Debauchery BioTech 9 (Patreon)

Debauchery BioTech

Chapter 9

-VB-

Sho-sho Numira Nam wanted to run away. 

It was one thing to give her life for the Draconis Combine and the Coordinator in an honorable fight against their enemies. It was a whole different thing to have to fight eldritch abominations and get eaten.

She trembled inside of her cockpit while her Panther remained hidden behind a building while a giant thing leisurely stomped down the highway behind her. 

It was huge. It stood at least twice her height and moved like a hundred pound dog, not a fifty ton mech that was closer to! 

But it was a living thing that did exactly that. And the mouth.

The mouth.

There were tentacles inside of it! 

She took a deep breath.

She could do this. 

She trained for this! 

She swung her Panther around and saw -.

Oh shit, that was three of them.

She fired her PPC at the closest gorilla-like abomination. 

The PPC shot landed and blasted the thing’s shoulder into meaty chunks. She felt green at the sight of it.

And then it morphed into horror when she saw wiggling tentacles bursting out of the wound and the flayed meat chunks. 

And she got to watch what happened when someone got too close. 

One of the infantrymen tried to flank the monster with an RPG, but he got too close to a chest-sized meat chunk.

Tentacles shot out of it and wrapped themselves around the infantryman. 

Numira watched in horror as the tentacles pierced through the body armor and into the flesh. Watched as veins popped up on the exposed skin before turning gray. 

Turned the man into a desiccated husk.

And the flayed meat chunk turned into a human-like monster.

Her attention snapped back to the abomination in front of her. Its gorilla-like form snarled before it jumped at her! Not a jump jet boost but a literal jump! 

“Stay away!” she shouted as she raised her Panther’s PPC and blasted at the thing. 

The PPC missed. 

And then the gorilla landed on top of her mech.

She screamed as her Panther crashed into the ground and then the entire mech began to shake and tremble violently as the gorilla began to pound on her mech’s torso. 

Her mech screamed at her, showing how rapidly the center torso’s integrity was falling apart. 

“No no no no no n-!” 

Something detonated. 

Her vision briefly became a cacophony of white, black, and red. 

And then she was gone.

-VB-

All across Radstadt, Combine mechwarriors, infantrymen, and tank crews engaged my people in urban combat. 

It was simply unfortunate for the Combine soldiers that they were not prepared.

The versatile Panthers were not fast enough to outrun Blademasters or durable enough to withstand the frontal assaults of Eradicators. 

And when the biomechs spilled blood and left their bodies in death, the very blood and flesh would become a parasitic monster that would chase after those who attacked them. They would attack, devour, and create more of themselves. 

By the end of the day, the capital city had fallen. 

By the end of the week, just as Karcist Croy demanded, Radstadt became his. 

ComStar News Network reporter Karl Magnalus understood all of that. No, he recorded all of that from the safety of the ComStar HPG compound that had been spared the death and destruction that the Priesthood of Kalmaktama had wrought upon the rest of Radstadt. 

And now, he had been invited to observe a ritual. 

Considering the kind of things he saw, Karl had been very reluctant to participate, but his superior, Demi-Precentor Kim, told him to go and record it all. 

So he found himself right underneath one of those giant “void dragons,” which he learned used to be a person.

He and many reporters stood at the edge of the ritual where many “orins” and a single “zend,” which were ranks within the cult. 

There was a large circle in the middle, which the orins and the zend stood around. And in the middle of the circle were many Combine commanders, administrators, and even the earl of Radstadt, who looked torn up and shredded. All of them were bound and gagged, wiggling like worms as they tried to get out from the middle of the circle to do … something. 

What would they do in this situation, though? Surrounded and … ready to be sacrificed.

Because that’s what this was. 

A ritual sacrifice. 

Then one of the void dragons, the one looking over this very ritual, lurched and sat something out. 

Instead of a truly enormous amount of spit, a single figure draped in a red cloak drifted down from the open mouth of the void dragon. 

The figure, a man, landed softly as if he hadn’t just defied physics. 

And all of the orins and the zend knelt. 

