Chương 133: 132: Out The Nest

The Nest opened around them. The combatants burst through a reinforced doorway and into a vast hall where rows of civilians, technicians, and personnel were already fleeing in every direction. Some stumbled through emergency exits while others pressed themselves against distant walls, desperately trying to put as much space between themselves and the fighting as possible. Several enforcers raised their weapons toward Clock.

"That's him!"

"He's the intruder!"

"Take the shot!" Another enforcer grabbed the barrel of a nearby weapon and shoved it downward.

"Are you insane? It doesn't matter right now!" He pointed toward Apotheosis.

"That thing is the priority!" Apotheosis lunged. Clock met it head-on. Their fists collided. BOOOOOOM! The impact sent a circular shockwave across the hall, shattering glass partitions and throwing abandoned equipment across the floor. Clock's feet slid backward several meters, while Apotheosis twisted with the force of the collision and used the momentum to swing its opposite arm around. The backhand caught Clock across the jaw. KRAK! His head snapped sideways, but he remained standing.

Clock slowly turned his face back toward the creature. His expression had changed.

"That strength…" Apotheosis was already moving again. It came forward with frightening coordination, its long body folding and unfolding between strikes as though it had been designed specifically for close combat. Its crimson tail whipped behind it, allowing it to pivot instantly, while its claws struck toward Clock from angles that should have been impossible for its elongated limbs. Clock blocked one. Caught another. Redirected a third. The creature adapted.

It ducked beneath his counterattack and swept its tail across the floor. Clock vanished upward, using telekinesis to pull himself clear as the tail carved through the hall beneath him. KRAAASH! The flooring split apart. Apotheosis launched after him, moving through the air like something swimming through deep water, its translucent membranes fluttering as it twisted between the suspended debris. Clock met it halfway, but instead of throwing another punch, he swung his guitar upward like a weapon. CLANG!

Apotheosis's claws struck the instrument's reinforced body, the impact forcing Clock backward without breaking his stance. He immediately rotated the guitar and caught another strike against its broad surface, using it as a shield before sweeping it sideways and forcing the creature away. Apotheosis adapted. Thin, translucent bubbles suddenly formed along its elongated wrists, shimmering with compressed Apis as it raised its arms.

Clock's next swing struck one of the strange shields and rebounded with a sharp BOOM, the barrier rippling without breaking. Ouro convulsed as dozens of snakes erupted from her body, writhing outward for several seconds before rapidly retreating beneath her flesh. Her legs and lower body twisted and reshaped, bones shifting as her form lengthened into a powerful serpentine tail, black scales spreading across it in intricate white-violet patterns. She had been struggling to keep pace with the others.

This form was faster. Much faster. Her silver eyes sharpened as her body coiled beneath her, and she launched herself forward with a violent snap of her tail. Her fangs gleamed as she lunged for Apotheosis. The creature reacted instantly, its body folding backward as it evaded the strike. Ouro pursued. Apotheosis twisted through the air, and the momentum carried both of them toward the enormous doors. KRAAASH! The doors exploded inward.

Beyond them lay another chamber, vast enough to resemble a ballroom, with polished floors, towering pillars, suspended lights, and enormous decorative arches stretching toward the ceiling. People screamed and scattered as the two creatures burst through the entrance. Apotheosis struck the floor, rolled once, and immediately sprang upright, its crimson tail sweeping behind it as Ouro slid across the polished floor and coiled herself into a ready stance. Clock descended through the ruined doorway.

Apotheosis attacked again. This time Ouro entered the fight from the side. Her body twisted with serpentine fluidity as she slipped beneath Apotheosis's sweeping claws. Her torso coiled around a pillar, using it as an anchor before she launched herself sideways, her mace arcing toward the creature's head. Apotheosis ducked. The mace demolished the pillar behind it. BOOOOM! Ouro's body twisted unnaturally as she recovered, serpentine movements allowing her to change direction in midair.

She landed on the wall rather than the floor, claws gripping the surface before she pushed herself toward Apotheosis again. Apotheosis's tendrils snapped toward her. Ouro twisted around them. She moved like a serpent through tall grass, every movement flowing into the next as she slipped between its attacks and struck from constantly changing angles. Apotheosis followed her with frightening precision. It caught her wrist. Ouro's expression shifted. The creature swung.

