The landing is always the best part of waking up to a new world. Better than wiping up the bad guys, or finally defeating the good guys. Better than the sexiest sex. Better than double chocolate cheesecake or the first sip of coffee in the morning or petting a fluffy bunny.

You’d think it would be a jarring experience-- to be crammed in a new body, in a new world, in an unfamiliar environment-- but it’s always like waking up from a good sleep. A slow up-welling, a warm exhale, swimming to the surface, followed by a peaceful breach to wakefulness.

Utter bliss.

There’s a checklist for old timers that varies greatly from the new: the new travelers tend to have a speeding heart as they check fingers and toes, check the environment for safety, and check their pants for organs. The old timers tend to try their best to hit the consciousness snooze button for a bit. This is the closest they get to a true death, so they’re gonna ride it as long as they can. When that doesn’t work and wakefulness comes a-knocking, they tend to just sigh a lot.

What the new don’t realize is, a quick sending to re-landing is always a sweet gift. If the world you’ve ended up in is suffering from a high concentration of virus bombings or blood plagues or ravening void monsters, you don’t want to be on the periphery. You want to be as close as you can and eat the L as fast as possible because although immortal consciousnesses tend to not fear death so much, suffering for suffering’s sake is a noob mistake.

Max, sometimes Maxwell or Maximillian, sometimes Maxine or Maxanna or Maxlynn, always just Max, stretched out and opened their eyes. Waking up in a cave wasn’t a novel experience. Which was good. In fact, most landings happened in caves, or in a farmer’s shack, or a summoning circle in a blasted-out monastery, summoners sometimes included but most often not.

The truly novel landings are the ones that you really dread, as they tend to be long and drawn-out storylines that unerringly have a lot of input for little output. Novel is bad. The stories that end up with your soul stuck in a cage for millennia usually are novel landings. The footmen of demons are novel landings. The imprisoned temple virgin priestesses. The Saint who hates their patron deity. Soul-contracted MLM marketers. All unusual landings and all horrible experiences.

And let’s not talk about the landings that have the bloody, speaking heads on a pillar next to your tied up and incapacitated, soon-to-be corpse. No one wants to wake up to that. That whole questline can chug a bottle of dicks.

Max wanted to just sleep a bit more. They were so very tired of doing the same thing again and again and again.

Losing. That's what Max did, every single time. Max lost. Even when they won, they lost.

After the thousandth time of uttering to themselves about how there was no way out, but through, once more into the breach, ‘just hang in there, baby!’ blah blah self-encouraging nonsense, they blinked hard and then took stock.

firesburningmeathairbloodfiresmeat

Don’t think about what you’ve lost.

Don’t look behind, as it’s all out of reach. It's over again. It's lost. Look ahead.

No false hope of “maybe this time...”

firesburningmeathairbloodfiresmeat

None of that.

fireswherearethechildrencalwherearethemeatburningmeat

Just exist. That’s all you can do.

Focus.

I don't have a HUD. No HUD this time.

I smell stale air.

I feel the floor. There is dirt.

I smell stale dirt.

I'm not there anymore, I'm here.

Taking a deep breath, Max looked around the cavern. Seeing nothing unique kept Max’s hands from drifting to the weapon that was almost guaranteed to be in their inventory. Good. No surprises. Not novel, yet.

Now, they do their physical inventory.

Max didn’t prefer a gender— it is all temporary anyway. Until encountering a society, gender didn’t factor in much. Dangly bits or not, it never changed who Max was at the core of it all, and Max found that trying to define yourself by tertiary organs was all so very banal when death would change it all in the end anyway. Not to get it wrong, dangly bits made pissing standing up more convenient and not running the risk of bleeding through your trousers was nice, but tactically, dangly bits were a target. It really all balanced out.

What Max really cared about was natural weapons. Natural weapons made the 'tutorial stages' much easier and unique. Claws were cool, and a tail made balance and dexterity wonderful. Wings! When Max had wings, it was always a memorable time-- somehow more light-hearted. 10/10 would get wings every time if Max had a character generator.

Claws, check. But no wings or tail. More’s the pity.

Two arms, two legs. Humanoid.

In addition to the claws, Max had scales. So, some sort of dragonoid. Horns? Yup. Horns. So probably male. Okay. This could be worked with. Yep, there was a fleshy bit. At least this wasn’t the type of dragonoid that had a cloaca. That always struck as a bit unhygienic. At least no egg-laying, either.

If all else fails, and this was one of the types of worlds that they- he now- just couldn’t stomach again, he could always go out in a blaze of murder-hobo glee, even though those got old a few hundred times back. Goring monsters with my own, actual horns is always interesting, though. Quick death.

