I swiftly made my way to the VR club that was part of the Hollow Investigation Association, and with my Hollow Investigator ID I was able to get into the club. The only issue was IT guy giving me weird looks when I asked for 'Armageddon' mode for the VR settings.
I knew my data was going to be recorded as I did whatever I was going to do. But hey, if Miyabi could cut through a Hollow, and Yixuan could slaughter entire armies of etherials and was a literal 'cultivator' I could get away with my own bullshit.
I wasn't going to go out of my way to hide my abilities, at least my fighting abilities as being known for being strong was only a good thing in this world that was falling apart.
And this game mode was made based on the Outer Rim, where you as the player was surrounded by hollows. And from the surrounding hollows came an endless stream of various etherials.
"This is weird. But it works at least?" I said with a frown as I clenched my hands into a fist as even in this VR setting, I had all my senses and with a flourish, I summoned Zabuza's sword without issue as well.
But then the Chaos Gatcha pinged for a tiny reward that made my face twitch. [Play a full dive VR game... Don't get stuck in the game for several years. 1 Bronze ticket]
Pulling the bronze ticket, I shrugged as the reward was actually pretty damned good.
[Great Soul Arrow]
|Uncommon Ability|
Darksouls - Draw energy from your life and soul and shape it as a weapon. This is a more refined and potent version of the Soul Arrow, which forms an arrow-like projectile that can curve in the air towards targets. As the origin of the arrow is linked to the soul, its power scales with the might of one's soul in addition to their energy levels.]
Fairly good actually, especially seeing as I didn't need some magical staff to actually use the damned thing.
Then, with a rumble, I watched as from the distance came an endless tide of ethereal monsters. "Alright... Let's see how long I can last. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about my safety here."
And as the seemingly endless horde of ethereal monsters that came in seemingly infinite forms and sizes. This false world went still as I was surrounded by thick magical energy, and then a magical glyph formed in front of me.
Dark crimson and utterly black lightning crackled around me before I spoke with finality. "Cybele!" And from the magical circle came a flash of purple light that bloomed in a wide cone into the distance that made everything flash freeze as their bodies turned into stone.
"Uhhh... Maybe I made a mistake." I said as my noble phantasm. Only destroyed like the ethereal's five deep. The endless tides of the worlds end continued to rush at me until I mentally said fuck it.
I held up my hand, and forming between my hands was a swirling void of black and twisted light that couldn't properly display the colors and lights it was bending.
The ground beneath my feet shattered, and I felt myself lose the feeling of the ground beneath me, even though I didn't fall. As the virtual black hole I created grew... Every so slowly as it began crushing and devouring the digital ground beneath my feet and all of the surrounding matter.
Then, as I myself began to spin around the black hole that was floating in the air. I threw it out, and I lost its direct effects on myself, but the etherials...
Didn't have whatever protection I myself had from my virtual 'fake' black hole, as they and the surrounding matter were far more aggressively sucked into the black hole.
The black hole roared to life fully as it began to expand far more aggressively... But I could feel my control over it remain solid, at least in this virtual world.
My senses then screamed at me, and I whirled around as if from my own fucking shadow, an ethereal shot out with a humanoid form, and its sole arm was a long lance with several ridges/folds on it.
My hand aimed at it and I aimed a Great Soul Arrow directly at its head, and just as I blasted its head off its shoulder with a fist-sized arrow of light that made its head explode.
Agony shot through my body as the folds of the lance's arm it had, made the lance itself extend greatly, doubled its length, and the sharp point of the lance speared through my upper chest, and I could feel two of my ribs shatter as the sharp tip of the lance shot out of my back.
"Fu-ck." I coughed out with blood leaking from my mouth as I could literally feel blood pooling within my lungs, even as the ethereal faded away from reality.
'I... Literally have a noble phantasm, and I can still be assassinated by an etherel. I am still so damned squishy.' I thought, but then I realized an important fact.
I uhhh forgot to put on my Dark Knight Armor before the event happened. If I had the armor on. I might have had a bone broken, possibly, but that lance woudn't have gone straight out my back.
So with that, I pulled myself out of the VR mode with a heavy inhale as I blinked at not feeling the hole in my lungs and the broken ribs anymore.
And as I came out of the massive VR pod, a techie came over with a wry grin and said. "Dude, were you experimenting with high explosives? Ether and exotic energy ratings were off the damn charts, besides, when Yixuan comes over to test her disciples."
I couldn't help but laugh as I nodded and said sheepishly. "Yeah, sorta... I wanted to see how effective a new type of weapon was in the Armageddon setting, but I got, got by an ethereal that could travel into someone's shadows? Any idea what those bastards are called and what hollow were they found in? I want to make sure to never go into that damned hollow."
The techie hummed thoughtfully and pulled out his tablet as he said. "Ah the shadow snatcher? Yeah, they were found rather recently in the last few years in the Outer Rim. They like to hide in old abandoned buildings, in their crevices, and when someone comes in, they pounce on the human or thiren."
