Free Web NovelChapter 154: The Eyehole Collapsing (1)
Ren moved quickly, yanking Kestrel to safety just as a dangerous attack came rolling in her direction. He immediately struck back. The gravity gun in his hand made the space in front of him collapse, and suddenly, there was a big, round pit in the ground where the creepy, rotting monsters had been.
Inside this pit, everything that had been flesh and blood was now just a squished mess. Tons of cut-off, dried-up tendrils squirmed and wiggled around the pit’s edge.
Dropping the overloaded gravity gun, Ren swiftly grabbed another plasma gun. A quiet beam zapped out of it, cutting through the enormous monsters that were charging at them like a knife through butter.
This place seemed like something out of an action movie. Awesome weapons were everywhere. Ren was puzzled, thinking, "Why would a science place have so many cool and strong weapons?"
Earlier, when he had entered this temple-like place, he had grabbed a bunch from this "institute." Every weapon felt perfect in his hand, full of ammo and super powerful. If the big monster wasn’t so giant, they would have won the fight already.
Bright lightning-like flashes kept lighting up the place. Huge tendrils and chunks of monster were flying everywhere in the messy battle. Amidst all this, Ren was thinking hard: "How did the people from a long time ago, even with all these awesome weapons and so many fighters and big walls, not beat these mutant monsters? How did everything get so bad now?"
In this dark underground place, huge tendrils were everywhere in the temple. Chopped-up tendrils mixed with the gooey mess of blood and flesh, and creepy sounds echoed from far away like a scary movie’s background noise.
Unit-01 had been alive for, like, forever, eating up so many "psychic powers" and becoming this huge monster. She was so big and strong with her "psychic power" that all the underground monsters thought of her as a god. Even now, super weak and almost dead, she was still really scary.
All of Arya’s "psychic power" was gone from here, which meant that the "Backbone" holding up the "Eyehole" was gone. Unit-01, which basically co-existed with Arya, was now super weak.
The "Eyehole" began to fall apart. It was going to disappear completely.
The bright white stand, the red steps, and all the walls and floors started to melt away. The pitch-black world began to crumble like a stage curtain dropping.
As this scary dream started to end, everything was getting all mixed up.
Now, with the Backbone gone and getting super weak, Unit-01 was mad like never before. Her dried-up tendrils were getting shot down but kept coming up like a never-ending wave, almost filling the whole temple.
Being super mad, she only wanted to attack and destroy everything she saw.
Inside the shadowy temple, dried-out tendrils lunged at Kestrel, reminding her of a wild storm. Kestrel tried her best to avoid them, but they still caught her a few times, leaving her hurt.
Inside his mind, Ren felt like he was hit by a tornado of psychic power. Suddenly, his peaceful psychic landscape disappeared. Instead, the vastness of space opened up, showing a super old creature floating among the stars. It looked super mad. Loads of tendrils reached out, and a spooky, far-off sound could be heard. Ren felt like he was getting dumped on by this ancient power.
A ghostly, cold force tried to zoom through the void and get into the sea of Ren’s mind. For this super old creature, Ren’s spirit seemed like just a tiny fish. Even though the creature was old and close to dying, it thought smashing Ren would be super easy.
Inside Ren’s mind, a huge storm kicked up in the psychic sea, trying to keep out this intruder.
A orca zoomed around in the stormy water, dodging the psychic attacks.
Back in the temple, Ren stopped, holding his head because it hurt so much. His hands shook as he tried to lift his heavy gun. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
Right then, he got why humans had lost to these monsters long ago. It wasn’t because the monsters were so strong physically. It was because humans, no matter how many they were or how big their guns, couldn’t fight back against the monsters’ scary psychic attacks.
Even Ren, who was super strong, felt totally overwhelmed by this huge psychic power.
He looked over at Kestrel.
She looked kind of like him just then – messy, with blood on her face, a gun in her hand, and all muddy from dodging the tendrils. She’d gotten really close to getting super hurt a bunch of times.
But even though she looked all messed up and everything around them was super dangerous, her eyes still sparkled. She looked like she’d never give up.
Their eyes met, and Ren whispered something. Then, a feeling he recognized filled him. He let Kestrel take over his body.
Letting someone else control your body when you’re awake felt super weird. Ren felt Kestrel’s psychic power wrap around him like a chilly blanket, touching every part of him. It felt so real, like someone was hugging him tightly. Ren almost got distracted from the fight.
He stepped back mentally, going to a safe spot deep in the sea inside his mind.
Now, Kestrel was in charge of Ren’s body.
