Chapter 55: The Artillery Rain

The five-mile incline leading up to the Citadel was a completely exposed, upward-sloping kill box of frozen black ash.

Ren stood at the base of the massive incline, his towering, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame casting a long, dark shadow over the scorched earth. The fierce, freezing wind howled down from the jagged northern peaks, whipping the ruined, blood-soaked shreds of his ash-grey hoodie around his dense, heavily armored torso. The ambient temperature was hovering in the single digits, but the massive, localized biological furnace burning in his chest, fueled by the Level 18 Abyssal Glutton core, kept his pale, iron-hardened skin flushed with volatile heat.

That heat was a beacon.

Exactly five miles away, mounted on the towering, fifty-foot-thick concrete battlements of the Old World bunker, the Citadel’s automated thermal-tracking systems completed their sweep of the scorched expanse. The massive, rotating sensor arrays locked instantly onto the colossal, radiating biological signature standing at the edge of the dead zone.

The military did not dispatch a scouting party. They did not issue a warning over a loudspeaker. They adhered strictly to the scorched-earth doctrine that had kept their bunker pristine for eight months.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

Three deep, deafening, chest-crushing concussions echoed off the jagged mountain peaks.

Even from five miles away, the acoustic force of the 155mm Howitzers firing was staggering. The sound rolled down the valley like a localized earthquake, vibrating directly through the soles of Ren’s heavy combat boots and rattling the frozen black ash around his ankles.

Three massive, high-explosive artillery shells were instantly airborne, tearing through the freezing, overcast sky at nearly Mach 2.

“Get down!” Chloe screamed, her voice completely cracking with raw, unadulterated terror.

She didn’t wait for his command. She threw herself face-first into the freezing, knee-deep charcoal, curling her fragile human body into a tight, desperate ball. She pulled the heavy, olive-drab military thermal blankets entirely over her head, her gloved hands clamped violently over her ears.

The sky is actually screaming, Chloe thought, her mind completely shutting down as the high-pitched, agonizing shriek of the incoming ordnance split the atmosphere. I can’t breathe. The ground is shaking so hard my teeth are rattling. We are dead. We are absolutely dead.

Ren did not dive into the ash.

His Level 18 Perception stat instantly mapped the supersonic trajectory of the incoming shells. Time seemed to slow to a thick, viscous crawl as his mutated cognitive processing broke down the threat. The artillery was clustered perfectly, designed to blanket a fifty-yard radius in absolute, overlapping explosive destruction.

He could easily activate his Dash skill, fracture the spatial geometry of the valley, and outrun the blast radius. But Chloe could not. If he abandoned her, the massive kinetic shockwave and the resulting shrapnel storm would instantly liquefy her unmutated organs, entirely bypassing the Level III-A ballistic plates strapped to her chest.

She was a valuable logistical asset. He was not going to let the Old World military vaporize her.

Ren dropped into a low, wide, incredibly aggressive stance directly over Chloe’s trembling, blanket-covered form.

He planted his heavy combat boots deep into the frozen bedrock beneath the ash. He completely locked the massive, hyper-condensed muscle fibers in his thighs, hips, and lower back. The pulsing sapphire veins crawling up his forearms flared with brilliant, blinding bioluminescence, bleeding a fierce blue light into the falling snow.

[Passive Activated: Iron Skin] [Passive Activated: Chitin Shell]

He braced his broad shoulders, turning his massive, armored back directly toward the incoming trajectory of the shells.

The first 155mm artillery shell detonated exactly thirty yards to his left.

The explosion was a catastrophic, retina-burning flash of orange and blinding white light. A colossal dome of pure, expanding kinetic force and superheated plasma violently erased the frozen topography. Thousands of pounds of black ash, shattered rock, and frozen mud were instantly vaporized into a towering, mushrooming pillar of toxic smoke.

The second and third shells struck a fraction of a microsecond later, detonating directly ahead and to the right, completing the overlapping kill radius.

The resulting shockwave hit Ren with the unimaginable, blunt-force trauma of a derailed freight train.

The sheer atmospheric pressure of the blast violently parted the falling snow for half a mile. A massive, howling wall of superheated air, expanding gases, and jagged, supersonic steel shrapnel slammed directly into Ren’s broad back.

His Iron Skin met the apocalypse.

