Chapter 126

  David pushed his [Stone Manipution] to the extreme, finding it easier than ever to call upon the power of the earth. The Silver-rank magic flowed out of him and into the concrete of the walls, and a barrage of projectiles began to pepper the abomination from all angles. Using the storm of debris and the dust it created, David managed to close the distance with the creature and deliver a powerful kick. His side was bleeding profusely now, and he winced in pain as he moved, but the kick connected right where the creature’s head was.

  The monster’s skull broke under the immense power of the kick, allowing his foot to sink partway into the brain matter of the abomination. But rather than being an execution, this restricted David’s movements as he found himself lodged into the head of the creature.

  He pulled away, biting back a scream of pain from the unnatural movement. While he attacked physically, he didn’t let up on the magical assault, constantly bombarding the creature. But the more he did so, the more the magical strain took a toll on his body, with all his injuries oozing blood and pulsing with pain that seemed to radiate outwards from them like cracks in stone.

  Even his old injuries were beginning to act up, scars and wounds he had thought long healed.

  I need to end this quickly, he thought, barreling into the fight yet again. He ignored the filing tentacles aiming to skewer him, delivering a final kick to the abomination’s head while trusting his stone skin to protect him from its st attempts at defending itself. He felt the wet squelch of brain matter exploding, and the creature went limp under him.

  He had barely time to exhale and think about slumping to the ground, feeling every inch of his body hurt like hell, when he heard a roar behind him. Two more aberrations rounded the corner, smaller and nimbler, squeezing themselves into the cramped tunnel of the facility. They had slithered all the way to him under the cover of darkness and the sounds of battle.

  They attacked immediately, with fast and savage strikes that had immense power behind them. David summoned a thin [Earth Wall] on reflex, intercepting the incoming limbs in the nick of time, and buying himself a few precious seconds to recover his strength. Then, he began hurling more projectiles of stone from all the walls. Although his magic was weakening, the two smaller monsters were not as armored and shock-resistant as the big one he had just killed.

  David snarled as he got up, invigorated by the kill. He cracked his neck, staring at the filing monsters with a bloody grin on his face before charging right into the fray. He felt his internal organs shift and groan with each savage strike, bones and ligaments struggling to keep their integrity with all the force he was outputting, but he didn’t care. Blow after blow he reduced the two monsters into pulps of misshapen flesh.

  He used his size to his advantage now, his legs long enough to deliver devastating blows from a distance, while his fists were like descending hammers from above. The abominations’ bodies were a disadvantage to them against David, and so the tide of the battle was slowly but inexorably going in his favor.

  Unfortunately, that’s when things became truly dire. A third monster appeared, nimble and small. It still retained a humanoid shape that was a mass of bulging muscles and bony protrusions. Its eyes were still visible, although mostly reduced to bckened, bloodshot orbs. It charged at David, plunging right through the other two, uncaring of the fact that its charge had parted their flesh with such force it had painted the walls of the tunnels with it. With the two abominations dead, it was a one-on-one fight between the nimble enhanced monster and David.

  David was easily twice its size, but this time size was not pying in his favor. Despite his speed, David was too slow to keep up, and despite his strength, the monster was stronger. David accumuted wounds, punches to his body tenderizing his flesh and pulverizing his bones. He felt the hits bruise his organs, and soon he was barely standing on his own two feet with sheer force of will.

  A punch sent him flying against the far wall. Several teeth were missing from his mouth, but he still managed to pull himself up and smile at the monster. Gathering the st of his strength, he charged again, on the verge of colpse. Yet, for a moment, he managed to match the monster’s strength and speed.

  Then a loud explosion rocked the tunnel. Suddenly the enhanced monster found itself headless, and its body colpsed into a misshapen heap on the ground. David’s legs gave out, and he colpsed beside the monster, his head tilted to the side. The edges of his vision were growing dark, and he felt consciousness escaping him.

  “Thank you for holding the fort, old man, I’ll take it from here.” A voice said before sleep took him.

  ***

  Michael staggered out of the dungeon, and into the blinding light of day. The cocoon of Qi wrapped around him helped him deal with the sensory overload somewhat, but stepping into the light of the sun had still managed to blind him for several seconds. While he was out of it, he heard a booming voice coming from beside him, but it took him several seconds to make out the words.

