novelraw Chapter 65: Bandwidth Throttle
Chapter 65: Bandwidth Throttle
The coast wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
Rin drove the Void-Runner over the crest of a dune that shouldn’t have existed, expecting to see the quaint German architecture of Swakopmund. Instead, he saw a pixelated cliff dropping off into a void of static.
"Where’s the city?" Joy asked, leaning forward against her restraints.
"It clipped," Leo said from the turret seat, his sensors spinning. "The map coordinates are offset by three miles. The city is floating."
Rin looked up.
There it was. Swakopmund, the entire city, was hovering two thousand feet in the air, islands of asphalt and buildings drifting in a slow, clockwise rotation around a massive central pillar of blue light. The pillar rose from the ocean, piercing the sky and anchoring the floating city like a thumbtack.
"That’s the Siphon," Rin said, feeling the Logic Core in the engine thrum against his own heartbeat. "It’s not just draining mana, it’s rewriting gravity to pull the terrain up."
"If we break the Siphon," Tayo said, staring at the floating chunks of suburbia, "does the city fall?"
"Physics are local," Nyx said, analyzing the data on her wrist comp. "If we destroy the anchor, the localized gravity should reset slowly. Hopefully."
"Hopefully is doing a lot of heavy lifting," Rin muttered. "We need to get to the base of that pillar. It’s in the water."
He gunned the engine. The Void-Runner surged forward, hitting the edge of the pixelated cliff.
"Rin, that’s a drop," Joy grabbed the handle.
"We have suspension," Rin said.
The APC launched off the cliff, falling toward the ocean surface two hundred feet below.
The ocean wasn’t blue. It was a flat, matte gray texture that hadn’t loaded properly.
"Amphibious mode," Rin thought.
The Void-Runner shifted. Wheels retracted, hydro-jets extended, and the mana-shield flared to form a watertight hull.
They hit the water.
SPLASH.
It felt like hitting concrete, but the shields held. The vehicle submerged for a second, surrounded by gray bubbles, then bobbed to the surface, rocking in the digital swell.
"We’re floating," Tayo exhaled. "I hate boats."
"It’s a car," Rin corrected, revving the hydro-jets. "Target the Siphon."
They sped across the gray water, kicking up a wake of static foam. The Siphon loomed ahead, a tower of pulsating blue code-light as wide as a skyscraper. The noise it made was deafening, a low-frequency bass thrum that rattled the hull.
"Defense grid active," Leo warned. "Sonar picking up movement below us. Big movement."
"Submarine?" Nyx asked.
"Biological," Leo said. "And it’s moving at sixty knots."
The water ahead of them bulged.
A fin cut the surface. It was made of jagged, black polygons, fifty feet high.
"Evasive!" Leo swiveled the roof turret.
Rin yanked the neural steering hard starboard. The Void-Runner banked, skipping over a wave just as a massive jaw snapped shut where they had been a second ago.
The creature breeched.
It was a shark, but wrong. It was three hundred feet long, its skin a shifting texture of error messages and white noise. It had too many eyes, and its teeth were rotating saw blades made of light.
[Boss Detected: The Null-Serpent]
[Rank: A (Glitch)]
[Ability: Data Corruption]
"It’s an A-rank!" Joy screamed as the monster splashed back down, sending a tidal wave of gray water at them.
"Nyx, stabilize!" Rin ordered.
Nyx slammed her hands on the dashboard. "Heavy water!"
She increased the gravity of the water around the vehicle, flattening the wave before it could capsize them.
"Leo, light it up!"
The turret on the roof whined. Leo didn’t fire bullets; he fired condensed shadow bolts.
Thump-thump-thump.
Black energy slammed into the Serpent’s flank as it surfaced again. The shots tore chunks of code out of the monster, but it regenerated instantly, the pixels knitting back together.
"Regen is too high!" Leo reported. "It’s connected to the Siphon, infinite mana supply!"
"Then we cut the power," Rin said.
He looked at the Siphon tower. It was surrounded by a barrier of hard light.
"I need to get close," Rin said. "I need to touch the pillar."
