Kay woke up. He didn’t remember falling asleep, and a good chunk of his body felt really sore, which was weird. He tried to remember what he’d been doing to end up feeling like this, but it as all kind of a blank. The last thing he remembered clearly was… huh. Not much at all. He knew his name, he remembered his family, and his friends, but there was a large blank where everything else should be. He frowned, his eyes still shut as he tried to work his way through what he did remember. High school, college, work after that…
There was a sharp pain in Kay’s side and he could feel a slice cut out of him sealing itself shut. The pain caused him to jolt, and his memories came flooding back. He’d been shunted into another world, and now he was a king. And a vampire! How weird was that? He had magic powers too, ones that could really help with this whole “in pain” thing. He directed mana into his healing Skill and relaxed as his body began to put itself back together even faster.
How was I healing without using my Skill? That’s not something that should work like that… Oh right, vampire! As long as I have blood I can put myself back together, can’t I? I’m glad I had enough to deal with whatever just happened to me.
He took stock of the blood stored within him and frowned when he realized how low it was. He couldn’t remember what had eaten into his stockpile like that, but he’d either been next to death or fighting something insane. Or both. He only had a few dozen gallons left, which was incredibly low compared to how much he’d had the last time he topped up. He mentally reached out to his Inventory and tried to pull out one of his emergency canteens, but it didn’t appear. He got the feeling like something was in the way. Frowning even deeper he tried to open his eyes and see what was going on but found he couldn’t, something was pressing down on his eyelids and keeping them shut. In fact, something was pressing down on his entire body. It felt like he was completely enclosed.
He shifted his fingers slightly, feeling the coarse grains of dirt and small rocks. I’ve been buried? Did I die? Or did someone try and kill me? That would explain how much blood is gone, especially if they did a really good job in trying to put me down. The System did say that I could potentially regenerate from anything as long as I had enough blood, I must have been cut to pieces and then regenerated from a few scraps.
He tried to remember what had happened. Being in a fight felt right, and he followed that feeling. It had been a desperate fight, one that he’d thought he might lose. An image came to him of a crazy storm, with a giant dark shape looming above him. Endless attacks coming from every angle, a bright blue light suspended in the air…
The fucking nanomachines!
He remembered the fight in its entirety now, the investigation team finding that one sample, killing the enemies there, then rushing to the other side of the island to join the defense against the enemies climbing from the ocean. Destroying countless eldritch beings, the core arriving inside its slug, all of the nanomachines fusing into one and the fight against it. He’d been pushing t back under the cover of Alahna’s storm, and he’d thrown Eleniah at the core to take it out, or at least distract it so he could get closer. Eleniah, who’d been at ground zero of a massive explosion.
Kay drew the remaining dregs of blood out of himself and pushed the dirt away from him. He dug to the surface, the wrapping around his body vibrating to move through the soil. He wedged an arm out and pushed, forcing himself above ground. Looking around Kay saw he was at the edge of a deep crater. Bits of black sludge were all over the ground near him, but they were barley moving where they were moving at all, and he didn’t have time for clean up. Ignoring the injuries he still had he threw himself down the slope of the crater and started running toward the center.
She was lying on the ground near the center, her clothes ripped away and bleeding sluggishly from multiple lacerations. The black sludge leaked from cuts that crisscrossed all over her and Kay couldn’t tell if she was bleeding. Slamming to the ground next to her Kay made the layer covering him up collect at his hands, and he roughly laid them across her, sending the blood deep into her body. She was breathing faintly, so he focused on her wounds. He started by pushing all the sludge near the surface of her skin away from her then he began moving further in. There were nanomachines laced throughout her system, although they were just as listless as all the others, and it wasn’t a problem to destroy them from within.
When all of the contaminants were gone Kay started sealing over her woulds, forcing blood to clot while his Skills stimulated her natural healing drive. He forced her heart to keep pumping at a steady rate just in case and bit by bit her bleeding wounds healed over to the point where he believed she wasn’t in immediate danger. After a few moments more worriedly starring at her and evaporating any nearby clusters of nanomachines, she opened her eyes with a gasp. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, but when she did she looked right into his eyes.
