---Richard---
“I’m getting stir crazy. Let’s go on an adventure!” Richard finished molding a stone bed below James who had been meditating like a floating log at the side of their permanent camp.
“Quick 20-minute adventure or?” James asked looking down at the changes below him. Richards best friend spun his body and rotated around to stand upright in an unnatural looking spin.
“…a longer one. I’ll tell you my plan if you accept.” Richard stage whispered looking about as if hiding from someone.
“Sure. Let me get my backpack.” James looked around trying to find his cookset.
“I’ll meet you by the suspicious skeleton – the red skeleton not the spiky one.” Richard waved then headed over to his tricycle.
…
“Hey…so I may have overhyped the adventure part of this” Richard spoke as soon as they started moving. James was ‘jogging’ at a smooth 100km/hr while Richard rode his newest buggy – a motorbike shaped like a children’s tricycle only suspicious due to its current highway speeds.
Richard’s voice carried to James just over the sound of pounding feet and bumping wheels.
“Just wanted to go on a run?” James asked slowing down slightly to run sideways.
“No, yes. It’s both. I have a dream! But let me just lay it all out there. I have something I want to do. I’m not asking you to join me, I’m asking if you feel like talking me out of it. You’re the only opinion I care about for this” Richard connected one of his free slots to a field generator the outside noises dropping away to nothing. As far as they were concerned, they might as well be sitting around inside the moment his noise canceling bubble was deployed.
“What’s up?”
“…I want to try and tank a nuke.” Richard admitted.
James was silent for a moment before responding.
“Before I start talking you out of this… Do you think you can survive?”
“Fuck if I know. It’s just…You know the calamities are getting a bit out of control, right? Fucker in the ocean tanked a makeshift nuke equivalent to the one used in the world war – as well as a second enhanced one! Beast – not sure how much stronger it was but just based on the shockwave I picked up it’s a few orders of magnitude higher…and now there’s a nuke storm dropping consistent explosions a bit weaker than those two bombs but nearly consistent in its bombardment…worlds really going to shit isn’t it?
“But yeah mate, I think with some preparations I can sit out in the storm…”
James seemed to think for a moment as if weighing his own chances before nodding. “Sure, let’s go. We’re aiming for some place directly in its path, right?”
Richard laughed a bit to himself. “I didn’t even have to justify my dumb impulse. Thanks.”
“I’ll see this through as well” Maddy’s voice came echoing out from inside Richard’s bicycle horn.
“…this is supposed to be a getaway with the boys” Richard groaned staring at his horn.
“Pretend I’m not here” She responded a moment later. “How did you expect to find us again if both of you left?”
Richard was silent.
“Are you implying you don’t think you are going to survive?” Maddy spoke up a second later.
“No. I’m nearly positive I can survive. I just, need some time to figure out if I’m coming back.” Richard said quietly.
“Are you just planning on being a point of contact or will you peanut gallery the whole time?” Richard asked a moment later.
“I’ll respond if you address me but…I’m practicing some stuff and don’t want you to feel like I’m stifling. The amount of attention in this eye is smaller anyways. I’m being honest. Pretend I’m not here.” Maddy responded, her voice echoing out of the funnel.
After a bit of silent riding Richard turned to James with a conversational tone. “Do you know how the big monster’s shit on the square cube law?”
James shook his head.
“I’m nearly positive I can tell you about the exact mechanics by this point. It’s already a theory but I feel like I’ve done some footwork proving it…you know? Standard science voodoo. I checked some boxes. Did you know a lot of different looking systems operate on nearly the exact same laws at the end of the day? A lot of different aether effects…it’s all the same under the hood. Kind of funny that despite the colossal amount of complexity in materials and reactions and unknown potential coming from those interactions...well. Infrastructure gets monostamped. Its fields all the way down!
