Chương 109: Start of Book 2

The night threatened on the horizon, the forest crackled in the chill of winter, and the monster howled in the cave. An echo of pain and hatred vibrated across the leafless forest. And Mark slashed his spear through the air, discarding the blood from the weapon. Mark floated a foot off of the ground, a dozen meters away from the entrance to the cave, and above all of the gore on the ground. White-furred monkeys lay decapitated, limbless, and bisected here and there.

Some of them were still spurting blood, refusing to die as fast as they should, but those were monsters for you. They'd be dead soon enough. Each tiny terror was the size of a small child, and each one of them could kill almost any normal party. Mark had worked his way through the lot of them over the last two hours, his black adamantium blades flashing through the air, along with his alchemical silver spear, as he killed, decapitated, and eviscerated. And now the main enemy was defenseless." Has the queen moved?"

Mark asked, though he already knew the answer because of his Union sense. Mark was one of two living things larger than a toddler still in the area. Not counting the trees, of course. It was just him and the monster. In the real wilds, such a venture would get a guy killed, but Mark was stronger than the average person, this was rather well-hunted territory outside of the walls of Memphi, and Mark's team was busy with their own lives. Isoko was training and studying for her hovercar tests.

She had been busy with that stuff for the last month, but her training had kicked into higher gear in the last few days. She was probably learning basic hovercar repair from a trainer right now. Eliot had moved to the house with Mark and Isoko two weeks ago, but he was busy, too. Everyone wanted a piece of 'Very Human', because of what he could do for them with his Man-made Manipulation. It wasn't too bad being out in the wilds alone, though.

Eliot had made Mark an upgrade for his AI, Quark, but he usually got trashed every other outing anyway. Quark wasn't a real person. He had no soul. But he was competent when it came to information organization, and pinging off of the publicly available resources that hunters used around Memphi." And how's the scanner from Eliot, too?" Mark asked.

Quark spoke from Mark's backpack, into his earpiece, "The personal monster scanner from Cybersong is at 30% capability and is beginning to rapidly unravel, as Cybersong indicated it would once it was outside of his perceptions and passed the 3 hour mark. We have about 29 minutes of capability left in the scanner. It is showing that you and the monster and the mundane trees are the only living things within 100 meters.

My estimation is that the mirror monkey queen has not moved, but that she is prepared to burrow and escape as the reports have said, unless she thinks she can kill you, which, since you are solo, means she should still attack you. A query to Skywatch reveals the presence of three other burrows in the near area, though. She has routes to escape if she confronts you and she desires to flee. Those burrows are at 8 o'clock, 70 meters distant, 10 o'clock, 120 meters distant, and 3 o'clock, 180 meters distant."

Mark grunted in acknowledgment. He had seen two of those burrows and cleared them out because the mirror monkeys had been hiding in there. He had not seen or sensed the third burrow; it must have been empty. Skywatch was useful. Winter was almost here, in the leafless forests north of Memphi, yet snow had not fallen. It was mid-December, though, so the snow was bound to start falling soon.

Until then, Skywatch, the satellite systems of Memphi that oversaw everything that they could, was pretty much free to use by any slayer, hunter, or otherwise, out in the field. The bareness of the forests made queries to the system fast and easy, too. You could never have enough sensory abilities.

Mark might have been out here alone in the wilds, which was pretty stupid if you were a normal person, but as a tri-Talent with a Power that helped to boost his tier in every category, a Power to 'fly', somewhat, and a general immunity to almost all Mind Magic, Mark was one of the very few people in the world that could go out into the wilds like this and not be worried about dying. This still wasn't something he relished doing, but sometimes needs must, and this was one of those times.

This monster was a special kind of horror that had already torn three separate teams apart, and it needed a singular person to kill it. Mark had been granted free use of the Skywatch system to hunt the beast, and that is what he was going to do. Now that it was alone, it was time to end this. Mark beat his heart with Union, black veins extending out into the air, beyond his body, drawing in resilience and giving back weakness.

There wasn't a lot of life to connect to out here in the leafless, sleeping forest, now that Mark had killed all of the queen's defenders and it was mid December, but there was more than enough for his purposes. With a flex of his adamantium that held him off of the ground and allowed him to use his spear even more like an extension of his body, Mark spun his caltrops on the ground here and there, pinching the rocks that had grown over them, breaking those rock covers in the process.

The queen had been trying to tie him down with her stonekinesis. The queen had killed two people by subtly covering their boots in stone when they weren't looking, but Mark didn't have that issue. He wasn't standing on the ground. The queen roared in her cave, hating that she couldn't lock down the threat outside of her cave. Mark breathed in warmth from his surroundings, plummeting the air to a chill even as he warmed up quite nicely.

He exhaled white mist that he flowed toward the monster in the cave, feeling it out, cooling it down. The queen didn't react to that. Perhaps it merely felt colder? Hard to say. It couldn't tell Mark was using Union on it at all, which was par for the course with 'simple' monsters. Mark floated forward, black caltrops breaking hold on the bare ground every time the ground tried to swallow the caltrops. The queen roared in the cave— Mark's unionsense warned him of the attack before it happened.

