Chapter 29 - Forevermore Song - The Unforgettables: A ZeroYear litRPG

  In freefall, the spider attempted to push Frank away with its massive front legs, but without success. Frank easily dodged the blows while grabbing the spider's leg tips in a double arm lock. Grasping the spider tightly, he stretched his body in a rush, delivering a brutal blow with both his legs like a battering ram against the spider's head. After the impact, he kept the spider's legs locked under his grasp and increased the pressure, pulling the spider's trapped limbs with such violence that they were amputated, causing a flow of blue energy to gush from both sides of the spider's body.

  High above, Silas noticed that despite all the ship's devices being drained of energy, including the auto-repair, the wingtip that Liora had ejected began to move by itself and regenerate somehow—almost organically. It seemed as if a kind of clot was forming due to the leak from one of the ship's inactive devices that had broken and leaked. This curious effect might improve maneuverability somewhat but wouldn't prevent the damage from the imminent fall. What Silas managed to do was try to maneuver the few flaps he controlled that didn't solely depend on energy to position the ship to maximize friction with the air and buy precious time.

  Petra observed Frank's combat, clinging to the ship's wing. Liora, on her way to exit from the open compartment inside the ship, became puzzled by the strange liquid leaking from an old broken pipe that was coagulating in front of her; she barely could read a name written with grease upon the broken tube before it melts, Agelmore, a name in Nailia language; despite her curiosity, she left the analysis for the aftermath as she noticed the ship's auxiliary flaps operating in an alternating pattern, and she knew what it meant. Liora immediately accelerated outside toward Petra, knowing that both communicators and telepathic magic were gone, but not the nano-translators. "I'm going to help Silas!" Liora shouted to Petra.

  "Okay! I'll jump to help Frank!" Petra responded, trying to concentrate on aiming her jump. Liora nodded affirmatively and immediately set off, doing superspeed parkour along the outside of the still-spinning ship until she managed to return to the hole opened in the bridge window.

  Immediately upon entering the bridge, Liora took over piloting, doing a much more effective job than Silas's. But despite controlling the spinning, there would be no time to avoid the fall. Silas said, "I'm going to see if I can activate the aircar's gravity engine; something is actively draining our energy from every device that was susceptible to the previous EMP attack!" He stood up and rushed through the bridge door that Frank had broken, crossed the coffee room, and went directly to the messed up docks where the aircar and the drone now sat stacked against one of the walls.

  Outside, Petra noticed Frank riding the spider and looking upward at the ship, trying to figure out what was happening; she jumped from the wing, trying to reach Frank and propel the ship upward a bit, activating her stone form with the certainty that the fall wouldn't injure her. Her jump, however, wasn't strong or precise enough to direct her on a trajectory that would reach Frank. With the loss of telepathic coordination and the shared abilities offered by the communication magic, everyone's movements became prone to error.

  Frank noticed Petra jumping from the ship and decided it was time to act. With one hand, he grabbed one of the remaining spider legs. With his other hand, he made an acrobatic arc and collected his still-deactivated Flexoclava from inside the spider. At the end of the arc, he returned to the top of the spider and prepared for a final jump upward. Moments before hitting the ground, he power-jumped from the top of the spider with all his might, mitigating his fall while targeting the spider with immense brutality toward the monolithic vein below.

  The effects were immediate. The spider accelerated like a meteor, hitting a lateral corner of a solid monolithic vein and exploding while opening a half-circular crater in the snow and dirt close to one side of the vein, spreading blue energy with a consistency between liquid and gas everywhere. Frank was able to deviate slightly from his trajectory, reaching the snowy ground, but suffered a considerable impact, falling on the same side but away from the vein where the spider had just hit. He fell diagonally, opening a sinuous trench. Despite the damage and pain of the impact, this time, Frank smiled as he lay regenerating on the icy ground, aware that his training had finally prevented him from losing consciousness during combat.

  As soon as the spider exploded, the effect that was draining all energy—both magical and from technological devices—ceased, causing some things to start working again; however, almost everything that was damaged by the EMP attack remains broken and will need repair. The weapons and batteries inside Silas's and Liora's bodies were the first to be restored, but it still took a few seconds; roughly the same time was needed for Frank's and Petra's mana to return because of their regeneration. Even with the mana flow restored, all the magic that had been dissipated did not return.

  Petra felt her magical energy replenished a few seconds before hitting the ground. She opened a deep crater in the snow and dust, but she landed on her feet and didn't even injure herself with the brutal impact. She immediately began scaling her deep crater as if nothing had happened, observing the ship still falling and spinning.

  Silas was inside the aircar, trying to improvise a solution, when he noticed that all the energy was returning. He immediately jumped to the dock terminal, which was now active, and directed all the remaining energy to the ship's gravity engine inertial stabilizer.

  When Liora realized her personal energy had returned but not the ship's, she went out again through the hole in the bridge and tried to fire her energy ray, similar to what Silas had done from inside the aircar the first time they fled from the Golems. She positioned herself under the ship and activated her energy beam; however, she didn't have the strength to hold the ship nor the resistance to avoid being crushed in the process. What she did was let herself be crushed by the fuselage while dividing her energy to partially thrust the ship and partially raise a barrier to prevent her from destroying herself in the process.

  While Liora almost sacrificed herself to prevent the fall, she was horrified to realize that the combat hadn't ended yet; looking at the ground from above, Liora figured out that she was the only one aware of what was happening. Inside the half-crater where the spider had exploded, a type of translucent energy egg with something in the shape of a giant blue fetus was growing at immense speed. Beside this monstrosity were Petra and Frank, still emerging from their snow holes, utterly oblivious to the danger growing near them.

  As soon as Liora realized what was happening and calculated that she wouldn't arrive at the ground on time, she flew back inside the ship and, with her super-speed, immediately appeared beside Silas, saying, "Something's coming out of the spider's crater, and it's going to attack the two down there; we need to warn them now!"

  Silas noticed the fall had been mitigated shortly before Liora appeared in front of him. With no time to ask questions, he promptly modified the ship's auto-repair order to prioritize the local communication device. Using his own energy, he accelerated the repair process for this single device to less than a second. As soon as he finished, he sent the message over the re-established local network to the comlinks: "Frank, Petra! There's an enemy in the hole where the spider fell!"

  Frank's comlink was damaged in the fall, but Petra's was in perfect condition. She heard Silas and perceived with her super senses that Frank hadn't heard any message on the crater near her; she then shouted as loud as she could, "Frank, the spider's alive! It's coming after us! Frank!" Petra awkwardly accelerated her climb while continuing to shout.

  Frank, still dazed, reasonably injured, and regenerating, slowly made his way through his long trench. When he perceived a distant and familiar voice shouting his name, he instantly smelled the danger, accelerated his pace, and got his Flexoclava ready, now working at full power. When he reached the edge of his trench, he noticed a type of cylindrical blue tentacle emerging from the hole where the spider had fallen. The tentacle ends in an oval bulb; he observed it with a grimace while muttering, "What? Oh shit…"

  Frank's speech was interrupted by the oval bulb opening, forming an eye that now observed him back. Immediately, seven more tentacles with eyes on the tips emerged from the hole and formed two rows of parallel eyes, all blinking and looking at him. After a few moments, a ninth tentacle rose from the hole and opened a ninth eye, identical to the others except for being completely misaligned with the other eight, but also looking at Frank. In a desperate rush, Frank trusted his Flexoclava and jumped at full speed toward the tentacles, shouting, "Spotted it! I'm going to attack!"

  When Frank jumped and passed above the ground line, he managed to perceive his opponent fully. It was a nearly 100-foot-tall blue humanoid giant, faceless and featureless, except for these tentacles emerging from its head as if they were thick strands of hair. Reflexively to Frank's jump, which exploded the ground and launched him like a bullet, the giant leaned back, and a type of energy field made concentric hexagonal shields appear, mitigating Frank's speed in the air. Perceiving this energy barrier preventing him from advancing, he delivered a full-force blow that shattered the giant's protective energy halo; this caused Frank to fall backward toward the ground slowly.

  Petra managed to get out of her hole and saw Frank still in the air, falling back. She also perceived the giant emerging from its hole. Before any reaction, eight spider legs sprouted from the giant's back, connected by energy membranes to form two web wings. The giant now began to fly out of the hole without taking its eyes off Frank.

  Silas refocused the auto-repair on the gravity engine and realized that the ship's fall would be avoided. Liora activated her new weapon and flew down through the hole in the bridge to join the combat below. Silas noticed that Liora's back was crushed and severely injured as he figured out what she had done to mitigate the ship's fall. He also activated his energy ray and followed Liora into the combat, saying via comlink, "The ship is safe, but it will take a good while for everything to start working again."

  Petra responded, "Frank's comlink is gone! I'm going to the front line to try to protect him from the attacks. Silas, I'll need you to position me. The teleportation stones I was carrying disappeared, and it would take precious time to make another one. This thing is huge, and I am not strong enough to catch it with a jump."

  Liora added, "My weapon is ready, and I'm going to fire. Petra, I'm detecting a large concentration of energy in the form of a spiraling spear coming from the giant and pointing at Frank."

  Hearing this, Silas launched himself toward the ground at full speed to arrive quickly, saying, "Petra, get ready to be thrown; as soon as I have a vector, I'll send you against the tip of that spear."

  Like a ballet, everything happened in sync. Frank was a few meters from hitting the ground when an energy spear appeared in the giant's hands and solidified as if by magic. With phenomenal speed for its stature, the giant delivered a surgical blow against Frank. However, Silas had already thrown himself toward the ground, firing a precise ray that sent Petra flying toward the giant. When the spear's tip was a few meters from Frank's head, Petra appeared turbocharged by Sila′s ray already in stone form, blocking the spear's tip with her Flexoclava, disarming the giant and causing the other tipless end of its weapon to pierce a hole through the attacker's own head. To close the dance, an apotheotic rain of mini-missiles perfectly dodged Petra, who was still in the air. Every single missile hit the giant, opening several antimatter holes that exploded in sequence, burying the colossus in a cloud of explosions and smoke. Frank finally reached the ground, already prepared for the impact, which was mitigated by his strength, while observing his opponent being massacred by his partners' attacks.

  Petra landed comparatively softly, while Silas, who had descended at full speed to give himself time to push Petra into the correct position, didn't have the same fate and fell hard, unable to sufficiently mitigate his fall.

  "Silas!" Liora shouted upon noticing the problem. Silas fell and stopped responding via his comlink; Liora immediately flew toward him as fast as she could. Upon landing near Silas, she realized he was still alive but heavily injured. His old ebex training, combined with his protective lab coat and a lot of luck in falling on a snow slope, caused him to slide. She immediately activated her sensors and attempted to provide first aid for her friend.

  Petra was paying attention to what was happening with Silas, but she also didn't take her eyes off the smoke and explosions where the giant had been flying. She noticed some movement in the midst of the smoke while Frank jumped to her side. With the communication channels open for Liora to hear, she said aloud, "I think the giant hasn't fallen yet. I'm seeing some shades flying in the middle of the cloud, but it seems to be much smaller. Liora, how's Silas?"

  Liora responded while treating Silas, who was starting to move and cursing, reacting to the pain. At the same time, she turned her head to observe the cloud with her luminous ocular sensors and said via comlink, "I'm detecting a weak energy reading; be careful! As for Silas, I've put some bones back in place, and he's waking up. There were many dislocations, and it would be good for him to go to life support and rest for a while."

  "Attention!" Frank warned, noticing a much smaller figure—less than 10 feet tall—emerging from the cloud where Petra had been staring fixedly. It had the same form as the giant but with a hole through its head, big enough to see the sky behind. As soon as the metamorphosed figure exited the cloud, it flew at high speed toward Petra and Frank.

  The monster advanced to within a few meters of Petra, stopping abruptly while a loud, guttural sound that seemed to come from inside it echoed through the environment. The winged beast slightly opened its arms toward Petra, who assumed an apprehensive posture. Frank decided to take advantage of the opening to attack; he leaped over the enemy, striking it from above and sending it crashing to the ground at Petra's feet. The morphing spider-giant seemed to have been defeated; it now moved with great difficulty, and its size decreased considerably again, now becoming a little larger than Petra but wholly broken and unable to coordinate its movements.

  Frank landed from his jump and went to Petra, ready for a final blow. But Petra noticed something strange and said, "Wait, Frank! It seems to have given up attacking us." She strained to hear a much fainter sound emanating from the shattered blue body, which was contorting on the ground in a disorganized manner and decreasing in size even more.

  While Silas woke up in pain and updated himself on what had happened, Liora recorded the sound Petra heard using the comlink. After a fast analysis, Liora commented, "Petra, that sound reminds me of the Gate's ancestral language we heard a while ago in the poetry Amanda showed us."

  Frank, now with less adrenaline, approached his head very close to Petra to share her comlink and said with some remorse, "These things speak?"

