Vivid Stars Online

As soon as we entered the now-empty hangar, the light filling the room suddenly snapped off, leaving us in near-total darkness. While a small amount of light filtered through the open doorway, it wasn’t enough to extend through the entire room.

“Looks like we were right,” I sighed as I began fishing in my pack for a torch. “This one is far more active than the last.”

“Agreed,” Linnea said tersely. “We should expect ambushes or worse as we move through the facility if it’s aware enough to deny us light.”

With our torches shining through the darkness, we were at least able to navigate through the hangar. After scouting the edge of the room, we found three doors leading further into the facility. Two of them were smaller, each barely large enough to fit one of the robots we’d fought, while the third was much larger.

Expecting that the larger door would lead to some form of cargo storage, and thus not to the AI core, I focused my attention on the two smaller doors for now. Neither was labeled, so I simply picked the left one and tried to attune to it.

This time it was more difficult with a feeling of resistance being present as I tried to open it. It turned into a battle of wills that stretched over several minutes, with my energy draining by the second.

At last, however, I forced it over a threshold and the door slid open. Damn, I thought with a groan as I stood up from the sitting position I’d taken to the right of the door. I think I’m finally running into a limitation from my lower Will. That might be the stat I need to focus on for a while.

I’d put more than a quarter of my energy into that battle, If I had to open too many of them, then we would be stuck until my energy recharged. I was about to relay this to the others when plasma fire poured out of the door.

“Get to cover,” Adam shouted as he darted to the left of the door. I slipped into position on the right and nodded across at him. Now in position, we began taking potshots around the corner while trying not to take any damage.

I avoided empowering any shots for now, as I knew I would need to save my energy for us to keep progressing. That left us in something of a stalemate until a powerful plasma blast shot straight past us, through the doorway, and down toward the robots at the far end.

Glancing back, I could see that Linnea had moved to the far end of the hanger, beyond the effective range of the enemy’s guns. There she was laying down to provide a smaller target while taking shot after shot down the hallway.

With a sigh of relief, I sunk back against the wall and left her to it. With it being far safer for her to take shots, Adam and I would only be required if the enemy entered the hangar. Only a short while later, the clang of moving feet told me they were indeed going to do just that.

With a grim smile, Adam gestured me out of the line of fire before aiming his gun across the doorway.

Realizing that he was going to shotgun them at point-blank range, I quickly jogged further back into the room. I’d seen what his scatter mode had done to enemies before, and I had no desire to experience it for myself.

Sure enough, an already smoking robot stepped through the doorway and was blown away by a mass of plasma before it could even turn toward Adam. Another followed it and then a third before everything went quiet.

“Not too smart, are they,” Adam said with a laugh as he kicked the wrecks out of the doorway. “You’d think they’d be smarter with an AI running them.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I responded with a grin. “I don’t think the AI had direct control of them. You're right that they would be a lot smarter if it did. What I’m thinking is that the Arkathians didn’t trust it with the ability to micro-manage them.”

Linnea nodded as she moved up between us. “That makes sense. If I had a secret military base, I wouldn’t give the AI running it the ability to move each robot around however it wanted. That sounds like the recipe for an uprising. It can probably only direct them to certain areas with basic commands.”

With the wreckage out of the way, we moved deeper into the facility, skirmishing with robots as we went. At two further locations, I had to open doors, leaving me dangerously low on energy and with a growing headache. Finally, however, we came to a massive doorway that almost exactly matched the entry to the previous ritual chamber.

“Huh, neat,” I said with a grin. “I was actually hoping to find the AI core so we could shut it down somehow, however, I’ll take this. The only question is whether I should spend the time to use it now, or if giving the AI so long to prepare is too much of a risk.”

“I think you should do it,” Linnea said, while Adam simply shrugged nearby, looking a little confused. “You're nearly out of energy anyway, right? Odds are we’ll need to rest before we find the core anyway, may as well do that while getting stronger.”

That made sense, so I nodded in response and settled down to focus on the door. I braced myself for yet another fight, not looking forward to spending even more energy and worsening my headache. However, to my surprise, the door opened eagerly as soon as my mind touched it, having none of the resistance the AI had been causing so far.

Instead, a voice echoed through the hallway. “How dare you sully the holy chamber, back away immediately, and do not enter!”

Ignoring the AI, I stepped into the chamber to see a setup again almost identical to the previous ritual chamber. It was again a large circular room with a circle of carved pillars in the middle. In the center of the pillars lay the rift, its energies guided into swirling patterns.

