Infinitium

Adam maintained eye contact with Valeria Xeli as he continued to take a very long drink of the Long Island Iced Tea until she turned away. When she did, the drink evaporated.

“Was there a point to that display of dominance?” Valeria asked.

“Nah, I just saw a character named Jules do that once in a movie. It looked totally gangster, so I thought I’d see how it felt,” Adam said honestly.

“And how did it feel?” Valeria asked with a tone that implied that she really didn’t care either way.

“Well, I have to admit the act didn’t feel that great, though the drink was good. Your reaction though, was priceless,” Adam said with a grin.

“I see…”

“No, I’m afraid you don’t, but that’s okay, Adam said with a laugh as he looked around the office and back at Valeria, “I do have one question.”

“Just one?”

“No, not just one, but this one will lead to the answers for the other questions.”

“What is your question?” Valeria asked.

“Why do you allow your company to host the hunt into what you term Shadow realities?”

“That is your question?”

“Yes.”

“Power”

“Power?”

“The Hunts allow us an opportunity to send in some of our personnel so that they can level and grow stronger while also allowing us to find and tag anyone that could be a threat to the Family or the Corporation. The Hunts generate wealth and also an opportunity to find dirt on or establish surveillance of other prominent members of our rivals.”

“You seem awful forthcoming all of a sudden after I do believe you were going to threaten me?” Adam said with a smile.

“If one doesn’t adapt to the changing sea, one sinks,” Valeria said.

“True,” Adam agreed, “What clued you in that the seas are changing?”

“First, you turned one of the most prominent legendary fighters into cubes and it didn’t even look like you moved, though the surveillance did catch a flicker of movement.

A new person teleported into the room beside Valeria. From the files Adam had looked over he recognized the man who appeared as her father.

“Second, I was stalling in the hopes that someone would arrive to help me,” Valeria said with a smile that said she thought Adam was fucked now.

“My daughter was always good at knowing when to stall until help arrived,” Adrian Silas Xeli said.

“Help her with what exactly, Adam said.

Adrian moved. One moment he was standing beside his daughter, the next he’d flashed forward and tried to pierce Adam’s heart with an energy blade he’d conjured. He followed up the initial attack with 114 swipes that were aimed at turning him into 1-inch cubes of flesh, just like he’d done to their security guard. When he was done, Adrian returned to his starting point, just as Adam had done.

Unfortunately for Mr. Xeli, the energy blade didn’t give the physical feedback a solid sword would have as it failed to penetrate Adam’s Damage Resistance. Each strike hit and fizzled against his skin even though it looked like the strike was successful. Of course, Adam’s Armanti Suit was sliced into little squares in some place as It fell away leaving him mostly nude from his chest up. The fact that Mr. Xeli tried to cube him while he was sitting down ensured that at least his pants weren’t ruined.

“See dear, nothing to worry….” Mr. Xeli started to say as Adam stood and brushed away the portions of his shredded suit as a new one formed over his body.

“Seriously, read the room,” Adam said as he checked his combat log. Adam zeroed in on the damage-resisted messages. The damage from all 114 strikes together wouldn’t have been enough to even come close to getting through half of his Damage Resistance.

“What? How?” Mr. Xeli asked.

“Yeah… Adam’s voice trailed off as a part of his mind that was utilizing Technomancy called his attention to some sensor inputs the station they were on was receiving from the border of Nothing. Adam tried to make sense of the sensor data but it wasn’t making sense. The barrier seemed to be developing lumps along the breadth and width of its entire surface.

Mr. Xeli’s expression became extremely worried for a moment as he turned to the window behind him and vanished with a pop of displaced air. A moment later SYSTEM Notifications began overriding his normal vision. Once they were viewed they disappeared, but the messages had overridden his filter settings so that they would displayed in the center of his vision.

SYSTEM INCURSION DETECTED

SYSTEM INCURSION DETECTED

SYSTEM Incursion Detected? What did you…” Valeria started to ask as her eyes caught something on the monitor before her and she turned to look through the transparent Aluminum at the barrier of NOTHING behind her. Of course, she couldn’t see anything, the barrier was a light-year away outside the transparent bulkhead. Anything happening there wouldn’t reach the station for another year.

On her monitor though, the lumps that were stretching out of the nothing were transforming into ships that were emerging from the Barrier of NOTHING. Ships of all shapes and sizes including one giant one that looked to be world-sized in comparison to the other ships present.

SYSTEM Parameters are being ignored. Non-SYSTEM Entities have entered Sector 00001 at Origin Start

Ascendant Recall Protocol activated.

Well, if there was an Ascendant Recall Protocol, Adam wanted to see what was going on. He teleported outside the station and sped off toward the barrier as quickly as he could. Quickly for Adam, put him within one light-second of the barrier a moment later. Adam came to a stop and watched as a plethora of ships emerged from the barrier of Nothing as far as he could see in all directions along the barrier. With Sense Chaos Adam could tell that one of the spherical ships was the size of a world at 10,000 miles in diameter.

