Jake's Story (Apocalypse Cultivation) ch 33

Hi all!

The book has been written! Huzzah!  It's 36 chapters longer.

Unfortunately, I'm exhausted so after I post this chapter, I'm going to pass out.  However, after I get up I will be editing and posting the remaining chaptesr ASAP.  So...early tomorrow morning they should all be up.

Have fun!  I love this book.  I can't wait to share the ending with you. :)

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Jake barely got his saber up in time to deflect his opponent’s staff.  He ducked.  Instead of taking his head off, the energy blade projected from the staff’s crystal hummed through the air over his horns.

The fight was not going well.  Jake was wounded in multiple places.  Slowly healing some of his damage while also maintaining enough energy to cycle his cultivation base was proving to be one hell of a balancing act and a drain on his focus.  The battle had raged across the entire shopping center.

Miniature bolts of violet fire erupted from the evil mage’s pointed finger, forcing Jake to dodge.  Each attack sizzled on the pavement where it hit.  The sound was like someone throwing a spoon full of water in a frying pain full of oil.  As Jake began to get closer, dodging like mad, Trosist suddenly made the air glint with a complex magic circle.  With the sound of a tortured wind tunnel, a wall of flame rushed out.  This attack was a dizzying display of destructive power that set parked cars on fire as it burst forward.

Jake flash stepped directly through the mystic plasma wall and savagely swung at Trostist’s chest.  The monster managed to parry and deliver a line of angry blue flame in a scything arc from his palm.

The Midnight Cloak swirled around Jake’s shoulders, barely blocking the attack in time.

Jake barely dodged a follow up stab to the face.  He could feel the heat of his enemy’s energy weapon as it passed where his head had just been.

Trosist’s staff was now as dangerous as Jake’s Lunar Dao Polishing-enhanced saber.  Its projected magic blade could cut into concrete and asphalt.  Both Jake’s saber and the staff could stop each other, but right now the vampire mage had the advantage in reach and in mystic reserves.

And it just wasn’t fair that the evil champion was obviously magic-focused, but could still be so physically strong and fast.

Jake grunted as he swung again, going for his enemy’s knee, but Trosist flowed backward and perfectly timed a powerful kick to his shoulder.  The Midnight Cloak didn’t catch it in time, and Jake went sailing through the air, smashing through the window of an Old Navy.

His protection field was weakened enough already that it dropped for a moment after the impact of the terrible blow.  He was actually cut by the glass.  Only his Gold level Body Refinement flesh protected him from the worst of it.

Jake rolled backwards, bringing up his empty hand and delivering the fastest Demonic Contradiction Wave that he could generate.  The blast blew out the front of the store, turning the remaining glass into a hailstorm of glittering projectiles.  Trosist snarled as he canceled whatever attack he’d been creating, leaving the partially formed circle to fade where it hung in the air.  He barely got up a half-sphere of protection in time to avoid being shredded.

Damn, thought Jake.  He’d hoped to get the asshole with that one.  Experience had taught him not to give his enemy too much breathing room, so Jake dashed forward, closing with the powerful monsters again.  He thought about using a flash step, but dismissed it.  Trosist had figured out at some point that Jake had a hard time using flash steps too many times in a row, and that they were the best defensive option he had.

The nasty burn on Jake’s leg had been the result of Trosist throwing spells around, trying to pin him.  Luckily, he’d only partially succeeded, but the near-miss had been enough to make Jake be a little more cagey.

He’d been the underdog in almost every fight he’d had in his second life.  But he realized that he’d also gotten used to being underestimated.

Unfortunately, this enemy had met him before and was not making the same mistake.

And Trosist was the strongest monster Jake had ever actually fought before...in either life.  The savage mage was at least a B rank threat.  A solid B rank monster was an order of magnitude stronger than a C rank monster like a fissure witch.  The dragon in Colorado, the most powerful monster in America that Jake knew of, was A rank.  Of course, between B and A ranks was BB rank.  Jake had always thought the system was needlessly complicated, but he was used to thinking this way now.  Luckily, Trosist likely wasn’t quite BB rank, but he might be getting close.

