Chapter 42: Full Power
Hodell followed Sasha's line of sight toward the deepest corner of the basement.
Something was crouched there.
At first glance, it looked like a heap of black refuse dumped into the shadows. Then it moved.
The thing slowly unfolded itself and rose to its feet.
Two dark red eyes lit up in the gloom.
"Wait!" Hodell's expression changed sharply. "Something's wrong!"
But he was already a step too late.
The creature had fully awakened.
It stood well over two meters tall, vaguely humanoid in outline, but that was where the resemblance ended. Its entire body was wrapped in a dull black keratin shell that looked grown rather than forged, like a living armor plated over rotten flesh. There was no nose on its face, only two narrow breathing slits. Its mouth stretched almost to the sides of its head, packed with rows of thin, needle like teeth. The limbs were too long, the joints too twisted, and every elbow, knee, and finger carried pale bone spurs that glimmered with an eerie sheen.
Loyi's face went white.
"What the hell is that?!"
"An Aberration!" Baron roared, dragging his shield up in one smooth motion and planting himself in front of Loyi and Irene like a wall.
"No..." Hodell's scalp tingled. The sharper his perception became, the more unnatural the thing felt. "That's not a living creature..."
Before he could finish, the monster opened its mouth.
A shriek tore out of it.
No sound should have been that sharp.
The shockwave that followed was invisible, but it hit like a rising tide of broken glass.
Irene cried out softly. The healing glow around her staff flickered, then nearly collapsed on the spot. Her face went bloodless, and her knees nearly gave out beneath her.
Loyi groaned, clutching his head as static consumed the display of his magitech instrument. The device let out one shrill alarm before the sound was strangled into silence.
Baron's whole body shook behind his shield. The muscles in his arms bulged as he forced himself not to collapse. The light runes on the shield began to waver violently.
Hodell felt a spike of pain drive straight through his skull.
[You have received 43 psychic damage.]
His vision blurred for half a second, but he held on.
At least he could still think.
Mental resistance depended on Intelligence and Mystery. If those four Psions from before had been standing here, they would have been picked apart one by one before they even got a chance to posture.
The Aberration's crimson eyes suddenly locked onto Irene.
It moved.
No buildup.
No roar.
Its massive body became a blur as it launched forward.
Too fast.
Far too fast.
Even Baron, already straining against the aftershock of the scream, was half a beat behind. He tried to swing his shield back into position, but the Aberration slipped past him like a black nightmare cutting through a gap in a fortress wall.
Irene's pupils constricted.
The creature's claws came down toward her like the scythe of an executioner.
"Get down!"
Hodell barked the words as both hands shot up.
Source energy surged through his body like an obedient extension of thought.
A narrow ice blue beam ripped from his right hand at an angle and hit the stone floor half a meter in front of Irene.
Crack!
A sheet of mirror smooth ice spread instantly across the ground, its range controlled with absurd precision.
The Aberration hit it at full speed.
Its footing vanished.
Its entire attack line twisted off course.
The claws screamed across Irene's staff instead of her chest, then carved a long groove into the wall beside her, spraying fragments of stone.
Irene stood frozen, her face blank with shock. Death had brushed close enough for her to feel its breath.
The Aberration landed badly, snarled, and whipped its heavy tail around toward Baron.
Baron planted his feet and brought up the shield, but his posture was still unstable from the psychic impact.
Another spike of pain stabbed through Hodell's temples.
[You have received 28 psychic damage.]
He ignored it.
Source energy changed form again between his fingers.
A white gold beam burst forth, so hot it seemed to bend the air around it. Tiny arcs of electricity danced along its edge as it slammed into the base of the Aberration's tail, right where the shell folds connected.
The blast burned, the lightning bit in, and the tail's sweep visibly stalled.
Most of the force died there.
Baron's shield smashed into the opening a heartbeat later and sent the monster skidding sideways across the ground.
A pale blue damage number floated above it.
[ 91 ]
At the same time, Hodell finally got a read on it.
[Aberration: Controlled State]
[Level: 43]
[Talents: Crystallized Shell, Runic Barrier, No Spiritual Body, Lightweight Magitech, Unstable Core...]
[Skills: Painful Shriek Lv8, Global Perception Lv10, Kinetic Siphon Lv3, Crystal Overgrowth Lv6...]
So that was it.
A manufactured battle unit.
Not alive in any normal sense, yet not fully mechanical either.
A magitech abomination stitched together with psychic power and soul stone technology.
The thing turned back toward Hodell.
It had chosen its target.
Good.
That made things simpler.
The source energy in Hodell's body surged harder.
If he held back here, the team would die.
