Chapter 25: Cybel

What came after was a wordless admiration of the environment. When both of them had had enough, they left the game and turned in for the night.

The next morning they could finally see the walls of Cybel, and it was just as plain as Elle's, through and through. However, Lu knew the interior would be much more grandiose.

The road became much smoother and assured them that the next hour would present them a smooth ride through the forest. However, the thought was quickly proven wrong when they heard a scream in the distance.

The speedwagon slowed to a stop

"You hear that?" Autumn asked.

Lu knew what she was onto, but he did not like what he was hearing, and what she was thinking.

"You're not going to get paid for this, you know?" Lu attempted to convince Autumn to not risk losing a finger or two.

"Don't act like you're against it" Autumn said simply.

"Right, detour it is" Lu said, succumbing to her suggestion. While he isn't a fan of high risk no reward, he knew his sister would scold him if he ran away now, thus his decision to follow Autumn.

Autumn continued to drive the speedwagon, turning to the direction of the cry.

After they had gone out of the trees, the road was again rougher, and at the distance they witnessed a lady running from a titan chasing her while she threw her feathers randomly at it.

"Please help me!" she screamed again.

Autumn drove as fast as she could and Lu threw a feather ahead. However, they were already too late. The giant picked up the woman and ate her soul right before Lu's feather crashed into its core.

They hurriedly came to assist the lady, but her vital signs told them that she was already gone.

Lu noticed that the titan's left hand was not equipped with a humanoid hand, but a drill.

"This one is...different" Lu asserted.

"Hereth! The nearby city!" Autumn shouted and prompted Lu to get back into the speedwagon.

The two heard more shouts and cries as they arrived at the scene. The city walls were broken and a titan that appeared like the previous one was using its drill to puncture its way into the city.

Lu and Autumn took advantage of its labor and deactivated it in an instant before it paid attention to their presence.

"I'll go to the other side, you enter here" Autumn commanded Lu.

Leaving him no other option, he burst through the small hole that the titan bore.

The horrific scene presented itself to him. Civilians were either running around or trying to defend themselves against the mechanical giants that were approaching them. Most of them are having no success at either, and he could tell from the number of bodies on the floor. Not only fires, but also ice towers, trees, and many other elements were all around the city, likely created by animus of both titan and civilian. The size of the effects told Lu that some civilians had already used their 4th animus, and possibly titans as well.

There are four titans that were on the floor unmoving nearby, but Lu counted that there are at least a dozen still rampaging inside.

He jumped into the action, clearing them one by one as fast as he could. Luckily, the colossi were not paying attention to his extremely precise feather shots, or they did not have methods to defend themselves and lost to the techniques Lu had gathered over the years of playing Monitum.

The last titan was one and a half times bigger than usual and had four arms, no drills. Lu was getting worried if titans could evolve, but he put the thought aside and focused on the fight.

Lu threw a feather and the titan faced him. Its core was exposed, but when Lu tried to put a quill into it, the mecha blocked the feather using two of its hands, and in response, Lu ran around it.

Titans usually do not block with their arms, because it would expose their elbow joints. For the same reason, tians do not attempt climb walls. Their abysmal speed is only made up for by their tough armor, so exposing its gaps is not a viable plan for any of them.

Nonetheless, this particular titan was confident that it is not endangering itself by using the full stretch of its flexibility.

Lu shot once at the space in its elbow armor and had proven his thoughts. It knew that the gaps in its armor are too hard for the feathers to penetrate, leaving the core as the only vulnerability with the titan, which is now screened by its fingers.

Lu launched a projectile at the gap between its fingers. Right before it hit, the giant armored bars shifted their position to block the attack. He then attempted to overwhelm it with a storm of quills, but it appears that the giant can shift its fingers fast enough to block all of them as they come. And while Lu is not able to harm it, the titan decided Lu was a bigger threat than the civilians who were just running away, making him the priority target.

The massive creature walked slowly at its own pace toward Lu, and when it decided that the distance was near enough, it launched four golden spheres of energy that rushed at Lu instead of the usual six, but thrice as large.

