Chapter 77: Battling through the Ridge!
The air at the Windwall shivered as Albedo stood before it, holding Havoc and Ruin, his coat fluttering in the wind that was trying to push him back. Ash whipped up in gritty sheets, pelting his legs, stinging his eyes.
He stepped forward into the windwall, and it didn’t break like glass or anything similar, it just accepted him, pulling him inward like how water swallows a sinking stone.
For an instant, he saw shapes within the wall: jagged silhouettes writhing as if clawing at the other side. Hands, jaws, things without name. Then he was through.
The Hollowglass Ridge spread before him.
It was a wasteland of blackened glass and pale, bone-white protrusions that jutted from the earth like the ribs of some titanic carcass. The air here hissed with thin, needle-sharp currents that sliced at his exposed skin.
His first breath burned like inhaling ground obsidian; the next felt like it scraped along the inside of his throat.
The glass was warped into jagged ridges and hollows.
Every few steps, he passed over bone half-fused into the terrain, spines, tusks, even skulls larger than buildings, their empty sockets filled with a red glow that faded as he drew near.
And then came the movement.
At first, it was subtle: the shimmer of something shifting in the corner of his vision. Then the sound followed, wet dragging, claws tapping against glass, the faint trickle of liquid.
The first one emerged from a fissure in the ridge, a creature made of bone and coagulated blood. Its limbs were warped, too many joints bending the wrong way, its ribcage open and pulsing like a second heart.
Its head was a bare skull, but within the sockets swirled a faint, luminous red haze.
It hissed at him, and more came. Dozens, crawling over the black ridges, pulling themselves from the bone-fused ground. They didn’t walk, they flowed, the blood holding them together stretching and snapping back like sinew.
Albedo raised Havoc and Ruin, immediately engaging with the creatures.
The first shots cracked like thunder in the suffocating air, two simultaneous flashes, silver-blue light lancing from the barrels.
Havoc was in Infernal Mode, its rounds detonated on impact, chunks of molten glass spraying from the creature’s torso.
Ruin’s shots punched through the gaps in its bone, creative graviton pulls that destroyed the creatures bones.
More surged forward, their movements erratic, some scuttling on all fours, others slithering across the glass on serpent-like spines.
Albedo stepped forward into them, blast after blast from Havoc and Ruin tearing the creatures apart blast by blast.
One leapt at him from the side, its mouth a vertical slit lined with serrated bone. He pivoted, letting it sail past, Havoc’s muzzle pressed against its back as he fired.
The explosion painted the ridge with molten fragments and shook the environment.
Another, taller than him, lurched forward with arms like cleavers. He slid under its swing, Ruin’s barrel kissing the hollow under its ribs before he pulled the trigger. The thing froze mid-strike, its form fracturing as he kicked it over.
The Hollowglass Ridge was bleeding monsters them into reality. Every time a corpse fell, the blood seeped into the glass, and new shapes began to stir within moments.
The ground was alive with their birth. It was the first time Albedo had seen something like that, no matter how much he killed, more were guarantee to spawn.
The air made every movement harder. Even through his coat, the slicing wind tore shallow lines into his skin, and every inhale left a metallic tang on his tongue. But he didn’t falter.
Two more appeared ahead, fused together at the torso, arms sprouting at odd angles, bone spurs jutting from their backs. Havoc tore one in half, Ruin froze the other solid before a boot sent it smashing into a ridge.
The path narrowed here, funneling him between two towering arcs of fused bone. Shadows flickered along the walls, and when he stepped through, they lunged.
Five of them, all at once.
Havoc roared, the concussive blast vaporizing the first into a mist of molten red. Ruin followed with precise, cold shots, each one puncturing a vital joint before the target could close the distance.
One still got through, its form a writhing tangle of limbs and teeth. It slammed into him, claws raking against the reinforced weave of his coat. Albedo caught it with his left hand, twisted, and forced the muzzle of Havoc into the thing’s gaping maw.
The shot turned its head into steam.
The ridge stretched endlessly ahead, every peak and valley alive with the whispering of bone and blood. The wind carried those whispers, brushing them against his mind, urging him to listen.
He didn’t.
He reloaded in motion, the cylinders of Havoc and Ruin spinning with practiced ease. The smell of scorched glass and frozen marrow clung to him.
And still, he pressed forward, summoning Ember to walk alongside him, hurrying through the Ridge. For a while, things were patient, no monsters attacking them, but soon, the 2nd wave begun.
It was still silent when Albedo felt it, that subtle shift in the air, as though the dunes themselves were inhaling.
His hand dropped to Havoc and Ruin. The twin pistols sat warm in their holsters, always drinking from his mana, always ready to roar.
The sand to their left bulged.
"Ember."
She didn’t need more than the name. Her head swung toward the disturbance, ears pinning back. Flames flared along her mane.
The first ghoul erupted from the ash like a corpse surfacing from a nightmare, limbs too long, skin stretched tight over blackened bone, its jaw hanging slack as if unhinged.
No eyes. Just hollow sockets that stared straight ahead, blind yet somehow fixated on the living.
It didn’t howl. It clicked, a sharp, insectoid chatter that echoed unnaturally across the dunes.
