**Chapter 29: Raid in the Stratosphere**
**Day 1,165.**
**Location: A Ramen Shop in Shinjuku.**
**Current Level: 8 (Power-leveled by a stray goblin).**
**Status: Crisis Management.**
The problem with saving the world is that the world doesn't know when to stay saved.
I was currently enjoying a bowl of Tonkotsu ramen. It was greasy, salty, and spectacularly mediocre—exactly the kind of mortal pleasure I had missed during my three-year tenure as a gravitational singularity on the moon.
"Zero," I subvocalized, lifting a slice of pork with my chopsticks. "Tell me that red blinking light in my peripheral vision is a graphics glitch."
**[Negative, Null,]** Zero's voice echoed in my neural implant, crisp and devoid of panic. **[Orbital sensors have detected a localized spatial distortion in the upper stratosphere. Altitude: 40 kilometers. Velocity: Mach 3 and holding.]**
I sighed, dropping the pork back into the broth. "Another Scout?"
**[Heavier. Spectral analysis indicates an Aetherian Frigate. Class: Bio-Harvester. They aren't just scanning this time. They are deploying atmospheric dredges. They intend to harvest the mana-saturated clouds directly.]**
"They're stealing my clouds," I muttered. "That's petty, even for an intergalactic empire."
If I were still sitting on the Tungsten Throne, I would simply point a finger and crush the frigate into a cube of scrap metal. But I wasn't on the Throne. I was in a ramen shop, wearing a linen shirt and holding chopsticks. My "God Body" was in stasis on the Moon, and my current avatar had the durability of a wet paper towel.
If I engaged the Frigate physically, I would die.
"I need a surface-to-air missile," I mused. "Or, more accurately, I need a team of murder-hobos with no sense of self-preservation."
I wiped my mouth with a napkin.
"Zero, initiate **Operation: Skyfall**. Target the top 0.01% of the player base. Send the invite to the usual suspects."
**[Architect, you cannot send avatars into the stratosphere. The latency would be too high for the complex combat required. The signal will lag.]**
"I know," I said, standing up and tossing a few digital credits on the counter. "That's why we aren't sending avatars."
I walked out into the neon-lit street of Shinjuku.
"We're teleporting their physical bodies."
**[That is a violation of the Safety Protocols. If they die up there...]**
"Then they die," I said, my voice hardening. "They wanted realism? They wanted to be legends? Legends bleed."
I pulled up my hood.
"Mask the teleportation as a 'High-Fidelity Instance'. Tell them it's a new immersion patch. And Zero? Make sure my avatar comes along. Someone has to open the doors."
***
**Global System Alert**
**Targeted Notification: Elite Tier Only**
Ren was mid-air, parkouring across the rooftops of Shibuya, when the notification slammed into his vision. It wasn't the usual blue or gold. It was a sleek, metallic chrome.
**[URGENT QUEST: RAID IN THE STRATOSPHERE]**
**[Enemy: Aetherian Bio-Frigate.]**
**[Location: High Altitude.]**
**[Objective: Board and Destroy.]**
**[Reward: Aetherian Tech / "Sky-Walker" Title.]**
**[Warning: Extreme Environmental Hazards. Full Sensory Feedback Enabled.]**
Ren landed on a water tower, skidding to a halt. He tapped his comms. "Damon? Elena?"
"I see it," Damon's voice crackled, sounding breathless. He was likely in the middle of bench-pressing a car. "Stratosphere? How do we even get up there?"
"Teleport invite attached," Elena added. "Ren, look at the warning. 'Full Sensory Feedback'. That means 100% pain settings."
"Sounds like fun," Ren said, a grin spreading across his face. He checked his gear. His *Star-Eater* daggers were sharp. His Void energy was humming.
"Accept," Ren said.
***
**The Transport**
I stood in a back alley, waiting for the synchronization.
**[Party Assembled: Ren, Damon, Elena, Viper (Respawned), IronWall... Total: 20 Elites.]**
**[Plus: Player Null (Level 8).]**
"Energize," I commanded.