This was not the time to preserve strength. This was the time to go all in.
He moved.
His left hand drew in a deep blue current of cold that condensed into a long, razor sharp ice spike. At the same time, his right hand ignited into a swirling dark gold fireball shot through with orange veins and unstable pressure.
The two attacks arced through the air on impossible trajectories, bypassing the Aberration's raised claws entirely.
The ice spike nailed itself into a seam in the creature's shell and froze a vital energy conduit beneath it.
The fireball detonated against the back of its left knee.
Boom!
The joint buckled.
The Aberration staggered.
Kyle, who had been raising protective barriers over the others, looked over and froze for a fraction of a second.
With that much attribute switching mid combat, he could still control angle, timing, and precision?
Hodell did not stop.
Both hands tore through the air, and a thin silver white lightning lash snapped out and struck the protruding runic growth at the back of the monster's neck.
The eerie glow along its spine flickered violently.
The Painful Shriek it had begun to charge up was cut off in the throat.
The thing actually seemed dazed.
Hodell suddenly understood why some players became addicted to juggling attribute conversions.
This felt incredible.
Every strike disrupted the next move before it could finish forming. Every shift in energy nature caught the enemy off rhythm. Every hit landed on the hidden joints of its internal circulation.
The Aberration roared again, but its movements had already become choppy, like a savage dog having its legs kicked out from under it every time it tried to lunge.
Loyi stared with open disbelief.
"What kind of casting style is that..."
He did not even know where to begin categorizing what he was seeing.
Normal mages could not do this.
Normal Espers should not do this.
Normal people should not do this.
The Aberration's rage finally exploded.
It abandoned everyone else entirely and fixed those crimson eyes on Hodell.
Its massive body lowered.
The eerie glow all across its shell surged inward, concentrating at an alarming speed.
A much larger psychic storm began building in its throat.
The entire basement seemed to repel Hodell's presence. Even the air felt like it was trying to crush him flat.
Irene's voice shook.
"Ryan, get back!"
Hodell did the opposite.
A cold light flashed in his eyes.
He brought both hands together in front of his chest.
Source energy surged.
Compressed.
Collided.
This was not a clean spell.
This was not even a stable technique.
It was brute force, control, intuition, and madness bound together by sheer will.
Different energy attributes slammed into one another in a space far too small to contain them. Fire, cold, electricity, and raw source resonance twisted together, each trying to tear the others apart, each held in place by an even more ruthless hand.
A three colored sphere formed between his palms.
It vibrated like a dying star.
The light from it was unstable, almost ugly.
It hummed with the promise of total failure.
Loyi nearly lost his mind just looking at it.
"What is he doing?!"
Baron stared in pure horror.
Kyle's eyes widened.
Sasha's pupils tightened, but the look in them burned hotter instead of dimming.
Without hesitation, Hodell thrust both hands forward.
"Go."
The unstable sphere flew out in silence.
It was not especially fast.
But it carried a bizarre suction, as though it wanted to drag every stray fragment of energy in the room into itself.
It collided with the psychic blast charging in the Aberration's maw.
There was no earth shattering explosion.
Only a crisp sound.
Like a glass bead cracking.
Like a bubble bursting under a fingernail.
Then the psychic blast twisted.
The storm inside the Aberration was thrown off balance at the last instant, its carefully compressed structure disrupted from the core. The energy discharged wildly in every direction instead of focusing forward.
Most of it slammed into empty walls.
Part of it recoiled straight back into the creature itself.
The Aberration screamed.
Its own power backfired through its shell, making the glow along its body convulse violently.
And at the exact moment the unstable sphere hit, Hodell had already moved.
Wind like force burst beneath his feet.
His figure became an afterimage.
He shot straight through the gap opened by the backlash, reached the monster's flank, and drove his right hand forward.
A sharp silver white electric edge condensed around his fingers like a short spear.
He aimed at the charred, destabilized runic knot at the back of its neck and stabbed.
"Break!"
The electric edge exploded inside.
The Aberration let out a shrill, distorted howl. Its entire body convulsed, then seemed to fold in on itself. The eerie light across its shell flickered wildly for two more beats before dying out all at once.
The red in its eyes vanished.
Its giant body crashed to the ground like a toppled statue.
Stillness.
Then the system prompt appeared.
[You killed Aberration Unit Lv43.]
[Gained 32,000 EXP.]
[Killed a target 18 levels higher. Additional 500% EXP bonus. Total EXP 160,000. Personal output rate: 72%.]
[You gained an additional 115,200 EXP.]
The basement fell into complete silence.
Only ragged breathing remained.
Irene still had one hand over her mouth, staring first at the corpse, then at Hodell, then back again as if she needed to verify reality several times before accepting it.