"Disgusting," Albedo muttered to himself as he saw the grotesque creature, wishing he could wipe the sight from memory.
Another joined it. Then another. The ground bulged again and again until the sand was breaking apart in a dozen places, ghouls clawing their way into the world, each dragging an obsidian scythe grown from their forearm.
They were slow in their emergence but relentless once upright, moving with a jerky, loping gait that kicked up sheets of black grit.
Albedo’s breath came calm and even.
He drew Havoc and Ruin in one smooth motion, each pistol’s runes flaring in answer to his intent. Infernal Mode. The metal around the chambers glowed like a forge just opened.
The first shot shattered the silence.
A flare of crimson light, the round blooming mid-air into a sphere of Apocalypse Flame the size of a man’s head. It struck the lead ghoul in the chest and erupted, the explosion hurling two more aside as burning sand rained down.
"Go."
Ember surged forward, her flames rolling off her in sheets, incinerating the nearest ghoul before it could close the gap. Her tail lashed, sending a whip of white-blue fire into another’s midsection, severing it clean in two.
The Ridge kept spawning more and more monsters, coming in waves, no hesitation, no fear.
Albedo moved like water through the chaos, Infernal Mode rounds turning the ash to glass in his wake. Each step he took was measured, avoiding the gaping holes where the ghouls had emerged.
A shadow darted along the ground toward him, fast.
He leapt sideways, rolling over a dune’s crest just as the sand where he’d been standing erupted in a vertical geyser, a skeletal maw snapping shut on empty air.
From beneath the ash came something larger, a burrower. Its body was a worm-like coil of chitin and charred muscle, eyes blind but nostrils flaring as it hunted by scent and mana.
Albedo snapped Havoc to Graviton Mode, the weapon’s crimson glow dimming into a pulsing black.
The slug he fired imploded, crushing a segment of the burrower’s body inward with a shriek of rending chitin.
The creature’s momentum carried it into the open, where Ember’s hooves struck down on its head like a hammer. Flames engulfed it, the smell of burning marrow thick in the air.
The dunes shook again. Not from more burrowers, from the ghouls themselves, now leaping in awkward arcs, trying to swarm over dunes from multiple angles.
Albedo’s mana dipped as he pivoted, snapping Ruin into Mana-Drain Mode. The runes along the barrel burned a hungry green.
One shot, the slug punched through a ghoul’s sternum. Its body withered in mid-stride, collapsing to ash as the mana rushed back into him. Another. And another. The sick, cold replenishment filled him like ice water through his veins.
Ember intercepted the flank, flames detonating from her mane in a wave that rolled outward like a tidal surge. The ghouls caught in it crumbled to char before their weapons could even rise.
The air turned into a shimmering haze of heat and mana.
They kept moving, always forward, the black obelisks marking the path to the windwall looming taller now on the horizon.
Then came the ambush.
The dune ahead of them collapsed inward, like a throat opening. From its depths rose something skeletal but massive, a war-beast ghoul, plated in obsidian armor that fused with its bones, its ribcage gaping like a furnace of black flame.
Its arms ended in scything blades the length of wagon axles. It swung at Albedo, carving the air with a blast of force that shattered the nearest obelisk into shards.
Albedo didn’t meet it head-on. He dove sideways, rolling under the arc, Havoc in Graviton Mode. The slug hit the beast’s right knee, and the joint imploded, snapping inward with a scream of breaking bone.
It fell to one side, catching itself with its other blade-arm, but Ember was already there. She slammed into it at full gallop, the impact cracking its spine as her fire poured into the gaps in its armor.
The black flame inside it guttered.
Albedo rose, spun Ruin back to Infernal Mode, and fired once into its open ribcage. The shot exploded inside it. What was left fell in pieces.
But the dunes behind them were moving now, dozens more ghouls in pursuit, their relentless march accelerating into something between a sprint and a fall.
They didn’t stop to fight them all, continuing to move towards the center of the Ridge where the Catacombs entrance lay.
Still, he constantly fired shot after shot, exploding various attackers, with every step toward it seeming to stir the land harder.
The ground heaved beneath them, the dunes themselves splitting as fissures opened, spewing jets of scalding air and black ash high into the sky.
Ember leapt them one after another, hooves striking glassy ridges as the cracks widened behind her. Albedo pivoted in the saddle just long enough to fire back into the pursuing horde, Infernal Mode shots turning the front rank into molten shadows.
A burrower’s maw erupted from the left, extremely close.
Albedo twisted, Havoc in Mana-Drain Mode. The slug punched through the roof of its mouth, and the surge of stolen mana hit him like lightning just as Ember’s hind hooves smashed its skull into the dune.
Albedo holstered Havoc, both hands snapping Ruin into Graviton Mode. He fired into the air above them.
The shot imploded space. The leaping ghouls were yanked toward the point like insects into a drain, smashing into each other mid-air before collapsing in a tangled heap that Ember’s flames devoured in a single, blinding surge.
Finally, that was the last of the attacking monsters. Albedo quickly used a Mana Hook to pull himself onto Ember and rode off quickly, heading towards the Catacombs, the blood of the attackers soaking his body.