Chapter 27 - Choose my Way
We didn’t have much to discuss after the bishop’s revelation. For one, I’d just been told I would be responsible for murdering… no “purging” innocent people, sick people, and that was something I was being asked to do because of the costume I’d been handed before this party.
It goes without saying that I was not entirely on board with this plan.
Even if I had the know-how or the strength, I didn’t think I was capable of doing what Kolash wanted. The idea of it slammed up against my conscience so hard, I could almost feel it physically.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. We are not going full murder-hobo. We are leaving. They can excommunicate me or something.
On the other hand, the supposed cause of the plague, the scourge-touched, were something with which I was intimately familiar, and if the goblins were to be believed, something I caused. Whatever I’d done back at the tutorial facility provoked them, and then I led them on a chase, one that got a lot of goblins killed.
I’d gotten Hunty killed.
Now, the scourge-touched were, presumably, still fixed on finding me, and people were being caught in the crossfire. The situation wasn’t fair to any of us.
I didn’t ask to be rebuilt and “inserted” into this universe, but here I was anyway. The people of Ralqir didn’t ask to have a human drop into their lives and kick off an extinction event.
The scourge-touched… well, they might have asked for this. They attacked me first, and I didn’t get the impression they were just upset I’d landed in their backyard. This was something else, something deeper.
A quiet but confident voice repeated the familiar accusation over and over again in my mind.
You did this.
Rationally, I knew it wasn’t necessarily true, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was responsible for the situation somehow. It didn’t matter what I’d intended or that I didn’t know what I was doing. People were suffering because of me, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
You did this.
It was too much. Much too much.
My spiraling thoughts must have been plain on my face, because Kolash detected that something was wrong almost immediately. He stood up and came around the desk to loom over me, his ameba pupils staring unblinking down into my own.
“Horp. May I be honest with you, Brother Ryan?” He asked.
I didn’t do anything to answer. I felt lost.
“Though this is a dark time for Eclipse, I find some glimmer of hope that the Light sent you in particular to us. I see the worry on your face and the conflict in your spirit. Perhaps you are not simply a weapon as I’d feared.”
That was true… or was it? Despite my misgivings, I was pushed into this situation and not given a choice, at least not one I was smart enough to see. Now, I was here, and Kolash had put me in front of what he thought was the only solution. I was being put in front of a nail and asked to hammer it, but was I a hammer? Did this particular nail need hammering? If I didn’t hammer this nail, would Ralqir collapse on its people?
I wasn’t this guy. I wasn’t a holy warrior sent by their god to purge the unclean. I was a dude wearing a stupid orange hat.
And maybe that’s a good thing. I’m not a trained killer. I need to think about the problem from the outside.
“I need time,” I rasped. My throat had gone dry. I cleared my throat and summoned a bit more strength to continue. “And I need information, any you can give.”
“If your methods require evaluation, you are free to do so. I will assign you a guide that will do whatever you require, and I am confident you will come to the same conclusion I have. Light knows I’ve looked for alternatives,” he said, pausing to let out a long, tired sigh that left him deflated, diminished. The bishop, the quintessential picture of authority and strength, aged in front of my eyes until I was looking at an almost completely different man than the one I’d met at the gate. “Perhaps it is selfish of me, but I feel some measure of comfort having someone else here to share the burden of this decision. My rank carries with it some implied divine wisdom, but I rarely come across a situation where the path is truly clear.”
I stared up into those ameba blotches of black that were his pupils. He was asking me something without actually asking, pleading. Maybe he didn’t want a purge either.
The bishop pressed the rest of a plate of food into my hands and gestured to the door. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, you can begin your work.”
—-------------------
Kolash guided me back down the hallway and to a set of stairs that led underground. As with most of the non-window parts of the building, the walls were worked and sanded wood and stone, broken at regular intervals by solid looking doors with little triangular slats at roughly head height.
They did love their triangles here.
My room was at the intersection of two hallways that met each other at an acute angle, with my door at the very corner.
Inside, the room was gray brick on three of the walls and the floor and lit by a glowing hemisphere of glass built into the ceiling, low enough to comfortably touch but not so low I’d hit my head. There was a wooden trunk with a latch and lock right next to a table and… a bed. When I saw it, I nearly tripped over my own feet, having to catch myself on the doorframe and forcing Kolash to pull up short.