She was hurled across the ballroom and crashed through another set of doors. KRAAASH!

"OURO!" Clock shouted. Apotheosis turned toward him. Clock was already there. His fist connected with its face. THOOOOOOM! Apotheosis's head snapped sideways, but instead of being launched away, its body rotated with the impact. Its crimson tail whipped around like a counterweight, and the creature used the momentum to swing itself back toward Clock. Its arm came around. Clock raised his forearm. BOOM! The force drove him backward through the ballroom floor.

Clock caught himself before falling completely through the newly formed crater as dust and fragments of polished stone rained around him. Across the ruined floor, Apotheosis landed in a crouch, its elongated body flexing beneath its crimson-indigo scales, golden spots glimmering faintly across its flesh. Without wasting a moment, the creature threw back its head and opened its mouth impossibly wide. SKRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! The sound was not merely loud. It was physical.

The scream carried extremely low-frequency vibrations capable of travelling through enormous structures, foundations, walls, machinery, and the very framework of reality itself. Its frequency transcended ordinary boundaries of space and time, propagating through matter and phenomenon alike as the ballroom began to tremble beneath the resonance. VRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMM! Pillars groaned while metal screamed and structural beams bent under the pressure. KRRRNNNGGG! Glass shattered throughout the chamber, SHRAAAAK!

, and the vibration passed directly through Clock's body. His organs lurched, his bones rattled, and his vision blurred as the resonance reached deeper than flesh, destabilizing concepts and interfering with the cohesion of phenomena around him, shredding delicate interactions between cause, force, and matter. Clock clenched his teeth.

"Ghh…" He raised one hand, and telekinesis snapped around Apotheosis's jaw. KRRK! Its mouth slammed shut, abruptly trapping the scream inside its skull and reducing the overwhelming roar to a distorted vibration that continued to shake the creature's body. Clock's other hand flicked toward his guitar, his fingers striking the strings with precise force. TWAAAAANG! A counter-frequency erupted from the instrument, tuned specifically against Apotheosis's resonance.

The two waves collided in the space between them, producing a violent interference pattern that seemed to fold the air itself. VMMMMMMMMM— BOOOOOOOOM! The frequencies detonated midair. A circular shockwave erupted through the ballroom, blasting dust, debris, furniture, and nearby personnel across the chamber. Pillars cracked, windows exploded, and several enforcers were thrown from their feet while Clock slid backward several metres, his boots carving lines through the floor.

His ears rang and his muscles trembled as the resonance left him momentarily disoriented. He clenched his jaw and forced himself upright. He was too late. Apotheosis had already moved. The creature blurred across the ballroom and seized an enforcer who had barely managed to raise his weapon.

"Intruder!" The word had scarcely left the man's mouth when Apotheosis's crimson tail snapped upward. SHRRK! The pointed tip pierced directly through his chest. The enforcer screamed and desperately planted explosives against the creature's body, but they detonated harmlessly across its flesh. The Apis emanating from Apotheosis overwhelmed the Apis within his suit, disrupting its systems and preventing him from escaping. Apotheosis held him suspended upon its tail for a moment, staring directly into his eyes.

Something shifted beneath the enforcer's skin. A strange bulge travelled upward beneath his ribcage. His scream became shriller.

"What… what is that?!" Apotheosis remained silent. Its tail withdrew. The enforcer collapsed to his knees, clutching his stomach as his entire body convulsed. For a moment, nothing happened. His abdomen tightened, his back arched, and a wet cracking sound emerged from somewhere deep within him. KRRRKKK… Something ruptured inside his torso. SPLAAAT! A slick, eel-like creature burst through his abdomen, twisting violently as it emerged, its pale body coated in blood and internal fluids.

Before the enforcer could even understand what had happened, the newborn Nightmare snapped its jaws around his shoulder.

"GET IT OFF ME!" Another bulge moved beneath his skin. His abdomen split again. Another creature forced its way through. A third followed. The realization finally reached his terrified expression. Apotheosis had not merely wounded him. It had planted something inside him. Eggs. They had already hatched. The newborn creatures crawled from his body, feeding upon their host as they emerged, their jaws tearing through flesh while their wet bodies writhed across him. SPLURCH.

His screams degraded into wet, broken sounds as the creatures consumed him from within. Clock was still recovering from the resonance, one hand pressed against the side of his head as he forced his senses back into alignment.

