"Are you ready?" Raymond asked Lukas.
Lukas nodded calmly. His hand tightened over the gun’s grip.
As if that were a trigger, the space before Lukas groaned, parting like a divine blade had split through its very fabric.
A thin line appeared in the space. Beyond the crack, an endless darkness was visible.
Lukas was not allowed to stare for long before something latched onto the edge of the crack. It was wet. Beneath the skin, something crept, visibly bulging the exterior.
A large tentacle.
Blergh.
Lukas did not know when he threw up. Everything he had eaten that morning was pushed out of his body.
He cleaned the side of his mouth.
Instinctively, he turned towards Raymond.
Emptiness. There was no one there. Even the machine seemed to have disappeared.
All that was left there was him and the voidborn.
Zip.
A sharp lashing sound echoed through the air in the next instant.
Lukas’s body moved on instinct, pivoting to the side.
He stared with wide eyes as the thick tentacle sliced through the space he occupied moments ago.
[As the God of Trickery, you need to create an illusion of strength.]
[Quest Generated: Win this battle as fast as you can while making it look as casual as you can.]
[Reward: Granted based on how high your performance is.]
His pupils dilated as he stared. ’A quest?’
He was not given enough time to digest the information.
The tentacle was already in his face, coming faster than before.
Lukas bent, letting the attack fly over him.
The force behind the attack was enough to blow heavy gales against Lukas’s face.
Lukas rolled backward, standing upright, gun pointed at the voidborn.
It was a large eyeball that hovered above the ground.
Moving like snakes within the eyeball were large crimson veins that felt like they were about to burst the eye at any moment.
It had a large crimson tentacle on both sides.
Lukas held back the urge to throw up.
A loud bang echoed through the air as he released a bullet straight at the creature.
As if it was anticipating the attack beforehand, one of the creature’s tentacles swung, swatting the bullet aside.
Lukas had already left that spot, delivering three successive shots one after the other.
But the creature was rather casual with the way it blocked the bullets.
Lukas had stopped after the first three failed attempts.
"So, this is useless," he muttered.
The words had not left his mouth when he felt a sudden shift in the air. His body tensed, his heart tightening behind his rib cage.
A feeling he had never experienced in his two lives. It felt as though surreal hands were pulling him.
His eyes bulged behind their sockets.
Every other thing in the area vanished entirely. The only thing Lukas saw was the floating eye. The only thing he felt was the arms pulling him downwards.
Every other sense he possessed seemed to have failed him at this moment.
Yet he was still conscious.
’What the hell is this?’
The sensation intensified.
’Why is it so... weird?’
Those thoughts seemed to be a passcode.
Everything retracted, pulled back as if it had never happened in the first place.
Lukas looked around, his pupils dilating as he found his surroundings and senses returning.
’Did its attack fail?’ He wondered.
But he was not given enough time to think by the creature.
Its tentacles lashed out harder.
Lukas jumped out of the attack’s path, avoiding it by a hair’s breadth.
But as he landed on the floor again, it felt like the ground had opened up.
"No. No," Lukas yelled, staggering backward. The world seemed to spin around him.
Again, it lasted only a few moments.
Lukas returned to normal, his chest rising and falling at an unsteady pace.
The eye turned to him. The tiny pupils within its frame locked onto Lukas’s face as if that was the only thing that mattered.
Lukas pulled his gun, releasing another volley of bullets at the creature.
"Fuck you, Raymond!" he yelled, unable to contain his rage.
This was a Voidborn, a creature capable of resisting normal bullets with its body unless its blind spot was targeted.
Why would Raymond provide that same gun when there were special guns and bullets made specifically for Voidborns?
But in response to Lukas’s outrage, there was only silence... and a heavy mass that crashed into him from above.
Lukas’s body was pressed hard against the tiles beneath, blood exploding from every pore in his body.
The tentacle was retracted almost immediately.
’Fuck!’ Lukas groaned in his mind.
Pain spread through his body, but before he could attempt to move, another strange sensation crawled through his skull.
The creature slowly floated closer. Its tiny pupils did not leave Lukas’s face.
He gritted his teeth and shot at the voidborn before him.
The creature swatted the bullet casually.
Bang!
Another bullet, pushed aside once again.
Lukas clicked his tongue as he pushed himself upright. His vision suddenly blurred.
He froze.
He could now see two voidborns. Then three. Then one.
His eyes clenched tightly as he pulled himself out of the illusion.
His breathing had become heavier.
Looking down, he was perfectly still.
That brief moment made Lukas raise a brow.
But he could only remain passive for so long before the voidborn lunged.
This time around, as if to put an end to Lukas, its pupils expanded, locking deeper, staring more intently at Lukas’s face. Both tentacles locked together, forming a ball that was already swinging at Lukas’s head.
Lukas rolled out of the way, his body avoiding the attack by a margin.
His mind moved at lightning speed.
For a brief moment, he was out of the voidborn’s eyes, and in that moment, Lukas remembered what it felt like to have a normal psyche.
The voidborn noticed the shift. It pounced back, appearing in front of Lukas, pupils locked on his face.
Except, this time, there was a minor issue.
"You bastard," Lukas said, letting a bullet fly.