Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

The monster barreled towards me like a freight train, and I heard the crunching of trees as the monster punched through them like they weren’t even there. I froze as the ominous crackling and rumbling drew towards me.

This thing could run through trees like they weren’t even there. If it hit me, I was dead. Worse, the monster had way too much life force. Extinguish could weaken it, but it was nowhere near being able to strike a fatal blow against it. What was I supposed to do?

At that moment, I realized an unsettling truth. I had gotten very used to fights going a certain way. I would weaken monsters with extinguish, then support my friends with portals and lightning bolts while they finished a monster off. We were a great team. Anytime we needed to deal with a powerful monster, we knew exactly how to work together and win.

That was true when we were a team.

Right now, I was on my own.

More than half of my build was built around supporting my friends and weakening our enemies, and right now, I had no one to support. I was still dangerous on my own - but I was several times weaker. If I wanted to win this battle, I had to win on my own. Losing wasn’t an option here - if I died, all of the work we had put into this life so far would be wasted.

I pushed down the anxiety and fear crawling into my mind, and gritted my teeth. I needed to win this. I couldn’t die here, so I wouldn’t.

I realized my first priority. I had a few seconds left. I needed to get out of the way before I popped like a red balloon.

I popped open my umbrella, and slammed absorption essence into it. I hadn’t needed to use the flight ability of {Storm’s Breath} very often, but it was time for this item to prove its value.

I felt my arms wrench upwards, and found myself yanked into the sky. My arms felt like they had nearly broken from the sudden acceleration, and I gasped in pain. I tried to create a few spatial tripwires in the creature’s path.

A moment later, I saw a mountain of black flesh and chitin tear through the spot where I had been standing, shattered tree trunks and splinters cast before it like debris from a tsunami. It swept past the spatial wires like they weren’t even there - I couldn’t tell whether they inflicted any damage or not. I thanked my lucky stars that I had moved fast enough - if the monster had touched me, I wouldn’t have even had time to realize that I was dead before my soul returned to the ocean.

The moment the monster touched the spot where I had been standing, it froze. All of the force it had accumulated disappeared in a way that was utterly incomprehensible to me. I shuddered. This thing wasn’t just fast and strong - it had unbelievable control over its own momentum. It must have been some kind of magic at work - there was no way such a massive creature could have stopped so quickly without some kind of magic.

I squinted at the creature, and I finally got my first good look at it. It looked like a centipede - that is, if centipedes were the size of a train car, had eight eyes on the top of their head, and were bright orange.

The creature sniffed at the spot where I had been standing, as if it were confused, and I felt the creature start tugging at the essence in our surroundings.

A moment later, the monstrous insect spun in a circle on the ground.

To my complete disbelief, I felt a sudden lance of pain tear through my thigh. I glanced down at my legs in shock.

My thigh was bleeding. Not heavily - it looked like the cut was rather shallow. However, somehow the creature had cut me, despite the fact that it had literally just walked in a circle on the ground. It didn’t even seem to have located me - and yet, somehow, my thigh was bleeding. Worse, I had no idea how the creature had done it. I desperately pumped more essence into my umbrella, bringing me even higher into the sky, and tried to figure out what had just happened. How had the creature hurt me? It had barely moved, and it hadn’t launched any noticeable attack at me!

I shuddered.

And then, to my horror, I saw a drop of my blood drip off of my shoes.

It landed on the centipede’s head.

It stopped.

It looked up.

Its fangs glistened with venom as it stared at me.

I swore that it smiled.

The next moment, a bolt of bright green liquid flew out of its mouth and towards me.

I reacted more on instinct than thought. A portal snapped into existence, right in front of the glob of green liquid, and another portal tore into reality right behind the creature’s head. A moment later, the creature found itself doused in whatever it had just tried to spit at me.

It accomplished nothing. The liquid splattered harmlessly off of the creature’s head, before it dribbled to the dirt underneath it. I heard hissing as the liquid splattered onto the soil, but whatever this stuff was, the creature was safe from its own attacks. I wouldn’t be able to win this battle by redirecting its own attacks back at it.

