Chapter 58:

When Alice's eyes opened, she was met with Titus's weary gaze. He had his hand rested on her shoulder, keeping her sitting against the wall several feet away from the door.

She looked up at him and asked, "You did it?"

"We did it," Titus said. "The AI seems to have launched. It did something?"

"Yeah, something," Alice said. "Did you understand the logs?" she asked, not sure how much she would have to explain.

"Logs?" Titus asked, cocking his head in a confused manner. "I didn't see any logs, just the maintenance system integrity prompt."

Alice swallowed. "It seems that the conflict isn't done. The AIs seem to be fighting each other, and I don't know what the outcome is going to be."

There was a moment of silence as they both thought about the implications of their actions.

"It was a smart move to overload the wand and create a slow field. How did you know that was going to happen?" Titus asked, changing the subject.

Alice looked over and saw the end of a volley of pilums hit the far wall, leaving shredded monsters in its wake and Tony running in slow motion towards them.

"I..." she said, breaking into a nervous chuckle before continuing, "I didn't. Glad it worked out, though."

Titus just shook his head with a slight laugh. "So, logs?"

"Yeah. It seems that the System thought it was under control but underestimated the AI somehow. And there's some sort of war going on as they try to shut down each other, and the new one grows. I don't know." She drew in a deep breath. "I don't know."

Alice paused, realizing she had no idea what was happening.

"This might not have been a good outcome," she said, a sense of dread creeping in. There were going to be a lot of consequences for this, and she had no real way of even knowing what they were.

"Do you know what the non-essential functionalities being terminated are?" Titus asked. The way he spoke held a note of reassurance but also a determination to move on and focus on the things they could control. This resonated with Alice and helped to focus on the problem at hand.

Alice frowned, but her trait, her title kicked in, and her innate understanding provided another window explaining what was happening. Alice's face paled.

"Not a lot of good things," she said slowly, reading through the list. "It appears that a lot of the non-essential functionality was the System holding back magic and monsters for us to be acclimatized. Shit!" Alice swore, and Titus raised his eyebrow.

"What?"

"I just had an epiphany about how this might have worked. Of course, this is just a theory, but I'm growing more confident in it. Still, I think what happened was the System changed reality at a fundamental level, making the monsters and magic accessible to us. And then there's a second sort of level where it limits them and gives us the System where it quantifies and everything," she said. "You can still pull up the menu. That's all good, but it says level zones are ending."

"So," Titus said, "Does that mean it just won't tell us what levels there are of monsters?"

Alice shook her head. "No. It means that monsters will no longer be confined to their level zones, so there's nothing to stop that level 45 ant queen from going into a starter area. And that's not good," she said, her voice tinged with worry.

"Yeah," Titus muttered.

"And then rank-up assistance was also ended." Alice continued.

"It was helping with our rank evolutions?" Titus asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Apparently, it would help make sure that the path was viable. And the most important thing is the tutorial is ending early."

"Fuck," Titus whispered.

"Yeah," Alice said, letting the importance of that sink in as she thought through the implications. "So people are going to be teleported all over the place, not having fully learned everything, not having leveled or gotten classes." She couldn't help but feel the weight of their ignorance.

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"We don't know," Titus said. "The tutorial could have been doing anything. We just don't know."

"That's true," Alice said. "I suppose it would have been odd for them to make it all the way to E-grade in the tutorial and get a class. But maybe they are getting instructions, basic levels, and knowledge about the System. That shouldn't be overlooked."

"We didn't have a tutorial," Titus reassured her. "They can figure it out."

"Maybe some of them," Alice said, "But we nearly died, and we have a lot of advantages that they didn't have."

"That's right, but they have had days to adjust. They aren't helpless." Titus said. "Okay. We do need to get out of here, though, because just because we accomplished something doesn't mean that the ants are going to go away. I know you had hoped they would, but that doesn't seem to be reality."

