System Hunt: Regalia

“Yes!”

[All Abilities Bolstered— Five Minutes Left]

Sam waved his arms, conducting an orchestra of shards into the hides of the Belua as he precariously skirted over the lurching treetops. He gripped the front edge of his glass saucer as he would a skateboard and twisted to avoid the blazed branches the horse-men Belua speared after him.

Escaping by the skin of his teeth, Sam cursed and took to open air again as more and more Belua raced after him, bounding and leaping through branches, creating their own leverage like nightmarish tarzans that even threw each other at him. He’d thought the skies were safe but he’d underestimated the Belua, their powers were versatile, tricky and if he let his guard down for a second—

Nyx yowled in terror and Sam immediately boxed himself in with all three of his free tempered glass shields. The shields slammed together, trapping the offending crooked hand of a Belua that swung from a branch at him. The ugly horse headed Belua whined in agony and rage. It wriggled its coal black arm, clawing and scratching in vain at Sam and Nyx all while bashing its head against the shields.

Sam dragged the Belua along for the ride to higher altitudes. With a great anger and wickedness in his heart Sam flew the saucer’s edge— where the Belua dangled between shields— closer to an office building’s coarse walls.

“This is what you get!” Sam hissed and grinded the Belua up against the wall, it shrieked, howled and its bones crunched against concrete once it’s thick hide was peeled away. Sam continued to scrub the building with the Belua until all that was left of it was the arm that’d gotten trapped, a skinned, busted torso oozing acidic black sludge down the wall.

Sam released the disfigured thing on the rooftop, its body bounced and he got a glimpse of where it’s Nucleus would be. A bright, green coloured orb poking out of the grinded part of its lower torso. With his nose crinkled in disgust and Nyx hoisted in his arms, Sam contemplated the worth of retrieving the Belua Nucleus.

[Available RGP— 1480]

He’d spent around twenty minutes or 400RGP raining glass down on the Belua he could spot. The horse headed men were difficult creatures to combat anywhere close to a root system and even with the effects of Bolster Sam quickly found the surge of Belua overwhelming to subdue. They were especially difficult when they turned invisible or controlled the burning branches of the unnatural trees that plagued Manila’s city centre.

He sighed at the thought of how much more RGP he might need for his actual mission— conquering the Doom Tower. As the source of the apocalypse unfolding in Manila the threats it would present a greater challenge than the ones he faced now. Sam only had around an hour of Bolster left and perhaps one use of Regenerate.

But that was assuming he went unscathed for an entire hour, a likelihood that was becoming less so the more he fought. Not to mention— Sam glanced at his Regalia— the tower icon that represented his power’s availability had reduced significantly. Out of the available thirteen bars of life only seven were left.

Seven bars until I’m too drained to control glass. The city’s bush burnt winds howled, as if hearing his thoughts and sent a cold shudder through him. Sam lowered the saucer onto the rooftop, his eyes narrowed at the Belua he’d just destroyed. Out of his attack ball he sent out shards of glass that stabbed and raised the horse headed man like a specimen from a biology class.

With precision, he sent three more shards after the grinded, oozing lower torso where the Belua’s Nucleus glinted. The shards pushed and carried the Nucleus delicately, the other attack shards abandoned the corpse to aid the three as they ferried the Nucleus to his waiting hand.

[Do you wish to absorb 1 Uncommon Belua Nucleus for a 223 Regalia Points?]

Sam raised a brow at his Regalia’s prompt. He expected that these horse headed fiends would certainly be stronger than the Belua he fought and absorbed back at Alpha Ring. And while the change of Nucleus grading from Common to Uncommon was proof of that, he didn’t expect the RGP he could reap from it to be…not a round number.

A flurry of gunshots rocked through the air, breaking him away from his thoughts before he could get too deep into wondering just how any of the Regalia and Doom Tower madness worked, “Yes, absorb.”

The green Nucleus sublimed into a gas and his Regalia eagerly absorbed it until there was nothing left in his hand, not even moisture.

[Available RGP— 1703]

With his Regalia out he took the chance to scrutinize the last ability he’d yet to test out, Fortify. It seemed intuitive enough what the ability provided; a wall of glass was its icon after all.

As the rough clambering of Belua throwing themselves up against the building walls and windows to reach him grew in tempo and sound, Sam’s eyes flickered to the band Alex left him with. Nothing had come in since they went their separate ways, he was tempted to call in and let her know he was about to test out Fortify but then…No point distrac—

“Help! Someone, please!”

The Belua climbing the building heard the cry for help the same instant Sam did and stopped, a fact that expelled all doubt that there was indeed a person in need of help in Manila’s centre of apocalypse.

And close too. Too close. Sam heard the Belua leaping off the building, changing targets while some continued on after him. He impaled the first four that reached the rooftop, jagged shards flung them off the fifteen-storey building to their hopeful deaths as he flew away on his saucer.

Once again his heart pounded with fear rather than adrenaline, the last thing he wanted to do was give up his aerial advantage but—

“Help us!”

There’s only one choice. “Hold on Nyx!” Ensuring to box himself up with his glass shields, Sam plummeted down the building and towards the cries.

It was close, the screams. Manila’s apocalyptic centre wasn’t all covered in black fires and burning contorted trees, even within the chaos some of civilization was spared. Three destroyed streets away, where a police van found itself upside down and on the rooftop of an elementary school was an open parking lot.

Some cars remained in their spot but one in particular, an SUV that had its back end sawed off by something was gathered by a bunch of women with bats, machetes and other conventional weapons.

As Sam flew closer so did the Belua the women fought against. Where’s the DSF when you need them! Sam broke apart his attack ball, forming five long shard poles as he flew, at his command one shot out, impaling a Belua that had leaped up onto the SUV’s roof.

The women noticed him briefly and one suffered for the distraction as a Belua materialized from the dark particles. The fiends clawed hand reached out faster than Sam or its victim could react. As soon as the Belua touched her, her skin festered and peeled like it’d been dipped in a vat of acid.

Rather than blood or ooze her body broke apart into decaying dark particles but rather than shriek in terror or cry out, the fading woman buried her machete in the Belua’s horse head. The force of her blow split the fiend’s skull in two and nearly carried all the way down its shoulders, if only she didn’t explode into black dust, leaving nothing but her clothes behind.

Startled by the sight, Sam sent shards down the creature’s open wound and split it through till it’s spine drooped and its Nucleus all but rolled out of its standing corpse.

As he reached the SUV and hovered a feet or two above it, he noticed Belua from all corners rushing into the parking lot, but more curiously that the women defending the SUV—all seven of them— were identical to a tee. All except one, with the difference being she wore pink glasses and stood closest to the SUV comforting the three school children and one adult man inside curled up and panicking.

“Who are you?” Sam had to ask as he gathered more glass. He split his tempered glass shields to guard vulnerable areas of the SUV as some of the women couldn’t cover due to only having their fists as weapons.

The woman with the pink glasses looked up at him, her hair was a frayed mess but somehow still tied together in a short ponytail. She wore a black and red lined hoodie, had one tattered jeans which could have been a fashion statement or the result of the impending apocalypse. And like all her sisters, she had one pair of bloodstained white sneakers, her other foot was socked but exposed.

“I’m Yoko and you?” she took aim at a Belua prowling on all fours, it leaped, she shot. It fell, got back and took a glass shard to its horse face.

“I’m Sam. Are these all your siblings?”

The identical girls continued fighting but spoke as one as Yoko smirked up at him, ““What do you think?””