Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]

With a simple flex of my chrome-colored wings, I kindly ask the Earth’s gravity to release me from its hold. After a brief moment of discussion, the Earth begrudgingly complies with my not-a-request and allows me to rise into the air. Chloe’s golden light manifests in a pair of majestic wings that look like a swan in human form, and she takes my hand, joining me in the mountain air above the Mile-High City.

The moon is down to a waning gibbous, little more than half its face shining the sun’s reflected light upon the night sky. Still, in the absence of clouds, it is more than bright enough to illuminate and guide our passage. A thousand miles we have to travel, maybe a bit more, and it’s already just after 9:30 in the evening. We’ll have to make good time.

Ah, shit, I just jinxed it with such thoughts, didn’t I? Darn.

I learn one thing shortly after we begin our flight from the outer edges of the Rockies down into the heart of the Great American Plains. The place is absolutely massive, and by the goddess, is it empty as fuck. Large chunks of it are cordoned off as farmland— mostly wheat, I presume in this part of the country— but the bulk of the land is little more than an untamed frontier with shrubs and prairie grasses growing without a care in the world.

It’s in these wilds, newly created days after the System first initialized the Earth into its universe-rupturing designs, that powerful beasts roam, or more commonly sleep. No monstrosities on the scale of those oversized City Slayers, but there are some bears that look to be about twenty feet long and large tribes of hundreds of giant… I can’t tell from this height if they are antelopes or deer or some other animal along those lines.

Above us are large birds of prey— hawks and eagles with wingspans far larger than our own— although none of them move to intercept Chloe and me. Perhaps they have already had encounters with humans or humanoid cyborgs and know better than to mess with us. Or perhaps they’re merely marshaling their forces for an ambush. It hasn’t gotten quiet yet, with the whistle of the wind and the occasional squawks, so we’re probably safe for now.

As we travel to the east, the cool prevailing winds at our back, I keep my eyes constantly in motion. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m never going to assume there won’t be some would-be apex predator along the way who thinks that we’re but juicy morsels flying to our own slaughter.

“Hey love,” Chloe asks. “Should we do a double-check to make sure we’re going the right way?”

That’s the other problem with flying by night. Neither of us has any navigation experience, and while we can follow the general path just fine, maintaining a course of slightly south of due east, even a couple of degrees off could mean dozens of miles off course. GPS still exists, but with the whole ‘planet in turmoil’ and ‘mass-scale restructuring’, it doesn’t always work well in the middle of nowhere. Not that it ever worked very well at altitude, by design, and we don’t want to take the time to land and hope to find a signal.

Normally, the existence of Tower Gauntlets, glowing with a dim auroral din, each sprawling as much as a mile into the sky, provides us some ability to triangulate our position. The problem with this is that there really aren’t any. What Hank said earlier was right: Denver is in the middle of damn near nowhere!

So, we fly, stargaze, hold hands, struggle not to kiss each other and veer off course— it’s not my fault Chloe is so beautiful and radiant it hurts!

“So, how’s the new helmet treating you?” I ask.

“It’s more than I could have hoped for. The defensive properties are amazing, and it also gives a lot of resistance against both [Fire] and [Ice] attacks. It also strengthens my [Fire]-aligned damage.”

“Do you have any spells or abilities that deal [Fire]-type damage?”

“No, but I have a feeling I’ll get some sooner rather than later.”

“Hmm… I wonder if my assimilation of the [Crimson Heart] into my being will cause me to gain specific [Fire]-aligned Skills beyond those I can replicate through [Glyphcasting].”

“It’s worth a shot. Just… maybe not right now…”

Chloe is right. I feel we’ve just encroached upon something we really ought not to have. The temperature drops; I break out into goosebumps, and the chirping of birds comes to a halt. A few seconds later, the wind from before comes to an abrupt halt. We quickly retrieve our weapons from our [Inventory] and ready ourselves for the battle about to begin.

“Where is it?” Chloe asks, cutting through the silence with soft-spoken words. “I can’t see anything.”

“Nor can I sense it just yet. But it’s too quiet.”

Not above, not below. Neither ahead nor behind. My eyes dart side to side, but again, nothing. At Chloe’s insistence, the two of us continue our flight to the east, hoping against all odds that maybe we’ll pass the distortion and find ourselves able to continue on home none the worse for wear.

My dim hopes are dashed when the monster appears, charging at Chloe at top speed and nearly engulfing her before I’m able to pull her out of the monster’s charge.

Although I have no idea what, exactly, this creature is. It’s a sphere about eight feet in diameter, nearly transparent, just leaving faint ripples in the environment. For a moment, I wonder if it’s some creature native to subspace— the ripples look very similar to those created whenever a creature enters or leaves the principal layer of reality. But no, upon closer inspection— and with a slight headache for my trouble— I realize that this creature is merely cloaking its appearance and [Ether] signature.

“Thanks, Sera,” Chloe says. Her new blades glow with golden light as she channels her own [Ether] into the creature, then charges headfirst like a golden warrior goddess at the shimmering mass of… whatever this creature is. I keep my distance, waiting to cover Chloe from the counterattack that never comes.

The creature doesn’t block, nor does it move to evade. Instead it just sits there and lets Chloe’s attack phase right through it. Chloe doesn’t relent, though, and hits it with another attack, then another. All of them have absolutely no effect except for Chloe to start breathing more heavily.

There goes my hypothesis that this creature is native to subspace; if it were, it would have been eviscerated by the overwhelming quantity of [Light]-damage inflicted upon its incorporeal form. But the creature is hale and hearty. And, though it’s difficult to be sure through the cloaking field it emits, I think this creature has gotten a little bigger.

“Stop, Chloe!” I call out. “I think this creature might absorb [Light]-element attacks!”