The only reason Jake was still alive was in large part due to the Deep Heavens Solistic Midnight Cloak and the fact he was a cultivator.  If Jake had been using magic instead of cultivation abilities, Trosist would have likely already won.

In his first life, Jake had switched to cultivation from magic for a number of reasons.  One was the general weakness of magic against cultivation techniques.  Another was how progression in cultivation and harnessing more energy actually made the physical body stronger, not just one’s techniques.  And cultivating also developed the mind--it sharpened reflexes and increased focus.

The tradeoff with cultivation was losing a lot of the versatility most mages had, but Jake’s master had shown him that versatility was overrated if pitted against enough raw power.

In this case, Jake was weaker than Trosist, but at least he was slightly stronger physically.  He was resistant to his evil magic, too.  Against a human mage, Jake actually might have won already.  Unfortunately, Trosist was some sort of vampiric monster, and the champion of a god.

And even though Jake could evade most of what was being thrown at him, his enemy seemed to have a lot of energy to burn.

“What are you, ‘Heavenly Grim?’” Trosist asked as he smirked and floated back.  “Yes, I know who you are.  The Grim.  After our first encounter, I took the initiative to investigate you.  So I know what you are calling yourself and some of what you have done, but not what you are.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?  You will try to kill me either way.”

“Well, yes, but we still have curiosity and manners.”  Trosist made a gesture with his free hand.  “Look around us.  There is beauty in a discussion amongst destruction, is there not?”  Little fires burned all over the parking lot, and entire businesses were burning.  A staccato thunder of gunshots rang out in the distance, proof that humans still lived.

“Beauty?  I just see a lot of property damage.”  A distant ghoul began getting closer but apparently thought better of it.  Jake could only imagine what kind of energy the two of them were giving off.

“Well, if you refuse to tell me what sort of creature you are, you should at least tell me what god you serve.  You are a champion, are you not?”

“None of your business.”  Jake spit and was tempted to just leave it there, but he needed to keep his enemy talking so he could rest longer.  He still didn’t exactly understand how his physiology worked as a ghoul, but he was breathing heavily.  If not for reflexes and luck, he might already be dead.  He concentrated for a brief moment.  With his enhanced senses, he could tell that the human defenders were hanging on, but barely.  They’d listened to his advice about the music, which was good.  Music really was a simple shield against mind tricks.  Right now the defenders were playing “Waterfalls,” by TLC.

Arcane energy had been steadily building in Macon over the last hour.  It was strong enough now that he could be sure of it.  One result of all the buzzing power in the region had been a massive increase in monster activity.  The energy had been attracting them.

With a great deal of focus, Jake could barely sense what the Macon Protectors were doing at the mall.  At the moment, they were busy protecting their own asses from the waves of monsters invading the city.

It was a little ironic how the Protectors had cleared the cities of monsters--other than the ones they were harboring and feeding, of course--likely to reduce competition for vulnerable human prey.  But their efforts to aid Tlaloc, to bring part of his realm to earth, had ultimately attracted so many monsters that they were defending themselves and didn’t even have the time or manpower to go after Jake’s allies.

This was fortunate for the Warhounds, or they would have been annihilated by now for sure.  Jake was amazed they hadn’t run out of ammo already.

He wasn’t sure what else to say, so he just babbled something random that came to mind.  “Besides, you’re wondering what I am?  What about you?  You should not even be here.”

Trosist cocked his head.  “What do you mean?  This is where I should be most.  A dying world, ready for plunder, serving my god.  What are you?  Something monstrous, or maybe demonic in origin.  Blocking us, you say?  You must serve the dark as well.  What is wrong with you?”

