Chapter 146: Running Away
'No...'
Hugo saw his Memory get consumed by dark and crimson light, leaving his ghostly hands empty.
[Nothing], his first Transcendent Memory—A weapon that had been alongside him since the Forgotten Shore—was gone...
It was gone, completely consumed by this abomination.
[Nameless Sun] was saved, as the moment [Nothing] was stolen, it unbound itself from it and was left floating around.
Thinking quickly, Hugo dismissed the [Nameless Sun] and backed away.
The pain of losing such a Memory was indescribable, yet he had to continue fighting or else he would lose his life as well.
Enraged, his hands formed violent balls of fire, and Huge them hurtling toward the Terror in the dozens, aiming to burn the terror.
Malware, sensing Hugo's rage, let out an inhuman laugh, mocking the weak creature Infront of it. Before the flames could reach the terror, its form changed once again.
This time, into mist...
Dark crimson mist weaved through the barrage of fire, slipping past each projectile and rushing toward Hugo. In an instant, he found himself drowning in a sea of dark mist.
It didn't take long for Hugo to realize what this ability was... Malware had inherited the properties of mist from [Nothing], twisting the powers of his beloved memory against him.
Becoming intangible, he escaped with a frown on his ghostly face.
'What to do...'
Hugo soared through the sky, and behind him a cloud of dark crimson mist was chasing him like a plague, seeking to devour him whole.
In combat, Hugo's main advantage was not his powers, not at all. Instead it was his versatility and the countless forms he could assume in battle.
But now, he had met a being that was not only more powerful than him, but also one that could match his versatility...
This had led him to reach a simple conclusion.
'I can't win...'
It was simple and obvious. He did not stand a chance against this abomination, who held powers to corrupt him and also powers of shapeshifting.
Diving deep down, he slammed the Omnitrix and switched forms once again.
A turtle-like shell erupted from his back as his body became much more solid and expanded in size. At the same time, his skin color took a much greener tone.
He had assumed the form of Terraspin.
He shifted his limbs and retracted them into his body, and rotated rapidly, generating a massive vortex mid-air to push the dark mist away.
'Just a little more...'
He did not need to win. Hugo only needed to buy time for his shadow to save the people of Bunker 202...
After all the lives of those people is what mattered the most.
Mid-spin, Malware's form changed once again, assuming a more solid quality, this time, his body had two dark wings protruding from the back.
A bast of crimson light erupted from his chest, too fast to notice and too fast to Dodge.
It all happened so quickly, as if it was merely a dream.
Hugo suddenly found himself unable to spin anymore, causing him to fall down like a comet... His sense of vision suddenly returned to him and He saw that his body had been pierced by the blast... No. It had been destroyed by it.
The entire right side of his body was completely gone, destroyed by the terrible attack, taking away his arm, half of his torso and the majority of his chest was evaporated...
'What...'
His mind couldn't even comprehend what had just happened. There was no pain, just a feeling of numbness as his body continued to plummet downward.
Blood was pouring from his body like a waterfall as he fell from the sky like a fallen angel, ready to meet the cold lands beneath.
Coincidentally, he and Malware were just above Bunker 202.
***
The shadow was barely struggling to stand, its essence almost depleted.
There were thousands of people infected in this settlement, and the shadow—despite being an Ascended Terror—was only a singular entity. Its essence reserves were only enough to save merely a hundred individuals, nothing more, nothing less.
Each individual saved drained a ton of essence, as Malware was a Galvanic Mechamorph of superior rank.
The shadow, theoretically, could assume the form of echo echo and clone itself to do the job... But it was not that simple. Echo echo had the ability to create perfect clones, however the shadow, due to its nature, could not benefit from the cloning ability.
People can only house one shadow after all, anymore then that and his master could die when the clones are absorbed back...
The shadow instinctively sensed that it was a bad idea, so it had refrained from doing so.
