Chapter 465
As it turned out, the wyrmcaller was too large to fit through the Transfer Maw he’d created in Dead City earlier. Even when the maw was stretched open to its limits, it was still too small to let such a huge creature pass through. Luckily, this issue was easy to fix. Jake took two tumors and left his lair. A mont later, he erged through the Maw in Dead City.
After a quick look around to make sure no danger lurked nearby, he retrieved the tumors from his inventory and set them on the ground beside the Transfer Maw. The tumors imdiately began to sag, spreading across the floor and rging with the existing patch of Corruption. The entire process took just a few seconds.
With a ntal command, he initiated the creation of two more Transfer Maws, placing them next to the one he’d created earlier and instructing them to rge with it. About a minute later, the process was complete. The splotch of Corruption was much larger now, and a single Transfer Maw occupied its center, three tis the size of a standard one.
The Fleshport in his lair was already quite large, so there was no need to make it bigger. Jake established a ntal link with his lair and instructed the wyrmcaller to use the Fleshport to teleport to Dead City.
A second later, the Transfer Maw before Jake opened, and the winged beast climbed out. Or, more accurately, since the Transfer Maw was placed on the ground, it looked more like the creature ascended from an organic-looking platform.
The beast stepped toward Jake and halted beside him, waiting for further commands. It was ti to put the Symbiotic rge to the test.
This ability was ant to let him fuse with the wyrmcaller, so it was unlikely to work from a distance. Still, he decided to test it. As expected, nothing happened.
He then stepped around the towering beast, halting by its side. Climbing onto its serpentine back posed little challenge to him. Clinging tightly to the creature’s body, he attempted to use the ability again. This ti, it worked. While Symbiotic rge was the wyrmcaller’s ability, not his own, it turned out he could use it without any problem, as if it belonged to him.
The mont he activated the ability, he felt his body rge with the wyrmcaller’s, becoming one with it. In the next second, his point of view shifted. He no longer saw the world through his own eyes. Instead, he was now looking through the eyes of the wyrmcaller. Everything around him seed much smaller than before. He realized that if the building still had its walls and ceilings intact, the beast’s head would have grazed the ceiling of the first floor.
With the wyrmcaller’s long, flexible body, he could twist his neck in any direction, even look directly behind without moving. He turned his gaze toward the spot on the beast’s body where he had rged with it. There was no sign of his original body at all, as if it had never existed. It had completely rged with the wyrmcaller, becoming one with it.
Jake stepped out of the building, his head swiveling from side to side as he surveyed the area. While the surrounding buildings now seed smaller, they still dwarfed his new form. Here and there, growths began to swell on the contaminated structures, taking the shapes of various monsters.
Ignoring them, Jake crouched low, muscles coiling like springs, and launched himself upward. With a single leap, he soared more than a dozen feet into the air. He imdiately unfurled his wings, and a single powerful flap propelled him upward another three stories. He continued climbing higher and higher.
As he neared roof level, one of the buildings suddenly sprouted a huge whip-like tentacle that lashed out at him. To his own surprise, Jake was able to veer aside without much difficulty. Controlling the beast’s body ca surprisingly easily to him, as if he had been an enormous winged creature all his life.
In a mont, he climbed much higher than the roofs and was well beyond the tentacles’ reach. He spread his wings and for a mont simply soared through the air, gazing at the sprawling city below.
It was incredible, far better than he had anticipated. He rembered the intoxicating feeling of freedom when he had first learned to navigate New Hope by leaping from roof to roof. But this, soaring through the air, was even better. The whole city lay beneath him as if in the palm of his hand. He could go anywhere he wanted.
He decided to test how fast he could go. He began to flap his wings vigorously for a few seconds, accelerating at an impressive speed. Then he folded his wings and speared through the air like a homing missile. It felt as though not even the fastest jet-powered aircraft could outrun him.
Gravity began to take hold, and he started to lose altitude. For a mont, he allowed his body to continue in that long, graceful arc downward. The rooftops gradually drew nearer and nearer. Not wanting to get too close to them, he spread his massive wings, instantly halting his descent. Once again, he glided smoothly through the air.
For the next several minutes, Jake flew around the city, enjoying his newfound freedom and studying the streets below. Most of the city was covered in the Ravage Contamination, but occasionally he spotted the empty carcass of a building, once a nest purged by the Spartans in the past. Every cleared-out building looked the sa: a bare shell consisting of columns and girders, prompting Jake once again to wonder what the Spartans might do with a city reduced to such hollow husks once the contamination was gone.
He continued to fly around. Aside from the organic plague coating almost every surface and the skeletal remains of buildings, there wasn’t much else of note. Several tis, he reached the edges of the city, then turned back toward the center. Surrounding the city was a massive wall, sothing he had already been aware of.
