Burning Starlight [Science-Fantasy Cultivation LitRPG] (Book 1 Complete!)

Blake broke from cover. He moved in a low crouch, a blur of motion across the tiled floor. His eyes darted, searching for the shooter, for any hint of movement beyond the static displays of mannequins and tarnished jewelry. He sprinted toward the next kiosk, a shattered jewelry store display, hoping its heavier construction would offer more substantial protection.

He ducked behind the kiosk just as a low hum vibrated through the air. The ghostly threads suddenly animated, whipping out from the floor and shadows. They lashed around his leg, biting into his suit with surprising strength.

No hesitation. One clean slash with Fang's phantom edge and the filaments recoiled like he'd touched them with fire.

Movement caught his eye. Dozens more threads stretching across the open space, snaking toward the debris field. A heavy metal bench rose from the floor. A mannequin arm—metal. A broken planter. All hanging suspended for one weightless moment, defying gravity.

Then they were hurled at him.

The world dissolved into a storm of incoming vectors. Instinct screamed move, a primal command to dive, to scramble for any solid object. But the scream was a distant echo, drowned out by a cascade of pure information.

The bench was about one-ten and headed for the wall three meters left. It would impact at about waist height. The mannequin arm—solid metal for some ungodly reason—was coming in at a low angle that he'd need to avoid. The planter would likely shatter, creating dangerous fragments, but his armor should be more than up to that challenge. That just left the reinforcements. He'd worry about them soon.

That was the feeling Blake sought when he had decided to cultivate his Mind, despite the temptations of strengthening his body first. It was like Major Steiner always said: "Information is Ammunition."

Warden's Insight laid the physical reality bare, a schematic of mass and velocity. Unfettered Stride overlaid it with paths of potential, glowing lines of force showing where a foot could pivot, where momentum could carry him, where gravity was a tool. His Quicksilver Mind churned it all into a single, perfect sequence of actions.

Blake moved. It felt like a formality. His mind had already run the calculations, already solved the problem; his body just had to catch up. Mana flowed into [Unfettered Stride]. He pictured the precise vector, the lowered friction, the perfect angle. His body obeyed, a single, magically-assisted foot-first slide. He shot under the thrown bench as it slammed into the wall.

A careful burst of [Telekinesis]. He flipped, arcing high enough to clear the metal mannequin arm as it whistled past. He twisted in the air, landing on his feet, then threw himself over the planter. It hit the floor with a crash, exploding into shards as predicted. Ceramic pieces struck his armor, but Blake remained untouched. He rolled, springing to his feet, ready to fight. He was a single long stride from two cutters, their bone blades glinting as they shuffled closer, drawn by the racket.

Their surprise was a palpable thing, a momentary freeze in their grotesque forms. It was all the time he needed.

Verdict was in his hand, the motion of drawing and firing a single, seamless act. The shot struck the first cutter's primary leg joint. The round ripped through ossified plating, pulverizing bone beneath. The monster stumbled, its grotesque arm flailing wildly, balance gone.

The shot echoed, a flat crack swallowed by the cavernous space. Blake didn't wait for the result. He was all motion, in a constant state of becoming, never being. He couldn't stay still, not with the sniper in play. He was already pivoting away, the crippled cutter a momentary obstacle for its twin. The second creature charged, its bone scythes carving arcs through the dead air.

He flowed under the sweeping attack, the razored bone hissing inches from his visor. Verdict came up, barking once, twice. The rounds punched into the creature's chest, staggering it. It wasn't enough. The thing was all hate and momentum.

As Blake sidestepped, a line of fire seared across his left shoulder. The impact was a physical blow, spinning him half-around. Shards of his combat suit sprayed away. Pain, white-hot and immediate, flooded his nerves. The sniper. The shooter was either damn good or damn lucky.

Blake hoped it was luck.

He grit his teeth, turning the stumble into a controlled spin. He came up inside the cutter's reach, too close for its wide swings. He lodged Verdict into the creature's jaw and fired, then put another through its neck and spine as it staggered away missing part of its skull.

