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Chapter 27 – Pray you survive this predation
🕑 Added 2024-09-29 16:09:26 +0000 UTCJace’s leg-claws kept him rooted in place, and the Dark Matter Shield kept his body safe as the concussive shockwave was stopped entirely by the barricade. A roiling ball of flame ascended into the sky as the drill’s remains smoked on the bottom of the mining area.
“That was close,” Ollie whispered.
Jace had to deactivate the Dark Matter Cloak or risk falling unconscious. He felt his arms shaking from exhaustion as a dull ache set in from the pressure that had pushed against the shield. Thankfully, no one was looking at him – and the electric fence was disabled. Now’s my chance. Jace got over the dirt berm and into the moat before clambering out the other side and moving as fast as he could away from the area.
<<<--->>>
[Quest Completed: Stop the Black Hole Conclave’s activities on Velenar Prime.]
[Time Limit: 12 days.]
[Reward: Stardust.]
[Sender: Dark Between Stars.]
<<<--->>>
Ollie surged with starlight that flared a bright, luminescent blue and white.
<<<--->>>
[Stardust Acquired: 2000.]
<<<--->>>
“Four levels?” Jace said as he kept moving away as fast as he could.
“Yup! Great job. That’ll throw a wrench in their plans for a good, long time. Enough for the Pulsar Coalition to get some Aspirants and Ascendants here to stop them for good.”
Jace felt a giddy exhilaration despite his tiredness. He, a single guy, had just stopped an operation guarded by at least fifty Aspirants that worked for a hostile faction. It had taken less than ten minutes to do it. Play to your strengths. Sneaking around and running. “Level up.”
“Alright. What do you want?”
“How…how many more Ranks does Dark Energy Mine have?”
“Two. It caps out at Rank 3.”
“That’s two levels,” Jace replied as he slightly slowed his pace – his hip flexors shaking from the exertion of moving the prosthetic legs – and his overall exhaustion. “You know what? Just the two levels.”
“Got it.”
<<<--->>>
Name: Jace Seren (Aspirant, Tier 1)
Power [Class Level.]: Dark Matter [Swordmage 19.]
Skills: Skill Name (Rank) [Evolutions.]: Universal Translation, Environmental Adaptation, Dark Matter Blade (Rank 5) [Rending], Dark Matter Shield (Rank 3) [Reflecting.], Swordmage Stance (Rank 3), Dark Matter Dart (Rank 4), Dark Matter Cloak (Rank 3), Dark Energy Mine (Rank 3), Starfire Stride (1/day)
Stardust: 1305
Equipment: Swordmage blade, Swordmage starting gear, Wirecannon Arm, Dragonclaw Devastation Legs, Runner's Replacement (damaged), messenger bag, sliverscreen, survival knife, survival meals (x62), canteen (x4), medical kit (x2), flint bar, flashlight, 40x arc reactor components, 2x hyperbike components
Boons: None
<<<--->>>
Dark Energy Mine (Rank 2): Increases the duration the trap lasts to 1 hour.
Dark Energy Mine (Rank 3): As Rank 2, Increase radius.
<<<--->>>
Only thirty seconds of anti-gravity still, Jace thought as the messages filtered past his vision. “How big is the new radius?”
“Rank 3 the radius is thirty feet from the point you plant it.”
Damn, that’s a huge area. Jace nodded as he slowed to a walk. He put his arms above his head so he could take in more air. The skies had darkened – not just from the billowing smoke behind him – and the night sky expanded ever onward. He felt his racing heart slow slightly. Well, back to that office-style city. A few days travel to get there, and I can get a lot of Stardust easily.
>>>---<<<
Agh. My head. Brom looked up and saw the enormous fireball in the sky, the smoke trailing up after it…and he felt pain. Looking down, he saw metal shrapnel embedded in his leg. Annoying, he thought as he focused on a Skill.
The metal vanished as it turned to nothingness – accelerated entropy to the point it turned to dust. “Report!” he shouted.
A group of Aspirants who had become Signers for his faction came over, “The drill exploded,” one of the younger ones said with a tremble in his voice.
“No shit,” Brom replied as he stood and dusted himself off. And this smoke is going to prevent me from tracking whatever caused it. He was one of the Dervkork – these new Aspirants had referred to him as a ‘dog person’ when they thought he wasn’t listening. And they had been punished appropriately for their lack of respect. “How bad is the damage?”
“Sir,” One of the engineers replied. “It’s…gone. Down to the bit far below. We’ll need a new one.”
Brom grimaced and nodded, “Was it an accident?”
“I don’t think so,” the engineer replied. “The control console was slashed and shredded – that’s why I couldn’t turn it off.”
“How many did we lose?”
“None, thank oblivion. We just have to get a new drill delivered and operations can resume.”
Brom nodded and sniffed the air. “Search the perimeter. If any other Dervkork’s get a whiff of something off-”
One of his two most trusted Aspirants walked over to him. “I smelled something and sounded the alarm earlier. It was up near the moat entrance.” Brom went with the Aspirant to the location and sniffed the area he pointed to. “That’s the path we went down,” the Aspirant pointed down the moat to the left of the entrance.
But Brom picked up something different. Singed hair. To the right side of the moat. Following the scent, he picked up a trail going off into the night. “I think I’ve found our saboteur,” he said with a grin.
“Shall we chase?” his lesser asked.
“I’ll deal with it. We don’t know when our reinforcements are going to arrive, or when the Pulsar Coalition will get here. Reinforce our positions, put the fence back up.” He turned back to the open plains. “This prey is mine to hunt.”
