Chapter 32 Struggling to Survive

The three lava golems minions moved forward, their steps sizzling on the asphalt, radiating a blistering wave of heat.

Arata didn't wait for them to strike. He took a single, solid stance, one hand outstretched. The air in front of his palm compressed into a visible, swirling vortex. 

"Wind Cannon!"

A colossal, invisible fist of pure air pressure slammed into the golems. The force was immense. The molten creatures were ripped from the ground and hurled backwards, sailing clean over the rooftops of the nearest buildings. As they flew, the intense wind rapidly cooled their superheated bodies. By the time they vanished from sight, their forms had darkened to a crusted, brittle rock, already beginning to crumble mid-air.

"Don't get the wrong idea. That wasn't enough to finish them off. My attack just disabled them for a while. They'll absorb more geothermal energy and reform. We don't have much time before more shows up."

As if on cue, another group of golems emerged from a side street. Mirai reacted instantly, her drills screaming forward and punching through them, splattering their forms into sizzling puddles on the ground. But the lava merely pooled and then began to bubble, slowly pulling itself back together, consuming the concrete and soil beneath it to fuel its reformation.

Enji launched a volley of blue fireballs. They impacted with explosive force, popping the reforming golems into molten droplets. But just as quickly, the droplets flowed back together, the golems slowly crawling back towards them, more annoyed than harmed.

Lycoris's voice whispered in his mind.

 "Shota, they are elemental beings sustained by heat and air. Box them in! Make the barrier air-tight! With no oxygen to fuel their internal combustion, they will rapidly cool and solidify. It will at least slow them down."

 Translucent blue barrier walls snapped into existence on all sides of the golems sealing them in a perfect, airless cube. Inside, the golems thrashed for a moment, their glow dimming rapidly. Their movements slowed, their forms darkening from bright orange to a dull, solid black. Within seconds, they were nothing, but motionless, rocky statues trapped in a crystalline box. 

 "Good call, Ultra Extra! This will let us move! Keep at it! We need to reach that facility before it's too late!"

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They sprinted around a corner. The scene was a nightmare.

A makeshift barricade of overturned vehicles and rubble was manned by a platoon of soldiers and a handful of support mages. They were unleashing a volley of cryo-ammunition. Blue-white rounds streaked into the advancing horde of lava golems, each impact flash-freezing patches of molten rock, coating the monsters in a brittle, frosty shell. Dozens of golems had been frozen solid, transformed into grotesque, blackened statues.

But it was a losing battle.

For every golem frozen, two more walked over its immobilized brethren. Worse, the still-molten golems radiated such intense heat that they superheated the frozen ones near them, the golems reactivating to join the advance.

The defensive line was crumbling. A soldier fumbled, dropping his cryo-magazine. 

"I'm out of ammo! I'M OUT! I'M FUCKING OUT! I NEED AMMO!" 

Another man was desperately trying to beat back a golem that had gotten too close with the stock of his rifle. The weapon instantly slagged in his hands, and he fell back with a cry, his gloves smoking. 

"There's too many! We can't hold! We'll die here! They will kill us all! God damn it! I don't want to die! Not today, God damn it, not today! Not like this!"

A support mage was trying to reinforce the barricade with a weak earth wall, but a lava blast shattered it anyway. She stumbled back, sobbing.

 "I want to go home... please, I just want to go home..."

A young soldier was curled in a ball behind a tire, clutching a dog tag and repeating like a mantra, "I can't die here... I have a kid... I can't die here..."

Another soldier fumbled with a cryo-canister, his hands shaking too badly to reload.

 "It's no use... it's no use... they just keep coming... My daughter... her birthday is next week... I promised I'd be there..."

A young communications officer was screaming into her headset, "COMMAND, ANYONE, WE ARE OVERRUN! I REPEAT, WE ARE OVERRUN! THEY'RE IN THE PERIMETER OF THE FACILITY! WE NEED AN IMMEDIATE—" A glob of molten rock slammed into her position, armored transport got filliped cutting her transmission.

Arata planted his feet, arms sweeping out in a wide arc.

