Michael waited for morning to arrive before setting out on his journey to complete his first objective. Yet, as hours passed, he quickly noticed a problem with his plan.
"Where the hell am I going?" Michael questioned himself after wandering around for a while with no clear direction.
Having a plan is good and all, but with no way for him to navigate the Hollows reliably, it might as well be dead in the water. He's thankful that he's immune to Ether Corruption, being already an Ethereal and all, otherwise, he would sure be feeling it by now.
Leaning on a wall, Michael calmed himself down and began to think back to his interaction with his fellow kin. "Hmm... How do Ethereals navigate Hollows? The booklet says that they have the instincts of an animal. Do they just instinctively know where to go? Does this mean I have to return to monkey or something?"
Michael weighed his options at this moment. He could always wait until another Ethereal passed by him and then follow it from there, but that was a horrible option considering how unreliable it was. There was also just wandering around until he found something, but that's just getting lost with extra steps.
"Wait a minute..." Michael then recalled when he sensed the fissure inside the orphanage's bathroom. "Maybe if I concentrate my senses..." He closed his eyes and began to concentrate on his surroundings.
"There." It took a while before he sensed something, but he could feel what he guessed was the Ether in the Hollow shifting around him and perhaps himself. Focusing even further, he can almost vaguely make out something in the distance.
As he approached the area where he had sensed the disturbance, he discovered a fissure. "Bingo. Now, how can I figure out where this fissure leads?" Focusing his senses once more, he directed them toward the fissure to see if he could discern the surroundings at its exit.
It was faint, but he could somewhat feel the other side. Not fully, but enough to be sure he won't be a mist on the ground.
"You know what. Good enough." With that, Michael, with his gun in his hand, stepped into the fissure, making sure to take it slowly, unlike last time.
.....
'Maybe I should just shut my mouth.'
Crossing over to the other side, Michael arrived at a military camp of some sort. Too bad it wasn't abandoned, as he saw military personnel, Bangboo, and a group of people wearing white and orange uniforms, who looked like researchers, all of whom were probably doing something before he arrived and were all now looking at him with various degrees of fear and hostility.
The tension was thick, and the silence deafening as Michael and the entire camp stared at one another without making a single sound. Michael stepped backward to hopefully reach the fissure he had come from, only for him to realize that the fissure was gone when his body hit nothing but air.
With no other options and seeing the soldiers raising their weapons at him, Michael sprinted forward and headed toward the fissure he had noticed at the other side of the camp.
BANG BANG BANG
"AHHH!"
"We got an Ethereal in the base! Light it up!" Michael heard one of them call out in between the gunfire and screaming researchers.
The sounds of gunfire permeated the area as Michael dodged and weaved as best as he could, taking stock of where the unarmed researchers were so they wouldn't get accidentally shot.
'UGH.' Michael internally groaned when he felt his body being repeatedly hit by bullets. His backpack, filled with things he had taken, must have absorbed some of the damage, as he heard the sound of coins hitting the ground.
'Those bullets better not damage my MP3!'
Still, he never stopped dodging and weaving, using any cover, be it a mound of debris or a stone pillar, to try and break the line of sight. 'Serpentine! Serpentine!'
Just as he's about to reach the exit, the gunfire behind him suddenly stops. He had thought that they were merely out of ammo and were busy reloading, but he was proven otherwise when the reason the soldiers stopped shooting appeared in front of him.
'Oh for crying out loud!'
A mech, a bit smaller than the corrupted one he had encountered, was blocking his way, its robotic eye tracking his every movement as if calculating his next move. A few moments later, it's back open up as small drones started to swarm him in every direction, which then fired upon him with their weapons.
He tried hard to dodge their attacks, but their agility, coupled with their number, made it so that he took a couple of hits in the process. Michael considered shooting them, but with how small and nimble they are, he quickly ditched the idea. There's just no way he would be able to hit them even if he's standing still and carefully aiming, let alone while he's currently running for his life.
Looking back at the attacking mech, Michael noticed that its attention seemed to be solely on him. A plan quickly formed in his head. While it was a bit of a gamble, it honestly might just be his best shot at escaping the mech. All he needs to do is get close to it.
It was easier said than done as the mech then unveiled two small guns underneath its robotic body and started firing, to which he reacted by doing a zig-zag manoeuvre in a random pattern.
When he got close to the mech, he executed his plan, going down and sliding under it on his back. For a split second, Michael and the mech stared at each other before passing by, just as he intended.
