Weapons of Mass Destruction

I take a few steps closer and move off to the side, and finally catch sight of the scene on the TV. It’s a replay of my fight with the lurker Whitey, taken from my perspective.

“Just come here and sit, don’t sneak around,” the demon says, waving his hand at me. I take notice of just how slim and smooth it looks.

After hesitating for a moment, I finally reach the edge of the hill and just as I begin to think about creating a chair of my own out of mana another white plastic chair appears next to the first one, so I take my seat and look to the left.

Whitey isn’t very different from what I remember of him from our two prior meetings. Tall, and slim, with a handsome face. Though this time he isn’t a lurker, so his eyes aren’t pale red but of the proper red color demons have. Even his hair looks smoother.

He’s wearing black clothes and sits there in an extremely easygoing manner.

“Look, do you see this crap?” he says, pointing at the TV as the video pauses.

The scene we’ve stopped at displays the moment he pierced me with a multitude of ranged attacks and forced me to use two of Lily’s healing marks.

“You should be dead twice over! How the fuck could his aim be so bad!”

“Isn’t that your aim?” I ask.

He snorts, “If I had fought you, you would’ve been dead mere seconds after the fight began. With or without your disgusting quantity of mana and healing marks.”

The screen starts playing that video again, and Whitey watches it with apparent disdain, “It’s like someone gave an amazing weapon to a newborn demon. No, even a newborn demon would’ve done better.”

Whitey waves his arm, and the screen starts changing rapidly, “Here, terrible placement. Here, that should’ve hit. Here he should have pushed you more. Here, that movement was trash. Here, why did he dodge instead of deflecting the attack and getting a hit in? Here, he should’ve deactivated his kinetic field much sooner. Here, he should have gone to 3rd stance instead of going to 5th; that would’ve confused you as well!” And he goes on, in a manic furor, pointing out every flaw he can find.

Annoyed, he waves his hand, and the screen disappears. Whitey stands, turning his chair to face me, the plastic legs scraping against the rock below. Then he sits back down, folding his arms across his chest, giving me a slow once-over.

“What year is it?”

“No idea, how would that help?”

He hesitates and nods, “Is Adrian still first in Individual and Exploration rankings?”

“Yes.”

“When are the rankings due to reset?”

“There’s a reset?”

He blinks, “Please don’t tell me my lurker lost to a goddamned newb.”

“I just started my second year of the tutorial?” Satisfied, I almost feel like smiling as I lean back in my chair.

“You smug little shit,” Whitey snorts. “Individual and Exploration rankings reset once every millennium, and Guild and Craft rankings reset every year.”

“Thanks for the info. This could help; someone told me you were one of the oldest lurkers around.”

He nods, “The 1st floor should reset with the rankings, so I probably died somewhere around a thousand years ago? For sure over 500 years. Damn, and no one got deeper than fucking Adrian.”

“Yeah, he’s the only one who’s made it to the 6th floor.”

“That makes me curious how that asshole is doing nowadays. If you happen to meet him by any chance, punch him for me.”

Feeling bold, I decide to poke Whitey for more info, “Was he stronger than you?”

“At least learn to mask your intent when you decide to ask such blunt questions.” He gestures at my eyebrow, “It moved when I mentioned Adrian. Your jaw too, the muscles twitched. Now your pinkie is tense, and you’re getting ready to attack. Your heartbeat changed a bit too.”

He shifts his position in the chair and watches me, “Adrian was stronger than me, but he did everything he could to avoid fighting me.”

I let the silence stretch for a bit longer, and when the time feels right, I ask, “So what is this place, and where did you get the TV?”

“You tell me. All of this was made using your memories.” He smiles, red eyes glowing, and when he stands, the plastic chair he sat on bursts into black particles before disappearing. The same happens with mine, and I jump to my feet before I can fall to the ground.

Whitey is slightly taller than me and slimmer. He looks like he has barely any muscle. Which I’d originally thought was a result of being a lurker back during our meeting, but looking at him now, I guess that’s just how he looked before he died.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I will tell you one thing, human: it’s fucking unfortunate that trashy lurker made of my body didn’t win; it would’ve been nice to be able to walk around again. I’m not even going to pretend to understand how that challenge even got accepted, but someone either hates you a fuckton or the opposite. But a wager is a wager, and I lost.”

“So, you are…”

“Probably just a construct, like the natives of the floors.”

“That sucks.”

"It really does. So, you foolish little human wished for my knowledge of kinetic energy, and now you have it. It’s safe to say that I will, for a while at least, remain part of your memories, and this is just the form they take."

“Wouldn’t it have been easier for the system to simply transfer the knowledge?”

Whitey doesn’t even bother answering.

“Yeah, I got it.” Obviously, the system is an asshole.

Curious, Whitey takes a few steps around me, poking my arm, my back, and my chest, just over my heart. “Tell me, why do you want kinetic energy so much?”

“Is this a test or something?”

