Universe's End

1. Entering Oscuro

Stepping through the dark rift, there were a lot of things Roxy might have expected. She’d heard of the floating Sky Haven, traversed the upside, and also floating, Reverse Mountains, and even explored some of the subterranean Maw.

This? This was new.

Appearing in a purple environment, the first thing that struck Roxy was that they were in the middle of a destroyed city that had been flung into the air, shaken vigorously, and then had every sense of direction inverted or flipped at random.

Basically, it was the most confusing cluster fuck of her life.

Trying to move left, Roxy found herself moving right instead, the rest of her group missing.

“Shit,” Roxy muttered. There had been a chance that upon entering, they might end up scattered, but she hadn’t genuinely expected it to happen.

Time to gather her bearings wasn’t on her side either. A flock of purple manta rays was flapping through the air, purple and black with sparks of red flaring off from them with every wingbeat. They were only basic-tier sevens, but they were mid-tier sevens.

“No rest for the wicked,” Roxy said, a phrase she’d heard her father say on quite a few occasions. “Fine then. Exalt, Growl!”

The pommel of her spirit blade appeared in her hand, before a golden blade flashed to life, aura folded and projection magic woven throughout, and most importantly, filled with an affinity she’d developed over the last decade.

Gold.

Only partially released, Exalt took the form of a golden sword. As the manta rays raced toward her, she swept out, a golden, curved light slashing through the air. The Glory Slash was far less powerful compared to what it could do when Exalt was in its Roar form, but that didn’t mean it was weak- far from it- as the Glory Slash cut through several of the monsters in a single strike.

Not durability types, if that wasn’t obvious.

The manta ray monsters attempted to swarm her, but with her empathic resonance refined into a powerful tool, she could react as if she knew exactly what they would do before they did it. She couldn’t spin up the many mental threads her father could; her empathic resonance would backfire, multiplying the burden, but she could replicate the effect by simply sensing their intent directly rather than requiring multiple threads to comprehend things on the fly.

There were pros and cons to her version of the precognitive fighting style that fighters like her and her father employed, but what mattered was that it was effective.

Dodging through the monsters without even a scratch on her, she kept her golden blade sweeping, butchering them. The red sparks radiating from their bodies with every flap of their wings could not touch her as she flashed three talismans, golden barriers of light surrounding her while the talismans burned up. It was technically a crutch. Tsarina had told her she needed to be able to manifest such defenses instantly on her own merits, but a triple-layer defense of folded aura while also maintaining Exalt wasn’t exactly easy.

Regardless of the details, at the very least, the opening assault of Oscuro was by a pack of monsters that, all things considered, were far from the most dangerous opponents Roxy had encountered. Within minutes, the remaining manta ray monsters flew off into the darkness, leaving Roxy only a little short of breath, though her insides were aching from the stress of maintaining Exalt.

Dismissing the blade, it returned to its pommel form as she crossed her arms.

Now, back to the initial problem… Where the heck is everyone?

Closing her eyes, Roxy forced her resonance field to ‘compress,’ holding it in as she fed it energy until, a minute later, it escaped as a single pulse. The single pulse was far from enough to glean anything useful about whatever it touched upon, but it did notify her if anything was in quite a large area.

Monsters, lots of them, but most are low-tier sevens.

That wasn’t unexpected; they’d known that there were plenty of low-tier-seven monsters near the ‘entrance’ of Oscuro.

What piqued her interest was the clear disharmony of some very confused monsters.

And confusion indicates one thing.

Closing her eyes once more, Roxy mentally probed outward, feeling for the fabric of the world around her. It was slight, but she could faintly make sense of the ‘ridges’ where direction seemed to flip or change at random, where up became down, down became up, left to right, right to left, so on and so forth.

There were a lot of those ridges, making it quite a mental task to keep track of them all. Doing her best anyway, Roxy charted her course before finally getting a move on. Navigating the debris field with the spatial contortions at least somewhat mapped out was far simpler than it could have been, only requiring gauging jumps between platforms or the like.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Spending nearly an hour traveling what should have taken only a few minutes, Roxy finally landed upon a shattered cathedral, a horde of hundreds of manta rays bobbing and weaving through the air as they seemed unable to stop, following an enchanting rhythm.

“Having fun?” Roxy asked as she located the culprit, hidden in a foggy mist that seemed perfectly capable of obscuring him, the eyes naturally drifting past if one couldn’t sense him as Roxy could.

The mist faded, revealing Elijah standing there, eyes closed as his fingers danced through the air, a look somewhere between a smile and a frown.

“Well, I would appreciate someone handling these things,” the barkeeper and musician said. “I can keep them entranced, but it's taking a lot out of me to hold such a crowd for as long as I have. If they weren’t so simple-minded, I might have burnt out already.”

“Line ‘em up, and I can cut them down in one go,” Roxy said.

“Overkill?”

“But fast.”

“Can’t deny that,” The musician said with a laugh.

Lining herself up, Roxy retrieved Exalt’s pommel as she took several steady breaths.

“By the way, when I draw them together, they’re going to be mad,” Elijah informed her. “Being tricked for an hour straight tends to do that.”

