Chương 63: 62: The Twelve Prototypes VI

/// Across the battlefield, Mango was no less occupied. Vines whipped through the air, binding limbs before Selene simply tore through them again and again. No matter how many burst from the glacier, her relentless advance never slowed, each shredded tangle carrying her closer. The pressure mounted until even Mango found herself giving ground beneath the sheer fury of her assault.

"RAAAAGH!" Victor burst through the vines, blood streaming from his brow and stomach as fresh wounds struggled to close, charging after her with reckless fury. Mango petal-stepped. Flowers scattered. She was somewhere else. Her position changed so rapidly that Victor and Selene were forced to keep chasing after where she'd already been.

"STOP RUNNING!" Victor roared. They lunged together. Petals bloomed. A colossal boulder appeared directly in their path. KRAAAASH! Both smashed straight through it. Before Victor could recover, a tiny A crimson pellet flicked into his open mouth.

"… Huh?" Mango petal-stepped beneath him. BOOM! A rising double-leg kick crashed into his jaw as thick vines coiled around his torso, wrapping him tight as the kick launched him skyward. BOOOOOOOM! The pellet detonated inside his mouth. Scarlet light engulfed his head, the blast violently tearing through his skull and hurling him higher into the sky. His body went limp for a heartbeat, smoke curling from him as he plummeted. Then Conflict Drop took over. Flesh raced back into place. Bone knitted together.

His ruined face rebuilt itself even as he fell. One eye remained swollen shut, blood still streaking across his battered features. Gideon winced.

"…That's gotta hurt." Victor's remaining eye snapped open.

"RAAAAAAGH!" Rage drowned out the disorientation.

"Victor, calm down!" Naomi shouted.

"Think before you charge!" Cass yelled.

"You're playing right into her hands!" Yuna warned. He forced himself upright anyway and charged straight back through the fading scarlet explosion. Mango had already petal-stepped beside him. She slipped his punch by millimetres, brushed his arm with her fingertips, and petal-stepped him into open space. Victor disappeared high above the atmosphere. — Prism reflected across invisible axes, tattoos blazing as every heartbeat solved another equation. When he couldn't evade, he slammed the tonfa into the attack.

The weapon matched the speed of whoever struck it. Beyond light. Prism himself couldn't move nearly that fast, yet every block sent him swinging up to five times faster than his own physical limit. Pain shot through his shoulder. Without flawless calculations and perfect angles, the recoil would've made him overswing and tear his own arm clean off. Cass and Yuna never stopped pressing him.

They fought as one, using flight to attack from different elevations, shoving one another into fresh angles, catching each other's momentum, and flinging one another into punches, kicks, and flashing slashes whenever Prism reflected away. Every Axis Reflection he used to escape one strike placed him directly in the path of another. His eyes never blinked. They watered constantly, darting across the battlefield as the yellow within his irises devoured new variables. Any attack he saw became another solved equation.

Any attack he didn't would land. Yuna's heel skimmed past his temple. Cass's knife-hand strike carved a crimson line across his forearm, drawing a sharp wince. Prism reflected behind her, the karambit flashing for her ribs, but she twisted through the slash and drove a back elbow toward his jaw. He caught it with the tonfa, only for Yuna to dive in with a spinning kick that forced another reflection. Snow exploded upward. A spray splashed into his right eye. His vision was stolen for a fraction of a second.

"Ghk!" Yuna's knee buried itself in his ribs, detonating him sideways. Before he could recover, Cass was already there. WHAM! Her punch cracked across his chin, snapping his head back. Prism groaned, blood spraying from his mouth.

"Dang it…" He smashed the tonfa against the spine of his karambit. KRA - BOOOOM! The stored kinetic force detonated between them like a bomb. His tattoos flared cobalt. Structural Distribution. The equation spread the coming force uniformly through his body. Without it, the recoil would've pulped him. The shockwave blasted Cass and Yuna backwards through the air as Prism skidded across the glacier, coughing and spitting blood onto the ice.

