33 - Dimensional Seeker

Dynamic Quest: Defend the Hanganathorie! - FAILED

Enemy units are attacking. Defend what is yours and repel the invaders.

NO REWARDS

- 2000 EXP

Try harder, next time.

Maya didn’t wake in pain, but she still screamed when she opened her eyes. She stared up at a startling white ceiling, with bright lights and without any smudges of dirt or grime anywhere.

She gasped as the memories of the fight hit her and cradled her arms against her chest. She stopped as she saw that they were bare. She was naked on a white bed in a white room and her arms weren’t broken anymore, her jaw wasn’t shattered, and even the teeth she had lost were replaced.

Confusion was replaced by caution as she quickly sat up and summoned her crowbar to her hand.

Dimensional Lock Active

Access to Dimensional Inventory is blocked.

“What the fuck,” Maya said.

She stamped down the fear that was beginning to well up. She was good at that, at least. She got to her feet slowly and then looked down at her hands again, realizing they weren’t in the cracked and blistered state they had been for the last two days.

How long had she been out? Where was Bell? Where was she?

Her cell, for it was a cell, consisted of only the bed and a small lavatory in the corner. A toilet, a sink, and a shower. Her stomach rumbled as she moved toward what appeared to be a door. She sidled up to it and ran her hands upon its frame. There were no controls, it was just a door shaped depression in the otherwise sparkling white room

She looked to the ceiling and couldn’t see bulbs. The whole ceiling seemed to glow with light.

Maya walked back to the bed and sat down. She dropped her head into her hands and took a slow breath. She needed to be smart here. Panicking and doing something stupid wasn’t going to help her.

Whoever these people were, they weren’t messing around. She had killed one of them, but they had just handed Bell and her own ass back to them. The attackers were high leveled and combat orientated. It was luck and surprise that had allowed her to kill one of them.

The death of the SIL she had fought tugged at her conscience. Like her fear, she brushed it away. She wasn’t going to worry about it now. She was a prisoner. The death of some asshole who tried killing her wasn’t something she would dwell on.

She paused. No, wait. She would dwell on it. What had happened to that invader? The armored asshole had taken everything Tender and she had dished out against them. They had shrugged off her shotgun and pistol fire, they hadn’t been killed by the beam weapon too, then they had still held their own against Tender going all out on them.

It couldn’t just be levels, could it? She didn’t know too much about it, but maybe that was what combat orientated SIL were like. She had suffered horribly in two battles. Did that mean combat SIL were tougher and could fight even after they were horrifically damaged?

Then why had they finally died? After the pulse stunner she had used on them. A weapon that wasn’t even all that powerful, enough to stun a rogue AI if it got too close. Richfield hadn’t said anything about it being able to kill a person.

Yet, the attacker had died after they had been struck. The mana pulse that hit the invader had fried something within its armor, within the SIL itself. Maya thought back on the fight and remembered seeing metal glinting inside the creature. System Tech?

She could hear Bell’s lecture on cybernetics. It boiled down to: “Don’t do it.” It wasn’t that cybernetics were a taboo thing in Bell’s eyes, but it instead interfered with one’s mana channels. For a power that coursed through everything, it sure did have a lot of hang ups.

Attaching replacement parts or organs to a body made the body lesser, as Bell had explained. The System Tech was too low quality to replace a real organ. Therefore it was better to pay for a new organ, limb, or whatever to be grown, rather than replace it with trash that disrupted one’s mana channels.

That brought up the question of why would anyone do it? Why did that person… no Halvara, why did they have cybernetic parts? A level 48 person would know what to do, they would not be inexperienced, so that meant that the cybernetics were intentional, right? She didn’t know enough. She needed more information.

Why did the pulse stunner even kill them? It shouldn’t have. Was it just-

The near silent opening of the door stopped her thoughts cold. She jumped to her feet and prepared to defend herself. Nothing came in, but the door remained open.

“Yeah,” Maya said. “Someone’s trying to be dramatic here.”

There was nothing to do but walk out of the cell. Maya took a breath and cursed the fact she couldn’t access her Inventory. She still had her axe and crowbar in there. Along with the healing and stamina potion Bell had given her. She looked down at her healed body, also noting that the bones she had been getting used to seeing were finally covered with a layer of fat.

“Plumping me up?” Maya asked striding for the door.

Maya shivered, the air in the corridor was cold on her bare skin. It was odd, she realized, she hadn’t felt much change in the ambient temperature in all her weeks in the rainbow sky hellscape, but now it was probably in the low seventies or high sixties.

