80

Tempest

The Second Gate opened for Rian, and on the other side was a sprawling forest of black wood and leaves. It was a portal into the Penumbra’s past—before the forests had died and the trees had shriveled, before broken mirror shards had filled the sky and Yindra’s tower had eclipsed the sun.

Rian stepped through onto a small platform overlooking the forests.

Sitting there with her legs crossed was the archer that had tried to kill him in 3-3. Her pet dire wolf lay curled behind her. She glanced up at Rian but seemed unconcerned. “What the hell are you? A Loyalist? You look like…” Her eyes widened.

“I’m your opponent,” Rian said.

She jumped up and shot something from a device on her forearm into the forests below—a wire stretching taut before she was pulled forward so fast that she vanished. A grappling hook.

Her wolf took one look at Rian before turning and leaping after her.

Rian watched the archer go as she navigated the forest at blistering speeds. She had two grappling hooks, one on each arm. Rian took the moment to check her stats rather than pursue her.

She was rank 13, one of the top players in all of Mirage. Her equipment was completely maxed out. Every item S+, unique, and fully upgraded, invaluable for the time and money she’d put into them. She’d likely spent every waking moment since the launch of Mirage refining and perfecting her equipment.

But she was still only level 40, the cap for a normal Vessel. And all those Ascendant Levels she had were nothing compared to the actual level difference between her and Rian—they just told him that she had maxed out her class’s skills.

Rian wasn’t entirely sure how else to compare his power to hers. His PVP rank had become indeterminate since fusing with Corvis like the System was struggling to measure him.

Opening his inventory, he glanced at the item still sitting there with two of its uses remaining. The Sacred-2 potion, Breath of Goam.

A peculiar thought came to him. A connection. He carefully read the item’s effect a second time.

120% damage, the potion gave.

Closing his inventory, he stored the item and put the thought to the back of his mind.

It would work. With the right circumstances, the combination would be devastating. It would annihilate almost everything here.

Hopefully he wouldn’t have to use it just yet.

Meditating, he took a deep breath, then lined up his fist and waited for the shimmering of the System to reveal itself. Banning his opponent wouldn’t exactly be fair, but he cared more about advancing to Yindra’s tower right now than playing around in this little tournament.

He punched another hole in space with Vital Strike. But when he tried to reach in and activate the ban function, there was nothing within reach anymore. The System seemed to adapt to his intent and reconfigure itself. What worked before wouldn’t work again, he supposed. A shame, but it’d been worth a try.

He cracked his knuckles. He had some hunting to do.

“You’re in LastWhisper,” Rian shouted, hopefully loud enough for the archer to hear. Then he saw it was showing up in their text chat. “You’re their guild leader, I presume. What’s your name?”

“Trini,” she answered, speaking in a normal voice. Even from what must’ve been half a mile away somewhere in the forest, Rian could hear her just fine, picking her voice out of the wind. “You must know my good-for-nothing sister,” she said. “Kat.”

Rian blinked, then entered Meditation again before gazing at a distant point of the forest. He could see Trini’s movement altering the air, an anomaly in the wind, running counter to the breezes.

He activated Fast Travel and warped.

When he landed within sight of her, she seemed to panic before taking off again and hurtling past the trees with her grappling hooks.

“You’re her sister?” Rian said. “So that’s why you looked familiar.” He didn’t want to fight her just yet, but he was concerned by how big the area was. It didn’t seem like there was a boundary to the arena—it was just the entire Penumbra, but without the roaming creatures.

Fast Travel only worked once per minute. If Trini managed to escape his detection, the fight could last for days.

Then again, what he had up his sleeve would be more than enough. It would only get stronger the further away Trini was.

“What the hell’s going on?” she muttered. “You’re level 65? And why do you look like…him?”

She must’ve been looking at his stat page. He wasn’t sure what she meant by that last part, though.

“Before I defeat you,” Rian said, “I’d like to know. What happened between you and Kat?”

“What do you care?”

“She’s my friend. Your guildmates came after me, too, just because I’m in her guild. I feel like I deserve to know.”

“It’s none of your business.”

The trees in front of Rian exploded. A single arrow came hurtling toward him, its momentum so powerful that it left a tunnel of destruction through the forest. A rain of splintered wood trailed behind it.

