Chương 69: Chapter 62 - Peace and the Demon Summoner (part 1)

Gilgamesh. Right. In a mixture of robes and armor, all various degrees of golden, it was unmistakably him. When he said this was going to be resolved in one move, he meant because he was coming himself. Verchiel also looked serious. He wore a mixture of white combat armor and robes, a blindfold over his eyes, and two swords crossed over his back. Sarah's sword hummed at my hip, delighted. They must have been among the second wave of the climbers. Away from the cameras and attention.

While the first wave breached new levels, the second wave filled up the tower and got key people through. And in it came the actually important people, who happened to make clearing the level a non-issue. Mina completed the trio in a hoodie, loose pants, and sneakers, hands in her pockets. One of these things was not like the others. Liu folded into a bow deep enough to qualify as gymnastics.

"The heavens themselves walk with us this day." Henrik's glasses flickered through scan after scan while he acted as if he was scanning the floor.

"Now," Gilgamesh said.

"Paradise should need about twenty hours to drain the suns to execute the ritual. We will be done in two. We split into two teams. The ground team will be Mina, Damian, and me. The aerial team will be Henrik, Liu, and Verchiel. The exit to the next floor is on the other side of the Paradise base. Mina and I shall force our way through. The rest of you save your strength, and we split up on the next floor. The aerial team will go disable the sun-draining device.

The ground team will siege the floor 34 base, rescue Sarah, and stop Paradise from creating the artificial goddess." I looked up. Four suns hung above the plateau. Three days ago they had been orange and bright, the plateau washed in clean light. Now they were the color of a campfire at four in the morning, deep sullen red, and the light lying over everything had gone the shade of old blood. Henrik followed my gaze, tablet already out.

"By Paradise's own optimistic schedule, the drain completes in twenty-one hours. The ritual can begin any time after that." I looked over the Paradise base. They had repaired the gate and most of the turrets. Nothing smouldered anymore, though the destroyed buildings were still missing. A wave of power released from Gilgamesh, and the ground underneath us turned into gold. The gold melted up, forming people. Hundreds of people. No, thousands.

Lifelike down to the stubble, down to the strap-lines on their forearms, every one of them gleaming and solid and moving like the metal was a suggestion rather than a material. Soldiers, even with mounts, with equipment from wildly different eras. But all golden, but looking and moving as if they were real. The center formed first. Broad men with round shields and crested helmets, spears couched, locking together into a wall with the ease of people who had done it ten thousand times.

At their front stood a man with a cloak flowing off one shoulder and the expression of someone who found the odds insulting in the wrong direction.

"Leonidas," Gilgamesh shouted at him.

"You and the Spartans take the front center." Leonidas nodded, motioning his men into a formation. Gilgamesh turned to the cavalry. A wedge of heavy cavalry on tall horses, led by a young man with no helmet.

"Alexander. You take the left wing." He turned to the cavalry on shorter, stubbier horses.

"Genghis, right wing." The rest of us gave him space.

"Caesar," Gilgamesh shouted toward the Roman legions.

"You form the army core. And leave space for the elephants." He turned a bit.

"Hannibal, move the elephants to the front. They'll be breaching the walls. Saladin!" He looked around a bit to find the correct commander.

"Outer flanks, support Alexander and Genghis." The army quickly fell into the formation.

"Edward. I Sun-sin," Gilgamesh shouted back.

"Your archers cover the extended front. Try not to hit the elephants." The armies quickly moved into formation. More gold rose around us, forming five horses. Gilgamesh mounted one. I climbed onto one too, as did Liu, Henrik, and Verchiel. Gilgamesh motioned to Mina.

"My army is ready. At your leisure." With a grin, Mina walked to the front. She passed through the legions and the Spartans, and took the tip. Her body stretched and swelled. Within a few seconds, she shifted into a semi-humanoid werewolf form that towered at over a hundred and thirty feet of height. As an absolute mountain of muscle and gray fur, she looked over us with a bit of a smirk underneath the massive snout. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Of course she was a werewolf. She turned to the base and roared. I had to cover my ears. The roar shook the ground itself, deafening us all for a good second. She bolted forward. In an extended instant, she reached the gate. With an upward swipe of her claws, she tore apart the ground and threw the entire gate and the attached sections of the wall into the air. Cannon and gunfire roared from the base. Mina moved in, throwing men and machines and buildings around with each swipe. The army charged in.

Spartans through the opening, shields locking, and they advanced ground through the defenders on the other side like a slow, patient avalanche. The golden elephants charged into the walls, tearing them apart as if they were made of hay. The horsemen followed. Both horse and foot archers fired overhead in glittering rivers, arcing golden arrows over the battlements in continuous volleys. Caesar's legion marched up the main avenue under machine-gun fire that sparked off their locked shields like rain on a tin roof.

