Dark Matter Ascension

Jace finished healing up with Dark Matter Mending (Rank 4) and lay flat on the floor, watching the timer above tick down. That was not a very hard fight, he thought, but it required a bunch of movement that I haven't had to use in a while. Not just fighting out in the open. He let out a sigh as he rolled over and fished around in his TPSB, pulling out another survival meal and shoving it down his gullet. How did Xera get us that Infusion Mission reward before? He asked Ollie in his mind.

Infusions are effectively Essence that is…distilled, for lack of a better term. Ollie sounded quite proud as he continued, I helped figure that out.

Jace swallowed down the meal and took a sip from his canteen, "Good to know. That means we could reverse it, right? Take Infusions and turn that into raw Essence for leveling up?"

Yup! Ollie replied with his characteristic affirmative reply. She has a "net" at the bottom of our universe's funnel. It is catching stray Essence. Not a ton – but a little bit. Enough for a low-rarity Infusion here or there.

Jace looked up at the timer that kept ticking down, "Any idea what is in that reliquary?" he asked.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Standing up, Jace drew his sword and activated his usual suite of Skills and Talents. Here we go, he thought as he tensed up. The timer reached zero, and the room began to shift and distort around him. The walls turned to deep cerulean before falling away entirely. He was standing on a cliff with a steep incline leading down to a short spur of sandy beach. Rolling waves extended beyond and into the horizon.

A huge, shadowy shape swam through the water. The ocean began to roil and bubble. A leather, scaled hide colored black and crimson in patches began to move out of the ocean. A mouth the size of a city bus breached the watery surface, letting out a tremendous roar that shook the water and caused the air to vibrate – Jace could actually see it shaking in place as sand that kicked up into the sky danced on the sound waves.

The black tentacles that surrounded the mouth were tipped with wickedly sharp, sharp-tipped spikes that crackled with the same energy as Jace's golden hued Psykinetics. He received the notification for Shattered Limits, and activated it with [Single-Minded Fury] stacked atop. The body below the cliffs began to move out of the water towards him.

Jace wasted no time; throwing his sword, recalling it, and throwing it again. Scoring marks that spread the crimson miasma and white-grey annihilation of Void. Yet the creature continued to move forward inexorably. The bubbling, writhing mass of flesh constantly swirling and moving about – redistributing the damage-over-time effects to the tips of its tendrils which were shed off before being fully consumed.

Interesting, Ollie said with some concern. It has already analyzed that your damage over time effects can be negated by disconnecting its injured body parts, and it can seemingly move its flesh about at-will.

Jace raised his hand, "Void Beam (Rank 3) [Limited Range]." The beam of white-grey blasted out, boring a hole through the center of the creature. It slowed, wobbled, and then the flesh surged inward, and it healed. I have ten minutes in between rounds, he thought. I can just use the bigger version so it cannot heal. "Void Beam (Rank 1) [Horizon-Splitter]."

His energy drained to zero as all his Skills and Talents faded out and offline. The world before him vanished, obliterated in a single instant. The monstrosity was fully annihilated, with no surviving mass to regenerate its form to continue the fight.

The walls returned around Jace as he collapsed to a knee, sucking in breaths as his eyelids fluttered. Glancing up at the numbers above, he felt the icy grip of fear coil around his chest.

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[Wave 2 – Complete.]

[You have one minute until the next wave.]

[All Talents have been deactivated to facilitate recovery.]

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"One minute?" he gasped out.

That is not good, Ollie said with fear filling his voice.

"What's the…fastest way…I can recover energy?" Jace asked as he felt panic rise in his guts.

The NICIF can process food to energy. Eat!

Jace reached into his TPSB and willed his helmet to recede as he began shoveling down survival meals. Alright NICIF, get this stuff turned to energy!

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[You got it, boss!]

[Increasing metabolism to maximum.]

[Just keep shoveling it down!]

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Jace kept eating, shoving the small pouches into his mouth, tearing a hole with his slightly sharpened teeth, and squeezing down the goop. He never felt full, and despite eating thirty of the packs he was still hungry as the NICIF churned through all of the available nutrients that he consumed.

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His energy bar ticked up. Faster than its passive speed, but still only reaching ten percent before he had to stand up, draw his sword, and prepare as the timer ticked down. Scraps of food wrappers were littered all around as he activated Void Shield (Rank 6), Void Blade (Rank 17) [Rending], and Crusader's Bastion. I can't afford to spend energy on a whim, he thought as he glanced at his bar which had dipped down to nine percent and was slowly trickling down because of the Void Shield and Crusader's Bastion. Thankfully, his weapon's augmentation did not cost any energy thanks to Nethaldrim's inherent properties.

The world around him shifted and warped once more. The chamber altering in size and shape until he was standing at the bottom of a canyon. Enormous cliffs rose up on either side, and right above him a creature manifested from sparkles of black and brown energy. Its sinuous form curled along the heights above as large, slitted eyes stared down at Jace. An enormous snake, covered with dozens of tendrils that seeped a sickly, green acid that began to melt the rocks around.

The thing hissed and a globule of acid launched forward. Jace held his shield up to it, taking the blow – but the acid seemed to stick to the shield and melt it. He had to dismiss it as it continued to eat towards his arm.

You cannot let the acid get on you! Ollie shouted at him. It does not stop, just like your [Rending]!

