Matthias "Crimson Tempest" Asano

It didn't take Matthias long to find the Tier 4 Anathema. Likewise, it wasn't hard to figure out what had gotten so much of its attention as to lead it away from, rather than toward, the underground bunker.

The Anathema was one of the rare yet iconic death knights, and it was seemingly hot in pursuit after another Guardian. More than that, it was a Guardian that Matthias recognized—both from part of the recent news cycle as well as from having previously met her in person.

I wonder what she's doing here. But right now, it didn't matter to Matthias that she was currently wanted, or that she may or may not be some kind of serial killer—the truth was irrelevant. What mattered was that she was currently fighting in an incursion—and that she was a Tier 1 with a powerful and uncommonly intelligent Tier 4 in pursuit.

Without intervention, Matthias would be shocked if she survived.

Unfortunately, the death knight was close to the worst possible thing the Anathema could have been. Certain Anathema variants, from the fairly common volter to the rare chamelium or obelisk, were an even worse matchup for Matthias's abilities than the incredibly common skinner.

Beyond not having anything close enough to traditional blood as far as his power was concerned, they barely even registered as being made of flesh. Sure while his power did still register them as living, sort of, but only in the vaguest, most borderline sense.

Their completely inorganic and solid, alien biology was only inches away from falling outside the scope of his power—and in the case of chameliums, monoliths, or the present death knight, extreme durability was the cherry on top that made them the most miserable kind of opponent.

Matthias's abilities were well suited against even the most regenerative Anathema, but not against the most flatly durable.

That didn't mean he would be completely useless, though, and he was still a full effective tier higher than the death knight chasing down after Alexis.

Catching up proved surprisingly difficult. They were both fast—in Alexis's case, almost unreasonably so—but over the next ten or fifteen seconds, though, Matthias had gotten close enough to put them both well within his aura.

And just in time, too, because the death knight had finally overtaken the shockingly fast Tier 1 Guardian as well. While Alexis may have been surprisingly quick for her Tier, she wasn't quick enough to get out of the way of the massive maul the knight swept into her side.

Amazingly, the savage blow wasn't enough to kill her outright, instead sending her skidding across the ground, her own conjured armor—remarkably similar to that of the death knight, Matthias noticed—now cracked and deformed.

In fact, she was even starting to get up—but the Tier 4 Anathema had stepped forward and was once more swinging in her direction.

Matthias's own arm shot out, and a torrent of blood followed, crystallizing along the way such that it had formed something close to a solid beam by the time it struck the hulking death knight's swing askew.

But that wasn't all. Matthias also clamped down with his aura, disrupting what would have otherwise been a smooth and calculated pivot to using a newly conjured weapon in its other hand. With Matthias actively leveraging his aura for suppression, the Anathema's active ability failed, leaving it momentarily reeling in surprise.

Intending to push the momentum he'd gained so far in the fight, Matthias was already redirecting his accumulated blood—only for a completely unexpected series of events to happen in rapid succession.

First, an unexpected blast of wind sent the already-reeling death knight teetering even further off balance. Rising out of the sudden whirlwind gust was Alexis herself, both hands outstretched. Twin bolts of violet lighting then struck, one in the center of the death knight's armored chest and the other hitting the massive head of its conjured maul.

And as if all of that wasn't crazy enough, the massive, Tier 4 Anathema was pushed back even harder—not just staggering this time, but outright flying backwards as if struck by another, invisible giant.

The maul got a rather different treatment, seemingly being yanked instead of shoved—straight into Alexis's waiting hand.

And just like Matthias had originally intended, the young woman didn't waste her incredible, newfound momentum. Wielding the oversized weapon like it was nothing, the other Guardian leapt back towards the fallen death knight.

Finally breaking out of his shock, Matthias did what he could to assist, which mostly amounted to maintaining the suppression of his aura to prevent the fallen knight from conjuring a new weapon or regaining control of its old one, while also doing what he could to keep it down with another strike of crystallized blood.

The death knight quickly threatened to break free of the blood and suppression, but at that point, Alexis completed her leap and brought the oversized weapon straight down.

