Luminary Institute

93: Upperclassmen Grace

The scene differed in other rooms. Electra and Ryker, the two upperclassmen, had ended up alone like Nyssa, but handled their situation with much more grace. 

Arcs of electricity filled Electra’s room. She let loose against the giant of an automaton she came up against. Larger than the several story-tall wall they had been sucked into, this automaton shook the floor with every movement, took up most of the space inside the large gymnasium, and let loose an unending barrage of attacks. 

Like the hive of a honeybee, a hexagonal pattern covered the giant ball-like automaton. Weapons filled every hole, some lasers, some cannons, some with fire ammunition, others with exploding ammunition, and others shot out gas. 

After trying a precise disassembly method, Electra had frowned after taking down thirty weapons. Thirty out of the hundreds, if not thousands decorating the surface of the automaton. Then, she watched as the machine activated a self-repair system, replacing half her efforts in seconds. 

“God... dammit, god FUCKING dammit,” Electra felt her temper rise. Deciding a brute force method would work better, she let her emotions run wild as a stream of expletives left her mouth. She shouted them out with all her chest. One after another, she cursed the machine, its creators, and the creators’ parents. 

As she cursed, electricity came flooding out of her. Her eyes filled with purple as she left trails of electricity arcing behind her. The initial snake-like streams of electricity became larger and larger and, soon, bolts the size of giant redwood tree trunks shot out of her like ballistic missiles. Here, she felt everything in her body course with what she considered the pure euphoria of life. 

This energy took her body into the air, and her skin seemed to flicker between opaque and transparent. In its transparent moments, her veins changed, shifting from the smooth streams of biology to sharp arcs. 

All Electra could do was laugh. 

It felt good. Like heaven. 

Yet, before she lost herself to the electricity and detonated like Ryker—just without the regeneration factor—she reeled it backward to keep it from progressing any further. 

The room, though, with every passing second, started to resemble the inside of an alchemical furnace. Black char marks began covering the walls as the lights on the walls went out. The automaton in the center of the room began breaking down. With every electrical component getting fried like an egg, it broke down piece by piece in the center of the room. Even its outer metal casings, built to survive most extreme temperatures, began melting under the unrelenting barrage of electricity. 

Thunder seemed to fill the room. Strike after strike after strike. A never ending storm centered around Electra. She closed her eyes. Her breaths smoothened out, and she rode out the storm while waiting for the automaton to collapse.

---

Ryker, in a separate room, had chosen the brute force method from the start. Recent training had helped him unlock a new tier of power, enough to where he felt confident enough to blow away several floors at once if he decided to detonate his entire body. 

It’s a nice last resort. But this is enough. 

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Instead, he stood in a corner of the room, detonating his legs every few seconds. Each explosion shook the room, filling it with a fireball over and over again. He’d detonate. A few seconds would pass, his legs would regrow, and he’d detonate them again. 

Rinse and repeat. 

How simple is that?

“I wonder how the others are doing...” Ryker monologued to himself while letting the smoke clear. He squinted his eyes, waving his hand in front of his face as if it’d clear the smoke in the center of the room. As for the robot in the center of the room, the one covered in ash, half-melted, struggling for life, and sparking nonstop, it still managed to move with loud creaks. Its camera lens swiveled, centering on Ryker, directing its body into a paraplegic crawl towards the corner of the room. 

“Well, gotta take care of my business first,” Ryker detonated his legs once more. Seconds later, without checking the machine, he let loose once more. “Ten more times, that should be good before I check again...” 

While resting, he couldn’t help but laugh a little. Sweat drenched his upper body, and he pulled his shirt forward a little to peel it off his chest. “It is quite hot in here though, I wonder why.” 

---

In another room, Celeste and Conrad faced what felt like a never-ending swarm of automatons. They ranged from the size of a baseball to the size of a small car. Some had a lot of legs, some had none. Some had classical weaponry, others fought like beasts. Each, though, seemed to have at least one defect. 

A missing plate. A dysfunctional targeting system. An extra leg. A backwards limb. A sparking electrical board. 

“Are we just fighting the discount section? Their failed creations?” Conrad spat as he wielded his energy sword in the middle of the room. Waves upon waves of automatons crashed onto him like a group of children rushing towards Santa. 

His attacks, though, never stopped. Destroyed automaton, now scrap metal more than anything else, piled up around and under his feet as he created an ever growing mountain to stand on. 

Celeste, in the air, flew in slow circles. She took out the few flying ones and spent the rest of her attention like a can of human bug spray. Lasers out of the eyes. Lasers out of the hands. Lasers out of the feet. Each laser melted a clean line through the ocean of machines, lessening the amount Conrad had to fight. 

“What do you think? I think we got the easiest room,” Conrad theorized while slicing through another ten automata at once. 

“I can’t say.” Celeste replied with a curt tone. Her eyes wandered to the walls as she stared off into space. Every second passing in this room made her worry more. 

Nyssa got sucked into one all alone. Is she alright? She was already pretty tired after helping people move aside a bunch of rocks. Maybe we shouldn’t have asked her to be the excavator. But how would we have known?

She’ll probably be fine... right?

But even I’m tired and I’m barely fighting right now. 

Celeste felt her heart speed up, and with it, her energy output increased. Even with the increase though, not much changed. Machines came flooding out of the pores in the walls, coming from what felt like a never ending supply. 

Even an investigation into the pores yielded nothing. 

“I guess we just wait it out...” Celeste sighed as she felt her shoulders in particular becoming more and more sore, spreading to other parts of the body. 

---

Albion and Titus, as another duo, ended up fighting a pair of automatons. The combination of fire and ice worked well, and they danced throughout the center of the room, waltzing in gentle swirls to create a never-ending stream of attacks towards each robot. 

First, a wave of ice spread across the ground, the mystery metal the organization used seemed to resist Albion’s usual conversion into ice, but it spread across the top without issue. Titus came next, launching a divine spear made of fire into the first robot built for defense. 

The robots, on the other hand, formed a unique tandem. One, like a bulldozer, boasted an unreasonable amount of defense, while the other, like a nimble dancer, sacrificed all defense for an all-out rain of attacks. 

“It’s coming,” Albion warned, skating in front of Titus and sweeping his arm upward. A wall of ice appeared, growing out of the ground, twisting and turning in on itself to solidify into a reinforced wall. 

Seconds later, lances twice the height of either Albion or Titus began punching into the ice. Each impact sounded like a gunshot as shards of ice exploded outward in shrapnel bombs, glittering under the room’s gentle lighting. 

Albion, reinforcing the wall as more lances came flying downward like airstrikes, gritted his teeth as an uncontrollable urge to cough clawed his way out of him. 

“Retreat,” Titus yanked Albion backward by the collar of his shirt. He sent a bolt of fire towards the slower automaton to delay its progress. “We can regroup and rengage. We have the upper hand, but if you collapse, we both die instantly.” 

“You’re right...” Albion coughed, his body hunching over. “The others better have it easier than us.”