Chapter 180: Twice the Gravity
The first thing Holden felt was weight.
Not the gentle, familiar weight of gravity on Earth. This was something else, something that pressed down on every inch of his body like the sky itself was trying to crush him flat. His boots hit solid ground, and his knees buckled for a second before his Rank 3 body caught up and locked solid.
The second thing he felt was the air. It was wrong, thick and heavy, tasting like battery acid. A metallic film coated the inside of his mouth, making him want to spit.
The third thing he felt was the darkness.
The Abyssal Realm was not black. It was worse than black. It was a deep purple that stretched in every direction like the sky itself was an infected wound. There was no sun, moon or stars. The only light came from the portal behind them, a shrinking ring of grey-white light that was already fading as the rift settled around them, along with a faint, sickly bioluminescence pulsing through the walls of the canyon like veins in a living body.
The ground was solid stone, covered in a thin layer of something that looked like ash but moved on its own, shifting and curling.
Behind him, the rest of Team Soup landed.
Emric hit the ground and staggered, his knees bending as his shield arm dipped and his face twisted under the sudden, crushing pressure.
"Double gravity," he managed through gritted teeth. His glasses slid down his nose, but he couldn’t spare a hand to push them up. "Widen your stance. Your normal footing won’t hold."
Renna landed next and stumbled forward three steps before catching herself on her bow. Her arms were shaking, not from fear but from the sheer physical pressure of an entire extra body weight pressing down on her bones.
"This is AWFUL!" she gasped. "It feels like someone stacked a second me on top of the first me! How are we supposed to fight like this?"
"Your bones can handle it," Emric said, planting his feet wider and lowering his center of gravity. "It’s the muscles that need a second to catch up. Give it a moment."
"I don’t HAVE a moment! Everything is terrible!"
Lyra landed last and was the steadiest of the three. Her Rank 2, 4-Star body processed the gravity shift faster, her muscles tightening and adapting within seconds. She straightened, rolled her shoulders, and gripped her spear.
"Heavy. But manageable."
"That’s because you have two extra stars of ’manageable’ that we don’t!" Renna snapped.
"Two stars isn’t that big a gap."
"It is when the planet is trying to sit on your head!"
Holden stood still, letting his body adjust. His Rank 3 frame barely registered the gravity shift. To him, it felt like wearing a slightly heavier backpack. Annoying, not debilitating.
He looked around.
They were in a canyon. The walls rose on both sides, fifty feet high, made of the same dark, cracked stone as the floor. The stone was alive, not metaphorically but literally. The cracks pulsed with that sickly bioluminescent glow, and the surface shifted subtly like the skin of something breathing. Veins of dark energy ran through the stone in branching patterns.
The canyon stretched forward into darkness. At the far end, barely visible in the purple gloom, something glowed. A faint, deep red light. Pulsing.
The anchor.
But between them and the anchor, the canyon was not empty.
The sound came first.
kkkrrrrk. kkkrrrrk. kkkrrrrk.
Then the shadows moved.
They stepped out of alcoves carved into the canyon walls. Twenty of them. Abyssal Centurions.
They were humanoid, roughly. Seven feet tall and built like armored statues, their bodies made of the same dark stone as the canyon fused with plates of corrupted metal that grew directly from their flesh. Their heads were smooth, featureless domes of black steel with two horizontal slits where eyes should be. Each one carried a weapon in its hands. Some had swords, some axes, some hammers, all made of the same corrupted metal.
Rank 2, 8-Star. Every single one of them.
The Centurions moved in perfect formation. They spread across the canyon in a wide arc, blocking the path forward, their weapons raised and angled in a coordinated defensive line.
kkkrrrrk. kkkrrrrk.
The sound was their armor, the metal plates grinding against each other with every movement.
Renna nocked an arrow. "Twenty of them. Rank 2, 8-Star! That’s a lot of stars! I counted!"
"That’s not how stars work," Emric said.
"I DON’T CARE HOW THEY WORK!"
Holden looked at the Centurions. Twenty Rank 2, 8-Star elites in perfect formation. Two days ago, this would have been a serious problem, a fight that required his full attention and probably his fire.
Today, it was a test.
Not for him but for them.
"Emric. Front line. When they charge, angle your shield. Let their own force bounce off."
Emric adjusted his stance. "Angle the shield. Got it."
"Lyra. Freeze the ground under their feet. Don’t go for full immobilization, just slow them down."
"Understood." Lyra raised her free hand, and frost energy gathered around her fingers in tight, controlled spirals.
"Renna. Eye slits. That’s the only weak point. Don’t waste arrows anywhere else."
"Eye slits. That’s my favorite." She drew her bowstring back, lightning crawling along the arrows.
The Centurions charged.
Twenty of them moved in perfect unison.
KKKRRRRK. KKKRRRRK. KKKRRRRK.
The sound was deafening, a wall of corrupted energy bearing down on them.
Emric stepped forward.
He planted his feet, lowered his center of gravity, and raised his shield at an angle. The first Centurion reached him and brought its greatsword down in a massive overhead strike.
CLANG!
Emric’s boots skidded back three inches across the ground. His arm shook and his teeth clenched, but the shield held.
