Book 6: Chapter 9 - Pushing Through (RAW)

“To seek praise while neglecting your purpose is to polish a great bell that lacks a clapper—resplendent yet silent.”

- A Quassian aphorism.

Matir Molins, head of the underground research facility, stared grimly at the chaotic display unfolding on his screen. Near the main entrance on the surface, something akin to suicidal madness erupted, raw violence spilling out in vivid detail across security feeds.

He had heard stories, hushed lurid stories among the staff—rumors of Metas, ESP-actives, even Augmented humans spiraling into destructive insanity—but he never expected such a scenario here, not in this carefully hidden fortress. It defied logic, reason even, for one individual to dare strike so brazenly at a facility safeguarded by technology that could detect every spectral range from infrared to ultraviolet. Yet here they were, a single intruder wreaking havoc like an unstoppable force of nature.

The preliminary data flashed across the screens, tagging this figure tentatively as a third-circle Meta. Molins felt his jaw tighten.

“Deploy additional security units,” he growled from his elevated command platform, eyes narrowing at the unfolding disaster. “I want this intruder neutralized immediately.”

The Meta looked like a sort of knight who had walked off a set from a popular fantasy vid. He knew some aspiring would-be heroes followed this aesthetic, but what worried him was this Meta’s ability to shrug off armor-piercing rounds like rain. The physics of it did not make sense. Even if whatever armor he was wearing could stop penetration, his insides should have been reduced to jelly.

Below him, the control room erupted into organized chaos as technicians scrambled to execute his orders. Beside him, Lisa Hollicks, his adjutant and head of current security, shifted uneasily, hugging her tablet tightly against her chest. Worry darkened her eyes as she bit anxiously at her lower lip.

“Should I prepare evacuation procedures for our VIPs, sir?” Her voice trembled slightly, betraying the anxiety she fought to suppress. “And the packages…”

“One rogue Meta or Muti stumbling in from the forest isn’t cause enough for panic,” Molins dismissed her sharply, irritation crackling beneath his tone. “We can deal with this ourselves.”

“It’s the timing, sir,” Lisa pressed cautiously, nervously twisting a stray lock of her jet-black hair. “With the Dragon Flight nearing, this can’t be just coincidental. Something feels off.”

Molins clenched his jaw, feigning contemplation, rubbing his stubbled chin slowly. Their illicit relationship, barely two months old and already common knowledge among the whispers of subordinates, made these conversations uncomfortable.

She was right. And yet pride prevented him from openly acknowledging it.

Lisa ventured carefully, sensing his hesitation. “Sir, perhaps we should notify Headquarters. Board Member Valazeo was explicit about protocols in situations like this.”

Just then one of the security drones, a lumbering monolith was torn apart by the Meta

Molins exhaled sharply, eyes hardening with reluctant acceptance of the growing threat. 

“Very well, open emergency channels if the next wave are unable to neutralize this madman.”

***

They sent toys against me—Gilgamesh, First Tamkar of Al-Lazar. Mere dolls, soulless mockeries of the human form, hollow shells of metal and synthetic sinew. Unlike the canine automata I had faced earlier, these things were entirely unliving constructs. Their weaponry splashed harmlessly against my armor, a drizzle against the impenetrable wall of black-forged Adamantium.

Yet even what the meager satisfaction of combat had drained away, replaced by dull monotony. There was no joy here, no thrill of receiving experience. Destroying these soulless machines yielded no growth; they provided only a meager release for my pent-up fury.

The alarm klaxons screamed incessantly from the tunnel’s maw as wave after wave of mechanical bodies surged forth to meet their end beneath my relentless assault. They posed no genuine challenge to my supreme might, but their strength lay in numbers alone. Without the restorative power of Greater Drain, even my prodigious stamina would eventually wane, chipped away by sheer attrition.

"How many more of these things are there?" came Solarin’s voice through the comms, edged with growing irritation. "Ammo’s down to seventy-six percent!"

Her words were nearly lost beneath my own battle cries, a roar of defiance echoing through the carnage-filled tunnel. Solarin had finally shown her worth, her distant fire picking off larger robotic specimens, sending metallic debris spiraling into the air. Still, despite her valiant effort, her contributions paled beside the brutal devastation I delivered with effortless contempt.

***

The security drones continued to swarm me, creating a monotonous cacophony as my blade and fists laid waste to them. Amidst the chaos, I heard a high-pitched trilling sound from the device in my ear.

