It's slow. It's beyond slow. While the R System's Integration took effect in the course of only a few minutes, it's been a solid two minutes now and I've only gotten a single point of progress.

And that's with Aster doing the utmost to help me. Beneath the flashing veil of the [Shield of the Eternal King], she's sweating. Until now, I've never seen her actually exert effort. Even during the darkest days, when she needed to leech W Inertia from me so she could level up to [Archmage], she never struggled.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [-4/100]

Fuck. The B System is aware of what we're doing, and it's fighting back.

It knows what it's doing better than we do.

What am I supposed to do? I finally found something that might work. We might actually be able to work towards victory, however small the odds, and yet...

We're just not strong enough. We don't have enough strength. Aster's doing her best, but--

I slap my forehead.

"Aster! Heads up!" I shout, and the volume of my voice surprises me. "You're about to get an XP boost!"

I pass her W Inertia. How much of it exactly, I don't know, but it's in the tens of thousands at the bare minimum. More than that, maybe.

It's the end of the world. The skies themselves are being torn apart. The B System is coming for me.

And I've been forgetting to power Aster up this entire time.

[Aster K'lon] class evolution! [Archmage] -> [Archon] You are one with the world. Your understanding of magic allows you to manipulate its fabric on an extreme level. [Aster K'lon] class evolution! [Archon] -> [Mage Ascendant] Your magic transcends this world. With a flick of a finger, you can annihilate or create.

"Thank you!" she shouts. It's a bit understated for a class evolution that will probably make her split the heavens apart, but she has no time to thank me.

This time, when she [Learn]s and [Perfect]s the Integration, her skill is [Unique] in rarity. She's so much stronger than she was before, and it shows.

She throws herself into her work, and W Inertia flares all around us.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [2/100]

Enormous. From negative four, that's a gain of six. With the time it took her to do that, that's a speed-up by a factor of, like, twenty.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [3/100]

There are monsters coming.

But there's actual hope.

If the B System is angry enough to focus all its efforts on us, that means we're succeeding. That means that Aster's assistance is working.

We can defeat the System.

Aster's entire self is focused on her magic right now. She's not going to be able to help me.

I have Jerome's body. I have his class. I have the W Inertia and the skill power of an entire world.

I will stop them.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [6/100]

The sky tears itself apart again, and this time, monsters come pouring out of the bridge.

The light itself fades in a few seconds, but creatures I've never seen fly out of it.

And that's how I learn that dragons exist in this world.

An entire swarm of them appear out of the light like so many birds, and they breathe down purple [Dragonflame] at me. At us.

The shield blocks it, but it's not going to last forever. With a searing application of will, I activate [Edgelord].

I've activated this skill for Jerome before, but I've never experienced it myself.

It's really interesting. My soul feels sharp.

I cut.

I appear next to a dragon, clearing the space between us with a single [Ethereal Stride], and I cut.

I cut and I cut and I cut and I cut. I wield a sword, and I am the sword.

When I return to the safety of the shield. A dozen corpses the size of a house fall from the air, black blood spraying across the air.

"I'm sorry," I say, and I absorb their W Inertia. I pass more energy into Aster, fueling her to infinity.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [9/100]

While I haven't been paying attention, another million people have died.

Fuck me. Every moment I spend protecting Aster is a moment I don't have the power to protect everyone. There's tens of millions of people in my lands, and I can't create a shield for all of them while also fueling and shielding her.

Thron and Arcs are still alive. I throw them a small shield--only an [Epic] rarity, but they're not facing the same enemies as us by a long shot--and turn my attention back to Aster.

More people are going to die. I absorb their W Inertia as fast as I can, but it's not always enough. The B System gets to them first sometimes, and I can feel its resistance growing. It's able to get to its own deaths before I can, and my heart hurts knowing that any number of reincarnators are having their souls literally eaten moment by moment.

Another rift in the sky opens. This time, it's accompanied by the earth cracking beneath us. With a gesture of will, I use a [Levitate] to keep us close, relying on my [Authority] to stop any anti-magic attacks from hitting us.

From beneath comes a behemoth, a mile-long worm so wide that I almost think it's the ground itself rising to meet us. Its sides are bladed and glistening with poison mana.

From above comes a many-winged angel, except it can't be an angel because all of those wings are dripping with the blood of the thousands it murdered before arriving here.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [14/100]

A big jump, but I waited longer before checking it this time.

"Jerome, Aster, keep at it," I say. "I'm going to go kill some fuckers."

Go crazy.

Aster just nods.

I soar into the air, propelled by a combination of my previous spells and pure W Inertia. A quick extension of the [Shield of the Eternal King] makes the dome a full sphere, which'll protect Aster from below, but the shield does have its limits. I can already see the first paper-thin cracks appearing in it as a dozen different attacks soar from hundreds of miles away, targeting her. It's not going to be a problem for the time being, but it's going to be an issue before Integration completes.

So I move her up. Levitation isn't interfering with her focus, so I just lift the entire structure up. The behemoth-worm might be able to reach her, but it's going to have to rise half a mile into the air first.

To her credit, Aster doesn't seem particularly concerned. She's still got her eyes closed, and she's still pushing the Integration along.

The angel is my first target. I can already tell that it's not going to be as easy to kill as the dragons, because it actually follows my movement even as I break the sound barrier.

