CHAPTER 71: THE RAVAGER’S END

Jonas held the world open with his hands.

The Ravager’s hinged jaws bit down, rebar teeth scoring deep furrows into his forearms, blood streaming in hot ropes. The pain was blinding, yet he held.

His boots sank into the asphalt, cracking it like dry riverbed. Veins crawled like lit wires beneath his skin as every muscle stood out in brutal relief, ballooned beyond sane geometry.

The system light flared across his vision, a warning he drowned beneath a roar of determination.

~----~

[System Alert!]

[Overdrive Active]

Strength: F → Temporary Surge: E Rank.

[WARNING: Cellular breakdown accelerating. Permanent damage likely on continued use.]

~----~

"Not... today!" Jonas snarled through his teeth, arms shaking so hard they hummed.

The Ravager’s breath poured over him like furnace wind; oil and copper and hot, ruined meat. Its eyes, if those slit vents could be called eyes narrowed, plate by plate, shocked that prey had become lock and lever.

No prey had ever withstood its assault quite like this.

"Hold him!" Reid shouted, the word razoring through the chaos as desperation turned into adrenaline. "Ethan, now!"

The Wheel spun like mad.

Ethan ran before his mind could argue. The Kill Road was a storm of falling metal; the Ravager’s magnetic field had loosened, and cars were crashing down in fatal percussion but Shadowstep peeled space like a curtain.

Bzzz!

He slipped through the jag of a tumbling bumper, past a spear of falling rebar, and into the seam where Kara’s spear had gouged the Ravager’s chest plate and his earlier blow had spiderwebbed the armor.

Shadowstep Dash faded and reality grabbed his boots again.

Ethan was now inside the beast’s reach, close enough to see the orange pulse under cracked plate, the magnetic organ beating like a heart.

Then, the Wheel locked.

DING!

~----~

[Improvised Gear: Resonant Spike Bomb]

A jagged spike seeded with tuned shards. It amplifies force and fractures when driven into structural cracks.

Fuse: Impact-triggered.

~----~

Ethan didn’t hesitate; he drove the spike bomb home with the Exo-Spike Gauntlet, Rugged Overload once again blooming along his arm like a burn.

Ethan’s punch connected, as once again, metal shrieked, opening up space... and the spike bomb bit the fracture before sinking inside.

"Kara!" Ethan barked.

She was already moving, her body a blur of sinew and intent.

Enhanced agility coiled and struck as her spear punched into the same crack above his gauntlet, pinning armor away from the organ.

GRRRRR!

The Ravager convulsed, jaws spasming but Jonas bellowed and set his stance, refusing to yield even an inch.

"Reid," Ethan called; he didn’t have time for an explanation.

But thankfully, Reid understood him.

"I see it," Reid answered, already there.

Time loosened around him, unwinding into clean segments. His rifle rose, and the world narrowed to a thumbprint of orange through shattered plate, a geometry of breath and recoil.

Time seemed to freeze, then Reid squeezed once.

BAM!

The bullet whispered into the fracture and kissed the spike’s crown as if the two had arranged to meet, and it started...

Tick... tock...

"Wind, front arc!" Holt snapped, catching motion at the edge.

The Scavenger Pack had crept nearer again, knives bright with hope and opportunism.

But Mira’s hands lifted and the air flexed and pushed, creating a hard and invisible wall that shoved the Scavengers off-balance and hurled a clutch of creeping F-ranks into their path.

Her face was pale, but she managed to hold them back.

"Two on your left," Holt added, then fired.

A Clip Hound folded mid-spring, as another’s skull snapped back in a mist of black. He pivoted and kept the flanks clean, eyes like glass.

The Ravager tried to pull again, instinct seeking the metal inside of it, but the spike slipped deeper, the organ’s rhythm now a stutter as Jonas added fuel to fire by turning the pull into resistance with his bare hands.

His arms were a horror show now; skin split, muscle exposed in red seams, but his grip stayed iron.

"Die!" He hissed at the beast, voice shredded, "Now!"

The spike detonated.

KABOOM!

The sound was that of overlapping thunderclaps as shock rippled through the Ravager’s chest, cracks racing like frost.

Kara wrenched her spear and tore a plate free while Reid’s second shot threaded the new wound and found soft, pulsing matter.

The magnetic storm finally collapsed.

BUZZ!

Cars and rebar fell, forming a rain of ruin.

Holt dove and dragged Travis behind a half-melted barricade as a hood gave them cover, while Mira moved the wind sideways to swerve a tumbling axle.

Ethan threw himself flat as a steel beam speared the space where his head had been a heartbeat before.

A heartbeat later, and he would have been a dead man.

The Ravager screamed, letting out an awful sound like girders snapping in chorus. It staggered, jaws spasming as Jonas ripped them wider with a bellow that sounded like victory even through agony.

The organ fluttered, failed, and finally went dark.

Then, the beast toppled.

BOOM!

It hit the Kill Road with a quake that rattled viscera. Dust and ash geysered, plates popping from flesh and clattering across cracked asphalt as its quadruple-hinted jaws jerked before going slack.

The Ravager lay twitching, then it finally went still.

"..."

The silence let the achievement sink in.

This was no mere monster, this was no F Rank, this was a bonafide E Rank monster, and yet it was the third of its rank that this group had killed.

E Ranks were not meant to be killed by F Ranks. The demarcation was there for a reason, it was a transcendence into another level of power, and yet, time and time again, despite almost dying multiple times, they survived in the end.

And they didn’t just survive, they killed the predator that came for them.

For a moment, the world was nothing but breathing.

Then Jonas collapsed.

His knees gave way; his ruined arms folded wrong.

He hit the asphalt on his side and curled around the wreckage, teeth chattering with aftershocks.

DING!

~----~

[System Notice!]

[Overdrive Deactivated]

Damage Report: Severe myofibril rupture, tendon microtears, compounded rib stress.

Recovery: Extended; medical intervention recommended.

~----~

Jonas grinned. ’At least I didn’t die’.