"The shark is faster than us," Tayo noted as the Serpent circled, preparing to ram.
"Not if we change the terrain," Rin said.
He focused on the Logic Core. The engine wasn’t just power; it was a processor. He reached out with his Admin privileges, connecting to the local water physics.
[System Request: Environmental Edit]
[Target: H2O Viscosity]
[Value: Max]
"Hold on," Rin said.
He pulsed the command.
The gray water around the Serpent suddenly turned thick, gelatinous. It wasn’t ice; it was like driving through setting concrete.
The Serpent slammed into the thick water, its speed dropping instantly as it struggled to swim through the sludge.
"It’s stuck!" Joy cheered.
"Not for long," Rin gunned the jets, the Void-Runner skimming over the surface because Rin had set their friction to zero.
They rocketed toward the Siphon.
"Barrier ahead," Leo warned. "Hard light. High density."
"Rin, ram it?" Nyx asked.
"Ram it," Rin confirmed.
He poured gray energy into the front plow of the vehicle.
The Void-Runner hit the barrier at eighty knots.
CRACK.
The shield shattered like glass. They punched through, entering the calm eye of the storm at the base of the pillar.
"I’m going out," Rin said, popping the hatch.
"Rin, the shark is breaking free!" Tayo yelled, watching the rear monitors. The Serpent was chewing through the thickened water, roaring.
"Keep it busy," Rin ordered. "Leo, target its eyes. Nyx, keep it heavy. I need thirty seconds."
Rin climbed out onto the roof of the moving vehicle. The Siphon towered above him, a wall of humming blue light.
He jumped.
He grabbed a maintenance rung on the side of the pillar, the raw mana burning his gloves. He climbed, hand over hand, gray sparks flying.
Behind him, the battle raged. Leo was unloading shadow fire into the Serpent’s face while Nyx dropped gravity hammers to keep it submerged. The Void-Runner circled the pillar on autopilot, dodging tail swipes.
Rin reached the interface panel. It wasn’t a screen; it was a glowing rune embedded in the metal.
He slammed his hand onto it.
’Static Mastery: Inject.’
He poured the virus—his own chaotic gray signature—into the clean blue stream of the Siphon.
...error...
...foreign data detected...
...purge protocol...
The pillar shuddered. A shockwave of red electricity blasted Rin, trying to throw him off.
[Damage Taken: 2200]
[HP: 65%]
Rin held on, his fingers digging into the metal. "Delete," he screamed, pushing harder.
The blue light turned purple. Then gray.
The hum died.
The Siphon groaned, the sound of a dying machine. The beam of light connecting the ocean to the sky flickered and cut out.
Above them, the floating city of Swakopmund groaned.
"Gravity restoring," Rin gasped, letting go and dropping back onto the Void-Runner’s roof.
The Siphon began to crumble, turning into blue cubes that drifted away on the wind.
The Serpent screamed. Its power source cut, its regeneration failed.
"Finish it!" Rin yelled down the hatch.
Leo charged a massive shot. "Goodbye."
A lance of shadow pierced the Serpent’s skull. It didn’t heal. The monster seized, then dissolved into a massive pile of loot data and foam.
[Quest Update: Siphon 1/5 Destroyed]
[Zone Status: Stabilizing]
Rin climbed back into the cab, soaked and shaking.
"Look up," Joy whispered.
The floating city wasn’t crashing. It was lowering. Slowly, gently, the islands of land were drifting back down to the ocean surface, locking into place like puzzle pieces.
The fog rolled back in, natural fog this time, not glitch static.
"One down," Rin said, wiping salt spray from his face. "Four to go."
"Where’s the next one?" Nyx asked, checking the map.
Rin pulled up the data. A red dot was pulsing in the deep south.
"Fish River Canyon," Rin said. "The largest canyon in Africa."
"Let me guess," Tayo sighed. "It’s full of flying rocks?"
"Worse," Rin zoomed in on the map. "It’s full of dragons."
The Void-Runner turned south, carving a path through the recovering ocean. The grind continued.