The New World

The Sentinel turned towards his portal, "Perhaps risking your life for a blow to the enemy isn't a good idea."

I shrugged, "Every fight is a risk. It's a part of the whole 'war for Schema' thing. Either way, you won't have to do much. All I need you to do is create a portal before I slam into the ground."

The Sentinel's eyes narrowed, "You intend to use your orbital bombardment to incite the eruption of Polydra?"

I spread out my arms, "You got it."

"That's insane."

I shot the guy two finger pistols, "Insanely smart?"

"No. You'll die in the aftermath at the very least. The eruption will consume you."

I shook my head, "Not exactly. From what I've gathered, this eruption will be more like a bomb going off. It will be like Mt. Saint Helens or Krakatoa."

"What are those?"

"They're famous eruptions from Earth's history. I watched a documentary on them one day while I was bored. I didn't understand all the technicalities at the time, but the destruction from the eruption wasn't from magma."

I opened my status, opening up Schema's information network. Though it sterilized a lot of the information, volcanic eruptions weren't something Schema censored. A few seconds of reading later, I tilted my status and showed the Sentinel some images.

"See here? It mentions a pyroclastic flow. We can instigate that to wipe the city. It takes this kind of eruption a few minutes to finish. That's plenty of time for me to survive. The Hybrids aren't as rugged as I am though."

The Sentinel tilted his head, "You have fought with glowing armor before, haven't you?"

"Yeah. Heat isn't something that bothers me much. It should be plenty to cull Poldyra utterly, though."

The Sentinel sighed, "Then I will create the tear. I must first visit the place. How will we get there?"

I pointed towards Polydra, "We'll use the sewers. I'll send a message, you just have to slice the portal for that then jump through it. I'll land my orbital bombardment into the sewers, creating a kinetic explosion beneath Polydra. The weak spot should create an escape for all the pressure to escape from."

I pointed back to the Sentinel, "Just make sure to keep the portal open for me to escape from...And, uh, keep your distance. There will be a fragment of the energy and magma escaping through the portal. It's enough to kill, though."

The Sentinel spread out his hands, "How do you survive these impacts."

"A loophole using one of Schema's trees."

The Sentinel gestured up with a spear, "Schema may allow a loophole to occur once, but multiple times? He wouldn't allow it."

I shrugged, "Eh, he's allowed me to do this three different times so far if I include my first Skyburner fight. Either way, it's reliable and works very well. I don't understand how Schema does it, but I don't have to."

The Sentinel stared down and cupped his chin, "Hmmm, perhaps he's pulling your mind from your body at the last moment then restoring it after the impact."

I raised an eyebrow, "You mean like what he did for the compendiums?"

"I...I wouldn't know. I know that Schema has a registry of people's consciousnesses for his revivals. They are costly, however. This is due to the nature of restoring a being's body, not from holding the consciousnesses, however."

The Sentinel waved his arms, trying to make sense of it, "Perhaps not all of your body is destroyed on the impacts? If that were so, then putting your mind back into a tiny portion of your remaining body would be more than enough. Your regeneration would follow through, your brain intact or not."

I leaned back, feeling my head, "Do I even have a brain anymore?"

The Sentinel gave me a deadpan look, "I do question it myself at times."

I rolled my eyes, "I mean the actual organ...Alright, I'll ask the Overseer next time I see him if I remember too. Anyways, do you think the plan will work?"

"It will, given you survive it that is."

I turned to Polydra, "My mortality exists on the edge of believability at this point. Hell, Kessiah called me unkillable earlier. I'll do my best to prove her right. The only way to do that is to survive what shouldn't be survived."

I opened my personal pocket dimension, "Anyways, let's get this done."

The Sentinel stared at me and the portal, "What do you need from there?"

I gestured between him and the portal, "I don't. You just need to step in here. It's easier to keep you safe here."

The Sentinel lifted his spear, "I have a better idea. "

He swung it in an arc, creating a portal towards the forest we arrived in Polydra from. I walked over and pulled the tear apart, and he stepped through. After hopping over, the wistful forest carried the smell of ash. Smoke plumes rose from Polydra as two more dreadnoughts arrived to finish the town.

The Sentinel pointed at the city, "We can walk there."

I walked up while nodding, "We could. You could also get captured and killed that way. Sounds like a good way to die."

The Sentinel stared at the city as a tectonic explosion rippled out from a dreadnought. For miles around the city, massive oaks bent and tore from the impact's energy. I leaned over to the Sentinel, "How'd you take one of those?"

