Kenji ran a gloved hand over the faintly humming surface of the second Reality Anchor. The cool, pure energy emanating from it was a balm against the constant, gnawing pain in his Shadow Brand.
His System showed the Anchor glowing a steady blue. The next one, a flickering dot on his map, seemed really far away.
"Alright, that's two down," he muttered, more to himself than to his companions. "Only… who knows how many more to go. And something tells me Noxius isn't too pleased with our progress."
Kaito, ever the pragmatist, was already checking his gear, his expression grim.
"Pleased?"
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 shivered as she scanned the darkening sky, even with the warm air of the Blight. Her Lumina light flickered, a subtle warning.
"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 quiet, filled with a deep, creeping unease.
They set out, but the temporary relief from the Anchor soon faded. Dread took over in the dimension.
The terrain seemed to actively fight them now. The ground moved up and down more often. Sudden cracks opened without warning, making them jump or scramble.
Blight storms, swirling winds of corrosive green particles, swept across the land. They forced people to find sparse cover behind the bony remains of blight-bone.
"Move! Now!" Kaito shouted and 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, shrouded in a particularly dense 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 tall, victorious in a ruined world. His face twisted into 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.
Elara hurried to him, her hands shining. She created 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 lumbering beasts, but tall, slender figures.
Their shapes seem human, yet they are completely alien. They are made of hardened blight. Their eyes glowed with the same malevolent intelligence Elara had sensed.
Stalker-Blights. They moved silently, aiming for Kaito's tech. They wanted to cut his connection to his gear. They also targeted Elara's light, hoping to snuff it out.
"They're fast!" Kaito yelled, dodging a lashing tendril that seemed to sprout directly from the mist.
He fired a quick shot from his energy pistol, but the Stalker-Blights absorbed the blast and barely reacted.
"And they're tougher than they look! My tech's barely scratching them!"
Kenji forced himself to push back the mental assault. He couldn't afford to falter. He charged 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.
Every dark energy blast increased the Corruption Influence building inside him.
The fight was a brutal, silent dance of death. The Stalker-Blights were relentless and clever.
They worked together to separate them and pick them off one by one. Kenji was their anchor, using his raw power to hold back the tide.
Elara's fading light kept them safe, and Kaito created clever distractions to buy them precious seconds.
They barely broke free, escaping the pass and finding themselves at the edge of a vast, churning 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 I don't think even your shadows can walk on liquid acid, ghost-boy."
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 that seemed like ancient ruins.
Huge, warped beams of solid energy floated up now and then, half-submerged in the corrosive 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, though. My last few energy cells are looking pretty sad."
It was a slow, agonizing process. Kaito scrambled onto a piece of floating wreckage. He quickly made a small device that pulsed with faint energy. This helped stabilize the unstable platform for a moment.
Kenji and Elara leapt across, moving quickly as the Blightwater churned below. Corrosive tendrils lashed out at them.
Elara formed a shining shield of Lumina light around them. It blocked the hissing acid.
Mid-crossing, the Silence Zone hit them. 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. His own tech had gone inert.
"I… I can't feel anything! No energy! No light!" Elara cried, her voice filled with panic.
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.
They emerged from the Silence Zone, breathless and shaken, but alive. Kenji's System came back online with familiar alerts and maps.
However, the Corruption Influence meter remained dangerously high.
The Blight-Lake was behind them. The ground rose ahead, heading 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 remained bright red.
Yet, he felt a cold, grim resolve wash 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.
"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.
"Let's move."