Chương 204: B2 Chapter 204: Get Rank One

The Carrier released them without slowing down. One moment Meno's SpaceAssault frame was locked against the outer hull beside Aurelia's, and the next the clamps opened and both machines drifted free while the Carrier continued toward Earth at absurd speed. They inherited all of that momentum. Turning around no longer meant going backward; they could rotate, burn sideways, or thrust against the vector, but actually bleeding off the Carrier's speed would take time they did not have.

With no ground or friction to help, every change had to come from the thrusters. They were already moving stupidly fast. Unfortunately, so was everything else. The Olutron remained behind them on the same Earthward line and kept gaining, its huge dark shape taking up more of Meno's HUD as the distance closed. For once, being chased was useful.

They needed it to catch them before it caught Earth, which meant slowing just enough to become the better target without dumping so much speed that they entered the fight helpless. Meno rotated until the Olutron stayed behind his left shoulder, then pushed Aurelia far enough to his right that one attack could not catch both Frames. Ahead of them, the Carrier kept shrinking.

"If there are adds, we move sideways and prune them with the beam cannons before we engage," Meno said.

"If it ignores us and keeps going?" Aurelia asked.

"Then it's a wash. Don't do anything stupid like trying to ram it."

"Can you lay off? Nobody forced you to come."

"Just shut up," Meno said. Aurelia burned farther right while Meno broke left. The Olutron answered. Ten spherical machines detached from its main body and split around it, five spreading high and five low until they formed a loose mesh between the Olutron and the two SpaceAssault Frames. Red markers populated Meno's HUD while the Olutron itself began bleeding relative speed. Ten adds, and the boss was slowing to deal with them. Aggro confirmed. The first objective was already done.

The Olutron had stopped prioritizing Earth and committed to the fight. Now came the part that could kill them.

"Spawns," Meno said.

"Going beam." They kept bleeding relative speed while moving laterally in opposite directions, stretching the formation and forcing the Spawns to split instead of collapsing onto one target. One sphere accelerated toward Meno as the beam cannons rotated over their shoulders and extended into firing position. The targeting overlays locked. LOCK. FIRE. Two enormous beams crossed the darkness and hit the same Spawn almost at once.

Its shield flared hard, but when the glare cleared, the sphere was still there and still accelerating toward Meno. The beam cannon had failed its only job before the fight had properly started.

"Stupid useless weapon. Where is the Absorption Pierce? Where?" Meno said.

"You deleted it alongside Veyrath," Aurelia said.

"Now do what you do best and destroy them." Meno folded the cannon away as the Spawn opened fire. Thin energy beams reached him first, several missing when he changed angle while the rest chewed through his shield in hard blue-white flashes. He kept accelerating with the sword already extended. The Spawn dodged the thrust. Meno let the miss carry him past, fired one palm thruster while cutting the opposite foot, and rolled the entire Frame through the failed attack.

The blade whipped around with the rotation and came back across the Spawn from the side. Miss became angle. ROTATE. SLASH. The sphere split through the middle, both halves continuing along separate vectors while Meno completed the spin and stabilized. Aurelia's target reached her a moment later, but she had already seen the dodge. Instead of stabbing, she brought the sword sideways across her body and ignited both foot thrusters. The Spawn evaded the thrust that never came and moved straight across the blade. BURN.

CUT. The sphere came apart.

"Two," Aurelia said.

"Not bad," Meno said. Eight adds remained. Six sections of the Olutron's outer body opened. Thick cylindrical assemblies rotated out from the central mass, and he knew what they were before the HUD finished identifying them. Railguns. Six of them. Meno and Aurelia split in opposite directions without discussing it as targeting predictions painted six lines across his display. [KINETIC WARNING] The Olutron fired, and the rounds simply crossed the positions they had occupied and vanished into space.

Their shields never reacted. At range, movement was the only defense. See the firing solution and leave before the rounds existed. If one of those guns caught them without room to move, there was nothing to block, or absorb.

"Do not try to tank those," Meno said.