"Damn it…" A flash of emerald light suddenly erupted across the ballroom. Korhess's flames descended upon the dying enforcer and the creatures surrounding him. FWOOSH! Fire consumed them. The screaming man disappeared beneath the emerald inferno, along with the newborn creatures, while Apotheosis was caught at the edge of the blast. Its pale flesh ignited. WHOOOOSH! The creature's eyes narrowed as flames swallowed its silhouette, but Apotheosis blurred a fraction of a second before the fire intensified. FSSHHH!

It reappeared several metres away, smoke curling from its shoulders while its scales remained intact beneath the scorched flesh. Clock finally looked up. His violet eyes locked onto it. Apotheosis stared back. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. For several seconds, neither moved. Around them, the ballroom continued to burn, emerald flames crawling across shattered pillars while smoke drifted through the ruined chamber.

Apotheosis's golden spots slowly began to glow through the haze, and its crimson tail swept lazily across the floor. A faint smile formed across its inhuman mouth. Clock's expression hardened. He understood now. The thing before them had just demonstrated another method of reproduction. It could turn the living into incubators.... Korhess entered the ballroom. She raised her spear, fire gathering around its tip before erupting outward in a sweeping wave of flames. FWOOSH! Apotheosis opened its mouth.

A torrent of boiling water erupted from its throat. SHHHHHHAAAAA! The two attacks collided in midair, producing a violent cloud of steam that rapidly expanded across the ballroom and obscured everything beyond a few meters. Ouro moved through it. Her serpents lashed outward like living whips, snapping toward Apotheosis from several directions while her chains simultaneously flew from opposite sides, forcing the creature to defend itself from attacks coming from every angle. Apotheosis twisted between them.

One serpent passed beneath its arm. A chain struck its shield. Another serpent nearly caught its leg. The creature suddenly opened one of the tendrils beside its face. PSSSHHHH! A dense cloud of black ink erupted across the battlefield. The substance spread rapidly through the lingering steam, swallowing the chamber in a darkness that did more than obscure vision. Perception itself began to fail within it.

Shapes lost their edges, distances became impossible to judge, and even the sounds of movement seemed displaced from their sources, footsteps arriving from one direction while the bodies that produced them seemed to occupy another. Clock's eyes narrowed. His violet gaze flickered across the darkness, trying to reconstruct the battlefield from fragments of movement and sound, but every piece of information contradicted the last.

His head turned sharply as he heard something behind him, only for the sound to suddenly come from his left.

"Damn." He raised a hand, violet energy gathering around his fingers, but hesitated. He could still attack. He simply could no longer trust where to aim.

"This isn't ordinary ink." A few metres away, Korhess stood perfectly still, her spear lowered slightly as her mismatched eyes searched the blackened air. Her ears snapped upward, listening to sounds that seemed to crawl through the darkness from impossible directions.

"Verily," she murmured, her voice low and measured.

"This beast hath cast forth a false night, one wherein the very paths of perception become tangled roots." She slowly turned her head. Her emerald flames flickered around her antlers.

"Mine eyes behold one road, whilst mine ears proclaim another." Clock clenched his jaw.

"It's scrambling spatial perception." Korhess's grip tightened around her spear.

"Nay. It doth more than blind." The black ink continued to spread. Korhess's expression hardened.

"It hath muddied the grove wherein the senses take root." A faint movement passed somewhere behind them. Both turned. Nothing. Clock's jaw clenched.

"Where is it?" Korhess's ears twitched again. A wet scrape echoed from somewhere within the darkness.

"Close," she whispered. Clock's violet eyes narrowed.

"How close?" Korhess slowly raised her spear.

"Near enough to strike." Something moved through the ink. Neither of them could see what it was.... Behind them, more people fled through the enormous chamber while enforcers struggled to maintain their positions.

"Everyone get back!"

"Clear the hall!"

"Forget the intruder! Just get people out!"

"Which one is the intruder?!"

"The one fighting the monster!"

"They're all monsters!" Korhess felt something approach. A fist. She twisted. The punch passed dangerously close to her stomach. Blue-gold mist erupted around her body. She teleported. A heartbeat later, she reappeared against the ceiling, planted one hoof against the stone, and launched herself downward with impossible acceleration, her horns aimed directly at Apotheosis. The creature looked up. It moved.