The world twisted.
This wasn't a digital loading screen. This was raw, physical displacement. I grabbed the space-time coordinates of twenty people scattered across the globe and yanked them into a bubble of pressurized air forty kilometers above the Pacific Ocean.
***
**The Hull**
The transition was brutal.
One second, silence. The next, a roar that sounded like the world tearing in half.
We materialized on the outer hull of the Aetherian Frigate.
The wind was a physical hammer. We were moving at Mach 3. If I hadn't wrapped the landing zone in a localized gravity anchor (a subtle manipulation of the System), we would have been peeled off the metal and flung into the ocean instantly.
"HOLY—!" Damon screamed, but the wind snatched the words away.
He slammed his *Blood-Iron* boots into the hull, the magnetic enchantments locking him down.
Ren crouched low, his coat whipping violently. He looked over the edge. Below them, the clouds were a white floor. Above them, the sky was a terrifyingly dark purple, fading into the black of space.
"This graphics engine is insane!" a Ranger named Hawkeye shouted over the comms. "I can feel the cold! I can taste the ozone!"
"It's the 4.2 Immersion Patch!" I lied over the party chat, huddled behind Damon's massive bulk to avoid being blown away. "Focus! We have hostiles!"
The Frigate knew we were here.
Hatches along the sleek, silver hull hissed open. They didn't release robots this time.
They released nightmares.
These were **Bio-Mechanical Horrors**.
Imagine a human corpse, flayed, stretched, and fused with hydraulic pistons. Their heads were replaced with sensor arrays. Their arms were long, articulated scythes made of bone and carbon fiber. They crawled on the hull like spiders, moving against the wind with unnatural grip.
**[Enemy: Hull-Stalker (Level 55)]**
"Gross!" Elena yelled, raising her staff. "**Holy Fire!**"
A beam of light struck the lead Stalker. It shrieked—a digital screech—and leaped.
"Hold the line!" Damon roared. He swung his greatsword.
*CLANG.*
The impact was heavy. Heavier than usual. Damon grunted, his arms jarring. The Stalker's scythe blocked the blade, sparks flying into the slipstream.
"They're heavy!" Damon warned. "The physics feels different!"
"Because it's real, you idiot," I thought, watching Ren blink-strike a Stalker.
Ren appeared on the Stalker's back. He drove his daggers into the spinal column. Black oil and purple blood sprayed out, freezing instantly in the high-altitude air.
Ren recoiled. "The blood freezes! Watch your footing!"
I stayed in the center of the group, pretending to be a terrified low-level support. In reality, I was micromanaging the environmental shield.
"Zero, boost the oxygen mix in their immediate vicinity," I subvocalized. "They're hyperventilating. If they pass out, they fall."
**[Oxygen levels adjusted. Architect, the Frigate is rolling. It is attempting to shake you off.]**
The horizon tilted. The massive ship began to bank a hard left.
"Gravity shift!" I shouted. "Anchor yourselves!"
The players scrambled. The Stalkers didn't care about gravity; they were magnetized. They swarmed over the players who had lost their footing.
"IronWall!" Elena screamed.
The tank slid across the hull, scrabbling for purchase. A Stalker leaped onto his chest, raising a bone-scythe.
I couldn't use a spell. Null was a Novice.
I pulled a small device from my pocket—a "hacking tool" I had fabricated. In reality, it was a remote control for the ship's surface shielding.
I aimed it at the hull plate beneath the Stalker.
*Click.*
The magnetic lock on that specific tile disengaged.
The tile ripped away into the slipstream, taking the Stalker with it.
IronWall slammed into a antenna array, catching himself. He looked back, breathless. "Null! Good timing!"
"Just... pushing buttons!" I yelled back. "The airlock is fifty meters forward! We need to get inside!"
"Wedge formation!" Ren ordered. "Damon, take point. Move!"
