Lost Rain
patreon
Outrun - Chapter 234
🕑 Added 2025-04-07 22:04:01 +0000 UTCI felt the ice-cold of Insight as dozens of phantasmal bullets impacted all over my body. I used Burst Step once more to force my way through the door as fast as possible, throwing myself to the side. My breath left in a sharp gasp as the injury from the shield slam caught with the movement.
A moment later, bullets pierced through recently vacated space and impacted the opposite wall. More combatants were filling the room. Out of sight from the borgs, I took a moment to activate my Blinder, entirely fading from chrome vision as I called out, “Contact on our flank! Circle borgs!”
Tyrone was the first to react as his sword pierced the skull of the final cultists on his side. He leapt over the barricades, returning to the door swiftly. “Go help Autumn!”
I nodded and checked on the woman. She was also almost done, with only half a dozen cultists left. Out of ammo in my rifle—and with my pistol too weak to do much—I shifted to my trusty throwing knives. While they lacked power, they more than made up for it in deadly precision.
I tossed one up in an arcing path towards the cultist's barricades. With the other in my hand, I pelted the first dagger full force with it. The motion pulled on my injuries, though the ice pulses of Cold Blooded helped me ignore it.
The clash between the two caused my first one to change angle and gain power, thrusting down towards a cultist on the far end of the barricades. It slammed into his helmet, catching in the visor. Not lethal, but it put him out of the fight momentarily. The shot that hit him in the back of the head as he staggered most definitely was lethal as his head practically exploded.
The second knife deflected and slammed into cultists firing at Autumn, catching in the receiver of his gun. The next bullet of his rifle fired, hitting the blade as the entire gun jammed and backfired in an explosion that sent him to the ground.
With two of the six down, Autumn easily took the gap to slice through two at a time with her twin shortswords. She danced through the barricades, slashes flying as she cleaned up the rest of the cultists and the downed one.
The Knight at the end of the hall fired shots off, claiming two more of the cutlists' lives with perfectly fired shots. Even without my help they would’ve been fine to ice the rest of these guys. The guy had a seriously powerful rifle to punch right through their armor so easily.
“Thanks,” Autumn said in passing before dashing down the hall to reinforce Tyrone. The fighting back there sounded as if it were intensifying with several loud impacts and small explosions.
I moved towards the fallen cultists, searching through their corpses for ammo. Thankfully, while we used different guns, we were all using the same caliber. I loaded up on just enough rifle ammo to refill my supplies without weighing me down too much.
A call came from down the hallway, “Who are you? Why’d you help me?”
I glanced up to see a Knight mounted against a barricade down the hall with a rifle trained on me. His silver armor was soaked in blood and ash, though there was no denying his affiliation. “We’re Crusade. There's an Illusion spell that makes us look like this. Just- just wait till the fight is over and we’ll talk.”
Although I couldn’t see his face, I could read his body language thanks to Cues. He was extremely hesitant and wary as he slowly turned his rifle away. “Fine. I’ll watch the flank.”
I nodded to the man and then ran back to the room to support the Knights. As I turned the corner, I found the Knights amid a fierce battle with seven borgs. Or, at least, there had been seven Borgs. Two lay dead on the ground, their limbs hacked off with clean cuts. The remaining five were trying—and failing—to pressure the Knights. Three of them engaged in melee while two fired away harmlessly into the Knight’s silver armor.
I added in fire support from behind the two, shooting past the frontal fighters to keep the back line engaged. One of the Borgs attempted to transform his arm into what looked like a grenade launcher. I stopped that with a perfectly thrown throwing knife, piercing it right into the mechanisms to stall the operation. I was getting more and more use out of Throwing Weapon Master as the days passed.
“Gah!” A borg collapsed as a shortsword pierced through his eye. Just four left.
A backliner moved for a massive revolver, one that fired at least a fifty-cal round. I changed my fire to him, landing burst after burst into his subdermal armor. It did little damage, but they did distract the man as he moved for cover.
