Chapter 525

The invisible force kept gripping him with the same strength as before, pinning him in midair.

Unfortunately, his earlier one-sided conversation with Owen didn’t seem to have achieved anything. It was impossible to tell whether his counterpart had been turned into a complete puppet or if his consciousness was merely trapped inside his own body, forced to helplessly witness everything it did. But even if it was the latter, it didn’t seem to make any difference. If Owen was struggling against the commands issued by the chip implanted in his head, the effort accomplished nothing. The telekinetic grip never wavered for even an instant, refusing to loosen by so much as a fraction.

Hoping Owen would somehow regain control long enough to release him was clearly pointless. Jake knew he would have to free himself on his own.

All his resistances had been pushed to their maximum values, but they did absolutely nothing for him in this particular situation. Which wasn’t really surprising. After all, it wasn’t a mind-controlling ability keeping him suspended helplessly in the air. Instead, the force restraining him came from the piece of technology fused into Owen’s left wrist, allowing his opponent to remotely manipulate objects.

And sure enough, none of Jake’s resistances offered any protection against telekinesis. But since it was technology keeping him immobilized, there was at least a chance he could interfere with it. After all, one of the upgrades to his Enhanced Intelligence skill allowed him to hack into various devices, so he wasted no time doing exactly that.

At the same time, he acted on another idea. While his body was almost completely immobilized, that didn’t stop him from mentally accessing his inventory. With a thought, he summoned the tumor stored there. It materialized in front of him and simply dropped to the organic floor below. The moment it landed, Jake issued a mental command for it to spread into a splotch of Corruption.

One of the turrets finished charging a fraction of a second before the other and immediately spat out a crackling bolt of energy. Jake snapped his head to the side just in time. The projectile screamed past his face, leaving a glowing trail in its wake that lingered for a heartbeat before fading.

The turrets had to be controlled by an AI, and it clearly registered his evasive maneuver. Instead of firing immediately, the other turret paused ever so slightly. Its muzzle tracked downward before settling on the center of his chest, and then it fired. Jake instinctively tried to twist his body out of the way, but the telekinetic grip held him perfectly still.

The bolt struck him square in the chest. His armor flared as the energy impacted. The concentrated blast bored clean through the armor, burning a smoking hole straight through the breastplate and spraying molten fragments outward. The edges of the wound radiated a bright orange glow.

The first turret had already finished recharging. Its emitter glowed brighter by the second, moments away from unleashing another lethal blast. Jake couldn’t move his body, but strangely enough, the telekinetic grip left his head almost completely unrestricted. He didn’t waste the opportunity. Turning toward the first turret, he opened his mouth and spat a glob of acid.

The projectile struck the end of the barrel with a wet splatter. The metal hissed as the acid ate through it, reducing the reinforced muzzle to a warped lump in the span of a heartbeat. The turret attempted to fire anyway, and the energy discharge detonated inside the ruined barrel, blowing the weapon apart. Shards of red-hot metal and blackened circuitry shot through the air.

At that exact moment, Jake’s mind was finally able to hack into Owen’s wrist-mounted device. The moment he gained control, he shut the system down. The invisible force around him vanished instantly. He dropped the short distance to the floor, landing in a low crouch. His eyes swept across the corridor, quickly assessing the situation.

He saw that the splotch of Corruption had just finished spreading. His first instinct was to shape it into a tentacle trap that could grab Owen and keep him in place. However, he almost immediately discarded the idea. Against most opponents, it would have been more than enough, but against Owen, it was just a waste of biomass. His counterpart would carve through the tentacles with those scythe-blades in seconds, leaving himself barely slowed.

So with a mental command, he initiated the process of transforming the patch of Corruption into a Transfer Maw instead. Then Jake rose to his feet. Tilting his head upward, he spat another glob of acid at the remaining turret mounted overhead. The corrosive projectile burst across its housing, devouring metal, wiring, and internal components alike. Within moments, the weapon sagged into a smoking, misshapen lump.

Across the chamber, Owen reacted immediately. He thrust his left arm toward Jake, trying to seize him with an invisible force once more. However, nothing happened this time, as his wrist-mounted device remained locked down by Jake’s hack.

Seemingly enraged by the failure of his last attack, Owen broke into a full charge down the corridor. Jake reacted instantly. He sprang upward, fingers and feet sticking to the organic ceiling. He scurried across it with great speed. Reaching a point directly above Owen’s previous position, he released his grip and dropped back to the floor, landing where Owen had stood only seconds earlier.

He pivoted to face his opponent again. Owen had just stopped at the edge of the Corruption patch. The mass was still in the process of morphing into a Transfer Maw. For a brief instant, it looked like Owen intended to simply crush it underfoot, to end the transformation before it could fully develop. Of course, Jake couldn’t allow that.

