Miller

  The titanic nameplate was hovering above the center of the city, granting no indication as to where the monster itself was located, or what its true form looked like.

  His eyes were perpetually sparking with electricity, [Thunderous Glare] perpetually communicating his roiling fury to anyone who saw him while also letting them know his anger was not directed at them. Incidentally, when he was irritated with a subordinate, the Skill could likewise inform the target of the fact that they’d live through the inevitable dressing down, though they might wish they hadn’t.

  Highly effective at communicating in many situations, though right now, it was his weapon of choice as he leaned out of the doorway of a helicopter above it all, unleashing a stream of electricity at anything that looked to be a part of the monster. At least as long as it was far from any civilians.

  Because they still had no idea where its true body lay, just that it was affecting the entire city, bringing down buildings and shattering roads into fields of rubble that were functionally impassable for civilian cars.

  This had reduced the entire “battle” down to being more of an evacuation under fire, except that rather than enemies that could be struck at directly, they were facing a living natural disaster that actively targeted the most inconvenient areas, further complicating things.

  The best plan they currently had essentially amounted to carpeting the city with bunker-busters once it was fully evacuated until the monster’s body was unearthed, which wasn’t exactly feasible, from neither a political nor a supply point of view.

  In addition, Miller himself was on a rather strict time limit. [Offensive Momentum] had let him and his squad rip their way through the various bosses scattered across the western US without requiring rest while constantly growing in strength and speed. But it was also starting to peak, reaching the point where it would leave them as strong as they’d get … and shut off, which would leave them, and especially him, useless for the next eight hours.

  They needed to finish this now, but all he was doing was destroying the odd rubble golem that rose from the ground.

  It was at this point that his radio crackled to life with new orders.

  “Lieutenant Miller, return to base.”

  That’d better important.

  Miller pulled himself back into the helicopter, slid the door shut behind him, sat down, and strapped in while the chopper banked left to return to the current base camp.

  And why couldn’t they do this over the ra- … they’d gotten reinforcements, Miller realized.

  An old man standing back straight, an incredibly thin blade sitting at his side. A true giant was next to him, wrapped in heavy metal plates that likely meant he weighed as much as a car, potentially even a truck. A third man Miller immediately recognized as King Arthur. And finally, a girl who couldn’t be much older than twenty but was wrapped in armor, had a sword by her side, and meeting his gaze coldly.

  Dietrich von Bern, his protege Mia Vogt, and the armored giant had to be Ogier Danske.

  Proper reinforcements in the form of three ancients and someone who was as close to an ancient as anyone else had gotten.

  “Von Bern, you can see monster weaknesses, correct?” Miller called out as he marched out of the chopper. “How the hell do we kill that thing?”

  Somehow, that question provoked amusement in the girl, and even the ancients seemed slightly bemused … for some reason.

  “It’s the same as all Nation Bosses, multiple cores need to be destroyed, but they’re immobile this time.”

  “And?” Miller asked, his tone right on the edge of where it could be considered as “snapping” at the man.

  “I don’t know where they are, specifically, they’re somewhere in a … five? kilometer radius. General Greer has a map with it marked.”

  Miller could feel himself deflate slightly. Yes, ultimately, at the moment, he was of too low a rank to be making command-level decisions, he just had the power to turn those decisions into reality far better than almost anyone else. It was just that it felt like he should have been informed earlier.

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  “Do you folks have a way to dig it out that I don’t know of?” Miller asked. He had numerous tactical and strategic Skills, he’d mastered every weapon a man could carry and many he couldn’t, and sizing up any natural enemy was as easy as breathing, but sadly, there were limits to his abilities. Such as the fact that he only knew what his subordinates could do, not his allies.

  “Depends,” the mountain of a man rumbled, gesturing towards the helicopter. “Can I borrow that, how high can it go, and have you already evacuated the area with the monster?”

  ***

  There were two things that were absolutely insane about the current situation.

  One, there was the fact that this plan had been approved the instant Dietrich von Bern had contacted General Greer with a borrowed radio.

  And two, there was the plan itself …

  It sounded like something he would come up with, and then hurriedly put into action before he got orders to the contrary.

