55-Nameless, Faceless

The blade pulled out of James’s back, and he thought: Now! I need to get out of here now! I can still move well enough. I just need to heal and–

Predator’s Instincts screamed at him to move to the side, and he dodged just in time. A spear thrust pierced the space where James had just been standing–and he felt an ominous heat coming off the red-hot spearhead, along with a sound as if it singed the air around it.

In a single smooth motion, James pulled his mask back down over his face and turned his head to look at the spearman.

“Well, who do we have here?!” Jan Roest exclaimed. He wore a broad grin as he pulled the spear back and readied for another attack. Then he frowned. “Wait, Jeff?! The fuck are you doing here?!”

“Betraying you,” James growled, doing his best False Impression-fueled impersonation of Officer Ross’s voice. In the moment that Roest hesitated, James closed the distance with him, grabbed him by the throat, and squeezed tight, using Predator’s Armaments to strengthen his grip. He remembered that Roest was lower level than him and hadn’t been through Race Evolution, so it was unlikely the enemy was actually strong enough to endure James’s grip.

Sure enough, he heard a cracking sound from Roest’s neck–but then James felt something extremely hot approaching from behind him. He was forced to pivot and use Roest to shield himself from the incoming fireball.

“Aaaargh!!!” Roest remained alive enough to scream, at least, and the flames didn’t fully envelop him, only covering one side of his body. As Roest went down, James assessed that the wounds were probably survivable with immediate medical help, but he couldn’t afford to focus too much on killing this one man.

He looked around himself. More people had gathered. He was almost surrounded, and the mass of men and women were moving in. He could somewhat feel, with Predator’s Instincts, where all the people behind him were, and James kept moving, trying to avoid giving anyone an easy shot at stabbing him again. The wound he already had didn’t seem to be anywhere debilitating, or perhaps his new body was just that much hardier than a normal human one.

None of the unevolved ones were likely to match his speed, and Predator’s Insight seemed to indicate that there were several weak points where he could carve his way through the enemies and escape.

James started to wonder if Rostov had instructed them to hold back on attacking him seriously until the Prophet could get there himself, out of consideration for how weak the average of the group was. But no. It made more sense that they had all only just awakened and gathered to see the enemy that threatened them.

Most of them had not had time to do more than position themselves–and maybe they were afraid of getting too close to the intruder who had already dispatched a couple of people in only a few seconds.

Then the situation got much worse.

“Take heart, my friends!” an all too familiar voice boomed. “He is just one man, nothing before the might of Moloch!”

James saw the Prophet’s silhouette emerge in the center of the group of enemies closest to the tents. The one we’ve all been waiting for, he thought.

James had a very bad feeling about this. The group of people all around him suddenly felt more menacing, as if they’d grown taller from Rostov’s pronouncement. Somehow those words, which sounded very confident but quite empty to James, had injected steel into their spines—and some other effect that James couldn’t quite explain.

And James realized that rather than calculating his chances of victory and survival, Predator’s Insight was now just screaming at him to run!!! Surely his odds couldn’t have declined that much, just from the addition of one supporting player to the enemy group.

Don’t be stupid, James, he told himself. Of course they could. Rostov is a higher level than you. Even if he’s only some kind of support class, his support abilities must be incredible.

“Lord Moloch, please protect your servants with your holy light!” Rostov chanted.

James had felt the presence of a god descending into a mortal body before, and without experiencing any of the same visual or sound effects he associated with that phenomenon, he now felt a small fraction of that same energy in the air around him.

Oh crap.

James dove toward what Predator’s Insight had identified as the weakest section of the line of cultists, thinking to penetrate through it—or he tried to dive. A pull at his ankle stopped him and almost sent him careening to the ground.

James looked down. Roest, with his good arm that wasn’t horribly burned, had locked onto James’s ankle.

“Fuck me,” James swore.

“I intend to,” Roest growled, half-burned face contorted in a horrific grimace.

James lunged downward, swiftly plunging his dagger toward Roest’s unprotected neck. The blade struck something—and stopped.

This feels uncomfortably familiar, James thought. He now saw that Roest was enveloped in a golden glow. Through his peripheral vision, he could tell that the surrounding area had grown brighter in the last few seconds. Worst case scenario, everyone else was glowing golden too. But he didn’t look around right now to check.

Instead, James braced himself to exert his full Strength. He swung down with the dagger clasped in both hands, right at Roest’s head. The man released James’s leg and raised his arms to defend himself, but he was too slow.

The dagger came down at speed, struck the golden light in front of Roest’s face—and snapped in two. The broken tip of the blade spun off into the night, whizzing harmlessly past James’s face.

I really can’t win this, he thought. How do I escape?

He swung his head in a wide arc and took in as much as he could of the situation around him.

The Moloch cultists approached on all sides, moving slowly but surely, glowing golden with apparent invincibility. A few were almost close enough to touch him.

They look like a goddamn zombie horde, James thought. If zombies had a weird holy aura. But fortunately most of them were at least slow. The two closest cultists tried to grab him, and he dodged back and forth, keeping out of reach without moving very far from where he’d started. As he weaved around the closest ones and looked for a gap in the wall of people that he could pass through, he noticed something strange.

As his followers advanced all around James, Rostov stayed away. He hung in the background like a mascot at a sports match. There had to be a reason why.

James focused his eyes on Rostov for a moment. He could barely see him around the other people, but he thought he caught a good image of him between the moving bodies. Rostov was glowing golden, just like his cultists, but he was also sweating as if he was the one fighting.

