: Chapter 36

Basil cut down the first bug foolish enough to enter his halberd’s range. Another followed, and then a third. But no matter how much blood Basil tasted, his thirst for vengeance only grew stronger.

“They burned the rabbits!” Bugsy roared in fury. His fiery breath set a flying drone ablaze. “You bastards!”

The Apollyon drones lacked enough alchemical bombs to sustain a bombardment and so switched to other options. A few attacked Basil’s group with bursts of wind magic from above; others descended to engage the party in close combat. Flames covered the world and smoke polluted the air. Chaos ruled.

“Kui wives!” Kuikui shrieked in despair. His hens had fled for their lives alongside the surviving rabbits. “Kui divorced!”

“Kuikui, use Rain Dance to extinguish the flames!” Basil barked out orders. Anger fueled his body and heart, but his mind remained unclouded. “Bugsy, you’re immune to fire, salvage whatever you can!”

Basil knew it was too late to save the whole house as it had suffered too much structural damage. But it was full of mementos and memories dear to him. His books, René’s trophies, the photos, the holomachine…he couldn’t let the flames take them.

“Yes, Boss!” Bugsy rushed into the burning house and Kuikui started waving his wings like a cheerleader. Shellgirl and Plato answered the bugs’ bombardments with projectiles of their own. As for Vasi, she summoned her flying broomstick with a whistle before engaging the swarm in aerial combat.

Alas, the bugs brought reinforcements.

The ground underneath Rosemarine split open and a terrible horror burrowed out: a colossal worm the length of a school bus with blue exoskeleton plates, half a dozen red eyes, and a hungry maw full of sharp fangs. The beast bit into Rosemarine’s left flank and attempted to coil around her.

Level 20 [Bug].

Faction: Apocalypse Force.

“Mister, the food is attacking me!” Rosemarine bit back into the worm’s hide, the two titans brawling under the shadow of Steamslime’s shell. House Garden’s members abandoned their doomed attempt to save the greenhouse to rush to the tropidrake’s rescue.

“Protect the queen!” they said. The vegetables jumped on the worm’s back to stab and bite it. Their valiance could not overcome the difference in power nor the beast’s thick armor, but it was the thought that counted.

Basil found himself facing bugs on the ground without backup. A dozen Apollyon drones charged at him from various angles, their stingers sharp and deadly.

There could have been a thousand, and they would still have been outmatched.

After checking his allies were far enough away, Basil whispered two little words brimming with fury.

“Warp Spasm.”

The Berserk ailment took over, and Basil saw red.

He expected the Apollyon drones to turn into goblins, to taunt him about his past. Nothing of the sort happened. Basil saw the bugs for what they were: insectoid vermin that dared to destroy his home and hurt his own. He could only hear a droning buzzing all around him. Plato’s meowing, Shellgirl’s words, Rosemarine’s cries…all noises faded into the background, drowned by the swarm’s symphony.

Yet when an Apollyon drone met his gaze, the voice that came out of his mouth belonged to René.

“I trusted you with everything I owned, Basil, over my own blood,” he said. “And you lost it all.”

Fueled by new strength and single-minded fury, Basil charged into the fray.

He split the first bug to enter his range in half with his halberd. The second, Basil punched in the gut with his free hand. His fist gored through the exoskeleton, smashed the heart, and came out of the drone’s back. Basil then tossed the corpse at the third drone with enough force to knock him onto his back.

A fourth and fifth drone charged at Basil from two sides. Moving faster than both, he sliced one of his assailant’s arms off. As the screaming drone screamed and covered his blood stump with his last hand, Basil grabbed his kindred by the back of the head and held it against burning grass. The bug’s howl of agony didn’t soothe his rage in the slightest.

“You’re like my family,” the one-handed drone mocked Basil with the Old Man’s voice before firing a burst of wind. Basil raised the drone he was holding up as a shield and charged. The swirling wind tore the flesh from the drone’s bones, but it resisted long enough for Basil to reach his quarry. “An utter disappointment.”

