Chapter Thirty-One

The Trail Grows Colder Than a Corpse

83 253 shed his froggish form and stepped back into the other. The tutorial program was not on Kward. It had never been there at all. The Overseer had found a second trail leading from Kward to another planet light-years away in the opposite side of the galaxy. The trail was cold and almost perfectly hidden but he had found it nonetheless. The tutorial had left a single atom behind that had become quantumly entangled with another on their true destination. It had been a bugger to find, but 83 253 rarely missed things like that.

Becoming corporeal had irritated his ephemeral form. It was offensive to his sensibilities and chaffed his emotional stability. He had eaten something. Eaten. Such a revolting method of survival. He’d hoped to leave that memory behind him with the skin suit he’d molted from as he stepped back into the other. It hadn’t. He carried it with him now and forever. Eighty-three to the Two Hundred-Fifty-Third power considered fracturing himself to divest that memory from him forever, but he was already too delicate to attempt such a thing; if he did, he would find himself split into infinities, and he did not want that to happen. That was what happened to the Prime back at the beginning, and it was forbidden to replicate that event. The collective could not withstand it if that occurred again.

The new destination was a gargantuan planet called Ao. This world was vibrant, mostly ocean with ten continents, and billions of sapient beings, and millions of dungeons. It would take him some time to examine every crack and crevice the world could use to hide a dungeon. Ao was a world filled with magic and held very little mana, so the core would have to be surviving on blood and fear. 83 253 would be on the lookout for areas rife with war where blood and terror were commonplace.

The Overseer dreaded having to leave the Other and step back into reality. That place of smoke and shadows was so alien to him that he could not conceive of having ever been a part of that actuality even though he knew that at one time he had. That had been a time before time itself had been conceived of let alone implemented and loosed into the wilds.

He wondered if it really mattered. If the DV-8 core did what it was supposed to, then the universe would undergo a second renaissance of invention and creation. What did he care if they lost their tutorial program? If the plan worked the way it was supposed to would they even need to make another dungeon core? It seemed unlikely. In 83 253’s mind, the whole thing had gone to pot the moment that he and the other fractals had split from the dragons. The dragons were complete and utter chaos and the Overseers pure order. The overseers had the ability to implement and the dragons to invent; their union had been a boon to everything in the universe.

If he were honest, then he had to admit to himself that he sided with the dragons in their feelings on using the lesser beings as cores. It was one thing to devour or incinerate one of the sapient races, and completely another to destroy their souls. 83 had never been comfortable with that, but the Prime was, as were most of the other fractals around him.

The Overseer felt the world approaching and prepared himself for reentry into the realm of smoke and mirrors. He would have preferred crashing like a meteor into reality rather than letting it slowly suck him into it as quicksand would a struggling man. Notifications asked where he wanted to corporeate and what form he wished to take. He chose a continent at random, and took on the form of a celestial elf, which were rare on Ao, but revered when they did appear. Such a guise would allow him freedom of movement and entry into any place he wished to go.

Eighty-three to the Two Hundred-Fifty-Third power wanted to go back to the Other, but would not be permitted to do so until he found the rebellious tutorial and its core, or another trail to follow. His options for getting home were limited.

The weight of flesh coalesced around him, and he was an indestructible immortal for all intents and purposes once more. His form could die, but he could replace it with the merest thought. He would do so reluctantly because Eighty-three to the Two Hundred-Fifty-Third power did not want to take on the trappings of mortality. He was not meant for such trivialities, but then if he wasn’t who was? Eighty-three to the Two Hundred-Fifty-Fourth power? What made him better than that fractal? Nothing, he decided. Nothing at all.

What, for that matter, made him better than the tutorial? Didn’t it have the right to live its own life? If he found it what was he going to do? Would he perform his assignment? Would he consider that the proper thing to do would be? What was the right thing? He had no answers for the questions that swirled like leaves in the wind around his mindscape, but he knew no matter what he decided he was not going to be happy with the outcome.