapon so legendary that its story transcended the bounds of any single universe!

And amongst its myriad of abilities was the power to partially bypass, or even outright ignore, defenses, and while the environment wasn’t traditionally considered as such, that was a simple matter of mindset … and having a ludicrous amount of mana available to burn.

Something in that monster’s mind seemed to have registered the weapon as a threat, as one of the massive tentacles was brought down to intercept it. But who was Elias to complain? He didn’t need a lethal blow. He just needed a single drop of blood. And he got far more than that.

The spear plunged deep into the flesh of the beast, and blackness swallowed the ocean as its blood filled the water … only for it to clear up in an instant as it was all condensed back down into over a dozen massive spikes, forged by his Bloodforge power. All save the blood he drew towards him, crashing down on him like a tidal wave of ice before it began to burn, Sanguine Overclock beginning to feast upon the lifeblood of his foe.

And then, finally, the arsenal he’d created with Bloodforge hit, the ocean once again going black from spilled vital essence, simultaneously with Elias’ connection to his conjured weapons cutting off as he sacrificed them to fuel Crimson Link, every single strike boosting the damage of the next, stacking into infinity … or as long as he could keep fuelling it. But how could that possibly be a problem when the ocean seemed to be more blood than water at the moment?

Elias grinned as he condensed yet another set of sanguine lances and launched himself at the tentacle.

The first spear struck and tore clean through. The second ripped a wound channel the width of a beer bottle. The third one was even bigger … and by the time the hundredth struck, the limb was already drifting away, entirely severed, the ragged stump continuing to cloud the water.

But Elias was already continuing onwards at the monster that was, inexplicably, retreating.

Not too smart, then, if it hadn’t realized how much of his strength was situational … or had he just scared it badly enough for whatever instincts remained in that chrome skull of its to take over.

Either way, it had left itself wide open, and it would be downright rude to not take that as an invitation.

Sanguine Overclock and Crimson Link were building higher and higher as blood flowed over him and his conjured weapons danced across the beast’s flesh, carving shallow cuts that nevertheless tore through blood vessels and every single cut made all the ones that followed that much easier.

… fe’d left his “sustainable” limits behind thirty seconds and a hundred attacks ago.

The blood in the water was endlessly fuelling his attacks, yet their power had long-since surpassed what the powers could channel on their own, and they were busily devouring down his dwindling mana like a swarm of rats in the grain silo.

Elias hit the side of the monster like a meteor, carving apart tentacles with barely a thought, then swept the Spear of Longinus to the side, along the body of the beast, while pouring on the blood and mana, extending a massive blade that carved through dozens of grasping limbs before the weapon came apart.

Feeling his power already wavering on the very edge of failure, the built-up energy about to be discharged whether he liked it or not … it was use it or lose it time, and there was no way he was giving up on his bounty of power.

His hands released his spear, casting it off into the void, then he summoned a stake from his storage at the apex of that movement and drove it down, right into and through the scales of the beast, and continuing inwards, and a tremendous shockwave tore throughout its body, flesh rippling, organs poppoing, blood vessels bursting.

But most importantly, the beacon that would endlessly draw in the Belfast’s torpedoes had been planted deep within the monster’s flesh. Only one, but the only way that thing was getting dislodged was for the beast to be downright eviscerated.

And with that done, he ran as though all the beasts of the void were dogging his heels, until he exploded out of the top of the ocean in a spray of water and black blood that had somehow managed to cling to him for the entirety of his two-kilometer ascent and shouted “Go!” at the monkey currently sitting atop the array of pontoons that held up all the countless depth charges Thomas had prepared.

Jan raised a single hand, palm down, and metal rods the size and thickness of Elias’ finger began to appear there, immediately plunging back down into the surf, chasing after the countless bombs that had likewise begun their descent as the pins holding them in place had vanished “mysteriously.”

***

The depths of the ocean were filled with blood, silt, poison, and torn fragments of flesh.

And amidst the slowly settling mass of debris, hung the City Guardian of Atlantis, the blue light of its singular, blue, glowing eye cut through the murk as it glared around.

That … there was nothing left to take down here. The inhabitants were gone, their possessions plundered one by one after the original owners had left.

And then it had been alone. The only living thing for oh so very long.

