Destiny Among the Stars - Scifi - LitRPG - Adventure

Rumbling forward, the Peregrine carved a slow path through the tangled jungle. Leaves slapped against the sides, and branches scratched the hull as Chris maneuvered the vehicle through the overgrown jungle.

Luca stayed low on the roof, sniper rifle braced tight against his shoulder. Every rustle, every twitch of movement had his finger half-squeezing the trigger. He wasn't getting caught off-guard again. Not today.

A shadow flitted across the canopy, then another. The hairs on his arms rose.

Shadows flitted overhead. "Contact," he called. "High, left."

"I see it," Ryan replied. "Coming in fast."

A high, piercing wail cracked through the trees like a warning shot. One of the Virelings dove out of the lower branches, wings stretched wide, claws ready.

Luca squeezed the trigger, and the plasma bolt punched through the Vireling's wing joint, sending it spiraling downward with a screech.

Emily appeared through the top hatch behind him, crouching. "Room for one more?"

"Always," Luca muttered, lining up another shot.

Another Vireling swooped low, this one coming straight at the Peregrine's side. From his vantage point, Luca saw that Danny didn't even reach for his blaster.

Instead, he activated his Taunt ability. "Come on ugly," Danny muttered, his voice a low rumble Luca could barely hear over the engine.

The Vireling shrieked and locked on like a heat-seeking missile, diving straight at him, claws extended.

Danny stepped forward into the clearing, swinging with all the grace of a sledgehammer at a ballet recital. One massive armored hand slapped the creature sideways with a meaty crack, sending it tumbling in a confused spin.

It hit the mud with a splork just as Danny brought his Warhammer down like divine punishment. WHUMP.

"Third's on the right!" Ryan sprayed plasma fire everywhere but the target.

Emily's single shot dropped it cleanly. "Got it."

"Show-off," Ryan muttered.

[+28,292 XP]
[+10,125 credits]
[Skill Upgrade: Ranged Weapons Mastery Level 10 --> Level 11]
[Ability Upgrade: Target Lock Assist Level 1 --> Level 2]

"Better aim assist. Now I can miss slightly less while bleeding internally," Luca muttered, grimacing as he rolled his shoulder. It popped.

He considered the new abilities stacking up. At Level 2, that meant twelve seconds of Target Lock with a four-and-a-half-minute cooldown. Perfect for a boss or a pack of mobs.

***

Hours passed. The growth around them was growing thicker when Ryan spotted something through the undergrowth.

"Stop."

Ryan jogged ahead, brushing aside vines and thick ferns. Beneath the overgrowth, half-sunken and covered in moss, was a smooth, almost metallic-looking paved surface. Faint hexagonal patterns ran across it, symmetrical and repeating, like a road.

"Guys… you're gonna want to see this," he said.

Luca climbed down from the roof and crouched next to the exposed section, brushing away the moss. The material beneath felt cool, synthetic, alien. It wasn't stone, and definitely not concrete.

"It's a road," Danny said slowly, crouching beside him. "I think."

"Not natural," Emily said, studying the patterns. "And too clean."

"Alien road means alien buildings," she added. "And alien eggs mean facehuggers."

"We've literally never seen a facehugger," Ryan countered.

"Yet," she said, pointing at him.

The hexagonal pattern glowed faintly under the vines, leading deeper into the jungle. A direction.

"Let's go," Luca said, climbing back up.

The road gave them a smoother ride, perfectly preserved despite what appeared to be centuries of jungle growth.

Ryan got curious and started poking at it, then pulled out one of their plasma cutters. "Maybe it's worth something," he said.

If the overgrown jungle hadn't been able to eat through it after what looked like centuries, Luca wondered how the hell Ryan thought he was going to carve out a souvenir with a handheld torch.

The cutter hissed and glowed, metal shrieking as it kissed the surface… and did absolutely nothing.

Just a pathetic little scorch mark that faded as soon as Ryan pulled the tool back.

"Uncuttable," he muttered, then started rummaging through their gear.

"Think it's some kind of alloy?" Danny asked, running his hand over the hex-patterned road. "That's… weird."

When the plasma cutter failed, he frowned, stepped back, and started rummaging through the Peregrine's external locker.

"What are you doing?" Luca asked, watching him with a sinking feeling.

"Just a theory," Ryan muttered.

Luca watched with growing dread as Ryan pulled out a tank mine.

"What if it's pressure-reactive?" Ryan grinned. "Only fractures under concentrated force?"

"That's a lot of science for someone who just tried to chisel alien metal with a blowtorch."