As he circled, he never saw any sign of Mad Mick. Every building looked the sa, thickly covered in the Ravage Contamination, making them unsuitable for a hideout. The subway wasn’t an option for him either. If Mick had been holed up there, the Spartans would have discovered him long ago.
So where was he now? Where could his hideout possibly be? The subway system was the only place safe from the ravagespawn, yet Mick clearly wasn’t there. It was strange because aside from the subway, there weren’t any other places where humans could escape the deadly reach of the Ravage Contamination.
Equally puzzling was the absence of D. Jake skimd over Dead City again and again, but his counterpart never appeared. He couldn’t help but wonder where his counterpart was and what he was doing.
As Jake soared above the city, he spotted mutants posted on several rooftops, ard and waiting. So of them had energy cannons, while others wielded rocket launchers. A few took shots at him as he passed overhead, but his altitude gave him plenty of ti to weave and dodge their fire.
These monsters, whose limbs were fused with weapons, were just another kind of ravagespawn. It was likely the reason the other ravagespawn didn’t attack them. Their arsenal clearly didn’t originate from the Ravage Contamination, though. Instead, soone must have supplied them.
At so point, Jake decided to finally test out the wyrmcaller’s main ability.
He spotted a huge ravagespawn ard with an energy cannon, standing on a rooftop. Jake dove toward the neighboring building. The mutant spotted him and unleashed a blast, but Jake veered sharply, the beam missing him by inches.
His landing sent a tremor through the structure beneath his powerful legs as he touched down. The monster on the neighboring rooftop pivoted toward him, weapon raised for another shot. Before Jake could summon even a single combat unit, it fired again, forcing him back into the air.
He decided to attempt Fleshport mid-flight then. Rising high above the buildings, he spread his wings and glided through the air. With a thought, he opened his riftmaw, issuing a ntal command for one of his wingclaws in his ten-story lair to teleport to his current position.
His combat units were on standby, so as soon as he issued the command, one of the wingclaws began to erge from the wyrmcaller’s riftmaw. It took about two seconds for the creature to fully appear. It dropped toward the streets below for a mont, then checked its fall with a sudden spread of wings.
Jake ordered it to target the energy-cannon mutant, then deployed a few more wingclaws, commanding them all to attack the sa target.
Jake touched down on the roof of a nearby building and swiftly deployed several crawlers, ordering them to join the fray. They leaped toward the other roof and joined his other creatures in their fight against the ravagespawn. Then he simply watched the battle unfold.
The monster’s weapon was quite powerful. Energy blasts tore straight through his creatures’ armored bodies, leaving behind huge scorched holes. One wingclaw and one crawler fell in battle, but the rest fought fiercely and ultimately brought the monster down. The skirmish lasted barely over a minute. Jake then called the creatures back and, one by one, teleported them back to his ten-story lair.
Taking to the sky once more, he flew toward the skeletal remains of the building that housed the Transfer Maw connected to his lair. Landing beside it, he sent a ntal command to disengage from the creature. At once, his own form erged atop the wyrmcaller’s serpentine body. A second later, he could control it again and see through his own eyes.
He jumped to the ground and gave the winged, towering beast another admiring look. He was proud of such a creation. So far, its performance had been amazing.
With a thought, he let the beast go, and it imdiately took to the air. Within seconds, it was far up in the sky, gliding over the city. From below, it looked just like a small bird. But if needed, it could plumt back down to the ground in re seconds.
Jake knew that the beast would be soaring over the city, well beyond the nests’ reach, replenishing mana when needed and ready to co to his aid at a mont’s notice.
The creature was truly spectacular. It could deploy a combat unit in two to three seconds. Now that its developnt was complete, he could create as many of them as needed through the Hive Nexuses. Considering a single wyrmcaller cost 10 CP, however, he decided he shouldn’t have more than five at any given ti. With five of them, he would be able to deploy thirty combat units in twelve to eighteen seconds, which wasn’t bad at all.
Controlling the Wyrmcaller was also amazing. Jake enjoyed every bit of it. He knew for sure that when his Kaiju finished growing, during one of its evolution cycles, he would bestow Symbiotic rge upon it so he could manually control his Kaiju whenever needed.
Now, however, his focus was on wrapping up his preparations. While his wingclaws and crawlers had managed to bring down the weapon-wielding mutant, D was in a league far beyond that foe. To stand a chance, his combat units needed a serious boost.
At Rank VIII, Rare, and possessing three special abilities, the Wyrmcaller was already at the maximum possible level of developnt, for now. However, his wingclaws and crawlers lagged behind, sitting at Rank IV with Superior rarity and only two abilities. He needed to bring them up to date as well, making them as powerful as they could currently be.
And once that was done, Jake believed he would be fully prepared for a potential rematch with D.
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