Falling from a ship at ten thousand feet is a great way to realize how much you miss having a "Flight" skill.
In the old days, I would have just hovered. I would have looked like a cool anime protagonist drifting through the clouds. Now? I was just a screaming teenager in a hoodie, flailing my arms while the wind tried to rip my skin off. My Level 0 body felt like it was being crushed by an invisible giant.
"Pull the cord! Pull the cord!" I screamed at myself, but the wind swallowed the words.
I yanked the handle on my chest.
THWACK.
The parachute snapped open. The sudden jerk felt like it was going to tear my shoulders out of their sockets. I groaned, dangling in the air as the green and black canopy of the Amazon zoomed up to meet me.
But the jungle didn't look like a jungle anymore. It looked like a giant, distorted circuit board. The trees were being encased in black glass, their leaves turning into sharp, crystalline shards that caught the sickly red light of the Stitch.
"Kess, do you copy?" I whispered into my ear-piece.
Static. The Fracture in the Amazon was ten times stronger than the one in Seattle. The interference was eating my comms.
"Great," I muttered. "I'm alone in a glass forest with one bullet and a bruised ego."
The Crash Landing
I didn't land in a clearing. I landed right in the middle of the "Glass Trees."
CRUNCH.
My parachute got snagged on a jagged branch. I was hanging ten feet off the ground, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Every time I moved, the glass branches scraped against my legs, slicing through my jeans.
"Stupid... gravity..." I grunted, reaching for the combat knife on my belt.
I cut the straps and tumbled to the ground. I hit the dirt hard, rolling into a pile of black glass shards.
[HEALTH: 82%] [STATUS: MINOR BLEEDING]
I sat up and looked at my arm. A long piece of glass had sliced through my sleeve. The blood was red—bright, human red. No blue sparks. No "Auto-Regen" ticking up. Just a wound that was going to hurt for a week.
I wrapped a piece of my hoodie around the cut and stood up.
The silence was eerie. In a normal jungle, you'd hear birds, monkeys, and bugs. Here, all I heard was a low, electric hum. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. It was the sound of the Needle, miles away, vibrating the very atoms of the air.
The Stalker
I grabbed Sarah's wooden rifle. It felt heavy and solid. I checked the small glowing tube on the side—the Essence battery. It was pulsing a soft blue.
One shot, I reminded myself. Don't miss.
I started walking toward the center of the Fracture. The ground was covered in white "bone-sand" that made my footsteps silent, but it also left deep tracks. I hadn't walked a hundred yards before I felt that prickle on the back of my neck.
In the System days, I would have had a "Sense Danger" notification. Now, I just had a gut feeling. I ducked behind a glass tree trunk and held my breath.
Something was moving in the bushes. Something big.
It stepped out into the light.
It looked like a panther, but its skin was made of liquid shadows. It didn't have eyes, just two glowing red slits on its forehead. Its claws were long, curved needles of obsidian.
[ANOMALY DETECTED: VOID-CAT] [THREAT LEVEL: DEADLY]
I squeezed the rifle. My palms were sweaty. The Void-Cat sniffed the air. It was looking for mana—the "smell" of a Hero. Since I had zero mana, it seemed confused. It tilted its head, its red slits pulsing.
It was ten feet away. If it lunged, I was dead. I couldn't outrun a shadow.
The cat stepped closer. It was right in front of the tree. I could smell its breath—it smelled like ozone and rotting meat. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I became a rock. I became a ghost.
The cat stayed there for a full minute, its tail twitching. Then, it let out a low hiss and melted back into the shadows.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would crack my ribs.
"D-Rank perks," I whispered. "Invisible to the monsters because I'm too weak to be a snack."
The Harvest
I kept moving for an hour, following the hum. The deeper I went, the weirder things got.
I found a small village. It was a cluster of wooden huts that had been completely turned into glass. Inside the huts, I saw the villagers.
They weren't dead. They were frozen.
They were standing in place, their skin turned into the same translucent glass as the trees. I could see their hearts beating inside their chests—tiny, flickering blue sparks.
"They're harvesting them," a voice whispered.
I spun around, leveling my rifle.
A girl was standing in the doorway of a glass hut. She was maybe eight years old. She wasn't made of glass yet, but her legs were starting to turn grey and stiff.
"Who are you?" I asked, lowering the gun.
"I am Maya," she said. Her voice was thin. "The Black Men came and touched my Papa. Now he is a window. They touch everyone. They say the King needs our 'light' for the big machine."
"The Needle," I muttered.
