"This is it," Kenji said, his voice a low growl. He pressed his hand against the softly pulsating surface of the second Reality Anchor.
The cool, pure energy felt like a brief relief from the ongoing, painful burn of his Shadow Brand.
His System showed the Anchor glowing a steady blue, a fragile beacon in this alien hell. But the next one, a flickering dot far, far away on his map, seemed impossibly distant, a tiny pinprick of hope in a vast, malevolent ocean.
"We need to move. Now. Something tells me Noxius just got our RSVP."
Kaito, ever the pragmatist, was already checking his remaining tech, his face grim. His custom hoverboard was a lost cause, a mangled mess of circuits and blighted metal left behind in the last desperate escape.
He was limping heavily now, favoring his left leg, and his usual cynical humor was replaced by a taut alertness.
"Pleased? Ghost-boy, that last Blight-Harvester felt personal. It was like it knew exactly which part of my tech to smash first. Someone's definitely getting annoyed. And they're learning. These things aren't acting like dumb monsters anymore. They're getting smarter."
He kicked a piece of discarded, blighted chitin.
"And these glowing tripwires? Definitely new. Very rude."
Elara, her face pale and drawn, shivered despite the oppressive warmth of the Blight.
Her Lumina light flickered weakly, a fragile shield against the pervasive gloom.
"It's… It's watching us, Kenji. I feel its gaze. Not just the creatures, but something vast, something knowing. It wants to break us. To reclaim the pure energy we're releasing."
Her words were soft. They carried a deep unease that matched the fear in Kenji's gut.
They set out, but the temporary relief from the reactivated Anchor soon faded. The dread of the dimension returned. The terrain seemed to actively fight them now.
The ground shook more often.
Sudden cracks appeared without warning, making them jump or scramble.
Blight storms, which are whirlwinds of green, corrosive particles, swept across the land.
They made everyone seek shelter behind the thin, blight-bone structures.
"Move! Now!"
Kaito shouted as he jumped over a pulsing barrier that had risen from the ground, blocking their way. He landed with a grunt on the other side.
"This isn't just random chaos! It's trying to funnel us! Into… whatever that is!"
He pointed to a narrow pass ahead. It was hidden in a thick cloud of metallic-green mist.
As they entered the pass, the mist thickened, making it hard to see, hard to breathe. Kenji felt a sharp spike of pain in his head.
His System blared: [Warning: Direct Mental Assault Detected! Hostile Entity Attempting Override!].
Images raced through his mind. Shadowbane stood victorious in a ruined world, his face twisted in a triumphant snarl.
A cold, insidious voice whispered,
"Give in. It's easier. Join me. Let the Heart consume. It is your destiny."
Kenji clutched his head, his vision flickering, his grip on Shadowfang tightening. He stumbled, fighting the disorienting assault.
"It's… trying to get in my head!" he gasped, forcing the words out through gritted teeth.
He felt the Heart of the Eclipse roaring. It seemed to respond to the mental attack, ready to break free.
Elara hurried to him, her hands glowing. She formed a small, delicate barrier of Lumina light around his head.
"Focus, Kenji! Don't let it take root! It's using your own connection against you!"
Her own face was pale, strained, as the effort of maintaining the mental shield drained her.
From the swirling mist, shapes began to coalesce. Not the slow beasts from before, but tall, thin figures.
Their shapes are somewhat human but completely alien, made of hardened blight. Their eyes glowed with the same malevolent intelligence Elara had sensed.
Stalker-Blights.
They moved quietly, aimed at Kaito's tech to cut off his gear, and targeted Elara's light, wanting to snuff it out.
"They're fast!"
Kaito yelled, dodging a lashing tendril that seemed to sprout directly from the mist.
He fired quickly from his energy pistol, but the Stalker-Blights soaked up the energy and barely flinched.
"And they're tougher than they look! My tech's barely scratching them!" He tried to throw a flashbang, but the device fizzled and died, sparking uselessly.
"Crap! It's scrambling my tech!"
Kenji forced himself to push back the mental assault. He couldn't afford to falter. He pushed ahead, trusting his instincts and the sharp control Eldrin had shown him.
He aimed precise Shadow Slashes at the Stalker-Blight's glowing eyes. That was their only clear weakness.
