Act zero: The end

Chapter 1: The last war of Humanity

"Fire!" cried a harsh and authoritative voice through the telepathic network. In response, the deafening explosions resounded as the great thunder-spitting cannons began firing, pouring out great energy bolts that transformed entire lines of demonic monstrosities into ashes and charred flesh.

The attack had even managed to evaporate part of the Carnigor's imposing carapace of bones before frying out its tiny brain. When the tens of tons of the titanic monster's body - larger and more imposing than a ten-storey building - crashed to the ground, it crushed hundreds of minor demons with it.

A new thought echoed through the telepathic network "Beastigors on the southeast wall!"

A squad of warriors, all equipped with heavy armor and their giant swords, ran to defend the designated area. Through the use of the Art of Extreme Displacement, the remnant's images seemed to follow the movements of their bodies as they ran nearly two hundred meters in just a few seconds. When they arrived on the scene, the Beastigors' maws, those demons as high as a four-story house, appeared on top of the walls, ready to pour a deadly fire from their mouths. Their four incredibly muscular arms, with claws capable of tearing through metal, rushed at once to take the lives of the warriors on the wall.

Several warriors sacrificed themselves to maintain the line of defense. Their ultimate cry "For Humanity!" resounded with fury and unshakeable conviction just before their presence suddenly disappeared through the telepathic network.

The warriors fought the many Beastigor without faltering, cutting and destroying with their enormous swords the demons that looked like monstrous mountains of flesh and bone, some ten meters high. A sorcerer came to reinforce them and recited short incantations of power, and under his spell dozens of luminescent crystal lances materialized in the air before raining at supersonic speed on the Beastigors and stabbed them in place.

Standing on one of the high fortified walls, defended by squads of warriors, Mars threw himself on one of the Beastigors who had climbed one of the walls. He wielded his long, enchanted sword with precision, falling methodically and relentlessly on each enemy. The oversized sword, which had been designed to deal with oversized enemies, cut the flesh of the demons as easily as a hot blade would cut a piece of butter.

Even so, the demons continued to pounce on him and the other defenders without ever stopping.

As he took the lives and souls of his enemies, Mars thought about his situation. Several days before the fighting began, and as a harbinger of their cursed fate, the icy wind had blown like a damned and shouted a thousand spectral voices over the thick walls of the ancient fortress as if to try to tear them down and remind them of their powerlessness to protect them.

Horrible visions of monsters and demons had appeared in the dreams of the few people who had managed to take refuge in their sleep. In retrospect many omens indicated that their worst fears had come true, and when an aura of madness and psychic terror crept through the corridors of the ancient fortress city and the walls shook under attack, their situation had become obvious.

Once again, demons had come to bring death and despair to them.

Since the beginning of the battle, Mars had stood alongside the defense units on the high fortified walls, holding and defending every meter of land at the cost of his blood and the lives of his brothers, in order to prevent access to the great enchanted stone gates that protected the city hidden in the mountain. Pieces of flesh were scattered on the hard stone of the walls, almost blocking the path of some of them.

Protected behind the great magic shield that defended the city, the sorcerers had unleashed deadly magical arts. They had summoned waves of lightning, fire and death. It was as if, after years of imprisoning evil spirits in a magical bottle, they had freed them, and to avenge all those years of imprisonment, the evil spirits had unleashed small cataclysms on the armies of monsters with all the fury of the world itself.

Among them, three sorcerers formed a matrix of spells, and with the union of their magic, a dazzling violet-tinted orb of white light similar to a miniature sun had formed inside the matrix. Then the miniature star was propelled at breakneck speed, crashing into the body of a titanic demon whose body was covered with thousands of mouths with sharp teeth.

The mini-sun exploded in a blinding flash, releasing a gigantic spray of superheated violet plasma, instantly vaporizing almost the entire upper part of the titan's body into flaming gas, while all the demons within a hundred meters of the giant demon were ignited by the heat released by the spell.