“Let’s start with some background. Aether…seems to collect and gather around dense things. It’s kind of like gravity – Exactly like gravity actually but running alongside it. Aether seems to care about this density gravity more than it cares for motion or other external influences with any dense element having enough “weight” to gather a chunk of aether. Nice little example is right back in step one. Every single one of our stats is a single massively dense atom that’s sucking aether towards it like a mini atmosphere…but the aether pulled towards those mini atmospheres isn’t sucked away as we run. It doesn’t care about our movement as I mentioned. Doesn’t care for a lot of stuff really – it’s really hard to pull that aether out of its mini orbit because it stays pretty much fixed in relation to the stat atom and doesn’t need to be a sphere.
“Basically, that gathered aether field is connected to the single stat point and yet the field itself can be pulled and stretched about and overlayed over an entire body…as long as the stat itself is inside the field and the field isn’t too far away it stays. I’m positive the system is doing something to keep the charged aether in its shape, but you didn’t come here to learn about stats did you?”
“Technically…I didn’t come here to learn about anything? Where is here anyways. Middle of nowhere?” James quipped, causing Richard to smile.
“You have an aether alignment even if yours is stabilized at a different level to mine. You should learn a bit. Stroll for a while with professor Richy rich! Anyways! Planet operates on the same principle. Dungeons and nests and pylons help increase the density of the planet. Not-Gravity sort of pulls aether towards it keeping a field of energy around the planet. This aethersphere is used for…system stuff. It’s like the stats of the planet. Slots or unclaimed skills use the same principle. Aether is pulled towards it and held around it…difference is that slots are a much weaker pull – and modified in such a way you can dump the gathered aether into the environment with effects and stuff. I’m also not sure where the aether is ‘pulled’ from. I think it’s all coming from some central system place but who knows.
“Magic slots – those concepts and affinities and stuff presumably operate on the same principle…but I’m not going to claim that for sure with how obscured everything is.” Richard paused and looked at his horn as if waiting for Maddy to chime in. When she didn’t, he continued as if nothing had happened.
“Nests obviously operate on the same principle…and mantles do as well. My mantle is basically an Arduino made of esoteric super heavy metals. Maybe it’s closer to a FPGA? AFPGA for aether field programmable gate array? Either way, it’s pulling aether towards me and creating a field and interacting with the field of the planet…but right now the mantel isn’t doing anything. Follow me so far?”
James nodded. “…and some fields weaken each other. The different stats give stronger effects when you isolate your muscles and bones and skin and all that jazz. They can sit side by side just fine but weaken each other when overlapping.”
Richard gave a smirk and a thumbs up. “Yep. Anyways. I’ve been studying my mantel in this default state for a while – as well as the neutral field it generates. The mantles field interacts with other fields at a miniscule but measurable level. Same idea you mentioned happens when I enter a nest – and in a greater level with my own nest or when I interact with my stats.
“Getting sidetracked and you don’t want to hear the few dozen different experiments both failed and successful but simple. Straight to the good shit. Here it goes.
“A field of aether can manipulate physical properties and fundamental forces as well as their interactions… Dumbing it down, a field can modify the base rules of reality. Back to my original point! All larger monsters have a field that covers their entire body. It’s just a stat field but...in terms of complexity it’s probably closer to a nest? It’s like the entire monster is a dungeon or black box – the only thing hiding the internals away being their skin. This field bends, breaks or modifies at least one if not multiple synergizing properties that should prevent them from growing that large. Maybe it fucks with their weight. Maybe it helps them keep a good strength with an insanely small density. Maybe it helps them regulate heat. Maybe it does something so sideways it doesn’t come to mind immediately – the point is we also have this field. Our body is a black box – like a dungeon – and every single field we add to it changes it further and further from what sounds possible with old worldviews.” Richard finished.
“So how does this relate to anything” James asked after a minute.
