Chapter 622: Brida’s Goal [Bonus - ]

Chapter 622: Brida’s Goal [Bonus Chapter]

It was a Spine-Render... a vile six-legged abomination with skin like wet leather, four snapping mandible-arms, and a long, whip-like tail barbed with bone hooks.

"...Ew."

It was dripping dark corrosive saliva onto the cobblestones, circling slowly and savoring the scent of its trapped prey.

And standing between the monster and the fountain wall... was a boy.

He couldn’t have been more than ten years old.

His clothes, a simple dusty tunic of Khemet linen, were torn at the shoulder with his knees scraped and bleeding.

His body was shaking so violently that his heels clicked against the stones.

Yet, he hadn’t curled into a ball and he hadn’t turned his back to flee.

In his small, trembling hands, the boy held a broken wooden broom-handle, holding it out like a spear, pointing the blunt splintered tip straight at the towering eight-foot monster’s face.

Behind him, huddled against the fountain basin, clutching his ragged trousers with both hands, was a little girl.

She was barely four or five, her dark curly hair tangled with dust, her face buried against her brother’s hip as she sobbed in pure breathless terror.

"G-GET AWAY!" the boy screamed with his voice cracking and tears streaming down his soot-stained cheeks. "DON’T YOU TOUCH HER! GET BACK! I’LL KILL YOU, YOU UGLY BASTARD! GET AWAY FROM MY SISTER!"

The Spine-Render let out a low wet clicking hiss that sounded like mocking laughter.

It crouched on its six hocks with its mandible-arms spreading wide, preparing to pounce forward and tear both children into ribbons in a single ravenous snap...

WHOOSH!

From the three-story roof above, a shadow fell like the hammer of a wrathful god.

SPLAT-CRUNCH!

Brida didn’t even draw her axe as she landed directly upon the Spine-Render’s head with both of her plate-armored iron boots.

Forty thousand pounds of descending pressure, reinforced by the unyielding density of her [Unyielding Bedrock Body], met the creature’s skull and the monster didn’t have time to register the impact.

Its armored head, its thorax, its six legs, and its internal organs were instantly pulverized into a flat circular stain of dark ichor and bone fragments that coated the courtyard flags.

THUUUUM!

The impact rattled the fountain, but Brida’s mana swept through the cobblestones, absorbing the shockwave before it could knock the children off their feet.

The boy stood frozen.

His wooden broom-handle remained raised in the air, mere inches from Brida’s massive iron-plated knee.

He stared up with his jaw slacking as he took in the towering silhouette of the woman standing over the flattened corpse.

Brida looked down at the boy, then down at the little girl peeking out from behind his trousers with wide tear-filled eyes.

A massive delighted smile spread across Brida’s bronze face.

"Cute," Brida chuckled softly, the sound deep and resonant, like stones rolling in a riverbed.

She slowly dropped to one knee, bringing her towering frame down to the boy’s eye level.

Her massive calloused hand reached out, gently tapping the tip of his splintered broom-handle with the tip of her index finger.

"You’ve got some serious guts, kid," Brida said, her amber eyes shining with genuine admiration. "Facing down a high-tier abyssal creeper with a stick of wood? That was remarkably brave... You did a good job protecting your sister."

The boy’s lower lip trembled with the adrenaline finally washing out of his small frame, but he stubbornly wiped his nose with his sleeve and refused to look away from her.

GROOOOOOOAN!

Suddenly, the five-story apartment building directly across the courtyard shrieked!

A secondary horror... a massive six-ton Battering Trench-Beast with a skull of solid calcified bone had burrowed straight through the building’s ground-floor support pillars and the foundation buckled.

Tens of thousands of tons of concrete, brick, and iron began to violently tip forward, collapsing toward the courtyard like an avalanche of crushing death, accompanied by the charging roar of the armored beast bursting through the dust.

"LOOK OUT!" the boy shrieked, instinctively throwing his small body over his little sister, closing his eyes tight but Brida didn’t stand up from her knee.

"Calm down..."

