Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 55 - A Fated Battle (Patreon)

I’m not special. Not unique. Yet, I’m surrounded by the best of the best. Gala. Alistaris. Even Freddy was strong for a Templar. But me? I’m only a little better than average. And Mira…she’s so far beyond even those others that she’s practically a different, far more evolved species. That scares me.

Patrick Ward

A sharp tendril of Mist extended from the black-clad mystic, aiming directly for my heart. I slapped it aside with my own Mist control and rocketed forward. As I did, the other mystics and Adjudicators opened fire, filling the fifty-foot-wide corridor with projectiles of all sorts. Meanwhile, Gala erected a portable Mist shield as she and the dozen Dingyts let loose with their own firearms.

It was chaotic.

But there was order to it, too. I could see it all via my Mist senses. And any projectile that came close to me was knocked aside with a subtle influence of Mist. I didn’t need armor, but still, I’d covered myself with a layer of protective energy that could rival any Mist shield I’d ever seen.

I wasn’t worried about the extras. They couldn’t hurt me. Instead, I was entirely focused on the man with the melted-wax face. Because it required every ounce of concentration I could muster just to hold him off.

With gunfire echoing through the corridor, I raced forward. When it became clear that neither of us could gain an advantage via our control of Mist, we clashed in melee combat.

I ducked under his initial sword strike, then threw myself upward with a massive uppercut that connected with his jaw. However, instead of hitting solid bone encased in a thin layer of flesh, I found something more akin to clay, slimy and formless. My fist sank in, and for a moment, I was stuck.

It was just the opening the black-clad mystic needed, and before I could initiate a dodge, there was a glistening sword tearing through the air, aimed at my neck. Judging by the amount of Mist in the blade, my foe clearly intended to end the fight with a single strike. Instinctively, I raised my hand to block, infusing it with Mist.

It hit with undeniable force.

And yet, I denied it.

It should have been unstoppable. My hand – and everything else in the blade’s path – should have been cut.

It was not.

Instead, I blocked the strike, even sending the blade rebounding out of control. Shock decorated the pale mystic’s malformed visage, and though he recovered quickly, I did so a few seconds earlier. I leaped high, ripping my hand free of his face and connecting with a Mist-infused round kick that sent him stumbling into a few of his own allies.

At the same time, another pair of mystics attacked me – one wielding a spear, the other with a pair of daggers. Each weapon was coated in Mist, which actually worked against them. Without even turning from my fallen – but recovering – foe, I slapped the newcomers’ weapons away with thin tendrils of Mist. Governed a thread of thought I barely even acknowledged, those wisps of Mist were nearly instinctive.

But that didn’t make them ineffective.

Indeed, they did their job with aplomb, then snaked out to wrap around the mystics themselves. They tried to fight, but their attempts at resistance were useless. I wrapped them in Mist, then squeezed.

They burst like a pair of balloons filled with viscous, red liquid.

I paid them no mind, because I was totally focused on the wax-faced mystic who was picking himself up from the ground. I dashed toward him, using a combination of Engage and Teleport that I’d devised on the spot. Mist rushed out of me, but I replaced it a second later by dragging even more from the ambient Mist.

As soon as I reached my opponent, I aimed a side kick at his knee, crumpling it. But to my horror, it snapped back into place a second later. Clearly, his odd malleability wasn’t limited to his jaw. He snapped out with his sword, and I couldn’t react quickly enough to dodge. Nor could I block it. So, the blade ripped into my side.

But he wasn’t rewarded with the expected shower of blood. In fact, my body – made almost entirely of nanites – mended even as his blade passed through me. So, aside from a brief shock, I was entirely unaffected as the blade exited my body. With my Mist senses, I could see that millions of nanites had been destroyed. Yet, that number was barely impactful.

It was also obviously surprising, because he stared in shock. Only for a moment, but that was enough.

I punched out with a jab that deformed his jaw. Then, I followed it up with a right hook that knocked it the other way. Finally, I ended the combination by grabbing his mushy head and launching myself upward with a knee that took him directly in the face. My flight didn’t stop there, either. Even as he flipped backward, I threw myself forward with an ejection of Mist, pummeling him with a two-handed attack that sent him rocketing toward the floor.

He hit with enough force to flatten his body and dent the plastisteel floor.

But he managed to roll out of the way to avoid my descending strike. When he picked himself up, his body snapped and plopped back into something resembling his old shape.

At the same time, Gala and the Dingyts had everything they could handle with the other mystics and Adjudicators. Gala was a whirlwind, Ferdinand in one hand and her blade in the other. The Adjudicators couldn’t stand against her, and if she caught a mystic alone, they were at just as much of a disadvantage.

