Jayden emerged from the Level 5 gate looking like he'd been through a blender made of lightning. His clothes were more char than fabric, his hair stood in every direction, and he couldn't stop grinning.
[Level 5 Gate Cleared - Solo]
[Current Level: 9]
Three days. From walking disaster to Level 9 His spatial ring bulged with two hundred corpses—Thunder Wolves, Storm Sprites, Lightning Elementals, and one very dead Thunder Lord whose basketball-sized core still pulsed with residual energy.
He pulled out the ten-grand phone, its shielding having survived the dungeon's electromagnetic interference. One message to JCL: *70-30 split. Acceptable. Have infrastructure ready for large volume. Very large.*
Mozart's response was instant: *Already moving. Market's hungry. How large we talking?*
*Shipping container. Maybe two.*
*Jesus. Timeline?*
*Two weeks. Keep them starving.*
The corrupt sheriff who'd sold him the first gate coordinates was happy to provide more—fifty grand bought him a list of "overlooked" dungeons throughout the Angeles Forest. Level 6-10 next. Then, lastly Level 15.
Then whatever else he could find.
By the time Jayden hiked toward the second gate, Mozart was already executing orders—cornering the low-level monster parts market, creating artificial scarcity that would make their eventual dump worth millions.
****
The Level 10 gate shimmered between two peaks, aurora of Genesis Energy painting the pre-dawn sky. Time for round two.
**Day 5 - Storm Peaks Dungeon**
"I'm doing it! I'M FUCKING DOING IT!"
Jayden hovered fifty feet above a crystallized cloud platform, supported by nothing but electromagnetic repulsion and pure joy. Two days of getting his ass kicked by Tempest Eagles had finally paid off.
The revelation had been embarrassingly simple. He'd been thinking like a human—humans needed wings or engines to fly. But he wasn't human anymore. He was lightning, and lightning didn't give a fuck about gravity.
Create a stable electromagnetic field beneath him. Use it to push against the Earth's magnetic field. Add directional thrust by varying the field's intensity. Suddenly, flight wasn't just possible—it was as natural as walking.
Not perfect but at least natural...
Well, more natural. He could actually fly without randomly teleporting now.
For sometime that is.
A Tempest Eagle Alpha—sixty feet of sword-feathered death—screeched its challenge. In its domain, nothing flew better than it.
[Tempest Eagle Alpha - Level 15]
"Bet," Jayden grinned, then rocketed upward at Mach 2.
The chase began immediately. The eagle's wings, each feather a crystallized blade of wind and lightning, beat with thunderclap force. It dove from above, talons extended like swords, moving at speeds that would have been invisible to normal humans.
Jayden barrel-rolled left, feeling the wind pressure as claws missed by inches. He inverted, flying upside down beneath the eagle, reaching up to tap its belly as he passed.
"Too slow, birdie!"
The eagle shrieked rage, wheeling with impossible agility for something its size. Its wings generated hurricane-force winds filled with razor-sharp feather projectiles. The air became a blender of crystallized death.
Jayden laughed, weaving through the storm. Each feather that came close got deflected by his electrical field, creating cascades of sparks that lit up the sky like fireworks. He accelerated through a cloud bank, the eagle hot on his tail.
They burst out the other side to find floating crystal formations—the dungeon's impossible architecture. Jayden threaded between spires at Mach 2, the eagle matching him turn for turn. It knew this aerial maze, had hunted here for years.
But Jayden was learning in real-time. Each near-miss taught him something new about three-dimensional combat. When the eagle tried to corner him against a solid cloudbank, he had a surprise ready.
He stopped. Not slowed—stopped. Zero to zero instantaneously, hovering in place as the eagle shot past, unable to arrest its momentum.
"My turn," Jayden said, gathering electricity between his palms.
The Lightning Bomb formed larger than usual, fed by his joy at flight. He didn't throw it—he launched it like a missile. The sphere tracked the eagle, curving through the air with predatory intent with his control.
A new trick in full five days of practice and evolution!
The eagle tried to dodge, but the bomb adjusted, following every aerial maneuver. When it finally connected with the eagle's back, the explosion lit up the sky for miles.
Feathers rained down like electric snow as Jayden hovered in the aftermath, master of his new domain.
[Tempest Eagle Alpha Slain]
[+89 XP]
[Skill Learned: Lightning Flight]
"Ground is for peasants," he declared to the empty sky.
*
**Day 7 - Storm Peaks Dungeon**
**The Basilisk Den**
The Volt Basilisk struck like lightning given form and teeth. Thirty feet of serpentine muscle, scales that reflected electricity like mirrors, eyes that could paralyze with a glance.
[Volt Basilisk - Level 17]
Jayden had tracked it for hours through the dungeon's inverted geography. Now, cornered on a bridge of crystallized lightning, he faced it head-on.
The basilisk's eyes flashed. Paralysis hit his nervous system like a sledgehammer, every muscle locking solid. Foreign electricity invaded his body, turning his own lightning cells against him.
"Can't move. Can't fucking move!"
The basilisk's jaws gaped wide, revealing fangs that dripped liquid electricity. Each tooth was the length of his forearm, designed to pierce and electrocute simultaneously. The maw closed on his torso with the force of a hydraulic press—
And bit nothing but air.
The basilisk's confusion was almost comical. Its jaws snapped shut on empty space, fangs clicking together. Where solid flesh should have been, only fading electrical residue remained.
Jayden blinked, suddenly three feet to the left, staring at his translucent hands.
They flickered between solid and energy, crackling with unstable power. His body had instinctively converted to pure electricity to avoid death, scattering his molecules just enough to let solid matter pass through.
"Holy shit," he breathed, watching his hands solidify. "Did I just...?"
The basilisk recovered quickly, coiling its massive body for another strike. This time, Jayden was ready. As the creature's head snapped forward, he didn't dodge—he phased.
His body dispersed into pure electrical energy. Not invisible, but intangible.
He could see himself as a humanoid cloud of blue lightning, could feel the basilisk's fangs passing through where his organs should be. The sensation was indescribable—like being everywhere and nowhere, existing as possibility rather than reality.
The basilisk bit nothing but lightning-flavored air.
"Oh, this is broken as fuck!" Jayden laughed, solidifying behind the creature.
The basilisk whipped around with shocking speed, breath weapon already charging. Plasma erupted from its maw, hot enough to turn sand to glass, wide enough to engulf a bus.
Jayden phased through it. The superheated death washed harmlessly through his dispersed form. He solidified mid-leap, landing on the basilisk's head. His palm found the junction where spine met skull.
"Thanks for showing me something new," he said, then channeled everything he had through that contact point.
Lightning didn't just flow—it invaded. Every nerve in the basilisk's body lit up at once, its own bioelectrical system turned against it. The creature thrashed once, a full-body convulsion that nearly threw Jayden off. Then it went rigid as millions of volts rewrote its brain chemistry.
When Jayden finally stopped, the basilisk was more charcoal than snake, smoke rising from its mirror scales.
[Volt Basilisk Slain]
[+67 XP]
[Skill Discovered: Lightning Phase]
[Warning: Extreme energy consumption. Use sparingly.]