Luca DR
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Edge 148
🕑 Added 2023-12-02 17:47:01 +0000 UTC148 – Catching up
As they made their way towards the source of the magical signature Albert was able to feel, the group began to come across the first signs of activity. It was only the last few stragglers at first, the slowest of the zombies who had been damaged too badly by the battle to be able to keep pace with the rest of the group, even in their frenzied state.
As the hours passed, more and more groups of zombies became visible. The team kept a good distance from them, but the former humans-turned-monsters didn’t seem to care about their presence in the slightest. Still, it paid to be cautious.
It was after a couple more hours of only spotting isolated groups of zombies in various stages of decomposition and damage but no trace of Lithoids that things changed. Night was coming, but there was still enough light to see.
“Oh shit, what’s going on here?” Albert exclaimed. He was the first to spot any abnormalities, his senses having long transcended what any normal human, or even average mage could do.
He had been training regularly as they traveled, and his power had increased by a few points, although Albert found himself keeping track of the numbers less and less. It was more of a vague feeling, and the feeling told him that he was getting consistently stronger thanks to his rigorous training regimen of getting as close to exhaustion as possible as many times as possible while remaining functional.
It helped that he didn’t need to sleep anymore, that his body was always in peak condition thanks to continuous passive healing being administered to it, and that he had a literal AI to help him. The healing part was particularly interesting. Basically he could keep it running at low-power indefinitely, resulting in his body being utterly and completely refreshed down to a cellular level basically every few days at the current pace.
Even if he didn’t change anything, this level of healing would allow him to completely regenerate from any non-fatal injury in mere hours, and even return to life given enough time. He still had to work out the kinks of the resurrection part, because he wasn’t too confident that he could keep the magic running to heal himself if he was dead, and unless he located the source of ‘aliveness’ inside himself, be it a soul or just his meatbag brain, he was not willing to test his luck.
Still, for now the healing was a long way from becoming a habit he could keep up without actual thought, which meant that it still provided enough challenge to make his Power grow. It was like physical exercise, and he was still in the gains part.
Another interesting thing was how he integrated his human senses with the information that came from Power-powered scanning. It was done through Jeff, and it was what allowed him to spot the line of monsters ahead well before the other two members of his team. He was basically aware of everything around him in a sphere of several hundred meters, although his mind was yet to catch up with the effort. Even with AI, he could only access data about the closest dozen meters, with more space being added every day as he got used to it.
Jeff didn’t have such problems, and providing Albert with the aerial view of the landscape ahead was just a trivial task for the AI.
Albert looked at the live video feed. It was a line of monsters, zombies and Lithoids alike, extending for kilometers. The view was taken from the highest point of his perception sphere by capturing all photons that passed through, like a panopticon camera placed three hundred meters overhead, and it offered a view of an interminable line of monsters that slowly shrunk and disappeared in the distance.
It was so long he could not see where it ended. What he could see was that the tail end of the column, closest to him, was mostly zombies. Gradually this shifted until there were mostly Lithoid golems milling about at the farthest point he could see.
Minutes later the team reached a small outcropping and the girls finally got a glimpse of what Albert had seen. Lina gasped, while Scrappy dropped to all fours and seemed to growl into the fading light of the day while stalking forward as far as she could to see better, using the rock as cover.
“Are they… following the Lithoids?” Lina asked.
“I would wonder, rather, who are the Lithoids following?” Albert rebutted. “You have seen their power, haven’t you? If they are behaving like this, it means that there is someone at the head of the line powerful enough to control them.”
Lina went pale as a sheet. “Would we be able to take them?”
Albert eyed her. “Not in a fair fight. Not even with our overpowered magic, no. But that was never the plan.”
Scrappy’s ears perked up. “We can sneak on them and kill them while they sleep!”
She was always quick on the uptake. Albert smiled. “Why yes, you little murder machine. We could do that.”
Lina frowned. “You don’t know if they are hostile or not.”
Albert looked at her in turn. “What does it matter? They are going to die anyway in less than…” he checked. “38 weeks. Why waste time on diplomacy that might or might not go the way we want it to go? I have a better plan!”
The warrior looked like she wanted to say something, but she swallowed her words. Beside her, Scrappy’s eyes were literally shining with light. “What’s the plan, Sir Albert? Are you going to use your nuk-ular bomb?”
Albert could only smirk.
“But why?” Lina said, finally finding her words. “Wouldn’t it be a waste? What if your… core gets destroyed?”
“It won’t.”
She wasn’t fazed. “We could simply ask them to show us how they are controlling the Lithoids, you know? It might not even be the core.”
Albert thought about it, and decided to speak his reasons out loud. There was no benefit in having a member of his team misunderstand his pragmatism for cruelty.
