That was the cue to move. I grabbed another demon out of the air. His name was Gore-Don, and while that was punny in a certain sense, I didn't really laugh at it. Instead, I used him as a human- I mean demon-shield. Gore-Don was rather robust. He absorbed a truly impressive amount of fire from the demons trying to kill me. Then, after that eventually killed him, his corpse continued to deflect the worst of the onslaught. This continued for a brief period longer, before the body seemed to pop in a boiling eruption of gore. With that, he truly was gore done.

No, I won't apologize for that.

I crossed the bridge and lost a layer of Ablative Shell from the constant barrage of hellfire. Apparently, I was a priority target. I am not complaining, every shot directed at me was damage, not aimed at the bridge. For now, at least, it didn't look like the fire was doing a lot to the bridge, but knowing the system, that wasn't going to last forever. The flames baked the stone, which was probably what was going to eventually cause it to break, that or the cooling to follow. For now, it was just making the structure very warm underfoot. I made it up the ramp and found the door basically intact; the shaped charge had put a rather large cone-shaped dent in the door

There was only one thing for it.

Destruction Check… Successful!

Tower Gate takes 114 Structural Damage.

Structural Weak Point is now part of Tower Gate.

I slammed my hand into the doors as hard as I could, right below the damage from the shaped charge. The Destruction check altered the nature of the damage to the gate. Instead of a vague dent. It altered into a sharp, notched X carved deep into the gate.

That was better than I hoped. Now to set a tone. I had been running Claws of Darkness this whole time. I also had Tenebrous Form going as well. It made sense so long as I had a layer of Ablative Shell. The thing is the way those spells worked is each did [Magic Atrribute]-2 damage a second. That was 44 damage a second each. Sure, Titanic Magic halved the damage, but that didn't matter for Titanic Retribution.

Titanic Retribution

Attacking a Titan Spawn is a foolish endeavor at the best of times. Attacking the bearer of this perk is tantamount to suicide. Once per minute, the Titan Spawn may rebound the Raw damage they have taken over the previous 60 seconds back at their attackers. When rebounding damage, the Titan Spawn must select whether to select a single target or an Area equal to Magic Attribute square feet.

Note 1: Raw damage is the total amount of damage before being reduced by defense.

Note 2: Damage will be divided equally between every being in the area of effect.

I triggered Titanic Retribution and punched the gate as hard as I was able.

Attack Critically Successful!

Tower Gate takes 10,611 Structural Damage.

Tower Gate destroyed.

That will absolutely set a tone. The doors fractured and split along the edges of the weak point I put in the door. It collapsed inward after breaking into four huge triangular chunks. Those things were each roughly six feet thick and primarily metal. The force of my punch sent them flying into the tower and down the hall. The demons that thought they were ready for what was about to come through that door found out the hard way they were not ready for Geometry Wars.

I blinked away the prompts telling me that I had indirectly killed: Slagathor, Long-Dong-Silver, Murder-Face, Stabby Steve, and Pedro.

The goblins didn't hesitate for a moment. They charged. Well, most of the ones in the tunnel did. A non-zero number of goblin commandos ran to the side of the bridge and jumped off the side. They were going to parachute into the Dark and get into the tower a different way. The lower entrances were less guarded and led more directly to prisoners. Like I said before, you can't accuse goblins of being indecisive. Fucking crazy, yes; indecisive, no.

Now, this was not some glorious charge of invincible heroes cleaving their way through unnamed minions of a dark lord. A lot of people were dying in very bad ways. A goblin next to me took a burning spear to the neck. That killed him eventually, but not instantly. I could see in his eyes before he passed, he felt the heat.

Let me be clear here. The demons we fought had literally built a society around the imprisonment and abuse of others. I didn't feel an ounce of remorse for any one of them I saw die that day. Not just because they weren't really dead, but because they could, in theory, get back through the gate, unless we closed it. I honestly believed we were doing something righteous in fighting them.

