Unidentified Practitioner
The cult master’s orders were absolute, but doubt crept into the mind of one particular practitioner of the gifts. He and his fellow practitioners and lower level acolytes moved through the street and rooftops of an enemy shard’s territory like the rainstorm that had blanketed the area. Like the storm, one could anticipate its arrival, and yet could do nothing to stop it.
The storm will rain upon everything regardless of the opinions of Kodak-Cresh.
The hydrophobic coating on the practitioner’s robes meant that he wasn’t affected in the slightest by the heavy downpour. He would allow nothing to stop him and his fellow members from carrying out their orders. Even if they didn’t make sense.
The raid on this particular Kodak-controlled hotel known as the Revelation was a perplexing task. He had not been ordered to extract any special artefacts for the Church of Nano-Evolution nor take any high-value Kodak agents as captive.
This seemed like a pointless task in the mind of the young practitioner. But the cult master was placed in his position for a reason. He pushed aside his heretical doubts and faced forward through the sheets of heavy rain.
The practitioner watched with pride in his brothers and sisters as all of them moved like a single cohesive unit. Members on the street put their enhanced physiques to proper use while he and the other followers hopped from roof to roof along the buildings.
Or, it was more accurate to say he and the others teleported from roof to roof. Gathering energy in his left hand, the practitioner would focus his eyes on a particular destination, specifically the next roof. Using the power of his gifts, the repurposed death step technique was used to get to one place to another in an instant without needing a sacrifice. In an instant, his entire surroundings flashed in a brilliant bright second before the practitioner found himself in new surroundings: the roof he set his eyes on.
Numerous other followers of the Church popped around him, using the same technique. They all continued their traversal on the rooftops.
At the end of the block, the acolytes and practitioners on the street encountered their first batch of resistance from the enemy shard. A squad of Kodak agents opened fired with their primitive weaponry, firing their inferior projectiles at the followers on the ground.
The practitioner was tempted to simply use his death step to blow apart one of the agents in their midst to instantly teleport to their location, then make short work of the rest. But he held himself back.
His brothers and sisters on the ground were in no need of assistance. The practitioner watched as the full might of the Church clashed against the inferior brutes of Kodak-Cresh. One of the newer acolytes charged up an energy blast in her hand and peeked over a parked vehicle and unleashed the energy at a distracted Kodak agent.
The blast of red energy rippled through the rain-soaked air and splashed into the face of the Kodak agent’s bare face. Half of the brute’s face melted away from the attack and he collapsed to the ground.
Another practitioner on the ground took advantage of the chaos and performed a basic flanking move, moving past the preoccupied Kodak agents. Gathering dark energies in his hand, he flashed out of existence, then reappeared in an explosion of blood, gore and armored bits in the place of one Kodak agent. The death step ability used to its fullest.
The final Kodak agent spun around, humorously with his comrade’s intestine hanging off his shoulder, ready to attack. The poor inferior brute had no chance.
The fellow practitioner’s pistol had already been raised and a brief green glow flashed in between the two combatants. In that brief moment, a green tracer of a radioactive rod had crossed the space between the two and buried itself into the upper left torso of the Kodak agent. The Kodak agent had no chance. Even with the superior durability and resilience generally associated with the Kodak shard, the master-crafted gifted weapons of the Church felled every enemy in its path.
Even through the sheets of rain, the practitioner already knew the extent of the Kodak agent’s injuries. The radioactive rod had penetrated and burned through the armor and flesh of the agent. The Alpha Corp with their outdated depleted uranium and tungsten wished they had such lethal rounds for their firearms. Even if the Kodak agent survived this wound, the rod had already put nearby organs in a state of decay. The Kodak agent fell to his knees before the fellow practitioner on the ground pointed his pistol and shot a follow up rod through the agent’s left eye.
The fight was over in mere moments. The Kodak squad had proven no match against the followers of the Church.
The followers on the ground swiftly resumed their pace through the street and so did the practitioner on the roof. They still had a destination to get to regardless of the resistance they encountered.
