Executor Rising: A GameLit/LitRPG Adventure (Magnus Book 2)

by Vowron Prime

  “Shit! Definitely faster.”

  Those lasers and microwave emitters meant instant death, yet the chariots were luckily designed to fire most of them downwards. Coupled with their slow speed, the trio had been able to outmaneuver their enemies in every encounter thus far. And that gave him an idea.

  “Nova, switch positions with me.”

  “But I’ve only just begun to teach Eiga how to fly by voice commands!”

  “You'll be fine. Just give it your best shot!” he shouted back over the buffeting turbulence.

  MC instructed Eiga to rise rapidly before cutting their speed, leveling out when they were about a thousand feet in the air, directly above the chariot. The hovercraft immediately started ascending to match them.

  He disconnected from the stirrup and stood up on Eiga’s back, latching his armor’s belt loop onto the rope they’d slung lengthwise across the black dragon’s back. Now secured, he shuffled to the rear of the beast, grasping his thick scales for balance.

  The chariot continued to rise until it was right on their ass. MC faced it head-on, his black cloak billowing in the wind. His cyber-organic left liquified, becoming an amorphous blob before solidifying into a new shape—a gleaming silver blade three feet in length. A neat trick he’d discovered just a few days back.

  “Magnus, what are you—”

  “Something really stupid. Hang out for a sec, will ya? I’m gonna dismantle this motherfucker.”

  “Magnus, no!”

  Nova’s eyes went wide as he vanished, reappearing on top of the scarab-shaped chariot’s back. He instantly drove the arm-blade into the ship’s hull, securing him firmly in place.

  “MAGNUS!” Nova cried at the top of her lungs, her voice lost to howling winds. But he didn’t need to hear her to know what she was warning him about.

  Another chariot was rapidly closing in on their position. In just a few minutes, they’d have another chariot to deal with, so MC immediately teleported to the starboard edge of the insectoid ship’s sloped roof.

  He peered over the precipice, opting not to stare at the snow-covered valley thousands of feet below. Taking a deep breath, he began to climb his way down the side of the ship, driving his arm-blade into the hull to afford him purchase. It didn’t take long—chariots weren’t especially large, after all. MC soon found himself at the edge of the alien vessel’s flat underbelly, legs dangling in the wind.

  A gap of about five feet still remained between him and the energy weapons. He’d have teleported over, but the guns were located inside the shimmering magic field, blocking his ability. The shield hugged the surface of the ship topside, though apparently the Zevan mages couldn’t quite shape it to wrap around the bevy of firepower that ran along its belly. That meant there was a bubble he could enter, an area where his abilities could function. The bad news was that he’d have to jump across to reach them.

  Even now, he could see the weapons continuously moving, scanning the air for Eiga, but the dragon had sensed the imminent danger and soared higher. Unfortunately, that meant that the chariot also gave chase, rocking MC about as he held on for dear life.

  He steeled himself, then launched into the air, reaching out with his left as he began to fall. At the last moment, two of his mechanical fingers latched onto one of the many guns that adorned the bottom of the ship, just as the chariot banked into a sweeping turn.

  MC’s legs dangled high above the snow-covered terrain but with this move, he’d already won. He was now fully inside the protective magic shield, along with the ship. No, that wasn’t quite right—the ship was trapped in there with him.

  He went to town, ruthlessly dismantling chunk after massive chunk of the hovercraft, teleporting them into the air nearby. As he relocated more and more pieces, the vessel’s innards became visible. If the outside resembled a metal beetle, so too did the interior. He sawed the chariot’s biomechanical bridge in half, and discovered a dozen Zevan mages. Unconscious, hooked up to pipes and wires in stasis pods, and blissfully plummeting to their deaths. Not one Dyn operator was visible.

  A pang of guilt swept through MC's body, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do for them now. Even if he did save them, they were in the middle of nowhere; the mages would freeze in an instant. Assuming they didn’t try to kill him.

