Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 36 - Deprivation (Patreon)

I once dreamed about exploring other words, thinking it would be some grand adventure. But now that I know what’s waiting out there, I just want to be left alone on Earth.

Patrick Ward

“What’s going on?” asked Rex as I once again reloaded my weapons. He and the rest of his team definitely looked a little worse for wear, and the Dingyts that had been tasked with helping me on my mission were clearly anxious. They only knew a little of what had happened, but what they did know wasn’t good.

“The enemy attacked the base,” I answered. “None of our people were alive, but there were a ton of bad guys there. So I blew them up.”

“I picked up on that last part.”

“Now, I’m going to check things out,” I said. “Make sure there are no survivors.”

“If there are?”

“I’m going to kill them,” was my simple answer. “I’ll interrogate them first, of course. But I don’t think they’ll be in any condition to talk. Things are going to be weird down there.”

That was certainly the truth. The addition of norcite powder into the bomb was technically considered a war crime in the wider universe. However, I figured that since Earth had yet to be integrated – that didn’t come until after the quarantine was lifted – I didn’t have to follow their rules. And besides, when the destruction of my planet was at stake, abiding by rules and laws seemed a lot less important.

Useless, even.

Besides, what did I care about the laws of a civilization that was willing to let my planet be destroyed? After all, clinging to some code of morality would serve no one but the would-be conquerors.

Regardless, there was a reason using norcite in bombs was forbidden. Even using it in the ADS was heavily restricted, and technically, I shouldn’t have even had access to the ammunition. Gala had broken quite a few laws by selling it to me, and for that, I was incredibly grateful.

In any case, the reason it was such a heavily restricted substance was because of its ability to drain depower the nanites that comprised the Mist, rendering them inert. If there was enough of it concentrated in one area, that shift would be permanent. So, the norcite-laced bomb I’d detonated had almost certainly left the blast zone and its surrounding area in a Mist-deprived state. How long that would persist was anyone’s guess, but I suspected it wouldn’t be a short amount of time.

With that in mind, I finished re-loading my weapons and left the Leviathan behind. Patrick had landed the ship quite some distance from the blast zone, but even so far away, I could feel the effects. The Mist was thinner than I’d ever felt it, and I could practically taste the toxic norcite in the air.

I pushed my discomfort aside and started toward my destination. With every step, I felt like I was suffocating. Not physically, but rather from a perspective of Mist. There just wasn’t enough of it, and as I went, I could feel the restrictions weighing down on me. It was as if my attributes experienced a precipitous fall with every few hundred yards I traveled. I counteracted it by retracting and compacting my aura, but with every passing minute, I could feel the increasingly desolate atmosphere chipping away at it.

And every mile I traveled meant that those chips grew larger. If I stayed in the area for much longer, I knew it would have negative – and possibly permanent – effects. Perhaps that was why norcite bombs were banned.

Still, I had a job to do, so I kept going. I tried using the Cutter, but it wouldn’t even summon. The error message I received told me that Mist fluctuations had triggered the failsafe, and it would be locked until the atmosphere stabilized. So, I had no choice but to proceed on foot.

Gradually, I made my way through the wilderness, and just like the integrity of the Mist in the area, the landscape steadily grew more desolate. At first, that desolation presented itself in the trees’ loss of leaves, but soon enough, the limbs followed suit. And eventually, the trees themselves had been knocked down by the shockwave. After that, the trees turned into burned-out husks, and when I drew close to the bomb’s blast radius, they’d been disintegrated altogether, leaving nothing but a barren landscape behind.

I tried to keep a running commentary with Patrick via Secure Connection, but the decreasing Mist levels rendered that impossible. So, I was entirely alone in the silent and desolate world I had created.

I kept going until I finally reached the primary blast zone, as characterized by mounds of overturned earth and an atmosphere almost entirely lacking in Mist. I had to use two threads of my Split Mind to keep my cocoon of personal Mist intact, and even that wouldn’t last forever. More, I felt weaker than I had since my first stint in Mobile, which was saying something considering how far I had come since that town had been destroyed.

I crested a hill of charred soil and gasped as the results of my actions were laid bare.

A huge crater, maybe a mile wide and maybe a quarter as deep, stretched out before me. And there was nothing inside – just bare earth, scorched and blackened by the bomb I had set off. Yet, I could see a few hotspots of Mist, like oases in a desert.

Or beacons in space.

