NOVEL NEXT 089 - Digging Around
The creature shrieked again, and this time Blake physically felt the wave of sound strike him. It shredded the air, a crackling current of incoherent rage. Blake's HUD flickered, the tactical display collapsing into a blizzard of nonsense data. A wave of vertigo hit him, the floor pitching under his feet. Some of the emergency lights overhead shattered, showering him with shards of glass. The creature lurched, its massive, fused limb whipping forward, trailing tendrils of sickly green growth.
Blake stumbled back, raising Verdict. The muzzle flashed, spitting a burst of Recoil rounds. The projectiles slammed into the creature's armored hide, tearing away small chunks of metal and organic mass. It shrieked again, a higher, sharper note this time, and another wave of distortion ripped through the chamber. With a distinctive crackle and a stabbing pain he felt from his ear down through his jaw, Blake's left eardrum perforated.
He resumed his barrage, emptying the magazine. With his damaged ear the recoil, usually negligible, threatened his balance. The creature recoiled, a gaping hole in its chest where Blake had clustered his shots, but the green tendrils pulsed, already beginning to knit the wound shut. It roared, a sound that vibrated in his bones, and charged. With a grimace, Blake holstered Verdict. He was running too low on his specialty ammunition as it was.
He made a mental note to prioritize expanding his arsenal as soon as possible once he and Kitt were reunited. The next time he had to fight something so massive, he wanted a shotgun. Kitt would have a field day modifying something like a Benelli M4.
Coiled tendrils lashed out at Blake, but with a slight pulse of mana he jumped up and out of the way. He considered his current distance from the creature and mentally added a nice carbine to his list. A .458 SOCOM round was similar in stopping power to a 12-gauge anyway.
Of course, there was no reason he had to limit himself to normal rounds at all. With Kitt making all his weapons and ammunition custom, there was no reason not to go a little crazy. He had always considered the Desert Eagle to be, at best, a great way to turn money into noise. Now, with his enhanced strength, he could fire one all day—and the prohibitive cost of ammunition was a non-factor. Maybe he'd just have Kitt bump Verdict up in caliber.
All of this went through his head as he danced closer and closer to the center of the creature's mass, using [Unfettered Stride] to magically maintain his damaged equilibrium as he moved along the periphery, forcing the creature to turn to face him.
The creature's head was a dented metal dome, crudely welded to its torso—a scrap of ship plating repurposed with no attempt at finesse. No face, just two red glowing orbs where eyes should have been. Thick, sludgy algae clung to its armor plates, dulling their sickly sheen and absorbing the impact of Blake's rounds. Beneath the grime, tendrils of tightly coiled fibrous material—like exposed muscle—throbbed with a faint green glow.
Those were its true limbs, whipping out with startling speed, each tipped with a sharpened point. The beast pushed up from the muck of the floor, its base a shapeless, churning mass that seemed to fuse directly with the deck, leaving no obvious legs. Its bulk slowed its pivot, but the reach of its tendrils spanned a wide arc. Blake kept outside that reach, baiting its strikes, looking for the split second where its mass had not yet caught up to its intent.
He ducked another sweep, the displaced air buffeting him. He'd seen the pattern: the rippling sludge betrayed the creature's moves. The tremor started at its base, racing up the limb just before the strike. It was a hell of a tell, and one Blake was grateful for. He shifted, letting another tendril pass within a few inches. As he leaned back and away, he saw the gantries overhead. He smiled.
Blake pushed off the deck, a burst of power driving him upward. His hands found the cold steel of an overhead gantry. He hauled himself onto the walkway. The world was a distorted thrum through his left ear. Below, a fused limb slammed into a support pillar. A deep thud vibrated up through the steel. The creature couldn't reach him here. At least not with its tendrils.
A length of rebar shot past his head. A jagged plate of hull plating followed, ringing off the gantry next to him. The Amalgam roared, the sound a physical force in the metal under his palms. It began ripping chunks from the surroundings and throwing them.
He put more mana into [Warden's Insight] and was delighted to feel the gentle support of his [Sand in the Gears] title coming to his aid. He examined the steel and titanium support structures. Identified the weak points born from the crash, years of disuse, and the encroachment of the outsider. A section of the gantries directly above the Amalgam was barely holding on. A latticework of corroded supports and compromised beams.
He moved, weaving through a volley of smaller projectiles. A spinning gear tooth scraped hard across his shoulder plate. He reached the weak point and drew his combat knife. A line of faint energy formed along the blade's edge.
He drove the blade into a support beam. Twisted. The steel screamed and tore. He did it again on the next beam. And a third. The high-pitched sound of failing metal cut through the chamber.
Stepping back onto a solid section of the walkway, he raised Verdict and fired. A single recoil round struck the first sabotaged beam.
The beam buckled.
A high tearing sound followed as the entire section peeled away from the ceiling. Tons of steel and decking crashed down. The wreckage pinned two of the Amalgam's thrashing tendrils. The creature roared, its other limbs flailing against the weight. It was trapped. Blake was still smiling.
