By the time morning came, Albert was tired but still functioning. Meditating was not like sleeping but it wasn’t very tiring either, but it wasn’t like he could ever hope to sleep after having been transported to an elven village in a fantasy world.
The day was off to a great start though: what greeted him when he opened the door literally made his heart melt. A little hair of golden locks, crowning a small round face with a big smile and two huge blue eyes. The little kid waved hello, while the mother waited a bit farther away, outside the small fence that encircled what should have been a garden around the house, as to not disturb Albert, yet fully aware that her daughter had indeed gone beyond her ability to stop her.
Albert crouched and cooed. “Hi kiddo. What’s your name?”
“Elle.” The child said, stumbling over the letters. “My mom said that you are a strong warrior. Is that why you are so ugly?”
Albert almost lost the fragile balance he had on the tips of his shoes due to suppressed laughter. “Ugly?” He asked, faking indignation but without hiding the smile.
“Yes. You are very ugly. You must be very strong.” The child said, beaming the most pure and innocent of smiles.
“Yeah, well.” Albert said, not knowing how to continue. “I guess I am…” he paused. He was getting overwhelmed. “Now, I need to finish preparing for the big fight. It’s been nice to meet you, Elle. Go back to your mommy, okay?”
Elle nodded vigorously, and trotted back to her mother. Albert shut the door close behind him and threw himself against it, sliding to the floor. He could barely contain the erratic breathing patterns his body was forcing upon him.
It was not about the exchange with the kid, of course. But the rising panic was connected to what just happened intimately. Because, for the first time since he got here, Albert realized that this was not just a random system mission. This was not a simulated space where he could do whatever he wanted.
There were… Real stakes. Real fucking stakes. The system had just thrown him a gut punch with this kid. Shit. He couldn’t do it. He could not. Was there a button to quit? A way to abort mission? There must be one.
Breathe. Breathe.
[Mental Fortress II] -> [Mental Fortress III]
This was a panic attack. Breathe. His mind produced a long buried memory of a paper he came upon during one of his deep internet dives of procrastination. Cyclic sighing breathing patterns alleviate stress. Yes. He needed to kind of get his stress level back under control.
Breathe in. Breathe in again. And out, slowly, through the mouth.
Again.
Slowly the panic attack passed away, and he just rested on the floor and watched his mind work itself out. By the time he was ready to leave, the panic was nothing but a memory, one that filled Albert with determination. He could save these people, in fact he was their only hope at survival. He would do it, and he would give 110% of himself to the task.
The first thing to do was exploration. Elvenhome was situated right at the deep end of a valley nestled between five great mountains that completely cut the village off from the outside. Being at the deep end, there was only one direction he could go (unless he decided to climb the steep slopes of the snow-tipped peaks). He could see now why the elves were so desperate. There was nowhere else to go from here, and their only escape route was blocked off by the presence of the golem. Soon, he would also learn that even this escape route was nothing more than certain death.
Walking to the edge of the valley took a good five hours of trekking, traversing various terrains that ranged from forest to rolling hills to open plains. Always the mountain loomed at the edges of his vision, hinting at a larger world beyond their stony faces, but never showing it. Those little few times Albert managed to get a glimpse of the outside, like through a window of hazy air and mist, what he saw was not reassuring.
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Fog, dark and dense. Flat barren plains behind a shimmering veil of energy. Then the sight was gone, hidden by a tree or by a waterfall coming from the mountains as he kept walking towards the far end of the valley. There were clouds up high, coming from beyond the mountains, and at times they were black and heavy, but then as he looked at them they became white and snowy, light and fleeting. Was there magic at work? He couldn’t tell, not even with his [Perception].
Albert crouched. Something tingled at his senses from the glade ahead, a rare opening in the thick rainforest that paved a section of the valley green and climbed a up the slopes of the mountains before ending abruptly and leaving space for lichens and bushes to grow.
