Broken Anomaly

Anna was happy because she finally saw some of her friends, they were wounded and seemed to be exhausted, but they were alive and that was all she needed. Without thinking she went right into the fight, hoping that she would actually be of help and not just a hindrance. She had expected to surprise her friends with her new strength but seeing them surrounded by corpses extinguished that idea. To her surprise, her actions did help and motivated everyone else to jump into action.

While she fought, she caught some glimpses of her friends. Seeing Alex crush the skulls of the barghest with his fists or Stella burn them up with her fireballs, was an incredible sight to behold. While she killed one, they killed three. Soon the fighting had stopped, and she stood before Alex, both breathing heavily. As she was about to speak, she was interrupted by the sight of the giant, yellow-furred beast running towards Alex, at an incredible speed. The beast ran with Alex still in its mouth and stopped near the building, dropping him and letting out a small chuckle. Anna and Stella were about to act, but they were interrupted by the white-furred beast.

“No, no. He’s hers, you’re mine.”

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In the last room of the second floor, were both Tony and an unconscious Marcus. Tony had dragged him in an attempt to protect him, in case any barghest made their way up again. He kept looking at Marcus with genuine awe in his eyes. Tony had seen exactly what happened when he threw the backpack, and it was incredible.

First it made the same noises the other bombs had made, only to be followed by prolonged silence that made him worried that it might have malfunctioned due to the impact of hitting the ground or something else he hadn’t accounted for. But then the silence was accompanied by the build up of static in the air, that even he could feel while on the second floor and from within the backpack a blue light started to burn through. All at once, with a loud crackling sound, the backpack was burned and what seemed to be a small lightning bolt appeared where the backpack used to be. The bolt then traveled through the entire horde of monsters, arcing and killing every single monster. It finally stopped after it struck the giant yellow monster on its side, leaving a small scorch mark.

Tony got up and headed toward the opening in the hallway wall. He saw no more monsters, not even the giant yellow one, but he could still hear fighting. He went back to check on Marcus and after seeing that he was breathing normally now, he headed back downstairs.

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Alex clutched his left arm as he stood before the yellow urstigar, who seemed to be mocking him. The beast felt absolutely no danger from Alex, and he knew it, it made him angry that it didn’t take him seriously. He tried to muster strength into his left arm but had little luck in doing so, it was out for the foreseeable future. Is this how Eric felt when he couldn’t use his arm? he asked himself. If he could do it, I can’t fall behind.

He covered the entirety of his left arm in stone armor. Since he couldn’t move it, the risk of it getting injured further was significant. He then covered his right fist in stone and got into a ready stance. Up until this point Alex had not had a reason to fight in a serious manner, just punching things as hard as he could was enough, but now it was different. This was a situation that required him to use everything he knew in terms of martial arts, which as someone who had practiced various forms ever since he was a kid, was a lot.

In his current state he was at a severe disadvantage. If his arm was just incapable of being used for fighting but could still be moved, there was no problem, however, in its current state, it was dead weight. Dead weight that threw off his center of gravity and basically eliminated any type of kick that he would normally have access to. Right now, his legs could only function as his main source of dodging.

“You sure seem to be thinking a lot,” the yellow urstigar said, chuckling a bit. “You’ll die regardless.”

The urstigar swung at Alex with a speed that he had never seen before, and he barely had enough time to roll forward and ended up directly in front of the urstigar. He got up and swung his arm back and punched with all the strength he could muster from such a hurried stance. As soon as his fist made contact with the stomach of the beast, he felt the stone that covered his fist crumble a bit. The skin of the urstigar was the strongest thing he had punched up until this point, even stronger than the tree trunk he had used to train.

Alex retreated to his original position and started to look for new avenues for victory. He put his brain to work as fast as he could. Its face has to come down for me to reach its eyes. The rest of its body is a no go, since the skin is tough and breaks the stone, he thought as his eyes darted around, as he dodged the attacks. His eyes finally landed on a scorch mark on its left side. A wound?

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The other group was not so lucky in there encounter. Anna was being pressed down by the white urstigar’s front paw, Stella was trying to a cauterize a superficial cut that she had across her abdomen and Ed was struggling to get back up after being thrown towards a tree, more than ten meters away.

They didn’t even have the chance to move, as soon the white urstigar finished speaking, it waved its front right paw and sent Ed flying, as it came down, it used it to push Anna towards the ground. Stella’s wound on the other hand was done by the yellow urstigar as it grabbed Alex, she had been right behind him and didn’t notice her wound until a few moments later.

“I was expecting more. Humans are always such a disappointment,” the white urstigar said as it slowly applied more pressure on Anna.

“What…. Are you….?” Anna asked, struggling to get the words out.

“To you and all who remain, I am reality,” it said as it increased the pressure on Anna even further.

Stella stood back up and tried to summon a fireball, only to discover how empty her newly created vessel was. She reached for the knife that was in her back pocket and after searching herself for a bit, found it and grasped it firmly. However, as she held the small knife in her hand and looked at the giant beast, all her confidence evaporated, and she fell back to her knees.

Up until now she had no trouble during her fights. She even found the fights with both the goblins and spiders to be relatively easy ones. However, she knew that they were weak. Having fought the barghest, she noticed a difference between them and the other two. The barghest seemed to be more alive, the other two seemed to only exist as npcs. Almost as if they were only there to serve a role, dungeon monsters, and they only existed to be killed. But before her stood a genuine, living, breathing monster, that seemed to know how to fight and was intelligent enough to communicate with them.

