Chapter 125

  David ran as fast as his powerful, long legs could carry him, which was pretty fucking fast after his recent power-up. He was now able to utilize more of both his own physical strength and his magical power without destroying his body in the process, allowing him to prowl through the underbrush of the forest, making a beeline straight for the biob where the emergency arm had triggered.

  When he arrived at the foot of the hill, for a moment he thought it was all a ruse. From the outside, one would never be able to tell what was going on inside. The hill looked peaceful, the sun hitting its side from a low angle and bathing it in oranges and fading yellows. Behind it, zy clouds slightly darker than usual drifted around, promising rain to some faraway state once they managed to congregate enough.

  There was utter silence. Birdsong reached his ears from the forest behind him, while the distant call of wild animals echoed in the far away hills. The slight, cool afternoon breeze rustled the leaves.

  However, the live video feed on his phone, provided by Icarus, told a whole different story. Thus, David did not stop to admire the view of the hill and instead kept pumping his legs as fast as possible. He barrelled through the door leading to the facility, the reinforced steel barely slowing him down by a fraction of a second.

  As soon as he got inside, he realized how dire the situation was. It reminded him of the expanded building at Redbud Ridge, with its custrophobic corridors, rooms and the ever-present smell of blood and rot. There was a lingering sweetness in the air that felt the same to him, making his blood sing.

  With but a thought, stone ptes materialized all over his body. He followed the sounds of gunfire, running through the too-small tunnels deep in the mountains that felt cramped for someone as tall and big as he was. At each turn, instead of slowing down, he simply smashed in the concrete wall and let the impact help him with turning, not caring in the slightest about the cracks and indentations he left behind. It barely tickled, he realized with a wide grin.

  By the time he reached the first abomination, the whole compound was eerily silent. He could see why: the dead, broken bodies of three operators y on the floor in a growing puddle of blood and viscera while the abomination, a writhing mass of flesh and tumors wide enough to fill the whole corridor, feasted on their remains.

  David ground his teeth, suppressing the manic grin that was making its way onto his face. Instead, he summoned his magic, feeling his own power suffuse every cubic inch of his body.

  He exploded with power, leaping across the room and towards where the abomination barely fit through the corridor leading deeper down into the hill. He could not let it escape outside, where its size and mass would be an advantage. Forgoing any stealth, he led his attack with a devastating tornado kick, aimed at the abomination’s midsection. It could not dodge, and David was deceptively quick for an old man, seven feet tall and covered head to toe not with skin, but heavy stone more flexible than it looked.

  The abomination stopped its feeding process and aimed its many appendages at the incoming threat. With a savage grin, David coated his leg with even more stone using [Stone Manipution], pulling from the very walls of the room and from the depths of the earth itself. His grin widened when he felt the raw power flowing into him. Here, deep into the earth, surrounded by nothing but stone… here was his pyground. He was at home.

  The leg, with the added weight of the stone, smmed into the creature. Immediately, its flesh was reduced to pulp around the impact site, and the force of the kick was so great that the abomination was sent flying backwards several feet, through the corridor until it smmed against the far wall at the bend before another room. The impact was violent, the flesh rippling like jelly thrown against a wall.

  David walked closer, never breaking eye contact. He felt powerful, confident. His steps were heavy, barely concealing the power behind them. His body felt hot, primed and ready, his muscles full of power as magic coursed through his veins. His Earth element sang in his ears, ready to explode like a volcano of raw mass and weight.

  This… this was what it meant to be powerful. This is but the appetizer, he knew, but already it’s like I’m a whole new person compared to back when I challenged the crazy house at Redbud Ridge, where I struggled even against weak monsters and traps.

  Now, the tide had changed. David was power incarnate, an unstoppable force hitting with the weight of the world behind his punches. And punch he did, smming against the abomination with jabs, crosses, and a final devastating hook. A slight tingle in his elbow warned David that, despite his power, he was still an old man, but he didn’t care. He watched the abomination be reduced to pulped flesh before his eyes, his face covered in blood, and for the first time in so many years, David felt alive.

  But then the abomination roared, a guttural sound echoing in the enclosed space of the compound. As the lights died one after the other, the eerie glow was reflected in the shifting flesh of the monster as it regenerated before David’s eyes. It pulled itself upright by digging into the walls with its appendages, using them like grappling hooks to shift its body upright.

  Then, with speed even faster than David’s own, the monster shed out with pseudopods tipped with bony spikes, aiming to impale David.

  He only grinned. “Well,” David chuckled as he retreated, “looks like I’m not the only one faster than they look. Too bad you’re too soft!”

  Yelling the st word, he summoned an [Earth Wall], intercepting more incoming tentacles. They smmed into it, cracking the exterior but failing to make it even budge. Some of them tried to circle around to avoid the new, sudden obstacle before the still-growing mass of stone could pulverize them against the ceiling, but David simply ducked and weaved around them with agility.

  The st one, he failed to dodge, not due to a ck of agility, but because his back had decided to give out on him at the st second. He roared in pain, frustration welling up because, despite everything, it had not been the monster but his own body that had managed to incapacitate him the most. Still, his old instincts kicked in, and he immediately sought to remedy the situation by throwing himself to the floor and rolling around to avoid the impaling tentacles. Only one reached him, and while it skittered against his hardened skin without piercing, it felt like the impact of a heavy caliber shot that sent shockwaves through his flesh and rattled his bones.

  Grunting, David grasped the retreating tentacle and yanked. He used the leverage to pull himself upright while making the monster lose its footing.

  He rotated his body to pull at the tentacle and suddenly close the distance with the monster. Then, he unleashed a sequence of elbow strikes at the monster, reinforced with a double dose of [Stone Skin] coated in concrete pulled through his Elemental Manipution from the walls themselves. Each strike was an explosion of dust and shattering concrete, but it also reverberated in sickening crunches as the monster’s internal structure was pulverized over and over again.

  Before the monster could react, David punched the wall and retrieved a long rod of rebar from the foundation of the tunnel. He yanked it free, and in the explosion of dust the followed, he began to savagely beat the everliving shit out of the monster with it. It could do nothing to defend itself, tanking hit after hit with its body, losing flesh left and right, and oozing blood and pus.

  Despite the adrenaline, however, David was slowing down. The abomination realized this as well. David’s eyes widened when he saw yet another tentacle rush at him while the monster’s main body tried to sm into him.

  He tried. He tried and he failed to deflect let alone dodge. The pseudopod smmed into him, and this time it tore through his side, which had been left unprotected while he had focused his magic on the offense. He recoiled in pain, which opened his front to being lifted with raw strength and flung against the wall.

  The tables were turning. David groaned, feeling much more like Old Dave now than David Chestermill, who he thought he still was. His bones ached, and his joints popped, but he peeled himself off the hole in the wall he had made with his own body. He felt something drip from his chin, and licking his lips he tasted iron and hot, sticky wetness.

  His smile turned nasty. He shot forward, fueled by rage, adrenaline, and a mad will to not only survive but overcome his own limitations. He was sick and tired of being old, and he would not retreat with his tail between his legs. Not anymore.

  Even if it’s the st thing I do, he thought grimly.