  Utterly helpless against his ability, the chariot soon lost all power and began to plummet to the ground with what remained of its doomed crew. He threw himself off the dying ship, spinning around to get a good view of the other chariot.

  The migraine he was currently dealing with was worse than any he’d experienced in the past, though he didn’t have the luxury to bitch about it. Steeling himself to guard against blacking out, he deployed Midar to get a lock, then teleported onto the other gunship.

  And realized he’d fucked up—big time.

  When he looked down, he’d expected to see the black armor of the Dyn assault craft, yet all that greeted him was a snowy valley, several thousand feet below—the craft had juked at the last moment, putting him just a few feet away.

  That wouldn’t have been a huge deal, if he could teleport again. Yet his vision faded as he fell from the sky, the result of overloading his abilities time and time again. By the time he regained consciousness, the ground that had seemed so distant now loomed close.

  Killing any thoughts of panic, he just teleported to the ground. He couldn’t stop his downward velocity, but he sure as hell could redirect it. MC landed hard, throwing himself into a roll.

  Luckily, the soft, powdery snow soaked up the impact like an air suspension, letting him tumble to a stop a hundred feet away. The trail he’d etched almost looked like some idiot had crash-landed an aircraft.

  He lay there heaving, staring up at the blindingly white sky as his body ached in pain, with eyes that struggled to see. Still, this was hardly the first near-death experience he’d been through. Nor was it the tenth, or even the hundredth. As he’d done countless times before, he powered through and stood himself up, boots sinking into the snow.

  The chariot continued its brethren’s relentless pursuit through the frigid skies, farther and farther away. MC mustered the most powerful directed Midar ping he could manage, sent it, and the vairo-syken responded.

  It banked a one-eighty to make a beeline for his position—the chariot hot on its tails. The enemy opened fire with their microwave emitters, searing the poor dragon’s wings. But Eiga was no idiot; he’d already dived to protect Nova from the blast.

  MC felt guilt, and anger. Guilt over letting harm befall his own, and anger over having to put up with this bullshit, day after goddamn day.

  One shot. He had exactly one chance to down that motherfucker before the headache robbed him of his consciousness once more.

  He reached forth with his right, closing his eyes. He imagined the strongest energy dampener he had ever created.

  Time seemed to slow.

  Every heartbeat, every breath, resounded like a depth charge in hostile waters. He imagined the formation of an energy vacuum. Something that could suck every iota of energy from its surroundings.

  The very air in front of him began to freeze as its energy was drawn away. The frozen air turned to steam in the next moment when the chariot assaulted him with its arsenal of radiation. Microwave and laser emissions from the combined might of ten weapons slammed into his barrier.

  Air superheated into a furnace, melting the nearby snow. He concentrated harder, willing the excess energy to dissipate. Yet the dampener had only a finite capacity to bleed energy off.

  He needed more.

  With a sudden flash of insight that often accompanies such experiences, he connected the energy dampener to a relocation tunnel, opening an alternate path for the incoming energy. The temperature immediately dropped, yet the chariot kept its emitters active, opting to simply hover in front of him as if it knew it couldn’t be hurt by the likes of a mere mortal.

  Too bad he wasn’t just any mortal.

  Waves of
energy continued to rock his world, and even the snow beneath his boots started to liquify. With every passing second, more and more blood burst out of MC’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. A few more seconds and he’d be dead.

  Yet instead of redirecting the energy to a random location, he now forced the relocation tunnel to terminate back at their point of origin—right in front of the chariot.

  Fleshy vidspheres maximized in his vision—the relocator and the energy dampener. A glossy purple umbilical cord stretched from each bubble, reaching, intertwining in the middle to form a link. A new, smaller bubble appeared over the two, and while he didn’t have the luxury to check it out, he knew exactly what it was.

  The deflector shield channeled nearly one hundred percent of the chariot’s bombardment back at it, melting through the ship’s armor. Before they had a chance to shut off the energy weapons, its front-facing bridge had already melted to slag. The guns continued to fire until the chariot’s energy core ruptured, precipitating an explosion of epic proportions.

