Story 2 Magical Ascencion Chapter 10

Due to the warnings and the anti-air guns mounted all over on the mega shopping center going to work and filling the city with the sound of American Freedom, I decided to splurge and get the armored taxi back home.

"I already took this before so I know how it works," I told the driver as I settled into the seat and pulled the laptop onto my lap to control the remotely controlled fifty-caliber machine gun that was mounted on top of the thickly armored moving truck.

So with my home address already put in, I rode the armored Uber home, and until we got onto the highway that looped around the city that led to the industrial district where my family's shop and factories were, the ride was fine besides how bumpy the overweighted vehicle was being.

There was a single major highway that circled basically in the middle of the circular walled-in form of the city of Columbus that would allow you to get off the highway into the smaller streets that led to the different parts of the city.

And the highway was well defended with it being the lifeblood of the city, as it wasn't like the city could put AA guns atop all the buildings in the city. But mounting the guns atop small towers above the highway to watch over it and the surrounding city worked well as the presence of the AA guns made the property values right near the highway highly valuable as its not like the homes couldn't install soundproofing.

But the ride's peaceful nature was cut short when I heard the dull roar of the city's manned quad minigun turret systems that made up their anti-air defense roar to life and I heard the driver curse as he called into the back. "I am unlocking gun systems don't shoot buildings or you may well be executed by the city government!" He warned as the laptop's screen when black before turning on the camera feed showing the carnage that was going on outside the enclosed armored van.

Every eight hundred meters there was a concrete tower with a car-sized ball-shaped contraption atop the twenty-meter-tall tower of concrete and on the sides of each ball was two mini guns on each side of the ball... And even as the transport was driving I could see all four miniguns spitting a constant dark red flame of thousands of rounds per minute being blasted into the air above us. As above us was something I had heard about many times in my life growing up here.

A flock of Marrow Eaters. Predatory birds about the size of a normal vulture but despite their fragility and small size as true monsters, they had the element of wind within their bodies granting them great speed. Despite the Marrow Eaters having frailer bodies they made for that by coming in flocks in the tens of thousands and had earned their name when they would fall upon someone and not even bone marrow would be left behind.

I didn't just click the mouse to start the transports guns to start shooting as that would only make the hyper-aggressive monsters attracted to the van. Let them throw themselves into the literal meat grinder that was the manned anti-air machine gun nests was my thoughts. And my hopes.

But the reality was cruel and unkind as I saw the mages that were supposed to be guarding the base of the towers that held the turrets flee using their elemental spells if they had ones that boosted their speed with the colorful light of mostly wind magic being the sight covering their forms as they fled.

And with the mages having fled to dive into the sewers or hide between buildings so the endless cloud of pitch blackbirds couldn't pick them apart, the anti-air turrets were within moments overran and I could only imagine the soldier's reaction. To have the monsters flood into the tower and enter their cockpit and know in that brief moment how fucked they were.

Once the turrets died out, the next most interesting target to the swarm of monsters was obviously the loud stream of cars that were speeding away to try to just keep moving for the higher-ranked mages to get here that could wipe out the swarm with a couple of spells. And in seeming unison that's when I and many other vehicles began to use our offensive means to defend ourselves.

I watched from the laptop screen even as the dull groaning noise rang out past the armored walls of the van and filled my ears as the stream of bullets coming from the mounted heavy machine gun atop the van tore through the vulture-sized pure black raven-looking monsters. "Hold on man, I am taking us off!" The driver yelled and then I smacked my head on the flat metal panel that replaced where there was supposed to be a window as the driver made a hard swerving turn to cut across a lane and I grunted feeling another car hit the back of his bumper as we cut him off.

But wasn't even the worst of it. As in the moments I wasn't using the machine gun with him having banged my head on the wall I could hear the accursed scratching noise that gave all people in this world fucking nightmares. The ever-present scratching noise all monsters made when claws, fangs, talons, and other hard things scratched desperately at the metal-containing us fragile humans.

The sound of their appendages being the can opener to open the armored things we used to survive this life of being the lesser to these endless monsters.

