The situation was surreal to Aurelio. He was rolling with the punches because it was better than letting his mind wallow in a pit of implications and sorrows. He’d abstracted his predicament well enough to a more vivid gaming experience that now confronted with an inevitable conflict…
His entire body was sending him signals that he should turn back and forget all of this. His heart was firmly lodged in his throat. His chest was tight and his breathing was hot. His skin had grown clammy and sweaty within the metallic plates of the suit and if the visor was just a clear windowpane, he was certain it’d be caked in fog.
Mentally, however, he was excited.
He knew the event they’d walked in and what that meant for their chances of success.
Achieving an ambush on the creature would give them the first move and that opening move would make or break the rest of the encounter.
Kalani looked at him with expectant eyes, her black face glistening with beads of sweat.
He took a deep breath, “This thing is currently occupied with a repair. It’s not going to sense us approaching. We’re going to get a lay of the immediate area and ambush it.”
Aurelio turned to look at Elena, “I’m depending on you to be our front line. I don’t care if you trust me or not but I know you’re going to do whatever is in your power to keep your crew safe. Do that.”
She didn’t respond. Better silence than an aggressive rejection of his plan.
“Are we looking for anything specific while preparing for this ambush?” Kalani asked.
He smiled, “We might get lucky and find some worthwhile resources strewn across this battlefield.”
He was hoping against hope that he’d find a particular piece of terrain within their ambush but he wasn’t about to test the limitations of their element of surprise scouring the ground for a discarded chest.
“If Elena’s the front line, what do we do?” Cantwell asked.
“We support her with whatever we’ve got.” Kalani answered, gingerly swinging the [Metal Spike] in front of her.
“I think we should head out and locate the Vessel. Cantwell and Elena, you two should remain on comms with me while we approach. Kalani, your comms are down so stay nearby any one of us for when you need to deliver a directive.” Aurelio advised.
They listened to him without complaint. The crew mobilized towards the distortions on their map, keeping their eyes peeled for the monster that had attacked them up among the stars.
---
Their arena was a scorched, dry, stretch of barren flatland. Save for the remaining three fungal stalks strewn about a swathe of haphazardly decapitated trunks, their fighting grounds were clear.
He noted the fireflies twinkling in the air. Their bodies were bulbous and their wings were colorful like a kaleidoscope. It was like watching tessellated glass flap in slow motion to keep the creature aloft. They floated in a lax holding pattern towards the other side of the field. He also noted towards the edge of the arena was a sizable clump of sludge in the shape of a melted egg.
His eyes shot back to the center of the arena. Their quarry stood in the middle of the devastation, body twitching and writhing as their trail of blue blood led them to it.
They were fighting a Vessel.
The thing was a liquefied hermit crab, inhabiting the insides of a discarded exo-suit and adding onto it with debris lying around the planet. The game classified them as either being Broken or Pure Vessels, and by the hodgepodge state of the monster before them, the disrepair alone told him they were up against a broken thing.
It was a sight to behold in real life. There were holes and gaps torn across the stretch of plating on its shell that they could see the swirling blue creature within. It violently threw its weight around but the shell did not move more than a few inches here and there as it did so, suggesting a fine motor control despite the vitriolic passengers control system.
The exo-suit it was inhabiting had a rusty cannon loosely mounted on its shoulder. It had a heavy looking canister with a heated valve towards its left clavicle, a tube at the canister's bottom running down and around towards its left arm where a nozzle was attached.
Each time that the monster twitched, blue tendrils would burst from the gaps in the suit, swatting at the air and lashing at the ground with great kinetic force.
Elena gripped her [Carbon Cleaver] tight and circled around the monster to face its blind spot. She had a good sense of war and he wasn’t about to bark orders to someone far more experienced in delivering violence than he was.
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He approached from the front, making himself as small as possible while it remained preoccupied. Cantwell was directed towards the sludge, the resources that could be found within it too invaluable to leave behind. The game didn’t allow for scavengers to interact with the field after a successful fight and he didn’t want to take chances.
