Act zero: The end

Chapter 0: The last war of Humanity

"Fire!" cried a harsh and authoritative voice through the telepathic network. In response, a deafening explosion resounded as the great magics cannons began firing. Lightning bolts lit up the night sky and for a moment the entire fortress and surrounding area were illuminated, while flashes of magical energy turned entire lines of demonic monstrosities into ashes and charred flesh.

The fury of magical projectiles had even managed to evaporate part of the imposing bone carapace of a Carnigor, those giant demon species used as a battering ram to destroy the gates and walls of even the strongest fortresses, before frying out its tiny brain. And when the tens of tons of the titanic monster's body - larger and more imposing than a thirty-story building - crashed to the ground, it crushed hundreds of minor demons with it.

Mars' ears were whistling because of the deafening sound caused by the magic cannons. He hated the noise they made when they fired, not because they hurt his ears, but because when they fired it always meant that very bad things were going to happen. And he hated bad things. In truth he hated a lot of things in this world, but there was nothing he hated more than the monsters and demons that were storming the fortress right now.

A new thought echoed through the telepathic network "Beastigors on the southeast wall!"

A squad of warriors, all equipped with heavy armor and their giant swords, ran to defend the designated area. Through the use of the Art of Extreme Displacement, the remnant's images seemed to follow the movements of their bodies as they ran nearly two hundred meters in just a few seconds. When they arrived on the scene, the Beastigors' maws, those demons as high as a four-story house, appeared on top of the walls, ready to pour a deadly fire from their mouths. Their four incredibly muscular arms, with claws capable of tearing through metal, rushed at once to take the lives of the warriors on the wall.

Several warriors sacrificed themselves to maintain the line of defense. Their ultimate cry "For Humanity!" resounded with fury and unshakeable conviction just before their presence suddenly disappeared through the telepathic network.

The warriors fought the many Beastigor without faltering, cutting and destroying with their enormous swords the demons that looked like monstrous mountains of flesh and bone, some ten meters high. A sorcerer came to reinforce them and recited short incantations of power, and under his spell dozens of luminescent crystal lances materialized in the air before raining at supersonic speed on the Beastigors and stabbed them in place.

One of them appeared just where Mars was. The Beastigors, those demons servants of the Lords of Fear exuded an aura of terror around them, and Mars was not immune to this aura, but it had long since learned that fear had its advantages. Adrenaline could give a warrior more speed or strength. Not much, but sometimes it was enough to make the difference between life and death.

When the Demon began to build up a breath of fire in it throat to attack him, Mars felt the world slowing down. He liked it when the world slowed down. He gave him a few moments to formulate plans, simple plans, which often failed, but sooner or later each of his enemies would eventually die at his hands.

And the one he had just formulated was the simplest of all. He was going to cut the son of a bitch in half. Mars imbued his whole body with his telekinetic magic, and by manipulating himself like an object, Mars arrived in an instant in front of the Beastigor before wielding his giant sword with his superhuman strength to attack him.

His blow almost completely separated his opponent's shoulder from the rest of his body. The arm tossed limply, shreds of bloody flesh and bone fragments hung from the wound. A second blow severed a major artery in the demon's chest, and after a few seconds the demon's fiery breath spread down it own throat, burning it from the inside. His opponent collapsed into a pool of blood as his flesh burned from the inside, his death was almost instantaneous.

Quickly, another Beastigor replaced the previous one, as if those bastards worthy of being end of level bosses in an RPG game were just cannon fodder. He wielded his long, enchanted sword with precision, falling methodically and relentlessly on each time a new opponent appeared. The oversized sword, which had been designed to deal with oversized enemies, cut the flesh of the demons as easily as a hot blade would cut a piece of butter.

Even so, the demons continued to pounce on him and the other defenders without ever stopping.

Mars knew from the beginning of this fight that today would be the day of his death. Even an idiot would have guessed the obvious just by looking at the absurd number of their enemies. The army of monsters and demons was so large that it filled and covered the entire landscape up to the horizon. There could be no hope in the face of something like that.

There was no place left on the continent where they could hide, but that did not mean that they could so easily surrender their lives to their enemies.

