“In some sense, if we were alone in the universe, it was strange that we evolved so early. How could we be so special? In some sense, the answer to that question can only be found within the tapestry.”
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Everyone stood for a second in shock and confusion, and then Alex could see people opening their Status screens. The T’Kordish spread throughout the crowd to monitor the progress, while K'Mposhe stepped back into the shadows of the alleyway. Suddenly, he felt a mental pressure.
“Human, how is your value so high?” The voice was that of one of the gray-cloaked T’Kordish. Alex realized that they hadn’t scanned him before since he wasn’t in their line of sight earlier. And his scan would reveal an estimated value far beyond a fourth of his combat power, exposing the fact that he had, at the very least, many titles.
He felt another mental pressure, much stronger this time, and the figure in black spoke up. “Interesting. He is too much of a threat. I will dispose of him. Suppress any unrest.”
Alex felt a chill run down his spine at being singled out by the creature. A sense of doom began to overtake him, and his legs felt wobbly. There was no way he could survive this.
The Assistant sounded in his head. [I’ve managed to complete a scan of one of them. It was much more difficult because of their high Mental Resistance, but certainly not impossible. The problem is that hacking into them would probably take hours.]
The voice of the Assistant snapped him out of his resignation to a degree. He saw a tooltip appear on his screen when he looked at one of the T’Kordish, although the rest were blank.
T’Kordish
Level: 20
Combat Rating: 273.40 (Tier 0-C)
Value: 68.35 Ł
The interaction happened within less than two seconds; his mental communication speed with the Assistant had improved dramatically following his latest increase in Mental Power and Mental Speed. But by that time, K'Mposhe had covered the entire square and was almost at the steps to the town hall.
Alex braced himself for the inevitable fate. But then he saw something: the level 14 Ulumou elite from earlier was locked in combat with one of the figures in gray. And soon, the other Ulumou followed his lead. Alex stared in disbelief as they threw themselves into a battle that was surely suicide. And then the humans began to follow as well. A full-fledged rebellion had erupted. Could it be that he had inspired this? And so when K'Mposhe reached him, a spark of hope was born within him. He steadied his breathing, and put his sword in a neutral position.
Right before they arrived, the hooded figure pulled from their Spatial Bracelet a heavy black mace and six black spherical objects. At a speed that was hard to follow, they dropped the black spheres in a circle around themself, and they began to spin in the air. A translucent black barrier appeared. Warily, Alex swung his sword through the barrier. But the instant it touched, it immediately started to corrode the metal, leaving only a stick of rust by the time it passed through. Without missing a beat, they swung the mace through the barrier at Alex. The mace was coated in a substance that looked like tar or rubber, and it passed through with no problem. The remainder of Alex’s sword was knocked out of his hand, and he felt a jolt pass through his body.
Weaponless, Alex hastily ran into the town hall, but K'Mposhe followed hot on his heels. He took another sword that he had picked up earlier from an Ulumou corpse from his Spatial Bracelet. The sword was mainly for blocking; it would be of little use against the black barrier. He reached the other end of the town hall, and he cursed when there was no exit door. The black barrier seemed like it affected metal, but perhaps wood would be effective. With an effort, he picked a table up from the ground. He was now cornered in the building, so if this didn’t work, then he was screwed.
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The T’Kordish leader was upon him. The mace came down, and Alex couldn’t dodge in time. He was forced to block with the table, and it splintered into pieces in his hands. A horrible shockwave went through his body as he absorbed the impact. For a second, Alex couldn’t move from the shock, and K'Mposhe took advantage of this to smash down with the mace once more. With a sickening crunch, Alex’s left leg was crushed.
A pain beyond anything Alex had ever imagined shot through his entire body. His left leg was a crumpled mess, with the entire lower thigh destroyed and the calf and knee hanging awkwardly in space. Alex fell to the ground in agony, losing his focus. It was everything he could do to block the next blow of the leader. His vision started to fade as the pain threatened to take away his consciousness. Faintly, he heard the voice of his Assistant in his head.
[Focus. Focus. Focus.]
It sounded like a metronome, and it somehow soothed the discomfort to the degree that he was able to process the situation a little bit more lucidly. Still almost blinded with pain, Alex rolled out of the way of another blow, feeling a chunk of flesh being taken from his side as the blow grazed him. Still on the ground, he grabbed the legs of another table to counterattack, but it was battered out of his hands by the T’Kordish leader.
At this point, he realized something. Was K'Mposhe toying with him? They should have been able to end his life a lot earlier. As if to confirm this, he heard a sound that was a mix between a clicking and a laugh.
“You are the strongest of the humans? Pathetic.”
From up close, Alex could hear the true sound of the T’Kordish beneath the System translation. The sound was sharp and disjointed, as if it was coming from a broken record. He could make out hissing and what sounded like… clacking? Yes, the true voice of the figure in black was a bit like the kaphdor.
A sense of powerlessness began to build inside Alex, and with it, a deep rage. Nobody was going to come to save him now. He had only one tool left in his toolbox: the chitin. There was no way he could replicate the insanely beautiful shard that had killed the Hirar, but he had to try. Something clicked in his mind, and he immediately went to the Quest menu and selected the option to become a Pretender. Another half-laugh echoed out from K’Mposhe.
He dodged another blow, now trying to put on a show. He screamed from the pain, now letting himself show weakness. If K’Mposhe was deriving some perverse pleasure from his pain, then let them have it. He was only a bit slower than K’Mposhe due to his titles, so he was at least able to give them some entertainment — if he was too easy to kill, then the predator would have gotten bored already and ended it. A large shard began to build between his hands. He had no idea how to add acceleration; it was far beyond his understanding. So he would only be able to make a stationary object. As the shard grew, he was able to feel from between his hands that it was ugly and misshapen — Alex lacked the understanding to shape it. Yet it slowly formed.
Another blow, and this one Alex couldn’t dodge in time. An excruciating pain shot through his arm, and the half-formed shard almost collapsed. But he kept pouring energy into it as fast as he could. His channels once again burned as if they were on fire, but all of his energy was finally poured into it. It was over 200 lucens of energy, which was definitely more than he would get from the T’Kordish leader, but he didn’t have a choice. He needed to seize the best shot at this, since he would only get one.
Alex rolled once again to dodge another swing of the mace, but this time, he turned towards the creature, not away. Now, he lay face down on the ground facing K’Mposhe. It was a poor position; he would almost certainly get hit by the next blow and possibly even killed. Another laugh-like sound came from the creature.
Right before the next swing, Alex jabbed upwards with all of his might, exposing his poorly formed shard. His hands burned as they passed through the barrier, but the shard didn’t dissolve. Taken by surprise, K’Mposhe didn’t move in time. And the moment the shard ripped through his cloak, it came in contact with a familiar substance. After almost a full day using kaphdor corpses to bash other kaphdor, Alex knew the feeling of chitin by heart. A surge of hope ran through him. The shard expanded as it drew chitin from the exoskeleton of the T’Kordish leader, and they screamed.
“An Insight? How??”
Almost faster than Alex could react, the leader pulled out a talisman from their Spatial Bracelet, and their body began to heal at an alarming rate. The chitin was being restored — but it only fed the growing shard. The leader pulled another object out, and Alex began to panic. K’Mposhe had access to an Outpost Shop, and who knew what items they had purchased? Gritting his teeth, he swung his body on the floor, his mangled left leg taking K’Mposhe off balance. Another burst of searing pain shot through his body, and he almost blacked out. With all of his remaining strength, he stabbed the chitin upward. And then he saw nothing.