John tried everything. He looted all the corpses and inspected every piece of machinery in the hop-pod. There were no signal beacons or anything helpful. He could infuse essence in two machines and get them to work, one being life support and the other being some sort of shielding barrier.
Life support wouldn’t be much help since John had already breached the hull. He needed to see outside. He couldn’t see much beyond that the hop-pod was tumbling, spinning around very quickly, and hurtling through space at a speed he had a hard time comprehending. He was spinning too fast for the NCS info function to lock onto anything for even a moment.
After thinking about it, John believed even space dust could puncture the pod at the speed he was traveling. He infused essence into the shielding barrier. He hoped it’d help.
I have to think. Really think. This is no time to be filled with doubt and anxiety. Feel those things once your wife is safe, and not until then. Now, more than ever, I must be the best of men. I will not use the token unless I fail in this, and I refuse to fail.
How? How do I get back to Amber? There’s a way.
Blasting [Flawless Glyph of Darkflame Jet] out the hole he had made in the hop-pod did nothing besides make the pod spin faster. He could exit the pod, but there was no way he could travel nearly as fast as the speed of the pod. His only hope seemed to be the pod reaching something on its own. But at the speed it was going, he was sure impact with anything at all would be instantly fatal.
John entered his Mind’s Eye to have time to think this through. “I’m only here to think, Avatar.”
“It’s your mind. Have at it, silly boy.”
John thought and thought. If he couldn’t think of a workable solution, his only choice would be the two boons of Betrayal. He’d offer up a bet. If Betrayal couldn’t win the contest of wills, the monster would still owe him a boon. He hoped Betrayal was the betting type. When he won, he’d use the boon to be sent to Amber.
But if that was going to be John’s out, he wanted all other options exhausted first. He finally had a path to true happiness, and he’d do his all to ensure it came true and he was alive for it.
After thinking for a long time, John excitedly asked Avatar, “Can you think of a way I can combine my four lower concepts into ‘portal’ as a high or peak concept?”
Avatar put her glasses on but said nothing. “Come on, Avatar. ‘Battle, ‘shadow,’ ‘change,’ and ‘protect.’ There must be a way.”
“It’s ‘protection,’ my silly boy, not ‘protect.’ I thought you wanted to think on your own. Now you want me to do your thinking for you again?”
Without much thought, fueled by his anxiety and worry, John angrily snapped out, “Enough! My wife and children are in danger. I need your help, not your barbs. Poke fun at me all you wish once she is safe, but not a second before. Hold your tongue if you’ve nothing useful to add.”
Surprisingly, Avatar looked chastised. John had never seen that before. She glitched and said, “I’m sorry, John. You’re correct. Why merge concepts when you have so many rune points? You have no [Archetype]. Every glyph is available to you.”
“Great gods…I mean holy shit! How did I not think of that? Thank you, Avatar. Thank you.”
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There were a lot of options open to John such as different types of teleports and bind and recall manifestations. But the best teleport, at least at Neophyte Mastery, even as a flawless level glyph, had a max range of 687,902 miles. A great distance but not really considering he was in the vast expanse of space.
The bind and recall would be perfect if John had gotten this glyph previously and set a bind point. The flawless version of the best glyph had a range of about 19 light years even at Neophyte Mastery.
There were other options, but the only one that had a chance of working was a glyph that transported the caster to the closest portal. It didn’t list a max range, but, at Neophyte Mastery, it had a cooldown of 36 minutes baseline with a little under an additional minute per every mile traveled. He knew there were about six trillion miles in a light year. That was a lot of minutes.
According to Avatar, the max range of [Glyph of Portal Transportation] depended on the potency and amount of John’s essence. If he didn’t have enough, it’d be obvious, but like with his old bracers that took everything from within, he could push through and give more of himself and his resources to power the spell.
I can’t fail. I have enough within me.
Having no better option, John purchased the flawless version of the glyph for 95 rune points. He trained with his new manifestation until he received the two increases his daily training allowed. Before exiting his Mind’s Eye, he put some thought into how he’d prepare.
John’s biosuit was in his storage bracer. Since everyone hated the Peerless, wearing it would be risky. But not wearing it was also risky. If he had to fight, he’d rather wear it and have access to his bolters. But if there were high tier Exalteds, fighting wouldn’t help save Amber.
Think, fool. All is on the line. No mistakes. This must work.
John decided to wear the biosuit, hold his shield, and place his sword on his back for easy access to it. If there were Exalteds that wanted to stop him from reaching his wife, he would somehow find a way to kill them. All of them, and anyone or anything else that stood in his way.
John switched out his active [Title] to the one he received on Isb that slightly increased the speed and efficiency of converting energy to essence. He turned all but a little of his essence to shen and half his shen to emptiness. He then refilled his dantian until he filled his shen and emptiness as much as he could before refilling his dantian again. He achieved his battle-mind, ensured he was breathing and cycling correctly, and fed essence into his new glyph. And kept feeding it and kept feeding it.
