Mod Superhero (Book 4 STUB on JULY 30th)

Chapter 4.49 - Venture 14

While the final battle between humanity and the Deep Ones raged along the Atlantic coast, Venture's eyes remained glued to the living room wall as mountains of data scrolled past. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his eyelid had started to twitch. He was equal parts overwhelmed at trying to keep up with TINA's capabilities and filled with pride that she'd come so far.

Of course, those weren't the only emotions he was feeling at the moment. The camera feeds at the top of the screen showed various angles of a heavy drone that had been impaled by spikes of ice three stories tall. A multimillion dollar piece of hardware looked like a piece of trash caught on a fencepost.

That feat represented a concerning jump in power from their prior engagements. Not even groups of the Deep One's mages had pulled off something of this magnitude.

Even more concerning was that this magic appeared to come from a single mage.

Venture knew part of the feat had come from harnessing the remnants of their crystals. The Deep Ones had used a significant amount of resources to make those weapons. So, as troubling as the current display of power was, it was markedly better than the crystals being turned against humanity in their original form.

TINA was already adjusting the swarm's flight and attack patterns to compensate. They had tens of thousands of Fast-Response drones across the world, but less than one thousand heavy drones. In normal times, their numbers were more than adequate for Venture's purposes, but there were 70,000 miles of coastline along the Atlantic ocean. They didn't even have enough heavy drones to support the major cities that were under attack. The loss of each heavy unit was a tragedy of support and resources.

Each heavy drone lost was a city they couldn't protect.

Other camera feeds flashed across the top of the wall screens, each denoting shifts in the battle.

The Deep Ones had already tried using the same giant icicle technique again. TINA had managed to save seventeen heavy drones from destruction. Nine of those sustained superficial damage.

Shock troopers were able to jump onto several other heavy drones. As viscous as their claws were, there was no chance of them penetrating the drones' armor. Even their cameras were reinforced. Still, TINA didn't want to take the chance on losing sensors, so she sacrificed Fast-Response drones to scrape them off the hull.

If only they'd had time to integrate nanomachines into the hull defense. That would've been a much cleaner solution.

Equally, concerning was that the Deep Ones were already adjusting their tactics. They'd stopped using giant icicles and shock troopers. Their enclaves acted as hubs to help the hivemind maintain contact across thousands of miles of ocean. With the enclaves destroyed, the Deep One's psychic link should've been broken or, at the very least, slow enough to treat them as separate groups.

The plan had been to divide and conquer—to test strategies against a group before implementing them across the entire front. But the Deep Ones were still sharing information. They were still just as unified as they had been before.

Venture stroked the stubble on his chin.

"It has to be the crystals," Venture said to TINA. "They were originally made to be weapons."

"Analyzing... Correct. The crystals have near-identical composition to the crystals used in the enclaves."

Venture sighed. "So much for that advantage."

More camera feeds flashed across the top of the screen, showing the Deep Ones and their changing tactics:

Barrages of smaller icicles—these couldn't penetrate the armor of the heavy drones, but could disable small ones.