'just how?' Regina thought as she dodged another attack from Vell, 'how does he have multiple cores?' She flipped back, putting distance between them. 'well, no matter, his power level is pathetic, the blocked core must be his main core, this will be easy and I have already adjusted to his power when he was beating . Useful skill but still hurts.'
She smirked and appeared instantly in front of him, "You are weak!" She grabbed him by the face and slamd him to the ground. "How does it feel to have your face on the ground huh?" She began dragging him across the ground forcefully, "you almost ruined my perfect face, you jerk!" She then threw him against the wall.
The wall crumbled around his impact, dust and debris filling the air. Regina stood triumphant, her power radiating in waves that made the very air shimr, but sothing was wrong. The dust wasn't settling – it was swirling, gathering around a point of absolute stillness where Vell had landed.
"You know," his voice cut through the chaos, unnaturally calm, "I was wondering about sothing." He erged from the dust cloud, brushing off his shoulders as if her attack had been nothing more than an inconvenience. "How many cores did you say you had?"
Her smirk faltered. "What are you babbling about now?"
"Because I've been counting mine." His eyes flickered with an inner light that hadn't been there before. "And I just rembered sothing interesting." The air around him began to crystallize, forming patterns that seed to fold in on themselves impossibly. "That admin in the white room – he wasn't just afraid of what I could do. He was afraid of what I already did."
She took an involuntary step back, her combat instincts screaming warnings she couldn't quite understand. The power reading she was getting from him wasn't just increasing – it was fracturing, splitting into multiple signatures that shouldn't have been possible.
"You see," he continued, walking forward with asured steps, "blocking my main core was clever but here's the thing about consuming an entire dungeon..." A smile spread across his face, one that made Regina's blood run cold. "Those powers don't just disappear. They transform, adapt and beco sothing new."
Find more adventures on My Virtual Library Empire
He raised his hand, and reality seed to bend around it. "Let show you what I an."
she barely had ti to raise her defenses before the attack hit. It wasn't just power – it was wrong, sohow, like being struck by multiple dinsions at once. She flew backward, her perfect healing unable to keep up with damage it couldn't properly categorize.
"Impossible," she gasped, struggling to her feet. "Your power level... it's still the sa, but—"
"But the effects aren't what you expected?" He appeared beside her, moving with a fluidity that seed to ignore the normal rules of space. "That's because you're asuring the wrong thing. It's not about how much power." His hand closed around her throat again, but this ti, where he touched her, her flesh began to crystallize. "It's about what kind."
[SYSTEM ERROR DETECTED, ANALYZING....PLAYING USING RESTRICTED SKILLS] The tower's voice rang out in his head but he ignored it, as if it was not there.
Her eyes widened in genuine fear as she felt the crystallization spreading. Her healing factor kicked in, fighting against the transformation, but it was like trying to heal a wound that existed in multiple realities at once.
"Stop!" she choked out. "You're going to—"
"Kill you?" His grip tightened. "No. Death would be too simple." The crystallization reached her chest, and suddenly she could feel every possibility of pain at once. "I want you to understand exactly what you've done. Every person you've hurt. Every life you've played with."
His eyes t hers, and in them she saw sothing ancient and terrible. "I want you to rember this mont, Regina. Rember what happens when you mistake patience for weakness."
He released her, and she collapsed, the crystallization receding but leaving her nerves screaming with phantom sensations from a thousand different realities. She looked up at him, seeing him clearly for the first ti – not just a powerful player, but sothing else entirely.
"What... what are you?"
He turned away from her, walking back to where Wren still lay recovering. "That's a good question." He knelt beside his companion, his voice softening. "One I intend to find out. But first..." He helped Wren to her feet, supporting her gently. "We have so friends to save."
"You think I'll just let you walk out of here?" She snarled, forcing herself up despite her body's protests. "I still have an army outside, and you—"
The air crystallized around her, trapping her in a prison of fractured realities. "You'll stay right here," he said without looking back. "And think about your choices. When I return with my people..." The crystal cage tightened slightly, drawing a gasp of pain from her. "We'll finish our discussion."
