Chapter 80: The Flames of War IV
As the brutal war raged on, the [One in red] felt the presence of a certain being... The second creature who holds the key to salvation in this world...
Raising their hand, they looked at the Forever Kings of Storm and Shadow.
"Go, find Ben Tennyson and bring him to me. You should be capable of at least that."
Sending them after the imposter was a dangerous gamble however, the [One in Red] would win either way. That was because even if they lose their lives in the battle, they would still serve their purpose, even in death.
The seat holder of Storm and the seat holder of Shadow leaped off the cliff of Mount Rushmore. At the same time, they each assumed their transformations.
The seat holder of Storm's armor disappeared into white sparks as his body grew bigger and taller. Two magnificent wings sprouted from his back, accompanied by a sharp needle-like tail. His head elongated and became that of a serpent, and his eyes became slitted...
In the end, he became a beautiful dark purple dragon, with amethyst-like scales spread all over his body.
The seat holder of Shadow's transformation was less impressive, however more... disturbing.
His flesh became dark as shadows, and slowly, his body started falling apart. Everything from his arms, hands, eyes, teeth, and all of it fell to the ground and transformed into dark beetle-like creatures that resembled maggots...
But that was not the end. The dark beetles multiplied rapidly, turning into a swarm composed of hundreds of them.
The seat holder of Storm flew towards the location of Ben Tennyson, which he could find through his insidious abilities, and the seat holder of Shadow followed after him, latched onto the dragon's body like a parasite.
—————
Hugo, still transformed into Jetray, found himself in quite the peculiar situation.
He was in the skies, moving at an incredible speed, battling two massive gargoyles at the same time. The abominations were bizarre and strange, just like any nightmare creature, really.
They were made purely of stone, and yet at the same time, they were as light as a feather.
'It must be one of their abilities...'
He could faintly sense that the creatures were devils; however, unlike him, their abilities were not as powerful.
Using [Nothing], Hugo shaped the Transcendent memory into a spear and used the [Nameless Sun] to augment it, increasing its power to the supreme.
Then, using Jetray's innate mastery over flight, Hugo circled in the air around the two gargoyles, making them chase him in a clockwise rotation.
Being a Terror, Hugo was far faster than the two devils, and because of that, they had fallen right into his trap.
A wicked smirk spread across Hugo's face as he suddenly moved upward, causing the two devils, which had been circling in different directions, to slam into each other.
Using that moment of confusion, Hugo raised his spear and shot downward like a missile, aiming his spear at one of the gargoyles and piercing its head.
As he did that, Hugo turned his sight to the other one and used Jetray's second ability to release a wave of neuroshock energy from his eyes, engulfing the second gargoyle and causing it to fall lifelessly to the ground.
[You have slain a corrupted devil: bell gargoyle]
Then, without stopping, Hugo grabbed the first gargoyle mid-flight and slammed his head into it multiple times, breaking its stone skin with each headbutt.
After a while, the gargoyle stopped moving entirely, and the spell whispered in Hugo's ears:
[You have slain a corrupted devil: bell gargoyle]
[You have received a memory: gargoyle's halberd]
'Ah, a memory halberd, interesting...'
Letting the gargoyle drop dead into the sea of abominations below, Hugo shifted his attention elsewhere.
Not far from where he was standing, his spirit body—which he was inhabiting—was fighting alongside the still-transformed Zed against a particularly harrowing fallen tyrant.
It was a similar gargoyle-like creature; however, this one was bigger in size than the first two gargoyles. It possessed bigger wings and seemed much more adept at wielding its powers than the other two gargoyles, despite their rank differences.
Thankfully, the spirit body was an ascended Terror, augmented by the [Asura] mantle, and Zed's Nemetrix gave it enough power to overwhelm the creature.
Hugo, now in his spirit body, unleashed a blast of soul essence from the Asura's emitters directly towards the tyrant's eyes.
Then, he summoned his new memory, the [Gargoyle's Halberd], which was a halberd made entirely of stone, and flew away, barely dodging its attack.
'A bit heavy, but it should do the job...'
The spirit body then rose into the sky, and using the protective qualities of the [Asura] mantle, it flew towards at an incredible speed slamming its shoulders into the tyrant's back and briefly knocking it out of flight.
Then, using the halberd, the spirit body pierced the back of the creature, driving the halberd deeper and deeper.
At the same time, Zed, still transformed, flew towards the tyrant's front torso and attached her insect-like limbs into its face and used them to slowly crush the tyrant's head...
SPLASH
The tyrant's head exploded into bloody mist, entirely evaporated by the devastating force Zed unleashed.
