Chapter 92
Ben ran a hand through his luscious blond locks. His hair kept growing faster since he selected his Body Path. At some point, he would master the quirk, but for now, he just got frequent haircuts. There were only two weeks left of the tutorial. Then it would be day 30, and they would release the survivors into the outside world.
Released as servants of the Crimson Armada.
The woman at his side sighed and leaned against him. He didn’t know her name or care. Ever since he reached level 20 such sycophants surrounded him constantly.
It was only appropriate.
“Do you think they’ll place us at the same outpost?” she asked him with a flutter of her eyelashes.
He couldn’t help but focus on the slight asymmetry of her face. With a few hours and a knife, he could have made her perfect. Alas, how times change.
“I hope so,” he replied charmingly.
She tittered and said something inane. It was strange that this woman — who was stronger than any human before her — could be so utterly dull. They turned back to the screens that captured everyone’s attention. The large room was like a cinema, though spread out, and organic in a way he couldn’t define or enjoy. People packed the stands, the hallways between the chairs, all watching the descent of the polyps and the establishment of the outposts.
Once free of the tutorial — Ben shivered with anticipation — their first duty was to claim these outposts in the name of Rue’s cohort. He rubbed at his neck as he recalled that feeling of overwhelming domination. Such cold power. So merciless. Another shiver raced down his spine as he hooked his arm around the woman at his side.
“Why don’t we go somewhere more private?” he whispered into her ear.
He grinned as she tittered and nodded and led him away. It might be dull, now that he had a position in the vanguard of the warriors, with Mr Biggs backing him, and his own power securing his placement, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy himself.
Really, it was a perfect reason to enjoy himself. The conversation might be empty, and her face asymmetrical, but at least she was strong.
Another tingle around his throat.
Maybe he would ask her to choke him…
###
How does one celebrate freedom? Even more simply, how does one acknowledge the lack of shackles? Shackles of the mind, of the body, of reality?
Zoe fell to her knees in the snow and wept. It hit her again and again like the hammer of the smith. She was out!
Oriz lay beside her, as though asleep. No longer bleeding rainbow from her pores, merely slumped in repose, her chest rising, gently falling. Zoe spared only a moment to sweep her eyes over with concern before the jubilation of her friends distracted her.
Bella screamed obscenities at the swirling heavens of green and blue and pink. Her sword outstretched like an exclamation point as she yelled herself hoarse. She shook the blade as though she were ready to stab the heavens and bathe in the bloody rain.
A feeling Zoe understood with every fiber of her being. And Anton…
Anton stared down at his empty hands with mute shock.
With betrayal.
“They… they took my pies!”
Zoe blinked, and laughed, rolling in the crisp snow as her sides ached from laughter. But not just laughter… she was hungry. So hungry it hurt. She frowned in the snow, that didn’t make sense… they had all just been eating a feast. The taste of mirrordile steak slipped down her throat, melting like sugar, but did it ever reach her stomach?
Or just her mind?
“The food wasn’t real,” Anton said bitterly. “None of the food we ate was real!”
Rage contorted his face as he bent and reached into the snow. He pulled out a rock the size of a bowling ball and hurled it at the cliff face behind them. The rock raced through the air and shattered against the large pattern of mirrored pieces without causing the slightest damage.
“You feel better?” Zoe asked.
Anton shoved his hands into his pockets.
“I’m hungry,” he grumbled as his poker face slid back into place.
His short-sleeved shirt — the pattern stained and faded — was not suitable for the cold weather, and neither were the tattered remains of Bella’s shirt and jeans. Zoe felt comfortable in her fishskin suit and with her enhanced Vitality…
“Are either of you cold?”
“No,” Anton frowned at the question with the simplicity of someone who never left the desert.
Bella grinned and ran her hands through the snow.
“Maybe it’s a little chilly? If I squeeze the snow, that is. But I think we’re fine. Wow, who knew leveling up would have actual, real-life benefits?”
They all laughed, and it felt good. Better than anything Zoe remembered feeling since that morning with the empty safe and the crashing down of her world…
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[Congratulations on exiting the Mirror Bell dungeon]
[Bonus Points are withheld during a dungeon]
[Awarding bonus points]
Now, Zoe felt the cold. It ran down her skull, down her spine, tingling and trickling like a cracked egg. She shivered.
[20 bonus points awarded]
Zoe grinned. With this, she could shore up some of her imbalances.
“Well, that’s a pleasant surprise,” she said. “I almost forgot about…”
The system was not done whispering.
[Completing Title: Fools Rush In…]
[Title Complete: Fools Rush In Where Angels Fear To Tread]
[Hard work begets hard work. Suffering begets suffering. A choice begets choices. Know that the path you walk down will never — can never — end. Even death is but a fork in the road]
[For your efforts, for your bravery, for your foolishness, we grant you the greatest gift of all: a second chance]
[Each person with the Title has gained a Limited Time Loop. You have 12 charges of 5 Earth minutes. Upon activation, you will travel 5 minutes back in time with knowledge retained of the future. These charges cannot be replenished]
[Congratulations, Zoe, Bella, Anton, and Joel!]
Silence drifted across the hilltop like flakes of heavy snow. They had just been granted a godlike power, but Zoe only felt emptiness.
“So…” Bella broke the silence. “Joel’s alive. Does that mean… Cassy?”
Anton shook his head.
