Chapter Four: Void of the Black Sky, Monochrome
Paladin, Ray Starling
As the unnatural laughter resounded, the mysterious black object breaking free of the mountain rose up to the sky at an incredible speed. Like a rocket, it pierced through the clouds above and stopped when it was nothing but a mere dot in the sky.
A moment later, the heavens surrounding it winked into darkness.
Though evening was still a while away, it suddenly felt like the sun had set hours ago.
It made me recall the night summoned by the aberration, but this was probably the exact opposite cause. While her Superior Embryo had created the night, the dot in the sky was taking the light and effectively robbing the day.
B3 silently took out a binocular-like magic item and used it to look up at the dot. Her expression turned bitter.
“B3... what was that?” I asked.
“A UBM.” She handed me the binoculars.
I took a look at the dot and saw a monster that had the appearance of a cracked crystal ball with a set of dark wings. Above it, there was the name “Void of the Black Sky, Monochrome.”
“‘Black Sky?’” I muttered. “Wait, that’s...!”
It had to be “Blacksky,” the UBM from the play. The monster from history who’d become the origin of the Windstar Festival.
The thing had been hit by the meteor and buried underground 300 years ago. Had that thing really survived all those centuries without any food or drink?
“So it’s a light-eating energy life form... an elemental,” said B3. “In that case, it’s not too strange that it survived, but that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is what it’s planning to—”
Before she could finish, Monochrome made its move.
Still high in the sky, it began shooting beams of light. The first few went to the mountain it’d just exited, but then they started landing in the festival crowds. They birthed bursts of raging fire where they hit. Stands, households, and people were set ablaze.
And as though that wasn’t enough, the beams didn’t stop. They continued to drop like an unrelenting rain.
“? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?! ?” the thing that caused them laughed. I could hear it clearly despite the distance between us.
The sound was thick with malice. It felt as though that was its way of telling the victims just how much fun it was having. The burning town, the terrified people, the children crying for their parents — all of it brought it great joy.
It watched the endless fear and tragedy and felt nothing but glee.
“You vile piece of...” I growled.
That monster made me feel exactly the same as when I’d found out about Maise’s evils, when I’d faced Gouz-Maise, and when I’d challenged Franklin. My heart was pleading me, saying, Do not stand for this.
“SILVEEEERRRR!” Hearing my roar, my trusty steed appeared out of my inventory.
I jumped on his back, locked my prosthetic’s hook on his reins, and used the MP stored in my Grudge-Soaked Greaves to activate Wind Hoof.
“Ray!” cried B3.
“You help Farica and the other tians find shelter!” I shouted. “I’ll take care of that thing!”
Without even waiting for a response, I swung the reins and made Silver gallop towards the sky. A second later, the crest on my upper left arm began to shine.
“Ray!” cried Nemesis as she popped out of it, took her greatsword form, and wrapped around my right arm.
“You get the situation?!” I asked.
“Of course! We’re shattering that damned crystal, aren’t we?!”
“Yeah! That’s all you need to know!”
Silver dashed towards the sky at a nearly 90-degree angle as I resisted gravity by charging magic into my prosthetic and adding force to my feet in the stirrups.
“What?” I burst out as I noticed something.
The vertical perspective was giving me a good view of Torne. Looking at it, I saw the silhouettes of four other flying mounts: a gryphon, a hippogryph, a wyvern, and a large skydragon — probably of Pure-Dragon tier.
All of them were being ridden by Masters who’d probably come to enjoy the Windstar Festival.
And now, just like me, they were taking to the sky to slay Monochrome.
“Hey!” the guy on the hippogryph called. “Hey! Aren’t you Ray Starling the Unbreakable?!”
“Yeah! Who are you?”
“I’m Lang, just a Gale Rider without a nickname! Riser told me about you! He’s a long-time member of our clan!”
“You know Riser?!”
“Yes! Anyway, talk about raining on a parade, huh? Let’s join forces and—” Suddenly, Lang’s head completely vanished.
“Wh...?!” I gasped.
In but a flash and without a sound, a beam from above had evaporated his skull. The body left behind was turning to particles of light, while his hippogryph was automatically returned to his Jewel.
“It’s intercepting us!” roared the heavily-armored Master on the Pure-Dragon.
Looking up, I saw the monster’s tentacles twist as their tips were directed at our direction.
“Hah!” chuckled the lightly-armored Master on the gryphon. “It’s like we’re in a shoot ’em up! Getting up close’ll be tough!”
“HyaHAH! We’ve gotta do what we gotta do!” exclaimed the wyvern-rider with a mohawk. “I’ll avenge my clan bro and the tians! We never run from a fight!”
They both made their mounts speed up.
“The beams go straight!” shouted the Master on the Pure-Dragon. “It’s not hard to dodge them! Just watch when the tentacles flash!” He was completely right about that. Though the thing had an immense range, evading its attacks was no challenge, and if we kept this up, it wouldn’t be long until we reached and killed it.
“Whoa, dudes, be careful!” said the mohawk guy. He sounded loud, probably because of some sort of voice-amplifying item. “I was there when it came out! Back then, it melted the bedrock and my clan bro in one hit, but when it shot from the sky, it just made the target burn! It means the beam power is inversely proportional to distance!”
“Ah, so its effective range is lower than the 10,000 meter actual range!” shouted the Pure-Dragon Master.
Basically, the real danger would begin when we got close to that monster.