After entering, I did pause, though, to see if we had finally angered the AI enough to trigger the self-destruct. It was my largest worry after barely stopping it last time, however, even after waiting for several minutes, nothing happened.

“Odd,” I said, turning to the others. “If anything was going to cause it to start the self-destruct countdown, then I’d have thought it would be that.”

Linnea shrugged before responding. “Perhaps some systems have failed? We haven’t seen the force fields this time, and it has repurposed those worker robots into soldiers. I doubt they're doing their usual work because of that, so there’s probably no maintenance happening.”

“It also seems a lot more alive than the last one, perhaps it isn’t willing to die,” she finished.

“Hah, could be,” I responded before turning back toward the rift. “I rather hope it’s the first one, otherwise it still might trigger it later in desperation. Anyway, I’ll go use the throne now if you two can keep watch.”

The AI was sure to have more robots still around and attacking while I was out of commission would only make sense. A thought hit me, however, and after checking they were both inside, I focused on closing the door.

It was once again incredibly easy, and I grinned as a hunch hit me. “I don’t think the AI has access to the ritual chamber here, it hasn’t been fighting me for control of this door. It called the place holy, so perhaps only the Psions were allowed in here.”

“Nice,” Adam said, though he was eyeing the circle of pillars with a concerned look. “Are those safe, though?”

“It got a little rough last time,” Linnea said with a shrug. “A little like being out in high winds. It was uncomfortable enough that I left the room before, however, I’d take it over a robot attack.”

“Yeah,” he sighed as he edged toward the wall, “you're probably right. I’ll just sit here, out of the way.”

I thanked him before I moved forward. I was glad that he was willing to stay, despite his obvious discomfort with the situation. While the two of them could probably take on any enemies without me, there was the possibility that the AI would stage an all-out assault once I started using the throne.

That made staying in the chamber worth it, even if it would be uncomfortable for them. As I passed the circle of pillars, the psi energy swirled around me in arcane patterns. Having seen it before, I ignored the odd feelings this produced and strode up to the throne.

Inspecting it, I found it appeared to be fully intact. I considered trying to Attune to it to gather more information, however, I eventually decided against it. With the sheer quantity of energy within this room, I was worried about the consequences if I triggered something that I shouldn’t have.

Instead, I simply sat on the throne and waited for the process to start. As before, a needle embedded itself in my back and injected me with the same mysterious compound. Having experienced it once before, I could focus my full senses on watching the process happen.

I could see the exact point where my natural defenses failed and the Psi energy swirled into my body. As best as I could, I tried to memorize how it happened, hoping that it would help me use wild rifts in the future.

This time, instead of forming a new pattern within me, the injected substance began fortifying the pattern that was already there. It grew in both size and complexity as I watched before all the power began flowing in to reinforce it.

Hours passed like this before it was finally over. Groaning, I slumped down in the chair as I was finally free to move. This had been even more intense than the first time, however, as before, I swiftly recovered and began feeling amazing.

Eagerly, I pulled up my notifications and found exactly what I had been hoping for.

Trait Upgraded

Due to utilizing an Arkathian Ritual of the same type as one of your existing abilities, Item Attunement(Acolyte) has upgraded to Item Attunement(Journeyman).

It was just a single sentence, however to me it meant the world. This was the optimal outcome that I had been hoping for and it was not just amazing right now, it held incredible promise for the future.

There were still two more facilities in this same group to explore and I was now almost positive that they would both have chambers of the same type. Two more upgrades would give me an incredibly advanced ability, one that would hopefully help me complete all of my goals.

I also had a notification informing me that Psi Sense had increased to level four, likely due to how much I had been using it during the process. That made it my highest-level skill and should help me find more wild rifts in the future.

Pulling myself from the chair, I began moving over to where Adam and Linnea were sitting. They looked rather ruffled but overall fine.

“Is it finally over,” Adam groaned as I approached. “That was as bad as being outside in a storm.”

“Yep,” I responded, unable to keep a grin off my face despite his evident discomfort. “Let’s go kill an AI. I want to come back and properly investigate this room later, perhaps try to decipher some carvings, however, for now, we can’t allow it any more time to get stronger.”

I hoped to improve my Archaeology skill by coming back, however, that would take hours if not longer. A quick check of my energy reserves showed they were back to full, undoubtedly having been helped by the dense energy of the room.

It was time to go work out how to kill an AI, this time without an engineer’s help.