World Filter

As Mark made his way to the front he saw his wall of force was still up but Jonathan and Sam were already fighting the ones that got through. Almost every portion of the wall was covered in small spider-like creatures. They were latching onto the surface and vibrating their way through.

Jonathan dealt with each one that came through but as time went on more and more were breaking from the construct and dashing forward. The next thing he noticed was the speed of the creatures. Their small light nature lent to an incredibly fast evasive creature with an impressive jump height for their size.

They were diving straight at Jonathan without a hint of self-preservation. He killed them as fast as he could but the limited space was restricting him and along with the people behind him, made retreat impossible.

Eventually one managed to latch into his left shoulder. Immediately Jonathan's entire left arm dropped to his side, paralyzed. Mark got ready to try and stop him if he start to go for the wires but that never happened. Mark then realized the location that they grabbed on mattered.

Sam was behind him using small controlled icicles but Mark saw her problem right away. She could probably blow all these things away in one attack -as he could tell they weren’t very tough- but they were surrounded by key infrastructure. If she attacked now they could damage the very thing they were trying to fix.

Mark quickly reasserted control over the Construct and expanded it toward himself without moving it from the frontline, once he had he let it tap into his Resistance. The flow of Corrupted slowed considerably the moment he took over, it did not however stop their advance. He could feel hundreds of the little things trying to worm their way through and all he could do was slow them down. They were slippery and it was difficult to get a good grip on them, almost as if they were phasing their way through his construct.

Jonathan ripped the creature off his body and crushed it regaining control over his left arm once more.

Sam saw the flow of incoming creatures slow and whipped her head around.

“Mark? Where’s Jaya?” she said looking at him with worry in her eyes.

It was Mark’s duty to be the one to tell her, but that didn’t mean it was any easier.

Gritting his teeth he looked into her eyes and gave her the bearest shake of his head.

He saw her pupils dilate and she blinked rapidly.

Setting her jaw and nodding she turned back the wall of Corrupted. Mark had known Sam for a while now and he hardly ever saw her sad or even angry. She was normally the upbeat, optimist.

But as he saw her raise her hands and magic began to build up, he knew she was pissed.

The air currents began to move in the tight corridor under her manipulation. Then like the cold wind before a storm, a wave of compressed air moved forward as one, traveling past Mark's construct. Right away the hundreds of creatures were pulled back off the wall of force, but she wasn't done there. Thin air walls rapidly compressed around the squiring masses, coming from all directions. Collecting the Corrupted Ghosts into one massive ball. They tried to vibrate out but it seemed they were struggling with the thickening air pressure.

Sam's hands kept manipulating the building spell and Mark felt the air from all over the area rushing to this tunnel drawn in towards her.

All Mark could hear was the screaming wind passing his ears. Air currents continued to flow towards the growing spell, pulling Corrupted off the walls and cables, to join the pile. Mark had to squint through the churning air.

Then all at once, the winds stopped.

A ball of compressed air floated in the middle of the passage holding countless Ghosts within, then the air ignited from within. Burning a brilliant red in the darkness of the tunnel. Mark felt no heat coming from it and not a single cable was damaged by the spell. Soon enough the light faded and a wave of air was released outwards. Ash drifted to the ground.

Sam looked drained and while he knew that spell could not have been easy this was not from Mana drain.

Her panting was the only sound in the tunnel, everyone else just looked on in silence.

Jonathan chose to break the silence at this point.

“Chris, report!”

Chris woke up and sent out a pulse.

“All of the ones in front of us are gone though there are a few much further back. I apologize boss I read the spell wrong I thought they were rats.”

Jonathan spoke.

“Chris, you couldn’t have known, just keep watch for any approaching threats”

Sam had begun moving back toward Jaya’s body. She knelt down beside it and clenched her jaw. Leaning over her Sam whispered something to Jaya.

Placing her hand on Jaya’s cheek, the corpse disappeared into her inventory. Sam said she wouldn't leave it down here. By now understanding that they had lost one of their own had reached everyone. The home team was warned to keep an eye out for the new type of enemy.

Mark already knew the guilt of not being able to save a life but in this new world, each friend they lost was a heavy blow.

They were still in danger so they could not mourn long.

When they regrouped, Mark explained what he had found on Jaya, as well as his theories.

“The system calls them "Ghosts" and from what I saw earlier, it looked like they tap into a person's nervous system and block the signals from the brain. Meaning they probably feed off electricity. If they get to your spine it's game over” Mark said.

“Do we keep moving?” Franklin asked.

Both Jonathan and Sam looked at one another.

“Yes we keep moving forward, if there is a source to these things then I want to crush it. After which we return to the control room to regroup. From there we will cleanse this place” Sam said.