The queen stood in her cave, deep in the cold dark, like a quiet vector of control, focused on Mark. She had subtle tendrils of stonekinesis threaded through the land, her intent to trap and harm Mark betrayed by the vector of her soul. But then her sense of self suddenly expanded outward, into the land under Mark. The land turned into a barbed spike, stabbing upward.

Mark pushed off of the ground to the right and gently slid to the left, keeping his adamantium in contact with the ground because he hadn't learned how to actually fly yet. Not for real. He was working on it, though. The spike missed Mark by meters, as Mark knew it would. Two more spikes erupted from the ground, trying to stab, to kill. Mark casually floated away from both attacks, seeing them coming from a mile away.

He floated forward, his spear at the ready, the black-capped silver length of metal floating with him. Four more times the queen roared in the dark. Four more times the ground spiked at Mark, and Mark slid around the spikes, wary for the actual fight. The ground spikes were real attacks, but the queen was rapidly realizing that they weren't going to work, and now she was focusing, attempting to spike the ground to surprise Mark. There was no surprising Mark in this way, though.

There was a reason that this monster had been marked as a high priority kill target for anyone ranked Yellow or above. There was a reason this thing had killed so many people, and not just because it was a spawner monster, laying clones down all the time that would grow into powerhouses, just like itself. Mark breathed in warmth and breathed out a chill, the air misting into threads of white that flowed into the world, into Mark's Union, into the queen in her hole.

Black veins extended out of Mark's body, threading through the air, turning invisible, as Mark reached near enough to the cave to fully latch onto the queen— The queen noticed, finally. She didn't escape, though. She could have escaped underground, making this kill a lot harder. But she roared with fury and raced out of her cave. She was a monstrous monkey the size of a hovercar with three arms, one of which was much larger than the others and which came out of her back, at a grotesque angle.

One leg was stubby, the other muscular and long, and she loped when she raced. Two faces roared on two sides of her malformed head, while her belly was distended with lumps, with more eggs. Her four eyes bored into Mark, though one of her eyes was too large for her face and peered off into the distance. It was possible that eye was nonfunctional. And then she latched on to Mark with her own true Power, and Mark saw what many other people would have seen before they were killed by the beast.

The queen became a copy of Mark. The same black webweave underarmor and overarmor, with his same backpack on his back, with bits of black metal stabbing into the ground, holding the queen in the air. Not-Mark twirled a silver spear with a black tip. The queen's face was exposed, like Mark, and Mark felt so damned odd to see himself as other people might have seen him. Not-Mark had solid black hair that drank in the light, blacker than his armor, while his eyes were silver and piercing.

He looked like a villain, with those black veins floating all around him. Not-Mark advanced, using an inferior copy of Mark's spear, jabbing forward like a wild man with no regard for how to fight at all. It didn't need a whole lot of knowledge, though. Mark flowed out of the way of the spear, using his own weapon to guide the queen's spear to the ground. The queen's spear touched down and stone blasted in every direction like shards of glass, even the dirt turning into more shards to inflict more damage.

Mark kept his cool, even as the shards slammed into his backpack and across his right side, like getting hit with a bunch of high-speed marbles. The webweave and armor held. Not-Mark pulled back and slashed forward, and Mark slapped down onto that spear, gaining height even as he forced his Union into the queen, drawing out all of her strength and making it Mark's own.

The queen attacked again, but this time with tiny bits of black metal that Mark deflected with his own small bits of metal, breaking the queen's 'metal' in the process. The queen's 'metal' bled, red waters splashing outward. Not-Mark screamed and tried attacking again, becoming a storm of metal bits and one very large spear, but Mark countered each attack, angling his adamantium to cut whatever the queen sent his way. The queen bled from everything she sent Mark's way, and still, she kept attacking.

The Mirror Monkey Queen was able to replicate most everything about a person, including their Powers, though she wasn't able to use them like their actual users. The report on her indicated that her Power was some sort of minor Reality Manipulation, marking her as an Arch-type monster. All of her progeny were similarly gifted, but to a much, much lesser degree. Mostly, they retained their stonekinesis. Perhaps, if this was a true Reality Manipulation monster, then Mark wouldn't even be out here.

Some superhero would have blasted the beast from the sky. But the queen's Power wasn't that great. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. She had still killed a lot of people, though. But Mark was stronger still. Union empowered him and weakened the queen. The queen's adamantium was just a part of the queen's body, and no substitute for the real thing. And she was tired, and getting more and more tired with every exchange. Mark was healthy as could be.

Mark floated backward, systematically cutting, carving, and when he could, he slammed his spear into not-Mark's stomach. The queen screamed as Mark ripped his spear out of not-Mark's belly, pulling out a stream of broken eggs and blood and tiny bodies with the action. The fight resumed. The slam of spear on spear continued to ring out into the chilling twilight, for the queen was still rather resilient. She was a top tier monster. A true killer. She had only been alive for several days, though.