Rian activated Mirage: Flux and converted his stats into Perception and Endurance.

He caught the supersonic arrow. It scalded his hand, pulled his entire body along with it several feet backward. Steam rose between his fingers. With how much energy had been put into the arrow, it was like grabbing white-hot iron.

But Rian didn’t flinch. He simply let go and watched the burn on his hand heal itself over. In the slow crawl of the moment, with the time-dilation of his INT jumping into the hundreds, he went to retrieve a tesseract to cancel Mirage: Flux, only to realize that he was out of them.

So he closed his eyes, grasped the temporal energy in the air, and pulled it into his palm, forming a colorless tesseract. He crushed it and reverted his stats.

“Let me guess,” Rian said. “It’s jealousy? Kat has something you wish you had.”

“She has nothing,” Trini said. “And she’ll never have anything until she learns her lesson.”

“You sound bitter. Whatever happened between you two, I don’t think you’re being fair.”

“The world’s unfair,” Trini said. “Tough shit. Only the strongest survive. And when it comes down to it, the weak will die to enrich the powerful. So the only choice is to become strong.”

“Oh,” Rian said. “You’re one of those kinds of people. You don’t even know what Kat’s like. I mean, how could you, when you’ve probably pushed her out of your life? Kat does work hard. I’ve seen it. She gives everything her all.”

“And what does that matter,” Trini said, “when this is all just a game. You think it’s a coincidence that I’m a top ranker, that I have tens of thousands of followers? I’m where I am because I invested in myself—into my future.”

“That doesn’t make you inherently better than anyone.”

“Yes, it does. I don’t play this game for fun. I play to win. Nothing else matters.”

Rian stood and listened. She was retreating still, swinging between the trees with her grappling hooks. In a few seconds, he’d lose her exact location.

But as long as he had a general sense of the direction she’d gone, it didn’t matter.

“I’m a lawyer,” Trini said. “I worked hard for my success. I don’t just sit around and play this game all day long like her. I have a job. I run a business, and I run a guild while maintaining my rank. I work every waking moment because that’s what it takes to get ahead. That’s what it takes to succeed.

“And what does she do? She lives a cushy life where everything’s given to her by her husband. She doesn’t deserve a thing. So I make sure she doesn’t get anywhere in this game. Not until she learns what a real work ethic is. Until then, she gets nothing. Her guild gets nothing. She stays where she belongs—in the pit she dug for herself, until she understands what it means to fight to succeed.”

“So that’s it, huh?” Rian said. “You want Kat to struggle as much as you did. You’re just projecting onto her.”

“I didn’t ask for the psychoanalysis, you freak.”

“You dealt with unfair circumstances and want everyone else to suffer because of it. I bet you’re just paying off debts you have.”

Her silence told him that he’d struck true.

“That’s kind of embarrassing for a top ranker, to be honest,” Rian said. “You run a guild full of toxic people. You think life itself is a competition. You’re only here to bring that kind of sociopathic nonsense from home and perpetuate it to justify yourself.”

“Home? What are you talking about?”

“I mean from Earth.”

“What world are you living on, buddy? This is a VR game.”

“You haven’t figured it out,” Rian said. “That’s a shame. I’m afraid you aren’t meant to be here. I wish I had better answers to your problems, but I think you should find another hobby—one that doesn’t involve this world. You’re not the kind of person who belongs in Miriad.”

“And who are you to tell me what to do?”

“Because I’m going to change everything. When I get to the top of Yindra’s tower, I’ll make this world a better place.”

“We’ll see about that. Whatever the hell you are, level difference or not, I’ll still beat you.”

Maybe she could, Rian thought. Her equipment was unrivaled. If she bought herself enough time hiding in the forests, Rian was sure she had plenty of methods to bolster her power to unimaginable levels.

She was still retreating.

Rian let her go.

He took the time to draw more temporal energy until he had four tesseracts at the ready. Then he crushed each one, adding to the heat haze around his body until it had grown almost to the size of the trees around him.

He took out the Breath of Goam vial, opened it, and downed the contents, consuming its third usage and two of his tesseracts’ energy.

