Grayson looked up and saw the moon coming at him.
Or at least something of similar size.
Which is of course, relative.
And obviously an over exaggeration.
Right?
That's besides the point.
The giant boulder, which seemed to have a personal vendetta against him, was thrown by some brute of an ant in an attempt to squash him like an insect.
The irony was not lost on him.
He dropped into the shadow of the boulder, entering the shadow realm.
It was a black empty space that mirrored every shadow in the world, entirely made out of shadow Aether and accessible by a few shadow users. One of the many anternate or mirrored realities that existed.
He dropped in and felt his body dissolve into an inky black mass reminiscent of a humanoid.
He looked above him, and saw a that thin film that separated him from actual reality. He focused a bit and split of a part of his shadow to watch it.
In the shadow realm, every thing that had a shadow had a shadow copy in it.
If he killed it, it became a part of his shadow.
And killed whatever cast it.
Philosophers( a broad classification of systems that focused on understanding things) still theorized about the relationship between shadows and creatures. But they were at least aware that they had a connection.
He looked around, looking for the shadow of the ant. It was surprisingly far away but he found it quickly.
It was dealing with Jason and Vin, struggling against their superior speed. He cut off part of his shadow, abnormally strong due to being made of a myriad of other shadows, and connected them to Jason and Vin's shadows.
In the real world, even though slightly, they seemed to get stronger, more grounded. The ant was struggling more.
He spoke out, directly in their minds, "Both of you, focus on tiring it out, something so large must be burning energy quickly. I'll try and kill it here."
He turned away from the film and focused on the shadow in front of him. It was a mirror image of the ant, just black and smoky, and with all of its strength.
He moved with immense speed when inside the shadow realm. He crossed almost fifty meters in an instant, flashing behind the ant and extending his hand into an inky black blade. Gray thrust out with it, the blade sinking into chitin and stopping.
The ant roared in pain, a black wound appearing on its exoskeleton, in the real world.
Since the ant couldn't perceive the world of shadows, it couldn't defend against Gray's attacks, and could only hope for its shadow's inherent defense to trump his.
The only thing that he had attacked in the shadow realm and defended itself was Kyran. His shadow looked at him as he approached, like it could see him. Kyran sensed the disturbance and shifted his fighting style, learning to fight both the rest of the squad and Grayson with the same set of movements, all on instinct.
It was a humbling experience.
Back to the present, the ant obviously wasn't as adept at fighting as the shadow user, and couldn't pinpoint why it was slowly dying. Before long, the ant's shadow wholly disappeared, and the ant keeled over, dead.
Gray rose out of Vin's shadow and high fived the others.
"That was the twelfth one this hour. Their spawn rate is accelerating or something." Jason observed. "Cedric said that the excess Aether from the routers was used to reassemble the bodies of dead ants, so we can expect that the other router would have another one of those birth chambers."
Vin spoke up, "Cedric destroyed the one around the other router. The density of Aether probably increased and was used for the other chamber. The one we need to destroy."
"Fuck him," Jason sighed, "And his fear of ants."
Grayson already started moving forward,"You can fuck him and his ants later, we got shit to do."
"Fuck you too!", Was the lighthearted response, which was accompanied by the moon from earlier's little brother.
After bantering for a bit, they were besieged yet again by another one, putting an end to their joking.
They killed this one by locking it down with shadow tendrils and frying it, since it was more speed focused and couldn't break free of them.
This cycle continued until they reached within a hundred meters of the router. Gray had kept his perception through shadows pumped up to the max, which was overwhelming but manageable. That was, until they got closer to the router, and he got so much sensory input at once he was brought to his knees. There was an absolutely gargantuan shadow where the router was supposed to be.
He shut off his perception before his brain exploded and struggled to his feet.
Vin was already aware something was wrong and told Jason to keep his gaurd up.
They slowly advanced forward, having already resigned themselves to horrible luck. Gray fully expected some unexplainable monstrosity to come barreling out of it.
No such luck.
They reached the place where he perceived the shadow.
There was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Nothing except for a massive gaping hole.
That was all the router space was.
