71

Before the Storm

Rian gazed at the deadened landscape, the bare trees and the red sky. Hundreds of broken mirror shards hovered high overhead, catching a twilight sun.

“It’s the Penumbra!” Rian said. “Holy shit! We’re here? This is…World 4?” He tried checking Ogrot’s location, but none of his menus were opening. He couldn’t see his own stat page, his guild, or even his friends list. “My mom should be here too…”

Rian really hoped that didn’t mean he was in for some weird twist of fate where Yindra was a time-traveled version of his mom or something. He would lose his mind if that were true. But he couldn’t discount the possibility—not in a universe as convoluted as Miriad.

Corvis, looking worried, hovered up beside him.

“Did you know we were heading here?” Rian said, breathless.

“I might’ve.” Corvis smirked. “I could only tell you so much without affecting your future until this point. I’m glad you chose to keep going.” His expression turned serious. “But now…”

Creatures shrouded in darkness were approaching through the forest. They slithered along the floor and across the dead trees, more appearing out of the ground like worms rising from the soil after a rain. They joined forms until they were one giant mass of oozing black.

Rian and Corvis were already surrounded, leaving only a circle of ground for them. The mass approached from every side like an ocean of oil, a concentric wave rippling in reverse to arrive at a single point. A thousand golden eyes opened across every inch of its surface.

Return of the Ancients (Level 82)

HP: N/A

Difficulty: Unknown.

“Run.”

Thoroughly horrified, Rian put a mental finger on the trigger of Fast Travel. But he couldn’t see anything past the encirclement, just glimpses of trees and the sky. It felt like the skill wouldn’t work unless he had a clear view of where he wanted to go, and in all likelihood he couldn’t warp himself into the air without dying from the fall.

Don’t think. Just fight.

Rian gripped his fists, and felt the internals of the Mecha-Gauntlets shift and snap.

Survive.

He dashed at the approaching wall of black and readied his gauntlets to fire their pistons.

To his left, a blue light flashed and nearly blinded him. The light cut sideways through the oily wall in a giant ring, beginning on Rian’s left and ending on his right. A burst of wind nearly toppled him from behind.

The rising creature-wall vaporized into black dust, writhing and screaming with a hundred voices. Dozens of trees fell to the ground behind it in a rush of noise.

Still at the center of the enclosure was Corvis, wielding his obsidian staff like a sword. Light trailed the pointed end. In an instant, he had cut through the surroundings with enough force to kill the creature and cleave through the trees behind it. Only the area directly in front of Rian remained unscathed.

Rian stared at him with awe, then shock. “But I thought you couldn’t—”

“Defend you?” Corvis said. “I’m defending myself. Penumbrian wildlife isn’t exactly friendly to anyone. We should get going.”

“To where? I don’t even know what we’re—”

The temperature in the air dropped so fast that it was freezing.

An eight-limbed figure stood several yards away, watching them. It was vaguely humanoid but disturbingly thin, with two pairs of arms and legs, its neck elongated, skin solid white. It wore a stone mask with a blank expression. Carved tears ran from its eyes.

Vanralis (Level 100)

HP: 9999/9999

Difficulty: Unknown.

“If you’re reading this, it’s too late.”

“Oh dear,” Corvis said. He grabbed Rian and started flying through the forest, weaving past the trees, the movement so sudden that Rian had trouble seeing anything.

Then the acceleration stopped as quickly as it had begun—a momentary weightlessness before Rian slammed into a hollow tree, followed by several more, each one shattering into splinters and bringing him to a halt. He’d taken a bit of damage, but Corvis’s healing kicked in immediately.

Heart racing, Rian got up only to spot the creature again. It was standing at the same distance as before as if Rian hadn’t been thrown hundreds of feet away.

He recognized this patch of the forest: they were exactly where they’d been a moment ago.

Nearby, Corvis was kneeling on the ground with his staff plunged into the ground as if he’d caught himself from getting blown away. “Well, it was worth a try,” he said, sighing.

