Savage Awakening 458. The Final Boss (II)

Red Giant raged down the Chains. Four shards’ worth of Destruction raced through.

And lashed the Slayer painfully tight.

Chain after chain bit into dragonscale, making stark CRUNCH-CRUNCHes—and as more piled on, it seemed an angry star was being painted into being, stroke by furious stroke.

The Slayer writhed at its heart.

Zane’s body felt excruciatingly hot, like steel nearing its melting point—

Upgrade progress—90%… 91%…

All he was fighting for came into sudden focus. He felt Reina there, felt her hopes on him—felt the hopes of Earth on him—

He roared, veins standing out down his body, muscles stretched to the point of breaking.

His Rhino Bloodline burned to its maximum. Asura Body burned to the brink.

In that moment, it was not physically possible for his body to give more.

The Slayer thrashed harder. Shrieked louder, voices splintering like glass.

But this time it couldn’t break him.

CRACK-CRACK—The noose tightened more. Searing through lion muscle, and eagle feather, blackening the bat wings—

The shrieks grew more crazed.

It locked eyes with Zane, twitching, frothing—

“No,” growled Zane, blood dripping between clenched teeth.

He held that beast to a brutal deadlock.

For a few moments—locked in that struggle—all anyone could hear was the coiling of chains, the BOOMs as thousands of explosions went off at once. Striking deep into the core of the beast.

He felt a shock go through it.

This Slayer couldn’t understand how Zane’s body—a body it’d so thoroughly wrecked—could still fight like this.

He crushed deeper and deeper, feeling Chain bite into that strange stitched flesh, feeling bone and muscle shatter and split.

Zane’s teeth clenched so hard he tasted blood. Black spots broke into his vision; the world started to spin—

His body was trembling. He could feel his muscles starting to tear. There was too much force rippling through him.

Still he refused to let go.

Then the beast snarled. A black intent stabbed through its heart.

And that new weapon. That third Million-Year-Bone went berserk.

A bomb of Creation detonated inside the lock.

There was a massive tearing sound—muscles ripping all over his chest, his back, bloodying the air—Zane grunted.

Then he crashed through a nearby asteroid.

And the Slayer stood free.

Badly burned—wings laced with holes. Muscles melted down its arms, dragonscale cracked, great bands of charred flesh and chitin rippling down its body.

But Creation was already on it. Healing it fast—

And all that howled out from it now was a black rage.

It locked onto him once more.

Zane had barely stumbled to his feet before it laid into him.

It slammed a fist right into his gut and almost put him down again. He tried smashing it right back, roaring, missed badly.

Then it slammed him over its knee. And he felt his back shatter.

He whirled around, pain spiking all over him even as he tried grabbing for it—growling, just trying to bring it down, get ahold of the damned thing—

It clocked him so hard his eyes rolled halfway back.

He’d barely registered that hit before it smashed him into an asteroid, full-body.

Then the mauling began.

Smashed him again and again—

In Limit Breaker form, Zane’s body was at its physical prime. His toughness. His regeneration. Even shattered as he was, he could still put up a fight.

But there was still only so much his body could take. And he’d already given everything he had.

He tried stumbling up—only to be smashed down again. And again, and again—

Limit Break flickered.

Reina let out an anguished cry.

It slammed him through a planet. Then another.

A third—blood spewing from his mouth—and that was it.

That beat the Limit Breaker out of him.

He hit something cold and very hard, and lay there. Just a slab of mangled, pulverized flesh.

The world was spinning. Everything felt blurry and painfully hot at once; an agony shot through every inch of him, an agony beyond the world…

But his heart was still beating. He gritted his teeth. Tried getting up, yet again—

SLAM.

Warning!

Critical Health

SLAM-SLAM—

He couldn’t see. Could barely feel anything anymore.

Five smashes ago, he should’ve been broken beyond moving.

But he’d made a promise. To Reina. To his friends, to Earth.

He reached out a trembling hand. Still trying to make a fist.

Then it slammed him one last time, and he went still.

***

Dead silence on the broadcast.

Most of the production staff couldn’t even watch anymore.

They’d always had faith in him. They’d felt Zane had no breaking point. They’d seen him take on the impossible, again and again—

He said he would protect them. And he delivered. Always.

Almost all of Earth had come to see him that way.

And yet… was there such a thing as a man who couldn’t be broken?

Becca and Tyler couldn’t find words anymore. Becca just had a hand over her mouth—she looked like she was about to cry.

They watched, emotions bared on their faces, as the man that was mankind’s greatest hope shuddered—trying to get his wrecked body to fight one last time.

He’d gotten up again. And again. And again.

But the Slayer had beaten him down again, and again. In brutal fashion. Their worst nightmares were being realized in real-time…

They could only watch and wait for that terrible moment when even Zane’s heart, at last, couldn’t take any more.