Even cannon fire barely damaged individual soldiers, their golden bodies empowered with magic, and having the actual weight of gold. We rode in behind them at a canter. It was the most surreal battlefield stroll of my life. Fire and screaming everywhere, mechs stomping out of hangars only to meet Alexander's wedge at full gallop, which charged in through the building's wall, as each rider weighed over ten tons together with his horse.

Flak emplacements disappeared under waves of gold, and in the middle of it, our little column trotted up the main road like tourists with an exceptionally violent tour guide. Gilgamesh didn't even give orders. He let the mayhem happen. A cannon shell blew a legionary into gilded shrapnel ahead of us. Gilgamesh flicked his wrist without looking. The fragments flowed back off the ground, up, and into the same soldier, who finished his stride mid-formation as if nothing had happened.

Ahead, Mina picked up a mech by its leg and used it as a club on two other mechs. All three lost the exchange. Defenders started breaking. First in ones and twos, then in streams, raiders and gunners flinging weapons away and sprinting for the side gates. The golden army continued its advance. We were going to the other side, so there was no escape. I kept scanning the towers and walkways for a floating crystal and a calm, insufferable face, and found nothing. Not that I expected Peace to be here, but still.

The far wall was already open by the time we reached it, as the elephants had been thorough, and beyond it, the plateau simply ended in massive stairs of light. Made of black light as if carved from obsidian, each step a shallow ramp built for something with a far larger stride than ours, climbing away from the plateau and up into the sky. Not toward anything. Just up, into the red-lit air, until perspective gave up. Half the army stayed at the base. I considered pulling out the lantern.

A lot of souls floated around, ready for a harvest. But a quick glance at Verchiel convinced me I'd better leave it for later. The last thing I needed was infighting over my greed. We drove the horses to the front to join Mina at the tip. We led the way, the army in our tow, like an ascending river of gold. We climbed. The air thinned. The red light thinned with it, the sky draining from bruised orange to violet to black, and stars came out around us, close and cold and wrong. The staircase led between the suns.

Each step moved us up far more than how it looked, the space itself bent. We filled the staircase, and yet saw the soldiers on the lower steps far beneath us. We rode out into open space. I kept breathing. I decided not to investigate why. The stairs ended up at a moon. A little one, grey dust and close horizons, hanging above the four dying suns like a spectator at an execution. And on that moon sat floor thirty-four. As we rode closer, the fortress of the moon came into view.

It was sci-fi in the way Paradise did their top-end technology, amber light bleeding through walls that looked grown as much as built, bio-mechanical towers ringed with turret clusters, shield membranes shimmering in overlapping layers like soap bubbles armored in contempt. Hangar mouths glowed along its base. The whole structure crouched over the moon's surface, heavy, fortified, and very much awake. And off to the side, floating free in the black, hung the machine.

A small space station clamped around a mechanism the size of a city, a massive machine that hugged a core of vast rings and pistons, with pipework sprawling out of it for miles, glass conduits running rivers of molten light back up from the suns below. It was drinking four suns through a straw, and by the look of the light in those pipes, it was nearly done with its drink. Verchiel slid off his horse and rolled his shoulders.

He leapt up, and a pair of massive wings of pure force burst from his back, his wingspan easily a hundred feet. A halo formed above his head. He drew both swords from his back and slashed. Two crescents of compressed force tore across the vacuum, silent and screaming at the same time, and the nearest district of the machine's pipework simply came apart. Conduits sheared.

Sunlight sprayed into the black like arterial gold, beautiful and horrifying, and the great mechanism's hum stumbled over itself for the first time. Every alarm Paradise owned went off at once. Turrets woke along the fortress walls. Hangars began to vomit light. Verchiel glanced at Liu and Henrik.

"We take the station." Henrik whispered something, and in a torrent of wind, flew up. Liu jumped off his horse. He bolted up, discs of golden light forming underneath his feet. They headed for the station at the center of the pipework. We advanced. A few steps later, the moon fortress came closer into view. It was absolutely massive, armed to the brim with bio-mechanical weaponry. Gilgamesh stopped. He let the army go ahead while glancing at me.

"This is the time to summon everything." I slid off the horse and pulled out a bit of Sarah's sword. I cut my palm, returned the sword to the sheath, ducked, and placed my palm on the floor.

"With my blood, I open the gate through ten thousand worlds. Through Void and Hell, I form the path. Across time and space, I open the way.

"Exiled from Heaven, uncrowned in Hell, I open the way for the second fallen. I open the way to summon the forsaken rose.

"I summon the Heaven's first song of love, the Hell's last song of despair, the requiem for hope. I summon through the gate to Hell." The mana formed a gate frame next to me.

"Come forth, El'Sha'I'El."