Ultra Worm (1)

This came out much quicker than I expected, but I'm not complaining. So have at you.

-x-X-x-

Eyes wide, head dizzy feeling faint, I was left breathless and choking on nothing, floating as I struggled desperately to suckle even a single breath of oxygen to no avail. I could feel my blood boiling, the pressure making it pop and rush like thunder in my ears; I felt hot, as if I was scalding unprotected under the harsh sun of the Sahara Desert while my shadow shivered, freezing in glacial temperature. And then the corners of my eyes started to darken and the pit of despair in my stomach grew as my inevitable death loomed over me, inching closer and closer at each and every second.

I was going to die.

I was dying already, or better yet, I was already dead.

No human should be outside of Earth after all.

I felt my consciousness drift, slowly leaving me as the darkness enclosed me.

Then I gasped.

“Haaah!”

My mouth opened and suddenly I was able to draw in a breath, and I felt everything return to me with startling clarity.

I bent over and coughed, and threw up any content still inside my stomach as I tried to rear in the assault of my senses that threatened to overwhelm me in an instant if I was careless. I squinted my eyes closed tightly shut when I started to see things I definitely shouldn’t have been able, like the molecules composing lunar soil that I was somehow immediately able to identify; or my ear picked up the dust storm gathering miles in the distance, much beyond the horizon, or how I was breathing where there was no oxygen in the atmosphere for my lungs to process.

And I was flying too, somehow.

“It’s absurd that me being able to fly by myself is somehow the least surprising thing I noticed so far,” a hollow chuckle left my lips. What was this now, one moment I was dying the most bizarre and likely exotic if not outright unique death in human history, and now I was doing things that could easily come up straight from a comic book as if nothing happened.

What was happening here?

What sort of insanity is this?

I didn't know. Frankly, I didn't even care right now as I basked in jubilant glee on sunlight, feeling healthier and more alive than ever in my life. Power rippled through me, as if my every cell was suffused with so much power I felt full to the brim. It was honestly quite the heady feeling, intoxicating even. This must have been what Superman felt the entire time, the amount of power at his disposition. It was mind boggling. Simply thinking about it was a numbing experience, but feeling it in person was an entirely different thing.

I felt so energised I could make laps around the world without getting winded, I felt so powerful I felt like I could lift mountains and a thousand thoughts coursed through my mind in a single instant. Things like magic spells, alchemical formulae, rituals; blueprints of different pieces of tech seemed to come to my mind at random, as well as thoughts on how to improve them and turn them into… magi-psytech?

What…?

And- and! It didn’t end there!

There were also… manuals and scripts, and books detailing on different Qi techniques of forging and alchemy, schematics of complex ancient ships capable of travelling through the infinite sea of stars as well as recipes of how to concoct a poison so potent that would leave even a god crippled if not outright dead. But that was by far the least confusing thing, because I was also loaded full of techniques for both martial arts that had embarrassingly long names even if they seemed incredibly powerful, and methods to refine my body and soul even further through… cultivation.

That made me pause and I simply hovered in the air as my face parsed through a host of different mixed expressions. “I think,” I ended up biting my tongue, “That the genres are all mixed up here, somehow.”

Because I was clearly some sort of Superman grabbag of powers taken directly from a comic book setting - this might even be a DC universe if God is not good -, which would explain the magic things and maybe, if I stretched a little bit, the psychic stuff.

Cultivation though?

That’s straight up Xianxia stuff, no way around it, which gives me mixed signals. That A: I am supposed to be some overpower character on purpose, likely a power trip for someone to watch and pass the time - my ROB self, maybe -; or B: I am purposefully being fucked over and this is all only so there’s maybe a hope of leveling the field if I prepare myself a lot.

I’m honestly scared of learning the answer.

It was then that, perhaps as a sign from whatever powers that sent me here, that three immense portals opened in three points around me, leaving me trapped against the three creatures that surrounded me in a triangle.

They were tall creatures of monolithic size, each one looking very distinct from the other and yet, at the same time, worryingly familiar. One was a dark goliath with dark hide for skin and armour of jagged obsidian stones jutting out from his body menacingly, a coat of molten magma dripping from the cracks and crevices in the rock on his skin. The other was another imposing figure, a somewhat reptilian and amphybious looking giant with a hunchback. His skin had varying shades of green just like his ominous glowing eyes, and he had an immensely long and prehensile tail that moved cautiously from one side to another. The last of the three figures was a humanoid woman, she looked beautiful and certainly naked, although not a single genitalia could be seen on her body, not even nipples on her breasts. Just like the others, she was gigantic, a monumental creature, but thin and frail looking. Her eyes still watched with some intelligence, searching around until they locked on me. But what truly caught my attention regarding her was the various asymmetrical wings apparently randomly placed on her body.

A shuddering breath escaped my lips.

These three… I knew them.

Rather, I knew of them. It was hard not to when I spent so much time reading through forums and other places where fans could write their things. The subject of Worm, the world of Parahumans created or perhaps just simply revealed by Wildbow, was a terrible one but also incredibly popular, particularly because of the hopelessness of the setting, and how everything had to turn down a dark and depressing way.

There was a saying, ‘being Taylor Hebert is suffering’, and in a world like Earth-Bet that couldn’t be more true. Not in a world where there are three literal doom engines slowly destroying society effortlessly.

It was for a good reason they were named the Endbrigners.

And now the three of them were here.

I took a deep breath, “Okay…” and exhaled slowly. “This is bad.” I reasoned. “This is really, really bad… But it could have been worse.” I thought. It could have been 40K.

Silver linings.

And at least I wasn’t powerless.

With that said, the first sensible thing I did was to turn tail and flee.

…

What?

Just because I have powers doesn’t make me suicidal or dumb. Sure, I might have kryptonian, or at least kryptonian-like powers now, but do you have any idea how that matches up against Behemoth, whose whole shtick is energy and radiation manipulation? Oh sure, I have magic now, and psionics, and apparently cultivation bullshit too, but would it have any effect when I literally don’t know fuck all how to use it? No, I’d rather not have this confrontation right from the get go and at least get myself used with my powerpack before coming back for a real throwdown.

So, having concluded that, I was really glad that, as my wings flapped - wait, I have wings? - and booms followed as I repeated to shatter the barriers of sound when easily moving at supersonic speeds; not a single of the Endbringers decided to pursue me. Certainly, that must have been in part because of the fact that I only needed two point twelve seconds to start ascending to the moon’s orbit, but as the distance between myself and the ground rapidly increased, I could honestly let out a relieved breath when I watched those same three portals appear once again to let the Endbringers seamlessly return to Earth.

Which I was not going to.

Not right now at any rate.

Like, what the hell? No, no, no. If I’m going to Earth-Bet it will only be much later once I have a firm grasp of the extent of my powers.

So I took a deep breath and flapped my wings.

…

“I have wings now…”

-x-X-x-

This story was done using the Interactive Worm CYOA, which allows you to be incredibly broken if you pick normal difficulty and are a masochist when picking your drawbacks.