Kick the Sphere 37 (Patreon)

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 37

-VB-

Colonel Julius Gon of the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces  blinked as he stared out of his jumpship’s bridge window to stare at … the impossibility. 

He blinked a few times to check if he was seeing things because of stress and sleep deprivation, but when the image stayed even after a full minute, he turned to his equally quiet and stunned pilot as well as the rest of the bridge crew and officers. 

He took a shuddering breath in, held it, and let it out slowly. 

“It’s not killing us,” he noted. 

This ran against everything that had already happened. 

How Rimward Sian Commonality was lost. 

How it became “Swarm Space.”

The creature lazily looking at them was one of the creatures that devoured their way across the confederation, and yet, it did nothing while it stared at them. 

And then the bulbous beast turned and floated away. 

“What is it doing so close to the sun?” the pilot and captain of the jumpship CCS Romance Dusk mumbled before he gulped and quickly activated the ship’s infrared and LIDAR sensors. It wasn’t long before the ship’s computer showed a rudimentary 3D map with them in the center. 

Julius hissed.

“What’s the maximum range on the displayed map?” he asked the captain. 

“O-One hundred kilometers, colonel.”

So … within a one hundred click radius sphere with them in the center, there were hundreds of those bulbous creatures and even more smaller ones that “flew” around the thing. 

It was scary and yet this non-hostility gave him hope. 

It’s been almost half a year since the start of the “invasion” and two months since his nation pulled out of the Rimward Sian Commonality in totality. For two months, the Capellan Confederation waited with trepidation while warning the rest of the Inner Sphere of the horrors that had befallen them.

For two months… nothing happened. 

So the chancellor sent him on this expedition to scout out the alien threat, and there were representatives from the Federated Suns and the Draconis Combine with him as well.

“... Jesus Christ, you lot weren’t lying at all,” the Federated Suns colonel, a woman by the name of Sarah McHensley, muttered. 

“We do not lie,” he replied back snappishly. 

“Then reports of their void combat strength must also be true,” he replied. 

“Yes,” he hissed. “I don’t know why haven’t blasted us to dust already, but any and all jumpships and dropships that got within their line of sight were as goo as dead because of their suicide flyers.”

“What changed then?” the DCMS major, Eve Luan, pondered. 

“What if it’s because they’ve accomplished what they came here for?”

Everyone in the bridge turned to the only scientist on the bridge, though no one would see a man with more muscle than any of the military personnel and immediately think scientist. 

“Explain it to us in Common English, Doctor Heu.”

John Heu, a doctor of biology and ecology, cleared his throat, making his short but soft hair vibrate briefly. “They’re animals, right? Not machines dressed up as animals?”

“They are. We have enough video proof of them bleeding and dying,” Colonel Gon replied irritably. 

“But they also move like a pack.”

“Yes. Get to the point.”

“What if this was a migration?” 

Everyone stared at him incredulously, Gon included. 

“You can’t be serious!” he snapped at the doctor. “They systematically destroyed battlemechs, soldiers, and naval assets. Anyone who resisted died! On the few worlds where HPG stations are still operational, we are watching them turn our worlds into horrifying hellscapes of cancerous flesh!” 

“Yes! Exactly! They came here looking for a fertile ground!”

Gon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “No, they have something controlling them. There is no reason for them to have taken exactly the rimward half of the Sian Commonality, not even straying into Federated Suns or Free Worlds League worlds.”

“We-.”

“Sensors are going crazy!” one of the lesser officers in the bridge shouted from their seat. “I can’t make sense of it!” 

“Captain-!” Gon quickly turned to the man.

But he froze.

Because he and the captain were both staring out of the bridge’s window because they witnessed an anomaly. 

A nearly flat and almost circular blossom of purplish red energy just sitting in the middle of space just barely close enough to be discernible. 

And then a monster came through it. 

It outmassed and outsized anything they’ve encountered so far. The bulbous creatures that leisurely watched them were nothing compared to it. 

Julius Gon gulped. 

That monster - the leviathan - lazily swam through the void as if it was a water creature down towards the sun. After a while, it spread its arms out and … started sunbathing. 

“I’m not moving the ship while we are in reach of that thing,” the captain hissed. 

Fair enough. Gon also didn’t want to know whether or not the creature would chase after them, and after seeing it move tens of kilometers in under five minutes from what had to be near stationary velocity, he also didn’t want to test that.

Gon cleared his throat. “The chancellor still needs information on what is happening within this … Swarm Space. We’ll jump in deeper. Hopefully, the next system won’t be as lively as this one.”

-VB-

Mantra Generation changed everything. 

And yet nothing. 

It changed everything in that mantra began to suffuse everything about myself. While I knew that Mantra needed a more cybernetic body to be used on a personal level, I also had other abilities like Essence Spinner that allowed me to fashion organisms to my needs and wants. 

It took me less than a day to create a new cell type within myself that could take in the excess Mantra bleeding out of my body into a more tangible energy that was better at interacting with flesh than machine. 

I actually had to dial back on how much energy they produced, and was in the middle of that when the girls came to visit me. 

“So I really look like that, huh?” I muttered as I looked at the video feed from the testing room. 

“You looked like some kind of buddha, Alan,” Rebecca pointed out from her place on the couch of my usual office. I looked away from the screen to look up at her and the rest of the ReUpgrade group. “But you don’t anymore. Why’s that?” she tacked on. 

“I managed it,” I smirked. 

Well… that wasn’t the whole truth.

Right now, Mantra that my soul generated was getting gobbled up by my body. From a purely scientific perspective, my body generated energy seemingly out of nowhere; cells that took in no nutrients or even ATP would just … work and keep working. 

But even then, I made too much power for my body to handle. 

Which brought me to now, trying to find a good purchase from the Celestial Forge that would let me deal with this overflowing energy.

Because it felt like I was going to burst if I didn’t find a solution soon enough, and I didn’t have access to anything Ancients might have because any such related tech was out of my reach due to their database being too fucking big.

And I really didn’t want to emulate the God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne to get rid of this soul-generated excess energy. 

The problem I ran into was the fact that, uh, I didn’t have enough points. 

Yup. After spending 1,300 points on Mantra and related purchases, I only had 200-.

Ping.

-300 points in my wallet. And I wasn’t sure if any 300 points purchase would be enough to handle Mantra.

My left hand stopped scrolling when I stopped over Skills Magitech category. Among its many many “magitechs,” there was a 200 point purchase that just might solve my new “mo money mo problem” situation. 

Weird Science.

Not kidding, that was the actual name of the stuff. 

What caught my eyes, though, was its description. 

‘Create devices that run off of spiritual power…’

It would help deal with my problem by tackling the root of the problem.

I thought about what else I might need. Or if there was a better choice for my budget. 

“Guess I’m gonna becoming Urahara Kisuke…” I muttered as I made the purchase. “God, I hope I don’t become Mayuri.”

-VB-

Mentioned new perks. 

Mantra Training and Techniques (200 CP) 26.0616

You have learned or been taught numerous techniques to focus and express your Mantra, rendered as supernatural martial arts and superhuman feats of agility, durability and so on. Meditative Kata can extend your natural lifespan, heal minor wounds and fight off sickness, while strikes and attacks could shatter walls. This increases your maximum Mantra level by 1. As an added benefit, this perk also allows you to create your own personal…

Weird Science (200 CP) 24.0130

While the rest of the Soul Society resembles feudal Japan, the Shinigami R&D area is the exception. Like them you can create devices that run off of spiritual power, and can, in time create mod souls as well.