My Invincible Defense: Traversing the Endless Worlds

“So thick… such a long fucking cock.”

Under the dark brown burlap cloth, Olivia reluctantly pulled her eyes away from the binoculars, heart still pounding, her cheeks faintly flushed.

After all, with her X-ray vision, Olivia had seen more human anatomy than a surgeon with a lifetime of operations under her belt. But Finn’s sheer size still hit her like a thunderbolt.

The real problem, though, was that she still couldn’t see through him completely. Even when Finn stripped down, her power couldn’t pierce his skin. With Jimmy, she’d been able to make out every single bone and every muscle fiber with crystal clarity.

“What the hell is going on?” Olivia sighed. The questions swirling in her mind hadn’t eased up—they’d only grown heavier.

She crouched lower, pressing on with the military binoculars. In the viewfinder, Finn had finished his shower and was now wiping the water from his body.

“Muscular and perfectly proportioned,” Olivia licked her lips. “And that body is straight-up perfect!”

…

After a nice, relaxing shower, Finn suddenly heard an odd splashing sound outside the inn, mixed with the soft calls of a little girl.

He poked his head out and saw a blonde girl squatting on the ground. Right in front of her, the used bathwater draining from the pipes was floating in mid-air, streaming neatly into a small bucket.

The little girl had some kind of special power that let her control water and guide it straight into the bucket. She wore her hair in a ponytail, her face soft and childlike. Beneath the grimy little dress, her skin was pale and flawless.

She was a mutant. Finn had learned that mutant genes were far more resistant to radiation and better at adapting to the harsh environment, which made their bodies—and even their looks—superior to everyone else’s.

Seeing the little girl working hard to collect his used bathwater—still full of white foam and suds—Finn felt a sudden pang of guilt. He realized just how wasteful he’d been.

The blonde girl kept her small face tight with concentration, activating her special ability and guiding a stream of water through the air into the bucket.

Her mom had taught her how to judge water quality. Sure, this stuff wasn’t perfectly clean, but once she ran it through their homemade purifier, it would be totally drinkable—way cleaner than the radioactive water people hauled up from the lakes.

Thud!

Two sturdy feet suddenly landed right in front of her.

The little girl looked up and saw a shirtless man standing there, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. He had just jumped down from the second floor and landed steadily on the ground, his hair still dripping wet. It was Finn.

The sky was already dim, and this was a narrow alley behind the inn. Only the two of them were there.

“Waaah! Scary uncle!” the little girl wailed in terror and plopped straight down onto the ground, bawling.

“Uncle? Come on, I’m not that old. Call me big brother,” Finn said helplessly. Then he pulled a 1.5-liter bottle of pure water out of his storage space and set it down in front of her.

“Stop collecting dirty water. This is for you,” Finn said gently, looking at her.

“Ah… thank you, thank you, big brother!” The little girl wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. When she saw the crystal-clear bottle of pure water, pure joy lit up her face. She hugged the bottle tightly and scampered off happily.

Finn watched her leave, then took one powerful leap, grabbed the inn window with his strong arms, and flipped himself back inside.

In Endless Worlds, people like Finn—who constantly traveled between different worlds—had a special name: Celestial Sojourners.

Celestial Sojourner meant exactly what it said: travelers and passersby drifting through the Endless Worlds. Most of them had no fixed home, roaming the vast expanses without roots, like a wisp of cloud floating between heaven and earth.

They never truly belonged to any single world. They were forever just passersby, outsiders beyond the myriad realms, rootless and homeless with nothing but endless journeys stretching out before them.

Crossing between worlds was dangerous. The physical and mathematical laws of different worlds were often completely different, not to mention the languages, writing systems, and customs.

For example, in one world flipping someone the middle finger was a friendly hello, but in another it would get you beaten half to death—or even pumped full of bullets.

Or take this case: some worlds didn’t even have the law of electromagnetic induction. Bring a powerful electromagnetic weapon over and it would die instantly.

Something exactly like this had happened before. A squad of high-tech elites from the Star Cosmos Empire went to explore an unknown world.