Below the high stone walls, giant stone golems defended the walls, tirelessly sowing death by crushing the hordes of minor demons on the ground, and giving brutal blows with their stone swords against all the demons they could not simply crush.

Yet no matter how hard they tried, one by one, the walls collapsed or were lost.

The great cannons gradually ceased their din, the giant stone golems that defended the walls had become inert rocks when the magical hearts that animated them were torn out, the sorcerers had ceased to unleash the fury of the elements, and the soldiers' brave war cries were slowly replaced by their cries of agony.

Slowly, the battle was nearing its end, and with it, the defeat of all mankind.

As he faced a Beastigor, Mars saw out of the corner of his eye a destructive beam of magical energy hit the magical barrier, but unable to hold it, the barrier was broken and the beam of magical energy blew off the section of wall he was standing on. Purely by reflex he concentrated all his magical power to protect himself, but despite everything, pain and darkness took over and he fainted under the brutality of the shock wave.

When he regained consciousness, Mars felt that the cold, moist air rushing into his nostrils with each breath reeked of blood and the stench of corruption. Even as his lungs were strengthened by the alchemical concoctions, he felt as if the air was burning him from within with each breath. His heartbeat like a steam engine, tirelessly pumping blood through his veins and supplying oxygen to his massive but painful muscles.

At least he was still alive. Then he heard claws scratching the nearby stone, and when he opened his eyes again, a Beastigor's jaw closed a few inches from his head. In a cry of frustration, the demon hit him violently with one of his muscular arms, throwing Mars' body like a baseball thrown at full speed, before he crashed into one of the thick walls of the ancient fortress, knocking down part of the wall and breaking the blade of his sword into dozens of fragments.

Nearby, two warriors too exhausted by the fighting were unable to defend themselves against the unreal speed of the creature. The Beastigor tore off the first warrior's head with one of its clawed hands, while the monster took the other warrior. The man called for help when he was lifted into the air, and Mars saw the horror in his eyes as much as he felt the horror in the warrior's mind when the enormous claw crushed the man in his armor like a squeezed lemon.

The Demon's red eyes glowed with pleasure as he absorbed the vital essence and power of the warrior's souls.

While reciting a short prayer, Mars invoked a spell on him. He felt a phenomenal power to take hold of his muscles, and he felt that his flesh and bones had become almost as hard as metal. After he stood up he ran towards the Beastigor and used his telekinetic magic to increase his speed even more, flying towards the abomination always focused on its carnage.

His insane speed coupled with the weight of his body turned the entire body of Mars into a deadly hammer. When his body hit the Beastigor, he knocked down the Demon and smashed one side of his rib cage, breaking his bones like twigs. Taking advantage of his position, Mars threw a series of brutal punches and kicks.

As the demon's burning, acidic blood splashed against Mars' armor, the sound of his fists and steel boots breaking bones and tearing the flesh of the monstrous creature below him echoed in his ears with each blow.

Yet that wasn't enough, the Beastigor was still alive and screamingly counterattacked by trying to grab Mars with its claws while its mouth full of fangs tried to bite him. But it was useless, Mars' next blow was so violent that he drove his opponent's jaw into the giant demon's skull and then shattered it into purple confetti of bone and flesh.

Once the Beastigor was dead, Mars looked around, but he was confused about the exact situation of the battle, so Mars used his magic to levitate and stand over the body of his victim to get a better view. From the top of the giant Beastigor's body, Mars looked out over the battlefield. Through the cracks in his armored helmet, he could see the ocean of corpses stretching as far as the eye could see in front of the fortress walls, and in the distance, legions of demonic monstrosities being vomited into an uninterrupted torrent through dimensional cracks.

Under the influence of the portals, the sky was colored with a thousand supernatural lights. This breathtaking spectacle was caused by the dark energies coming from the immaterial planes that distorted and devoured the texture of reality itself.