As she slowly started to spiral into despair, she was brought out of it by yelling that came from the entrance of the building. It was Tony who was leading a small group of fighters, as they ran towards them. As they ran the short distance between the entrance and the urstigar, some threw their spear, none of them caused any sort of injury but it distracted him.

Having found her courage once again after seeing the approaching group, she took advantage of the small distraction they created, and rushed forward. She approached the paw that was pressing down on Anna, grabbed the small knife with both her hands and plunged it down as hard as she could. The tip of the knife shattered but she didn’t stop, it never pierced but it was enough to cause it to instinctively raise it. Anna had just been waiting for a chance and immediately crawled out, both of them retreated and put some distance between themselves and the beast.

“Fascinating. You continue to struggle, and I remain uninjured. Surrender, make it painless for yourselves. Accept reality.”

“I was feeling quite a bit of pain there. Either you’re a liar or you’re a fraud.” Anna said as she gathered herself. “Wait, same thing, isn’t it?”

“Hmm. You speak bravely for someone who will die soon,” the white urstigar said. Up until this point it only moved and sat down after arriving at its destination, now it stood up on all fours, ready to fight in a serious manner.

Everyone noticed the shift that had occurred with the beast’s attitude. As soon as they noticed the shift, the beast was already on the move, biting a fighter and lifting him in its mouth. The fighter barely noticed the approaching beast before he ultimately died as it bit down on his neck, causing the rest of his body to fall.

The fighters, frightened by what they had just seen, fell backwards. Tony, seemingly unfazed by what had just occurred, lunged at the beast with his spear firmly grasped with both hands. He ignored the pain he felt because of his bite wound and thrust the spear with all his strength. The beast ignored him, considering it a foregone conclusion that it wouldn’t even scratch him, which is why he was surprised to feel the spear penetrate his skin.

The beast roared, both from the pain and the surprise.

The spear that Tony had used to pierce the beast was one of the last spears he made and like the devices Marcus had created, it was slightly imbued with mana. Having seen that Tony was successful, the rest of the fighters got back up and tried to pierce the beast, with only a few achieving their goal.

The beast jumped back in a panicked state, its arrogance nowhere to be seen. It started to look frantically at the weapons that were being wielded by its attackers. It didn’t know what was going on, they hadn’t been told this was possible. In fact, everything they were told suggested that they would be unstoppable in the first days of integration. The pride that it had carried slowly disappeared and a feral desire to survive took its place as it got ready to attack once more.

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Marcus awoke to the sound of a roar. He was still exhausted and just sitting up caused his body to ache. Checking his status window, he saw that he was afflicted with an abnormal condition.

Mana depletion: You depleted your mana beyond normal levels. You are unable to use any type of mana until fully recovered.

Duration: 2 days

He walked towards his workstation and sat down. He wanted to run and help but in his current condition he would only be dead weight. He turned and grabbed some of the unfinished devices still left and started to work as fast he could, given the circumstances.

“Just wait a bit. I’m coming to help,” he said in a low voice.

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“The System is angry. We weren’t supposed to fight, we were only meant to accept our fate,” said a man, cowering in a shower.

“Everybody calm down. This is a trial for those violent brutes, we will be fine,” said a woman in a failed attempt to ease everyone’s worries.

“Then why are we hiding?”

“So that the beasts don’t mistake us,” she answered.

“Will they be angry if they win? The fighters I mean.”

“Why would they? We’ve done nothing wrong, they’re the ones who brought the beasts upon us.”

“Are you sure?”

“People calm down. What they are going through is merely the consequences of their own actions. We will not be forsaken, we will prove to them that our peaceful way, is the right way.”

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Ed stood up, his back hurting after having hit a tree at tremendous speed. Surprised that his injury wasn’t worse than it was.

“Is this how being run over feels like?” he asked himself. “Not a fan.”

He lifted his head to see what the others were doing. In the short time that he was out, the big man who had been taken by the giant yellow monster was dodging and punching in an adept manner. Meanwhile the woman he had come with and the one who attacked with fireballs, were on one knee, seemingly catching their breath. The white monster was facing off against a group of people wielding wooden spears.

“Whew. It seems she wasn’t the only one to know what to do,” he took a small pause to think about the women had said before. “Are those her friends?”

He shook his head lightly, letting the thought vanish from his mind, he recognized it wasn’t the right time to think about such things. He reached for his makeshift spear and once he held it, he used it to bring himself to his feet, or at least that’s what he tried to do. Before he could question what was wrong, a voice came from behind him.

“That... leg… is beyond fucked,” the voice said, its speaker clearly trying to catch their breath.

Having heard the voice, Ed turned to look at his right leg, only to see that it was bent the wrong way. He instinctively wanted to scream but he didn’t really feel any pain and held the scream back.

“Can I…. borrow this?” the owner of the voice said, finally coming into view.

He was a young man, probably a student at the university, and his clothes were stained with blood and torn in several places.

“Taking that as a yes,” the man said his voice now calmer, as he grabbed the weapon and ran towards the others.

“Who…. huh?” that was all Ed could say.