Adam watched in horror as the beam shot from Abbey’s hands into Vincent, Vincent had been unconscious the whole time they were there and he didn’t stir from the energy beam at all.
Adam alongside the others prepared themselves to fight.
“That’s right. I was having a great time playing as the High Priest before you lot arrived. You have forced events into motion a little earlier than intended but no matter, I was growing impatient anyway, just my superiors had it on hold for a while longer.” Abbey seemed to not have a care in the world at the five hikers ready to fight her, not even looking at them as she seemed to take pleasure in explaining herself.
“We know enough!” Adam yelled out. “That you want to use Oak for your own selfish purpose and don’t give a damn about this planet or its people.”
She snarled, snapping back with her response “You don’t know anything, this is so far removed from being selfish, this is a project, this is a rebellion, this goes beyond any of your understanding. It’s not even your fault, you just got caught up in The Refined and their infinite thirst for resources.”
“Whatever, there’s still plenty we don’t know about The Refined but you are clearly the bad guys here. You’re even standing in what is basically an evil lair right now. We’re taking you down, whatever it takes and saving Vincent.” Adam hated her arrogance.
“Don’t lean on silly little tropes, you can see for yourself.” Abbey gestured towards the tree as a whirring sound began, the glowing purple energy started to change from drifting upwards to stopping and then swapping to drifting down towards the base of the tree, as this happened the colour shifted with the inverted flow of energy.
Adam saw the purple glow they were so used to swap to the red tinge they had seen infecting the tree. In a matter of seconds the red tinge took over entirely and now the tree was glowing entirely red with crackles of black energy.
“This is the Omega Rebellion, we will use Omega energy to fight back against the Refined and their Alpha energy. We will do whatever it takes, no cost is too high to stop this threat to the entire multiverse.” Abbeys eyes were widened as she soaked in the change in environment, Adam merely associated the palette swap with the evil enemies of this planet and grew frustrated that they weren’t able to stop this from happening.
“I hope it’s not too late to fix this, we still have to fight.” Adam told the other hikers with him.
Naomi shouted out to Abbey “If you have such a noble intention, why the hell are you capturing innocent people like me and using them for slave labour, you’re all scum.” Adam noticed that she started to motion to start casting her icy spells.
Abbey frowned “Yes it’s unfortunate what we have to do to you hikers who get caught up in this war. Unfortunately you are far too valuable to just ignore and as we see here, The Refined have caught on to what we are doing and are now sending Hikers to get in the way of our projects.”
Naomi didn’t respond in words, she just started throwing a rapid barrage of sharp ice spikes while simultaneously summoning pillars out of the ground all in an attempt to pierce and stab through Abbey. She screamed out in frustration.
Abbey turned her back to the incoming barrage of ice, ignoring all of it as a shell of dark energy encased her and the incoming attacks either missed or bounced off of her shield. She examined the tree and Vincent.
Hammy was now airborne, flying towards Abbey in his shadowy form, his legs had turned into smoke as he travelled through the air while his head and torso stayed in his regular humanoid form.
Adam felt frustrated as Hammy and Abbey were so far above their level that it felt like they could barely help, all they could hope for was that Hammy was formidable enough that their contribution shifted the tide enough in their favour.
Brian had followed Hammy in a rush, still with his single axe in hand, Matilda had started firing her Radiant bursts, Adam was still figuring out how to best help them, her mind was too strong for Truth Compulsion, there wasn’t anything very useful to temperature control and his psychokinesis couldn’t do anything to her impenetrable shell.
Tob and the other guards rushed with Brian, Adam hoped they didn’t get caught up as collateral damage in the fight.
Hammy was jumping around trying to break into the shell surrounding Abbey. Adam watched him climb on top of the shell protecting Abbey and raise his arms up as they began to pulse black smoke around them, he reached down and it was as if he was ripping the shell apart with his bare hands. They were all trying to attack and barrage her at the same time to which she yelled.
“ENOUGH!” She made a throwing motion with her hand and Vincent flew down from where he was suspended near Oak and landed on the ground with a thud.
