Arcane: Bond Beyond Death (R18)-Chapter 43: Episode 42: Type Nuke

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Bael's eyes darted across the chaotic, smoke-filled corridors, his mind working in overdrive. Every path, every obstacle, every corner was assessed in mere seconds.

"This way!" he barked, leading the charge, weaving through the wreckage like a shadow.

Jinx ran beside him, her breath quick but her eyes wild with excitement. She glanced back, catching sight of the swarm closing in. Without breaking stride, she ripped her steam gun from her side and tossed it to Vi.

"Here! Use it!" Jinx called out, her voice a twisted blend of amusement and urgency.

Vi caught the weapon, her hands trembling slightly. The weight of it—both physical and moral—hit her like a hammer. She looked down at it, then back up at the approaching enforcers.

"Shit..." she whispered under her breath. Her fingers tightened around the trigger.

"Forgive me..." she muttered, barely audible.

Then, she fired.

The gun roared to life, spitting steam-powered death down the corridor. Enforcers dropped one after another, cries of pain echoing through the halls. Each pull of the trigger chipped away at whatever innocence Vi had clung to.

But there was no time to think. No time to regret.

Bael glanced back, satisfied but focused. "Good! Keep moving!"

Jinx cackled beside him, thrilled by the chaos. "That's it, sis! Welcome to the fun part!"

Vi didn't respond. She kept shooting. She had crossed a line—and there was no turning back.

They made their ways towards one corridor that seemed safe and berged into the first room they found. They locked the door and found out it was Jayce and Viktor's laboratory.

"I know this place..." Bael muttered under his breath, his voice low but certain.

Vi and Jinx looked at him, confused.

"Jayce and Viktor's lab," he continued, his tone edged with both familiarity and urgency.

Vi blinked, realization dawning on her. Jinx raised an eyebrow, smirking.

"Ohhh... The nerd factory, huh?" Jinx snorted, trying to mask her unease with humor. "Maybe we can snag something pretty before we blow it all up."

As Vi asked how he knew the place, Bael froze.

"I... I really don't know..." His voice was low, distant—like he was trying to pull something from the depths of his mind, but nothing surfaced.

Before anyone could press further, a loud THUD against the door jolted them all. Then another. Heavy boots, enforcers shouting commands—they were trying to break in.

"Shit!" Vi cursed, raising the steam gun Jinx had given her. Jinx grabbed one of her grenades, a manic grin starting to creep back onto her face despite everything.

Bael snapped out of his daze, his mind switching gears. He rushed to the window, peering out. His heart sank.

"No way out... We're too high up... They've boxed us in."

Another slam on the door—it was splintering.

Bael turned back to the lab, his eyes darting over the hextech cores, tools, prototypes—potential everywhere.

"Hold them off... Just for a little." His voice was sharp, commanding. "I can make something—with all this—I can flip the damn tables over!"

Vi nodded, bracing herself, while Jinx let out a giddy laugh, fingers twitching over the grenade's pin.

"Ohhh, baby, you better make it fast!" Jinx sang out, her eyes wild, as the door threatened to burst open.

Bael tore through the shelves like a man possessed, grabbing every ingredient he recognized—volatile powders, shimmering liquids, metal shards—anything that could explode, burn, or build. His hands moved fast, instinct guiding him as if he'd done this a hundred times before.

Then he saw them—refined hexcrystals. Polished, glowing with concentrated power. He snatched them up without hesitation, their potent energy humming against his fingertips.

But then—his gaze locked onto something else.

A device—sleek, intricate, unlike anything he'd seen before. Runes etched into its surface, faintly pulsing with magical energy.

A rune printer.

He paused, breath hitching. He didn't know exactly how it worked—but he knew what it was. He'd heard whispers. Piltover's cutting-edge tech—able to carve enchantments onto weapons, armor, even bodies, enhancing them with power beyond imagination.

"Holy shit..." he murmured under his breath.

The door rattled again—splinters flying as enforcers hammered it with brute force.

No time to think.

He grabbed the rune printer, shoving it into his pack along with the hexcrystals and reagents.

"Vi, Jinx—just a little more!" he barked. "I got what we need!"

Jinx cackled through the tension, cocking her gun. "Better make it count, my man—'cause they're about to get in, and I'm feelin' trigger-happy!"

Vi gritted her teeth, nerves tightening—but she stood firm beside her sister.

Bael's eyes burned with determination.

Time to change the game.

Bael's hands moved with feverish precision. He slammed the hexcrystals into the rune printer's chamber, locking them in place. Their glow intensified, pulsing with raw, untapped energy. Without hesitation, he poured the chemical mixture he'd just concocted into the printer's infusion chamber—a volatile cocktail of catalysts, accelerants, and stabilizers.

"Come on... work, you beautiful bastard," Bael muttered under his breath.

The rune printer activated, its engravings flaring to life as it blasted the hexcrystals with concentrated arcane energy. The crystals vibrated rapidly, their atoms starting to separate under the relentless bombardment. A faint, high-pitched whine filled the room as radiation began to bleed from the chamber.

The liquid absorbed every trace of that energy, growing denser—darker. A heavy, unnatural heat radiated from it, and the air grew thick, almost suffocating.

Bael gritted his teeth, knowing exactly what he was creating.

A bomb.

Not just any bomb—this was devastation in liquid form. The radiations were stockpiling, compacting into an unstable mass of arcane volatility. The pressure built with every passing second, reaching critical levels.

One click.

One fucking click... and everything goes up.

