---Richard---
Battles were hectic. Thems just common sense really.
Every single human here had survived the steadily ramping up zones. Ramping up zones specifically designed to teach them how to survive if anything else – if anyone here was weak enough to die to standard attacks they should have failed in a zone or two previously. Basically, all the ‘fodder’ should have failed to reach this point.
It's easier to destroy than to create.
Harder to defend as a group than simply attack.
Not that Richard was disparaging defense – And if you had enough time for prep you could make a pretty good bit of defensive architecture. That was more a question of prepwork though – give someone prepwork to break into a place and they could make a pretty good destructive…
Well anyways. How was James still going? Richard spotted his friend flying through the air while holding a black armoured figure by the throat.
James pushed incredibly hard causing the figure to flip backwards and in the same motion grabbed their armoured leg. Carrying that momentum, James gripped the leg and flung his opponent forward – the armoured man rushing across the sky on a collision course with a floating chick surrounded by dense floating stones.
She tossed what looked like a slip of paper towards the armoured man spinning towards her and ducked as the projectile rose up above her.
Richard suddenly noticed the giant fucking pillar above her.
High high above, a massive black pillar floated like some rod of god about to obliterate everything.
How the fuck was something that big held up? Telekinesis was equivalent to a limb in skillspace – force still had to transfer between held up items and the ground although things got a bit funky as the force could transfer in indirect ways.
As the man slowed down, the massive pillar floated up a tiny bit. Such a small amount over such a far distance Richard could have blamed it on the wind.
A second later the pillar dropped noticeably and the floating armoured man shot across the battlefield moving far far faster than James had tossed them. He was screaming and the ahhhhHHHHHhhhhhhh of him flying past dragged a giggle out of Richard.
Is that pillar some sort of gravity battery? She can transform the potential energy of its height into sideways force and capture force into more height? How efficient even is that? We have several energy dense materials that can store aether at massive massive ratios. There's a reason most batteries on earth are electrical not based on gravity…although maybe there's an efficiency gain by transforming similar kinetic forces? That rod looks taller than a small building!
James raised a hand and touched the spinning figure causing them to instantly rebound and start spinning back towards the floating woman. AhhhhHHHHhhhhh for the second time. Each rebound became funnier and funnier.
Cutting off Richard’s view of the human ping pong happening above them, a man in an incredibly old looking mech crunched past. He had to have gotten it in the industrial area and kept it – Richard remembered piloting one of those before.
Spending a moment to ring up a message as he tried to spot his friend again, Richard sent a “text” toward James telling him he was here and ready to help.
Someone crashed into Richard bouncing off his unmovable body with a rabid snarl before bounding away.
“What the fuck. Who’s pet was that? I think he’s feral.” Richard's quip was lost to the sounds of combat on all sides.
It seemed like a free for all. Enough of the people were fighting each other instead of James, Richard felt like he had missed some context.
Someone in full Police-warden gear from the last zone shot “super rated” capture rounds at everyone he could see. Half the figures hit found themselves paralyzed and covered in purple shocks. The other half dodged or reflected or otherwise disabled the indiscriminate fire.
One of the shots hit Richard’s chest and dumped thousands of Kvolts into his body.
Capture rounds were complicated unstable combinations of different fields…they could be easily described as a combination of a tazer, a paralytic poison and a self reinforcing kinetic dampener. The chemical and kinetic freezing abilities were lightly bound to the dense heavily altered electron – then shoved in a sort of altered omni release capacitor canister. Basically it moved through skin and bone like lightning, freezing and locking up muscles from several complementary angles.
Richard froze for a second – his AI shifting some of his stat alignments around before he was able to continue walking.
Altering his path, Richard aimed for the figure who had shot him. He ran like a bull towards the fucker and tried to punch his stupid armoured face as soon as he reached them.
The man dodged – rotating his whole body sideways. He quickly turned fully towards Richard, then kicked with an exoskeleton-enhanced swing aimed at his side. Tip of his foot had a sharp vibrating blade on the end of it and the metal punctured Richard's skin more Kvolts pulsing out of the tip straight into Richard’s insides.
Richard tried to grab the leg as it hit, but the slippery fucker immediately spun away.
Something buzzed in his ear as something washed passed him and…failed. Whatever that attack had been it wasn’t even able to push past his weaker initial defense let alone his ramping skill.
Too much was happening. Richard had quite a few mental stats including mental speed stats…but they were optimized for the type of research he had done as that’s what the majority of his achievements had been from. Not necessarily for combat even if it did help. Right now he felt like that one meme. “I’m stupid but faster!”.
A man completely covered in yellow goo landed between Richard and the warden. He had four gel-like tentacles pulling out from his back and he noticeably glanced at the warden’s exosuit and Richards holstered kinetic cannon.
“Dumbasses. You’re on the same side. Aim for the corrupted aether cultists or any infrastructure they might have” the gel man yelled even as the warden shot a capture round at his chest.