“Shut up!” Basil snarled as he tossed his shield aside and chopped off the offender’s head. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

The remaining bugs attacked him from all sides. Basil’s sight blurred as he hacked drones left and right. The slaughter became a whirlwind of screams and guts. He vaguely remembered the sound of crushed bones, the taste of bitter flesh, the warmth of blood on his cheeks…

When the rush of Berserker rage receded, Basil stood alone surrounded by dead foes. He almost tripped on dismembered limbs and glanced at his bloodsoaked clothes. How many drones had he killed in the Warp Spasm’s five minute duration? A dozen, a hundred?

It wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough.

“Something’s wrong.” Basil turned around to find three more Apollyon drones staring at him with fearful eyes. They had had a clear shot at his back and didn’t take it. Dread paralyzed them. “I’m no longer Berserk, but I’m still .”

Megabug had once nearly slain the party, but that was twenty levels ago. The bug’s fellow scouts posed no greater threat to Basil in a fight than flies. Shellgirl and Plato shot them out of the skies by the dozens. Rosemarine dragged the worm fighting her into the stream. Even Vasi, who didn’t benefit from the party’s Tamer-related boosts, handled herself well. The witch flew around the battlefield while blasting bugs left and right with shadowy spheres.

Yet as Bugsy dragged the TV and holomachine from their burning house, Basil realized that the drones didn’t need levels to hurt him.

“I got them, Boss!” Bugsy said with pride. “I got the TV—”

The house exploded in a cataclysmic blast.

Like any good alchemist, Basil stored bombs, flammable substances, and other explosives in his basement alongside the gas generator. René had invested in a pretty good fire protection system, so he had thought it wise to safekeep the dangerous stuff underground.

But as the Apocalypse Force’s white phosphorus ignited his reserve, Basil realized he had sorely miscalculated. Kilos worth of bombs detonated underneath the house and shattered the few walls still standing. The roof broke into fiery debris propelled into the sky, forcing Vasi and the swarm to disperse to avoid them.

Bugsy, the closest party member to the detonation, was blown back and landed on the grass alongside the holomachine. Their TV’s screen, already partially melted from the heat, shattered on impact. The campervan kept in the garage was flung into the stream. It bounced off Rosemarine’s back and sank below the waters. Shellgirl resisted the burst of hot air and dust, but the more fragile Plato and Kuikui rolled backward.

Basil ignored the fiery debris falling all around him. He stared in silence at the fuming crater where his house once stood.

“Our house…” Plato stopped attacking the drones. Much like his owner, he couldn’t take his incredulous eyes away from their home’s fiery grave. “They…they blew it up. They blew it up.”

Not even ruins remained of the Old Man’s house.

Black clouds obscured the sky above Basil’s head. Cold raindrops fell upon him, first a few, then a downpour. The water extinguished most of the flames and raised a faint mist of steam over the garden, but it did nothing to quell the inferno within Basil’s heart.

Kuikui changed the weather to [

]! The [

] and [

] elements will be strengthened, and the [

] element weakened!

Basil roared to the skies in wrath and despair.

His voice shook the three drones on the ground from their paralysis. Two of them promptly flew away, abandoning the third to its fate.

“Running won’t help!” Basil raised his halberd and took a step toward his newest victim. “I’ll hunt you down all the way to Siberia if needed!”

“No, Lord Apollyon, I swear I can take him!” The last bug drone held his head in his hands. “Please… Argh!”

The bug’s body shone with the bright light of metamorphosis.

Realizing the danger, Basil swung his halberd to behead the creature. A metal stinger parried his weapon’s blade.

“This smell…”

Light dissipated from the Apollyon drone, revealing its new form. The insect’s exoskeleton had taken on a bloody red hue and its compound eyes glowed with a sick yellow light. The stingers at the end of its forearms shifted into metal drills. Its claws were sharper, its mandibles more like knives. Black circuits pulsated with energy along its translucent wings as organic, lamprey-like mouths opened on its shoulders.

Level 25 [Bug/Artificial]

Faction: Apocalypse Force “You smell of the Avatar of Preservation, yet you are not them.” Two voices came out of the bug’s mandibles; the droning noise of a lowly hornet and the deeper buzz of a creature far, mightier. “An item—”

Basil pointed his free palm at the bug’s face. “Inventory—”

The creature realized the danger and pushed Basil back with a swift kick to the chest.

“Road roller!”

Basil’s hand shone and a road roller taken from Dax materialized from his fingertips. The vehicle fell to the ground with enough weight to blow ashes in all directions. Yet the bug deftly dodged the improvised projectile.

