Mage Steel: A Western Sci-Fi Cultivation Series

Nine

An F-Grade rift was little more than a tear in space no larger than a doorway. Without Alice to guide him to it, Kon would have never found it. Up and over the crest of the hill and down into a small, rocky gully, the two traveled in silence. Alice had let him rest, eat and drink some water she had gathered with another rune fragment that had pulled moisture out of the air.

He was still tired, his limbs heavy and his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, but Alice had merely raised an eyebrow at the suggestion of a day off. Kon had dropped his eyes and sighed but took the rest she had given him. She had been even kind enough to go out into the forest and return with a straight branch and had shown him how to tie the D-Grade fang to it to make a crude spear.

He still kept his trusty bludgeoning rock in his pocket though.

Alice had been like a bloodhound, sniffing the air as she had lead them directly to rift. In the shadow of a boulder twice his height, a red oval doorway shimmered with dirty gray light. The scent of rot roiled out of the rift and he had to force himself to not heave at that cloying smell.

"Oh, that's ripe. Sucks to be you." Alice nudged him with her good shoulder toward the passage.

"You're not coming with me?"

"Don't worry about me. You'll have plenty to deal with in there. Now, you'll need to find the anchor piece. You'll know it when you see it. Removing the anchor from the rift will cause the portal to collapse."

"That easy?"

"There's probably a guardian nearby for it. It'll be an incredibly saturated…something. Sometimes it's a plant, or tree, or a piece of rubble, could be anything. You'll know where it's at though."

"Because that's where all the monsters are?" Kon asked while rolling his eyes. Alice was getting predictable.

"Got it in one. Yeah, all the monsters will want to be near it. These ones out here were weak and driven out of the rift. The guardian will be a Mid to Upper F-Grade. Probably. You're screwed if it's a Peak."

"How will I tell?" Kon asked with concern as he looked over at his mentor.

"If you see it move and can react fast enough to not die, it's not a Peak F-Grade."

"I can see why they let you stay in the field and not in the classroom." Kon glared at Alice while she simply laughed at him.

"She really is crazy. But she's strong. So strong that she's a Commander while only being a few years older than me." Kon looked over toward the burning red portal and the gray haze that emanated out of it.

"I'm so going to die."

Kon gulped but stepped through the portal, making sure to raise his boots to clear the edge of the portal. He didn't know what happened when part of you entered the portal and the other part didn't, but he wasn't willing to find out right now.

Smoke choked him as he drew his first breath inside of the portal and he fought to keep from coughing loudly as his eyes watered. He glanced back at the portal and ensured that it was still floating there, waiting for him to leave this shattered reality.

A shrill cry came from somewhere in the smoky mass and Kon snapped his attention forward. The dense gray smoke made it impossible to see even as he dropped down into a deep crouch. Lower to the ground was more bearable, but the smoke still burned his lungs as he shuffled forward. The draft against his face gave him hope that whatever the fire was caused by was driving it toward him and he could move out of the thick smoke.

Kon circled quickly and tried not to breath. Tears ran down his eyes and the his grip on the spear was slick as he stumbled along. More and more monsters were crying out somewhere ahead of him and his heart thundered along as adrenaline surged through his veins.

"I'm going to murder Alice for this," Kon muttered to himself. A moment later he realized his mistake. The howls stopped. Nothing made a sound as Kon froze and waited. Smoke billowed around him and then a shadow moved inside the smoke before he was beset with teeth and claws.

Kon cursed as he jabbed the spear at the creature, but it swung its head and the tooth tore a crease along the monster's trapezius as it got inside of his guard and pounced. Kon dropped back and landed hard on his back, driving what little air he had left out of his lungs. His boot caught the creature in the gut and then exploded up and backward, throwing the man-sized monster behind him.

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He turned to look at the flailing monster as it cut through the haze and then hit the edge of the portal. Its lower half went out and into the world while its upper half stayed inside of the rift. The sound of wet, heavy, intestines splattering across the ground echoed out and the heady iron scent of monster blood filled his nose.

"I really thought I walked a lot further than that."

More shadows were swarming through the smoke and Kon got to his feet and gripped the spear tight. He had been too slow and timid with his stab and had allowed the beast to escape its fate. There could be no timidity here. Hesitation would kill him,

Another bounded at him, smoke whirling around it as its wide mouth full of dull teeth opened wide. Kon struck like a viper and the tooth pierced below the sternum and ran the monster through. Its momentum carried it halfway up the spear and its dull claws scratched the metallic wood only mere inches from Kon's fingers.