>>>---<<<
Jace traveled through the night, turning his Dark Matter Cloak (Rank 3) on and off in short bursts to disrupt anyone possibly tracking him down. When morning came, he was bone tired. Finding another burrow was easy now that he knew what type of terrain to look for among the grasslands. All out of water, he thought as he drained the last of his four canteens. “Ollie, are there any water sources on that map?”
“Not on the map,” the Wayfinder replied. “Your best bet would be that city with the office buildings. They should have water tanks on the roof.”
I should’ve gone that path down the creek, but they could have tracked by smell and found me. I made the right call. Just suck it up for now; I can survive another two days without water. Maybe more, since I don’t have legs and an arm.
Jace shoved dirt to the entrance of the small, abandoned burrow – his tarp having been dragged down with his cargo. And his belt. He sighed as he pushed himself back as far as he could. This burrow was slightly deeper than prior ones, and he shut his eyes.
>>>---<<<
Brom followed the scent trail for hours until it faded away. Damnit. Where did it go? He used his large, broad sword and cut away at the grasses. No footprints, he thought as he dug a small divot with his blade. From that point, he slowly spiraled out in a circle, sniffing the whole time.
Hours passed before he picked up the scent again. Clever. Some way to mask yourself. He kept following the trail – having to repeat the process several times. Thankfully, his Ascended Power prevented any need for sleep, food, or drink. He was a merciless hunter.
And his prey was close. He could see buildings on the edge of the horizon. And the scent trail led right to the uniform skyline.
>>>---<<<
Jace made his way through one of the empty buildings. The zombie-things had gone…well, he didn’t know where they went. There were plenty of locked buildings, still, and he planned on going into each of them with Dark Matter Cloak (Rank 3) active, clearing them out, and harvesting a ton of Stardust.
But first, water. He reached the rooftop access and kicked down the door. To his delight, there were several, large, metal barrels strapped in a neat line across the flat top. Going up to the first one, he tapped the side and heard the sloshing of liquid inside. “All right!” Pulling out the survival knife, he stabbed in and made a slit that poured out the clear liquid. Jace caught some in his palm, sniffed it, and then took a sip. Stale, but clean.
Rummaging in his pack he filled up the four canteens and stowed them back in their place. After drinking his fill, he leaned back and scarfed down some of the goop-bag survival meals.
Ollie floated up to his maximum tether height, “It is a nice day today,” he commented. “Great for dealing with hordes of these creatures.”
Jace nodded as he cracked open his second pouch of the meal, “Yeah.” Slurping down the delicious slurry, he smiled, swallowed, and looked up at the otter. “It’ll be easy pickings.” He finished the meal, adjusted the straps on the bag to keep it secure to his back, and drew the sword. “Ready?”
Ollie nodded and saluted, his cute little paw going up to the top of his head. “Yup! Here we go killing again!”
>>>---<<<
Brom arrived at the edge of the city and heard gurgling sounds. The slap of flesh being carved apart and slapping against a surface. The scent of decay and rot reached his nostrils…and the scent of blood and sweat. The same scent he’d been tracking, mixed with the smokey smell from the drill’s explosion. In the city somewhere, eh?
He backed away a few thousand feet and pointed his hand at the space above the city. “Black Hole Summoning!
>>>---<<<
Jace swung his blade back and forth, carving away at the horde that was pushing past him. He had figured the best way to kill these things would be to use the entrance as a natural funnel, keep Dark Matter Cloak (Rank 3) active so they wouldn’t interact with him, and then just slice at neck-level.
That plan had gone out the window rather quickly, as the tide of creatures was enormous. He couldn’t keep up – and they spilled out into the street before grouping up and running one direction or another.
Jace felt an odd tug. His clothes began moving upward. What the hell? He felt his body begin to move upward, and clamped down with his clawed feet to stay put. The Velenian zombie things began to ascend skyward – to a singular point far up in the sky above.
“It is one of the Conclave!” Ollie shouted. “That is a powerful Skill. We can’t outrun it. Use the mine!”
Jace tapped his torso, Dark Energy Mine (Rank 1). He immediately detonated the Skill and felt weightless. “We were followed?”
“Yup!” Ollie had a trace of fear in his voice. “That is not just a black hole from someone with that type of Cosmic Power. That is a Supermassive one. An Ascended Power.”
Jace watched with fear and awe as the buildings, the street, everything around him began to ascend skyward and compress into the singular point. He was standing on a spit of cement and ground as the world was sucked upward into the gravity well before compressing. This is insane! He began scanning each direction. The whole city was being sucked up into the singularity. And the ground under it. Everything except for Jace and the ground in that five-foot radius was sucked skyward.
Ollie shifted to his silvery-outline form and clung to Jace’s shoulder. “Over there!” he shouted over the din of ripping metal and clashing concrete. Jace looked along Ollie’s arm and saw a bulky person wearing some type of armor that looked to be heavier than what Jace was wearing, but lighter than that ice-using General Logistics corpo had on. “That is…a Tier 3 Ascendant,” Ollie whispered.
“What powers?” Jace asked.
Ollie nodded and gulped, “Black Hole Cosmic Power, and Supermassive Ascended Power. Level 25 Berserker, Level 39 Warlord.” There was a massive boom that resounded across the area as the sphere compressed even tighter, crushing all of the metal and resulting in a singular mass of matter.
“You might want to run.”