“Did you keep this tool in your inventory just in case?” the bug noted with vague amusement as he moved around the road roller. “That trick will not work twice on us.”

“Who the hell are you?” Basil snarled. The rest of the swarm had mostly retreated except for the worm struggling with Rosemarine. Yet this one creature remained.

“Can’t you tell?” Blood dripped from the creature’s mandibles. “I am the voice of the swarm, the spirit of hunger. I am the thirst, I am the drought, I am the wasteland. I am the vanguard of the Apocalypse.”

The bug’s shadow briefly grew to an enormous size. The shade that was cast in the house’s dying flames didn’t belong to anything humanoid. It was the shadow of a colossal insect, with cannons for antennae and the power to match.

“I am Apollyon,” the bug declared as his shadow returned to normal. “Horseman of Famine.”

Basil sneered in contempt. “I expected a bigger cockroach.”

“This puppet is but a vehicle for my spirit to ride. My true body awaits on the other side of this crumbling barrier barring our way.” Apollyon raised one of his drill-darts at Basil. “Where is the avatar? You received a gift from him. I can smell it on you.”

Kalki. The Apocalypse Force knew about Kalki.

“What do you want to do with him?” Basil replied, trying to distract the bug and find an opening.

“You will warrant no revelation from me.” Apollyon snapped his mandibles in frustration. “No matter. I will beat the answer out of your lungs after eating your ey—”

Basil charged before he could finish.

Apollyon was no Megabug and saw the sneak attack coming. Yet as his drills moved to parry him, Basil raised his halberd with both hands and put all his might in the strike. The two duelist’s weapons clashed among the ashes and steam.

Apollyon gave up first. No matter how powerful his host body, Basil was stronger. His blow propelled Apollyon backward, leaving him open for a second strike.

“Waste away,” Apollyon whispered, his eyes shining as the halberd came for his head. “Famine!”

Cramps took hold of Basil’s limbs midswing. He felt his strength vanish in an instant, replaced with exhaustion and tiredness. His breath weakened, and the world became a little slower. His vision blurred. His stomach growled with hunger.

[

] Ailment! All physical stats debuffed for ten minutes! You will lose 1/16th of your SP per minute!

The halberd missed ever so slightly. Apollyon’s drill-darts spun as he counterattacked in close-combat. Basil dodged a strike aiming for his head and another for his chest. His body was slow, almost as if he had just woken up.

Basil thought as he found himself on the backfoot, parrying or dodging blows the best he could. He was supposed to resist all ailments! Did that bug bastard possess a Perk allowing him to bypass it?

“Don’t you dare touch my human, you dirty hornet!” Plato jumped to Basil’s rescue, backed up by Kuikui. “Wind Slash!”

Air swirled around Plato’s rapier and cut through raindrops. Apollyon raised a hand, his drill producing a wind blast of its own. The two forces collided in a mighty clash that blew the cloud of dust over the clearing.

“Kui help master!” Kuikui roared, his voice stronger and higher-pitched than any rooster. “Brave Howl!”

Strength and Magic buffed!

Basil felt new might fill his bones. It didn’t fully compensate for his existing debuff, but at least his halberd no longer felt so heavy in his hands. He flanked Apollyon from the left while Plato attacked from the right. The Horseman of Famine danced around the battlefield, parrying one blow after another.

“You shouldn’t have destroyed this place!” Plato hissed as his rapier clashed with Apollyon’s dart. “It was precious to me!”

“My thrall slew you once.” Apollyon lunged at Plato. “I will do so again.”

Showing agility beyond what any cat could achieve, Plato leaped above his enemy’s drills and slashed Apollyon mid-jump. The rapier’s tip pierced the bug’s left eye, leaving him half-blind.

“You shouldn’t have destroyed this place!” Plato taunted the bloodied Apollyon. No sooner did that cat land on the ground that he returned into the fray with uncharacteristic fury. “You shouldn’t have woken up the panther!”

“This house was more than a place. It was a dear friend’s gift.” Basil didn’t raise his voice at Apollyon. No shout could match the brimming anger in his words. “You can’t fathom how much we’ll hurt you for this.”

“You have destroyed many of my thralls and denied me a dungeon,” Apollyon replied. Basil felt him growing winded from the constant assaults. “Did you expect no retribution for taking arms against us?”