  These people, on the other hand, they’d just said they’d do it, and immediately gotten the go-ahead. It was almost funny how he’d have likely had that level of “authority,” or at least independence if he’d come into this as a civilian, rather than regaining his memories while already a member of the armed forces, because then, the brass would have had to fight to recruit him.

  Now, now they just had to keep him. And while a lesser man might have taken advantage of the situation to wrangle out concessions, he’d sworn an oath. The same oath, in spirit at least, which he’d sworn countless times before, one in each lifetime. It was rarely twice to the same master, to the same nation, but it was his oath to make, his oath to keep. And he did. Always.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

  Ogier Danske nodded. “This isn’t the first time I’ve fallen onto a Nation Boss from up high, just the first time it was on purpose.”

  There was clearly a story there.

  “Are things clear down there?”

  Miller carefully leaned out of the helicopter and scanned the target area using [Battlefield Eye]. Downtown San Francisco was a complete mess, largely reduced to rubble and then having walked away in the form of golems, though the devastation was so widespread that it had been hard to pinpoint the monster’s location without magical assistance.

  There were no civilians left there. Many had been evacuated … and many more were dead. But there was not a single living soul that would suffer from what they were about to do, save the monster itself.

  “Clear.”

  And just like that, Ogier Danske leaned out of the helicopter’s open door, letting himself pitch forward, and at the last possible second he could reach the man, Miller reached out and gave him a hard push, triggering [Surge of Power] as he did so.

  The helicopter was flung backwards from the force, while the armored giant was hurled downwards with tremendous speed as though he’d already been falling for several kilometers.

  Using an ally as a living bomb, hurling him at the monster in place of an inert hunk of explosives from kilometers up, and expecting him to walk away from it … the world had gone crazy. And he loved every minute of it!

  Down below, Ogier streamlined his body, accelerating further and further, until he hammered into the ground, face-first. But he stopped in an instant, decelerating from what had to be near-terminal velocity to a dead stop and rolling into a proper stance while the ground around him erupted as though a volcano had suddenly unearthed itself in the middle of the city by the bay. Rubble and powdered concrete washed in every direction, successfully exposing one, two … four cores.

  A bolt of lighting leaped from Miller’s eyes to shatter one, even as down below, another sizeable chunk of ground was ripped open as King Arthur unleashed one of his big attack Skills to obliterate a second along with a sizeable area around it, von Bern destroyed a third and Vogt neatly bisected the fourth with her far striking Skill.

  Four of seven.

  And then, they ran.

  Because every single manmade structure that had been destroyed by the impact had grown legs and was now coming after them. The new golem army was met by artillery shells, tanks, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers, but fighting them in melee from within was a Bad Idea with a capital B.

  So they’d run until they’d no longer be encircled the second they stopped, just as they reached the fortifications the group of Irishmen known as the “Fianna” had set up, ripping the onrushing horde to shreds.

  Then, the helicopter’s radio crackled to life.

  “Return to base, they want to do that again.”

  Miller snorted. Crazy bastards, one and all. He might be in love.

  So they did it again.

  And a third time.

  And once more for good measure after heavy bombardment from artillery and magical users had loosened up the soil so it could more effectively be blown away when that lunatic Dutchman decided to compete with Fat Man for who could leave the bigger crater.

  And fourth time turned out to be the charm, as it unearthed the ninth and final core, which Miller himself wound up destroying.

  [Specter of War Lv. 73 -> Specter of War Lv. 75]

  [Skill Boost gained]

  [Capstone Skill gained: Domain of War’s Truth]

  The first two Levels he’d earned since regaining his memories. Boost [Thunderous Glare], obviously, and as for the Capstone … it allowed him to transform his surroundings, suppress all Skills including his own as long as they were beneath a certain threshold of power, though he could artificially lower that threshold if that was what he needed, and he even had the ability to interfere with advanced technology.

  As he grew in power, the Skill would be able to reach further, suppress more, and cause greater environmental transformations. Create the perfect battlefield while ensuring that his enemies, regardless of who they were, would have to fight him down in the mud without magic or tech as long as he abided by the same restrictions.

  Oh … he’d have loved to be able to use that five fucking minutes ago!