BOOM BOOM
The sounds of small explosions seemingly indicate his success as Michael looked back at the mech, finding it hunched over with electrical sparks coming out of it, still moving, but definitely damaged, and with its drones nowhere to be seen.
He wasted no further time as he jumped straight into the fissure, leaving the camp behind and hopefully into safety.
The soldiers who had run after Michael stopped at the fissure, which had begun to close up, their expression filled with shock and confusion at what had transpired. "Uhh... Corporal? Should we pursue it or...?" One of the soldiers asked his commanding officer, who looked as if he were having a migraine.
"How are we gonna tell command about this, Corporal?" Another soldier asked as he inspected the damaged and malfunctioning Lightfoot.
One other soldier, however, had a different priority. "Ooh. Dennies."
.....
"Oof!" Michael grunted out as he fell flat on his face. "Ow... My everything..."
Getting up and dusting himself off, he inspected his body, finding chunks of crystal missing along with several bullet holes. He was glad that Ethereals seemed to have higher pain tolerance than his old body; otherwise, he would be in a world of hurt.
That was not important to him, however, as he quickly took off his bag and looked at the contents in a frenzy.
'Please don't be damaged, please don't be damaged.' Repeated Michael in his mind as he rummaged through the bag, discarding every single item that now sported a bullet-sized hole in them.
'Phew!' Michael internally cheered as he found his MP3 that had miraculously managed to survive the whole ordeal undamaged. The worrying thing, though, was that the MP3 had begun to grow a small crystalline formation on its surface, and it had only just been a day.
The backpack was, unfortunately, a lost cause. "Damn. Looks like Swiss cheese." Michael said as he held up the bag, the remaining coins and ammo he had gotten were falling down on the ground like a waterfall.
Throwing the bag away, he looked at his surrounding, finding himself in what seemed to be in a middle of a mall.
"Sigh... How the hell am I going to get anything done if I can't even find my way inside this maze?" Michael complained. "You know what, how about I train myself to use Ether before I do anything else. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Not like I need to worry about getting corrupted by Ether or anything."
Sitting down on the ground, Michael looked at his slowly corrupting MP3. It was almost impossible to see, but he noticed that the crystal seemed to be growing faster when he was holding it with his hand. His presence must have had a corrupting effect on anything around him, which should have been obvious. "Tch. Better not hold this for the time being, at least until I can find a way to get rid of the corruption."
Setting the MP3 down not far from him, Michael began to think of ways to use Ether just as the booklet said all Ethereal could. "Maybe I need to visualise it? But that begs another question, how does one visualise Ether?"
Closing his eyes, this time, he really begins to concentrate on his surroundings to the fullest, trying his hardest to somehow visualise Ether. If Ether is truly akin to radiation and an Ethereal is made from Ether, then there must be a way to use it without a third party; otherwise, he was pretty sure the Ethereals wouldn't have such a wide range of abilities as described in the booklet.
He didn't know how long he sat there trying to find ways to naturally harness Ether, yet after a lot of failed theory and attempts, Michael tried one final Hail Mary before calling it quits for the day.
Holding his arm out, Michael then tries to control the Ether in his own body. "If using Ether in the environment is a bit too advanced for me, what about my own body? It should be easier in theory, right? Then again, I'm not a theoretical physicist or anything."
At first, there was nothing. A few moments later, still nothing. A few minutes passed, and nothing. Just as Michael was about to give up, he felt it. Like blood coursing through his veins, an energy that he was sure was Ether.
Opening his eyes, Michael could see his arms absolutely pulsing with an iridescent energy as he felt the damage on his body being slowly repaired. It felt powerful, almost intoxicatingly so, as he turned around and slammed his fist against a nearby large stone pillar as hard as he could.
CLANG
A large dent appeared on its surface, digging so far into its rebar. A moment later, Ether Crystals began growing out of where he had exactly struck, spreading on the surface like a malignant cancer.
"Damn! I feel incredible! Like I can take on the whole world!" Michael boisterously shouted as he next tried to redirect the energy into the tip of his blade. It worked as an orb of Ether began to converge at the tip of it, swirling like a raging maelstrom.
Michael pumped more and more Ether into it, making the orb bigger and bigger. Not only that, but he could also feel the surrounding Ether being pumped into it, which meant he had managed to somewhat achieve one of his objectives. To manipulate the surrounding Ether to some extent.
While he wanted to stop as he sensed the orb was beginning to become unstable, for some reason, something at the back of his mind was telling him to keep going and see what would happen. And so, Michael added more Ether into it. And then added some more. A lot more.
