Chapter 42 - Maximum Lift

  I soared over the battlefield, taking it all in. No, I wasn’t some military genius. I hadn’t spent years honing tactical skills in games, either, although at that point I was wishing I had. But even a raw amateur could see things were going badly.

  The police had done a good job of holding the enemy at Cambridge Street, but only because it had been just lobsters attacking them. Now, they had a dozen of the massive crabs marching forward, too. The police lines were still in place, but there was no way they were going to be able to hold, not against that sort of assault. I’d already seen what those giant crabs could do to someone who wasn’t augmented by enough crystals.

  Alex could maybe take one of them down solo, but I was pretty sure no one else down there could. Even for me, taking on more than one or two of them at a time was a bear. I’d managed to beat the four attacking along the southern front, but only by taking them on piecemeal.

  I shot up even higher so I could take in more of the downtown area. A few rocs flew by over my head. I saw them eyeing me, but maybe the word was out or something, because they didn’t bug me. I was grateful for that. I didn’t have time for it, not if I wanted to help save the city.

  From a height of a couple hundred feet I could observe most of downtown Boston. The hottest fighting was up near the intersection of Cambridge and Sudbury Streets. There were a ton of lobsters fighting there, trying to break the human battle lines. Curiously, though, none of the crabs were headed that way. From my vantage point it looked like the crabs were all headed for the stairwells in that long, curving building. There weren’t as many defenders in those spots. The police only had about ten or so people at each post, far too little to do more than act like a speed bump for those crabs.

  Just like the squad I’d taken down, each of those units of crabs were aiming to penetrate the defensive line so they could flank the remaining humans and finish them off.

  It left me unsure where I should join in. I had a few minutes before the crabs reached their destinations, but they’d all hit the defenders about the same time. I could maybe stop one squad, but not all three.

  There was something else weird going on, too. There were swarms of lobster troops moving through the city, but at least half of them were nowhere near the fighting. Instead, they were back in the North End, the Greenway, and the Financial District, and it looked like they were building something. That made no sense; the middle of the battle felt like a poor time to be setting up fortifications, and whatever they were constructing looked too small to be forts. Maybe they were lookout towers or something?

  Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good for our side.

  My mana was starting to run low, so I streaked downward. There was no way I could stop all four groups of crabs, but I could free up the main body of the human fighters. I landed in the middle of the lobster force pinning them down.

  The impact of my landing shook the ground, but I wasn’t there for shock value. I rushed toward the nearest lobsters, a whole team of the creatures hunkered down behind a big car, firing spells at the beleaguered defenders. I was in among them before they even knew what was happening.

  My first punch sent one of them crashing back into the car, shell shattered. They all turned on me, spears jabbing. The blows did nothing to me, simply bouncing off my Armored skin.

  That gave them pause.

  “You all might want to run now,” I told them.

  They apparently had other plans. Five of them rushed me at once, still feinting with their spears, but clearly aiming to immobilize me with their claws. I was finally starting to get used to this game plan they were running. If they found something they couldn’t hurt with their weapons, they worked at pinning that foe down. If enough of them piled on top of me, I wouldn’t be able to move. Eventually, they could suffocate me with sheer mass.

  But like I said, I’d seen this play book before. I’d been developing some countermeasures of my own.

  I let the first one grab my wrist in one of his bigger claws, then flashed him a grin.

  “Big mistake,” I said as I grabbed his claw with my free hand.

  Before he could let go, I pivoted my body, spinning hard enough to lift his entire body from the ground. I spun my attacker in a quick circle, using his body to bludgeon the rest of the attack wave. All four of them went down like bowling pins. They weren’t all dead, but their attack was foiled.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  A quick burst of Flight and I was on top of the car’s roof. “Come on, then! Let’s finish this up. I have other things to do with my day.”

  The real reason for jumping on the roof was so the police behind me could see I was there, of course. I was hoping they’d take that as a signal to advance, but I couldn’t count on it. I needed to wrap this part of the fight up fast. Alex had four giant crabs bearing down on his position. He needed my help, and I wasn’t going to let him down.

  I jumped off the car, landing on top of one of the fallen lobsters, crushing his shell. More of them rushed me from nearby fighting positions, sending spells and spears slinging my way. Some of the spells stung, but none of the hits did any serious damage.

  “My turn,” I called out, and rushed forward.

  I poured on all the speed I could muster and added it to all the Strength I could put into each blow. With basically five and a half tiers of Agility I was faster than any non-magical human who’d ever lived. My feet and hands moved like lightning as I dashed in among my attackers. Each fist struck like thunder, obliterating the frail tier two opponents in front of me.