The capture round sunk into the gel, visibly sparking in the goop before with a “oh no you didn’t”, The gel monster lunged at the warden yellow tentacle balled into a fist.
Richard watched as someone in a leaf costume bashed a confused-looking man in swim trunks into the ground. Swim trunk guy was bloodied but seemed fine.
To the side, he watched as a woman with a massive pole/metal tree trunk-looking club squished someone into the ground with a sick crack. That one…yeah that guy was definitely dead. Richard saw a maggot crawl about the mangled remains which…seemed way too fast but maybe that metal trunk tossed maggots in everything it hit just for good luck?
So much was happening and tons of people were moving fast enough they would be nothing but blurs without his mental stats. Richard had to force himself to focus on his friend once again and start making his way over.
What looked like a house had been built and then ripped to pieces at some point – he had to step over wood and metal shreds as he walked.
What looked like a stone conveyor belt was smashed to bits – Richard melted a chunk up into his arms and started forming stone snowballs as he passed.
Continuing to ignore the battle, Richard dodged, pushed through and wound his way over.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Finally with a final jump over a body he was there. James was there – directly in front of him.
“Yo!”
…
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---Maddy---
Maddy was over-extended.
Overworked.
Exausted.
Absolutely Pooped on several different levels.
Maddy hadn’t had a full pool of mana in days – she didn’t have space to work. No room to breath!
It was kind of sad – Maddy didn’t have time to really create any new Spells. Not proper capital ‘S’ spells at least – she’d twisted her existing skillset back and forth into new shapes but there wasn’t really the same thing.
No, every time she imagined she could take a small break to clear her head, something went wrong. Every time she imagined ignoring the endless battle and building something…well ‘things’ fell apart. One of her friends got hurt and needed healing. Groups began banding together to attack them – their combined attacks breaking through Jess’s defenses or threatening the stalemate in countless other ways.
On a very real level Maddy felt like she wasn’t doing enough. She should be exceling in this sort of fight – should be a cornerstone of this battle.
And she was. None of them were dead. The dungeon was still growing. They were succeeding…But it didn’t feel like enough.
Her magic was wide ranged after all – and while she underutilised it, she could still use death energy to boost her magic.
One of her deadliest attacks was still her mass seed/egg placement. She’d yell every few hours – plant healing vine seeds on all her friends and necrotic maggot eggs on all her enemies…and then hope they hatched and healed or killed those they’d infected.
The problem was twofold. One, A single proper cast used the entire life pool of one of her healing eyes and the entire death pool of one of her necrotic mana eyes…And using just mana was weak enough it barely did anything because of how spread out the effect was. It was really a spell designed for huge amounts of incredibly weak creatures – over half the humans they were facing straight up ignored the spell and of the ones it hit most seemed to be able to cleanse or have it cleansed from them.
There were two reasons she kept using this spell even though it wasn’t singlehandedly swinging the battle.
One. She sometimes got lucky. Someone who might have ignored or shrugged it off might have opened their mouth and allowed eggs to form on their throat. Someone who could cleanse it might be so distracted by the battle they might have missed it or been otherwise unable to wipe the eggs. Someone might be nearly dead and unable to resist the finishing blow of her maggots slipping in on exposed flesh.
Two. When she won she won big. The secondary part of this spell remained. Or in other words. As soon as someone died while infected by maggots, her lucky maggots exploded. They gorged on death energy splitting themselves as needed and then transferring themselves to her once they’d had their fill. Maddy could then embed the reality of these strengthened maggots into new empowered casts basically for free – and, when someone died to the empowered death energy maggots, she could recycle them yet again. Some of her maggots had been sent out and returned half a dozen times by this point becoming incredibly solid to her creation sight.
When she had originally created this skill the maggots would return to her scythe – and needed her touch a body to retrieve them without loss. Now they blipped back to a tree she was growing. One protected at the center of Jess’s dome.
It was the second of these trees – the first had been smashed…a lot of stuff had been smashed. Maddy's original water feeding aqueduct. The living house she’d planted.
Thankfully even while smashed, the first tree had fulfilled her purpose. The tree’s fleshy center would hold winning maggots for as long as possible but when those maggots fell apart? They donated their captured death energy. Captured reality.
Symponed and kept in one spot for easy dumping into the pit.
The longer it lasted the bigger of a dump into the pit it would be.
Anyways. Of the hundreds who’d attacked them, Maddy had killed maybe three enemies directly and profited or directly led to the death of something like twenty of them. Her biggest influence on the battle wasn’t even magical. Partway through the first day she’d turned to trickery – manipulating her voice’s direction and tone to sew distrust amongst them. “All the corrupted aether cultists are working to break the world” “I’m planning on stabbing those tech bros in the neck as soon as they get distracted want to help?”
Hence the three way battle instead of the two way they had started with.
Suddenly someone stumbled out of the brawl. His face looked vaguely familiar but Maddy couldn’t place them for the life of her. With her mental stats if she couldn’t remember their face they probably weren’t important? Still whatever memory she had was tense. She felt uneasy – as if the man in front of them was dangerous.
