“What just happened? Where the hell did they come from?” Ruby yelled in shock before falling silent as she noticed the severity of their injuries.
“Cough!” Jake jerked back, vomiting a copious amount of blood that stained his armor, and dropped to one knee from a temporary bout of dizziness.
His face contorted horribly from the pain and Ruby immediately noticed that his disintegrated left shoulder and torso were not regenerating. Worse, they wouldn’t stop bleeding, a steady stream of blood spilling onto the ground. Using her own Myrghenian Eyes, she detected multiple strands of sharp energy swirling chaotically through his wounds and negating the clotting.
The two individuals Jake had just rescued were suffering the same torment, but although their wounds were less worrisome their condition was actually much more dire.
One of these people was obviously Aisling, the leader of the Mutants, but she was in a deep coma, her vital signs so weak that they could go out at any moment. She had not been tainted by the cutting energy that was ravaging Jake’s insides, but she had long since bled to death. Because of her unique nature, she had not perished, but her time was running out.
The second individual was an ageless man shining as bright as a star in the firmament. An Astral. While carrying him, his body seemed insubstantial, as vaporous as a wisp of smoke, but every bit of gas was charged with tremendous energy. A being of energy. Yet it didn’t flow through their fingers when they squeezed it, allowing Ruby to easily carry it on her back.
It was most likely he who had summoned the pillar of light to save Aisling. Without his intervention, she would have died long ago.
The Oracle Device identified him as Haynt, a level 91 Astral. Such power… He could only be the leader of the Astral Faction. His circumstances were both cause for rejoicing and terrible concern.
The good news was that he was apparently on Aisling’s side, willing to risk his life to save her. Apparently, the specters’ conduct had nothing to do with him. The bad news was that even an immortal being existing since Quanoth’s latest reiteration had ended up in this state.
Each Spirit Body level was significantly more difficult to attain than the last, and the gap between two higher levels widened exponentially. At level 91, Haynt’s spirit was probably ten times more powerful than Aisling and her level 82. Even that much power had not been enough.
His wounds were more like Jake’s, and though he had no holes in his body, the Astral was continually wracked by dozens of conflicting energies and spirit imprints of different kinds, requiring all his concentration not to simply implode. To offset the danger, he was burning up the energy of his Astral body at a dizzying rate, the stars inside him flickering ever so faintly.
“Ruby, carry us and leave! NOW!” Jake ordered snappishly!
The silvery glow in her beautiful pearly eyes flashed vibrantly for a split second, but when Ruby noticed dozens of crushing auras melting down on her, she stopped dithering and bundled the three wounded onto her back before flying off at full blast without looking back.
As Ruby streaked her way forward like a shooting star, the monstrous energy signatures erupting behind her became more and more terrifying as they got closer. Shooting just one curious glance, the young woman’s eyes bulged out as she saw the trees being uprooted by the thousands by the blast of their passage.
“Fuck! Jake, I’m not going to be able to outrun them. We’ve got to let them go! They’re the ones they want.”
Jake, who was focusing on his wounds with his eyes closed, snapped his eyes open and coughed up another spray of blood charged with maiming energy and growled,
“You really have no solution?”
“Hmmph, if a certain gentleman hadn’t forced me to waste all my Aether, then maybe!” Ruby harrumphed grudgingly. “You’re the money guy right now, so take responsibility.”
“What makes you think I have any Aether left?” Jake chuckled scoffingly before being seized by another bloody coughing fit. He had already ingested a gallon of Rank 8 Digestor Blood but it didn’t seem to be having much effect.
“Please. Not to me.” Ruby sneered before anxiously yelling as she saw thirty or so figures appear less than half a mile away from her, “I AM NOT JOKING! IF YOU DON’T FIND A SOLUTION RIGHT NOW WE’RE GOING TO DIE IN A FEW SECONDS!”
Jake scowled with a gloomy look and said in bad faith, “Leave it to me.”
The Purgatory hidden in his Aether Soul Core emerged from his glabella again, and a rush of light later they were transported into the cockpit of a huge spaceship, a 7th generation Consortium Interstellar Battleship designed for the Inquisition.
Ruby blinked in bewilderment, but after witnessing the unfathomable potential of his Purgatory Dream, she found it hard to be surprised.