"Shit!" Kon cursed as he tried to get the spear free of the body. Two more shapes were hurtling toward him, eddies in the smoke giving him warning as they tried to get behind him. A boot to the dead monster's chest and a desperate heave freed the weapon, just in time too.

Kon ducked and lashed out with the butt of the spear, the heavy wood cracking the charging monster's knee with an audible crack. It howled and collapsed to the ground as its partner leapt at him, feet clear of the ground, claws outstretched and looking for vulnerable flesh. Kon angled the spear up and the heavy weight of the monster landed on the spear and shattered the shaft instantly in a spray of splinters.

The two crashed to the ground together, hot blood covering Kon's chest and abdomen, and teeth latched on his shoulder and bit down. Pressure. Unending, crushing, pressure. Kon gritted his teeth to hold back a scream as his free hand reached into his pocket and grabbed his bludgeoning rock. Blood was still moist and tacky on it.

It was an awkward angle as the thing gnawed on his shoulder like it was a piece of jerky. Kon managed to twist and turn his shoulders enough to hit the beast on the back of the skull. Once. Twice. With the third blow something cracked and it became deadweight atop of him. Its jaws loosened enough that he was able to push it free and then he screamed.

"Holy fuck, it hurts!!!!"

The scream drew more attention. More shadows ran through the moke and created rivers of air as all around him they circled like sharks. He rolled his arm and didn't think it was broken. He reached the back of the monster and grabbed the broken spear shaft that protruded. The tooth was still fine, but the spear was much closer to a dagger now, only a few inches of wood separating the perilously sharp edge from his hand.

He had to move. Staying here was death. He couldn't see, couldn't breath, and now he was hurt. Turning ninety-degrees, so that the draft was on his left arm instead of face, he burst into a sprint. Each step sent a burst of pain through his shoulder, but he kept the dagger close to his side in his good hand and the rock loosely held in the bad hand.

The sudden motion threw the prowling monsters off, they parted for him instinctively, but howled in rage as he flashed past them. Coughs racked his body, but his lungs kept churning as his gut burned where the node sat. Every passing step slowly eased the pain in his shoulder until it was bearable again.

With a sudden abruptness, the smoky haze ended and he was staring out across abrupt, short, slate-gray hills. Each one was uniform in size and covered in rock with a small entrance in the center and walking paths toward the top. Fresh air was a relief even as he continued to cough and splutter. The howls behind him hadn't stopped though and were getting closer.

Kon kept moving, more stumble than run, and headed toward the closest of the artificial hills. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what he was staring at. His feet trample broken masonry as he ran directly toward the illuminated entrance. Warm yellow light came out of the human-sized door and would have allowed Kon to inspect his surroundings.

Except he could feel the fetid breath of the F-Grade monsters on his neck. A yowl echoed right next to his ear and he sped up even further as fear gave him an extra boost of speed to enter the hill.

He spun as got inside of the entrance, his shoulders nearly scraped the edges of the passage, and it finally allowed him the ability to fight his pursuers on more equal footing. The tight confines forced the beasts to enter one at a time instead of circling him and attacking from every angle.

Kon's chest heaved up and down and his eyes were wild as he looked down the passage and saw the beasts. They stayed right outside of the glowing rectangle of yellow light, Kon's shadow not showing even as the light bent around him. Black eyes stared with hatred, but none tried to get closer, simply hooting softly to each other.

"Oh, that's not good," Kon muttered to himself as he turned to look deeper into the tunnel. The tunnel was short and he could see a small rotunda further in, but with how narrow his field of vision was, he couldn't tell what was in the rotunda.

Kon backed up slowly, keeping his eyes locked on the monsters, and retreated back into the main part of the hill. None of the monsters followed after him, even growing silent as he disappeared by stepping to the side.

A trio of stone sarcophagi were situated in a triangle in the center of the rotunda with a yellow orb glowing in the middle of the triangle. Kon stared at it for a moment before looking around at the rest of the hill.

"Barrow. These are graves." The thought struck him and he sighed as he looked down at the sarcophagi. Humanity had given up on these types of burials, the rigors of space and being nomads too demanding to ever have a place to rest the dead. There was just no space.

He had seen the history vids where they had talked of old-Earth customs. Media from that time period was still disseminated around the fleet. A way to hold on to their old homeworld, the cradle of humanity and its original culture.

Kon knew what graves were. And he knew what creepy crypts in monster effected worlds were.

"It's going to be zombies." Kon sighed as he tightened his grip on his rock as the yellow orb began to flash with bursts of red light. Stone scraped from somewhere and Kon watched as the lid of the closest sarcophagi began to move.