Lightforge was in pain. This was not, generally speaking, a new experience for him. Living in a super powered world and getting mixed up with fights between heroes and villains was a painful way to exist. This wasn’t news to him, and he had come to expect a certain level of pain in his daily life.
This was different. It felt like fire was coursing through his veins instead of blood and his muscles were tied up in knots that simply refused to release. Even breathing took effort and he labored to drag himself to his feet. Shakily, he tried to check his status.
Name: Lightforge
Alignment: Neutral
Level: 10
Power Set 1: Hard Light Construct
Power Set 2: Gadgeteer
Status Effects: Marked by Blood
Stats:
Health Points (HP): 18/692
Ability Points (AP): 33/582
Strength: 20
Agility: 16
Intelligence: 24
Aura: 24
Status: Marked by Blood
A powerful being has marked your very blood through the use of afflictions. So long as you are affected, you are under their power. You cannot run, and you cannot resist.
Effect:
* Base HP recovery reduced to 0
* Base AP recovery reduced to 0
* The user of “Marked by Blood” knows your general location at all times. This knowledge becomes more exact the closer they are to you.
* The user of “Marked by Blood” can inflict an HP and AP drain effect on you through direct contact. This drain effect cannot be resisted.
Time Limit: None
The icy chill that ran through his body was almost enough to ease the fire flowing in his veins. That affliction was both potent and terrifying. Not only had he gained the notice of an incredibly powerful villain, but that villain had decided to put a tracker on him.
After what felt like an eternity, the pain finally faded. He took one slow step and then another, forcing his body back to work. The function was slowly coming back to him, but it was going to be a trial to get anywhere anytime soon.
His resource bars weren’t refilling, but he hadn’t expected them to after reading the affliction description. In fact, the most surprising aspect of the situation was just how calm he actually felt. It took a moment of introspection to realize why; He was in a much higher level area. Whether his resources were at 5% or 100% didn’t really matter; anyone he saw could kill him either way.
In fact, the best course of action might be to run around until something around here killed him. It would give his killer a negligible amount of XP for their level, and it would probably clear the affliction from him. Status ailments couldn’t persist past death, after all.
Then again, there were plenty of things in this world that weren’t supposed to be possible. It would be a bad idea to put too much faith in the mechanics that he thought he knew. Much better to get back and have Gray Guardian clear the ailment for him.
Of course, that meant navigating his way across the city with no resources. In reality Centuryville, where he currently was, was actually reasonably safe for him. He was too weak to be a tempting target, so the only people who might attack him would be doing it for fun. Of course, Bloodwing had done just that, so there was no such thing as a safe bet.
He opened his inventory and looked through it for anything that might be useful. Healing items should bypass the affliction, but he didn’t have any with him. In retrospect, that was a gross oversight that he would need to fix as soon as possible. An emergency beacon that could summon his allies would also be useful but, again, he didn’t have something like that. It would have to go on his ever-growing list of ideas that he needed to invent.
The only thing that could be useful was his Gate Controller. There was nothing stopping him from relocating his base to this area of the map and using it as a safe place to plan and recover. Well, nothing but the two minutes that it took to set the portal’s location. An eternity in combat, but nothing too unreasonable out of it.
He decided that the risk was worth it. He placed the gate into the roof’s door, as it was the only surface large enough for it. After two long minutes of waiting it was ready, and he passed through the portal intent on collapsing into bed.
You have entered your Safe Zone. Affliction mitigation is in effect.
Status: Marked by Blood has been partially suppressed
* Base HP recovery is now 50% of normal
* Base AP recovery is now 50% of normal
Status effects will regain full potency if you leave this Safe Zone.
He hadn’t expected that. He knew that his base would keep him safe from further damage, but he hadn’t known that it would affect the affliction. That was excellent news, and he fell into his bed as he watched his resources refill very slowly. Not enough to trust fighting, but it was something.
He laid there for a long time, staring at the ceiling as his resources slowly recovered. It was good to know that he wasn’t completely out of options as far as recovery was concerned, but he was still wary of the other abilities that were built into the status ailment. Bloodwing could find and drain him no matter what he did so long as it was active.
Of course, the man could have killed him in an instant, but that wasn’t the point. If Lightforge simply went about his business, leveling up while using his base to recover, he would essentially be fattening himself up. Sooner or later the crazed villain would come after him. He needed to solve the problem, and that meant getting home.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He mentally added a few new items to his list of future inventions. Prime among those ideas was a way of setting multiple portal locations for his base. If he had that already then he wouldn’t be trapped here. He could just open a portal somewhere else and instantly teleport across the map. Actually, that was probably why such an item didn’t exist in the main game.
Once his HP and AP were back to full, it was time to go. He cautiously reopened the portal and stepped out onto the rooftop. He wasn’t immediately killed, which he took as a good sign. He turned in the direction of Chancery Hills and started to run.
He decided to view this as an opportunity. After all, he had a new ability that he hadn’t used yet. He pulled up the description as he took his first few steps.
Name: Shining Step
Type: Mobility
Charges: 2
Duration: 1 sec
Cooldown: 10 sec
Create a platform of solidified light to use as a foothold in midair. Platforms are susceptible to enemy attacks. Each charge has a separate cooldown.
He grinned as he approached the edge of the building and leaped out into the empty space between buildings. This wasn’t a tightly packed section of the city; the buildings weren’t close enough for him to leap between them normally. Luckily he didn’t need to.