He snapped his arm forward and fired a grappling hook straight into Owen’s armored back. The hook latched on with a solid thunk, anchoring itself into the plating between segments. Jake immediately yanked hard on the fleshy cable. Owen staggered a single step backward, feet scraping across the organic floor, but he managed to keep his balance. Then he wheeled toward Jake and surged toward him again as scythe-blades erupted from his shoulders.

Out of the three devices implanted in Owen’s body, Jake had already managed to disable two: the shoulder-mounted turret and the telekinetic bracelet. Other than the tech that allowed him to teleport over short distances, Owen didn’t seem to be carrying anything else. Or if he did, he hadn’t employed it yet. Perhaps the remaining devices simply weren’t all that useful. Or perhaps they were constantly active, but their effects weren’t immediately apparent. Whatever the case, his counterpart had reverted to his most standard abilities.

As he closed the distance to Jake, one of his scythe-blades cut through the air in a wide arc. Jake shifted just enough to let it pass, the blade missing him by inches and continuing its path with great speed. Jake didn’t waste the opening. Stepping in tight, he got up close and personal with his opponent and delivered a crushing punch to Owen’s torso. 

But the blow achieved next to nothing. Owen barely even rocked back. Jake could’ve dealt more damage by punching a concrete wall. Owen responded immediately, attempting to throw a punch of his own. But Jake was already moving. He dipped under the swing, letting the arm pass overhead, and came up behind his counterpart.

He morphed one hand into a drill, the fingers fusing and elongating into the spinning bit, then slammed it straight into Owen’s back. The impact jarred up his arm as the drill bit into reinforced plating with sparks spraying outward. However, before he could bore even a shallow hole through the armor, Owen twisted around and delivered a brutal haymaker to Jake’s chest.

The blow landed like a wrecking ball. Jake was lifted clean off his feet and sent hurtling backward through the air before crashing hard to the ground beside his Transfer Maw, which had just finished developing. Jake immediately leaped upright, issuing the command for the maw to deploy dozens of wasps and blastfiends.

Immediately, droves of small creatures poured into the corridor, skittering and buzzing. The air filled with the hum of wings and the click of numerous legs against the floor. Jake sent most of them surging straight toward his opponent.

Blastfiends scuttled toward Owen, skittering up his legs and clambering over his armored torso before the sacks on their backs split open with wet pops. They drenched his metal plating in corrosive acid that hissed and smoked on contact, eating into joints and seams and weakening the structure beneath. The stench of burning metal and chemical rot filled the air around him as the armor began to melt and warp under the acidic attack.

Wasps swarmed Owen, circling his head and limbs before repeatedly darting in to strike. Their stingers punched through the weakened armor without much trouble, injecting venom into his system that slowed all his movements, turning his strikes heavy and sluggish.

Owen was infuriated now. He swung his fists wildly as he lashed out with his scythe-blades in wide, sweeping arcs that carved through the air. For the moment, in his rage, he seemed to have completely forgotten about Jake. And Jake immediately seized the opening.

He issued silent commands to the wasps and blastfiends that weren’t distracting Owen to follow him. Then he spun on his heel and darted down the corridor, sprinting toward the door Mick had managed to open moments earlier. Two seconds later, he burst through the opening, closely followed by the churning mass of small insect-like creatures.

The swarm spilled after him like a living tide, as they poured into the new space. As soon as the last of them crossed through, the organic doorway sealed itself behind him, trapping Owen in the corridor beyond. Jake skidded to a halt to take a moment to scan his surroundings.

He was on the bridge of the living vessel. The room was huge but mostly empty. Scattered across the organic floor were several crab-like monsters, similar to the ones he’d fought earlier. Their shells creaked softly as they shifted, registering the intrusion.

But Jake barely even glanced at them. His attention was locked instead on the center of the bridge, where a strange control console rose from the floor like a growth. Fleshy translucent tubes  snaked from what had to be the instrumental panel into the body of the lifeform that hovered before it.

Unmistakably, the weird creature that occupied the organic control console was the captain of the bio-ship.

Hey guys! Thank you for reading! Since the Dead City arc is almost over, I updated the list of acts in the fiction description! Here’s it is:

Act 1 – Chapters 1 - 33: Human Arc

Act 2 – Chapters 34 - 152: First Steps as a Mutant, Evolution to Stage 2

Act 3 – Chapters 153 - 258: First Confrontations with Los Demonios, Dungeon Arc, Evolution to Stage 3

Act 4 – Chapters 259 - 388: Full-scale War on Los Demonios, Exploring New Powers, Developing Lairs

Act 5 - Chapters 389 - 542: Exploring Dead City, Developing a Kaiju, Evolution to Stage 4

Act 6 - Chapters 543 - 580: Finalizing the Apex Hollow, Developing the Leviathan, Exploring the Crystallized City, Making New Enemies

Act 7 - Chapters 581 - ???: Exploring the World, Developing New Creatures, Final Evolution to Stage 5, Waging Full-scale War on the Borgs and the Grafters