A heavy thud signaled yet another fallen borg. This time, Tyrone’s vibrating blade had cleanly decapitated the woman. A spray of arterial blood soaked the roof as her body collapsed.
The odds turned in our favor rapidly as Tyrone and Autumn overwhelmed the rest with little effort. The two in the back were there for a reason. They barely put up any resistance as Tyrone and Autumn ran them through.
I dropped my rifle as the Knights finished the fight off. “Sir, the Knight we saved is still out there.”
Tyrone wiped his blade off on one of the dead borg’s clothes. “Right. Autumn, watchat our flank for more stragglers. Zuku, go check the wolf. I heard it whimpering.”
”Yes, Sir.” I moved past the Borgs, tapping their chrome with my foot in passing. Adding chrome to my database was never a bad idea. As I moved, I ran through the mental models and pinpointed weaknesses for future exploitation.
The wolf was where I left it, though it had been hit by a stray bullet at some point. Unfortunate, but at least it was just a flesh wound. I patched it up with a bandage and rubbed at the tired-looking wolf’s head. “Can you hang in there just a bit more?”
”Woof…” The big dog’s head dropped, butting against my arm as if to reassure me. Really, the sprite hanging in for this long was impressive to begin with. Resisting the temptation to just return to the Aether and heal from its current injuries was a testament to his steel will.
I helped the large wolf up, supporting him as best I could as he staggered to the door. I exited out to find Tyrone and the new Knight deep in a conversation. They’d already seemed to get past the initial weariness of the illusion spell considering the new Knight’s guard was entirely dropped.
A few minutes later, Autumn joined us as we set off once more. We were close now—extremely close. The new Knight took a rear position behind the wolf and I. He seemed to be a sharpshooter, which was quite weird to see. Most Knights were sword maniacs.
We moved through the corridors, the knights cutting through walls as we approached our destination. With one final wall in our way, I could smell it before we could see it. The thick scent of blood was heavy in the air as we approached a cargo hold not far from where the circle’s initial ritual was suspected to be.
The hall leading to the corridor was a literal bloodbath filled with corpses. Most of them were the Circles. There was literally nowhere clean in the entire hall to step as we moved toward the door into the cargo hold.
“Contact.” Tyrone drew his sword, moving towards the door-
“Wait!” I called, stopping the fight before it could begin. “Friendly!”
Tyrone immediately disengaged, backing away from the ‘contact’. Four blood-soaked wolves stood just outside the door. To the others, they no doubt looked like plant monsters. The two knights at the front split, letting me pass as if they’d discussed it beforehand.
The wolves had confused expressions as I approached. They held back growls, though weariness was evident in their eyes. The confusion dropped as the wolf sprite that led us here moved forward on shaky legs. “Woof!”
Two of the wolves moved forward, supporting the injured one that’d guided us all the way here. They still had a look of caution to them, though their guard was almost entirely down now.
One of the four moved back into the cargo hold while the last kept watch. It quickly returned, barking at me. “Woof! Woof!”
I couldn’t quite understand the sprite, unfortunately, but I could understand the body language. I turned back to my group as the injured wolf was helped into the room. “They want us to follow.”
The entire group looked on edge, completely different from how I felt. It took me a moment to remember they were seeing horrifying plant monsters rather than wolves. Our newest Knight was even more on edge than the other two.
“Right… four wolves out front? They are wolves, right?” Autumn muttered as she sheathed her shortswords. Then she side-eyed me, only continuing once I nodded. “Might be High Lord Lykos.”
”I hope so. It’d be good to see a familiar face.” Tyrone put away his longsword, motioning to me. “After you.”
I moved forward, stepping into the cargo hold. It took a moment for my brain to process the scene. Crusaders were all over a cleared-out section of the cargo hold, most of them heavily injured. For every five injured Squires, Knights, or Inquisitors, there was one up and stable-looking.
We were hit harder by this than I originally thought. At a rough count, there were at least a hundred Crusaders here. Most of the wounds looked self-inflicted. How'd they gather all these people up?
