System Hunt: Regalia

Sam flinched, shut his eyes and clutched his arms over Nyx’s backpack as his tempered shield burst apart against the Tikbalang’s root strike. He waited for the inevitable thunder of agony that would come from being impaled by a burning tree root but it didn’t come.

The world continued, he continued. Sam peeled his eyes open as he shuffled back as far as his trembling legs would allow him and he saw why he was still alive.

It was the clone he’d told to return to Yoko, her back was pierced through her gut, spine shattered as she stubbornly stalled the root stretching greedily for Sam. He shuddered at the gruesome sight. Sam still didn’t understand one bit how Yoko’s Regalia worked but she was down to the two clones up front.

This one looked over its shoulder at him as the Tikbalang began to raise her, “Sam! Snap out of it, take the kids and run!”

The kids? It was then sound returned in full force; he heard the children bang against the glass shield he’d placed over their SUV’s sliced opening. Sam, with his back against the vehicle, heard their injured father plead in a language he didn’t understand but didn’t need to. He wants me to run off with his kids.

As the Tikbalang thrashed and beat the clone against the ground for its interference, Sam snapped into action. Rather than release the tempered shield from its place protecting the family, Sam reached out to the shattered pieces of the shield that failed to protect him.

With a snappy velocity each shard rocketed towards the giant, imposing Tikbalang that continued fusing with more of its kind. Unlike with normal glass Sam did some harm with the tempered shards, slicing and gashing open wounds on the Belua’s dark skin, severing its roots and freeing Yoko’s dead clone.

A hand clasped against his shoulder, “What are you doing!? Take them and fly away!”

Sam didn’t spare a glance at Yoko the original, she fired at the giant Tikbalang and hissed as the Holy Bullets barely bruised its skin. “I can barely carry myself on glass, what makes you think I can lift an entire family?” Sam answered sourly, his bravery wasn’t a choice.

Her grip only hardened, “The fact that you haven’t tried yet. Try, fail, I’ll cover you!” she wisely switched targets, firing at the Belua scrambling to fuse with the larger Tikbalang. Their knees, heads and torso’s exploding courtesy of her impeccable aim.

“With just you and your last ‘sister’?”

“I can make more,” Yoko glared at her bleeding fingernails for some reason and repeated herself, “I can make more so go!”

Defiant, Sam shook his head, “I have a better idea.”

He retrieved his Regalia, quickly prompting the message as he gathered a cluster of glass around them. He had two other tempered shields at the front and brought them closer as he tightened the wall of glass shards around them and the SUV.

[Spend 500RGP to Fortify Fractured Glass?]

It was costlier than Sam expected, five times so but he could afford it. Without pausing to do the math on how it came to be 500RGP rather than a 100RGP, Sam assented and witnessed the effects of Fortify for the first time.

He felt it before he saw it, the glass crystals within each and every glass pane, shard or fragment he held control over began to grow, splinter into connective veins and thicken all the way to their edges where they multiplied.

All around the impromptu glass belt Sam had put up to protect them, the shards were growing at rapid speed, the power of his Regalia digging up their innate potential to be more than they currently were and multiplying that by a factor he couldn’t determine.

In a few short seconds his glass belt became a glass wall that covered them securely. It was just as he’d imagined, better even as the shards he held close as means of offence experienced the same fortifications. Simple broken windows, soda bottles and streetlights became thickened slabs of glass ready to rip into the Tikbalang.

Sam sent them forth.

The giant Tikbalang was prepared, it summoned more roots from the ground, its ability to do so had become easier with each absorption of its fellows. Sam’s fortified shards rent through them, splitting the burning roots like a knife to a particularly stubborn hide. Few found stalemate but more soared past, unhindered and eager to bleed the Tikbalang.

One, two, four, six, eight, twelve, sixteen shards slammed into the Tikbalang despite its trickery, spilling vile ichor all over the concrete field of the parking lot as it shrieked.

Sam licked his lips at the sight of that blue-black blood burning through the concrete, reminded almost fondly of how he’d blinded the fire-slinging jaguar days ago he send another flurry of shards, his mind unhindered even as scores of Belua attempted to breech the glass wall secured around them.

“Why didn’t you do this right at the start!” Yoko yelled, relief clear in her voice as she fired Holy Bullets at the Belua that tried to fuse with the giant Tikbalang. She and her last clone shot and slashed the fodder while Sam pelted the giant Tikbalang, keeping its attention and wrath of roots on him.

“I wasn’t sure I could!” Sam gestured and formed three fine sets of glittering glass spears with the fortified glass.

The Tikbalang wasn’t having it. It let out a hoarse roar as its muscles rippled and expelled the shards embedded in it with force enough to push against Sam’s influence. Standing at over thirteen feet, as tall as bus and as thicker than a supernatural tree’s bark, the Tikbalang charged.

“Fuck, brace yourself!” Sam quickly re-delegated his glass. He disbanded the spears and sent them raining into the Belua cluttered on the left side of his orbiting glass wall, ending their annoyance and freeing up Yoko’s clone to stand back at his side.

He quickly lifted the left side of the glass wall, recalling it to his side. Fortified glass was weighty on its own, even without anyone sitting on it. As the Tikbalang closed in on them, its head reared like a bull and roots spurt from the ground wrapped around it like horns, Sam grunted as his head spiked with pain.

I’m about to lose control, I’m out of power. He didn’t need to look at his Regalia to know he’d spent all of its energy moving and fighting. Biting his lip, Sam doubled down on the saying; The best defence is a good offence.

With the left and centre parts of his fortified glass wall attached to one another—becoming two large, jagged and thick panes of glass— Sam expelled them towards the charging Tikbalang, setting it to fly horizontally like a giant, heavy glass razor.

The two forces met. The giant Tikbalang caught Sam’s flying, fortified razor with a thicket of roots that instantly faltered. The Belua then caught it with its crooked hands, hooves grinding against the earth as it was pushed back.

It neighed and roared in agony as its palms bled out quick, fingers dropping and then half a hand. Against the swirling migraine Sam commanded the razor forward, even as more roots rose to buckled against it and more Belua ran to fuse with the giant Tikbalang.

Yoko cursed as she fired a seemingly non-Holy Bullet but she persisted anyway, intent on being as much a hindrance as possible while Sam and the Tikbalang struggled for supremacy.

The familiar, relieving sound of choppers swirled overhead. Ironically the Calvary had arrived and just in time. With Alex nearby Sam fetched his Regalia for what would surely break the stalemate between he and the Tikbalang constantly reinforced by fusing Belua.

[Available RGP— 903]

[Spend 100RGP to Bolster All Abilities?]

Sure enough he had one bar left in the Regalia’s battery from the seven when he last checked. He didn’t bother thinking more about it and quickly affirmed the prompts.

[All Abilities Bolstered— Five Minutes Left]

Almost instantly the Tikbalang let out a strained gurgle as all its fingers were sliced off, its chest torn in two and severed from the rest of its torso in a sharp, unstoppable slice that carried on through decapitating the hordes that had abandoned beating the glass wall to fuse with it.

Only then did Sam collapse to his knees, a trail of blood leaking from his nostrils as Yoko’s yells and the repetitive shot of her gun faded to silence.