Neon’s steps sloshed through patches of mud and decomposing vegetation as he trudged onwards. Nomine followed him at a careful distance. Not too far behind, but not too close either. Almost, almost as if he were setting him up as bait in the case something jumped out at them.
Nahhh. Surely not, right?
The jungle breathed differently now that afternoon had given way to the evening. Though the heat remained just as high, sunshine had faded into a muted orange glaze, dimming the patches of light that filtered through trees that had fallen silent under a stilling wind.
Darkness wasn’t exactly a comforting thought. In here, every clearing looked the same, each fallen log positioned in a way that seemed handmade. Neon was sure he would’ve gotten lost several times even in daylight, if not for the tracking map that kept him oriented. Small mercies.
Somewhere around five hours had come and gone since their skirmish with Carrion Reign, since they’ve been trudging in the direction of their next objective. Neon had been tasked to steer them towards the nearest body of water he could spot on his interface —at Nomine’s suggestion, of course. Or maybe royal decree was the better term for it.
He had his reservations at first, though mainly because he bristled at the way Nomine made plans for them both without caring for his input. By that point, though? He was kind of lamenting they weren’t released closer to the river.
Humidity clung to Neon’s body like uncomfortable needle pricks, forcing him to take off his hoodie and tie it around his waist at some point. To have his lanky frame exposed under his soaked white shirt made him all the more self-conscious, especially when comparing himself to the toned Nomine.
Whom of course, showed not even the closest sign of anything resembling sweat. The bastard retained an effortless poise despite hour upon hours of trekking, his elegant sharpness never disturbed.
“Hey, I wonder…” Neon tried again as he began walking backwards, pointing a finger at Nomine’s clothes as if trying to justify the way his eyes lingered a little bit too long on them. Not so much the half-corroded outer layer, and more over the pristine undersuit that withstood even Gnaw’s acid. “Is that thing like an armor? Does it help you stay cool too?”
Aware of the kind of person Nomine was, Neon doubted it was just some avant-garde fashion statement.
“Pretty darn convenient if it does. You got it through the System’s Store?”
“Just move.”
Two words. That was all he got this time, delivered with the warmth of a morgue slab.
It was this that kept his nerves standing on end. The relentless heat, the endless walking, and even the lingering uncertainty about whatever awaited for them in this so-called game —these were all bearable. Not so much that insufferable attitude of his.
Neon had tried everything. Tried to ask what it all meant. Shut down. Tried to learn more about what kind of teams or augments they could encounter. Dismissed. He had even tried to crack a joke about how Gnaw had essentially spat on Nomine, and if he had maybe liked it. That earnt him a glare. He probably deserved that one.
Usually he’d have an easier time lightening someone’s mood. He could read their tells, their wants, the little gaps in their armor where a well-placed smile or gentle word could sneak by. But Nomine? He was like trying to decode a letter that had been encrypted twice and then set on fire.
Frustrations aside, cresting a small rise was their final hurdle before the faint rush of water reached his ears. Finally, a potential end to this stalemate. Neon’s shoulders sagged, letting go of a knot he hadn’t even realized had formed in them. The river’s murmur wasn’t the only discovery in this new space.
Before him, the jungle opened like cupped hands, fallen trees creating a natural amphitheater lined with flowering vines. Their wide blossoms glowed in an electric purple tone, luminescence strengthening under the dimming sun. Strikingly beautiful, yes. Also obviously artificial.
“Think these are safe to touch?” Neon muttered, approaching the nearest cluster with caution until his fingers hovered inches away from the petals.
“How should I know? Why don’t you eat one and find out?”
>> “Maybe they’ll finally make you shut up.”
His retort felt like a slap. Yes, he had been talking mostly to fill out the silence, and it wasn’t like he expected Nomine to give him a real answer anyway. But he could only take so much, especially when his new comment felt so… Mean.
Mean enough to make something in Neon snap.
“You know…” Neon heard himself say as he turned to him, words tumbling out before his better judgment could stop them. “… If we’re going to make this work between us, I really think we need to be able to talk with one another.”