"… Tch." His chin throbbed. One rib ground painfully with every breath. Broken. Bruised. He forced himself back into his stance anyway, tattoos already blazing as fresh equations flooded his vision. Roman answered by ripping boulders from the glacier and hurling them one after another like artillery. KRAAASH! KRAAASH! KRAAASH! Prism sprinted across the frozen plain, weaving between hurtling masses of stone, leaping over one and planting a foot against another to vault higher. Another came. CLANG!

The tonfa caught it. Cobalt circuitry blazed as the impact stored itself within the weapon. Another. The fourth threatened to crush him outright.

"Hrk!" He swung. BOOOOM! The stored momentum erupted skyward. The shockwave burst through the incoming barrage, pulverizing some boulders and flash-melting others into torrents of steaming water that crashed over the glacier. Roman flew straight through the scalding flood without slowing.

"There you are!" WHAM! His hand clamped around Prism's throat and drove him into the ice hard enough to crater the glacier. Roman straddled him. Punch. Prism tilted his head. The fist shattered the ice. Punch. Another slight movement. Each blow missed by fractions of an inch, pulverizing the glacier around Prism's head as his watering eyes flicked from fist to fist, every motion already solved before it arrived. Roman snarled.

"…I get it." Another punch. Prism leaned aside. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"Anything you can see can't harm you." Roman scooped up a handful of snow and slammed it into Prism's face. Snow packed into both eyes. Prism flinched. Roman blasted backward into the sky. Prism shoved himself upright, coughing, one hand rubbing furiously at his eyes.

"…Tch…" His vision blurred. He looked upward. Nothing. CRAAACK! Roman erupted from beneath the glacier. The uppercut caught Prism square beneath the jaw from his blind spot. The impact nearly tore his head from his shoulders, launching him across the battlefield. Even as he flew, his arm moved. SHRK! The karambit carved through empty air, shedding a glowing ∫ that unfurled into a sweeping geometric arc. The integral completed. The flying equation slashed across Roman from dozens of metres away.

"GHK!" A deep crimson line split open across his stomach, blood spraying into the Antarctic wind as the completed calculation carved through flesh before dissolving into drifting light. Prism crashed through a ridge of ice and disappeared into a freezing subglacial pool. SPLAAASH! For a heartbeat, only ripples remained. Prism burst back out, coughing violently as icy water streamed from his clothes. One eye had already swollen completely shut, his bruised jaw hanging stiffly as he spat blood into the snow.

"… Still… working…" He staggered upright, already thinking ahead. Roman'll be out of the fight for a while. The ∫ hadn't merely cut him. It had imposed Momentum Integration. Every movement Roman made contributed to the equation, feeding the accumulated value of the wound. Conflict Drop could seal the gash as many times as it liked, but the instant he moved again, the integral resumed and another tear would open. The faster he fought, the deeper it would become.

Unlike his two major equations, which imposed absolute mathematical truths and could never be dodged, Prism's flying slashes were completed proofs cast into the air. They could be seen, avoided, and faded after about a minute, but he could maintain as many as his concentration allowed. As an Abomination, that concentration was vast enough to sustain a storm of equations across an entire nation's worth of opponents. Against armies, the battlefield itself became a storm of waiting theorems.

Prism fixed his remaining eye on the battlefield and immediately sprinted back toward Mango. — A heartbeat later Selene arrived. Mango barely twisted aside. KRAAAK! The punch clipped her arm. Green blood sprayed across the glacier as the limb shattered. Selene blinked.

"Her blood's green?" Her eyes widened. These kids are Abominations!

"Everyone, be caref-" THWIP! A black pellet tore across the battlefield. Mango grunted, swinging her sling with both hands from hundreds of metres away. THOOOOOOOM! The shockwave alone erased Selene's body into a crimson mist before the pellet had fully passed through, continuing onward to punch mansion-sized holes through mountain after mountain along the horizon. Silence followed.

"…How dense was that thing?" Linh whispered.

"It didn't explode," Elias muttered.

"It just kept going." Atlas frowned.

"A pebble shouldn't do that."

"No," Freya said quietly.

"It shouldn't." A distant boom rolled across the sky. High above, a tiny speck punched back through the atmosphere trailing fire. Victor. He tore through the clouds, blood streaking behind him as he righted himself mid-flight, rage twisting his face.