The other cutter was rallying, and the sniper was no doubt about to fire again, so Blake sprinted towards the next storefront. If he could get a wall between himself and the shooter he could swap mags. Displacer rounds would kill these things, but he only had 2 magazines worth total. He had double that in Recoil rounds, and those could be similar devastating if applied correctly.

Blake didn't slow as he reached the shop, just plowed through the glass of the storefront and bled his momentum by pivoting and slamming his back directly into the far wall. He swapped mags with almost unconscious ease, tracking the cutters the entire time. They were close behind him, about to enter the store.

Blake considered his options and decided that he'd take a melee engagement inside the walls of the store, rather than trying to take them in the open under sniper fire. He holstered Verdict and drew Fang. He really needed to get into the habit of keeping it in his off-hand at all times. Proper form decreed he needed two hands on his pistol to fire, but his increased strength and control made shooting one-handed a non-issue. He added it to his list: just one more thing to work on.

Mana surged into his blade again, but he didn't bother with a sword construct this time—just a [Phantom Edge] to help him seal the deal up close. The first cutter approached and brought its scythes down in a desperate, clumsy chop. Blake stepped into the attack, too close to be cut by the scythes. He used his left forearm to shove one of the cutter's tentacles away. The other tentacle snagged his right wrist. It tried pulling Blake's arm closer. He let it.

He drove the glowing point of Fang upward, into the creature's stomach. He met almost no resistance as it punched through exposed muscle and into the thing's guts. He gave the weapon a vicious tug upward, opening the stomach all the way up to the ribs.

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Gore poured from the cutter. Blake twisted his wrist to grab hold of the tentacle and then poured mana into his Strength attribute, kicking viciously at the thing's chest with his mana-reinforced strength. The tentacle ripped free from the cutter's chest, and it landed with a wet thud, a ruined mess of flesh and bone. Between the headshot and the gut wound, it would bleed out in short order, just like the first cutter Blake had killed. Its twin, with the damaged leg, dragged itself into the store. It moved slowly, its bone scythes lightly scraping the tiled floor.

Blake didn't wait to see what came next. Waiting was a luxury for a different kind of fight.

He didn't even raise a hand. He focused, gathering a knot of pure telekinetic force in his mind and projecting it outward. A targeted, invisible shove—a solid wall of pressure—slammed into the cutter's ruined leg. The joint, already compromised, gave way completely. The creature pitched forward, its scythe-like arms clattering uselessly against the floor as it went down face-first.

Before the cutter finished falling, Blake was on it. Two quick strides and he drove his knee into the center of its back, crushing it against the floor. The creature bucked wildly under him, desperate. Tentacles whipped from its back, slapping his armor, then wrapping around his arms and torso. They constricted with unexpected power, pulling tight against him.

Blake ignored them. The tentacles were just noise. Background static. They weren't what would kill him.

He grabbed the bony ridge over the creature's eye sockets and yanked its head back. The neck was thick. Corded. He set the point of his knife at the base of the skull. Probed. Found the soft gap between vertebrae.

He drove the blade in and pulled. Sliced through flesh and muscle. Then the hard, grating resistance of the spine. A wet pop as the bone severed. He followed the curve of the neck, and the head came free in his hand.

He tossed it aside. It rolled into a corner, leaving a dark trail.

The body went limp, then spasmed. Tentacles constricted around his limbs in a final, dying reflex. He sliced through them, [Phantom Edge] shearing the rubbery flesh. He shoved himself off the twitching corpse and stood.

It might be enough, but he wouldn't risk it. Not after the big guy got back up.

He knelt again and drove his knife between two of the thing's vertebrae. He put his weight on the handle, forcing the point as deep as it could go. He worked the blade, sawing through bone until he felt it part.

From there it was easy. He cut the torso in half, separating it from the legs. The three pieces lay still. Dark fluid pooled on the pale tile. This one wasn't moving again.

