[Can’t Opt Out]

Haru’s sword swung through the air, decapitating one of the invaders that Emilia would passionately argue did not fit the description of {Crawlers}. Still, her Censor continued to read [Invaders: {Crawlers} + {Unknown}].

A slash of red spit off Haru’s sword as he spun in a haze of black aether, knocking back a dozen invaders before the slash exploded into darts that shattered through their skulls. Lovely, and nostalgic. It wasn’t the first time Emilia had thought that Haru’s favoured willbrand form reminded her of another she had seen, during her childhood. It had been decades, though, so she could just be imagining things—filling in forgotten details with the ones she saw semi-regularly through Haru. Then again, maybe she wasn’t.

[Lili has connected {Loser Squad} to your Network!]

[Communication Network Expanded!]

[Communication Network: 83/357]

Lili, who Emilia had yet to actually see, had gone off to try and connect their network to someone who knew why so many heroes were being taken out—i.e. left to move themselves out of active fight zones and forced to wait until the raid was over to be able to communicate with anyone again. Almost half of the heroes had been taken out in the first ten minutes, while more than two-thirds of the invaders still remained.

Emilia sighed as she wandered through the carnage, her willbrand protecting her from anything that got too close. She had just wanted lunch! Now she was stuck in this raid where nebulae knew what was happening! She was hungry and just wanted out~

An invader lunged towards her, pressing tight against the barrier of her willbrand and refusing to be pushed completely away. She frowned at it. Rude. She wasn’t doing anything to it—not that they had done anything to the things they had fought during the war, as far as anyone could tell. And yes, it was programmed to attack her. And yes, she had spent ten minutes teasing the invaders and riling them up, but still! Rude.

“Can’t you just go bother someone else?” she asked, smiling brightly and fluttering her eyes at it. You never know, it could worked.

It hissed, apparently upset by her existence. Its feet dug into the ground as it pushed against her shield, the formerly limp legs hanging down like too long bangs over its face twitched, as though they too wanted to push but were too weak from disuse.

“Artificial disuse,” she reminded herself. These things didn’t exist before a raid. They were simply constructs of the raid system, pulling at the aether to create monsters. They weren’t as nearly strong as the real monsters were, but it disturbed her, how the system—how the government and corporations—could create such things with relative ease. Of course, that also meant heroes within the system often didn’t realize the difference in strength between the invaders of a raid and an echo—didn’t realize they might be able to beat invaders with the snap of a finger but would lose their lives against even the weakest of echoes.

She glanced around as the creature—a {Lithro} apparently—continued pressing at her barrier. It didn’t have teeth or a mouth on its face, as far as she could tell. Just leg bangs and slits that she assumed were eyes. Somehow, she’d wandered a little too far from her friends. She could call someone to help her, of course, but she had a bit too much pride to do that when it was just her against a single opponent.

She could hold her own even against a mob, thank you! She just would have preferred not to be here at all, was the thing.

Abruptly, she released her barrier and bolted backwards. The bug overbalanced, landing with a wet splat across the spot she had just been, its body squishy like some gelatinous dessert across the ground. It was so flat for a moment that—if not for the lack of any notification—Emilia wouldn’t have been sure it wasn’t dead. Then it popped back up, its body reforming into a long tube that stood on its back quarter. It hissed from its missing mouth again, liquid squirting off its body that had her shooting further backwards, away from the smell.

She watched in mild interest as the blackish-blue liquid burned the ground, like acid. “Okay,” she thought as she swished out of range again, “note to self: do not let that shit get on your cute outfit.” That was one of the most annoying parts of raids: the damage to clothes and hair and makeup. Her barrier might protect her from almost everything, but even it occasionally missed the smaller stuff—like a drop or two of acid split. She didn’t have money to replace her clothes, thank you! And unless you were a top contributor to the raid, you wouldn’t be getting a paydrop big enough to replace your entire outfit—not unless it was cheap to begin with.

She burst back a few more steps, noting with annoyance that she was being pushed further and further away from the group. Annoying, but also interesting—she could swear the invader was purposefully isolating her.

[Sil: Need help?]

[Em: dunno]

[Em: i’m curious where it's taking me]

[Sil: It’s herding you?]

[Beth: Definitely. I can see them. That looks purposeful.]

[Sil: You got a shot, Beth?]

[Beth: Yup.]

[Sil: Let me know if that changes, or if it takes Em too far.]

[Beth: Will do.]