“What is wrong with me?”  Jake chuckled grimly.  “That’s rich coming some kind of fucked up, lord-of-the-dead looking vampire thing that sacrifices children and kisses ass to an ugly, child-killing god.”

Trosist rolled his eyes.  “You should speak more respectfully, especially since you are such a hypocrite.  One of your titles is ‘Feaster of Children,’ is it not, Grim?”

Jake’s mouth worked for a second as he remembered his meeting with Morrigan.  “Titles!?” he said.  “You can see titles?  How!?”

“Ah!  And now I am somewhat enlightened.”  His expression was smug.  “Yes, I can see titles.  Champions gain the ability to see titles, and will see more as they mature and grow in power.  The fact you know about them, but did not know it was possible to see them yourself means you have likely been scouted to be a champion, but have not actually accepted the honor.  Or perhaps you are not qualified yet.  How interesting.”

Jake was as impressed by Trosist’s insight as he was angry at himself.  This is why you don’t talk to monsters, idiot! He mentally yelled at himself.  How the knowledge that he was not a champion would help his enemy he didn’t know, but he didn’t like volunteering information.

Luckily, the talk had gone on long enough for him to catch his breath, and he flash stepped into a surprise, slashing attack.  He wasn’t particularly shocked when Trosist somehow managed to block the strike, just disappointed.

The savage fight continued.

***

Jake slammed into a car and grunted in pain.  His energy reserves were actually getting dangerously close to running out.  Power running through his meridians was ragged, uneven, and his channels were frayed.  He was mentally and spiritually exhausted from rotating his cultivation base so fast for so long.  Behind him, the Warhounds, the Post Apoc Kings, and what was left of the Night Rangers fought a desperate defensive battle.

The Macon Defenders mostly still had their hands full at the mall, but at some point, members of the Screaming Demons had shown up and taken pot shots from hiding places, or even attacked from moving vehicles.  They attempted drive bys with firearms or flinging magic.  All of them avoided Jake and Trosist’s fight now.  Stray magic had torn apart a van with would-be opportunists, and a Demonic Contradiction Wave had totaled one side of a Fiat.  The driver had survived, unfortunately.

The entire area had devolved into pure chaos.  A group of armed home owners had even come out of hiding from the nearby neighborhood to defend their families as best they could.

Somehow, the Screaming Demons were being largely ignored by the scores of monsters invading Macon.  Jake figured they must have talismans or something for protection, but he didn’t have much time to think about it, or to wonder why the Macon Protectors didn’t seem to have similar devices.

His chest hurt, burned and punctured.  Makeshift shrapnel from an exploding wall had lacerated the back of his leg.  A gaping cut on his shoulder was slowing him down.  Jake was losing, the human groups he’d brought to the fight were losing...everything was going wrong.  If matters continued as they were, everyone was going to die for sure.  But he still had one very large, very real hope.

Sunrise is really soon now, he thought, and tried to keep every speck of what he was thinking off of his face and out of his aura.  Not all monsters were weaker during the day, but a lot were.  Vampires definitely didn’t like the sun.  And at the very least, during the day humans could see better and the monsters wouldn’t have as much of an advantage from night vision or superior smell.

His attention wavered for a second too long.  He barely blocked a savage strike from Trosist/  He immediately stepped into it so he blocked the mage’s staff, not his energy blade, but the impact of the blow still drove the back of his saber into his body.  The sheer energy of the exchange flung him to the ground.  Jake immediately sprang up, but didn’t regroup, didn’t gather energy for a Demonic Contradiction Wave.  This fight was going badly, and even though he didn’t have to hold on much longer before sunrise, what he was doing wasn’t working.  He needed to change it up.

Jake embraced the inhuman nature of his body.  If fighting like a cultivator wasn’t enough in this situation, maybe he could fight like a monster.

He dropped his sword into his storage ring as he pounced forward, enhancing the claws on his pinkies with Lunar Dao Polishing.  Trosist’s eyes widened and the vampiric creature tried to levitate backwards at max speed.

