Chapter 499
Chapter 499
Jake attempted to lift his hand to fire a grappling hook at the synth phantom, but his limb refused to cooperate. The creature’s glowing eyes kept gazing into his own, holding him in place, mesmerizing him. He had to look away. That was the only way to break the hypnotic tether.
Exerting all his willpower, he attempted to look away. For a moment, nothing happened. He felt like he was struggling to lift an extremely heavy object. He could feel that the effort was burning through his mana at an incredibly fast pace, but he didn’t care. He needed to break visual contact with the ghostlike creature no matter what.
Then he finally felt his attempts begin to pay off. Inch by inch, his head began to turn away. Then his body followed. Slowly but surely, he kept turning away from the synth phantom, and then, when he turned halfway away from it, he finally managed to wrench his gaze free from its hypnotic stare.
Look at me, immediately said the same weird voice in his head.
As soon as he heard the call, his head snapped back to the synth phantom, his eyes once again locked on the monster’s. Jake felt so frustrated he wanted to shatter something, anything, with his smashfists. But of course, he once again couldn’t move.
His resistance to mind control was 25%. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it clearly wasn’t nearly enough to properly resist the synth phantom’s mind-controlling ability. With enormous effort, he could break visual contact. But that alone wasn’t enough. He also had to resist the phantom’s mental command, refusing to obey when it called him to look.
But before attempting to break eye contact again, he decided to check on his mana first. He could tell he had just burned through a hefty chunk of it simply trying to break the hypnotic tether, so he had to know how much he still had left.
MP: 379,676 / 450,000
It was bad. Before attempting to break eye contact, he’d had over four hundred and thirty thousand MP, meaning he had just lost over fifty thousand mana in just a few seconds.
It was no good. Still, he knew he had to make another attempt to break free.
Just then, something happened. The synth phantom opened its mouth, and out of it shot a beam of light toward him, enveloping him in its glow. It didn’t harm him in any way, so at first, he wasn’t even sure what was happening. Then the answer became obvious.
The synth phantom turned as it began to gain altitude. At the same time, Jake was lifted off the ground and moved in the same direction the synth phantom did. The beam kept shining from the creature’s mouth, striking Jake and always keeping him suspended directly in front of it.
At one point, Jake noticed Owen in his peripheral vision. Just like him, his partner was held by the telekinetic beam of the other synth phantom. Both creatures then flew upward, moving toward the mothership hovering motionlessly high above them. The synth stalkers followed, flying on both sides of the phantoms.
Jake kept trying to break visual contact with the ghostlike monster holding him, but to no avail. He couldn’t see the mothership anymore, as it was directly behind him now, but he could feel them drawing closer. The earth beneath them dropped farther and farther away. Jake had no idea what awaited them in the mothership, but he knew they were about to find out.
It wasn’t long before they passed through the mothership’s gigantic maw. Though Jake couldn’t turn his head or even tear his gaze away from the synth phantom’s eyes, he still managed to catch glimpses of the environment in his peripheral vision.
The interior was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The walls seemed ridged and dotted with countless small lights of different colors. What those were, he had no clue. He made another attempt to break free, but for some reason, it seemed to be getting harder and harder to do so. For the first time, the huge difference in level between him and his enemies felt real.
Suddenly, the synth phantom came to a stop. Almost immediately, what looked like a soap bubble appeared around him. The beam stopped shining from the ghostlike creature’s mouth, and he instantly felt the hypnotic tether sever. He could finally look away from the synth phantom and move freely again.
However, he quickly learned he was still trapped, only in a different way now. He hovered inside the bubble as if in zero gravity, unable to move from the spot. He tried to reach the bubble, but it was well out of reach of his limbs.
He quickly looked around and, to the left, saw Owen trapped in a similar bubble. As for the synth phantoms and stalkers, they no longer paid them any attention. The creatures flew past and behind them. As Jake glanced over his shoulder, he saw some kind of circular door spiral open to admit the creatures. One by one, they flew through the opening, and then the door closed behind them in the same strange way.
Jake didn’t like it one bit. They were captured like wild animals. But for what purpose? Whatever the reason, he wanted no part of it. They needed to escape.
He sprouted bladed tentacles from his back and lashed out at the bubble. To his surprise, they did absolutely nothing. The moment they struck its surface, they seemed to lose all power, all momentum, as if the impact had been swallowed whole.
He then morphed one hand into a rotary blade launcher and fired a saw blade at the bubble. It spun through the air and hit the bubble’s transparent wall. As soon as it struck, the rotary saw blade stopped dead on contact, all momentum erased in an instant.
Jake opened his mouth and launched an acid spit. It splattered against the inner side of the bubble and just hovered there. It didn’t sizzle or smoke, and it definitely failed to eat through the bubble’s weird surface. As he watched, the acid splatter faded, disappearing right before his eyes until there was nothing left of it.
He quickly glanced at his partner and saw that he was also employing various abilities, trying to shatter the bubble he was trapped in. Just like Jake’s bladed tentacles, his scythe-blades inflicted no damage on the bubble whatsoever.
Owen even attempted to use his golem form. He quickly grew inside the bubble as his entire physique changed and armor thickened around his body. It wasn’t long before his growing body filled every iota of the bubble’s inner space. And then the expansion just stopped, failing to shatter the bubble.
For a second, Owen just remained there, jammed motionless inside, his limbs tangled in a dense mass of obsidian-black armor. It took Jake a moment to make out his face in the bulk, but eventually he found it. Owen was helplessly staring back at him.
If Jake could laugh, he probably would have despite their situation. Owen looked ridiculous, like something straight out of Looney Tunes.
Then Owen seemed to shrink back down, deflating to his normal form. Moments later, he was hovering inside his bubble once more. He sprouted his scythe-blades again, lashing out at the bubble around him. He swiped at it with fierce abandon, clearly frustrated with his inability to break free from his small prison. Sure enough, his furious strikes did no damage to the bubble at all.
Before Jake could think of what else to try, both his bubble and Owen’s suddenly lurched into motion.
His shot backward at incredible speed. Just as he glanced back, he saw a circular door behind him spiral open to admit him. He quickly glanced to his left and saw that Owen was being carried into a different opening.
They were being separated, and Jake didn’t like it one bit.
A heartbeat later, his bubble raced into a tunnel that looked like a tube or hose. It was straight and only slightly wider than the bubble itself. The interior was smooth, patterned with a mosaic-like design, each segment glowing with clusters of colorful lights.
The ride didn’t last long. After a few seconds, the bubble began to slow down until it finally came to a halt. Then, just below him, one section slid apart, and the bubble slipped through it. Jake found himself in a rectangular room. The bubble hovered about a foot above the floor.
He quickly glanced around, but there was nothing inside. The floor, ceiling, and three walls were solid and made of some hard, dark material. However, the wall he was facing was missing. In its place was some kind of force field stretched across the opening. It was yellow and semi-transparent. Through it, he could see a corridor, and on the other side of it was a rectangular room not dissimilar to the one he found himself in. Inside that room was Owen, also still trapped in his bubble.
Just as he glanced up, he saw the opening seal shut, blending seamlessly with the ceiling. After that, the bubble simply vanished. Jake dropped to the floor and immediately sprang to his feet. He looked through the force field and saw that Owen had also just been released.
For a second, they just stared at each other. They didn’t need to communicate. No words were needed. They both knew exactly what the other was thinking.
It was time to get out.