Chelsea took a deep breath, summoning her strength to send herself into the void. She had heard from Dana that the enemy this time specializes in memetic warfare, so she had a distinct advantage, but this was still not going to be an easy fight.
Chelsea had been learning from her ‘other self’ all this time, understanding the powers of the Origin at her disposal. However, she wasn’t at all confident that she could fight as well as her ‘other self’ could, though she was willing to try.
Once out in the void, she saw the massive monster heading towards a cluster of universes suspended within a giant, tree-like structure. Reaching her hand forward, Chelsea erected a wall of blue energy around the tree, allowing the turrets within to continue firing. At least, if they showed any intention of firing from the start.
She flew over, standing outside the shield and facing the giant monster. Dozens of memetic attacks entered her body, but she wiped them out instantly. Why aren’t the defenses working? She asked herself, suspecting that it might be one of the monster’s many effects, disrupting the automated defenses.
If that’s the case, I’ll need to use manually controlled weapons. She thought to herself, lifting her hand to the sky. The void seemed to open, revealing a massive energy weapon that was aimed towards the monster. One of the eyes on the monster blinked open, looking at the weapon, which began to sizzle and corrode.
Chelsea’s eyes went wide in shock, surprised that the memetic power was even able to imprint on an object without any external sensors. With a wave of her hand, she dismissed the weapon, and then clapped her hands together. This time, a blade emerged from the void, slashing up at the monster from below.
With this attack, the monster had indeed been struck, the blade carving into its body. However, as it did, black blood splashed out onto the blade, causing it to bubble and dissolve. Worse yet, after dissolving, it flowed back into the monster, which gained numerous bladed limbs across its body.
Chelsea was stunned as she saw this, unsure of how to best fight a monster like this. She tried to think back to the various manuals that her other self had written for her, trying to identify any means of combat that would work on an entity that absorbed the form and abilities of anything that struck it directly, while being able to disable remote attacks.
Containment? She thought, pointing her fingers forward. A sphere of black energy formed around the creature, and began to slowly shrink. If I can restrict its movements, I can still effectively save the World Tree Guild.
At least, such was her plan. As soon as the monster was trapped, all of its eyes closed at once. Its figure became illusory, passing through the wall of energy that she had erected. Chelsea was left dumbstruck, but she felt as if she had noticed something. A small ripple of energy passed through the barrier that she had erected immediately prior to the monster closing its eyes. That should imply that it is still receiving commands from one of the other worlds.
This gave Chelsea a plan, and she removed the now ineffective barrier from around the monster, which soon opened its eyes. She felt its gaze, which seemed to taunt her, and her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Let’s try this, then.” She said, and created a new barrier around the monster, this one shimmering with various colors.
This was an information barrier, one that Chelsea had designed within her inner universe based on the special constitution of Origins. The energy required to maintain it was wholly impractical for use on a large scale, but an Origin was able to activate it with the power they contained.
Being cut off from any commands, the creature briefly froze, its eyes blinking open and closed. It began to advance, slamming into the barrier in what seemed to be a frenzy. However, Chelsea could tell that the barrier was holding properly, causing her to grin triumphantly. Let’s see you try to get out of that.
As she was thinking this, she noticed a change in one of the distant universes belonging to the Thousand Eyes Guild. The surface of the universe’s barrier began to ripple, a fleshy protrusion forming over it and encircling the entire universe. Then, a thin slit formed in the flesh, which opened to reveal a massive eye.
What in the… Chelsea began, before feeling a fresh barrage of memetic attacks striking her core. Her eyes widened, realizing that the enemy had converted the entire essence of the universe into a memetic weapon. Worse yet, this weapon was specifically targeting other universes, issuing a simple command, ‘burn’.
Stretching her arms out to the sides, Chelsea hastily began to erect information barriers around each of the nearby universes. After witnessing the birth of this ‘universe meme’, she didn’t want to risk only creating a barrier around it, and having more such monsters born before she could react. All that she could do at this point was to minimize her losses as much as she could.
Chelsea grit her teeth, feeling the powerful impact of the memetic attack against both herself and her barriers. With how concentrated this attack was, she wasn’t sure that her barrier would be able to block it in its entirety. Worse, when she looked back, she saw that there were numerous universes within the World Tree Guild that had already been infected before she could erect the shields.
These universes now appeared as balls of fire, their flames licking up against the branches of the great tree to start to spread. Chelsea narrowed her eyes, summoning a large turret to attack the advancing monster. This one doesn’t seem to have the same sort of defenses as the one that I have trapped, so it should be able to be destroyed.
That said, she knew that there was no saving the universes that had already burst into flames. Every life that had existed within them would have long since been extinguished. With a heavy heart, she commanded the turret to fire, blasting a thick hole into the advancing eye.
Thankfully, this one did not possess the same kind of assimilation power that the first monster possessed. It froze after the attack, cracks forming along its body before it disintegrated into the void. Still, Chelsea did not release the barriers she had in place. First of all, she needed to keep the first monster contained, as its release would spell doom for the rest of the World Tree Guild universes. Secondly, she knew that another eye monster could appear and attack if she lowered her guard.