Jake flash stepped, and just like that, he was right in front of his enemy.  One hand clamped onto the staff, using all of his strength to immobilize it. He rabbit punched the enemy mage in the face with his other hand before raking the side of Trosist’s head with his enhanced claw.  His attack didn’t make it far through the mage’s defensive, but put a nasty cut from his hairline to his jaw, through one eye and his lips.

The next few seconds were a desperate struggle for control of the staff as Jake used every dirty fighting trick he knew.  Trosist tried to burn Jake to death even as he grabbed with his weapon.  Several magic attacks actually hit.  Jake didn’t relent.  He surged forward, smashing his forehead into Trosist’s bloody face and sinking his sharp teeth into the high level vampire’s shoulder.

Trosist roared in pain and anger.  He began casting a powerful spell, but Jake threw knees and elbows, striking as hard and fast as he could.  The two of them crashed into a home depot.  Trosist threw magic attacks at point blank range, but Jake leaned into them, trusting his Midnight Cloak as he ripped and tore.

The two of them demolished a shelf full of toilets.  Trosist bit Jake in the deltoid, right over the cut he’d sustained earlier.  It hurt like hell, more than it should have, and Jake roared.  He threw a hooking punch into the vampire’s ear hole, dislodging the bite, and side kicked him deeper into the plumbing department.

Then Jake began building a Demonic Contradiction Wave, a triple layered one.  He loosed at the same time that Trosist snarled and launched a fire ball.  The first layer of the Demonic Contradiction Wave exploded, mitigating some of the other attack.  With the second explosion all of the fire attack was overpowered, and Jake’s third blast caught Trosist in the chest.

His enemy was blown to the back of the store, scattering washing machines as he went.  A moment of silence rang through the store, only broken by falling merchandise.  Sounds from the fighting outside the store were clear now.  The violent clash of energies had blown holes in the roof.

Jake breathed heavily.  He was dripping dark, evil-looking blood.  His body was covered in cuts and burns now.  He wasn’t sure, but it felt like one of his arms was broken.  One of his eyes was fuzzy.  As he gasped, he suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood.  He was a mess.  His body hurt all over and his mouth tasted foul from biting Trostist even after coughing up blood.  He spit in disgust.

A second later, the entire store exploded.

He barely managed to channel energy into his defenses and flash step away from the worst of it before being blown backwards like a cannonball.

It was hard to think.  His head was fuzzy from the shockwave.  If he hadn’t evaded and defended himself, the blast would have killed him for sure.

At few moments later, he realized a few things at once.  First, he was up in the air.  Whether he had been flash stepped upwards in confusion, or the blast had taken him that way on its own...or even bounced him off the ground, he didn’t know.  He was so injured he could believe that he’d been bounced.  The Midnight Cloak was keeping him floating high in the air better than a parachute could.

Second, he was almost entirely out of energy.  Protecting himself from being destroyed had taken almost all of the last of his reserves.

Third, the explosion had been some sort of attack launched in a line.  An angry, burning scar extended from the back of the store, demolishing half of it and cutting across the parking lot.  The pavement glowed red hot.  Cars had been vaporized.  Little fires burned in dozens of places.  It was a catastrophe, a level of attack that Jake could not hope to replicate yet.

Fourth, the sun was finally starting to come up.  Yay, thought Jake tiredly.  These fuckers had killed his family, and the least he could do was ruin their plans.  But that thought froze  as he noticed one more thing.  An exhausted and wounded Trosist was talking to some bowing Protectors in the parking lot below.  He looked angry and frustrated.  The cultists bowed lower.

Lastly, at the grocery store where the Warhounds were fighting, more of the Screaming Demons had pulled up in vans, taking cover behind walls or engine blocks, trying their best to kill Vincent’s people.  And one of them threw fire.  That’s the fire mage!  Jake recognized two of them from the description his sister had given of the awakened that had killed the Andersons and his family.