Once John’s dantian was nearly tapped of essence, he knew he didn’t have anywhere near enough for the spell to work. He pushed through, allowing the spell to pull from the rest of him.
As the glyph began to drain him, John began to meditate again, creating new essence to feed the glyph before he had nothing left to give and the spell failed. The deep of space had plenty of strange energy on top of the normal energy to cultivate, so he frantically did so as quickly as possible.
And John did so for hours. He remembered he had a bunch of EBs in his bracer. He paused his cultivation to connect one to his biosuit and then the next when the first was emptied. He then went back to cultivating as fast as possible, ensuring the glyph was fed enough essence to prevent, pause, or slow the rate that it drained the other substances within him.
Anxiety and worry raked John the whole time. He tried pushing those unhelpful feelings aside but couldn’t fully. Instead, he used those feelings as fuel, along with all the strong feelings he usually suppressed, along with his love for his wife and his deep hope of having children again. And he kept furiously meditating and feeding the glyph.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
And John kept feeding it. For hours and hours longer. Until suddenly his reality stretched greatly, then collapsed in upon itself.
Groggily, drained, his face pressed into hard ground, John forced his orb-eye to look around. He was near a portal. Guards had their weapons trained on him. More were coming. Qraads. The avians.
John wasn’t certain that it would take the biosynth two weeks to travel from Umpani to Ryicci Station. The only thing he was certain of was that he had to beat Nine back to his wife. He wouldn’t fail. Not his new wife. Not his new children.
On shaky arms, John pushed himself up and struggled back to his feet. None of the qraads were high tier. And none would be alive soon if they were uncooperative.
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One week and four days. That’s how long it took John to arrive at Ryicci Station. One terrible week and four terrible days from the hop-pod tumbling through deep space until now.
Whether Nine actually petitioned for refugee status on Umpani was up in the air. There was a good chance John beat Nine to Ryicci Station. He prayed so. He had made many enemies during his mad rush here.
John watched the viewscreens to see if he could spot Jim docked. There were a lot of ships. He couldn’t see Amber’s but that didn’t mean it wasn’t at the station. He spotted a Peerless destroyer. He cursed how slow the ship he was on was taking to dock. Then he cursed how long after docking it took for the crew to start allowing passengers to disembark.
The cooldown of [Flawless Glyph of Portal Transportation] was almost 20 thousand years. During his flight, he tried to calculate how far he had traveled to the portal. He had given up. With his cooldown reduction and the numbers involved, it was futile. He could ask Avatar, but she was being too weird lately.
Once off the ship, John pushed his way through the crowd and found a terminal. It was the wrong type and didn’t tell him what he needed. He frantically looked around for another. He saw nothing. Wires slithered out of his palm and into the machine. It was pretty easy to hack and reach systems with the data he needed. Manipulating data would be another story. He just needed to access unprotected systems available at other public terminals.
Jim was docked at the station. He ran towards it, ignoring the warnings guards shouted at him to stop or slow down. Ryicci was a big station without the most sensible layout. Jim was berthed at the premium port eight levels down and practically on the other side of the station.
Just outside Jim, John stopped to collect himself. If he were wearing his CSL, as soon as he got within a certain range of any Peerless ship, it would automatically connect, and he’d show on tons of systems. But he wasn’t wearing his CSL.
John infused essence into Adumbration and cast [Hide]. What he was about to do would either save his wife or cause her death. He prayed fervently that he was making the right call. All the doubt he felt wasn’t helpful.
Unless Nine beat him back and cut John’s access, even if the gangway was closed, the ship would read his biometrics and open. But that could still notify the people onboard still making the stealth approach futile. Not a lot of the nuts-and-bolts stuff was taught in academy, and he hadn’t spent a lot of time on the bridge. He just didn’t know how noticeable his actions would be. He was hoping for a miracle.
The ship scanned John. The airlock opened, sprayed John inside of it, closed, and the inner airlock opened. He pushed more essence into Adumbration and entered.
John spread his senses. He couldn’t feel onto the bridge. He felt nothing. The chalk, the area where the Oli would stack and prepare to quickly exit the ship, was empty, as were the two rooms off to the right, the medbay and the room Amber’s deployment platform, the hoverchair, was stored.
As John turned left towards the ready room, he saw Amber run out of the bridge, a giant smile on her face and tears in her eyes.
Nine followed right behind her.
Amber couldn’t see John hidden within stealth, [Hide], and Adumbration. Nine’s emotionless eyes, somehow, stared right at John.
Nine’s right hand extended forward. As his left hand snapped, the double doors to the bridge slammed down, as did the double doors leading to the ready room, trapping John in the space between.