We fought our way up the spine of the ship. The wind howled. The Stalkers chattered. The thrill was electric.
This wasn't a game. There was no respawn here. If IronWall had fallen, he would have burned up in the lower atmosphere.
And they loved it.
***
**The Interior**
We breached the airlock. The silence that followed was deafening.
The interior of the Frigate was a maze of pulsating tubes and chrome corridors. It looked like the inside of a living machine. The walls breathed.
"Check corners," Ren whispered. "This place gives me the creeps."
"It's a Bio-Harvester," I explained, stepping forward and tapping a wall panel. "It processes organic matter into fuel. Don't touch the green slime. It's digestive acid."
"How do you know the lore so well?" Elena asked, eyeing me.
"I read the forums," I shrugged. "Also, I have the **[Identify]** skill maxed out."
We moved deeper.
The enemies changed.
In the narrow corridors, the Stalkers couldn't maneuver. Instead, the ship deployed **Flesh-Hulks**.
These were massive, bloating conglomerations of harvested biomass, stuffed into power armor. They wielded rotary cannons grafted onto their arms.
*BRRRRRT.*
Plasma rounds chewed up the corridor.
"Shields!" Damon yelled, stepping in front.
His *Blood-Iron* barrier flared, absorbing the shots. But the heat was intense. The paint on the walls blistered.
"We can't push through that fire!" Viper (who had been resurrected by the system after his bounty death, albeit with a massive XP debt) shouted from the back. "We need a flank!"
"There are no flanks!" Ren argued. "It's a straight hallway!"
I looked at the ceiling.
"Zero," I thought. "Schematics."
**[Ventilation shaft directly above. Access panel three meters back.]**
"Ren!" I called out. "Vent! Up top!"
Ren looked up. "I see it."
He didn't ask questions. He **[Void Stepped]** upward, phasing through the grate.
We heard the scuffle in the ceiling. Then, silence.
Suddenly, the Flesh-Hulk stopped firing. Its head fell off.
Ren dropped down from the ceiling behind it, wiping slime off his coat.
"Gross," Ren said. "It smells like a butcher shop in there."
"Keep moving," Damon grunted. "Before it regenerates."
***
**The Core**
We reached the central chamber.
It was a vast, spherical room suspended over a pit of churning, glowing green liquid—the harvested mana.
In the center, connected to the ceiling by thick cables, was the **Captain**.
He wasn't a humanoid like Vax. He was a brain. A massive, floating biological processor encased in a glass sphere, heavily armored with mechanized spider-legs.
**[BOSS: THE HARVESTER CORE (Level 65)]**
*~INTRUDERS.~*
The voice vibrated in our teeth.
*~BIOMASS DETECTED. SUITABLE FOR PROCESSING.~*
"He wants to turn us into soup," Damon summarized. "Let's crack his bowl."
The fight began.
The Core was stationary, but it controlled the room. Lasers swept across the floor. Gravity anomalies tried to crush us. And endlessly, from the pits, new Stalkers crawled up.
"I can't get close!" Ren shouted, dodging a laser grid. "He has a repulsion field!"
I stood by the entrance, watching.
The players were fighting hard, but they were exhausting themselves. The realism of the "simulation" meant fatigue was setting in faster. Damon's swings were slower. Elena's healing was lagging.
"The cables," I said.
I pointed.
"The cables feeding the brain. They aren't shielded."
"They're fifty feet in the air!" Viper yelled. "We can't fly in here, the gravity is messed up!"
I looked at my inventory. I had nothing but a novice staff and some potions.
But I was the Architect. I could cheat. Just a little.
"Damon!" I shouted. "Throw me!"
Damon paused, blocking a Stalker. "What?"
"Throw me at the cables! I have a **[Disruptor Charge]**!"
"You're Level 8! You'll die!"
"I have a respawn!" I lied. "Do it!"
Damon gritted his teeth. He grabbed me by the back of my linen shirt.
"Aim true, Null!"
He hurled me.
I flew through the air. The wind rushed past my ears.
