Chương 105: Treasure Vault

[Uncommon title: 'Dauntless (I)' gained!] [Title - Dauntless (Uncommon, I-Grade): Overcame fear based attacks without protection—while active, the bearer gains minor resistance to mana induced fear. Skills or magical effects of higher grades may still affect the Title bearer.] Kelly slot it in right away, and though the fear didn't vanish, it eased up. The creature was hurt now, visibly hurt, and it didn't like that.

Darkness rose from the ground around it, from the shadows of buildings and vehicles and the spaces between streetlights, all of it flowing into the wounds, knitting them closed while the thing stood there taking hits. Then it adapted. The creature opened holes in its own body, shadow gaps that let the lasers pass straight through, nothing for the light to hit, nothing to disrupt.

The holes shifted as the beams moved, always open where the fire came from, always closed everywhere else, and the shadows kept rising, kept healing it, kept making more. Kelly was all eyes and excited ramblings, soaking up every detail with scientific curiosity.

"It's detecting exactly where each beam's aimed and opening holes that line up perfectly with the incoming light. Does that mean it's sensing the energy signature before the beam fully forms? The apertures position so the lasers pass through without touching anything solid. So Voidlings can do that. And the regeneration's pulling shadow material from the environment, absorbing darkness off the ground and buildings and weaving it straight into damaged tissue. Active construction.

It's manufacturing new body out of whatever's lying around. Does it need a constant shadow supply to keep going, or can it store what it takes in?" Then the creature did something else that made her jaw drop. Ren's brows rose a fraction. Reggie and his goons screamed, roared, and opened fire, and Reggie's puppet was on the creature. The creature raised both hands and the darkness answered.

Every shadow in the street pulled toward it, sliding across the ground like oil drawn to a drain, pooling at the voidling's feet in a thickening mass of absolute black. The street reappeared under normal light for the first time since the attack began—glow strips flickering back to life, storefront signs casting actual illumination, the sudden exposure making everyone blink. And from that pooled darkness at the creature's feet, something rose. A dragon.

Massive, winged, made entirely of the darkness that had covered everything moments ago. Its eyes were voids within the void, its scales shifting like smoke given form, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow large vehicles whole.

"Heads on target! Don't let it breathe!" Reggie's voice cut through the gunfire.

"Hit it with everything!" The voidling slipped into the ground like it was water, disappeared completely, and rose again from the dragon's back, standing between its wings. Shadows ripped out of the ground—spikes punching up from the street that forced Goon One and Goon Two to dive sideways, spears of shadow aimed at their chests. Then the shadows around them bulged and from that darkness came smaller shadows, muscular little bodies with the proportions of children and faces full of teeth and empty eyes.

Shadow goblins. Evil shadow toddlers.

"What the fuck are those?!" Goon One sprayed them with his rifle, rounds passing through shadow and sparking off the street behind.

"They're everywhere! They're coming from everywhere!" Reggie's puppet lunged at the creature but the shadow toddlers swarmed it, dozens climbing its legs and torso, tiny hands tearing chunks of light from its shape. The puppet threw two off—they dissolved, re-formed, and jumped back on. More kept coming, smothering it in a mass of writhing black bodies. The puppet flickered, one arm falling away into sparks, the head caving in as three toddlers chewed through its face, the torso collapsing under clawed hands.

The last of it guttered out and died, swallowed by the swarm. The lesser constructs attacked—spikes ripping through pavement, toddlers scrambling at Reggie and his goons with empty eyes. Reggie and his goons opened fire, lasers cutting through shadow stuff that dissolved and re-formed and kept coming. Ren watched, arms crossed. Then from every shadow on the street—Reggie's, Goon One's, Goon Two's, Ren's—dark spikes rose to strike them. Only Kelly's shadow stayed flat against the ground, untouched.