She kept her left hand resting gently on the boy’s head, holding the children securely against the stone as she turned her upper body slightly toward the collapsing five-story building and the six-ton charging behemoth and her right arm pulled back.

...Her fingers curled into a massive iron-hard fist.

’Haah,’ Brida thought, her internal mana circulating with a warm feeling. ’Just a normal punch.’

WHOOSH!

She drove her bare right fist straight into the empty air!

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The displacement was so monstrous that the sound wave might have shattered reality...!

From Brida’s single stationary fist, a colossal visible cone of compressed wind mana erupted outward.

The six-ton Battering Trench-Beast was hit by the pressurized air with its bone-armored skull caved inward, its ribs shattered; and its massive six-ton body was horizontally blasted backward through the sky, clearing two city blocks before disintegrating into dust.

And the falling five-story apartment complex?

The blast wave hit the collapsing concrete mid-fall as the force of the punch violently reversed its momentum, blowing thousands of tons of falling brick, steel, and mortar backward into the empty lot behind it, pulverizing the entire structure into fine harmless gravel that settled over the ruins like a gentle cloud.

The courtyard fell dead silent and the boy slowly opened his eyes.

He looked at the empty space where a five-story building had been falling bare seconds ago.

...There was nothing there. It was just an open view of the southern sky, framed by drifting dust motes.

He looked back at the giant woman kneeling before him as Brida grinned with her white teeth flashing.

"Told ya," she winked. "Nothing to worry about."

SWOOP!

With a single effortless motion, Brida reached out with both arms. She scooped the boy up under her left arm like a sack of grain, and lifted the little girl into the crook of her right elbow, cradling the child against her massive warm plate armor.

"Hold on tight, little sprouts," Brida laughed boisterously. "Auntie Brida is giving you a ride!"

BOOM!

She leaped.

Brida didn’t take the rooftops this time, she cleared the entire city block in a single soaring trajectory, sailing three hundred yards through the air before landing lightly upon the manicured turf outside the grand public pavilion of Sector Three.

In the center of the pavilion, glowing with serene starlight, was one of Aeliana’s honeycombed purple barriers.

Inside the protective dome, hundreds of sheltered citizens were watching the skies in terror.

Standing near the front of the barrier with her hair disheveled, her dress torn, weeping frantically as she called out two names over and over, was a middle-aged Khemet woman.

"FAROOQ! AMINA! WHERE ARE MY BABIES?! GODS, PLEASE, SOMEONE FIND MY CHILDREN—"

THUD!

Brida landed softly on the grass right outside the purple barrier as she gently lowered the two children to their feet, nudging the boy forward with the flat of her palm.

"Go on, hero," Brida smiled warmly. "Your mother’s waiting."

The woman inside the barrier froze.

Her tear-filled eyes locked onto the two small figures standing on the grass.

"MOMMY!" the little girl wailed, sprinting straight through the permeable starlight ward!

"AMINA! FAROOQ!"

The mother collapsed to her knees, throwing her arms around both children, sobbing hysterically as she buried her face in their hair, kissing their dusty cheeks over and over, rocking them back and forth in a desperate embrace of pure miraculous salvation.

The mother looked up through her tears, looking at the colossal, auburn-haired titan standing outside the barrier.

"Thank you..." the woman wept, bowing her forehead against the turf. "Thank you! May the heavens bless you! May the sun shine upon your path forever! We were separated when the first gate fell... I thought they were dead... I thought—"

"They’re tough kids," Brida said softly, her voice remarkably gentle. "The boy fought like a lion so you should be proud of him."

The little girl suddenly wriggled free from her mother’s arms.

She turned around, trotting on her tiny feet back toward the edge of the barrier.

She reached into the small dirt-stained pocket of her apron and pulled out a single bright yellow desert-poppy... a wild flower she had picked from the fountain basin before the monster arrived.

She stood on her tiptoes, reaching her small arm up toward Brida’s knees.

Brida blinked, tilting her head. "For me?"

"For the big knight," the little girl lisped shyly, her cheeks turning pink.

