Something in the distance caught my eye. It almost seemed like there was a faint line cutting reality in half that extended up into the sky, far away. The plane's stability was lowering to the point where cracks were starting to show, which wasn’t great because whatever was leaking from the other side seemed to be corrosive to literally everything. Whether it be matter or Mana, the gas leaking from the cracks would just cause it to disappear. I could close those cracks by burning a bunch of Mana to sew them shut with the world roots, but I could tell this was a temporary solution. Besides, I had other concerns I had to save my Mana for.
The frequency of Wretchspawn was also increasing, and every now and then, I could feel something in the far distance that I didn’t even want to get near. This meant that my path was starting to become a bit of a weaving mess as I slowly got closer to the black line in the sky. The wretches were specifically seeking out Mana, so clothing myself in only Ashenflare stem and turning my eyes off when they rolled by was enough to turn me nearly invisible to whatever sight they had. The blobs didn’t have eyes most of the time, except when they consisted almost entirely of eyes. They didn’t seem to be functioning eyes, so it had to be some kind of inherent Mana sense. No two wretches bent reality in quite the same way, though they all had a general theme of being awful.
In the middle of designing little flaps I could cover my eyes with, kind of like eyelids. I realized that I had managed to walk into a dead end. Three different massive sources of Authority were blocking my path toward the crack in reality, so I decided to start backtracking. After less than one hundred metres, I realized there was actually a fourth one, sitting in the area from which I had just come. Which meant I was now trapped.I wasn’t sure how this happened. I’d never felt one of the big dudes move before, but it was there now, so obviously, I just wasn’t watching when they did. Or maybe they only move when nobody can feel them, but that would mean they already know I’m here and are closing in on me intentionally. I shivered at the thought and shoved it out of my mind into the drawer filled with things I shouldn’t think about. Unfortunately, that drawer was getting a little overstuffed. But that’s an issue for a later version of me to solve.
I had two options to get out of here: wait around for one of the things to move and make a break for it. That plan was fairly tempting because it meant I could slip away without risking being seen. However, it came with the risk of them moving closer to me while I waited, which didn’t seem like a good idea.
The other option is to try and slip between two of the beings. Which given the fact I could feel them but couldn’t see them over the horizon likely means they’re fairly spread apart. I could probably wiggle my way in between two by skirting the edges of their Authority. Though if I’m spotted, I’m likely fucked, I have no confidence in my ability to banish them. Just from feeling alone, they’re dozens of times stronger than the wretches, which, if I used a simple linear formula, would mean requiring more than my entire Mana pool to remove them. Swallowing hard, I could only hope it wasn't an exponential formula for Mana requirements to banish them. Maybe it’s logarithmic. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Deciding I couldn’t wait here, but I definitely needed a backup plan, I started putting together a little contraption in my legs. Given that these creatures seemed to dive at any Mana they spot, I could probably release a Mana-dense pollen as a kind of flare to redirect their attention. Testing my movement, I realized that having pockets in my legs slightly destabilized my ability to walk, so I shifted them to my upper back. I couldn’t have the pollen stick to me at all. Otherwise, I’d stick out like a beacon calling all the creepy crawlies to me, so I added little kinetic circuits to jettison the material.
Now if anything starts flying at me I just need to pop my pollen flares and fucking run. Taking a deep breath and holding it I started testing the edges of where I could sense Authority. I found that heading inwards towards the crack was a lot riskier than going the opposite way, as the horrors were a lot closer together in that direction. But I couldn’t turn back, not after getting this far.
I pushed a bit of extra Ashenflare shielding to grow over my body before activating [Natural Enhancement] and bolting along the shortest path of shared coverage. I could only hope that they couldn’t sense the Mana being burned inside me.
This also gave me a moment to observe the effects of [Natural Enhancement] on my circuits, which was actually fairly enlightening. I already knew from previous observations that the Nature Mana circuits used to move my body were more efficient when they took on an almost organic appearance, and the Skill seemed to enhance this somehow.
It was almost like my circuits were acting as muscles, flexing inside me alongside my movements, leading to an improvement in speed. I had no clue how to replicate the feat myself, but it was interesting nonetheless. Maybe if I had some kind of plant material that could move in designated ways, I could mimic the effect of the Skill on an artifact.