That meek excuse for retaliation made Nomine stand very still. Not with the alertness that had dominated him ever since they were thrown in the jungle. It was something colder. Harsher.
“Once again, you seem to be confused.” His voice carried the impatience of someone who had been biting back their thoughts for a while. “You think this is cooperation? Between you and me? Don’t make me laugh.”
>> “I’m merely using you. As you are using me. That’s all this is. Cooperation requires choice. We were forced together into this, and we have to do work, or else we die.”
>> “That isn’t cooperation. That’s coercion.”
Each bluntly delivered word felt like yet another punch finding its mark on his stomach. Worst of it was that Neon knew he was right —they had been thrust together into a team, prisoners of a partnership neither had chosen. That was their only connection, two strangers bound by survival and nothing else. Perhaps that was all there would ever be to it.
And yet… It was so sad… Because…
“I…” Neon started, then stopped. The silence between them felt heavier than before. Poisoned by a truth that couldn’t be taken back once spoken. “It’s just…”
>> “… It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“Be quiet.”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
Okay. That was it. The last straw that kept his disregarded goodwill from turning into full-blown anger. Who did Nomine even think he was? If he didn’t want to play nice then fine. They wouldn’t be friends. But this lack of human decency was…
“Now wait a minute!” Neon’s hands clenched at his sides, feeling his chest starting to burn. “Shutting me up again is entirely uncalled for! I’m trying to work with you, and you just—”
“Don’t yell.” Nomine interrupted him with a tone unlike his usual calm. It was enough to make Neon’s spine straighten involuntarily. “Stay where you are.”
His command was threaded with as much urgency as someone like Nomine could muster —a concern that blended in with cold caution. The veteran’s posture shifted, shoulders squaring in a way that spoke of preparation.
Black Metal materialized in Nomine’s grip to be suddenly angled towards Neon, and for a heartbeat, the rookie wasn’t sure of what to feel aside from terror. Every instinct screamed at him to move away, to do anything else other than stand there like a deer caught in headlights.
But he decided to trust. Trust in whatever it was beneath those focused, calculating eyes. Despite the cruelty. Despite the sheer coldness he reserved to the world. Trust that Nomine wouldn’t hurt him.
The blade whistled past his shoulder in a puncturing lunge, burying itself in the bark of a tree standing right behind Neon. Its dull impact resonated through the silence, making the bright flowers shiver in response.
“Tsch. This is…” Nomine’s voice carried a note of grim recognition, gesturing for Neon to step clear.
Instruction he took eagerly, chest hammering from the near-miss as he stumbled aside. He saw it then, as Nomine freed his blade —something impossible emerging across the scarred wood. A radiant white sigil shimmering like the echoes of a dying flame. Or probably like a malfunctioning lightbulb.
The symbol pulsed with a glow of its own with a design both intricate and organic. Seven overlapping crescents arranged in a perfect lotus formation. Delicate lines spread outwards from the central mandala like roots, creating an almost sacred display of religious geometry.
“Dammit.” A curse escaped Nomine’s lips with quiet vehemence, though his expression remained deliberately neutral.
Once the mark flared a final time before disappearing, threads of white light wove themselves along Black Metal’s obsidian surface. The radiance clung to the weapon like parasitic ivy, clinging to the weapon as if it had always belonged there.
That’s when Neon noticed the web of the spider to its full extent.
Lights flickered all around them in a chain reaction, revealing dozens upon dozens of identical marks scattered across the clearing. A vast network of interconnected nodes that traveled deep into the shadows, far away from view. Each symbol shone with that same seven-fold pattern, making the jungle itself feel… Watchful.
[Skill: Light Infection Lvl 1] <>
It seems so contagious to revolt.
An augment. Realization made Neon almost stagger, but he contained himself to not clash with any of the still potentially hidden white marks. After all, they hadn’t just wandered unwittingly into someone else’s territory —this was undoubtedly a trap.
The question that remained was simple enough. Whose?