With a thought a small platform of blue light appeared beneath him. It was so small that he doubted he could even stand on it comfortably. It flashed past him in a blink as he stepped on it and leaped again. A second platform appeared under him again, and it was only then that he realized his miscalculation.
The next building was further away than he had estimated, and he was out of platforms. He couldn’t turn back, so he did the only thing that might save him: he threw himself across the gap with all the force that he could muster.
It wasn’t quite enough. By his best guess he would crash into the building ahead of him a couple of floors from the top. He grit his teeth as his mind kicked into overdrive. An instinct in the back of his mind told him that he had the tools to survive this, but he needed to be smart about how he deployed them. Even then, it would probably be close.
He raised his arm with his shield emitter. The shield pulsed into being all around him just as he crashed into the wall. It was in its full sphere mode, which lasted just long enough to absorb the blow. He let it shatter around him, leaving him hanging in midair an arm’s length from a solid brick wall.
Spikes erupted from his shoes as he began to fall again. The blue energy tore at the bricks, digging deep and slowing him without stopping. He retracted the spike and redirected the energy to his hands, where his daggers formed instead. He roared and drove the weapons into the wall in front of him.
The muscles in his arms strained as he dropped and felt his full body weight pull hard against the joints in his arms and shoulders. He had already been aware that he was big and strong, but now he was gaining appreciation for the fact that he was also heavy. He tried to find purchase with his feet, but there wasn’t quite enough traction for that.
Time to really test his powers. He dismissed one dagger, groaning as he supported his entire weight with one arm. He mentally commanded his boots and one of them gained spikes but not the other. Perfect. He dug the glowing points into the wall and carefully balanced his weight between one leg and one arm. It was awkward, but he was hanging stably, and he only had to hold it for ten seconds.
The cooldown for his platforms finally ran out, so he dismissed the spikes once again and drove his second dagger into the wall. He heaved himself up into a curled position before summoning a platform just beneath his feet. He extended his legs with all the force he could muster and launched himself upward. At the top of his jump he summoned another platform and jumped again.
The second jump was enough for him to reach the lip of the rooftop above him. He pulled himself the rest of the way up and sat on the rooftop, giving his body a quick break before continuing on his journey.
That was exciting. Not the fastest or smoothest way to travel, but it had gotten the job done. If he gained more platforms at higher levels, there might well come a time when he could simply run through the skies without a care in the world. Well, probably still a few cares, but a lot fewer than he had now. Especially with the affliction that was still hanging onto him.
His little stunt through the air had put a dent in his AP, though one that wouldn’t normally be significant. The only thing that gave him pause was the fact that any reduction in his resources would require the tedious process of opening a new gate to his base in order to replace them. He needed a way of being more efficient with his movements.
He decided to spend a little time experimenting with his abilities. He started summoning platforms in front of himself just to see what he could do with them. It was hard to test; the one second limit on the platforms was almost too short to test anything with. Almost, but not quite.
It didn’t take long to discover that, while the platform size and shape was constant, he could place them in any orientation that he wanted. That would give him a better surface to push off of, but he wanted to do more. The real question was whether or not he could make them move. That took considerably more time and effort to figure out.
Technically speaking, making the platforms move was simple. It just had to be part of the mental command that created the platform in the first place. The hard part was making it move in the way that he wanted. As it turned out, once you introduced the idea of movement to the platforms they would move randomly unless specifically constructed not to. He had to mentally construct the three dimensional movement and rotation exactly as he wanted it or else it would behave unexpectedly.
It took nearly an hour of experimentation to get the hang of the process. He had moved his base once again and was simply leaving the gate open. He would sit just inside the portal and create the platforms on the outside. The ten second cooldown should have been hardly noticeable, but continuous usage of the ability meant that he was largely just sitting still the entire time.
Once he was confident in his new ability, he closed the portal and decided to put it to the test. He took a running start and jumped forward, creating a platform to push off of beneath his foot. Instead, the glowing square of light kicked his foot out from under him and sent him tumbling back to the ground. He landed head first and had to watch his health drop ever so slightly from the impact.
Apparently the timing was going to be more complicated than he had expected. Which meant that this was going to take even longer. Unfortunately, he didn’t see any other way forward. He had to be able to move around faster and more freely. Not just to get home, but to reach the level of the powerhouses that he’d met so far.
He was getting ready to try again when a flash of golden light appeared above him and he instinctively prepared himself for a fight. He relaxed almost instantly as he recognized the source. Sunbird was looking down at him, a relieved smile on her face.
“There you are. Why the [BLEEP] did you run off like that?”
“I wasn’t going to just stay still after that psycho attacked us. What happened to you?”
“He loaded me up with status ailments and killed me. I figured the same thing had happened to you.”
“It almost did.”
He explained about his near-death experience and the new status effect that had been left behind. With each word he spoke his friend’s face grew more and more pale. By the time he explained what Marked by Blood actually did, she was white as a sheet.
“Oh [BLEEP]. That’s really bad. That nutcase can find you anywhere in the world? You need to be really careful until we can get rid of it.”
“That was the plan. Hopefully Gray will have something up their sleeve to fix this for me.”
“I hope so. For now, let’s get flying. The more distance we can put between us and this whole area, the better.”
“Agreed. Let’s go.”
She picked him up and took off into the sky, headed back toward the relative safety of Chancery Hills. At least there they would be some of the bigger fish around. But Lightforge wouldn’t forget everything that he’d seen that day. He was far from the top of the mountain, and he would need to either change that or accept being the plaything of individuals much more powerful than himself.
The second option was utterly unacceptable.