  The blurry image of a man took some time to resolve itself into the shape of one of the security guards stationed outside of the dungeon.

  “Sir? Do you need help?” the guard asked him.

  Michael pulled himself up by hardening a sheet of air with his aura, then resting his hands there for support. He shook his head lightly, trying not to make his headache worse.

  “Where’s Dave?” he rasped.

  “There’s been an incident, sir,” the guard said. All Michael could hear was echoing booms that resembled words, but he still somewhat understood their meaning.

  Then his brain caught up. He grabbed the man’s shirt, pulling him close. “Where? What?”

  The man was close enough that his body entered the cocoon of Qi, and the smell of another human being assaulted Michael. He could hear his blood, his heartbeat, the deafening beeping of his fucking phone—

  He released the man before colpsing back on the ground, punching the stone to stop his fall but with enough strength to carve a hole surrounded by spiderweb cracks. He took big gulps of air until the world stopped spinning. Then he gred at the guard, who had taken several steps back and seemed unsure of what to do. He couldn’t bme the man. In the guard’s eyes, it was like a walking nuclear bomb was suddenly going unstable. There just wasn’t any sort of discipline or training that could prepare someone for such an event.

  “What did you say?” Michael demanded.

  “There’s been an incident,” the guard’s voice trembled, and he spoke much less loudly now, “at the biob.”

  “Is Dave there?”

  The guard nodded.

  Michael took off like a missile. However, due to his state, he couldn’t control his trajectory nor react to what he was seeing in time. It was like he was staring at the midday sun without sungsses while the whole world was blurry and out of focus. While he did manage to reach the biob, he did so by leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

  “What is going on?”

  Once inside, he had better control over his faculties. With a gre, he short-circuited the wiring of the bring arm on the wall, killing the blinding red light and the deafening sound.

  Someone expined the incident to him, although he found it hard to concentrate. Something about mutations and monsters. There was damage everywhere, and then he was led to a room. They were expecting him to do something. There were beds in the room, with people in all sorts of dismembered states ying on those beds.

  A man stood in the corridor, and squinting Michael could see that it looked like Travis.

  “What a clusterfuck,” the man was saying, visibly angry. Just looking at him made Michael’s headache worsen, and this time the source of the sensation came from his [Unity] skill.

  Travis was acting, the skill seemed to want to tell Michael, but he was in no state to deal with it. Looking around, he spotted Dr. Kavins on one of the beds, missing an arm. Then his eyes finally noticed the literal giant who was too big to even fit in one of the beds. He was bleeding, with a full team of medics surrounding him.

  “You must drop the skill!” one of them pleaded.

  “The fuck you saying? If I drop it, I’m good as dead.”

  Michael could see that Dave was still using his [Stone Skin], for some reason. Then he noticed the blood pooling under him, slowly dripping to the ground. A droning sound bathed the scene, coming from the electric lights overhead, like tinnitus magnified a millionfold. Michael staggered to the bed, where Dave’s hand gripped his. He winced at the new sensations.

  “Michael! Heal me, please?” Dave begged.

  Michael staggered like a drunk man, trying to regain his bearings. Fucking mind dantian. But then the gravity of the situation registered in his mind. Even in his addled state, he could see that Dave was bleeding out. If not that, one of his other many internal injuries would soon kill him.

  He focused, calling upon his magic. The whole world lurched as his aura expanded, lights going out and then exploding overhead. Several medics simply fell unconscious around Michael, and the very walls of the bunker-like room began to melt and warp like pstic being burned in a firepce. The metal of the bed framing groaned, and Dave was suddenly pale, his body literally missing several pieces.

  Michael used a hand to prop himself against the bed in order not to fall, but the metal turned red-hot and then froze, before bending and warping strangely.

  What is going on?

  Blinking, Michael staggered back. His vision was swimming, and he saw Travis grimacing while looking in his direction, but doing nothing to get close to the walking camity. Then his eyes settled on Dave, which made Michael himself look down at the old man. He was not breathing anymore.

