The mushroom cloud was still rising when the first soldiers reached the crater's edge.

  Ralph arrived first, his Humvee screeching to a halt at what used to be the factory's loading dock. He kicked open the door and stepped out, his eyes going wide at the devastation.

  "Holy shit," he breathed.

  The crater was massive. Fifty meters deep at least, the edges still glowing with residual heat. The stone at the bottom had fused into black glass that reflected the flames still burning around the perimeter. Smoke billowed upward in thick columns, carrying the smell of cooked meat and something else. Something chemical and wrong.

  Axel's Humvee pulled up beside Ralph's. The Major General climbed out, already barking orders into his radio. "All units, converge on my position! Medical teams on standby! I want a full perimeter established in five minutes!"

  Steven emerged from the third vehicle with Daniel, Kai, Ash, and Jack. All of them stared at the crater in various states of shock.

  "The doctor actually did it," Daniel said quietly. "He turned himself into a bomb."

  "And killed every cultist in the—" Steven started, then stopped.

  Because something was moving in the crater.

  Down in the blackened glass, in the center of the devastation, shapes were stirring. Large shapes. Writhing shapes that shouldn't have survived what just happened.

  "Contact!" someone shouted from the perimeter. "We have movement in the crater!"

  The first creature crawled out of the smoke.

  It was one of the transformed sacrifices. The Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. Its body was a mass of black tentacles, each one tipped with a mouth full of teeth. Its trunk of fused flesh dragged across the glass, leaving trails of ichor. Where its head should have been was a flower of eyes and mouths, all of them screaming in harmony.

  Then another emerged. And another. All six of the transformed sacrifices, their bodies charred and burned but somehow still moving.

  And behind them came the cultists.

  Not three thousand. Most had died in the blast, vaporized or crushed or burned beyond recognition. But hundreds had survived. Eight hundred sixty-three, to be exact, all of them climbing out of the crater like corpses rising from a grave.

  At the front of the group were four figures that radiated power so intense it made the air shimmer.

  Wilhelm stepped forward first, his body a ruin. His robes were burned away, exposing skin blackened and cracked like charcoal. His bandaged stump had cauterized, the flesh melted together. But he was walking. Moving. His eyes burning with fanatical fury.

  Beside him was Margarethe, both of her mouths opened wide, the vertical one down her throat screaming in harmony with the horizontal one. Her body had swollen obscenely, her abdomen distended like something was growing inside.

  The other two were Brother Klaus, the massive man with goat eyes, and Sister Helena, the beautiful woman with filed teeth and a split tongue. 3 of them at Mythical rank. 1 S rank. All four of them alive.

  "BLASPHEMER!" Wilhelm's voice boomed across the crater, magnified by some eldritch power. "YOU DARE DEFILE THE MOTHER'S SACRED RITE?!"

  Ralph stepped to the edge of the crater, his hands beginning to glow with arcane light. Runes appeared in the air around him, floating and rotating like planetary orbits.

  "You're the ones who are defiling things," Ralph called back.

  "Worshipping Outer Gods. Sacrificing people. Trying to open dimensional gates. You're all completely insane."

  "INSANE?!" Margarethe screamed, both mouths working in unison.

  "WE ARE THE CHOSEN! THE BLESSED! THE MOTHER'S FAVORITE CHILDREN!"

  "You're breeding grounds for parasites," Axel said, stepping up beside Ralph. His body began to change, muscles swelling, veins bulging, his eyes turning red.

  "That's all you are. Incubators for things that should never exist."

  The temperature around Axel spiked. His aura manifested, a crimson field that made the air itself feel heavier. The Tyrant of the Red Horizon was awakening.

  Wilhelm laughed. A sound like bones breaking.

  "You understand nothing! The Mother grants us eternal life! Endless transformation! We will inherit the earth when She arrives!"

  "You'll inherit nothing but a mass grave," Steven said, his hand moving to his eyepatch. The blue glow beneath it was already visible.

  "Because we're about to bury every last one of you."

  The cultists behind the four leaders began chanting. Eight hundred voices raised in unison, speaking those same eldritch syllables that predated language. The six Dark Young added their voices, their multiple mouths screaming in harmony.

  "CHILDREN OF THE MOTHER!" Wilhelm roared, raising his one remaining hand.

  "SHOW THESE UNBELIEVERS THE GLORY OF OUR FAITH! FOR THE THOUSAND YOUNG!"

  "FOR THE THOUSAND YOUNG!" the cultists screamed back.

  Axel turned to the five hundred soldiers spread out along the crater's edge. His voice carried across the battlefield, amplified by rage that had become tangible force.

  "ALL UNITS! THESE CULTISTS TRIED TO SUMMON AN OUTER GOD INTO OUR WORLD! THEY SACRIFICED INNOCENT PEOPLE! THEY THREATEN EVERYTHING WE'VE SWORN TO PROTECT!"

  He drew his weapon, a massive cleaver that looked more like a slab of sharpened metal than a proper blade.