The moment they crossed over, every piece of advanced gear they carried shut down. Mechs, laser cannons, charged particle cannons, high-molecular oscillation swords—all of it turned into useless scrap. Even their powered exoskeletons locked up tight.

The local Stone Age natives found them. Language barrier, instant fight. The spear-and-stone-hammer-wielding savages swarmed in and slaughtered the entire elite team.

A squad strong enough to conquer a whole country had been wiped out by cavemen. For a while, the story became a running joke across the Endless Worlds. It was real, it was ridiculous, and it showed just how deadly traveling the Endless Worlds could be.

Especially with brand-new worlds that had zero information on them—you had to be extra careful. Even the expansion-obsessed Star Cosmos Empire had no choice but to steer clear of certain bizarre realms.

If they couldn’t rewrite a world’s rules, even those cross-world super empires lost all interest in developing or exploring it.

Finn sat cross-legged on the bed, pulled out a self-heating rice pack, and got ready to dig in. Self-heating rice tasted a little better than instant noodles or compressed rations, but it still felt somehow fake. More than anything, it just didn’t taste like home.

Knock, knock, knock…

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Jimmy ran over and opened it. Standing outside was the blonde little girl—the same one who had been collecting the bathwater.

She poked her little head in and said to Finn, “Big brother, Mom and Dad told me to say thank you for the water. If you don’t mind, they want to invite you over for dinner. Dad hunted a wild bull today, so we’ve got steak!”

“Sure,” Finn answered right away. A hot home-cooked meal and dishes would definitely beat his dry rations. He was also curious to try some real wasteland food.

…

The little girl’s house was only two buildings away from the inn. It was a family of four—besides her, there was a three-year-old little brother.

The husband’s name was Harrison Jackson, the wife was Emily Jackson, and the little girl’s name was Beverly Jackson.

The couple first thanked Finn for the bottle of pure water, then curiously asked where he and Jimmy came from. In Black Mountain, Finn and Jimmy’s clothes clearly didn’t match anyone else’s, and their accents sounded pretty strange too.

After a bit of small talk, the wife brought out several aluminum plates piled with food: swamp crab sandwiches, tender mutant wild bull steak, charcoal-grilled radiation cockroaches with the tails cut off, and a big pot of vegetable-and-meat stew.

In the fresh, fragrant broth floated thick white pupa-like strips of meat, each one as fat as a thumb.

The hostess explained that these were fly larvae raised at the Refuge City food base, loaded with protein. Finn hesitated for a second, then stabbed one of the thick pupa-like strips with his wooden fork and popped it into his mouth. Huh—not bad at all. The taste was actually pretty damn good.

The husband and wife closed their eyes, traced a circle over their chests, then drew a slash through it. That was the holy symbol of the Radiant Path. They started saying grace before the meal, and even little Beverly and her three-year-old brother Decker Jackson copied them exactly, eyes shut tight as they mumbled along:

“Holy Radiance above, let Your light pass through our flesh and leave no poison behind. Shield our blood from the burning dust, our bones from the silent sickness, and our souls from the darkness that crawls beneath the ruined world. Let our food be cleansed in Your brilliance, our water purified by Your mercy, and our bodies strengthened to endure the wastes another day…”

The whole family of four were devout followers of the Radiant Path, but Finn couldn’t have cared less about this so-called Holy Radiance. He had wandered the Endless Worlds and seen more than his share of gods, but he still hadn’t killed one yet—and he was dying to give it a shot.

Still, the Radiant Path folks really could purge nuclear radiation from the body. That was probably why they’d pulled in so many believers. Finn’s mind drifted back to the old man named Milton back in Black Mountain. The thing the guy carried was definitely weird—it didn’t look like any wasteland tech Finn had ever seen.

The husband was a real talker. He worked as a wilderness hunter, spending most of his days out tracking game or poking through the ruins left from before the Cataclysm. The wife held down a job at the local food greenhouse, balancing childcare with her shifts. She handled filtering wastewater and mixing the nutrient solution for their soilless crops.