Second Genesis

’It has to be near here, probably. Where did I throw it the first time? Closer to here? Fuck, but I threw it further back this time, so it might have gotten blasted nearer the gate in the opposite direction.’

Grey knew that he was on a time crunch, so he was trying to narrow down the search. Any moment now, that archer could show up here, and clearly, he wasn’t shy about killing people.

The encampment wasn’t exactly huge, but there was debris, rubble, and what remained of the goblins everywhere. It wasn’t exactly the easiest place to search, especially when it was for something he had already missed twice already.

The blast had managed to rock even Grey off his feet. He probably weighed nearing 200 pounds due to his height and muscle density. But if the object wasn’t obvious, it probably wasn’t all that large.

He was probably looking for something relatively small and quite dense, but he wasn’t sure.

If all it took was something dense and heavy to crack the door, then why wouldn’t an explosion do anything to it? As much as it made sense for what he was looking for to be small and dense, it might very well be as light as a feather but have some sort of special property that could ignore the defenses of the door.

Anything was possible. These people could send him back in time—who was to say where their technological limits lay?

Grey knocked over crates and rummaged around with his hands and feet alike. Visibility still wasn’t all that high due to the smoke bomb, but an unintended consequence of her sending the bomb sailing much further this time was that the blast had blown the smoke away and out of the gates.

Right about now, the tunnels were being flooded with quickly diluting smoke. If he was lucky, that might delay Fitz.

Grey came to a stop at the center of the encampment. He ran his hand through his hair out of habit, cursing when a familiar annoying fragrance and gel coated his hand. He wiped it away on Ray’s Nexis Suit—or rather, he tried to.

The material was odd. Though it didn’t feel slippery to the touch, it was very dust and stain-resistant. The gel seemed more interested in staying on his palm than it did transferring over to the suit.

Grey ended up wiping it on his floral suit instead, but it wasn’t exactly the best napkin either, made of a silk-like material. The small actions were starting to build up an annoyance in his heart that nearly sent him over the edge.

He took a deep breath and exhaled.

He wasn’t even sure if any of what he was looking for was actually here or not—he was just speculating. For all he knew, it was a fluke that caused the door to crack the first time.

’Come on. We’re running out of time.’

Grey slipped Ray’s suit sleeve back over his hand, tightening it around his wrist. As he made a move to wrap it around his other fist and maybe prepare for another round of battle, he felt a weird tingling in his first arm.

At first, he thought the problem with his shoulder was starting to show up downstream, but the sensation didn’t feel like pain. While it did feel like it was firing from his nerves, it felt like it had a different source... an external one.

’What is that—?’

Grey ripped the suit off as he felt a sudden jolt of pain. But before he could think about why this was happening, his eyes widened as he focused on something.

His wrist and a bit of his forearm were covered in the gel from his hair. Because of the material of his suit, he hadn’t been able to wipe all of it off. So when he slipped the sleeve of the suit back over his hand, the inside mesh had pushed some of the gel back and over his skin.

’The gel...’

Grey had once gone to a doctor’s appointment with his grandfather. The old man had needed an ultrasound to check up on his health, and before it began, the nurse had squeezed out a nice glob of gel onto the old man’s belly before rubbing it in with the instrument’s tip. From his understanding, that gel was used to make sure the sound waves were traveling well between the instrument and the body.

Was something similar happening here? Did the gel help the Nexis Suit not need to line up with nodes as perfectly as they would normally have to?

But it felt so painful just now. Grey felt like had he not quickly ripped it off, he would have suffered severe burns. There was no way it was supposed to feel like that, right?

Grey looked toward the boss door and then rushed toward it. He dropped the axes he had stolen from the dead large goblin, slid a hand through his hair, and then slipped the arm of the suit back on.

The moment he felt the first tingle, he pressed a hand to the door.

Nothing happened.

Grey took a deep breath, being forced to regulate his emotions again. But then...

Click.

Grey felt a surge through his arm and he screamed.

It felt like an electrical fire had ravaged his arm. He collapsed to a knee, his eyes blazing with pulsing veins. The smell of sizzling, burning flesh reached his nose, his skin looking as though bolts of lightning were crawling beneath its surface.

Jagged lines of scorched flesh tore a path upward, reaching up his neck and across his chest before he barely managed to rip the Nexis Suit off once again.

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[BOSS BATTLE]

[Grey Temolt VS. Last Goblin Swordsman]

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[Description: The Last Goblin Swordsman carries the forgotten pride of a fallen race. Once an honored being with royal blood running through their veins and the flames of warlords rampaging in their hearts, the goblins have fallen far. No longer are they seen as Generals, but are instead savages and barbarians. Only the Last Goblin Swordsman remembers.]

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[Congratulations, Genesis Candidate! You have triggered a Rare Tutorial Instance! Good luck and don’t die! :)]