Nomine reacted quickly despite the mystery, extending his katana as far from his body as possible with his right hand alone. Black Metal dissolved from that grip, then soon rematerialized in his empty left. The mark withstood on the blade even after the experiment.
No curse escaped his lips this time. Nomine simply shifted his stance without fanfare, abandoning the almost-bored vigilance he’d worn this far into a hardened, muscle-burning readiness.
His head tilted slightly, not letting even the faintest of sounds in the dead of the jungle escape his awareness.
Neon felt torn between relief and unease. The veteran was reassuring in his lethality, yes, but it was like counting on a supposedly tame tiger as an ally. Even when its fangs were bared at someone else, the threat of what those jaws could do would never abandon the back of your mind.
Still, whether Nomine was dependable or not wasn’t reason for Neon to stall. His instincts urged him to follow suit with the quietness. So he slowed his breathing, sharpened his ears, and strained his focus for whatever that could be out there. The only other option he had was to copy Light Infection.
Taking the lotus marks for himself wasn’t a bad idea on its own —if only for the intel— but the one-hour time limit on Ours to Steal doubled as a cooldown. If he committed to that route, it would be his only shot at getting a skill worthy of a fight.
His mind hesitated on the command. He had gotten burnt before, after all. Serpents Unleashed sounded promising, yet it served him for little more than a glorified grappling hook. What if Light Infection turned out the same? What if all it did was just make some mystical-looking squiggles? Something to let him finger-paint pretty patterns while his enemies carved him into pieces?
Sound took him away from those questions. That of uneven footsteps rushing towards them, accompanied by the distinct woosh of an ignition. Not a clean, controlled burn of a torch or an engine. This one was wilder, hungrier.
“I got this! Just stand back and watch me, Teitai!” The voice that broke their tense standoff carried the reckless joy of someone who’d never met a bad idea they didn’t want to marry.
Neon’s eyes traced it to a lateral ridge overlooking the clearing, just in time to catch a flash of movement against the darkening sky. A figure launched itself in a blazing jump, body wreathed in flames as the leap turned into something that belonged more in anime than reality.
[Contestant 97, CC.] <>
[She/Her. Team Ashen Bloom. Rookie. Convict.]
The fire concentrated near CC’s arms as she plunged, coalescing into a tempered sphere around her fist that irradiated the same incandescence of molten iron. Her trajectory? Neon’s soon-to-be-exploded face.
His reflexes took control before his brain fully caught up. To hesitate here was to die, and so Neon claimed those flames as his.
[Copied Skill: If I'm Burning Lvl 1]
To love her is the worst mistake.
<>
Simple, but undeniably powerful. He could work with this.
Time for fire to meet fire.
A strong sensation of heat erupted along Neon’s left arm with shocking intensity, flames crawling down from shoulder to fingertips like a living thing demanding territory, begging to be unleashed.
CC’s blazing fist met his own in a collision that sent tremors through the jungle, scattering sparks as the impact drove both of them backwards. The short redheaded girl landed in a graceless tumble, but she immediately bounced back up, as if she couldn’t bear to stay still for a heartbeat.
Her expression had morphed from confident aggression to bewildered outrage.
“Wait. The hell!?” She pointed an accusatory finger at the flames now fading away in Neon’s arms, confusion and indignation warring in her golden-brown eyes. “That’s my augment-thing!”
For just an instant, her bravado cracked, darting her gaze towards the ridge as if pleading for a backup she had been too hasty at leaving behind.
It didn’t escape Neon that Nomine was yet to move a single inch. Not to intercept CC’s attack, or even shift in his general direction. Sure, he wasn’t expecting to be saved, but…
The way Nomine’s grip tightened around Black Metal radiated the dread of a threat that hadn’t fully revealed itself yet. His blade was angled, but not towards CC. It went to the spot where her gaze had also traveled involuntarily. Up there, two more figures emerged along the looming trees, silhouetted against a cloudy twilight sky.
With them, their disadvantage wasn’t merely tactical anymore.
It was numerical too.