Warning: Incoming razor hail. Seek immediate shelter or the blades of nature will pierce your flesh
With the intense rain and thunder above, the practitioner wasn’t surprised at the worsening weather conditions. Razor hail was a strange weather phenomenon most common in Kodak controlled lands. Instead of conventional ball-shaped stones that fell from the sky, razor hail was exactly what it sounded. Dead jagged-edged shards would fall from the atmosphere and down onto the lowly plains of this planet, weather that directly harmed all living beings with such violence and visceral intensity that acid rain couldn’t match.
The practitioner willed in message in his mind and sent it out to all of his brothers and sisters.
“Take heed everyone. We have razor hail incoming. Activate your psychic fields and you might live through the storm.”
The practitioner was no stranger to this deadly form of precipitation. Any normal man caught outside when the razor hail rained down from the heavens would be stabbed and impaled by the deadly shards. A few unlucky individuals in the past had succumb to their wounds from the deadly weather phenomenon. Even the agents weren’t entirely safe. A fully armored agent, even with a helmet, still had a small chance of injury if any razor shards just so happen to fall upon a soft spot within the armor. Or if the agent looked up for any reason, a razor shard could potentially pierce and shatter a helmet visor.
Only agents with built in energy shield modules could withstand the intense barrage of razor hail and only for as long as the shields held.
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Or in the case of the Church and its followers, generating a psychic field would significantly reduce the odds of injury by the falling shards.
The practitioner willed his mind and activated his psychic field. A brief purple flash enveloped his entire body before disappearing. The field now became a passively generated ability.
Psychic field activated.
50% chance of redirecting incoming projectiles.
-20% debuff to all category stats.
Continue your dedication to the Church and your powers to increase your rank.
The psychic field still wasn’t foolproof. The ability only reduced the chances of being hit by the razor hail and incoming bullets. While the field was now passively generated without the need for further thought and effort by him and the other followers, everyone suffered a decrease to all of their other stats. The generation of such a field impacted their bodies as much as it did their minds.
The practitioner hoped one day that he would level up and eventually graduate to becoming a cult master. One such added perk was the psychic field’s increased effectiveness to seventy-five percent.
The group continued their journey through the enemy city for another two blocks before they encountered yet another obstacle. This time, the enemy had the element of surprise against them. Two acolytes at the building ahead were shredded apart by heavy calibre gunfire from a manned gun turret. The practioner and his allies dropped to their stomachs and the followers on the street dived towards nearby alleyways.
The practitioner peeked his head slightly above the outer edge of the rooftop and saw the murderous machine that had gunned down two of his fellow followers. On a rooftop across the intersection, a gun turret with a Kodak agent in the seat next to it was scanning the area for more targets.
The Kodak agent being exposed would prove fatal for the brute. The practitioner kept his eyes solely focused on that agent while gathering the nebulous energies in his hand. After a few seconds while maintaining line of sight on the enemy, the practitioner activated his death step and was instantly transported from his current rooftop to the seat of the manned turret, along with makeshift confetti made of blood and guts flying around him. The gunner had been eliminated.
Just to be sure, the practitioner hopped off the turret and took the rifle off his back. He fired a few radioactive rods into the side of the turret to prevent further use of this equipment. The practitioner walked to the edge of his current roof and saw that his followers on the ground were pinned down by a single Kodak agent with a grenade launcher in one hand and an inferior assault rifle in the other.
While trying to keep his heavy breathing under control, the practitioner observed this lone Kodak agent. One of his fellow followers on the roof raised himself to pop a shot off, only to be shot in the head by the lone agent. The poor acolyte dropped from the roof. This particular Kodak agent was more accurate than most and was halting the advance of all his brothers and sisters.
The practitioner’s heavy breathing and fatigue signalled to him his excessive use of his gifts. He decided that he must deal with this lone brute to give his fellow Church agents to move ahead and get to the objective. The cult master’s order must be fulfilled.
The practitioner opened up the communication links in his mind. While agents from the rival shards used technological means to contact each other non-verbally, followers of the Church had a much superior method of communication.
Telepathy.
