Savage Awakening 137. Final Layer (IV) (Patreon)

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The moment Zane saw the Monster, he frowned.

It had to bend to the waist just to get out of the castle. Its shadow stretched half the length of the bridge. It was made out of a steel plate blacker than black, swirling with silver dots. Like there was a night sky trapped in the metal. The plates melded together seamlessly. There wasn’t a chink in the armor. The whole thing smocked like a burning building.

A single glowing red eye lay in the middle of a giant block of a head.

Each step it took rattled the whole plane, sent debris jumping all over.

Dread Colossus (Monster)

Essence Level 142

“Oh… my… god…” whispered Tyler.

Zane still stood there frowning, puzzling at it. Like he was trying to feel out a weakness. The thing wandered out onto the bridge; it started lumbering at him…

Zane didn’t move.

“What’s he doing?!” said Becca. “He has to get out of there!”

“Maybe he just can’t,” croaked Tyler. “He’s at Critical Health, I mean—he can barely stay upright!”

It was over. They all knew it.

And yet... when you looked at Zane you didn’t get the impression of a broken, defeated man.

He didn’t even consider giving up on himself.

His eyes were watching, seeing it all coming. Seeing an arm as big as a skyscraper looming over him, seething Blackflame, smothering him in its shadow…

“His eyes!” cried Becca.

They were what’d drawn them all in this whole time. What gave them pause.

Zane Walker’s eyes were remarkably still. Like limpid pools of water. There was a dark intensity to them, a fierceness—yet they stayed startlingly clear. Even now, face-to-face with certain death—death literally falling on top of him, blotting out his world…

But they could see he didn’t have it. They couldn’t find that glow in it, that a-ha moment Zane kept pulling out time and time again.

“Do something!” cried Becca.

Zane stayed in the pocket. Staring down death, searching with that searing intensity…

Then the arm fell on him.

And at last, Zane moved.

His legs wouldn’t obey anymore. So he lashed a Chain behind him and yanked forcefully; his body hurtled away—

The fist crashed faster than any of them would’ve thought possible. It sent fissures streaking down the side of the bridge, showering stones—the whole structure shook with the force of it. A wall of blistering black fire shot so high it licked the clouds. The backlash, the explosion, would’ve thrown Zane off the bridge if it weren’t for his hammer anchoring him.

Becca gave a strangled gasp.

If he’d been just a moment late…

Everyone watching had their hearts in their throats; they clutched chairs or arms, white-knuckled. Up in Seattle Reina was ready to burst.

Everyone was nervous. Except, strangely, for Zane.

Zane just blinked at the death he’d narrowly avoided, taking it in. Then he looked to the Colossus.

He seemed to realize something; a light flashed in his eyes.

The Monster lumbered toward him and he nailed it with an Apocalypse Smash. A hunker of a thing now that it’d Leveled so high—yet against this thing it didn’t matter. He could barely dent it.

Then Zane wrapped his Chains around its legs, trying a tripwire—it walked right through it. Kicked the Chains aside like they weighed nothing.

“Thirty Levels… it’s just too much!” choked Tyler. “Zane can’t knock the thing off-balance, he can’t even move it! He can’t do anything to it—how’s he supposed to get it over the edge?!”

By now both he and Becca were barely commentating anymore. They were just fans now, shouting what everyone was thinking.

They watched as the Colossus slouched forward step by monstrous step; its joints creeped and groaned as it moved. Its fist went high—

Zane unleashed another Smash.

Not at the beast. Between its legs. It shot out, stuck the giant crater on the other side.

And Zane yanked.

He whipped through the gap and landed exactly where he’d been seconds ago. Behind the Colossus, facing its back.

But the Boss recovered incredibly quickly; its giant red eye narrowed; it swiveled and crushed in one smooth motion—

“No!” said Becca.

This time Zane barely got out of the way.

He landed in a heap a few yards down, heaving; the spot where he’d been just a second ago had caved all the way in. Deep fissures ripped through it like open wounds, bleeding gravel out of the rough stone.

This time when the Colossus stomped at Zane, it came out at him crouching low, giant arms outstretched, ready to scoop him up and crush him—sweeping across the bridge…

“It’s left him no way out!” shouted Tyler. “No room to run!”

Zane frowned at it too, like his imminent death was just another tricky puzzle.

He had just a fraction of a second to find an answer—

And he did.

He yanked himself hard. And went flying off the side of the bridge.

Becca screamed.

Then—as the Colossus turned to face him, red eye squinting, a Chain lashed around its pillar-leg.

He flew in a wide arc; for a good half-second all that lay under him was certain death—bubbling, boiling lava.

Then he landed on the other side—staggered, panting. But somehow standing.

“Holy—what the hell was that?!” said Tyler. “What a move!”

“How long can he keep it up?!” cried Becca. “He hasn’t even hurt the thing!”

It was true. Zane was back, somehow, in the very same crater he’d started out from. Back to square one. He’d been running this whole time, buying time any way he could—but he was quickly running out of tricks…

The Colossus, meanwhile, had learned its lessons.

When it came at Zane again, this time it moved with a finality, a sureness, a purpose. Like it’d had enough of this ant. And it knew exactly how to squash it. The Boss aimed a fist—and fired.