Of course! He’s the one who’s fueling this. Maybe if I target him, the shielding disappears. He tried to use Predator’s Insight, but it again screamed at him that he needed to escape as quickly as possible, so he deactivated the Skill. I’ll have to improvise.

James bent to grab Roest, who yelped with surprise as James lifted him overhead. James couldn’t stab the other man with his knife, but the glow did not prevent James from getting hold of him. Though James could sense he wouldn’t be able to do any damage by grabbing Roest, holding onto him was good enough for his purposes.

James charged the weakest place he could find in the enemy encirclement, using Roest’s body as a battering ram. It worked to push the closest people backward, although again, James could sense they hadn’t taken any damage.

He dropped Roest on the ground as soon as he was through the human obstacles.

James bobbed and weaved through the few cultists in the weak area of the line he had penetrated through, and he made a beeline for where Isabelle Rose still lay on the stone tablet. He knew what he had to do, and he was already drawing another Wolfbone Dagger.

I’m sorry I couldn’t do better for you, he thought. Given the change in circumstances, his mission in regard to her was no longer rescue, merely an end to suffering.

“Why leave so soon?” Rostov’s voice came from James’s elbow.

Really? James thought. I thought you were a coward, or at least that you could only fight through others. If you’re going to come to me, though…

He turned and seized Rostov by the collar. The golden glow around the leader was stronger than that around any of the followers. It seemed obvious now that James wouldn’t be able to pierce it unless Rostov ran out of Mana or whatever resource it consumed.

But every ability he’d seen in the System thus far did have some limit or other.

James slammed Rostov head first into the ground. Then he lifted Rostov’s head off of the ground and smashed it down again. And again.

As the cultists rushed towards him, James slammed Rostov’s head against the ground once more and scraped it forward, trying to create maximum friction. But as soon as James stopped to see if there was any damage or weakening of the shield, Rostov was pushing against the ground, trying to raise himself from his prone position.

James got a good look at him. There wasn’t a hair out of place. Aside from the sweat that continued to pour down the side of his face in greater and greater volumes, Rostov looked the same as before.

The only damage their clash had done was to the ground, which James had landscaped with a small crater connected to a trench, both dug in the shape of Rostov’s head.

I give up, James thought. He took off running toward Isabelle again, only to feel a sudden sense of tension. He half turned back, and an arrow tore through his left bicep.

If I hadn’t moved, that would’ve gone right through my heart! He covered the wound with his right hand in an attempt to slow the bleeding, and he began Silent Spellcasting. He needed some magic that would definitively put an end to this fight. It was time to rely on good old Apophis again.

At the same time, he ducked low and continued the rush toward Isabelle, dodging slightly from side to side as he moved to make himself a harder target. Projectiles repeatedly zoomed by him as he ran, but none of them landed this time. Either their aim or his instincts protected him, and he made it to Isabelle.

As he reached her, he sensed Rostov’s mob continuing to press closer around him. Tightening the noose. He had no time to say anything, to try to wake her or free her from her bonds. He only had time to do what he had resolved to do.

Just think of her like a piece of meat, he thought. Nameless, faceless. No one’s sister. No one’s daughter. His eyes fell upon the slight swell of her stomach. No one’s mother.

He swallowed. Then he raised the dagger up as high as he could and plunged it straight down toward the hollow between her breasts. Forgive me.

As if possessed by some superhuman instinct, Isabelle stirred at the last moment. Her eyes flew open, and their gazes met for a moment.

He thought he saw a flash of contentment there, and then the knife was in her chest. He pulled it out and quickly, numbly slashed her throat as well. Have to be sure. He wouldn’t put it past these people to heal her just so they could sacrifice her according to their perverse rituals.

Then he rose to his normal height.

“He has stolen the Sun God’s sacrifice. We must capture him alive!” Rostov declared.

James felt a pit form in his stomach. He wanted time to process what he’d just done, but he wanted far more desperately not to take Isabelle’s place on the tablet.

He looked around and assessed his situation again. It wasn’t so bad. He was almost surrounded, but he’d been more surrounded when he broke through to reach Isabelle. Everything he’d done in these moments of heated action since he’d freed the prisoners had taken less than a minute.

Only a few of the enemy had caught up to him as he paused to kill Isabelle. Those three figures stood just a body’s length away, waiting for more of their group to catch up to them. Even with the golden light protecting them, none of them wanted to fight him one on one.

Most of the cultists couldn’t compare to him in speed, power, or sheer unrelenting energy. He just had to stay out of reach of those few who could actually keep up with him, and he could escape, just like those prisoners. Or he could stay out of reach long enough to blow them all to kingdom come. His Mana was charging a bit more quickly than it had pre-Evolution, and in the state of mind he was in right now, he’d happily blow up most of the forest to take all of them down with him. He was focusing hard on that thought for Apophis’s benefit.

Then there was a new light, bright and a sharp yellow hue, approaching from the distance behind the line of cultists. It was different from the golden light that surrounded Rostov, and it gave James an ominous feeling.

After all, it certainly wasn’t backup for James.

“Ah, excellent!” Rostov said.

James noted most of the cultists turn their heads, apparently as surprised as he was by the light.

A group of figures appeared, outlined against the light. More cultists? They had more people than I realized. Then he saw.

No! How?!? The woman wearing the flower wreath was the first figure he could see, and the yellow light shone brightest around her. But also wreathed in the light were all of the prisoners James had just freed. Something that looked like a glowing yellow wall followed behind them. They hadn’t made it very far after all.