The answer came in the form of a deafening crack that split the air like thunder. A fissure opened in reality itself, not from my abilities but from the cumulative strain of multiple dimensional fractures. The rift was beginning to tear apart at the seams.
The Void Reject's six eyes—three still visible beneath crystalline growths—darted toward the ceiling as chunks of obsidian-like material broke free and plummeted around us. It momentarily released me, more concerned with the structural integrity of its domain than with my destruction.
I seized the opportunity, staggering backward as the Living Metal conduit continued to drain my energy while offering crucial protection.
EXHAUSTION: 85 → 90
HP: 28 → 26
"Consume Hazard," I gasped, focusing on the Living Metal aura surrounding me. The metallic substance dissolved into my body, its energy flowing through my system as the Hazard Conduit dispelled. First Fracture Charge accumulated, triggering Reactive Fracture Tether.
HP: 26 → 51
MANA: 40 → 65
STAMINA: 15 → 40
EXHAUSTION: 90 → 65
The Living Metal remained partially fused to portions of my body—left arm, chest, parts of my legs—but no longer actively drained my resources as much. My Speed surged with the Fracture Tether, perception sharpening just as another segment of the chamber collapsed.
I leapt sideways as a massive crystal formation crashed where I'd stood seconds before. The floor beneath us gave way, revealing an abyss of swirling dimensional energy. Fragments of the chamber—crystal, obsidian, and metallic structures—didn't fall but floated, creating an archipelago of debris in a void of pulsing purple and black energy.
The Void Reject roared in fury as the ground beneath it disintegrated. It leapt with impossible grace despite its crystal-metal hybrid form, landing on a massive floating platform twenty meters away. Its six eyes fixed on me with hatred that transcended dimensional boundaries.
I jumped to a nearby platform just as my previous foothold crumbled into the void. My enhanced speed made the leap possible, but landing sent shockwaves of pain through my injured ribs.
HP: 51 → 48
The chamber had transformed entirely—no longer an enclosed space but an expanse of floating debris in what appeared to be the raw dimensional fabric between realities. The air thinned with each passing second, the atmosphere bleeding into the void between worlds. Breathing became labored, each inhalation providing less oxygen than the last.
EXHAUSTION: 65 → 70
The Void Reject vanished again—blinking out of existence for its signature attack. Ten seconds until it reappeared with an area blast. I needed to find stable ground before then.
I scanned the floating debris field, spotting a cluster of platforms that seemed more stable than the rest. The distance was too great for a single jump, but I could make it with careful timing.
"Create Hazard," I commanded, focusing on the space between platforms. A gravity well manifested—a localized distortion that pulled surrounding matter toward its center. Second Fracture Charge accumulated, refreshing my Speed boost.
MANA: 65 → 55
With enhanced speed, I leapt toward the gravity well, allowing it to accelerate my trajectory. The increased velocity carried me past the well's center and toward my target platform. I landed in a controlled roll, minimizing impact.
Eight seconds until the Void Reject reappeared. I positioned myself near a time bubble, preparing to use it strategically.
"Amplify Hazard," I called out, targeting the time bubble. The temporal anomaly tripled in intensity, expanding from the size of a softball to a sphere three meters in diameter. Third Fracture Charge accumulated.
MANA: 55 → 45
Reality fractured with a sound like the universe itself being torn apart. The dimensional fabric split open, wider and more catastrophically than before. Through the tear poured Chronoplasm—liquid time, a substance that existed in all moments simultaneously.
The iridescent fluid spread through the debris field, coating surfaces in a film that shimmered with temporal energy. Where Chronoplasm touched matter, that matter experienced its entire existence at once—formation, alteration, and destruction occurring simultaneously.
The Void Reject materialized directly in front of me, immediately unleashing its area attack—a spherical wave of purple energy. I dove through the amplified time bubble, experiencing subjective minutes in objective microseconds. The energy wave passed around the bubble's edges, missing me completely.
The Chronoplasm reacted violently to the Void Reject's presence, flowing toward the creature with apparent purpose. Where it contacted the hybrid being, portions of its body aged rapidly while others reverted to earlier states. Parts of the crystal parasite infection crumbled to dust while others grew with renewed vigor. Sections of Living Metal oxidized instantly while others became more refined and pure.
I wasn't immune to the Chronoplasm's effects. Where the temporal fluid splashed across my body, I experienced disorienting flashes of past and future—wounds healing and reopening, energy depleting and restoring. My vision flickered with contradictions.
HP: 48 → ???
EXHAUSTION: 70 → ???