He turned to Wren, his expression softening. "Can you walk?"
She nodded, determination burning in her eyes despite her lingering weakness. "I can fight too, if needed."
"No, leave this to , I still have a lot of pent up anger."
[Suppressing....error...error...error, can't seem to affect player's stats, impossible, analyzing player...oh]
He strode through Regina's compound, the air crackling with dinsional distortions around him. Every step left crystalline footprints that shimred with impossible geotries before fading away. Behind him, Wren followed at a careful distance, watching her master's unleashed power with a mixture of awe and concern.
"They're keeping the others in the eastern wing," she said, her voice still rough from earlier abuse. "But master, there's sothing else you should know—"
A squad of Regina's elite guards rounded the corner, weapons raised. Their leader's eyes widened at the sight of Vell, but to their credit, they held their ground.
"Stand down!" the squad leader commanded, energy gathering around his blade. "By order of Lady Regina—"
Vell didn't break stride. He simply raised his hand, and reality fractured around the squad. When the distortion cleared, the guards stood frozen in crystalline stasis, their faces locked in expressions of dawning horror.
"You were saying?" he asked Wren, stepping past the impromptu statues.
She swallowed hard. "They... they've been experinting on so of our people. Trying to understand how you enhanced us."
His next step cracked the floor beneath him, spiderweb patterns of crystalline energy spreading outward. The temperature in the corridor dropped sharply.
"Show ."
They encountered three more squads before reaching the eastern wing. None lasted longer than their predecessors. Vell's power moved with terrible precision now, each gesture exact and purposeful. The crystal prison he'd left Regina in had taught him control – he no longer needed to shatter reality to reshape it.
The laboratory doors were reinforced with multiple layers of defensive spells. He placed his hand against them, and the barriers simply ceased to exist in this particular version of reality.
Inside, they found horror.
Tanks lined the walls, filled with swirling fluids and floating bodies. Monitoring equipnt beeped steadily, recording data from cruel experints. Researchers in white coats scrambled for the exits as he entered, but they found their paths blocked by walls of crystalline force.
"Master..." Wren's voice cracked as she recognized faces in the tanks. "That's Jin, and Mira, and—"
"Get them out," he commanded, his voice carrying harmonics from multiple dinsions. "All of them."
He raised both hands, and the entire laboratory shifted sideways through reality. The tanks shattered in slow motion, their contents suspended in air as ti stuttered around them. With surgical precision, he extracted each of his people from the experintal apparatus, drawing them safely to the floor while the chemicals and machinery crystallized and shattered around them.
The researchers cowered in corners as he turned his attention to them. "The data," he said simply. "All of it. Now."
One brave or foolish soul spoke up. "We can't just give you classified—"
Vell's gesture was almost gentle, but the researcher's reality splintered into a thousand crystalline fragnts, each showing a different possibility of pain. The man scread in voices from a dozen dinsions.
"The data," he repeated.
They complied.
As Wren helped the rescued captives regain consciousness, Vell absorbed the research data through crystalline tendrils. His expression darkened with each new revelation.
"Regina wasn't working alone," he said finally. "These experints... they're too sophisticated. Soone else is involved."
[WARNING: DINSIONAL STABILITY COMPROMISED]
[TOWER PROTOCOL VIOLATION DETECTED]
[ATTEMPTING TO SUPPRESS...]
[ERROR... ERROR... ERROR...]
The tower's warnings echoed in his mind, but they seed distant, irrelevant. He could feel new powers awakening within him – not just the abilities he'd stolen from the training dungeon, but sothing older, sothing that had been sealed away.
"So its you again huh." There was no one in sight but Vell could see exactly who he wanted, "lab woman, your scent is all over this place. Ti to pay you are visit, you and your organization. TI TO ANNIHILATE ALL OF YOU!"
But before he could distort reality, his power vanished.
[HIGHER POWER NEEDED....USED, THREAT LEVEL 1000, RESTRICTING...SUCCESS, FOR NOW. PLAYER WILL BE TROUBLESO, PUTTING COUNTER ASURES IN PLACE.]
"Tch, dammit, my revenge was so close...so close." He smirked.
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