I was interrupted from my thoughts by one of the horrible creatures shifting slightly. I shut the flaps over my eyes and prayed to whatever god was willing to help me out. No Mana left my body. Just a bunch of jerks up there, apparently.
The movement seemed to settle down. I couldn’t quite tell how much it moved. It was just that the Authority became slightly denser for a moment, except not in conjunction with how I was running into an already denser field of it. The Mana in my circuits was starting to behave off, and the air started feeling thicker.
I stopped breathing because it was becoming uncomfortable, though I noticed that I seemed to slow down slightly as I did that. Despite not needing to breathe, apparently, it was doing something to improve my body. So I decided to tough it out and pull in lungfuls of what was beginning to feel like sludge.
Directly in front of me, space cracked as a hole formed. Annoyed, I reached out and was about to close it when I realized that doing so might cause me to be detected. So, instead, I skirted around where I assumed the caustic gas the crack was releasing would have reached.
With my eyes closed, apparently I didn’t give myself quite enough room as I felt part of my shirt burn away as the gas ate through the material I had encased myself in all the way to my skin.
Cursing inside my head, I shifted some Ashenflare stem to replace where the hole had been created, not bothering to fix my shirt. I didn’t do this fast enough, apparently, as the closer of those big things shifted again, before slowly making its way in my direction.
I wasn’t even halfway past them yet, but I tried to up my pace anyway. Turning my fast-paced run into an outright sprint. As long as nothing happens from here on out, I can still outpace it.
Just as I had that thought, I ran into another Authority field coming from directly up ahead. It was just a regular lesser minor Wretchspawn, but it was right in the wrong place, and it wasn’t moving. I wanted to scream but held myself back, I had no idea if these things could hear or not, I hadn’t bothered testing.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The pressing Authority was beginning to become an issue as some of my internal circuits popped under the strain of whatever it was doing. I pumped Mana into [Regrowth] to fix issues as they appeared and tried to figure out what to do about the spawn in front of me. My Mana began taking on the properties of the air around me and began flowing slower, like viscous fluid being forced through a pipe.
I was beginning to panic slightly. Checking my Mana, I was at a comfortable seventy percent. Finally, passing the halfway mark to get out of the creature's area of influence as well.
I decided the only thing I could reasonably do was banish the Wretchspawn and hope that it wasn’t super obvious to the horrible things in the distance. Obviously, I was going to wait until the last moment to do so, though.
Another crack popped up right next to me, and I dodged it with a hop to the side, barely managing to keep my footing and maintain my speed due to the increased precision from [Natural Enhancement]. I could hear my cloak make a crackling noise as some of the end bits of it dissolved.
I cracked my eye slits open very slightly and spotted the Wretchspawn several hundred metres away. From my testing, I could get within one hundred and fifty metres-ish of them safely before being detected through the non-conductive barrier I had wrapped myself in.
Closing my eyes again, I reached out to my feet for the root holding it in this plane and just waited. Keeping a steady pace of a panicked sprint, I approached the spawn.
It seemed to pick up the fact I was nearby when I was three hundred metres away, a bit further than normal. Closing the distance as it wobbled back and forth, looking for the source of Mana, it finally found me and pounced, closing the distance in less than a second.
The instant before it slammed into me, I yanked the root, and it popped out of existence. At the same moment, it vanished. All of reality seemed to slow for a moment. The pressure that had been building up from the Authority on me tripled in an instant, and I barely resisted dropping to the floor and writhing in pain as the circuits inside my Core felt like they had been clogged.
The only thing that kept me up and moving was the fact that the being that had been slowly moving toward me had picked up its pace considerably. Some kind of message was carried through the air between the two beings of immense power that I couldn’t comprehend. The pings they were sending each other felt like nails being driven into my soul. Only one continued in my direction, but I knew the gig was up. I allowed myself to exhale loudly and opened my eyes.
I had gotten fairly close to the crack by now and realized there seemed to be some kind of massive crater surrounding it. The crater was completely filled with corrosive gas and was immense to the point that I had no comparison. It appeared to be almost a hundred miles across, and I had no idea how I hadn’t spotted it before. Looking for any way out of this predicament, I encouraged [Natural Enhancement] to push into my eyes, even though it wasn’t originally designed to do that. If my eyes could water, they would be doing so right now, and I felt the circuits begin to burn out, and I could hear a crackling noise.