  The superheated shrapnel from the blast tore through the overtaxed energy dampener and sliced into his face, ripping dozens of searing cuts that cauterized immediately. He hardly noticed.

  A faint part of him recognized that Eiga and Nova had landed nearby, and a pair of gorgeous white wings headed towards him. Unable to form coherent thoughts any longer, he collapsed onto his back like a power suit whose batteries had run dry. The last sounds he heard were the sweet, soothing words of an angel.

  “You are mad. Truly! Utterly! Mad!”

  Coughing up a wad of blood, he grinned through bloody teeth. “Someone once said… that if the enemy has a bigger gun… steal it.”

  Three

  Wreckage smoldered. Embers burned.

  Nova dropped to her knees on the ashy snow, gently lifting MC’s head. She brought the waterskin of mutagenic water up to his parted lips, pouring its last drops into his mouth.

  “That’s it, huh?”

  “Yes, and thank goodness. I cannot believe you have been drinking this poison all this time. We need to find a better way of healing your wounds as soon as possible. If only we had access to Dyn medical tools…”

  Too bad he couldn’t take a holophoto of Nova’s reaction when she’d first seen him chug the stuff. She’d had a genuine panic attack, and had even attempted to force his waterskin away until he explained that in his particular case, it actually seemed to help more than it hurt. Though even then, he did not want to see what his insides looked like at this point.

  “I think I broke a leg,” MC grunted through gritted teeth, spitting out a wad of blood. “Among other things.”

  Nova quickly scanned his body for damage. As bad as he must have looked on the outside, it soon became apparent that his internals were even worse off.

  “A fractured rib, a broken leg, and likely some minor internal bleeding as well,” Nova said, concern etched on her face.

  “Gee, thanks, doc. I’ll make a note not to hop off flying alien gunships next time.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. Just help me up onto Eiga, will you?”

  Leaning against Nova’s shoulder, he hobbled back to the vairo-syken, boots sinking deep into the snow. MC had kept all three of them safe this past week as they were relentlessly pursued by the Legatus’s chariots throughout the frozen north. But that meant constantly keeping his abilities active to protect them, and he nearly killed himself in the process several times over.

  This time around, though, Nova would repay the favor. After seating MC atop Eiga, she hopped off onto the soft snow, circling to the front of the dragon.

  “Eiga, we need your help. We need to hide inside the nearby caverns to the north. Can you fly us?” she pleaded with the giant creature, enunciating every word. She pointed to the gargantuan mountain range barely visible in the distance.

  The vairo-syken grunted and craned his sleek armored neck in that direction, sniffing the air.

  “I dunno, Nova, that’s a pretty complicated command. Don’t think we’re there yet.”

  The only reason they’d stayed hidden this past week was thanks to Nova’s idea to train Eiga to fly without Midar. Even with the energy dampener, the fact that MC had to send Midar pings to guide the beast meant that there was always an opening in the dampener’s bubble to let the pings through. So long as that was the case, their stealth would remain imperfect.

  “There are massive caverns nearby,” she said, again miming the mountains that they had spent the last few days making their way towards. “Please, will you fly us there?”

  They’d only tried the simplest of commands thus far. It wasn’t an issue of intelligence; the dragon-like creatures possessed nearly human sapience. It was a communication barrier, one they’d been slowly overcoming. While the dragon seemed to understand them at times, it was most likely through body language and tonal cues, rather than an increased understanding of their speech.

  Eiga apparently wanted to prove MC wrong, because he motioned for Nova to get on.

  Nova’s eyes lit up. “Thank you! Please, stay low?” She indicated the ground with one hand and mimed Eiga flying close to it with another.

  “Why the hell does he always listen to you?”

  “Maybe because I don’t treat him like a tool?” she quipped, climbing up on Eiga’s back behind MC.

  It seemed that Eiga had received the message. He took flight to the north towards the great Ells Mountains.