Misty white wisps of what seemed like compressed air had gathered around the weapon while she'd been leaping, and the resulting strike wasn't so much heavy as it was explosive. Even from over a dozen feet away, the ensuing shockwave blew back Matthias's own hair with a blast of hot air.

The death knight didn't just have its nonexistent hair blow back, however.

The attack had penetrated its central plate of armor, exposing the hollow interior and sending snaking fissures even further across its metallic surface. It was still alive, for the moment, but Alexis followed up with another arc of violet lightning.

Rather than strike the dying Tier 4, this one yanked a more appropriately sized weapon to hand—a sword—which the supposedly Tier 1 Guardian thrust straight through the gap under the death knight's helmet-head.

Using it like a fucking crowbar, the definitely not Tier 1 Guardian used leverage and an immense strength to pop the whole head off like a particularly stubborn bottlecap.

Okay—there is no way she's really a Tier 1. Those are mid-Tier 3 abilities at the very least. Matthias hadn't felt a proper aura from her at any point during the fight—but there was always the chance she was hiding it, just like she'd been hiding her real tier in the first place.

Either midway through Tier 3 or close or at Tier 4. Matthias was sure of it.

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"Hey," she said, seemingly noticing Matthias for the first time—not that he would believe it. "I kind of wondered if you might show up. How's it going?"

Alexis "Valkyrie" Huntingfield

Surprisingly, Matthias didn't ask any of the questions I expected him to, and he didn't even make any explicit remarks about either what was on the news or my most recent display of strength. I had zero doubt that he still believed I was just a Tier 1, though. He didn't strike me as either unobservant or stupid, and the way he looked at me was laced with an uneasy suspicion.

Anyway, I wasn't too disappointed about potentially missing out on a chance to make a meal out of the powerful death knight. I probably wouldn't have been able to do it even if Matthias hadn't showed up, and my original goal there had been to hone my skills and get some more proper combat experience anyway.

In the end, I was pleased. Matthias's contributions had definitely helped, and I kind of wondered if he'd done anything beyond what I actually saw, which mostly amounted to knocking it about with huge amounts of stolen blood. I wouldn't be surprised if he had some additional tricks that weren't so easily spotted.

He was a powerful Tier 4 Guardian, after all, which meant he had a proper aura.

Regardless, I came away from the encounter feeling like I'd still done the majority of the work and that the victory was still overall 'earned.' That made me happy.

But now that the death knight was defeated, Matthias's continued presence was starting to get really irritating.

I got the sense that he was staying close to me more to improve our combat efficiency and to make sure I didn't start randomly murdering people in the chaos rather than to try capturing me at the end—but still, I felt less free than I otherwise would have.

"Titan over that way," Matthias pointed, signalling for me to take the initiative in dealing with it. Overall, he was being very practical and just doing his best to point me at all the toughest Anathema I could readily handle. His own abilities were much better for mowing through weaker Anathema than mine, even without the massive tier disparity.

"On it."

I got a brief, partial glimpse of the titan as it passed a narrow gap between two buildings not a full block distant. I still wasn't entirely sure what I was looking at, other than that it was big. As for the taste—well, I was actually in range, and it was kind of familiar.

While I could have run or flown the short distance in even shorter time, I'd just learned yet another awesome sword trick that I could only perform now at my own new tier.

Repeating the ranged attack that originally missed the death knight, I blasted the sword away from me with violet energy, only to trigger a massive momentum increase just after I'd already imparted it with a high velocity.

Then, with a peculiar, inside-out twisting motion of nonphysical, esoteric muscles, I flipped the nature of the connection so that I was now pulling instead of pushing.

But because of the way I could manipulate the sword's mass, it was now far heavier than I was, even with all of my 'armor' raising my own weight several times over. The end result was that I'd learned to do something that felt incredibly awesome—while I could theoretically only use the metal pushing and pulling aspect of my evolved abilities if there was a large enough metal object nearby, I could actually just cheat using my own sword.

The g-force was also insane, and the whole process took about a single second to send me hurtling all the way across a city block horizontally and three stories up into the air.