If the power of the beams is still low, that means that Lang was instakilled only because it hit his head... Man, what an unlucky guy.
I heard a sound behind me and turned to see what caused it. “Hm?”
There were fiery fumes floating somewhere around the halfway point between us and the surface. It looked somewhat like a missile explosion.
“That’s exactly it,” said Nemesis upon reading my mind. “Someone on the surface fired a missile — most likely an Embryo skill — but it was shot down by the fiend’s beams.”
Being in weapon form expanded her field of vision, so she could see what was happening both above and below us.
Though the few of us here were the only ones who’d risen to the sky, someone left on the surface was trying to do something, as well.
“The missiles aren’t the only attacks coming from there, mind you,” she added. “But all the others, too, are being shot down by the beams.”
“All of them, huh?”
And yet, despite that, the remaining four of us flying riders were in peak condition. It was probably because we could dodge the beams, but I still found it pretty odd.
It felt like the monster was prioritizing stopping the attacks from the surface, as if there was no need to take care of us.
“Geez... Just how far is the damn thing?!” complained the gryphon Master, and I shared his sentiment.
Monochrome had started out at about 10,000 meters up in the sky, and though we were nearing that altitude right now, the distance between us still seemed about the same. The thing was actually rising even higher.
“Keh! What’s with its range?! It’s insane!” the mohawk guy complained, but he was probably reading the situation wrong.
“Indeed,” Nemesis agreed with my thought. “Its original altitude appears to have been the limit of its range. The beams have stopped reaching the surface.”
Exactly. 10,000 meters was more or less the maximum distance those beams could reach before losing all their power and dispersing. But that had nothing to do with Monochrome’s own maximum altitude. It could rise above that limit, and it wasn’t hesitating to do so in order to avoid us.
There probably was a maximum height it could reach. At the very least, I hoped it couldn’t leave into outer space, but even if it could, we had bigger problems.
“Ah...! Cra...p!” exclaimed the gryphon Master. His voice was starting to sound distant and meek.
Of course it did. We were 12,000 meters above the ground. The air here was many times thinner than on the surface.
“He...y, this is ba...d! My bod...y ca...n’t hand...le this...”
This wasn’t an environment that could support life. Even the jumbo jets in reality didn’t go above 10,000 meters. The air beyond that point was way too sparse to allow long-term flight. The air density, temperature, and pressure here were far too low to allow the survival of any living thing, and even majestic flying monsters like gryphons and wyverns weren’t welcome here. Unless we were supported by high stats, we Masters would either faint or freeze to death.
Monochrome, however, was still 10,000 meters above us, and it was only going higher.
Again, there might be a limit to how far it could rise. But even if it couldn’t leave the atmosphere and escape to outer space, the limit for living creatures came far earlier.
That was the reason why it had focused on the attacks from the surface — it had known that none of us could reach it.
“Khh...! Sorr...y, I’m backi...ng o...ut...!”
“Shi...t...!”
The gryphon Master and the wyvern-riding mohawk had no choice but to give up. The Pure-Dragon was still holding out, but its movements had become too dull to be able to dodge the beam storm. It roared in pain as they burned its body, eventually piercing its wings and making it fall.
“Khh! Reca...ll!”
The Pure-Dragon’s Master prioritized the mount’s survival and returned it back to the jewel. Without anything to keep him in the air, the Master began to fall.
Crashing from this height would definitely give him the death penalty, but he was probably more than aware of that. After all, the look in his eyes was basically saying, “I’m leaving it all to you.”
“So we are the last ones,” sighed Nemesis.
“...Yeah.”
Silver was a Prism Steed, not a living being, so he could fly higher than the other mounts. Even I could survive thanks to his Wind Hoof. The skill created a faint membrane of compressed air that shielded me from the cold, oxygen-less atmosphere. But alas, our limit wasn’t far away, regardless of those facts.
“Ah!” I gasped as Silver suddenly stumbled.
Or, rather, the compressed air beneath his hoof collapsed under our weight.
I’d known it was gonna happen eventually. After all, Silver’s “flying” was actually “walking on hardened air.”
Here in the stratosphere, 15,000 meters above the surface, the air was far too thin for his Wind Hoof to form footing strong enough to support us, and giving him extra magic wouldn’t be enough to help.
Even the barrier that protected my life was on the verge of being broken by the beams grazing it. The surrounding air had less and less oxygen and more and more hazardous ozone. Going any higher would put me in danger of instant death the moment the barrier broke.
“Tch!” I looked up and saw that the distance between me and Monochrome was still as great as before.
“? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?!” It laughed raucously, and I couldn’t help but feel it was directed at us. Despite the overwhelming distance and the air around us being nearly nonexistent, I could hear its cackling all too clearly.
“That is most likely a skill,” said Nemesis. “One developed for the sole purpose of ridicule.”
“...”
Beams that could reach a whole 10,000 meters away, an ability to ascend into the stratosphere, a skill to mock its victims... All of its powers were focused on looking down on other creatures and completely extinguishing them.
“Ray! This is the limit!” Nemesis shouted. “We can’t go any higher!”
Silver began to slow down. He could no longer create enough compressed air to keep up with his galloping.
Not only that, but Monochrome now focused all its beams exclusively on us, and my steed just couldn’t evade them all.
We simply had no means of going higher and reaching the monster.
“Gh! We’re backing out!” I growled, trying not to give in to the rage storming within me, and ordered Silver to travel back to the surface.
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