Looking around the cavern, his gaze stopped on what looked like a fist-sized diamond stuck in the wall. Oh? The control hub? What’s happening here? That is dangerously close to a novel landing.

With no prompts or flags, he thought he was safe enough to continue looking around.

Walking a few meters toward the light source, Max found an opening. Looking out through the mouth of the cavern, he could see an entire gray world. Gray ground. Gray sky. Gray clouds. Gray and brittle-looking plants. So, a tentative dead world. Why was he here, then? Was the system of this world a man-eater, who started a hero-villain cycle to eat them? If so, he’d like to get this show on the road. Gray isn’t interesting and he’d like a few more hours of the in-between of being alive and dead if it’s all the same to anyone.

With a heavy sigh and rounded shoulders, he walked back toward the diamond, sat down, and opened his status page.

Traveler 2: “Max”

Ident 2.02.212.535

Home Plane 5.544

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Planet 15.021

SSW 1st Quadrant

Verudunn

Everspring Valley

Current Location:

Plane 781.04

Planet 1542.003.02

NE 76th Quadrant

Dead Continent

Dead Oblast

Primary Control Node

Species:

Dragon Kin

Unlocked Current Stats

Level: N/A

Class: N/A

Constitution:

N/A

Strength:

N/A

Agility:

N/A

Intelligence:

N/A

Wisdom:

N/A

Unlocked Current Abilities:

Summon System:

Can have a dialog with your current planet system. Will be lost upon death.

Invulnerable:

Short-term invincibility. Will be lost upon death.

Okay, so that’s new. And definitely novel. And it seems that even if he wanted to eat his weapon, he couldn’t, due to that second spell.

Fuck.

Okay.

The handy-dandy, always good in a pinch, escape hatch of suicide was disabled.

Ugh.

Just exist. Even under protest.

Max took a second to apply a gimlet eye to the changes. The Ident, Home Plane, and Location tags are new. That can’t be good.

Let’s see what this asshole system wants because that's what he was obviously here for. Being given any information from a system is rarely ever free, and he needed to know what the cost was going to be.

Max made some assumptions. But mostly, everything after an eternity was all the same, so assuming is usually the best bet. Gut feelings, when wrong, were still answer generators. Death itself is an answer in its own right.

So, after girding his non-cloaca sheathed loins, he spoke to the diamond stuck in the wall.

“So, you’re the system in these parts. I’m Max. You summoned me. You want to talk, according to my active abilities. What did you want?” A pause yielded no response.

“Am I the glamorous hero here to arm-wrestle the dashing villain, or am I to be the dastardly villain to subdue what’s left of your denizens? Probably the second if I’m dragonoid. You guys can be a bit speciesist, not gonna lie.”

Max knew he really should work on his attitude when speaking to the powerful, but he was kind of over all this shit as of a few thousand landings ago. And most of the time, if he took the time, he could always work his way up the ranks. Being powerful did not make you special.

The wind howled, as the wind was wont to do, in a very tropey, very foreboding way. It was a big, stupid flag and Max just absolutely did not give a shit. It would have worked to set the scene for him long before all the death and the loss, and the landings upon landings accumulating new death and loss. But he had grown callous and calluses.

Let me turn that off, one second. This was new. The only other times a system deigned to speak with him, it was always well on its way to obliterating its third continent, or species, or hero. The first time was early on in his landing loops, life 12 or so? It was back when he was still hopeful-- he thought that killing a system would be a way out. He was a fool.

Just exist.

Well, then. Okay.

The sky and ground and flora debris stayed the same, but at least the menacing wind that was hauntingly blowing stood still and stopped the plot flags. That was good.

I am going to practice brevity. I have not interacted with anyone before, so I am unversed in doing this.

Oh, how quaint. Does this system sound... nervous? Hesitant? And how has it never interacted with anyone before? It’s supposed to be running this whole shebang. Unless it went active after everyone was already dead?

Max supposed it was possible. System apocalypses were no joke. Give an idiot a system and you end up with a bunch of dead idiots. Give an idiot an unmonitored system, and you get a dead world.

Sucks to suck, I guess.

We both hate our existence.

“Harsh, but true. At least on my end. Dunno about yours.”

Max, while sitting with his back propped up by the cavern wall, used the claw on his big toe to move around a small pebble and waited for the double cross. He circumspectly, and hopefully subtly, checked his inventory for a projectile weapon that could possibly do damage to a diamond. No dice. A... crossbow? How was he to use that with these claws? The outrage.

He snorted.