My lips twitched as that sounded fucking terrifying, honestly. But with a sigh, I shook my head as I handed over my HOA ID to seal my combat data, as I made sure to sign the waivers that cost me some money to prevent the club from selling my data to the TOPS and other organizations.
Or at least... Legally speaking in the contract I signed, they couldn't. But if they did. Whelp, I would happily take them through the wringer in court.
Once I got all my shit sorted out, I went back to the main building of the Hollow Investigation Association, and I started speaking with a free worker. Because I didn't plan on being completely worthless today. I wanted to see if I could get a legit hollow investigation job as well.
And there were a lot of official missions I could take even as a solo investigator. There was a mission to collect data from several investigation points in a nearby hollow. There was a mission to purge a low-level hollow of its likewise lower-level etherials as they were showing levels of numbers that could suggest a hollow breach containment.
But there was one mission that was more interesting, actually. A data collection bunker in a hollow went offline, and it shoudn't have been remotely attracting etherals either.
So the job was to find out the state of the bunker and to see if the Bangboo that was left in the bunker could be brought back online, and resume the data flow.
"Lemnian Hollow... Isn't that the Hollow that Belebog Construction was working out of and lost their giant machines in canon?" I mused to myself before shrugging, as I knew canon hadn't started yet.
So I accepted the job as... Thankfully, the HIA offered bus rides for investigators being sent to a hollow in case they didn't have transportation that could hold their weapons.
With a quick, uneventful bus ride, besides getting some looks for my heavy armor and giant sword on my back. I made my way to the Lemnian Hollow that was far bigger than the other child hollows I had been into before.
'Alright... I got my squid jerky to give me Ether resistance. I got more snacks for magical and stamina energy gain. And if I get hurt, I can literally cast a miracle to heal myself with the Erdtree Rites.' I nodded at my readiness and with a deep breath, I stepped into the hollow.
Pushing into the hollow, the world turned into twisted bubbles of color and otherworldly energy before my feet landed atop the rough ground as my vision also cleared.
"Well, now this is an interesting place to land," I said with a flat expression as I saw I had landed in the hollow... At the upper level of a high-rise building that wasn't yet finished building. With countless construction bits in my view.
I looked over at the large pieces of iron scrap and girders and... I walked over with a firm expression as I placed a hand on a large metal pole, and my hand glowed with green energy as I surrounded the metal pole with my magic.
I closed my eyes as I felt my power surge through the pole in every single atom of the entire pole, and then very quickly, the somewhat rusted iron pole shifted, and I could feel the iron pole shift to turn into silver.
"It's... Not just a hard rule of transforming iron into silver, and then silver into gold. It wasn't a metric of value or merely a transition. There was a sort of resonance that lay between iron, to silver, and then to gold in particular that I couldn't see or properly explain.
I made a humming noise and went over to a stack of old packaged washers that went along with bolts that I thought they looked like nickel. And with another flash of green light, I converted the nickel into another metal with my spell.
And I just stared at the likewise still silver clear metal and muttered. "Ok... I turned nickel into something else I can't exactly recognize? Is it like solid mercury? I don't think touching an unknown metal with my bare hands is a good idea. For all I know, I made some kind of radioactive element."
I grinned as I then turned towards Silver, my own Bangboo, and said. "Do you recognize this metal, Silver?"
My Bangboo's overly reactive eyes went wild as question marks appeared on its facial panel, and then it yelled. "Ena! Oooh Ena!"
I raised an eyebrow before looking back down at the metal and said with a grin. "Hey... You can't go wrong with platinum, especially in this world. Well, selling a good roll of platinum 'coins', I totally found, would make me a pretty penny."
Although platinum wasn't an ether alloy and thus didn't have weird energy transmission abilities and statuses. It was still an extremely important metal to be used in vital machines to deal with industrial pollution and such.
"Ena!" Silver hurriedly pointed at the stack of platinum washers and then pointed at a large steel pillar that was clearly meant to be part of the support beams for the levels above us that hadn't been built yet.
And I just looked at Silver and said flatly. "Little dude... I am pretty strong. But I sure as hell can't drag a thousand-plus pounds of silver/gold. That is the literal definition of biting more than you can chew."
I then looked outward and checked my carrot to see where I was in the hollow. Only to frown as I saw that there was a good reason the Hollow Investigation Association had made the mission public instead of using their in-house agents.
"Well... This is fucked." I said helplessly as I saw an Ether Haze that stretched across the hollow as far as I could see. And the Ether Haze was an event where the Ether Gateway's points of contact had solidified into lines of ether that led between the different portals.
Which made the sight line of the area fucking weird with the twisting rainbow corridors that faded in and out of sight.
But not only that, but it also meant that with so much active ether energy. The ethereals in the hollow were going to be alot more active in of themselves. "I think I bought off a bit more than I can chew," I said helplessly before shrugging.