That didn't change the fact that they were people.

This is what the Narrators wanted. We were killing each other en masse.

The crazy stuff hadn't even started yet. Zach had done me a solid damaging the rings. The broken ring tried to turn so they could bring more guns to bear on us. This resulted in them crashing into floating debris that kicked off a chain reaction of massive rocks flying around, bashing into things. That basically locked the inner rings down and prevented them from rotating. That heavily limited the guns on them from being able to target us. The outer rings were still chugging away, though.

Attack from Flesh-Render Blocked.

Another rod-not-from-god was heading right toward our bridge. I didn't like that. It really sucks when your enemy has great aim. I just barely caught it. That was the ticklish part. Once I had my hands on it, it was a simple matter of circle step one-two-three and lobbing it back.

Counter-attack Successful. Flesh-Render takes 173 damage.

Flesh-Render is slain.

Hey! Welp fuck you specifically, Flesh-Render. I had tried to hit one of the big guns on the outermost rings, and I succeeded. I also seemed to have taken out the shockingly accurate Flesh-Render. You would think the person would have the name Blood-Shot… well, then again one of those projectiles would probably rend a lot of flesh.

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Meh, no time to dwell on it.

Expend Free action? Yes/No

Note: You must select the total number of seconds spent before activating.

I mentally selected one second and punched the yes button.

The world froze with the telltale thrum of time stopping. I took a brief moment to really take things in. all around us were maybe a thousand demons, give or take. That was far less than the ten thousand that were supposed to be defending this place. Then again, given that demons that died could come back to this world through the hellgate, these relatively few defenders might be enough. If the rings were working, they could probably wage a hell of a war of attrition.

There were thousands of little moments locked in place around me. Hellfire sat blazing in the air. A nasty blob of it was about to hit me in the head. There was a goblin to my left, stabbing a demon in the neck with a knife. It was hard to tell whose face was twisted more with hate, rage, and terror between the two of them. On my right, a demon had impaled another goblin. The pair of them were suspended twenty feet from the edge of the bridge over the vast pit. That goblin was dead; she just wasn't at the end yet.

Hundreds of other moments were scattered around me, but I had to focus on what mattered. The bridge was in place. Brunhilda had fixed her end into the tunnel mouth, and that was reinforced and anchored by stone and heavy iron cables hooked to actual anchors stuck into the tunnel floor far back.

Please select an action…

The inside of the tower was a different story. The doors blasting inwards had ruined the main defenses of the long hallway leading into the tower. That said, I could still see into the cavernous interior. This room had pens, massive ones, resembling a feed lot. I could see the gates connecting to fenced-in paths that all led to a series of different elevators and stairs.

What appeared to be the center of the room was a towering pillar of energy. It looked like hellfire, but far too concentrated and organized. It was mid-pulse as power flowed along the line. This central conduit seemed to run the entire length of the tower. This was something we were pretty sure we needed to break. Besides the fact it was obviously important, it seemed to connect to the Hellgate. Trouble is, the piece of door that slammed into the pillar was vaporized. The remaining piece that hadn't moved through the beam was glowing red hot, like it had been cut through with an air arc torch. That was unfortunate. I had really hoped hitting it would work.

Please select an action…

Lastly, I looked at the rings. This was mostly to get a good idea of where the guns were. Given that four rings were seemingly trapped, the floating rubble prevented them from turning. That at least weakened the defense, and hopefully created an exploitable weakness along this main entrance

Please select an action…

I focused on the mental images and…

Commune Check… Successful

You are now communicating with Followers Seth Cohen, Chino Minoru, Pappy Octavio Havok, Spine Spindle-Bite and Toad Badkiss, Marvin Grimset, Philip Spindle-Bite, Sunit Patel, and Rachel Blum

Doug: Toad, do you have what you need?

Rachel: Why the FUCK am I stuck with him?

