Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 33 - Special (Patreon)

She is special. Even in the context of the wider universe, Mira can do things most people can’t. Some of this is by design. We may never know who was behind her carefully planned development, but it set the stage for her to become the unique person she is. But there’s far more to what she became than a one-of-a-kind Nexus implant.

Alistaris Kargat

The norcite pellets slammed into the tentacled mystic’s hastily conjured shield, but due to the nature of the material, it only slowed them down. However, they lost just enough momentum that, when they hit Syphos, their armor was enough to protect them from the draining projectiles. Still, the shield shattered, giving me the opening I needed to barrel into them.

I hit with a shockwave of force that cracked the walls and ripped the tiles from the floor, but the mystic managed to sweep their scythe out just in time to block my descending blade. I held nothing back, instead putting every point of my Constitution into the blow, and the result was like a bomb had gone off.

Even as the hall was torn asunder by the explosion of force, my blade pushed the haft of Syphos’ scythe back just enough that I nicked their cheek. Their mouth fell open in shock as I let out a grunt of effort, but it didn’t last long before they kicked out, taking me in the stomach. The impact pushed me back almost a dozen feet before I slid to a stop.

“Not bad,” they said. “I –”

Ferdinand II’s report interrupted whatever they were going to say, and I didn’t stop firing until his drum went empty. None of the rounds made it to the mystic’s body – they were far too weak to make it through the re-conjured shield – but that wasn’t the point. Instead, I only wanted to distract them from what I was doing with my other hand.

A trio of small globes rolled across the ruined floor, too inconspicuous for Syphos to notice amidst the barrage of gunfire. But they definitely noticed when the three spheres erupted, bathing them in green gas. Meanwhile, I had yanked my respirator from my arsenal implant, slamming it into place over my mouth and nose before the poison could reach me.

That small distraction was almost enough to get me killed.

Syphos was done talking, it seemed, and they weren’t just going to stand around and breathe the rapidly expanding cloud of poison. Instead, they’d launched themselves across the distance between us, sweeping their ridiculous weapon out with intimidating speed. Still, it was an impractical weapon, probably chosen for some cultural significance – or perhaps simply because they liked the aesthetic – so the attack didn’t land nearly as quickly as it should have. Even so, I had to scramble to raise my sword in a one-handed block that was wholly inadequate to deal with the sheer force the mystic could bring to bear.

Fortunately, I was no novice, and I knew the weaknesses of my situation well enough to adapt my block accordingly. So, I angled the sword, slipping just enough to the side to avoid the worst of the impact. Even with that to mitigate the force, I felt the blow rattle the bones of my arms and shove me hard enough into the floor that what few tiles had survived the previous exchanges shattered like all the rest.

I lashed out with Ferdinand II, whipping the butt against Syphos’ knee. It felt like hitting a brick wall, but it buckled ever-so-slightly, giving me an opportunity to dive away from the next attack. I rolled, then used Teleport a second before the blade of the scythe skewered me. Even as I reappeared a few dozen feet away, I dismissed Ferdinand II and my Interdiction Blade, replacing them with the Stinger. I completed my roll, coming up facing the oncoming mystic.

I fired, and the first few rounds were rendered ineffective by another shield. However, I couldn’t help but notice that their movements had fractionally slowed, which was the whole point of the poison I’d deployed. It didn’t kill people – or it wouldn’t truly harm anyone on the level of the mystic. Instead, it attacked the nervous system as well as the Mist, slowing reactions and restricting the flow of nanites.

Hopefully, it would be enough.

I continued to fire, and each shot got a little deeper into the shield Syphos had raised. However, I could tell that I wouldn’t get through before they reached me. So, I switched gears and, with one of my threads of thought, attacked the shield with Mist Authority. At first, it was like banging my fists against a mountain, ineffectual and frustrating.

Yet, a simple shift of my attitude made all the difference in the world.

Normally, I overcome my enemies with sheer application of overwhelming force. That wasn’t always the answer, though, and even if I normally didn’t use it, I’d been trained to attack my problems in a variety of ways. Still, those lessons were only a shift of thought away, and instead of imagining myself as a giant battering ram of strength, I thought of my efforts as a steady wind, eroding a mountain over millennia.

It didn’t make it go any faster, but it certainly altered my strategy enough to make a difference. So, even as Syphos charged through the hail of gunfire, their scythe raised for an attack, I slowly tore the shield down.

Time felt like it slowed as I chipped away at the Mist shield, but in reality, the pace of the fight was so fast that an ordinary person couldn’t track it. I continued to fire until Syphos reached me, then I once again summoned my Interdiction Blade to exchange a series of blows that left my arms feeling like jelly.