"I'm evolving."

"You're about to get us killed."

He set the mine down gently on the road, like it was a goddamn offering.

"Ryan."

He pulled out the remote detonator.

"Ryan."

He thumbed the safety cap open.

Luca groaned as he stood up on the Peregrine's roof. "Do NOT detonate a tank mine on an unknown alien road mid-delve!" Luca shouted.

Ryan paused. "What? It's not like we're-"

"You want a scenario-wide mob pull? Because that's how you get a scenario-wide mob pull!"

"So... no?"

"NO!"

Ryan sulked as he disarmed it. "You're no fun anymore."

"He used to be," Emily said, "before he almost died."

They continued forward through the alien road, over tangled roots and vines.

The jungle thinned out, revealing a massive structure ahead. Cracked glass domes and stone walls emerged beneath vines and vegetation. Through a shattered greenhouse entrance, purple flowers bloomed by the hundreds.

"There it is," Emily confirmed.

Chris stopped the Peregrine. The squad deployed, helmets sealed against potential spores. Luca's torn scout suit was barely holding together, patched with nano-bandaids and duct tape.

Zoe stayed in the vehicle. "I've got sensors and turret control. Just don't get ambushed without me."

"Deal."

The team formed up. Emily checked her blasters. "Tight formation. We're here for the flowers, nothing else."

She caught Luca's eye. "You good?"

Luca rolled his shoulder. "Yeah," Luca replied. "Keep your eyes open."

They entered the building just to be floored by what they saw. The interior, past what must have been a foyer at some point, opened up into a stadium-sized glass enclosure with multiple levels heading down, while above them... was a literal vertical labyrinth of floating gardens. Platforms suspended by gravity tech. A central shaft pulsed with blue-green light while silent drones tended the plants. The place was enormous.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Jesus Christ," Danny whispered, his voice echoing in the vast space.

Ryan had stopped dead in his tracks. "Are you seeing this shit?"

The floating platforms moved in slow, lazy spirals around the central light shaft, some as small as dinner tables, others the size of basketball courts. Plants spilled over their edges in impossible waterfalls of green, their roots dangling freely in the air like they were underwater. The whole thing went up so high they couldn't see the top; it was just more and more levels disappearing into a soft, glowing haze.

"How is this even structurally possible?" Luca breathed, craning his neck back.

"I need... I need my multitool," Danny said, his hands grabbing for his belt. They had all left multitools in the Peregrine. "There's so much tech in here, and it's all intact."

Ryan whistled. "Fuck yeah, we're scanning the SHIT out of this place when we're done."

Clusters of purple flowers bloomed on the mid-level terraces, glowing softly, just like the patch that had nearly killed him the day before.

"This is… this is alien agri-tech crossed with zero-G manipulation," Danny stammered, turning in place, his power suit whirring as he scanned everything. "Do you see those drift-planters? There are... they're using microgravity for optimized plantings. That's, that's insane."

Zoe's voice crackled over comms. "Can you nerds save the techgasm until you're not standing in what looks like a boss arena?"

"Shhh," Ryan implored. "Let me have this."

Chris spoke low, weapon rising. "Movement."

The glittering canopy overhead began to flex. Dozens of limbs scurried out of camouflaged nooks above the vertical gardens, eyes glowing, mandibles opening with an eerie hiss.

"Ambush!" Luca shouted, pulling his rifle.

One of the ceiling panels dropped and a jumble of hairy legs scrambling down before them.

What the fuck? He activated his Combat Predictive Modeling ability.

Oh. Good. Because what they needed right now was a dozen weaponized praying mantis-centipede hybrids, crawling out of the ceiling like they were late for brunch.

These things were ugly. Like someone shoved a bug into a leaf shredder, glued the pieces back together with fungus and mucus, and then gave it six fucking legs, two scythe arms, and a tail. Their carapaces glistened, slick with slime, while eyes glowed like embers under the hood of a goddamn murder-plant. Mandibles clicked open, releasing a hiss that sounded like fuck you in bug-language.

The first one landed two feet from Luca, legs bracing, claws twitching. It ran at them, claws outstretched, screaming, and met Danny's Warhammer mid-swing.

The impact obliterated a rotating grow-bed. Soil, roots, and tech shrapnel splashed across the chamber as the Reaper folded in half.

Chris lit up another with his new plasma heavy rifle. Shots stitched across the greenhouse wall, blasting straight through flower beds and alien support structures. Vines ignited. Electrical panels exploded, and Danny actually screamed in sorrow.

