Chapter 70: Run

Another “ding” echoed in Derek’s ears as the point defense shredded a tiny eldritch creature that genuinely had no place in this madhouse of a … dimension? Wherever they were, at any rate.

Where the hell were they going to go?

They couldn’t leave; the barrier was seeing to that, the circling World Boss was a roaming hazard of apocalyptic proportions in the most literal sense, and all the monsters it had shed in its wake were mostly beyond them. Even with their ship.

“Could we level …” Derek wondered, muttering under his breath as he ran some calculations. Number of monsters that were within their capabilities to beat, XP they’d get for them, heights to which this could bring them, power they’d then have, assuming their ship was even remotely intact … not quite the mainstay purpose of [Stellar Mental Maths], but at the end of the day, the mathematical parts were relatively basic calculations.

Extrapolating combat power from that, on the other hand, considering unknowns like future [Classes] and the state of the ship, was a far hazier prospect.

Yet the final answer was surprisingly independent of said unknowns. Assuming they played this perfectly, somehow sniping the weak monsters without drawing attention from even a single strong one, they’d be lucky to reach Level 80, and even that was practically an impossibility.

Not to mention that that level of power wasn’t anywhere near what they’d need to escape through raw power.

Although it seemed like they’d have to beat the World Boss to escape, and with just four of them, that was never going to happen, even if they’d had a functionally infinite source of XP. The Level cap would cut them off long before they got anywhere near being able to beat that kind of monster on their own.

Of course, given a literally infinite amount of XP and an equally infinite number of Aspects, the potential for stat gain would be without limit … but that wasn’t a situation they could ever be working with.

No, what they needed was a way to hide out until they were rescued, galling as that was. Where the hell were they supposed to do that, though?

They were in a bubble of space neatly separated from normal reality, approximately five light minutes across, centered on an Earth-sized planet that had been transformed into a total hellhole by the World Boss, and a massive cloud of monsters surrounding the world, closer to the outer edge of the bubble than the center.

As it stood, heading to the center was the right call … except the surface seemed to be crawling with monsters. Infested.

“Is it just me, or is that cloud more misshapen than we can take credit for?” Atticus asked, drawing a circle on the main viewscreen as he did so, indicating that the cloud of monsters wasn’t quite the uniform hollow sphere it had appeared to be. There were “holes,” two of them, on the exact opposite sides of the planet from each other. And The Error was swanning along the edge of one of them, leaving behind more monsters in its wake.

“Huh,” Derek muttered, adding a couple more parameters to the sensor feed and being rewarded with the display adding a neat diagram, tracing both the densest collection of enemies and the path The Error had taken. The places its drifting, skipping, and teleporting movements had taken it.

They actually did have an open window to reach the planet, were it indeed as safe as it looked. But it was closing, and would be gone … in a week.

Long enough to talk this out, to plan, yet some part of Derek insisted that he charge in right the hell now, that “closing” at all meant that a complete loss of options was imminent.

He took that part of himself out behind the woodshed and shot it in the head. Then lit it on fire. Then buried it twelve feet under, upside down, after wrapping it in steel chains until it looked like the world’s most uncomfortable mummy.

Yet when Derek once again tried to focus on the plans, that sense of unnecessary, nay, idiotic urgency was once again at his side, tugging him headlong into disaster.

Even so, getting going sooner would be better.

“We might have to land,” Atticus finally said, seemingly having read Derek’s mind. “We don’t have the fuel for an orbit inside the atmosphere.”

Would they actually have to go that lo- … shit, they might, actually, depending on how far the spaceborn monsters could detect them. Between the engine’s enchantments and magically expanded storage spaces, their ever running out of fuel would require genuine effort on their part, but constantly burning their engines to counteract the air resistance might actually do the trick.

Quickly redirecting the scanners to provide a more in-depth resolution of the surface, Derek tried to see if [Eye of the Predator] would work at this distance and through the distortion caused by the planet’s atmosphere.

At first, it didn’t, to the point where he half allowed himself to hope it wasn’t doing anything because there weren’t any enemies down there to scan, only to see his hopes swiftly dashed as the first few forms came into view.

As had been the theme for this entire mess, none of them were even remotely normal-looking, the typical mess of seemingly random body parts, many stretching off into impossible angles that seemed to be twisting his mind into knots as he tried to comprehend them …

Derek closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, as though that would drive away the burgeoning headache.

There were … maybe a hundred and fifty creatures in the frame at that point, while the screen itself covered an area of a little over ten square kilometers. Scanning the entire planet in increments that small would take far too long.

Although it was possible that it might be sped up, depending on how much pain he was willing to endure.

After all, with [Eye of the Predator] working via the sensors, adding additional information to the display, it also added info to the ship’s systems. Despite being a creation of the supernatural force that had reshaped the world beyond what even magic could achieve, it was still something that machine code could interact with, if properly prepared.

Mimi had spent several days working on it, vastly increasing Derek’s grasp of Gaelic profanity and easily tripling his overall vocabulary of cusswords. Also, after finishing the program, she’d wound up demolishing something like a fifth of their entire supply of ice cream to calm down afterwards.

