Apocalypse Cultivation 2, ch 23

“Night just never fucking ends,” Jake muttered to himself.  Bartok winged through the sky, following the road back in the direction Jake had come before.  He’d been pretty sure he’d known where the kidnappers had gone, but once he was up in the air he’d been able to immediately confirm it.

The van was running without visible lights, but it was using infrared lights.  Veil Piercing Phoenix Eyes were proving to be incredibly helpful.  Maybe because they were part of a great Dao, the ability kept poking him, getting his attention when he could use it in a new, helpful way.  With the help of the Veil Piericing Phoenix eyes, he’d easily spotted the van in the distance.

He had to hurry, though.  The vehicle was moving slowly but was already almost back to the fortified area near the Walmart.

As he got closer, Jake wondered what the hell the cultist or gangs were doing, and even how they were doing it.  Driving solo at night with no real lights was ballsy.  Then again, the monsters had attacked the school.  Maybe the asshole kidnappers hadn’t just used it as a distraction, but had actually caused the huge monster attack.

That was a disturbing thought.  However, Jake thought about how the Protectors back in Macon had had a building full of vampires.  He had to admit it was possible.

He quickly ran through a few options to stop the van.  Just like back in the school, the actual motivations and reactions of the kidnappers were a problem.  There was also the fact there innocents were unconscious in the back of a moving vehicle.  Luckily, the van was only moving around twenty miles per hour.  That helped.

There were a few options to stop the van, but Jake dismissed almost all of them.  He even thought about riding Bartok down right above the ground and using his new AK pistol to take out the tires.  He made a face thinking about the first gun that he’d lost somewhere in his fight with Conophta.

Shooting out the engine would be too dangerous too, not least of which because of how much noise it would make.  Jake didn’t know what kind of power the kidnappers had over monsters, if any, but he didn’t want to make any assumptions and end up attracting a million monsters to the passed-out-people-buffet.  Destroying the tires could cause an accident, and unlike in Hollywood movies, a rolling vehicle could be lethal to the kidnapped children.

Finally, he just decided to keep it simple.  Sword in the engine it is, he thought.

Jake commanded the bat to go lower and readied himself.  He soundlessly glided down on Bartok’s back, sword ready.  His focus was so sharp, for a moment he even forgot about all of his fatigue and pain.

When he was ready, he jumped down about ten meters in front of the van, spun and delivered a Lunar Dao Polishing infused cut at an angle through the engine block.  He’d briefly considered using Phoenix Piercing Talon, but that technique was rooted in fire.  Introducing any kind of fiery energy around gasoline while trying not to kill everyone seemed like a bad idea.

The plan worked beautifully.  Jake’s strike took out the engine fast enough that the kidnappers couldn’t gun it or really do much of anything.  The van sputtered and died.  It swerved to the side and Jake could tell the bastard driver was trying to escape or maybe even roll the van.

“You’re going too slow for that, jackass,” said Jake out loud.  Then he jumped to the roof of the cab, cutting through the area beneath several times for good measure.  Every strike was delivered with killing intent, his blows delivered faster than any vanilla human could ever manage even if they could somehow cut through metal this easily.

The goons inside had gotten exactly one shot off.  Jake eyed the Midnight Cloak where the bullet had left some lead residue.  Being bulletproof was nice, but he needed to remember how he’d almost just been turned to fried meat a few minutes ago by a minotaur.  He gingerly touched his burned arm and nodded.  It was a good think to keep in mind, especially since another champion could pop up any moment.

If it happened again, and the other champion was as strong as the minotaur had been, Jake was fucked.  It was something he was avoidinging thinking about.  All he could do was try to be fast.  He’d already decided to help the people in Locust Grove, and he was going to see it through to the end.

Hopefully it wouldn’t take too long and he could get the hell out of dodge soon, though.  Jake wasn’t quite as worried about being ambushed if he was a thousand feet in the air riding Bartok.

He hopped down from the top of the van and glanced inside.  It looked like someone had blended some ground beef mixed with dark clothing and thrown it all over the cab.

The back of the van opened and someone got out, hissing, “Van is stopped.  Heard noises!  I think we’re under attack.  Be advices that– Oh shit.  Grim.” The would-be kidnapper, a young man with a mustache, looked up right as Jake flash-stepped into a savage sword strike.  An arc of blood followed Bloom’s blade.

Jake flicked blood off his blade and sheathed it.  He glanced down at the radio as someone squawked on the other end.  Someone out there had gotten a warning.  Maybe.  Nothing he could do about.  Jake rushed the radio with his foot.

His senses buzzed out, a quick pulse, and he confirmed that the kidnappers were dead.  Two of them had been awakened.  Every time he killed an awakened, it pissed Jake off.  These assholes should be helping people, not being professionally awful.

He glanced through the back of the van and verified that the captives were still alive.  They seemed fine.  Good.

Since Jake couldn’t sit around all day waiting for the defenders from the school to catch up or figuring out how to return them himself, he briefly studied the victims, trying to figure out what to do with them.  One of them, a little boy, looked like an angle as he slept.

Jake didn’t know what the kidnappers were going to do with them, but based on the paragons of virtue he’d killed back at the school, he could guess.  