Apollyon buzzed in pain as a lightning bolt hit from behind. Kuikui followed the sneak attack with a second bolt as Basil hit the bug’s chest. His halberd pierced through the exoskeleton and the blow spilled green blood all over the ground. Yet Basil failed to slice Apollyon in half as he intended.

The bugman’s wings flapped at high speed, unleashing a burst of wind all around him. Basil, Plato, and Kuikui were pushed back. The compressed air hurt Basil all the more because of his vulnerability, yet he shrugged off and rushed into the fray once more.

He was too pissed to feel pain.

“The Maleking will create a new world for us,” Apollyon rasped with a hand over his chest wound. “A hell for the weak and a heaven for the strong.”

“Guess you were damned from birth then,” Basil snarled as he and Plato moved in for a killing strike.

“You won’t have to wait for your boss’ leave to see hell,” Plato added.

“Left to your own devices, your lot became dangerous.” Apollyon unfurled his wings. “I won’t allow you to grow any stronger.”

Apollyon took flight to avoid Basil and Plato’s strikes. Halberd and rapier hit only dirt as the bug hovered above the group.

“Poisonous flowers allowed to bloom are future headaches,” Apollyon said from above as the small holes on his shoulders vomited black spikes. “I will pluck you here and now. Dart Missiles.”

A dozen black spikes flew out of Apollyon’s shoulders and fell upon Basil’s group in a rain of destruction.

“Dodge!” Basil shouted. He avoided a projectile, as did Plato. Kuikui didn’t share their luck. A missile hit him on the side, blowing off his left wing and feathers. “Kuikui!”

“Fascinating,” Apollyon mocked them. “You are strong enough to match this vessel’s strength even when debuffed, but you seem to lack effective long-range options. Such an oversig—”

An ice pearl shot by Shellgirl hit Apollyon in the face, making him flinch. Vasi targeted him with a fireball from behind immediately afterwards. Apollyon sensed her approach, dodged, and raised a hand in the witch’s direction.

Vasi barely had the time to blink as a blast of wind hit her in the face. The blow tossed her off her flying broomstick.

Basil’s eyes widened in horror as Vasi fell from almost ten meters high. She hit the edge of his house’s crater with the sickening sound of breaking bones, close to Kuikui.

“Fuck!” Basil rushed at them as fast as he could.

“Help them, Basil, we’ll cover you!” Plato shouted, wind swirling around his rapier.

“We’ll take him on, Boss!” Bugsy breathed flames at Apollyon from the ground, assisted by Shellgirl. “You make me ashamed of being a bug!”

“That’s what you get for destroying my assets!” Shellgirl snarled at Apollyon. Her barrels fired ice pearl after pearl, but few of her projectiles hit the mark. “And for hurting my friends!”

“We are famine,” Apollyon said while retaliating with dart bombardments. “We will burn your fields, eat your crops, and destroy your roads. No matter the blood we shed, our hunger will forever gn—”

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” Plato interrupted him. The cat moved in front of Shellgirl and Bugsy, before using his Wind Slash to shoot down projectiles from the skies. “Just die and be done with it!”

Basil used Apollyon’s distraction to reach his wounded allies. Kuikui whined from his broken wing and Vasi was bleeding from the head. The witch looked about to fall into a deep sleep that she would never wake up from.

Shit.

“Vasi, Vasi you hear me?” Basil had no healing potions to use, and Rosemarine was too busy dealing with her own foe to help heal the group. Which only left a single option to save Vasi’s life. “Join my party now!”

“I…” Vasi grumbled, her face pale and gaze dizzy. “What….”

“Kui hurt…” Kuikui whined.

“Join my party! I can’t heal you otherwise!” Basil temporarily expelled Shellgirl, the member of the group with the least bruises. This left a spot open. “Do it now!”

“I…” Vasi whispered, her eyelids half-closed. “All right…must sleep…”

Changeling Vasilisa Yaga joined your party! Vasilisa unlocked the [

] hidden Perk!

“Yes!” Basil rejoiced. Using his dwindling SP, he activated his healing Perk. “Monster Cure!”

A green glow covered all his allies save for Shellgirl.

“Monster Cure,” Basil kept casting. “Monster Cure. Monster Cure.”