Korhess passed through the space where its body had been, her horns missing it by a fraction as Apotheosis twisted aside with impossible speed. Its long hand closed around her hoof. For an instant, Korhess hung upside down. Apotheosis swung. WHOOOOM! Korhess was hurled across the ballroom, but she twisted in midair and released her spear. The weapon shot backward toward Apotheosis. The creature caught it effortlessly.

For a moment, it simply held the spear, studying the weapon in its hand before flicking it back toward her with a casual motion. Korhess's hand snapped out.... Ouro's chain caught the spear first. CLINK! The chain wrapped around the shaft and redirected its momentum, guiding it safely back into Korhess's grasp before another chain swept through the darkness and began absorbing the ink from the air. The black substance recoiled toward the links, vanishing into them until their surfaces turned completely dark.

Ouro barely paused. She launched herself upward, her feet cratering the floor beneath her as her now fully human body coiled through the air. At the apex of her ascent, she suddenly leaned forward and retched. A long, curved bone erupted from her mouth. KRRRKKK! The bone rapidly unfolded, branching and reshaping itself into a massive, ornate bow that extended far beyond her own height.

Korhess and Clock both stared for a moment, their expressions betraying genuine surprise at the grotesque weapon taking shape before them. Ouro caught the bow with both feet and braced herself atop it in midair, her legs locking around the weapon while both hands seized the string. Her entire body became a living mechanism for generating tension, muscles tightening as the bow bent farther and farther beneath the force she applied. Apotheosis's translucent wrist-shields appeared again. Ouro released. THWAAAAANG!

The bowstring snapped forward with explosive force, launching a massive bone arrow across the ballroom. The projectile struck the shield. KRAAASH! The translucent barrier shattered instantly, fragments of light scattering through the air as the bone arrow continued forward and punched cleanly through Apotheosis's arm, burying itself deep within the flesh. Apotheosis staggered. Ouro descended. She landed lightly on both feet, already changing again as a serpent slithered from her back.

Its jaws opened impossibly wide. Ouro shoved the massive bow directly into its mouth. The serpent swallowed it whole. GULP. The creature disappeared beneath her flesh as though it had never existed, the weapon returning to whatever impossible anatomy Ouro used to store her arsenal. Her legs twisted immediately afterward, reforming into their serpentine shape as scales spread across her skin. Korhess's ears remained raised. Clock finally had a moment to look at her properly.

He had never seen Ouro in this hybrid form before, and his expression betrayed his surprise as his gaze traveled over her serpentine lower body and the black scales patterned with white-violet markings. Ouro caught him staring. A knowing smirk curled across her lips. Clock immediately looked away.... Apotheosis glanced down at the arrow protruding from its arm. It slowly wrapped its fingers around the shaft and pulled it free. SHLK. The wound did not bleed. Instead, it sizzled. HSSSSSSS...

Darkened flesh curled inward around the opening, charring as the venom spread through the surrounding tissue. The arrow had carried an absurd concentration of poison, enough to overwhelm the biology of almost anything it touched, yet Apotheosis simply stared at the wound as its monstrous physiology began dismantling the toxin faster than it could take hold. The corrupted flesh twitched once. The poison burned itself out. Apotheosis flexed its arm. It tossed the arrow aside. CLINK. Its gaze returned to Ouro.

"You are considerably weaker than the others." Ouro's smile faded slightly. Apotheosis examined the wound in its arm as the damaged flesh began knitting itself together.

"Yet you survive blows that should kill you." Its gaze shifted toward the chains wrapped around her body.

"Those chains absorb what would otherwise destroy you. Though even they have limits. If I continue increasing my strength, they will eventually fail." Ouro's forked tongue flickered between her teeth. Apotheosis continued.

"Your snakes carry poison, and your weapons are different." It glanced toward the shattered remnants of its wrist-shield.

"They do not merely pierce the body. They interfere with defenses, powers, abilities." Ouro's expression became wary. Apotheosis suddenly smiled.

"I like that." Ouro blinked. Apotheosis brought its hands together. The sound echoed through the ballroom.

"Smart." Ouro stared at the creature for a moment before her own grin returned.