It was a long hall, lined with doors similar to the one she exited. More cells. She counted two dozen of them. Bell was most likely alive and he had to be in one of these rooms.

Maya stepped to a door and ran her hands over it. She still couldn’t see or feel any kind of controls to it. She sighed and looked down the corridor.

She wondered which direction she was supposed to travel, then shrugged and headed left from her doorway.

As she reached the end of the corridor and saw an opened door, a black clad figure stepped in her way. The armor the figure wore was the same as those that attacked Bell and her.

Jomallava Sin Tesko - Level 39

“Hey. Nice day today, huh?” Maya said, trying to drown her spiking fear behind a joke.

Jo said nothing. The reflective helmet didn’t move an inch. Maya stepped forward and Jo still didn’t move. It seemed they were blocking the doorway.

“You could have just come to the door and took me in the right direction.” Maya said.

Jo was dangerous, they oozed it and she could almost taste it in the air. She had said she wouldn’t be stupid, but there she was, antagonizing an armored stormtrooper.

“Right,” Maya said. She turned heel and walked the other direction. As she neared the end of the corridor, another door opened. She stopped and saw Bell stumble out of the room, looking confused.

“Bell!” she cried.

“Maya?”

Relief flooded her as she rushed to the big four armed man. She grabbed him in a bear hug and he seemed still confused and tentatively hugged her back.

“What’s going on?” Bell asked.

“I don’t know. But Jo back there subtlety suggested we head in this direction.”

Bell turned to look down the hall and spotted the armored figure.

“It’s not attacking,” he said.

“Probably scared of two naked low leveled trash world dwellers,” Maya said.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Bell said.

“Ditto, buddy. Now let’s keep staying that way, alright?”

Bell nodded and they took one more glance at Jo. Maya gripped Bell’s hand and they marched to the exit.

***

“Sweet System, someone’s anal as hell about cleaning,” Maya said as the two walked down another empty corridor. The flooring wasn’t the metal decking she was used to, instead it looked like polished marble. The walls were sparkling white and there was nary a smudge of dirt anywhere. “I gotta get the number for their cleaning service.”

“It is unnatural,” Bell mused. “Any kind of vessel should have signs of life in it. This place appears too… sterile.”

“Yeah, fucking weird.”

Jo kept pace behind them, stopping when they stopped and moving when they moved. The figure hadn’t said anything, only shadowing them. That guard only added to the eeriness of the place. The cliche of dank dark fortress of evil didn’t seem to cross species. Maya nearly chuckled, as it was they who had been in a dank, dark lair.

“Signs would be a godsend,” Maya said. Every corridor looked the same, brightly lit and sparkling clean. “I think we’re lost.”

“Keep walking,” a voice spoke. It wasn’t Jo, it was the distorted voice that she had heard on the Hangy.

“Ah, our mysterious [Capturer] speaks,” Maya said. She glanced at Bell who looked about suspiciously. “If you’re looking for ransom, I’m sure we can work something out. If you’re into SIL Trafficking, I’m down for it as long as it gets us out of this rainbow sky hellscape.”

“Keep walking.”

“I’m pretty tire-“

Jo launched themself forward and struck Maya with a baton. Bell roared and turned to fight only to get punched across the face. The fight was over in a second and Maya gasped on the floor.

“Maybe we should keep walking,” she said to Bell.

He nodded.

The corridor ended in another opening, but this time instead of more corridors, they entered a large well appointed room. The color scheme changed from the sterile white to what Maya could only call Victorian chic. The room was huge, circular, and draped in all manner of banners, tapestries and wall hangings. The furniture appeared to be wood and well cushioned; gleaming in the soft golden glow of actual lamps. There was a thick luxurious rug upon the floor, covered in strange patterns and designs.

“Well,” Maya said after a long pause, “you can lead a horse to water but can’t teach it aesthetics.”

Bell grabbed her as she began to step forward.

“The rug’s enchanted,” Bell said. “I’m not sure with what, but it’s an offensive enchantment.”

“If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you already,” A figure walked in from another entrance. “You only pretend you have any choice here.”

“Yeah, I already don’t like this asshole,” Maya announced.

The figure was in armor again, but this armor was more… casual. Everyday armor, not battle armor. It flexed and moved around his body like cloth but it had a stiffness that said it could stop a blade or bullet. Over the armor the figure wore a long dark shimmering robe that looked like silk, but had runes and designs moving upon the cloth. The face of the figure was also covered, a form fitting mask that reminded Maya of the blank eyed busts of old Roman dudes.

