NOVEL WEB Chapter 11: Pressure lines
The air was bitter with ionized dust, thick with the scent of scorched metal and scorched effort. Emric crouched behind a broken ventilation duct, blood darkening the edge of his sleeve. His wrist-pad flickered, staticky with overclocked data.
[ENEMY ELIMINATED – 12]
Twenty two left.
His legs shook from fatigue and pain. His shoulder ached where the Vanguard's hammer had grazed him earlier and he'd barely survived that last one— the high resonance Kinetor from earlier still managed to collapsed half a roof on him while launching knives from six directions before her fall.
Although only one of those knives had hit. It still burned, nicked into the shallow of his ribs. The synthetic weave in his suit had absorbed most of it. Most.
Emric limped behind the crumbled skeletal frame of what once was a multi-ton mech loader, his wrist-pad pulsing with environmental recalibrations. The AR Gauntlet continued shifting—mimicking tectonic instability. Floor panels jittered, collapsed scaffolds groaned, and smoke coiled upward like phantom limbs.
He needed to move.
His path veered south toward the collapsed metro station simulated at the edge of the map. He skidded into an opening as a plasma arc streaked overhead. Close.
A pair of initiates were tailing him—one an Obscurant with cloaking disruptions, the other a Cognivore who, unlike Emric, had actual sync-read advantages. They moved in tight formation.
He couldn't outrun them.
He reached into his gear satchel.
Deploy: Arc Scrambler / EMP Darts
The darts ejected from his wrist-pad, guided by the corridor's magnetic strip. The Obscurant shimmered briefly, disrupted, and flickered back into full visibility. Emric dove left, let his body hit the concrete, and fired a two-round burst.
[ENEMY ELIMINATED - 13]
The Cognivore initiated a cognitive echo—Emric could see the scan layers in the air. Predictive arcs, angles, escape routes.
But Emric had already calculated that.
He pulled the trigger mid-fall, not toward the Cognivore—but at a hanging pipe overhead.
Steam vented with explosive force, knocking the initiate back. Emric scrambled forward and jabbed his blade into the side of the Cognivore's neck before the sync dampener could trigger.
[ENEMY ELIMINATED - 14]
Pain tore through Emric's side.
He staggered.
No time to rest.
His breathing was shallow. Focus tight.
Worse, the environment had changed again.
[Warning: Zone Hazard Spike - Thermal flux inbound]
[Sync lag rising. Environmental interference detected]
He tuned it out.
He could hear them ahead. Footsteps. Distant shouting. A sudden burst of firelight. Another awakened, maybe two. The stronger ones were starting to sense the last stretch, and the battlefield was thinning. The easy targets were already eliminated.
He crouched low and rolled a detonation puck into the adjacent corridor. It bounced twice—silent—then triggered with a concussive pop.
Someone screamed. A pair of feet hit the floor hard. He rose, weapon raised, only to feel a jarring thunk! across his left flank.
He hadn't seen the attacker.
An Arcanist. This one was fast—flickering plasma bursting from his hands into the edges of a high-frequency sword.
"You're that ghost everyone's talking about," the boy said, eyes gleaming. His uniform was scorched along one shoulder, but he didn't move like he cared.
"Unawakened and fourteen down? What a shame you met me."
Emric raised his repeater—but the boy was already moving.
He fired.
Missed.
The plasma sword came down. Emric rolled, hissed as heat scorched his side. He came up low and aimed for the leg, but the Arcanist leapt, twisting through the air like a dancer.
"You don't get it," the boy snarled. "We're not the same. I'm designed to win."
Another strike. Emric caught it on the side of a beam, but the force threw him against a broken crate. His shoulder exploded with pain.
The Arcanist stalked forward.
"You think clever tricks make you special?"
Emric tried to stand. The pain in his knee screamed. Blood ran down his hand. The repeater lay inches out of reach.
The Arcanist raised the sword—eyes gleaming with triumph.
"You don't belong here."
—And then the world blinked.
The battlefield faded.
He stood in a chair now.
No. Sat.
But it was wrong. Too silent.
Dark room, no windows. Cold metal beneath his hands and a voice from the shadow:
"Name?"
He blinked.
Where—?
"Name?"
The air cracked around him, light glitching at the edges of his vision. The memory of the sword strike was still there. His ribs still hurt. But now?
He looked up.
The figure across from him. In the shadow. Asked again:
"Is your name Lucas or is it Emric?"
Something shuddered inside his skull.
His vision pulsed.
⚠️ System Event — Glitch Detected
[Class Awakening Misalignment Error]
[Neural Trauma Detected]
[Error | Temporal Memory Thread Misalignment Detected]
[Begin Protocol: Memory Reintegration – Level 4 Auth Override]
Recalibrating...
[Cross-life Continuity Achieved]
[Accessing: Current Life — Subject: Emric (Age: 17)]
[Anchor Point: "He awoke not knowing which name belonged to him."]
[ANCHOR: SECTOR 1189 – TIMESTAMP LOCKED]
The wrist-pad lit like a flare.
The walls of the interrogation room distorted—melted—and then snapped back into simulation geometry. Cracked warehouse. Broken beams. Sword mid-swing.
He moved.
Everything exploded at once.
He shoved upward. Grabbed a steel shard. Drove it upward into the Arcanist's side. The boy screamed—but not before blasting him point-blank.
Plasma heat seared into his chest. His HUD blanked for half a second. But Emric didn't stop.
He rolled behind the Arcanist, grabbed the dropped sword, and stabbed it into the environmental power relay behind them.
Boom!
White fire. Screaming steel.
Silence.
He coughed—crawled out of the wreckage. Somewhere in the blur of smoke and light, the Arcanist's form lay twitching but not for long.
His vision buzzed.
Then—
No sound. No light. Just the pad flickering blue with micro-data flares.
His thoughts snapped into sync.
Suddenly, everything moved slower.
A gap. A weakness. A strike vector.
They moved at the same time.
He shifted his weight—turned sideways—and used the Arcanist's own fireburst to launch himself upward, over the incoming strike.
One knee to jaw.
Disoriented, the Arcanist spun.
Emric grabbed his arm and twisted it, disarming a second thermal dagger—
And then flipped it back into his chest.
[ENEMY ELIMINATED - 15]
[Remaining Combatant: 2]
He collapsed beside the wreckage, coughing.
The wrist-pad flared.
Bright. Steady.
A soft tone.
[Resynchronization Complete]
[Class Detected: Cognivore]
[Resonance level: 72%]
A high enough resonance to advance off the bat.
The light dimmed slowly. His breath returned to him in gasps. But he wasn't weak now. He wasn't afraid.
He stood.
And for the first time, Emric Vale felt it. The knowing, the pattern, the burn of his mind tuning into something deeper than sight, stronger than instinct.
Above, in the viewing decks, Strategos Datch sat forward.
"Pull a full talent scan. Now."
Professor Halveth's smirk had vanished.
"Initiate Emric Vale," he murmured, almost reverently. "Cognivore. Advanced-resonance on first flare. The Gauntlet just got interesting."