Time had never been something it had perceived overly much, beyond the rise and fall of the sun, the appearance and disappearance of light … yet when the world had shifted, even the guardian had realized that it was taking an unnaturally long time from day to return.

That was when, after untold aeons, an intruder had revealed themselves. A brazen attempt, one that had ended the moment the guardian had revealed itself … yet that invasion was only to be the first of many.

The second had been a vessel of fire and steel, one that had been obliterated in a vain attempt to strike down the guardian.

The third intruder had fled before the guardian could even start to move.

And then, finally, there was the current attempt. The serious one. The single worst attack it had ever faced, throughout the entirety of its history.

The guardian … it was tired. Old. Broken.

Yet it would do its duty to its dying breath. These invaders would fall, like all the others. Until the end of time, this place would be its home, and the only ones to leave it would be corpses.

But even as it roused itself, about to attack, hundreds of small metal cylinders fell on its head, and the ocean lit up as though the sun itself had descended.

***

When he’d been younger, Thomas had once gone out onto a lake in a pedalboat, but been a little too small, too weak, to properly move the vessel, let alone control it. An eight-year-old child trying to move a boat three times his weight.

Yet his current situation made him wish that was all he’d been restricted to.

Because the Belfast had been so utterly stuffed with weaponry that it was actually right on the edge of outright losing buoyancy … or rather, it had been. Then he’d had to flood the magazines to allow rapid fire, and now, he’d had to stick the Belfast on the top of one of his three Kronosauruses, “carefully” balancing it there …

Okay, no, that was a bold-faced lie. Any normal human would have already been bounced around so much that they’d have been dead ten minutes ago, and by now, reduced to a shattered mass of bones locked in a sack of pulped flesh. And the mana-conduit velociraptors were already looking slightly worse for wear, and those things were C-Ranks. Magic-focused C-Ranks, granted, but the point still stood.

Speaking of C-Rank, he’d upgraded all of his underwater creatures to it, with the ship’s “mount” being half again the length of the ship and holding the power he’d stolen off of the Hunger, of all things, a version of its Singularity Maw adapted for underwater use, which was incapable of drawing in, well, water.

As far as the power was concerned, that stuff simply didn’t exist, which also made it far less effective against the overwhelming majority of organic beings, since they were seventy percent H2O, resulting in the “draw” against them being at less than a third of its power … but it was actually usable. Unlike the original version, which would have drawn in a bunch of ocean water, created a cavitation bubble that would wreck everything nearby, including the monster that had cast the power, and not achieved anything else besides.

And then there were, of course, his beloved catsharks had also gained numerous upgrades. Some were even more effective cryokinetic suicide bombers, built to freeze and shatter the carpet of tentacles that shielded the main body; others had been turned into rabid little eating machines that could, in theory, devour the anchor beast from the inside out, and others still were meant to act as living target designators for his torpedoes.

And the torpedoes themselves were incredibly simple, both in capability and design, yet they’d do one hell of a number on anything they hit.

They were basically regular torpedoes, barely more advanced WW2-era designs, and three enchantments.

The first of these was the warhead, the exact nature of which varied based on the individual weapon.

The second was on the propeller, which did one thing, and one thing only: make it spin, the moment it was stuck into the torpedo tube.

And the third was for navigation, and the most complicated of the lot, though that wasn’t saying much. A kind of “compass” always pointed at the nearest compatible beacon, and a relatively simple mechanical contraption linked that compass to the steering paddle in a way that steered the weapon to said beacon.

It was far from perfect, some other body part might get in the way first, and it had zero ability to aim in front of the beacon to account for a fast target … but that hardly mattered. They were fighting a kaiju. Any weapon that struck anywhere, even remotely near the anchor beast, would still hit their target.

But no single torpedo, no matter how powerful, would be able to kill that thing.

Which was why he’d spent the entirety of his mana pool, several times over, just to create the depth charges that were currently falling onto the anchor beast’s head, attracted to the very same beacon that Elias had planted at its very core.

A simple paddle at the end that would twist and turn until the bomb it was attached to was on target, massive steel pillars falling like hail, all converging on the singular foe just sitting down there, glaring skywards.

But the bombs didn’t explode. Not the first ones.

Instead, frost bloomed like plants returning after a forest fire, instantly locking the tentacles they touched in a thick layer of ice, wave of cerulean magic after wave of cerulean magic seemingly erasing all heat around it, turning water solid, and further cooling anything already frozen, the cold creeping into the entombed limbs and, in places, shattering them from the inside out as the moisture within the very cells themselves solidified into razor-sharp crystals.

