Gideon didn't wait for the creature to finish its scream.
He gripped the hilt of the Conductive Bastion Blade. The sword hummed, its edge glowing with the white-hot intensity of Photonic Tempering. He didn't swing it at the monster; he swung it at the floor.
"[Smite]."
CRACK.
He drove the blade into the obsidian ground. The skill detonated not as a flash of holy light, but as a kinetic shockwave. The impact rippled through the glass-like floor, sending a tremor straight toward the Aether Fracture.
The beast recoiled, its polygon fur bristling as the shockwave disrupted its footing. It screeched—a sound like metal tearing—and vanished.
"It blinked!" Elara shouted, scanning the room.
"No," Gideon growled, raising his Dwarven Tower Shield. "It lagged."
The air to his left shimmered. A split second later, three tentacles made of void-black static lashed out from empty space. They didn't travel through the air; they simply appeared, bypassing the distance between them.
[ ATTACK DETECTED: SPATIAL LAG-SPIKE ]
Gideon didn't have time to dodge. He slammed his shield into the path of the glitch.
CLANG-ZZZT.
The impact was heavy, jarring his shoulder in its socket. The tentacles didn't just hit the shield; they tried to phase through it. Gideon grit his teeth, bracing his boots against the floor. He refused to activate his [Radiant Lattice]. He needed every drop of Mana for later.
He took the hit with raw steel and strength.
[ HEALTH: 2,580 / 2,700 ]
The force of the blow slid him back two feet, sparks flying from his greaves.
"It hits hard!" Gideon yelled over the noise of the distortion. "Physical damage mixed with void corruption. Keep moving!"
Elara was already a blur of motion before Gideon even recovered his footing.
She didn't run away from the creature; she ran tangent to it, sprinting along the curved rim of the obsidian crater. She drew the Recurve bow, her movement fluid and practiced. She wasn't firing blindly. Her violet eyes locked onto the shifting, glitching hide of the beast.
Beneath the jagged polygons of its wolf-form, she saw them: pulsing violet nodes where the corrupted mana was leaking out to knit the code back together.
THWIP. THWIP.
Two arrows struck home in rapid succession. They hit the glowing nodes on the beast’s flank.
The Fracture screeched—a sound like a modem tearing itself apart. The arrows didn't just pierce; they disrupted. The polygons around the impact site flickered and vanished for a second, exposing a void of pure white static beneath.
The beast’s regeneration cycle stuttered. It thrashed, its head snapping toward the source of the pain.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"Got it!" Elara yelled, sliding behind a floating slab of rock as a void beam scorched the air where she had just been standing.
The beast didn't charge. It crouched, its form shimmering.
Gideon’s HUD flooded with red warning text.
[ ALERT: SPATIAL ANOMALY DETECTED ] [ PREDICTION: TELEPORT INTERCEPT ]
"It's not running," Gideon realized, seeing the creature’s particles dissolve. "It's jumping."
He looked at Elara. She was sixty feet away, drawing another arrow. The air directly behind her began to warp, black tentacles of lag spiraling out of nothingness.
"Elara, move!"
But she couldn't move fast enough. The Fracture materialized out of the void less than three feet from her back, its claws raised high, ready to cleave her in two.
Gideon didn't think. He checked his distance. Too far to run. Too far to charge.
He looked at his Mana bar. 3,550.
"[Photonic Displacement]."
[ COST: 150 MP ]
FLASH.
The world jerked. For a microsecond, Gideon was everywhere and nowhere, disassembled into light. Then, reality snapped back.
He rematerialized directly in the path of the Fracture’s claws, standing between the monster and Elara.
He didn't have time to brace properly. He threw his Dwarven Tower Shield up and leaned into the impact.
CRASH.
The collision sounded like a car wreck. The Fracture’s claws slammed into the steel, the force driving Gideon’s boots into the rock floor. He slid backward a foot, sparks flying from his greaves, but he held the line.
"Go!" Gideon roared, shoving the beast back with a heave of his shield arm.
Behind him, in the space he had occupied a split-second ago, the after-image of the teleport—a Photon Shell—flashed brilliantly. The stagnant clone exploded in a burst of hard light.
The Fracture recoiled, screeching as the flash overloaded its optical sensors.
[ TARGET BLINDED (1.5s) ]
"Good hit," Gideon panted, checking his HUD. His Mana had dipped to 3,400. The fight had barely started, and he was already burning resources. "Don't stop shooting! I'll keep it busy!"
The blindness from the Photon Shell lasted exactly one and a half seconds.
The Fracture shook its head, shedding pixels like dandruff. It didn't try to blink again. It didn't try to lash out with tentacles. It seemed to realize that speed was being countered, so it changed the rules of the engagement.
It roared—a deep, bass-heavy sound that vibrated in Gideon’s chest—and its form began to convulse.
The jagged, sleek lines of the wolf-shape expanded. The polygons thickened, interlocking like tectonic plates. The texture of its skin shifted from glass to rough, corrupted stone. In seconds, it towered over them, transforming into a massive, lumbering Golem of static and weeping mana.
It raised two massive fists, aiming not directly at Gideon, but at the floor beneath them.
"Ground slam!" Elara warned, seeing the build-up of kinetic energy. "Move!"
Gideon looked at the massive fists coming down. He calculated the radius. If he dodged, the shockwave would ripple outward, turning the obsidian floor into shrapnel. Elara, with her lighter armor, would be shredded by the debris.
"No," Gideon growled. "I catch it."
He planted his feet. He didn't raise his shield to deflect; he braced it against his shoulder to endure.
"[Gravity Anchors: MAX]."
HUMMM-THOOM.
The air around Gideon distorted visibly. His personal gravity field spiked. His weight instantly multiplied by five hundred percent. The obsidian floor groaned and cracked under his boots just from the sudden increase in mass. He locked his knees, tucked his chin, and became a statue of lead and steel.
BOOOM.
The Golem struck Gideon’s shield with the force of a falling building.
The sound was deafening. The obsidian floor shattered in a twenty-foot radius, the rock pulverizing into dust. Debris flew outward like buckshot, pinging harmlessly off Gideon’s heavy plating but tearing through the air where he would have been standing if he’d dodged.
But in the center of the crater, Gideon stood.
He hadn't moved an inch. He was an immovable object anchored to the fabric of reality.
[ DAMAGE MITIGATED ] [ KINETIC SHOCK TRANSFER DETECTED ]
The shield held. The armor held. But the energy had to go somewhere.
It went through him.
Gideon shouted as the impact rattled his skeleton. Blood burst from his nose inside his helmet. The shockwave compressed his organs, knocking the air from his lungs. It felt like being hit by a freight train while wearing a metal box.
[ HEALTH: 2,100 / 2,700 ]
"Is that all you've got?" Gideon wheezed, tasting copper.
He dropped the [Gravity Anchors] instantly to stop the mana hemorrhage. The Golem roared in frustration, its fists still resting on the dented Dwarven steel, and the floor around them began to turn an angry, glitching red.