“Well. Just based on effect. I’m nearly positive the defensive calamity has two things. Only defensive stats for a pure base infusing its flesh. And a ‘skill’ that synergizes with that base. You know…I still have a bunch of useless power and speed stats floating around in here.” Richard slapped his belly once. “They are getting harder to find but…at this point they are not doing much more than working against the one thing I hope for for my body. 72 power. 22 speed. Ignoring the self-synergy bonuses and the currently much greater nerf that being heavier and stiffer with defense…that’s 3.6x human baseline power and 1.8x baseline speed. I’m making a new weapon and dumping the power stats into it, then focusing on a vehicle and dumping my speed into it. What do you think of this tricycle? I have it comfortable at 130km/hr with a single slot. How much faster do you think I can make it with those speed stats?” Richard asked gesturing to his ride.
“Bruh, I can run ten, twenty times this speed in a dead sprint. I don’t even think I’m spending aether right now. I’m sure you are going to get bored of that within a week. Remember your moped?”
Richard nodded in a resigned manner. “Stats set pretty quick, and I can’t really pull them out of a item once I put them in. Only reason I can even manipulate them already, is they are in my body and easily highlighted by my skills and AI. Still. I’m dumping them by the time we reach our destination. If nothing else comes to mind I’m slapping an upgrade sticker on my tricycle and calling it a day.”
“What’s that?” James asked pointing at a shape on the horizon.
Richard pulled out one of his less important guns powering it just for the scope. “Give me a second. My binoculars are charging.”
“That’s a gun.”
“My monocular? I don’t think I’ve used my monocular to shoot anything yet…alright. Got it. That my good sir. Is a train.” Richard nodded dropping his gun and letting a free hand grab and tuck it away in his back tray once again.
James jumped transferring most of his sideways momentum immediately upwards.
Dropping down beside Richard a moment later James nodded. “Had to squint but I think you’re right. It laying down tracks right in front of it. White sort of stands out on the green.”
“Looked fun. Side quest?” Richard asked while angling slightly towards it.
“Might as well?”
…
The pair slowed down the closer they got to the train slowly pulling alongside it. It was rolling forward at a trundling pace – Richards AI clocked them as going just under 0.2m/s. Less than a kilometer per hour and not using any standard aether communication lines.
As far as vehicles went it was relatively simple. A single large locomotive near the front – roughly 4 meters tall, 3 wide and 15 long. Four windowless cabins behind it – sealed boxes each almost 20 meters long and covered in spikes.
The general shape of the locomotive and carts seemed mostly normal…but yep. The front car had what looked like arms.
Just before Richard mentally decided this was a strange new monster he spotted a head peeking out an open door near the front.
The woman seemed less nervous than curious. She stared at them both with a slight tilt of her head even as she pulled out a long white track roughly a meter long. The track was handed off to the hands which twisted it around and placed the line on in front of her. A second or so later she had a second line twisted around and placed on the other side.
How was she making a track that big?
Presumably she was making the tracks as she went – what colossal level of power did she have to materialize this much matter? Even assuming it was psudo-matter how much energy did it take to keep it stable and long lasting in a line behind her?
“Hail to the train?” Richard called and the woman nodded slightly glancing at his tricycle while keeping a ‘relaxed but ready’ posture.
“Are you looking for a ride” the woman asked after glancing at his tricycle.
“Full disclosure, I can link you to New New York and the Antheon but payment needs to be up front and double to make up for pausing my new route. Alternatively, if you take the long ride I’m aiming for a city I heard about this way. Should take no more than three or four days to reach at our current speed.”
The woman had a strange accent. It sounded like a southern drawl sped up and shifted – as if she had moved from Texas to California and then spent a few years slowly drifting.
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“I think we are good. Going to try catching the storm. Just curious about what you have going on here.” Richard responded.
“…have a death wish?” The woman spoke never once stopping her grabbing of new rail lines and handing it to the train’s arms.
“Something like that. Hey, I’m really curious. How are you generating so many rails?” Richard asked gesturing to the lines being laid like clockwork.