As he took the lives and souls of his enemies, Mars thought about his situation. Several days before the fighting began, and as a harbinger of their cursed fate, the icy wind had blown like a damned and shouted a thousand spectral voices over the thick walls of the ancient fortress as if to try to tear them down and remind them of their powerlessness to protect them.

Horrible visions of monsters and demons had appeared in the dreams of the few people who had managed to take refuge in their sleep. In retrospect many omens indicated that their worst fears had come true, and when an aura of madness and psychic terror crept through the corridors of the ancient fortress city and the walls shook under attack, their situation had become obvious.

Once again, demons had come to bring death and despair to them.

Since the beginning of the battle, Mars had stood alongside the defense units on the high fortified walls, holding and defending every meter of land at the cost of his blood and the lives of his brothers, in order to prevent access to the great enchanted stone gates that protected the city hidden in the mountain. Pieces of flesh were scattered on the hard stone of the walls, almost blocking the path of some of them.

Protected behind the great magic shield that defended the city, the sorcerers had unleashed deadly magical arts. They had summoned waves of lightning, fire and death. It was as if, after years of imprisoning evil spirits in a magical bottle, they had freed them, and to avenge all those years of imprisonment, the evil spirits had unleashed small cataclysms on the armies of monsters with all the fury of the world itself.

Among them, three sorcerers formed a matrix of spells, and with the union of their magic, a dazzling violet-tinted orb of white light similar to a miniature sun had formed inside the matrix. Then the miniature star was propelled at breakneck speed, crashing into the body of a titanic demon whose body was covered with thousands of mouths with sharp teeth.

The mini-sun exploded in a blinding flash, releasing a gigantic spray of superheated violet plasma, instantly vaporizing almost the entire upper part of the titan's body into flaming gas, while all the demons within a hundred meters of the giant demon were ignited by the heat released by the spell.

Below the high stone walls, giant stone golems defended the walls, tirelessly sowing death by crushing the hordes of minor demons on the ground, and giving brutal blows with their stone swords against all the demons they could not simply crush.

Yet no matter how hard they tried, one by one, the walls collapsed or were lost.

The great cannons gradually ceased their din, the giant stone golems that defended the walls had become inert rocks when the magical hearts that animated them were torn out, the sorcerers had ceased to unleash the fury of the elements, and the soldiers' brave war cries were slowly replaced by their cries of agony.

Slowly, the battle was nearing its end, and with it, the defeat of all mankind.

As he faced a Beastigor, Mars saw out of the corner of his eye a destructive beam of magical energy hit the magical barrier, but unable to hold it, the barrier was broken and the beam of magical energy blew off the section of wall he was standing on. Purely by reflex he concentrated all his magical power to protect himself, but despite everything, pain and darkness took over and he fainted under the brutality of the shock wave.

When he regained consciousness, Mars felt that the cold, moist air rushing into his nostrils with each breath reeked of blood and the stench of corruption. Even as his lungs were strengthened by the alchemical concoctions, he felt as if the air was burning him from within with each breath. His heartbeat like a steam engine, tirelessly pumping blood through his veins and supplying oxygen to his massive but painful muscles.

At least he was still alive. Then he heard claws scratching the nearby stone, and when he opened his eyes again, a Beastigor's jaw closed a few inches from his head. In a cry of frustration, the demon hit him violently with one of his muscular arms, throwing Mars' body like a baseball thrown at full speed, before he crashed into one of the thick walls of the ancient fortress, knocking down part of the wall and breaking the blade of his sword into dozens of fragments.

Nearby, two warriors too exhausted by the fighting were unable to defend themselves against the unreal speed of the creature. The Beastigor tore off the first warrior's head with one of its clawed hands, while the monster took the other warrior. The man called for help when he was lifted into the air, and Mars saw the horror in his eyes as much as he felt the horror in the warrior's mind when the enormous claw crushed the man in his armor like a squeezed lemon.

The Demon's red eyes glowed with pleasure as he absorbed the vital essence and power of the warrior's souls.

While reciting a short prayer, Mars invoked a spell on him. He felt a phenomenal power to take hold of his muscles, and he felt that his flesh and bones had become almost as hard as metal. After he stood up he ran towards the Beastigor and used his telekinetic magic to increase his speed even more, flying towards the abomination always focused on its carnage.