It took a while before he seemingly snapped out of whatever trance he's in, and by the time he realised what was happening, he saw just how big and unstable the orb of concentrated Ether had become. "Oh... Okay..., maybe this is too much," Michael said with concern in his voice.
He tried to stop the flow of Ether from feeding it further before realising one crucial detail. He doesn't know how to. He might be able to channel Ether, but he sure as hell doesn't know how to do the reverse.
"Dammit! It's not- it's not stopping!" Michael yelled out loud as he desperately tried everything to contain the rapidly deteriorating situation.
All around him, the surroundings were also affected by the concentrated Ether, with the ground beneath him beginning to sprout Ether Crystal and spreading rapidly.
While that wasn't problematic in itself, it was the fact that his MP3 was also close by to him, and with how fast the crystals were spreading, it wouldn't be long before it would also be corrupted.
Left with no other choice, Michael grabbed his handgun and placed a single aimed shot at it.
Miraculously, it worked as the orb dislodged from his blade, falling onto the ground. His woes were not over, however, when cracks began appearing on the ball's surface, spewing out Ether in all directions as it seemingly destabilized.
"Shit! It's gonna blow!" Michael quickly grabbed his MP3 with some difficulty since his only hand was also wielding a gun and made a run for the exit of the mall.
As he was running from the inevitable, a few Ethereal ran opposite to him and in the direction of where the ball was. 'Must've been attracted to the Ether Energy.' Michael noted to himself.
Reaching the exit, Michael smashed through the glass door, shards of glass flying everywhere, which he didn't care about as he made it to the parking lot of the mall.
"I think I'm far enough," Michael stated as he leaned on a nearby car after he had reached the otherside of the massive parking lot.
"N-" Before he could even utter a single word, a brilliant explosion engulfed the mall. Far larger than the one he had been anticipating.
Michael held on to his items tightly as he braced for the incoming shockwave.
.....
"Let me get this right, Corporal. A group of Ethereals attacked the base?" Captain Roland, who had just arrived, questioned the commanding officer in charge of the camp.
The soldier's face was filled with sweat as he tried to come up with an explanation for how they managed to fail at killing a single low-level Ethereal. "W-well... No. It's just a single Ethereal. It just ran through our camp before exiting using a fissure, not even trying to attack us."
Roland took a look at the damaged Lightfoot, not believing that a single Ethereal managed to cause such a ruckus. "Then explain exactly what happened, Corporal." The tone made the soldier straighten his back even further.
"Uhh... Sir? You're not going to believe this, but the Ethereal was weird." The soldier then explained further. "While we're trying to take it down, it was running and dodging our gunfire and even weaving between covers. To be honest, sir, if it wasn't an Ethereal, we would've thought it was a soldier with how tactically it uses its environment."
That definitely caught Roland's attention as he was now paying close attention. "What type of Ethereal was it, Soldier? And was it weilding a gun?"
"It was a Tyrfing, sir! And yes, it had a gun in its hand. Not only that, after carefully reviewing our Bangboo's recording, we found out it was also wearing a backpack which was filled with Dennies and other items." The soldier then pointed at the trail of Dennies on the floor, clearly mapping out the route the Ethereal had taken in its escape.
'No doubt about it, it's the Tyrfing.' Roland concluded before facing the soldier once again. "Corporal, gather your men and return to base with me. After that, collect every recording of the incident and hand it over to Ray Yersin, then delete every single recording of it."
The Corporal looked stunned at Roland's orders, "May I know why, sir? Shouldn't this recording be sent to H.A.N.D?"
"Classified. As for H.A.N.D, I'll personally send a copy of the recording to them. Now then, prepare to head back."
"Yes, si-"
RUMBLE
They suddenly lost control of their balance, falling onto the ground, as the ground beneath them shook and rumbled.
The radio was inundated by the nearby squads asking what had happened and asking for answers.
In the chaos of it all, no one noticed a single HIA Investigator placing a small memory card into his pocket.
.....
Later in the night, as New Eridu's inhabitants began to fall asleep, a post on Inter-Knot appeared titled 'Anyone willing to buy this?'
"Hey, guys? I just got this memory card from my friend. Said he had to ditch it fast or something and that there's an interesting recording of an Ethereal inside. Any takers?" The OP of the post commented.
"Dude... Did you really think any of us were gonna fall for this obv scam? A recording of an Ethereal? Really?"
Almost every comment took turns clowning on the post, calling it a scam or some other variation of it.
One comment with the username 'Night Emissary', however, took an interest in the item. "Where do you want to meet up?"