---James---

James smiled in anticipation as he entered the strange biome. Step one was to access the dangers – over there he saw something swaying slightly. Was that a threat? There’s a faint chittering coming from the upside down forest – cicada analog or monster?

The badlands felt so much more packed – it almost felt busier than the city in its own way. Fuller with life – more…packed with creatures.

James breathed slowly as he crouched and lightly stepped forward bit by bit. A shrew-like creature with skeletal wings ran past. A bird that looked like it was made of glass appeared and then vanished into invisibility a second later.

Part of him felt silly – he was much stronger than he had been last time he was in the badlands and yet a huge portion of his last time here had been spent running and hiding. He could not jump from fight to fight like he had been in the random nothing between him and the city.

A faint splashing rang out from ahead and with an earthy gurgle the tip of a long tentacle raised up from the pool of lava. It was dark dark grey and covered in dried chunks of stone – the solidified lava looking like so many barnacles.

With a slight crack several small tentacles popped out of the ‘main tentacle’ to wave slowly in the air. The smaller feelers seemed to be tasting the air or listening or something – a few steps from James had them spin around and point directly at him tracking his movement slightly.

Fight or flight?

James looked at the appendage. He was stronger but was he strong enough to face this? It was an unknown. Part of him – the part that had gotten battle crazed while fighting monsters the whole way here wanted to rush at it. Another part wanted to play it safe. He had a goal – continue on through the badlands to get to the other side. The first part argued its point – he didn’t want to feel weak anymore. Running from a fight was the mark of a coward. He wanted to be strong – strong enough to face any foe head on.

The rational side smacked this dumb budding personality – he wasn’t regressing to a child’s reasoning. Not sticking your hand into a fire wasn’t cowardness, it was common sense or survival instincts and survival was a mark of the strong. His rational side tried to appeal to his dumb side and yet battle James could read rational James’s every thought and wasn’t tricked.

Rational side pointed out there wasn’t very many monsters in this area – an almost suspicious lack around the lava fall.

This battle hungry part of him drew him slowly closer to the appendage – he could see it and, even assuming there was more underneath, this part of him promised he was well out of grabbing range.

The rational side pointed out the tentacle was bulging.

“Splurt”

With an awful undulation, the tentacle sucked lava up from below it – the bulge of molten liquid travelling up its length in sickening waves like a leech sucking blood. The tip of the tentacle bulged and puckered like a mouth about to spit and then popped – a massive glob of lava flying towards James a moment later.

James [haste]ed to the side, his reactions speeding up even as the spray of lava went wide. He dodged the majority of the throw, but a single drop worth of molten stone impacted his side as he moved.

It burned – instantly and without any real warning or way to bypass it.

This wasn’t the heat of an open flame or hot pan – James couldn’t withstand the material for a second and get off with light burns. No, this drop melted into him – travelling a centimetre or two into his body before he managed to use one hand to scrape and throw it away.

Grey smoke and the smell of burnt flesh floated off his side and in his haste to remove the burning parasite, his fingers were also badly singed.

The lesson hurt – but it wasn’t dangerous. Or more accurately it was dangerous but not lethal – not with James’s current body. The pain was already gone – his body deciding it wasn’t useful anymore and tossing it.

Bending down to dig into the ground better, James zig zagged backwards then began running in an arc around the lava tentacle.

A second and third splurt were dodged from further away without a drop landing on him, but James was already retreating.

Just out of range James picked up a rock and pitcher threw it as hard as he could towards the tentacle. The rock left his hand like a bullet – travelling across the distance while spinning wildly. It smashed into a chunk of the congealed stone on the creature, causing it to writhe slightly and splurt more lava towards him.

James jumped sideways and ran further into the badlands. The only reason he had successfully dodged was due to haste – a skill almost on cooldown already. Just out of range, the skill faded causing James to slow down slightly.

All attempts at subtly were gone – James spotted a large blurry shape heading towards him from the side.

Passing into the upside down forest, James clawed his way through what felt like sharp spiderwebs. The way the roots dug into the air left stiff lines of sharp oxygen or…something. He couldn’t focus on unimportant details right now.

Hidden from one danger, James paused when he spotted the figure staring at him.

In front of him was a humanoid figure – a humanoid figure made out of those same cracks in the air. It looked like someone had bunched together a thousand sharp lines into the vague shape of a person.

Backpedaling James watched the figure grin – a jagged mouth of crisscrossing lines giving the figure the appearance of a child’s scribbles.

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Still have half a minute of cooldown on [Haste]. Not much kinetic energy stored in [Retaliation] and no useful or easy way to use my new [Transfer] skill. Feint right then jump left?

James’s mind flipped through options even as his body moved.

The sound of shattering glass accompanied his dodge around whatever the crack figure just did a ripping sensation crossing the side of his body. He could definitely have escaped unharmed with the inertia breaking power of haste but dwelling on “what ifs” was a useless train of thought.

Grabbing a root James swung – pulling his body into a curve and continuing on. It felt like pins and needles were beginning to spread all across his body. What even was this biome? The lava pit seemed safer in hindsight. At least then James understood what was happening.

Making a right angle break James found himself on the other side of the small forest – a crashing from the figure right on his heels.

Ahead of him was a perfectly flat plane of glossy stone – a patch of yellowish grey rock roughly half a kilometer in length.

