ARC1/C25 - Trapped

The faces of those on the ground were completely strickened, all hope fading from their eyes as the snaking lines of drones and flightships came into sight on the horizon. Sam did not like their chances either, it wasn’t just the numbers but the fact that he had never taken on a flightship before.

Sam stopped his AOEing of the remaining drone surrounding the base and flew down using [Aerokinesis] which was a bumpy ride but he had been trying to level it as much as possible. And after switching to [Flight] so he didn’t suck them up like a vacuum cleaner, he managed to find Hiroma and the others in their group, assuming this was were the leader would also be.

It would be impossible even for Sam to fly the whole lot out of there so he left instructions with Hiroma to get the soldiers to execute a swift withdrawal. If he could get them to just group up their was some chance of stealthing them in the meantime he would have to delay the oncoming force with a little distraction of his own.

He felt intel must have been sent back to the other force by the drones, after all they almost acted like insects with a hive mind. Hitting [Flight] at maximum speed he headed straight towards the center of the main approaching formation who immediately opened fire on his position.

He stealthed and immediately shot straight up until he hit the cloud cover over head. Deciding to employ a tactic that had just been a pet theory before and hit [Aerokinesis] on max, until the clouds parted causing him to come into full view again.

This set the perfect bait for all the patrolling drones to come back into range again.

What he saw next as he restealthed and covered himself in a large protective bubble of psi-energy, before they could take him out with their high explosive rounds.

Soon [Aerokinesis] began to take effect as the clouds were not only dispersed but could be seen rotating below, it was a hurricane with Sam slap bang in the centre.

The drones with their comparatively low powered engines were sucked into the vortex, while the nearby flightships merely wobbled slightly. “Come closer, just a little closer” Sam thought, all the time shifting his trajectory slightly away from the base, drawing the enemy formations with him.

Sam held his breath as one of the two flightships sent a missile directly at his position. He had hoped that the hurricane’s power would manage to slightly chance is direction avoiding a direct hit but the missile did not even reach him. Though it sure came close enough. The detonation and concussion sent his bubble of psi-energy flying far of course, causing him to lose temporary control of his mini hurricane.

Also tearing great fissures in the psi-bubble that he had to continually repair. If it wasn’t for the missile being struck by one of the many hundreds of drones swirling around in the hurricane he knew he most lightly would be no more.

Sam’s thought processes sharped as thought what to do. He couldn’t turn back to base yet as the people on the ground had had very little type to prepare for evac. So instead he came with another plan.

As most of the enemies formation had switched direction, unsurprisingly only interested in him, as they must surely know by now that he was the vore they had been searching for. And clearly they deemed him a higher priority than other humans. So he went back to his previous tactic of using [Flight] followed by [Cryo Wave].

This proved ineffective against the many flightships but as his main purpose was just to distract this didn’t really matter at all.

While he repeated this tactic he spun ever denser and denser psi-energy around himself, each time compacting it as he had done before in the Mirror Realm. And at this point he truly realised how far he had evolved from a week or so back when he could only have completed something like this in the Mirror Realm itself. There were clearly stats and mechanisms that he didn’t know about but he hopefully would have time to dwell on that in the future if he got out of this stalemate alive.

He flitted around the same area, trying to draw the flightships in and stop them heading off where they could cause destruction.

Deciding enough time had passed he circled back round at top speed towards the ground forces finding them grouped up and already heading out from the battlezone. Easily catching up with the group he unfurled the ball of psi-energy like a giant clingfilm wrap over the convoy shielding them the eyes of all above.

He had not seen any drones on his way back from the flightships but he could have easily missed one. Left with no choice but to pray for safe passage, they made their way painfully slowly across the terrain away from the mountain range in the distance. As he felt that would be the obvious direction. Really what he needed to do was get this group to the nearest uncontested Mirror Realm.

And Sam knew this would mean heading for any nearby settlement of sufficient size. Sam watched the Seracian formation as it started to move back towards where they had been and sure enough the largest part of the force headed for the mountains the rest scattering in all directions.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

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Back in the Mirror Realm Traksis was still trying desperately to find a way to save Bartholomew and his ever depleting psi-energy. Trying to manipulate her [Pursuit] ability seemed a tenuous method but it was the only thing she could think of and it also fit with some of her very rough theories.

The [Pursuit] ability was after all something that targeted the area of the body where the life forms core would be. She could see this clearly by the tendrils of psi-energy stretching out and connecting at this exact point on both Lopez and Bartholomew. The logic that followed was that it was psi-energy and that was what she wanted to feed into his core in order to restore his energy and evade his death.