"Thank you?" Clock lowered his guitar slightly while Korhess retrieved her spear from Ouro's chain. Around them, surviving personnel continued fleeing through the enormous chamber while the remaining enforcers struggled to decide whether they should be watching Clock, Ouro, Korhess, or the creature standing between them. Apotheosis slowly raised its wounded arm. The damaged flesh had already finished knitting itself together. Its gaze moved from one fighter to the next. Clock with his guitar.

Korhess with her spear. Ouro surrounded by chains and serpents. Its crimson tail slowly swept behind it. The creature's posture lowered once more. This time, none of them mistook what came next. Apotheosis was no longer testing them. It was studying them.... They did not give it the luxury. Experience, they understood, could trump raw power. Korhess clopped forward, her hooves striking the floor as Apotheosis's throat swelled.

Another torrent of boiling water erupted from its mouth, but she slipped through the stream as though it were nothing, driving her spear straight toward its throat. Apotheosis twisted to evade. Clock dragged its head back into line with telekinesis. SHRRK. The spear opened a line across its throat. Blue blood spilled freely as Apotheosis recoiled, its body pouncing backward. A few drops struck the carpet. For one heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the blood moved. Ssssss…

It spread across the floor like something alive. The puddle convulsed. KRRRKKK! Something erupted from it. The new creature landed on all fours with a wet SPLAT, its elongated, eel-like body immediately curling into a predatory stance. It was roughly the size of a jeep, with slick grey-brown flesh, a narrow serpentine torso, elongated limbs, and cobalt eyes burning beneath its low skull. It hissed. HSSSSSSSS! Korhess barely had time to turn before the offspring lunged. Clock appeared between them.

His fist drove straight into its skull. THOOOOOOM! The force crushed its head and upper body inward like a metal can beneath a hydraulic press, killing it instantly. The remains were launched down the corridor as the shockwave blasted dust and debris from the walls. Clock remained standing. His violet gaze shifted toward Apotheosis. The creature stared back. Apotheosis looked at the blood on the floor, then at the distant remains of its offspring, and finally returned its attention to Clock.

"You are strong too." Its tendrils slowly lifted.

"But I asked a question." Its cobalt eyes hardened.

"Did you hurt my mother?" Apotheosis's gaze shifted toward Ouro.

"What if we did…" Its golden spots suddenly ignited. Intense golden light erupted across its crimson-indigo body, each spot blazing like a miniature sun. The illumination was so violent that the battlefield disappeared beneath a flood of white-gold brilliance, forcing everyone nearby to throw up their arms and shield their eyes.

"Gah!"

"Too bright!" Korhess's ears flattened as she turned her face away, one arm raised across her eyes. Clock clenched his eyelids shut, violet light flickering defensively around his face as even his enhanced vision struggled against the sudden radiance. The light did more than blind them. The creature's silhouette fractured across the battlefield, its blazing spots projecting overlapping shadows and deceptive afterimages through the glare.

For every outline that appeared, another shifted somewhere else, making it impossible to determine which shape was real. Ouro squinted through the radiance. Apotheosis's voice emerged from somewhere within the brilliance.

"Then you die here!" It disappeared. Ouro barely registered the movement. A blur crossed her vision. Apotheosis appeared beside her, its fist driving into her stomach with enough force to tear the cap from her head and lift her completely from the floor. Ouro understood the choice a fraction too late. Her body was exceptionally resistant to piercing attacks. The scales covering her flesh could deflect and absorb enormous amounts of penetrative force, making blades and similar weapons far less effective against her.

Blunt force was another matter entirely. Apotheosis had somehow recognized the distinction. It had chosen kinetic force deliberately, using the same principle that made a bludgeon more effective against chainmail than a sword. Instead of attempting to pierce the armor, it was transferring overwhelming force directly through it and into the body beneath. Ouro's muscles tightened. She braced herself for the backlash. BOOOOOOM! The impact folded her body around the blow. Ouro's absorption failed.

The chains wrapped around her body shrieked under the strain as they attempted to devour the force passing through her. Their surfaces blazed with energy, desperately drawing power into themselves, but there was simply too much. The impact overwhelmed their capacity in an instant. KRAAAACK! One of the chains snapped cleanly apart. The broken link spun through the air. Blood erupted from her mouth. HSSSSK!