The masked creature lifted a foot and stepped toward them. The ground at its feet surged with life. As if its footsteps were restoring the land, black grass emerged from the soil, and red moss appeared upon the nearby trees which had turned from a deadened gray to glossy obsidian. With each footstep, everything shimmered like a tesseract had been used, and it occurred to Rian that the creature wasn’t reviving the land but sending the locality backward through time.

“What the hell is that thing?” Rian muttered.

“It’s Vanralis,” Corvis said. “The Penumbra’s groundskeeper. There’s usually no escaping once it spots you. We can’t fight it, either. It can time travel. And send things through time. If it touches us, we’ll cease to exist.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

“I’ll need you to defend me. There’s a way out, but it’ll take me a moment to locate it.”

Rian made a sound like he was choking. He struggled to find words. Defend against an untouchable level 100 creature. Yeah, okay.

“Just draw its attention away from me,” Corvis said, flicking his wrist and producing a tesseract. He crushed it and heat-haze swarmed around him.

He was using a Mirage skill. Rian wondered if it was the one he’d learned from crafting the gauntlets.

Corvis changed—the difference was subtle but noticeable only because it was instantaneous. His suit seemed larger than before, but nothing had happened to it. Instead, Corvis had gotten thinner. His muscles had shrunken, and the intimidating aura around him had lessened.

Nothing else seemed to happen, and Rian was thoroughly disappointed. All Corvis was doing was glancing around for something.

Vanralis had started approaching faster as soon as Corvis had taken out the tesseract. Its leisurely walk had become a stride, leaving in its wake a tunnel of black flora behind it.

Rian hesitated. He needed to attack this thing without touching it. At first he considered lobbing a tree at it, but then he had a better idea.

He crushed a tesseract in his fist and cast Mirage: Piercing Wave. Already, he’d gotten the creature’s attention. Rian’s entire body had begun to shimmer.

He dashed toward a fallen tree that he eyed at about forty feet away from Vanralis, then lined up with it and punched. The moment Rian hit the tree, he lost all sense of where his body was—not just one but several parallel universes had opened in front of him, and instead of feeling the impact of his fist against the tree, it felt like he was hitting nothing. In the same way that Mirage: Cancel created two of him, he could feel his arm occupying multiple locations at once, far ahead of him. A superposition of punches.

Then everything snapped back, and the tree in front of Rian exploded against his gauntlet. A rippling wave shot out past the splintered bark flying through the air and struck Vanralis.

It did nothing, of course. The wave parted like a breeze around the creature, who didn’t even flinch. But Rian had at least learned how Piercing Wave worked: it wasn’t a shock wave but a way of punching almost every point in space beyond a target.

Vanralis was still marching toward Rian until Corvis muttered, “There it is.”

The creature turned again, and Rian used Mirage: Cancel, splitting in two. One version of himself dashed in front of Vanralis to get in between it and Corvis, and the other version dashed around the creature to attack from behind.

Vanralis swiveled around and grabbed the nearer Rian, who vanished instantly, ending Mirage: Cancel and snapping Rian back into a single perspective.

By the time he could focus, Rian was flying through the air, dragged along by Corvis again. They were already fifty feet away from Vanralis by the time they landed, and Corvis immediately dropped and plunged his hand into the ground.

He pulled a device from the soil.

It was the Yindra-Locator. Glowing with power, there was already a Godly Fragment within it.

There was no time to question it. Corvis practically threw the item at him, and Rian activated it, pressing the button on the transceiver.

The Godly Fragment within the device vanished, spent, and unleashed its temporal energy in a burst of light no stronger than a camera flash. Vanralis disappeared, taking the restored section of the forest with it and reverting the surroundings to the old, dead gray trees.

***

Silence fell upon the Penumbra. Rian sat down and took a moment to catch his breath. Even Corvis seemed a little winded.

When Rian looked at the device in his hands, he saw the actual name of the item was Lootable Y-Locator.