She would not remain alive much longer. Mark got into the flow of battle while the queen lagged, stone layered onto her bleeding guts, holding her insides inside as much as she could. Blood still splashed everywhere— An opening. Mark slashed, and there went not-Mark's right leg, cut almost at the pelvis. The queen screamed as she went uncontrolled, blood freely flowing from her severed leg, spurting out red onto the brown ground. The land screamed with her.

She swung her spear, and the head transformed into sharpened stone a good four meters longer than it had been before. It was a feint, just like everything the monster did. It wasn't even really tired. It only appeared tired, because that made its targets drop their guard. But Mark could tell, with his unionsense, that the monster wasn't even fully committed to this fight. Not yet. Mark was trying to force it to fully commit, though, and so Mark retreated a meter, sliding away from the strike.

The blade came at Mark's head but the real attack was in the ground, already stabbing up at Mark, at the place where he had retreated. Mark pushed off of the ground with his adamantium, launching himself into the air and away from both strikes. He sailed 15 meters upward, and that's when the queen fully committed; Mark could tell, based on the queen's attack vector focusing fully on him. Not-Mark slipped under him, to where Mark would have fallen down.

The queen jabbed up with the spear, the head of the spear turning into five different spears, becoming an unequal mirroring of force. Mark made his own move, his heart, head, and lungs beating with adamant and weakness. He stabbed down with black veins like the shattering of a sky with dark lightning. In a single stroke, Mark overcame every defense of the queen, its multiple spears faltering away like a flower wilting in the sun. Not-Mark gasped in her sudden lack. It was like cutting the strings of a puppet.

The queen faltered to the ground, completely insensate. Mark buried his spear through the queen's head, down her neck, through her stomach and into the ground. It was not dead yet. Not by a long shot. Even with his weapon full through the creature's body, the creature was trying to rally. It was weird to kill something that looked like himself. Mark turned on the adamantium blender and turned the queen into little more than hunks of meat.

Normally, such destruction wasn't necessary, but the queen's vector still existed even when Mark chopped the body into pieces; her 'illusion' was stronger than it appeared to be. Her 'illusion' of taking Mark's own form and some of his Powers remained, even in death, until Mark started really going at it. Mark carved off not-Mark's head and then carved that head into mush. He turned the body and 'webweave' into scattered black. Eventually, the body pieces started to transform back into the queen, but not really.

Eventually, Mark saw human flesh turn into thick monster hide and white fur and boils of tumors. The 'illusionary' bits of the monster's adamantium mostly became stone, but some turned into fingers and toes. The queen's many copies of Mark's alchemical silver spear became an arm and Mark chopped up the arm, turning it into several arms that were more real than the single one had been. Dripping with blood that was not his own and breathing evenly, Mark surveyed the scene. The queen's vector was fully gone.

She was dead, for sure. He had needed to blender every single clone of the queen, too, because those little shits also had the same ability to survive their mirror dying. But Mark had needed to go further with the queen than he had with her progeny. But it was finally done. Mark breathed in the cold, twilight air, relaxing in the bloody desolation. Everywhere, white monkey bodies lay in pieces. Many, many pieces. Blood covered the bare trees and the ground, collecting into puddles. And Mark hovered above it all.

With a breath of purity/impurity, Mark cleaned himself off. He breathed in sustenance and exhaled deprivation, to rebuild himself after the battle, though there wasn't much life around here to work with, except for the sleeping trees. He was kinda hungry. His muscles were vaguely sore from the strain of moving like he had been moving for the last two hours of battle, but the soreness was a good soreness. … Was it over, though?" I can't feel any other monsters in the area."

Mark took a moment to make sure that was a true statement, and it seemed true enough. The trees were asleep and some of them were monstrous, but that was perfectly fine. The mirror monkeys had killed everything else in the area. Mark nodded, and then asked, "Quark? What's Skywatch say?" Mark looked out at the land while he waited for Quark to do his queries and come back with answers. … he waited some more? Mark frowned.

"Quark?" When no answer came, Mark let his spear float to the side while he looked at his backpack— There was a big hole in his backpack." Ah, fuck." Mark jangled his backpack and bits of metal slipped out of a gaping hole, scattering debris onto the ground." Ahh, fuck!" Mark complained, frowning.

"I thought that stone swipe had missed me. Shit fuck." He looked closer at his backpack, muttering, "And I got the smallest, tightest backpack I could get. It was tier 3 webweave, too… Shit." He stuck his hand through the entire backpack.

"She got me good, didn't she… Well." Mark pulled out half of a broken phone.

"I should say she got you good, didn't she, Quark." Quark didn't answer because, of course, Quark had failed to survive yet another encounter." Bah!" Mark slung the backpack back onto his back, frowning at everything. He stared at the overcast sky, at the cloudy horizon in every direction. The sun was on the horizon out there, somewhere. Down here, the land was pretty much the same in every direction; bare trees, ready for winter snows. Night was coming on, and it was gonna be a cold one. … Mark was kinda lost."

Which direction is Memphi?" Quark was not around to answer.