"Calamity Class Tacet Discord... Bell-Borne Geochelone? That's the thing under the bell down there?" She squinted at the ancient bell rising from the center of the frozen lake. "How do you even know something like that?"
"Like I said, my memory's fully intact." He shrugged with a light smile, his sword already drawn. "So, what do you say? Want to pick a fight with something that big?"
"Obviously. But let's probe it first before we commit."
"Fair. The Governing Pact files didn't have anything on this one."
She sheathed her sword and reached into her Tacet Mark space, pulling out something unexpected: a sidearm. Silver-black frame bisected by a gold-pink energy cell, sleek and unmistakably high-tech.
Baizhi had specifically sent these over before they headed out today, new equipment from Huaxu Academy: Pistols#26. Far more powerful than the standard-issue Originite sidearms or Training Pistols, with extremely high performance.
Still weaker than either Rover's throwing knives in terms of raw damage, but the range was leagues beyond, it supported charged shots, and ammunition was rarely an issue.
Sidearms were typically issued in matched pairs.
She had one. He had the other.
So my sword's still the starter model, but I'm already packing a four-star sidearm. Here's hoping my aim's decent.
The sword might be their primary weapon, but this wasn't a game where you were locked into a single weapon type. Both Rovers kept a full arsenal stashed in their Tacet Mark spaces: Broadblades, Rectifiers, Gauntlets, the works.
They raised their pistols in unison, sights trained on the ancient bell.
Fingers held steady on the triggers, letting energy build.
Then...
Bang!! x2
DONG!!!
Two energy rounds streaked out trailing golden light, striking the bell three hundred meters away. The sound that erupted was deep, ancient, immense.
As those two resonant tones faded into silence, the surface of the frozen lake began to churn. Then the whole of Bell-Borne Ravine shook as if the earth itself were splitting apart.
The tremors reached far enough to rattle the Gorges of Spirits nearby, and even Jinzhou's city walls dozens of kilometers away.
A colossal shadow rose from the lake's depths.
"GRROOOOOOOOH!!!"
"Here it comes!!" they shouted together.
Four ice-encrusted limbs, each thick as a stone pillar and tall as a building, heaved free of the water. The entire lakebed had been its shell. A tail like a frozen morning star trailed behind it, sheathed in blue-white ice.
Its head was built like a snapping turtle's, large enough to swallow a person whole, with twin blades of solid ice extending from its lower jaw.
Every step sent tremors through the ground.
Every breath dragged the temperature down.
The pressure rolling off it dwarfed anything at the Overlord Class, and made a mockery of Scar's self-proclaimed Calamity tier.
"GRROOOOOOOOOOH!!!"
DONG!! DONG!! DONG!!
The roar rang out alongside the bell, carrying across the land for miles. Half of Jinzhou could hear it. People who had no idea what was happening turned instinctively toward Bell-Borne Ravine.
"So this is what a real Calamity Class Tacet Discord looks like?!"
"It hasn't even attacked and it already feels like this!"
Both Rovers stood stunned. He felt the dissonance more acutely than anyone. This is the Bell-Borne Geochelone? The same mob I used to stand on top of and casually combo to death? This is a little much, don't you think?!
"Might've been a bit hasty, but... we're here. Let's see what it can do. All forces, engage!"
She drew a sharp breath and steadied herself in an instant, then her Pangu Terminal flared as she summoned the Echo legion.
"RAAAAAAGH!!!" x N
The sight was something out of a war epic. Over a hundred Echoes surged toward the legendary Calamity Class in a mass charge, six Overlord-tier generals leading their soldiers against an ancient king.
"Go, go, go! Get in there! Fight, fight, fight!!"
Abby was so wired by the spectacle that sleep was forgotten entirely. The little companion burst out to spectate, clutching a tiny dumpling in one hand.
Then something far more devastating happened.
"GROOOOOOH!!"
The Geochelone raised its morning-star tail skyward. Extreme cold condensed at its tip until a beam of ice-blue light erupted straight up, and then...
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!
Enormous ice meteors rained from the sky.
Bell-Borne Ravine was carpeted in a full-coverage saturation strike.
In the span of a blink, the lake's depth dropped visibly, and more than two-thirds of the Echo legion was annihilated in a single attack. The power behind it defied comprehension.
"What the hell?!"
His jaw dropped. He'd known perfectly well that the same monster could be a different beast in reality versus the game.
But this still stole the air from his lungs. Is this really the same Bell-Borne Geochelone that everyone bullied for free in my past life? The same pushover that made people question whether Calamity Class even meant anything, right alongside Scar?
Does Kuro even know you're this strong? They nerfed you into the ground!
"Looks like anything below Overlord Class is useless against a top-tier Tacet Discord," she observed, watching the Geochelone's movements with clinical calm. "They can't even serve as proper cannon fodder."
"No kidding. And even the Overlord Class ones might not..."
He nodded. Whatever hope he'd had for the Impermanence Heron and the other Overlord-tier Echoes dimmed considerably. The gulf between Calamity Class and Overlord Class was exponentially wider than he'd expected.
The first to fall was the Feilian Beringal.
The Geochelone's jaws yawned open. Lake water compressed between those massive teeth and erupted as a high-pressure beam that bored clean through the ravine, punching a hole two meters wide through the ape's chest.
Next went the Thundering Mephis and the Tempest Mephis.
The two agile Echoes, capable of dissolving into lightning for near-instant movement, blitzed up to the Geochelone in the space of a heartbeat and brought crackling violet arcs down with blade and claw.
No penetration.
The blue ice sheathing the Geochelone's body chipped where they struck... and that was it.
The damage repaired itself in an instant. Meanwhile, frost surged up from the ground and locked both Echoes' feet in solid ice, killing the very speed they depended on.
Then, as all three spectators watched in disbelief, the Geochelone's four legs flexed.
And it jumped.
A heartbeat later, a body the size of a small hill came crashing down on the frozen lake.
BOOOM!!!
The deafening impact cratered the terrain several meters deeper. The Thundering Mephis and the Tempest Mephis, frozen in place directly beneath it... had been flattened beyond recognition.
"Uh... Bell-Borne Ravine is sunk a good hundred meters below the surrounding terrain. You don't think the Geochelone did that by... landing on it?"
"That would explain why the geography around here looks so weird..."
"This thing weighs a ton! Somebody put it on a diet!"
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