Suddenly cries rang out in the distance. About twenty enormous demonic creatures resembling deformed dogs appeared, and ran towards a group of three warriors in heavy armor and a witch. The deformed creatures had a jerky and disjointed gait that reinforced the sense of abnormality that emanated from them. Despite their imposing and massive bodies, they moved so fast that they covered the distance between them and the group in a few heartbeats, propelling their imposing bodies as if they weighed nothing.

When the creatures attacked the group, the warriors pushed back the first monsters, beheading them one by one. The witch unleashed purifying white flames on the monsters, which turned their enemies to ashes as soon as they touched them. However, despite their resistance this was not enough. The group slowly succumbed to the numbers, as the huge jaws of the monsters closed on one of the warriors, deforming his armor and tearing him apart alive.

Even as the other two warriors were executing the monsters, knowing it was too late, the witch who was with them invoked a forbidden spell when a black and shiny flame condensed into three small beads in her hands.

She looked in the direction of Mars and whispered something with half a smile on her sorry face, almost as if to apologize for having gone before him, then when she clapped her hands between them, the spell was triggered, turning the witch's body into a huge, deafening and blinding explosion of cursed fire that would incinerate all her enemies with her.

Then the flames began to dissipate, revealing a crater of vitrified stone.

Mars clenched his fists and teeth in front of the scene. Why did survival almost always mean being the one to watch those around him die before his eyes?

Fate is sometimes unpredictable. The day he was summoned to the world of Yvelmore by the sorcerers; like every other human on Earth, who could have guessed that he would survive long enough in this cataclysmic war to witness the end of the world?

Not him anyway.

He still remembered that banal and ordinary summer day. After having emptied a few bottles of Scotty Bolder to help him drown his sorrow caused by his last love break-up, he had put his underwear down to enjoy a porno in order to get revenge. But right in the middle of a hot lesbian scene, he disappeared in a kind of painful blinding flash, and when he opened his eyes again, he found himself in another world, but without his underwear.

It wasn't exactly an ideal start.

It could have looked like any generic premise of an Electronic Arts game, except that where he had landed 14 years earlier wasn't exactly the kind of place that would appear on a travel brochure for a nice vacation or in the list of <50 worlds to visit>, except perhaps starting at the end of the list.

The world of Yvelmore was a cursed and dying world.

An unknown cataclysm had struck this world, destroying the barriers that isolated the material world from the immaterial dimensions. Since then, whole armies of monsters, demonic creatures and other totally insane things had come to claim this place as their new playground.

The different nations, kingdoms and empires of this world, despite their armies, their guardians, their saints and their super-powerful sorcerers, had all fallen one after the other. A decade had been enough to see them all destroyed. And when that happened, the few survivors fled, seeking refuge in the eastern end of the great continent, in forgotten lands. They had sought hiding, taking refuge in the old cities.

The group that Mars had followed had found refuge in a fortress city dug into a mountain. They had hidden the smallest traces of their presence with the help of powerful spells that the wizards who accompanied them had woven, superimposed on each other. They had succeeded in making their presence undetectable to creatures with the sharpest magical senses, but that was not enough.

He didn't know how, but after many years the demons had found their tracks. Or maybe they had never looked for them in the first place, but just because there was nothing else to destroy, who could tell?

The slightly shaking walls and the sound of broken trees interrupted his inner thoughts. In the distance, a titan of flesh almost as high as the fortress itself emerged from the nearby forest, ripping out and sending out with every step century-old pines that flew like twigs. The titan of flesh was running at full speed in its direction like a big excited kid in front of a packet of candy.

But as he looked closer, he had more immediate problems. Two monsters resembling giant, deformed dogs like the ones that had just attacked the group of warriors climbed the rubble of the collapsed fortress walls.

Mars hastened to pick up the two large swords from the lifeless hands of his comrades.

This would probably be his last fight.