Ki Horizons - [Litrpg, Adventure, Power Levels]

Blood. So much blood.

It poured forth, flowing down the metal beast, down into its burning gullet.

And yet two arms, fighting the force of the world, pushed. Refusing to allow himself to be beaten.

"I… really… hate you. Hate you so much."

I could feel my body screaming, pushing with everything I had. My arms and legs pushing, straining, to have this damn thing open its stupid fucking mouth. I could feel its teeth, sharp, deep in my legs and arms. There were grinders inside this thing's mouth and my body was already more cut up than I'd like from it.

It bit down and I screamed as I was further impaled.

My eyes shook, staring straight down such a monster, feeling force unlike anything else. At this rate… my bones were going to snap! In my hands, pushing with all their might, were two items.

The ball it had come out of.

And the capsule that could store a car.

The plan had been simple, put it back in its ball somehow and store the ball in the capsule. It could be stored, it had been stored, if I could just store it twice… it'd be out of the way.

That plan was ruined now because…

Tink tink tink

The sound of metal falling on metal was not lost on me. The ball it had originally come in was scrap. There would be no figuring out how to store it within. I could even feel the capsule starting to crack beneath the force of my hand and this thing's jaw.

It bit down harder and I cried out, worrying noises coming from seemingly every part of my body. It wouldn't be long now. My durability and strength couldn't hold up. I'd be snapped like a toothpick and eaten! I just, I just had to-

The dark hole. The dark hole of its mouth began to glow red.

Fear and anger shook my heart. I could feel the heat rising as my blood poured from a dozen wounds, as my back screamed, as sweat dripped down my body. As adrenaline pushed and pushed and pushed, my heart beat like a drum, nerves screaming as if on fire. The world refused to slow, the end seemed to come as fast as it'd like, and the feeling of the metal teeth piercing through me made me want to scream all the more.

"I told you… already." My words were said through gritted teeth, every ounce of my will struggling just to survive a second more.

"I'M NOT GOING TO DIE HERE!"

My hand squeezed, anger fueling desperate hope more than anything, shattering the already cracked capsule.

Then everything went wrong.

Orange smoke engulfed me and poured down the thing's gullet. I suddenly felt like I'd left. There was no other way to describe it. Like you were no longer home, like everything you had ever known had changed. Not the same space, not the same land, not the same air. It was such a startingly sense of foreignness that I lost the battle of force from the distraction.

And yet I was not crushed to death immediately.

Everything began to… twist. What was once just orange smoke suddenly seemed to move and twist and turn like nothing made sense. Up was down and right, left was diagonal, right was inside out and everywhere, everything was wrong. My vision briefly saw me, my arm was in my ear, my mouth was around my heart, my body split into a million separate pieces, everything was so wrong.

Flames spiraled around burning me, metal corroded all around, and for a brief, terrifying moment…

I was nowhere. There was nowhere and nothing. Like I'd been disconnected from all of reality. I could feel a wrong force pressing down on me and I knew, somehow I knew, that it was a blessing I was encased in metal. That if I saw what was on the other side, on the outside, I'd never be the same man again.

And then it was over and I felt myself falling inside the mouth, falling on my back, as a lighter force seemed to knock me around.

I got up, my body moving even as I struggled not to puke my own organs up, and realized I'd been knocked out of the head of the thing. The reason for that was clear.

The head was no longer attached to the body. It now lay on the ground, separated, as if a clean cut had gone straight through a portion of it. Its giant metal body slowly fell over, before echoing out with a crash. That was shocking enough but it's once red eyes…

The lights were now cracked in a spiderweb pattern and completely blackened. Not like they had gone out, but as if they had been fully eroded from the inside out by something other.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I shivered, seeing something so horrifying, even as the rest of my body felt like it was going numb.

Who said these were safe?! There's nothing safe about them if a power level [50] and [32] can break them! What if I had this on me later on?!

A roar brought me back to reality. I turned, only for my jaw to go slack and my eyes to widen at what I was seeing.

The whole room… seemed to disintegrate at once at the power being used. It was a notch higher than anything I'd seen so far, a giant beam struggle between the Director and Cooler. Except…

The Director was mostly the same, sporting some wounds and a look of absolute concentration as he fired his dark purple beam. But as for Cooler…

His once red markings were now all black, from his tails to the ones in his hair, and the look on his face was like a fox's rabid snarl. His Kimono had been torn away partially, revealing him standing there bare chested and with what was left wrapped around his waist. His eyes and body seemed to beat with black veins, all his Ki being pushed into a massive beam of unbelievable power. It was pitch black and fighting evenly with the Director's own power.