“A god descends!” 

Right there and then, Karl felt a cold shiver run across his skin.

They were serious. 

Every single one of them truly did consider that man to be a god.

The man drifted forward and Karl froze as he saw something impossible. 

The man’s legs. 

Where were the legs? 

Why was space bending? 

Those were exposed bones phasing in and out of reality! 

What? Huh-?

Someone covered his eyes. He nearly snapped out and attacked them before he heard a shush. 

“Calm yourself,” the familiar voice said. 

It was Demi-Precentor Kim! 

“D-Demi-Precentor…?”

“I didn’t realize it was going to be this distressing. Sorry, Karl.”

“I…”

Karl realized then that he was shivering almost violently. 

“You can leave if you want.”

“... N-No. I’ll do my d-duty to ComStar.”

“... ComStar is lucky to have you, Adept Magnalus,” he said as he uncovered Karl’s eyes. 

When Karl opened his eyes again, he saw the “god” of the cultists standing at the edge of the ritual circle. 

“When I first opened my eyes here on the now unnamed planet,” the ‘god’ began to speak. “I was met with beautiful people whose hearts was what made them beautiful, not their appearance. Isolated and scorned for their diseases, the diseased of Radstadt helped each other where the Combine and their people had abandoned them. That was where I woke up and those were the people who I helped.”

A pause. 

“But when news of my existence rang out, the Combine came to get rid of me. They torched the hospital I had built. They killed everyone who was there. I came to learn not too long after that it had been the decision of the Warlord of Rasalhague that such an atrocity had been done.”

He paused. 

It was an angry pause. Karl could feel the anger emanating from the cultist leader. 

“So I am here to make you pay for what you’ve done, and I’ll do it in a way that will prevent the Combine from ever being able to reclaim Radstadt.”

He raised his hands up. 

Then he screamed something. A word. 

Something dribbled down Karl’s lips, and he reached out to touch it. 

When he pulled back, there was blood on his fingers.

He looked around.

Some people bled from their eyes. Some from their nose. Others from their ears. 

The cultist made them all bleed with just a word. 

Then Karl looked down and saw the bound and gagged Combine high ranking officials. 

They were convulsing. 

He bit his lips and backed away when he saw their skin start to melt. Saw their forms morph and decay. Witnessed them dying yet continued to scream as their bodies were joined together unwillingly. 

The cultist leader, this ‘god,’ arranged them into a living, screaming flower.

Then he saw it. 

He saw something red leaving from each of the bodies and the screaming stopped. 

But everyone was focused on the red mists that had left them.

“Your souls will be the fuel that locks this world!” the ‘god’ roared and clapped.

The souls…

The souls let out a haunting scream before they burst like water balloons. 

Karl stood there horrified as something sacrilegious had just been committed. 

Afterlife was real, and the fucking cultists can kill your soul.

Then he felt it. 

A weight that settled down upon him. He struggled and panted as the weight bore down on him like some kind of a living thing. It was searching. It was looking. 

And then it disappeared.

It didn’t disappear for so many others in the crowd. Their heads popped, and red soul mist left their falling bodies and joined other soul mists as they floated into the sky. Then they too popped.

Karl heard it. 

Pop.

P-p-pop.

Pops of heads exploding. 

Pops that grew both louder and fainter as more heads popped but the sound itself grew further away. 

He looked around. 

Civilians looked fine but there were a few among them that had their heads popped. 

Other prisoners who had been bound and gagged were all headless. 

Some sort of … 

How was he supposed to report this? 

He didn’t even understand what happened! 

And then the cultist leader spoke up.

“This world… no, this system is now off limits for all those who identify themselves as a soldier of the Combine,” he declared. “I have enslaved the souls of the dead, and any Combine soldier who enters this system will die and join their brethren! I, Karcist Croy, proclaim this world in the name of the Priesthood of Kalmaktama!” 

All of the cultists, their abomination mechs, and the void dragons roared so loudly that the ground trembled underneath them all. 

And Karl…

He just wanted to get off this world as soon as possible.