Stain

The blood filled plains were merrily enjoyed by Cobalt and Arch, nether sacrificed much to gain such a victory and they were both overjoyed with that fact.

They should of been more prepared, but the undeniable satisfaction that came from mowing down hordes of enemies with freshly made blades overturned such thoughts from Arch... Cobalt, in his ever thinking mind thought long and hard about preparing for situations like this in the future. He pondered hard, thoughts of making some sort of radar device crossed his minds... but he ruled it out swiftly, enemies supposedly warped there as opposed to else wise... so detecting them before hand would be impossible with such a message.

Another thing that crossed Cobalt's mind was a truth he wasn't ready for, this war scenario had been cut off from the rest of the game for quite some time now... years had passed since it started, and the participants couldn't leave and join back... it was a one time operation just like war back in reality, though the circumstances changed dramatically.

Arch started wrapping and cleaning away at his many wounds, Cobalt did attempt to heal Arch with blossom magic... and yet something prevented that, there was something wrong. They both knew it, yet they couldn't tell what. Feasting away at variety of corpses and resources was Nebula Fantasm, and it was about to find out.

With a greedy gulp, Fantasm ate multitudes of the enemies weapons... only to start suffocating and rusting, the metallic beast spat away the swords and found them to be rusting as well, it lacked the intelligence to determine what was wrong and attempted to eat said swords again.

Once more, they were spat out... and the cycle repeated until Cobalt happened to take notice. " What the hell? " Cobalt murmured, rust? That shouldn't be possible, such things only happen due to oxidization if he recalled... ingesting metal shouldn't create such a reaction normally right?

Cobalt looked over the scattered blades, he noticed a fine red powder on some of the metal weapons... it was rare though, he only found it in very few select weapons. What is it?

Cobalt called out to the system, yet there was no response. It was a static like interference between the two, for whatever reason the System couldn't generate a connection between it and Cobalt... and Arch was getting worried.

Arch had been slashed by a powdered dagger.

It was ominous, an unknown powder has entered his body... and from what he could tell it could even form rust on Metals that don't subscribe to logic.

Speaking of logic, eventually they came to the conclusion some sort of healing would need to be administered on Arch, while not the best at it... or even a bit proficient... Cobalt took that problem on himself using Blossom Magic, petals flew freely between the two and gathered upon Arch's wounds.

A bright pink light irradiated the wounds, and the petals faded away as per the spell... and yet it seems there wasn't any affects! Arch and Cobalt were very logically focused so while the former began trying to decode what the powder might infer about Origin's strength the former became dedicated to figuring out why he couldn't heal Arch.

Neither could think of a solution.

The best idea would be to get Melody here... but its quite the distance away, she would never make it quick enough... after all, Cobalt is the only one to have flown the jet so far... without the jet Cobalt wouldn't of made it here in the first place.

So onto the second idea, bring Arch to Melody. Now this was a little more... risky, there were likely more Origin soldiers either on their way or making way through the battle, while Arch could fight on his own there is no telling I'd his situation would worsen... it would be a death sentence if timed poorly.

That didn't leave a lot of options.

So, Cobalt bound up Arch's wounds and began preparing a small fortification while messaging Melody, he needed her to heal Arch and Arch needed Cobalt to protect him until then.

The reformed marksman pulled away at the soaked earthed and began modeling it into a small fortress, it was only big enough for a small apartment sized room and the surrounding battlements... but it would make do, there wasn't much else that could be done... and Cobalt heavily regretted sending the Jet away.

If the jet was still here, he could ride back and send Melody here with AutoPilot... attempting to get here her without Autopilot would be suicide, Cobalt didn't know if Melody bad the ability to fly a super sonic jet fighter and she didn't have the permissions to activate AutoPilot.

Cobalt couldn't fix this issue remotely, and so he just had to hope and pray she would be able to get here soon, that's when Cobalt heard a big, visceral splatter.