Jace felt scared. Fear that he had not felt in a long, long time. He could die here. He could actually die. Low on energy, facing a foe that was superior to him, and low on energy. I don't have enough for a big [Horizon-Splitter] to take it out in one giant blast, he thought. The golden glow surrounding his body went dim as that terror took hold. The way the snake was looking down on him threw him back through his memories, to when he was being looked down at by gang members on the streets before being beaten to a pulp.

None of that, Ollie stated. Gonna meddle with the brain chemicals a bit here.

All of the fear vanished as Jace was filled with a sense of comfort. I'm not that weak street kid anymore, he thought as he shot his grapple line to the sky above him and pulled himself up. The snake creature slithered back along the crevice, launching globules of acidic spit that Jace was able to dodge mid-air by re-firing his Soul Tether grapple and redirecting his path of the travel. All the while, while he chased the snake across the ravine that seemed to stretch on endlessly, he was throwing Nethaldrim, scoring hits on it as the white-grey and crimson miasma spread.

Dark Matter Mending (Rank 4) [Vampiric], he thought as he activated his healing Skill to ensure that he would continue to heal as long as the thing was suffering harm from his afflictions. The snake creature kept retreating. This is easy, Jace thought as all of that fear was washed away – not just by Ollie's meddling with his brain's chemicals and manipulation of his amygdala. I've got this.

The globules kept flying and he kept dodging. The snake-creature was covered with the crimson glow of [Rending] as the dripping miasma kept sloughing down and plummeting into nebula clouds that vanished into the crevice below. As Jace kicked off a wall to dodge another globule, the sphere did something unexpected – it exploded a few feet in front of him. The acid covered his whole body, and it went through his armor, landing all over him, and began dissolving him.

He screamed out in pain; but as fast as the acid dissolved his flesh or melted into the prosthetics, his Dark Matter Mending healed the injury. He was in a perpetual state of agony, and his vision flickered from the indescribable agony he endured. His ability to dodge the globule was shot, and he dangled from his Soul Tether, grappled to the air, just persisting in that state of agony. He would heal endlessly as long as his damaging afflictions persisted on the snake-creature, and he would burn and dissolve endlessly until it lay slain. Or possibly beyond, he had no clue.

Another globule came towards him, and he let the grapple release, dropping down to the bottom of the crevasse as his legs crumbled to absorb the fall. Instinctively, he curled up into the fetal position, begging for the pain to stop. But it would not. It kept burning, searing, and then being healed to only repeat the process over again. Endless agony and torment, and he didn't even notice as the thing kept spitting more acid at him because the damage was already done.

His energy slowly began to refill as he let the Void Shield fade because it did nothing to help against the higher-Potency Pyskinetic assault. He had to endure. Outlast the acid. He knew that the snake would eventually die but he had to stay conscious. His only hope was that like his [Rending] and Void Blade, the effect would stop if the thing died. The ground around him dissolved as he sank down into the rocks below.

Survive, he thought as he held onto the image of Shhiv in his mind. Survive for her. Just survive.

He focused on her in his mind, exclusively. Pushing everything else aside. Staying alive for her was all that mattered, and he would weather the pain. The worst pain of his life. Worse than when he lost limbs. Worse than when he was shot through the chest and his body died. And yet he endured.

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[Boss, we are almost tapped.]

[Withdrawing from your limbs and heading to your torso.]

[We cannot replicate any more.]

[It's down to your Cosmic System Skill!]

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Jace felt the pain increase and localize. His arms and legs were heavy as the NICIF left them, and they kept mending thanks to his Dark Matter Skill, but he could no longer feel them. They were just prosthetics now, not integrated. The pain that was affecting those limbs was gone, and now he felt it only along his torso and neck. He would have screamed if he could have, as the searing, white agony surged over him in waves.

It is down! Ollie shouted with joy.

The pain vanished and Jace sucked in a deep breath as he lay there on the solid, stone floor. No longer melted into a crevice inside rocks, he was laying on the flat surface as an Astral System message appeared above him.

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[You have cleared a Vault.]

[Reward: Relic.]

[Open the reliquary to claim your Relic.]

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Jace lay there in dull bliss. No pain consumed him, no acidic torrent bypassing his armor and eating into his skin, muscle, and bone. He felt very, very tired but knew he needed to give the NICIF more calories to reproduce and re-fill his body. Rolling onto his side with a groan, he tapped his TPSB interface and began slurping down more of the survival meals, going through another forty over the course of twenty minutes.

That was not pleasant, Ollie stated.

No shit, Jace thought back. I've never been in that much pain before. Thank fuck it died and that stopped the acid.

Yup, Ollie replied. Good luck that time. But that just proves we need to get you some armor that will actually take some Psykinetic hits. Or inscribing Runes into your existing Equipment.

Jace felt the NICIF surge into his arms and legs as sensation came back, and he flexed the limbs little by little to make sure there was no lasting damage. He felt relief wash over him and chuckled, "You wonderful bastards."

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[Happy to help, boss!]

[Just don't get dipped in acid again, please.]

[Very painful for you, near-death for us.]

[We like living.]

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Jace pushed himself to his feet and summoned his sword to its dimensional sheath. The reliquary stood before him on a pedestal – the rectangle box beckoning him forward. Quite literally, as an Astral System arrow comprised of pink central definition and black outline pointed down to the handle. Gripping it, Jace pulled up.