In the end, Trini wouldn’t even know that it was Kat’s gift that brought her down.

Rian activated Mirage: Piercing Wave.

“Any last words?” Rian said.

“Last words? Don’t be so dramatic. What’s your deal, anyway? Got the hots for my sister or something?”

“I’m serious. The fight is over. I’ll tell you this: back home, we’re all victims of a system not meant for us. And when the time comes, I’ll give you a choice. To keep going as you are, or to try something new.”

“What, you think you can change things?” Trini said. “Yindra won’t accept a wish that changes the status quo. Besides, what can you possibly do? You’re just one person.”

“Am I?” Rian laughed at the thought. “I’ll become so much more, soon.”

“What the hell are you,” she muttered. “You sound like you’re insane. This is—”

Rian dashed, drew back his arms, used Mirage: Cancel, and crushed a tree with both his fists at once.

He needed an attack powerful enough to set it off, create a shock wave with Breath of Goam that was of sufficient magnitude to reach so far. When the first wave extended ahead of his fists and hit the tree, he canceled the attack into itself, doubling it.

The wave struck the tree and set off Mirage: Piercing Wave.

Piercing Wave shot out past the tree, then generated a leading shock wave ahead of itself through Breath of Goam—a shock wave generating a shock wave, multiplying its power and size by the value of Breath of Goam: 120%.

And then it struck two more trees.

The first tree cracked beneath the attack. The second and third split in half. The fourth, fifth, and sixth shattered. Beyond that, it was a storm that had unleashed itself upon the Penumbra, a maelstrom of uprooted trees and splintered wood rushing faster, strengthening with each collision. A tornadic wind stripped the land in an expanding, horizontal cone. It tore up the ground, shook the foundation of the continent itself, and formed a rushing wall of debris like a tidal wave reaching to the clouds. The sound was deafening, unworldly, as if a meteor had struck the Penumbra to blast away everything into dust.

Entire trees fell for miles ahead of Rian. The roar of the wind only settled to the sound of rustling canopies throughout the landscape.

When the dust settled, he could see the ocean. The attack had destroyed everything from here to the northern edge of the continent.

Trini was no longer responding.

Rian supposed the attack had connected—he was sure it had hit the damage cap by the time the wave had reached her. And the breadth of the destruction was almost unfathomable.

A moment later, Rian didn’t need to suppose anything.

The Third Gate appeared in front of him, directly before his view of the ocean and the destroyed wedge of the Penumbra. The obsidian double doors began to open.

This was it. No turning back. He was going to get his answers from Yindra herself.

And he was going to save his mom from whatever was going on up there.

There was one use left for Breath of Goam. He had a feeling he was going to need it.

***

The sound of the apocalypse drew his attention.

As the wave of destruction cast itself across the Penumbra, he summoned his obsidian staff and floated above the trees to get a better idea of the danger he was in.

Apparently the battle between Trini and whoever had beaten Ogrot was already underway. He hadn’t noticed, preferring to explore the Penumbra’s past in the meantime and take a moment for himself. Trini wasn’t exactly a friendly companion. Nor had she ever needed his help.

Above the canopies, he gazed toward the spot where the destruction had originated. His novai senses let him narrow in on the source.

His jaw loosened.

All of this power had been generated…by an off-worlder? And not only that, but the off-worlder’s Vessel had merged with one of them. The appearance was unmistakable. The four horns, the fangs, the vertical pupils, the black clothes.

It was a half-human, half-novai Vessel. And it looked almost like him.

He had always been one of Yindra’s most beloved servants, so much so that he’d received a blessing that only one other Loyalist—Ossyra—had the privilege of.

A dual-self, occupying the same universe.

They’d never been able to meet, of course. Such things were forbidden by the System. But he’d always wondered, had daydreamed of it while accompanying Trini. What was the other Corvis up to? Was he carrying the other Eye of Ezre? Did he even know there was another of him in the same universe?

He’d even begun to doubt that his other self was real. And yet here was his proof.

The other Corvis had fulfilled the mission.

Trini was dead. The fight was over. Soon she would return to the Overworld and continue on with her life.

For what remained of it.

The time had come, the moment that every Loyalist had been waiting for. Yindra was going to be free.

And soon their work would begin.