In the end, though, she’d created something that could completely interface with the data from him using his [Skill] through the sensors created and infer from it the same way the computer could from all other sources of input.

Technically, Derek didn’t need to see the monsters. They simply needed to be on the screen long enough for the [Skill] to trigger and the data to end up in the computer.

Except that turning the screen into a stroke-inducing strobe light filled with eldritch creatures would probably not be a pleasant experience.

And he did have to do that, because using [Skills] via sensors required a live feed and the anti-cognitohazard program sufficiently interfered with the “live” part to prevent that from happening.

But “not pleasant” was better than “dead,” so it was time to suck it up and get going, wasn’t it?

Derek found himself quickly laying out the plan to the others, then headed off the bridge, dismissing himself with a statement of “Cut the sensor feed to my quarters if you don’t hear anything from me for five minutes.”

It shouldn’t get that bad … but since when had “should” been even remotely certain?

Derek quickly headed into his room and carefully laid down on his bed, then projected the sensor feed against the ceiling. Even if this gave him a seizure or something, he’d at least not wind up falling on top of everything else.

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Then, he quickly set the machine to start sweeping the surface of the planet.

It was to switch between locations as quickly as it could without losing his [Skill], and for it to generally show him samples of each overall area, rather than every square inch of the planet’s surface, all the while prioritizing places with visibly different monsters, and especially anything oversized that could easily be a boss.

The headache began almost immediately.

At first, it was the sort of thing one would ignore unless one had absolutely nothing else to follow on, with Derek only really paying attention as the view overhead was flashing between images so quickly he never got the chance to actually see anything.

It swiftly grew into something more, first turning into something that felt like his head was being crushed by a vice, then suddenly transitioning into the sensation of an icepick being stabbed through his eye.

Triggering [Lifesurge] banished the pain … for all of thirty seconds. Then some hyperactive toddler began treating his head as their personal drumset, invisible clubs seeming to bounce off his skull.

Yet even as Derek made that mental comparison, it was as though he actually were getting struck, something even another cast of [Lifesurge] failed to entirely stop.

Actually, no, the pain did stop. It was the sensation of someone smacking him that continued until it stopped the instant he clued in on the fact that the sensation should be gone.

And then it was replaced by a resurgent ice-pick headache that he once again battered away with his recovery [Skill], continuing to stare up into the epilepsy-inducing mess reflected on the ceiling, fighting to keep the process going.

Derek wasn’t entirely sure how long that had gone on by the time the screen winked out, though it was almost certainly the five minutes that he’d set as the limit, considering just how badly he’d lost track of time, and that Ye-in was standing in the doorway, a look of shock on her face.

He sat up, feeling something move down along his face, forced down by gravity and brushing across his mouth. He tasted iron. When Derek brushed the back of his hand across his chin and when it came away red, he found himself sadly unsurprised.

Fuck.

“Yep,” Ye-in answered, leaving Derek to wince as he realized he’d said that out loud. “You’re not trying that again for a while.”

“I wasn’t planning on it … but why are you insisting on that?”

“It’s because we’ve got enough data,” she said. “I mean, Mimi seems to think so, and she’s usually right about shit like this.”

“Meaning …” Derek offered.

“Plenty of potential landing sites,” Ye-in said. “There aren’t any places that are completely clear, but we’ve got places we can fight our way through.”

“Huh,” Derek sighed.

“Do you need to go to the infirmary?” she asked, but Derek shook his head, drops of blood splattering across his previously clean sheets, though a quick spell undid that, at least.

But one more [[Lifesurge] also got the health report on his status sheet back to “healthy,” though the lingering headache gave lie to the idea that he was one hundred percent fine.

“If you can walk over here without falling on your face, I’ll buy that,” Ye-in replied skeptically, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her chest.

And it wasn’t like Derek could fault her for that stance, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still a certain thrill to proving her wrong.

So he strode past her, swiftly returning the captain’s chair on the bridge, finally eyeing the results of his efforts, currently hovering in the middle of the room in holographic form.

Only half the planet was actually tagged with Level ranges, the side that had been visible to him during the scan, but that still quite thoroughly showed that there were significant differences in danger.

The “churned” area of land was easily the most dangerous place they’d scanned, utterly covered with monsters that were outright beyond what he could scan, likely around max Level and decidedly not something they wanted to tangle with.

Or could, really. Even with the ship as an equalizing factor, there were limits as to how far above their weight class they could punch, and Level 200-ish monsters were well beyond those.

However, while that clusterfuck might be the most dangerous area on the planet, it was also the only area at that Level, with the average Level dropping off with increased distance, all the way down to seventy-ish on the furthest point on the planet that was visible to them in their current location. Logically, that meant the best place for them to set down would be directly opposite the high-Level zone, but honestly, trusting blindly in his inferences felt like it’d end with them getting hit upside the head out of nowhere or something.

