Four of us stand against an army.

Not that the others can tell that the army is here. I can sense them, of course--not only do I still retain enough of my System senses to feel out the distant monsters, I also have the natural benefits of Jerome's body.

Honestly, it doesn't fit me that well. His body is too tall for me, too muscular, and I'm not a terrible fan of having a male body in general.

But after so long not being able to feel true sensation, I might as well be in heaven. Besides, body dysmorphia never killed me on Earth. It won't kill me here.

...it's rather more likely that the Origin System'll kill me first, to be fair.

"What did you do to yourself?" Aster asks me. Her voice is familiar, but hearing her through ears instead of the weird System-filtered process that I heard in the party chat? That's weird.

I have to try surprisingly hard to keep myself from tearing up.

"The Origin System has been following our every move," I say, and I can feel the way that my voice isn't mine but isn't Jerome's either. The timbre we use is different, the pacing, the words themselves--to the rest of them, it must be like they've seen a new voice come out of the same throat. "Up to and including the part where I absorbed the R System and became something else entirely. The P-System became the P System, and that was still within its calculations."

"You're not Jerome," Arcs surmises. She's prettier than I got the impression of. Maybe I just haven't been paying any attention to her. Aster and Jerome have kind of taken up most of my attention prior to this point.

"You speak weird," Thron grunts. He looks exactly like I remember.

"I'm not Jerome," I confirm. "I'm the P-System. Parker."

Explaining my name to them feels like a confession, but they take it in stride. Nobody seems to even react to the revelation of my name even after spending the time until now hiding myself away.

Then again, they do have bigger concerns on the horizon. Literally.

Woah, this is super weird. Is this what you feel like? I, uh, can't really control anything.

Huh. That catches me off guard. The R System didn't have any passengers controlling the System while it was doing its whole Eternal King schtick, but if I'm not mistaken, that's Jerome's voice I'm hearing in my head. That's his text appearing in front of my eyes.

"Can you hear me?" I ask.

"Jerome?" Aster asks. Can she see it too? Or is she talking to me?

I'm here. I can hear you. I'm fiddling with some stuff here, and...

Mana surges around me, the passive magic in the air inflamed by my System. By the part of me that's still all around us and is also... part... Jerome?

I'd like to question that more, but we're on a time limit. From the feel of it, I think Jerome is able to pump up the mana around us and empower me. His body. Whatever.

This is a lot to take in. How the hell have you managed this?

"Through sheer fucking spite," I say, grinning. It feels so, so good to smile.

The sky rips apart. A blue spear of light slams through it, parting the clouds.

Above it, I can see the stars. It's gotten dark already. I didn't even realize.

The bright spear holds its position there. With a start, I notice that I haven't instinctually analyzed it.

Different body, different instincts. I examine it.

It's a [Lightbridge Lance], but it wields the authority of the B System, and that shit's got a lot more power than I do.

Than I did. Two hours ago, even being in the presence of this weapon might've been enough to overload my circuits and stop me.

Now, though? With Jerome's help, I can activate the [Shield of the Eternal King]. What was his is mine now, and it manifests itself as a translucent dome of golden force, veiling us from the worst of the attack. The light intensifies, the blue spear brightening until it's a second sun in the sky, and I can feel the pressure of the attack bearing down upon us.

The shield holds.

No notification appears. Normally, I would be the one to handle it, but it appears that Jerome hasn't quite managed to figure that out.

It's very possible that we won't get damage numbers here either, but I doubt it'll matter. Half the Continent away, the R System's lands--my lands--are getting stormed by adventurers, monsters, and regular citizens alike. They're on their way to attack my people. These aren't soldiers, not all of them. Many are going to die on both sides. I plan to do what I can, but I can't stop them all, especially when my focus is on the .

The real enemy here is the B System. If I can defeat it, then even the deaths in this fight won't matter. They'll be thrown into the cycle of reincarnation, and their souls will return.

The light lifts, the skill fading. It takes nearly two full minutes for it to dissipate fully.

