Unchained Potential (The Whispering Crystals: A LitRPG Series Book 4), page 20
Besides, this mode has its advantages.
As I reform my tail, Kaitlynn fires two low-power streams of Astreum from her feet, which—combined with my field of Negative Inertial Energy—are more than enough to send us rocketing forward together.
At this level of output, she can still easily recharge, thanks to the conversion cycle and her Power-Up.
We shoot into the tunnel, relying mainly on my tail for steering. The ground here slopes up, so only now do I see what’s ahead of us. My eyes widen as I take in the stretch of webbing that fills up the length of tunnel ahead. I don’t see any spider-like creatures, but there’s a high-pitched noise which tells me the webbing is full of Vibration Energy regardless.
Up above, a big tube of Boreum penetrates the webbing, revealing how Dominique is passing through. It’s rather convenient that the entrance is still there. Actually, a little too convenient... It seems to be under a lot of pressure from the webbing, and it probably won’t last much longer with all that Vibration Energy.
Did she leave it open on purpose? Well, either way, we’re carving our own path forward. After all, I know exactly how to handle webs like these.
I pull the waterskin off my belt and inhale its contents.
Literally.
Inside my lungs, I Infuse the Hydrum with a certain Purpose of Toxic Energy.
Kaitlynn stops the jets coming from her feet, tensing up as we near the webs, but doesn’t say anything.
She knows what’s coming. After all, she’s seen me practise this.
I eject the glowing pink acid through the o-shape formed by my lips at high speed. It burns a little in my windpipe and mouth, as my Tolerance is not capable of perfectly countering the Purpose-filled Toxic Energy, but Regeneration will take care of that, and I don’t mind a little pain.
The narrow flow of Hydrum cuts through the thick webbing like it’s cotton candy, clearing a huge swath up to about halfway through the web.
If only Bruce could see me now. Who needs a squirt gun when they can do this?
The cleared section improves visibility by a lot, revealing Dominique exiting her tube in the distance. She glances back, sees us enter the web, and quickly speeds up with another flap of her wings, disappearing to the side somewhere. As expected, her tube of Boreum crumbles as we fly past, allowing the webbing around it to spring back into place.
Nice try, but we’re not that dumb!
Below us, Lilly and Onni navigate an electrified surface of Greysteel beneath the webbing. I keep a narrow eye on Onni as we pass over. He looks up but doesn’t make any attempt to stop us.
Good choice.
Next, we catch up to Jacob. The webbing appears to do little to slow him down as he wields his spear one-armed to hack himself a way through the dense stuff, while navigating a series of narrow ridges between deceptively shallow pools of Boreum vapour.
If anything, the Vibration Energy probably empowers him. Assuming he knows reconversion, of course.
When we near the halfway point of the web, Kaitlynn hands me her waterskin. I inhale the contents, and shoot another narrow stream of acid which cuts a gap through the rest of the web, providing us with a clean path through.
I spit a few times to rid my mouth of the sour taste as Kaitlynn increases the output of her jets.
“Look!” she calls over the Aether streaming past our ears. “The Greysteel Doors!”
And indeed, beyond the webbing the tunnel suddenly widens, giving way to a big hexagonal room made of smooth grey stone.
Of course, seeing the Greysteel Doors begs a question.
Where’s the rest of the doors?
We fly in at high speed.
Four of the walls hold a big Greysteel Door featuring a unique etching of a grossly disfigured humanoid. They all have a kind of victorious pose which seem off somehow. For example, the one with his arms in the air in a clear ‘finish pose,’ seems to be suspended from chains on his wrists...
“Shit, sharp left, sharp left!” Kaitlynn exclaims, having noticed sooner than I that there’s a tunnel which leads on starting in the wall directly to the left of the one we just exited.
Ah, so the race isn’t done yet. Good thing too, or Dominique would have already won!
I throw us sideways and kick my tail as hard as I can, drifting around the corner, as Kaitlynn turns on her jets again.