A giant beam of orange hit Amber in the back and pierced right through her, causing her face to crumple up in pain as she tumbled forward, blood spraying all over from the massive and fatal hole in her chest.
John cried out and charged the door. He didn’t feel anger. He just felt broken. And defeated. He had guessed wrong. He failed. Again. He should’ve just used the token.
Nine seemed to smile without smiling. He lowered his hand to where Amber lay bleeding on the ground while still looking John in the eye. Amber turned invisible. Nine still sent his beam at her.
But Amber had turned invisible! John prayed that meant she was alive. Being so filled with anxiety would help nothing, and neither would giving in to defeatism. He forced himself to calm down.
Every ship had double doors between sections. In academy, he was taught that major hull breaches often damaged a door before it could fully slam down and seal. Two doors made ship sectioning much more reliable.
And the doors were very durable. They had to be. There was little chance either John or Nine could breach the doors. He didn’t think the NCS would consider him to be in combat since he was trapped. He tried entering his Mind’s Eye and was relieved when it worked. “Is Amber alive? Is she okay,” he worriedly asked Avatar.
Avatar sighed. “You know I can’t tell you that, John.”
“Don’t do this to me. Please. You know I would do anything for you. I’d die for you the same as I would my wife. Just do this one thing for me. I beg of you.”
After glitching, Avatar lowered her head and said, “She lives.”
John let out an anxious breath and exited his Mind’s Eye.
As Nine slowly approached the door to the chalk, John cast [Flawless Glyph of Plasma Barrage] at the window. The window was extremely durable and thick, but his [Min. Power] was very high, and his glyph was very powerful. Small fragments of the window exploded away. It would take a great amount of time and effort, but he’d get through the door eventually.
John’s hand shook as he cast his glyph. His actions caused this. This was his fault. He had messed up. He failed. Again. And his wife paid the price for his failure.
“I told you what would happen,” emotionlessly said Nine, “but you couldn’t just die, could you? This is your fault. She could’ve been happy. A mother. Now, another woman important to me is dead because of you.”
John cast again and asked, “You think the Meleua is going to let you get away with killing his Alii?”
Something bumped into one of the tables near the area of the ready room leading towards where storage, engineering, and Amber’s chambers were located.
Both John and Nine looked at the table. John let out a sigh of relief. His wife was up and moving. He hoped that was a good sign. But her injury was bad. Very bad. He had no idea how she was still moving. A huge hole in her chest had exploded outward.
Nine turned back to John and said, “Yes. He will. I am Yellow. That none of you understand just what that means has been helpful. Bioware is programmable. He’s currently a prisoner of his ridiculously large biosuit. I’d ask how you prevented yours from locking up too, but I’ll check its logs after you’re dead.
“It looks like our Alii is managing to hold onto life. She’ll bleed out. The wound was massive. Or maybe she’ll miraculously live. Do you believe she’d survive if I vented the ship?”
After finishing his new cast, John said, “We’re berthed at a station where the field extends around the whole ship.”
With his face still showing no emotions, Nine said, “No. When I snapped my fingers, we started getting underway to deep space. I have complete control of this ship. We’re now outside the field. I’ll raise the door behind you. Head to the training room. We’ll fight there. I tried to spare you this shame. I will not hunt down my Alii if you do as I say.”
The door behind John opened. He stared at Nine, trying to control his anger. “I’m going make your death as painful as I can.”
“No, my dear friend, you won’t. You’ll try and fail,” replied Nine in his monotone voice. “How has no one realized that I’m an alpha-type? You’ll quickly understand how outclassed you are. You’ll realize you lost the moment you decided to disregard my explicit instructions. You’ll die knowing the woman you love, her children, your children, will all die because you failed to follow simple instructions and just die.
“This conclusion is forgone. Their deaths are on you. I told you. I told you exactly what would happen. And still, you decided to kill our Alii. I ask that you don’t further damage the ship. Don’t reply. Just go.”
As John went to speak, Nine’s eyes began to glow blue. John froze in place. “Can you move,” asked Nine.
John couldn’t. He couldn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t speak. He tried fighting through whatever held him, to force his body to move. He couldn’t even get a finger to twitch.
“Good,” said Nine. “I looked up the body [Perk] shown in your status the first time we partied. It’s a truly impressive and wonderful body, but it lists a high-grade receptive charm right in the required mats. I hope to one day meet your ex so I can thank her. I’m assuming that was her doing. I isolated the frequencies while you studied at my side.
“I could kill you right now as you stand there helpless. I’d rather we fight on equal footing. I want you to realize how much more than you I am, and that you are nothing to me. Go to the training room. I’ll wait two minutes and follow. I give my word that I will not pursue our Alii. Not until after I kill you.”