The three stared at one another. Maya wouldn’t have been surprised if their captor had been standing before a roaring fireplace with a snifter of brandy in hand.

“You need a mustache to twirl.” Maya stepped forward onto the rug. Fear was roaring through her veins, but she kept her face blank and her stride steady.

“Yes, now I understand. You speak boldly and crassly to hide your fear. You antagonize because you’re scared. You mock because you know you have no control.”

“Yeah, well, that’s like your-“

Within a heartbeat, the figure was towering over Maya. A cold metallic hand wrapped her around the throat and lifted her off the ground. Maya barely had time to gasp in surprise and terror before she felt it squeezing.

“I can taste the fear coming off you in waves. You put up a brave face, but you’re a terrified rodent about to mess itself.”

She wanted to snap back with some witty retort, but those words died in the throat that was being crushed. She couldn’t breath. Panic began to set it.

“Know this, fool. I can crush the life from you in a nanosecond. I can tear the bones from your flesh in a heartbeat.” The grip suddenly released.

Maya dropped to the floor, gasping for breath. Tears streamed down her face and she gagged as bile rose up her throat. She felt small, she felt weak, she felt as if a stiff breeze would shatter her.

Like some terrified rodent, she wanted to burrow into the rug, into the floor. She would be safe out of sight of this monster. She saw saw that Bell was on the floor too, Jo’s knee in his back and the baton holding his neck down.

It was what they wanted. The fear. To pound it into them so that they would submit to their nefarious plans. Maya felt a surge of rage and anger.

What did Pops say? “Bullies are assholes who feed off of your fear. They’re tough and will kick your ass, but the real danger is when you submit. When you do what they want, then they’ve won.”

Maya staggered back to her feet and stared at the armored figure.

“Fool, indeed.”

“Get on with your evil monologue and tell us why we’re here and not dead.”

The figure laughed, their voice distorted and grating. Maya wanted to cover her ears, but she stood firm. Eventually, Bell was allowed to get back up.

“I have already stated, if I wanted you dead. You would be dead. That little attack on your trash ship, it was not meant to kill you. Though you did surprise me with defeating Halvara. Such a shame, she was with me for sixty years.”

“So you sent those guys to what? Beat us up for shits and giggles?”

“A test. To see if you had the will to fight, to defend what is yours.”

“Jesus, you are crazy.”

“I am Shendogradeh Firnakaal, supreme [Dimensional Seeker], renowned for a thousand years as the greatest mind on the System. It is my life’s work, to discover the System and to discover where it lies.”

Shen raised a hand and the room changed. It wasn’t like the VR sim where it melted away and reformed, the room itself began to fold up. Maya could only describe it as that. She watched as the wooden chairs and rich decorations began folding in on themselves and collapsed into the floor.

It wasn’t magic, it wasn’t a simulation, it was high grade, Tier 2 System Tech. Maya would have gaped at the casual use of technology that dwarfed everything on the Hangy, but she realized that was the whole point. The room was unnecessary, it was Shen showing them they were outclassed in everything.

It took only a few moments before the whole room had changed shape, instead of the rich circular room, it was a long hall. Maya could only describe it as a great hall from what she had seen in movies. The ceiling was high, at least twenty feet above her head, the walls were an off white color streaked with reds and oranges, but textured and made to look like stone. High on the walls, were a series of alcoves from which light poured into the room; a warm golden glow of sunlight.

Maya readjusted her description. It wasn’t a great hall, it was a chapel. She looked to the end of the room and saw a massive mana core. She had seen what the Hanganathorie’s core had looked like before the rogue AIs had shredded its shielding, this was the same, but more decorated. It dominated the end of the room, but sat silently like some foreboding statue.

Before the mana core was an altar. A massive slab of black stone, like obsidian, but Maya could feel power coming from it. Shen walked up to it and touched it, above the stone rose a holographic projection. It showed both Maya and Bell, not just their figures, but everything inside of them. Organs, veins, and mana channels.

“You are an interesting pair,” Shen stated. “A moderately leveled [Alchemist] and a untrained newly Integrated SIL. Two individuals who have survived the Dimensional Instability and found one another. The odds of that happening are extreme to say the least.”

“You know a lot about this place?” Maya asked. Her curiosity getting the best of her fear.

Shen seemed to laugh. “I have been here a hundred universal standard years, child. I have been here longer than any creature who has survived the Dimensional Instability. I am an expert of this place and everything it holds. I am its Master.”

