Chapter 281:
–Layla–
{Warning: Critically Low HP!}
"What the fuck happened…" I groggily sat up, doing my best not to cringe. My entire body ached in pain. As if someone had taken a school bus the size of Jupiter and decided to run me over with it. Then do it again for good measure.
When was the last time I had truly felt pain like this? I could barely even recall. It had been a long time, that was for certain.
[Layla of the Fallen]
[Title: Fourteen Winged Angel, Goddess of Angels, Death's Favored.]
[Level: 105]
[Sacred Gears: Purger of Darkness, Orb of Infinity]
[HP: 1500 / 124500]
[MP: 500 / 141,200]
[Faith Energy: 1,530,678,654]
[Vigor: 12450]
[Strength: 5,895]
[Intelligence: 14,120]
[Luck: 2745]
[Available Free Stat Points: 0]
[Perks and Skills:]
-Goddess of Angels (10x Increase in all Stat Points. Access to all Angelic Abilities. Can turn other races into white or black winged Angels depending on the person's Karma.)
-Death's Favored (Resurrect on Death after 24 hours. Can resurrect up to three people a day.)
-Daughter of Heaven's Will (Passive Skill: Ask and you shall receive! The universe bends to your whims and circumstances that you wish for are far more likely to occur!)
-Acting (Max: You are a master of the craft when you want to be.)
-Observe (Max: No one's level is hidden from your gaze. No one can detect you using Observe on them.)
-Light Manipulation (Max: All Light Abilities Cost 10x less MP to Cast.)
-Senjutsu (Max: Passively regenerate 1000 MP/Min.)
-Rinnegan (Max: All Rinnegan abilities cost 5x less MP.)
-Faith Pool (Can draw upon Faith Energy when MP runs out.)
-Cosmic Energy (Instead of air, you know breathe Cosmic Energy. All abilities are drastically improved along with access to Cosmic powers.)
-Lustful Queen (Active Skill: You can drain the energy of anyone you touch and convert it into any type of energy you desire. This ability is 1000x more effective when performed during sexual intercourse. You will also receive random stat points after every "session.")
I only had 1,500 HP left!? What the fuck! No wonder I felt like absolute shit. I had lost over 99% of my HP!
I immediately summoned my Sacred Gear: Purger of Darkness and started healing myself.
I let out a sigh of relief as I felt the soothing purple light wash over me. Normally, pain doesn't linger no matter how low my HP gets, but the cause of my near-death was almost getting ripped apart by overwhelming gravitational force that hit me from all directions at once…
[This one might have been on me. I should have never told you to give that brat the benefit of the doubt...]
"It wasn't just on you, System. It was on me as well. I knew he was a spoiled brat, but I didn't think for a second he was capable of attempted murder," I said wistfully.
It was all starting to come back to me now…
…
…We had all just arrived at the super collider, prepared to confront Wilson Fisk and his mysterious new "woman." It was quite a surprise to find out that the woman turned out to be a Goddess, and that she had already killed Fisk. She seemed very smug about that fact too.
Of course, someone had to go and ask her who she was and what her plans were. And of course, she told us all about them with zero hesitation.
She was Shathra, the Goddess of Wasps and enemy of all Spider-Men. Shathra started monologuing about how much she hated her sister, the Goddess of Spiders, Neith, who had designed the entire Spider-Verse. She went into detail about why she hated her sister, but I kind of tuned her out.
You've heard one evil plot to take over the universe, you've heard them all…
…
[She wanted to rebuild the universe in her own image. Instead of a Web of Life that allowed mortals to have free will, she wanted to create a hive-like universe where all mortals were nothing more than drone-like slaves for herself and the Gods.]
"Was that what it was?" I asked the System. How droll…
[Yeah, she was pretty much evil for the sake of evil. Standard villain stuff. Anyway, feel free to continue.]
"Right…"
…
…Anyways, Shathra was planning on using the collider to destabilize all the Universes at once, hoping to do enough damage to the Web of Life that the entire thing collapsed in on itself.
Because that was apparently a thing that could happen. Clearly, when Neith had been creating the Web of Life, she hadn't taken that design flaw into account.
In order for Shathra to enact her evil plans, she first needed to get her hands on the flash drive. Unbeknownst to her, I wasn't even in possession of it anymore. I had given it to Peter for safekeeping before we arrived in the control room of the supercollider. Of all of us, he was the only one who knew how to use it. Peni probably could have figured it out as well considering she was from over 1000 years in the future, but I wasn't taking any chances.
