Savage Awakening 430. Farming Credits (III)

World Rank #44 Gunnar Beck took a drill of a claw straight to the chest. His knotted beard splattered red.

His bracer shattered, its Steelheart sigil breaking apart before his eyes…

He rolled, got to his feet, and grimly took out his Spirit weapons—dual-wielded axes slicked with density, weighing down the fabric of reality. He took a deep breath, spat blood, and gave that wall of red eyes and slobber and gleaming goblin teeth a long, hard look.

He gave one last glance over his shoulder.

“Friends,” he rasped. “It’s been an honor.”

Then he turned back.

He roared; the colors on his axes deepened—

A furious note.

A heartbeat in the Astral Plane.

Every soul there felt it—especially the monstrous ones; and when they felt it, they shivered.

That was the immensity of that fighting spirit.

When the humans felt it, their hearts beat faster, swelled with hope, pride, and defiance—

When the monsters felt it, their eyes went narrow, savage, feral.

“They’re… frozen,” said Celeste.

Then, as one, the goblins howled. And blasted off for a distant horizon.

A horizon where—faintly—a beacon of sheer vitality could be felt, shining like the rising sun…

***

Geralt Vin stumbled back, cloud-cloak bloodied, three velociraptor-like demons ready to tear out his throat. He slashed out a wand; red thunderbolts ripped through. But it wasn’t enough to keep off the horde.

Then the lure struck, and the monsters shuddered.

It could only be one man.

World Rank #71, the necromancer Ben Lane, rubbed his baggy eyes. “Zane!”

The monsters froze. Growled.

They bolted.

They joined a black line boiling down the distance—another hundred Minor God Monsters, drawn from who knew where...

***

“He just told every Monster in the damned sector to bring it!” Tyler laughed. “This man—I’m telling you—”

“Tyler,” said Becca.

“Oh—sorry. My bad—I’ll watch it on the curses, folks—”

“No, I mean—” She hesitated. “Just… just how many Monsters did he just challenge?”

“Well—down southeast of him there were a few hundred. About the same southwest, and there’s that huge horde up north, sieging the Storm Princess….”

The realization was dawning on him.

“Look,” he said, coughing. He visibly rallied. “This is Zane we’re talking about—and he just made Minor God! He can take a few hundred—”

“To World #1, Zane Walker,” a voice broke through. “This is Gaia Mission Control. We’re picking up approximately 1,700 hostile Gods converging on your position. Of that number, 600 appear to be peak Minor Gods, and 50, half-step True Gods.”

There was a long pause.

“Good luck, soldier.”

***

Back at the heart of the frontier, Zane watched the horizons.

Watched until the rumbling was all he could hear.

The distant stars began to flicker.

A wall of boiling black clouds closed in from all directions. Clouds full of snarling snouts, red eyes, and curved, wicked-sharp claws. Quickly broadening to snuff out the stars, above and below, all around him…

His mini-map was a thick red circle, closing in fast. Thickening as it came.

He took the measure of the challenge. He felt calm—even as his heart beat faster and faster.

The aura felt like a hurricane racing across the horizon; a hurricane the likes of which no planet had ever seen, a hurricane that could end worlds. Aura, on aura, on aura, stacked together in their thousands—

It was easily enough, taken together, to overwhelm a True God’s Distortion Field.

Left unchecked, it could be a serious threat.

Zane took out his Chains.

Time to check it.

***

“Hammers?” Becca blinked. “I thought for sure he'd go for his Axes—he’s got to get that Solar Storm up, right? How else would he…”

“Zane knows what he’s doing,” said Tyler. He tried to sound confident, but the color hadn’t fully come back.

“But why—” Becca’s eyes widened. “Unless…”

“What?”

“Unless he just doesn’t think it’s a threat.”

A beat.

“That’s nearly two thousand Minor Gods!”

“…He’s Zane.”

They could only watch as the man loaded up his hammers.

***

That Minor God trial had been some of the most grueling tests he’d gone through yet.

Time to see what it was all for. Time to see just what he could do.

They were so close now he could make out the Monsters making up the mass—Ogre tusks, viper fangs tipped bright green, and laughing goblins twirling shrieking knives…

His hammers burst aflame.

He’d never had this kind of force descending on him before—the weight of it…

He was eager to feel it head-on.

It was a formidable mass. But it wasn’t enough to shake his confidence.

That was for a simple reason.