The entire place was turned into a makeshift field hospital. Wolves prowled around, at least a couple dozen of them. They kept an eye on everything, though they were set up in such a way that they could rush to the center of the cargo hold at a moment’s notice.
The center of the cargo hold held several familiar faces. For one, the wolf-armor-clad High Lord stood front and center. His boisterous voice seemed to cut above the rest of the noise in the room as he spoke to a group of Knights and Inquisitors.
Standing next to him: Inquisitor Ligh. The bastard was fine after all. He looked no worse for wear, as if he’d just gone for a walk through a park rather than an assault on a heavily fortified location. How… irritating. Seriously, if there was even a smudge of ash or blood on him, I’d feel a bit better. Still, better fine than heavily injured.
The other squires tailed just behind him, away from the meeting in the middle. Hope looked extremely drained, and one of her shoulder plates had been knocked off. Blood lightly leaked through the bandaged shoulder, and her face was covered with ash.
Dev and Joshua, by comparison, looked perfectly fine. Well, almost perfectly fine. Dev kept twitching around at every shift of a person near him. The illusion must be playing havoc on the already paranoid Squire. Joshua looked the best out of all of us, standing perfectly fine as if he’d taken no injury.
I felt bittersweet as I stared at them. I was happy they were all fine, but incredibly bitter I was the only one who hadn’t been found by the group. They all got to group up while I was desperately rushing around to preserve my own life. How unlucky...
Of course, none of them recognized me. I still looked like a Circle stooge under the power of the illusion magic-
No, that wasn’t quite right. Inquisitor Ligh watched me like a hawk. There was a hint of recognition in his Cues as he stared at me. Why-
A necklace around his neck caught my attention. An amulet hid under his clothes. I could vaguely make out the symbol of the Circle. I felt a memory pull in the back of my head of him ‘borrowing’ it from the Crusade the same day I ‘borrowed’ Shinobu’s wedding ring. It seemed I wasn’t the only one capable of seeing through the illusion.
For a moment, we stared at each other. Then Inquisitor Ligh subtly dipped his head in my direction. I returned the gesture as a look of mutual understanding passed between us.
I followed behind the wolves as they helped the injured one to Lord Lykos. The High Lord paused mid-conversation, leaning down to rest his hand on the wolf’s head. They seemed to have a silent conversation before the Knight gently ruffled the wolf’s ears.
The High Lord’s normal loud and excited voice dimmed to a calm and somber one as he stood up. “You’ve done well, buddy. Go get some rest.”
The wolf sprite glanced at me one final time before it slowly started to fade away. If I flicked on Aetherial Perception, I had no doubt I’d catch sight of it returning to the Aether. Yeah, go get some rest. You really deserve it after leading me all this way.
As the wolf sprite vanished, Lord Lykos turned fully to us. He crossed his arms as his eyes passed over us. “So… who are you lot?”
Comments
Lost Rain
The spell makes them look like enemies. They look like cultists, not Crusaders. Everyone looks like an enemy under the spell, basically.
Gardor
Great chapter, like how shes so effective at support and doesn't have main character syndrome. At least when it comes to working as a unit with the crusade, I guess. "A call came from down the hallway, “Who are you? Why’d you help me?” I glanced up to see a Knight leaning against a barricade down the hall with a rifle trained on me. His silver armor was soaked in blood and ash, though there was no denying his affiliation. “We’re Crusade. There's an Illusion spell that makes us look like this. Just- just wait till the fight is over and we’ll talk.” Although I couldn’t see his face, I could read his body language thanks to Cues. He was extremely hesitant and wary as he slowly turned his rifle away. “Fine. I’ll watch the flank.”" Alright I don't really have any way this could be done better, and I appreciated the moment of her calling out "friendly" when the knights were about to engage the "plant monsters", but: if he was fighting cultists who looked like crusaders, he knows there's fuckery afoot. I don't know why this bit of dialogue struck me as funky, cuz again I can't see a reason she WOULDN'T spell out the illusion, it just seemed odd to me in the moment. Maybe it was body language of the rescued knight or something. Thanks for the chapter.