[Multi-Mind] showed its worth as I devoted various threads to different tasks. One focused on the physical fight, while another was wholly trained on the slow erosion of the Mist shield. Still another monitored the environment, while the fourth cycled my abilities to best effect. As a result, I far out-performed what I’d once considered my peak efficiency, which allowed me to keep pace with the powerful mystic.

Still, I knew I couldn’t keep it up.

Already, my own Mist reserves were starting to run low. I was using too many abilities, and far too quickly. On top of that, my mind felt like it was starting to overheat from the strain of keeping track of so many disparate threads of thought. Sometimes, and soon, I would start to make mistakes. And when I did, Syphos wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage.

If I wanted to win, I needed to change the paradigm.

I needed to take a risk.

So, I yanked one thread of thought away from monitoring the environment, instead dedicating it to manipulating the Mist. That sudden surge turned the gentle eroding wind into a hurricane of gusting destruction. Whole swaths of nanites were yanked away with every passing nano-second, and yet, it wasn’t enough to topple the shield.

It was a good thing, then, that I had another card to play.

As the mystic drew closer, I dodged their incoming attack, exchanging the Stinger for the ADS as I did. Then, I squeezed the trigger. We were so close that Syphos had no chance to react, and my previous efforts had weakened the shield just enough that the norcite pellets made it through with enough force to bury themselves in the mystic’s body.

The reaction was immediate.

Syphos threw themselves backward in an effort to create as much distance as possible. However, now that I had them on the back foot, I wasn’t going to let up. So, I kept up the pressure, following closely as I continued to pepper them with as many shots from the ADS as I could. I got seven shots off before Syphos lashed out with their scythe, knocking the weapon from my hands and sending it flying down the hall.

Then, they quickly reversed course and, before I could even react, buried the blade in my chest. It sliced through my shield and armor as well as the subdermal sheath like none of it was even there, and it cut my lung into two pieces. It would have destroyed my heart if I hadn’t shifted an inch or two to the side at the last possible second. Still, it was a debilitating injury that Syphos clearly thought was enough to win the battle.

They grabbed my hair and pulled me close. I screamed as they twisted the blade, further destroying my lung. I gasped, coughing up blood as I grabbed the haft. But my actions were panicked and unproductive.

“Such a shame,” they said, their voice a mixture of high- and low-pitched sounds, with a slight quiver to indicate just how close I’d come to killing them outright. “You could have been special.”

I rammed the blade of my hastily summoned nano-bladed dagger into their side. The attack lacked strength, but my efforts to breach their shield had never stopped. And it had finally born fruit.

I twisted the dagger, spitting blood as I responded, “I am special.”

Then, I finally completed my infiltration of their core. It wasn’t the same as a Nexus Implant – or the system that came with it – but it was close enough that, with my long experience, it amounted to the same thing. In seconds, I had uploaded a Ghost that sent the Mist inside their body into rebellion. Immediately, the nanites attacked one another and everything around them.

Syphos screamed in pain as the Virus Ghost I’d spent months perfecting did its job. Their body seized, and I ripped myself free of the scythe’s blade. A few chunks of my lung and ribs went with it, but I quarantined the pain in its own thread of thought as I put some distance between myself and the mystic.

Meanwhile, they struggled to get their Mist under control, and for the most part, it was an effective strategy that depended on their incredibly ability to regulate the nanites in their own body. Yet, the Ghost I’d uploaded was perfectly suited to interrupt that control, and it was clearly giving Syphos quite a bit of trouble.

Or perhaps that was the obvious agony.

Perhaps they hadn’t been subjected to the same training that had helped me develop my own pain tolerance. Whatever the case, it gave them just enough trouble that when I summoned the HIRC, they were caught by complete surprise.

The huge weapon barked, filling the hall with a hail of gunfire that cut through their unprotected body with ease.

Miraculously, Syphos whirled their staff, blocking the initial stream of rounds. Yet, the sheer volume of the HIRC’s output was overwhelming, and without the benefit of their shield, the outcome seemed preordained. My prediction proved accurate a second later when the first rounds snuck through their guard and sent a spray of blood arcing behind them. Then another. And another. They stumbled, and I adjusted my aim.

I knew it was over.

Presumably, somewhere beneath all their pain, they did too.

But even so, it wasn’t until I’d literally ripped them limb from limb that they finally perished. I continued to fire for a couple more seconds, splattering what was left of them against the wall. Finally, I released the HIRC’s lever, and its barrels spun down. In the absence of gunfire, the hall was incredibly quiet. I could hear my own heavy, raspy breathing, and my heartbeat was like a bass drum.

But I had won.