I needed to inspect them, though I was undeniably terrified of what I might find. Visions of mutated aliens danced in my mind as I descended the slope toward the first concentration of Mist. It was only a few hundred yards away, so it didn’t take me long to arrive at my destination. The weak Mist signal was buried beneath a few feet of burnt soil, so I retrieved a shovel from my arsenal implant and got to digging.

It was only a few moments before the spade hit something solid.

But after a little prodding, I recognized that it was soft as well. I’d found a body, I was certain. So, I carefully continued digging, keeping one thread of thought on my surroundings; I wasn’t sure if the alien below me was alive, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

As it turned out, my caution was unnecessary. The alien was indeed alive, but their body was so desiccated and charred that it was hardly distinguishable from the surrounding soil. Still, they were alive – an issue I ended with a few quick strikes with the sharp blade of my shovel. As their head fell free, the Mist dissipated into the atmosphere. On instinct, I reached out, snatching at the rapidly degenerating cloud of nanites and dragged it to me. It took a subtle shift in my mind to absorb it, but as deprived of the Mist as I was, I quickly figured it out.

That helped to allay some of the effects of remaining in such a barren environment. More importantly, it felt like it caused something to click inside my mind. Until that moment, I’d never really considered directly absorbing the Mist I ripped away from various people. Yet, in retrospect, it seemed like such a natural progression that I was incredibly surprised I had yet to make it.

But now, I could see all sorts of uses. I didn’t typically run low on Mist, but there were a few of my abilities that really drained me. Most notably, using the Emperor was incredibly taxing, and the healing associated with [Mist-Infused Body] took every ounce of Mist I had at my disposal. But if I could somehow form a bridge between the ambient Mist and the ability, I could…

Could I become immortal?

I already suspected that I could live for quite some time without my organs. I’d once seen a video of my uncle persisting as nothing but a severed head and a bit of spine, and I was certain I could replicate that feat. Yet, with the ability to take ambient Mist via Mist Authority and funnel that into the ability that could rebuild my body in seconds, the limits I’d once thought were hard and fast suddenly seemed like they were little more than gentle suggestions.

However, the tiny bit of Mist I received confirmed that I would need a much more powerful source if I was going to do anything worthwhile. Still, it was a significant breakthrough that I hoped would help me unlock untapped potential I’d never even considered might exist.

But for the time being, I needed to continue my inspection. That first alien’s survival suggested that all the beacons of Mist shining throughout the crater were living creatures. And I intended to put an end to that.

So, I continued forward, growing ever more uncomfortable by the second. Part of it was the lack of Mist, which left me feeling like I was drowning in nothing. But related to that was the pervasive weakness that came with it.

I persisted, though, and I quickly found my next foe. This alien was even more desiccated than the last, and I ended them with a single blow from my shovel. That gave me another chance to absorb their Mist, which went far more easily than the first time, almost as if my body knew precisely what to do with such a situation. Perhaps it did.

In any case, once that creature was dead and the miniscule amount of Mist absorbed, I kept going. However, after only a short few steps, I heard something that made me whip around in alarm. Yet, when I did, I saw nothing but the expanse of charred earth. Still, I could have sworn I heard something that sounded like whispers.

“Definitely just the wind,” I muttered to myself as visions of desiccated corpses rising from the ground haunted my thoughts. “Or my imagination.”

After taking a couple more looks around and finding nothing, I continued on my task. It mostly went as I’d expected, though there were a couple of instances when the nearly-dead aliens attempted to attack me. Their flailing was weak and ultimately useless, but it was still more than a little disconcerting.

The whispers of the wind continued as well, though it thankfully didn’t grow any louder, which was only moderately comforting.

Eventually, I reached the center of the crater, where I found my first real surprise. One of the aliens had dragged itself out of its earthen grave and was propped against a mount of dirt. The creature was incredibly long-limbed with a sinuous form that was clearly very inhuman. Its skin had the texture of charcoal, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to injuries or if it was a natural state. Regardless, that rugged, black skin coupled with their orange eyes to give a distinctly demonic appearance.

Or maybe that was the horns jutting from either side of its head.

I put my shovel away and drew the Interdiction Blade as I approached. It watched me, and when I finally drew near, it let out a cough, saying, “You won’t need that, monster. I can’t even move, much less fight back.”

Judging by the grooves in the burnt soil, it looked as if it had dragged itself as far as it could, then given up.

“You came here to kill everybody on the planet,” I said. “From where I’m standing, that makes you the monster.”

“Naïve fool.”

“Maybe,” I acknowledge. Then, I cocked my head to the side and amended, “No. That’s not accurate. I’m definitely naïve. But I can’t really be blamed for that, can I? Information isn’t exactly flowing from the tap around here.”

