Chapter 74: A Spark in the Void
The pseudopod descended with the gentle, inexorable finality of a falling curtain. The numbing cold that preceded it was already leaching the feeling from my face, a sensation far more terrifying than any pain. It was the feeling of being unwritten.
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.1%]
The blue box flashed, a frantic, pulsing red directly in the center of my vision, obscuring the devouring darkness. It was like a mosquito buzzing in my ear while a lion was chewing my arm off. Annoying, useless, and a stark reminder of my own fucking impotence.
Shut up! I screamed internally. I can see the goddamn problem!
My mind, in its final, frantic seconds, wasn't processing noble last stands or poignant memories. It was a torrent of pure, unfiltered rage and frustration.
Five thousand Pele. Five. Fucking. Thousand. Gone. Vaporized. Two and a half months of rent, erased in a nanosecond. I hadn't even had it for a full day. I could have bought a small farm, a herd of sheep, a lifetime supply of shitty ale, but no, I bought a fancy fucking stick that turned out to be as useful as a wet noodle against this… this thing.
And for what? This wasn't even a System mission! This was a goddamn paid vacation! A simple escort job to get me the hell away from Torak, away from Freya and the political shitstorm I knew was brewing around her. A week of quiet road, maybe figuring out this picture book deal, and getting my head straight. Not this. Not a silent, statistical deletion in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere by a hole in the goddamn universe.
The frustration boiled over, a geyser of pure spite. I'd survived a goblin cave with shattered limbs. I'd survived a city-siege and a Beast Tamer with a 11.7% chance hanging over my head. I had one hundred of these fucking missions to go, and I was going to get wiped out on my day off?
"FUCK THIS!" I roared, my voice raw and tearing from my throat. "AND FUCK YOU!"
I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a technique. I had nothing but a bottomless well of anger and a refusal to be erased. As the void-limb pressed down to annihilate me, I didn't try to block it. I didn't try to dodge. I shoved my hands forward, palms out, as if I could physically push back the inevitable.
I didn't push with my muscles. I pushed with everything. I reached down into the core of that fledgling Ki that had been humming inside me, the energy I'd used to run faster and hit harder. I didn't try to coat my skin with it. I didn't try to channel it. I grabbed the entire fucking reservoir and shoved it out of me. I vomited my life force directly into the face of the void.
For a heart-stopping moment, nothing happened. The cold intensified. The grey nothingness filled my vision.
Then, the world exploded.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation, a violent, concussive NO that ripped through the fabric of reality. A dome of visible, rippling golden energy erupted from my outstretched palms. It wasn't a beam or a ball; it was a pure force of rejection, a denial of the Wurm's null-existence.
The moment It touched the descending pseudopod, the silent erasure was answered with a thunderous retaliation.
BOOOOOM.
The Aberration didn't dissolve. It shattered.
The viscous, tar-like substance of its body, which had consumed matter and energy with such indifference, was violently blown apart. Chunks of smoking, sizzling black ichor were hurled in every direction, splattering against trees and sizzling on the ground like acid. The two void-eyes winked out of existence.
The shockwave hit me like a charging bull. I was lifted off my feet and thrown backward through the air, a ragdill in a hurricane. I had a fleeting sensation of cartwheeling, of branches snapping against my back, before I slammed into the mossy earth twenty feet away, the wind blasted from my lungs.
A chorus of crashes and panicked whinnies sounded from the road. Briza was sent tumbling through the undergrowth. The horses reared, but the wagons, heavy and anchored, only rocked violently, sparing Laron and his servants from being thrown.
Silence returned, but it was different. It was the ringing, stunned silence that follows a cataclysm. The oppressive, life-sucking presence was gone. The high-pitched whine in my teeth had vanished.
I lay on my back, gasping, staring up at the patches of sky through the canopy. My ears were ringing. Every part of my body ached from the impact. But I was alive. I was whole.
A new notification, calm and blue, appeared in my vision, unobtrusively replacing the frantic red one.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[TECHNIQUE UNLOCKED: KI BLAST (NOVICE)]
[ANALYSIS: Host has successfully manifested internal Ki as an external, concussive force. A fundamental milestone in Ki Control.]
[MISSION 3 SURVIVAL PROJECTION UPDATED]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 24.5%]
I stared at the number. 24.5%. It was more than double my previous projection. It was still shit, don't get me wrong, but it was a number that didn't feel like a death sentence. It felt like a fucking achievement.