So far she had managed to increase the thickness of the tendril of psi-energy that connected her with Bartholomew. And could see it was dramatically wider than the one going to Lopez. But was this actually doing anything? The [Pursuit] ability differed from many of her other abilities not just because it was innate but because it didn’t require any psi-energy to maintain it and also puzzlingly didn’t require more even though Sam appeared to be in another world altogether. How it worked exactly she had no idea.

The problem was it seemed to be having no effect whatsoever to Bartholomew’s condition and to make things worse if that was possible they now had company. People were appearing from all directions, presumably from all exits to the Mirror Realm.

They were backed into a corner with no choice but to attack and try and break through to one of the exits. But then everything went dark. Traksis could no longer see in any direction. Everything was just a black silent void in all directions. Clearly this was an ability used by…someone on their side in didn’t really matter at this point who. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and tried to see if her meagre talents were anything when pitted against these no doubt elite soldiers.

And she found there was one thing she could still sense. Her tendril of psi-energy to Sam and as she concentrated on this she noticed she could also sense the other strands from the ability – they were moving. That meant she and the others were also moving. They had been caught and if they were caught then…

She pushed as much psi-energy as she could into both [Energy Drain] and [Absorbing Regeneration] praying that she was right and was rewarded by an influx of psi-energy and her senses coming back online.

Looking round she saw below her what was left of one of the soldiers crumpling to the ground. Her attackers were all around her, stumbling back clearly surprised by her attack. They were shouting but she does dove at the nearest, punching straight into their core space with her [Absorbing Regeneration] ability. She felt she had definitely gained some kind of ability but did not have time to process what it might be, in her mad scramble to down as many of these guys as she could.

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Sam having got the convoy of allied forces away from the original danger zone and onto some local roads that were still functional and hadn’t been bombed. Making good progress they had reached the outskirts of the nearest settlement. They didn’t need to ponder over whether there might or might not be a Mirror Realm here as the shear size of Seracian forces told them this was an exit point from Earth.

There original plan had been to just sneak on through the Mirror Realm and out of here to the Resistance home base with the group they had found. But all traffic had come to a halt some twenty minutes ago. No flightship hanging in the air moved, No drones patrolled, all was still. It was like someone had cut off power to the whole Seracian force.

What could have happened? Could they still sneak through?

Attacking the Seracians right now would not only endanger their group it would also threaten the safety of the many thousands awaiting to be transported elsewhere by the Seracians.

So sneak it was. But he couldn’t just fly the whole lot of them over the heads of the ground forces. But maybe he wouldn’t have to, if the Seracian forces were all in the area, maybe they could just carry on through unhindered.

Using [Flight] to survey the area ahead he found it might just be possible to get through untarnished.

But he was very wrong. A Cacophony of explosions could be heard that completely knocked him off course. They were detonating their own ships. What the hell was going on? Was it some malfunction?

Whatever was going on, those flightships contained hundreds of human prisoners each, as far as he was aware. Were they going to detonate the whole of the Earth as they had done worlds before?

Then it came back to him what Velta had said about the situation being a “double edged sword”.

He had no clue how advanced their technology was but surely they would need more effective means to destroy the planetary system. He was overthinking things, it was merely a ploy to get Sam to react. To draw him in. No doubt even if they could not see or sense him they more than lightly had access to some with eye abilities who had some kind of precognition.

What to do? Well he supposed he didn’t have the luxury of hiding and sneaking through but maybe the others could while he caused a distraction again. And with the rage he was feeling right now he could assure them it would be a big one.

He lifted off using [Flight] at only a nominal speed - he did want them to see him clearly after all.

Immediately all the Seracian forces in the area came to life, moving in his direction. Now all he needed to do was figure out how to avoid hitting the flightships full of people. And of course rescuing the aforementioned people before they decided to blow more of them up.

At least the droids were still an easy target as they were way too small to be carrying any human cargo. So he switched back to flitting between them and AOEing them with [Cryo Wave] once they were in range again.

This of course left the convoy on the ground completely vunerable but with the rubble of the city as a screen and the thousands of Seracians attention directed towards him he could only hope for their continued safety and that they could make their way alone to the Mirror Realm.

Sam’s flight had to get more and more erratic as the pure volume of drones in the area increased and also as he noticed the flightships trying to pinpoint his location were trying to surround his position.

Then he felt it. A blurring of his vision, no his senses causing him to lose concentration and abort the [Cryo Wave] he was just about to send out. If only he had some kind of defense against whatever ability they were using. But for now all he could do was try and keep his movements as random as possible and keep moving away from the bulk of the flightships.

He guessed it was lucky that they had broken his concentration before he used his ability rather than after which might have left him wide open to…

A massive explosion rocked his position and he blacked out.