Brida’s heart hitched as she slowly knelt down, lowering her massive head until her forehead was level with the little girl’s hands.

With extreme clumsy gentleness, the little girl reached up and tucked the bright yellow poppy carefully behind Brida’s ear, smoothing down a thick strand of auburn hair.

The boy stepped forward, standing tall beside his sister as he looked up into Brida’s eyes, snapped his heels together, and brought his small right hand up to his brow in a crisp, determined, and deeply earnest military salute.

"Thank you, General," The boy said with his voice clear and proud.

’General...’

Brida’s chest tightened with a strange breathtakingly warm sensation as she raised her massive calloused right hand and returned the salute with solemn respect.

"Dismissed, soldier," Brida smiled. "Get underground and keep your family safe."

The boy nodded firmly, took his little sister’s hand, and led her back through the purple barrier, joining their weeping mother as they followed the local Awakened down into the subterranean shelter.

Brida remained kneeling on the grass.

A strong warm desert wind swept through the ruined pavilion, rustling the leaves of the shattered palm trees and gently stirring the yellow poppy tucked into her hair.

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Deep within Brida’s sternum... deep within the core of her own being... a profound shift occurred.

The chaotic wandering mana that had circulated through her heavy limbs for weeks suddenly began to converge.

It rushed inward, condensing around her physical heart like molten iron pouring into a mold.

Brida looked at the empty gate where the family had vanished into the earth as a slow radiant smile spread across her bronze face.

She reached up with her thick fingers, gently patting the yellow poppy resting behind her ear, her pulse hammering with a steady clear purpose.

’Yeah...’ Brida thought, her breath coming in a soft trembling deeply happy sigh.

’I have a goal.’

The wind grew stronger, howling through the spires of the burning city, but Brida’s massive frame didn’t sway by a single millimeter.

Her thoughts weren’t complex.

...They weren’t woven from prophecies, nor were they burdened by the strength that drove Tasmin through the high clouds.

They were simple.

’I want to have kids,’ Brida thought, her smile softening into something beautifully maternal.

’A shit ton of them. A whole house full of rowdy thick-headed, iron-boned brats who run through the high grass of Blessed Land with wooden swords, screaming their heads off and breaking things...’

Her knuckles curled into fists of unbreakable resolve.

’And I want to be strong enough... I want to be so terrifyingly, god-shatteringly strong... that no rift, no monster, and no deity can ever touch a single hair on their heads... I will protect Lord Silas... I will protect my kids... My grandkids... My great-grandkids... Every single soul born beneath our banner...’

Her chest expanded as the golden-red energy coalescing around her heart locked permanently into place.

’Me... and Lord Silas.’

It was a simple goal.

It was probably an absurd unrefined dream compared to the grand cosmic ambitions of the other nine women walking this sand today.

Yet, as the clarity of that purpose settled into the marrow of her bones, Brida’s massive iron-armored legs began to shake... not from weakness, but from the uncontainable surge of vitality violently erupting through her meridians.

’I feel weird...’

Not only did this power spread from her legs to all of her body, but even her heart began to feel faster.

’I have a purpose... Is this what Tasmin feels?’

The purpose made her... feel a lot stronger for some reason, was it supposed to be like that? Even if she made it her life’s mission to get knocked up like twenty times by Lord Silas?

DING!

[GRAND TITAN BASTION BRIDA HAS DEVELOPED A WARRIOR’S HEART!]

...

[Author’s Note]

Happy New Month In Advance everyone! Since it’s the last day of the month, I want to thank everyone for all of the castles and golden tickets as you’ve supported the book and it means a lot to me...

And not only that but through your support with Golden Tickets, we’ve managed to hit the Top 10 Ranking in Golden Tickets however it’s not really secured that we’ll get the ranking this month due to an invisible book in the ranking so we’ll need about 200-300+ Golden Tickets to be able to enter Top 8-9 which is secured, from what I know. Thank you! Each and every Golden Ticket matters.

I feel a bit better too so I’m going to start writing for a new month Mass Release so expect that, once again, thank you all for your support! Hope to see you next month!