I looked at her father. He was a statue of frozen glass, his face twisted in a silent scream.
"Maya, where did the Black Men go?"
She pointed toward the center of the jungle, where a pillar of red light was stabbing the clouds. "The Big Spike. They take the people there to drain the light. They say the King is hungry."
I looked at my hand. My skin was pale. I had no levels, no mana, and a heart that skipped beats. But I had a gravity-grenade and one shot in this wooden rifle.
"Stay here, Maya," I said. "Hide. I'm going to go break their toy."
"You are just a boy," she whispered. "The Black Men are giants."
"I'm a D-Rank," I said, pulling my hoodie up. "Giants don't look at their feet."
The Fortress
I didn't walk. I ran.
Every step hurt. My Level 0 lungs were screaming, but I used the Backburn logic Sarah taught me. I didn't push my muscles; I just let the gravity of the Fracture pull me forward. It was like falling horizontally.
I reached the edge of the clearing.
It wasn't just a "Needle." It was a factory.
Thousands of glass-slaves were hooked up to black cables, their life-force flowing into a massive, spinning turbine at the base of the tower. Standing guard were the Remnant Knights—traitors like Vane who had sold their souls to the Devourer King to keep their levels.
They were wearing heavy obsidian armor and carrying "Soul-Scythes" that hummed with purple fire.
"Architect, do you copy?" I hissed into my mic.
Static. Then, a voice cracked through. "...ane! ...eading you! The ...urbine is the weak point! If you hit the ...vent, the whole thing blows!"
"I see the vent," I whispered. It was a small opening, glowing red, halfway up the tower. "But there's a Knight standing right in front of it."
"You have one shot, Kane," the Architect's voice stabilized. "If you miss, the Needle stabilizes and the Stitch becomes permanent in South America. Everyone turns to glass."
The Vertical Climb
I didn't have "Spider-Climb." I had a pair of sneakers and a lot of spite.
I crept around the back of the tower. The glass was hot, vibrating with the stolen energy of a thousand souls. I started to climb.
The glass cut my fingers. My Level 0 grip strength was failing.
Click. Click. Click.
A Remnant Knight was walking the catwalk above me. His boots sounded like hammers on a coffin. I froze, hanging off a glass ledge by my fingertips.
The Knight stopped right above me. He leaned over the railing. His mask was a featureless black plate.
"I smell... nothing," the Knight muttered. His voice was a glitchy electronic growl. "Empty space. This Sector is clear."
He moved on.
I hauled myself up onto the catwalk, gasping for air. I crawled toward the red vent.
Twenty feet away.
The Knight turned around. He saw me.
"A civilian?" The Knight laughed, raising his Soul-Scythe. "How did a Level 0 worm get past the perimeter?"
"I took the bus," I said.
I didn't go for my gun. I went for the Gravity Grenade.
I threw it at his feet.
BWONG.
The grenade didn't explode. It created a miniature black hole. The Knight's heavy obsidian armor was his downfall—it was too dense. The gravity grabbed him and crumpled his armor like a soda can. He was crushed into a ball of scrap metal in three seconds.
The Shot
I stood in front of the vent. I could see the turbine spinning inside. It was beautiful and terrifying, a whirlpool of stolen souls.
I raised Sarah's wooden rifle.
[SIGHTS LOCKED] [ESSENCE BATTERY: 100%]
"I hate being the hero," I whispered.
I didn't pull the trigger. I closed my eyes. I felt the vibration of the tower. I felt the "thin" spot in reality right in front of the muzzle.
CRACK.
The rifle kicked like a mule, nearly breaking my collarbone. The blue Essence bolt didn't fly straight. It spiraled, catching the gravity-drift of the Fracture, and dived straight into the center of the turbine.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, the red light turned white.
The Escape
The Needle didn't just break. It screamed.
A wave of pure energy exploded from the vent, throwing me off the catwalk. I was falling again, but this time, the ground was exploding.
"KESS! NOW!" I screamed into the comms.
The Vagabond dived out of the clouds, its ramp lowering.
"Jump, Kane!" Elena's voice was a roar.
I didn't think. I ran off the edge of the collapsing glass tower and leaped into the air. For a second, I was flying. Then, a hand caught mine.
Elena.
She hauled me onto the ramp just as the Needle collapsed into a pile of black dust.
"You're alive," she panted, hugging me so hard I thought my ribs would finally snap.
"Barely," I said.
I looked back. The jungle was still glass, but the red light was gone. The people... they were starting to move. Maya's father was shivering.
"Two down," I said, closing my eyes. "Two to go."