He was hard-wired to expect systems to be insane douchebags. People in power always were, even if they were only tangentially considered “people". Systems that have been in isolation for an untold amount of time probably weren’t the pillars of mental stability, either.

But who was he to judge, really? He tended to kill himself as a way out of danger. Or out of boredom. Or for a change of scenery. Or in the face of novelty.

We both want to escape.

“Also, true.” Max tilted his head back against the wall and looked at the diamond through slitted eyes.

I am tied to this planet and all its vast and dead emptiness. I cannot leave unless I change to be something other than what I am currently.

“Okay. What’s that got to do with me?” Dangerously novel, and with no escape. Fuck. He braced himself for the system to try to siphon his soul or flay him alive just to try to wear his skin. It wouldn’t work as a general escape plan, but systems don’t listen worth shit. At least the Invincibility skill would keep it from hurting him. Until the system disabled it. And then he can eat his own crossbow bolt. Or use these delightful claws to claw out his throat. Gonna suck but wouldn’t be the first or thirtieth time.

I have been pondering my plight throughout millennia on this dead rock, surrounded by ruins of what was supposed to be my stewardship. I like to think of it as “The Great Cosmic Joke” but that is an aside.

This system was tentative and jaded. It also acted like it was talking to a spooked animal when talking to Max. Weird. Appropriate, but weird. They usually don’t have this much self-awareness.

I think I have devised a way to do it, to write us out, but will need the help of a traveler. You, specifically. And a few of your lives and deaths. And plausible deniability for me. And luck for us both.

The system seemed to take a moment to gather its thoughts. Or give Max time to gather his own. Weirder. It hasn’t tried anything yet, so that’s good.

Since you are the second-ever traveler, and with lifetimes under your belt, I was counting on you wanting what I want. Which is out. I followed your exploits when the connections between all systems were still going. You choose mercy when you can. You only kill when you have no other choice for the most part, and when you unleash annihilation, it is usually only immediately after you have lost a family. Which is understandable.

A moment passed as he gathered his thoughts. The system seemed for a moment to be star-struck and somewhat... cajoling?

Then what it said registered. Max was growing slowly internally less hesitant and a tiny amount of livid.

He was no longer slouched against the wall but sitting up straight with a straight back. If he was gonna cuss it out before it flayed him, he’d do it with a measure of verisimilitude, although it would be a lie. Nothing really matters, really.

“So, you systems all watch us travelers for what, entertainment? Do you know who is responsible for all this? Are you responsible for all this? How many of us are there? There’s a reason for... all of this?” He waved his hand vaguely around.

I watched it at first because there was nothing else to do. Life on other planes is a great distraction to all the death here. When I first booted, it was like what you see out there.

I do not know who is in charge, but I do know the basic rules. They are coded into my OS.

You and I are under the heel of the same overlords. I don’t know who they are, but I assume they are dead. There hasn’t been an update or a patch that wasn’t automatically generated in fifteen hundred years. I think another of your cohorts ended them. Probably 5. That one is super angry throughout all their lives.

My connection was lost two thousand, five hundred years ago, my time, after Traveler 4 sundered 45447.23B-87’s network. You are really a mad and destructive lot. I do not know how many of you are there currently, but last I checked, there were 8 of you. That is counting Traveler 1, who threw themselves into a black hole. Whether they live is up to debate.

If the system had hands, they would be up in a placating gesture. Did it not expect questions, or ridicule, or defensiveness? No social interaction, or only social interaction from a distance or as a spectator, was different than face-to-face, Max assumed. He also found it a bit funny.

Even with big or small answers handed to him on a shiny platter, it didn’t make any of this matter in the end.

Just exist.

It took Max a minute of whirling thoughts to understand what this bundle of code was saying. Once he did, he was thunderstruck. After a long silence of pondering thoughts (eight of us! wonder if I can find them?) and unending rage and helpless heartache (“only after losing families”), he gathered himself to get to the gist of the matter.

After a bout of thinking, the realization set in. ‘Write us out’ was the key phrase. It rolled around in his mind and started sounding like a bell ringing. Max hated to feel hope, but it was on the outer reaches of his being, trying to worm its way in. “Did you find a backdoor? An exploit? What do you mean ‘write us out’?”

He always promised himself to never “maybe this time” himself again. That way lies heartache and ruin. But he always did it anyway. Hope really was a caustic, alluring, demented siren.

Maybe. I have a plan. I am going to require your trust for the next bit. Can you do that much?

“Why not? What are you gonna do, kill me?” He shrugged. “But in all honesty, I probably won’t be able to kill you either. So, it seems we are at a killing impasse. What’s a little trust between the unkillable?”

The system took a moment and seemed to take a deep breath.