Quantum Cultivation by Jace Kang (simple e reader TXT) 📕

her neck.  Pressure built up in her head, and her vision darkened at the edges. Billions of thoughts jumbled together beyond her coherence.

One thought rose above the swarm:

This was it.

She was going to die.

It was even worse than losing parts of her Avatar code.

Colors flashed across her visual field.  Kentaro. His form shifted. Loud cracks mixed in with the pounding in her ears.  What he was doing was impossible to tell, but the Kappa’s grip around her neck loosened. She sucked in a breath of air. Sweet coolness filled her throat and lungs.

Metal clattered across the pavement. The Kappa’s arms fell away completely. She heaved in two more breaths, even as her head swam.

Kentaro knelt by her side, stroking her hair. “Are you all right?”

Was she? She started to push back on the pavement with her arms, but her hands slid into something slimy.  Her elbows wobbled, and she collapsed back.

Kentaro caught her and helped her sit up. “Deep breaths.”

Head pounding, she turned to the side and vomited.

How humiliating.

“It’s okay.” Kentaro rubbed her back.

Ryusuke, followed by Teppin and Siena, came and knelt in front of her. “Are you all right?”

She tried to nod, but it made her head hurt.

“Your internal heat is too intense.” He took her hand and rubbed his thumb into the webbing between her index finger and thumb. A dull ache throbbed there, but then the hot compression drained from her head. “Feel better now?”

This time, she was able to nod.

“Good, now take deep breaths, use the Microcosmic Orbit. Imagine as you inhale that you are bringing up cold water from your tailbone, up your spine. When it reaches your head, it is cooling the fire blazing there. Then, when you guide it down, the warm water fills your Core.”

She did as she was told, and with each breath, the heat and pressure in her head ebbed.

Now it was easier to think.

Oh, shit.

The cameras.

During her tussle with the Kappa, she’d dropped the emitter and rolled over it. Had it made a cracking sound at the time?  She scrambled around on all fours, patting the concrete.

“What’s wrong?” Kentaro asked.

“The emitter!”

“This?” Teppin asked, kneeling down and pointing.

There the box was, underneath the jellied remains of the monster. The blinking green light hadn’t even turned to red—it was completely out.

With the emitter broken, the cameras would’ve captured the end of the fight here—and everyone in their group.  It might not be too late to corrupt those files, but she was too tired—not to mention too scared, after the damage done to her in the Ministry of Defense’s EtherSpace—to hack into the hub.

“We need to leave,” she said.

“Why?” asked Siena, now coming up to her.

“All of the cameras.” Aya waved a hand in a wide arc. “I lost control of them.”

Siena frowned. “Which means they captured our images.”

Kentaro wrung his hands. “It also means Peacekeepers—”

“Stay where you are!” yelled a voice from the other side of the bridge.

Aya turned, even if the pain made it feel as if her brains were spilling out of her ears.

A Peacekeeper in a burgundy uniform stood on the east bank, pointing a sidearm with one hand while holding his wrist communicator to his mouth.

One would be easy for Ryu or Siena to handle, but tactical teams would be mobilizing at this very second, and in moments would come pouring out of the nearest transit hub.

She had to go back into the EtherCloud. A frightening prospect, given her recent experiences.  However, there was a softer target: the transit hub required so much energy to fold space that it had minimal defenses.

Jacking in through her EtherCloud bridge into the transit station’s EtherSpace, she shuddered.  Pain from the earlier damage to her Avatar manifested as pain in her real body, which she felt here. Level Three AI Operators, appearing as Dwarves, worked the cogged machinery representing the folding space apertures; meanwhile a Level Three Repairer, which looked like a gnome, fixed broken code. The bushi in light armor, representing Level Two Sentinels, patrolled the area.

Level Twos were usually easy to avoid with a cloak or a shell, but given the amount of damage her code had sustained, her perception of the EtherCloud had slowed. One charged, sword raised.

As someone who always relied on stealth, her combat skills were lacking. She needed to get out—

A Level Four samurai in armor mail appeared, blocking the exit.

The first chopped.

Fighting reflexes she didn’t realize she had kicked in, and she caught its arm, torqued her waist, and threw it over her hip. It wasn’t a perfect throw, and she went down with it. To her surprise, the techniques she’d learned in the real world took over, somehow manifesting as combat subroutines in the EtherCloud. In half a second, the Kappa’s Way of the Swirling Fist had helped her overwhelm the bushi. She wrapped it up and choked it out, representing a decompiling of its code. As quickly as possible, she copied its Shell and donned it.

If she succeeded, the Sentinel by the door would think its comrade had defeated her. Otherwise, she was no match for it. She stood and gave a thumbs-up.

Did it work? She held her virtual breath…

The bushi went back to their patrols, and the samurai blinked out of existence.

Now disguised, she opened her menus and copied the Level Three code for the Repairer’s outer shell.  Appearing as a gnome, she went over to the teleport machinery and inserted looping code. It appeared as an extra gear, and would cause anyone arriving at this station to reappear back at their point of origin. Once the Peacekeepers realized what was going on, they would then have to find more conventional means of coming to the Shijo bridge.  Only a Level Four Repairer would