"This is it... My first ever Type Nuke!... HOLY SHIT!" Bael was amazed by what he just pulled off. In just a few minutes, thanks to his ingeniosity and high-quality ingredients, he managed to create a tool of unprecedented mass destruction.

Bael slammed his mechanical hand down onto the rune printer, his fingers shifting with practiced precision. The gears within whirred as a red-hot boom-boom tattoo scorched itself onto the device.

The doors burst open—enforcers flooded in, rifles raised, eyes locked onto the trio.

"DON'T SHOOT! HOLD YOUR FUCKING SELVES!" Bael roared, voice cutting through the tension like a blade.

The enforcers froze, fingers twitching over triggers, uncertain. Their eyes darted to the rune printer, seeing the pulsating, unstable hexcrystal chamber—feeling the raw heat radiating from it.

"You know what this is, right?" Bael's voice dropped into a dangerous growl. "One wrong move... and I take this whole fucking city with me."

A heavy silence followed. Sweat dripped down foreheads. Nobody dared breathe too loud.

"...Stand down."

The enforcers hesitated but lowered their weapons slightly. Mel stepped forward, gaze drilling into Bael.

"What the hell have you done?" The cold voice asked.

Bael met her eyes without flinching. "Leveled the playing field."

Jinx giggled lowly, clutching Pow-Pow Eta, licking her lips. Vi was tense, heart racing, but her eyes flicked between Bael and Mel, recognizing the dangerous game unfolding.

A deadly standoff. One wrong move—everything burns.

Mel was not having it.

"As if you'd blow this place and risk hurting your little blue fury over here. Take the two girls." Mel orders her enforcers.

The moment they moved, the boom-boom tattoo glowed ominously, threatening to explode any moment and trigger the Type Nuke.

Bael's eyes never wavered as he locked onto Mel.

"You don't want to mess.... With US..." Bael said, his voice cold but carrying a weight of finality. "What you're looking at is a modified hexcrystal bomb. It's not just any regular weapon. It's an energy converter—takes the raw power from those crystals, supercharges them, and amplifies them into a chain reaction. In other words, a Type Nuke. Release us, and I'll leave it useless."

The enforcers exchanged nervous glances, but Mel stood her ground, unflinching. Her gaze flickered to the device, calculating, weighing her options, but the anger and fear in her eyes were clear.

Mel's jaw tightened. She couldn't afford to let Bael get the upper hand, but the threat in his voice, the calm, undeniable confidence, sent a cold chill down her spine.

Jinx, standing beside Bael, seemed almost delighted by the tension, her twisted smile growing wider. "Ooooh, that sounds so fun," she giggled. "Don't listen to him, Mel. You can't do anything to stop it. Unless you wanna blow up with the rest of them."

Bael ignored her, keeping his focus entirely on Mel. "Here's the deal, Mel," he continued. "You let us go, all three of us. You get to keep your precious city, and we'll just disappear into the shadows. But if you don't, we take everything—your precious Piltover, your power, your people, all gone in the blink of an eye."

Mel's eyes flashed with fury, but her lips remained sealed, struggling to keep control of the situation.

Then suddenly, the door creaked open, and Jayce rolled in, his wheelchair squeaking with each move. His once-immaculate appearance had faded, his posture slumped, his eyes dull.

"Bael..." His voice was low, tinged with pity. There was no anger, no defiance, just sorrow and a strange sense of understanding.

Bael's eyes flicked toward Jayce, his expression unreadable. For a moment, there was silence between them—two men who had once stood on opposite sides, now faced with something neither of them had anticipated.

"Jayce," Bael said, his voice still as cold as ever, but tinged with a hint of something darker. "Look at you. You're a shadow of what you used to be. Broken. Pathetic. Was all of it worth it?"

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"I should be thanking you, had you not invented Hextech I would have never achieved this level of power." Bael points at the Type Nuke.

"Look at that, a weapon capable of erasing Piltover if my emotions get out of control. This much hold of the human life makes me a god at the moment." Bael spoke.

Jayce's gaze fell, his head lowering slightly. He didn't have the strength to argue, to defend himself.

"I didn't want it to be like this," Jayce muttered, his eyes meeting Bael's. "I thought... I thought I could save this place. But I didn't realize the cost. The price of all this progress... it's the birth of monsters like you..."

Bael stepped closer, his gaze sharp, cold as steel. "By monster, you mean a segregated Zaunite who was left to rot in hell while you had your time to shine? If so, then YES. I AM a monster... Atleast I used to." Bael said.

"Now... I'm not a monster anymore, as I'm not left to rot like ten years ago... I don't care what it takes, even if it means killing millions of Piltover citizens in a single blast, I'll have my moment of glory... whatever it takes." Bael exclaimed.

Mel watched the interaction with an expression of disbelief, still holding her composure but clearly shaken by the weight of Bael's words.

"Enough," she snapped, her tone desperate, yet strained. "We're past this. You think we can just walk away from everything? From all the blood, all the lives lost?"

Bael's eyes locked onto hers, his voice steady and resolute. "Yes. You can. If you're willing to let go of your pride and your obsession. Otherwise, you'll be the ones to finish what's left of this city."

In that moment, Jayce seemed to sink further into his wheelchair, as though the weight of the world had become too much for him to bear. There was no fight left in him, no will to stop Bael, only the overwhelming truth that all of this had been inevitable from the start.

Tension was its peak. Is Bael really going to destroy all Piltover now? None have a single idea...