"MANGO!" he roared.

"GET BACK HERE!" Petals burst overhead. Mango bloomed high above the battlefield, already spinning a sapphire-blue pellet through her sling. THWIP! CRACK! The stone slammed into Atlas's shoulder, ricocheting into Mateo's ribs.

"GHK!" CRACK! Mateo staggered sideways into a spinning √. SHRRRK! The symbol carved across his chest before collapsing the wound to its square root. Flesh, muscle, and bone along the cut abruptly shrank, leaving his arm sagging as blood sprayed across the glacier. The pellet rebounded again. CRACK! It struck Naomi square in the hip.

"Oof!" She stumbled into intersecting coordinate axes. The grid completed. Space folded. She reflected straight into a waiting ∑.

"NO!" SKSKSKSK! Every shallow nick Prism had scattered across her body was gathered into a single instant. Tiny cuts burst open together, combining into one savage eruption of blood that hurled her spinning across the ice. Another ricochet. CRACK! Gideon cried out as the pellet clipped his shoulder.

"AGH!" He crashed through a rotating lattice of luminous triangles. SHRRRK! The proof resolved. Every angle became exact. Intersecting vectors erupted from each vertex, carving mathematically perfect slashes before launching him through the glacier. Victor lunged to catch him. CRACK! The pellet caught Victor in the ribs instead, knocking him backward into a drifting π. The glowing circle wrapped around him.

His charge curved violently into a tightening spiral, every step bending farther from the straight line he intended until he was flung directly into a waiting ÷.

"Shit!" SHKK! The slash landed. His momentum divided into fragments. The next burst of speed arrived in uneven jolts, each acceleration weaker than the last.

"Move!" Cass shoved Atlas clear of another incoming construct as × skimmed past his shoulder. The cut was shallow. The damage wasn't. Pain multiplied. The wound tore wider, blood spraying as the injury magnified itself severalfold. Above them, Mango had already loosed another pellet while Prism's karambit painted the sky with fresh proofs. √ shrank. ∑ accumulated. ÷ divided. × multiplied. π bent trajectories. Coordinate grids reflected positions. Triangles resolved impossible vectors.

Separately, either attack could be avoided. Together, Mango's ricochets kept driving the prototypes into the one symbol Prism wanted them to touch, turning the battlefield itself into a solved equation.... Prism's remaining eye darted across the battlefield, its yellow iris devouring trajectories. Cass. Yuna. Roman. The lingering equations. His attention stretched across too many variables. Elias moved. Without thunder, roar or warning.

He descended directly behind him, perfectly within the narrow blind spot Prism's vision could never cover. BOOM! A shoulder crashed into the centre of Prism's back. Something gave. A sharp crack echoed beneath the impact. Prism lurched forward, the calculations in his eye scattering for the briefest instant as he carved a trench through glacier and shattered stone. Before he could recover, Linh was already there.

"HRAAH!" She struck like a missile. Her shoulder slammed into his ribs, driving both of them through an ancient wall of blue ice. KRAAAASH! The glacier exploded around them. Buried beneath frozen debris, Prism coughed and instinctively reached for his back.

"…Spine…" Pain flared through his torso. His equations still held. His concentration did not. Linh's next punch stole the rest of the sentence. THOOOOOM.... Across the battlefield, Yuna never joined the assault. She watched. Mango's vines. Their magic. The way they answered only after Mango's attention settled upon them.

"…You have to choose," Yuna whispered. She tore several lengths of enchanted vine from the ground and wrapped them tightly around herself. The living plants accepted her without resistance. Their magic settled over her. Her presence blurred into familiarity. Mango's awareness flowed through flowers, drifting petals, scattered stones and every vine spread across the battlefield. Yuna became one more vine among thousands. For the first time, Mango overlooked something.

"…Huh?" A faint crease formed between her brows. Something felt... Off. Yuna burst from beneath the flowering canopy. Her knife-hand flashed. SHNK! Mango's sling arm came away at the forearm. The enchanted sling spun away with the severed limb as petals scattered through the air. Mango gasped, more startled than afraid.

