Okeria launched himself into the air once more, flowing blue lines extending from his armor as he went. He positioned himself between me and the signaleech, then let loose a rain of stone that shredded through everything but its eyes like warm cheese. The wounds barely leaked thanks to whatever the slyk had done to thicken itself, but the rare splatter of oil so thick that it fell like rotten fruit was followed by a victorious whoop from Okeria.

“Go for it!” He yelled down to me as the slyk thundered towards us. “Not gonna get a better shot than this!”

I had to agree. I placed a stone in my sling and took a step back, spinning it until my armor switched from its ‘in motion’ to its ‘stationary’ bonus, and let the first bullet go. It struck true, shattering one of its remaining eyes in an eruption of electricity and glass, but this one was accompanied by a geiser of oil. Like a pinhole in a balloon it wasn’t enough to deflate the signaleech, but it would be the beginning of the end for the creature.

The glass had a different idea. The shards stuck in the shelves that the signaleech was in the process of squeezing through, arcing electricity to the main body, and easily sheared through the oily parts of the slyk’s body. Huge globs of oil fell from the newly opened wounds, buzzing with so much residual charge that they seemed to be moving on their own, but the signaleech was undeterred in its single minded assault. Even as it visibly deflated from the oil it lost, it charged on.

“Keep at it!” Okeria yelled encouragingly.

“Wasn’t planning on stopping!” I called back, already spinning the next stone as I did. My aim was getting a little bit better, but the signaleech was starting to sway unsteadily on its legs. I let loose the second bullet, watching as it did just as much damage to an eye as the first one had. “One more to–”

The signaleech let out a cry like nothing I’d heard it make before, thick globs of oil raining from a thousand cuts and bullet holes that it had been stopping for a long while, and it somehow sped up. A massive monster of oil and rock jumped at Okeria like a disobedient dog, trailing thick globs that rained down in an ever increasing frequency.

He let out a yelp of surprise and backed up, but he couldn’t get away as quickly as he needed to. A leg stretched out and took him in the chest, spiking him into the rock in a spray of oil and dust. It all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to react, a now oil-soaked Okeria completely out of commission in what was supposed to be the last seconds of the fight.

I watched in horror as the signaleech’s wounds began to close, siphoning Okeria’s battery to repair itself. He had to be in terrible shape, and without his armor helping him recover, he’d be dead in minutes at most. The signaleech had to die before that happened. Even if I didn’t overly like Okeria, he was still one of the most important people in Rainbow Basin. Having him on my side would be a massive boon, and returning with his corpse would be the opposite.

There wasn’t time to think. I grit my teeth and spun my last stone, aiming at the signaleech’s one remaining eye, and let it loose. It lurched out of the way as soon as it left my sling, not quite quick enough to avoid it completely but quick enough to avoid losing its last eye. The stone cut through its oily head in a spray of stone chips and much more fluid oil than a moment ago, proving that the slyk was quickly reverting to a state where it could fight.

“Fucking hell, that’s bad.” I hissed, transforming my sling into a dagger as I pivoted on my heel to run towards the nearest oil pod. Hopefully the slyk hadn’t gotten smart enough to avoid incapacitating itself.

Rumbling impacts told me that the slyk was indeed following me, which was a relief and a terrifying thought at the same time. The going was quite a bit rougher now that everywhere was littered with oil, glass, and rocky shards, and by the time I found myself standing next to a pod I’d lost a good chunk of my battery to the residual oil and some of my armor’s integrity to the shattered glass and stone. I hovered my hand over the pod with trepidation as I saw the slyk’s legs crash into the ground in front of me, my jaw clenched right as I waited for it to get close enough to touch the pod.

It got closer with every long stride. Close enough that I could see its low-hanging bloated body slap wetly against the ground as it bent down, revealing three electric orbs shining in its face. Only one of them was covered with glass, but all of them shined with intelligence that spelled nothing but my doom.

The space under its eyes split open with strands of oil connecting the two sides like spittle, showing a rotating maw of stone shards churning up enough electrified oil to drain me dry a hundred times over. The oil lurched forward every moment, dripping and arcing out of the signaleech’s face in long bolts, readying the web-wavewave that would utterly consume me.

“And it’s smart again. Fuck me running.” I groaned. I racked my brain to think of anything that I still had left to use. //ENDLESS was already doing all it could, most of my armor only gave me bonuses to my stats, and my //FLOODPETAL-SCALES would just be another drain my battery couldn’t handle. I needed something to help that wouldn’t end up killing me in the process.

And I found it buried in a heap of notifications I’d been ignoring.

//CREATION ACTIVATED: SIGNALEECH SEGMENT HAS PERISHED.

//DESIGNATE THE RECIPIENT OF THE CREATED CORE.

