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Chapter 161- Black Gate
🕑 Added 2024-07-02 22:59:00 +0000 UTCTyrone stalked through the underbrush, eyes fixated on the mountain lion he'd stalked for the past half hour. His team crept behind him, their lack of stealth made up for by the expensive consumables used for this hunt. It erased all traces of their scent and made the sounds they made considerably quieter. Add on a decently camouflaged outfit, and it made them all but impossible to see amongst the shrubbery.
His team had done quite well and made a name for themselves over the last month and after finally joining the Global Hunter's Association, their team was official. The beast they were currently chasing was an animal that had started to wander too close to civilization for comfort, ignoring all the skills Tamers and Farmers were using to protect their livestock. As such, a bounty of 110 Guild Points had been placed upon it, a number just shy of its level 123 nametag. With their team of four all over level 100 and Tyrone's level 127, this fight should prove an easy challenge.
With their most recent addition of a government-sanctioned healer, part of the program that offered additional GP to help level the nation's healers, Team Rachet had very little to fear. That was, of course, when everything decided to go to hell. One moment, they were quietly stalking their prey, and the next, Nolan went down with a cry of pain. Tyrone saw nothing but a blur, and by the time he turned around, it was already too late. Nolan, the team's ranged damage dealer and close friend from work, lay on the ground gasping for air, his throat a squirting mess of blood.
The man's stomach had been ripped open too, and Tyrone felt sick at the sight of the ranger's intestines leaking half-digested food. The world almost seemed to slow to a crawl as the disaster played out before his eyes in slow motion. Clarissa cried out in despair at the sight of her savaged husband even as John rushed forward to heal him. The grey blur appeared again- this time he was able to identify it as some sort of massive feline- and he cried out a warning. Too little, too late. A massive paw struck John on the back and a dull crack echoed through the forest, the sound of the man's spine breaking followed by his agonized scream.
That was when the mountain lion struck him from behind In his panic, Tyrone had made the biggest rookie mistake and lost track of his surroundings. He felt claws pierce between his shoulder blades, tearing a line of fire down his back. Only his higher constitution saved him from meeting John's fate, and he was able to turn around and smash his hammer into the monster's side. The consumables they'd purchased blocked the general sounds they made as they traversed the forest path, not the shrieks of a dying man. Now, the mountain lion, too, was aware of their presence, and they were down two men.
Tyrone tried his best to stay calm and prevent panic from setting in, but things weren't looking good. He barked out orders and felt a small flare of pride in his chest when they were followed to the letter. Clarissa dragged John towards her bleeding husband, ignoring his groans of pain. "Heal him. Quickly," she barked. "We'll need his skills if we want any chance of surviving today."
The words were callous but true, and Tyrone mirrored them a second later. Nolan had the highest agility amongst them, and only he could attack fast enough with his lightning magic to deal with the grey feline. They formed a tight perimeter around their injured members and faced outwards, eyes trained on their prey-turned-predator. The mountain lion circled them, a known threat. The agile feline, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Sweat pooled in his palms as he gripped his hammer tighter, cursing its fraying grip. I should have got it reworked. Why'd I have to be such a cheapskate? Cursing his lack of foresight, Tyrone prepared for battle. Unfortunately, things went wrong almost immediately. Their healer, John, was going into shock, unable to string together three words, never mind the necessary magic to heal a savaged throat. With no means to combat the big cat, they were left at the monster's mercy. The feline seemed to realize this too, and it took sadistic pleasure in cutting them apart, flitting in and out of shadows to slice at their ankles, too fast for them to react.
A minute into the fight, and Clarissa had passed out from blood loss, an artery severed in her thigh releasing blood in rhythm with her faltering heartbeat. Things were looking well and truly hopeless, and Tyrone began to despair. No matter what he did, he couldn't see a way for him and his team to make it out alive. He didn't want to give up. A life of hardship had taught him never to bend the knee, to always remain standing in the face of adversity. As the wounds began to pile on his body, he almost wished he was made of weaker stuff; his mind knew he was dead, but his heart just hadn't accepted it yet.
That was the moment a miracle unfolded before his very eyes. Tyrone was delirious with blood loss, the only one still clinging to consciousness on his team. He wondered if the scene unfolding before him was the result of a desperate mind, that in his final moments, his brain created a narrative in which they survived, implausible as it was. His teachers used to always tell him he had a terrible imagination, with an intelligence that lent itself better to memorisation and mathematics. Going by the fantasy his brain had cooked up, he had to agree. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no saviour coming out of the woods to save them, no grandmaster willing to divulge his secrets to the hardworking peasant.
If Tyrone had been watching a movie of his final struggle, he would have scoffed and called it uninspired, the product of lazy writing. One second, the grey feline was there, attacking him, and the next, it was dead, the entirety of its chest caved in, leaking silvery blue blood. There was no intervening moment to describe what had happened; no scene that explained the monster's transition from life to death. One moment it was alive, and the next it was not, almost as if some god had struck from on high and decided that his group wouldn't be dying today.