The angle did exactly what Holden said it would.
The Centurion’s force, redirected by the angled shield, bounced back. Its greatsword slid off the shield face, and the recoil drove the Centurion’s own weapon into the one standing next to it. Both staggered sideways, their formation breaking.
"It worked!" Emric shouted. "They’re formation is breaking!"
The second wave pushed past their stumbling companions and charged.
Lyra struck.
She slammed her palm into the ground, and frost energy erupted outward in a massive, expanding circle. The floor became a frictionless sheet, and the Centurions lost traction. Their synchronized charge turned into a sliding, stumbling mess, legs locking in place as the ice crept up their ankles and froze their joints.
kkkrrrk. crack. kkkrrrrk.
Three seconds. That was the window.
Renna fired.
She didn’t aim individually. Her 10x cognitive buff processed all twenty targets simultaneously, calculating wind resistance, arrow trajectory, armor density, and eye-slit coordinates in the second it took to release.
Seven arrows in two seconds.
whiz. whiz. whiz. whiz. whiz. whiz. whiz.
Each arrow was wrapped in crackling Storm energy, and each one found an eye slit. Seven Centurions dropped instantly, their heads snapping back as the arrows punched through the horizontal slits and buried themselves in whatever served as a brain inside those featureless helmets.
clatter. clatter. clatter. clatter. clatter. clatter. clatter.
Seven down.
Thirteen remaining.
Holden walked forward.
He didn’t run or charge. The Solar-Forged Sword hung at his side, the blade catching the sickly purple light of the canyon. His Phantom-Weave Armor moved with him, silent and dark.
He reached the first Centurion. Its legs were frozen, its arms flailing as it tried to break free. Its greatsword swung wildly at him.
Holden turned his head, and the blade passed an inch from his ear.
He raised his sword and brought it down across the Centurion’s neck. The Solar-Forged steel sheared through the corrupted metal and the dark stone beneath, separating the head from the body before it hit the ground.
thud.
He walked to the next one. Same motion. Same result.
thud.
And the next.
thud.
And the next.
thud. thud. thud.
The Centurions couldn’t move, couldn’t dodge, and couldn’t even raise their weapons properly with their legs frozen in place. They were statues, and Holden was removing pieces with precision.
thud. thud. thud. thud. thud. thud.
Twelve seconds. Thirteen Centurions.
The last one was bigger than the others, its armor thicker and its weapon a massive war hammer that it had managed to raise above its head despite the ice. It brought the hammer down with everything it had.
Holden sidestepped. The hammer hit the stone where he had been standing and cracked the floor.
He placed his sword against the back of the Centurion’s neck and pushed. The steel slid through the gap between two armor plates. The Centurion went rigid, then slack, its hammer dropping to the ground.
clatter.
[Abyssal Centurion (Rank 2, 8-Star) Defeated! x20!]
[+13,000 KP!]
[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]
[+26,000 KP!]
[Current KP: 608,290]
Holden flicked the ichor off his blade and turned to his team.
Emric was staring at the field of bodies, his shield still raised. Slowly, he lowered it.
"The ricochet actually worked," he said, and there was something almost surprised in his voice. "I felt the force transfer. It was like hitting a wall that hit them back."
Renna was bouncing on her feet, despite the double gravity. "Did you SEE my hits? I didn’t miss ONE! My brain just, it just DID it! It saw the targets and did the math and my hands went! The 10x thing is INSANE!"
Lyra lowered her hand from the ground. The ice held for another few seconds, then cracked and dissolved as she stopped feeding it energy. "Four seconds. I was aiming for three."
"You’re getting faster," Emric said.
"I’m getting better."
Holden looked at them. The purple light of the Abyssal Realm painted them in dark, alien colors. Emric stood behind his shield, still slightly breathless, while Renna crackled with electricity and barely contained her excitement. Lyra remained calm and regal, her spear gleaming.
They had just killed twenty Rank 2, 8-Star elites without him doing anything except cleaning up.
"Good work," he said. "That was clean and fast. That’s exactly what you needed to be."
Renna beamed so hard it looked painful.
Emric pushed his glasses up. "Nineteen seconds from first contact to last kill. That’s... actually really good."
"We’re not ’really good,’" Renna said. "We’re terrifying."
"She’s not wrong," Lyra said.
Holden turned back to the canyon.
The dark stone stretched ahead, narrowing as it went deeper. The walls pressed closer, the bioluminescent veins pulsing faster as if the realm itself was reacting to their presence. Something ahead was aware of them. Something ahead was waiting.
And at the far end of the canyon, that deep red glow pulsed.
The anchor.
Holden raised his Solar-Forged Sword. The blade ignited, white-hot crimson fire blazing along the steel and pushing back the purple darkness. The heat was intense, the fire reflecting in the walls of the canyon and turning the passage into a tunnel of orange and red.
He pointed the blazing blade down the canyon.
"That way. Stay tight and sharp."
Emric fell into position, shield up, eyes forward.
Renna nocked three arrows. "Right behind you. Like always."
Lyra took the rear, her spear humming and eyes glowing.
Team Soup moved deeper into the Abyssal Realm, following the red light.