“Kay?”
“Hey.” He reached down and cupped her face. “What the fuck was that?”
“What?”
“Sorry, something blew up right by the core and I’m still panicking. Are you alright?”
“Oh, that was me. It did some power up and I ran out of other options.” She tried to sit up and Kay backed off to let her. She glanced down at her arms and twisted the back and forth to see all sides.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just thought I’d be paler.”
“… Why?”
“The nanomachine things were digging into my body at the end. I assumed if I was still alive you had to turn me into a vampire.”
Kay’s head drooped down and he sighed. “No. That’s if a vampyr gets you because their bullshit transforms your body. This was just trying to kill you so I did some healing.”
“Awe, I was kind of hoping we’d match.”
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The intelligence was not happy. Not at all. It had agreed with the leadership that they needed to strike first, to eliminate any threats, including the red one, and establish a base to being growing. It even agreed with the orders to send everything and everyone, to make sure they had everything they needed to take the island. It had not agree with the decision to take the s̸̚ͅẗ̶͉r̴̘͝a̷̹̽n̷̹͘g̴̘̽e̷̛̤ ̷͇̄m̸͚͊ă̶͚t̷̃͜t̶͚̾ě̷̡r̵̳̽ extrusion device with them. The leadership had overruled it’s protests, and now the device was gone. This world, this universe, seemed to lack s̸̚ͅẗ̶͉r̴̘͝a̷̹̽n̷̹͘g̴̘̽e̷̛̤ ̷͇̄m̸͚͊ă̶͚t̷̃͜t̶͚̾ě̷̡r̵̳̽ entirely, meaning the only source of it the intelligence would ever be able to use to rebuild with was gone forever.
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It knew for sure that it had been unlucky to fall into this world now. There had been nothing but setbacks since arriving here. The intelligence started to pull itself together, gathering up all the n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍ it could reach into its shell. It even stole from any of the others nearby. They weren’t able to fight back and protect their n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍, they’d been knocked silly by the death of the entire leadership, including the elder. The intelligence was the paranoid type and had made sure to keep the connection to the leadership disguised, it hadn’t been nearly as deep as the leadership had demanded, and thus it hadn’t been as hurt as all the others.
It collected the n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍ it could and began moving away. It had no destination in mind, just away. The intelligence and its kin had been clumped together, making them susceptible to attacks like the explosion that had ended the battle, but the natives hadn’t been. They would come soon and it had no desire to stay where it could be caught and killed. There was no s̸̚ͅẗ̶͉r̴̘͝a̷̹̽n̷̹͘g̴̘̽e̷̛̤ ̷͇̄m̸͚͊ă̶͚t̷̃͜t̶͚̾ě̷̡r̵̳̽ matter here, but there might be alternatives or other resources to find that it could adapt to, as long as it continued to live. Even if there wasn’t, enough time would let it convert whatever it wanted into more n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍, enough to destroy anything that threatened it.
There was movement in the crater, and the intelligence saw something throw itself down. It tracked the movement, making sure it stayed undetected while it left. Then it realized. It was the red one! The being that could completely unmake n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍, with its powers! The red one was the only true threat that the intelligence had if it wanted to harvest all the resources this world offered. Even with millions of years to build up, with no s̸̚ͅẗ̶͉r̴̘͝a̷̹̽n̷̹͘g̴̘̽e̷̛̤ ̷͇̄m̸͚͊ă̶͚t̷̃͜t̶͚̾ě̷̡r̵̳̽ the red one or any others that might have the same powers could just undo everything the intelligence tried.
It had to kill the red one.
It gathered its shell up and moved closer oh so slowly. It used dead shells and still those that were still stunned for cover, stealing n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍ as it went. It gained more mass and density as it got closer and it prepared the strongest weapon it could with the time and resources it had. As it approached, the one that had killed the leadership awoke and they both started to move. It had to act now, there was no time to increase its chances of success. The intelligence readied the projectile weapon, the gathered n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍ that were shaped into sharpened ammunition ready to fire. It aimed at the uppermost limb, the one it knew these natives needed to survive, and fired.