For the first time the woman seemed slightly tense. Her grip tightened around her current rail then visibly relaxed. “I’ll tell you, but you have to get real cool about a few things real fast.” The woman spoke up glancing down at them with a hard look in her eye.
“…what fucked up thing are you doing” Richard asked after a moment.
“Rather than speak the woman gestured slightly and stepped back into the darkness of the caboose.
Richard looked around and down at his tricycle.
“I’ll look”, James said jumping toward the door.
“Wait no, I want to see too, give me a sec to park” Richard called back frantically unhooking the connection hand fueling his bikes engine and sending a few AI commands to finish it off.
Running slightly to jump up Richard felt like an invisible film was passing over him as soon as he passed the threshold.
The locomotive looked even bigger on the inside – a large workshop roughly 4 meters wide and 20 long. It took Richard a solid minute to recognize what he was looking at.
Near the back of the room a bloody mess of a man was bound, mutiliated and dangling from the ceiling on hooks.
Several arms ripped bloody bones out of his body at a furious rate – his spine appeared to be ripped out wholesale twice a second. The bones entered a vat and proceeded to travel down a variety of machines before being pounded into rail shapes – smelted and smithed as if it were metal. Most of the blood and gore was pulled off and pumped back to the man feeding into fleshy tubes around his mouth.
“What the fuck?”
…
“This monster in human skin is name is Marven. Say hello Marven.” The woman spoke mockingly gesturing towards the lump of flesh.
“You have three seconds to say what he did to deserve this before I’m breaking him out” James said his entire body tensed.
“Raped and killed a personal friend of mine. Presumably hit quite a few more woman, presumably did some other murders or something – but the only one who mattered was Nicole. Make no mistake. This is personal and its revenge. You’re on my train now so you best behave. I said you had to get real cool about how I’ve decided to carry out my punishment. If you don’t like it, you had best get off my home now, you hear me?” The woman spoke and Richard felt the air seem to tighten around him.
Richard stared about slowly. Was…he here to judge? Should he ask the man for his side? Should he weigh in his own opinions on the punishment in question? It sounded…it sounded like he should verify the story. Like he should do more than just accept what she said as soon as she said it and yet…that felt exhausting if he was being honest. If she was lying, wouldn’t she have spent more effort hiding this?
And well…if he took her at her word…what did Richard think? There was a faint buzzing in his ear as he looked at the sitation. Richard…would prefer a quick death to whatever this was but he just didn’t feel qualified to weigh in. He’d rather just leave her to her torture. “Is…this whole train under your pylon?” Richard asked after a moment trying to push the scenario as far to the side as he could.
“Yes, Domain extends in a limited manner along the track as well.” The woman spoke visibly relaxing a bit.
James still looked tense as he stared at the whole setup.
“Bone makes a great rail – I can tell if something has damaged it at any point along the track. Tiny tiny bit of regeneration as well – my main luck is how insane the monster’s regeneration is. It has to have gotten over half its stats in regeneration easy and I can set some of that insane regeneration concept to work in the final product.” The train conductor spoke gesturing to some of the machines as if Richard would know how they worked.
“What type of magic are you using?” Maddy spoke up from the wall. Richard turned and saw her eye sitting embedded into the wall as if growing out of it. For the very first time the woman looked outright shocked.
The conductor stared across at the eye for a moment, glanced at both James and Richard. Stared back at the eye then finally responded. “I have a life and death affinity, and I picked up the transformation affinity from some witch a while ago.”
Maddy’s eye exploded – appearing near the ground and then popping once again to land on Richard’s shoulder. She glowed brightly for a moment and then a second eye appeared as if the first was cut in two – splitting out a different colored clone in one jump.
This…was probably the first time Richard had seen this happen. At least in this proximity – she usually popped about behind his back when she wasn’t walking around with a body.
“What is your plan?” Maddy asked whispering into Richard’s ear. He spoke out loud purposefully letting the crazy conductor hear.
