Savage Awakening 501. Stellar Gravity (II)

“There you go!” roared the Sage.

Zane was wrestling with a dwarf in a mecha-suit. A brute of a half-step Empyrean—its gears ground violently as it tried to crush him into the dirt.

He growled, shoving back hard. He had to burn his Asura State near 200% just to keep it off. The thing was making him work for it.

Normally, Zane didn’t have much trouble with this kind of physical test. His physique could hold off half-steps by itself—he’d proved that in battle.

So the Sage went and chained a few stacks of infinisteel to him, like a weighted vest. It was the old fellow’s idea of a training exercise. They clank-clanked with every flex and heave.

“Think of it like this,” said the Sage. “Gravity’s like a new muscle you’ve got to work, right? So we’ve got to make it a real struggle. Make you give all you’ve got to the thing!”

Zane was just getting going. Trying to force his will onto the thing—trying to use Gravity as a crushing force. It was slow going so far. He was struggling to get ahold of it.

The old fellow nodded in satisfaction. “It’s like a fist! A big ol’ fist of the will. Now bear down, and put all your soul-weight into it—crush, lad, crush!”

Zane nodded, gritting his teeth. He worked his mind around it, just like the Sage said.

The mecha-suit staggered. It started to whine. Bolts began pinging out of the seams. Then those thick, rusted plates started deforming, crushing like tin cans—the pressure was on.

Then Zane started gaining the advantage. He pressed it back step by step, even as it compressed—letting out a growl as he did. He never let that crush go. Slamming down more and more of his will…

At some point, he hit his limit with the Concept.

He still felt pretty clumsy with it. He had the soul heft, he had the will—but he couldn’t put all of it to good use in the crush… he didn’t have enough Gravity just yet.

But what he did have was enough to send sparks whirring out of the monster. It made it stumble and stagger—nearly tripping when he stomped down and rammed himself against the steel.

That was all the sign he needed.

He gave it another hard bump, knocking it off-balance—then made of Gravity a great big cloak, wrapping his body and giving himself new weight.

He rammed that thing again, much harder this time, a one-two in quick succession. So hard he caved in the chest piece. He flung that mecha-dwarf off him.

“That’s it!” cried the Sage.

Then Zane leaped—threw up one big spin sixty feet off the ground, wheeling his hammers all the way around, gaining furious momentum even as the hammers burst into flame.

“Now you go drop that Gravity core, you finish the damned thing!”

He remembered what the Sage had told him earlier—“There are two ways you can smash harder. See—so far what you’ve done, you’ve put all your heft into them! That’s the push. But now stack it with that pull—the weight of Gravity—that’ll run through planets like damned bricks!”

Zane dropped his hammers. He dropped a Gravity core right at the heart of his foe and roared as he pulled with his will—just as hard as he slammed with his physique.

His hammers shot down.

They went so fast they surprised him—like they were shot out of a cannon; but they went faster as they flew, blazing like meteors.

They streaked their fastest at the moment of impact.

The poor dwarf-mech never had a chance.

CLANG-BOOM!

The Sage stomped nimbly out of the way. Then a mushroom cloud wiped out half the landscape.

When it cleared, there was one big dent in the Divine Profound steel of the main road—and on either side of it, made of lesser steels, lay yawning canyons.

It was done.

Zane landed in a crouch, smoking. He grinned. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”

“Feels heaps stronger, doesn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Hmm.” The Sage squinted at the destruction. “Right—I’d say your drag force right now’s about a few dozen planets strong. Now that’s strong stuff! Much stronger than it usually is at Tier 6… that’s your Destruction having to do with it, I imagine. That soul of yours too.”

“Makes sense.”

“I figure… bit hard to say, eh? But might be you’re a third of the way in. I’ve got a feeling once you get all the way done with this thing—once you’ve got the full Concept locked down! You’ll be pulling stars with that strength. Now imagine you could pull just as hard as you can smash.”

“It definitely feels a lot stronger than I thought it would.”

Zane was already flattening half-step Empyreans at rates he’d never seen before. Sometimes he barely took 20% damage.

The Sage grinned. “I remember when I was getting the hang of that damned Concept. Went around smashing these big ol’ evil seals for a whole month and a half, out there in the Wilds… damned fun stuff! Just dragged ‘em in and whacked ‘em right out of the star system. They had this seal cabal. They were trying to hoard all the Everfrost water, see? The thing with seals—they’re all blubbery; it makes for great whacking. You ever get the chance to whack a seal, I highly recommend it.”

The Sage blinked. “Where was I?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Hm.” The Sage seemed to decide it didn’t matter. He continued on cheerfully.

“The thing is—if you pull ‘em in, it’s not just making your hits hit harder. You’re yanking ‘em out of their defensive position. Sometimes, even yanking ‘em out of their distortion fields, or even their universes, if you get that pull hard enough! You’re giving ‘em a good ol’ ‘come over here!’ before you whack ‘em.”

Zane started working on his cache of steels again. They kept on along the main road, which was now nicely cleared. He was working through a bar of infinisteel like it was beef jerky. The Sage was content to ramble.