"My-""Cass!" A shadow eclipsed the pale Antarctic sky. Cass descended like a falling meteor, both fists locked together. BOOOOOM! The blow drove Mango straight through the glacier, blasting the ice apart in an expanding ring that rolled for miles across the frozen continent, reducing her to a green puddle.... The battlefield froze. Snow drifted through the widening crater. Yuna landed beside Cass, breathing hard.

"…Did we…" Cass never answered. She simply stared into the settling cloud.

"Where'd the scientists go?" Every head turned toward the observation platforms. The galleries stood deserted. Holographic displays continued scrolling. Coffee still steamed from abandoned mugs. Consoles faithfully recorded telemetry. The people operating them had disappeared. Victor looked around uneasily.

"…What?" Naomi's eyes narrowed.

"They didn't evacuate."

"There wasn't enough time," Freya replied. Elias slowly lifted his gaze.

"Lucien." The ash-coloured figure was gone. Only Pearl remained. The small white drone hovered quietly above the battlefield, her blue lens calmly observing the aftermath. Mateo swallowed.

"…He left?"

"No," Linh said quietly.

"He finished." Pearl emitted a soft, melodic chime. A lattice of pale blue light unfolded beneath her, projecting lines of text into the Antarctic air. ENDURANCE TRIAL COMPLETE. COMBAT DATA VERIFIED. ALL REQUIRED OBSERVATIONS RECORDED. Victor laughed.

"We were a test." Naomi looked back toward the deserted platforms.

"So where are the scientists?" Cass folded her arms.

"He took them."

"But why?" Miriam asked. Freya's expression remained unreadable.

"If Lucien wanted them dead, they'd already be dead." Elias kept watching Pearl.

"He wanted witnesses." Linh slowly shook her head.

"No." Her eyes settled on the abandoned consoles, still recording data from a battle that had already ended.

"He wanted the data." The implication settled over the battlefield like fresh snow. Lucien had arrived, measured everything he wished to measure, removed every scientist capable of understanding what they had built, and departed before anyone realised the examination had ended. Pearl gave another gentle chime before turning toward the empty sky and quietly followed wherever Lucien had already gone. — Freya descended beside the group, landing lightly on the glacier.

"…Is it over?"

"I hope so," Yuna sighed. Silence lingered until she stretched, her joints popping.

"…Mango was a menace." Naomi snorted.

"For someone named 'Mango,' she sure wasn't sweet when she was fighting." Elias smiled faintly.

"Maybe that's why she's called Mango." Everyone looked at him.

"She's got hard seeds inside." He rubbed the side of his head.

"And she keeps hitting people with them." A few weary laughs rippled through the group. Cass rolled one shoulder.

"She actually wasn't that physically durable, though. I flattened her into a puddle." She frowned.

"With how hard those pellets hit, I honestly thought she'd be tougher."

"Prism was the durable one," Gideon said. Elias nodded.

"He survived well over a dozen direct hits."

"More than that," Mateo muttered.

"Linh was the only one who kept him on the defensive." Linh folded her arms.

"He never stopped calculating." Freya glanced toward the shattered glacier.

"His eye would flick once... then his body would correct itself before the attack even reached him."

"It didn't feel like dodging," Yuna said.

"It felt automatic."

"As though he'd already decided where he needed to be," Elias added quietly. Mateo sighed.

"I still think Mango was worse." Cass raised an eyebrow.

"The ricochets?"

"The ricochets," Mateo confirmed.

"Every stone bounced exactly where it needed to. Glaciers, cliffs, our own attacks... she turned the whole battlefield into one giant slingshot." A gust of wind swept across the glacier as Atlas dropped from the sky, landing beside them with a heavy crunch. He caught the tail end of the conversation and barked out a laugh.

"David beat Goliath with a sling." A broad grin spread across his face.

"Mango would've bounced the stone off three mountains first." Another round of tired laughter spread through the group. Elias shook his head.

"This was worse than the trial."

"Much worse," Naomi agreed.

"Those kids were completely insane." Yuna stared toward the empty horizon.

"How old are they?"

"They fought like they'd been training for decades." Nobody had an answer.