Chloe grimaces. “So what do you want me to do? I don’t have any attacks that aren’t [Light]-aligned!”

“Let’s switch; maybe I can find some way to damage it!”

Chloe isn’t happy, but she falls back and starts channeling a large amount of [Ether]. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I trust her absolutely.

What I don’t trust is for this spherical fuck to go down quickly or easily. As expected from its appearance and seeming intangibility, all of my strikes are completely ineffective. Worse, the creature hasn’t made any move to attack after its initial ambush strike. An ambush predator, yes, but why is it just floating there, watching us? Usually an ambush predator would retreat in this situation. Does it simply know that it is immune to most forms of attack, or maybe–

I switch Filia from [Light]-damage mode to [Non-Elemental] mode and begin thrusting. Nothing happens, as to be expected, although I need to get a better idea of this creature’s proclivities before I can start devising countermeasures. When I switch back to [Light]-mode, my spear still penetrating the creature’s transparent, shimmering form, I feel a small pull, my [Ether] drained by a small amount.

That explains a lot. What this creature is, and why it appeared. I was half-right before. This creature is a predator, but not one that ambushes prey in the sense I had thought before. It does absorb [Light]; in fact, this creature seems to eat light. Thanks to its intangibility, it has little to fear from most of its prey, and with Chloe’s wings and swords glowing with a celestial shine, it seems to have found an all-you-can-eat buffet.

And then an idea hits me. “Chloe, switch to attacking again!”

“Are you sure?”

“No!” I truthfully say. “But I was thinking that maybe we can overfill it. Give it more than it can eat, and maybe it’ll explode.”

“That’s a terrible idea!” Chloe responds. “But I’ve got nothing better than that, so it’s worth a shot!”

The two of us go for an all-out assault. As expected, the creature does nothing to resist our advances, simply sitting there and allowing the full-course meal to brighten its palate. As I’d seen earlier, it starts to grow as well. Nine feet, then ten, then twelve, all the while we continue to pelt away at it, hoping that at some point, the creature is going to burst.

“Is it working?” Chloe asks. “It doesn’t feel like it’s getting any weaker, just bigger.”

“I don’t know; I’ve never heard of a monster like this. But it beats just sitting there and waiting for it to– To– Fuck.”

“What’s happening?” Chloe asks. “I can’t see it very well.”

“Its center is starting to pinch. We’re not making this creature burst. We’re causing it to divide.”

“Well, that’s just great!”

Chloe seethes. I mirror Chloe’s frustration. The logic was reasonable, but the results were not what we were expecting. Unfortunately, that still leaves the question unanswered of how to deal with these shimmering orbs, as I’ve decided to call them. Once Chloe gets out of the way, I throw a [Lightning]-aligned [Elemental Ether Strike], hoping that perhaps a different element might be more effective.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. My [Lightning] is as ineffective as my physical attacks were, and trying [Fire] proves no better. While it might have another weakness, at this point, I’m not going to drain my [Ether] yet further hoping to suss one out without some sort of lead. Going into subspace might work, but I can’t drag an incorporeal creature with me. If this is just a projection and its real body is in subspace.

The problem is that Chloe doesn’t have any attacks that don’t deal [Light]-elemental damage. If she did, and I went into subspace right at the creature phased out of the principal layer, then maybe I could… Wait a minute–

“Chloe, switch to your other swords!”

“Why?”

“This creature seems to phase out of reality the moment we attack it with anything other than [Light] attacks. Maybe if you hit it and I slip into subspace right then, we can catch the creature unaware!”

“But Sera! You’re still suffering some lingering Dimensional Sickness! I don’t want you to exacerbate the situation even further! Especially because–”

“Do you have a better idea, Chloe? I don’t want to drag this thing back home with us!”

Chloe sighs. “Just promise me you won’t spend long in subspace!”

I nod. Chloe switches back to the [Swords of Repose]. Am I ever grateful we didn’t decide to sell them! Her attacks fly with even greater celerity than before, slashing and slashing again and again in a cadence of rhythmic fury. I take a breath to prepare myself for the pain that awaits me and grit my teeth before vanishing.

Instantly I feel my body rebelling against me. I fight the impulse to drag my sorry as back into conventional space to try some other plan, barely tethering myself to this plane of existence. I want to vomit. I want to break down and cry and scream from the pain that my body still remembers where I nearly lost my life as I was torn apart at the cellular level. But I have a job to do; everything rides on this, and I will never fail Chloe.

It’s excruciating just to look at this reality; classical conditioning is a bitch. But I’m able to force the pain down, block it out, and power through. My earlier hypothesis is correct; the creature does have to pull parts of its body into subspace when it phases through attacks, though it seems to have some other Skill that negates the damage it would take. Then again, as a seemingly-massless, formless blob of… whatever the hell it is, maybe it just naturally has immunity to the ravages of this place. Because why the fuck would things be easy for me just once in my life?

With my rage now at its peak, I let my pain and fury become my power, thrusting my lance in rapid succession toward the bits and pieces of gelatinous flesh that appear and then disappear a moment later. Being in different dimensions, I can’t coordinate my strikes with Chloe through our bond. But that’s not necessary; I know Chloe better than I know anyone else. I know how she fights perhaps better than she does herself. It’s trivial to coordinate wordlessly, and together, we attack the monster dozens of times every tormentuous second until we’ve brought the creature to the brink of–

With a pained scream, I’m forced back into conventional space right before the final blow can be struck. My vision is nearly completely dark and I struggle just to keep myself from blacking out. Only the sobering reality that falling to the ground will mean death, keeps me from crashing down to the ground right here and now. Chloe’s [Potent Cure] stitches up the worst of it, but there’s still the fifteen foot wide elephant in the room to deal with it. And as I am right now, I’m not at all sure how we’re going to finally purge this thing from existence.