“I’m not sure how much I can even learn from a magic user…I do want to hear about her pylon. I kept wanting to make a truck for my nest. See if I could make it mobile somehow. Then…I’ll probably head out. Continue storm chasing” Richard shrugged.
“Can I stay?” Maddy’s second eye spoke up. “I want to talk a bit about magic if you’ll have me. Can help out around or pay a passenger fare…
The conductor nodded. “Sure floating eye. You’ll have to tell me a bit about yourself. How does one lose their body? I also have a few questions for you – the suicidal one with a weird ride. Treat is as payment for looking at my workshop.”
…
Richard and James left the train a few minutes later. Maddy’s original eye had returned to her place, hiding in Richard’s horn and the pair continued on a bit less sure of themselves than before.
“Why do people suck” James spoke up after a minute of silent running.
“Not all people suck, just a bunch of them” Richard responded easily enough.
“I’m staying as far the fuck away from them as I can. Monsters are easy. Give me simple. I don’t want to deal with morality and justice and all that junk,” James muttered waving his hand about in an annoyed manner.
“Have any other opinions on that situation you want to share with the class.” Richard laughed slightly.
“Nope, that’s it. Tell me more about stats or something. I don’t want to think about it anymore.” James groaned.
“Sure, let me tell you about fat stat and the interactions it has with my body.” Richard responded reaching about and wishing he had a whiteboard.
…
The pair saw the storm before they heard it. The calamity was a blur on the horizon – quickly growing in shape and size. Looking far smaller than you might expect from the distance they were and yet drawing one’s eye as the largest thing on the horizon.
It looked like an angry cumulonimbus cloud – a massive, massive and more importantly tall blob of swirling brown. The calamity was constantly rolling with miniature mushroom clouds floating off in all directions. It didn’t look very fast and yet taking into account its scale some of the sections of cloud were moving at thousands of kilometres an hour as they crawled up the sides and swirled into offshoots.
Tall and fat, the cloud was kilometers in diameter and nearly as tall as it was wide – the sound came as they grew closer. Strange – much quieter than you would expect and sounding more like thunder than a stereotypical explosion.
Where was the ‘boom’? Why was it so quiet in person?
There was a strange sort of breeze as you grew closer – wafts of shockwaves rustling over the grass in almost gentle looking pulses. It seemed as if anywhere from one to twenty miniature explosions would happen every minute.
Richards homemade Geiger counter started ever so slightly ticking up. Just this distance was radioactive – an invisible field of radiation extending out in all directions. It wasn’t that excessive – ignorable long term with just a few radiation defense or a few dozen general defensive stats…but shocking just how high it was.
How long before the entire planet was radioactive? How long before this ignorable but lethal for a baseline human level of radiation was standard?
The pair passed the storm and continued on roughly 100 kilometres ahead of its current blast area. They had a few hours before this area was hit – plenty of time to set up.
First things first. The superfluous stats. Richard had already packaged and suppressed them but just their very existence in his body was poisoning his pure defense build.
Richard wished he could move them to his mind or stick them on his AI but…no. He wanted to do this now. It felt important.
Carefully Richard laid out his favorite stone shotgun prizing out each portion and trying to figure out where the best places to place his stats were.
It was kind of funny, wasn’t it? Richard needed to spend more time and care choosing these stats then he did his own…at least if he wanted to use them to their fullest potential.
“Actually, do you have your cookware still?” Richard asked glancing across at James.
“Yeah,” James paused pulling off his backpack and opening it to show the supplies inside.
“Hand me your firestarter and pot.” Richard called glancing in. James gave him a weird look before tossing the pair over.
“9 power on you, 9 power on you, that leaves 2 27 chunks for my weapon and ride.” Richard muttered reaching around in his body with his ethereal hands and poking the tools a bit.
“You removing your stats honestly makes me want to vomit a bit in my mouth.” James said continuing to watch as Richard carefully pushed each stat into place dragging their fields about before they set and he stopped being able to modify them.