  This wasn’t anything close to a fair fight, and I found myself strangely okay with that. We hadn’t asked for magic and monsters to show up on our doorstep, and we definitely hadn’t asked to have our city invaded. They’d come at us. What they were doing with the prisoners they took into the water, I still didn’t know, but it couldn’t be good. What they intended for the city was likewise a mystery, and was probably just as bad as the fate their captives faced.

  I darted forward and shattered the chest plate of one lobster, then turned to grab the spear from one rushing my right side. I twisted the spear away and sent it hurtling into the chest of another attacker, then punched the one I’d swiped the spear from hard enough to send him sailing back ten feet to smash into a car.

  Activating Flight, I shot forward through the air, barreling into another batch of the monsters. They all went down, and I grabbed the spear from one, using it to stab any of them within reach.

  In under a minute, I’d killed at least a dozen of them and disabled a dozen more.

  A roaring sound rose behind me. I whirled to face whatever the new threat was, but it wasn’t a threat—not to me, anyway! The police force surged forward, their riot shields interlocked and batons at the ready. I’d broken the lobster’s fighting line, shattered it completely. As I’d hoped, the police were using the opening I’d given them to launch an assault of their own.

  Their ranks surged forward, smashing into the disrupted and disoriented lobster force. I nodded, glad to see it. They had this fight. It was time for me to go save Alex from a killer case of the crabs. I left the crystals behind. The police needed them, if they were going to rank up enough to fight off this assault.

  I took off, rocketing through the air toward his stairwell. The crabs had already crossed the street. They clambered over the parked cars on the west side of the road. Once they were past that very weak barrier, there was little to stop them from tearing apart the defensive line waiting on the steps.

  Someone fired off a powerful Ice Blast. I figured it was probably Alex, still doing everything he could to hold the crabs back. But they’d tilted their head forward, showing the thick upper shell to the defenders. Even Alex’s spells weren’t strong enough to break through that. The Ice Blast shattered on the shell, unable to penetrate.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t have ranged attacks, and couldn’t take out four crabs at the same time. But I had a few tricks up my sleeve yet to play.

  With my Strength now up to tier seven, I’d reached vastly more powerful levels of physical force. By my rough guess, I was now about four times as strong as the maximum possible non-magical human Strength. I remembered reading that the old lifting record was over five thousand pounds, so I ought to be able to lift more than that.

  And those crabs didn’t weigh five thousand pounds.

  I rocketed toward the rear-most crab, grabbed it by the back of the shell, and lifted off, burning mana to surge my way back into the sky.

  The crab seemed a little stunned to suddenly be flying. It took a few moments for it to react, anyway. At first it just hung there as I went up, up, and up some more. When I reached about fifty feet above the pavement, it must have had an existential moment or something, because it started wriggling like mad. That made it much harder to hold on, but I managed, flying still higher.

  At about eighty feet, the crab managed to slash my side with one of its rear legs. Turns out those flipper-like back legs are sharp! It sliced right through my clothes and my skin. Natural Armor was good, but it wasn’t proof against all harm. The pain was immediate and intense. I let out a scream and almost dropped the thing, barely managing to hang on. I glanced down. We were directly over the leading two crabs in their formation.

  “Good enough,” I said, gritting my teeth against the pain. Blood ran down my side. I could feel it wetting my t-shirt. But it was good enough. I was high enough, and positioned well enough, so before the thing could get in another slash, I dropped it.

  The crab tumbled end over end as it fell, dropping all eighty feet in a matter of seconds. It missed the lead crab, but landed directly on top of the second one. Both crabs practically exploded from the impact. Shards of shell and bits of crab went flying in all directions.

  Two down, two to go. My mana was running low again. I’d burned a lot of it, getting that crab airborne. Apparently the amount of weight I carried did impact how fast I used mana up while flying, because I was close to tapped out. I soared downward and landed on the steps a few feet in front of the concrete barriers where the defenders hid.

  I spotted Alex there and waved. “Miss me?”

  “About time!” Alex shot back. But he was grinning, so I knew he wasn’t actually too mad. “How’s the girl?”

  “Safe and sound,” I replied. “You ready to finish these guys?”

  He nodded and stepped forward to join me. A woman in police uniform was beside him. She stepped out, too.

  “This is Marion,” Alex said. “She’s got a Fireball spell.”

  “Sounds useful,” I replied. “Let’s take these guys out, shall we?”