[You have slain a fallen tyrant: valaient gargoyle]
The abomination was a tough cookie to crack, however, Hugo had a big advantage.
Zed, in her current form, had a mind manipulation ability, and he simply added that to the spirit body's [Enthrall] ability, which resulted in the creation of a powerful mind attack, causing the tyrant to slowly lose its sense of self throughout the fight.
Not to mention, Hugo happened to be quite good in the sky, no doubt thanks to the myriad of flying creatures he could transform into.
'Now what to do...'
He had plenty of options to choose from, not only in terms of how many abominations there were, but also in terms of how he could go about it.
Being a Terror, he could now create minions of the ascended rank and unleash them on the battlefield, starting a long and slow war against the nightmare creatures by slowly spreading his insidious influence through the battlefield.
That influence was not a figure of speech, but a real thing that he sensed each time he transformed... It was an alien sensation that he did not understand just yet.
There was also Zed and the spirit body; he could simply use their mind attacks to slay powerful foes.
'Making an army would be safer... And I also want to see how I evolved...'
Hugo had not used his tyrant abilities in a while. After all, when he became a Terror, he became so powerful that using them didn't really benefit him anymore, at least not against the opponents he fought in the nightmare.
However, that did not mean they were useless.
Grabbing the Omnitrix on his chest, Hugo rotated through his forms.
He had nineteen aliens to choose from...
He could play it safe and go with Swampfire, unleashing his fiery power alongside his minions.
Or he could try something new.
'I wanted to try this guy anyway,'
Hugo thought, slamming the Omnitrix to transform once again.
His body shifted mid air, turning more jelly like. White and light blue colors spread across his body as his limbs retracted into his body, and new ones, resembling that of an aquatic creature, emerged in their place.
The transformation was over in an instant, and where Jetray floated was now a blue jellyfish-like alien with white swipes on his body resembling lightning streaks. His torso had three-segmented skirt-like parts that reached into his head, chest, and abdomen, and six long tentacles that functioned as two pairs of arms and a pair of legs.
"Amphibian, huh..."
This alien was quite the nebulous one. It was both an aquatic alien and a land alien, created by a storm goddess and possessing a myriad of strange abilities that gave it a strange form of mobility but, at the same time, powerful combat-orientated powers.
Its first ability allowed it to generate electricity; however, that electricity was not like the one Buzzshock produced.
Buzzshock produced electricity like a battery, while Amphibian created something called bioelectricity, which was born from organic parts. The distinction was subtle, but it was still there.
Its second and third abilities were very similar, with the second allowing it to absorb all types of energies to convert them into bioelectricity, and its third ability allowing it to control external electricity.
The tyrant ability allowed it to spawn minions from its body, which directly resembled their creator. Moreover, those minions were a bit special in the sense that they were connected to Amphibian through bioelectricity.
They were more like puppets, moved by Amphibian's ability to control bioelectricity... However, what made this ability disturbing was the fact that the minions were alive in a sense... just without free will.
Its terror ability... was quite peculiar. It was an augmentation-type ability, making it so all of its abilities could grow more powerful in bodies of water, but that was of no use right now, considering Hugo was nowhere near water.
It was certainly an interesting alien, with its attribute allowing it to float and stretch its body in bizarre ways.
'Time to do this again....' he let out an exhale.
Hugo closed his eyes briefly, letting the world fall into peaceful silence as he drew upon his tyrant ability.
He had experienced minion creation before, even recently in his fight against the Transcendent devil known as Mahoraga, and the sensation of creating minions... It was no different from giving birth, just in a less painful way.
In fact, despite the similarities, the creation of a minion was anything but painful... Instead It had its own perverted pleasure that humans were not supposed to experience.
Other tyrant abilities would create beings that are sentient but not quite free. They were beings born for the sole purpose of serving their tyrant, no more and no less...
Hugo did feel quite terrible about that, but alas, he needed all the power he could get.
Amphibian's body opened up like a terrifying maw, and if someone looked a little closer at the hole in his chest, they would see the gruesome sight of tendrils forming into the silhouette of a creature...
It was a gruesome sight, as if a baby was being born.
But it wasn't just a baby, it was dozens of them, even hundreds, all of the Ascended rank.
Ten...
Twenty...
Thirty...
The numbers kept rising as the army of Ampers flooded the sky, descending upon the sea of abominations below like a tide of white doom.
Soon enough, hundreds of Amperis joined the battle against the corrupted, each using their powerful jelly-like limbs to tear the weaker abominations, while the powerful ones were being electrified by the same tendrils....