I designated myself as the recipient and transformed all of the nodes it gave me into potential. I hadn’t had a chance to use the new //OVERGORGE core function that I’d gotten from Nia, but it was the only thing I could really count on at this point. I poured as much of my newly gotten potential as I could into my dagger and transformed it into a shield, then slammed it into the ground before me to brace myself against the oncoming rush of oil.

//OVERGORGE ACTIVATED.

//ENDBOUND NULLSHIELD DESIGNATED AS THE RECIPIENT.

//DURABILITY INCREASED.

//SIZE INCREASED.

//WEIGHT MASSIVELY INCREASED.

My shield tripled in size and sunk into the rock, threatening to drag me down with it. I grunted and fell to one knee, letting my arms rest against my other knee to keep my shield from falling through the rock. I had no doubts that the shield would stand up against the signaleech’s attack, but the problem was with me. If the oil came up and over, I was screwed. When the signaleech recalled its oil, I was screwed. I needed a sphere of protection, not just a frontal shield.

“Guess I might as well use everything then.” I reluctantly said, activating //FLOODPETAL-SCALES and designating my shield as the piece of gear I wanted to affect. Images flashed through my mind of a swirling vortex of gleaming metal flower petals, and the more I focused on it the larger the vortex grew. It grew and grew until my vision started going dark, and I felt the same ringing emptiness that only came with a complete and utter lack of battery. I backed off on my vision a few steps, leaving me with a whirl of petal-scales that was still fairly impressive but not blot-out-the-sun impressive, and forced battery into that image.

My shield sang like a struck bell. It shuddered and shook while shedding little bits of itself that were the exact same colour as it, swarming around me just as they had in my vision. I commanded them to wrap around me in a sphere starting from my shield, and to leave no gaps for anything to get through. The signaleech let out a sound like the rumbling of a volcano about to erupt, the storm of petal-scales around me closing off all outside light as a tidal wave of electric oil and rock surged towards me.

I braced myself as well as I could, but the impact still rattled my bones and threatened to shake my fillings loose. My shield flashed countless warnings at me that were multiplied a hundred times over thanks to all the scales that were now a part of it. There was absolutely nothing I could do now, except hope that the slyk’s assault wouldn’t kill me and that I could figure something out for whatever the hell happened after this.

The deluge only lasted for a half-dozen seconds, but the lull that followed was twice as long. The feeling of emptiness inside of me grew more and more pronounced as the oil fed from my shield and the scales sucked up the last dregs of my battery. I looked down at my arms and saw a glow that wasn’t from my armor reflecting off of my shield, an electric blue hue that was so dark I almost couldn’t see it.

I craned my neck to see what was making the light and found myself face to face with the pod I could’ve sworn I’d had in front of my shield. I looked down at the bottom of it and saw that the cables of oil dug into the rock below, leaving a pile of pebbles around them, almost as if the pod had burrowed its way into my shield sphere for safety. Which gave me an idea. A terrible idea, but one that could possibly save my ass or expedite my death. I summoned the gumball Okeria had given me into my mouth and held it under my tongue as a last resort, then slowly lifted my shield and petal-scales.

My battery was single-digits away from bottoming out when I hopped to get the scales under my feet. Not a moment later did I feel everything around me being dragged back into the slyk like a fisherman trawling his last net of the day, and I said a silent prayer with the hopes that this wasn’t the dumbest fucking thing I’d ever done. A mounting pressure rose around my petal-scales as I felt myself lifted off the ground, and a myriad of sharp rocks ground against my shield to inform me that I’d succeeded in getting myself inside of the signaleech. I shot a look back at the pod to confirm it had come with me, and once I had, I closed my eyes and let my functions fall.

Oil overtook me. Sharp rocks ground against my armor like sharks gnawing at a diver’s cage as my battery fell to zero, giving the signaleech what would be a perfect victory if I’d miscalculated. I stayed perfectly still for five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. The grinding slowed to a halt. The electricity dancing on my armor intensified to a fever pitch, snapping and crackling like the world’s angriest bowl of rice krispies as everything grew way too hot for me to touch. Unfortunately it wasn’t up to me if I wanted to touch my armor or not, so instead I opted to scream bloody murder as I was cooked alive inside of my armor.

But just as I started to smell myself burning, the world exploded into motion. And just exploded in general. Lightning burst out of the signaleech and destroyed everything in sight, shredding shelves into dust and blasting massive holes into everything else around it. A bolt caught me in the chest and sent me careening upwards, denting my armor so severely that I felt my ribs crack and blood gushed into my lungs along with a pointed shard of metal.

My battery came back. All the notifications about the signaleech draining it disappeared, and I was left with a quarter tank that instantly worked to un-dent my armor and stem the bleeding before it got as bad as it would’ve. I gurgled a sigh of utter relief as oil splattered every visible inch of the warehouse, staring down at the pod that had just saved my life that stood intact in the middle of what had once been the signaleech.

Even the cold hard ground that I bashed my head off of didn’t take away my good mood, though it did massively reinforce one thing.

I needed a fucking nap.