Water dripped from the ceiling of the cave as they continued to follow rail tracks deeper into the mine in the dark. Eli had smiled at the chance to experiment with his [Glow] and [Amplify] perks that he had equipped to Photon Shot. Once he got more of an understanding for them, he’d swap them out for [Double] and [Control Light] which were currently equipped to Stellavoltaic Nullspace, just because.
“You sure you don’t want me to use a flashlight or something for you? I’ve made plenty of magitech lights so we could synergize a bit.” Roman asked while he stooped beneath a partially collapsed beam splintered at the top where something massive had struck it.
“Maybe when we’re fighting.” Eli ducked under the same beam under the guidance of Stellavoltaic Nullspace. After Eli confirmed Roman could still see with whatever cameras or lens he had in his suit, he relied entirely on his powers to navigate. It was surreal to force himself to not dawdle or be hesitant about where things were just because he couldn’t see them. He felt them perfectly fine though, with his spatial field that burrowed dozens of feet deep into the rock and covered a fair amount of distance both forward and back.
By itself, [Glow] was useless. It provided no genuine light, little more than a shine, but if he already had light then it’d turn it brighter. Stronger.
While they walked in silence, afraid to alert any of the soldiers or any other spawn here, Eli honed his understanding of [Glow] and Photon Shot. He concentrated on the sensation of activating the perk as warmth tingled through his skin. Capillaries twinged as a faint light spread through his skin like a stain before he absorbed it. Trickles of light sank through the channels of his body into that detached but vital bridge linked to Photon Shot. With so little light, he was acutely aware of the avaricious void inside of it.
A white-hot radiance blazed at the center.
All light he absorbed into his body ended up here where it was compacted into what would one day be the sun of his three stats. Eli almost laughed at how perfectly it fit together, even when he had scrambled at his choices the day after losing his arm from throwing himself into danger as his first real fight.
It felt like he had shaped Photon Shot to fit him and his spatial powers from the first moment he accepted it.
More light crinkled across his skin as they came up to an abrupt end of their tunnel with a massive shaft plunging down into the earth. Noise echoed from below. Cries of pain, the scrape of metal on stone, and maybe even the cracking of a whip. They pressed forward in silence.
Eli observed the progress of the newly absorbed light as it streaked through the yawning pit inside of him and Photon Shot. The sun at the center brightened ever so slightly with the next addition. It felt full almost to bursting, which felt odd despite all the space there was inside of the void. Could he store more light if he focused new light into new stars?
He halted the next flow of glowing light as it seeped into his skin as he willed it to compact away from the lumbering giant star in the center of the void. Glinting wisps compressed as he forced the two apart. Nerves jittered up and down his spine as broiling heat swelled. Photon Shot resisted even as it eagerly gave way. Sweat beaded and dripped from his forehead even as the seed of light charged and grew.
Rock grated beneath them as they passed a burnt out husk of a torch left in a dusty sconce.
Misshapen stony fingers burst out of the ground to wrap around Roman’s ankle. Metal plates protested with a whine as the fingers squeezed. Roman jerked his leg to the side pitifully in a gentle tug. Eli shaped space around them into a knife so he could sever the rock’s hand from his friend’s ankle when reality distorted as that gentle tug repeated ad infinitum.
Dreamlike reflections of Roman yanked against and into the stone hand even while the rest of its body rose out of the ground. Stone weakened, then crumbled with a crack as the rock pointer finger and thumb popped out. Roman dove to the side as a lumbering humanoid made of rock and crystal flashed out of the ground.
Its missing finger and thumb lifted under their own volition before they spiked into Roman’s suit with a booming clang.
Hardened space slashed into the rock with a twinkling crash as the construct shattered. Eli frowned at the already excessive durability of stone getting such an enormous boost from whatever powers this spawn had. He wished he had a way to identify—
“No!” Eli whispered as he teleported through an invisible bolt of starlightning to dodge a hammering blow of this thing’s fist as it tore through the cave floor as it ripped out more rock to reinforce its fists with. If he hadn’t recycled Voidspace Horizon, he bet it would’ve been strong enough for him to dice this thing into cubes.