Three visible rings of compressed air exploded outwards from him. The first wave staggered the front line of golems. The second lifted them off their feet. The third, most powerful one, hurled the entire advancing horde backward. Lava golems tumbled over each other, crashing through building facades and scattering like bowling pins, their forms skidding and cooling across the asphalt several street blocks away.

Arata shouted, "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS MESS?! On your feet! Reload the heavy machine guns with damn cryo ammunition! Man the damn things and light them up! Crying in a corner won't help you or anyone else! All you can do right now is hang in there! Top Pro Wizards will be on this location in ten! Until then, you HOLD THE DAMN LINE!"

The effect was instantaneous. The sheer force of his command gave them a purpose to cling to. The soldiers who had been scared and hiding behind covers scrambled to their feet. The support mages began channeling mana to reinforce the barricade. They jumped into action, frantically reloading weapons with the glowing blue cryo-canisters.

Mirai slammed her hands onto the asphalt. 

"This will slow them down!"

 Streets in front of the barricade rippled and transformed into a sheet of polished stainless steel, severing the lava golems from the soil they used to fuel their reformation.

Shota didn't wait. He erected massive, sloping barrier walls and began pushing them forward like colossal bulldozer blades. They scraped across the steel sheet, gathering the disoriented golems and crushing them against each other and the surrounding buildings, creating massive, steaming piles of cooling black rock.

Enji snatched a rifle from a fallen soldier and joining the suppressive volley. 

Mirai then raised her hands again, and from the ground, steel barricades and cover walls erupted, giving the soldiers renewed defensive positions and creating choke points to slow any new advance.

"We can't stay here forever! We reinforced this point the best we could, but we need to reach the main building! Other Pro Wizards will come to help them soon! Let's go, team!"

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The desperate sounds of the rearguard action faded behind them as Team Bravo sprinted the final block toward the facility's main entrance. The massive, reinforced gate was scarred and dented, but still holding. The air here was even hotter, thick with powerful magic and the primal heat of the S-tier golems fighting pro wizards in the near distance.

"Bravo to Facility Command, come in! We are at your doorstep, main entrance vicinity. What is your status? I need a sitrep, now!"

A burst of static, then a voice crackled through. 

"Bravo team?! Thank God! This is Chief Supervisor Akane. The perimeter is collapsing. We've lost the eastern and western defensive lines. The Pro Wizards we have on site are containing the breaches, but they're being stretched to their limit. The... the artifact is still secure in the central vault, but the structural integrity of this building won't hold much longer against those things outside. We already took couple of big hits from the kaiju golems!"

The voice dropped, becoming grim.

  "We're prepping the artifact for emergency evacuation. But we cannot move it while the entrance is under direct threat. You need to clear a path and secure an exit corridor. How copy?"

"Solid copy, Akane. We're on it. Be ready to move on my signal. Bravo out."

He turned to his team.

"You heard them. The artifact is still inside. Our job now is to punch a hole through this mess, get it out, and run like hell. This is it."

The massive, scarred entrance of the facility came into view through the smoke. 

A sphere of absolute darkness, silent and swallowing all light, materialized in the air before the main gate, then collapsed in on itself.

The world turned into a nightmare of flying concrete and twisting rebar. The entire front half of the facility disintegrated, blown inward as if a god had taken a bite out of it.

 Shota, instinct driven by a decade of trauma and weeks of brutal training, summoned a dome of blue energy around them before the shockwave hit. The world outside vanished, replaced by the roar of rubble slamming against the barrier, burying them in an instant tomb of darkness and dust.

The Man in the Raincoat stepping out of a lingering void midair. He landed lightly on the newly created plateau of rubble and brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve.

"My, my, I think I overdid it a little this time. Intended just to knock on the front door... and look what happened."

He tapped his chin, looking at the mountain of debris that had once been a secure facility.

 "Now I have to dig through the rubble for that artifact. How tedious. Making haste makes even me make mistakes."

His gaze drifted towards the distant sounds of battle, where the Pro Wizards still fought his golems. 

"My allies might be persistent, but they will not last forever. I need to get this done before the Top 5 arrive... Dealing with Kenji while digging up an artifact from the rubble would be... problematic."