Emilia continued dancing with the {Lithro}. It lurched and lunged and flung more acid at her and hissed, its movements irregular and unpredictable, but a bit too slow to actually be any danger. She was keeping her barrier firmly in place, though, and she was sure Beth was keeping her sights on it. Beth was keeping her safe, and even if she wasn’t, Emilia could have switched her willbrand into a weapon. Her skills manipulating the aethernet were artificially lowered by the raid system, however. Something about keeping things fair. Your real skill utilizing the aethernet didn’t always translate into raids. Her skill was still higher than it should have been, but it was nothing compared to how skilled she was outside the raidlands, even with her own slightly less artificial limits in place. The real world was the aethernet. The raidlands were the aethernet and a computer program, monitoring and controlling everything.

Sometimes, she thought most people forgot that fact.

[Warning: Obstruction Nearby]

Emilia’s eyes glazed over with an image of the world behind her. Until now, she had been moving through a mostly empty area, only the occasional tree jumping out of the landscape, which she could easily avoid with minimal effort. Now… What were those things? She bolted far to the side and forward, getting behind the {Lithro} so she could get a full look at the area.

Her best guess was that the thing her Censor had warned her about had been a playground—an aether enhanced one. Anything that had been enhanced within the real world, in order to allow people easier access to the aethernet, acted differently within raids. You could often physically see waves of aether rolling off it. Black lines pulsed out of the deformed climbing toys, reaching out towards anything that got too close, even innocent leaves sent flying by the aether vibrating in the air.

[Beth: I was just about to tell you, if you go any further that way I’ll lose sight of you.]

[Em: so you can’t see it?]

[Sil: It?]

[Beth: It?]

[Em: it’s a black zone]

Beth swore.

[Sil: It’s not on the map.]

[Em: no it’s not]

[Sil: Haru and I will be right there.]

[Sil: Keep clear of it.]

Emilia watched as the black zone swelled to life, black waves erupting from it as the {Lithro} surged towards it. It exploded into a flash of blinding light, its aether consumed by the black zone.

It pulsed.

It breathed.

[Beth: What was that?]

[Em: one of the invaders just sacrificed to it]

Both Beth and Sil swore this time as Emilia backed up slightly. Eyes trained to the black zone as it swelled and compressed, forming itself into a giant ball of muddy, formless blackness.

[Invaders: {Crawlers} + {Deathly Black}]

“Thank you, Censor,” Emilia thought dryly, trying to throw as much sarcasm into it as she could. Her Censor only understood sarcasm about 50% of the time. She’d tried to program it to understand more, but then it had learned how to be sarcastic back, so she’d restored the previous, 50-50 sarcasm version. Interestingly, it was still sarcastic to her occasionally.

She scanned the map, wondering which way to run away, noting the smaller black dots now spread over it—babies of the black zone, not as dangerous as this thing, but certainly strong enough that they could take out all those missing heroes. The dots were quickly converging back towards their location, drawn in as their creator gained a physical shape.

Emilia wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not, but she’d wandered way further than she’d meant to. This meant that no one was around to accidentally get dragged into a boss fight, but it would also take Sil and Haru longer to reach her than she would have liked.

[Em: where do you have sight?]

[Beth sent {Sight.map}]

Emilia overlaid the maps before bolting to the right. The boss rolled after her, its muddy aether splattering across the world and destroying anything it came into contact with. Even the building enacted an impressive illusion to make it appear as though they had been affected by the hit.

A bolt from Beth’s willbrand struck the boss, a little notification altering Emilia that it had done 1/7777 damage. Awesome.

[Beth: Well, that thing’s out of my skill level.]

The ball of darkness sputtered and then exploded into a roar that sent Emilia sprawling forward. Her palms and knees scraped the cement, and she swore, rolling to the side just in time to avoid being run over by it. In the corner of her vision, she saw her HP drop significantly, enough that she’d probably done a little a bit of lasting damage to herself. Nothing hurt at the moment, but that was likely just the adrenaline talking.

“Sil, I am going to kill you!” she yelled, sending an echo of rage through the aethernet towards her friend. He might be too far away yet to hear her, but he would most certainly feel her anger.

She huffed and flipped herself back up. At the very least, the boss didn’t have the greatest of breaks, and missing her had sent it skidding away. It crashed into the side of a building so hard the ground rocked, and then Emilia was bolting away, thankful that she hadn’t let her Physical D-Levels or her muscles themselves become so deficient that she couldn’t outrun the boss through pure physical ability.

[Beth: I can’t see you anymore.]

[Em: i know]

[Sil: Get back into Beth’s sights!]

[Em: nah]

An echo of Haru laughing and Sil cursing pressed into her skin, and she moved further away from them and closer towards the edge of the raid area.

[Em: i have a plan]

[Sil: The last time you said that, you accidentally took out a bunch of random heroes!]