"Spears, spikes, evil children, a dragon. Could I pull that off with my shadow storage? What happens if I cut one open and see how the mana moves it? Kelly watched all of this in the fraction of time she'd borrowed from the rest of the world, the creature and its constructs moving like they were swimming through honey while her personal time raced ahead. She considered the problem. Option A: capture a piece of the creature. Option B: capture the whole thing, or at least one of the things it summoned for study.

Problem: it couldn't be contained. It moved through shadow like water, and while concentrated directed energy beams harmed it, it had already adapted to them. She could probably destroy it with a full-power blast, but then she'd lose the sample. No sample, no data, no point.

"Genecorp sampled one of these things. If those corporate clowns could pull it off, so can I." Experimentally, with time moving at a crawl, she aimed her directed energy weapon at one of the lesser shadow goblins scrambling toward Reggie's position. A precise beam, surgical, and the goblin's arm separated at the shoulder. She switched out the Dauntless title, felt Giantslayer flood her systems, and raced forward at over two hundred percent speed, crossing the distance before the arm hit the ground.

Her hand closed around it. For a second it felt solid—hard as metal, cold, dense—and then naturally, as it touched her palm, it burst into formless smoky shadow and sank into the ground, gone. Kelly grinned.

"Success." She hadn't been trying to catch it. She'd been trying to touch it. Her mimic skin activated, and where the shadow had touched her palm, her hand transformed—pure construct of shadow now, the same material as the goblin's arm, solid and dark and hers. She flexed her shadow fingers. They moved exactly like her real ones. So the things the voidling summoned from shadow weren't alive. It was controlling them, puppeting them, same as Reggie did with his lightning puppet.

That meant the intelligence was in the main creature, not the constructs.

"That makes this so much easier," she muttered. Kelly pulled a drone from her own shadow dimension and mentally commanded it to shine a light directly on her. She time-skipped the drone into various positions around the street, watching her shadow stretch and sweep across the ground as the moving light shifted in the world's most aggressive light show—under every shadow goblin still scrambling, under every construct, shadow-spike and spear, over Reggie and his goons and Ren.

The constructs hit her shadow and kept going, sinking into it as if they'd found a new home and decided to move in without asking, disappearing one after another until the street was just pavement and light and four very confused humans standing in it. The voidling still sat on its massive dragon overhead, wings flapping, looking down at an empty battlefield where its whole army used to be. The voidling looked at her.

Kelly couldn't see its face through that matte black void where features should be, but in the way its silhouette shifted, the way its head tracked her, she got the distinct impression it was pissed. Probably recognized what she was. Definitely noticed its army was gone. She'd have been annoyed too. The dragon opened its mouth and fired a beam of darkness shot through with sickly grey and nasty-looking mana, a column aimed right at her chest.

Kelly equipped Disciple of Deflection and slapped it with her shadow hand like it was an annoying fly. The beam veered off and hit a parked car, which stopped existing. Her mimic hand exploded into shadow vapor. She looked down at the stump of darkness where her hand used to be. Experimentally, she dipped it into her own shadow, the one still attached to her feet, and pulled it back out. The hand re-formed, solid and dark, flexing on command. Huh. Interesting. Same trick the voidling's constructs used.

Good to know. [Title: Disciple of Deflection Grade III → IV] [Additional Effect: Deflection gains reflection. Successfully deflecting an attack sends back 120% of its original force.] The dragon fired again, thicker beam, more charge behind it. Kelly deflected with her shadow hand and an instant shield for backup, and this time the beam bent off her and shot back at the dragon with extra force—slightly off target, but close enough to clip its wing. Dark shadow-stuff sprayed across the sky. The dragon reeled.

Her shadow hand exploded again. She dipped the stump into her shadow and pulled out a fresh one. Kelly flexed her new shadow hand, watching the darkness ripple where knuckles should be. She looked up at the dragon circling above, then at the voidling riding it. Was the dragon alive? Like actually alive, with thoughts and feelings and a desire not to get stolen? Or was it just more puppetry, same as the goblins and the spikes and everything else she'd already vacuumed up?