And then an insanely loud guttural groan rang out clear as day, even through the armored van as we drove off the highway into a side street and I screamed as I felt my eardrums pop at the pressure and then literally pop again as I lost my sense of hearing but the driver... It seemed he wasn't a mage at all.

So instead of his ears merely being popped at the pressure increase I could see blood splurt from his ears, nose, and eyes as the pressure increase looked to have just pulped his brain and without the driver, the armored van slammed into the metal crossguard and we drifted down the swerving offramp to get down the highway.

The camera system mounted next to the machine gun was still working, so I was able to see what had made the groaning noise and thus I knew exactly why the Marrow Eaters flock had braved coming to the forbidden land of our city. They were being chased by one of their natural predators.

Even with countless monster species in this world, nature found a way to keep things harshly fair. For all that the Marrow Eaters could use their bodies to overwhelm and eat entire encampments when higher-ranked monsters wouldn't be able to get past the wall of lead being shot into them. That didn't change that there were monsters that were naturally perfectly suited to devouring their swarm.

A massive flying orb more than a hundred meters wide covered in spikes that constantly sparked with lightning flew silently, ominously across the air. A testament to nature and magic coming together to create a being perfectly suited to the mass slaughter of weaker beings.

A Storm Orb, a being naturally that grew to be a Commander tier or Tier 3 Monster was a being perfectly suited to slaughter monsters and the city had a standing order and some deals with the Storm Globe King that had reached the Monarch or Tier 4. That basically went along the lines of. 'You don't eat our weak squishy humans, and our Forbidden Curse Mages don't enslave your entire race to power our cities.'

It was a fair deal all things considered.

But that didn't change the fact that the presence of a Commander Tier monster was like having people without their own magical energy protecting themselves, hug a ball of enriched radioactive material. As was evident with my driver fucking dying at the Storm Orb spreading its mana through its surroundings so it could sense the swarm it was chasing.

The Storm Orb was literally blind, deaf, and incapable of speech until it reached the Monarch rank and with human-level intelligence sent a spiritual message to people or other monsters. And it was clear that it was in a rush as the spikes that covered its hovering form rammed into the swarm impaling the Marrow Eaters with the tiny tendrils covering the spikes pulling the monsters to the mouths that were between the spikes like some kind of sea urchin.

The swarm was one thing, but a commander-tier monster swinging its mana around so flagrantly over this city was a death sentence as several more suppressed magical signatures raged as the human mages of the city had come out of their meditation or just learned the news of the swarm's arrive but before any of the Super Mages could react and come from their stations a purple blur of shimmering light appeared in the midst of the swarm and in front of the Storm Orb.

Floating in the air using her Super Mage tier mana to defy gravity due to the mana density within herself, Makoto Raiden eyed the Commander tier monster she teleported in front of coldly. Both of the Raiden sisters were peak Super Mages who could possibly one day break into the Forbidden Curse Rank of Mages... So her gaze upon the monster even if it was blind could only feel the massive gulf in the mana between the two of them and the beast's reaction was evident as the Storm Orb all but screeched in terror as it turned in the air as it tried to whirl around Makoto.

But Makoto clearly wasn't in a merciful mood from the way she glanced at the torn-apart anti-air gun emplacements so with a flourish of her hands purple light filled the fog ceiling above us and thunder roared as she used her lightning element to fill the fog above the city with terrible lightning that slaughtered the swarm and then she smiled coldly as she said something to the Storm Orb I couldn't hear from the visual-only part of the camera system that allowed me to see what was going on.

After she said her piece, she flicked her finger at the Storm Orb and a bar of solid lightning zipped through the air, when it passed through the Storm Orb it left the monster to fall literally in half as the bar of lightning cut the monster in half with the monster's corpse shattering the multilane highway while I watched as Makoto's sea of lightning she conjured fried the swarm of monsters.

So... I looked away from Makoto slaughtering the monsters and I realized something really fucking awkward. I was locked inside the van as there was the wire mesh between me and the driver with the armored door dented and jammed shut from the van smashing and grinding into the highway's guardrail.