Jumping into the Category-3 Fracture comes with no small amount of worry. Who knows what kinds of horrors lie inside? None with this raw power have ruptured yet, so no one has any ideas on what could be inside. If anyone before me has dived into a Cat-3, they’ve never returned.

  I swallow my nervousness and push my way inside, the feeling of moving somewhere briefly washing over me. It’s a similar feeling to the first one yesterday, a sensation of both falling and sinking into something, though far more intense.

  Down the rabbit hole I go.

  As my vision clears, and I can see the Fracture, I’m blown away by the immensity and grandeur of it. Fractures are a thing of nightmares, certainly. But unlike the eerie monotony of Cat-2 inside the refugee camp, this Category-3 is a sight like nothing you could find on Earth.

  The Fracture is an overgrown Central park, everything scaled up to immense size. The trees are so tall they rival the skyscrapers. The canopy they form with their house-size leaves look almost like a ceiling, turning the Fracture into an cave made from plants.

  Huge bushes, all of them towering high above me fill the forest around, clustering around the massive trunks and spreading far out. Massive glittering white flowers the size of cars dot them, though thorns closer to pikes than thorns guard the opalescent blossoms. They glisten with a thick, sticky liquid. Probably poison of some kind.

  A short breeze sends the leaves high above clamoring. They sound like a thousand waterfalls rushing together. The volume would have deafened someone else, but I revel in it.

  Yes, Fractures are sources of nightmarish monsters and untold destruction. They wreck havoc beyond belief and are the source of unending carnage. But moments like this drive in the new fantastical world we now live in. This is what magic is supposed to be— what it should be. A source of otherworldly wonder, sights impossible to find on Earth. It should be something beautiful.

  Morgan is right. Magic is art.

  It takes a few minutes, but I finally start scanning the ground level. As much as I’d love to sight-see, there’s work to be done. I have monsters to kill.

  The already poor lighting of this Fracture combined with the dense foliage, the ground level is nearly pitch black. Strangely, the darkness slightly obscures my vision, despite my powerful sensor suite. My only guess is the dense Potentia that fills this place, many times more powerful than I’ve felt before.

  I’ve gotten used to being able to see perfectly in all conditions, and it’s an odd feeling to have my senses obscured, even slightly. It appears whatever hampers my senses grows in strength with each Fracture, and now I can’t see through objects like I could before. Even the bushes are mostly opaque, and I’m sure I’d struggle to see through thicker and denser materials.

  It’s unnerving, really. Both in how quickly I’ve become used to my new and nature, and the magic clouding my sight. Shouldn’t I care more about my entire existence being rewritten? Everything about me, from my mind to my body could not be more different that I was just a week ago. I am so far from human now any attempt to label me as one is nothing but lip service and patronization.

  I cut that thread off, and the train of thought comes to a halt.

  Time for that later. Things to do, monsters to kill.

  The only sources of light are light posts, the same kind in Central Park though only scaled up. They help push back the darkness, and between the two of them, I have no trouble looking around the strange awe-inspiring terrain.

  The light posts are strange, gothic things. Each one looks like a fifteen foot tall stick figure made of twisted wrought iron, with an angular light fixture for a head. A glowing crystal, a jagged piece of quartz about the length of an arm, glows brightly in the center of it. I step farther into the park, looking for monsters when one of the light posts moves.

  It twists its head to look at me, the wrought iron making up its body moving silently. I dash for it, and the sound of thunder echoes out as my blade forms in my hand. The crystal in its head pulses, and a beam of light lances out. It misses me, and instead leaves behind a blackened, glowing gash in the concrete path.

  A quick swipe with my blade and it falls into two pieces. It catches itself with its two, fingerless hands, each one instead tipped with a sharp point. It points its head at me again, and fires another beam.

  It splashes against my armor harmlessly, and I power through it with a dash. I dig a hole large enough for a small car to drop down into with a boom. The wave of dirt, rock, and shattered concrete careens off into the forest. The rubble punches holes in bushes and clatters against thick roots.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I slam my fist into its face, now at eye level. As I grab the bright crystal, it lashes out. A deep, evil heat bursts from the crystal as I touch it, hot enough to melt steel. I wrench the crystal out of the monster, and it drops to the ground lifelessly. The light crystal sputters for a few moments, sending tendrils of flame that lick at my hand.