“It’s fine, look. I just gained some mental power and defense for the charity. System gives a lot of achievements for all this work. I’m farming the stats I do want! I’m making back a good portion of it because of how rare it is...and my total defense is like 700 last I checked” Richard waved a hand lazily.
Turning Richard smashed his tricycle apart – tossing several items to either side and grouping specific components.
Glancing between the items carefully Richard began applying stats, molding a quick shell for it out of stone then handing them over.
“Here, can you fly all this stuff some distance that way? I don’t want it getting hit…my main AI too, give me a minute to remove it.
Richard swapped his main AI for a spare – loosing a minimal amount of storage this time as he’d gotten used to setting it up to be non-volatile. Whatever got wiped by being disconnected from his nearly permanent slot could be regained easily enough.
Done with his preparations Richard gathered some of his remaining items and began digging himself a pool. As he worked, he dumped the full regeneration from all three of his open slots into some thermal transference spheres.
Very very quickly Richard had a pool of liquid stone roughly a meter in diameter and twice that in depth. His generators were raising the heat of the pool rapidly – slipping in before it got to hot Richard continued to work on the setup modifying some of his trike's kinetic drives to start shooting blasts of air at him.
Very soon the liquid stone was near molten – tipping up closer and closer to a 1000 degrees celsius and ripping past whatever control his feet would have on them. It took less than 10 minutes to heat the whole pool up to lava temperatures and Richard began slowing down as his adaptive skill took up more and more of his attention.
James returned to witness Richard swimming around his pool of molten stone – his body completely caked in partially solidified chunks.
Every few moments one of the cannons on the side would blast a chunk of stone towards him bouncing off his head and flipping to the side.
“Hey” Richard waved gesturing to his bed. “As you can see. I’ve decided to take a quick bath before we head through hell. I’ve just started dropping my thermal defense, so my adaptive defense needs to work a bit harder. It took less time than I was expecting to get used to this.”
“Will this be enough?” James asked, staring down at him.
“Honestly?” Richard paused spitting out a bit of molten stone before turning back to him.
“At the levels of granularity stats get into, this is…not quite what I need. I’ve capped out around 1111c for the temperature of this bath. Peak output of a nuke can get up to the 100 million Celsius range – over a sec or two max. I have to train up flash burn defense not ongoing heat defense – the real killer is the transfer rate. Its like the volt or amp saying. It’s the current that kills you for electricity not the voltage. Richard turned to face James with a serious look on his face. “No matter what I do I’m going to get burned. I think I can limit how far down the burn goes, especially when I crank my stats up right before it hits. Radiation is a bit of an issue too, but I’ll destabilize my heat sources soon and start dealing with some more ionizing bombardments. At this point I’m more worried about the shockwave. Can you chuck things at me to start filling up my bludgeoning defense? Every little bit helps”
James started to gain Richard's same urgency. More and more this was sounding like a bad idea – but he wanted to be the type of friend that was there for you.
Reaching down James gripped a stone and tossed it up and down like a baseball. “For friendship then” He yelled before chucking it at Richard faster than the machines could run.
…
----------------------------------------
---James---
Ten minutes of chucking stones at faster and faster speeds. That’s as long as James had to help Richard setup.
They should have gone further ahead.
It didn’t seem like long enough.
At some point Richard's urgency had leaked through to James and he had stopped holding back. It was to the point where James needed to toss from dozens of meters away just to avoid the splash back from the magma.
It was too the point James was starting to rethink his own involvement.
If Richard was doing this much in preparation…why did James feel so confident in his own safety?
Had he ever defended against anything near this powerful? James…couldn’t quite say he had. Nothing had felt dangerous lately – James had stopped dodging a lot of monsters when he realized he could parry all their strikes.
And yet…James wasn’t the type of guy to back down. If Richard could do it he could too. The anticipation was probably worse than the event. Yeah – come on calamity. Prove you’re as bad as you’re making yourself out to be.