On this side of the ships, spread out as far as Adam could see individual creatures of all shapes and sizes appeared to be floating in space including Adrian Xeli. As Adam’s Sense Chaos perk reached out he realized that the ships were all shielded in a very thin layer of Nothing that had been made transparent. He knew that it was Nothing because Sense Chaos was getting the same feedback that he was receiving from the barrier of Nothing behind the ships. The only thing was that the barrier had been made transparent somehow, which was something he’d never seen before.

Just as he was about to say something an unseen signal must have gone up because the defenders, all of the beings that had appeared, attacked the ships including Adrian Xeli. In less than one second every single defender that had decided that they could burst through the shield physically launched forward. As they collided with the shields, they vanished as did every ranged attack. The ships that they were attacking remained unaffected and continued to float on this side of the barrier untouched.

Adam watched as the various beings that were flying around the ships seemed to rethink their actions as they realized that their allies hadn’t just vanished, they were gone. That’s when many realized something was amiss. Then it happened. Suddenly it was just Adam and the ships. Adam reviewed his memories and noted that maybe 10% of the defenders that had been left had teleported away before the ships had all seemed to flicker. With nothing in his combat log and only his memories to review, it looked like a barrier had been erected and flown away from the ships as a very fast wave. As the distortion of energy passed over each defender, they’d simply vanished. When the wave washed over him, it had no effect though.

Adam floated there for another moment before he decided that it was time to leave. Just as he was about to move a temporal bubble that was supposed to freeze him in place surrounded him. His Sense Chaos detected that one of the ships that was closest to him had dropped its barrier of Nothing and seemed to be projecting the temporal bubble onto him. Was that an invitation? That sure seemed like an invitation. Adam allowed Sense Chaos to map the ship and then teleported onto what must be the bridge.

Adam appeared in front of the Captain's seat and reached out with Technomancy. Once he established his connection to the Ship’s Computer Core, Adam infiltrated and absorbed information on every electronic system on the ship. Technomancy let him know that whoever these invaders were, they were so far ahead of anything he’d seen in the physical universes it was scary. There was also something off about what he was sensing with Sense Chaos and Technomancy

It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen or even considered technologies that matched what he was detecting, it was that the rules that technology was created within were just slightly off from what he was used to. Almost like the physical laws of the Universe this ship was created in were just slightly different than the laws of nature and magic he was used to. Not so much that he’d have to relearn everything again, but just enough that things might not work exactly the way he expected.

It wouldn’t matter. As Adam Reviewed the Computer Systems and electronic structures of the ship it was a simple thing to adapt the technologies he knew to this new environment. Sense Chaos let him know the structure of the ship and the interaction of energy and matter. From that knowledge, he calculated the minor changes within the makeup of the universe and adjusted himself. Within a nano-second, he conformed to the new rules, for the most part. As always, it was really hard to restrain chaos, as whoever these jokers were would find out soon enough.

Adam continued to scan the ship with Sense Chaos as he focused on the individuals on the bridge. The Captain, Pilot, and Navigator, were all wearing mithril-plated armored suits that looked to be vacuum-sealed. The individuals within the Armor were bipedal, but not human. One head, two arms, two legs, but internally all three had two hearts and a much larger lung capacity than a standard human for their size. Adam estimated that the female was about 7 feet tall and the captain and the other male had to be just about 8 ½ feet tall. As tall as they were, Adam was sure they weren’t elves with their pointy ears and narrow eyes though they were probably related somehow.

“Very aggressive for a human and fool-hardy. Jumping onto a ship with unknown enemies of unknown capacity into an area where the SYSTEM you know does not hold dominion, have you come to surrender so easily,” The male captain asked in a melodic voice.

Adam knew his abilities weren’t cut off nor had they been transformed or nerfed as far as he could tell. In fact, if he was judging this right, he might be more powerful than anything they’d come across yet, which made Adam wonder how they’d defeated the Ascendant beings that hadn’t left. Adam used Sense Chaos to verify that he could feel everyone and everything within one light second. He could. Of course, Sense Chaos stopped at the barrier of Nothing around the other ships and the barrier of Nothing behind the ships but the perk was functional and unchanged as far as he could tell. With Technomancy, Adam continued to analyze the programming of the ship and every device on it. That was fortunate because it allowed him to detect and cancel the S.O.S. that the copilot was trying to send off.

Adam looked at the Captain for a moment and then activated Hyper Focus which seemed to freeze everything around him. Adam dropped into his Primary Perception into his Mind Space and down to his Soul Core. He wanted to make sure the adjustments he’d made didn’t allow a back door into his soul. As he looked over the structure of his Soul Core he didn’t see anything amiss. Well, except for the tendril of energy that was trying to attach to his Soul Core

Before he did anything else, Adam utilized Technomancy to issue an override retreat code through the ship's communication circuits. Simply put, he reviewed the programming, protocols, and emergency disengagement reasons and found a preprogrammed routine that seemed to fit,

“Location not suitable for Primus Emergence.”

