CALAMITY : Legends Of The Chosen

The forest air grew still, humming with raw tension as the Namsari thrashed helplessly inside the orb of swirling water Morgz had trapped it in. Tentacles slammed and curled, struggling for purchase, but the high-density Flowing Water sphere remained unbroken.

Morgz turned to the others, panting. "I've got it locked down, but not for long."

That's when Max stepped forward, eyes narrowing with a predator's grin.

"Perfect," he muttered. "That thing's inside a conductor... time to cook it."

Morgz blinked, confused. "What?"

Max didn't answer.

He raised both hands as black lightning began crackling from his fingertips, spiraling up his arms like living tattoos. The air grew heavier, the static pressure so intense it made the hairs on everyone's bodies stand upright.

"Indra's Arrow."

His voice boomed like thunder through the trees.

With a single pulse of VYTHRA, two black lightning crossbows constructed themselves on Max's forearms, forged from pure condensed electricity. The limbs of the bows were jagged, glowing, unstable — arcs of voltage constantly dancing off them like chained spirits.

Everyone backed away instinctively.

"Yo, Max," Karl called, raising a brow, "How many shots you thinking?"

Max smirked. "All of them."

He aimed both crossbows directly at the water orb.

"Indra Arsenal: Black Barrage."

Then he fired.

A rainstorm of black lightning arrows tore through the air. Hundreds in seconds. Each bolt screamed through the water sphere, electrifying it from the inside out. The water lit up like a neutron bomb, pulses of black-white energy flashing at blinding speed.

The Namsari shrieked in warped psychic static, its body convulsing violently within the orb.

The bolts ricocheted and rebounded inside the sphere, trapping the electricity in a chaotic vortex, turning Morgz's water into a prison of torment.

Morgz, watching from behind a tree, couldn't help but whistle. "Holy crap…"

Max didn't stop. He walked forward slowly, expression unreadable, bolts still unloading like a VYTHRA minigun.

"Come on... How do you like 1,000 volts per shot, freak?"

Cracks began to form across the Namsari's shell. The creature writhed, screeching like a chorus of dying minds. Black steam rose from the water as its body began boiling from within, its mental defenses eroding under Max's unrelenting onslaught.

With a final roar, Max charged both crossbows fully.

"Execution Shot."

He fired one last pair of arrows, larger than the rest — twin spears of pitch-black lightning that spiraled inward and impaled the Namsari's core, exploding in a pillar of black light that vaporized the water orb entirely.

BOOOOOOM.

The forest shook. Trees bent from the shockwave. A high-pitched wail of soul energy echoed through the air — and then, silence.

Max stood alone, breathing hard, crossbows fizzling out into static dust.

"Still alive…?" he muttered.

From the smoldering crater, the Namsari twitched — black blood leaking from dozens of gashes, its dream armor melted, its core exposed.

It was wounded. Vulnerable. But not dead yet.

"Tag in, someone," Max said, eyes narrowing. "Time to end this."

Karl stepped forward, silent. His body glinted under the moonlight, patches of metal shifting and liquefying with every step. Max's electrical storm crackled behind him, but the Namsari still twitched within the churning water sphere Morgz had crafted. Tentacles flexed. Its shape—barely comprehensible—was now forming new muscle, new armor, new instincts.

Karl's pupils narrowed into thin lines of crimson as his voice came out flat.

"It's adapting. Figures."

Then, his voice dropped into a snarl.

"Time to see if it can adapt to this."

With a loud KA-CHUNK, his spine split open, metallic plates folding outward like mechanical wings. Twin shoulder ports hissed as twin rotating plasma cannons emerged, aiming independently with soft beeps. His arms mutated, skin peeling back in ribbons of molten nanites—replaced by twin hyperdense blades, curved and wicked like guillotines.

Then, his back erupted open—a heavy module rising from within like a missile battery—the Nanite Rocket Barrage Unit, bristling with six compact high-density warheads.

The other Chosen stepped back instinctively.

Morgz blinked. "Wait, he's had that the whole time?!"

Karl's eyes were dim. Focused. Surgical.

"Engaging apex configuration."

He leapt.

The rocket pack ignited—a booming roar that turned night into hellfire—and Karl blurred into the sky, a silver-black streak carving across the moon.

Then he dropped like a falling meteor.

SLICE—

Two of the Namsari's growing armored tentacles were cleaved in half mid-motion as Karl reappeared behind them, spinning in mid-air, blades moving so fast the atmosphere around him vibrated with shear pressure.

The moment he landed, the shoulder cannons fired—twin plasma lances shrieking toward the target, drilling into the regenerating base of the creature's main body. Ichor exploded, steaming as it hit the compressed water prison.

"It bleeds," Karl muttered. "Means it can die."

The Namsari roared, distorting the very dreamscape with its scream. The terrain rippled like water under its voice, but Karl didn't flinch.

Instead, he crouched.

"Let's make this quick."

The Nanite Rocket Barrage fired.

All six micro warheads shot out in a synchronized arc, spinning with intelligent guidance. They circled the sphere, then all impacted simultaneously, detonating in a perfect sphere of red-hot nanite fire that vaporized stone and heat-fused the air.

The shockwave nearly knocked the Chosen off their feet.

A geyser of black mist and liquid horror erupted upward.

When the smoke finally cleared…

The Namsari was still standing. Its central core now armored in translucent dream-flesh, twitching and pulsing with adaptive membrane nodes. Worse yet, Karl's tech was failing—his right arm blade now melting at the edge, sizzling where the energy met the Namsari's aura.

"Tch… it's learning too fast. The longer we take… the worse this gets."

He staggered back, mechanical limbs sparking.

Warning lights blinked across his chest display. His entire body was in redline. The Nanite Forge was beginning to destabilize from over-deployment, and now the acidic corruption of the Namsari's dreamspace was corroding the nanite lattice on contact.

"Morgz. I hope you're reloaded," Karl grunted. "Because my whole system's about to go critical."

He collapsed to one knee, panting.

Zans and Max rushed to his side.

"Dude! You had rockets this whole time?!" Max asked, half-impressed, half-horrified.

Karl chuckled, spitting oil. "Rockets, blades, the works. Just… forgot this thing wasn't from this world."

Shojiro cracked his knuckles. "Then we hit it with something that is."