The people it had saved, on the other hand were terrified and in a daze, completely confused by what had just happened to them. But that was only the initial reaction. Not long after they were freed from the plague of malware, they would lose consciousness, falling into a state of deep sleep.
This was beneficial for the shadow, as this meant that the process could become slightly easier...
The shadow was just about to go he
Cure another person, until suddenly..
Something crashed hard into the ceiling, driving through multiple armored alloys of protection and shattering them like they were paper.
The thing finally reached the last ground, where the shadow and the people were.
The eyes of the shadow widened, as it saw its master there—in the form of Terraspin, laying on the ground, compeletly defeated. He was missing an arm, half of his head, and his entire right torso.
Before long, the Omnitrix made a peeping sound and detransformed him.
In his human form, the wounds were inherited as well, leaving him with half of his body...
But his master was not dead yet.
The shadow rushed towards its master, attempting to help in any way it could, but before it could do that, something suddenly landed behind the shadow and slammed it away like a bug.
Malware stared at the shadow with eerie malice, happy that it had a second meal as well—one that wielded another Omnitrix, at that.
It moved towards the broken Hugo, its arms opening up and transforming into a mass of dark tentacles, ready to devour him whole.
The shadow, far away, watched as its master was being consumed.m
For a moment, it remained frozen in its place... What would happen if its master died?
Would it be set free?
A shadow without its master... The shadow suddenly felt an eerie sense of disgust at the thought.
And then, it slammed its Shadowtrix, becoming a gigantic abomination and assuming the form of Humungousaur.
The shadow rushed at Malware, using its shoulder to crash into the Corrupted Terror and stopping it from devouring its master last moment.
The shadow punched once again, aiming to crush the startled Nightmare Creature.
But just then, its fist was suddenly caught by the Corrupted Galvanic Mechamorph.
THUD.
The shadow received a devastating punch to its jaw, nearly destroying its head.
The Corrupted Terror did not stop at that, as its hand shifted into a terrifyingly sharp blade, connected to its torso, and pierced the flesh of the shadow.
The two engaged in combat, with Malware overwhelming the shadow easily.
Not far away, Hugo coughed blood as he briefly regained consciousness.
He tried to move but found that half of his body was missing.
Finding himself in such an odd situation, Hugo chuckled a little, causing him to cough more blood.
'This is like what, the third time I've lost my arm?'
It was still painful, so much so that he felt his eye fill with tears from the pain...Yet it was also a strange coincidence.
Hugo used the last of his strength and raised his head and one remaining arm. Using all of his remaining strength, he slammed his forehead into the dial of the watch, transforming immediately.
His skin became green, becoming much more bark-like, and he grew taller as well, with multiple seeds appearing and blooming on his head.
He had assumed the form of Swampfire.
Using a small amount of soul essence, Hugo groaned in pain as he regenerated his body, allowing his arm to grow back thanks to the attributes and abilities of swampfire.
With that done, he looked at the situation in front of him.
There were around one hundred refugees, clearly cured from the influence of Malware, laying on the ground. They were knocked out, likely due to the trauma their souls experienced in such a short amount of time.
The awakened that were in charge of this area were nowhere to be found... They were all dead. Likely taken out first by malware...
Hugo expression became even more solemn.
His shadow was fighting Malware. Well, fighting was a generous word for the situation.
It was getting absolutely destroyed.
Time seemed to suddenly slow down for Hugo... As he suddenly realized how terrible his situation was. To make it worse... He couldn't find anyway to escape his current problem...
Or to be specific, no solution that he was willing to take.
He could likely escape malware himself... But he did not want to leave those people. It would go against everything he stood for, and also against the reason he came to Antarctica.
His eyes darkened as he found a single solution... It was simple and logcial...
He could command his shadow to run away with the people, while he himself did something very, very stupid to distract malware.
'... It doesn't matter. If I die, I die.'
Hugo rushed towards Malware, and as he did, a blue light engulfed his Omnitrix as he activated [Fusion] once again, using the DNA sample of Heatblast for a second time.