"You don't say," Aurelia replied. The remaining Spawns spread across the firing lanes instead of diving straight in, cutting off clean escape vectors while the Olutron tracked their movement. Meno burned upward out of the next railgun solution and found two Spawns already closing off the route, one above and one below. He cut through the upper sphere on the way past, but the lower stayed outside sword range and raked his shield with energy fire while his existing momentum carried him toward another bad angle.

Boss mechanic overlapping add mechanic. Genius encounter design. Aurelia came across his flank before the Spawn could finish the burst. She made no attempt at a clean strike; she drove her entire Frame across Meno's path with the sword braced through the center. IMPACT. The Spawn shattered around the blade. Meno corrected just as another railgun warning started painting across his HUD.

"Had that," he said.

"Too slow," Aurelia said. They split again, and Aurelia stopped trying to fly like Meno. Until then she had been correcting every vector after launch, shaping movement with palms, back, and feet the way he did. It fought everything Heavy Striker had trained into her. Aurelia had always been about choosing one committed line and making the other person regret standing on it. So she went back to that. Commit to the vector. Let momentum carry. Then choose the next one. BURN. HOLD.

One Spawn tried to evade her approach. Aurelia let it. She read where the dodge would finish, killed most of her thrust just long enough to break the prediction, then relaunched straight into the position it had chosen. BURN AGAIN. Her sword punched through the center of the sphere. Clean.

"I figured it out," Aurelia said. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Egocheck. Don't get carried away." Heavy Striker. Different game, same idiot. The Spawn count had dropped enough for Meno to finally get a clean line on the Olutron. He swung the beam cannon over his shoulder and fired before the next railgun cycle. White light crashed into the huge machine, its shield flared, and the armor beneath remained untouched. Aurelia came from the opposite side without bothering with her cannon. She burned straight through the glowing field and drove her sword into the armor.

Metal the size of a building peeled away. There it was. Energy stopped at the shield. Physical attacks went through.

"Cannon is trash," Meno said as he folded it away.

"Big slash only," Aurelia said. The Olutron folded its railguns away and rebuilt itself around the fight. Armor closed over the gun assemblies, the central mass lengthened into a huge bipedal shape, and two interlocking arms formed with blades extending from each hand. Even crouched, it stood nearly ten times taller than either SpaceAssault Frame. Meno did not care.

He stayed high around the head and shoulders while Aurelia worked below, committing hard to each line, cutting a joint, then burning clear before the Olutron could answer. Meno pulled the guard high and she wrecked an elbow. He crossed to the other side and drew the blade away while she tore into a knee. One draws. One hits. Bait. Dodge. Slash. They had rhythm.

"Left elbow," Meno said.

"Already there." Aurelia hit it before Meno finished the call. On the next pass, the Olutron changed the rule. Aurelia carved through the damaged arm and started her usual exit burn. Meno went high to pull the response, but the Olutron did not follow him. It fired sideways instead, intercepting the exact line Aurelia always used to disengage. The shoulder hit her like a wall and threw her into a spin.

"It learned your cancel," Meno said.

"I noticed!"

"Change it."

"While spinning?!" She hammered short bursts through her palms and back, trying to recover control as the Olutron folded its blades away and brought all six railguns back online. Meno crossed Aurelia's targeting line, and all six barrels swung after him. Her marker stabilized. Railguns still needed a firing solution, which meant the counter remained simple: make the gun commit, then leave. TRACK ME. WAIT. MOVE. The barrels settled, and Meno burned sideways a fraction before they fired.

Six rounds crossed where he had been and disappeared into space.

"See? Easy," Meno said.

"You almost died."

"Almost means DPS." Then the Olutron stopped trying to kill them efficiently. At first, Meno thought the Spawns were just missing. Their energy fire kept clipping around his feet, palms, and back instead of center mass. The Olutron's sword pressure changed too, no longer chasing clean hits but herding each dodge onto narrower vectors before unfolding the railguns. Then Meno understood: it was deleting their movement first, pruning thrusters until every future railgun solution became easier.