Tyrone felt the warm golden energy of healing come over him and watched in wonder as John's wounds healed rapidly, almost as if time itself was being turned back on his injuries. He strained his eyes, trying to catch sight of their would-be saviour, but nothing revealed itself to him. Just as his consciousness faded away, he saw the shadow of a man leaning over him, their form a hazy blur in reality. Or maybe those were the tears of relief in his eyes. Finally, blessed sleep claimed him.
Arthur stood over the unconscious team and scratched his head awkwardly. He hadn't wanted to get involved with their hunt, but he could hardly stand by when an overgrown Ashen cat decided to eat them. While the group seemed competent enough, he was pretty sure a level 153 monster was still beyond them, something that was proven thirty seconds into the encounter. He'd given them their fair chance, and when they didn't prove up to snuff, he intervened. The cat had been a speedy bugger and lacked in the constitution department. A single Spartan kick and the monster was dead.
Now he had a party of five vulnerable people on his hands in the middle of the woods. Arthur briefly debated what he should do and came to a decision quickly. The Darkstar essence core's effect was starting to run out; he suspected he had another two weeks of cosplaying a ninja left and a month and a half before people started to remember him again. Its effects were starting to wane though, and Arthur worried that if he strained its abilities too much, the effect would break early. Talking to and escorting a bunch of people through the forest, for example, was sure to cut his time short.
These people have been fully healed, and with the death of these two animals, there's nothing over level 100 within two miles, Arthur thought as he began to walk away. The team would be completely fine, and if something did happen to attack them, they were sure to wake up in time to deal with it. Sleeping tended to be difficult when a nasty critter was trying to tear your leg off. No, Arthur would much rather fulfil his actual purpose for coming to the wilderness than babysit a bunch of humans.
Technology had made some vast strides over the past month as humanity adapted to the presence of ether. The guidance and machines alien corporations were willing to sell them had been the MVP, though, and they'd come very far from their days predicting dimensional incursions with satellite imaging. Now they had predictive programming in place with AI that could accurately ascertain the time, location, and general threat of incoming incursions. It wasn't 100% accurate was a far cry better than the guesswork they'd once been limited to. That was why Arthur was rushing through the forest, heading towards the massive lake that had formed in the wake of the system's arrival.
Earth was changing; scientists estimated that the planet was now seventeen percent larger, with every new day revealing another unknown landmass. His destination was one such change, a massive lake with an ether density approaching the peak of tier 1. Already he could feel the energy suffusing his body, and a tension he didn't know he'd been holding left his shoulders. Unfortunately, or fortunately for Arthur in this case, places with higher concentrations of energy were prime spots for dimensional incursions, and the one he was heading to had been declared a black zone; a place where monsters over level 190 would be invading.
With how often such places had been cropping up lately, the world's nations were struggling to keep up, with remote locations often left to fend for themselves as if ignoring the problem would somehow make it disappear. Arthur needed a place to get used to his new traits and enemies he could take out his frustrations on until he felt calm enough to return to civil society. He arrived with time to spare. The lake was bathed in an eerie purple light and black lightning flickered over the water. A massive fracture in space pulsated like a throbbing wound on reality, the source of the strange discolouration tinging everything.
Gravity itself was stronger in the area and Arthur suspected this was as close as one could get to tier 2 on a tier 1 planet. Little by little, the conditions grew harsher: first, an increase in temperature that had the surface of the lake boiling, followed quickly by poisoned air, a caustic breeze that stripped trees of all greenery, and a host of other debilitating effects he was too durable to notice. Anyone with less than 500 constitution would be at death's door already; that's what it meant to stand before a black zone incursion. Arthur welcomed the challenge and hoped it would be enough to satiate his appetite. Battling extra-dimensional creatures wouldn't lessen his Darkstar essence core's effects too much. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did, and it was the main reason why he had decided on this course of action. Perhaps something to do with them being from another reality, at least on a technical level. Or are dimensions and realities different things? He didn't know and didn't care enough to find out. Arthur would get used to his new power and then use his temporary stealth to go on a little hunt.
He hadn't forgotten the monsters responsible for so much death and destruction, the ones that had reduced his house to rubble. The vampires had earned his enmity in a way nothing before ever had. Their time would come, but first, he'd deal with the incoming threat. The Ozarah Coven had come from a black incursion and Arthur would be damned if he allowed another such threat to establish itself so close to his city. He was killing two birds with one stone here. Arthur needed a way to level and these monsters needed killing.
Forming a soul spear in his hand, Arthur marvelled at how much his control had improved since gaining his traits. The weapon cost half as much to generate and maintain and became significantly easier to keep manifested. Whereas before, he had struggled to create a pointy stick one would generously call a spear, now Arthur's weapon looked like something you'd see used as a movie prop. At least if it wasn't entirely blue. The predictive AI humanity was using wasn't always 100% accurate, but Arthur felt like it had hit the nail on the head with this dimensional incursion.
It would break any second now.