Also, my aim being imperfect wasn't much of an issue here, and a couple beats of my actual wings were enough to pivot midair and launch myself onto the side of the massive kraken parading down the main thoroughfare between the architecturally archaic humanities area and the fancy new performing arts complex.

The kraken was a real big bastard, guaranteed to be a titan unlike most Anathema which were only classified as titans on a case-by-case basis when one ended up becoming particularly large.

The definition for 'titan' amounted to any Anathema that was considerably larger than any native land megafauna—so basically anything that got substantially bigger than an African elephant.

I myself counted as a titan now, or at least I did when in my full chamelium form. Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten much of a chance to show it off since first evolving it while out in Nevada not too long ago.

I certainly wasn't going to use it here. Even without Matthias hanging around, it would simply draw too much attention while not actually being so strong as to trample right over anything that the local scene of independent Guardians could potentially throw at me.

I'd defeated Guardians ostensibly much stronger than myself before, and going 'full dragon mode' was definitely a great card to have in my pocket—but not for a fairly ordinary incursion in the middle of the city like this. I didn't want a random Tier 3 or 4 team spotting me and potentially wrecking my day, or just making the whole situation dramatically more disastrous.

The kraken itself was 'only' a Tier 3, but it was a big and tough one. I'd fought a very similar Anathema once before, and while I eventually won, it wasn't a great fight. I got taken out of it multiple times, only to get really taken out of it when I fell unconscious for several days after finally defeating it with an overcharged attack.

But now? I was a lot more confident in my abilities than I was back then—and that confidence wasn't ill-founded, because I was a whole tier higher, far stronger, and just generally more skilled and experienced.

The first thing I did was actually to grab my sword—and then blast it off again, but this time even harder, and straight up into the empty sky.

Then I repeated the same trick, likewise with even more force, sending my own body absolutely hurtling straight up through the air. It was far faster than I could fly the 'normal' way in my current Valkyrie form, and overall it was just exhilarating.

I went high, too, as I allowed my own momentum to keep carrying me until I actually passed by the now super heavy sword, which had been yanked hard and long enough that it was now well on its way back down.

But not for long!

An idle thought was all it took to summon it back to me the 'normal' way, where it turned effectively weightless and intangible. Now, looking down at the distant ground some several hundred or even thousands of feet below as I neared the top of my trajectory, I was ready to make full use of gravity.

Repeating the sword trick yet again, I set myself streaking straight down, back towards the oblivious kraken. I'd learned the hard way that a kraken's exterior hide was incredibly tough, but with the amount of velocity and weight I'd just put behind the sharpened blade now plunging straight down like some kind of holy judgment, I was confident I could impale myself straight through it.

And that was the most important part—I wouldn't have had to go to such ridiculous lengths if all I wanted to do was put a fairly small hole in the damn thing.

Instead, I was looking forward to a particular kind of experience that had grown on me quite a bit these past couple of months. To put it bluntly, Anathema like myself loved nothing more than to

eat,

And devouring my way through the interior flesh of another Anathema much larger than myself was a great way to experience an especially flavorful and filling meal.

Plummeting straight down, head first, with my hands stretched out to aim a big fucking sword, I felt like some kind of olympic diver about to win the gold—only, I wasn't diving into a pool of water, but of meat.

The impact was brutal. It actually succeeded in rattling my own shoulders enough to be decidedly uncomfortable, and the more 'exposed' parts of my face stung—but that was nothing compared to the hurt inflicted upon the much larger, but lower tier Anathema.

While I hadn't actually bored all the way through, I'd embedded my own body about halfway deep into a hulking mass of Alien blood and flesh. Keenly aware that the kraken would grab me by the legs and fling me several blocks distant if given the chance, I hurriedly dug my claws in, unhinged my true, inhuman jaw, and hauled myself fully into the gaping new wound while also getting my first bites of delicious, Tier 3 meat.

Oh this is so fucking good. Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy…

Out of sight, out of mind, wasn't that the saying? I was cocooned in a warm, squirming darkness—and the only thing I could think about was how fucking good it felt to eat.

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