Doug: 'Cause I don't have time to piss around. Ignore Seth. What is your situation?

Toad: Yes, I have what I need. Continue to the top of the tower as planned.

Rachel: We are at the Final Boss's Door. I can already tell this is going to suck. It is going to be a marathon fight.

Minoru: The Spider Dungeon?

Rachel: Yes. Minoru: Aerosol weapons can easily kill the monsters that deal there. Pepper Mint oil in the confines of the dungeon will choke them in minutes.

Rachel: That would have been awesome to know ahead of time. We don't have mint.

Spine: We can't get into the Dark, not in a safe way. We are basically backed into a corner. Nanny Shank wants us to load back up and go.

Grimset: Where?

Spine: anywhere but here.

Pappy Havok: Too late, Sasquatches are coming. A lot of 'em. The big bastard is leading them. We're set up to fight. We're gonna fight.

…

Fuck. chat got cut off. Another less convenient prompt flashed.

Please select an action…

Warring: Continued delay will result in free action being lost.

I was tempted to spend another second just to hash things out. Spine's message was chilling to the core. Yes, I was standing in a literal battle and was surrounded by the dead, the dying, and those doing the killing, but I knew Spine, and behind him were children.

The hard truth was we had agreed that I needed to limit my use of time stops for certain goal posts, or if someone reached out to me through the Commune Skill. If shit was fucked over there, Spine or Pappy Havok, or any number of other goblins would reach out. Not that I could do anything here. As much as it sucked, time wasn't our friend. We just had to trust each other and act fast.

I planned to move with a purpose.

Destruction Check… Successful!

Wicked Spear destroyed.

I had the free action and used it to destroy a barbed spear about to impale a goblin in front of me. It shattered like glass, but the embers of hellfire within couldn't erupt yet in frozen time.

This battle on the bridge was going to be ugly. That said, I needed to trust my people. We all had jobs to do, and had to focus on mine.

Jump Check… Successful!

I leapt through the frozen battle into the tower. Let me be clear, this was not graceful. I moved through the air and everyone in my way like a semi-truck through… well, a crowd of people. Three unfortunate demons got splattered before another eleven were mangled pretty good. I am not going to lie to you, I didn't stick the landing. Instead, the third demon, who was splattered, a dipshit named Florida Ted, caused my ice-encrusted boots to slip on the floor.

I landed hard on my ass. Rather than waste time, I grabbed a larger chunk of the shattered door and used it to crush a mounted gun emplacement that was about to fire on the charging goblins. I got a demon named Terri-Belle along with the gun.

I am going to keep harping on the names, partially because I was making it a point to remember them. Mostly because killing people should be something that sticks with you, but also because so many of them were just bad. I will acknowledge the ladies seemed to be more creative in general, but they were also part of a machine powered by the suffering of others… so rest in piss, Terri-Belle.

I dodged an attack from behind by Bert the Backstabber. I used the momentum to get to my feet and then backhand him into the next life. I needed to get to the stairs. I couldn't trust the elevators. The goal was to get to the next floor. Then, get to the floor after that. Then the floor after that, and so on until I reached the gate.

I also needed to speed run it.

Worrying about it wasn't doing the work. So I pushed the crushing weight of fear to the back of my mind and started hitting people. Behold, male coping skills. Jokes aside, focusing on what is within reach and possible to control in dark times is a valid coping tool. Besides, if I was gonna punch demons, I was gonna punch them as hard as possible. Its not like I went full Doomguy on them, not even close. I barely cracked Dante level violence, and I sure as hell wasn't stylish.

The demons died, though. I have stated before that my fighting style is less of a coordinated series of movements and attacks and more of a bomb. The action economy favored me so heavily that taking me was one of the best ways for a demon to find themselves on the other side of the veil.

Half a minute of bloodily battering my way through a crowd of demons, I found myself at the foot of the stairs. They lead up into the dark. For some reason, no one tried to stop me.

That wasn't a great sign.

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