It was a miracle that he survived this.
A blast like he had never felt before, almost akin to that time he blasted himself up with a claymore half a month ago to kill a Gobzkin Shaman. This time, though, he was lucky.
"Com… Clay! Are you alright! Stand up!"
He was fortunate he survived, though not unscathed. He felt like he was cut by something across his right side, including his head, shoulder, and arm. He even felt like something sharp was sticking in him, but he was disoriented and unable to move.
"Biscuits, get over here!" Elena shouted for her medic to come, then issued another command, "Sharp, shoot the big fuckers!"
The sight of the blast that hit Adam was terrifying; it nearly unsettled all the Wartopians. But it was he who saved himself at the nick of time, raising an earthen wall that absorbed most of the blast.
However, the fates were ever cruel in this world, and he was wounded and bleeding.
As Biscuits ran towards him, dropping her Medkit right before checking on him, she found him trying to stand up despite the injuries.
"Rest up, rest up!" She said, looking closely at the wounds on his head, "That's not gonna be pretty, but you'll look dangerous, eh?"
"Argh!" Adam groaned, feeling the cuts on his body reopening as Biscuits checked on them, "It… burns."
"Clean flesh wounds on the chest and on the arm. There is something stuck in here." Biscuits gave a status report on Adam's condition.
"What is it? Can you get it out?" Elena asked.
"I don't know." She said, and held the shrapnel-like thing stuck in him, before pulling it out.
Adam howled from the pain as the object was pulled out with small bits of his flesh clinging to it, soaking all of Biscuits' fingers in red. She immediately grabbed her Nanofoam spray and began spraying it over his wounds, creating a protective blue layer that accelerates healing.
She then tuned her blazer to cauterizing mode and put a biting stick between Adam's teeth.
"Bite the bullet, sir!"
"No, wai…"
Bzzzzzzzzz!
"ARRRRRGH!"
In the grim darkness of the far future, field medical methods were highly effective but often bordered on torture. A nanofoam spray, activated by blazer heat, would form an anti-infection skin-like layer that adhered to the body long enough to seal bleeding and prevent further complications. The pain, however…
"FUCK! FUCK THAT FUCKING HURTS!"
Adam sweated from every pore, feeling piercing sensations through every cell that was in contact with the nanofoam spray.
≪ You have gained a New Skill! (Toughness) ≫
Getting a skill out of it—especially one from the Might stat, the furthest it was from his main Spirit stat—was already enough indication that his brains were so chewed up with pain, his Sanity was on the brink of leveling up as well.
Elena leaned closer and offered him a hand, pulling him up, even though he wasn't even ready.
He felt his arm tearing from the pain of his wounds, but he still had to bite the bullet. She handed him his Shaman Club, which he used to manifest another short wall, this time thick enough to withstand one of the blasts, before resting his back against it.
"Are you good now?" Elena asked.
"My body… it burns like a motherfucker!" He said, gritting his teeth and wishing for something strong to drink.
"It's okay, commander. You fought well." She said, and looked beyond the cover, "Those large monsters, they shoot water jets with these inside them."
As she said so, she handed him the shrapnel that was stuck in him, still with bits of his own flesh. Adam received it with a grim face and could barely stomach the sight of it, but when he looked closer, his brows furrowed.
"That's… a barnacle shell." Adam thought for a while, then looked back from cover, "Those things load their squirt guns with barnacle shells?"
"They are nasty, huh?" Elena followed Adam's thoughts.
"Yes, nasty means they are cunning, too. They are not just monsters." Adam said and frowned, "Like Gobzkins, they are tool users too."
"Does this change things?" Elena asked before emerging from behind cover and shooting twice to support the recruits.
"Not a thing. This is not their fucking world to crawl over as if they own the place. We'll kill them all regardless."
Adam sounded as determined as any good Justiciar of the Solarium, fitting the coat he was wearing, eager to return to the fight and return the courtesy.
A minute ago, he had been blasted almost ten meters by a squirt jet armed with barnacle shells, a scene that surely hit the morale of his troops, knowing that he was the highest-ranking officer around. But his return to the fight had to be just as epic to turn morale around.
"Are the squirt lobsters dealt with?" He shouted to Sharp, who gave him a shaky hand gesture before shooting a blazer blast, then changing the gesture to a thumbs-up.
"Clear, sir!" Elena reported.
"Watch this!"
Adam aimed the shaman club with the Bending rune at the ground near him, and rather than drawing a wall or blasting spikes, he started making a ball roll around him in a circular track.
As the ball rolled, it grew in size as he kept adding more earth to it, using the movement to hasten its growth and rounding its shape. Just as its height was almost to his chest and probably weighed a ton, Adam redirected its movement, sending it downhill.
He sped past it towards the trench and extended an earthen bridge wide and thick enough to bear the weight of the earthen ball, and just as it rolled over, he dropped the bridge and resumed his control over the ball.
"Now, get wrecked!"
There was no joking around when a ball of such weight was going downhill. The Krants may be aquatic and more adept in the dark, but they were not blind mobs, and the sight of an earthen ball rolling downhill wasn't something to be missed. Naturally, the Krants evaded.
