I Die to Rise: Resurrection System-Chapter 105: Beyond the Exosphere!

The toxic fog rose from the Garden below, boiling upward in thick, sickly clouds of greens and purples swirling together, carrying spores and glittering particles.

The house-sized flytrap below widened its maw, serrated petals flexing outward as ropes of acidic drool stretched between them like stringy cheese, waiting to catch its prey.

"Ah. That’s... unfortunate," Kurt muttered, still spinning end over end through the air.

His mind moved fast. Faster than his body, which was currently tumbling like a ragdoll through the sky with absolutely no control over his trajectory.

In the blink of an eye, a swirling vortex of air whipped up around him, steadying his body mid-air.

The ability detonated outward in a spiraling column, a violent cyclone forming around his falling body and tearing into the toxic fog with the force of a hurricane.

The poisonous cloud parted as the wind blasted spores outward in all directions. Garden plants below recoiled under the sudden pressure, vines snapping and leaves thrashing from the whirlwind flattening them temporarily.

Kurt kicked his legs downward and ignited twin jets of blue flame from his feet. The flames roared to life, stabilizing him midair and propelling him upward.

The whirlwind continued spinning outward, carving a temporary tunnel through the poison cloud as Kurt shot upward like a missile bursting out of a storm.

"I have to catch up," Kurt said through gritted teeth, eyes locked on the distant blimp and the black-and-silver nightmare closing in on it.

He boosted his twin jet burn with the spiraling wind while simultaneously activating Electromagnetism, reaching out with invisible magnetic force to try and slow down Black Heaven.

The machine had its own bloody magnetic field, Kurt could sense it humming across the distance, but his pull still had just enough juice to slow it down, if only slightly. Just enough to close the gap.

Without hesitation, Kurt grabbed Black Heaven mid-flight, wrapping his hands around the bot’s torso. "Let’s take this somewhere quieter."

Then he kept wrapping. His arms stretched and coiled around the machine’s body like elastic cables, looping over and over and over again until he’d wound himself around it like a living straitjacket.

Then he rocketed upward with one single intention.

To keep it as far away as possible from the blimp. And if that meant leaving the bloody stratosphere, so be it.

Wind screamed past Kurt’s ears as he rocketed upward. The world below blurred into streaks of green and grey, the Garden shrinking by the millisecond.

Black Heaven struggled against his hold, thrusters firing in short bursts to resist the pull. Yet, Kurt’s body yielded only where necessary—bending, stretching, coiling tighter each time the machine tried to break free.

Together, they became a single streak of light tearing through the heavens.

First came the clouds, which were swallowed in an instant.

The friction from their ascent ignited the air around them into fire that scorched Kurt’s clothes even through Fire Lord’s protection.

Then the air began to thin as the roar of the wind faded, dying into something hollow and distant.

As the air thinned rapidly, pressure dropped, and Kurt felt the temperature plummet as frost began forming across his stretched limbs.

Kurt’s flames sputtered as oxygen thinned, flickering wildly at his feet, yet he forced them to hold just a little longer.

"Come on... just a bit more you good for nothing bastard..."

The sky darkened progressively as blue gave way to violet, which then collapsed into black.

And then there was silence. Absolute, total silence.

The Earth fell away beneath him, no longer a landscape but a vast, endless blue sphere hanging in the void.

They rocketed past the pale and distant moon, hanging in the void like a silent witness to their approaching battle, and stars blinked into existence all around them.

Still, he didn’t stop. He didn’t let go. He was going to keep holding on, keep moving until they were far enough. Until he was certain that his mates were safe.

[Ascent Complete]

[NOTICE: Time To Exit Exosphere: 11 Seconds]

In the vacuum, the warmth was sucked from his body in an instant, and his flames that had been flickering began to sputter and die out, no longer able to sustain combustion without oxygen to feed them.

He and Black Heaven floated just above the exosphere now, suspended in the black emptiness of space as the last traces of the atmosphere escaped his lungs in a faint mist before vanishing into the void.

Then the System chimed.

[NOTICE: Space Survivability has been synthesized from Plastic Man, Gas Lord, and Solar Energy Absorption]

Kurt grinned. "Fuck me."

His body adjusted immediately. His lungs stopped burning, his skin stopped freezing, and the cold became... tolerable.

He could feel the radiation from the distant sun washing over him as his ability converted it into warmth and strength.

He let out a slow breath and watched it freeze instantly into glittering ice crystals that drifted away. "Bloody convenient that."

At the same time, something activated inside Black Heaven.

"ESSENCE SYSTEM BACK ONLINE."

"ANTI-BFR BACK ONLINE."

"ATOMIC LOCK SYSTEM BACK ONLINE."

Shit.

Kurt realized immediately what had happened. He’d created enough distance to keep the blimp safe, but that also meant they were effectively outside the dead zone.

Which meant Black Heaven was no longer limited.

"Bugge—"

Before he could finish the curse, an omnidirectional wave of energy tore through the machine’s body, repelling Kurt’s hold instantly and blasting him backward.

Kurt was sent tumbling through the void, unable to control his direction, spinning helplessly as stars wheeled past his vision.

He compensated quickly, using short bursts of fire from his hands and feet to push himself as he made micro-adjustments to his movements.

Compared to the machine who adjusted seemlessly to the vacuum with its thrusters continuously firing. Kurt’s movement wasn’t as elegant.

Black Heaven raised one hand, and energy began building in its palm again. White light formed into a humming sphere that grew brighter and brighter until it was almost blinding.