Perhaps the monster would have figured out a way to safely get rid of most of that, but before it could, the second “salvo,” which was slightly more buoyant while still in no way being able to float, landed.

These … well, they were the closest thing to actual “bombs” he had among the depth charges, specifically redesigned in a way that minimized the chance of a cataclysmic detonation causing a tsunami.

Which was why he’d gone with a ludicrously overpowered version of the Razorspine Archelon’s cavitation bubble ability. Briefly mess with water’s inability to be compressed, push it away, and then have the whole weight of two kilometers of ocean overhead slam the hole back shut.

Constant pressure was something you could deal with relatively easily if you adapted to it.

To have that same pressure hit you suddenly, and with great violence, instead?

Incomparably worse.

Either the ice shattered in an instant, either obliterating the entombed limbs in the process, reducing them to ragged strands of flesh as the ice shards carved them to pieces, or simply torn away in their entirety as the blocks they were trapped within were blasted clear, opening the way for the third and slowest “wave” that would now be able to detonate clean against the monster’s main body.

That was when the ocean crackled with energy as the guardian unleashed its stored power, achieving precisely nothing. Lightning against solid slabs of steel … sure, it could melt the metal, but doing so would require the anchor beast to first boil the entirety of the ocean, and even an A-Rank wouldn’t have that kind of power, an exalted position this beast wasn’t anywhere close to.

Unfortunately, what it could do was use its power to use ethereal propulsion systems to both move itself and blow away the falling bombs.

Shit.

The bombs were, well, bombs, meant to be simply dropped, and their ability to adjust their trajectory was fairly limited against the vastness of the ocean.

In the distance, the world shattered.

Void Bombs tore huge chunks out of the seafloor, spitting the rock out as titanic clouds of powder that made huge areas of the battlefield impossible to see through with anything short of the Belfast’s magical radar.

Toxin Bombs that dissolved into a “temporary,” ranked-up, version of Tatzelwyrm blood, the liquid soaking straight into the guardian’s body upon contact, and staining the ground beneath in perpetuity, it would never go away even after that liquid warcrime had long-since returned to metal powder once the magic had run out.

Teleport Bombs based on Jan’s snatch power that randomly teleported chunks in a cone ahead of it to its side, regardless of whether those chunks were random patches of water … or vital organs.

And finally, there was the design that Thomas had inaccurately named “Razorgale,” which was neither sharp nor wind-based.

It was a highly specialized application of the kinetic magic power he’d gotten from the Russian mercenary elementalist, which unleashed a focused burst of kinetic energy straight at the associated targetting beacon upon detonation.

A lot of “bombs” touched down on the seafloor and merely produced an interesting-to-look-at ripple in the silt curtains … but that was only when they missed.

Wherever this variant touched the monster’s body, the flesh cratered, while blood and pulped organs burst out of any openings in the skin all around.

And then, finally, the Belfast was in range.

The submarine vibrated as she unleashed the first salvo of one hundred torpedoes, nearly getting flung off the Kronosaurus’ back.

Less than two seconds later, the second salvo did hurl the ship clean off its mount, the various engines and propellers normally meant to make the submarine mobile only managing to stabilize its sinking, keeping the bow aligned with the monster as the third and fourth salvoes were unleashed upon the world.

And that was enough torpedoes fired so that a few of the deepest storage chambers to be empty and Thomas activated the magical item within, or rather, had one of the mana battery raptors trigger it, and all the water was pushed out in an instant, replaced by air, immediately lightening the sub, but not to the point where it was able to, you know, swim.

Regaining that ability took another four salvoes, leaving a grand total of four hundred weapons in the water, of which precisely none had already reached their target.

And he’d barely even fired off fifteen percent of his munitions load. He needed to get that amount to at least fifty, or he’d be obliterated the moment the monster paid attention to him.

So he kept firing, even as the first set of torpedoes detonated.

In the distance, the ocean blossomed into flame and fury, like a once-in-a-century fireworks display that turned night into day and probably started half a dozen fires to boot.

Of course, the lights were extinguished near-instantaneously, the cold and pressure of deep smothering them into non-existence, while torn fragments of flesh spewed out in such quantities that even his radar began to grow cloudy.