Two explosions later, and I raced towards the city with the Sentinel in storage. I burrowed beneath the mountain, keeping my distance low. I encountered the defenses the Hybrids mustered against the gialgathens. My mobility within stone overwhelmed them, leaving their mammoth, mechanical worms hunting for nothing but the tunnels of softened earth I left behind.

Once in the sewers, I pulled the Sentinel from the Abyss. He fell out, suspended by gravity. He looked around, shaken by the experience but still lucid, unlike Torix. He landed on his feet, taking a deep breath before rearing back his spear. A second later, he tore open a portal to the Rak'shah dessert. I hopped in there, amazed at how smooth the operation worked so far.

Passing into the desert, I lifted up into the sky while the Sentinel walked back. The same heat built over my skin as usual, and I braced for the inevitable impact. Landing into the tiny warp proved simple. My depth perception impressed me from that perspective. A full minute away, I viewed the portal in pristine detail despite the distance.

All those points into perception paid off.

Once I sped up to an immense extent, I adjusted my descent slightly from my other attempts. I kept myself narrow like a sword slicing the air. As I whipped through the portal at supersonic speeds, I flattened my body. Instead of mitigating the impact, I created a wider surface area. This meant I hit the ground like a hammer instead of a bullet.

At the same time, I created an extended, powerful well of gravity just beyond the portal. This used my excess mana, giving me an even stronger point of impact. I also shifted into the Rise of Eden at the last moment for extra mass. This enabled the destruction to reach new levels. I questioned the merit of these adjustments until I landed.

At that point, the devastation was undeniable.

The entire mountain quaked, creating a chain reaction of carnage. The first piece of the bloodbath resulted from my impact. The enhanced mass and energy from my descent assisted my fall, creating a larger kill radius. Multiple miles, in fact. A smaller city would've vaporized in an instant.

Polydra's survived, though the ancient portion the gialgathens lived in disintegrated. Several of the skyscrapers wiggled like worms, the resulting shockwave pushing them one way. The earthquake pulled the foundations in a different direction, creating violent clashing forces in the buildings.

This created a whipping effect at the height of these massive buildings. As the kinetic chain completed at the top, the buildings splintered into shards of death. They plummeted down, creating aftershocks from my landing and shaking the mountain on their own.

My landing carried friction as well. Friction caused heat, and this heat created a molten vat of magma large as a small island around me. It was as if the shell of dirt over the molten earth was dissolving. I existed at the bottom of this magma pit, the lava comfortable as warm water to me.

I reintegrated into my body, opening my eyes to vibrant orange and red. The lava touched my eyes, a mild discomfort resulting from the contact. It mirrored leaving my eyes open in a pool. At the same time, I radiated with astounding energy, the kind few could tolerate. It created dense, dynamic shivering throughout my body.

Holding onto the vast energy kept all my concentration as I blasted myself from the pool. Lifting from the lava, I picked myself up onto a broken landscape. Nothing stayed standing within a kilometer of my landing point. After that, the signs of devastation lingered, most buildings leveled.

The Hybrids degenerated into crumbled piles of metal. Both the dreadnought's shields popped like air balloons from the shockwave. They stayed afloat by the crew coming together during the crisis. Deep below the mountain, another, far vaster wave of destruction loomed.

A blistering, ungodly crack erupted above Polydra. I turned to the sound, and my eyes widened. A black plume rose miles into the sky, a pyroclastic cloud swallowing the sun. From this rising cloud, a swarming, starving wave of blackened ash swarmed across the forest.

It consumed all in its path, unstoppable and unyielding. My own power paled in comparison to the wrath of nature, the flow encompassing all my vision. It swarmed towards the city, a harbinger of death and a herald of annihilation.

It created a seizing in my chest, my adrenaline screaming for me to run. I quashed this natural reaction, inspecting the field of lava around me. Within the pit, nothing survived. Beyond the hole, along the edge of the destruction, a familiar face showed itself.

My armor grinned as I dashed towards Version 2.2, the body left broken and mutilated. I wasn't lucky the monster died, but I was lucky I got to see it pass in person. As I came upon it, the Hybrid's bleeding eyes turned towards me. A mangled pile, it reached up a hand towards me and gurgled,

"This...you used a nuclear weapon? You speak of ethics to me when you would break the Engrevia Code. Even I would not stoop so low as to leave a nuclear wasteland."

I laughed, a long, haunting kind of gesture. It echoed across the ravaged landscape, a message towards the Hybrid and those that led it. I leaned over the mangled body, red radiating from the jagged maw of my armor,

"I don't need a weapon of mass destruction to wreak this havoc." I reared back an arm, "I need only my own two hands to unleash destruction."