However, when that Earthen Ball altered its trajectory and its descent velocity exploded in defiance of natural laws, the minds of the initial Krants confronting the ball's onslaught seemed to have experienced what can only be described as a certified "Oh, shit!" moment.
"HAHAHA! ROLL, ROLL, YOU HOLY BALL! Follow the ball, Brother Recruit! The Ball of Sol Imperius!" Flint the Fanatic shouted as he ran after the Earthen Ball, spraying it with flames and setting it on literal fire.
"Nani? Demo Sol Imperius-Sama, holy ball nai." Kave replied, denying the existence of such a thing in-lore.
The Fanatic halted his steps and looked at Kave with his expressionless gas mask, yet Kave's lunacy was potent enough to see the fires of madness brewing behind those goggles.
"He has one now." The Fanatic said with a serious tone, transmitting more madness to Kave as the two went into madness sync.
"HOLY BALL! BANZAI!" Kave raised his shovel and gave a deranged war cry, following after Flint into the sea of bugs and flames, chasing the Flaming Earthen Holy Ball of Sol Imperius.
Adam struggled as much as he could to steer the ball left and right, but as it gained speed, crushed bugs, and caught more flames, it was finally reaching downhill, and Adam wasn't powerful enough to steer it back uphill, especially at that range, and so as a parting gift…
"Boom!"
… he exploded the flaming earthen ball in the middle of the crowd, causing the largest amount of damage possible.
≪ You have gained 1 EXP! ≫
Even though the damage was immense, the number of Krants that kept coming seemed unending, and Adam was exhausted from that magic stunt he had to do.
Kave and Flint still fought ahead, swearing to avenge the Holy Ball for some reason, but they had to retreat at the sight of more Lobster Krants appearing.
"Get back behind the trench! Hold the line with the recruits." Adam shouted to Flint, giving the Fanatic a direct order which he, as a summon, was compelled to follow.
Flint still dragged Kave, whom he saw as a blessed comrade, and made a strategic retreat along with him, since the Scorcher seemed to have run out of charge.
Adam continued to raise spikes across the field, not for the sake of attacking, but to make the Krants choose a path that he could predict and defend against.
"Flint, I'll round them up for you. How many bombs do you have left?" Adam asked as soon as Kave and Flint crossed the trench.
"Three more, sir," Flint replied, ready to toss one.
"Only use them when the swarm is at its thickest. Show those recruits how a Grenadier fights." Adam added.
"With pleasure, sir." Flint became even more excited to meet those young ones whom he could inflict with his lunacy, an excitement that would later meet utter disappointment.
The Fanatic and the recruits held the line as much as they could, but the pressure increased ceaselessly as the Blazer-shooting soldiers were more focused on felling any Lobster Krant if they approached the recruits, leaving the swarm of Worker Krants to the recruits.
During that desperate defense of the line over the trench, the Krant workers started making a bridge using their dead bodies just as Adam feared, making this a worst-case scenario. But just as things couldn't get any worse, a Krant Worker grabbed Mop (formerly known as Danial, the elderly care worker) by his foot and started dragging him down the trench.
"No! NO! HELP!" The young man started shouting frantically, fearing the fangs of the monster that had grabbed him.
"Hold him!" Officer Reeves jumped over and grabbed him by the hand, dragging him against the Krants, who tried to use him to crawl over.
"YAMERO!" Kave immediately jumped in, bashing and slashing until the Krants gave up on Mop, who crawled back up to the ranks, yet instead of picking up his shovel and holding his position, Mop chose to run.
"No! No! FUCK THIS!"
"Mop, get back here!" Elena shouted to him, but she was busy reloading, torn between controlling the troops and the recruits. She then turned to Adam, "Do something about it!"
"Do what?" Adam shouted back, trying his best to reshape the field into some sort of tower defense battle, but with his front already crumbling, he felt like he was having too much on his hands alone.
"If you're wearing the coat of a Justiciar, act like it. Deal with that deserter." Elena shouted to Adam, urging him to control the situation.
Adam turned his back on the fight and shouted:
"Mop! Get back here! Get in the line!"
He shouted, but whom he was shouting at wasn't even listening as he ran up the hill.
"You motherfucker! Do you want to be taken for a deserter? You'll fucking be killed!" Adam called again.
Mop stopped and looked back at Adam, crying like a little bitch:
"This is madness! We shouldn't be here! We can't… we can't stop all that."
His words were heard by all, but they hardly had any effect on the Men-at-Arms. The recruits, on the other hand, seemed to be faltering, their wills weakened by the desertion of one of them.
Adam saw that and didn't know what to do. If this goes on, the trenches will be overflowed with Krants, and the camp will be overrun sooner or later.
The camp he had built; his camp, his home, Kave's family house, the cave, this place he had carved for himself and his troops in the world.
Just because one guy decided to run?
Adam's anger spiked through his heart as he turned back to the battle. Mop saw that, and he decided to turn away again, no longer willing to partake in this madness. However, not a second passed, and he heard…
BZZZ-CRACK!