The goddess didn't know any of that. She immediately attacked me, demanding I hand over the flash drive. In order to buy time for everyone else, I started fighting back against her.
The Spider, who, it turned out, was an evil Spider-Man combined with Carnage, attacked all the remaining Spider-People in the meantime. The Spider was easily stronger than any of the other Spider-People, but he was outnumbered, so I had faith my new Spider allies would pull through. They were all also very pissed off after the gruesome death of Spider-Ham, so they were all giving it 120%! I figured they would beat him in only a few minutes.
As for my fight, Shathra was no slouch herself. She was sitting at a respectable Level 120 and was deadly in close combat. Her entire body was basically poison, I couldn't get too close to her without losing HP.
She also insisted on fighting directly on top of the supercollider, which meant I had to hold back my more destructive techniques. If the collider was damaged, it could explode, accidentally taking out a large chunk of this planet.
We were lucky that was something Shathra didn't want to happen. She wasn't satisfied with ruining one Spider-Universe, she wanted to topple all of them in one go.
However, as I predicted, the Spider was soundly defeated and Peter plugged in the flash drive:
I blocked her latest assault and lashed out with a punch directly into her solar plexus. Shathra flew 20 feet backwards and started wheezing. My hand had turned partially black from the contact poison, but I was able to quickly purge it from my body.
"It's over, Shathra! The Spider has been beaten, and Peter is already in the process of reversing the supercollider," I told her. "It would be a waste to kill a goddess as beautiful as you. Surrender yourself to my custody, and you'll go free after a few hundred years in prison." I made her the offer. I thought it was a pretty light sentence, considering what she was trying to do.
Shathra really couldn't help herself when it came to evil monologuing. "No! I will not be denied my vengeance against my sister! It doesn't matter if I've failed here. I'll simply try again in another universe. There's an infinite number of Wilson Fisks who have lost their wife and son. It's a canon event! I'll simply influence another one of them to build another collider!" she declared while spreading her arms wide. There was a mad gleam in her eyes.
Why is it always the crazy ones that are also super hot? What a waste…
[Just how it is…]
Like me, Shathra possessed the ability to freely traverse the Marvel multiverse–although it seemed she could only go to Universes connected to the Web of Life. She opened up her own black portal to attempt to escape once she knew she couldn't overpower me or stop Peter from reversing the collider.
Knowing what she was planning, I couldn't let her escape. I used my Sacred Gear: Orb of Infinity to lock down space around us.
In hindsight, we both made a poor decision.
Neither of us should have been fucking around with space magic right next to the super collider that was in the process of opening a kaleidoscopic rift so that all the Spider-People could return home. Our two space magics messed with the process, we inadvertently ended up creating some kind of black hole!
It immediately started sucking Shathra and I in! The gravitational pulling force was massive, and yet it only seemed to be affecting Shathra and I. All the delicate technology around us was completely unaffected by the emergence of a literal black hole. Pure magical bullshit…
Neither of us were very keen on finding out what was on the other side of a black hole.
"Temporary truce?" I asked her.
Shathra scoffed but still nodded her head in agreement. "I only agree to this because you are a fellow goddess–although an extremely misguided one like my bitch sister!" She would have been a perfect tsundere if not for the whole "wanting to destroy the multiverse thing…"
We temporarily found some common ground and both combined our space magics once again–but intentionally this time, in order to destroy or at the very least stabilize the black hole to stop it from swallowing us!
"Whooo! Hell yeah, the next Spider-Man is here to save the day! I made it in time to help!"
Stabilizing a black hole was a very delicate process. That's why I didn't appreciate when Miles Morales came swinging in to save the day–after all the fighting was already over. He was wearing a black and red Spider-Man outfit that actually looked pretty cool, but I had no idea where he got it from. That wasn't really important anyway, what was important was that he landed right behind Shathra and I.
"What's going on here?" Miles asked us both nonchalantly as he landed on top of the collider.
Sweat was dripping down my brow from concentration. Without Ajuka's magical knowledge, I would have had no idea what I was doing. Even with the knowledge, it was still a very difficult process.
"We're kind of busy, kid. Why don't you go join the other Spiders in the control room?" I suggested in annoyance.