“Casia?” I questioned sharply, briefly pausing mid-strike.

Her voice whispered back through the neural link, clear yet distant, “Apologies, Gilgamesh. I’m using this device as a node to access their local network. Uploading Cant Virus. It wasn’t designed for this… but it will do.”

The trilling sound continued.

The effects were not immediate, but nonetheless inevitable. Slowly, all around, drones began to spasm violently, limbs jerking in grotesque parody of life before collapsing uselessly to the ground. One after another, as if it were a ghost, the virus spread itself among the techno-constructs. The machines succumbed, caught helplessly in Casia’s viral infection, their systems’ code corrupted from within.

Suddenly, distant thuds echoed through the corridor, followed by the distinctive sound of heavy blast doors sealing shut with mechanical finality.

“Wonderful,” Solarin's voice crackled bitterly through the comms. “Just wonderful. This is exactly why we should have used the sewer tunnels instead.”

I stepped forward into a debris-strewn tunnel illuminated by flickering lights. The blast doors ahead stood massive and imposing. According to the briefing, these were constructed from HEA, or high-entropy alloy, Zerosteel—a formidable material known in this world for its exceptional strength.

“Solarin,” I said coldly, raising one gauntleted hand towards the great barrier. “Oh ye of little faith.”

Before she could reply, I cast the spell. Rust, its raspy voice like broken glass filled me, before it radiated from my fingertips like black lightning. The Zerosteel doors groaned as the spell permeated their molecular structure. Metal, a meter thick, screeched in anguish, turning from polished silver to a fiery, molten slag. In mere moments, the blast doors dissolved into a pool of bubbling ruin. The path was now clear.

There was the breathy sound of reluctant admiration. “How the…”

“Fae magics, Sol,” I lied to the girl Solarin nonchalantly.

I stepped through without hesitation, armored feet sizzling slightly as they crushed through molten metal. This close, I could feel the emitted heat, but it did not touch me as it should have. This was the secondary effect of having such a ridiculous Constitution; the influence of the raw elements was greatly reduced. Across the comms, Solarin made a sound resembling reluctant admiration or perhaps simple astonishment.

“This way! Hurry!” Casia's whisper guided me deeper inside, her instructions precise, leading me past halls lined with spasming drones and sparking consoles. Her virus had ravaged the facility's electronic defenses, but these insects would not be deterred easily. Without their disposable mechanical guardians, they finally unleashed their flesh-and-blood pawns.

The first wave of human security emerged, clad in sloping black armor and crystal see-through shields. Their faces were grim, eyes hardened by training yet widened by fear. I moved without mercy, shattering bones and lives alike. I was grateful for the experience they granted me as I waded through their pitiful resistance until something new, something more formidable appeared.

Two Meta-humans stepped forth, confident in their unnatural abilities. One was grotesquely flexible, limbs elongating in twisted, serpentine coils. The other moved with ghostly ease, phasing effortlessly through solid matter, slipping in and out of reality as easily as breathing.

“Stay alert, Gilgamesh,” Casia advised, concern lacing her calm voice. “These two are dangerous. That’s Slither and Nullstep. Slither is capable of…”

“They are nothing,” I growled contemptuously, grabbing two still twitching drones at my feet. With all of my brute force, I hurled a drone towards the elastic Meta. Channeling raw Entropy once more, I cast Rust, heating the machine’s body midflight until it glowed white-hot as it flew through the air. 

He evaded, his body contorting impossibly, my ad hoc missile exploding against a wall in a fiery explosion. However, Slither did not evade the lump of metal coming his way. The burning drone smashed into him, searing flesh and bone alike. He screamed, a high-pitched wail of agony, writhing helplessly as the burning metal melted through him, his twisted, elongated limbs flailing in a futile struggle before collapsing into a smoking heap. 

You have slain unknown. 123 experience gained.

You have learned Double Throw (lvl.5)

It really had been far too long since I had used the skill Double Throw. Excellent stuff. 

The phasing Meta Nullstep hesitated, eyes wide with shock at his comrade’s gruesome and rather quick demise. He fled into a nearby wall. A futile gesture, a mere delay of the inevitable. 

Smirking, even though I was unsure it would even work, I summoned Improved Entropic Aura, flooding the vicinity with the raw waves of invisible grey.