I hope our friends all manage to get to a door in time... Jacob shouldn’t have any issues, with his rate of progress, but behind him were Onni and Lily. If they all take a Greysteel Door, that leaves but one, in which case either Dave, Alec, or both, will have to join the fight for the three Darksteel Doors...
Damn. Maybe we should’ve stuck around and... I shake my head.
Stuck around and what? Dropped Calyx and Steve into the pit to help our friends? Frig. Let’s just focus on our own problems.
The tunnel curves to the right, surprisingly obstacle-free, until it opens up into a large chamber with a long, wide, smooth upward slope, that looks slickened with some kind of liquid.
Well, that shouldn’t be too big of an ob—
A high-speed projectile smashes into me, barely leaving me time to lift my arm. The Negative Inertial Energy Field protects me from the impact and is probably the only reason I don’t break any bones.
Kaitlynn barely manages to hang on as we’re both flung back into the tunnel.
I manage to stabilise before we hit the ground, and look up for the source of the attack.
My eyes widen when I spot what’s going on.
Almost near the top of the slope, Dominique is using a dome-shaped wall of Boreum in an attempt to block the bombardment of a dozen cannons. The sleek Greysteel barrels are mounted upside-down on swivelling stone platforms attached to the ceiling and fire with pulses of yellow light.
Twelve Kinetic Energy cannons? Holy shit!
To her credit, Dominique almost manages to reach the top before the projectiles start pushing her back again.
I swear I can hear let out an inarticulate scream of rage as the oversized Boreum dome is accelerated backwards. It isn’t until she reaches near the mid-way point that she manages to stop the process by flinging out a web of Boreum vapour that anchors the whole thing in place mid-Aether, despite the continued barrage of what I now realise are Greysteel cannonballs.
Her Boreum dome holds up admirably under the heavy impacts, so it must be pretty darn Cold.
She glances back, spotting us even before we’re done taking in the situation.
Her eye narrows, and as she turns back around, her strategy changes. The dome remains anchored in place, but its front stretches out into a sharp, hollow lance. At first, I believe it’s just meant to be a more streamlined shape to help deflect the projectiles, but then she enters it, and the lance begins to lengthen in the front and disperse in the back, while new tendrils of Boreum vapour spread out before it to keep it anchored.
It’s another tube! She’s burrowing through the Aether!
Well... kind of.
I open my mouth, but Kaitlynn is way ahead of me.
“Flight mode A!” she calls out as she leaps off my back. Twin streams of Astreum leave her nose, surrounding her body in a glowing orange cloak before she jets off.
A single projectile is immediately fired at her. In response, Kaitlynn spits out a compact ball of Astreum, which shoots forward and meets it head-on.
The compressed Astreum bomb—the product of the third level of Astreum Manipulation—detonates upon contact, slowing the cannonball down and sending it off course.
After marvelling at my girlfriend’s prowess for only a split second, I set off as well.
Splitting up is definitely the right call, as together we’d draw twice as much fire.
My own method of crossing the area is a little different. Instead of engaging with the projectiles, I set out to evade them.
Normally that’d be pretty hard, even with my improved manoeuvrability, but why play fair if you don’t have to?
My eyelid flutters in concentration for a moment as I shrink the boundary around myself down in no fewer than three dimensions.
All the training I did in the past couple of days paid off. I had to endure a lot of splitting headaches, but I eventually managed to split my attention in three directions, and raised Distort Space to the third level. I still haven’t seen what comes next in the Skilldream Shopping Window, as I lack the points, but I’m very curious.
All the more reason to hurry up to that Crystal Door.
Shrunken to a size of about two feet, I’m much harder to hit. Not only that, but I’ve found that I can somewhat shift my boundary—including its contents—around in the empty space surrounding it.
It’s an odd form of movement. It’s clearly not teleportation, more of a swift drift to the side, like sliding over a frictionless surface but without accelerating.
