Chapter 24: The ninth stage part 4

PoV Tsuitame

"RUN!" was shouting my brother, Satsui.

Before we knew it, we found ourselves surrounded by enemies. We were tailing Forren's group when suddenly my brother sensed the enemy incoming and decided it was best to hide ourselves until we figured out a way to deal with the current situation.

The enemy knew about our hiding spot and opened fire on us as soon as they saw us.

'Those crazy bastards don't even care if they open fire on civilians. What kind of barbaric civilization is this?'

We ran up the stairs of the clothing shop, using other people as shields.

'We carefully had to cover our whole bodies to hide the fact that we weren't humans. We even went as far as to cover our faces with some weird masks. How did they find us so quickly?'

As soon as we reached the third floor, my brother ran towards the window immediately in front of the stairway and broke it with a kick.

"C'mon, hurry up! We don't have much time. "

He proceeded to cover his body in his dark aura and jump through the window. He used the bodies of the cursed ones to break the window and quickly get inside before they could shoot at him.

It was a horrible spectacle to watch. Black bodies popped out of his left arm, and from their arms more bodies popped out that extended for half of the distance between the two complexes.

'This is a joke, right? There's a road in between... There are at least thirty meters of open air where I could get shot at any given moment.'

I had no choice; as I started hearing the gunshots and the footsteps of the soldiers closing in, I steeled my courage and started covering my legs with a wind aura.

Then I jumped.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't scared. I could barely cover a couple of meters before needing to use the aura to make a second jump mid-air, before I could even use the second jump I had prepared in advance. Satsui used his strange power to grab me and pull me in faster.

Before he could make them disappear, I saw that many of his black souls were also of our race.

'Just what happened after I died for you to even absorb our men?'

He pulled me with so much force that I thought he was trying to rip out my arm by force. But at the same time, I realized that if he hadn't done so, I would've been dead by now, as the soldiers had already started shooting at us.

I didn't even have time to recover when he started running, dragging me by the neck.

"We don't have the time to fuck around; heal yourself! A single mistake here could cost our lives now." He said this while dragging me towards the rooftop.

Several loud bangs could be heard in the distance.

"Are they using artillery now?" He seemed worried.

I started using aura to speed up the process of regeneration.

'Shit! This never happened before; the enemy never actively tried to hunt us down in this way before. Is this a punishment for being the last ones?'

We were tirelessly running up the stairs, shoving aside whoever was in our way, desperately trying to reach the rooftop.

Suddenly, many sirens started to go off at the same time, and even more loud explosions could be heard in the distance.

'I hope they're still ok.'

We reached the rooftop, Satsui broke the door, and then started looking towards the ground to analyze the situation. I, on the other hand, was looking at what was happening down the stairs. Every civilian was quickly climbing down the stairs, probably to escape the inevitable conflict that was about to happen.

"We can forget about escaping; they brought at least a couple hundred soldiers here to deal with us." Some more were dispatched towards Forren's side. All we can do now is try to catch them off guard by hiding and making surprise attacks while also trying to regroup." He said, after having taken a good look at our surroundings.

"Well, we don't have much time to reorganize ourselves. What do you think it's-"

Another couple of giant, blunt objects smashed into the complex in front of us. Upon closer inspection, those objects appeared to be giant eggs made of steel.

"What the-"

As the egg opened, a weird creature was slowly making its way out. It had a dark, slender body, five extremely long tails, and the head of an ant. It didn't have any fur on its body, and it had very sharp claws at the ends of each leg.

It was barely able to stand on its legs without collapsing. It constantly shook its head left and right while also using the long tails to move around. The creature was using the tails to slowly check the terrain around it before making a move, sliding them around across the ground. It reminded me of an octopus who's adjusting his position before blending in with the environment.

The soldiers did not chase us; they simply surrounded the block shortly after green smoke signals were shot high in the sky. At some point, their tails came into contact with some humans. Among the two creatures, one simply killed them instantly with a flick of its tail, while the other squeezed them to death.

"A demon…"

"Sterio! Guran! Come forth!"

Guran was my brother's armor; it usually leaned towards a more heavy style of armor to get more protection, while Sterio was a bit of an odd one. I never knew him, so he probably came to my brother's side after I died, but from what I gathered, he likes to transform into ranged weapons, although he can basically transform into any form he pleases. This time, it was some sort of small bow attached to his arms.

"Tsuitame, keep your eyes on the soldiers."

"Yes, brother, I won't let you down."

PoV Hannis

All the preparations were ready. As ordered, we cornered the beasts into block 3. We had previously surrounded the block, but we patiently waited for the beast soldiers to enter the block before we could surround them, although I didn't expect them to make such a long jump.

'Why am I still on the frontlines after all of this? I know they trust me, but at this point I would gladly stay at home rather than deal with this. Thankfully, my father's shop is still in business; maybe next year I'll be able to resign from this position.'

I sighed.

"Our orders are clear, capture the beast by any means necessary. Make sure to have your weapons fully loaded, and make sure not to overdose them! If possible, try to sedate the creatures. If the first attempts at subduing the tailed creature fail, you're allowed to use fire weapons against them!"

'Am I doing this correctly? I've never once led an operation as important as this. Aargh! Why did they choose me out of all of the options out there?'

I hastily took out the radio while looking the soldiers behind me in the eyes.