A laugh bubbled up from my chest, starting as a pained wheeze and evolving into a full-throated, slightly hysterical cackle. I did it. I finally, finally did a Ki blast. A real, honest-to-god energy attack. All that suffering, all that near-death experience, the Accel Loop, the constant feeling of being one step behind, it had actually paid off. I had gotten stronger. Tangibly, quantifiably stronger.
The feeling was intoxicating. For the first time since I'd seen that 11.7%, a genuine, untainted feeling of hope surged through me. This System thing wasn't just a meat grinder; it was a ladder. And I had just climbed a fucking rung.
Groaning, I pushed myself to my feet. My body protested, but it was the good kind of pain—the pain of being alive. I looked toward the epicenter of the blast. A crater, about ten feet wide, was scorched into the forest floor. The ground was blackened and smoldering. Scattered around it were the remains of the Shadow-Wurm, globs of black goo that were slowly… evaporating? Dissipating into faint, greasy smoke. The grey void it had left behind was already fading, color slowly seeping back into the world at the edges, as if reality was healing a wound.
"Kaizen!"
Briza was stumbling towards me, clutching her shoulder. Her face was pale, smudged with dirt, and her eyes were wide with a mixture of shock, fear, and something that looked an awful lot like awe.
"Are you… what in the seven hells was that?" she breathed, her gaze flicking from me to the smoking crater.
"A lucky shot," I grunted, flexing my hands. They felt raw, like I'd just grappled with a sun. "Are you hurt?"
"Bruised. My sword…" She gestured vaguely to where the hilt of her blade lay in the ferns.
"Join the club," I muttered, the euphoria momentarily dampened by a fresh wave of irritation. I looked down at the stump of my own sword, still clutched in my left hand. "Fucking five thousand Pele."
That's when the realization hit me. Why had the Ki Blast worked when my Ki-infused sword had failed?
I replayed the moment in my head. When I'd attacked with the sword, I hadn't coated the blade in Ki. I'd been an idiot. I'd only used the Ki to enhance my muscles, my grip, my swing, my speed. The sword itself was just plain old matter. The Ki never actually touched the Wurm; the sword did, and the sword got erased. The Ki was just along for the ride.
The blast, though… that was pure, unadulterated Ki. Raw life energy, projected outward. It wasn't matter for the Wurm to disrupt. It was the opposite. It was an assertion of life so violent that it overloaded the Aberration's negation field.
"Son of a bitch," I whispered to myself. I'd wasted my best weapon because I was thinking like a thug with a sharp stick, not a Ki user. A costly, fucking infuriating lesson.
Laron and the servants had managed to calm the horses. The rabbit demihuman was staring at the scene, his ledger forgotten, his expression one of profound, earth-shattering terror and wonder. He looked at me as if I'd just parted the sea.
"We… we should go," he stammered. "Before… before something else is drawn by that… noise."
He was right. The explosion would have been heard for miles. We quickly got the caravan moving, giving the smoldering crater a wide berth. The mood was no longer tense with suspicion; it was shell-shocked, reverent. Briza didn't say a word, just rode with a distant look in her eyes, occasionally glancing at me when she thought I wasn't looking.
As we put distance between us and the site of the battle, a strange thing happened. A flicker. A spark.
It was a sensation, not a sight or a sound. For a split second, I could feel the life around me. Not just see it or hear it, but sense it. I felt the robust, steady pulse of Briza's vitality a few feet away. I felt the smaller, frantic flickers of the forest creatures hiding in the brush. I even felt the low, dull hum of the plants themselves. It was a tapestry of energy, a symphony of existence.
And then, just as quickly as it came, it was gone. Vanished.
But I had felt it. I was almost sure.
A slow smile spread across my face. Soon. Very soon. I was on the verge of sensing Ki signatures. True awareness. It was the next step. I didn't know how useful it would be in a world that seemed to run on mana, but Ki was life energy. It was present in all living things. Being able to sense it… that was a predator's advantage. It was a way to see in the dark, to feel an ambush before it was sprung, to find the strong and the weak.
For the first time in a long while, a genuine thrill of excitement coursed through me. This System, for all its brutality, was offering power I could barely comprehend. The Accel Loop, the Ki Blast, and now the promise of sensory expansion.
I looked down the road, towards Silveridge. A bandit-infested cesspool, Laron had called it. A den of cutthroats and villains.
A day ago, the thought would have filled me with grim determination. Now, it felt like a training ground. A place to test my new toys.
Let them come.
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