His insane speed coupled with the weight of his body turned the entire body of Mars into a deadly hammer. When his body hit the Beastigor, he knocked down the Demon and smashed one side of his rib cage, breaking his bones like twigs. Taking advantage of his position, Mars threw a series of brutal punches and kicks. As the demon's burning, acidic blood splashed against Mars' armor, the sound of his fists and steel boots breaking bones and tearing the flesh of the monstrous creature below him echoed in his ears with each blow.

Trying to get rid of Mars, the Beastigor struggled trying to grab Mars with its claws while its mouth full of fangs tried to bite him. But it was useless, Mars' next blow was so violent that he drove his opponent's jaw into the giant demon's skull and then shattered it into purple confetti of bone and flesh.

Once the Beastigor was dead, Mars looked around, but he was confused about the exact situation of the battle, so Mars used his magic to levitate and stand over the body of his victim to get a better view. From the top of the giant Beastigor's body, Mars looked out over the battlefield. Through the cracks in his armored helmet, he could see the ocean of corpses stretching as far as the eye could see in front of the fortress walls, and in the distance, legions of demonic monstrosities being vomited into an uninterrupted torrent through dimensional cracks.

Under the influence of the portals, the sky was colored with a thousand supernatural lights. This breathtaking spectacle was caused by the dark energies coming from the immaterial planes that distorted and devoured the texture of reality itself.

Suddenly cries rang out in the distance. About twenty enormous demonic creatures resembling deformed dogs appeared, and ran towards a group of three warriors in heavy armor and a witch. The deformed creatures had a jerky and disjointed gait that reinforced the sense of abnormality that emanated from them. Despite their imposing and massive bodies, they moved so fast that they covered the distance between them and the group in a few heartbeats, propelling their imposing bodies as if they weighed nothing.

When the creatures attacked the group, the warriors pushed back the first monsters, beheading them one by one. The witch unleashed purifying white flames on the monsters, which turned their enemies to ashes as soon as they touched them. However, despite their resistance this was not enough. The group slowly succumbed to the numbers, as the huge jaws of the monsters closed on one of the warriors, deforming his armor and tearing him apart alive.

Even as the other two warriors were executing the monsters, knowing it was too late, the witch who was with them invoked a forbidden spell when a black and shiny flame condensed into three small beads in her hands.

She looked in the direction of Mars and whispered something with half a smile on her sorry face, almost as if to apologize for having gone before him, then when she clapped her hands between them, the spell was triggered, turning the witch's body into a huge, deafening and blinding explosion of cursed fire that would incinerate all her enemies with her.

Then the flames began to dissipate, revealing a crater of vitrified stone.

Mars clenched his fists and teeth in front of the scene. Why did survival almost always mean being the one to watch those around him die before his eyes?

He had long since stopped memorizing the names of those around him. Most of the time he just gave them numbers to remember them by. It was more convenient, and it was much easier to forget their faces once they were dead.

In fact, he had long since learned to lose interest in others. Because taking an interest in them inevitably brought with it the risk of liking or becoming attached to the other person, and that was something he didn't want to do. Unfortunately, despite his efforts, he had sometimes failed in this task, and many times he had made connections with other people or unintentionally memorized their names.

But even so, even when he tried to ignore others and treat them as disposable numbers, sometimes it was not enough to avoid the pain he felt watching someone he had become familiar with die before his eyes. Especially when they had tried to be kind, patient and warm to him despite the fact that he behaved like an asshole in order to keep them out of his way.

And every time it happened he felt his heart die a little more.

This had been particularly evident when 43924 died. This stupid girl had sacrificed herself, and she had done it to save his life. But did he even ask for someone to save him?

Because he had survived since the beginning of this war, and while everyone they met ended up dying, he had unwittingly ended up memorizing too many names and faces that he would have preferred to forget.

During his dreams at night, he could sometimes see their anonymous faces twisted by fear and pain in his dreams, breaking the fragile torpor of his rest on the rare occasions when he was able to find sleep through the effects of powerful drugs that calmed his tortured mind. But the tiny doses of the drug, which at first had been enough to give him deeply, peaceful rest and bring him welcome and life-saving relief, had lost their effect on his mind, even at doses that would have killed anyone other than himself.

That was also one of the things he hated. Just like this doomed world and this stupid war against demons and monsters.