Meanwhile, the Dingyts fought completely differently. They almost looked like they teleported around the battlefield, but through my Mist senses, I could tell that they were just engaging some form of stealth, coupling it with a movement type of ability, then racing across the battlefield to attack another target. To mundane senses, it looked like they just disappeared, only to reappear in another location – a perception that wasn’t helped by the fact that they all looked almost identical.

It was chaos, and it was hard to appreciate the level of ability they showed.

Gala was an unstoppable juggernaut. The Dingyts were almost impossible to pin down.

And me?

I was everything, all at once.

Tendrils of Mist shot out in every direction, guided by whatever remained of [Multi-Mind]. Some mystics, I outright killed, but for the most part, that would have taken a lot more focus than I could expend on that endeavor. So, I used my Mist control to foul their footing, blunt their senses, and stagger them. It was enough to keep the other mystics under control.

The Adjudicators proved another challenge. I couldn’t control norcite, and it was sufficient to block my attempts at Mist manipulation. However, their armor wasn’t perfect. It had gaps, most of which were only a single nanite wide. Yet, that was enough to provide an opportunity for exploitation.

It took more than one strain of thought, but I managed it all the same. Whole swaths of the black-armored soldiers fell as I flooded their bodies with Mist, exploding them inside their seemingly invulnerable armor.

At the same time, I stalked toward my real opponent.

“I am impressed,” he said.

“I’m not.”

Then, I resumed my assault, peppering him with attacks. Some were mundane, harnessing my incredibly powerful body to do devastating damage. However, as I fought, I realized that the same principles that allowed me use Teleport or fly were usable in combat. I didn’t use them to move my whole body, though. Instead, I accentuated attacks, pushing against the Mist to add more force to punches, kicks, and knees.

And when he tried to counterattack, I realized that I could simply let his intended attacks pass right through me. Sometimes, I even flickered out of existence for a brief moment, and he hit nothing but air. It was an odd way of fighting, but it was also effective – not only because I avoided any lasting damage, but also because it was clearly frustrating.

Which made things that much easier for me.

He expended great quantities of Mist, but slowly, his efforts grew wilder. Less controlled. It was useless. He couldn’t touch me. In fact, as the battle went on, it felt more like I was toying with him than fighting a life-or-death battle. Even when he leveraged the entirety of his Mist against me, it was like throwing a bucket of water into the ocean. He simply was not on my level.

That wasn’t to say that he went down easily. He did not. His strange body was impervious to most damage, and he had vast stores of Mist at his disposal. Still, I wore him down, and then, I sharpened my Mist tendrils into points and shoved them through him. He was ripped into pieces beneath my eviscerating efforts.

And just like that, he was dead.

But I wasn’t finished. I reached out, grasping the Mist in his core, and dragged it into my own body. I no longer had a real core of my own. When my body had reformed, it had spread the Mist throughout my form. I absorbed everything he had, becoming far denser than ever before.

And to my surprise, his Mist came with a host of memories.

Dal Kanik was from a mostly aquatic planet, and his odd skeleton was the result of his species having evolved under the immense pressure of ocean depths. He’d overcome that via Mist control, joining the Arbiters of Orion the moment he’d displayed a basic proficiency with Mist.

Since then, he’d slowly climbed the ranks until he was one of the top one-hundred mystics in the entire organization.

And now he was dead.

At my hands, no less. I could feel his frustration. His indignation. His pride. It had all counted for nothing, though. He was nothing before me.

Nothing.

Just a collection of flesh and Mist. And I had taken his Mist. Now, he was just lifeless meat.

Suddenly, I realized that the entire battlefield had gone silent. I looked up to see that I was surrounded by a bubble of Mist that no one else could see. A few feet away in every direction, a solid wall of bullets, superheated balls of Mist, and other projectiles hovered in place.

Gala was down, lying in a pool of blood. The Dingyts were dead. I could tell that from a mere glance. There were plenty of other bodies all around me. Dozens of Adjudicators and mystics, all fallen. But still more were still alive, and all of their weapons were aimed at me. Nestled in my bubble of Mist, I couldn’t hear their fire. But with every passing moment, another projectile added its weight to the collection around me.

And in the distance, I saw even more Adjudicators, blue-uniformed crewmembers, and a host of mystics rushing down the corridor in my direction.

I screamed.

The projectiles all reversed course, going back in the direction they’d come. Some of the fire hit home. But the ones who fell from that first volley were the lucky ones. With a thousand tendrils of Mist, I lashed out.