“I’ve got it,” Roxy said. “Just line them up.”

“If you say so.”

The man suddenly held a flute, raising it to his lips before blowing into it, a single shrillnote that seemed to shake the manta ray horde out of whatever confused stupor they were in. Like a single mind, the horde locked onto the two of them before racing forward, a cloud of purple and black death.

Here we go.

Raising the pommel overhead in a two-handed grip, Roxy felt the power swelling for a single, massive strike.

“Exalt,” Roxy shouted, the blade instantly manifesting. “Roar!”

Swinging downward, the golden blade seemed to extend endlessly in a roaring column of golden light that illuminated the dark cloud of death.

The reaction was instant; the moment the golden light descended upon the horde, they shrieked as one before exploding, unable to bear the sheer power collapsing upon them.

Dropping to the ground only a moment later, Rory sucked in deep breaths. She’d called upon Exalt’s Roar twice in one day. Tsarina had explained that pushing herself was good for growth, like a muscle being exercised, but it took a lot out of her.

The good news was that the golden beam had done its job, completely removing the monsters from play.

The bad news was, perhaps, that the overkill might have been a bit too much, as something roared.

“Uhh, Lady Roxy?” Elijah asked, looking at the sensen woman currently plopped on the ground, eyes worried.

“So, problem,” Roxy said. “I’m spent.”

“Spent? Like, you can’t fight at full speed or-”

“Like, please throw me over your shoulder and run.”

Pinching his nose, Elijah groaned.

“Should have stayed at the bar.”

Their escape from whatever had locked onto them was surprisingly relaxed, mostly because with Roxy guiding him, Elijah had little issue navigating the maze of spatial distortions, the presence of something constantly lurking just close enough that they knew stopping would be a bad idea.

When they finally came to a stop, it was when they’d managed to navigate their way to the ground far below, a scraggy badland of black and purple grass with dusty, bleached sand and dirt that was blown about by a wind that seemed to want to scrape irritants into their eyes at all times.

Hunkering down for the ‘night’ though there was no nighttime within Oscuro, an eternal twilight, the two remained beneath an illusion that Elijah had propped up through the use of a magical music box.

The good news was that, as a tier seven, Roxy had no need for the comforts of a bed to sleep on the hard-packed, itchy ground. Within what felt like moments of their ‘shelter’ being put in place, she was out like a light.

When Roxy awoke next, she was lying on a durable foam mattress, an adventurer's cot. They were quite popular within Ehkorrus, even if they were little more than a glorified blanket that could conform to the terrain and expand into a thicker mat.

“Morning,” Elijah tipped his hat to her. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like the dead,” Roxy sighed, sitting upright. “Any news on the whereabouts of-”

“Us?” A new voice said as a man appeared. “Morning.”

“Flair,” Roxy nodded to the man before glancing to the side. “Kai Rong.”

“Apologies for the disruption,” Kai Rong said, bowing her head slightly. “I did not expect us to be separated. Due to our tier, we attracted the attention of Oscuro Crashers. Tier eights, while they weren’t too terribly threatening on their own, the more we fought-”

“The more that found you,” Roxy guessed.

“Exactly,” Flair snapped his fingers. “On the plus side, it made finding each other fairly easy. The downside was I basically had to drag her off, or it would have continued forever.”

Dusting herself off and standing up, Roxy stretched before shaking her head.

“So, now what?”

“We’ve convened, which was priority number one,” Kai Rong answered. “After that, we have no clear directive or direction; it’s up to our own best guess of where to travel.”

“I say that way,” Flair pointed off into the distance.

“Why there?” Roxy asked, curious.

“Dunno,” Flair shrugged. “But if there is no obvious reason to go in any direction, then does it matter if we pick one at random?”

“That does make sense,” Elijah said with a frown. “Even if it seems like some careless logic.”

“Ahh, relax, see, this is how I know you were stuffed inside most of your life,” Flair said as he wrapped his arm around the man. “Us adventurers, we go where the wind takes us. Right?”

“I was only a proper adventurer for a short period,” Kai Rong answered, deflecting.

“I was never an adventurer,” Roxy said with a shrug. “Couldn’t tell you.”

“Bah, that’s for backing me up,” Flair snorted. “Alright, how about this logic for you? Did any of us spot anything in the directions we came from originally?”

“No,” Kai Rong said.

“No,” Elijah agreed.

“Ditto,” Roxy answered.

“Then bingo, we go in the direction none of us went. Better logic?”

“I suppose,” Elijah said, before humming a few notes to himself. “And I do suppose it can’t hurt.”

“Oh, it definitely can,” Flair said, undermining himself. “But that’s half the fun.”

“Wait, question,” Roxy asked. “Anyone spot any interesting things around while I was out?”

“Ehh, the grass and some of the flora are noted as carrying traces of ‘miasmic shadows,’ but while it might be worth collecting some, it's all mundane grade,” Flair answered. “The miasmic shadows, I think, are referring to the natural latent pneuma of Oscuro being toxic.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I suppose we’re wasting our time here, at the very least,” Roxy sighed.

“That’s the attitude,” Flair grinned. “Off to adventure!”