It looked slippery – and more importantly wide open to anything that may see him – but James didn’t exactly have options right now.

Continuing to run towards the unnaturally flat section of stone James jumped – his monstrous jumping stats sending him onto it fast where he found that yes – it was in fact slippery. Like warm ice, his legs flung up from under him as soon as he landed. James fell even with his attempt at keeping his balance, his whole body flipping back and his head smashing painfully into the ground.

As James slid, a flash of stars passed over his vision. This was…not ideal.

Thankfully the crack monster didn’t follow him – preferring to stay hiding half behind one of the tree trunks as it watched him slide away.

James figured out why this section was empty – it's because anything that entered it slid to the other side. No friction at all – that’s what this feels like. The flat plane was also less flat than he thought when viewed from the side – it sloped slightly pulling him towards a hole on the far side.

[Haste] is free again.

Digging into his skill James felt something struggling between it and the floor below him. Within a second his skill seemed to have gained supremacy, the unnaturally frictionless ground below him turning into merely slippery linoleum.

Skill break?

Yes No

Of course pushing the skill past the natural kinetic aether caused that blue annoyance to pop up, but James was well rehearsed in denying that particular prompt.

Not yet. Soon. He promised and then exited the slippery trap, his body dropping to dodge whatever that was flying past his head.

James continued on. It felt like he was running an obstacle course or something – a claw here a hand here. Some pincers down there a guillotine like rope up there. Siren call here, toxic smell there. Same old, same old…except nothing was the same, every single creature wanted to kill him and each had a unique way of going about that. Tons were too weak to matter, but an equally large number could squash him with a glance if he got too close.

Nearly as soon as [haste] was off cooldown he would be forced to activate it again, the skill turning on and off literally hundreds of times. A few times he mistimed the cooldown – attempting to use the unavailable skill and causing a box to appear – but every price he paid was small and instantly ignored.

Sometimes he found it easier to kill the monster harassing him but most of the time he simply ran past them.

Despite the massive difficulty in traversing this web of nests he was making it. He wasn’t thriving – not truly – after all, by the two hour mark he was absolutely covered in burns and scrapes and dangerous looking gashes…but despite that he was making it. He was still alive – nothing important lost yet – and making good time.

Even got an achievement for dodging so many monsters – increased his leg speed by another drop in the bucket.

And yet ‘despite his good time’ his state was a risky one. He was in a sort of equilibrium where he was just barely winning again and again.

And something came to tip the scales.

By the time James started his journey into the badlands it was already late afternoon. He reached the badlands and wanted to head into it right away…

Now perhaps he had been flush with victory after killing so many night crawlers on his trip over. Maybe he simply forgot how close he had gotten his one survived night in the badlands or maybe…maybe there was some malevolent god watching his struggles with glee, piling more danger onto the scale just to see what would happen.

Either way…monsters came out at night. More monsters multiplying the danger that already existed. It felt like the night monsters were stronger on average – and with the dimming light came worse visibility.

Either way, the scale tipped. James almost dodged passed something that should have missed him.

He was even running [haste] when he dodged – it was in that state of sped-up and heightened reflexes that he watched the preyingmantis-shaped bear move.

You see, he should have dodged the creature, but as soon as he did it was like he didn’t. The creature sort of shifted slightly and despite not looking like it had moved…James was suddenly impaled – a sharp and furry arm sticking out his back the dim figure staring at him in alien curiosity.

What sort of unfair move was that?

As soon as James turned his head away from the creature it moved with him. It was like the creature was photoshopped into his vision – like he was wearing glasses with little moving mantis monsters painted on the inside of them.

It hurt his head to focus on, but no matter how fast James moved the creature was always there. No matter if he jumped left or right the direction was wrong – The only way to escape seemed to be running backwards or moving his face purposefully into obstacles that forced the mantis to “unlock” and dodge around.

Running backwards was not an ideal method of running – especially not at night. Especially not in the wilderness and especially not surrounded by monsters.

An incredibly soft sheet of something touched James’s back, his whole body slowing down to a crawl.

Kinetic power, Why is haste always deactivated! I need it to break away. Can I try and transfer this? Shove it over…

The mantis was in front of him, its one hand stabbing his front again and again.

It looked almost like a gangster shanking someone in an alleyway – its long claw actually a knife entering his stomach and-

One of James’s cores was punctured, and his badland run was finally snuffed out. His kidneys were his heart – his new brain – and with their loss his life was also forfeit.

It felt like he’d forgotten this – forgotten to protect them in the hectic melee.

But at the end of the day…how was he supposed to protect them? He had been held down by something from the back. It felt…it felt like there was nothing he could have done.

…

James awoke standing in the middle of the city. He felt like he had been hit by a truck repeatedly. His body was oh so weak – emancipated. The muscles atrophied.

More importantly Richard stood in front of him waving his hand slightly.

“Hey…hey James. Hey….hey James. Oh! There you go. Why have you been ignoring me? Fuck happened to you? You look awful man. I thought you left?”

James stumbled and looked about for something to vomit into.

“Died” he choked out and hurled shiny and slightly clear red liquid onto the street.

“…” without saying anything Richard walked over and patted him on the back.

“There there, happens to the best of us.” Richard spoke when James was finished hurling. “Let's go get you something to eat. Tell me all about your adventure – Actually let's go find burritos. I’m really craving Mexican. My treat.”

…