“Sir, Chelsea’s asking for directions.” Dana said, looking up at me. “There is a problem with the World Tree Guild currently. Some of its worlds have burst into a memetic flame, which is trying to spread through the rest of the tree. She has the flame contained currently, as well as the main monster threat. However, she doesn’t have a method of extinguishing the memetic flame. As soon as she lowers her guard, the flames will inevitably spread to the rest of the tree.”
My eyes widened in shock, surprised to learn that even Chelsea was having so much trouble. However, as I thought about my answer, Terra spoke up from the side. She was still in her Origin form, as a full day had yet to pass from when the spell activated. “I can sense a twisted fate around these monsters… I think the Hermit has gotten involved.” She said in an uncertain tone.
“You think that he’s trying to indirectly get rid of the World Tree Guild?” I asked, and Terra gave a brief nod.
“That’s the only thing that I can think of. Perhaps he realized that we are in an alliance, so he is attempting to keep some of our strongest fighters in the field to hold back their forces. After all, only an Origin can fight against the Thousand Eyes.”
Unfortunately, that made sense. Still, I closed my eyes, thinking. “Tsubaki, tell the Monarch to start evacuating as many of his people as he can without drawing too much attention. Even if we win this fight, I don’t know whether or not we can save the tree from burning.”
Tsubaki firmly nodded her head. “Yes, my Keeper.” She said, as I turned to look at Dana again.
“Ask Chelsea if she thinks that she can take out the Thousand Eyes Guild with her current firepower.”
Dana closed her eyes to pass the message along, before nodding her head. “She said that it’s possible, as long as they don’t have any secrets. However, given the defensive systems of the World Tree Guild, she’s expecting similar systems to protect these.”
There wasn’t anything like that protecting the universe that Lifre blew up, though. I thought to myself, before shaking my head. It’s possible that she overpowered any defensive systems that were in place.
“Give the order. Take out as many universes as she can. Right now, the Thousand Eyes Guild is our biggest threat.” I instructed, and Dana nodded her head once again.
That’s what he said. Dana relayed the command, and Chelsea nodded her head. She had been expecting something like this, so she wasn’t too surprised. With a wave of her hands, she summoned a dozen massive turrets, each locking onto a different universe within the void.
Naturally, she couldn’t release an attack on the level of what destroyed Kione, but it did not take that much energy to destroy a universe, so long as there weren’t special defenses in place…
Without taking the various barriers down, she ordered the turrets to begin bombarding these universes, and watched as beams of light flashed out. Truthfully, she expected to see them collapse as the second eye monster had done. However, to her surprise, she found that not a single universe was destroyed by her assault.
Worse yet, none of them appeared to even be overly damaged. Instead, a blue bar appeared over each barrier, similar to a health bar. The first blast had taken out a small chunk of the bar, but it was slowly recovering by absorbing the nearby energy of the void. At the same time, eye-shaped turrets appeared around each attacked universe, glowing with an ominous light.
Once again, Chelsea felt various memetic powers locking onto her, designed to incapacitate enemies. She grit her teeth, realizing that her damage output wasn’t enough to take on so many universes at once. I’ll focus fire and destroy them one at a time, then. She decided, commanding the turrets to all attack the same target. The only downside with this plan was the time that it would take to complete the attack.
That should keep them busy for a while. The Hermit muttered in satisfaction, watching the void battle from within his hotel room. There was a small amount of interference, due to the information barrier that the native master had erected, but he was still able to see through it. After all, his clairvoyance was not a memetic effect, but rather the ability to observe an ongoing fate. Now, what can we do about those little barriers?
His sharp gaze turned towards the barriers protecting the World Tree Guild. It wouldn’t be difficult to manipulate fate enough to have the enemy master drop one barrier for only a moment, allowing the fire to burst forth. However, doing so would leave a much bigger ripple in fate, and even an immature master might be able to track it back to its source. I’ll need to risk it. They should hesitate to destroy a primary world like this, so I’ll have plenty of time to flee.
With that thought in mind, he lightly tapped on the projection before him, causing one of the barriers containing the memetic fires to flicker out. Immediately, that fire began to spread wildly, greedily consuming everything in its path.
Without waiting to see what would happen next, the Hermit teleported out of his hotel room, and began making his way to the crystal spire. As soon as he released his power, he felt the presence of a distant threat approaching. From his previous experience, he could only imagine that the administrator had begun to activate his pen again. If he’s that dedicated to killing me, even this world might not be safe!
The Hermit didn’t bother to activate his clairvoyance, as doing so would consume precious time that he needed to make his escape. And with every step he took closer to the spire, he felt the threat to himself growing, as if the entire planet would be erased at any moment.
Without hesitation, he dropped the pretext of being a normal civilian, rushing towards the spire at full speed and placing his hand on it. He only breathed out a sigh of relief once he had entered the spire’s elevator and entered a hurried destination.
It took him several long moments before he realized that the threat to himself hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it had only grown stronger. More importantly, the elevator didn’t open up again after he felt himself being teleported. Instead, a new screen appeared, this one no longer containing any runic writing.
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Good Evening, Master Hermit. I would like to play a game. |