Thinking about it made him angry. Very angry.

He finally figured out what to do when he realized that he had access to his storage ring again.  After a decade without it, it wasn’t really at the front of his mind like it used to be the last time he was on earth.  Hell, it wasn’t like he’d had it for that long back then in the first place.

Jake gathered salt, chalk, and a few other arcane ingredients, then went to work drawing a ward around the van.  Once it was complete, he figured there was a high chance he wouldn’t be able to cross it since he was a monster, but he could still phase through it if he really needed to.  This barrier should function the same as the one he’d phased through near Macon what felt like a lifetime ago.

It didn’t matter, though.  Jake was going to leave once it was complete.  He examined his preparations critically before letting a single drop of blood fall on the circle and injecting his chi into it.

Unless humans or a monster at least as strong as Jake came along, the innocents were safe now.  They’d be fine.

Jake hopped back on the clay bat and took to the sky.  He turned up the volume on the boom box again.  This time, “Poker Face,” was playing.

Jake decided he really needed to make his own mix tape the first chance he got.  Ten years without any music, and now he was like a flying, “Now That’s What I This Is Music!” album.  He frowned.  That wasn’t quite the right name for it, at least he didn’t think so.

The real name eluded him the entire way to the outlaw base.  Aldina would know, he thought.  His sister had always been good at remembering random bullshit like that.  Well, he amended.  She was always good at everything.

On the off chance any of the raiders at Walmart had been involved in his family’s death, he decided he’d just need to kill them all.

***

“Wow, they really took that guy’s warning seriously, eh?”  From up in the sky, Jake looked down at a scene of frantic activity below.  Moments later, muzzle flashes lit up the night below like camera flashes.  It didn’t seem like most of the fire was actually in any danger of hitting Jake, but the fact they were trying at all was weird.

“How the hell do they know I’m up here?”  He frowned before face palming.  “Duh.”  He was still blasting “Poker Face.”

Turning the boom box back on wasn’t super smart, he told himself, then forgave himself.  Jake well and truly felt like shit.  Ever since his fight with the minotaur, he just kept feeling worse, probably because of how he’d strained his meridians.

Jake targeted the largest group of muzzle flashed below and delivered a Demonic Contradiction Wave right in the middle of it.  He was rewarded with screams and even more activity below.  Then Jake began flying in circles with Bartok, delivering ranged attacks.

Part of him was tempted to craft a four layer demonic contradiction wave like he’d just used earlier.  He thought better of it, though.  Adding layers to a Demonic Contradiction Wave almost took exponentially more focus and power for each one.  Jake could maintain his lower level Demonic Contradiction Wave attacks without immediately wiping himself out.  He dedicated to that.

As he destroyed the front of a jeep below, he grinned savagely.  It wasn’t like these assholes could go anywhere.  Jake had air superiority.

He continued to circle, delivering attacks where he could, but the defenders were starting to wise up and not clump together in the open.  Jake made a face.  He didn’t even bother shooting any of the many firearms he had access to.  He wouldn’t hit shit from this high up, riding a flying bat without a saddle.

For the first time, Jake wished he’d been able to acquire a minigun or something from somewhere.

He kept getting closer to the ground, trying to find good targets.  While he could keep throwing attacks like these as long as he needed to, he still couldn’t exactly rapid fire waste energy.

Suddenly, spotlights below finally light up Bartok.  Jake wasn’t too concerned and didn’t bother telling Bartok to bank, which ended up being a mistake.

Jake learned two unfortunate things in quick succession.  First, while he might be bulletproof, Bartok was not.

A hail of bullets punished the clay bat, chewing through his body and wings.  Bartok shuddered and began to lose altitude.  “Fuck!”  Jake wildly looked below for the source of all the fire, but he was being blinded by the spotlight.

Veil Piercing Pheonix Eyes helped Jake’s vision, but it didn’t help much.  All of the shooters were scattered.  Jake snarled and delivered a Demonic Contradiction Wave, blowing one of them through a car door.

That’s when Jake learned his second lesson when a shot from below slammed into his thigh and had enough energy to punch clean through.  Jake’s supernaturally strong bone thankfully didn’t get pulverized, but the wound was still gnarly.

He was not actually bulletproof.

“Fuck, fuck!  Fuck!”  Jake quickly took a wad of cloth out of his storage and gritted his teeth as he tore off the right amount to shove it into the hole in his leg.

Right about then, Bartok finally lost energy and rolled before falling like a rock.  The bat likely couldn’t die, but he was done.  Jake collected the bat, threw him into his storage ring and dove for the ground.  He needed to get lower, fast, before the sniper could hit him with another .416 or 50 cal or whatever the hell that had been.

He commanded the Midnight Cloak to flare, slowing his descent right about the lowest he figured he could.  It turned out to be just about perfect, but when Jake flexed his powerful legs to absorb the energy of impact, he cursed.  He’d forgotten about his wounded leg.

“This sucks,” he growled.  Jake limped into a flash step at a man with a shotgun and cut right through the man’s gun before burying Bloom in his chest.

Just like that, the situation had drastically changed, and Jake’s mood soured even further when he realized he had nobody to blame but himself.  He’d been cocky and he’d paid for it.