  The sight gave him a burst of adrenaline, which in turn gave him a moment of crity. He tried to use his skill again, and watched in horror as the healing did not seem to follow normal rules. Instead of restoring the old man, his body was warping and changing into misshapen flesh and tumors, tentacles and bony protrusions.

  Michael immediately cut the skill and reeled back his aura, and Dave’s flesh returned to normal. He was overdoing it. He tried again, using only a sliver of his power now, and slowly he watched color return to his mentor’s face. Around him, the medics also came to, and quickly vacated the room with panicked swiftness.

  He colpsed on a stool next to Dave’s bed, not letting the healing stop for even a moment, surrounded by mutited bodies of those who didn’t make it. Everyone else had been taken to the infirmary after Michael had managed to heal them, and nobody had stuck around him for longer than strictly necessary after his outburst of magic. Only Dave was left. He was still being healed, and he not waking up.

  The sound of steps, each one loud like an explosion in Michael’s mind, made the young man turn around.

  “Here,” Travis offered him a gss of amber liquid.

  Michael took the whiskey with a nod.

  “What the fuck is up with you?” asked Travis. “I am forced to reassure people working for you that you are not going to blow up like a nuclear bomb in their face, but I need to know that I am not lying to them.”

  Michael shook his head, “I found my dantian cores,” he said.

  “Why are you speaking so low?”

  “Why are you so fucking loud?” Michael yelled sharply as he turned around quickly, making the stool he was sitting on fall to the ground, which in turn made him wince. Travis did not recoil even though Michael was literally in his face.

  “Why do you look like you’re hungover or some shit?” asked Travis. If he had taken offense at Michael’s outburst, he wasn’t showing it.

  “That’s a side effect of the mind dantian. Sensory overload.”

  Travis hummed, “well, you better get it sorted out quickly. People can’t see you act like a crazy madman or they will begin to believe you actually are one. It doesn’t take long at all to turn the healthy fear they have of your power and transform it into actual fear. The kind that makes people do dumb shit.”

  Michael snorted as his [Unity] skill tingled. “An image of me you so carefully curated. Well, say they see me as deranged. That would benefit you, wouldn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Michael snorted, “don’t act like a fool. Undermining me gives you more leeway. Oh look, the leader is all messed up in the head, you all better listen to me. I’m totally not going behind his back because I fear his power.” Then Michael leveled his gaze at Travis, looking him in the eye. “I know you are up to some nasty shit with the company. I said nothing so far, but I want you to know that I know.” There was a moment of silence before a sigh. “Get. Out.”

  Travis turned around before he crossed the threshold leading to the outside, and nodded. “You are not a na?ve kid anymore, I’ll give you that. You let me do all that nasty shit, though, didn’t you? How does it feel to be able to afford to wash your hands of any problems, turn your head around and pretend all the nasty shit you don’t like doesn’t exist?”

  “Don’t try to say that it makes me complicit, Travis, or I swear—”

  “Nothing of the sort. I just want you to remember, before you choose to pick a side… there’s a reason you didn’t stop me even though you knew. You need me.”

  “There’s no sides to be picked, Travis.”

  “Oh, but there are. If you think there aren’t…then you haven’t grown up at all.”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You are useful, but I am sick and tired of pying games with you. Remember, you are what you are because of me.”

  Travis scoffed, “huh, it looks like it took a whole mind dantian core to make you stop being a pussy.” He turned around and, instead of leaving, walked right towards Michael. He summoned his elemental weapon but, before Michael could react, he tossed it to the floor.

  Then, he sunk a hand into the back of his other hand. Screaming, he took out all of his cards. Michael watched him pull out three Silver cards and several Copper ones, feeling his aura flicker and weaken until it was nothing more than a feeble candle in the wind.

  “Kill me.” Travis demanded.

  “What the fuck is this? A power move? If you have a death wish, get the fuck out. I won’t kill you for this shit.”

  “Good,” said Travis, “good.”

  He turned to leave. “If you decide you still need me then after you sort out this mess, come give me back the cards. My cards. But know that if you do, you will be giving them to me and if you want to take them away, you will have to pry them from the back of my hands.”

  With that, Travis was gone.