“Borp. Oh! I know it’s not much, Brother, but I was given to believe the Order of the Dawn were ascetics. If you would like a different room, I could ask Yik’i’trix to-”
“No, it’s fine,” I chuckled darkly. “It’s just the first bed I’ve seen in a long while.”
“Oh,” the big man said, his mouth opening and closing a few times as he searched for something to say in response. He chose to sidestep the subject instead. “Well. Good night then, Brother Ryan, or ‘good morning’ would probably be more appropriate. I’ll have your guide meet you once you’ve had your rest.”
With that, he was gliding back down the hall, his long legs carrying him quickly to wherever bishops went to sleep.
I closed the door and engaged the slide lock.
Alone at last.
The bed creaked under my weight as I sat down on it holding my plate of sandwiches, but the structure held on. I popped a little morsel into my mouth, letting the greens crunch and the saltiness of the cheese play over my tongue.
I had decisions to make.
First and foremost, what was I going to do?
My goal ever since I’d arrived on Ralqir was to survive the tutorial and get back home.
It was my one and only goal, or maybe it was my ultimate goal, the last in a series of goals that would see me home to start living my new Exotic life.
Now, things were more complicated. My arrival here affected people, whether that was what I intended or not. There was violence and suffering that might not have been if I’d done things differently, and I wasn’t sure I could abide that.
If I stayed the course and focused on completing my tutorial, I might just be able to now. I had some money, a fair bit of magic, and a place to stay. With a little luck, I could probably leverage all of that to equip myself well enough to sneak back to my insertion point and be gone before anyone was the wiser. The plan had its dangers, but there was a nonzero chance I’d make it.
But, then again… I’d had the misfortune of seeing what the scourge-touched did to the Stone Hearts. They didn’t even have the good grace to be too simple to understand what they were doing. They weren’t animals. They knew what they were about. They enjoyed killing. They loved it, reveled in it, pursued the act of dealing death so single-mindedly they didn’t even value their own lives or their kin’s.
If I slipped out in the night, that would leave the people of Ralqir stuck with the consequences of what I’d set in motion.
The black ones were swarming across the mountain, the goblins were homeless and desperate, and the people of Eclipse, though I hadn’t gotten to know them yet, were probably the next domino to fall. They might not be the last.
My coming here changed things.
Whether it was my choice or not, my arrival was the first pebble of a rockslide. The disaster grew with every passing second.
If I left, would the rockslide settle? Maybe. Eventually.
Perhaps the more important question was:
What cost was I willing to pay for my ticket home?
Vince’s memory surfaced in my mind, how he’d died, the way he drew Barrow’s ire in a desperate play for time, how he couldn’t just let Barrow single out another one of his friends for murder.
Then there was Hunty. He died in my place too.
I already cost the multiverse two good lives. How do you square a debt like that? Can you ever?
*CRACK*
Status Gained: Bleeding [.08 HP/s]
Damnit.
I looked down at my shattered plate, the remaining pieces in my hand smeared red with my blood. I forced myself to let them fall and brought my hand up to my face to pluck a sliver of ceramic out of my palm. The bleeding debuff didn’t even last more than a couple heartbeats. Even now, I could see the skin welding itself together in real time.
I’d be costing the multiverse more than just two good people if I ran. That was… unacceptable.
If I stayed, I would eventually be found out. Of that much I was certain. I couldn’t keep the ruse going indefinitely, and I didn’t know how people would react to the deception or the knowledge that I wasn’t native to this universe.
I looked around at the walls of my new cell, how close they were. I eyed the solid door, wondering how easy it would be to lock me inside.
What if they reacted much like the goblins?
Perhaps I just needed to delay that moment as long as possible, long enough to fix what I’d broken. Then maybe I deserved that ticket home.
I nodded to myself, slowly at first then with more confidence.
I’m one of the System’s fucking Chosen. It’s time to earn that title.
Yes, I was staying to fix things. No one else was dying for me. No one.
Not. Even. One.
Starting my journey to cleaning up my mess, I started small. I bent down to pick up the pieces of ceramic plate off the stone floor, eying the rest of the little sandwiches among the shards of the broken plate.
Well, it would be a waste if you didn’t…
It wasn’t my proudest moment, but I dusted them off and shoved them all in my mouth. Man, were they good. Compliments to the chef.
