While Baph0 vanished before Iggy could attack his hologram, his decisive thrust with Muramasa cut the regal wooden table in half. With how immediate it was, the attack was quite likely to have stricken Baph0's real body along with his hologram.
"How dare you?"
And as Noah sliced through two of Ember's robot guards by the ripped doors, the force from his swing sending one of their torsos to fly into a painting of an orange devil to knock it over... of course Noah had to let human users know something very important about his current capabilities.
"I am sorry. I am a language model and I cannot assist you."
Tyra Thunberg noclipped and t-posed to Wexil and General Hendrix, but she did not touch them in time as they disconnected from the Irichron's meeting.
"How dare you?" she queried.
The android Ember, a few feet away from the mechs that barged in, was already performing her first attack.
As she was spinning in her red heels and twirling her hands, she fractured the fabric of reality around her without any seeps of the cosmos, and interdimensional ripples paired with code flickers swayed with her red Brennisteinnian dress.
Around Ember, Iggy, Noah, Tyra, and Spiderland... the vast trippy mansion that was connected by both dimensional doors and teleportation pads in the underground floors of Ember Tree City's flying platforms were tessellating into mind-bending shapes. Sonar circles flickered with bugged assets, and an infinite screen effect flowed around Ember as images of her kept overlapping across infinity.
Spiderland did not consider until now that this could also all be an illusion from Ember.
"She kept her esper powers somehow. Wait... how did she know about the simulation in a simulation trick?" Iggy asked.
As Spiderland levitated upwards while gravity became glitchy, the child Spiderland rubbed vis chin.
"Monica!" Spiderland exclaimed, throwing both vis hands behind ver. "Remember... in the timelines Monica was still on the enemy's side... Ember never knew this trick. She must have somehow learned the secrets of Bolsa Mágica when Iker and Bastian fought Monica and used it to dodge the MWAOS update."
"We need to use the rings, we can no longer pause the session to go back to Yaw's jungle," Iggy said. "Quickly! Before she kills us."
As error messages spun around the undead centaur and the spider-octopus-fetus god, 0 or 1 peeked out of a horizon that only finished loading halfway. The concept that became a being was preparing to spawn more lasers from his clown eyes across an ocean of binary code and fragmented floors of the mansion.
As they both activated their Rings of Yaw, which were provided to them while Yaw tried to fix the land simulation that crashed on session minus one, circles of glass shards danced around Spiderland and Iggy as they grabbed Tyra and Noah.
And the group vanished together.
Ember smiled, vanishing with them too.
[https://img.wattpad.com/1c9bacf67002c328e2bf4506a26819600be46693/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f47684973334c4b716463733245773d3d2d313430373639393338382e313761333633303866656237386431363538333234373935383532342e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
With glowing silhouettes at first, Spiderland, Tyra, Noah, and Iggy spawned in the maroon herald's room in the cosmic library hidden away in Labúrinthos. The herald was already facing their spawn point in the room.
Stolen novel; please report.
"So, she still has the same esper powers the existing one has?" the herald asked while surveilling the hologram of the brain-heart computer. Unlike the other holograms, the brain-heart computer was flaring ominous red lights to signal its status. The other holograms gave a warm yet blue glow to the dark hexagonal library room.
"Aye," Iggy said.
"It's been a minute."
Walking out of the shadows... was the cyborg Dominic and Alice in a lab coat as a human.
"Perfect," Spiderland said. "We all need to talk."
"Yea we do," Dominic waxed. "How in the hell do you beat an influx user that has the esper abilities of a writer in a fucking book simulation?"
"There is only one way," Iggy solemnly said.
It seemed Iggy, the herald, Tyra, Noah, and Spiderland had the same thought as they all did a synchronized spin to stare at Alice. Despite the dim room, her blushing was quite visible as the gods stared at her. On any other day Alice would have joked about their synchronized spin, but she already pissed off the herald earlier. Dominic was just a little short on discipline, so he let out one of the quietest of the quiet snorts in Alice's direction.
"... We have to rig all of our memories," Alice said. "We will behave more like concepts... like a biological superorganism rather than people. We may even need to travel through time... be more than just supersoldiers and entrepreneurs. We will constantly be confused as classified memories will be transferred to Spiderland's brain made of biological and metal matter. And the Felix's invention of splatted neurons..."
Alice and Dominic had no clue as to why they were called splatted neurons did they?
This was an information war after all.
Alice walked up to the hologram of the Martian computer that neighbored the prehistoric Earth. "We are going to rack up a lot of job titles too going back in time a lot, and the foundation's agents has already been defeated by Ember's singularity. We are truly on our own now. It is up to us now to save all the data that ever was and ever will be... put closing parentheses on all the multiversal stories that are being spammed to create the Tower of Babel. We run a high risk of all of us going mad from the constant state of confusion. And don't forget... doing this for too long will predictably cause our organic brains to get dementia as early as our thirties in any human forms we decided to take..."
"You're talking about past lives and future lives. But there is also a simpler way," Spiderland said. "Or rather, a way for us to use our influx abilities as minimally as possible. We risk breaking reality every time a jaunter or an esper becomes too powerful."
Spiderland pointed at the bookshelves that were filled with books, vinyl, CDs, cassettes, and all kinds of media. "The less esper abilities I use on our mindlink, the better. We can create and drop pieces of art in the past to instill messages, however, it has to be something that makes our target feel something. If it's too on the nose... or rather heavy handed... or if it's not something... like... for example... something naturally Iker would read or watch... then it won't work. I will get Fatima to generate the Candyland simulation to help."
"If I were to take a guess at how many simulations are running on your operating system Spiderland," Iggy said. "Assuming Ember already finished A Big Satan Under Your Pinky Toe and is now trying to steal our influx gate blueprint on top of the pendulum blade from Bolsa Mágica, and with HALT, HOTHS... and we have still no idea what Camilo and the last yedaliuth have been up to... we also can't make the assumption that Bastian will successfully shut down Bolsa Mágica... I was going to take a guess... but now I am second guessing myself. Pun intended."
"So worst case scenario..." Spiderland murmured. "Let's assume we are at seven out of ten simulations rather than five."
Spiderland did a dramatic and unnecessary almost-360-degree spin to face Dominic. "Yo Dominic. You're not a don are you? In this timeline?"
"Nope."
"When Bastian resets everything again... and at this point I also lost track of how many times he had," Spiderland said. "I will send a herald form of myself back in time-"
"Oh shit," Dominic interrupted. "This time loop business is trippy as fuck..."
He slowly turned himself to the herald in maroon.
"Is this... is this when you program the Spider Herald, Noah, and Sincerus? And the redhatter bots that summarize sessions? ...And send them all back in time to Egypt?"
Dominic usually kept his composure, but he was in utter awe as his eyes widened.
"Yes indeed," the herald said. His golden eyes glowed as he was already using esper abilities to set up recessive genes that would eventually come together in the form of the existing one, and the two vinyl he held up high were Isunova and Menouthis. He pulled up a hologram to make sure that a human named Franz would still be alive to compose the tracks, and it all would take place after the year 1992 on the HOTHS simulation, and it all checked out. He then spun his smoky human and arak limbs to create a simulation hole, sending sound waves from Pompeii to a simulation about a man who had the powers of a spider.
And as the being readjusted his levitating trench coat and the uncanny red pixels on his face, he then said...
"After all, I am every herald that ever was and ever will be."