James watched the surroundings darken staring up at the cloud defiantly. Any minute now something would come for him and he could flick on his domain. Any second now…
The first thing that hit was the dry acidic wash of rain. More smoke than water the drops fell in a light mist – James flexed and continued flexing as soon as he realized the water was definitely radioactive.
Barely paying the drops any attention James floated up softly picking a position a few dozen meters in the air – there was a certain kind of confidence that came with flight. A strength you felt when floating under your own strength.
A flash of light arrived – strong enough to blind James if he weren’t reflecting everything that came near. Moments later the shockwave rippled past – that strike had been close. James gathered some of the kinetic energy even as he directed the rest back the way it had come.
The world turned grey black as James reflected light harder than he had been – James had been trying to reflect only the brightest of the light but realized radiation had to be mixed in with the lower levels and he didn’t have enough practice to feel confident he knew the difference on feel alone.
A second bomb dropped – this one only a few hundred meters away. The blast passed nearly harmlessly past James, but he felt a worrying warmth coat his skin despite attempting to reflect all the heat.
Come on. James squinted at what he thought was a nuke – it looked like a dense cloud dropping towards him. Like a bomb made out of smoke – gathered together dense enough to fall…were the nukes closer to hail then lightning?
…
James watched the bomb fall towards him and felt impending doom. His mind suddenly brought back a memory of the dragon. Of the immense heat. Of the apocalyptic wash of dragonfire.
He didn’t have an extra life this time. What was he doing. Why was he throwing it away on a whim.
James pushed down the cowardly twinge of self preservation and faced the nuke head-on. He had at least 3 foresight stats screaming at him to move. To dodge. To run.
James screamed and tensed his domain harder than he ever had before.
The shockwave was the least problematic part. A massive wave of kinetic energy washed over James threatening to fling him far away.
James nearly let it. But no. that was running away. James pulled as much of the shockwave into himself as he could – allowing the majority of it to punch into his channels and instantly oversaturate them with more energy than they had ever held before.
The force from the shockwave was nothing. James ate shockwaves for dinner. Maybe before he had refined…but no. he could have handled this before then.
The heat on the other hand…
Heat coming towards James was a vector. James could flip that vector and push it away. Heat itself wasn’t too different from kinetic energy wasn’t it? It was just tiny movements. Tons and tons of tiny movements – and James should be the absolute king of those movements. His domain refused to bend to any scale of movement.
He refused to bend.
Instead, James broke.
The heat just kept coming and James found himself almost blacking out from the exertion of trying to push it away. It was on all sides and despite James’s ability to ‘push’ the heat backwards by flipping the direction it was moving…it was like trying to push a wall of water away. It just kept coming in.
James flexed the entirety of his gathered kinetic energy in a continuous blast in all directions. His channels still began to fill with heat – nuclear fire filling his blood and vaporizing it as he rotated it through his channels.
Countless openings ripped out of his skin as weak spots made themselves known. The holes blasted out of his capillaries cauterized themselves before they had even finished – even as every part of James’s body fought to make the energy his. His skin was the edge of his domain. Anything that even grew near it should come under his control. Nothing should be able to move against him without his permission!
James felt the heat begin to die and a wash of triumph filled his body. He had done it. He had survived! He had won!
And that’s when the second nuke hit.
James let this one blow him away riding the shockwave into the distance his mind sinking away as his body dealt with his bad decisions.
----------------------------------------
---Richard---
The second nuke was better than the first. Third was barely worth mentioning. Richard lay in complete sensory depreviation as he weathered the storm. His body was frozen by his own hands. He could feel the barrier between him and the world. Feel how close he was to enlightenment. Could feel the way in this moment his skill almost pushed out of his body following the trail his mantle left to start defending in the air long before anything reached him.
He had done it. He had proven to himself he was just as durable as any stupid monster shoved out of the sea.
Richard stayed frozen and and isolated long after the third blast dissapeared.
He had done it.