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A searing sharp pain struck Kay and the same time that his head was thrown back by an outside force. He felt the lower right half of his jaw tear off as something struck him at high speeds. He reeled back in pain and shock but his training was already taking over. He was up on his feet and facing the enemy within a second with a weapon in his hands. He saw an ovoid shape made out of the black sludge pointing a barrel that jutted out of it at him. Readying his weapon he sealed the wound in his face with blood to keep it closed and charged the enemy.
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If the intelligence had had lungs or a mouth it would have screamed a curse. It hadn’t had time to run proper diagnostics on the weapon it had made, and it had missed! The red one was injured, but not enough to ensure death. The intelligence made its shell leap back, growing limbs from the bottom to travel on. The red one was charging it, not just blasting away as it had previously, which meant it was low on resources. But the intelligence was too and it would lose a battle in close proximity.
But the intelligence was canny. It had seen how the red one healed the other, and knew it cared. The intelligence swung the barrel of its weapon toward the explosive one which was still on the ground. It was bluffing, for it had no more ammunition, but it was all the intelligence had.
Without the necessary organs it could not crow with satisfaction, but it wanted to when the red one skid to a halt. It tried to use its body to block the intelligence’s aim, but rotating and moving places stymied that effort. Stuck in the stand off, the intelligence began working on its escape. It’s assassination had failed, and it had even less of a desire to stay here now. It needed the red one to stay back long enough for it to finish preparing, so the intelligence started working on a distraction.
The intelligence had felt the big thing, the thing that lurked outside, when it had fallen into this world with its brethren. It was a big thing, one that waited. But it was also a thing with plans and those plans had made the cracks that had brought the intelligence here. It hated that thing, because it hated this place and part of its plans were to grow big enough to kill that thing itself. But it had no qualms with getting someone else to do the job for it, so why not turn two threats against each other?
Deep in its memory the intelligence had stored records from the past. It had studied all it could to learn how to avoid the predations of those more resourceful than it and to outwit its own rivals. Among those record were a time of when communication had been done through vibrating the atmosphere, like these natives did. This method was called “speech” and something called “language” was used to convey meaning. One of those “languages” was very similar to the one it detected the red one using, and it pulled that “language” up, translating its own thoughts into it and using its n̸̡̻̈́a̵̝͂͌n̸̫̅̏i̴͖̇͘͜t̸͇̏e̶̹͋͛ͅs̷͎̐̍ to vibrate the air.
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Kay shifted back and forth, trying to put his body between the monster and Eleniah. She was yelling at him from behind, telling him to just attack it, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know if, after taking the damage from the insane explosion she’d made plus her injuries before that, she could tank a hit that had blown part of his skull off. The damn thing kept shifting so that it had a clear shot on her every time he tried to interpose himself, keeping it a standoff.
The blob crackled, like the fake person they’d caught trying to escape the palace, and then words came out of it. They were garbled and jumped pitches weirdly, but they were understandable words. Understandable English words.
“We were brought here. We did not wish to be here.” The thing crackled and spat. “The shapes of power, the “ritual”, it cracked the barriers and opened a hole that we could not escape from. You protect this place from things outside. If you wish to keep protecting them then you should seek-“
A cannon burst out of the back of the ovoid shape, aiming at the sky. It depressed and fired, launching a sphere of the black goo into the sky where it grew blades from its middle that started revolving. The ovoid body below that collapsed into goo as the other piece began to fly away.
Before it could get away a bolt of lightning rained down from the clear sky, frying it and causing it to hit the ground. It landed on the edge of the crater and slid down, rolling and bouncing as it went. It hit the bottom and just lay there, unmoving.
Alahna landed next to Kay with a heavy thump. “You shouldn’t let the enemy distract you like that.” She straightened up and brushed dust off of her clothing. “At least, that’s what I would say normally, but it looked like your main goal was protecting Eleniah, which I endorse. Also, your lips are closed but I can see inside your mouth from the side, so I’m going to cut you extra slack. Let’s get the two of you to some healers. I’ll grab Eleniah.”