Triple Brahmastra

And then I nodded to myself once, as sure as I could be. If there was any secret power source or something on this side holding the barrier in place, I couldn’t see it. As I’d hoped, it seemed somehow self-perpetuating, meaning it was all but divorced from this dimension so long as no one specifically tried to break through it. And an archeological and historical wonder this place may be, but there were more important things at stake now—and hell, it was my history anyway, bad ending and all. As such, I took a brief moment to memorize every detail I could and then…

Well.

Then I destroyed Jericho Falls.

It happened quickly, set off by nothing more than a minute twist of my Aura, and then a flash of blinding white light descended from the heavens.

It was the Brahmastra.

Three Brahmastras, to be precise. It wasn’t something I’d be capable of on my own, not even after a week to train it—while the Brahmastra leveled quickly relative to its usage, it was still something that I could only use once a day and I hadn’t had that much time to play with it.

But just because I could only use it once a day didn’t mean I couldn’t store it. I couldn’t put it into my Inventory, alas—attempting to put the created spear into my handy pocket dimension had simply resulted in a window telling me it would be a bad idea—but there was another way.

This was the result of Patientia and, somewhat ironically, a great deal of patience. At first, the nature of the skill had not changed in the slightest as it leveled up, but after reaching level twenty-five, one this changed—I was able to store another skill within my Aura. The same thing had occurred again at level fifty and, after a significant amount of effort in the hopes of grinding it to the next benchmark before the possibly-literal deadline hit, recently occurred again at seventy-five for a total of four ‘slots.’

How I’d spent them had been a matter of great deliberation for me over the course of this week—I’d gained a fair number of new options in that time period and there were a number of tactics I could potentially exploit. In the end, however, I’d boiled it down to two main options. The first was, of course, my healing skills; at the end of the day, stuff that could keep me, or potentially someone I cared about, alive in an emergency was hard to beat. While I could easily heal myself or others in the midst of combat, some effectiveness would probably need to be sacrificed for the sake of expedience. If I had the time and power to spare to fully charge a healing skill, well…then I probably didn’t really need one.

It was the type of thing I needed when I was about to die—if something broke past all my defenses, emptied the wells of my MP, and then ground me down to my last hit point and forced me to rely on Second Chance. If I could heal myself at a leisurely pace, it wasn’t really an emergency, and so I’d long since promised myself to always keep at least one ‘full restore’ on me.

Yes, I fully intended to be one of those assholes—one of those video game enemies who make you grind them down to a single hit point and then promptly heal back to full health and make you do it all over again. I hated those guys when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure everyone hates those guys. But here’s the thing; the best thing in the world is when someone really, really, really wants you to die…and you just don’t.

On the other hand, there was also something to be said for really, really, really wanting someone to die and then making it happen. The Brahmastra was by far the hardest skill I had to use, simply because it’s charge time was atrocious and it could only be forged once a day. In a pinch, it was possible I could use just about any other skill, so long as I was willing to burn enough Dust crystals to make it happen, but in a fight, I’d only get one shot with the Brahmastra and if it wasn’t an opening move, I’d never get it off at all. Being able to store several of them got around both the charge time problem and the limit on it’s use, however, and it was a truly devastating weapon.

It had been a tough call. Extra heals would have served to give me more of a life line, but dropping a Brahmastra on an enemy’s head was its own reward. In the end, I’d made my choice for one simple reason; I’d only get one Second Chance. The usefulness of two full heals dropped somewhat with the knowledge that if something big hit me, odds were I wouldn’t survive to use the second one. I could still use it to heal my wounds and restore MP, of course, but those weren’t necessarily worth a slot. Saving my life was one thing, but in the end, killing things before they could hurt me was better than just healing from the wounds they inflicted—because they wouldn’t be hurting me much when they’d been reduced to ash. As such, I spared a slot for a single full heal and, instead of using it just to practice and grind, stored the last three days’ worth of Brahmastra’s in my Inventory.

And I hurled all three of them into the heart of the ruins. This was, I had decided, the best time to use them—right at the very start. No one knew we were here, no one was particularly on guard, and there were a lot of Grimm that needed to die. I didn’t truly believe that I’d get them all, but anyone I killed now couldn’t interfere later. Adam, Autumn, Gou, and Raven would be putting their lives on the line to hold off any survivors while I clashed with Gilgamesh; the best thing I could do to help them was to do my best to limit the number of survivors. This was my best chance to take them out and it wasn’t as if I could risk using the Brahmastra while my friends and family were on the battlefield. It was now or never, really.

Needless to say, the results were…impressive. As the three spears descended towards the unsuspecting ruin, they pulsed with an inner light and the process I’d set in place with their creation reached its inevitable conclusion. At the last moment, I saw some of the Grimm look upwards, but it was too late to notice now.