"Fuck off, Spider-Brat! We're busy here!" Shathra grunted as well. She had less power than me and was already trembling in near magical exhaustion.
"I actually wanted to talk to you one more time, Layla, if that's alright?" Miles asked me as if it wasn't an absolutely terrible time to do so.
My arms burned from the amount of energy flowing through them. I had long since run out of MP and was burning through my supplies of Faith Energy. "Not the time, Miles!" I told him.
"Are you sure?" he said.
Shathra looked to be in a similar situation. "Fuck off you foolish, arachnid. This is a very delicate process. One slip up and we'll both be sucked into this black hole!"
"And that's bad right?" Miles asked the dumb question.
"Yes, it's bad, Miles…" I replied blandly. What part of getting sucked into a black hole sounded like a good thing?
"We could both die!" Shathra groaned. "And I refuse to let that happen!" she roared and used the last bits of her power to help us!
Despite him distracting us momentarily, Shathra and I eventually succeeded! The black hole started to shrink. It started out as big as an Olympic Swimming pool but quickly diminished.
"I wanted to ask you one last time, Layla? Could you please bring back my Uncle Arron?" Miles asked me again. "I'm a hero now" he said while gesturing to his probably stolen costume. "I promise that I'll keep him in line. He won't commit crimes anymore!"
"No," I told him for the last time. "I'm not going to risk it. I'm not going to revive a villain!"
"I thought you'd say that," Miles said somberly.
The black hole had shrunk to the size of a hot tub and was continuing to shrink on its own. Shathra and I didn't need to use any more of our power to stabilize it. We both put our arms down and let out sighs of relief.
"That was a close one," Shathra said before turning to me with a small smile. "You weren't half bad there."
"Neither were you," I replied with a smile of my own. Nothing brings heroes and villains together like a temporary team up to prevent both of our imminent deaths. I felt like we might actually be able to reach some common ground and settle things peacefully. For all I knew, Shathra might just be really pent up and needed to get laid.
Unfortunately, that was something I'd never be able to find out.
A second later, I felt someone kick me hard in the back! It was Miles! The little bastard caught me off guard while I was catching my breath! It wasn't just me either, he also kicked Shathra as well.
"What the fuck, Miles!" I screamed out.
"Damn you, Spider-Brat!" Shathra's shout was laced with hatred and fury.
Both of us were flung forwards… directly into the hot tub sized black hole right before it shrank out of existence.
The darkness and pain inside was indescribable! Light and sound didn't exist, my screams couldnt be heard by anyone, not even myself.
The laws of physics ceased to exist entirely. Unstable gravity started crushing me on all sides. I quickly lost sight of the other goddess. I had no way of confirming if she was immediately crushed by the forces or managed to escape.
It had only been a few seconds and yet my HP was plummeting faster than I thought possible. It took every last bit of Faith Energy I had to escape myself. I don't know how it was possible that i opened up a portal inside a black hole, but I fucking did it!
…
I tried opening a portal back to Earth Marvel, but something obviously got messed up in the process. I ended up somewhere else...
After healing myself, I finally got a look around and took in my surroundings. Volcanic ash and molten lava was all I could see in all directions. The air around me barely had any oxygen at all, it was pretty much completely toxic unless you were a goddess and didn't need to breathe oxygen.
I found myself on Muspelheim of all places…
It wasn't exactly Earth, but close enough I supposed. Another portal and I would be home finally. I'd save my retribution on Miles for another day, but he wasn't getting off lightly after what he did to me.
[Before you do that, there's something that you didn't notice before because of all the pain you were in. I waited for you to heal yourself before mentioning it.]
"Hm? What's up?" I asked the System.
[You have accumulated over 1.5 billion Faith Energy…]
"What the hell?" I quickly brought up my status screen to see if that was right. It took me a few seconds to register that what I was reading was correct. It shouldn't have been possible, but the system was right!
{Achievement Unlocked: The Faithful!}
{You have acquired over 1 billion Faith Energy. Evolution commencing!}
Evolution!? I could evolve past 14 wings?
"Ugh!" My wings all forcefully manifested behind my back, I never enjoyed when they just popped out on their own like that. I could feel another pair added to the set. It was known that my father, Yahweh, had 14 wings.
I had now surpassed that number with 16! If I was already a Goddess before, what was I now?