He stood in the quiet, the only sound his own breathing. The phantom edge on his blade dissipated, the mana receding. The pain in his shoulder was a steady, angry throb.

Two down. Now he just had to find the sniper.

He holstered Fang and drew Verdict, the weight of the weapon a familiar comfort in his hand. Even as he did he chided himself for not keeping Fang out. It'd take a while to work that one out. He took a steadying breath, then another, letting the air out slowly, calming the frantic spike of adrenaline.

He crept to the edge of the shattered storefront, using the frame as partial cover. He didn't peek. Peeking was for amateurs. Instead, he sank lower, his back sliding down the wall until he was in a crouch. He needed a target. Something to draw fire that wasn't him. His gaze swept the trashed interior of the shop. Clothing racks lay toppled. Shards of glass littered the floor like dirty snow. In the corner, a female mannequin, armless and headless, lay on its side.

Perfect.

He reached out with his mind, a tendril of telekinetic force wrapping around the plastic torso. He focused, mana feeding the subtle push. The mannequin torso slid across the floor, scraping softly. Carefully, he pulled it up to the broken window. Once it was in position, he activated [Warden's Insight] and placed the entirety of his focus on the mannequin.

He gave it a little jerk, a quick lift and drop, mimicking the lurch of a wounded person trying to get up. During that jostling, the mannequin left the safety of the store's walls.

A sharp thwip and the plastic torso exploded, sending white fragments scattering across the tiles. [Warden's Insight] analyzed the entry and exit wounds, [Quicksilver Mind] worked the geometry and fed the result to him in the form of a scarlet line in the air—a perfect vector tracing the projectile's path back to its origin.

As quickly as it appeared, Blake felt the visual fading, and he held onto it tightly, trying to get his HUD to trace the line his abilities had created. It took a few seconds, but the nanites that governed his HUD caught on to his intention and created an overlapping line. He sighed and let go of the mental construct.

Blake didn't need any additional reasons to miss his wingwoman, but it was an enlightening exercise. Kitt had said one of the reasons the Tylwith made her was to serve as a bridge between magic and machine, and Blake could see the value. She made throwing arbitrary information up on his HUD seem effortless.

Still, he had the trajectory now, which meant it was time for action. He stepped into the street, confident he had a few seconds before the creature would fire again based on its previous pattern of fire. His gaze followed the vector back to its origin. There, perched eighty yards away atop a dilapidated clothing stall, was the source.

It was a husk, like the flamethrower type, but specialized differently. Its entire right arm was weaponized. Gnarled bone and sinew had warped and elongated into the shape of a rifle. A thin, whip-like tentacle extended from its shoulder, fumbling to slot another long, metallic-looking round into a chamber near its elbow.

Blake settled into his stance. His feet found their perfect placement on the tile, a wide, solid base. He brought Verdict up in a two-handed grip, locking his elbows. The world narrowed, there was only the front sight, the rear sight, and the target.

He let out his breath and held it. The throb in his shoulder, the distant scrapes of other creatures, the very air itself—it all ceased to exist.

Blake squeezed the trigger.

Not a decision. Not a choice. Just the inevitable next step. His finger moved a quarter inch. Verdict bucked against his hands with that familiar recoil. Solid. Reassuring. Like an old friend saying hello.

The Recoil round crossed the eighty yards in a heartbeat. It impacted the husk's chest with a dull, wet thud, followed by a deafening thump of released kinetic energy. A visible shockwave, a ripple in the air, erupted from the point of impact.

The creature was launched backward. It flew through the air as if hit by a truck, its body rigid and arms flung wide, slamming into a thick concrete support pillar with a sickening crunch of bone and metal. It stuck there for a moment before gravity reasserted itself. The broken form slid off the pillar and tumbled over the railing, falling down to the first floor.

Blake smiled, even as he started counting the rest of the undead moving in his direction, drawn by the sounds of fighting and gunfire.

If stealth wasn't going to work, he'd just have to rely on good old-fashioned violence.