Hugo watched from above, exhausted after having spawned nearly three hundred Amperis... each serving as a conduit of himself.
'Ah... I had forgotten what it was like to be a tyrant...' he thought with a somber look.
But something was different this time. He had felt it when using Echo Echo's tyrant ability against the Transcendent devil known as Mahoraga, but this was far more profound.
As a terror, his tyrant ability had gained an evolution, as not only had the number of minions he could summon increased, but their strength had also gained a drastic increase with their ascension...
But that was not the thing that surprised Hugo...
Instead, it was the power he was receiving from his minions that shocked him.
Simply by existing, his minions were killing creatures and spreading his "essence" into the world in a subtle way, slowly empowering him with a strange type of essence.
That essence entered his soul, flooding into his omni-cores and transforming into soul essence.
Terrors were beings that spread their influence through the world, eerily similar to supreme humans. But this was not will; rather, it was a state of existence similar to how cells multiplied in the body... or, to be more accurate, how a virus would multiply...
'I hate how normal this feels to me...'
Hugo was perhaps the only human to truly experience what it was like to be a noble creature. He had experienced being a lowly beast, and in time, he evolved into a powerful devil, then a tyrant, and now a terror.
Devils were beings that used their internal power to survive, serving only themselves and evolving to match their needs.
Tyrants were beings that ruled over minions to protect themselves, usually avoiding direct combat.
Terrors, on the other hand... were creatures that fought in combat themselves and used their minions at the same time, growing stronger by spreading their influence.
The more presence a terror possessed, the stronger it was.
In fact, the usage of minions was unnecessary for a terror to spread itself, but it was more efficient to use minions.
However... this process, and this bizarre power, was simply something no human, at least mortal ones, should experience.
After a few minutes of watching his minions tear apart creatures and being torn apart in turn, Hugo finally joined the battle.
As he descended, he activated his first ability, generating a wave of bioelectricity outside of his body.
Then, using his third ability, Hugo spread his electricity across the battlefield, using his minions as conduits of that electricity and attacking the myriad of abominations present on the battlefield.
At the same time, his minions were absorbing foreign energies into their bodies, using the inherited abilities they got from him.
Then, after reaching critical mass, they exploded, creating gigantic shockwaves across the entire battlefield.
Hugo felt every death, every injury, and everything the minions felt... And with those feelings, his heart was growing heavier...
It was as if he was experiencing the death of his child, and not one but dozens of them, all at the same time. He was all too familiar with this process, but back on the forgotten shore, he lacked the empathy to dwell on it and experience the True anguish that came with it.
The spell sang a song of blood as it credited Hugo with each kill, but he was slowly growing numb to it, focusing only on killing the abominations.
However, Hugo paused for a moment, pulling his tendrils from the eye sockets of a nasty abomination and looking to the sky.
Far in the distance, something was approaching him, fast and powerful.
He knew that presence too well...
'A forever king... No, two of them.'
Hugo shivered slightly as he made Zed and the spirit body move closer towards him, and then he let out a silent mental command for the minions to surround him in a narrow circle as he felt the two powerful beings reach his location.
The first was a majestic dragon, and the second was a mass of flowing darkness.
Looking closer, Hugo realized that mass was actually beetles in disguise, their numbers so vast that they seemed like mist.
'Transformation abilities...'
Hugo wondered how their powers functioned, now that he was looking at them more closely.
The Forever Kings were not creatures walking the path of ascension; rather, they were corrupted humans—ones that had embraced their profanity so much that they became something else.
He did not know the details, but from what he saw in Karna's memories, he was sure there was no trace of divinity left in their souls, which is why they were not insane the same way nightmare creatures were.
The dragon landed with a powerful beat of his wings, breaking the ground beneath him. All around him, the nightmare creatures that survived the onslaught of Hugo's attacks prostrated themselves before the two incomplete void beings, their dark presence overpowering the madness within the nightmare creatures, making them submit to their authority similar to how tyrants do.
Soon enough, the entire region Hugo was in was split into two.
One was surrounded by hundreds of Amperis—Hugo's main body, the spirit body, and Zed.
On the other side were the two corrupted Forever Kings, one a gigantic dragon and the other a formless mass of dark beetles.
The nightmare creatures surrounding the two kings were there as well, but none of them were above the fallen rank.
Looking at them coldly, Hugo sneered as he shouted:
"The two of you? For me? That is a bit unfair, isn't it?"
He floated above his army of minions, being the biggest and most powerful among them, giving him the visage of a terrifying alien god.
"Unfair for you, that is—now, bastards, prepare to die."
And with that, all hell broke loose as Hugo commanded his army to engage in battle.