NOVEL WEB Chapter 388: 35
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Bio Forge Master (Rewrite) by Throwaway1971
Books » Private Rated: M, English, Romance, Words: 137k+, Favs: 57, Follows: 75, Published: Dec 12, 2023 Updated: Mar 15, 2024
29Chapter 35: 28
Bio Forge Master
A Man Plans and Gods Laugh
Fran Moss/Dr. Patches
The achievement of flight for something so heavy and non-aerodynamic as Echidna's body was an abomination against every natural law. Something every aspect of reality fought to overcome, from the ludicrous drag of her unnatural shifting form to an ever-shifting center of gravity. Even the massive malleability of her flesh sought to futilely fight its trajectory from the powerful strikes against it.
Said strikes were also a ridiculous thing, each blast an explosion powerful enough to kill anyone in a three-hundred-foot radius, the vast majority of the force applied directly into the monster as the spider surgeon pushed her higher and higher.
Clouds were pierced in minutes, and the stratosphere was breached as the air became cold, and the sky turned from the infinite blue into a black void. The monster failed to breathe, still, he himself was at his limit. A trip to the stratosphere was almost insignificant compared to the sheer energy requirement to breach the gravity well of the Earth. Especially considering the weight of Echidna.
So, he stopped pushing (and his mind and body thanked him for it), and only moved his own body above her as she reached her apogee. The acceleration imparted by him equaling with gravity for a small moment, he could see her face. The girl, terrified of a giant spider monster in the void of space, that the girl was still capable of experiencing fear was truly unfortunate, but he couldn't allow her to leave and kill more.
"Sorry about this." He said to her telepathically, it wasn't anywhere near enough, but he felt he should say something to the girl trapped in a monster.
Before gravity reasserted itself, he extended his hand to her and the girl was suddenly retaken by fear covering herself as he pushed with far more gentleness than expected, just enough to change the arc from a perfect fall to a parabola, and so they continued for several minutes. He would've attempted to make conversation, but he didn't think it would do any good and instead used his lingering psionics inside her to check to see if there were any more captives inside her that may possibly die due to the impact of terminal velocity.
He couldn't detect any other mind. But he had a feeling he was forgetting something.
The initial plan was to push her to the sea had been dropped, giving her cloning abilities access to a nigh-infinite supply of fish and plankton seemed like a terrible idea. Granted, she had never used her power in such a manner, opting to focus entirely on parahumans, but he wasn't sure if this was an example of human folly or some sort of hard limit to her power. If it was in her abilities and she never thought of it, it was a terrifying possibility really.
Just by simply walking into the sea, billions of tiny organisms, as carnivorous as any lion and completely willing to obey her every command? In effect, it would possess the same potential for devastation as nanobot weaponry, to be eaten slowly by an entire army simply too small to fight.
The less thought about killer dolphins and whale monsters the better in his honest opinion.
To be fair, he didn't actually remember if she simply couldn't or didn't think of this strategy. Her state of mind and current circumstances didn't really lend itself to research to optimize powers. But still, it didn't hurt to keep oneself open to all possibilities.
Either way, he refused to use the strategy, so he moved onto his second target, which was also the one that had the most promise; a large sandbank. Close to the coat, but not enough that sea life should be a concern.
He also found it clinically fascinating that Echidna's regeneration ability easily offset the damage of oxygen deprivation.
Shaking the clinical observation Dr. Patches further planned, one of the more unexpected uses of telekinesis was liquifying the ground. It was a strategy that he rarely ever had to use but was theoretically possible, especially with sandy solid. He could separate the grains and the target would fall through the ground at the same speed as they would in water.
Sadly, as he observed burying Echidna alive was futile as her regeneration ability would prevent death via oxygen starvation. However, he could make her stay in the pit, the ground liquefaction didn't need to stop, he could keep it going for days. By making the surrounding ground as heavy as ever but as fluid as air, she'd have no purchase to dig herself out. It would give Dr. Patches sufficient enough time to create something that could either kill Echidna outright or pierce her mental defenses.