Emily was already airborne. Vaulting off a railing, she fired her twin plasma pistols, cutting down two in midair. Each shot shredded through biodome glass, lighting fixtures, and an entire rotating orchid node.

"THAT WAS A FUSION-POLLINATOR!" Danny wailed.

"How the fuck do you know that?" Luca muttered, ducking under a lunging Thornmolt and smacking his energy tomahawk against its underbelly.

"I'm not blind!" Danny shouted, spinning mid-swing to smash another one into the remains of a medicinal root lattice.

One of them scurried past his flank. Luca lashed out with his blaster, catching it across the midsection. Greenish ichor splashed across his visor, barely missing his chest and sizzling like acid. Shit, he hoped his suit wouldn't melt.

Danny screamed again, "THEY TOOK OUT THE FLOATING HERB CIRCULATOR!"

"Oh no," Luca deadpanned, side-stepping another Reaper as Chris's plasma sweep incinerated an entire terraced planter and most of the ceiling above it. "Anyway."

Joey flanked left, his battered shield raised, and caught two leaping Thornmolts, slamming them into a glass pillar. It cracked, groaned, and then collapsed, taking an entire tiered flower rack with it.

"Worth it," Ryan panted.

"YOU MONSTERS!" Danny cried, swinging his hammer again and accidentally vaporizing a whole moss-hive array.

Luca ducked a spiked tail as a Reaper scraped past him. He spun, tomahawk slicing through its leg. He didn't have camo; his torn scout suit left him completely exposed.

One pounced on him from the side. Too fast.

Emily appeared out of nowhere, plasma sword drawn, and cut it clean in half. Glowing blood sprayed across the ruined hydro-systems behind them.

"You okay?" she shouted.

"Yeah," Luca coughed. "I need a better vantage point."

He scrambled up a twisted slab of metal half-swallowed by vines. The platform groaned under his weight, threatening to collapse. He found his perch. Perfect. High ground, clean sightlines, and just enough cover to not get instantly gutted.

Below him, it was pure unfiltered chaos.

Danny wasn't just swinging; he'd planted himself in front of a flickering console, using his armored body as a shield while smashing a Reaper that got too close. He was actively trying to protect the hardware.

Joey and Chris were a well-oiled machine of violence; Joey would catch a pouncing bug on his shield with a grunt, and Chris would fire a plasma bolt over his shoulder, vaporizing its head.

Emily was a blur of motion, using the tilting drift-planters as springboards to get above the fray, her plasma pistols barking as she rained fire down on exposed backs. Meanwhile, a flashbang went off near the entrance, followed by Ryan yelling, "Oops, my bad!"

Time to get to work.

Luca activated [Heightened Awareness].

His world sharpened as the ability kicked in. Every scratch of a claw, every whisper of movement became crystal clear. His brain buzzed with caffeine-fueled paranoia, but the clarity was worth it.

A Reaper climbed directly beneath Danny's platform. Another slinking toward Emily's exposed flank.

He marked them, activating [Pattern Recognition]. The two closest mobs lit up in his vision, their projected movement paths pulsing. One bastard was mid-pounce, headed straight for Joey's blind spot.

With his sniper rifle in position, he activated [Target Lock Assist]. No sense in shooting Joey by mistake. The system steadied his hands, the rifle locking on as the Thornmolt was highlighted in his sights. He exhaled. One shot was all he needed.

The bolt tore through the air, a streak of blue-white death. Mid-leap, the Reaper's skull exploded, its body crumpling like a kicked puppet.

Joey's thumbs-up earned a quick nod. You're welcome, big guy.

Another bug tried climbing to his position. One shot, one cooked corpse sliding into the chaos below, taking out what looked like a crystalline ceiling on its way down. Danny would probably cry about that later. Ryan's trap snared another while Chris's plasma swept the floor clean.

A larger Thornmolt, likely a Champion variant, appeared, bigger and meaner than the others. [Weak Point Focus] revealed a hair-thin seam under its jaw.

Luca grinned. "Headshot, bitch."

The Champion's headless corpse hit the ground with a wet thud, and suddenly the chamber fell silent except for the hiss of damaged systems and Danny's horrified whimpering.

Luca surveyed the aftermath from his perch. What they'd taken for a simple biodome was clearly something much more complex. Floating walkways were powered by glowing root-lines that pulsed with power. Alien script flickered across cracked consoles embedded in the walls. This was more than a garden; it was a research facility.

The Reaper corpses scattered across the floor told their own story. His Combat Predictive Modeling had been right: Vexillari genetic fragments spliced with local fauna. But why were Vexillari elements showing up in some abandoned alien lab?