“We all saw her die… and I saw her again in the lake when I was scouting,” he flinched at the intensity of Zoe’s stare. “She was just watching me, taunting me, I don’t know what she wanted or what she planned…”
“Well, we know they’re out now. Somewhere out in this forest planning who knows what.”
Anton nodded.
“And Joel, at least, has the time loop ability.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t use it for evil,” Bella tried to laugh, tried to make a joke of things, but the icy wind blew away any humor. She sighed. “What… what are they? Exactly?”
Zoe shrugged.
“Sometimes, when I’m incorporating, I get a prompt to quit. To reject the system. I think they’re what happens when you do.”
“But what are they?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
Her chain coiled around her arm. She had almost forgotten the ghostly metal, the way it sunk into her flesh as though almost a tattoo, almost a shadow, almost a forgotten memory — until it spoke.
[Ding!]
[They aren’t friends!]
Zoe smiled.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Bella frowned.
“Said what?”
“Oh?” Zoe raised an eyebrow. “You can’t hear that?”
Anton shook his head.
“You going crazy, boss? Crazier than this crazy world, I mean?”
Zoe tapped the chain.
“It seems the Black Star system has lingered beyond the incursion. So if you hear me muttering to myself… I’m not crazy, just talking to the voice in my head.”
“Sure thing,” Bella gave her an annoyingly exaggerated wink.
Zoe returned her grin, bent down, and scooped up some snow. With her enhanced Might, the snowball sped like a bullet and caned Bella in the head. The grinning blonde woman spun off her feet and into a snowdrift.
She groaned, but before Zoe could feel any remorse, several snowballs shot out toward her and Anton.
Anton dodged with effortless grace, bent down, and scooped up a ball himself. A smile broke through his poker face, and then the free for all began.
###
They lay on their backs, inside the imprints of angels, three fools on the outside of a dungeon, underneath a roiling sky.
“So, what’s the plan, boss?” Bella said with a yawn.
What time was it? Hard to say. The only sign was the countdown for the Gambler’s next show.
[Countdown for Magnifying Glass appearance: 1 day, 23 hours, 46 minutes]
Just under two days until he dragged them back into his hell. What should they do until then?
Her stomach rumbled.
“I’m starving,” she said.
“We all are,” said Anton.
Zoe stood, brushed off the snow, and gazed off the edge of the hillside. Pines stretched out away from them for a dozen or so miles before they ended abruptly in a glistening green sky. That would be the edge of the island. From this position, it appeared the hill was near the center and the woods surrounded it, but not entirely.
A town occupied a full third of the island. It had seemed smaller when they first crashed the plane, but Zoe supposed that could have been because of the lack of light. If all the electricity around the world died, then it made sense the town was powerless when they landed. She wondered where the town came from. Was it an island from the Pacific ripped up into the sky, or did it come from elsewhere?
She supposed there was only one way to find out.
“So, food,” she said to get everyone’s attention. “Instead of camping in the woods, building a stick fort, and hunting squirrels, I think we should go toward the town.”
Anton snorted.
“Obviously.”
“What about the monsters in the woods?” Bella asked.
There was no fear in her voice, only concern. She tapped her runeblade against her cheek and watched the trees as though listening to something.
“The giant praying mantis chased us into the dungeon the first time…”
Zoe shuddered at the memory. She did not know how powerful that thing had been — not compared to everything she had faced since — but back then it could have torn her in half like tissue paper. She didn’t want to…
No.
She looked down at her hands. They were still. Open. Unclenched. She smiled.
The snow-coated pines held shadows and secrets within. All manner of beasts might lurk, might wait, ready to tear her limb from limb. But she was not who she once was. Not a little girl. Not quite a mortal being.
She clenched her fist and felt a thrill of Skein rush through her.
There was power in her body, enough power to defy the monsters in the woods, to defy the gods in the sky. Maybe, with luck and determination, she would have enough power to defy the System itself.
Something whispered at the back of those thoughts, an echo of an echo, not displeasure, not approval, merely acknowledgment. She grinned.
“I don’t care if you’re watching and listening you bastards, I’m coming for you, so either strike me down or get ready to die.”
A slight wind howled across the rocky hilltop and blew up a flurry of snow. Then the wind passed. Zoe hoisted Oriz over her shoulders and took her first steps toward the town below them. Her first steps toward the future of her choosing.
And her friends followed.
###
STATUS
Name: Zoe Chambers
Level: 28
Body: The Bell At The Center Of The World (Rank 2, Progress 8/10)
ATTRIBUTES
Might: 79 (+6)
Vitality: 32
Dexterity: 25 (+1)
Willpower: 78 (+6)
Insight: 33 (+1)
Skein: 246/246 (+14)
Chains: 1
Free Points: 26
Titles: Intrepid, Lodestone, Fools Rush In (12/12), Quest Breaker, Glutton, True Believer, The Magnifying Glass
Techniques: Our Hearts Toll As One, The Self Reflects The World, Mind’s Eye Incision
Rue looked over Zoe’s stats again. Not bad for only a couple of weeks in the system. Already her techniques were creating an unusual build, something between a surgeon and a spymaster. He was excited to see what she would do next.
She said she was coming for him, and he welcomed her challenge. The road to his level was grueling, but he did not doubt her.
In his mind, she had already earned a place in the upcoming tournament of champions, but did she have what it took to grant him a glorious death? Or would she be just one more mess of blood frozen between the stars?
He sat alone in his dark chamber and smiled. For the first time in centuries, true bloodlust stirred his heart. He could hardly wait for her to grow.
End of Book 1 of Endless Apocalypse