Vincent slowly awoke and stood up. He carefully brushed the dirt off of his clothing.
Matilda shouted out “Vincent, you’re alive! Thank god.”
Vincent looked around the battlefield with a sharp glare. He held his arms out and looked down at the ground as he boosted himself with a crackling black and red aura, similar to the aura Adam had seen him use against Abbey last time outside the city gates, except that the colour scheme now matched the Omega Rebellion side more than anything, Adam had a sinking feeling in his stomach.
Vincent made his voice boom throughout the rocky chamber.
“The only useful thing a hiker like myself can do is eliminate as many hikers as possible.” He proclaimed in a monotone, almost robotic voice.
“What is wrong with you?” Matilda shouted, a panicked look on her face.
Vincent raised his arms, his crackling red and black aura growing in size and intensity.
“Get down!” Adam yelled at Matilda, knocking her down with his kinesis with more force than he meant to, Matilda hit the ground hard, her head knocking on the hard rock. The beam of energy went straight through where she was standing moments prior and hit into the wall of rock, causing rocks to crumble and fall to the ground, the room began to shake violently.
Stolen novel; please report.
“He tried to kill me! What do we do, what did she do to him?” Matilda pleaded.
Hammy flew overhead in a gust of dark shadows
“I’ll deal with Abbey on my own, you lot are going to have to deal with Vincent over there, whatever this is, it isn’t good.”
Adam watched as Hammy turned around in the air and charged at Abbey and her protective shell yet again, they began a dance of combat, Adam was barely able to keep track of their movement let alone the various colours of magical blasts and attacks going between the two.
Suddenly Adam was tackled to the ground, his vision turned up to the ceiling, watching a red energy beam fly over.
“Keep your focus on what’s important boy” Tob said, laying next to him on the ground.
“It’s not the Vincent I know but either way we gotta deal with him, don’t hold back!” Tob got up and ran in, armed with sword and shield.
“Don’t kill him. I just have a feeling this isn’t permanent, I don’t know.” Adam asked, calling out to Tob who was still charging in at Vincent.
“We worry about that once we find out if we can even beat him, get up!” Tob called back.
Vincent stood there waiting for Tob, his aura steadily flickering around him. He was reading his own hiker menu. Tob got closer, swinging his sword. Vincent swung his right arm into his body, a large black shield coming into shape. Without even moving his arm, the black shield pushed out from his body rapidly, knocking into Tob with a huge amount of force and sending him flying back, Tob hit the ground with a thud. Adam cursed under his breath, whatever version of Vincent this was still had full access to the hiker menu and the abilities, how were they meant to take him on?
Adam, Matilda and Naomi gathered together and all began using their abilities to the best of their abilities to fight off Vincent, Naomi made extra ice as a weapon for Adam to use with his kinesis and Matilda fired out as many radiant bursts as she could.
Adam turned to check on everyone else, some guards were trying to get in to fight him in melee range but Vincent was easily knocking them all away with his Shield Bash ability. He was flabbergasted at what Brian was doing.
Brian kneeled on the ground with an axe in each hand, Adam wondered when he got a second axe, maybe from one of the guards. What really perplexed Adam was why Brian was sitting there tapping his weapons into the ground rapidly.
“What in the world are you doing Brian? Fight!” Adam yelled at him in frustration, it made zero sense to just tap his weapons on the rock floor.
A loud boom was heard as shooting out from the weapons was a shockwave of force, it was barely visible except for all the little pebbles and rubble it caused to move along the floor of the cavern they fought on.
A few moments later, another one shot out. Brian continued rapidly tapping his weapons, almost like he was trying to drum as fast as he could.
“You don’t remember the item we bought from Histo? It never said I had to connect with a real enemy to get the low chance to summon the shockwave, I guess this is my new fighting style?” He said, a smile on his face, it quickly went away to a look of determination as shockwaves continued to proc from that necklace they had bought for Brian.
It was working, Vincent was getting hit by all of them and starting to fall back and struggle against it. In combination with the barrage of ranged abilities they were throwing out at Vincent, his barriers couldn’t quite keep up, thanks to the numerous shockwaves being thrown out at them.