“That’s the best time for these kinds of experimentations,” he said, wagging a finger. “When you’re fighting the runts. Big bosses, you want to be on your A-game. That’s no time to play around. All the same—you can’t try new things if you’re serious all the time.”

Zane swallowed a chunk of steel. “It’s the difference between training and fighting.”

“Exactly right. It all comes from trying things,” the Sage concluded heartily. “You’ve got to try things to make ‘em your own.”

The Sage suppressed a burp.

“One hell of a Concept, that Gravity… there’s tons you can do with it. You can weight your own stuff, crush down with it! You can pull ‘em into your blows—it’s a smasher’s best friend. There’s an even higher version of it at Tier 7. Stuff just keeps building.”

“Sure.” Zane was just getting to the end of this infinisteel bar.

Skill up!

Asura Titan’s Body, Third Form V -> VI

The Sage perked up. “That another body level right there?”

He nodded. “I’m up to six now.” 

“Most of these half-step Empyreans can’t do much to you anymore, eh?” The Sage looked pleased. “We’ll find you a good fight, don’t you worry, lad. You’ve got to figure there’s a chunker out there. Might be there’s one waiting right there.”

They were coming up to the dwarf-king’s castle now.

It squatted in the heart of the cavern, built into a pillar of stone and steel. All brutal blocks of iron—its guts were showing in places, revealing the gears working inside. Steam puffed from chimneys on every tower. But the place also showed signs of heavy battle. Those towers were chipped, rammed with craters. There had been a wall once, and the ruins of it still looked pretty formidable—fifty feet thick. But the middle had been blown clean through. The castle face, too, right beyond—like a giant cannonball had rammed its way through and never stopped, leaving a trail of rubble in its wake.

Leading right into the throne room.

The place looked like it had been heavily bombed. Broken gears lay about, big chunks of scrap metal from mech-suits, some still sparking, scattered over caved-in statues. The runes worked over the grounds and the ceiling—the great braziers lining the hall—were all splattered with dried blood.

The only thing still intact was the throne itself. And on it, shrouded in a light smoke, sat a hulking figure with green, glowing eyes.

Zane stopped just at the entrance. Something about the way Corruption lingered there, like tripwires—quite thin, but up close his Sage mind could catch it with little trouble.

He frowned. The way reality twisted around it… 

Hmm. 

The Sage crossed his arms. “That’s one hell of a booby trap right there. Looks like whoever made this mess got its money’s worth… it’s wrapped pretty tight around the throne room, too. You’d have to go through it to break it.” 

It was hard to tell just how strong it was—it was pretty cleverly cloaked. Still—there were hints. That thin line of Corruption had to be some of the highest-grade Zane had ever seen. Much stronger than anything a half-step Empyrean could muster.

The Sage inspected it for a few breaths.

“So,” said Zane at last. “We just going for it, or…” 

He didn’t mind giving tanking it a try. 

“I’ll take this one,” said the Sage. He scratched his chin. “Wager it’s left by the very same ancient Monster that did all this. I get the feeling it’s meant to be the kind of thing that kills Empyreans… S’pose there’s only one way to find out, eh?”

He strode up to it, took out a finger, and poked it.

The tripwires broke.

The whole chamber began to rumble.

Corruption lightning lit up the ground. Ritual circles carved around the Sage’s feet, spinning faster and faster.

The lightning began to gather right over the Sage’s head—making a ball of crackling chaos, a ball that seemed to suck in all other light…

Sure enough, it carried the weight of Empyrean. The weight of a full-on Inner Universe; Zane could see the way it ruptured reality all around it.

He was no expert on Empyrean attacks, granted—but he was pretty sure that was no ordinary Empyrean blow. He got the feeling it was more like an all-out attack.

The Sage stared up at it and grinned.

The chaos star descended.

At the same moment, the Sage stomped.

Just a simple action. But it sent earthquake shockwaves rippling the length of the cavern, going through Primordial steel like waves in water.

Then he leaped, cranked back a fist—a fist that darkened, gaining a shiny, metallic quality—

Reality broke around the Sage’s knuckles. There was Stellar Gravity there, and something far more profound stacked there too—some higher order of Gravity. More Concepts too, something that gave the Sage’s fist an impression of great size, far bigger than it seemed to the naked eye.

Reality didn’t know what to do with it.

Zane could hear that sound, like paper tearing—ripping one vicious line all the way up as the Sage charged that falling star.

Then he smashed.

It looked like a raindrop hitting a plate of steel. Those Concepts over his knuckles sank in—and it looked as though that falling star hit a surface much greater than the size of the Sage’s fist; a surface that flattened it utterly.

All that pent-up energy blew open.

Empyrean lightning blew out every which way, ready to eviscerate everything in several hundred miles’ range.

But the Sage clenched his fist.

A Gravity asserted itself—something absolute.

All that lightning froze still, caught in the pull of that immense force. Zane blinked as his master reeled that explosion back in. He could see what the old fellow meant by that ‘come back here!’ feeling. The Sage just yanked all that lightning right out of the sky, stacking it back together until it made that star again—much smaller, tamer, there in the Sage’s palm.

Then he crushed it.