Vivid Stars Online

While I had never been told that directly touching a rift was a bad idea, it was always something that I had assumed to be true. This turned out to have been a very good idea.

The energy burned as I flew into it, and my sense of the external world shut down almost immediately. All I could see was the swirling energy pouring into me, the horribly corrupted energy.

I had decided from the moment I sensed the rift that I would not be trying to gain a power from it. The energy felt far too corrupted to be safe, and if it had created the tentacle beasts, then I wanted no part of it.

Unfortunately, it was looking like I had no choice. I tried to push the energy away from me, to throw off its influence, but nothing I tried worked. The more I struggled, the tighter its hold grew.

I only knew one way to use up the energy of a rift, and it wasn’t fast. Whatever I did now, I was out of the battle. I could only hope that Linnea and the others could prevail on their own.

With an effort of will, I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on my current peril. As much as I would prefer to avoid it, I was going to have to try to gain a new power from the corrupted rift.

With a wince, I stopped trying to defend, instead focusing my attention on trying to guide the power. It didn’t work, the energy flowed through me to its own will, making changes as it went.

It seared its way through my body before finally beginning to form a pattern. It was an eldritch, twisted thing, far stranger than even the random patterns from wild rifts. Yet a pattern it was, and the energy began to ever so slowly subside as I drew in it.

If that was all that occurred, I would have been relieved, but some of the energy drifted off into the rest of my body. It faded from my senses as it went, despite which I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was making changes of its own.

Time passed slowly as the energy warped me to its will, until, finally, the flow slowed. When the last bit of the pattern was etched, it released me and I was jerked awake by the solid thump of my back hitting stone.

“Jared!” Linnea’s voice came from somewhere to my right, her tone relieved yet worried. Moments later, she was beside me as I cracked my eyes open.

At first, my eyes were oddly out of focus, showing only blurry shapes, before they sharpened into clarity. Linnea was beside me, reaching forward cautiously, as if afraid to hurt me.

Her armor was battered and bloody, with at least three rents that I could see, yet she was alive nonetheless. I let out a sigh of relief at the sight before wincing at the pain in my body.

The corrupted energy had done quite a number on me, despite my significant toughness. For a normal human, it may very well have been fatal.

“Ah, please tell me that’s you in there,” Linnea spoke up, her hand drafting toward her hip.

“Of course it is,” I groaned as I tried to sit up. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You’ve got an acute case of the Sith look about you,” she responded, her tone lightening into amusement. She fiddled with her watch for a moment before projecting a hologram of my face.

True to her word, I now had sickly yellow pupils. They matched the color of the rift and did indeed rather look like I’d gone to the dark side. “Great,” I muttered with a shake of my head. “That’s going to be hard to explain, I hope it doesn’t extend to back home.”

“That would make getting through an airport rather hard,” she responded with a snort, though her tone had a hint of worry. “Let’s hope it’s at least lessened on Earth. If it just lightens your normal brown color you should be fine.”

“Right,” I nodded before turning my head to take in the cavern. “How did we do? I assume we won if you’re standing here talking to me?” I asked, my gut twisting as I thought of them fighting alone.

Her face fell at the question before she responded with a wince. “We won, yeah, though not without a cost. Those little beasts may have been weaker, but there were a lot of them.”

She took a deep breath before continuing. “Once you got hit and started floating in mid-air, I moved to take the old one down on my own. That was hard, but doable.”

“It’s the others that had problems. They did the best they could, and won in the end, but we have three fatalities and half a dozen wounded,” she finished, her face twisted with guilt.

“Fuck,” I muttered, the ache in my gut deepening. I’d been dreading the time when someone would first die under my command, and that it had happened when I was out of commission was even worse.

There was no way to know if the fight would have gone differently if I’d been able to help, but I felt like we could have at least reduced the casualties. I could feel a dark hole opening up within me but pushed it down for now.

Recriminations could wait until we’d made it back safely. “How did you even take the big one out?” I asked, as much to take my mind off the fatalities as out of curiosity. “It wasn’t as big as the others, but it was a Psion, so it must have been tough.”

“After you cut that barrier apart, I hit it with the second cannon blast,” she responded with a shrug. “After that, my sniper shots could hurt it a bit if I struck that initial wound, though it blocked a lot of them. Eventually, it ran out of energy and I got through,”

“Even then, I couldn’t finish it from range, but you’d dropped your sword. It might not have had whatever you normally do to it, but it’s still an incredibly sharp blade. I managed to cut through its scorched hide and finish it.”

“Which is when I took most of this,” she continued with an embarrassed twist to her mouth and a wave at her amour. “Turns out melee combat is pretty rough, I can see why you avoid it when you can.”

“That’s amazing,” I said with a laugh and an encouraging smile. “Thank you for pushing so hard, we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t managed it.”

She flushed in response before waving her hands in front of her. “Thank the soldiers, I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I was attacked from behind. Their work in keeping the little ones busy saved the day.”