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He had theorized, and Eland had confirmed, that if he were ever going to continue advancing his [Battlewright] skill he would need to push the boundaries of how he fought. The idea he had was wild, and probably qualified, so he didn't waste too much precious time overthinking it.
Blake leaped from the gantry, channeling mana into [Unfettered Stride]. The power surged through his legs as he pushed off, accelerating toward the pinned creature. He spun midair and brought his arms in close, legs straight, as if he were dropping into water.
Nearing the creature, he closed his eyes, visualizing a shell of force mana around his body—a crystalline armor shaped by pure will. More mana flowed as he refined the construct, sharpening its leading edge into a perfect cone where his feet would strike.
The shell solidified, invisible but undeniable. Blake opened his eyes to see the amalgam's surface rushing up to meet him. Its red orbs flared brighter, registering his approach. A tendril whipped toward him but missed, thrown off by his speed.
He struck. The impact drove through his body like a hammer blow, but the telekinetic cone held. It pierced the creature's outer shell, driving Blake deep into its mass. Corrupted fluid sprayed outward as he penetrated the beast's defenses. The creature's shriek changed pitch, becoming something closer to a human scream.
Blake gritted his teeth against the pain and pushed deeper, letting momentum and gravity carry him down into the horror's innards. As he slowed to a stop, he gathered his mana and intent once more. Throwing his arms out to the sides he poured mana into [Telekinesis] and pushed the walls of his makeshift drop-pod out for almost 2 feet in each direction. The creature roared again, and Blake felt it as his right ear very nearly failed in the same manner as his left. Thankfully, the creature's own bulk was protecting him.
Blake formed two shovel-like constructs around his hands with [Telekinesis], shaping them with the same focus he'd used to create the drop-pod. The force mana responded eagerly, coalescing into broad, curved blades. Next came the part he was most unsure of. He channeled [Phantom Edge] into the constructs, hoping that he wasn't just wasting his energy. Ghostly power rippled along the shovels' edges to his relief and delight, turning them into supernatural cutting tools.
"Alright, let's see what you're made of," Blake muttered, and drove the right blade deep into the mass surrounding him. The creature's flesh parted like butter, spraying viscera that was impossible to place. It didn't quite look like normal blood, but it wasn't anything he'd ever seen come from a plant either. He shuddered. The beast's howl changed pitch, becoming higher and more desperate. Blake kept cutting, methodically carving away chunks of corrupted matter.
The walls of his telekinetic bubble held firm as he worked, keeping the creature's bulk from crushing him. He continually moved it with him as he dug, just in case the creature had additional surprises inside its body. The only areas left exposed were where Blake was cutting. Every few seconds, another violent tremor ran through the amalgam's bulk. Blake ignored them, focused entirely on his grisly excavation. The phantom-edged shovels sliced through metal and membrane alike, revealing layer after layer of foul-smelling matter.
A red glow caught his eye, stronger than the ambient light from above. Three more cuts revealed what he'd been looking for: a crystalline mass the size of a basketball, crackling with corrupt energy. The amalgam's core. Blake brought both constructs down hard against its surface. The crystal resisted, but hairline fractures appeared where the phantom edges struck.
He struck again and again, watching the cracks spread like lightning through the core's structure. The creature's screams reached a fever pitch. With a final, decisive blow, Blake drove both blades deep into the crystal. It shattered with a sound like breaking glass, and the red light within guttered out.
It got very quiet after that, save for the tinnitus in Blake's left ear.
Slowly, he crawled his way out of the gory mess he had made of the creature. As he surfaced, he found the phantom Rax waiting for him.
"You do know you've actually specialized in mental cultivation, right?"
"Yeah," Blake replied, offering the strange devil on his shoulder a predatory grin. "Give me some credit, that was basically all magic. I'm a wizard."
Rax didn't say anything to that, instead just observing the carnage. Blake broke from his usual habits and checked his notifications, finding exactly what he was hoping to find.
[ Experience Gained: Battlewright ]
[ Experience Gained: Battlewright ]
Not just once, but twice, he had earned progress on the skill. Given that it was the backbone of his ability to fight the way he did, he was thrilled.
Next, he checked his navigation, and sure enough, they were practically on top of the next sub-core. Blake hoped it was a coincidence that he had faced such heavy resistance so close to his objective. It would make his job very difficult if the Outsider had begun determining where the remaining sub-cores were.
"That was reckless," Rax finally said. "I'm of two minds about it, honestly."
Blake turned to look at the manifestation. Something about the seriousness of the thing's tone set him off.
"I was made with the parts of you that revel in using your strength," he continued, locking eyes with Blake. "On the other hand, I'm also made with Rax's mind and personality. He would never think to do something like that. Risking himself like that wouldn't even cross his mind."
Blake kept staring at Rax, holding his gaze and trying his hardest to pry more meaning from the thing's words. He was trying to hint at something—to help him, despite the limitations placed on him by the system.
"Thanks for the insight," he said finally, breaking eye contact and moving towards the small room housing the next sub-core. "I'll think on it."
Not just that, he'd get Kitt's opinion too. There was definitely something there in the comparison between himself and Rax. Something that might prove to be the key to liberating Rax's Gnosis and advancing his path.
He just had to figure out what.