Clyde emerged from the portal and landed on the remains of a ruined city. The first thing he noticed was the lack of gravity. There was no clear direction anymore.
Fragments of buildings floated through the sky like the entire world had been torn apart and scattered into space. Skyscrapers drifted several dozen meters above the broken streets. Some of them were still almost intact while others had been ripped in half, their exposed floors and rooms hanging open to the void.
Vehicles floated between them. A few were still burning, trails of smoke twisting strangely through the air before disappearing into the distance.
Pieces of concrete, metal, glass, and entire sections of buildings slowly drifted past one another.
The city had once been enormous. Now, it was nothing more than a graveyard suspended in a broken world.
Clyde stood on a cracked section of road and looked around. He showed no fear. He had seen far worse.
A low roar suddenly echoed from above. Clyde looked up.
He saw dozens of serpentine monsters flying between the ruins. Their long bodies slithering through the air, their wings carrying them effortlessly through the spaces. Some of them had black scales like charcoal, others had pale, translucent bodies that almost disappeared against the sky.
Several of them were already fighting in the distance, colliding between floating buildings and tearing into one another while bursts of energy illuminated the ruins.
Clyde narrowed his eyes. He could not afford to attract their attention or it would be bothersome. His mission was simple: He needed to locate the materials left behind by the Boss that had been killed in this world.
The Higher Beings had considered those materials like this worthless, of course, and had left them behind. To the Resistance, however, they were still very valuable.
Clyde immediately moved. His body disappeared between the ruins before the flying serpents could notice him.
He traveled through the ruined streets, occasionally jumping between floating pieces of concrete, while searching for the designated area.
After moving several hundred meters, Clyde stopped beneath the remains of a collapsed building.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin stone slip.
The object was only the size of his palm. Its surface was dark gray and covered in faintly glowing symbols. The markings were not written in any special language. They were coordinates and descriptions used by the Resistance to identify locations inside Ruins.
Clyde ran his fingers across the surface. Several lines of text slowly illuminated and he read it.
[Assignment]
Target: Remnant Materials of the Fallen Boss.
Primary Material: Voidheart Crystal.
Secondary Materials: Star-Metal Fragments.
Estimated Location: Central Section of the city.
Warning: Strong monster energy detected in the area.
Clyde’s eyes lingered on the final line.
"Central Section," he muttered. He folded the stone slip and returned it to his pocket.
His gaze shifted toward the distant remains of the city. Without another word, Clyde moved again.
—
Clyde continued through the ruined city at incredible speed. He moved between the floating debris with instinctive agility. His steps carried him across roads, platforms, and fragments of buildings before he immediately changed direction again into more stable platforms.
The flying serpent monsters were still everywhere around him. Sometimes they moved through the ruined sky in groups, their long bodies twisting around the floating skyscrapers.
Some of them hunted smaller creatures and others fought among themselves. Their roars occasionally shook the surrounding debris, sending fragments of concrete drifting through the air.
Clyde avoided all of them. His agility allowed him to move through gaps that they would never notice. Whenever a serpent approached, he immediately changed his route. When two monsters collided nearby, he used the disturbance to move past them unnoticed.
The deeper he went, the more dangerous the ruins became.
The central region had suffered far more damage than the outer districts. Gravity fluctuated constantly. Some pieces of land suddenly fell before stopping in the middle of the air. Other debris drifted sideways without warning like being pulled by something.
Entire sections of buildings rotated slowly through the sky.
Some ruins were also unstable enough that simply touching them could cause them to collapse.
Clyde encountered several dangerous situations along the way, like a massive piece of concrete that suddenly broke apart beneath his feet. Luckily he managed to jump away before it could drag him.
Another time, two serpents crashed into a nearby building, sending a wave of debris toward him. Clyde managed to slip through the gaps between the fragments without slowing down.
None of it was particularly difficult. It was just very troublesome.
Eventually, after nearly hours of careful movement, Clyde reached the deepest part of the ruined city.
He stopped. The central sector was different from everything he had passed through.
The remains of several enormous buildings formed a wide circular area around a massive crater. Floating debris surrounded it, slowly rotating through the air as though caught in an invisible current.
And inside that area were the monsters. Ten of them.
The serpentine creatures there slithered through the ruins without any apparent concern. Some of them floated lazily around the crater, and some curled themselves in the ground.
They seemed almost relaxed. As though they were enjoying their territory.
Clyde was standing still hidden behind a wall and quietly observed them. His eyes moved across the area carefully then he saw it among them.
Something shimmered in the center of the crater. A faint light shines beneath the surrounding debris and monsters, revealing a crystalline object buried among the ruins.
Clyde narrowed his eyes. That should be it, the material called the Voidheart Crystal. The material he had been sent to retrieve.
Unfortunately, ten monsters stood between him and his objective.
Clyde let out a long sigh. What should he do? If this was his old body he could just kill him. But now, he was not certain that he would be able to kill them all.
But maybe if he faced them one by one, he would manage to kill them.
Clyde jumped between the floating building, toward the serpents, until they noticed his presence.
—
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