The tiny bit of light on the horizon hadn’t actually lit up the sky yet, which was lucky for Jake.  If it’d been daytime, he would have been much more conspicuous while using the Midnight Cloak to float.  Right now Trosist seemed to think he was dead, or at least nobody was looking up.

Jake felt like shit.  His world was agony.  But at least when he got down to the ground, he would still have enough power to go say hello to the assholes who’d killed his father.  Jake could feel his eyes start to burn.

He glanced back down again and swallowed.  His heart went from radiating rage to dropping down to his feet.

Trosist was leaving, heading north, right past the burning wreck of the Home Depot and into the forest.  The mage was limping and noticeably agitated, even from such a distance.

Oh shit, thought Jake.  He was very aware of how lucky he was to still be alive and that he’d wounded the dark champion as much as he had.  Not only that, he still had all the information he’d gotten from goatee-guy Alex.  Jake also had all of the mage training from his first life to draw on.

And he had a very, very bad feeling he knew exactly what Trosist was going to do.  Which meant everyone was out of time.

“Fuck,” he hissed passionately.  He pointed a hand and considered building a Demonic Contradiction Wave powerful enough to obliterate both of the Screaming Demon assholes who’d killed his family and pretended to be Warhounds.  The mage and the strongman.

He might miss with his attack, but he felt in his bones that he could make it count.  The problem was it would wipe out the last of his energy.  After that, he truly wouldn’t even be able to cycle his cultivation base to keep fighting.  He was pretty much down to his claws and his sword now before he could recover.  And his shattered body was going to make him much less effective.  He could deal with the pain.  Practicing the Four Winds of Heaven Purification had increased his resistance to pain by an impressive amount.

But he wouldn’t be much help to the defenders without the last of his energy, and he damn sure wouldn’t be able to kill Trosist.

Jake took a look around the ruined shopping center.  Bodies were being savaged by ghouls behind cars and around corners.  The Warhounds and their friends desperately defended their shattered grocery store, possibly where they’d chosen to make their last stand.

Vampires were slowly starting to slink away, repelled by the impending dawn, but the Screaming Demons--the same group that had killed Jake’s family in his first life--had chosen now to join the party in earnest.

Jake could kill the fire mage and strong guy and likely still get away, or still escape what was to come.  But he just couldn’t do it.  He knew what it had been like to go to Ahriman’s realm.  Could he live with himself if he let that shit happen to Vince, or the other decent people he’d met?  What about the big tiddie goth chick he’d helped bfore?  She was still in Georgia.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck...goddamn motherfucker,” he sighed.

He cast one more wistful glance at the two people he wanted to kill most in this world before instructing the Midnight Cloak to lower him to the ground faster.  The moment his feet touched the parking lot, he began shuffle-running into the forest, going the same direction that Trosist had.

Catching and killing that asshole was the only way to stop vampire hell from coming to America.  And he had a terrible feeling he was the only one who could do it.

“I’m sorry, Mom.  Sorry, Dad.  Sorry, Dina,” he said softly.  He knew they’d approve of what he was doing, but he couldn’t help feeling like he was betraying them.

As he ran through the forest, gasping and hissing in pain, he wished he could cry properly.  Instead, he just heaved in emotional distress while blood ran down his face.

His earlier, vague desire to get stronger crystallized.

Jake was going to end Trosist or die trying, and after that, he was going to get so strong he would never be taken advantage again.  He vowed to never have to make a choice like the one he’d just made ever again.  His mission to get stronger wouldn’t stop until he could punch Ahriman’s teeth through the back of his head.

Sorrow and anger carried Jake through the early morning twilight.  He couldn’t quite bring himself to pray, but his eyes glowed blue and he flexed his claws, remembering a Bible verse that seemed appropriate.

Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.

His skin didn’t catch on fire just thinking about it.  He took that as a good sign.