A crimson spray scattered through the air as her body was launched upward, the sheer force of the strike sending her tumbling toward the ceiling. Korhess's ears snapped upright. Clock's expression hardened with sudden fury. Ouro's body continued rising. As she ascended, serpents burst violently from her form, exploding outward in a frenzy of snapping jaws and flashing fangs. They lashed through the air toward Apotheosis, dozens of heads striking from different directions. The creature blurred.

Its elongated body twisted through the air with impossible fluidity, swimming through empty space as though it were water. It slipped between the serpents, ducked beneath snapping jaws, twisted around coils, and emerged on the other side before the snakes could even redirect themselves. Apotheosis appeared beside Ouro again. Another blow connected. THOOOOOM! Clock intercepted it. The impact struck his jaw hard enough to shake the corridor, yet he remained completely unmoved.

His head shifted only slightly before Transport activated once more, and his hand snapped forward, catching the creature by the torso. Apotheosis stopped. Its glassy eyes widened. Clock's palm pressed firmly against its stomach. Violet light bloomed between his fingers.

"Enough. You are beneath me. Die." The Reverse Blast detonated. VROOOOOOM! At point-blank range, the violet explosion engulfed Apotheosis's torso and hurled it backward through the corridor. Clock could have released the blast at its normal strength, allowing its destructive capacity to increase with distance, but he deliberately forced the escalation beyond its intended measure point.

Two additional percent of his remaining power burned away in an instant as he rewrote the very behaviour of the attack, overriding its natural increase through distance and forcing its destructive capacity to multiply directly against his palm. The Reverse Blast intensified at the point of contact, its destructive force multiplying instantaneously, ×3 over and over again as violet energy screamed through the corridor. The air itself warped. The walls buckled.

Apotheosis was driven backward beneath the escalating force, its body disappearing inside the expanding violet radiance. Its body twisted against the blast as its claws dug into the floor, carving trenches through the metal.

"What manner of...?" The words emerged as a broken rasp. There was something other than hunger in its expression. Shock. Clock stared through the violet explosion, his palm still extended. His eyes hardened.

"Something you should have feared before you touched my people." The others regrouped, dusting themselves off as the implications of what had just happened settled in. Each drop of Apotheosis's blood could create another creature. They understood it. Apotheosis staggered upright, one hand briefly pressing against its abdomen where Clock's Reverse Blast had struck. Steam curled from its body as the last traces of violet energy dissipated, yet the wound was already closing.

Korhess studied it carefully, her spear held ready.

"Heat hath failed." Clock's gaze remained fixed upon the creature.

"So did blunt force." His eyes flicked toward the earlier wounds, then back to Apotheosis.

"Piercing and cutting. Those are the way through." Korhess gave a slow nod.

"Then we know how to harm it." Apotheosis straightened fully. It understood that they understood. The creature grinned.

"Want to harm me?" Its cobalt eyes flicked between Korhess and Clock.

"And what happens when you do?" Before either could answer, Apotheosis drove one claw into its own side and dragged it downward, tearing open a deep wound across its torso. Blood poured onto the floor. One drop. Two. Ten. Dozens. The blood spread. The puddles began to convulse. KRRRKKK! Creatures erupted from the pools one after another, each larger than the previous offspring.

They landed heavily on all fours, their massive bodies moving with the low, predatory gait of lizards while elongated serpentine necks stretched forward from their shoulders. Their skulls were long and narrow, cobalt eyes burning beneath ridged brows as rows of needle-like teeth emerged from their jaws. Their bodies resembled enormous eels given the musculature and limbs of terrestrial predators, with thick tails dragging behind them and grey-brown flesh glistening beneath the Nest's lights. Each opened its mouth.

Corrosive saliva dripped between its teeth. HSSSSSSSS… Korhess stared at the growing horde. Ouro's chains tightened. Clock slowly raised his guitar. Apotheosis stood among the creatures it had birthed, blood still dripping from its self-inflicted wound as its grin widened. They had called its blood a weakness. Apotheosis had just turned it into an army. Nightmares. The creatures poured out in every direction, flooding the Nest on all fours until the corridors became a living tide of grey-brown bodies.

Korhess raised one hand and unleashed a wave of emerald flames, incinerating several instantly, before exhaling a concentrated gust that ripped through another cluster and hurled them against the walls. They were not particularly powerful individually. Each Nightmare possessed enough strength to collapse a city, but nothing beyond that. The problem was their numbers. There were too many. And they were fast.