For miles, the area around us is devastated. I know for a fact there used to be a mountain range to our right, but it's been reduced to a flaming valley, the scorched land still glittering with the fragments of light from the skill.

With my senses, I can feel the depths of destruction. The skill left scars a mile deep and a hundred miles long. A truly legendary skill, and one that would take my breath away if I wasn't so focused right now.

[Lightbridge Lance] didn't come from a single being. It came from thousands, manifesting their mana and W Inertia together.

Unlike the R System, the B System doesn't have a single convenient manifestation to attack. It's smart. There's a couple ways to finish this. First, I can annihilate the entirety of those under the B System, but that means killing millions. Even if I'm willing to kill in the process of ending this fight... killing that many still feels wrong. Maybe it's just that irritating human morality I've got, but I refuse to manifest so many skills just to kill people.

That leaves me with the alternative that I've just discovered. The R System tried something on me, and that meant to subsume me. From what it said, the B System might actually be harder to subjugate than the R System. In addition to that, I now have enough comprehension of the process to know that the first step was only possible because I expressed the desire to work with the R System.

Somehow, I don't think the B System is going to agree with me.

Still, I have to try.

"Jerome, can you hear me?" I ask. "Can you help me?"

Always.

"What's happening?" Arcs asks.

I look at her, vaguely annoyed. I've saved her and Thron again and again and again, and they haven't really provided anything to me in return. Yeah, sure, saving people is good for its own sake, but I don't think they can help me here.

"Return to your hometown," I say. It's a total non-sequitur, of course, but I don't have time to waste on things like social niceties. "You can't help me here, but you can help save people."

Everyone that the R System held domain over is under my rule now. There's so many innocents.

Arcs opens her mouth and closes it. She nods. Thron nods with her.

I raise a hand--completely unnecessary, but I revel in the sensation of being able to manipulate my body--and I lower it, casting [Mass Teleport]. I try to mimic Aster's version of it, but I can't quite get it down. Even with the detailed grasp I have on mana, it's super hard to get her precision down.

My version is horrendously inefficient, but my resources are far greater than ever before. Arcs and Thron vanish in a flash of light, reappearing back at an Edge City--at one of our Edge Cities.

I watch them for a moment after I drop them off. The city is already being overrun by rabid adventurers and monsters, all of them fallen to the mind-control that the B System engages in. Within moments, they're fighting. They don't hesitate to kill.

I tear my sight away. It's a little surprising to see that they're so willing to attack people that were on their side, but it's been a wild fuckin' week.

"How the hell did you manage a better version of this?" I ask Aster.

"Years of experience have helped me," she tells me serenely. For someone who's living through the literal end times, she's handling things pretty well. "I believe you understand this."

"I would have sent you away otherwise," I say. "Can you help me?"

"I can always try."

"Then try," I say, and I start the process once more.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [0/100]

I think I can feel what you're trying to do. I would try to help, but my grasp of all these numbers is really, really bad.

I'll push it towards Aster. It might ease her just a little bit.

"I can feel the process," Aster says. "I lack the power necessary to start it from scratch, but I can enhance this."

She uses [Learn], and I watch as her eyes flit back and forth behind closed lids, analyzing what she needs to do. She uses [Perfect], and I watch as she winces from the feedback of the skill. She's trying to use it on a super large working, and it's affecting her.

But she doesn't let it stop her. She keeps going, and soon enough, she starts providing her own mana to the skill.

Against all odds, the skill starts to work.

I can tell it starts taking effect when the afterimage of the [Lightbridge Lance] starts to fade into me, the residual W Inertia sinking into my land.

And I can tell that it's working when Origin redoubles its efforts. Seventeen million people scream in fury, and my people start dying. In a breath, fire and ice and poison and light and dark and a hundred thousand other effects slam through my cities. In the first four seconds, two and a half million people die.

I absorb their W Inertia as fast as I can. There's no time to grieve a loss this major. I can't let the B System recharge itself with the W Inertia of the dead. I'm probably killing a reincarnator or two for good this way. But I can't stop.

The B System's attention is closing in on our location.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [1/100]