  "SHOW THEM WHAT HAPPENS TO MADMEN WHO PLAY WITH FORCES THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND! NO MERCY! NO PRISONERS! KILL THEM ALL!"

  "SIR, YES SIR!" Five hundred voices roared back.

  Wilhelm slammed his stump into the ground.

  The blackened glass cracked. Then shattered. Roots erupted from beneath, thick and black and pulsing like arteries. They spread across the crater floor in seconds, growing and branching and creating a carpet of writhing biomass.

  "Profane Fertility," Wilhelm intoned, his voice reverberating with eldritch power. "Let the battlefield become a garden. Let the corpses become seeds. LET THE MOTHER'S BLESSING RAIN UPON US!"

  The roots began to pulse. Growths appeared along their length, swelling like tumors, splitting open to reveal—

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  "FIRE!" Ralph screamed.

  Five hundred weapons opened up at once.

  Gunfire tore across the crater. Bullets ripped through cultists, through roots, through the Dark Young's tentacles. Blood sprayed. Bodies fell. The air filled with the sound of automatic weapons, the screaming of the wounded, the inhuman shrieks of the transformed.

  But the roots kept growing.

  Margarethe's body convulsed. Her abdomen split open, not with blood but with black ichor. Umbilical tendrils shot out from the wound, dozens of them, each one seeking the corpses of fallen cultists.

  "Lactation of Black Ichor!" she screamed.

  "FEED MY CHILDREN! GROW STRONG ON THE FLESH OF THE FAITHFUL!"

  The tendrils latched onto the dead. The bodies began to swell, bones cracking, skin splitting, transforming into new horrors.

  "Mages, burn that shit!" Axel roared, charging down into the crater. His cleaver swept in a wide arc, releasing a shockwave of crimson energy that carved through a dozen cultists. "Don't let her spawn more!"

  Ralph raised his hands. The runes around him flared bright.

  "Law Inscription," he said, his voice carrying an authority that made reality itself listen.

  "In this space, organic growth shall cease."

  The air shimmered. The roots stopped spreading. The bodies stopped transforming. For a moment, Margarethe's power was nullified.

  "NO!" she screamed. "YOU DARE REWRITE THE MOTHER'S BLESSING?!"

  "I dare rewrite whatever I want," Ralph said coldly. "That's what it means to be an Archon."

  Wilhelm snarled and gestured. The ground erupted again, this time farther from Ralph's zone of control. "Thousand Young Eruption!"

  Fissures opened across the battlefield. From them poured creatures. Clawed spawn with too many joints. Tentacled feeders with lamprey mouths. Screeching larvae the size of dogs. They swarmed toward the soldiers, overwhelming by sheer number.

  "Defensive positions!" Daniel shouted, firing his rifle into the swarm. "Don't let them flank us!"

  Kai, Ash, and Jack formed up, their weapons blazing. Kai had his rifle on full auto, hosing down spawn as fast as they emerged. Ash threw grenades, the explosions sending chunks of flesh flying. Jack was screaming while he fired, terror and adrenaline mixing into pure survival instinct.

  "THEY JUST KEEP COMING!" Kai yelled.

  "SHOOT FASTER THEN!" Ash yelled back.

  Steven stepped forward, his eyepatch coming off. The blue eye beneath glowed like a star. Frost spread from his feet in a wave, freezing the ground, the spawn, everything within twenty meters.

  "Eternal Polar Sovereign," Steven said quietly. "Temperature control, absolute zero."

  The frozen spawn shattered like glass when bullets hit them.

  But more kept coming. Wilhelm's spawn cap was two hundred, and he was pushing it. Elite spawn began to emerge, larger, stronger, covered in bony plates that deflected small arms fire.

  "Heavy weapons!" Ralph commanded. "Take out the elites!"

  Rocket launchers fired. Explosions rocked the crater. One of the elite spawn went down, its body blown apart. But the backlash hit Wilhelm, the psychic feedback making him stagger.

  "BLASPHEMERS!" Wilhelm screamed, blood pouring from his nose. "YOU WILL DROWN IN THE MOTHER'S CHILDREN!"

  Brother Klaus charged into the soldier lines. The massive man moved with speed that shouldn't have been possible for his size. His fists, covered in chitinous growths, smashed through a soldier's skull. Then another. Then three more in rapid succession.

  "Die for the Mother!" Klaus roared. "Die and become Her garden!"

  A squad of B-rank hunters engaged him, weapons and skills flashing. Klaus took damage but kept moving, his Mythical durability letting him tank hits that would have killed anyone else.

  Sister Helena moved through the battlefield like a serpent, her split tongue tasting the air. When she found wounded soldiers, she descended on them, her filed teeth tearing into flesh, draining their blood and leaving behind infected wounds that sprouted growths.

  "Blood Orchard," she hissed. "Bleed for Her. Grow for Her. BECOME ONE WITH THE MOTHER'S BLESSING!"

  The wounded soldiers screamed as their injuries split open, black tendrils emerging from the wounds.