With a swing of my arm, my palm crushed Version 2.2's torso, pulping its surface. My armor drilled into the body as Event Horizon smothered it. The looming black cloud rumbled as the pyroclastic flow expanded in our vision, its size incomprehensible. It devoured the edge of my magma pit, my skin glowing white as I leaned towards the Hybrid,

"You've done well in creating this hell."

As the pyroclastic surge neared us, I roared,

"Now let's see if you can fight here, where the monsters come out to play."

The ashen cloud frenzied over us in a blistering cloud of dust. I ceased breathing, lifting the Hybrid into the immense cloud's torrent. Enormous boulders bounced near us, the sound of extinction screaming in my ears. The wind whistled like a banshee. The heat caused metal to melt and rock to soften. The ashen clouds smothered anything that needed air to breathe, liquifying their lungs with ash like broken glass.

I stood at the center of the devastation, and I laughed in the face of it. The Hybrid scrambled in my hand, squealing in agony as it attempted to escape. The psionic force left the body seconds after, unable to withstand the torture. As life left the dying monster, I grabbed its throat and crunched it in my hands.

Ripping off the skull, I held both pieces of its body in each hand, pacing through the blackened cloud. Rushing boulders and ash created a cacophony of sound that masked my surroundings. Like an ever changing wave, getting a firm grasp of it was impossible. My gravitational sense saved me here, giving me a rough outline of my surroundings.

A quick dash around the city revealed the absolute nature of the destruction. The volcanic eruption continued shelling the area like a carpet bombing. Any living Hybrid died from the resulting buildup of heat. These clouds reached temperatures exceeding a thousand celsius. Water burst into steam when it passed. Even rock melted if exposed for long enough.

As I paced across the fields, I hunted down any stragglers. I survived in this purgatory, all those around me left dead and dying. After stomping across the hellscape, I pulled myself above the wave of desolation. I stared above. Blots of lightning rippled across the enormous cloud above Polydra, the eruption rising beyond the clouds.

This cloud left the heavens above scarred, the clouds mangled, the sky darkened. As night descended onto the day, I stared down at the charred corpse of Polydra. I peered further down at my hands, the weight of my actions pressing down onto my shoulders.

A looming shadow crossed over the landscape, volcanic ash falling like gray snow. Left lifeless and dying, I dashed down towards the tear in space-time. The ash and magma submerged it, but the siphoning of liquid made it easy to find.

I dashed through the portal, keeping the lava off me with an antigravity well. As I paced out of it, the searing sun of the Rak'sha dessert belted down without mercy. Beyond the portal, ashy glass formed along the edge of a new magma pit. Ash and a portion of the dune flowed in the air, blown away by my initial landing.

The Sentinel stayed off in the distance, two dunes away. I leaped over, my feet creating waves through the sandy mounds. As I neared him, the Sentinel stammered at me,

"It...it seems as if Polydra has been decimated. An explosive eruption wiped the city from the map, as you wished it to. Several news outlets are guessing at the cause, from nuclear blasts to some kind of kinetic weapon in orbit above Giess."

The Sentinel sliced a spear, creating a rip to Elderfire,

"They know it was your guild that caused the havoc, however. Until now, many higher powers questioned the status of you and your followers. They spoke of a weak, new guild given special treatment over a fluke. They can't defy your ranking anymore."

The Sentinel pulled the portal apart with a bit of effort before turning to me, "How does it feel to put your guild on the galactic radar?"

I peered at the horizon,

"It's pretty good I guess. I find myself thinking about Schema's system more though. Sometimes it's like I'm Schema's mercenary, just doing what he wants without really knowing what's going on."

The Sentinel scoffed, "Schema's far more informed than you could ever hope to be. He also created a stable environment to live despite the eldritch's best attempts at stopping him. Being his mercenary is the same as being a champion of justice."

Eh, I doubted that.

The Sentinel stepped through the portal, "Now come receive the spoils of war, as a mercenary should."

Before stepping through the portal, I glanced at my notifications for a moment. I found dozens of messages, too many to read at the moment. As I stepped through the portal, I reminisced on what Tohtella said. Wrong as she was, the core of her points still stood on their own merit.

Putting entire species forever in an unknown status was fucked. That wasn't the only disaster Schema caused. He eldritchified Hod's homeworld. He limited information to paint a certain kind of narrative. Hell, each world's initiation into the system was known as 'the culling.' Bottom line, Schema wasn't perfect.

Maybe I wasn't going to be able to change the AI's mind, but there might be other ways of improving Schema. Doing so would take a lot of time and effort though, so I put these thoughts into the back of my mind. Stopping the Adair family and the Hybrids took precedent. With that newfound resolve, I stepped through the portal.

It was time to break them, one city at a time.