After a relatively quick search, he had a long and detailed map and history of the United States geography, with most maps either being public or protected knowledge with minimal civilian copyright capacity. Dragon herself had even tried to intervene and had to be sent his plan and intentions, he didn't want to look like he was unwilling to work with heroes, especially after this nightmare, and Dragon was separate enough from the Protectorate that she could claim to be working Independent in this situation.
Admittedly, there was that issue of a backdoor, a paranoid creator's restrictions, and some other things he was fuzzy on the details over.
She even suggested sites he could use, surprisingly quickly given what little he knew about her chains, but he didn't give it much attention and focused more on the several sites she had suggested. One was too far, the other was too close to inhabited farmland, and eventually, his choice took him to a small patch of forest with incredibly sandy soil. Preserved simply because there was no agricultural value to the land, and building there would have cost more than was feasible.
As he adjusted his aim, he pondered on both strategies. They would both take a long time, and his psionic powers were already destroying his body, while Master of Masters helped him hold up through the pain, ultimately they would destroy his body.
His body simply wasn't designed to be pushed to this level of power.
The damage from his psionic powers manifested similarly to severe radiation exposure and electrical injuries, only burning him from the inside out instead of the reverse due to the tremendous amounts of energy passing through his body.
All he needed to do was contain Echidna for a few hours and Esper would be here, no matter how much he wished it didn't come to that. The drive alone from Salem to here would result in several thousands of dollars in damages to roads, but it was more than warranted in his mind. With his Esper body present, the psionic strain could be shared, achieving the same results with only half the effort.
"It's funny how fast time flies when you're planning…" It was less than a rational observation and more of a futile attempt to ignore the pain. Admittedly, Master of Masters helped him maintain lucidity, but it did nothing to actually help him mitigate the pain of cooking himself.
The ground was approaching fast, and the first thing he realized was that he noticed they were approaching far too fast. Echidna had lost several portions of flesh from the drag alone, the fact they were falling at maximum speed possible with all the drag Echidna had impressed some distant part of his mind.
When they finally hit, a cloud of powdery sand made its way through the pine trees at high speed, throwing a column of soil nearly several stories high. The place that he had chosen was north of the state with highly sandy soil and when Echidna finally hit the bedrock the depth exceeded her size roughly ten times.
Echidna was tired, wounded, and had suffered more damage than it had ever been before, even its impressive regeneration was incapable of fully keeping pace with the sheer brutality of what it experienced. Several lethal explosions from below, each hitting with the power of an angry god. Those very blows were of little significance compared to the devastation of the impact itself.
One which would've killed any other brute whose powers were consistent with the laws of physics, the damage a fall correlated to one's weight; a child could fall and immediately get up, whereas an adult may be severely injured. Bearing that in mind, anything else the size of Echidna would have simply died, either torn to shreds by friction or simply crushed into uselessness to a fatal degree!
The physical mind of what was once a girl was mostly reduced to muse due to the sheer amount of repeated trauma, which would have caused permanent neurological damage by the sheer amount of pain her brain was processing. Were it not for her insane level of regeneration, she would've long since left this mortal coil.
From a purely scientific standpoint, Dr. Patches had learned a great deal. But from a practical standpoint, he just wanted this to end already!
Wasting no time in arguments or conversation, he started to enact his plan. The ground beneath the monster undid itself as each particle was slightly shifted. It was a monumental task, not because of its mass but due to its complexity. The effort caused his body to burn steadily, it was only a matter of time before his body simply combusted entirely! But the solution was functioning, and even as Echidna tried to awake her massive bulk, sunk beneath the sand itself.
At the same time rocks sunk together whereas the trees and roots floated upwards like the leftover flotsam after a tsunami, as every light material floated, and the heavy ones sunk. The effort required for this caused his flesh to start sizzling even more than, propelling Echidna to the stratosphere!
Thankfully, the amount of energy needed to keep her underground was significantly smaller than to bury her in the first place. Despite his body reaching its limit of psionic usage, he would be able to hold her several hours of limited stress and everything would be over.
It allowed him to update himself regarding the situation back in the bay, and in moments he had the details.
The situation had been overshadowed by the massive attack of Echidna; the massive explosion he had felt came from somewhere in the city center. Over five thousand people were dead as of last count and the number was expected to rise.