“What?” Roman hissed through garbled static as the plates in his suit’s right arm rearranged into a wickedly sharp sword that hummed. He shoved his literal sword arm out while he lined it up before he shot the vibrating sword deep into the granite skull of the spawn. Metal cleaved through it like butter as it buzzed so ferociously, the strange sword-like arrow slid down its body as it continued to slice.
Bisected chunks of rock fell as the blade dissolved into motes of fantasy. At the same time an identical blade sprouted out of Roman’s suit. Eli really didn’t understand how Dream powers worked.
Rock spawn spun as it charged toward Roman despite its missing head.
Eli’s eyes widened at the realization that he wouldn’t be able to heal Roman if he got hurt. Not without Lumencloud Transfiguration. He eyed his meager 66 GP while he debated buying Warlock’s Sanctum to see if he had any enchantments he could use or if he would even be able to store this spawn bef—
Both halves of the spawn’s skull sharpened themselves like horns as they rocketed through the air toward Eli.
He teleported to the side as he prepared to siphon out some of his stored light to blast the rock spawn to rubble. Stone horns sank into the cave wall before they reappeared out of the floor to chop at Eli’s ankle. Blood splattered as the crushed joint shattered.
Roman squatted as nozzles slid out of multiple hidden pockets along his suit before the same propulsive jets he had used to fly whirred to life. He blurred through the air as his sword screamed as it hacked into the giant rock spawn. A single slash pruned slabs of stone into fragments. Legion’s Impact multiplied the blow until all that remained was a mound of dust.
“Holy… shit,” Roman coughed as the dented, still vibrating blade ejected from his suit with a hiss and clatter. A few moments later, it faded out of existence with a pristine blade in its place. “My head is fucking pounding. I’m trying to hold out on evolving Legion’s Impact, but killing that spawn strained it a fuck ton.”
“Are you waiting for a certain perk or another power to merge it with?” Eli stooped beside Roman while he clapped him on the shoulder. Could he even energize someone with Lumencloud Transfiguration anymore? Not that he even had it, but still. He knew he had lost the ability when Restoration recycled, but Roman looked just as nauseous as Eli had felt when he had tried to figure Teleportation out initially.
“Not really.” Roman stretched back to his full height as he rubbed at his helm like it was his literal forehead. “I’m mostly waiting, so I can keep pushing and tweaking it until it can handle multiple intelligent actions at once. Imagine if I learned how to do something, like how to say a word in a foreign language and use it. It’d be like I said it multiple times at once, helping me learn the language faster. Or I could sleep for a single hour and sleep for eight. Get healed once? Nope, I can get healed as many times as I need to. Right now it’s multiplier and I know it can be so much more.”
Eli nodded while he digested that. “Have you thought about corrupting it?”
“And risk ruining it?” Roman’s faceshield withdrew so Eli could clearly see his frown through his spatial field. Eli dimly noted that it was odd he couldn’t see his friend’s face or body otherwise inside of the suit. Some kind of protective enchantment or was it just the sheer evolution difference?
“It’s only evo-0, right? If you’re that nervous, find some perks that will help you guide it.” He shrugged.
“I suppose I could. I’m not sure what more it can handle, though. I’ve been pushing it pretty hard.” Roman’s face vanished behind his helm as he turned to lead the way deeper into the mine. “C’mon let’s finish this. I want to finish this round so we can kick Nora and Dorian’s ass in a duel. I bet they’ll challenge us.”
“Nora should be pretty easy to fight, but I’m nervous about Dorian.” Eli frowned at the thought of Dorian's display of rapid movements and staggering might whenever he trained on the dummies. Depending on the rest of his build he could be immune to most of Eli’s tricks.
