082: Twilight War [part 03]

I… didn’t expect that to happen. It was, however, no mundane explosion. It was something much more metaphysical. Probably caused by the Yhrezerach seizing the Ambryxis place and fighting against the being beneath the city over the seal.

Whatever it truly was, I was suddenly in a ruined room that looked like an average office from Earth. Line after a line of small cubicles, with desks, computers and a lot of paperwork. However, the place looked like a hurricane came through. There were dead bodies everywhere. Humans. Some looked like they were killed by gunshots, others were sliced apart.

“What is this place?!” Leria’s voice suddenly woke me up from stupor. She was there as well.

“An office. From Earth.” I was even more startled when another voice answered her instead of mine. I turned my head back.

The Founding Father of DFI. The mysterious Warrior that just couldn’t pick the hint and leave us alone. Wonderful. How did he even got here, wherever the ‘here’ is?

“Ok, so is that ‘THE’ Earth?” I could scarcely believe that.

“Oh, no-no. No way. It’s still the game.” Well, shit. “A little question to you. What is the best way of maintaining control over the VR game once you imprisoned millions of people inside and you do not want anyone to save them?”

What does it have to do with… oh. Oh. Ooooohhhh.

“The best way is to move into the game yourself… and wire the game so that’s the only place it can be controlled from.” Of course, there was also a problem of someone being able to physically shut the servers down… but if Robinson found a way to fix that problem, moving himself out of range of the vengeful people was a good idea. But… why did nobody just took the VR helmets off?!

“Yes. I believe this was the ‘secret level’ of the game. One, from which Robinson oversaw his creation. Together with lots and lots of DFI personnel.” He looked around the room. “As to what happened here…”

“Glitches?” Leria interrupted here. “Bullet wounds everywhere, but also sword slashes. In our world, there were enemies from other worlds. This is completely different world, so there are enemies from all worlds, right?”

Made sense. The Warrior thought the same and answered with a nod.

“Probably. But there are no glitches here now.” He went silent for a second. “I feel Robinson. He is somewhere here. Still alive.”

Time to get some answers it seems.

***

The battle for this place was fierce. Robinson seemed to have a lot of security in place. Most of the security soldiers seemed to have the same face. Huh. They probably took down a lot of Glitches, however their bodies most likely dissolved, leaving nothing behind. We could only guess how many of them died.

We finally entered a room that seemed to be a central control room. There was a large, almost throne-like chair in the middle. On it, sat Robinson himself.

I’ve restrained myself enough to not try to kill him immediately.

“Edgar.” The Warrior signed to us to do nothing and made a step forward. “It’s nice to meet you again.

Robinson’s head raised up - slowly. He didn’t look well. His clothings seemed to be stained with red.

“Oh. It’s you.” Robinson chuckled bitterly. “I kinda expected you to be the first one to show up here.”

“To be exact, my two companions were the ones that found their way here. With Gods’ help.” Robinson made a deep, painful sigh. “I simply joined them.” There was a brief moment of silence. “Edgar, what have you done?”

The perpetrator of the greatest case of kidnapping in human history answered with a bitter chuckle.

“You know already. Or at least you have suspicions. Doesn’t you?”

Warrior turned his head towards us.

“Before you get more and more confused about that: I’ve met Robinson few weeks ago. He was drunk. Badly. And he was pretty depressed. What he said made no sense, but… at least a part of it started making sense after people got imprisoned in the game.”

“And he already knows what was the rest about.” Robinson chuckled, even more bitterly. “He just refuses to believe it. You came here, thinking that I could free your from the game. That I could let you return home. Isn’t it the truth?” I nodded.” Well, here’s the problem. THERE IS NOWHERE TO RETURN TO.” He let out an almost maniacal laughter.

Warrior’s face went grim.

“What… what do you mean?” I asked him. Fear gripped my heart. I was almost sure that I didn’t want to hear what was going to be said… but I had to hear it. I just had to.

“They discovered it several years ago.” Robinson said, with an almost dead voice. “An asteroid. Five times bigger than the one that killed dinosaurs. On collision course with Earth. The governments tried their best to stop it without telling the world the truth. Nobody wanted the mass panic. But they also started working on contingency plans.”

What?

“One of them was the game. We’ve scheduled it to be launched the day the asteroid hits. It was all over mere minutes after my announcement. We are dead. We are all dead. And the game? A computer afterlife, it’s physical form digged deep into the ground on the exactly other side of the world than the ground zero. There is nowhere to return to.”

…

“So, it’s all just a computer game?” Warrior said, his shock much smaller than me. “How the heck did you program the NPC so well? Nothing I heard about recent progress in computer technology suggested this was possible.”