  Liora heard Frank's voice and responded, "Not that I knew of. The nanotranslators will also have great difficulty interpreting this, but I'll try to see what I can do here."

  Silas, realizing what was happening, said with difficulty, "Let me try to help. I was curious about the ancestral Gate′s language, so I updated my nanotranslators with some Suma experimental models."

  Liora commented, "Silas, return to the ship; you're not in minimal condition."

  Silas grumbled, "I'm fine; some work deciphering these messages will make me forget the pain."

  The giant stopped emitting light and decreased to a minimal size, becoming what seemed to be an egg. The sound coming from it ceased, but Petra managed to transmit everything for Silas to try to decode. After a little over a minute, Silas said, "Okay, team, I'm going to put the result that makes the most sense on the audio channel; the verbs seem quite displaced."

  Through the comlinks, a synthetic voice could be heard, translating what might have been the giant's words: "Fools prevent me; I managed to save one."

  Silas explained, "That's what it said when it approached you, Petra, before Frank's blow that brought it down."

  Frank and Petra looked at each other. Petra said aloud, "Save one what?"

  Silas interrupted, "And now what it said when it was on the ground, withering. All translation attempts seem to indicate that it was talking to itself this time."

  Again, the synthetic voice was heard via Petra's comlink: "I am Messenger. My ninth eye emits destiny, now lost in time. Time to born."

  Petra lamented, "It seems we shot the messenger."

  Frank retorted, "Messenger? It killed Amanda before saying anything and would have done the same to us."

  Petra cracked her neck. "I just hope Amanda's on her way to the City of Spirits; we need to talk to Mosh!"

  Silas checked the repair list and commented, "For now, we only have local communication. The ship's Aethernet connector is drained and should be operational by the end of the day. After we get our batteries from the factory, it will take about three days to repair everything. Is your portal okay, Petra?"

  Petra concentrated and responded, "Yes, only the three stones I was carrying disappeared; the rest remain normal. We should leave now, and I will make a new stone in a few moments or leave the ship's door behind to return because I'm out of reserve stones to enchant this place. Let's take the rest of the ship inside and repair it in my universe."

  At that moment, the egg that had once been the blue giant, which had been ignored until now, hatched, and nine spiders emerged—identical in shape to the energy spider that had captured the ship and drained all the energy but miniature in size. They jumped from the egg and burrowed a hole, disappearing under the snow.

  Liora and Petra became apprehensive, preparing for what could be another trap. With her illuminated eyes, Liora looked down and warned, "I'm a bit distant; from there, it seems those spiders fled very quickly and left a thin trail of energy in the shape of a thread. Team, under the snow, I'm perceiving more of these threads all around."

  Frank observed, "Are these monsters immortal?"

  Hearing Frank′s low voice from the comlink, Liora thought aloud, "Perhaps these creatures have a different idea of how life and death work; this reminds me of what Amanda said about that tower around here."

  Petra prepared to open her portal, saying, "How about we get out of here? Silas, can you move the ship through my portal?"

  Silas turned on another terminal and said, "The thrust engines are still off, but Liora could easily push the ship inside. I could, too, but it still hurts a lot when I move."

  Frank and Petra, standing near the egg's remains, looked toward the ship, already thinking about where to place the portal. Silas and Liora were a little further away, upon one of the monolithic veins, next to the slope marked by Silas's body sliding on the snow.

  Silas noticed Liora's delay in responding; he asked: "Liora?"

  After a brief silence, Frank and Petra realized something was wrong; they turned to Silas and Liora and observed. Petra refrained from opening her portal and commented to Frank, "I'm not seeing anything there."

  Silas asked again, standing next to Liora, "Liora? Everything okay?"

  Liora responded via comlink, her voice full of glitches, difficult to perceive, and with abrupt pauses: "The bastard… is here! Inside my mind… Adarian!"

  A few meters from Silas and Liora, a figure of black shadows revealed itself. It appeared in the middle of the vein, and Cernutos Tower rose ominously behind him in the path. Adarian appeared as if shedding a cloak of invisibility. It was clearly the same Bo that everyone had seen a few days earlier via the Northern Valley city cameras, but now wearing lighter clothes.

  He didn't approach; he merely lowered the cloak covering his head, revealing his bald head, and said, smiling, "There's no more reason for me to hide; you even know my name; I'm almost flattered by that!"