“I don’t know. I feel like Nora will be pretty tough, but yeah. Dorian is a monster.” Roman shivered. “He’s untouchable and fast. I watched him mow through the spawn in the Crucible easier than changing the channel with a remote. Was Nora really that unimpressive?”
“Hm, I mean, she got knocked out by the Colossal Titan Spider almost right away. But she wasn’t bothered by the goblins and trolls at all.” Eli paused as something large moved behind the cave walls. He waved his hand to get Roman’s attention.
“What?” Roman blurted before six of those rock things dove out of the earth. Five of them dogpiled Roman in a squeal of tortured metal as their jagged fingers pried the plating of his suit away. Roman howled.
Nullspace ripped uselessly at Roman while Eli tried to teleport his friend away.
Eli stepped forward as constructed blades of space slashed ineffectively across each stone figure. The sixth intercepted him before he could move farther.
Granite lumps of stone drove into Eli’s gut before he could get any closer. Spatial shields shattered in a spray of fragments. Eli blasted back into the cave wall with a bounce as he hit his head. Flecks of blood and spit splattered the ground as he coughed.
Stony fingers reached for his head.
He teleported to the side even as the stone creature’s hand rippled into the stone. Its fingers rose out of the floor to snag around his ankle. Crushing pressure smashed bone against bone pulverizing his ankle.
Dazzling radiance welled up.
Eli’s broken leg phased out of its grasp as he flashed onto its shoulders, his legs straddled around its neck. His fists bashed into its stone skull with blinding eruptions of light as he used all his perks together.
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[Glow] made his light even brighter while [Reflection] let him inverse and direct all wasted light into his target. He activated [Amplify] for the first time. Incandescence honed his radiant punches into celestial blows that quickly left the stone creature a molten, dimpled puddle of slag.
Golem (x 1) [Game Point: + 5 GP] [Game Point Balance: 71 GP]> Starlightning crashed around him. Instantly charged starlight zipped through him as he used it to heal his powdered ankle and pulped ribs. Eli launched a carefully inverted cutting beam of light that he let ricochet from golem to golem before he activated [Amplify] again. What was already a charged, powerful beam of radiance elevated further. Heat turned each golem brittle and weak before they ruptured in an explosion of superheated rock that he sponged up with nullspace. Eli teleported beside Roman. “Roman?” Eli shouted as he flooded harmless light into the exposed cavity of the suit. He searched for any sign of life in the internal wreckage of pistons and gears secured in a skeletal frame of steel. He didn’t respond. Could he even respond? It looked like Roman had some sort of technology transformation ability. That or he had created a copy of his suit and left it as a decoy. But why hadn’t he appeared since then? Eli’s notifications opened with a hard yank of his will. Golem (x 5) [Game Point: + 25 GP] [Game Point Balance: 96 GP]> Eli was off by four points. He couldn’t fucking buy back Lumencloud Transfiguration to heal him. Intellectually, Eli knew that Roman would be fine and that this was like the Crucible. If Roman ‘died’ in the game, he would wake up back in that little cell and that would be that. But Eli didn’t like that. He thought about buying back Warlock’s Sanctum to see if he could try to use the weak copy of Hyper-Regeneration enchantments he had stored away. Would that work? Ye— Ticking reverberated as the suit shuddered. Reality fuzzed as Dream shimmered off Roman’s suit. One second it was a devastated mess, the next Roman was whole in its place. “That fucking sucked.” Roman hissed as he held his head in his hands. A watch that hadn’t been on his wrist before appeared with a sundered watch face. It was the same watch he had been working on in the train. “Thank you for killing those golems. I wouldn’t have been able to last under stasis for much longer.” “Stasis? You made a watch capable of putting yourself in stasis?” Eli asked with disbelief while he glanced at his unharmed friend. “But your suit was destroyed and then—“ “And then I came out and absorbed it. I’m using Magitech Fabrication to fix it, but it’ll take awhile before it’s combat ready. It isn’t perfect, but it can store things as long as I can supply it with power. Apparently, it can also store people too. It ran out