Jason squinted into the hole, and then referenced the map Kyran gave them. The white-haired squad leader could be wrong, but they couldn't do anything about it a within the timeframe he gave them. Although if he was wrong once he could be wrong twice.
But Gray didn't want him to be wrong. For reasons he himself didn't know, he trusted Kyran. He would complete the mission.
Because that was the order he was given
Gray stood up, and took a few deep breaths. He tried to think straight. Why was he not alerted to such a massive shadow within a few kilometers of him? Why didn't the runes pick up on the change and update the map? A few slight inconsistencies were nothing by themselves, but those inconsistencies were directly linked to the contents of the Finals, which were confidential before the end of the exam.
Gray shook his head and focused. He would scheme to his heart's content once he could afford to. He knew what he needed to do.
"Vin. Jason We're jumping in." He said without giving himself time to tell himself it was a stupid idea that would end with their corpses on the floor of whereever that bottomless abyss ended.
Jason reacted as any normal person would and asked, "What did Kyran do to you?"
Vin jumped on the Bash Grayson Train, "We told you to run when that crazy shit got you alone. But it's obviously too late.*sigh* On a serious note, what did you figure out?"
"That hole was not there around an hour ago. I would have sensed such a large amount of shadow Aether the second we got anywhere remotely close. But I didn't. Nor did I even notice it until we were on the verge of falling into it. Something's wrong here. So we're going to finish this regardless, and get out of here so we can be alive to question what's wrong"
Jason looked like he was slightly queasy, "All well and good my friend. I can't argue much with logic." He then grabbed Gray's left shoulder and Vin took his right. Grayson looked at both of them for confirmation. He saw what was probably a mirror image of his own face. The confused fear of the unknown coupled with an aversion to weakness. They both nodded.
He took a step forward….
Wind howled in his ears..
He lost balance and started uncontrollably spinning and twisting. He called to his shadow and made it manifest in the shape of an upside down oval bowl. Their feet roughly landed on it and tendrils grew out of it and strapped their aching feet in place. "Vin! Try and get a cloud in the bowl! Just right us up and try to slow our fall as much as you can!" Gray shouted. He could barely hear his own voice over the roaring in his ears and the pounding in his heart. His eyes stung slightly.
A sudden jolt took him off his feet, and he felt the angle he was standing on shift. He got up, thankful for those straps, and tried to sense anything.
By this point their surroundings were shrouded in shadow so deep that the memory of light was as fleeting as a dream.
Gray took advantage of that fact and extended he perception outwards, slowly, just in case.
He found absolutely nothing. I'm fact the emptiness was more overwhelming than the vast shadow.
It was unnerving, as even the smallest movement would cause a change.
Gray tried on in vain until Vin shouted, "Brace yourselves!" Gray made new straps and tightened all of them in response, just in time to get his teeth rearranged. The jolt ran deep into his bones and the transition from weightlessness to that shock found him almost emptying his stomach.
Jason called out and asked if they were okay. On any important level they were, so they rested and kept moving.
The density of both Aether and ants steadily increased, until they reached the place where the router was marked, where they cut off.
They entered the massive domed room, which was just as dark as the rest of the place except from a slight amber glow from the ant 'shelves' and a bright one in the center.
Rather than destroying them like the idiot, they decided to just fry the amniotic fluid-like stuff using Vin's lightning.
Once they were done with that they could finally focus on the router itself.
It was significantly larger than the one Cedric saw, and emmanated an absolutely off kilter amount of Aether. It was so dense that everything around it was vibrant and full. But through the thick haze of light, Gray faintly made out the fact that it…..
Was a human corpse.
And it was vaguely familiar, but only vaguely,
At least until he made out its facial features.
High cheekbones, a sharp jawline and lusterless blue hair. He had a slight beard and prominent eyes, now sunken in death.
Gray fell on his ass.
Th-that face… there was never a day it didn't show up on tv. Never a post that didn't reference one of his stature. Not a human that didn't know him or his title. What that title represented, as the hope of the human race.
That man….
Was Inaris Ecko…
Apex of Neptune.
…And Gray was sitting not one meter away from his corpse.