Opening links to all of his surviving brothers and sisters, the practitioner commanded with one sentence, “I shall deal with this pest. The rest of you will fulfill the cult master’s order. Go forth and crush our inferior foes.”
After hearing the acknowledgements from his fellows, the practitioner hopped down from the roof. Using his death step would prove too taxing on his body for this particular Kodak agent. The practitioner pulled up the metrics in his vision to guage how powerful his foe was.
Agent: Raphael Curse
Age: 27 M
Shard: Kodak-Cresh
Rank: Tier 2 | Level 35
Strength: 50
Agility: 45
Endurance: 40
Intelligence: 38
Healing Factor: n/a
It was no surprise that this lone brute had pinned down his entire force of Church agents. A tier two agent of a rival shard were always a challenge to deal with. The practitioner rushed the Kodak agent while his back was still turned. The practitioner slammed his body into the Kodak brute and they both fell to the wet ground.
The practitioner stood back up, but the Kodak agent proved faster in his recovery. The Kodak brute in turn slammed into him, digging the sharp spikes of his shoulder piece through the practitioner’s robes and impaling him. The practitioner didn’t give his opponent the satisfaction of hearing his screams of pain.
The practitioner shoved his thumb into the eye of the Kodak agent, stopping his charge and giving the practitioner a breather. Weakened by the impalement of the agent’s archaic spikes, the practitioner stared at his enemy.
“Cheap fucking trick, worshipper,” the Kodak agent spat. “You're nothing without your magic tricks. You and the rest of you cult fanatics aren’t warriors. You’re all just a bunch of fucking gypsies.” The brute cracked his knuckles. “Now prepare to die.”
Even without the use of the gifts, the practitioner was well above any regular human in physical stats. He charged fast enough to see the wide eye expression of the Kodak brute. But not fast enough to land a stab with his poisoned dagger. Stabbing nothing but rain droplets, the practitioner halted in his tracks as the Kodak agent had circled around him and delivered a heavy blow to the lower back.
The practitioner gritted his teeth at the powerful attack.
Warning. Sustained critical injuries. Seek immediate medical attention.
His own injuries did not matter. The bigger threat to him was his failure to keep this brute occupied while his brothers and sisters pushed ahead toward their destination. The cult master’s orders must be fulfilled at all costs.
The Kodak agent in front of him was as dangerous as the typical tier two of any rival shard. The agent had overwhelming strength and speed in his favor.
The practitioner felt some of his magic energy replenish, if only a little. But it would be enough to permanently end the life of the enemy in front of him. But with such little energy left, it would cost him.
The price would be his own life.
“Not much of a fight,” the Kodak brute said. “I’m more impressed that you haven’t screamed or begged for your life.”
The practitioner still didn’t give any response to the Kodak agent. Why would he towards an inferior being? Vermin like this don’t deserve to live.
The hatred and contempt built up inside the practitioner, exactly what he hoped to power up his final attack against the foe in front of him.
“I don’t know what you and your cult followers were doing running around our streets, but I’m going to end you and then hunt down the rest of your friends. You worshippers picked a bad day to fuck with Kodak,” the agent said.
The practitioner decided he had sufficient hatred built up in his being to execute the attack.
Warning: insufficient energy for use of supernatural gifts. Use of the Glare will be fatal to you.
The practitioner laser focused his gaze on the Kodak brute in front of him. He could feel the hot liquids flowing out of his eyes and his vision turning red as he executed his glare at full power. The Kodak agent was frozen in place.
“W-what the fuck is this shit?!”
In the span of three seconds, guttural shrieks from the agent echoed in the dark rain-soaked street as the Kodak agent burned so intensely that his entire body glowed bright orange for a split second. The orange flash rapidly faded as the agent’s entire silhouette crumbled away. The rain water mixed with the hot ashes of the Kodak agent’s remains as the clumped up byproduct of burned flesh littered the street. The remains of the agent were blown and swept away by the wind and rain.
Breathing heavily and collapsing to his knees, the practitioner could feels many of his internal organs have either ruptured or shut down from such exertion of effort. He breathed out one final response before he collapsed onto the street of rushing water.
“The Church reigns over all.”