“That’s such a gimmick, not that I’m complaining” Adam said as they continued to pelt everything they could muster at Vincent, he was worried about killing Vincent but Tob was right, they had to subdue him first or get some kind of lead in the fight before they worried about that Adam thought.
Since Vincent was so distracted, Adam was able to float over a bunch of razor sharp icicles directly over Vincents head and throw them down with great force, and from a high enough height that gravity would help. Vincent now had icicles sticking out of his shoulders as he fought off Tob and the guards that were still pestering him. Adam grimaced as he heard the crunching of bones as one of the guards was thrown into the wall by the energy beam.
The guard had a great hole straight through the middle of his body from the energy beam, they were all vulnerable to an instant death like that Adam tried to keep in mind. Vincent was definitely starting to struggle Adam observed.
Just as Adam got excited to try to make a bigger play to completely subdue Vincent, a bolt of dark energy emerged from above him, near the ceiling and hit Vincent. The icicles fell out of his skin and he seemed completely refreshed, Adam guessed that was his Shock Heal spell he had seen on Vincent’s hiker menu back outside the city gates when they first ran into Abbey.
Matilda ran over to Brian and imbued his weapons. Adam forgot she even had that ability, sure enough her intentions worked out for the best as his shockwaves he continually kept creating were now glowing with a fiery blaze.
Vincent kept glancing to his hiker menu which Adam found strange. Clearly whatever was controlling Vincent didn’t get to access his own knowledge of his abilities. Adam kept this in mind as they got closer to making their move to get Vincent back.
A second guard was taken out, his life taken instantly as a beam of black energy, speckled with red lightning took his head off cleanly, vaporised in the energy instantly, his headless corpse falling to the ground. Adam was going to be sick. He rushed in closer to Vincent, finding some cover behind Tob and the remaining guards.
Vincent now grew more panicked, creating seperate energy beams from both arms, swinging them around wildly, the team struggled with the sparse cover available in the room to dodge out of the way, soon enough someone else was going to cop one and die, it could be any one of them.
“Who are you?” Adam called out, pushing open the barrier in Vincent’s mind to allow the truth to flow out unrestricted by the brain.
“General Rezzdeck” Vincent answered.
“Huh?” Adam heard from Brian to his left.
“Why are you trying to kill us?” Vincent had stopped trying to attack them now, seeming to shake in place, just continually creating new barriers and shields to protect himself but no longer on the offensive as he tried to reconcile with the truth compulsion forcing him to speak.
“You are in the way of the Omega Rebellions first inversion project. We are seeing success but you are going to ruin it, you need to die.” Vincent answered for him.
“What are you trying to accomplish?”
“How are you forcing me to speak, arrogant hiker. We are building up Omega energy to utilize in the fight against The Refined and their tyranny across the multiverse. The Hiker project is a bane on all of reality.” Vincent spat the words out in uncharacteristic disgust.
Tob stabbed his sword into Vincents stomach and bashed his head to the ground.
“Don’t worry, he won’t die from this. We will keep him alive.”
Vincent lay unconscious on the ground after having his head bashed in, Adam hoped there was no permanent damage, the dark aura faded from around his body.
They all turned to the fight between Hammy and Abbey in the air. They were both still holding on but as they turned to look Abbey landed several hits into Hammy, blasts hitting directly into his torso.
Hammy tried to shake it off as he dodged the next round of oncoming attacks.
“I could use some help now, good job.” Hammy called out.
“Disgusting hikers, I won’t let you ruin the inversion of Oak, this is going to be our launching ground in a new crusade.” Abbey hissed at all of them, growing in size dramatically, keeping the same proportions and figure but growing to be about three times as tall. She pushed out a large circle of force from around her body in all directions, the room was now shaking more violently than ever before.
Abbey swung her now gigantic fist straight into the outer body of Oak, near where Vincent had been suspended in air before, revealing a hollowed out area inside the tree, she shrunk back down to her regular size rapidly and made skips and dashes through the air, travelling inside Oak.
Adam followed her in.