That was all that mattered. I turned my attention to the silhouette that indicated my hearth, and I was unsurprised to find that my lung had been almost completely destroyed by the mystic’s scythe. That normally wouldn’t have been possible, but Syphos had somehow sent a pulse of condensed Mist along the blade, facilitating my injury.

Whatever the case, it was a problem that needed tending. So, I focused on [Mist-Infused Body], and activated the rapid healing portion of the skill. I gritted my teeth as the nanites that comprised the Mist went into a flurry of activity, rebuilding my lung in seconds. When they were finished with their task, they went inert, and I let out a gasp of relief as the constricting bands around my chest released their grip.

My shoulder sagged.

Every time I fought one of the mystics, it felt like I was balanced on the edge of a knife. Sure, I’d been in difficult battles before, but ever since my class had evolved, it had, at times, felt like I was on an entirely different level than my enemies. The best example was when I’d massacred the irradiated Wildlings that had long ago nearly killed me. But the mystics – they were different. They pushed me in a way nothing else could.

And I knew that unless I grew significantly more powerful, one of them would end up killing me.

It was a sobering thought, but one that I chose to use as fuel for my progression rather than a source of fatalism. For now, though, I needed to finish my mission. So, after gathering the scythe – which still felt like it was pulsing with Mist – I contacted Patrick via the Secure Connection and said, “The mystic is down. Proceeding with the rest of the mission.”

“Are you okay?”

“Had to use my wildcard,” I said, referencing the healing ability associated with [Mist-Infused Body]. “But I’m fine.”

“Do you need backup?”

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, Pick,” I repeated.

That got my point across, and he went silent. That lack of response made me feel a little guilty, and I resolved to make it up to him at some point in the future. In the meantime, I needed to finish my mission. So, once I’d slipped the scythe into my arsenal implant, I exchanged the HIRC for the more compact Stinger. Thus armed, I set off through the facility, and when I turned the corner, I came face-to-face with twenty guards of varied alien species. They had clearly been waiting for the dust to settle on our battle – the last thing anyone wanted was to get in the middle of something like that – so my sudden presence elicited some degree of shock.

I used that to my advantage, cutting them down with extreme prejudice. After all, I wasn’t there to take prisoners, and as far as I was concerned, the fact that they were there at all established that they were my enemies. So, killing them – even when they couldn’t really fight back – was never going to cause any guilt on my part. Still, it meant that my journey to my real target – the drill – took a few extra minutes.

I likely could have used Stealth to sneak through, but after the struggle against the mystic, I wanted to take my frustrations out on someone. The aliens in the digging facility were unlucky enough to be given that role.

Over the next few minutes, I swept through the area, killing everyone who got in my way. So, by the time I reached the bridge leading to the digging apparatus, I had racked up quite the body count. Pointedly, even that much killing had barely moved the needle of progression, so I knew it would likely take a mass genocide on the level of what I’d done to the Pacificians for me to gain any appreciable number of levels.

Still, that had never been my focus, so I pushed those thoughts away as I crossed the bridge.

A few combat bots tried to stop me, but I quickly dispatched them with a judicious application of Mist Authority. I didn’t even bother wasting my ammunition on them. After all, it was expensive.

Without breaking stride, I marched across the bridge. Vaguely, I was aware of some aliens on the floors below. I didn’t care about them, though. They were entirely inconsequential, and besides – they would die soon, anyway. So long as they didn’t attempt to bar my way, I was content to leave them be.

And they were far too frightened to challenge me.

Soon enough, I arrived at the central pillar and got my first look at the drill. I knew from the packet I’d read that the drills were designed to leave behind a series of powerful, Mist-infused explosives on their way to the core. I wasn’t certain how it was all supposed to work – that level of explosives knowledge was far beyond me – but the intended result wasn’t difficult to understand.

Nor was my plan overly complicated. So, I planted my own explosives along the drill’s outer fuselage. I used more than was probably necessary, but I figured it was better to over- than underdo it.

Once I’d finished, I called Patrick via Secure Connection. “Alright. I’m ready for a pick-up.”

“Ugh. Pick-up? Really? How long have you had that one in the bank?”

I giggled at the play on words. “Longer than I want to admit.”

“Fine. Hold tight for…two minutes.”

“Gotcha. I’ll be on the top of the giant drill.”

With that, I got to climbing. I didn’t even have to flare Balance on my way up, and after only a minute or two, I reached the top. Then, I settled in to wait. In the distance, I saw a few aliens who were too afraid to approach. I waved at them, muttering to myself, “Hope you all don’t get out of range before everything goes boom.”

They pointedly did not wave back, which I thought was rude. Just when I was considering pulling out my rifle to take a few pot shots, I saw the Leviathan on the horizon. So, I stood and waited for my pick-up.