The leaks of Protectorate and Ward identities and affiliate heroes had been stopped by Dragon, with some help from Scylla as she was able to delete the identities faster than most could read through the neural line. Still, this only applied to their own identities, the heroes of the Protectorate were still outed, the Empire identities as well, but that information was mostly irrelevant compared to the number of capes they had lost.
Also, the Merchants were dead, somehow. Honestly, no one seemed to know how that actually happened.
There was going to be very little conflict for the foreseeable future seeing as practically all the gangs were imploding, not to mention the Elite would most likely be given the city as appeasement as the simple threat of Uppercrust immigrating to Europe would lively override any of the traditional moralism of the PRT.
The United States considered letting the soviets have a city in retaliation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, they wouldn't give a single iota of care if a tiny unimportant crime-ridden city was lost so they could keep the Trillion Dollar man as Uppercrust has been called from just fleeing or refusing to work with them. Especially after what amounted to a government execution squad attacking him during a surgery and killing his underlings.
"Oh, finally." Dr. Patches thought as Echidna finally hit bedrock and his perception returned to normal.
Echidna's struggles stabilized as she finally came to a stop at the bedrock, however, the amount of sand needed to keep her down there was minimal compared to the amount he had spent to put her there. So he was finally able to relax the psionic powers thrumming through him, sadly the internal burns were too much for his own innate regeneration ability to overcome so he'd have to do some thorough repairs to get back to a hundred percent.
He changed back to his human form as he relaxed, however, it was at this moment Echidna fired a missile at him. And he didn't understand what it even was until it rose several hundred feet above the ground. And both his hearts skipped a beat as a chill ran down his spine.
The woman was clad in white and looked identical to Alexandria, her costume the opposite to the original's black. And despite the color, it somehow radiated far more malevolence. The tower on her chest is a broken ruin compared to the original's as well.
She looked at him for a few seconds before shooting straight at him, he was barely able to dodge. Then the panic of his situation truly set in, and he instinctively tried to use the same strategy of the Skitter-That-Never-Was. Forming a vacuum in front of her face, sand controlled by telekinesis rushed forward, and the woman seeing it simply flew into the forest at high speed... His attempts at holding her in place were shattered by the strength that propelled her flight.
"Why is there an Alexandria clone!?" He panicked hard, as the clone was far above his ability to fight. How was she even there, he checked and there was no one other than the Empire capes inside Echidna!
Then a memory came to him, of how Alexandria was invisible to his psionic abilities! Her body must've maintained this invisibility even while her powers were being suppressed.
Even in this short amount of time, Echidna had dug dozens of feet up until he retorted the liquid properties to the soul around her. However, the clone of Alexandria approached, invisible to all his senses, until she was within grappling range.
A deadly mistake against her, or at least Dr. Patches hoped.
He tried to repeat his trick from earlier and suffocate her as she grabbed his throat, he was forced to use his telekinesis, so she didn't simply decapitate him with one hand! Surging in psionic power, he continued his attacks, but she slammed him into the ground and the energy he had been using to attack her was redirected in an instant to prevent his spine from snapping like a twig!
He wailed and tried pummeling her with several of his arms, to absolutely no effect in the slightest.
She gives him a small smile as he's pushed down into the sand, and unlike last time, the sand is solid. Even with psionics protecting his back, the sand shreds his tattered lab coat and then starts shredding his flesh. All his focus is on the hand grasping his neck and protecting himself from the very ground.
He tried to escape, but her hold was simply too strong as she calmly few him into Echidna's flesh, the sand in contact wet in a mixture of stinking fluids as the meat moved around him like magnetic putty around a magnet.
The doctor screamed as the flesh consumed him.
Apocrypha
The clone of Alexandria flew upwards, her job mostly completed. She would dig out her mother and then kill all of Cauldron, her hatred for mankind blinding, and then she would simply find Scion and trigger the end of the world if it wasn't her love for her mother.
She flew higher into the air, both to gain air and more visibility. And it was at this exact moment the clone was punched from several miles away, and a UFO flew into her at tremendous, near supersonic speeds.
And despite the sheer noise generated by the wind, the clone could still hear the voice of Esper scream "Fuck off bitch!" from the driver's seat of the UFO.
[Celestial Forge]
CP gained: 100
CP available: 750
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