“That’s where the things get complicated.” Robinson sighed. “There were several very advanced but still non-sentient AIs. All cutting edge secret military technology. Then, soon after the asteroid was detected, they began making moves. They provided the technology. Far beyond anything we’ve ever imagined. Far beyond anything we could understood. That’s what made it all possible. The AIs seem to now ‘be’ local Gods. Or maybe they were Gods to begin with and simply used the form that we were comfortable with to salvage whatever was left from our world?” He shrugged. “Few people would believe in ‘divine revelation’. But when benevolent super-powerful AIs offer you almost magical technology? Yeah, that’s totally sensible.”

Leria grabbed my hand. She said nothing, but the look on her face told me everything. It’s nice to have people offer you their support even when everything you ever believed in crumbles around you.

“Wh… where are the Glitches in all of that?” I’ve managed to utter. I could still scarcely believe in all of that. It was too surreal. Too terrible. In a way, also ironically funny - if only people like Vasyr knew that it were the Players that could be the non-real part of the world…

“We’ve screwed up.” Robinson answered me. “Big time. We’ve attempted to assemble an AI of our own. You know it. It introduced every Player to the game.” The administrator?!” Unfortunately, we’ve made a major mistake. It was stable at the beginning, but soon after the separation… it started changing. I guess that’s what you get for trying to tinker with a god-AI code you do not understand.” Robinson shrugged.” The only thing I have in my defence, is that the governments had us do it. Can’t say I blame them, being at the mercy of AIs didn’t sit right with me either.”

“So it’s now trying to kill anyone? Why?” Warrior said.

“Yes, it seems so. I have no idea what’s its point in all of that. Maybe it’s just insane? Maybe we forgot to to install some important part of its code? We did remember about a fucking off-switch… but it figured it out and somehow broke it.” Robinson shook his head. “I think it just doesn’t care about us anymore. It just wants out, and we are just in the way. Now it pretty much took over big part of the Administrative Section. Administrator built itself a hidden small dimension beneath it. Glitches are just a side-effect of it slowly chewing its way into the worlds. All of them.”

“Daemon God.” Warrior said. “It’s either an insane AI ruining a game, or a manmade Daemon God.” Robinson nodded. “Probably the worst possible, since it’s of a literally different world. A perfect case of an outside context problem.”

“Yes. Gods seemed to redirect it towards the Ambryxis region.” Robinson answered. “Probably because of the Malice’ firstborn imprisoned beneath the city.” IT WAS A FUCKING FIRSTBORN OF A FUCKING MALICE?! “A faction of the Gods planned to unleash him, making the Glitches and the forces of Pentagram continuously murderfuck each other for millenia, though it would end up with the whole continent as a collateral damage. Others, like Overtyrant, Inri and Deviation, seemed to prefer an alternative plan. Yhrezerach’ seized the power of the seal, using it to amplify the variant of teleportation spell that moved you here, into the Administrative Section. Risking a lot for a chance to slay Administrator.”

Explained why the Pentagram was so active in the area. And also, Yhrezerach, you asshole.

“And the other worlds…” Warrior decided to ask the hard question.

“Well, in Long War you have an entire Galaxy to live in. A lot of place to escape to. The others… are faring worse.” Robinson gave us all a sad look.

“One question.” Leria spoke for the first time in a while. “Why are you still alive?”

That… was a good question.

Robinson answered by showing his legs. Or, the lack of them. They seemed almost dissolved, but he covered them with a blanket.

“‘Still alive’ is a subjective term.” Robinson added. “I’ve used all the exploits and cheat codes I knew of to give myself enough power to defeat it. But all I managed to achieve was to make the Administrator retreat… after receiving a mortal wound. Daemon Gods are vulnerable to theurgies, and no cheat codes can give you that. Gods’ have limited power here. And, besides, they are still furious at us for assembling the Administrator. That’s a bit of a supreme sin according to them. They knew we were doing that. And they ignored that while saving as many people as possible, but it’s not like they were planning to just forget all of that. Slowly dissolving due to the wounds Administrator gave me seems to be their punishment.”

Besides, the ‘supreme sin’ would be a bit of a problem with granting Robinson the theurgies. So instead of breaking the unbreakable rules of the world (intrinsically tied to the Great Game), they went for a different approach.

“I see. So it’s like that.” Warrior turned towards us. “I believe it is a time for you to finish the job.”

“Can’t we at least get some cheat abilities?” Leria, once again, asked the right question.

“No.”I figured as much. “The Administrator locked me out of the system. Besides, it’s collapsing entirely. That’s why the AI attempts to escape into all available worlds at the same time.”

I remembered something.

“Firewing looked through the RPG system. She detected something that is going to launch around the time the system runs out of steam. What the heck did you put there?” Even Warrior looked surprised with the question.

“NPC looked through… really?!” The surprise included Robinson, of all people. “Well, my last gift to all the Players. To help them fit in. A bit of a mass-scale genetic modification. We’ve done that with the help of the Fertility.” What? What does the imperial deity of procreation and motherhood has to do with that? “Essentially, all Players will be capable of having children with pretty much anything in the world. With ability to choose the species and subspecies of their children.”