She had done that. It was difficult to hurt other heroes within a raid, but not completely impossible. There were a few powerful techniques that were a bit too hard to control or too wide-ranging. Even the system couldn’t stop those from accidentally hitting someone like it did with normal attacks, instead only barely managing to limit the damage so people weren’t completely mangled by the friendly fire.

Emilia skidded to a stop in front of a large fountain, twisting back towards the boss barrelling towards her. She backed up, her legs bumping against the coolness of the fountain’s edge, just wide enough that she could sit on it. She let her hand fall back—let the tips of her fingers slide through the cool water, which had been turned a rather off-putting shade of yellow by the raid. It would still do, however gross it looked.

She smiled at the boss, noting with amusement that Sil and Haru were now running away from her location. You accidentally knock a few heroes out once and this is how people treat you.

[Skill {Worriful Weather} Selected]

[Skill Activation in]

[— 5 —]

[Warning: Sub-30 Level Skill Activated]

[Warning: Please take care to avoid the area!]

[— 4 —]

[Warning: Sub-Containment Area Activated]

[Warning: Please take care not to walk into the Sub-Containment Barrier!]

[— 3 —]

Emilia watched the boss bowling towards her, a faint red barrier of aether forming behind it in an attempt to contain her skill—to stop it from running too wild.

It hadn’t stopped it last time, but that had been a while ago. Maybe the sub-containment barrier had improved! Or, maybe anyone who didn’t get out of this half of the raidlands fast enough would get hit. Ah well, they’d be fine… probably.

[— 2 —]

On her map, she could see all the people in their communication network evacuating the area. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who thought the barrier was liable to fail. Given the way indicators for many of the heroes not in their network were headed in her direction, however…

Not that she could blame them. Most people never got the chance to see a sub-30 level skill—and practically no one ever saw one twice.

That was mostly self-preservation.

[— 1 —]

[Skill: {Worriful Weather} Activated]

The water rippled. A single ripple from the fingers she had dipped into it. So small and unassuming until it hit the edges of the fountain and swelled into a wave that rose high into the sky, separating and turning into a night’s sky worth of droplets. Drops splashed up Emilia’s arm, and she was glad she didn’t have long sleeves on.

Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to use her willbrand barrier until the skill released. Skills acquired from both official events and ranking high followed you into subsequent seasons, but her current level wasn’t high enough to use the skill and her willbrand at the same time. She couldn’t complain too much, though, because the power of permanent skills never degraded, although they were often quickly eclipsed by newer, limited—or even single—distribution skills.

{Worriful Weather} was still more powerful than any skill she could acquire just by levelling up, even though she had won it ranking in the Top 10 nearly eight years ago—she’d been competing with Elijah that season. He had annoyed her from the moment they met, during their freshman year. She knew he had wanted to try and rank in the Top 50 that season, before their schoolwork got too intense. It was the only season she had ever really partaken in. She had beaten him soundly—she hadn’t even realized her level had scored high enough that she’d rank in the Top 10, whoops—and become friends with Sil as a result.

The droplets sputtered, beginning to vibrate with the aethernet. They sizzled, burning as they reached a state between existing in her world and returning to the aether.

The boss rolled closer, closer and her skill waited, burning the world until it was close enough—mere metres away from her.

Then the tide broke.

Water swelled through the world and her willbrand surged to life, a ball of glassy, swirling purple and gold wrapping itself around her as all the aether within {Worriful Weather}’s area of effect became water and wind and destruction. Emilia had never experienced an aether storm—they weren’t common in Baalphoria—but she imagined they must be something like this, only a thousand times worse. The power of the universe stretching and crashing around you.

Waves of water and aether rocked against her willbrand, and she imagined that almost anyone else would need a low-10s level in order to use this skill. Most people favoured weapon coded willbrands over defensive ones, relying instead on skills acquired from levelling up to defend themselves.

There was no way even the strongest of Sil’s defensive skills could completely protect him from this. The boss’s defences definitely couldn’t, and when the world cleared, nothing was left of it, save a small token that burst into black flames and slotted itself into her account.

[Congratulations!]

[You’ve Beaten the Boss {Deathly Black+}!]

[You Acquired {An Eventful Moment Invite}]

Emilia sighed. Looking over the details of the invite, annoyed to find that while she could bring a few guests with her to it, she couldn’t just transfer it to someone who would actually want it.

She slumped forward, resting her arms on her knees as she watched her Censor. Her contribution and level exp skyrocketed, and the number of invader’s left plummeted because the sub-containment barrier had indeed shattered, and her skill had rushed outward, taking out almost half of those remaining—and apparently a few heroes. Oops.

Unfortunately for them, the system prioritized protecting other things, like buildings, non-combatants and downed heroes. Not to mention making sure no one actually died. Seriously, though? Why even create skills that the raid system couldn’t contain!?