The jagged, fist-sized chunks of jagged steel shrapnel, designed to easily punch through light armored vehicles, struck his hardened epidermis at thousands of feet per second. The shrapnel sparked violently, screeching in agonizing, metallic protest. The heavy metal flattened against his skin, entirely failing to penetrate the incredibly dense, underlying plates of his Chitin Shell.

The kinetic shockwave was far worse. The immense pressure physically pushed him forward, his heavy combat boots digging two deep, brutal trenches into the bedrock as he was forced to slide backward. The microscopic muscle fibers in his back and shoulders tore under the unimaginable strain, instantly regenerating and calcifying even thicker as the raw mana in his bloodstream violently repaired the damage in real-time.

He did not break. He did not yield. He remained a towering, immovable, biological vault over the terrified girl huddled between his boots.

The localized temperature spiked to nearly a thousand degrees for exactly three seconds. The heavy, dark green tactical webbing strapped across Ren’s chest began to smoke and melt. The remaining fabric of his grey hoodie instantly flash-combusted, burning away into fine, grey ash and leaving his pale, heavily scarred, hyper-muscular torso entirely exposed to the freezing wind.

Then, the pressure broke.

The massive, towering pillars of thick, black smoke and localized fire rolled upward into the overcast sky, leaving a completely devastated, deeply cratered landscape in their wake.

The silence that followed the bombardment was absolute and completely deafening, broken only by the sharp, hissing sound of superheated rock rapidly cooling in the freezing February air.

Beneath Ren, Chloe was completely paralyzed. Her ears were ringing with a high-pitched, agonizing whine that entirely drowned out the sound of the wind. She could smell the horrific, choking stench of vaporized sulfur, melted nylon, and burning ozone. She slowly, shakily lowered the heavy wool blankets from her face.

She looked up.

Ren was standing over her. He was completely stripped to the waist, the intense heat of the artillery strike having entirely vaporized his upper clothing. His back was a horrific, mesmerizing landscape of pale, iron-hardened skin, crisscrossed with jagged, healed scars and the heavy, segmented grey plates of his localized Chitin Shell.

Thick, dark smoke literally curled off his broad shoulders. Small, flattened chunks of heavy steel shrapnel fell from his hardened skin, clattering harmlessly against the glassy, melted ash around his boots. The brilliant sapphire veins pulsing across his neck and arms were glowing with an absolutely terrifying, furious intensity.

He was breathing slowly, deeply, his massive chest expanding and contracting with perfect, predatory rhythm.

“Get up,” Ren commanded. His voice was a low, localized vibration that she felt in her teeth more than she heard with her ruptured eardrums.

Chloe scrambled to her feet, her hands shaking so violently she dropped the FN P90 twice before successfully securing the sling around her neck. She stared at the massive, smoking, twenty-foot-deep craters surrounding them on three sides. The black ash had been subjected to such intense, localized heat that it had literally melted into smooth, jagged sheets of black glass.

He tanked an artillery strike, Chloe thought, her mind completely and utterly broken by the sheer, impossible reality of the physical feat she had just witnessed. He stood in the center of a barrage that turns tanks into scrap metal, and he didn’t even bleed.

High up on the jagged northern ridgeline, inside the heavily fortified command center of the Citadel, the Old World military officers were staring at their thermal-tracking monitors in absolute, paralyzed horror.

Target acquired. Thermal mass exceeds Level 15 parameters. Fire for effect, the Citadel Artillery Commander had thought exactly sixty seconds ago, his finger pressing the heavy red firing stud. Turn that grid coordinate into a smoking crater.

Now, the thick, digital smoke cleared from the high-resolution satellite feeds.

The massive, Level 18 thermal signature was still standing. It had not dissipated. It had not scattered into pieces. It was glowing even brighter, radiating a massive, furious heat signature that completely defied their understanding of biological limitations.

Down in the scorched valley, Ren turned his back on the massive, smoking craters.

He did not draw the Crimson vibro-sword. He did not attempt to find cover. Cover was entirely irrelevant.

Ren steps firmly onto the glassy, melted surface of the blasted ash, his heavy, bare, armored torso steaming in the freezing wind, his glowing violet eyes locking directly onto the massive concrete battlements of the bunker five miles away, as he begins the slow, deliberate, unstoppable march directly up the incline to completely dismantle the Citadel’s heavy guns.

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