Using Ren’s body, Kestrel picked up the gun to defend both of them. The gun’s loud bangs kept ringing out in the dark.
Inside Ren’s mind, Kestrel used her psychic power to groom the delicate, almost breakable parts of his thoughts and feelings.
At the same time, in the real world, Ren’s body did its best to protect Kestrel’s physically weaker form. They both took care of the most sensitive parts of each other, becoming like one strong unit, always looking out for the other. It was like they were a team that couldn’t win without both players.
Ren felt like in that moment, they were super close, like they were glued together. This deep connection made him feel weird and a little uneasy, because he had been used to fighting alone.
Inside the underwater palace in Ren’s mind, an orca looked up at the water’s surface. It carefully moved some memory-filled pearls to a place where they could be seen more easily. These pearls recorded some super important things that had happened in a creepy, wet cave.
Ren had hidden these memories really well because he felt embarrassed and didn’t want anyone to find them.
But while all the action was happening on the battlefield, the orca sneaked those pearls out, hoping someone would spot them.
Deep in the water, the orca swished its tail, secretly wishing that she’d notice these memories.
Suddenly, fiery explosions lit up the dark, painting everything in bright red. Before the fiery light could go away, bright beams from powerful weapons shot across the air, looking like they were tearing the sky.
With Ren and Kestrel working together without even needing to talk, the battle started going their way.
Huge monsters charged around in the flashes of weapon fire, acting all crazy. But it looked like they were getting weaker.
Kestrel heard a super loud roar from one of the monsters, Unit-01. Behind her angry noise, Kestrel could hear it sounding sad and scared.
Unit-01 shouted a name. Kestrel knew what it meant.
"Arya."
"Where’s Arya?"
"My Arya, where did you go?"
...
The voice got quieter and sadder. Burned tendrils all over the ground stopped moving, went stiff, and began breaking down. They turned to ash that was so delicate it could blow away with a breath.
Inside the old temple, the clean, white altar broke in half, fancy columns toppled over, and rocks covered the red carpet. It looked like a snowstorm, but instead of snow, it was ash. The flakes swirled around the big underground temple like dancing in a forgotten underground city.
Amongst the ash, Kestrel kind of saw a memory from like a hundred years ago: two young girls, comforting each other, sat in that same cold, dark temple, with one using some tendrils as a weird blanket.
One of them told the other her dreams.
"Arya, your dreams are so cool. When I’m powerful enough, I’ll make them real for you."
"I’ll give you eyes, Unit-01. So you can see any world you want."
"Stay with me, Arya. Let’s live in your dream."
As everything kept breaking down, the shadows of these two kids from way back in the past slowly disappeared, holding hands.
All Kestrel heard was a long, sad sigh.
"This is for you. Look at the world for her."
She felt something cold touch her hand, and when she looked, there was a round stone placed gently in her palm by a tendril.
"We have to get out, everything’s falling apart," Ren shouted, grabbing Kestrel’s hand as they ran.
Running, Kestrel glanced at what she was holding. Even in the dim light, she could see a shiny, pretty gemstone in her hand. The patterns on the gem looked like a detailed, fascinating eye.
...
An alpha, climbed out from a hole in the underground. When she looked up, she saw a huge eye in the sky, crying red tears. She let out a breath of relief.
She felt her heavy backpack, "Made it out again," she thought.
She was one of the alphas from a nearby outpost, always going in and out of the Eyehole. The place was super risky. Many of her friends had disappeared in it, never to return.
She knew she might be next, but she still had to keep going in.
Every time she left the Eyehole, she would see the same sight: a giant crying eye in the sky, and its red tears would fall like a rain. Even though she had seen it many times, it still amazed her.
Looking at the big, sad eye, she always wondered, "Who does this eye belong to, and why is it so sad?"
Then, something strange happened. The always-open eye, which had been the same for hundreds of years, began to close. The flood of red tears stopped, drying up.
She stood still, watching as the last drops fell down into the hole leading to the underground.
The eye, which had no black center, disappeared completely. The sky above started to fade, as if someone was erasing a painting, and the dreamy colors vanished.
Suddenly, a brand-new sun appeared, lighting up everything. Warm sunlight shined into the dark underground city, lighting it up for the first time in ages.
"Is it... ending?" The alpha whispered in shock, standing by the big hole in the ground. "Is the Eyehole ending?"
The ground shook. People and strange-looking creatures were running up from below.
"It’s ending!"
"The Eyehole is breaking apart!" Everyone yelled as they ran.