“Just answer the fucking question. You have a lot of mana, and from the way you fought, it’s clear how much time you’ve spent mastering it. There’s no point lying; it’s something I know very well. You also have access to thermal energy. There are a number of things to divert your attention. So why kinetic energy?”

“I don’t want to show off, but I could do almost anything I want with mana. I could focus on detailed manipulation, I could focus on compression, I could focus on ranged mana abilities, or melee. Or I could just spend all my time crafting. The same goes for thermal energy. I could spend more time making it as strong as possible. I could also try to come up with more ways to use it for healing.”

“That’s a lot of options,” he nods. “So why kinetic energy?”

“Because I want to.”

Whitey shows me a wide smile and gestures to continue.

“It will cover for my weaknesses in the future. Kinetic for body strengthening and close-range combat. Thermal for healing, and mana for everything else.”

This white-haired demon keeps nodding, his bearing now so different from the way he fights. He is weirdly easygoing.

Clapping his hands together to recapture my attention, he says, “A loss is a loss. I’ve never taught anyone before, so this is due to be an interesting experience. There are seven stances I’ve put together and made my own. Some I learned from other demons I met in Beyond, some were drilled into me before the tutorial, some I gained on the floors, and some I came up with myself. And you will learn all of it.”

My interest only grows as I quietly listen to the words of this demon who came so close to killing me so many times.

It’s unnerving to see him move so casually, and sometimes I notice my body twitching, expecting another attack. And I’m sure he’s noticed as well, but he kept quiet so far. Likely finding it amusing.

“First is Pulsar Stance.” Whitey takes a short, quick step, his movements boosted by a burst of kinetic energy, and delivers a quick punch to the air, causing it to reverberate in a concentrated pulse of energy. “It’s quick, and disorienting, focused on efficiency and accuracy. You stay in constant motion, confusing your opponent with erratic movements, absorbing and adding to your inertia to outmaneuver them.”

He shifts back into his original position and smirks, “You were trying to do something similar, but I’ll still need to beat some bad habits out of you.”

Once again, he changes his stance; it becomes wider and heavier. “The second is Breaker Style. It’s brutal, relentless, and relies on raw kinetic energy to overwhelm the opponent with powerful, heavy attacks. You crush, you shatter.” His movements are heavier now, but each one is full of purpose, and each strike he demonstrates sends powerful waves radiating outwards.

“Third is Wraith Dance.” He stomps powerfully, but there’s no impact; instead, he vanishes, moving so quickly it almost feels like he’s teleported. His heartbeat echoes erratically, sometimes from places he's already left, leaving fake signatures along his path. “It’s all about rapid, long-distance movement, afterimages, and individual bursts of swift, extended motion.”

The more he shows me, the more I realize just how lacking his lurker was when it came to the intricacies of his abilities.

“I will show you the other four later, but they are called Resonance Flow, Needle Point, Counter Flow, and Steelroot.”

As he comes to a stop, I ask the question that’s filled my mind since he began, “How did you die?”

The moment these words leave my mouth, his mood changes. The Whitey’s expression, which had felt so forced until now, crumbles, growing dark. His eyes seem redder now, and the beating of his heart grows even more oppressive.

I like it more than this weird kindness, so I pile on, knowing my next question will hurt.

It’s meant to.

“How many times has your lurker been killed?”

Whitey moves impossibly quickly, in a burst of movement more like teleportation than mere footwork in an amazing show of the third stance he demonstrated just moments ago.

I lift my arms in front of me to block, but he shifts at the last second, landing a hit on my chin instead.

Louder and louder that demon heart beats, and I freeze mid-air, held in place before my body can even start to fall, and he grabs my leg, pulling me back and smashing me into the ground. He finishes it with a kick, sending me crashing into a rocky wall nearby.

It’s surprising how much it hurts, almost as much as it would outside, and I stumble to my knees before pushing myself back to my feet and glance at the demon who’s staring me down with a more fitting expression on his face.

Not like a puppet content to deliver information, but more like a living being.

He might be a fake, perhaps he’s just a snapshot of his memories from the moments before he died, or maybe the system prepared something else entirely. Still, I much prefer this over that fake eagerness from before.

Laughing quietly, Whitey sweeps his hair from his face, his red eyes fixed on me. “Killed by betrayal, hundreds of years as a fucking lurker, and then I get challenged by a fucking human just to end up like this. The Rulers must be shitting their pants with laughter right now.”

My movements halt again, and I don’t even try to fight back as Whitey uses Wraith Dance to appear in front of me.

“Worst of all, I have to teach a human,” he says, pressing a finger against my chest. “Even though you’ve won fair and square in my eyes, what can you do? As a human without a proper heart, you will never master everything I can show you.”

As he lets go and steps back, I answer, “I hear that a lot. Show me the first stance.”

At that moment I decide to abandon any further attempts at explaining; It’s not like I was ever any good at it anyway, and I know my actions will convey what words cannot.

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