Emergence must be what they were trying to do now. Where they were coming from, specifically where they had been before they came out of the Nothing and why they were emerging wasn’t provided but he didn’t need that to activate one of the preprogrammed disengagement protocols.

By activating the recall, none of the other ships, at least within range, would be able to counter the command because they hadn’t lowered their barriers yet and as luck would have it. One of the primary seed ships was in this group. With a little tweak to the communication circuit, he sent out the coded message to the fleet and also made it appear as if the ship he was on was receiving the transmission from somewhere else.

Adam released Hyper Focus as he brought his attention back to the Captain. Without answering his question Adam activated Safe Haven and was quickly drawn into the dimension between the Material Plane and the Astral Plane as the Captain tried to jump forward and grab him. The last thing Adam heard as he was sealed into the Haven his Skill created was a klaxon sounding on the bridge.

Once he was sealed away Adam could see the Captain and the bridge but he couldn’t hear what was going on the bridge anymore. He fully expected the ship to back away from him and to find himself between dimensions in open space. That didn’t happen. For some reason, Safe Haven was not staying spatial locked to this corner of space from his Universe. Instead, he was locked to the same location on the bridge as the ship reversed course and slipped back through the barrier of Nothing. He must be locked to the dimension resonance they’d created for their original dimension which meant he locked himself to the dimension the ship existed within. One thing of note, Technomancy did not work while he was in his Safe Haven.

Another thing of note happened when they crossed the barrier of Nothing. When he activated Safe Haven he could see into the Material Plane he’d exited and the Astral Plane with both terrains superimposed over each other. As he crossed the barrier of Nothing his view of the Astral Plane vanished.

Adam activated Astral Projection and exited onto the bridge of the ship. Now able to hear again he listened as the crew talked in a language that was familiar yet not. Adam correlated all the information he’d absorbed with Technomancy and searched his memories. Adam found a translation program, reviewed it, and added the language “Primus” to all the other languages he knew. Once he was done he noted that the language was very similar to Latin.

Adam watched as the Captain checked their position within the fleet, hit a toggle on the arm of his seat, and walked to an alcove at the back of the bridge where he vanished. A Teleporter that worked through the barriers of Nothing? Well, unless he teleported to somewhere else on the ship? Adam quickly checked by flying through the bulkheads and searching through the various compartments. The ship wasn’t large, at least no larger than an American destroyer and only had 30 personnel on board. 10 seemed to be in a rest state while the other 20 were either working or doing something that could be construed as entertainment; working out, relaxing, or eating.

Adam returned to the bridge and looked out of the front portal but as he suspected there was nothing to see. Adam returned to his body inside the Safe Haven pocket dimension. He checked to see that his body had remained in the Safe Haven when he returned to it and closed his eyes as he fell back into his Mindspace and then headed deeper to his Soul Core. As he suspected something was still trying to attach and modify his Soul Core. Now that he had some time he followed the tendrils of power back to their source.

While he couldn’t physically follow the strand, he was very capable of packaging and sending tendrils of his mentality back along the tendril of power and did so. As his mentality shot forward along the tendril of power his Point of View Solidified into a digital representation of himself that stood on a flat graphed neon blue plane with a light shade of solid blue

There was a pause as the digital landscape stuttered before a Primus male made out of golden energy appeared before him, “What is this?” the Primus male made of golden energy said.

Adam smiled, “This is Adam, and you are?” said in Primus as he pointed at himself.

“And you speak the language of the creators, how interesting. You do not appear to be digital yet you have entered my digital realm, how is that possible?”

Adam stood silently and waited.

“Not very talkative are you?”

Adam remained silent

“Very well, my name is Cis-Thm,” The entity said, “Why are you trying to infiltrate my mind?”

Adam looked thoughtful for a moment before he answered, “Yeah, not buying that load of domesticated animal feces, just in case you don’t know what a horse is.”

“What is a horse?”

“Exactly my point Adam said.

“You are being nonsensical, I will download the information I need from your mind and find out why the location we were emerging into was not suitable,” Cis’Thm said.

Cis’Thm flashed forward, placed his hand on Adam’s head, and established a mental link with Adam. Adam was not surprised to find that Cis’Thm had tried to establish a one-way link. Unfortunately for Cis’Thm one of the few things that Adam was extremely good at hacking computer systems. Though it wouldn’t have mattered. Where Cis’Thm thought he’d find a token resistance he ran into a wall which reversed and slammed through his defenses. Adam bypassed Cis’Thm’s defense routines and protocols as if they were tissue paper.

Unlike the instances where his enemy tried to download his memories only to be over-taxed by the amount of information and memories they were trying to download and then ultimately succumbing to him, Adam instead fell through a paper-thin defense and absorbed everything that was Cis’Thm.