The figure himself looked…off slightly. His posture – his tired grin.
Whoever they were they did not look like someone walking around a battle. His body itself was weird too – the man had something like seven or eight little hands extending up from his legs each sort of shifting and moving with minds of their own at different speeds.
The figure would move his arm forward and one of the stone hands would bend and avoid his limb naturally. He would pause for a second and one hand would scratch his nose. Two hands near his feet wrapped around each other and held a small pile of stone spheres. Another pair massaged a stone stuffing what looked like a pill into the middle before smoothing bits over.
A bomb?
Mid threat analysis the man waved up at James.
What?
James gave a happy glance of recognition and Maddy made a connection to a time James had mentioned having another friend.
Not-enemy, Maddy thought and forged a mental connection to the figure in front of her. Whitelist, whitelist! Don’t attack!
Creative-Light blipped over, landing near his feet in the imprint an attack had left on the soil. Just in time to hear a cheerful “Yo!”
…
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---James---
James was…conflicted? On one hand. He was having tons of fun. Most of the humans about were…either stronger than most monsters or at the very least more varied. A lot of them had lifesaving abilities – one man James was completely confident had been squished under a pillar suddenly appeared moments later, slinking out of the crowd like a twin out for vengeance.
Pitting his skills against theirs – flexing his magical muscles in a competition like this felt good. Losing himself in the clashes was a simple sort of joy.
On the other hand…well James didn’t like thinking about how many he had killed by now. It made him feel like too much of a murder hobo. It was easy to justify defending yourself against people who attacked you first. Reeaaaallly, really hard to feel good after watching someone cry over the body of the “enemy” you’d just killed. Don’t look at me like that. You’re supposed to band together and fight the villain with the power of friendship not try to guilt him into surrendering.
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---???????---
“Are…are we the baddies?” The dark lord asked turning towards his vile allies in mock self awareness.
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---James---
Yep. James really hated interacting with humans. Monsters didn’t make him feel messy like this. Nice and simple. With monsters he could eat them when he won. Entertainment and food! Push his budding chef skills higher. One day he’ll be known as a top chef. One who silently came in and expertly wove delicious meals from simple ingredients.
Right now he was probably just seen as a butcher.
…
“Yo!” Richard stood down below James a searching smile upon his eyes.
James smiled back – glanced toward his new friends – then returned the wave.
I hope they get along?
...
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---Chu---
A dying soul struggled to remain cognizant of the world. Chu was her name. Her body had been dismembered, her mind shattered in that true death in a way it hadn't in all her false ends... and yet she had always been a stubborn sort. She floated there resisting everything that attempted to drag her down. Her name was Chu. That was her name. That was her. She struggled moment after moment to stay alive for a single additional moment. The scavengers that had come to her flesh wouldn't have her. The world wouldn't claim her. She was still here. Still present even if she wasn't alive.
The world came to her in blips and streaks of greyed form and pulses of colour. Time passed in starts and bursts. Her thoughts were incredibly confusing. They almost blended with the world – at a certain point she couldn't be certain if the thoughts were hers or ones she'd dragged from others. She knew so little – who was she? Where had she come from? She knew so much. Names she shouldn't know, memories she shouldn't have. What was her name again?
The rest of the battle was long and bloody. Maybe it was a few more minutes?
No. Days had definitely passed. The soul wasn't that far gone. The battle had reached a final point – the moment where they just might fail, when with a sense of crisis Maddy activated their last resort.
Who was Maddy? The soul knew the name and feelings associated with the name but that was it. Were they friends? Enemies? Lovers? Strangers?
Maddy and her friends had been trying to find an alternative to the entire planets water. They had begun supplementing that with bodies. Water was still an option.
With an impact, the entire area began to sink.
A valley formed from sheets of ground hundreds of meters in each direction. They all broke off and slid towards the middle with a wet rumble. Stone and dirt and man and water.
A constant flood of water.
The freshwater ocean they had been given fell and continued to fall. The bodies of monsters and humans alike had kicked them ahead. Now the battle was flipped. Attackers came and tried to build. Defenders only needed to destroy.
Had the soul been an attacker or defender before it had fallen? Defenitly not a survivor as much as it wished it was.
It was less than a weak into the drain – the planet's water dropping three feet – before the dungeon was full. All the bodies had supplemented the water in pure quality – thankfully the world still had an ocean however smaller.
The entire area seemed to bubble up when the dungeon had its fill – the drainined water bursting out of the top of the hole like a whale's blowhole. Changed. Iridescent. Strange.
it had a pull. A sort of light tugging that shifted the soul closer and closer.
This massive spray of irredecent water had turned to mist as it fell, slowly settling over the valley that had been formed in the breaking.
Dense this mist rippled and remained over top of the dungeon like a liquid.
Only then at this final point.
Only once the battle was over did the soul move on.
It let go from its hold on the ground below it and found itself pulled into the mist.
Finally, blessèd darkness.