Lu easily dodge the sluggish bombs. The titan followed up by hammering him down with its fists.

It was then that Lu knew it was almost not threatening at all, given its speed. Lu could dodge its attacks almost effortlessly. However, it was still going to take a lot more effort to deactivate.

Autumn appeared at the scene from the top of a nearby building and scratched on its fingers with her scythe.

She instantly jumped back to avoid its grasp, landing back into one of the facility's windows, masking her presence.

Lu ran to search for Autumn inside while the titan did the same, but smashing its way through instead.

They met in one of the hallways far from the mecha's rampage, almost attacking it each other if they did not realize who they were facing.

"Ah, it's you. You're done with your side?" Autumn said, taking a good stretch.

Lu sat down. "Yeah. There's so many of them in here. You hurt anywhere?"

"No, but I'm already out of animus. I think I took around 30 on my side, I lost count" Autumn said.

"Chrio's husband will be shocked if he hears about what we did today. Anyway, that last one moves slow, but the armor's gaps are harder than feathers. I was hoping you could take care of the fingers in front of its core with your animus while I send a bullet right behind you, but you said you were out" Lu analyzed.

"If I knew, I would have saved one. But don't forget, My scythe is harder than feathers. If it can tear through the openings even just a bit, I'll be counting on you to take care of the rest--" Autumn fell to the floor.

The ground shook and the walls and floor cracked, but nothing showed no signs of breaking.

A large metallic hand tore through the distance between them, splitting the building into two and seperating them before any of them could ask what had happened.

Autumn only nodded to Lu as if cueing him. She immediately jumped to the left elbow of the hand protecting its core and hacked into the gap, leaving a wound where it landed.

Lu had gotten himself into position already and instantly dispatched a feather into the hole, making it bleed gold smoke.

The titan realized what had happened and shook the girl off, sending her flying to Lu who helped her reduce the harm of falling by catching her, then he covered them both with his own smoke.

They ran away from the scene before the titan got to pummel randomly on the smoke.

"It can scan the ground and find us", Lu said. "Let's hit him where it hurts"

The surroundings formed cracks again, and they understood that it was the titan's scouting animus again.

Lu responded by throwing in another smoke, and when the giant arrived, it did not know where to strike first, so it just thrashed in front and around itself, mostly directed where the smoke is.

Autumn jumped onto an elbow of an arm protecting its core, this time the one on its right side. She slashed again with her scythe, but this time it slapped a hand to its damaged area, warding off Autumn and protecting it from the feather that it knew would follow right after.

Little did it know, Lu aimed at its left elbow again instead, damaging it further.

It then covered its core with all of its four arms, disregarding their ability to damage its joints. It started charging up an obnoxious unmaker, and Lu felt that it was going to be the worst one he will ever face, judging by the size of the orbs it launched earlier.

"Autumn!" Lu called out.

"You don't need to tell me!" She shouted back and immediately opened another two pockets on its other set of arms.

Lu did his best to send as many feathers into the holes, and Autumn did the same after she had cracked its shell.

One arm deactivated, and soon another one, yet the unmaker was only a few seconds from firing.

The two forced themselves to send more feathers, but they felt closer to their doom than their success.

They ran for cover, knowing full well that they are doomed eitherway, but they still hoped for the best.

Alas, it dropped all its arms and the energy at its core was so much that some debris floated around it.

In the eight of a second before it fired, a small figure stabbed into the core and jumped away as the energy built up inside imploded, destroying the titan from the inside.

The two braced theirselves as the resulting destruction sent many dangerous objects their way.

When the effects of the blast subsided, Lu was greatly pushed away and he heard a mound of flesh get stabbed, and Autumn gasp for little air. When he turned to inspect what occurred, a masked little girl around 9 years of age with black hair, holding what appears to be a gold manablade scissors, with one of its blades pierced right through Autumn's chest.

"No way, she really took that for you!", the girl chuckled. "Well that just makes life easier, doesn't it?"