There was a pulse behind me, a subtle disturbance brushing against the waves of Entropy I was radiating into this reality. Turning, I smiled with wicked glee.

His abilities betraying him, Nullstep's body was caught halfway through the solid floor. Predictably, he had attempted a truly futile attempt to ambush me from behind. My magic, nay, my very presence, disrupted all that was unnatural, both in this world and the one I had just come from. His frantic struggles amounted to nothing more than pathetic, involuntary twitches, a trapped animal’s death throes against an inexorable force.

“No… Please,” he choked out weakly. “Just here on a job. Let me go!”

I shook my head, ignoring his pleas and placing one gauntleted hand upon his exposed neck, and called to Greater Drain. Life force surged into me through the spell’s sapping tentacles, replenishing my energies, even as his final gasps faded into deathly silence. His lifeless eyes stared blankly, forever fixed in terror.

You have slain unknown. 157 gained.

“You are your choices,” I could not help but add.

Continuing onward, I tore open more blast doors, rust and entropy reducing them to ruins. With only Casia’s voice and painted signs across my vision, corridors blurred together in monotonous destruction until I reached near the center of the facility. There, I entered a grim scene: cages lined the walls, imprisoning screaming men and women, their tortured cries a testament to the grotesque experiments conducted within.

What were they doing here?

“Gilgamesh, that place, it's a trap!” warned Solarin, her voice loud in my ear.”

Suddenly, a grey, cloying mist flooded the chamber, and I felt a slight tickling sensation in my lungs. The subjects in their cages died almost immediately. They were trying to poison me.

My Health dipped down a point, then immediately went back up.

They might as well have been morning mist for all the effect it had on me. I straightened, exhaling a faint curl of smoke that might have been the poison burning away inside me. My blood ran with something far more potent than whatever toxin they’d conjured up, and it would take more than cowardly poisons to lay me low.

With slow deliberation, I stepped forward, scattering the settling haze around me. The corpses in the cages, limp and discolored, were a silent testament to their hubris. This place was not fated to be my grace.

“Are you alright?” came Sol’s worried voice.

“This is nothing. How far away am I now?”

“Just a bit more, but they are throwing all that they have at you now. Emergency distress signals have just been sent. Apex has now been warned. Once he finishes dealing with the Dragon Flight…” Casia warned ominously.

I closed my eyes for a moment. “Fantastic.”

Just what I needed, a mission timer.

More human guards, desperate and panicked, arrived. These ones were fully encased in heavy, bulkier armor. 

“Augmented humans with an unregistered ESP-active,” Solarin warned, her voice hollow and strangely distant. “Their deaths will have no meaning. Another page gifted by the Void.”  

Among them was a man with a bulbous head whose eyes glowed faintly. I could feel him trying to assault my mind, but the voices within put up a wall of madness that rebuffed his pathetic attempts. And to look upon the madness within me was to look into the heart of the void. 

Possessed by whispers not meant for human ears, he began to claw out his own eyes. The psychic feedback he was releasing lapped against the weaker minds surrounding him, and they all fell to their knees, clutching their heads.

A merciful strike from me to the back of his neck ended his suffering. 

You have slain unknown. 191 experience gained.

There were times when even I could be kind. Especially when the act was rewarding.

The rest of the slaughter was relentless. I moved systematically, a harbinger of death and decay. Experimentally, I removed one of the guard's helms, exposing him to the deadly air. I watched him wheeze and die almost instantly as he inhaled the poisonous mist. Humans here, it seemed, were not as tough as they had been in the Grieving Lands.

Solarin’s voice came through again, anxious and urgent. “Gilgamesh, you have to hurry! More reinforcements are inbound, and you don’t have long. Apex is moving to engage the Dragon Flight…”

“Be not afeared, Solarin. I shall welcome them one and all,” I responded, voice devoid of concern. “Let our hosts come. They, too, shall know of my might.”

The target of this quest was slowly becoming secondary for me.

Solarin groaned softly over the comms, knowing better than to argue further. I sensed Casia's unspoken caution as I pressed forward, deeper into the depths of the facility. Time pressed against me, but my purpose remained resolute. Let them send their legions, their best warriors, their desperate last stand.

It would not matter. 

For I am Gilgamesh, First Tamkar of Al-Lazar, and here, in this blood-hallowed sanctuary, this temple of hollow technology, I was Entropy made manifest and incarnate.