“I want to get a look at that area,” Derek said, highlighting both it and the needed course on the display. “That’ll take a while, but on the upside, it’ll give us more time to plan.”

“Actually, I have an idea …” Mimi muttered, her voice so low he barely heard her, while she did that nervous “index fingers tapping together” thing he’d only ever seen people do in comics. “But you’re really not going to like this.”

Then she explained.

She’d been right.

Derek did not like the idea.

In fact, he’d even go so far as to say he absolutely hated it because of what it meant for him, personally … but he still had to admit it was a decent one. For the situation, at least. And he at least had nearly a day of grace to come up with something new while the Dragonfly swanned its way through space around the edges of the sealed system.

***

Their journey across this strange demiplane somehow managed to combine the worst parts of boredom and terror, leaving them permanently on edge, never able to relax, yet with long enough breaks in between that no one was able to ride the high of combat.

Every so often, one of the monsters would decide to come over to try its luck, eventually coming into the range of their weapons.

First, lasers and particle beams would lash out, occasionally reducing the interloper to steam in a matter of seconds. Occasionally.

Anything that could ignore, or at the very least survive, those soon found themselves under a more concentrated form of attack, as every beam with line of sight spun to target them, a sizable portion of the output of the artificial suns that were the Dragonfly’s power sources directed onto a creature that typically wasn’t much larger than a semi-truck.

It was always gratifying to see the creature then bloom into a burst of plasma as whatever defense it had was overwhelmed, but that sight had been rare at the start and was falling over time.

After that, the creatures were met by weapons that were harder to reload.

For starters, with their new and improved reactors, the spinally mounted railgun could be fired at a genuinely absurd rate, though the accuracy sucked unless they were willing to employ the Moebius Array and compress space between them and the enemy, which was far too risky with these enemies.

The primary particle beam, just in case somehow it was what pushed the enemy over the edge, blowing an irradiated hole clean through the target whenever it worked.

But Ye-in got to use the autocannons a few times as well. They really were beautiful creations, especially for how makeshift they’d been, laying clouds of projectiles at the target, weaving a lethal web around their target, explosions wreathing the target as one of Derek’s proudest creations unleashed its fury upon their foe.

And the elemental cannons and their hellfire could torch just anything to ash …

Yet in the end, somehow, they still had to pull the emergency ripcord several times, be it an [Instant Redirection] to dodge at the last possible second, or an [Absolute Ward] from Ye-in to make ramming the enemy survivable. And the occasional attempt to [Flash Forward] past the enemy, the sudden change making the enemy fly past at speeds even they should have a hard time recovering from.

Usually, making the enemy shoot past worked. It’d leave them in play, but physics were physics and Isaac Newton was the deadliest son of a bitch in space unless you could explicitly ignore the laws he’d laid out.

Unfortunately, certain creatures had abilities that made a complete and utter mockery of all things logical. Never allowing the distance between them and their prey to increase, perfectly matching magical vector changes, the ability to use magical redirection on their own, some kind of unique supernatural shenanigans that put the “fuck” in “WTF” …

Freaking eldritch! They never made sense, not compared to each other and most certainly not to everything else, or even themselves, their own personal “logic” changing at the drop of a hat.

It was enough to drive a man insane, and that was just the ones who didn’t actively erode the sanity of everyone around them via their own innate abilities.

And even then, Derek occasionally headed back into his room to continue his scan of the surface.

It sucked each and. Every. Single. Time.

On one occasion, Ye-in even snuck into his room and stuck a medical scanner on his head, with him only noticing when the cold metal touched his skin.

Yet ultimately, one thing became clear: there was a low-level area to go to on the surface of the planet. If they could reach it.

***

One day later

Yep, still hate this idea, Derek thought as he leaned back in what basically amounted to a metal coffin strapped to the outside of the Dragonfly, right underneath one of the elemental focus cannons, letting him charge it at the drop of a hat. And even with eldritch fuckery in play, hellfire was typically effective; the main bottleneck had always been and would continue to be reloading and the direct access to the weapon that demanded.

Not to mention that the crates of ammo for the autocannons crammed in there with him meant swiftly reloading those was a quick process too. Much quicker than if he were merely moving from the airlock, let alone the bridge.

And it technically wasn’t all that risky, the top of the box being a spare piece of hull plating with all the durability that implied, and anything that could tear through that was also liable to tear the ship in half … but damn if it wasn’t terrifying to be out there.

For what had to be the hundredth time, Derek checked the tether that would hold him to the hull when he was out and about, because that was just about the only thing he could control at right that moment.

Because the last thing he wanted to think about was how easily this could turn into another charge of the Light Brigade, except this time, they wouldn’t even be able to blame misunderstandings and poor communication. It’d be sheer fucking stupidity that killed them.

“Ready?” Ye-in asked. With Derek off the bridge, it had been a pretty easy choice to put her in the captain’s chair.

“Ready,” he sighed, hearing Atticus and Mimi echo him a moment later.

That was when the main drives lit off, beginning the Dragonfly’s journey towards the planet. And the clouds of monsters between them.