“That’s true,” I responded, reaching a hand out to lay it on hers. “You all did well. I’ll have to organize some kind of reward ceremony. Funerals too,” I finished, my tone darkening.

Her blush barely faded, but Linnea still nodded and moved to help me up. Looking around as I stood, I took in the room. Beast corpses littered the ground, blood soaking across the stone.

It looked like the cores had been cut out of each, and I was thankful that we wouldn’t have to waste any time on that. Once again, I considered trying to get their organs out, but with people wounded and dead, I just wanted to get everyone home.

Then there was the staff the creature had been wielding. Up close, it looked to have been fashioned from a massive root, and it pulsed with psionic power. Far too large for me to actually use, but it should still be a good source of energy to make fuel from.

My soldiers were grouped near the entrance, with the healthy guarding the injured. Nearby, three bodies lay still, and my heart lurched again at the sight. Turning away, I surreptitiously pulled up my notifications.

Trait Gained You have gained a new ability, Fell Shield

Trait: Fell Shield(Initiate) has been added to your character sheet.

Trait Upgraded

Due to using a powerful rift, your trait has been upgraded.

Corruption grants strength, due to the tainted energy you have consumed, your trait has been upgraded again. Be warned, such power comes with a price.

Trait: Fell Shield (Initiate) has become Fell Shield (Acolyte)

Trait: Fell Shield (Acolyte) has become Fell Shield (Corrupted Journeyman).

Fell Shield (Corrupted Journeyman)

A Psionic Ability that forms an energy barrier at a location of the caster’s choice. Each barrier costs energy to maintain, with the cost scaling as multiple barriers are used.

Due to the corruptive influence, the strength and energy cost of this ability has been increased.

Warning: As you lack the skill to utilize this ability, its effects will be greatly decreased.

Well, that’s ominous, I thought with a groan as I took the ability in. Honestly, it was a wonderful ability, exactly what I had hoped for when I’d gained Skin Hardening. If it wasn’t for the disturbing corruption warning, I would have been ecstatic.

As it is, I would have to test the ability somewhere safe. It wouldn’t be at full power without a skill to use it, but I could still try it out. If there were no unfortunate side effects, I might even swap my Skin Hardening skill next time I got Class Skill Upgrade points.

Going straight to Journeyman made it one of my most powerful abilities, far outstripping what Skin Hardening could do for me. Hopefully, I get some more damn slots in the future. Ideally, level fifteen, that would be an obvious milestone.

Moving on from there, I checked my status sheet, only to stagger back as I read the changes that had occurred.

Jared Hope

Class: Psion

Level: 11

XP: 6100/6600

Statistics:

Brawn: 12

Toughness: 42 (28)

Agility: 12

Perception: 12

Mind: 29

Will: 42 (63)

Free points: 0

Skills:

Archeology level 2

Translation level 2

Pistols level 3

Psi Sense Level 4

- Extra Information upgrade (4)

Light Blades Level 1

Technokinesis Level 4

Enhance Cognition Level 2

Skin Hardening Level 3

Scouting level 2

Ethereal Roots level 3

General upgrade points: 0/5

Class upgrade points: 1/5

Traits:

General:

Database of Alien Languages

Strength of Corruption

Psionic Abilities:

Skin Hardening (Novice)

Ethereal Roots (Journeyman)

Enhance Cognition (Acolyte)

Fell Shield (Corrupted Journeyman)

Great Psionic Abilities:

Technokinesis (Master)

Status:

Tainted Eyes

Moderately Injured

Full Energy Well

Two of my stats had some kind of effective number by them, significantly lowering my Toughness while skyrocketing my Will. It looked to be a net positive effect, a thirty percent decrease for a fifty percent increase, but I was still worried about what it represented.

The only cause I could see was my new trait Strength of Corruption. I hadn’t even received a notification for it, the thing had just quietly appeared on my sheet.

That was terrifying, a feeling that was only enhanced by the significant effect that it had on me. My entire fighting strategy had just been modified without my consent.

While twenty-eight toughness was still a lot higher than I used to have, it was a very significant drop compared to what I was now used to. I had survived this long by tanking everything I had come across, and the thought of not being able to do so anymore scared me.

Worse, Toughness also controlled how much energy you could store at once. It was hard to tell with my reserves full due to the rift, but it felt like I had less.

With my new ability explicitly requiring extra energy, I was worried about running out.

I would only be able to tell the full effects over time, but it felt like a forced shift towards more of a casting style build. That was not something I was sure I wanted.

I don’t know how long I stared at the screen, but eventually, Linnea tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was all right. Glancing up, I found the still living soldiers staring at me.

“Yeah, just a few changes. I’ll be fine,” I whispered back, before turning to the rest of the troops.

“It's time to get out of here. With the beast dead, the path should have opened back the way we came. Get organized and then we’ll head out, we can send more troops to handle anything else down here.”

I got a weak cheer in response and guessed that was the best I was going to get under the circumstances. It’d been a tough fight with losses, and I could hardly fault the troops for being down.

Now I just had to get the rest of them back alive.