If it wasn't alive, how wide would she have to stretch her shadow to fit something that size? She'd need a lot of light. A lot of angle. A lot of shadow real estate. She turned to Reggie and his goons, still standing there with their weapons and their panic and their complete lack of ability to contribute to what came next. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"Stay out of this one. This part's mine." She equipped Mana Vacuum and felt the Title settle into place, hungry and ready. Her molecular switch weapon reconfigured in her grip, internal runes slipping in and out of alignment with a sound like a knife being sharpened on its own edge. She summoned an instant shield under her foot, stepped onto it like it was a staircase that hadn't been there a second ago, summoned another above it, and climbed.

Shield after shield after shield, racing up into the sky, leaving the ground behind before anyone could argue. Kelly raced through the sky on rune-summoned platforms, each appearing under her foot just in time, climbing toward the dragon. The massive creature tucked its wings and dove into a building thirty stories up, disappearing into its shadow. Then the ground cracked beneath her.

The dragon erupted from the pavement, jaws wide, rising on a column of darkness aiming to swallow her while she was mid-step between platforms. Kelly looked at the jaws, at the space the dragon had been, and remembered how stretching her shadow across the street had immobilized every construct the voidling made—walls, spikes, goblins. All had become inanimate. The dragon had stayed in the air, moving separately. Realization hit her mid-air. She cackled—a genuine laugh echoing off the buildings. It wasn't alive.

The dragon was a puppet, controlled by the voidling. She skipped sideways off her platform just before the jaws closed, landing on a new one she summoned mid-thought.

"—just a really big toy," she finished, still laughing. She should've known. The real deal was far more deadly. Kelly hung in the air, floodlight drone keeping pace at her shoulder like an obedient pet, and threw up instant shields in a massive layered cage around herself and the dragon—walls of reinforced composite stacked thick enough to block every light source except the drone still hovering at her shoulder. The space inside went dark. Complete dark. Her dark.

She slammed a second cage inside the first one, tighter, boxing the construct and its rider into a shrinking pocket of black. The dragon hit the inner wall. Kelly's shadow stretched across the shield surface beneath it. The dragon sank into that shadow like it was falling through water and was gone—stored away in her shadow dimension. The voidling wasn't gone though. It tumbled through the air where the dragon used to be, alive in a way the constructs weren't, and Kelly slowed time to a crawl.

She time-skipped across the space between them, appearing right in front of it—drained and slightly exhausted—and grabbed it with her shadow hand. It thrashed and stabbed at her, but small stacked shields sprang into existence at the point of impact from thin air before crumbling to nothing. The blow had carried more strength than Kelly expected, but the shields had bought her a second—that was enough.

The thing thrashed, tried to slip away into darkness, but there was nowhere to go—her hand was shadow, the only thing that could actually touch it, and it held on like grabbing cold dense meat wrapped in flexible armor, tough and springy and solid in a way that felt almost organic. Before it could escape, Kelly moved. She put her directed energy weapon against its head and pulled the trigger. The voidling went limp. Still standing on her platform in the sky, Kelly stored the body in her shadow. Two prime specimens.

Plenty of material. Good haul.

"Guess dying's off the menu today." Kelly eyed her shadow. With the latest storage, it could probably appraise for enough to buy a small town. Dying this loop would be a disaster. It wouldn't be the usual type where she woke up annoyed and missing a few hours. It'd be much worse. The reset would wipe it all. The Voidling corpse. The constructs. All her hard work would just be… gone. She dropped from the sky on a sparse series of instant shields breaking her fall, her boots hitting pavement with a thud.

Ren stood exactly where she'd left him, arms crossed. Reggie and his goons were still there too, looking at her. The old veteran, Ren, turned to face the mercenaries, "We're heading into more danger from here. Your men won't be able to follow." Reggie shook his head.

"No can do, sir. We were hired for a specific job." He pointed at Kelly.