{A new title has been acquired: High Goddess of Angels! All base stats have been increased from 10x to 100x!}
[Layla of the Fallen]
[Title: Sixteen Winged Angel, High Goddess of Angels, Death's Favored.]
[Level: 105]
[Sacred Gears: Purger of Darkness, Orb of Infinity]
[HP: 1,245,000]
[MP: 1,412,000]
[Faith Energy: 530,678,654]
[Vigor: 110,500]
[Strength: 58,950]
[Intelligence: 141,200]
[Luck: 27,450]
[Available Free Stat Points: 0]
Holy shit! I got ANOTHER 10x boost to all my stats!? It looked like it cost me 1 billion Faith Energy to evolve, but that was worth it in my book.
Still though… This random evolution was very strange. It had literally come out of nowhere.
"What the hell just happened, System!?"
I'd only been gone a few days. There was no way I could have accumulated that much Faith Energy in so little time. On top of that, I thought I was down to zero again. I used the last of it escaping from the black hole.
[I have a theory, but you're really not going to like it…]
"Hold that thought!" I perked my head up and gazed into the distance.
All my senses felt magnified by a huge degree. I could sense a familiar presence engaged in combat over the horizon. I smiled when I sensed who it was.
It was Sif! Her aura blazed like the sun, she was facing a large group of fire demons. I could feel her steadily chipping away at their numbers, but there were certainly a lot of them.
I spread my 16 black wings and took off into the air towards the fight! The scenery underneath me BLURRED!
"Holy shit!" I exclaimed after arriving at my destination faster than I could blink. I had flown hundreds of kilometers in almost an instant. That was some bullshit comic book level of speed I had just pulled off!
"LAYLA!" Sif looked up at me in shock. A nearby fire demon tried to take advantage of her distraction and charge at her back with a flaming dagger. It didn't work out for him as she effortlessly twirled her sword and looped off its head. No one else tried to take her off guard.
The remaining 100 or so demons glanced up at me warily. I could see a couple of them in the back already slowly back away, preparing to escape from me. With 16 wings I was now a High Goddess. I'm not sure what that meant compared to my old title just yet, but it felt like I was something…more.
Before any of the demons could escape, a hundred lightspears manifested around me. Each one formed with only a thought and immediately zipped downwards to find their marks. They were all wiped out without any chance to retaliate. The volcanic hellscape was stained with demons' blood.
I floated down and landed right in front of Sif. She looked extremely hot right then, her long blonde hair billowing behind her as she was covered in demon blood and ash. A true goddess of war.
I smiled at her. "You won't believe the kind of crazy two days I've had, Sif."
Sif, like all Asgardians, loved swapping adventure tales. I was about to start explaining my latest adventure but was cut off when I felt a stinging sensation across my cheek!
{-1HP!}
Sif had slapped me out of nowhere!
"Where the hell have you been, Layla!? Everyone has been so incredibly worried about you!" Sif shouted at me. Tears formed in her eyes.
I was momentarily taken aback. I don't know what I did wrong, but clearly I had fucked up somehow. I wrapped my arms around my crying lover and embraced her in a hug. Sif sobbed into my shoulder as I rubbed circles on her back.
"What's wrong, Sif?" I asked her gently. I'd never seen her breakdown and sob quite like this. My heart ached seeing it…
"...You've been gone for two years, Layla," Sif whispered between sobs. "No one knew what happened to you!"
"W-What…?" I actually stuttered.
[I was afraid that's what happened. Time works differently around black holes. All that Faith Energy was two years worth of accumulation that hit you all at once after you escaped!]
I could barely even register the System's words. My eyes widened in shock and I started trembling in disbelief. Sif wasn't the type of woman to lie. Especially not a lie like that.
It only felt like I was trapped for a few seconds, but I had been gone for two whole years…
Now I was the one who was suddenly crying. "H–How much did I miss..?" I shakily asked Sif as she hugged me even tighter.
XXX
A/N: It's not often Layla gets screwed over especially with her Luck but everything happens for a reason. At least she got a big power up! I took the black hole time fuckery idea from the movie Interstellar, one of the best movies ever made.
Next time on the Fallen Gamer: what did Layla miss? How much of the world has changed without her guiding presence?
I'm always happy to get feedback so please leave a comment or review.
I have a patreo n. My subs can read advanced updates of my stories ahead of standard release and vote on story polls.
Link:
Patreo n .com (slash) Starwaves