The Core saw me. A laser turret tracked me.
*~PEST.~*
It fired.
Time slowed.
I couldn't dodge. Null couldn't dodge.
But *Shigu* could.
I didn't move my body. I moved the laser.
I tweaked the probability variable of the aiming algorithm by 0.001%.
The laser missed my ear by a millimeter, singing my hair.
I hit the cable bundle. I grabbed on.
"Zero, overload the circuit!"
I placed my hand on the cable. I didn't use a bomb. I channeled a pulse of my own Prana—the raw, unadulterated energy of a God—into the Aetherian system.
It was too much. The alien tech couldn't handle the voltage of a Creator.
*ZZZZZT-BOOM.*
The cable exploded.
The repulsion field flickered and died.
I fell fifty feet.
"Null!" Ren screamed.
He blinked. He caught me mid-air, inches from the acid pit.
He teleported us to the platform.
"You're crazy," Ren breathed, setting me down.
"The shield is down!" I gasped, clutching my ribs (which were definitely bruised from Damon's grip). "Kill it!"
The players didn't hesitate.
Twenty ultimate abilities fired at once.
The glass sphere shattered. The brain inside was incinerated.
**[VICTORY.]**
***
**The Escape**
The ship groaned.
**[WARNING: REACTOR CRITICAL.]**
**[SELF-DESTRUCT INITIATED.]**
"Of course," Damon sighed. "It always ends in an explosion."
"We have to jump," Ren said.
"Jump?" Elena looked at the hole we had made in the hull. "We're in the stratosphere!"
"We have gliders," Ren said. "Deploy wings!"
Most of the elites had mana-gliders or flight spells.
They looked at me.
"I... don't have a glider," I admitted.
Damon laughed. He walked over and grabbed me again.
"Then you're luggage."
He tucked me under his arm like a football.
"Everyone out! Dive! Dive! Dive!"
We ran. We leaped out of the hull breach just as the Frigate exploded behind us.
The shockwave caught us, hurling us down toward the clouds.
It was chaotic. It was terrifying.
And as we fell through the white mist, watching the burning debris of the alien ship streak past us like meteors, I saw the faces of the players.
They weren't scared. They were exhilarated. They were alive.
Damon roared with laughter as we plummeted.
I closed my eyes and let the wind tear at my clothes.
"Mission accomplished," I whispered.
***
**The Aftermath**
**Pacific Ocean Surface**
We splashed down. Elena cast a *Water Walk* spell so we didn't drown.
We stood on the surface of the ocean, bobbing in the waves, watching the last of the burning wreckage hiss into the water.
**[Quest Complete.]**
**[Reward: Aetherian Data Cache.]**
**[Title Unlocked: Sky-Walker.]**
Ren wiped water from his face. He looked at me.
I was soaked, shivering, my linen shirt ruined.
"You did good, Null," Ren said. "For a Level 8."
"I try," I chattered.
"You know," Damon said, slapping me on the back hard enough to knock the wind out of me again. "You're crazy enough to be a Blade. Join us. I'll power-level you to 50 in a week."
"I prefer solo," I said. "But... thanks for the lift."
Elena healed my bruises with a touch. "Be careful, Null. You used up a lot of luck today."
"Luck is a stat," I smiled. "I maxed it out."
A rescue boat—summoned by the Guilds—arrived.
I sat in the back of the boat as we headed toward the shore.
I looked up at the sky. The tear where the Frigate had been was gone. The Aetherian Empire had lost a scout. They would be angry. They would send more.
But looking at Ren, cleaning his daggers, and Damon, recounting the fight with booming laughter, I wasn't worried.
"Zero," I thought.
**[Yes, Shigu?]**
"Update the patch notes. Tell them the Aetherian Empire expansion is live."
**[And the difficulty setting?]**
I looked at the bruised, battered, smiling faces of my players.
"Nightmare Mode," I said. "They can take it."
**[Chapter 29: Raid in the Stratosphere]** ends.