Tachyons, he realized, much like the particles he felt when he inspected the Pylon at the edge of the Exclusion Zone, yet at the same time different in their flavor. He had never thought that particles could actually have a taste, but here he was, convinced that these were not the same kind of tachyons based on flavor. There was also a familiarity to them, but the memory that came to his mind was not of the Pylon but of something inside the shields that hid the Exclusion Zone from the rest of the world.
The mental distraction of contemplating about particles proved to be problematic. A sudden sound sent all of Albert’s systems into overdrive, and immediately he activated [Bullet Time], to give himself time to react. He was right to do so. He turned around in five-times accelerated motion and was met with a stony appendage, gripping a blade of obsidian, descending through the air.
The hiss of the blade’s edge was a low bass with the time dilation, but it was still fast. Albert rolled out of the way, and ended up sprawled on his back on the moist dirt of the forest, with the blade cutting a deep gash in the earth in the space he occupied not a moment ago. The golem was fast, fast enough that by the time Albert’s eyes took in the gigantic construct behind the blade it was already moving towards him, tracking him with its small head, rotating its gargantuan body.
Trees exploded into splinters. Huge stony feet sunk inches deep into the damp earth. The golem loomed like a ten story solid building.
There was no time. And Albert was not prepared to fight. Gripping a mana crystal to replenish his reserves, he activated [Strengthening] and refreshed the effect of [Bullet Time], and took off in a mad run.
The golem gave chase, but Albert kept running. Being able to replenish his mana pool every hour or so meant that he had access to a huge stockpile of mana crystals to draw mana from, and could keep going for a long time. Eventually the golem relented, and disappeared. Albert didn’t know when it happened beyond the fact that it happened quickly, in the span of time between looking back once and seeing it and then looking back again and seeing only trees.
There was also another issue. All the running led him to the edge of the shielded valley, from where he could look upon the world beyond. He could see it clearly now, the threshold. The limit after which which no green thing grew, where the very air seemed toxic and noxious. He rested for a moment, catching his breath and letting the time dilation fade away. As he did so, his eyes scanned the horizon in search of anything that could capture his attention, and they happened to settle upon a great structure in the distance.
It called to him in the way something tickles your curiosity until you are unable to resist it.
The wastelands were wind-swept plains of red-brown dirt, dotted here and there by small hills and mounds of debris. The scrap that was scattered everywhere looked technological in nature, made of metal plates and the strange appendages of destroyed mechs. There were also craters, scattered containers and bomb shells, some unexploded. Albert walked carefully, checking time and time again that the steel ring on his finger was still protecting him from the harmful environment.
He could see that the air was toxic, and that radiation was no doubt strong enough to kill anyone in seconds by the way the shielding of his ring lit up all around his body in a glow. He quickly decided to abort his exploration mission, before the charge dissipated, but not before he managed to read the letters embossed on the side of what looked like a felled airship: HDF.
The environment loomed. It was no longer a simple walk in the park – a park made of toxic remains of a war long past – despite nothing having changed from a few seconds ago. Now, the knowledge that there was radiation all around, strong enough to cook Albert’s internal organs in a matter of seconds was all there was in his brain. His mind could not shake itself out of the idea that there was only a thin film of magic, one weak enough to be breached by a single punch, standing between Albert’s meat body and death invisible.
He found that he was running as fast as he could back towards the threshold, and he did not stop until he was on the other side of it. Heaving, he looked back at the edge between the lush vibrant life of the valley and the desolation all around. He wondered if all the planet was like this, and what kind of war must have caused such destruction.
Were humans really responsible for this? Did they really wage war against the elves? And, most importantly, were these humans from Earth, or were there other places where humans lived that he didn’t know?
Something didn’t sit quite right with him about all this. The technology didn’t add up. The destruction didn’t make sense. And the presence of the golem, which the system labeled as been made by the Pilgrims, was too suspicious. Was the golem already here at the time of the war, or did it arrive some time later? Why was it so hell-bent on destroying elves and humans alike?