"This was a detour." Kelly was in a good mood. An exceptionally good mood. She wiped soot off her cheek with the back of her wrist and glanced at the APC, which now had a dragon-shaped gouge carved straight through reinforced plating rated to stop anti-armor rounds. The steel around the tear had folded inward. The windows were busted and the interior was a crime scene. Kelly was pretty sure the left axle was praying—the vehicle sagged two inches lower on the left.

"It's fine," she said.

"We'll meet you back at Haider's place. Try not to die before I get there. I need witnesses for the expense report." Reggie snorted.

"Make sure you have a bonus ready, lady. That APC's suspension isn't going to pay for itself. It's going to need new windows. And a new interior. A new everything." Kelly waved.

"Bill Haider. He loves invoices." Reggie crossed his arms.

"Haider pays, but he also asks questions. What do I tell him happened?

'Your new hire stuffed a shadow creature into the vehicle and then arm-wrestled a dragon over the hood'?" Kelly shrugged.

"Tell him I'm ahead of schedule." Goon One laughed, a short burst through his metal jaw.

"Schedule for what? Wrecking company property?"

"Research and development," Kelly said.

"Very expensive and valuable R-and-D. He'll understand." A beat of silence followed as the adrenaline from battle left them, and they stood for second, calm. In the cool breeze of a burning city. Reggie glanced at his ruined APC, then back at Kelly, then at her shadow.

"That thing in your Shrink-Box. The dragon-thing. It's really secure in there?"

"Sure." Goon Two spoke up, quieter than the others.

"You're not going to, like, lose it, right? It can't get out? I heard those things are still prototypes" Kelly patted her own shadow.

"This is a premium shadow dimension. Climate controlled. Secure entry. No unauthorized exits." Goon Two stared at her.

"That doesn't mean anything."

"Sure it does. It means your ride home won't have a dragon in it. Relax." Reggie shook his head as he started walking, his men falling in behind him.

"Man… of all the clients I've had, she's got to be one of the crazier ones. Top five for sure." Goon One said, "Top three."

"Don't encourage her." Goon Two had been stayed quiet. As the others left, he hesitated. Then he caught Kelly's eye, gave a short nod. That was it. Then he said, "Stay safe." How kind! Kelly beamed back in surprise and waved goodbye.

"You too! Don't let anything eat you on the way home! I'll see you guys later!" He turned and sauntered after the others. Kelly and Ren stood there, watching them leave in silence., waiting until the footsteps faded. Then Kelly spun and grabbed Ren's arm, his nanotech shifting under her fingers.

"Give me an hour. Just one." Ren looked at her. She said, "With the cube and everything about to happen, there's no time. I need to look at the samples now. The voidling. The dragon. I need to see how they work, what makes them tick, if there's anything I can use before we walk into that dome." Ren said nothing. He opened his mouth to speak. Kelly got there first, pressing further, already pinging messages, bartering with multiple parties for what she needed, "I'll be quick. I'm always quick.

Just wait here, kill some things, steal some info, do your old man recon thing. One hour." She paused.

"Please?" Ren was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "One hour. Gives me time to walk the perimeter." Kelly was already moving.

"You're the best. I promise I won't die." She raced off to find somewhere dark and private, intent on investigating the Voidlings secrets, already pulling samples from her shadow, mind racing through dissection protocols and integration possibilities. An hour and four minutes later, Kelly returned, dishevelled and disorganised, but grinning. Ren waited until the footsteps were right behind him, then turned. He looked at her, one eyebrow raised a fraction.

"Satisfied?" Kelly's eyes glazed over as she pulled up her Status panel, reading information that hadn't been there an hour ago. She flexed her shadow hand once, watching the darkness ripple. Then she patted her own shadow like it was a particularly well-behaved dog.

"Got a voidling corpse and a new Trait. Of course I'm satisfied."

"Good." Ren turned and started walking.