***

It’d come to finish him off.

Even now—jaw broken, a bloodied mess—so broken he wasn’t sure there was a bone or a muscle left in him intact—it couldn’t knock him out.

But he had nothing left anymore. His vision was bloodied, darkening. Couldn’t feel anything. Too much had broken. Could barely even think anymore, he was in so much pain.

He lay there in a daze, knowing only that he had to get up. Feeling only his heartbeat—but even that was struggling…

No.

He set his broken jaw.

He had to get up. He had to—

Footsteps.

A warmth touched his chest.

His heart skipped a beat.

Reina.

A shield—an aegis of pure white flourished in front of him.

He saw her moving in front of him through bleary eyes. The image of a tree, a tree of pure white blossoming before her—the anguish, the fury in her expression—

No, he tried to say. But he couldn’t even do that anymore.

He could only watch as she put herself between her man and the Slayer; healing poured in.

The Slayer cocked its head again. In a way no animal would—tilting too far.

She stared it down, tears streaked down her cheeks. A look of pure defiance, even as she trembled.

The Slayer seemed amused. A lion’s claw blazed the color of the sun.

NO!

It slashed.

CRACK!

And Reina coughed blood. Her shield cracked—shivered—

And held.

The Slayer blinked.

The tree grew brighter. Her body was burning up with Creation, burning up with that light—burning with such raw power she gasped. More warmth poured through, shuddering Zane’s ruined body.

Then the Slayer shrieked, and hit her for real.

One hard swipe cracked her shield like glass.

A second rammed her into an asteroid.

And that was that.

The Slayer watched her lying there with cold interest. She’d crumpled—she wasn’t moving anymore. But her heart still beat, barely there.

The Slayer whined and stalked closer.

It seemed to think it had all the time in the world as its shadow fell over her. It raised its claws—

Thump.

The Slayer stilled.

***

Thump. Thump—Thump—

The Slayer swiveled back around.

It felt a hateful thing rising before it. The stuff of life—that thing burning in every living creature, that gnawed and itched at its mind…

The stuff that big man had in abundance. Before it’d crushed the life out of him.

Now it went supernova.

The Slayer turned slowly. And saw the big man’s body stumbling up from the ground, fists clenched and trembling, a bloody light streaming off the muscles—muscles suddenly at full, swelling even as the wounds stitched back up—

The woman the Slayer had just broken had drawn an impossible amount of Creation. It had given this power to the man.

But that was not the source.

There was something more. Something… deeper.

Something had changed in him. Something familiar, something that made the Slayer whine louder, made the voices in its head hiss and howl.

That aura…

The Slayer hissed at the sight. Hissed as the man staggered up—and with each beat of that stubborn heart, his aura growing stronger—

This time it would break this man for good.

Then the man howled. A sound like nothing else he’d made. A primal, grievous sound—a sound that gave even the Slayer pause.

It had just enough time to register a flash of the most blinding white.

Then a bloody fist crunched into its face.

And every bone in its snout shattered.

***

That wasn’t Zane anymore.

When Zane fought, it was a vicious thing—but he fought like a man. Moved with a controlled savagery.

Whatever control he had—whatever reason, or restraint or mercy he had left—

That all shattered the moment it hit her.

There was just one feeling left. Pounding through every beat of his heart, stark in every line of the expression on his face.

He showed the meaning of Destruction.

A meteor of a hammer crushed through its face, blasting it flying. But it couldn't go far.

A Chain caught the reeling Slayer by the leg.

He rammed it straight into the asteroid field.

Then the hammers started falling.

Every smash came made a new crater in the fabric of reality.

And in every smash the Destruction was blinding.

Asteroid after asteroid shattered behind the Slayer. The hammers just kept coming.

Every plate of dragonscale—cracked. Snout—long shattered; claws blown off its arms, arms crushed to shreds—organs turned to paste—

Zane kept whaling on it.

***

No one dared to speak a word. They could only watch as Zane unloaded.

Smashing and smashing—he smashed the Slayer into a giant chunk of planet-sized steel. An anvil for his hammers.

By then the Slayer wasn’t even moving anymore. Its soul had flatlined.

Zane kept going.

He smashed until his own hands broke. Smashed until there came a CRACK!, and that huge bone of Creation shattered in its chest—

He broke. And broke, and broke again, bellowing his fury. Until everything that could break had broken.

At last, he staggered there, among the ashes. And the only things rising from the dust were pale wisps—the spirits of grateful beasts, released at last to the river of souls.

A great Rhino ambled over to touch horns with Zane. It made a grateful bellow before it closed its eyes and rumbled into the next life.

And finally, he collapsed.