Kalani was trailing behind him with her weapon brandished, a determined look on her face.
Within seconds, they were in position.
“Elena, you strike first. Strike as hard as you can.” Aurelio whispered. Before he delivered another directive, a new prompt appeared before him.
|AND SO YOUR STRUGGLE BEGINS|
The visual elements on his visor dissipated. His eyes felt like they were melting within their sockets, the sensation acutely similar to his experience at the hands of the monolith back at the outpost.
He was unable to inform the others of the new development as Elena lifted the [Carbon Cleaver] with both of her hands and slammed it down on the monster.
The dormant auxiliary lights around the suit flashed a deep crimson, her attack successfully cleaving through the creatures plating. The thick blade ran down the length of its back in brutal fashion.
The creature within let out a visceral screech that caused his skin to crawl and his body to wince.
|Exonaut draws one wound|
|Exonaut deals two wounds (DESTRUCTIVE 1)|
The prompts were succinct as they scrolled across the corner of his eye. Whether it was an adaptation that the monolith had made from him due to his peculiar arrival or a byproduct of the systems managing the world, Aurelio was perceiving the circumstances of their engagement in the same way he’d be viewing the situation as a tabletop player.
He took the opportunity and followed Elena’s lead.
|?Let Fate Decide?|
He ignored the prompt for now, using the bulk of his strength to target the monster's chest and stomach. The first attack was shallow, his swing bouncing back from the metal plating across its chest in an ineffective display.
Aurelio’s second attack found more success, the pointed end of his [Metal Spike] piercing through the thinner plating across its stomach and into the creature within.
|Chosen draws one wound|
|Chosen deals one wound|
He shelved the system's description of him in the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand. He was winded from swinging the way he had but that couldn’t stop him from continuing the assault. Their situation would only grow downward from there.
Aurelio stoked the embers in his heart and felt his inner flame respond with a powerful outburst.
It was instinctual the way that energy flowed through him, first from his chest and outwards towards the rest of his body like tingles. The ignition gauge on his forearm ticked up by one as a resurgence of stamina gave him the power to continue attacking.
He dismissed the wave of prompts and jabbed the [Metal Spike] deep into its rib cage. Aurelio felt the creature convulse from the inside and as he pulled the weapon out to go for another swing, a wave of blue-black sludge washed over him.
The sludge was cold on his skin. It felt like he’d been coated in ferrofluid as ooze mixed with metal shavings tickled his skin before hardening.
The second attack was an egregious miss as the sludge was slow in slipping off his visor.
|Chosen draws one wound|
|Chosen deals one wound|
Kalani let out a bellowing cry as she leapt and stabbed the creature's rising arm. The attack only clipped a loose stretch of metal but she was not discouraged in her approach. She swung again towards the monster's forearm and found nothing but air.
In the blink of an eye, the auxiliary lights on the monster’s suit flashed a brilliant blue and the arm that’d been slow to rise jerked up over the commander’s head and slammed downward on her skull.
|Commander drew zero wounds|
|Commander suffered one point of damage to HEAD|
|Commander at risk of a Grievous Injury|
|Commander is KNOCKED DOWN|
|INSPECT not unlocked|
There was a high pitched ringing in Aurelio’s ear, the intercom buzzing with activity between Cantwell and Elena. The world had suddenly slowed down to a crawl and the hope he’d been feeling within the pit of his stomach sunk into darkness.
|Engineer interacted with Hardened Sludge [PARTIAL SUCCESS]|
|Engineer gained x1 Vile of Sludge Basic Resource|
Cantwell had committed to his task despite the sudden development. Or was he in the middle of the process before Kalani had suffered damage?
The creature snapped and shifted the metal across its body to stand up straight, its cracked helmet looking down on him with an alien detachment.
The monster was prepared to make its move.