Grey was running on fumes. He couldn’t really fly. At least not in the super hero, I-do-this-as-casually-as-walking kind of way. Every time he flew, he was burning a large amount of energy, straining his Neural Frame to make his body as light as a feather and blow himself forward like a solar sail.
The problem was that he was also carrying two people with him and by now, he had already been at it for a whole half hour.
It was hard to fathom how this place was so vast. It was like they had plopped everyone into the same corner just to make sure they killed each other.
Or... maybe that was just the product of them falling in the same place.
The oddity was that when Grey entered the Instance this time, he had appeared instantly.
Whatever the answer was, he was moving as fast as he could but his energy wasn’t keeping up.
He grit his teeth, beads of sweat falling down his brow as he tried to make it closer to the center. However, he had barely made it halfway there when his energy gave out and they started falling from the skies.
His consciousness blinked in and out as they fell.
’Come on... focus... focus on... recovery...’
Grey suddenly realized he didn’t really know how to do that. Where did his Holy Energy or any other energy, for that matter, come from. He usually just fought until his body gave out. Then he would sleep a long time and wake up energized or dead. One or the other.
’Food...’
He only had one solution for this.
He brought out a normal Cyber Core, opened his mouth and bit down for all he was worth.
It shattered against his teeth and the flood of energy filled his body.
’Finally...’
Grey grunted and tilted his head up, pulling them above the line of fog again.
...
’There.’
Over an hour later, Grey finally felt that he was in the general area of the center of the endless fog. He had been just high enough before to see to the end of it all, and this was what he felt should be the location he was aiming for.
’Only one thing left to do...’
They began to fall.
Grey knew this was going to take a while, so he just tried to restore his energy. By the time he finished that, they were still falling.
"I can’t believe this." Thi Lan eventually mumbled at some point, the harsh winds whipping her words away.
Grey chuckled as though he knew exactly what she meant already.
"LAND’S AHEAD!"
Grey swung his feet toward the ground and flames jetted out of his heels.
They started rapidly slowing down, and by the time Grey touched down, they practically fluttered.
A grin spread across Grey’s face. "Nice."
The two of them looked around and found that it... looked exactly the same as the other part of the maze they were in before. Except now, they were locked even deeper inside.
Was it deeper? They couldn’t even really tell all that well. It just looked like Grey was flying deeper.
"Look alive, ladies. There’s definitely something around here. Let’s go."
Grey went ahead like he had been here before. Technically, he kind of had. On the way down, he had spread his senses as far as he could. He had a general idea of which way to go.
He had just fallen in the general area of the center, so there was still a ways to go before he got to exactly what he was looking for.
As for why Grey was so sure that he should head toward the center of the maze...
Vibes?
No, that was only part of it.
Grey’s actual thinking was a bit more complex. The fog reminded him a lot of the fog of chaos even though it very obviously wasn’t. But the similarities were too obvious to ignore.
The memories of the blackhole had flashed in his mind not long ago. And if he recalled correctly, it was like an endlessly looping eggshell. It swallowed world after world, endlessly.
Presumably, the start of it all, the secret to everything...
Was found at the very center of all of those eggshells.
The Old Ones were in love with the Fog of Chaos, weren’t they? In that case, if they made a maze like this to find the best of them... or they were using concepts of it or trying to mimic parts of it...
Then shouldn’t what was most important be at the center here as well?
Grey stopped all of a sudden and a grin spread across his face.
’Fog of Chaos.’
There was a shift in the fog. It looked the same but it didn’t feel the same any longer.
Thi Lan and Amunet didn’t notice consciously, but their frowns furrowed just a little bit more, their bodies tensing just that extra bit.
’We’re close.’
Grey rounded a corner and he found exactly what he was looking for.
A sphere of darkness hung in the middle of the air. Before it, a fountain of grey stone lay.
An angelic woman formed the centerpiece of the fountain. She was, quite literally, an angel. Her wings were spread wide as she leaned back and away from the sphere of absolute darkness.
"Damn." Grey said.
He was staring at the statue’s big ass tits and wondering who decided to make it like that.
"Whoever made this is definitely a pervert. My kind of guy." Grey nodded.
"... Can you take a moment from being insufferable for a second?"
"Sorry, this is my therapy for breaking my back carrying your ass. You ever try being a little bit stronger?"
"Maybe I would be if someone wasn’t always stealing my things."
"I’d steal your things less if you spent less time attacking my back in one way or another and more time being a decent human being." Grey pointed at the statue. "Or at least have tits like that. I could forgive you for everything if you had some real mommy milkers."
Amunet’s eyes looked like flaming torches all of a sudden and she grinned a very dangerous grin. But before she could give her own snarky reply, the head of the statue suddenly spun, looking toward them.
"You have little idea... what burden this causes..." she said slowly.
Grey blinked. By her somber tone, he kind of knew the answer, but he still couldn’t help but ask.
"So... are you talking about the big black ball of energy? Or the big tits?"