of juice and combusted after about a minute though.” “Well, shit.” Eli stepped back while Roman stood with a wobble. “Are you okay? We can pull out and kill some wolves or something and pull out afterward.” Eli frowned. He only needed 110 GP in order to buy all the perks he bookmarked to purchase for the creation of his new power. “I can’t. I want to keep going so we can finish this.” Roman held his hand out as all the broken stone reshaped itself into a club that rested easy in his grip. In his other hand, one of his guns appeared as it nestled easily into his palm. “If you cover me, we can find and wipe out the last of them.” Eli looked at the suddenly shaped club with a suspicious glance. A seed of a plan started to form. “Hey, Roman… Don’t a lot of mines have pockets of toxic or even flammable air?” “Yeah?” Roman said idly while his clothes stiffened into hardened armor. He paused, then looked up with a manic grin. “Yes, they do.” “Let’s blow up a mine.” Eli shrugged with an easy smile while he glanced at the quest rewards to see if it was justifiable to purchase Warlock’s Sanctum or not. He wouldn’t be able to do or help with this otherwise, but if it set him back too far… It would cost him 50 GP to get Warlock’s Sanctum back, but completing this quest would net him 80 GP. Easily worth it. Especially if they hunted for the last of the wolves for those points. Not to mention the points they’d get for clearing the spawn out the mine. He made the purchase. [Use of: Warlock’s Sanctum (- 50 GP) Game Point Balance: 46 GP]> Space shifted around Eli as the familiar presence of his demispace opened up to him once again. He glanced over his gathered substances in his vault. Light, air, water, fire, wood, various metals. Nothing of too much note. “Wait…” Eli muttered aloud while he focused on his floating bubble of water that spun over its own pedestal. Concentration divided a small drop from it while he focused on the molecular chain of hydrogen and oxygen. Eli isolated both and stored them as their own materials. “What?” Roman asked while he assembled and enchanted the rudimentary prototype they were going to use. “I was thinking we could use hydrogen to blow it up but that sounds less than ideal.” Eli shuddered to think about how violently messy and volatile that would be. He saved the idea for later though. Along with the intention to see what sort of enchantments or lumencloud combinations he could make with hydrogen and other elements. “Like what?” Roman furrowed his brow. “Carbon dioxide, maybe? It’s not flammable so we’re less likely to get caught up in it.” He could also try creating diamonds with it. Starmetal diamond alloys sounded interesting. “I guess, but… I don’t think those robe people breathe and the golems definitely don’t.” “Fuck. Hydrogen it is.” Eli sighed while he lent his assistance with shaping their joint efforts in creating something that could probably get them put on a watch list, if they weren’t already. Eli created starmetal canisters filled with the same explosive pellets Roman had created and enchanted for his shotguns were attached to spatial bubbles full of loose gravel. Once the pellets exploded they’d unleash a hail of rock. He tried to enchant the pin so that it would only detonate when hit by starlightning, but he couldn’t figure out how to program for it. Roman had to take it and show him to create a trap for his starlightning and then a mirrored trigger that would only release when the same thing touched it. Meanwhile, Roman stripped out spare useless parts he filled his suit with so that he always had material to craft with. With his Magitech Fabrication, he could create far more advanced enchantments and equipment than Eli could. He created a basic grenade launcher that he borrowed Eli’s Warlock’s Sanctum for so that it would store then reproduce one of the grenades they made. Just as an insurance policy. Roman also created a small dragonfly sized drone that would seek out spawn while flying throughout the mine shafts to deposit beads enchanted to teleport all the available air inside of it while it pumped out hydrogen. Each bead also had another spatial bubble with a grenade inside of it. They also acted as a relay network so they could use them to fire their grenade launchers safely from the surface if necessary or have it detonate their entire payload directly. “It’s pretty nerve-wracking being this close to these.” Roman set the assembly plate down at the entrance of the mines. Material copied itself with Warlock’s Sanctum