Hugo was already low on essence, and using this fusion was the last straw... Leaving him with only one core worth of soul essence.
It was still enough for what he wanted to do.
As the fusion of Heatblast and Swampfire, Hugo used his flaming vines to grab his shadow and throw it away. At the same time, he sent it a mental message, telling it to leave this place immediately with the cured individuals.
Hugo summoned [Proto-Truck], sending it towards the shadow, as well.
Without wasting any time, he crashed into Malware and grabbed the terrifying Terror in a tight hug.
Flames erupted from his legs as he rose to the sky, flying as far as he could and slamming through the ceiling once again, piercing it like butter.
Hugo flew as far as he could, and as he did, Malware hammered his body with all types of terrifying wounds, cutting his body in multiple ways...
His body was already battered from before, and now it got even worse. After all, Swampfire's regeneration was not the same as Nephis's healing; it left the body riddled with fatigue and minor wounds, not to mention the regenerated body parts would be weaker then the original parts...
But he endured... As always.
The pain done to his soul and body was enough to drive any sane man mad, but at that moment, the heat that had been building up inside of him suddenly grew much more oppressive.
It engulfed his entire body, turning it into a beacon of fire, burning so brightly it lit up the night sky of Antarctica.
Looking at Malware one last time, Hugo spoke in a hoarse voice:
"Go to hell, you ugly bastard."
And with that, the heat that had been building up inside of him exploded forward like a raging wave, spreading across the sky of Antarctica as far as the eyes could see.
It was so overwhelmingly powerful, so immense and so bright that it defied all reason.
All across Antarctica, people suddenly felt the temperature become slightly warmer, as if a sun had exploded in the Earth's atmosphere.
Hugo felt his cores shaking violently, and at the same time, his [Flames of Divinity] were encasing his soul in a tight mantle, protecting it from being destroyed by the flames.
Burning alive, Hugo couldn't help of think of something his friend, nephis,bad told him a long time ago.
'You have to light yourself on fire... To reap the blessings of the fire...'
Nephis herself had done so in the depths of her first nightmare, as a powerless mundane girl, to escape the mind hex of a terrible abomination.
Now, Hugo was doing the same thing, as a powerful ascended terror, to save thousands of people.
He was not the heir of Sun God, not at all, but it was... Such a beautiful feeling. It was painful, yes, but at the same time there was something ethereal about allowing your body and soul to burn in divine flames.
This was the blessing of the fire.
***
The shadow had once again reassumed its Upgrade form, fusing with the [Proto-Truck] and grabbing all the cured people it managed to save.
The knocked-out cured were easy to transfer, however... The thralls seemed to have regained some form of thinking, now that the Corrupted Terror, Malware, was aware of the shadow's schemes.
They refused to enter the ship, even when the shadow had forced them to...
Overpowering one was possible, but it could not hope to overwhelm thousands of people without killing them, not to mention the shadow did not think it was powerful enough to do that, as each human here was a vessel for malware...
So, the shadow, fused with the [Proto-Truck], simply fled, rising high into the sky and going the other direction as fast as it could.
Through its lightless eyes, it saw the beautiful beacon of flame that had been born from its master... The light finally dimmed, and the silhouettes within it began to become much more apparent.
The Corrupted Terror had survived the explosion, yes. But it was badly injured.
Its master, however, was on the verge of death. His body was nearly incinerated by the fire, turning completely dark.
He still hadn't detransformed... But there wasn't much time left.
The ship turned around and exploded forward with terrifying speed, crossing the aerial distance in moments and stretching out a tendril using its Upgrade form, grabbing its master's wounded body.
The shadow turned around once again, and flew as fast as it could. It didn't even think of finishing off the Corrupted Terror, as it knew that it was impossible.
That day, the wielder of the Omnitrix had experienced defeat once again... And the situation in Antarctica got much more dire.