There was a blinding flash. A sudden rush. An annihilating, consuming heat, seemingly carried along by a force like the hand of God—and I was still far, far in the air. There was sound accompanying it, too, but I could hardly hear it; there was a brief, massive roar and then silence. For a moment, my ears burst, my eyes went blind, and the light of the Brahmastras plunged my world into darkness.

A part of me wondered if this had ever happened before. I wasn’t the first person to ever wield the Brahmastra and looking into what legends remained, there were tails of the weapons clashing—but had three ever been hurl towards the same target? I didn’t know.

But what I did know was the result of such a thing. As the moment passed and my sight and hearing returned, I saw what I’d done.

I’d blown Jericho Falls off the map. And I meant that as literally as I could—someone was going to have to actually redraw the map of this area at some point.

“Hello,” I said belatedly.


----
The explosions of the Brahmastras had thrown me high, further into the air than the portal Raven had used to drop me off initially. I waited for a moment, already working to refill the emptied slots of Patientia—and gladdened by the fact that nothing immediately tried to kill me. I could tell already that I hadn’t killed all of the Grimm, but it was always nice to know that my enemies couldn’t outright brush off my best attacks. They’d been stunned, if only for a few minutes. Even better, the dimensional barrier that existed alongside Jericho Falls had been unaffected by the blasts. I’d been almost certain it’d be fine, but not completely.

Time to move on to the next step. I focused my attention on my Aura for a brief moment and then sent a shudder through it, releasing a signal towards my distant target. A moment later, I felt her attention on me and two more portals swirled to life at my sides. Adam strode quickly through one while Autumn, Raven, and Gou entered through the other. I caught each as they walked into open air, supporting them with my power.

“God we’re high,” Adam noted. “When you said we’d be dropping in, you meant that literally, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered simply.

He sighed and shook his head.

“Whatever,” He said after a moment, focusing his eyes on the massive clouds below. “You really didn’t hold back, did you? Did you even leave any for us?”

“I didn’t hold back specifically in the hopes of not leaving anyone for you,” I replied. “And you shouldn’t hold back either, because I failed.”

It wasn’t a surprise, not hardly. I’d been all but sure going in that I wouldn’t be able to take them all out with my opening move; it was why I’d worked so hard to grind Patientia to its next bench mark and then loaded it with all the Brahmastras I had available. If I’d been certain that the Grimm would be hit hard enough to stop them long enough for me to do so, I would have waited another day, charged a fourth Brahmastra, and hit them even harder—but the sight before my eyes kind of made me glad I hadn’t taken any chances.

All throughout the ruins, Grimm rose. They were few in number, thankfully, and many of them looked badly hurt—but they were there, standing back up after I sucker-punched them with three of my greatest attacks. If I’d had a fourth, I might have gotten a few more, but…

My gaze drifted towards the leader of the pack. Location hadn’t much of an issue when it came to my Brahmastra’s; even a single one had the range necessary to cover Jericho Falls. Even so, I’d aimed the spears with the intention of inflicting as much damage as possible to the largest threats, figuring that the lesser ones would be wiped out regardless. And if they were, well, I would have sent Raven the other signal. If more than a handful of the Grimm could walk away from a trio of Brahmastras to the face, we would have been in way, way over our heads and the only logical thing to do would be to run the fuck away. As it was, the numbers were acceptable. Not ideal—that would have required me to have killed everyone—but not as bad as they could have been.

Beyond the amount of surviving riffraff, however, there was another important thing I’d needed to check—just how strong the legendary Gilgamesh really was.

The results on that front had been at once expected and worrying.

The creature my power had identified as Gilgamesh did, if fact, look fairly human. He was a man of middling height, with a stock of almost shockingly dark hair, set up in spikes. His skin was as dark as most of the Grimm, where it wasn’t covered by his bone-white armor. He carried a simple looking sword at his side, made of the same material as his body, and his face—assuming he had a face beneath it—was covered by a simple mask. It was more elaborate than most of the masks I’d seen, carved like porceline to give the impression of a calm human face.

Except for the eyes, of course. There were as red as an of the Grimm’s, and staring right up at me. Gilgamesh didn’t seem impressed, excited, or even worried to see me, not that it was easy to gauge the emotions of the Grimm; if anything, he simply looked expectant.

Worse, he didn’t look particularly hurt, either. He hadn’t quite shrugged off the blows and I could see the wounds it had left when it had seared at his flesh and armor—but he wasn’t exactly falling apart, either. His limbs were all where they were supposed to be, his eyes were still in his head, and all told, he looked shockingly intact for a guy who I’d made sure had taken the worst of the blasts. It was a little off-putting, truthfully. I mean, I hadn’t honestly expected to take him out with my first attack, but I’d kind of been hoping for a bit more of a reaction then ‘Ow, that hurt. Why would you do such a thing?’