“What about your stormtroopers. What are they?”

“They are tools,” Shen replied.

“Right…”

“You are interesting… Human is it not? Your mana channels are damaged, your stats and levels are low, but you still managed to defeat Halvara. Normally by level 10, one would have solidified their Path and begun training their chosen occupation. Yet, you seem to have chosen nothing. You have not even used your level 10 bonus.”

“I like to keep my options open. Humans are, y’know, generalist. Specialization is for insects.” Maya paused. “What level 10 bonus?”

Shen laughed. “You are a fool. It is a shame about your mana channels, though. I suppose I must fix them and waste a day on it,” Shen sighed and snapped his fingers.

Jo launched forward again and before Maya could react, Bell was on the ground once more. This time instead of just disabling him, Jo began wrapping a glowing cord around his arms and legs. Bell struggled for a second, but a hard strike to the back of his head made him stop.

“What the hell!” Maya yelled.

“Your friend’s mana channels are intact, though. So he will go first.” Shen said, ignoring Maya.

“What the hell are you doing!” Maya yelled as Jo dragged Bell toward the black altar. Maya threw herself forward to only smash against an invisible wall.

Bell struggled against his restraints, but Jo was far stronger and glowing cord didn’t budge. Within a minute, Bell was being pulled toward the altar like a trussed up pig.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Maya screamed, smashing her fist against the invisible wall.

Shen turned to her. She could feel the glee pouring off of him, if not for the mask, he would have been smiling.

“Sacrificing him, of course. What are you going to do about it?”

Maya pounded against the invisible wall, screaming her rage. Jo, the silent stormtrooper, dragged Bell toward the black altar. He continued to struggle, but it seemed the fight was going out of him. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything. Their eyes met momentarily and she could see fear and despair in his yellow eyes.

“No, no!” Maya smashed herself against the barrier.

Jo unceremoniously threw Bell upon the altar. An array of projections appeared around him. Shen ignored Maya’s screaming.

Maya punched the barrier, she kicked it, and then threw herself against it. It did not budge, it did not waver.

From the ceiling above the altar, a narrow spire began to form, like a stalactite in a cave. Metal and crystals melded and warped, forming a glowing spire that reached for Bell. The ceiling pulsed with odd lights and runes, flashing momentarily blue, then green, and finally a deep purple.

She could feel the mana in the air. It was like humidity, hot, sticky, and thick, so heavy it was almost hard to breathe. The tip of the inverted spire crackled with energy. It was mana. They were going to pump mana into Bell.

“I couldn’t have done this without the core from your ship,” Shen remarked casually as he waved his hands over Bell. “The Nerigana Consortium weren’t renown for their engineering, but they do make solid mana cores.” He glanced over his shoulder to Maya. If it weren’t for the mask, he would have been giving her a grin. “You don’t mind, do you? After all, you were not using it.”

Maya tried to ignore the free falling realization that the Hangy had been stripped of the one thing that would have ensured their long term survival. They had mana cores, sure, but the massive mana core would have allowed them to do so much more. She choked down the feeling and screamed her rage at Shen.

The mana core meant nothing if they both ended up dead.

Bell’s screamed. The energy condensing at the tip of the spired reached down and punched into his chest. His back arched and his eyes opened wide, his screams unstopping.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Maya slammed against the force field. If they were to die, they would die fighting. They would go out swinging, raging at the dying of the light. Not a sacrifice. Not at the hands of someone who meant nothing to them.

As Bell screamed, the room changed. It warped and flowed like water, the stone like walls broke apart in fragments and skittered across the wall, heading toward the spire. It was as if something were dragging everything toward the spire, but it wasn’t a force, it was the room changing.

The walls of the chapel collapsed into mounds of blocks, like a spilled bucket of legos. They undulated and pulsed, until they were dragged toward the spire.

Maya looked upon it all in horror. She stared to where the walls had been before and saw the mana core from the Hanganathorie. The massive unshielded core wasn’t in its dormant state anymore, it was raging. She flinched from the light burning off of it, the glowing stator she had seen so many times was gone now. Instead there was an entire rotating cylinder around the core. A wall of multicolored light that raged with both horror and beauty.

It all happened in seconds. Bell still screamed and the spire above him crackled and pulsed as the swirling cloud of components reached it. They were components, just like the ones she had been using all this time, but whereas the ones she was familiar with were low grade, these were high grade, Tier 2.

Shen was building something.