I forced my brain into motion. How could I win this? Extinguish couldn’t win this on its own, because the centipede had too much life force. Spatial tripwires didn’t seem to be doing much - this thing’s body was too sturdy for weaker attacks to penetrate its body. Lightning bolts would probably run into the same issue - and to even use the lightning bolts, I would need to point the tip of my umbrella at the centipede. That would drop me out of the sky, and I did not fancy getting up close and personal with this abomination. 

What could I do?

The creature crept closer to me, and I felt a slight pressure as something cut into my arm. Another invisible, incomprehensible cut. I needed to end this, fast. If one of those strange cuts went a bit deeper and cut through my neck, even my healing magic wouldn’t be able to patch me up. Beheading was far beyond what my reaction time and essence pool could handle.

The creature seemed to realize that whatever it was doing with its intangible blades was effective. It started to dash in an incredibly odd motion - it looked almost as if it were dancing. It dashed forward and then backward in a cycle of near 180 degree turns, its body contorting and doubling back on itself as it ran in place. Somehow, the more it did so, the more tiny little cuts started to appear on my body. They were shallow, but they were getting deeper and deeper with every second.

I couldn’t hesitate.

I had a desperate idea.

The biggest problem was this thing’s resilient chitin. The armor was protecting it against my spatial tripwires, as far as I could tell, and I needed attacks to hit the softer, squishier body underneath.

Extinguish was farm from lethal, but it could weaken the creature. Then, I needed to put as much force as I could into a single attack, and try to land it on one of the creature’s eyes.

Here goes nothing, I thought, before I deactivated my umbrella-induced flight.

The creature seemed taken aback as I started plummeting towards its body, before it sped up. The strange, incomprehensible cuts to my body began appearing faster and faster, and I gasp in pain as I felt something reach into my eye and cut it out, as cleanly as a surgeon’s knife. The sudden loss of half of my vision disoriented me for a moment - but I already knew what I needed to do.

A single drop of water landed on the creature’s body, as I threw my entire alteration essence pool into the most devastating extinguish I could manage. Instantly, the creature’s life force shivered as it weakened - nowhere near enough to be lethal, but enough to weaken it.

The creature shuddered, and lost balance as my extinguish robbed it of a great deal of its life force. It corrected its balance almost instantly - but that split second was enough for me.

I used a last jolt of absorption essence to nudge my falling path, even as gravity dragged me towards the ground at a faster and faster speed. I kept my umbrella steady - and plunged into the creature’s eye, during the split second it was thrown off balance.

My arms snapped like twigs, but my umbrella tore straight through the creature’s eye, chitin and most of its brain. Unbelievably, the creature was still alive - but I didn’t have time to worry about that. I needed to survive my imminent collision with the earth.. Instantly, I activated {Eldritch Soul}, and my vision split in two. I lost hold of my umbrella, and only a portal fueled by my clone’s essence placed it back into my hands as I hit the ground.

Not fast enough for me to get back to flying, or even lessen the impact as I slammed into the earth.

I gasped in pain as several more bones broke. My Grade 7 Fortitude kept me alive - barely. My clone immediately burned out its entire alteration essence reserve as it threw the biggest renewal it could manage at me, to hopefully keep me alive through this mess. Meanwhile, I tried to point my umbrella at the writhing centipede. A flash of searing agony informed me that my arms were not going to be obeying my commands anytime soon, and I nearly screamed in pain. 

My clone used a portal to reposition the umbrella - making sure that I was pointing at the giant, gaping hole in the centipede’s head. Then, I unloaded every scrap of absorption essence I could muster into {Breath of the Storm} and blasted the creature with the biggest lightning bolt I could muster. The creature stopped writhing and fell silent. A System notification appeared, but I could barely process it before darkness started to creep into the edges of my vision.

A moment later, my clone collapsed - with so much of its essence spent healing me, it didn’t have enough energy to sustain itself any further.

My last thought before I blacked out was a desperate hope that I hadn’t just gotten myself killed in this trial.