There was no big wind-up this time; this time hundreds of tons of burning steel jabbed out like a piston, lightning-fast. Zane barely had time to react. It was all he could do to thrust out a Chain—try yanking himself out of the way—

The punch landed so hard the whole bridge teetered.

For a second they all thought it’d crushed him.

Then the smoke began to clear… “Look!” said Becca, wide-eyed. “He’s—he’s—”

She choked off. “Oh…”

Most of his torso had gotten out of the way. But when the fist came up, it showed a meat paste of a lower body. Everything twisted the wrong way; every bone was shattered—so deformed, so brutalized it barely looked human anymore. It made you flinch just looking at it, made you hiss. It looked horribly painful— the most painful thing most of them had ever seen.

Every part of him that could be broken was broken. And yet it was still attached, all just intact enough you knew he was feeling every last bit of it; an excruciating torture. They saw Zane wince. They’d never seen him wince.

Then the darkness came over him again. The fist blotting out the sky… and this time he was stuck. There was no getting away.

Zane looked up.

He didn’t whimper. Didn’t wail, nor cry out, or curl up—the kinds of things those watching imagined he’d do; imagined they’d do in his place.

Instead Zane gritted his teeth. And stared straight into the abyss, defiant.

“Christ,” croaked Tyler.

There was so much pressure hovering over him it felt like a tangible, oppressive thing—the mind-bending pain, the specter of certain death, getting so badly shut down, brutally broken, splayed out against a literal Giant thirty Levels up—

It choked up the crowd.

But none of it could cloud Zane’s sight.

When he looked up, he saw something there no one else could see.

There was a light in his eyes—a very familiar light…

The fist fell.

And at the same time, Zane moved.

He smashed his hammer straight into the Colossus’s thigh. Not to damage it—to snare it, get ahold of it; he yanked. And flew straight up.

The falling arm came so close and nearly grazed him, so close you could see its black fires reflected in his intense eyes.

They went right past each other.

That giant arm smashed down one more time; he flew up, higher and higher, like he was shooting for the Colossus’s head—the huge Boss swiveled, clenched a fist, ready to bat him straight out the sky.

Then Zane’s other Smash made landfall. On the ground.

It struck a very particular spot. The same spot Zane kept looping back to.

The same spot he’d baited the Colossus into smashing—three times in a row.

The same chunk of bridge already riddled with fissures, sloughing off stone, teetering on the brink—

Stormfire raged into the ground. And tipped it over the edge.

The Colossus’ arm was halfway up a swat—then it staggered.

It frowned down at the ground.

There was an echoing CRACK!

A single jagged black line carved down the middle of the bridge…

And the whole thing split clean in two.

Then they were all falling—an avalanche of stone and steel and fire, all except Zane, shooting up as the battlefield went down. Then he fell too, tied as he was to the beast—one man riding a behemoth. Straight into the mouth of hell.

They struck lava.

The explosion whited out the world.

The projection went black.

Silence.

Then the Hell Array lit up. Zane Walker himself stumbled out, matted all over with sweat. He wiped one burly arm over his forehead. Then glanced to the leaderboard—

A new name climbed above all the rest, sitting at number one.

ZANE WALKER, 891 KILLS

The crowd went wild; there wasn’t a man woman and child left seated; Zane looked around baffled as thousands of the world’s strongest gave him a standing cheering ovation. The crowd surged, running at him, mobbing him—

“Zane Walker,” screamed Tyler, voice hoarse. “Planned that whole thing. From the moment he saw that first smash, he knew!”

He shook his head. “He stood in the shadow of death. He stared it down even as it fell on top of him, crushed him within an inch of his life—when it matters most, when the pressure’s at its greatest, Zane delivers! He found the needle in the haystack and threaded it through the eye of the storm—with a sliver of Health, he took out a Boss thirty Levels above! He had to execute perfectly. If that man flinched a single time, from pain, from fear, from doubt—it would’ve been over. But Zane Walker does not flinch!”

His voice cracked as he yelled. “That’s the meaning of his name right there! That’s the Savage Sage!”

Zane, who was still rather bemused about the whole thing, would later find out that last recording was the first essence recording to go truly viral.

In the far, far future—when many of those present in the crowd or watching around the world became big names, even legends in their own right, scattered to places very, very distant from Earth… they’d often be asked about Zane Walker. Every Earthling would have a story—it was pretty much impossible to come up on Earth around that time and not have something to say about him.

They’d chuckle, and think about the good old times, when the world was so much smaller and simpler, and reminisce.

For some, they’d cite the Eze fight. But most would cite this—this was the first time they realized they were seeing someone truly different. The first time they saw a glimmer of what he would become. 

***

It took Zane a while to extricate himself. He didn’t manage to do it even in the street; he could only find refuge once he was back in the hotel.

He found a surprise visitor waiting for him in his room.

It was Reina. She was feeling a lot of intense things.

“Oh. Hey—” was all he got out. Then she was all over him.

Hours later, improbably, Mephisto’s Pleasure Sutra became his first official high-Level Skill.

//

A/N: 

if all goes to plan tomorrow will be a 2-chapter day... trying to do more of them!