Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

fight. The problem with gods was that they often underestimated everyone but themselves. And usually this was enough, due to the huge power discrepancy.

Yuki clenched her fists around the zanbato, letting fury build up inside her core.

Don’t you ever underestimate me!

Chapter Thirty-One

Holding in the World

Yuki blazed with anger and let out the compressed rage that she had been taught to hold deep down inside, funneling that energy into her attack.

“Data Kicking Inferno!” she yelled, and poured all the energy straight into the breach by her sword which had slightly sealed as she had stopped moving. The gout of energy lit up the surrounding structures and illuminated the craggy rock wall in the trench they were scuttling through. The area of impact began to implode and crumble inward like a sinkhole. As Yuki’s zanbato was freed, the force of the attack propelled her away from the Kraken.

Upwards she soared, propelled like a rocket through the water. The heat of the beam created a plume of steam and released dissolved gasses which hid the combatants from view. Yuki kept feeding her fury into the attack. She hadn’t tapped into this energy for a while and she had much more available than she was expecting, a wicked grin spreading across her face.

She shot out of the water just as the power started to ebb, and her momentum propelled her high enough that she made an easy landing atop one of the tilted towers. The euphoria that attack generated was beyond most things she had ever experienced, and part of why she loved battling AIs. Her body thrummed with the residual resonance. Releasing that toxic yet powerful energy caused a refractory relaxation that was second to none. The subconscious wrestling of the fury beast could ease. For a while, at least.

The release also served to purge her system. The mental sludge that accumulated over time, like the gunk in drainage pipes, was blasted away, resulting in a temporary increase in her mental stats: perception, intelligence, and charisma. She smirked, remembering how she had thought charisma was a useless stat to boost in a battle, until she felt a surge of confidence and security in the scope of her abilities that allowed her to push past the fear of fighting an impossible foe. The boosts would only last a short time; she needed to use them to their best advantage.

Her mind focused, she peered at the bubbling water below. Steam and large air pockets burst the surface in a stream. A telltale furrow and large wake followed the Kraken as it sped back to engage her again. Data-mine revealed that despite her ultimate attack, the creature was still at 40% max health, which equated to over 200,000 HP still remaining! She needed to get this creature out of the water and fight on her terms or she would run out of juice. Plus, the longer this took while “in,” the more time was passing on the “out,” and the chances for detection went exponentially higher.

She wasn’t sure what had happened to her body while she was slicing, but countless warnings had been given that if she died during an AI battle, she would become a ghost in the machine. Unable to merge her consciousness back with her body.

This was part of what irked Yuki. No one she cared about seemed to know the real risks of what she did—and how amazing it was she pulled it off, time and time again. Maybe she made it look easy. They only saw what they thought was a simple hack or breach of a firewall and they moved on. This was a constant struggle, but one that made her feel truly alive. She just wished someone could understand.

Yuki backed up the sloping roof of the skyscraper, trying to draw the creature out. She had frenzied it, and its tentacles snaked out, rabidly searching for purchase and pulling the lumbering mass of its body out of the water. Without the water to support it, the creature looked unwieldy as it pulled itself onto the rooftop, caving in concrete with its bulk. Instead of stopping it, this created more footholds and purchase points, slamming metal tentacles into the building like pitons as it grasped its way toward Yuki.

Checking her own MP and health, she was still doing alright, having taken little damage, but her ultimate had dropped her MP down dangerously low. She would only have one trick left in her arsenal and she needed to make it count, as she could only use it once per slice. It only took 1 MP to activate, but it was her most powerful skill.

She looked through her choices as she kept her attention rapt on the morbidly fascinating progress of the Kraken as it scrabbled and clawed its way out of the water. Such a thing shouldn’t exist. Couldn’t exist in reality, an unsightly agglomeration of bits of Lovecraftian horror. The site of her ultimate attack had left a large bulbous mass where the molten blood had cooled, resembling a gargantuan tumor. The irregular mass slowed its progress, giving Yuki the time she needed to consider her options.

Her back hit the other side of the rooftop, a railing preventing her from tumbling over the other side. She was as high as she could go on this particular tower. Nothing else was close enough to reach, and she knew she would lose if she tried to reach another building and allow the Kraken to return to its element.

The utter size of the monster was surprising; it kept pulling more of its bulk from the water like a magician’s endless handkerchief. The slug-like body tapering only slightly as its body disappeared into the waves as it squelched and surged towards her. Over two hundred feet and who knew how much was hidden.

Yuki was swiping between her options and suddenly returned to one she passed in haste as she quickly searched. Yes. That one.

One of the unique advantages of fighting AIs, that was