Oh. Oohhhhh. Made sense. Players, unlike the locals, had no inborn preference for people of their own species. There was very little (or even none) racism involved. Bulk of population of any given region tended to be a single species. Simply because if you overdo with a interspecies romances, your population would start dropping down and that’s a BAD idea in that world.

Adventurers, however, belonged to the rather mobile social group. NORMALLY, said adventurers typically went for brief romances (or just, ‘let’s have sex, because we might be dead tomorrow’) for a few years, before they returned to the lands where their species was a common sight and typically moved to another line of work. But what about Players? It’s not easy to just force them to behave like that. And what about cases when for example a married pair playing the game together, but choosing biologically incompatible species?

This would also mean… that me and Simea… Huh.

Time for the conclusion. It’s the one and only world we have now. Losing it would be pretty bad.

***

Warrior said he isn’t ‘supposed’ to follow us. He stayed back, to talk about something with Robinson. The two of them gave us a map, showing the way towards the entrance to the place where the Administrator hide.

No enemies around. No idea why. Administrator pulled back its forces, probably sending them at the other worlds now that Robinson was out of the picture. It didn’t expect someone to invade the Administration Sector.

It noticed us when we were pretty close to it. It was a nightmare made material. Nothing was left from the Administrator we once saw. It was a grotesque mishmash of flesh and technology, with lack of shape being its best defining feature. It attacked us with the combination of powerful magic and equally powerful technology.

We retaliated with magic. Theurgy hit it hard, but we were like mosquitoes to it. Not the same level of power. It barely noticed us.

It almost crushed Leria with a vertical swing of a massive limb armed with a lot of teeth. Entire mouth of them. It threw me back with a powerful kinetic spell.

What the fuck did the Gods expect us to do here?! We were outmatched right from the start. The appraisal magic didn’t work here, but I estimated the thing to be beyond Yhrezerach’ level. It wasn’t even attacking us. It was more like a person almost automatically swatting a mosquito that bit him. Or a horse/cow using their tail to scare away the flies.

It would took me YEARS of continuous casting of my strongest Death Magic spell to have it die! Leria dealta bit more damage with her wide slashes empowered by both aura and Overtyrant’ magic, but in return she exposed herself to more danger. It was a matter of time before one of the Administrator’s blows will connect.

She suddenly launched such a devastating rain of hits that the Administrator seemed to have noticed her. New tentacles emerged, all of them surrounding a massive mouth that showed up in the middle of his body. The tentacles began trying to catch Leria, but she managed to avoid them.

Administrator was still not treating us seriously. Ugh.

“It’s over!” I shouted to Leria. “Nothing we can do can kill it! We have to get back to Warrior and try to figure something out together!”

She jumped out of the Administrator’s range.

“I know how to kill it!” She shouted back. “I’m just preparing myself for that.” She jumped sideways right before another massive tentacle smashed her.

What?

Another tentacle smash tried to catch me. Recently I learned enough about aura to be able to dodge it. Narrowly. Then I smashed the tentacle with my staff. It recoiled a bit, giving me enough time to put some distance.

“What are you planning?!” I shouted to her. She managed to almost cut off a bit of a tentacle, but she had to jump back to avoid another powerful hit from another tentacle. And the slash healed quickly.

Jesus.

The Administrator’s main body moved a bit towards us. The mouth opened wide. More and more smaller tentacles emerged. What is he…

Wait. WAIT.

“Leria! DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!” I screamed.

There was just a single thing that had more of the Gods’ power in them than artifacts.

Chosen Ones.

“There is no other option here. We can’t let that thing out!” She had a point. But one I wanted to avoid noticing. But I had to admit one thing. The only alternative included me doing the exact same thing. And I, unfortunately, wasn’t a person with a quality of character required for this.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

“Avhar!” She turned her head towards me. “Do me a favour. Find our… my mother. And do her some bad things.”

Wh…

“WAIT, GIVE ME A SECOND I CAN FIGURE SOMETHING OUT!”

She didn’t give me that second. She purposefully jumped towards the mouth. Tentacles grabbed her and pulled her inside with little trouble, as she didn’t resist at all.

I was just standing there, watching her be almost instantly devoured. Finally understanding that I wasn’t a main character in that story. I didn’t even have the balls to do the job myself.

Mere seconds after Leria was devoured, the Administrator noticed what he just ate. He recoiled in pain, vomiting its own insides as its intestines began rapidly dissolving.

Overtyrant planned that from the start, didn’t he? He cultivated Leria with that in mind. A perfect sacrifice - one who volunteered. He made sure she was powerful enough to reach this place - and had Deviation and Inri helped her by using me and random archspell scroll.

Flawless victory. Risky - if Pentagram won, the effects would be terrible. Glitches could never win - Gods just had a troublesome dispute about the way they should fix that problem.

I’m free to return to Simea. I’ve succeeded. But why do I feel so bitter about it?