“Do you hear the whispers?” it asked. “We all do.”

“Nope. No whispers at all,” I lied.

“Liar,” it spat, coughing up a wad of black phlegm. “You think yourself special because you survived without an implant? A quirk of genetics, nothing more. That doesn’t make you strong.”

“Oh, you think I’m a Templar, huh? Do my clothes look white?”

“I am blind.”

“Ah. Right. Well, I’m not a Templar. I’m not a mystic at all. Just good, old-fashioned human with a big, beefy implant.”

“But that doesn’t…wait…you are a Seeker.”

“No clue what that is,” I admitted, though I got the gist from context.

“A normal person who seeks the power of the mystic,” they said. “One who has reached the summit through murder and training.”

“Oh. Then yep. That’s me. Love some good ol’ murder,” I said. “Though that’s probably obvious from the bomb I dropped on you and yours.”

“I know of you.”

“Do you?”

“The genocidal terrorist who slaughtered millions of peaceful beings,” they said, coughing once again. I was keeping a close eye on their Mist, which was tightly controlled, but almost entirely inert. “You are why we came. Through your actions, you have sentenced billions to death. And you believe you have won? It is laughable.”

“I’m not laughing,” I said. “And I’ve won every battle so far.”

“Battle? We are nothing more than a scouting expedition. The most expedient way to accomplish the goal. Now, your planet will be subjected to an invasion you can scarcely imagine. And –”

“Oh, you’re going to kill us all even harder than before? Is that supposed to scare me? Leave your two-bit, evil villain monologue in the trash where it belongs. You came here with the express purpose of killing everyone on Earth and harvesting its resources. There’s nothing past that. No escalation that matters. So, I’ll just save you the trouble and say that it doesn’t matter what the next steps are. I’ll meet them head-on, and I’ll kill every last one of you who sets foot on my planet.”

“Bold claim for someone so powerless,” the long-limbed alien spat.

“It’s worked out so far,” I stated. “Millions dead, remember?”

“How long can you keep it up, though? You will die. Everyone does. The universe functions on a timeline of eons. When you’re gone, we will be back. And we will get what we want. Your little backwater of a planet cannot resist. You can’t fight back. You will all be conquered, enslaved, or killed. It is only a matter of time. It is inevitable.”

“Maybe,” I said, my mind roiling with anger and frustration. The alien wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t going to live forever. And even if I managed a victory, the aliens would just wait until I was dead and gone to come back. “But you won’t be there to see it.”

With that, I lunged forward, but not with my sword. Instead, I did so with Mist Authority, slamming my will into the alien’s with as much force as I could muster. For a moment, they resisted, and we remained at a stalemate. But then, I flexed the entirety of my mind and shattered their resistance. Mist erupted out of them, gushing like a geyser, and with multiple tendrils of thought, I snatched at the various leaks, drinking deep of that Mist.

The alien screamed. Whether those screams were of pain or horror, I had no idea. Nor did I care. Instead, I absorbed their Mist greedily, ignoring their pleas.

As I did, they shrank, physically and in terms of their suddenly exposed aura. When I’d finished, the alien was no more substantial than the desiccated husks I’d encountered throughout my exploration of the crater. I watched them die as the last of their Mist winked out.

Then, I let my shoulders sag.

I knew that, though spiteful, their words hadn’t been a lie. Earth was not in a great situation, and things weren’t going to get any easier with Alistaris presumably gone. I hadn’t recognized his Mist aura before I’d dropped the bomb, and he certainly wasn’t capable of surviving the destruction I’d left in my wake. Without his leadership – or information network – I questioned how successful any resistance could be.

We had accomplished the mission, and Earth probably wasn’t going to be exploded the second the quarantine lifted. However, I knew they would be back. I knew they would try again. And next time, I wasn’t sure that we’d be in a position to stop them.

I sighed, then looked around. I had all the destructive power in the world, and yet, if I didn’t know where to aim it, it was useless. And now that Alistaris was gone, I felt rudderless in a way I hadn’t for quite some time.

So, it was with a somber attitude that I trekked across the crater and completed my grisly task. Dozens more had survived, but even then, I knew most of them wouldn’t have lived through the night. There were only a few that might have made it past a few more hours, and I expected that they were all mystics. None were as strong as the long-limbed alien I’d killed in the center of the crater, though.

Finally, once I’d finished, I headed back to the Leviathan. Along the way, the Mist levels slowly rose until they had reached an acceptable density. I felt a little better after that, but even when I reached the ship, the reality of Earth’s situation still weighed heavily on my shoulders.