Piece of shit had learned the build.

"Protect your thrusters," Meno said. One Spawn reached Meno's lower frame at exactly the wrong moment. He cut another machine out of his path, shifted right, and fired the foot thrusters to clear the next angle, but energy fire had already torn through one assembly. Meno corrected on instinct and immediately overdid it. With thrust missing on one side, the clean lateral burn twisted into a crooked rotation just as the Olutron opened into railgun form. Six barrels came out.

Meno fired the remaining foot thruster and both palms, trying to flatten the spin, but every correction cost him more of the vector he needed to escape. The six targeting lines settled over him before he could clear any of them. Aurelia slammed into his side. The impact knocked Meno out of the firing solution as the Olutron fired, all six rounds ripping through the space he had just occupied. Her momentum carried her straight across Meno's path, leaving her back exposed.

Two Spawns raked her with energy fire and killed one rear thruster cluster before she could recover. The Olutron came through next at full burn, its blade tearing across her lower frame as the giant machine blasted past and continued deep beyond the fight. [THRUSTER FAILURE] [SECONDARY FAILURE] [MOVEMENT CONTROL DEGRADED]"Why did you do that?" Meno asked.

"Shut up and move." Meno burned toward her, but the remaining Spawns folded into the gap. He cut one out of his path while Aurelia took another from above, rotating the sword through its center because her arms still worked even if her acceleration did not. Before Meno could close the distance, a third sphere tore through what remained of her rear propulsion. Her marker changed. [MOBILITY FAILURE] The HUD stopped projecting escape vectors for her Frame.

Aurelia was stranded on the flank when the Olutron turned toward her. Its bipedal form opened and six railguns rotated into view, but she had no foot thrust, no rear acceleration, and no lateral escape left. Railguns were survivable at range only as long as you could move. Aurelia could not.

"Meno," she said.

"I'm coming."

"You're too far."

"No." The six barrels finished rotating onto one target.

"Goodbye, Meno." No. Meno cut the first Spawn horizontally, carried the rotation through the wreckage, and split the second vertically before going full burn toward her. Still too far. Faster. Aurelia dying was not an available result. Meno did not care about the math, the distance, or the stupid piece-of-shit alien robot deciding otherwise.

"FASTER."

"Meno—""SHUT UP!" The Olutron fired as Meno reached Aurelia. Six railgun rounds came at them together. No shield, no cover, no time to drag her clear. Try to get through me. Go ahead. Try it. Meno rolled his Frame side-on to the Olutron and brought the sword across his body. Too soon was too fast. Too fast was too slow. Too slow was Aurelia dying. The six trajectories converged across his body. NOW. SLASH. The blade carved through all six trajectories in one vertical sweep.

Six rounds became twelve fragments that screamed past on either side.

"What the fuck?" Aurelia shouted. The Olutron was already loading the next volley. Meno could not babysit her through another shot, then another, waiting for one mistimed deflect to delete them both. He went straight for the guns instead. Full burn. Every meter he accelerated toward the Olutron shortened the next timing window, so Meno changed the mechanic. Accelerate between volleys. Kill his movement before impact. Deflect. Accelerate again. The railguns fired. BRAKE. SLASH.

Meno dumped thrust against his own vector and swung through the volley as it reached him. Six rounds shattered across the blade. Full burn again.

"Meno, get away from it!" Aurelia shouted. The Olutron fired again before Meno could reach melee range. Another full stop would cost too much approach speed, so he burned hard sideways, changed the relative angle, and killed his movement only for the fraction of a second he needed. SIDE BURN. STOP. SLASH. Fragments tore past meters from his shoulders. Meno accelerated again, closer now, faster, with less time before the next shot. The fourth volley came as he entered near-melee range.

There was no setup distance left, no clean plane, and no time to brake. The rounds were already on him before he finished processing the muzzle flash. Wrong angle. Make a new one. Meno broke his approach vector and rolled the SpaceAssault Frame into a full corkscrew, carrying the sword through the rotation. CRESCENT SLASH. The curved cut ripped through the incoming spread. Broken rounds flashed past, and Meno came out of the corkscrew already inside the railguns.