“I don’t think it would be that easy. Whoever is controlling the Lithoids just destroyed Bastion, Lina. That speaks volumes about their personality. Besides, someone with that much power at their fingertips will probably not be the type to talk peacefully to unknown actors such as us, not unless they know we are not to be trifled with. Which, again, would place the whole operation in the too-bothersome scenario. The power dance would simply be too long to bother.”
“We could scout, then! See if they even have the core!”
“Need I remind you that Lithoids run on Doom energy? Getting even close to them is not a wise strategy. Now, had I any interest in the current state of the world, I would do as you say without batting an eye. However, with things being what they are, the less costly course of action is to simply drop a bomb on them from a distance, swoop in at speed, and get out. Which, coincidentally, would make it a solo mission for me.”
“I can come, Albert.” Lina said.
“Right. With your new skills, you can survive and even help perhaps.” He turned to Scrappy. “But you sit this one out, okay?”
The girl in question frowned. “No.”
“No?”
“No. What if the mage survives your bomb? You would need someone who can assassinate them quickly from the shadows!”
A corner of Albert’s mouth quirked up. “Ah, your Stalk skill.” He tapped his chin. For a moment he thought he really looked like an aloof bastard, talking down to Scrappy, but the thought of her dying because he underestimated the risks was enough to make her anger at him worth enduring. Therefore: “still too weak, I fear.”
However, instead of pouting or throwing a tantrum, Scrappy smiled. A sinister, toothed, crooked smile. Then she vanished.
She truly vanished.
Even from his passive, Power-fueled senses.
He turned to an active pulse of raw Power just in time to feel a ripple in the fabric of space-time. Not even his reflexes were fast enough to react. Fortunately Jeff was.
With a burst of superhuman strength and speed that cost him more than half his supply of current Power, Albert turned around and grabbed a portion of empty space. Mere instants later, the air shimmered and he found himself grasping with his right hand a thin, pale-skinned wrist that ended in sharp, nightly claws. Behind this wrist he once again saw that toothy, lopsided grin, complete with twin sharp fangs glistening in the night.
A head of black, darker than the void hair. Two furry, twitching cat ears.
“What the actual fuck?” Albert yelled, throwing himself backwards even as Scrappy – now fully visible – laughed her ass off. “When did you do this, you monster? This is not even supposed to be possible!”
“Got you!”
“Almost.” He corrected her. “Almost got me. Now answer.”
“Last night! I was meditating and… it evolved!”
“Give me full access. Immediately.”
Scrappy nodded. She was still smiling even as Albert lost all focus on her and focused on her status screen.
Name: Scrap “Scrappy” Foundling
Race: Human Changeling
Class: Black Cat - LOCKED
Attributes: LOCKED B-Tier
Items:
Defense Handbook.
Performing procedure 779-Cavanough as illustrated in the book grants Evasive until used. Evasive can be stacked up to 4 times on the same individual. Only one individual can gain Evasive at any given time.
Evasive. Consume a stack to become incorporeal and avoid all damage for 0.25 seconds. Stacks are automatically consumed to avoid fatal or incapacitating damage.
Skills:
Dodge (growth).
The ability to sense and dodge incoming attacks. As your proficiency with this skill grows, you will be able to sense attacks better, faster, and further into the future. Likewise, your ability to dodge them will increase, allowing your body to move in otherwise impossible ways.
Stalk (growth).
Stalk your prey, circling it unseen until the right moment comes to pounce and slay it.
Activate the skill enter a Stealth state. While in Stealth, your efforts to remain unseen are more effective, and enemies will not focus unless you are their primary target.
Your next attack will cancel Stealth and gain extra power for every second of combat you spend unseen.
Transformation (growth).
You transform into your demihuman form, becoming like a cat that stalks the night. The more this skill grows, the more powerful your manifestation becomes and the more control over the manifestation of your beast features you gain.
Planar Shift.
You walk into the realm of shadows. You sacrificed the first ever gift Albert gave you, the first act of love from the person you love most, in the creation of this skill. As such, its powers have been incorporated in it.
While in the shadow realm, you become completely undetectable and untouchable by any mundane, magical, or Doom-related means. Upon leaving the shadow realm, shadows will stick to you for a brief window of time, hiding your presence and empowering your first attack. If used together with Transformation, this effect is applied to any animalistic features of your choice.
This time, Albert yelled. “Holy. Fucking. Shit.”
Loudly.
Then he cursed. In a positive way, he later thought.
All the while Scrappy was beaming a smug grin and Lina was staring dumbfounded.
“So not only did you do something I thought would be impossible,” Albert said after he managed to restore a semblance of order to his thoughts. “But you also skipped the whole ‘weakling’ phase altogether. You unlocked everything, gained powerful-as-shit skills, one of which is friggin’ growth. You even SACRIFICED an item? All of this without me noticing either. I knew you had talent, but this?”
He shook his head. “I guess I can’t be the only monster here, can I? Scrappy, as you would have said a while ago, you’ve earned your place in the mission, that you did.”