Ouro screamed as her mace swept through several of them at once, crushing bodies beneath the weapon's momentum.

"We have to get them out of the Nest! Now!" Korhess moved. Apotheosis lunged at her, but she slipped beneath its next strike, her body flowing around its claws like water around stone. Her hand touched its hide. Blue-gold mist erupted around them. Both disappeared. They reappeared outside the Nest in a burst of mist, far from the facility and its inhabitants. Within the Nest, the Steppers were already responding. Gunfire erupted through the corridors as bullets tore through the Nightmares.

Others rushed directly into the swarm, grabbing creatures out of the air and snapping their elongated necks beneath their feet. The creatures were dangerous to ordinary humans, but against the Steppers, they were little more than an inconvenience. One Nightmare slammed repeatedly against a Stepper as he calmly reloaded his weapon. Each impact failed to do anything meaningful against his continental-level durability. The magazine clicked into place. The Stepper looked down. The Nightmare opened its jaws.

He punched it in the stomach. BOOM! The blow tore a massive gash through its torso, sending the creature tumbling backward. Another Stepper caught a Nightmare by the tail as it leapt past, swung it in a wide arc, and slammed it into the floor hard enough to leave a crater. He glanced toward the others.

"Looks like we're having eel soup for lunch tonight, boys." Another Stepper laughed as he kicked a Nightmare through a doorway.

"Hope you like it raw."

"Keep talking and you're cleaning the kitchen."

"I'm already cleaning the kitchen." A third Stepper caught another Nightmare by its elongated neck and snapped it with a casual twist before tossing the body aside.

"Make that three portions." The humor did little to ease the chaos around them. Operatives were already barking orders over the alarms.

"Sector Three is compromised. Get medical teams into the eastern wing."

"Contain the remaining Nightmares before they reach the residential levels."

"Someone shut down the damaged Apis conduits."

"Forget the conduits for now. Get the wounded out!"

"Engineering, start sealing the structural breaches."

"Where are the evacuation teams?"

"North corridor!"

"Send two more squads!" The Nest had become a disaster zone. Smoke drifted through the damaged corridors while emergency lights flickered across broken machinery, shattered glass, ruptured pipes, and walls torn open by the fighting. Operatives moved through the wreckage in every direction, some carrying injured personnel over their shoulders while others carefully lifted bodies from beneath fallen debris. Medical teams rushed past with stretchers.

"Easy, easy, we've got you."

"Move him!"

"She's still breathing!"

"Get a medic over here!" Others simply stood amid the destruction for a moment, staring at what had once been an orderly section of the facility. An operative stepped over the remains of a Nightmare and looked toward the ruined ceiling.

"Someone's going to have a very long report to write." Another glanced at the destruction around them.

"Several reports." A Stepper walked past carrying two unconscious personnel under his arms.

"Make mine short." He dropped them beside the medical team."'Everything went to hell.'" The medic looked up at him.

"That's not a report."

"It's an accurate summary." Behind them, another Nightmare charged through the smoke. Several Steppers turned simultaneously. One sighed.

"More eel." The others raised their weapons.

"Lunch isn't over yet." Outside, Clock grabbed Ouro as she continued tearing through the Nightmares. His arms wrapped around her waist, and he launched into the air, carrying her against his chest as they raced through the corridors. The remaining Nightmares surged after them, claws tearing through walls as they pursued. Clock burst through the facility's outer shell and into the open sky.

Below them, the Nest sprawled across the landscape, smoke rising from its shattered exterior as countless Nightmares poured from its entrances. They barely made it outside before the Steppers descended upon them. Nightmares were cut apart, shot from the air, crushed beneath fists, or simply torn apart by overwhelming physical force. The operatives hardly needed to intervene. Each creature that died dissolved into black smoke, leaving nothing behind.

Far above, Korhess and Apotheosis were already locked in combat, their forms blurring across the sky as their attacks sent distant shockwaves through the clouds. Ouro looked up at Clock. Her silver eyes were wide, but there was something else in them too, something suspiciously close to amusement.

"You have really nice arms." Clock looked down at her.

"Are you serious?"

"A little bit, sì."

"Focus."

"I am focused. I am simply also appreciating the moment." Clock shook his head, though the faintest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Unbelievable." Ouro grinned.