  "Medics!" someone yelled. "We need medics!"

  But the medics were already overwhelmed. Casualties were mounting. The cultists fought with suicidal fervor, throwing themselves at the soldiers with complete disregard for their own lives.

  "FOR THE MOTHER!" they screamed as they died. "THE THOUSAND YOUNG WILL INHERIT!"

  "You won't inherit anything!" a soldier screamed back, putting a burst of rounds through a cultist's chest. "You're all just crazy! Insane! DEAD!"

  The cultist smiled as he died, blood bubbling from his lips. "The Mother... loves us... we are... blessed..."

  Axel carved through the battlefield like a force of nature. His cleaver split cultists in half, shattered spawn, left trails of carnage in his wake. His Dominion of Wrath expanded, a crimson dome that made every enemy inside feel crushing pressure.

  "You want to worship monsters?!" Axel roared, his voice no longer quite human.

  "I'll show you a real monster!"

  He activated Cataclysmic Bloodstorm.

  Every swing of his blade released shockwaves. The air itself became weaponized, compressed into cutting edges that tore through flesh and bone. Cultists exploded into red mist. Spawn were bisected mid-leap. The ground cracked from the sheer force of his strikes.

  Wilhelm watched his followers die and laughed.

  "YES! YES! MORE BLOOD! MORE DEATH! THE BATTLEFIELD GROWS FERTILE!"

  The roots pulsed stronger. The corpses began to sprout, even outside Ralph's zone of control. Arms and legs twitched. Eyes opened in places eyes shouldn't be. The dead were becoming something else.

  "He's using the casualties as fertilizer!" Daniel realized.

  "The more we kill, the stronger he gets!"

  "Then we stop killing!" Ralph snapped. "We incapacitate!"

  "HOW?!" someone yelled back. "THEY'RE NOT SURRENDERING!"

  It was true. The cultists fought to the death, every single one. They didn't retreat. Didn't falter. They charged into gunfire with smiles on their faces, screaming praises to their Mother as bullets tore them apart.

  "We are blessed!" they cried.

  "We are chosen! Death is transformation! Death is rebirth! THE MOTHER WELCOMES US HOME!"

  "You're all fucking insane!" a soldier screamed, his rifle clicking empty. He drew his sidearm and kept firing. "There's no god! There's no blessing! You're just dying for nothing!"

  "NOTHING?!" A cultist lunged at him, arms spread wide. "WE DIE FOR EVERYTHING! WE DIE FOR THE MOTHER! WE DIE FOR THE FUTURE! WE DIE—"

  The soldier shot him in the head. The cultist's body hit the ground, still smiling.

  Margarethe's abdomen distended further. The skin stretched to translucency, showing shapes moving inside. Dozens of shapes. Hundreds.

  "I can feel them growing," she moaned, both mouths speaking in ecstasy. "The Mother's children. They hunger. They want to be born. They want to FEED!"

  Ralph's runes flared. "Law Inscription: Internal growth is—"

  "TOO LATE!" Margarethe screamed.

  She activated her ultimate.

  The Grand Birthing.

  Her body exploded.

  Not with gore, but with life. Umbilical tendrils erupted from her torso, dozens becoming hundreds, each one pulsing with bioluminescent light. They spread across the battlefield like a web, latching onto every corpse, every wound, every drop of blood.

  The dead began to rise.

  Not as zombies. As something worse. Their flesh restructured, bones broke and reformed, organs became weapons. They stood up as fully-formed brood spawn, their eyes vacant but their bodies deadly.

  "HOLY SHIT!" Kai screamed, backing away from a soldier who'd been killed minutes ago and was now standing up with tentacles growing from his mouth. "OUR OWN DEAD ARE TURNING!"

  "BURN THE BODIES!" Axel roared. "DON'T LET HER CONVERT THEM!"

  But it was too late for dozens of casualties. They rose as spawn, adding to Wilhelm's swarm, attacking their former comrades with new mouths and claws.

  The battlefield descended into chaos.

  Five hundred soldiers versus eight hundred cultists and hundreds of spawn. The crater had become a meat grinder, both sides taking catastrophic casualties, neither side willing to retreat.

  And above it all, Wilhelm and Margarethe laughed, their voices mixing with the screams of the dying and the chanting of the faithful.

  "THE MOTHER SEES!" Wilhelm cried. "THE MOTHER APPROVES! THIS SLAUGHTER IS BEAUTIFUL!"

  Ralph's hands moved in complex patterns, weaving spells faster than thought. "Starfall Manuscript!"

  The sky above the crater lit up. Constellations appeared, ancient patterns that predated recorded history. Each star descended as a lance of pure magic, different colors, different elements, all of them hammering into the cultist lines.

  Explosions. Ice. Lightning. Fire. Force.

  Dozens of cultists died instantly. The spawn were blown apart. Even the elite spawn staggered under the assault.

  But Wilhelm just laughed harder.

  "MORE!" he screamed. "GIVE US MORE BLOOD! MAKE THE GARDEN GROW!"