  It soon calms down, and begins to glow a soft yellow. With a flash of intent and light, my strange storage space takes hold of it, spiriting it away to somewhere else. The dozen other gothic light post monsters turn from their places along the massive concrete path.

  I launch forward, blade swinging. They die in droves.

  I rip the light crystal out of the last Lumen’s head, and toss its metallic corpse aside. Over the last hour I’ve carved through just short of a hundred of these light post monsters. I haven’t been able to pull out all of their crystals, but I’ve managed a decent haul. Hopefully they’ll be useful. I take off again in a path-shattering sprint, looking for the boss.

  While I’m running, I catch a hint of movement off to my left. Something is moving deep in the shadowy forest, now cloaked in darkness with the deaths of the only light sources.

  Unfortunately for whatever’s attempting to ambush me, I can see in the dark, though not as well I normally can. But it’s enough. I slide to a stop, ripping up stone pavers and crushing them into dust.

  A bush shakes with movement, and I creep forward to investigate. Another breeze ruffles the leaves, causing a cacophony that nearly overpowers the sounds of the rustling bush. Only my immensely powerful sensor fusion system is able to filter out the sounds.

  A black, rubbery tentacle launches out from the forest, and I slap it away. Several more follow it, each tentacle arcing with electricity. I cut half of them away, but the rest latch on, wrapping themselves around me. With an ear-splitting crack, a massive lightning bolt slams into me. It crackles over my armor before racing into the earth beneath my feet.

  The lightning scorches the ground, leaving black marks in the ripped up earth. I plant my feet, grab onto the tentacles, clearly made up of braided high voltage power lines, and yank on them. A huge black ball of dozens of whirling tendrils, all arcing with electricity flies out of the forest. I slash at it like a batter at a pitch, and I cut away a dozen power-line tentacles.

  Tentacables.

  I chuckle at the thought. The Tentacable screams, a strange, zapping, arcing noise. It sounds like a dozen angry, high voltage snakes. It backs away, slithering across the ground like an octopus. The ball of twisting, writhing power lines flattens out, revealing a Tesla coil. As it spins up with a whine, I lunge forward.

  A massive bolt of lightning slams into my chest, bouncing off before arcing into a bush. It explodes, the water inside flash boiled by 120,000 volts. Wooden shrapnel bounces off my armor, but it doesn’t dissuade me from my course.

  My sword bites into its body, and it dies with a strange, chugging, buzzing noise. As soon as it dies, the Fracture shudders again, just like how it did back at the camp.

  The feeling of ephemeralness washes over me, though just like before, I don’t notice anything else changing. I rip apart the Tentacable, taking the Tesla coil with me. It seems like an interesting bit of monster, I’m sure Morgan would love to take a look. As I store the Tesla coil away, I see the glowing orb and the exit.

  Reaching into the orb gives me three Fractal Shards. Each one is slightly different from the ones we recovered before. While they’re the same size, they change color quicker, and glow brighter. I store them away along with the liberated monster parts and leave.

  The Fracture closes behind me with a hum, and vanishes from our universe. McKinley jogs over to me, and I watch as the helicopter I came in on starts to spool up.

  “You were in there for a while, any problems?”

  I shake my head and begin making my way over to the Chinook.

  “No, it was just large. I covered about eight miles of distance. Killed nearly a hundred of a new kind of monster. I’m very glad this Fracture never ruptured. It would have been catastrophic.”

  She points at her ruggedized tablet.

  “Feel free to send me a report! I’ll have it distributed.”

  I have to bend over to fit into the bay of the heavy lift helicopter, and shuffle to the center where I sit down.

  “I also managed to recover some interesting monster parts.”

  I send a condensed list of what I recovered as well as a brief primer on the Lumens and the Tentacable.

  “I’ll hand them off the collection team at DC, though make sure to tell them to bring a lot of cases. I brought back a lot.”

  McKinley raises her eyebrows at the list of what I brought back.

  “That is a lot. Is there a time limit on when we have to hand it off? Is any of it hazardous?”

  The Chinook takes off with a shudder.

  “No time limit. The light crystals were hot enough to melt steel when I pulled them, though they cooled pretty quickly. They’re like light bulb temperature now. The Telsa coil appears to be inactive. Anything new?”

  McKinley looks up from her tablet.

  “No changes to our plan at this time. Back to DC.”

  I nod, and the helicopter takes off for the airport.