I can also only do it within the volume my boundary occupied before I shrank it. It feels like the empty space I created around myself by shrinking the boundary is still linked to the boundary somehow, which makes a kind of sense. Perhaps I can only do this because I still technically occupy the same space. In any case, it seems like the moment I allow the boundary to expand again, my centre of mass will shift back to its initial, centred position.
Until then, however, I’m free to move myself around unpredictably, which makes dodging these cannonballs a lot easier, even as more of them start coming.
We’re steadily catching up to Dominique, whose tunnelling process appears unstoppable, if kinda slow. The only downside here is that as we move further up the slope, more of the cannons start to focus on us, letting up on Dominique as a result, and allowing her to speed up again.
The increase in speed doesn’t seem to satisfy her, however, or maybe she’s getting anxious now that we’re getting so close, because the next thing I know, she bursts out of her tube and attempts to fly the last ten feet up.
Unfortunately, it seems she manages to catch whatever system is controlling the cannons by surprise, because she makes it.
Her gamble pays off. The second she reaches the top of the slope, the cannons swivel away from her, spreading all their fire between us.
Shit!
CHAPTER 27
Always gonna be an uphill battle
I had good hopes Dominique might stick around to gloat for a bit, but she barely spares us a glance before flying on.
Three quarters up the slope, Kaitlynn is beginning to have issues producing enough Astreum bombs to counter all of the projectiles launched by the six cannons gunning for her, and I see her quickly dodge one with a burst of yellow.
Gritting my teeth, I kick my tail and accelerate, overtaking her.
The pressure on my ability to dodge immediately seems to double as more cannons swivel my way, but it allows Kaitlynn the breathing room she needs to push forward.
We steadily fly further and further up the slope, but as we do, the distance between us and the cannons decreases.
Dodging becomes harder and harder, even with the two of us sharing the burden, but we can’t stop now, not with Dominique racing ahead.
If only there were more people to draw fire... Wait, that’s it!
The next time I dodge left, a flawless miniature copy of me—as I’m still shrunken down—goes right. The conjuration of this semi-sentient illusion sets me back a hefty 12 Espir, but it’s worth it.
The cannons immediately reconfigure, dividing their loving attention equally among the three of us.
I direct my clone to dart forward straight up the middle, and as expected it draws even more fire.
Kaitlynn rockets up the right side and I up the left.
She blasts another projectile to the side. It grazes her shoulder, but she flies on, reaching the top first.
The cannons immediately shift again. I dodge the first three point-blank shots but fail to see the fourth one coming.
Thanks to my swirl of Negative Inertial Energy, the cannonball to the face feels more like a basketball, but it still makes for a decidedly less than pleasant experience when my head snaps back and I’m sent spinning away.
Ooh, my head...
“Emma!” Kaitlynn yells.
I quickly stabilise and stick up a thumb to indicate I’m fine. Thankfully, my illusion held and—as it’s much farther up the hill than I—currently draws fire from about ten out of the twelve cannons.
I dodge an errant cannonball, wracking my mind for a solution, when Kaitlynn makes her move.
She lifts one of the Greysteel cannonballs that must’ve bounced back up off Dominique’s Boreum shielding, and with a burst of Astreum and a flash of yellow, hurls it at one of the ceiling-mounted cannons still pointed at me.
It misses the cannon, but hits the swivelling stone platform it’s mounted on.
A crack appears. I frown and move to the left. The cannon rotates to follow, but noticeably slower and accompanied by a new grinding noise.
Sweet!
“It’s working, keep going!” I yell as I start flying up again.
Kaitlynn manages to disable two more cannons by the time I make it up, slipping through the reduced pressure with relative ease.
As soon as I reach the top, I allow my boundary to expand to its normal size and call out for Kaitlynn. “Flight mode B!”
My clone fizzles even as she hops onto my back. The room turns eerily quiet as the cannons stop, and we blast off into the cave leading on.