  MC activated the energy dampener, completely surrounding them as they made their way through the air. Even still, the Dyn’s Insight Network would spot them instantly if they broke through the clouds, which was why she’d asked Eiga to fly low.

  Now that they had destroyed what were hopefully the only chariots in the area, they ought to have at least a chance of losing the Legatus’s forces in the labyrinthine caverns.

  MC learned how to fine-tune the dampener over the past week, modulating it to selectively block different types of energy. That meant it’d kill any and all radar, but still allowed air particles to pass through without sapping their heat energy. The result was a bubble that cut out all outside sound, making for a somewhat pleasant flying experience devoid of turbulence and noise.

  Eiga flew them to one of the many gigantic caverns, easily large enough to house the great beast. The brilliant light gave way to blinding darkness as they penetrated several hundred feet inside before landing gently on the hard rocky ice.

  Nova helped MC off and had him lie down next to the jagged cavern wall, then turned to hug Eiga’s snout in gratitude. It whinnied in response, a sound she had never heard from the majestic creature before.

  “Preferential treatment, much?” MC jibbed.

  The vairo-syken tilted its head away and snorted in indignation. Like it was telling him he wasn’t good enough for that kind of treatment.

  “Yeah, I get it. You’re just a playboy. It all makes sense now.”

  Eiga bellowed a deafening roar before stalking off to the other side of the massive tunnel, where he lay down to nap.

  Nova hurried back to MC to check on him. The cold affected him less than it did her thanks to his armor and extra mass, and the slightly warmer temperatures of the cavern would still aid in recovery. She got to work.

  “Your broken leg should heal on its own given time, so long as we splint it well, and your internal bleeding seems to have lessened. I shall monitor that for now, but your broken rib worries me the most. I will need to set it.”

  MC grimaced, but kept his silence.

  “Are you not in great pain? How can you be so at ease like this?”

  Seeing Nova’s concern put a small smile on his face. It’d been so long since anyone had worried that much about him.

  “Well, you know. Pain’s an old buddy of mine, we get alo—” MC broke out into a fit of coughs and tried to sit up, but Nova pushed him back down, rolling him onto his side to clear his airways.

  “Magnus, give me your nanite-enhanced knife.”

&n
bsp; MC obliged, retrieving the weapon from a drop leg sheath he’d fashioned. “I’m not gonna like this, am I?”

  Nova didn’t respond, thus confirming his suspicion. It wasn’t like they had any anesthesia around, so MC just balled up the edge of his cloak and stuffed it in his mouth.

  Working together, they removed his chest armor, revealing exposed bones that stuck out at an obscene angle.

  Nova cut off a small section of the titanium wire lace from MC’s boot, then held both the wire and the knife up to the magic cleaning orb he carried around. It lit up for a quick moment, sterilizing both her and the tools upon contact, completely eliminating any harmful bacteria.

  She locked eyes with MC, who nodded once.

  Then she got to work, resetting the bone, reconnecting it to his ribcage, and securing them with wire. She’d have preferred to use a biodegradable wire, but given that they had nothing else on hand, it would have to suffice. Still, she attached it in such a way that it could be easily removed later on.

  Though MC had a hard time forming coherent thoughts at that moment, he recognized her skill. While he’d managed not to scream throughout the process, he passed out by the time she finished her operation.

  Hours later, MC woke to a body wracked with pain. A throbbing sensation pulsed through his entire body. Apparently, Nova had created a splint for his leg while he was out, because he found himself completely immobile.

  “Your condition has stabilized, though it will take time before you recover enough to walk.”

  MC gazed up at the cavern entrance and the white world that lay beyond. He clenched up, and in the next moment, giant black boulders sealed off the opening, plunging them into darkness. Then he reinforced it a couple of times for good measure.

  Even with radiation weapons, the Dyn wouldn’t be burning through that anytime soon.

  “I thought I just told you to rest! You are aggravating your condition!” she scolded, just as any good doctor would.