LIGHTNOVELONLINE 6 – Deathsmoke
Working off of decades of tactical instinct, she ran into the center of the square, towards the fountain, intending to use its height for cover while she cleared out some of the beasts and made her way to a better tactical position. At worst, she could scale the fountain itself and play king of the hill. They were trying to make her panic and run as predatory beasts or pack-hunter drones were wont to do. She gripped her pistol in both hands, diagonally offset in a center axis relock position.
Just having reached the fountain she shot down another of the beasts as it tried to crawl towards her, taking two shots to hit its spine. Forward-back. Forward-back. Casings flying through her field of vision. Her last shot burst open the head of a third creature just as it leapt up at her from the side while she stood atop the fountain’s lowest tier, calf-deep in ice cold water.
Digging her fingers under the edge of her bodysuit, Krahe pulled free and slammed into place a fresh en-bloc clip, the empty one clattering onto the fountain’s edge. Adrenaline coursing. Heart pounding. A primeval FIGHT reaction kept barely under control by sheer force of will and decades of combat experience etched into her brain, something that didn’t magically lose its potency in spite of the absence of hormone-regulating cybernetics.
While her attention was split between the remaining creatures she was already aware of, a seventh creature leapt onto her back. The impact sent her rolling across the square’s smooth tiles, still holding onto her gun with a deathgrip as she struggled to stop and get her bearings. She mentally kicked herself for not having paid closer attention, but she had neither eyes in the back of her head nor neural coprocessors to hyper-accelerate her reaction times. Krahe could feel the beast’s ribs clamp down around her, its “tail” wrapping around her leg and its tongue around her neck. Its unsettlingly humanlike arms reached to her stomach and dug their clawed fingers into her suit as if trying to disembowel her. They hooked around her arms to pin them to her sides. As she struggled to free herself and reflexively sent out mental impulses to cybernetics that were no longer there, she instead felt something altogether different react deep within herself. Something eldritch flowed from elsewhere into her and a flame came ablaze within her chest, her left arm coming alive with a flame-like glow like a reignited ember. Dense, pitch-black smoke began to seep out of the limb. The four surviving beasts from the original six closed in, and one of them leapt at her from the front. She managed to just barely raise her left hand far enough to aim at the thing, pulling the trigger..
The gunshot was accompanied by a sudden burst of smoke originating from her arm, rather than the gun. Within its tenebrous mass she caught a glance of crimson light, in the brief timespan of its flight.
It smashed into the beast like a gale-force wind, a flash of crimson light bursting through the creature while the strange smoke scoured its flesh, like a swarm of ravenous nanomachines crossed with superheated plasma. The arcane projectile evoked memories of prototype weaponry firing just such nanite-sheathed plasma bolts.
A vaguely sickly feeling was left behind, only to flow away into her left arm and vanish from awareness. Even the left arm of the creature mounting her was shredded down to bare muscle by what little smoke had caught it, but the pain only motivated it to try harder, a perverse gurgle-growl echoing from just behind her head. Its claws pierced her suit and dug into her flesh. The flame in her chest became something altogether different, collapsing unto itself and uncontrollably drawing in more of that eldritch energy. Krahe felt her own consciousness fade as the blazing force erupted from her in the form of a pyroclastic flow illuminated by blood-red light and filled by an all-consuming buzzing sound.
Krahe returned to awareness into the scene of a city square utterly devoid of life, the outlines of its parasitic occupants burned into the stone as ghosts. Everything in her vicinity seemed… Sanded-down, the surface layers stripped away. She even found herself to be sitting in a shallow, just barely noticeable crater.
A sudden, rising sickness gripped her, and an uncontrollable deluge of revolting, acrid smoke came spilling out. She spent the next several minutes coughing and retching as the otherworldly miasma poured from her face. Despite her bodily state, Krahe mentally searched for that menu again, frantically listing through its articles in the hopes that it would explain what had just happened.
Already, the initial menu had changed.
She had an archetype now.
[ARCHETYPE: Deathsmoke Mage Lvl. 1]
However, it was the Boons menu that held her answer. Two of them, in fact.
[CHERNOBOG’S MYSTIC WISDOM]
[Tags:]
Taboo Knowledge
Outer God’s Touch
[Details:]
The holder of this Boon possesses the knowledge of Chernobog; she may query this Boon regarding subjects tagged with Outer God’s Touch.
Grants the holder full control over Thaumic Fusion, making it more efficient. Enables the holder to contain Anathema generated through Thaumic Fusion within the Left Arm of Chernobog. Anathema thus stored has no effect on the rest of the body, but does not dissipate unless reintroduced into the body.
Renders the holder immune to mental manipulation and capable of discerning the true nature of things.
[DEATHSMOKE BLESSING]
[Tags:]
Elemental Affinity
Eldritch Corruption
Identity Obfuscation
[Details:]
Grants Third-order Elemental Affinity: Smoke
Grants Zeroth-order Elemental Affinity: Anathema
Blocks nonconsensual Appraisal attempts targeting the holder, regardless of potency or anti-concealment properties. Enables the holder to corrupt the results of consensual Appraisal attempts such that the nature of Boons/Grafts tagged with Outer God’s Touch is obfuscated.
Enables the holder to contain Anathema generated through Thauma Fusion within the Left Arm of Chernobog. Anathema thus stored has no effect on the rest of the body, but does not dissipate unless reintroduced into the body.
Improves the holder’s Anathema and Entropy Tolerance.
Causes the holder’s Anathema Tolerance to scale with her Entropy Tolerance.
Improves the holder’s Entropy Tolerance growth.
Still hacking and heaving, she dragged herself over the fountain; she wasn’t coughing up her lungs or puking smoke anymore, but her body was gripped by flu-like sickliness, making even small movements demand full effort.