But not in the same way I’d done so before.

Instead, I reversed the polarity of my senses – and my control. The whispers became screams, echoing my own. And when I sent my tendrils of Mist at the Adjudicators, mystics, and crewmembers, there was nothing that could stop me. I ripped their powerful armor away, then flayed them where they stood.

It happened in seconds. Blood and flesh of all different colors and consistency painted the walls. Body parts flew in all directions. And their screams – so different from the ones in my mind – joined the chorus.

It only took a few moments before every single person in the corridor was dead.

And I was all alone.

I released my grip on the Mist. Hundreds of bullets fell to the ground with a clatter. None of the blood had reached me. In fact, all around me for a few feet in every direction was entirely spotless. That couldn’t be said for the rest of the corridor. The blue-and-gold walls had been stained with every color in the rainbow.

I stood there for a long moment, just staring at the carnage. I hadn’t even thought about it. Not consciously. The Mist had simply responded to my need, like it was an instinctive part of me.

In fact, that was how it had been since my body had been destroyed and put back together. It was like I was the Mist, and the Mist was me. I didn’t know what that meant, but after only a few more seconds, I recognized that I had another issue.

Gala.

She was still alive, though only barely.

I rushed to her side, dropping to my knees and sliding the last few feet across a blood-slick floor. Once I came to a stop, I reached out with Mist, checking her condition. It only took an instant before I’d hacked into her interface. Fortunately, hers was even more advanced than the one I’d once had installed, and it came with a detailed health readout that characterized her injuries as severe.

She was dying.

I knew it.

But I refused to accept that. So, I shoved my Mist tendrils deep inside of her, and commanded them to repair the damage. At first, nothing happened. But then, I remembered the auto-mender I’d used during my first Rift. Buried deep within my mind – or perhaps the nanites – was the memory of how it had worked. At the time, I’d been incapable of understanding it. However, combined with that memory was the ability attached to [Mist-Infused Body], which was capable of repairing all but fatal damage.

Even with those memories and methods, I relied mostly on my desperation and instincts to give it form.

Suddenly, Gala’s wounds began to mend. I poured Mist into her, and her flesh fused back together. Broken bones healed. Bullets and other projectiles slid out of her bovine form. And then, after a few more moments, she let out a gasp and shot upright.

“What happened?!” she bellowed.

“You were injured,” I answered truthfully. “I healed you.”

“How?”

“Same way I do everything else. Mist. Are you okay? Because we still have a job to do,” I said.

After Gala checked herself over – apparently, the sudden healing was more than a little disconcerting – she declared herself fit. Unfortunately, all the Dingyts had been killed while I was focused on Dal Kenik, the black-clad mystic. It was a tragedy, but they’d come to the Infinite Conquest fully prepared to die. So, I shed no tears for them.

“Pick, is everyone in position?” I asked.

It was Alistaris who answered via the Secure Connection we’d established before setting out. He said, “The fleet is poised to launch the moment you bring the blockade down. We will destroy the drones, carving a corridor through which we can reach the world ships.”

“Have they arrived?” striding through the corridor. Gala accompanied me, looking this way and that as she searched for any enemies who might’ve lived through my onslaught of Mist. There were none.

“They’re waiting just outside the range of the Infinite Conquest’s sensors.”

“How quickly can they get here?”

“Minutes,” he stated. “Are you ready?”

“Give me a few moments,” I answered, finally reaching the terminals. I reached out, touching the port. I no longer had the Hand of God or a personal link, but with Mist control, I didn’t need them. In seconds, I had infiltrated the system, tearing through the Mist Wall so easily that it might as well not have existed.

Suddenly, the entirety of the ship’s system was laid bare before me. Unfortunately, I could only look at most of them. The terminals I’d infiltrated weren’t connected to the Infinite Conquest’s overall functions. Instead, they were solely connected to the blockade controls.

With a flick of my mind, I deactivated it.

The moment I did, I became aware of a dozen ships arriving in Earth’s orbit. Each one was the size of the Infinite Conquest. But they were sleeker. With better Mist control. Through the blockade’s satellites, I saw them.

Pristine white and shaped like giant wings, they were also decorated with gold filigree. But I didn’t need to see anything but their white hulls to know who they were.

“The Templars have arrived,” I said.

Then, I became aware of a hundred missiles being launched from each of those ships. Each one was teeming with Mist, telling me that whoever had launched them had some significant modifiers. Even one would rival the explosive power I’d unleashed on the moon. All hundred? That was enough to destroy Earth.

Yet, the planet was not their target.

Instead, the missiles were aimed at the Infinite Conquest.