Another platform beneath us disintegrated, forcing both combatants to leap to separate floating debris. The rift continued to collapse around us, more platforms breaking apart with each passing second. The atmosphere had thinned to near-vacuum conditions, making each breath a struggle.
The Void Reject's six eyes locked onto me as we faced each other across thirty meters of dimensional void. It raised one clawed hand, void energy gathering for a beam attack. I leapt sideways just as the beam discharged, the energy cutting through the space I'd occupied and continuing until it struck a reality shard floating in the distance. The shard exploded in a shower of crystallized dimensional fabric.
My resources were depleting rapidly in the thinning atmosphere. I needed to max my Exhaustion and get close enough to the Void Reject to bait its ability to consume it. That would heal both of us again, but I needed the close proximity for this to happen. The floating platforms between us posed a real challenge.
"Invert Hazard," I commanded, targeting a gravity wave moving through the debris field. The hazard reversed its properties, changing from random gravitational fluctuations to a controlled antigravity corridor. First Fracture Charge accumulated, triggering Reactive Fracture Tether.
MANA: 45 → 35
With enhanced speed, I navigated the antigravity corridor, using it to propel myself toward the Void Reject's position. The creature seemed surprised by my direct approach, readying its claws for close combat.
I landed on its platform with controlled momentum, immediately rolling beneath its first strike. The Living Metal fused to my form limited my mobility, but hardened at impact points. It provided crucial armor against its attacks.
"Create Hazard," I called out, manifesting a time bubble near our position. The temporal anomaly created a sphere where time accelerated dramatically, causing seconds outside to translate to minutes within. Second Fracture Charge accumulated, refreshing my Speed boost.
MANA: 35 → 25
Instead of remaining within the bubble, I positioned myself at its threshold, dancing along its boundary. One moment I'd step inside, experiencing accelerated time that rapidly decreased my cooldowns, then immediately dart back out before the Void Reject could adjust.
The strategy was incredibly dangerous—each time I exited the bubble, from the Void Reject's perspective I seemed to disappear and reappear almost instantaneously, while I experienced several subjective seconds inside. The creature's reactions became increasingly erratic as it struggled to track my temporal flickering.
"Too slow," I taunted, darting into the bubble to shave precious seconds off my cooldowns, then leaping back out just as the Void Reject lunged. To me, the creature moved with glacial sluggishness when I was inside the bubble, but became terrifyingly fast the moment I exited.
The time differential created an unsustainable advantage—my resources replenished faster, but each transition across the time boundary risked precise timing. One miscalculation and the Void Reject would catch me during the fractional moment of vulnerability when I re-entered normal timeflow.
The Void Reject sensed my Exhaustion level rising due to the Living Metal still partially coating my body and the thinning atmosphere. It reached toward me, initiating the energy drain that would consume my Exhaustion to heal itself.
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EXHAUSTION: 70 → 30
I felt my Health returning as the effect triggered. My broken ribs knitted together, lacerations closed, and internal bleeding stopped—all in accelerated time.
HP: 48 → 68
The Void Reject's wounds similarly healed, crystal parasites and Living Metal reorganizing across its form. It roared in renewed strength, but I was already executing my next move.
"Amplify Hazard," I commanded, targeting the time bubble itself. The temporal acceleration tripled, causing time to flow so rapidly that external events appeared frozen. Third Fracture Charge accumulated, triggering another Speed boost.
MANA: 25 → 15
Reality fractured for the fourth time, and rift was on the verge of total collapse. The dimensional fabric didn't just tear—it shattered like glass, fragments of spacetime cascading outward from the rupture. Through the multidimensional breach poured Fission Plasma—matter in a state of continuous nuclear breakdown and reformation.
The super-heated, semi-stable plasma spread through the debris field, igniting everything it touched with atomic fire. Where Fission Plasma met Chronoplasm, both substances reacted violently, creating pockets of temporal-nuclear detonation that released both energy and time in explosive bursts.
The platform beneath us disintegrated immediately upon contact with Fission Plasma. The Void Reject and I were forced into a deadly dance across disintegrating debris, leaping from fragment to fragment as the rift continued to collapse around us.
EXHAUSTION: 30 → 45
The atmosphere had nearly vanished now, the void between realities claiming most of the rift's breathable air. Only pockets of atmosphere remained, clustered around larger fragments of the original chamber. I navigated toward these oxygen-rich bubbles, each breath precious in the expanding vacuum.
The Void Reject pursued relentlessly, seemingly unaffected by the lack of atmosphere. It vanished again, preparing for another area attack. I had ten seconds to prepare, but in a field of disintegrating platforms, finding stable ground was nearly impossible.
"Negate Hazard," I called out, targeting a void current flowing between debris clusters. The stream of nothingness collapsed, its energy dissipating harmlessly. First Fracture Charge accumulated, triggering Reactive Fracture Tether.