"Let's go." Kelly and her teacher, Ren walked through the city. Before the loops, she'd hated walking. Now, it wasn't so bad. Something large, with too many limbs and too many eyes drifted by the two of them, not noticing the humans strolling past. Ren stood behind her, palm hovering a few inches from her back. A thin sheen crawled over her jacket, then her arms, then her face. It spread in a smooth layer, tight as a second skin. It did not glow. It did not hum. It simply settled. Kelly looked down at herself.

She could still see her hands. Ren nodded once.

"Move slowly." She took a step. The air bent. Her outline thinned, bled into the background, then vanished. Kelly stopped mid-step.

"Oh, that's disgusting," she said under her breath.

"I love it."

"Speed disrupts the film," Ren said.

"Sudden acceleration fractures the light alignment. Sensors recalibrate if you spike."

"So no sprinting, no parkour, no throwing cars," she said.

"Correct." She rolled her shoulders experimentally. The film shifted with her, adjusting, tightening. When she turned too fast, a faint shimmer rippled across her outline and snapped back into place. Kelly crouched and pressed her fingers to the pavement. No heat signature bloom. No distortion trail in the dust. Even her shadow failed to anchor properly, diffused into the environment. Instead of barreling through the city guns blazing like they'd done to get here, Kelly and the old man actually tried using stealth.

It was Ren's idea. The nanotech would make her invisible. But it wasn't just invisibility—it scrubbed every trace she existed from everything except the really expensive detection systems you'd find off planet on ships—or rigs the size of houses. Right now, to every sensor and sight that mattered, her atoms literally did not exist. And his nanotech had built the stuff on the fly, right there, with designs that definitely didn't come from any human factory she knew about.

Kelly watched it crawl over her hand and felt her brain light up. This was impossible, even by Kelly's standards. What else could his nanotech build? Kelly stared at her own arm as a thin film spread across it, nanotech crawling over her skin like a second layer of something that wasn't quite alive but also wasn't quite dead. This wasn't tech that you could code in to nanotech. Or even industrial machines. This tech should have only worked with a starship. Or a corpo fighter shuttle.

Ren had just waved his hand and it happened, no visible device or sequence, but old man magic of the technological variety.

"How is this even possible?" She turned her hand over, watching the film shift with the light.

"I read papers on this. Theoretical papers. People lost grants trying to make this work. The total omni-sensor disruption alone requires processing that—" She broke down the mechanics, the impossible engineering, the sheer audacity of building this on the fly with tech that didn't look completely human in origin. Was it Tüin tech, stolen? Or something else? She had to know.

"There's a reason nobody wants to get on Joe's bad side." Ah. Of course. There was a reason Dr. Haider was too valuable to imprison. His mind was pretty special. Practically the only one who could handle this without being taken over. Give this tech to anyone else and you'd just get the next AI overlord puppeteering a human body. Or a very dead man with stolen tech. Kelly let out a low whistle.

"So Haider rides the tiger without getting eaten."

"Yes." Kelly processed that. Processed Sato's tech. Understood now why they called him Sato the Ghost. People called him that because they couldn't see him coming. She'd assumed stealth augments, tactical skill, old veteran tricks. Now she got it. The man was literally invisible in a world where everything and everyone was seen, even from orbit. She lifted her hand slowly. It vanished into the city backdrop. She wiggled her fingers and watched the shimmer threaten to ripple.

"Do I get one of these permanently?"

"No."

"Rude." Unseen, undetected, the two of them moved through the ruined streets until the dome wall towered in front of them, close enough to touch. This section of the dome wall glistened with perfect construction. Smooth, seamless, and absolutely not designed to let people in. Kelly pressed her palm against it, felt the faint hum of something massive and power-hungry running through the metal. Ren said, "Use your blade. The molecular one. Cut us an entrance." Kelly looked at him, then at the wall.

Finally, they had reached the dome. The East Grid. The Cube. And Kelly couldn't wait to get her hands on what was inside.