[Execute], it declares, pointing a blood-soaked finger at me.

My entire body shakes as the order passes through me, and with my sense, I can feel my cells begin to die, the individual parts of me disintegrating from the inside out. My skin falls apart, the organs coming loose, and I fall.

And then I stop.

My [Authority] won't let me die just because someone else told me to. My body--Jerome's body--heals itself, the disconnected parts coming back together, and I'm good as new a moment later.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [23/100]

The notification of that much progress startles me, and it gives the angel a window of opportunity.

In less than a quarter of a second, it closes the distance from its position miles above me, leaving a glowing white after image as it flies at me, razor-sharp bladed wings ready to tear my throat out.

And something catches it.

A veil of gold surrounds me.

Woah. So that's what that does. Is that how you've been saving me all this time?

"Yes. Thank you, Jerome," I say.

My reactions are slower in this human form. I need to pay more attention. If I'm not actively using my System senses, I lose reaction time, multitasking ability, and just general effectiveness.

Now that the angel is close to me, I can use my skills. I could use Jerome's skills, but... I'm feeling a little vindictive, and I doubt his primary attacking move can cut this monster enough to kill it.

Instead, I mirror it, gathering up all my rage at this bloody angel and the System that powers it and this goddamn world for being so fucking bloodthirsty, and I channel it into a single point of power.

New skill unlocked: [Execute] Annihilate life.

With a shout, I [Execute] the angel, and it has no similar skill to stop me. I can tell it's not a very hardy creature now that I extend my senses enough to fully take it in. It's just fast.

And it's not fast enough.

The light in its eyes fades, and I watch as it comes apart at the seams just like I began to earlier. It looks like a water balloon exploding, chalky white flesh falling apart like wet paper tearing, unleashing the innards within.

I fly away instantly. There's another titan to deal with.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [31/100]

We're making progress. Aster's made a breakthrough somewhere, somehow.

I try to ignore the fact that in the time it's taken us to get this far, another three million of my people have perished. Many of them were defenseless. The elderly, the infirm, the sleeping. Children.

It's little solace that they'll get another try at life when I can feel the weigh tof their deaths pressing down on me, but I need to push through.

I can't stop to think.

I dive. As I do, I pump more W Inertia into Aster. At this point, I've spent upwards of a hundred and fifty thousand W Inertia on her, but I keep giving her more. It's not like she'll explode if I give her too much, and she can use everything she can get. I think that if there was another rarity of class beyond [Unique], she would get it. There isn't, so she's stuck with her ascendant mage or whatever.

She's getting faster, and that means the B System's advances are getting more aggressive.

I try to kill the worm the same way I did the angel, but only part of its body necrotizes and falls away, and even as it does, it grows back.

This one's hardier. It won't fall to a single [Execute].

The sky is opening up again. I can't waste time.

The worm opens its massive maw, revealing a gullet a hundred feet wide. A perfect target.

Without second-guessing myself, I dive into its throat.

Wow. That's something I would do. Kudos!

"Shut it, Jerome," I growl at the insult.

The inside of the worm is no nicer than the outside. Until now, I've never seen a monster that has blades on the inside of its body as well as the outside, but there's a first time for everything. There's a lot of heat and poison mana in here as well--I'm fairly sure there are actual magma pools forming within its body. My skills keep me safe from it. I exert my will on the world, and it bends to match what I say it is.

"Lend me some will," I said. "God knows you're stubborn enough."

Ha. Here we go.

The solution to so many things in this world is just to fight them with their inverse.

For every poison, there is an [Antidote]. For the heat, there is cold.

I freeze the insides, developing a new spell on the spot. Jerome tries to guide it, but he's never been a System before. I guide it with him, our metaphysical arms gliding across it together, and we create the skill.

New skill unlocked: [Absolute Zero] Freeze, motherfucker.

Being able to control descriptions probably makes them a bit more vulgar, I'll admit.

I blast it out at full power, the weight of my will accompanying it, and the effect is immediate. Around me, atoms stop moving. Magma turns to stone, blades freeze and shatter on the slightest contact, and the monster's blood turns to ice in its own veins.

The effect spreads as I fly through it, and it has no recourse. How do you attack something within yourself?

With lava sprays and acid, apparently, but I counter the poison as fast as it reaches me and the magma can't make it within forty feet of me before it solidifies.

When I burst out of its tail not fifteen seconds later, exploding outwards with my W Inertia made mana, I can almost hear Jerome whooping inside my head.

The worm is dead, but there's already goint to be more monsters on the way.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [59/100]

When I step outside, there are no monsters. Rifts have been torn in the sky, revealing the blankness of a starless void beyond, but nothing has come through them. Similarly dark tears in reality appear on the ground all around us, and yet nothing has breached them to attack Aster.

[P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [67/100] [P-System's Objective]: Integration Progress: [81/100]

A crushing weight slams into me. I stagger back. It takes me a moment to realize that the effect is not physical.

[Objective]: Integration Progress: [90/100] Origin System Status

Deviation outside of bounds... adjusting battle plan.

Adjusted.

Proposal: manifest physically and subsume with overwhelming force.

Accepted.

Manifestation initiated.

The world continues tearing apart, and I find myself staring into the abyss.

The B System stares back at me.