[Xi, I’ll let you fly the ship.] Jake mentally authorized.
[Okay! Pilot Xi joins in!] She cheered before merging her consciousness with the ship’s AI.
Numerous control blips and holographic screens popped up all over the room, and the whirring of engine ignition made the ship roar.
[Hang on!]
The ship accelerated sharply, going from 0 to 10,000G in an instant, but the ship’s artificial gravity reduced the danger to the passengers to a tolerable level. Otherwise, only Jake and perhaps Ruby would have survived with grievous injuries.
This insane velocity had a terrible trade-off. No ship was supposed to fly at light speed through a planetary atmosphere. The friction forces were simply too high and no ship, even an armored one, could withstand such stresses.
The spaceship was only a Purgatory illusion and as such could be maintained indefinitely, but its sturdiness was the same as the original version. To maintain the illusion during this brief acceleration, over 20B of Aether points were consumed in an instant.
In a flash, the ship and its smoldering prow resurfaced over Lodunvals, its huge shadow blanketing the last remaining stronghold in the north-central part of the city. Wyatt and his squad, Aisling’s trusted Mutants, the paladins and the few remaining refugees all looked up in shock, momentarily forgetting to fight.
Wyatt and Carmin were taken aback when they recognized the ship’s design, but they remained on guard. For the refugees already on the verge of despair, it was just a nightmare vision. Only the Undead Wengols continued to fight unconcernedly, causing the death of several absent-minded fighters.
When Jake’s amplified voice echoed through the fortress as the boarding deck lowered like a drawbridge, Wyatt and Carmin were finally relieved, but they were quickly disheartened by his first words,
“Get on board now or die! You have 10 seconds!”
Wyatt and his companions processed the information instantly and with unspoken agreement proceeded to ferry the refugees at superhuman speed, leaping like locusts into the ship with dozens of refugees on their backs. Ruby and Jake also came to assist them and they were alarmed when they saw his injuries.
Aisling’s bodyguards and the remaining paladins were a little confused, but seeing the quick reaction of their esteemed helpers, they too were alarmed. They too began to pick up refugees and soldiers too frail to jump that high.
To save time, Jake unceremoniously slammed the ship down on the already battered fortress and it instantly collapsed like a house of cards. He had made sure just before that there was no one left inside.
Before landing, he activated the ship’s defensive system and multiple plasma cannons and other homing missiles shot down all the Undeads within a radius of half a kilometer.
“Awesome!” Jeanie chirped from inside the ship. “Why didn’t you use that weapon earlier?”
The question was innocent, devoid of ill intent, but Jake’s face turned ugly as he received this dig. His pride and stinginess had simply prevented him from doing so. If he had summoned it from the start, he could have rammed the ship right through the Alpha Were-Eagle. Who knows how many people he could have saved with that extra time?
But the reality was just as stark. Jake had only summoned this ship for a few seconds, but its intense use had already burned 25B of Aether points. Activating his weapons was easy, but the energy used for ammunition was powered by his Aether. No matter how much he wanted to, it was still a last resort.
Seven seconds after Jake and his ship appeared, Wyatt and the rest finally understood why his tone was so urgent. A rumble of thunder echoed in the distance and they saw a huge tsunami roll in from the edge of the Wilderness. The wave was nearly touching the clouds.
The six Mutants left from Aisling’s bodyguard cursed loudly as they recognized the newcomers.
“Those bastards! Treacherous sons of bitches!”
Jake said nothing, but there were also 29 Wengol generals among them. The approaching hooded figures were in the minority, but one of them was out in the open, his gold leggings and red cloak making him particularly eye-catching.
“Abbikesh!” A Mutant woman gritted her teeth, her eyes bloodshot from rage. “I understand now how they defeated Aisling.”
“Where’s Haynt?” Another elderly Mutant growled with a somber face. “I hope he didn’t betray us either or we’re really screwed…”
” Get your fucking ass over here or die!” Jake barked gruffly as he started pulling the boarding drawbridge shut from inside the cockpit.
Aislings’ guards shut their mouths immediately and rushed into the ship, the deck closing with a thud behind them. The battleship then swiftly took off into the air and with a BANG vanished into the clouds, leaving their pursuers in the dust.