The Y didn’t necessarily stand for Yindra, he supposed. It could also mean branch. A branching universe.

Rian glanced at his surroundings. They were still in the forest, but the area was completely different than where they’d been a moment ago. He hadn’t noticed until now, too focused on whether or not Vanralis was still there.

“It’s like we reset things,” Rian said. “Did we jump universes? Is that thing gonna come back eventually?”

“Let’s not wait around to find out,” Corvis said, hovering through the dead forest already.

Rian put the spent Locator into his inventory and followed after. “Do you think we made it in time? Is Ogrot even still here?” He tried to check his friends list, but it wasn’t working. Half his menu was glitching out.

“He’s here,” Corvis said. “In fact, he’s waiting for you.”

The dead forests were eerily calm as they passed through. Emerging before the enormous black tower in the distance was a rocky plateau, leading up to which were stone-cut stairs. As Rian and Corvis exited the forest, there was a barrier spanning the entire area from the plateau and past the black tower. From far away, it had almost looked like a giant egg, but up close there was no substance to it. Space itself had shattered into glass, creating an enclosure.

At Corvis’s instruction, Rian took out the Y-Locator, held it aloft, and the broken space shifted, even with the device empty. A cleared passageway opened.

On the other side the sky was almost filled with floating mirror shards. The stairs to the plateau looked like they would take an hour to climb.

“This is it,” Rian said, staring up at the rocky plateau—likely where he would find Ogrot waiting for him. Devon.

Rian didn’t have line-of-sight to use Fast Travel, but he supposed that if he looked long enough at the hundreds of mirror shards floating in the sky, he could spot one of them reflecting the plateau’s surface.

He found a shard that was floating close enough for him to touch. He grabbed it and stuffed it into his inventory, having a feeling that he could use one later.

“You should make your final preparations,” Corvis suggested.

Rian threaded his fingers together and stretched. The inner mechanisms of the Mecha-Gauntlets whirred and clacked. “Like walking into a final boss fight, huh? Wish I’d stocked up a bunch of rare items for this moment.”

He felt horribly under-prepared, though he didn’t really have a choice at this point. Everything was always obvious in hindsight, but now that he knew his mom was here…

He was getting nervous. More was riding on this fight than he’d ever imagined.

Still. He took a moment to calm down and remind himself that he could only do what he could. He could ruminate on what went wrong after the fight. And unless he could go item-hunting and questing here, which didn’t seem likely given how absurdly strong everything was, there was little else he could do to increase his power.

What he needed right now was information.

“I guess I should actually figure out what I’m up against,” Rian said. “Can you, uh…pass me some notes on Ogrot’s skills? The ones I haven’t seen yet, at least.”

“I know the basic kit of a Berserker,” Corvis said. “But I don’t know which Mirage skills he’ll have.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll have four of them, and I’ve only seen the one he used last time. Armor Break. I’ll have to adapt to the others as he uses them.” Rian crossed his arms. “Show me his other skills, at least. I’ll study them on the way up.”

Corvis obliged and produced several windows that, for some reason, didn’t glitch out like the rest of Rian’s menus. Rian read as he ascended the stairs. He spent the rest of the time comparing his own kit to Ogrot’s and looking for effective strategies between them, soaking up all the info he could.

Bloodlust (Level 10 [MAX])

(Passive)

When sensing weakness in their prey, the Berserker’s desire to kill becomes overwhelming. For every nearby target inflicted with a status effect or with less than 50% of their Max HP, the Berserker gains +5 Power and +5 Agility.

Hot Blooded (Level 10 [MAX])

(Passive)

Rage flows through a Berserker’s veins. When struck by piercing or slashing damage, the Berserker’s blood sprays onto everything within 10 meters, causing 40 Fire Damage with a 33% chance of inflicting Burn.

War Cry (Level 10 [MAX])

347 MP

Cooldown: 120 seconds

Releasing their anger, the Berserker’s scream stuns everything within 40 feet for 1-5 seconds depending on proximity.