His platform chose that moment to collapse.

"Shit!"

He watched his rifle tumble into the wreckage below as he plummeted toward a waiting Thornmolt that had been playing dead. A red plasma bolt from Chris vaporized the bug just as strong arms caught his fall.

"Little help?" Luca wheezed.

"You're lucky you're light, sniper boy," Chris grunted, setting him down.

Another Reaper burst from the debris. They'd missed one. Pure reflex drove Luca's tomahawk into its face. Green ichor sprayed across what looked like some kind of atmospheric control panel.

"Back to the perch?" Chris asked.

"Gone. Guess I'm in the pit now."

"Welcome to the party."

Chris activated Powersurge, his rifle cutting through the last few stragglers. The shots punched through bugs, walls, and, unfortunately, most of the upper walkway's support structure.

"I SWEAR TO GOD," Danny bellowed mid-swing, "STOP SHOOTING THE INFRASTRUCTURE!"

The final Reapers fell to Joey's shield bash and Emily's precise shots. Silence settled over the ruined garden.

[+377,228 XP]
[+135,000 credits]
[Skill level up! Precision Shots Mastery Level 10 -> Level 11]
[Ability upgrade! Steady Aim Level 1 --> Level 2]
[Skill level up! Critical Strikes Mastery Level 10 -> Level 11]
[Ability upgrade! Weak Point Focus Level 1 --> Level 2]

[Steady Aim] now gave twenty seconds of sniper zen. [Weak Point Focus] turned weak points into glowing targets.

"Guess that was worth the trauma," Luca muttered.

"Level up?" Emily asked.

"Operative life. Still squishy, now slightly more murdery."

The loot explosion triggered instant chaos. Emily dove for boxes, Ryan kicked crates, and Danny faceplanted into gear.

[Item Acquired: Hyper-Coag Spray] x2
[Item Acquired: Auto-Seal Patch] x2
[Item Acquired: Biogel Applicator]
[Item Acquired: Smart Nutrient Bar] x3
[Item Acquired: Smoke Cloak Grenade] x2
[Item Acquired: Nano-Weave Spools]
[Item Acquired: Centauri Juggernaut Mk-64 Titan Striders]
[Item Acquired: CEntauri Guardian Mk-64 Terrain Adaptors]
[Schematic Acquired: Bio-Scanner Drone]
[Schematic Acquired: Nano-Welder Unit]

Joey nearly wept over the medical supplies. "This is... do you know how rare this shit is? These are battlefield miracles! Could've stabilized Luca's chest in seconds!"

"I got jack," Luca said. "No sniper mods, no upgrades."

"What about the smoke grenade?"

"You throw one, I'm as blind as they are. I need armor."

Emily cut through the celebration. "We need the rest of those flowers. Now."

While the others sorted through their haul, the team spread out across the ruined terraces, carefully harvesting the glowing purple blooms from what remained of the floating gardens.

[Mission Objective: Medicinal Harvest – 52% Complete]

Joey examined a violet blossom. "Something reactive in the cell structure. Probably enzymatic. Could be regenerative."

"So... psychic?" Danny asked.

"Medicinal, Danny. Wound sealing. Not telepathy."

"Yeah, great medicine," Luca muttered, cutting stalks. "If you like mouth-paste in wounds."

"Which worked," Joey insisted. "Field-druid medicine. Get on board."

Danny made a gagging noise. "Ugh, don't remind me."

"We were all there," Chris muttered, stacking a few more samples into a container.

Ryan just grinned from across the dome, shaking another flower clean before tossing it into the satchel. "Hey, I saved his ass. Should count for something."

Luca didn't respond, though he knew he should have. He should have said something. Instead, he just kept trimming, pretending he didn't hear the note of pride in Ryan's voice.

He tapped his comm. "Zoe, status?"

A moment of silence passed, then her voice came in, a little staticky. "Still in the Peregrine. All clear out here. It's quiet. You guys almost done in there?"

"Working on it," Luca said. "Let me know if you spot anything weird."

While Ryan and Danny greedily sorted through their new gear, the rest of the team spread out, carefully harvesting the glowing blooms from what remained of the floating gardens

[Mission Objective: Medicinal Harvest – 79% Complete]

The bioluminescent glow from the central shaft suddenly flickered, casting dancing shadows across the ruined terraces.

A high-pitched, ear-splitting screech echoed through the dome. It sounded like a summoning cry.

"What the hell was that?" Danny whispered.