Two turns and a bit of a climb later, the tunnel exits into another huge hexagonal room, easily a hundred feet wide. Three of the walls opposite our entrance feature a large door made of gleaming black metal.
If that’s not Darksteel, I’ll eat my other foot.
Glancing around, I don’t immediately see a path leading onwards. For a moment, I consider the possibility that Dominique entered one of these three doors.
Then Kaitlynn gasps. “Look, up there!”
A flick of my tail rotates us backwards, allowing me to look up without hurting my neck. As huge as the room is in circumference, its height is greater. It seems to go at least four hundred feet up.
This isn’t a room, it’s the bottom of a bloody shaft!
And there’s no doubt in my mind about what awaits us at the top: a door made of crystal.
Dominique seems to have drawn the same conclusion. However, for some reason, she isn’t flying, but instead running up a staircase of Boreum that she forms along the walls. Her speed appears to be limited by her need to recycle previously used steps as well.
She must’ve lost control over her boundary and lacked the Qi to make a new one!
I grin and share a glance with Kaitlynn. “First Mate?”
“Aye aye, cap’n?”
“Engage the thrusters!”
We rocket straight up. I keep a close eye on Dominique as we do, assured she’ll try something when we reach her height.
However, before we even get close to her, I start to feel something I haven’t in a while.
The pull of gravity.
My eyes widen as my boundary creaks and trembles under the pressure.
“Uh oh,” Kaitlynn mutters as our upwards progress quickly crawls to a slow. “I don’t think there’s enough fuel in my tank to blast us up there.”
“Maybe you should go without—” I cut myself off with a grimace. “Nevermind, without my boundary the gravity would be even stronger, so you probably still wouldn’t make it.”
“Got any ideas? Otherwise I’m turning off the jets.”
I glance up at Dominique. Her method makes a lot more sense now, slow but steady.
“Screw it,” I mumble, “take us to the wall!”
I have no idea if I can do what I’m planning, but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try.
As Kaitlynn steers us closer to the sheer surface, I activate Boost Physical’s second mode and reach back to grab something off her belt.
The second we arrive, I slam the pointy ends of two of Kaitlynn’s throwing knives into the smooth grey stone. They enter with a crunch, spitting out some gravel. I hang from them with our combined weight—though still reduced thanks to my Spatial Boundary—and thank Goddess when they hold.
Not that I think Goddess has anything to do with it—or would even be willing to help me if she heard—but some grovelling could never hurt.
“What are you—woah!”
My sudden pull-up rocks Kaitlynn in the saddle, so to speak, but she hangs on. I shift my weight to one of the knives, and with a sharp motion, pull out the other and plunge it higher.
“Rock-climbing,” I answer tersely.
With a grunt, I pull myself up to the next knife.
I hear Kaitlynn gulp audibly, and feel a feather-light touch on one of my straining biceps. “God, that’s hot...”
My mouth curls up on one side. “Later,” I promise. “Right now, I’m going to need your help if we’re to catch up.”
With a groan, Kaitlynn kisses me on the neck, then activates her jets again.
Pulling up immediately becomes much easier, and I start climbing up as fast as I can.
Suri once told me Strength doubles the force you can output every 5 points. With Boost Physical active, I have a Strength of 19, which means I am currently almost four times as strong as your average human male.
That’s a lot of power. Combined with the reduced weight due to my Spatial Boundary and Kaitlynn’s jets, I practically fly up.
As I get higher, however, the gravity continues to increase, pushing through my boundary’s ability to decrease our weight more and more.
Kaitlynn murmurs encouragements at me, letting me know we’re catching up, but I have trouble focusing on it. My world narrows to the painful strain in my arms, the scrambling of my legs for a hold, and the last one hundred feet stretched out above me.
A flash of red from Kaitlynn’s wrist is all the warning I get before she fires a shockwave of Vibration Energy that leaves my ears ringing unpleasantly.
The bolt of lightning she deflected strikes right next to me.
I glance to the side it came from, and notice that we’ve drawn level with a furious-looking Dominique.