… and a red blazer beam exploded on the ground in front of him.
Mop turned around and saw Adam, aiming a blazer pistol at him.
"NO! PLEASE! NO!"
"Accept the fate of a deserter, you scumbag!"
BZZZ-CRACK!
BZZZ-CRACK!
Rather than returning to the fight, Adam made the hard choice. He grabbed Elena's blazer from her hand and started shooting towards Mop, who crumbled from fright, and started running uphill on his hands and feet.
"STOP HERE, YOU FUCK!"
"YOU MADMAN! FUCK OFF!"
All the recruits saw what happened, and it terrified them, but they couldn't retreat or leave their positions open. But the real fright came when they heard…
BZZZ-CRACK!
"AAAH!"
… a shot finally hitting Mop.
Finally, after four shots from Elena's pistol, Adam managed to drop Mop from a 90-foot range. However, Mop didn't die.
Adam handed the pistol back to Elena and marched with a face twisted with anger towards Mop, who was rolling downhill. The moment Mop landed near him, Adam caught him by throwing his body onto him, then got on top of him, pressing a knee to his neck.
"I swear to God, you run like that again, I'LL BURY YOU ALIVE!"
"No! PLEASE! NO! STOP HIM!" Mop struggled under Adam, broken in spirit.
"I didn't fucking shoot your head! I toned down the shot so it wouldn't rip your FUCKING leg off!" Adam held Mop by the hair and made him look up, "Laser guns don't cause bleeding, so get your shit together! Get it together or I'll murder your ass!"
Adam then proceeded to pull Mop by the hair and pushed him towards the other recruits, telling them to open a path for him.
"Pick the shovel up! NOW!"
With Adam behind him and the monsters ahead of him, Mop was left with no choice. However, just as he picked up the shovel he had dropped, Adam immediately kicked him from behind and threw him into the fray to fight the Krant workers on the front line along with Kave, Flint, Officer Reeves, and those who didn't fear the monsters.
The actions Adam took were clear, merciful compared to a typical Solarium Justiciar, but grim by all human accounts. Yet by doing so, he solidified the feet of the recruits on the field, making them realize that there is no running away.
"OUT!"
But the situation wasn't getting any better; in fact, only worse when Corporal Stone announced that he had run out of blazer cells.
Stone was the grunt, the heavy gunner of the squad. This meant that almost 25% of the firepower was lost.
"OUT!"
Hammerhead followed, before descending from the firing position, fixing bayonet, and joining the front line.
"Adam, I'm out!"
Then Megan announced, running to Adam's side.
"We need to retreat." She said.
"Where?" Elena retreated to Adam's other side, "The base had no defenses. We can only take the cars and escape through an open area."
Elena and Megan both discussed a retreat, but Adam's heart couldn't take it.
"No!" He stubbornly refused.
"Adam, we can't. They'll get tired eventually." Megan tried to implore.
"It's looking bad, sir. Their numbers are endless." Elena added.
"I got an idea." He said, and looked at the shaman club in his hand, "Give me a hand."
Adam immediately started flailing with the club, making the ground around him swirl, which was the best way he had found to gain more control over the earth element.
Slowly, he formed an earthen pillar, then joined it with another beside it. Then he joined the pillars at the top into a single body.
""OUT!"" Dusty and Patch announced at the same time and jumped down onto the front line with bayonets.
Adam started sweating as he needed absolute focus, and the situation kept getting worse. Soon, his magic would only be the firepower his camp had, and he was gambling it.
He added two more pillars, connecting them to the upper part of the body, before hollowing out its top part from the back, while maintaining its integrity by keeping the earth dense.
What he ended up having was a figure the size of a Star Paladin, standing on four thick earthen pillars, and looking so rough that even a Gobzkin would frown.
But Adam needed that roughness, and he started working on it immediately.
He picked up any stone he could carry, then started lodging them in the pillars, trying his best to make the stones stick to his earthen construct, then he condensed the earth around it for integrity reinforcement.
"Help him! Hurry!" Megan was already down on her knees, digging in the earth for more stones, before asking Elena for help.
"What is he doing?" Elena asked Megan, trying to pick any stone that would fit what Adam was using.
"What he knows best," Megan replied, a smile on her face, as she took a bunch of stones from Elena and started helping Adam stick them to his construct.
"WE CAN'T HOLD MORE THAN THIS!" Officer Reeves shouted, feeling the weight of his shovel like a ton, after swinging it a few hundred times.
"Go, assist them!" Megan spoke to Elena, fully committing herself to assist with Adam's most absurd idea to date.
Finally, Adam added the last of the stones he needed to reinforce the pillars, and then he stood back, looking at what he had just built.
Megan stepped beside him, covered in dirt all over; her tank top shirt was torn from places that would attract his gaze any day of the week, but his attention was focused entirely on the thing he had just made.
"Will this work?" She asked.
"No need for red flags." He replied, looking just as battered as she was.
He then aimed his hand, gathered all his strength, stamina, and what remained of his sanity, and spoke one word.
"ARISE!"
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
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