  Silas realized he needed to buy time for Frank and Petra to position themselves. He also knew that Frank was still regenerating from his fall. He calmly said to Adarian, "Actually, our business isn't with you, Adarian, nor with the knights we know you're looking for. We were heading North and ended up having some trouble with the spider. Release my friend so we can continue on our way."

  Silas was surprised to notice that Adarian wasn't listening directly to him. He was waiting for a virtual servant to interpret and relay the message using a comlink with a complex modded virtual interface.

  After a while, Adarian responded slowly, "And since when does a slave give orders? I participated in the Eastern campaigns and already know that talking to your kind can be dangerous to memory; obviously, there are no knights with you. But the way that weapon you call a friend defeated the giant impressed me; it will be useful in my mission. That seems like a fair price for pretending I didn't see all of you here. I'm not interested in any deal because you're useless; I need an apprentice, but a slave is out of the question, and I'd be the laughingstock if I had a human as an apprentice. So, leave!"

  Petra and Frank realized Silas was buying time. Frank wasn't in perfect condition but considered himself regenerated enough. He nodded at Petra as they quickly approached Silas and Liora, positioning themselves closer to Adarian.

  Frank spoke, "Adarian, you don't seem like the type who worries much about what others are laughing at. The idea of passing through here without losing time with a confrontation sounds good, but we're taking our friend with us, so how's it going to be?"

  Adarian cracked his knuckles, blinking his eyes with disdain. "Seems you guys are out of things to offer me, but if you insist on ending your lives like this, the space in our freezer is infinite. I will give you a little time to get ready and healthy; at least, I'll try to use you as training."

  Frank feels a sense of warrior pride in Adarian as he waits for him to regenerate. He tries to buy more time warming up for combat while Silas tries to see if he can help Liora. On Petra's comlink terminal, Silas silently typed, "Adarian is using some kind of mind domination power on Liora; this isn't technological hacking."

  Frank said, remembering the conversation with Silas after defeating the Dragon, "Training? In a combat where the loser will be forever frozen? Can't you make me a more intelligent offer in exchange for our friend?"

  Adarian raised a protective energy bubble while taking off his cloak, throwing it to the side in the snow, revealing a muscular physique as he said, "Well, I don't know how you survived this long without the protection of an aura. And I wonder where you stole those weapons, but they don't seem like much; it will be an easy combat. However, if there's something I learned from my old master, it's not to underestimate any enemy." Saying this, Adarian used another power on himself, making his already large physique improve visibly, turning him into a mountain of muscles that almost ripped off the shirt he wore under his cloak. He waved his hand, inviting the group to engage.

  Petra wrote to Silas via comlink, "Silas, Adarian isn't even using his master's weapon. If things get messy, be ready to fire your ray at him while we all go through my portal. I need a few seconds to close it after we pass, but if he enters, it'll be a big problem because everything we have so far is inside."

  Silas responded via text, "Don't open the portal until we're sure we can keep him out. He analyzed our brief combat with the spider; it seems he calculated that neutralizing Liora right at the beginning could mean an easy win."

  As Petra and Frank studied the fight, slowly walking toward Adarian, he seemed to lose his patience. He said, "I've seen enough; let's end this quickly!" and accelerated into a slightly higher timeframe than Frank's.

  He jumped in an almost horizontal trajectory across the monolithic vein directly toward Frank with a direct punch ready to deliver. Petra got in the way, noticing the feint, and prepared a decisive counterattack. To Adarian's surprise, before he could reach Frank, Petra's Flexoclava hit his protective energy aura squarely, shattering it immediately. Without wasting time, Frank accelerated himself and delivered a low kick that Adarian easily parried, but that allowed Frank to get close and land an uppercut with his Flexoclava, considerably injuring his opponent.

  With a rapid answer and enduring the pain, Adarian took advantage of Frank's opening to attempt a punch to Frank's exposed side. But again, with the hum of Petra’s Flexoclava burning its energy cells, she quickly interposed herself, completely dominating her opponent at the mercy of a decisive counterattack.

  Petra smiled. "Then let's end this quickly!" she said as her stone body tore into Adarian, sending him crashing to the monolithic ground and crushing him with the Flesxoclava right after. Realizing his critical situation, Adarian raised another protective aura before anything else, but now he was deeply injured and close to death.

  Adarian said as he partially rose, kneeling; he looked at Petra with his head down and eyes half closed, smiling, "Great! This is going to be more fun than I expected!"