Alice nodded mutely. She had been naively, perhaps hoping that if this AI got in and took down the System, all the monsters would vanish, and time would be unwound. Or she'd wake up from a dream. She wasn't sure what she had hoped for exactly, but it appeared that they were only partially successful. It didn't remove the System, but did it remove the parts of the System that were actually helping them? Was the System really their enemy?

She had to say yes in some ways. But it wasn't in any category she had ever conceptualized enemies. So far, it seemed that the System was planning to help them. So, removing the System might only be a net negative.

That she was only really considering this possibility now, told Alice how much she'd been blinded by guilt, grief, rage—everything. Not that she had any way of verifying it, but... well, was she really doing this for anything besides revenge?

No, she decided, rejecting that possibility. There had been a very real chance, a small chance, that damaging the System could make things better. Not having it whisk people off to tutorials was probably good. Who knows what was going on there? Maybe just not having a single overlord and having two AI's fight each other, leaving the humans alone, was possible. But, of course, they could also be trampled underfoot.

Alice breathed out. There was so much uncertainty, so many things that she couldn't plan for, couldn't account for, so many unknown unknowns and known unknowns.

Alice looked at Titus. "We get out of here?"

Titus nodded. "Yes."

"And then?" she asked.

Titus gave her a roguish smile. "And then we get stronger. What else do we do?"

Alice nodded. Titus stood up, offering her a hand and pulling her to her feet. The slow field from her wand exploding was slowly vanishing, and she could see Tony speeding up as it savagely bit into the few semi-still-alive Sporelings that the pilums had only injured, killing them quickly.

Titus and Alice forced their way through. By the time they got to the stairs, the slow field was gone, and they could move normally. The building still shook occasionally from the clash of the Fungus King and the ant Queen, but they made it to the doorway with little problem. Looking out, they saw the fight was far from over but clearly tilting in the ants' favor. The massive hole that the Queen had bored into the chamber to join the fray had been replicated, the ants adjusting the configuration of their nest to allow their full weight of numbers to come to bear.

It explained what had happened earlier when the ants had only come in small numbers. Apparently, the rest had been making sure that their entire fighting force could get there. Now, instead of dozens of ants, every Fungus Sporeling had hundreds attached to it. Countless piles of dead ants littered the floor, but so did Sporelings.

Even as they watched from the door, waiting for an opening to make a break for it, Alice saw one of the last Sporelings tunnel through and explode into dozens of Sporelings, which were consumed within seconds as the ants ripped them apart and then carried pieces off deeper into the nest.

Alice realized the ants weren't even fighting anymore. Now they were hunting. The only one fighting was the Fungus King, the Queen, and an army of soldier ants at her back.

Alice looked to Titus, who handed her a vial of the pheromone liquid. She reapplied it gratefully, having completely forgotten about it. "Should we sneak out?"

Titus reached down and grabbed a bit of Sporeling chunk near the lobby where the fight had been and handed it to her. "Sure. Let's carry little pieces and follow the outflow. I'm sure that'll be less suspicious."

Alice took the fungus chunk. "Gross," she said as the slimy thing touched her finger. "This is probably not necessary."

"Maybe not," Titus said, picking up another one for himself. They jogged off, joining the quickly moving line of ants carrying away pieces of food deeper into the nest. They followed it for a while before the ants started to split off, getting the food to where it needed to be. Titus and Alice both dropped their pieces of fungus and wiped their hands on their clothes before following the flow of fresh air toward one of the exits.

"I still don't think I'll ever get used to ants like this," Titus said as he had to duck to get through one of the more narrow sections of the tunnel. Alice and Tony scrambled on ahead.

"Well, I don't think Tony's going anywhere," Alice said.

Titus looked down. "Hey, that little bastard's okay. It looks more like a tiger than an ant."

Alice smiled at Titus's adoption of her original joke. "Come on. I think I see daylight just ahead," she said.

Moments later, they stood halfway up the anthill on the side, looking down at a city filled with chaos.