Zero to Peak: Ascension Online

The entire time, Meteorite was donning an Interstellar-Rig—the standard, formidable combat attire an Und alien would wear. It consisted of the 'Torso Plate Carrier', which at a glance resembled a standard human combat vest, until one noticed the four distinct, heavily reinforced shoulder apertures designed for their unique anatomy. Below the cinched waist, the creature wore four separate and flexible leg coverings, terminating in tough, gripping boots engineered for absolute stability and protection on any terrain. The pouches sewn onto the Torso Plate Carrier were not for mere ammunition; they contained an array of esoteric tools that Meteorite could deploy in battle. In one such pouch lay a canister of Exotic Matter, a substance they used to tear open wormholes in the fabric of reality. They rarely resorted to such a drastic measure, but they were facing off against a tough, unpredictable enemy that could nullify both gravity wells and meteorite strikes. A wormhole was no longer a contingency; it was a necessity.

Meteorite's entire form pulsed with a furious, dark purple light. More than one hundred gravity wells, each a ten-metre-wide vortex of crushing force, materialised in a dense, inescapable pattern around Flame Ash. Purple gravitational threads, shimmering with malevolent energy, lashed out and pulled on the reanimated alien, threatening to tear it into constituent atoms. Meteorite was focused, their intent singular and brutal: they would tear the reanimated corpse to pieces, ensuring this mockery of their comrade would never walk again. They compounded the assault, forming another fifty pairs of gravity wells around the target. Using shimmering threads of force that emanated from their own body, they launched the Exotic Matter canister towards the newly formed pairs.

Upon reaching the pairs of wells, the Exotic Matter collided and spontaneously collapsed in on itself. The violent interaction saw the instantaneous formation of fifty shimmering, unstable wormholes, each a hungry mouth in spacetime. Flame Ash was once again puppeteered to try and overload the gravity wells with its innate flame energy. But this time, it was futile. Lighter shades of purple gravity threads, distinct from the darker ones of the wells, snaked out from the wormholes. They intercepted the torrents of fire, pulling the flames away from the gravity wells and feeding the raw energy directly into the waiting maws of the wormholes to be swallowed into oblivion.

Overwhelmed with the feeling of imminent success, Meteorite roared, a sound of pure, primal triumph, "Victory is mine!"

With that roar, the gravity threads pulled taut. But instead of the expected gruesome tearing of flesh, Flame Ash's form burst into a blinding, dazzling shower of golden light. When Meteorite's vision cleared, they saw shimmering, iridescent bubbles floating serenely all around them. Something was profoundly wrong. This was not the aftermath of a battle; it was an illusion.

"I can see through your sorcery!" Meteorite bellowed, raising their right arms, which were now wreathed in bands of dark purple light, before pulling them down towards their shoulders in a powerful summoning gesture. They were trying to pull down meteorites, to shatter this false reality. They realised with a jolt of cold dread that they had been pulled into an unknown pocket dimension.

The very fabric of this new reality shook under the power Meteorite summoned. However, the tumultuous agitation wasn't the result of meteorites crashing upon the space pocket. It was the sheer, raw might of Meteorite's summoning power that was destabilising the illusion from within. Desperate, Meteorite began throwing their power wildly in all directions. The landscape shifted, melting away into a sterile white room that swirled with a nauseating touch of psychedelic colours. The Und feared the worst: that they were trapped in a dream, a prison in their own mind, while their real body stood vulnerable and motionless in the open, completely at the mercy of the puppet master.

Meteorite's guess was horrifyingly accurate. Within the dream, they could feel the suffocating, cloying aura of Lady Flux approaching them. Meteorite forcefully tried to break out of the dream, pouring all their will into shattering the mental cage, but they were too late. They awoke to find themselves standing less than thirty centimetres away from Lady Flux herself. They stared into the cold, black, depthless eyes of the ethereally beautiful necromancer. A sweet, intoxicating aroma wafted into the alien's olfactory system. Meteorite's thoughts became blurry and uncoordinated, their formidable mind reduced to a confused haze. The only coherent thing they could articulate was a single, bewildered question: "How is she as tall as me?"

The battlefield was empty. Only rubble, ashes, the charred and grotesquely burned corpses of the human soldiers, and dazzling, dying embers were all that remained to be seen.

A familiar feminine voice spoke, though its source was unseen. "I wonder why he didn't want the soldiers to retreat from their posts. Although the innocence of some of them can be questioned, they didn't have to die such a gruesome death."

Meanwhile, during Meteorite's ill-fated arrival, another of Lady Flux's undead creatures was busy. This battle was taking place on another long stretch of contested land, a strategic territory caught between the Unds' government and Section 2's. The land lay between Section 3's southern border and Section 2's northern border.

A battalion of four hundred Und soldiers was advancing on Section 2's northern border. The soldiers travelled on sleek, hovering surfboards that moved at an average speed of thirty kilometres per hour.

"Halt in the name of glory!" A powerful voice yelled out, echoing across the plains.

The soldiers halted their approach, their sights beholding a lone, bold figure standing in their path. The person was clad in magnificent silver plate armour that had a striking red dragon insignia emblazoned on the right side of the chest plate.

Tether, the Und leading the battalion, was amused to see the familiar figure. They recognised the person clad in silver armour to be the late Raymond, the legendary Knight of Glory. Raymond had been killed by a group of Unds during one of the most intense alien raids on Section 2. The twist was that the group hadn't escaped with their victory; Raymond had killed every last one of them before he finally fell. But the history that made Raymond stand out to Tether was that before that final raid, the Unds had cinched a firm control of him using a mind-control device. Under its influence, he had played a crucial, devastating role in the success of that raid. A great number of the Liberation Force's Awakened Transcendent Special characters had been killed, thanks to the role he played. Tether was sure that Raymond had died with a heart full of profound regret and self-hatred.

"Retreat, scummy foes!" the reanimated Raymond commanded. But this wasn't him speaking. It was Lady Flux, executing his most famous special skill: Glorious Defensive Line.

Tether issued a calm command to their battalion. "Advance. Go beyond him."

The soldiers under Tether's command were not regular Unds. They were powered up, mostly Bronze-rank aliens. However, they all shared the same abilities: they were "gun-shooters." The projectiles the soldiers fired at Raymond varied wildly, from hyper-velocity bullets to searing plasma bolts and electrified glass shards. Most of them wielded technologically diverse firearms, while a few launched their projectiles from a pocket space, like spatial-based telekinetics.

The battle between the lone knight and the four hundred soldiers was immense, but Raymond held the clear advantage. The Knight gruesomely cleaved down the unfortunate aliens who got too close, his blade a blur of silver and red. No one could break past his Glorious Defensive Line.

Tether observed the battle from above through a special item, a flying gunship moulded like an modern naval warship. The gunship's advanced sensors analysed the knight's movements and detected a repeating pattern in his seemingly flawless defence. The information was transmitted directly to Tether, who spared no moment to intervene in the battle.