SSS-Tier Extraction: From Outcast to Overgod!-Chapter 81: Shadows of the Schism

The moment Ryan’s fingers closed around the cold, heavy metal of the Void-Phase Engine Core, the entire Foundry screamed.

It wasn’t a sound that you could hear with your ears. It was a silent, psychic shriek that resounded directly inside their skulls, a sound of pure, ancient panic.

The lights in the massive, dead factory flickered wildly, casting long, dancing shadows. The dormant machinery all around them began to whir and clank, ancient emergency systems kicking into gear thousands of years too late.

The air grew thick and heavy, crackling with a strange, dark energy. Ryan felt it instantly. The same chaotic, broken energy from the Reality Schism was pouring into the room, drawn here by the power of the Engine Core he now held in his hand.

"Oh, that can’t be good," Hale, the medic, muttered, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his weapon.

"What’s happening?" Griz, the big Iron Wolf, growled, planting his feet and raising his shield.

"The Foundry’s emergency alarm just went off," Scarlett said, her eyes wide as she stared at a point in the center of the room. "And I think it just called for the manager."

A spot in the middle of the chamber began to warp and distort. The air grew dark, not like a shadow, but like a hole had been punched in the world. The darkness swirled and grew, pulling in dust and debris. It was a vortex of pure, unmaking chaos.

From the center of that swirling void, something began to emerge. It didn’t have a solid shape. It was a shifting, glitching mass of broken code and raw power.

One moment it looked like a towering giant made of static, the next it was a swarm of screaming, fractured faces, then it was just a column of pure, shimmering darkness. This was a being that had been born from the Schism itself.

The god Warden’s identification flashed in Ryan’s mind, cold and clinical, but for the first time, he could almost sense a hint of fear in the Warden’s tone. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

[APEX ANOMALY DETECTED: SCHISM LORD (LEVEL 11)]

[THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWABLE. ENTITY OPERATES OUTSIDE STANDARD REALITY PARAMETERS. ALL CONVENTIONAL ATTACKS WILL BE INEFFECTIVE.]

[ADVICE: FLEE. SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.01%]

"Zero point zero one percent?" Ryan said out loud, a dry, nervous laugh escaping his lips. "Hey, that’s not zero. I’ll take it."

The Schism Lord finally formed a semi-stable shape. It was a colossal humanoid figure made of swirling, rainbow-colored static, its limbs stretching and reforming constantly.

It had no face, just a smooth surface that seemed to absorb all light. It raised an arm that ended in a claw of crackling, negative energy, and it pointed directly at Ryan and the Engine Core he held.

The battle began without a sound.

The Schism Lord didn’t fire a beam or throw a punch. It simply... looked at a massive piece of machinery near Hale and Griz.

The machine, a giant metal press the size of a house, flickered for a moment, like a bad TV signal, and then vanished. It didn’t explode. It didn’t crumble. It was just gone. Unmade.

"Okay," Hale whispered, his face pale. "I am officially terrified."

"Stay behind me!" Griz roared, his knuckles white as he gripped his shield. He was brave, but even he knew that you can’t block an attack that just makes you stop existing.

Ryan knew their weapons were useless. This wasn’t a monster they could shoot or stab. This was a living disease of reality itself. They couldn’t fight the monster. They had to fight the disease.

"Scarlett, keep moving!" Ryan yelled, his mind racing. "Draw its attention! Don’t let it focus on any one spot for too long!"

Scarlett didn’t need to be told twice. She took to the air, her Sky Lord’s Mantle carrying her in graceful, unpredictable arcs around the huge chamber.

She fired her pistols, not at the creature, but at the walls and ceiling around it, creating noise and distractions.

The Schism Lord’s faceless head turned to follow her, and it "looked" at a section of the catwalk she was about to fly past. The catwalk vanished into nothingness. Scarlett adjusted her flight path in mid-air, her face a mask of intense concentration.

Ryan knew he had only one hope. He couldn’t fight it from the outside. He had to fight it from the inside. It was a radical, insane idea, but it was the only one he had. He wasn’t going to try and kill it. He was going to try and fix it.

He looked at the Engine Core in his hand, then at the swirling chaos of the Schism Lord. He needed power, and a lot of it.

"Hale, Griz! Get to the main power conduit in the floor! The one we saw on the way in! I need you to break it open!" Ryan shouted.

The two soldiers, trusting their leader completely, ran. They found the main power line for the entire Foundry, a thick, armored cable humming with ancient energy.

Griz slammed his massive war hammer onto it again and again, while Hale used a plasma cutter to slice through the reinforced plating.

With a final, mighty blow, Griz smashed the conduit open. A geyser of pure, raw god energy erupted from the floor, a brilliant blue fountain of power.

"It’s open!" Hale yelled.

"Good!" Ryan shouted back. He then did something that made his teammates’ jaws drop. He ran towards the Schism Lord.

As the creature turned its attention to him, Ryan activated his Energy Siphon talent, but he didn’t draw on the Schism Lord’s power. He drew on the pure, clean energy erupting from the broken conduit behind him.

A river of blue light flowed into his body, charging his systems, over-charging them until his very skin hummed with power.

He was now a beacon of pure, stable energy, standing in a storm of pure, unstable chaos. The Schism Lord recoiled slightly, as if his very presence was painful to it.

Now came the crazy part.

Ryan raised his free hand, his Weaver’s Gauntlet glowing with an intensity that lit up the entire chamber. He focused all his will, all his power, all his understanding of the universe that he had learned from the Weaver, into his Ultimate Infinite Extraction System.

But he wasn’t just extracting. He was trying to do two things at once. It was the hardest thing he had ever attempted.

He focused on the Schism Lord and shouted his command, not with his voice, but with his mind. "EXTRACT: INSTABILITY MATRIX!"

A thick, black, oily tendril of energy shot from his gauntlet and plunged into the swirling static of the Schism Lord. He felt a terrible, wrenching pull as he began to draw out the very essence of its chaos, the broken code that made it what it was. It felt like trying to pull the sickness out of a dying man.

The Schism Lord let out a silent, psychic scream that made Ryan’s teeth ache and his vision swim. It thrashed wildly, its form glitching and tearing as its own unstable nature was pulled from it.

At the exact same time, Ryan performed the second part of his plan. He used his remote link to the god Weaver, a connection amplified by his Sector Command Orb, and pulled. He pulled a stream of pure, clean, ordered reality code from the Weaver, all the way across the sector.

A second tendril of energy, this one a brilliant, golden white, shot from his gauntlet and into the Schism Lord. "IMPOSE: ORDERED god CODE!"

He was trying to perform open-heart surgery on a being made of chaos. He was pulling out the bad, broken code with one hand, while simultaneously pumping in good, stable code with the other.

It was an agonizing process. The two opposing forces, the black chaos he was extracting and the golden order he was imposing, battled inside him. His body felt like it was being torn in two. His vision went white with pain. He could feel his own mind starting to fray at the edges.

The Schism Lord shrieked, its form fluctuating wildly between a being of pure darkness and a being of pure light. The Foundry shook, pieces of the ceiling raining down.

"I can’t... hold on... much longer!" Ryan grunted, his knees buckling.

But he didn’t let go. He held the connection, pouring every last ounce of his will into the process. He could feel victory was close.

He just had to survive the final, terrible moment. The creature in front of him was about to either stabilize, or explode with enough force to wipe this entire sub-sector off the map.

He gritted his teeth and pushed one last time.

The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel