CHAPTER 46: THE PRICE OF CONTROL

The world inside the Gate was a cacophony of screeching metal and splintering bone.

Jinx was a blur of deadly efficiency, her rifle barking out a steady, percussive rhythm of death.

But the buffed-up ghouls were tanks.

Her armor-piercing rounds, which should have turned them into clouds of black mist, were now just chipping away at their newly-formed chitinous plating.

One of them, a hulking brute with claws like rebar hooks, swiped at her, forcing her to dive behind the rusted-out husk of a station wagon.

Sparks flew as the claws tore through the car’s roof like it was wet cardboard.

"A little help here, Boomer!" she yelled, her voice tight with strain.

Jax, however, had his own problems.

He was pinned down behind a crumbling brick wall, two of the armored ghouls relentlessly hammering at his cover.

"One second, Jinxie!" he called back, his usual cheerfulness strained. "I’m in the middle of a very important architectural deconstruction project!"

Chunks of brick exploded inward, peppering him with debris.

"And I’m the architect they’re trying to fire!"

Michael watched from the flank, his mind a chaotic storm of tactical calculations.

His Void Tethers were like rubber bands against these things. They were too strong, their momentum too great.

He was a controller in a fight that needed a nuke.

This isn’t working, his inner monologue stated, a cold knot of dread tightening in his stomach. The DPS check is too high. The adds have an armor buff. This is a party wipe waiting to happen.

He saw his chance.

Jax, in a moment of brilliant, suicidal genius, tossed his last sonic grenade over the wall.

It detonated with a silent, disorienting pulse.

The two ghouls attacking him staggered back, clutching their heads.

Jax used the opening, not to attack, but to run, scrambling away from his disintegrating cover.

But the third elite, the one that had been stalking him, was waiting.

It moved with a speed that defied its bulk, cutting off Jax’s escape route.

It raised its massive, clawed hand.

Jax froze, his face, for the first time since Michael had met him, completely devoid of its manic grin.

He looked... small.

Terrified.

The whispers in Michael’s head, which had been a low, chaotic hum, suddenly coalesced into a single, cold, logical thought.

It was the voice of the Cable Hound, the ruthless efficiency of a machine.

Inefficient.

The sapper is a critical asset. His loss is an unacceptable mission failure.

Intervention is required.

Michael didn’t have time to argue with the ghost in his head.

He saw Jax’s wide, terrified eyes.

He saw the claw beginning to descend.

And he made a choice.

He turned his attention to a fallen elite ghoul nearby, its corpse still twitching.

He was out of options.

He was out of time.

He reached for the button he had sworn he would never press again.

"I’m sorry," he whispered, though no one could hear him.

He activated the skill.

[SOUL DEVOUR (LV. 1) ACTIVATED.]

The air around him didn’t just get cold.

It died.

From his outstretched hand, the silent, hungry vortex erupted, a perfect sphere of absolute nothingness that drank the sickly green light of the ghoul nest.

Jinx, peering over the hood of the wrecked car, felt it first.

It was a pressure drop, a sudden, soul-deep chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

She saw the vortex.

She saw the look of pure, agonizing concentration on Michael’s face.

"Oh, hells," she breathed, her blood turning to ice. "Not again."

Jax, who had squeezed his eyes shut and was preparing for the sweet, explosive embrace of death, felt the change too.

The killing blow never landed.

He cracked one eye open.

The monster that had been looming over him was frozen, its head cocked as if listening to a sound he couldn’t hear.

He looked over at Michael.

He saw the swirling black hole in the kid’s palm.

He saw the faint, twilight-colored light being ripped from the corpse of the other ghoul.

He saw Michael shudder, a full-body flinch, as the power surged into him.

What... in the name of all that goes boom... is that?

Michael screamed, but the sound was trapped in his own head, a silent, psychic shriek of a dozen conflicting agonies.

He felt the ghoul’s essence pouring into him.

The hunger.

The mindless rage.

The faint, lingering echo of the human it had once been, a ghost within a ghost.

The power was a tidal wave of raw, untamed energy.

He didn’t fight it.

He rode it.

He turned his gaze to the Ghoul Alchemist, who was still chanting, its back to him, oblivious.

The whispers in his head were screaming now, a chorus of dead monsters demanding blood.

He gave them what they wanted.

He drew the Reaper’s Fang, its matte black surface now humming, glowing with a deep, malevolent purple light.

He didn’t use Shadow Step.

He didn’t need to.

He moved, a blur of pure, untamed void, crossing the fifty feet between them in an instant.

[VOID SLASH (LV. 1) ACTIVATED.]

The slash wasn’t a cut.

It was an act of unmaking.

The blade passed through the Alchemist’s back, leaving no wound, no blood.

For a split second, the Alchemist froze, its chanting cut short.

Then, its body dissolved.

It didn’t explode. It didn’t crumble.

It unraveled, its very essence being shredded into a million tiny threads of dying, green light that were then sucked into the lingering energy of Michael’s slash, feeding his power, feeding his corruption.

The buff on the remaining elite ghouls vanished.

They stopped, confused, their newfound armor plating cracking and falling away.

Jinx and Jax didn’t waste the opportunity.

Two sharp cracks from Jinx’s rifle, and a single, joyous, and slightly hysterical-sounding BOOM from one of Jax’s custom grenades, and the fight was over.

Silence fell over the dead, twisted street.

It was a heavy, suffocating silence, filled with the stench of ozone and the unspoken horror of what they had just witnessed.

Jinx slowly lowered her rifle.

Jax just stared, his mouth slightly agape, the usual manic gleam in his eyes replaced by a new, profound, and deeply unsettling fear.

He owed the kid his life.