Loyi stood frozen, half in shock and half in academic despair.
What family technique was that supposed to be?
No.
Forget family technique.
That thing had not resembled any orthodox school of magic he had ever studied.
...
Far away, inside a hidden control room, a Psion smashed the equipment beside him in one furious sweep.
"That little thief!"
His face had gone red with rage.
He had been forced to watch the entire thing collapse from the other end, able to do nothing but helplessly lose control of the unit in real time.
If it had only been a failed interception, that would be one thing.
But if this failure damaged the larger plan...
A cold dread rose from the pit of his stomach.
His legs gave out beneath him, and he dropped to the floor with a thud.
...
Back in the basement, Hodell drew in a slow breath and looked toward Kyle with undisguised appreciation.
Kyle had still contributed heavily despite spending much of the battle shielding the others. If not for that, the experience split would have been a bloodbath.
Sasha was looking at Hodell too.
Her expression was harder to read than usual.
Baron was the first to break the silence.
"Beautiful!" he boomed, then slapped Hodell on the shoulder hard enough to rattle another man's teeth. "That was beautiful!"
Loyi finally found his voice.
"Ryan..." he said weakly. "What exactly was that last move?"
Hodell did not even blink.
"Talent."
His face remained completely calm.
His heart did not race.
His soul did not tremble.
Clearly, Acting Skill had activated automatically.
Baron gave him a huge thumbs up.
"As expected of a genius!"
Kyle walked over, his eyes still deep with complicated thoughts.
"Good work," he said quietly. "If you hadn't broken it there, we would've been in real trouble."
Hodell nodded once, then turned toward the device.
Now that the battle was over, that was what actually mattered.
He stepped closer and placed a hand against the strange machine.
The system interface immediately responded.
[Unknown Facility: Large scale magitech and psychic composite component.]
[Purpose: Used to receive, analyze, and anchor specific mental frequencies.]
[Composition: Contains soul stones and related stabilizing materials.]
[Current Status: Core crystal residue 37%. Array integrity 100%. External connection signal severed.]
Loyi hurried over with his own equipment.
"Did you find anything?"
Hodell withdrew his hand. "It contains soul stones. Do not try to study it here. Pack it up and take it back."
Kyle made the decision instantly.
"Agreed. We leave now. Every extra minute here increases the risk."
Loyi nodded, then immediately took a silver storage case etched with several layers of sealing runes from his spatial gear. He and Sasha worked together to move the component inside.
Hodell glanced at it twice.
Spatial equipment.
Small capacity, heavily restricted, and expensive enough that even many official teams did not get much of it.
Loyi really did come prepared.
The moment the case closed, every rune on its surface lit up at once, severing the flow between the inside and the outside world.
Kyle gave the order.
"Move."
The team withdrew at once, retracing their steps up through the basement and out into the abandoned warehouse above.
The broken windows let in slivers of starlight, turning the dust in the air pale and ghostly. Outside, the city seemed calm. Too calm.
Hodell's brows drew together.
Something still felt wrong.
They exited through the rear of the warehouse and melted into the deeper darkness of the alley beyond.
Then Kyle's expression changed.
His hand snapped to the badge on his chest.
The communicator was dead.
Again.
"The mana net's cut!" he barked. "We're in another interference zone! Move for the main district, now! Get out of the blocked area first!"
Hodell immediately extended his senses.
It was true.
The shielding field was not especially large, but it was precisely positioned to cover the warehouse and the surrounding exit routes.
An ambush.
Of course.
The entire team abandoned stealth and broke into a full sprint toward the brighter streets that led back toward the General Administration. Once they reached open roads and active patrol zones, they would have a chance to break contact and force this into the public eye.
But the enemy had anticipated even that.
A sharp whistling sound tore through the night.
Multiple energy crossbow bolts flashed from the rooftops in a crisscross pattern, sealing off the open path ahead.
"Scatter!" Hodell shouted.
At the same time, he activated Overload again. His perception expanded to its limit, catching each bolt's trajectory in the darkness.
Baron roared and slammed his shield into the ground. It expanded with a flash, forming a broad defensive wall that protected Loyi and the sealed case in his hands.
Kyle's staff blazed.
A shockwave exploded forward, sweeping across the fan shaped kill zone and temporarily smashing apart the nearest line of fire.
"Do not get tied down!" Kyle shouted. "Punch through!"
They surged toward the nearest alley opening like an arrowhead.
If they could get into the maze of narrow streets, long range fire would lose most of its advantage. Any larger exchange would also attract official attention.
They were only a few steps away from the alley mouth.
Then the night changed again.
.....
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