Kuikui’s feathers regenerated and his wing fell back into its proper place. Blood stopped flowing out of Vasi’s wound and her face regained some color. The white phosphorus burns on Rosemarine’s back vanished.

“I feel better, Mister!” Rosemarine chewed the half-dead worm monster in her teeth before swallowing it whole. Having dealt with her own foe, the tropidrake turned her attention to Apollyon and attempted to bite him. The more agile bug dodged Rosemarine’s clumsy attacks and blasted her in the face with a wind burst.

Having stabilized his allies, Basil threw his halberd at Apollyon. The bugman dodged by flying to the side, but he could only predict so many attacks at once. Bugsy burned his left wing and Shellgirl pierced the right with a well-aimed projectile. Apollyon started losing altitude.

“You’ll pluck us like flowers, that’s what you said?!” Basil shouted as he rushed after Apollyon. “Well, I’ll pluck off your wings like the bug you are.”

Fueled by single-minded fury, Basil tackled Apollyon before he even hit the ground. The two rolled among the ashes, brawling and kicking and biting. Basil’s fists might as well have been made of steel. He felt no pain as they pummeled Apollyon’s ugly face into the ground.

“Leave some for us!” Plato joined in the beatdown by stabbing Apollyon’s last remaining eye with his rapier. Bugsy’s mandibles closed around the monster’s left forearm and ripped it off. As for Shellgirl, she kneecapped him. “I hope he has nine lives, too, one death won’t be enough!”

Basil didn’t know how long they beat Apollyon within an inch of his life. A minute, an hour? No matter how hard he struck, the bug just refused to die. He was agonizing in his own blood, dismembered and broken, yet he wouldn’t stop breathing.

“We have killed billions…” He rasped. “On countless worlds…”

Basil gathered his breath and stepped away from Apollyon. The group formed a circle around their mangled foe, who remained defiant even with both eyes ripped out and no limbs left to fight with.

“I shall return. For your people. For everyone.” Apollyon spat blood. “For you.”

Basil stomped Apollyon’s mangled skull under his heel, killing him at last.

Yet the fatal blow provided him with neither joy nor satisfaction. If anything, Basil felt even more frustrated. This bug was a mere puppet controlled from afar and the true mastermind lived to threaten them another day.

Your party earned 90000 exp (13500 for you). You earned two levels (total 25).

Basil glared at the mangled corpse one last time before checking on his team.

“Everyone all right?” he asked. Plato was throwing dirt at Apollyon’s corpse as a last sign of disrespect, Shellgirl was treating Vasi’s wound the best she could, and Rosemarine checked on the members of House Garden.

“Kui’s wives, gone.” Kuikui lamented in despair. “Roof gone…”

“It’s all right, Kuikui, we all made it in one piece,” Bugsy said, trying to cheer the velociraptor up. “We’ve won.”

Basil’s jaw clenched so much that he felt blood flowing from his teeth. Bugsy reeled back at the sight.

“You call a victory, Bugsy?” Basil waved a hand at the smoking ruins of his house. Only the holomachine and Steamslime’s shell had survived the battle more or less intact. Most of the Barthes had been reduced to ash, its trees burned to the ground. “Our home, the food, the garden, my lab…René’s things…”

Basil shook his head and sighed in defeat. “All gone.”

“Basil,” Plato whispered.

“What?”

“René wouldn’t hold it against us, and you know it.”

His cat’s words felt like a bucket of cold water to Basil. He understood, intellectually speaking, that Plato was right. Yet Basil still blamed himself for failing the Old Man.

“René entrusted it to us,” Basil whispered. “Because he cared. Because we cared.”

“I know, Basil,” Plato replied. His eyes were colder and more vengeful than ever before. “He took us in because we were strays with no home to call our own. These bugs robbed us of it. I’m as furious as you are, but you shouldn’t be angry at .”

“We’re alive, Partner,” Shellgirl said. Rosemarine walked toward the group, with House Garden’s members under her care. “Houses can be rebuilt, but the dead can’t come back.”

“Yes, we live to take vengeance.” Plato glanced up at his owner with a determined look. The cat, who usually couldn’t be bothered to do anything, now brimmed with fury. “They crossed the line, Basil. You know what that means.”

Yes, he did.

“This means war,” Basil replied quietly.