MANA: 15 → 5
With enhanced speed, I navigated to a relatively stable platform surrounded by several atmosphere pockets. Seven seconds remained before the Void Reject reappeared.
The rift's collapse had accelerated dramatically. What had been a chamber was now barely recognizable—floating debris in an expanse of dimensional void, reality itself breaking down into its component parts. The horizon, if such a concept still applied, showed not darkness but a kaleidoscopic storm of raw dimensional energy.
The Void Reject materialized three meters away, immediately unleashing its area attack. I had nowhere to dodge—the platform was too small, and the surrounding void offered no refuge.
I braced for impact as the energy wave struck with full force. The Living Metal coating portions of my body absorbed some damage, but the majority transferred directly to me.
HP: 68 → 40
EXHAUSTION: 45 → 60
Blood filled my mouth as internal injuries reopened. My vision blurred, consciousness threatening to fade. But I couldn't fall—not here, not now.
The Void Reject pressed its advantage, closing the distance with frightening speed. Its claws raked across my chest, the Living Metal barely deflecting the worst of the blow.
HP: 40 → 32
I staggered backward, nearly falling from the platform into the dimensional void. Desperate, I reached for the only option remaining—the Void Reject's blood. I drove a shard of Living Metal that had broken free from my arm directly into an exposed section of the creature's form, between crystalized plates.
Black viscous liquid gushed from the wound. I positioned myself to intercept the flow, letting the void blood splash across my face and into my mouth. The taste remained indescribably disgusting.
HP: 32 → 57
MANA: 5 → 30
STAMINA: 40 → 65
EXHAUSTION: 60 → 95
The platform beneath us crumbled, forcing another leap to nearby floating debris. The Void Reject followed, wounded but still deadly. The rift had deteriorated to floating fragments in a sea of dimensional chaos—multiple fracture effects combining and mutating in the space between realities.
"Create Hazard," I commanded, focusing on our current platform. A time fragmentation field manifested—not a uniform bubble, but a lattice of intersecting temporal planes where time flowed at variable rates, creating narrow channels where seconds stretched into minutes alongside pockets where minutes compressed into heartbeats. Second Fracture Charge accumulated, refreshing my Speed boost.
MANA: 30 → 20
I navigated the treacherous temporal landscape like an obstacle course, deliberately passing through acceleration zones to reset my cooldowns while avoiding deceleration pockets that would leave me vulnerable. The Void Reject struggled to track me as I appeared to flicker in and out of normal time flow—visible in one position, then seemingly teleporting several meters away as I crossed temporal boundaries.
The drawback was brutal—each passage through an acceleration zone rapidly increased my Exhaustion as my body experienced subjective hours in objective seconds. My internal clock fractured, nerve signals arriving out of sequence, muscles firing before the command to move even reached them.
EXHAUSTION: 70 → 95
The Void Reject sensed my Exhaustion approaching critical levels. It reached toward me, initiating the familiar energy drain. Purplish energy streamed from me to the creature as it consumed my Exhaustion to heal itself.
EXHAUSTION: 95 → 50
My own wounds partially healed through the linking effect of its ability, giving me a second wind in this seemingly endless battle. The time fragmentation field intensified around us, reality splintering into a mosaic of temporal shards as the field interacted with the already unstable dimensional fabric of the rift.
HP: 57 → 77
"Amplify Hazard," I called out, targeting the time fragmentation field. The temporal effect tripled. Third Fracture Charge accumulated, triggering another Speed boost.
MANA: 20 → 10
Reality fractured for the fifth time, the dimensional fabric completely giving way. The breach wasn't just a tear or a rupture—it was total dimensional collapse. The rift itself began to implode, drawing all matter and energy toward a central point.
The implosion created a momentary singularity—a point of infinite density where the rules of physics broke down completely. For a heartbeat, everything ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. Then, just as suddenly, the singularity reversed, exploding outward with unimaginable force.
The explosion propelled debris in all directions, including the platform where the Void Reject and I still fought. We were thrown apart by the blast wave, tumbling through dimensional chaos. I glimpsed the creature being struck by multiple fragments of reality shards, its form penetrated in several places.
I wasn't faring much better. The explosive decompression tore at my body, the sudden pressure change rupturing blood vessels and damaging organs. Only the Living Metal still fused to portions of my form prevented immediate death.
HP: 77 → 20
With the last of my strength, I stabilized myself against a larger chunk of debris. The dimensional storm raged around me, multiple fracture effects creating a maelstrom of physical impossibilities. The combined energies of Chronoplasm, Fission Plasma, and at least three other fracture materials were reaching critical mass.