guidance as one of the winged drones phased into existence in the center of the plate. “No kidding.” Eli watched with bated breath behind their combined shields of light and space and then some kind of forceshield enchantment Roman had. It established a connection with the plate and then the watches they wore before it buzzed down into the tunnels. A trail of beads floated out of the drone as it explored. Metal molded itself out of the plate as another was created, linked, and then teleported as it appeared beside the other one. Good, they were still in range. “So, should we stay here or…?” Eli asked after a few minutes of them watching their army of drones descend into the depths of the earth. “Hell no. Let’s get out of here.” Roman re-summoned his suit covered in pocked holes and crumpled metal. He immediately flew away without a second glance. Eli turned radiant with a shrug before he followed with a suggestion. “Kill some wolves?” “Sure.” *** Lacey Blake perched on the edge of her seat while she watched the tablet they had given her. It had cost her most of her allowance to buy the train ticket and to get a white band, but it had been worth it. She had two notebooks already filled with an illegible scrawl of notes and various formulas she had doodled into the margins. An empty plate sat to the side, her serving of sliced potatoes called fries and a sort of breaded sandwich with a meat patty at the center had been delicious. The waitress said that the cheeseburger meal with fries was their most popular and Lacey could see why. Why hadn’t her parents let her try this part of life’s equation? Over her notes, she also nursed a bottled beverage that bubbled both in the glass and in her mouth whenever she drank it. She winced at the cloying sweetness, but she had always wanted to try soda. Something else her parents wouldn’t let her try despite her childhood peers insisting it was good. Elias and Romulus’s counterpart continued their killing spree of wolves despite the picture-in-picture view of the mineshaft they had flooded with strange mechanical insects. In their livestream chat, multiple spectators tried to guess what their endgame was. Neither of them had anything above evo-1 according to their wristband reports so it couldn’t be anything combative. A lot of people assumed they were cowards who had left after ‘Romulus’ had almost been kicked out of the game. Yet, that posed its own question. Why did they spend thirty-seven minutes creating and enchanting multiple items that patrolled the mines? It didn’t make sense if they were just going to leave. Lacey wished she could hear them talk, but all dialogue was removed from the live feeds of the dungeon delving to ‘preserve delver privacy’. It was only allowed during the dueling half of the game. Elias and ‘Romulus’ jerked to attention as they eerily turned toward the mine. Dazzling white electricity sparked over Elias’s wrist. A minute later, each of the hundreds of beads lining the entirety of the mine sparked as a strange metallic spray bottle popped out of each bead where it rolled. The handle of the bottle decompressed. In the lowest sections of the mine where the Deep Puppeteer had killed and animated the remaining soldiers of the Fabri spawn a deadeyed soldier kicked one of the cans. Wavy crawling legs shuddered in the innermost recesses of the Deep Puppeteer’s nest as it noticed the intrusion of beads and mechanical insects. A carpet of sparking cans rolled all over the cave before they all flashed simultaneously. The feed went white. Elias and ‘Romulus’ high fived as the view panned over to the dust cloud billowing in a massive column on the horizon. Messages flew across the chat. WarpKat shared a picture> Lacey’s eyes widened at the screenshot WarpKat sent of their bet for a 1,000 Game Points on each Elias and ‘Romulus’ for beating the Deep Puppeteer and not getting the bonus reward of minimal damage. They had gotten 20,000 Game Points, which converted to 5,000 USD. Her pen tore through paper as she furiously scrawled in her observations. On her phone screen was an article about an alert of a new mutated spawn that had eluded police on the outskirts of Anchora. She was almost certain it was Elias based on the grainy picture leaked from the police’s cameras. She had to convince them to talk to her. Lacey wondered if she could speak to the leading police and Delve Regulation Committee investigators. If they were capable of that… What else did they know? What other worlds would they discover? Lacey had to find out.