A crack filled the room and Maya flinched once more. She looked up to see the ceiling collapsing, but not in a shower of broken beams or supports, but instead it was a crumbling of small component blocks that streamed toward the spire, that now floated on its own.

The rainbow sky blazed overhead and Maya blinked as she saw crumbling gray walls. Against the rainbow sky, she saw a trash pile looming over them and a familiar husk of a mostly destroyed building.

They were inside the hole created by the dimensional bomb.

Then it hit her, that sickening feeling she had always felt when she was near what they had been calling the dimensional scar. Inside of the pit and unshielded by the building, it raged and snarled inside of her head.

Maya slumped against the invisible wall and her mind reeled from the bombardment of wrongness that flooded her. It tried scouring away her thoughts, her emotions, erasing everything except the feeling of wrongness.

Maya gritted her teeth and fought against the sensation. She would not let it consume her, she would not let it erase her. Dimensional Awareness roared to the forefront of her mind. She understood what was happening now, she understood why it pained her so much to be near the dimensional scar.

Dimensional Awareness III

The mana cores, the creation of some kind of machine, and the dimensional scar, it all coalesced in her mind. Shen was trying to punch a hole out of the rainbow sky hellscape. He was trying to escape this place.

Dimensional bombs were hated because they could bring about dimensional instabilities. One bomb wouldn’t do much, even ten in a single area wouldn’t do anything, but enough dimensional bombs in an area, then that was a problem. Reality began to break in those areas, the instabilities were only the beginning. A wound formed and from it erupted essence mana in its rawest form. It destroyed all that it touched, it torched whole worlds.

Too many wars had turned whole solar systems and sectors into raging infernos of essence mana, so powerful and so deadly that any who got near it would be consumed by it.

She could feel what Shen was attempting. She could feel the mana from the core burning through Bell. He was a conduit, nothing more than mana channels needed to bridge the gap between the structure that was forming, the mana cores, and the scar that had been made. He was a filament and Maya realized that all the mana coursing through him would burn him out.

Shen would sear his mana channels.

The dimensional scar began to pulse, not in reality, but in her Awareness. She could feel it in the air, throbbing and bubbling. The spire began to take shape, it ballooned and warped, becoming a black square box that was fifteen foot cube. Components marched across the sides of the structure, creating ordered runes and shapes upon it.

Bell’s screaming was beginning to fade, his eyes stared sightlessly at the box forming above him. Yet, his back was still arched and his muscles strained against the glowing cords that bound him.

Maya could only watch helplessly. Her aching fists continued to pound against the invisible wall, but she could do nothing.

She had failed.

Bell was going to die and she could do nothing.

“Fuck this,” Maya growled. She had mana channels. They might be kind of fucked up, but they were still there.

Maya slapped her palms against the invisible field and snarled. She clawed within herself for that feeling she had felt only twice before. She reached for it and scoured herself trying to catch it.

Shen raised his head and turned to her as if she had finally said something that interested him. Maya glared at him and continued reaching for that power within her.

Bell had said it would kill her. Nanaseto said it was impossible. But she had done it before. She had channeled that raw mana that everyone called deadly. She could do it again. She needed to do it again.

Maya screamed. It was a trickle, just a delicate surge that she grabbed onto. She snatched at it, she wrapped her metaphorical hands around it and dragged. The electric feel flooded her veins, she screamed again, not from rage but a burning searing sensation that seemed to alight every cell in her body.

Shen straightened and stared at her.

“Finally.“

Maya didn’t hear him and even if she could, she didn’t know how to. She felt mana tearing through her veins, through her cells, and even skipping between her atoms. It was power like she had never felt before, she could do anything.

She destroyed the invisible barrier.

Shen was shouting something and Jo launched at Maya. The armored figure smashed into Maya, their fist rising and slamming down against her face. But her body didn’t yield. Her flesh was steel and her eyes blazed with unholy light.

Maya continued screaming and she watched as Jo’s fist began burning. The figure staggered back trying to put out the flames, but it melted the gauntleted fist. The black metal sloughed away and revealing flesh beneath it, that skin flash fried and the fire burned up Jo’s arm.

Essence Mana Channeler

Through skillful use of mana and a lifetime of study and practice, you have tapped into the very power of creation itself.

Essence Mana Channels created

Essence Mana Draw I

Essence Mana Manipulation I

+ 10 Fortitude

+ 10 Physical Channel

+ 10 Mental Channel

+ 10 Soul Channel

True Mana Draw I

Mana Burn I

Maya’s stopped screaming and collapsed.

Level up!

Level 11