I almost jumped for joy when I spotted a hole at the very edge of the crater surrounded by some kind of facility. The buildings were long gone, but if I could just make it to the hole, I might be safe. I picked that direction and increased my frantic pace as much as I possibly could.
After estimating the distance, I realized I probably wouldn’t make it in time. The thing chasing me was speeding up, and the air had reached a thickness similar to a thick syrup or maybe sap.
At the thought of sap, something in me snapped. I had never wanted to think of that disgusting substance ever again, and now it was impeding my progress to reach potential safety. I knew I couldn’t trust that awful stuff.
Leaning forward as I ran, I allowed the thickness of the air to carry part of my body weight. The decrease in weight lowered the strain on my leg circuits, which allowed me to increase the flow of Mana through them, causing me to speed up noticeably. I knew the memory of me running like this was going to play on repeat if I ever re-entered the plane of Eternal Torment.
Glancing behind me to see how close the abomination was, I nearly tripped when I saw the horrible thing bounding toward me. It had a vaguely anthropoid shape, but that’s where any resemblance to a natural being ended. Its body was completely covered in tentacles, except for its unnervingly flat face. Oh, and it was three meters tall. As it moved, reality seemed to shudder at its mere presence, a tear following its wake, similar to the small cracks I had been seeing but much larger. The ground itself seemed to burn away as it moved across it, leaving blackened soil along the path it took.
I realized then and there that flares weren’t good enough, I was going to have to get creative. Shifting the construct in my back I moved some of the stem my clothing was made out of to create little balls filled with pollen, set to kinetically detonate twenty seconds after being released dispersing the Nature Mana that had been packed in.
Looking back, I released the kinetic circuits and simultaneously activated internal timers in the balls, jetting them to either side of me. I immediately began to create another set. Checking my Mana reserves, I was down to twenty percent. I choked back a sob, stuffing any thoughts about not making it into the drawer of things not to think about.
The pollen balls had travelled a good distance from me, flying past the blight on reality itself. The moment they detonated, the being paused, before its movement became a blur as it flew towards the Mana I had released into the environment, greedily absorbing every speck.
I sighed in relief and closed my eyes, hoping to hide my signature. It stopped after having absorbed all of my Mana and seemed to pause. I had nearly reached the edge of the ruins by now and turned to peek at it. As I turned to look, I saw a wave of that horrible twisted Mana spreading out from the creature in all directions. Maybe feeding it a snack was a bad idea…
I barely crossed into the ruins and ducked behind a half-crumbled wall as the wave passed overhead. It didn’t move anymore, but I wasn’t going to move either. Not until it did something at least, I couldn’t tell my relative distance from it, as I didn't know exactly how large it was, but the abomination was likely massive from how it seemed to move. Which would indicate it was a little over a kilometre away. I was having trouble judging distances as the air seemed to distort itself when this close to the monster, making precise estimates difficult.
While I wasn’t paying full attention, a wisp of the energy pulse must have touched me. I felt all my circuits lock up for a second, and my Mana began to convert into that twisted energy. This required me to open up my circuits and purge all of the energy inside, which I immediately realized was a horrible mistake.
Trying to rectify the situation, I began running out of the cloud of my purged Mana as quickly as possible, lowered the timer on my pollen balls, then ejected them to either side again. Less than a second later, the aberrant slammed into the location I had previously been sitting around the same moment the pollen balls exploded. While it was busy absorbing the Mana, I dove towards the hole, which looking at it now I realized was basically just a shaft with a ladder. I ignored the ladder and dove inside, blowing a raspberry towards the awful creature as I slipped into the hole. Barely making it before the entity slammed into the top of the structure, luckily, it was too large to fit inside.
As I fell, I noticed the entire tunnel seemed to be made out of some kind of metal. Whatever the material was, it was incredibly resistant to the corrosion inherent to the greater wretch, or whatever that thing is called. I heard repeated slams echoing down the tunnel as I fell. But looking up at the creature, none of the corrosive properties seemed to pass the entrance to the tunnel.
A few moments later, I realized something was wrong as I hadn’t hit the ground yet. How godsdamn deep does this shaft go? Whatever, as long as I’m as far away from that thing as possible, I don’t care.
Looking closer at the walls, I could see small channels of Mana burning brightly along the surface, and I allowed a smile to creep across my face. Totally worth it.