He had to be careful. Each dark energy blast boosted the Corruption Influence within him. The meter turned a deep, angry red.
The fight was a brutal, silent dance of death. The Stalker-Blights were relentless and smart.
They worked together to separate them and pick them off one by one.
Kenji was their anchor, using his strength to push back the tide. Elara's fading light offered protection.
Kaito made smart distractions. He quickly struck with a metal pipe he had found. This bought them precious seconds.
They just managed to escape the pass. Now, they stand at the edge of a huge, swirling lake of glowing, corrosive liquid blight.
Its surface bubbled and hissed, giving off noxious fumes.
The faint blue dot of the next Reality Anchor seemed to hover mockingly on the far side.
"Oh, great,"
Kaito muttered, staring at the toxic expanse.
"A giant puddle of 'don't touch me' juice. My hoverboard's busted, remember? And my boots are definitely not acid-proof."
Kenji looked at the lake, then at the distant Anchor.
There was no way around. They had to cross. He scanned the edges, his System glitching as it tried to analyze the foreign liquid.
He saw strange, twisted pieces of what seemed like old ruins. Huge beams of solid energy floated to the surface, half-submerged in the toxic liquid.
"We'll use those."
Kenji said, pointing.
"Kaito, can you stabilize them? Enough for us to jump across? Elara, a protective field. Even a weak one. We can't touch that stuff."
Kaito's eyes lit up with a spark of his old ingenuity.
"Hmm. Stabilize moving chunks of acid-soaked misery… I might have something for that. Need to reroute some power from my last few working modules, though. They're looking pretty sad."
It was a slow, agonizing process.
Kaito jumped onto a piece of floating wreckage. He quickly built a small device that pulsed with faint energy. This device helped steady the unstable platform for a moment.
Kenji and Elara leaped across quickly. The Blight-water churned below, with tendrils of corrosive liquid reaching out.
Elara held a thin, glowing barrier of Lumina light around them. It deflected the spitting acid, and her face showed the strain.
Mid-crossing, the Silence Zone hit them again. Suddenly, Kenji's System went utterly black. All external data vanished.
The faint blue dot of the Anchor, the red warnings of Corruption Influence, everything was gone.
Elara's Lumina light dimmed to almost nothing. The air itself felt… dead.
"What… what happened?!"
Kaito yelled, disoriented, nearly losing his footing on a slippery, blighted beam.
His own tech had gone inert, the small devices he'd used for stabilization flickering out.
"I… I can't feel anything! No energy! No light!" Elara cried, her voice filled with raw panic as a tendril of corrosive water splashed dangerously close to her face.
Kenji felt a primal fear, a profound sense of blindness. He was adrift. But he forced himself to focus. He had his senses. He had his comrades.
He had the Heart of the Eclipse, still throbbing, though its Corruption Influence meter was now utterly invisible.
He had to trust his gut, trust his training. He grabbed Elara's arm, pulling her close, then pushed Kaito forward.
"Keep moving! Trust your instincts!"
They emerged from the Silence Zone, breathless and shaken, but alive. Kenji's System flickered back on.
The familiar alerts and map came back, but the Corruption Influence meter stayed too high.
The Blight-Lake was behind them. Ahead, the ground rose, leading towards the distant, shimmering blue glow of the third Reality Anchor.
They were battered, exhausted. Kaito slumped against a warped, pulsating tree, his chest heaving.
"Okay, so Noxius is officially mad at us. Great. Just what we needed. Next time, let's pick a fight with something that doesn't have an entire dimension backing it up."
Elara, her hands wrapped around her trembling arms, shivered, her light still struggling to gain strength.
"I can feel its anger… like a cold, vast ocean trying to drown us. But the Anchor… it's still there. A beacon."
Kenji looked at his System.
The next Anchor, though distant, was clear now. His Corruption Influence meter was still bright red, but he felt a grim, cold resolve settling over him.
He met the gaze of his weary comrades, a silent promise passing between them.
"It wants us to break."
Kenji muttered, his voice hoarse, the words heavy with the weight of their struggle.
"It wants us to give in. But we're not. Not yet. This is a race now. And we're going to win it."
He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming protest of his muscles, his eyes fixed on the distant light.
"Let's move."