The Core: The Dark Enemy

41. Run, if you can

Hi! Here is the updated chapter!

Should be smooth sailing from here on out. (Fingers crossed.) Everything was updated, even the half that I already wrote for clarity. With so many moving parts it is hard to try to tie off each loose end and to not miss anything.

Yes, sometimes it feels like readers will get to the end of the story and ask me why they didn't just take the eagles to the mountain to destroy the One Ring instead of sending the hobbits all on their lonesome. I am trying here :P

Hope you all are doing really well!

Ken

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Helvlad cheered as his ship surged backward, away from the intense battle. "Q'tell, disengage! The spatial lock is broken! We are free to esca—"

He cut off as every display cascaded with warnings in front of his eyestalks at once. The alarms coincided with a surge of deadly CR energy and the sudden deployment of several of his Giant Killer weapons—tools he had often used against the massive creatures of the next dimension. He nearly swiped the alerts away in frustration, knowing those weapons would never be as effective against a denizen being force fed CR energy directly.

The Giants of the next dimension didn't have CR generators stuffed inside their bodies, making those battles ones of attrition. Unique challenges depending on physiology and talent, but still winnable in the end.

It was only when the wording of the warnings caught his attention that he turned toward its origin.

Something blossomed in the distance, just beyond the grotesquely ballooning Arch Arachnid. Where stars had once shone, darkness now spread—rapidly expanding within a vast corona of silver.

"No! A black hole is forming!" he screamed, shoving his ship to maximum speed. But he already knew it was hopeless. Black holes were the one thing none of his experimental probes had ever returned from. They didn't lead to the next dimension, nor to any place he could confirm.

And now, to see one forming before his very eyes—and at such an impossible speed—he knew everything would be swallowed.

Even the Skism abruptly vanished, teleporting away.

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The insane, hate-filled, bloody rage was back.

Not mine, but the Silver Orb's.

At least this time it wasn't directed at me. I could feel it blasting outwards from the shell around me, and sense a constant sizzling feeling across the front of my body. Everything was white-washed, as though my sight was being overwhelmed, and my hearing was screeching and buzzing horrendously.

I noted that my body could still move a little, judging by the stiff, jerking response to my mental shouts at my limbs. Even just a little movement was all I could ask for in this situation. I had to hurry before more Seedlings arrived and completely covered me—Ess needed my help!

I pushed through the resistance draining me, grinding my teeth as I flailed my arms against my own body in a savage attempt to crush the Void Seedlings clinging to me. My limbs felt leaden, as if tranquilizer darts were biting into my skin. The Silver Orb's contact was burning the Seedlings, their attacks ebbing and surging as they took trauma breaks from siphoning off my sensations. With each one I managed to blindly crush, my vision darkened, allowing me to gain moments of clarity through the white haze.

I used those moments to target the remaining Seedlings and smash them out of existence. Their fear-projection explosions on death had shrunk; what had been powerful with an army of Seedlings tapered in strength with each group destroyed. By now it was barely a whisper.