And then the next salvo slammed into that mess. Several weapons detonated as they impacted particularly large bits, blowing prematurely, but that just cleared the way for the next weapon in line, further adding to the mess of gore that he was likely only seeing a tiny part of, considering the lighting conditions.

Again and again, explosions rang out in the distance, but now Thomas was only hearing them, his vision entirely blocked around the monster.

It was at this point that he reached the point in his munitions storage that had a different kind of torpedo. Rather than being loaded with torpedoes targeted at the specific beacon Elias had used, but ones that could go after any of the four beacon variants, depending on which segment of the guiding system he charged with mana.

This time, he sent out four weapons, one for each of the beacons, just so that he could watch the trajectories and check which beacons were still embedded in the monster’s flesh.

Only one left, the one Elias had planted. The deepest. The rest were scattered across the seafloor.

Thomas immediately sent a mental message to all the countless raptors he’d locked into the handful of compartments that had held air the entire time to charge the guidance systems for those.

And then he finally hit the magical fifty percent mark for weapons. There were still limits as to how he could maneuver; he needed to keep the sub’s bow somewhat on target so the seeking function could still work. So he just threw the Belfast’s engines into reverse while also using some of the ones on the side of the vessel to maneuver perpendicular to the wall of debris, a maneuver that worked despite all the water resistance he was fighting to go that way.

All around him, his monsters spread out, the three kaiju-sized but still smaller than the guardian Kronosaurues taking up a triangular formation, shoals of catsharks of every upgrade path going every which way, and a series of mako sharks that he’d also summoned circled in place, their inherent inability to breathe while still preventing them from sitting put.

This particular variant of the shark was more of a living torpedo than anything else, carrying with them powers all about going as fast as possible, surviving said speeds, and striking with the absolute maximum amount of force when they impacted the target. He could get much the same from torpedoes, but these sharks were oh so much easier to direct, and far more maneuverable.

And throughout all this, the Belfast continued to pour on fire, until his ammo reserves finally hit ten percent and he stopped.

His foe wasn’t dead, that much was certain; he’d have felt the surge of power from its death otherwise … but he also no longer had any idea what he was shooting at, and he wanted to have at least some torpedoes left when the monster came back into view.

The “barrier” of monster bits continued to grow despite the explosions having long-since ended, the wall of suspended particles so thick that his crappy radar was unable to pierce it, not just subsisting but expanding, moving with slow yet inexorable force. It wouldn’t overcome his forces unless he let it … but what the hell was causing it?

A single thought was all it took to give new orders to his largest creatures, who had a power meant for creating currents that swiftly tore apart the approaching wavefront, yet behind it, more and more crap continued to flow through the ocean, including large chunks of fle- … no, those were rocks.

Thomas fired a single, lonely torpedo, just to make sure the monster was still ahead of him, rather than being in the process of burrowing itself into the ground.

The monster was still there, in the middle of that mess. Or, at the very least, the part that contained the beacon was.

And then, finally, the monster itself came into view, most of its body save for the very tip of its tail curled up into a ball, protecting the head.

It looked utterly horrendous, obviously, skin practically shorn bald with how many tentacles had gotten torn off, hundreds, if not thousands, of craters littered its body, and several gaping wounds seemed to be outright leaking organs.

Yet that wasn’t what drew Thomas’ attention.

No, that honor went to the currents swirling around it, jets of water blasting off its tail and straight into the ground, endlessly sending sand, silt, and even larger rocks bouncing up to join the now-dispersed “wall” while all around it, visible only thanks to the suspended particles that were getting blown about, more currents held the anchor beast in place, right there amidst the regenerating wall of chaff, glowing spotlight of a face balefully glaring at the Belfast.

He’d seen plenty of torpedoes hit, and Thomas was pretty sure many more had hit even after he’d lost sight of it. Yet with that damn trick, how many of his weapons had uselessly exploded against a thrown rock, or just a particularly dense patch of smaller debris?

… fuck.

Thomas had spent months preparing for this fight, had written and rewritten his plans a hundred times over, used materials whose value surpassed the GDP of many nations to endlessly experiment with the best way to kill this fucking thing.

Yet this monster … all it had to do to counter his ultimate creation, the one specifically designed to tear the final anchor beast to pieces, was get serious.