Mark worried for the home team but with limited resources, they had to work with what they had. If they retreated now, they may not be able to make it back here.

“Alright let's keep moving,” Jonathan said.

Mark was a bit worried about Sam's Mana and seeing what just happened he wanted to make sure she wasn't rushing things.

Pulling her aside he asked her as much.

As it turned out he needn't have worried apparently, she was past her first regeneration threshold. Which brought her base regen up to thirty seconds to one Mana. That was ignoring the regen from her items. The scale was different for Mana apparently and so was the amount of regen one got. Dropping from a minute to thirty seconds was a 50% increase while Prana had been 20%.

Mark had never asked because it's private but that meant her base Mana stat was at least 200, plus item stats, but seeing as it didn't seem to be a recent thing to her, he put her Mana higher than that.

When he looked at her he saw pain there but also the determination to keep moving.

They all had to, nodding at her he placed his hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture and went to take up his place in the formation.

Elizabeth confirmed that everything was fine on their side and they kept traveling. As she had said earlier she could only give them a rough idea of where the problem was so they wandered for a time following the damaged cables.

Mark had taken to spreading his construct across the whole party. That way if anything tried to drop down he would sense it coming. Chris kept on high alert. Though they never encountered a group like that again. Almost like they were hiding after their partly failed ambush.

Wandering forward they followed the sound of buzzing and soon enough they came to a room which Elizabeth called an ‘expansion chamber’.

The area was slightly bigger and had panels of electrical circuits on the wall which Mark assumed was for controlling things. Wires sat exposed throughout the room, along with many charred corpses.

The sound of buzzing was overpowering in this chamber, collecting into one droning hum. Mark could barely hear himself think when all at once the sounds stopped.

In the back of the room near one of the main powerlines was a Titan hunched over one of the panels.

Its back was turned to them. Mark didn’t even know how it had gotten down here at that size but noticed Ghosts covering its body.

Its body shook as the Titan gripped onto a thick cable. Unlike the other bodies in here, it was defiantly still alive.

It was as if the Ghosts were using the titan for something. Mark's eyes flicked around the room to some burnt Ghost copses attached to the cables.

Frowning the pieces started to fall into place, he already figured they fed on electricity but perhaps they couldn’t necessarily handle the raw current coming from the cables. So their solution was to grab people and use them as resistors? If their Aura was high enough they might be able to handle lower currents for a while before burning out.

Mark didn’t have any longer to contemplate as it looked like the Corrupted had sensed their presence.

The room exploded into activity. The air was suddenly filled with hundreds of tiny bodies leaping with blinding speed from nearly every surface and dark corner in the chamber.

At Sam’s signal, Mark pushed his construct into the room to make space for the frontline. The nearest Ghosts fixed themselves to the barrier immediately. Trying to get through. Sam began the spell she had used earlier but at the same time, movement came from the Titan at the other side of the room. It jerked its body free of the cable.

Turning around Mark could see a massive Ghost attached to the Titan's chest, with an egg sac securely fastened to its back. If the others were the size of a palm then this thing was the size of a labrador.

When the Titan stood its head scaped the low ceiling. There was an awful buzzing sound from the Ghost on its chest and a second later the Titan reacted by screaming in rage. The thing was nowhere near the size of the one they had fought before but in these close quarters, it was just a deadly.

The Titan charged.

The wind began to gather near the center of the room picking up the loose Ghosts and dust along with small bits of debris. With the Titan's weight, it just charge right past the building spell.

Mark reinforced the construct and sent it forward. At the same time, he sent a [Bestowal] directed at Jonathan aiming to improve his strength.

Then he did something he had never done before, he allowed the Titan to pass through [Sculpt Mana].

Well partly. He had gotten the idea from the Ghosts. They slowly pushed their way through the barrier, as if caught in molasses. This made them sitting ducks while they did this, so what if he could slow the charge but not have to waste all that energy to stop it? As a bonus, he could keep the other Corrupted off the party while they engaged the Titan.

Just as he finished calling out what he was doing the Titan crashed into the construct. Mark kept the barrier permeable, dispersing what little momentum the Titan had managed to build up. The differences in cost were day and night.

Unfortunately, the Ghosts on the Titan's body got a free ride in but he could keep track of them, they were in his neck of the woods now.

Jonathan charged the thing without a second thought.

When the two met it sounded like a strike of thunder.

The combination of slowing the Titan's charge and Jonathan's full power swing enhanced by [Bestowal] resulted in both of them taking a step back but the Titan came off worse.

This was impressive when one remember the absolute raw strength these things could output.

Jonathan and the frontline engaged the Titan, and seeing as it was something they were familiar with it looked like they had the upper hand.

That was until a flash of lightning exploded out of the large Ghost on its chest. Electricity arced outwards into the surroundings, jumping to anything nearby.