'This is going to be a long day for sure.'

"Team... D, you're going in. Meanwhile, the rest of us will try to reach the rooftops of buildings adjacent to the ones they're fighting, remember not to interrupt the fight between them unless one of them is about to die. This is a test after all."

'Why are they so nonchalant about sending their own soldiers to die? If even one of us survives this encounter, morale will drop to an all-time low.'

A sudden flash of light caught my attention; it was from the rooftop where the two special soldiers were, then an armored beast jumped out of the building towards the monsters, branding what seemed to be a sword made out of fire.

In a single slash, it managed to cut down the creature's tail and, with a weird crossbow on its forearm, finished it off with a clean shot in its head.

'What?'

'This was not part of the plan; it wasn't this strong in the footage shown to us. Did they get stronger in the past week? No, it's likely that they held back back then'

Team D had already entered the building, while the rest of them had just started moving.

"I guess this is my last day, huh? What a shame. I really wanted to have a family with-"

Suddenly, some sort of blast of wind hit us, cutting through most of our vehicles and taking my right arm with it. A colleague had jumped in to save me and push me to the ground. Unfortunately, he was hit by the blast and is now lying dead on top of me. I was lying on my left side on the ground. I was confused and in pain; the world around me was spinning around me while getting bigger and bigger.

Whatever hit us was making weird noises, and then it quickly returned to where it came from.

At that point, I could either lie there and die of bleeding or make a last-ditch effort to at least injure one of the two soldiers. I felt my chest burning in pain, and I could feel my strength rapidly vanishing as I kept bleeding.

With my left hand, I reached towards my belt and grabbed a handgun. I pointed it in the general direction of the building, but there was no one inside.

Something sharp cut off my left hand from above. I didn't even have enough time to look up to see that the creature had grabbed me by the neck and was now using me as a shield. His cold, sharp claws were sinking into my skin.

He charged ahead, using me as a shield. He probably thought they wouldn't shoot if he used a hostage.

The soldiers that had remained outside the buildings, unfortunately, were the ones that were carrying firearms while the rest were fighting using powerful tranquilizers.

'Hah! Guess we'll die together.'

In a flash, the world disappeared. It was a strange feeling, I thought death was a painful experience, or that I would find myself in front of the gods, who would then judge my every action and decide if I was going to hell or not. But strangely, there was nothing. I was simply slowly disappearing into nothingness—no light, no darkness. It was all empty.

"How stupid of me to throw my life away for nothing."

As I was watching my body slowly turn into dust, I was thinking that there was no point in regretting what had already happened and that reincarnation wasn't an option.

'I thought I had prepared myself for my eventual death, but still, I wished I could've at least gotten married to someone and had a kid. But maybe it's better that I didn't.'

Before my neck had even started pulverizing, a weird force pulled me out of there. I was pulled back into the world of the living, but strangely, the world had lost all of its colors. It was mostly black, with some white strings defining the outlines of the world.

"WHAAAT!"

My body had turned into some kind of sword. The blade was extremely broad, probably around 40 cm, and it was longer than the beastman himself. The blade was completely gray, with no particular pattern or decoration on its hilt.

"What's happening!"

A lot of energy was flowing around my body, covering it in its entirety and some more. As a matter of fact, the energy seemed to extend for well over double the length of my body.

At each swing, that energy was cutting everything in its path, yet the soldiers didn't seem to be able to react in time to his swings, although they weren't much faster. The same energy would act as his shield whenever they tried to shoot at him, creating a wall that dispersed the projectiles to the side.

'So that's how he-"

????: Will you shut the fuck up? You're distracting me!

A powerful voice shouted inside my head. It was so loud that, for a second, I thought he was blowing an air horn next to my ears, but as I remembered immediately after, I no longer had ears.

He had already caused enormous amounts of damage to the surrounding area with his weird power. Buildings had become wrecked and unstable due to the constant clashes. Three nearby vehicles had been cut in half vertically. Most soldiers were desperately trying to get under cover to get away from him.

In an extremely short time, he managed to kill more than a hundred soldiers.

Then a heavily armored wolf landed close to us. His armor was emanating a weird liquid. It had a purple color, and it was flowing so fast that it was spilling a lot of the liquid all around him.

"What's that?" asked the beast.

"I found it by chance. Unlike everyone else, this soul was weirdly strong, so I decided it would've been best to put it to good use." Responded my holder.

"It's dangerous to have one when it's not tamed beforehand." He reprimanded my holder.

"You're fine with all of those souls inside your body. I can definitely handle one by myself." The white wolf stated.

I noticed the purple liquid starting to flow around us, creating some sort of protective bubble, stopping any incoming projectile.

"Does it have an ability?" Asked the wolf with the bow in his hands.

"Yes! Am I not extremely lucky? I still don't know how to manifest it like you do." My holder replied back.

"Mhhh…"

In the meantime, I noticed some sort of small particle made of green light leaving the ground and flying towards the sky. As I followed the particles with my eyes, I saw some massive circles in the sky.

"Those girls...what is Forren doing? Why didn't he stop them?"

CREATORS' THOUGHTS
Arcdeal

Originally I wanted to post the second part of what happened with Diego and his weapons, but the chapter was badly written, the pacing was messy, and the overall quality was not something I would be proud of. So I decided to either skip that chapter or postpone it

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