The Void Reject materialized one final time, appearing on my platform with six eyes blazing in hatred. It was heavily damaged—large sections of its form crystallized, melted, or simply missing—but still intent on my destruction.
"Consume Hazard," I gasped, focusing on a nearby reality shard—a crystallized fragment of dimensional fabric. The shard dissolved, its energy flowing into my depleted system. First Fracture Charge accumulated, triggering Reactive Fracture Tether.
HP: 20 → 45
MANA: 10 → 35
STAMINA: 65 → 90
EXHAUSTION: 50 → 25
The Void Reject lunged, its movement sluggish from accumulated damage but still devastatingly powerful. Its claws penetrated my chest, bypassing the Living Metal armor and piercing vital organs.
HP: 45 → 10
Blood poured from the wound, but I hadn't come this far to die in the void between dimensions. With the last of my strength, I reached up and seized the Void Reject's crystallized face, focusing my remaining will. Knowing it was likely to fail, and possibly deadly even if it succeeded, I played my last, worst card
"Amplify Hazard," I commanded, targeting not a specific hazard, but the center of the overlapping Fractures, the dimensional collapse itself.
The Fractures writhed, their colors bleeding into one another in a sickening display. Reality buckled and groaned, the very air crackling with untold power. The implosion-explosion cycle immediately tripled in intensity, creating a feedback loop of dimensional destruction.
With enhanced speed, I tore free from the Void Reject's grasp, the creature's claws taking pieces of me with them. I staggered backward as the dimensional collapse accelerated, drawing all remaining matter toward another forming singularity.
For one heartbeat, the Void Reject and I locked eyes across the disintegrating chamber. Then everything moved at once. The Void Reject roared in what sounded like both fury and fear as the fabric of reality compressed around us. It vanished one final time—blinking out of existence to reposition for an area attack.
"Invert Hazard," I gasped, my voice barely audible in the thinning atmosphere. I targeted the forming singularity itself, attempting to reverse the most fundamental force in the multi-dimensional cosmos. Third Fracture Charge accumulated, triggering one last Speed boost.
Reality didn't just fracture—it detonated.
The inverted singularity exploded outward with the force of a thousand suns, releasing energy equivalent to multiple nuclear detonations. The blast wave expanded in all directions simultaneously, tearing through dimensional barriers and igniting the very fabric of spacetime.
The Void Reject materialized directly in the path of the dimensional shockwave. For a single moment, its six eyes widened in what might have been understanding—recognition that it had encountered something beyond even its considerable power to control.
Then the wave struck, and the creature simply ceased to exist—not destroyed but erased, its pattern scattered across infinite dimensions.
The wave reached me microseconds later. My Resilience reduced the damage by 50%, but that still left an incomprehensible amount of destructive energy. The Living Metal fused to my body liquefied instantly, absorbing another portion of the blast. The remnants of my mesh suit's dimensional stabilization weave activated, creating a momentary bubble of protected space.
It wasn't enough. The blast tore through my defenses, cellular damage cascading through my system as reality itself unraveled around me.
Consciousness faded as the dimensional detonation continued expanding, breaching the boundaries between realities. The last thing I perceived was a sense of falling—not through space but through the cracks between dimensions.
Then darkness.
Light filtered through my eyelids, diffuse and warm. I felt soft fabric beneath my body, the gentle pressure of a mattress supporting injured limbs. The air smelled of antiseptic and something floral—nothing like the burnt ozone and alien chemistries of the dimensional void.
I forced my eyes open, expecting to see the sterile white ceiling of the Rift Management Center's medical wing. Instead, I found myself beneath a transparent dome, beyond which stretched a skyline I didn't recognize—impossibly tall spires of crystalline material that reflected sunlight in prismatic patterns.
A monitoring device beside my bed beeped softly, registering my return to consciousness. The interface displayed unfamiliar symbols alongside familiar ones, a hybrid of technologies I'd never seen before.
A door slid open silently, and a medical technician entered—human, but with subtle augmentations visible beneath translucent skin. The tech's eyes widened at seeing me conscious.
"He is awake," they said, not to me but to an unseen listener. "Yes, vitals stabilizing. Molecular cohesion improving. Yes, I'll inform them."
They approached my bed, professional demeanor hiding obvious curiosity.
"Welcome to Moonstone City," they said, adjusting something on my monitoring device. "You've been unconscious for three days since you appeared in the Dimensional Fluctuation Chamber. The Administrator will want to speak with you as soon as you're able."
Moonstone City? Earth's capital? Administrator?
As darkness claimed me again, one terrifying truth became clear: I was screwed.