"Got you." The Olutron began unfolding back into its blade form. Too slow. Meno was already on it before the weapons finished deploying. Everything he had been holding back went into the sword. SLASH SLASH SLASH SLASH SLASH. Targeting priority, clean rotations, efficiency. None of it mattered anymore. Just delete. A gun mount disappeared. Then the shoulder around it. Then a joint. Delete the arm. Delete the gun. Delete the next piece. SLASH. SLASH. SLASH. Turn this piece of shit into confetti.

By the time the transformation finished, half the Olutron's upper body was missing. Its remaining blade snapped up and caught Meno's next attack. Parry. Fine. Meno drew back for another huge swing. The Olutron raised its blade to block. There. It had learned him too. Show it the attack. Make it believe. FORWARD BURN. Meno accelerated into the swing, and the Olutron committed its blade across the line. Then he stopped. FULL BACK. Meno blasted away as the block cut through nothing. Reverse. FORWARD SLASH.

He drove straight through the opening and buried the sword in the Olutron's centerline. The armor split. White light erupted from inside. Too bright. His HUD filled with warnings as the exposed reactor surged past anything that looked like a normal damage state. [REACTOR INSTABILITY] [CATASTROPHIC FAILURE] Self-destruction. Meno turned and dumped everything into thrust. For once, distance mattered in the useful direction: get clear, get Aurelia clear. Then he checked her marker. She had not moved.

The HUD did the calculation for him: distance to the Olutron, expanding blast radius, Meno's velocity, Aurelia's position, remaining thrust. He ran it again. Same result. Again. Same. Everything in his head went quiet. Too close. Too slow. All that timing, all those impossible deflects, all those perfect cuts, and none of it had bought enough. Meno had finally been too slow.

"Sorry."

"For what?"

"I was too slow." The warnings kept flashing at the edge of his vision.

"It's okay," Aurelia said.

"No."

"Meno. It's okay." She had the same numbers. She knew there was nowhere left to go.

"I'm glad it was you, idiot." Anger hit him harder than fear.

"DAMMIT!" The Olutron was still charging. Still building. That meant the explosion had not reached full yield yet. If Meno triggered the failure early, maybe the blast stayed smaller. If he drove his own reactor into the Olutron's and overloaded both at once, maybe the reactions interfered, two negatives canceled each other out, and the energy went somewhere else. Maybe that was complete bullshit. Running was zero percent. Bullshit was higher than zero.

Meno flipped the Frame around and burned straight back toward the exposed core.

"Meno?"

"Never ran from a boss in my life. This zero-skill trashcan isn't about to out-pump me."

"Don't do it, Meno. You can still get away. Don't you dare." He opened the reactor controls at full acceleration, and the HUD immediately drowned in warnings. [EMERGENCY REACTOR PURGE] [PILOT SURVIVAL NOT GUARANTEED] [CONFIRM?] YES. A second confirmation appeared. YES, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. Then the interface stopped mattering. Only target. Only distance. The Olutron's core swelled ahead of him, white swallowing metal until the machine looked like a sun trying to happen.

Meno kept burning toward it, and the warning finally became real. He might actually die. Losing the Frame, wiping, waking up wrecked in the XTachyon afterward, those were the good outcomes. Maybe nothing after this. His mother flashed through his head. Then rank one. Then Aurelia.

"Aurelia, if you live, promise me something."

"What?"

"Get rank one." Silence. She understood. Of course she did.

"Fuck you."

"Promise." Another beat.

"…I promise." Good. That was enough. The Olutron's core expanded until it filled almost everything ahead of him. Meno's own reactor was already going critical behind his armor, heat warnings and containment failures stacking faster than he could process them. Two suns about to collide. FULL BURN. TEN MILLION CHAIN! Closer. FULL BURN. JUST ONE MORE HIT! The core swallowed his vision. FULL SEND. Meno flew straight into the light and detonated his Frame. Then there was nothing.