Taken together, they might be far stronger than a True God.

But he had a feeling they wouldn’t be any harder to break.

It’d just take some serious firepower.

By then, his Asura State was burning well over 100%. His body was trembling with pent-up power.

He blasted off—put the heft of his whole body into the blow—

And dropped two Solar Flare Smashes right into the heart of the storm.

They streaked into the depths—and sank straight in. In an instant, they’d vanished—lost. Vanished into that fathomless shifting murk…

A heartbeat. Two—

Streaks of gold broke through.

One after another, striking out every which way, punching jagged holes through the face of that monstrous tsunami—

The whole thing began to tremble, like a bomb about to blow.

Then he felt his hammers make contact.

BANG!

Hundreds of deities were crushed in a single blast.

A shockwave rippled through the mass. Clumps of burning Monsters smashed other Monsters out of flight, tore open the heart of the charge, forcefully breaking its momentum—

The hammers fell again—BOOM-BOOM!

Flare tore open yet another face.

If it was just a frontal assault, that would have been enough to break the back of the charge.

But when Zane had sounded that war horn of a lure… he’d brought everything down on him.

He whirled around, pulling hard, willing his hammers into another blow.

But before he could get it off, the rest of that Monster storm crashed over him from behind.

He bellowed; struck out—but this time his blast was knocked off course.

Then a pack of Orcs descended on him, clubs falling—clobbering him off balance.

He vanished under a mass of writhing muscle.

Then the rest of the Monsters piled on and let him have it.

***

“No!” cried Becca.

Tyler couldn’t even talk.

There was a silence…

“He—he’s fighting under there,” said Tyler. “He’s got to be—we saw what Zane can take! A few Monsters could never… They couldn’t—”

But it wasn’t just a few Monsters.

That horde was like nothing they’d ever seen—and they’d all seen those clubs clobbering him, all seen him go under…

Then—

Thump.

Becca gasped.

She knew that sound. So did Tyler.

Thump. Thump-thump—

Then it all blew wide open.

And on scrying glasses all over Earth, the only color was solid Solar Flare gold.

A triumph of light shot through with bloody fury.

And at the heart of it—eyes blazing that very same color—stood a heaving, bloodied Zane.

He roared—his hammers crashed.

This time the shockwaves flattened reality itself as they passed, so forceful they made distant asteroids ripple like reflections in troubled water.

As for the Monsters caught in the midst of it…

There was a single great CRUNCH as bones and tissue shattered at once—just from the raw force.

Then the Flare raged out and conquered.

When it faded…

There Zane stood, breathing heavy.

He’d taken a few scrapes, but the cuts down his body were shallow.

His blood runes burned savagely.

He stared down the rest of the horde.

And he attacked.

***

1,700 Minor Gods—and a smattering of half-step True Gods.

Zane looked around at the destruction he’d wrought, chest heaving. He nodded.

“That’s more like it.”

Engagement Complete

Calculating…

+0.23 Credits

Nice.

Level up!

Level up!

Level up!

Essence Level 500 -> 503

He’d felt vast seas of essence pouring into him, reinforcing his body. That essence was his now; it was packed into every inch of flesh. That it was only good for 3 levels just spoke to the caliber of his class.

He didn’t mind.

This was Day 1. He figured it’d be the first of many. He hadn’t even seen a True God yet, and they’d yield orders of magnitude more essence, as well as credits.

He grinned.

Solid warmup.

He went back on the hunt.

***

Tyler burst out laughing.

“Heavens,” whispered Becca, all pink.

“I swear,” said Tyler, dabbing at his face. “I’ve been covering this man ten years—you would’ve thought I’d learned by now.”

“He wouldn’t go down like that,” said Becca, nodding; she could finally breathe.

“No, he wouldn’t!”

***

World Rank #17, the Silent Death Koga Kano, watched it all unfold on his perch atop an asteroid. His black combat fatigues and moon cloak were badly torn—when they were whole, he blended into reality so well only half-step True Gods and above could notice him.

Only his silver eyes were visible beneath a gray scarf. They widened.

Then they crinkled at the edges, as though he was smiling somewhere beneath.

He stood, blurred—and was gone.

***

A few hundred miles off—“That,” laughed Henry Colt. “Was freaking awesome!”

Now he was all pumped to go fight a hundred Minor God Monsters himself.

Then—“Huh.”

Planet rank updating….

#13,733 -> #8,820