With a loud smack to the ground, Greg was knocked down in his power armor; he lay immobile on the marble ground of the training island for a moment before slowly lifting himself up while Kitsune was busy fending off attacks from both Adam and Zero. Mighty shockwaves blasted onto her body; she withstood them quite easily but had to stand still for that, a result of her fighting the trio with the same energy as she had brought herself to their level—an opportunity Zero did not fail to take to plunge her into an illusion. His illusions had gotten far better, and with Kitsune holding back, she was affected. As Kitsune remained in her spot after the shockwave; there were no lingering mists or visible effects of using an ability on her either—her eyes just went slack, an intense struggle in her pupils.
Zero soared into the sky, he was looking ethereal like an otherworldly being with flowing robes of silver draping his body and a wreath of moonflowers crowning his head; an ethereal mini-moon floated above him like a halo. silver rays of moon energy swirling through his made up etherea robes.
He made no visible gesture, but his illusion skill was swiftly activated, the effectiveness of this particular ability of the moon card had gotten far stronger since it was last used. He knew he had less than a second before Kitsune broke out of the illusion—but three seconds was enough for Adam, who used his new skill on her. It was something he developed with inspiration from the Tome of Souls; the principle behind it was simple: opening a rift in reality with the mind. Any object caught within would be quite literarily torn apart.
The air split apart vertically along Kitsune's torso as the attack descend on her out of the blue, but a thin layer of automatic QI defense stopped it. Although the attack was halted, the layer of QI had thinned considerably, almost faded.
The attack brought her out of the illusion, and she took no time at all curb-stomping everyone. Even the just-risen Greg wasn't spared.
This was day nine after the last Dive.
Day fifteen, they all gathered before the Monolith, awaiting transmission. As the de facto leader, Kitsune had received information about their next Dive: a galaxy-type civilization overrun with an alien species of space bugs for the last thousand years. She wasn't given too much information, but she had already purchased an artifact that made it possible to determine the general trend of a world's fate. She intended to make use of the device in case the trend could be affected.
Greg, dressed in compact black militaristic wear, carried a shopping bag—Adam's earlier purchase—which contained his power armor outfitted with two unlimited-ammunition, armor-piercing guns and several mini-missiles. It even carried some plasma grenades and a tactical nuke smaller than a finger. Most of the weapons were made by Adam, apart from the unlimited-ammunition guns, which cost two hundred fifty essence points each, purchased with Greg's remaining points, and the nuke, purchased by Zero at a cost of one thousand five hundred points. It also had a massive Gatling gun.
Then it came, the long awaited act of Devoid space; the space directly in front of them twisted into scripts midair.
"Galactic Alliance World (A-grade)," it read, and then they were gone—every member of the team whisked to their next