I watched in awe, as the beam struggle continued, unsure if I would even be able to approach them.

Just what… was going on?!

"YOU'LL DIE YOU FOOL!"

"YOU'RE COMING WITH ME!"

The beam struggle seemed to grow in strength and even this far back, I felt myself begin to be pushed back. It grew and grew, each of them putting their all into it, and then-

The Black Beam won out.

"NOOO!!!"

The purple beam was overwhelmed and the Director was hit with the full power of Cooler's beam.

I watched in awe as the beam seemed to smash into the ground and bore through it, seemingly not stopping as it created a crater and tunnel, destroying everything in its path!

The winds from the power pushed me back, but I stood strong, watching as Cooler finally killed the Director.

The whole facility seemed to shake all at once from the blast.

Slowly, as the underground below was destroyed and the room broke apart, the beam seemed to die down. My heartbeat echoed so loudly in what remained of my eardrums. Sweat coated my body and it had nothing to do with anything prior.

That was… amazing!

So awe inspiring. That-

Cooler dropped like a fly, hitting the ground with a sound like a stone on stone.

"Cooler!"

I ran to him, only to trip across the ground, my pierced legs making themselves known. I grimaced and forced my body to get up, limping quickly. Cooler, cooler, don't you dare be dead. We worked too hard for this. Not you, not you too.

I made it to his body, avoiding the massive hole in the ground.

"Cooler!"

He looked… rough. He was worse off than when I'd first seen him fire that beam from before. His eyes had black veins going through them, his veins and markings as well. His face looked haggard and pale and eyes didn't seem like they could focus. Even his previously white tails had turned utterly black. Wounds marked his body but they were nothing compared to that.

"Mu… Mutai…"

"I'm here Cooler, I'm here!"

"You're… al… alive…"

"Yeah, yeah I am. I made it, we made it Cooler. You're going to be okay. Don't die yet, alright? We just have to get you to a healing tank. I know where one is. I just need you to stay with me, okay? Just stay with me!"

"You're… alive… alive. I'm so… happy…"

He smiled. A wide genuine smile. I don't think I'd truly seen one on his face before.

"Yeah, yeah, that's great. Now-"

Suddenly, Cooler's lost looking eyes widened and the smile slipped from his face.

"How heartwarming." Came a voice from behind.

It felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped onto me.

I turned quickly, fear and panic rising within, as I saw the Director.

He'd seen better days.

One arm and leg hung limp at his side, seemingly broken somehow. His body looked half vaporized, his left arm missing entirely. The side of his face was showing his teeth through his cheek and his previous hair was now gone entirely. Blood leaked down from more than a dozen places across him. Wounds from where parts of him had begun to disintegrate.

He stared with his eyes, the shapes going through them slowly as they went across. His once plastered on smile had disappeared, replaced fully with a scowl like he'd been wearing a mask all along.

He was alive. Alive and his injuries weren't even as bad as mine!

"Mutai… run…"

"You may try but I tire of this day. I've lost more than you two could ever imagine because of both of you. You, nothing more than a clone donor, and you, nothing more than a clone. I am going to extract as much value as I possibly can from your corpses."

He didn't exactly seem in a hurry but as he took a step closer, my mind railed for a solution. Some way to survive this nightmare. There was only one I could think of.

I looked back down at Cooler, my only hope, only to see his muscles spasming and all the black veins seeming to get worse by the second. His eyes were lost but his fingers spasmed, constantly trying to form a fist. He was trying to move, and couldn't.

Alright, that wasn't happening.

He was out of it, too damaged from whatever was going on.

I looked back at the Director as he slowly walked towards me and I took a deep, deep breath.

I stood in front of Cooler, raising my arms up, both palms outward.

The Director raised an eyebrow.

"I figured if you could use Ki, you would've already. A final bluff? And even if you could, nothing you could produce could harm me. The researcher in me is interested, however. A final attempt before death?"

"Just… shut up!"

I had nothing left. My body was a mess of flesh and pain more than anything else at this point. It was all or nothing. My last hope, my final gambit.

I was going to use Ki again or I was going to die.