At the last minute, Kurt rolled aside as the beam fired, letting the blast streaked past him, missing by inches, and vanished into the infinite black void behind him.

He steadied himself, flames sputtering from his boots, and looked down to see Earth hung below them like a vast blue, beautiful marble.

From his new position, Kurt could sense the magnetic field of the Earth, at least a fraction of it, and it was overwhelming. A massive, invisible web of force wrapping around the entire planet.

If he could draw from that source, he could override Black Heaven’s own magnetic field. Shut it down like he’d done to the Warden’s system.

The only problem was that his main sources of movement were severely limited in space. The whirlwind or flames he generated would only last briefly in a vacuum before dying out.

So he was going to have to rely on closing the distance with Warp King and Plastic Man. Gather a concentrated electromagnetic pulse around his fist and nail the tin bastard with it before it could react.

In that moment, Black Heaven’s optics began to glow brighter, like it was calculating the best possible moves of its opponent.

And as though it could tell exactly what Kurt was thinking, it fired up its thrusters, creating distance between them.

Kurt extended his fist anyway toward Black Heaven, and the machine dodged predictably, thrusters adjusting its trajectory with perfect precision.

Kurt couldn’t help but grin in that moment.

He’d taken a page from Emma’s Void King. A portal snapped open in the path of his extended fist, and another portal opened simultaneously right in front of Black Heaven’s torso.

His fist connected, and a shockwave of electromagnetic energy erupted outward, rippling across the machine’s frame in cascading arcs of blue-white lightning.

Black Heaven’s systems flickered instantly as its optics dimmed, then went dark. Its thrusters sputtered and died, leaving the machine drifting slightly, looking lifeless .

Kurt floated backward, breathing slowly through the vacuum, watching it carefully. "And down goes the oven toaster."

For one beautiful second the robot hung motionless. Then its optics flared red again.

"SYSTEM REBOOT COMPLETE."

"THREAT ANALYSIS COMPLETE."

"ANTI-BFR SHIELD EXTENDED TO WIDE RANGE."

Kurt’s grin faded. "You have got to be bloody kidding me."

Black Heaven’s chest plates opened, and a circular aperture formed in the center of its torso. From it, energy began building rapidly inside the opening, glowing brighter and brighter.

Kurt frowned. "That seems excessive, don’t you think?"

The energy reached critical mass, and the beam fired.

A blinding column of white light erupted from the machine’s chest, tearing through space toward Kurt with the force of a solar flare.

Kurt tried to warp away, but the space around him felt inaccessible. "System, what the hell is going on!?"

[NOTICE: Anti-BFR negates spatial manipulation within field range]

"You don’t bloody say!"

Whatever this Anti-BFR shield was, it had been extended to cover a massive area, and it was actively blocking his ability to teleport.

The beam struck him squarely in the torso, and for a brief instant, he felt nothing.

Then the force hit, and he felt everything.

Kurt was hurled backward at unimaginable speed, shooting away from the machine like a bullet fired from a cannon.

The relentless and unyielding beam continued pushing him, driving him through orbit, past the empty blackness, straight toward the blazing inferno of the sun.

His body burned under the heat and radiation. Solar Energy Absorption tried desperately to convert the energy, but it was too much, too fast, overwhelming the ability entirely.

The last thing Kurt saw was the sun growing larger. Brighter. Endless.

"Ah," he murmured faintly as the light swallowed him whole.

Then nothing.

[DEATH REGISTERED]

[Deaths: 25]

***

Back near Earth, Black Heaven hovered in orbit, systems running diagnostics. Its sensors tracked the trajectory of the beam’s target until it disappeared into solar interference.

"TARGET ELIMINATED."

The machine remained motionless for several seconds, processing. Then it rotated its optics back toward Earth, specifically toward the region where the blimp had last been last detected.

SCANNING...

SEARCHING...

It didn’t locate the blimp, but something far stranger was picked up by its sensors. Far below, deep in the ocean, something was approaching.

In the abyssal trenches where sunlight had never touched and ancient pressures crushed steel into powder, something was swimming upward.

It felt the signal.

The strange, irresistible pulse of the Resurrection System calling out like a beacon across the void.

The water parted as a shape began to rise from the depths.

Its body was colossal, covered in writhing tentacles that stretched for miles, each one thick as an oil tanker and lined with suckers the size of buildings.

Its skin was a sickly, translucent grey-green with bioluminescent veins. And its wings were massive and leathery, unfurled from its back, dripping seawater in torrents as it climbed toward the surface.

Its head was also crowned with writhing tendrils, and its eyes... hundreds of them scattered across its body, blinked open one by one, glowing with a sickly yellow light.

It rose from the ocean like a massive island breaking the surface, and water cascaded from its wings as it climbed toward the sky. Toward orbit. Toward the place where Kurt Manchester had died.

Black Heaven noticed the anomaly immediately.

"UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED."

"THREAT LEVEL: UNCLASSIFIED."

The machine rotated slowly to face it. Thrusters ignited, and nanomachines began crawling across its armor plating, sealing cracks and melting damaged metal back into place. Its claws flexed as systems returned to full capacity.

While the machine readied itself for the incoming threat, something it couldn’t possibly comprehend happened.

In the vacuum of space, where Kurt’s ashes should have been scattered across the solar wind, light formed.

A small glowing sphere appeared, and inside it, a body began reforming.

Bones knitted together first, white and clean. Muscle tissue wove across the skeleton in red strands next. Skin spread over the surface. Clothes materialized thread by thread.

Hair... eyes... breath.

[RESURRECTION COMPLETE]

[RESURRECTION SYSTEM LEVEL UP]