With my new goal in mind, I was ready to make my other decision, one I’d been putting off for a while.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Main class ability: Shape is now level 5!
Based on current skills and affinities, you have 5 upgrade paths available.
Transmute
Remote Shaping
Duplicate
Enchant
I’d gotten this prompt back in my cell an unknown number of days ago, shortly before the black ones flooded into the cave to become my new neighbors. I hadn’t known what to do then, when my goal was simple survival and escape. Now, though, I had a new perspective.
Transmute: Shape may now convert one type of matter with which you have an affinity into another. The strength of both affinities will dictate the cost of conversion.
Remote Shaping: Shape may now be used at a distance [1 meter/S, where S is the value of Spirit over 10]
Duplicate: Shape may now copy any Shaped material within range, given proper material and mana are available. Mana cost is slightly reduced, and Shape speed moderately is increased.
Enchant: Shape may now imbue your creations with limited intelligence, allowing them to perform certain tasks that require some level of logic and decision making. Complexity and cost of intelligence is affected by the Mind attribute. Mana required to power Enchantment provided by user and is conditional upon its complexity.
For a long time, I was stuck on this decision. All of it seemed useful in the short term with Duplicate and Remote Shaping making my short list.
When I was making the ammo for my pistol, I’d thought about how Duplicate would save time and energy when making a bunch of the same thing, and it was a tempting option. The way I fought right now depended heavily on preparation, and if it could cut down on my prep time, I’d be able to do more.
Remote Shaping leaned into my high Spirit attribute, and, assuming I could get my affinities up in the future, I would have a chance to be Magneto. Who didn’t want to be Magneto?
I didn’t need to take Enchant. I was sure of that one. My ammo worms could already do what the System was describing, and they didn’t need to make any decisions to…
Wait, exactly how does my ammo do what it does? How do they navigate?
Every obstacle they encountered and step they took, while I took them for granted, were actually decisions they were making on their own, without the use of something like Enchant. How?
The question set off a chain of explosions in my mind. Imbue specifically said I imparted a small fraction of my will to my automatons. That made some sense, but how did my ammo find their way back to me? They didn’t have eyes or nerves or even the equipment needed to develop a sense. If they were truly thinking on their own, they had no way to do what they did.
There was something I was missing, a piece of the puzzle I couldn’t see, but it was integral to the whole design. Magical dark matter. My method worked though, and, so far, worked without fail.
If I was imparting some of my will when I Automated things, that took out a whole lot of leg work normal programmers had to do to get their stuff working. What if… Holy shit. What if I automated more than just my ammo? I could make a smart gun. I could make a smart gun with smart ammo. Hell, with some trial and error I could probably make smart ammo that made more smart ammo. Swarms of it. Giants mechs. Magical nanobots.
I blinked. Wow, I needed sleep.
More than that, I needed time, materials, and somewhere to experiment like right now.
If only I wasn’t impersonating an assassin monk.
If only I wasn’t being asked to murder a bunch of people because I was impersonating an assassin monk.
If only I wasn’t on the run from the black ones… and probably Jassin.That one’s probably for the best. No need to be examined by magical academics.
Okay. Breathe.
I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, searching for calm. I missed my workshop. Pity that Barrow’s people burned it down, and even the ashes were a universe away.
Still have a choice to make.
Transmute was at the bottom of the list for a long time, ever since I saw it. My mind had been consumed with acquiring iron and shaping it into equipment at the time, so it made sense. I had zero strong affinities, and I got the impression converting something like limestone into magnesium would be so prohibitively expensive, my mana pool would bottom out maybe a second into the process. I had Engine to alleviate that, but I would pretty much be giving myself a migraine over and over and over again for minimal gain.
However, Consume and Engine were absolute game changers here. The more I Consumed of something, the higher my affinity for said something climbed. Eventually, I had to stop focusing on my immediate situation and start playing the long game. I was going to get more affinities, and I was going to grow them over time.
If I were to take Transmute, I could conceivably… literally… turn lead into gold, given I lived that long.
Wait for Ms. Right or settle for Ms. Right Now?
Class ability: Shape upgraded! (Transmute)
Immediate decisions made, I brought up my sheet to get the full picture of my status.
Ryan Kotes - Level 9 Animator (Uncommon)
Type: Artificer (Common)
Core: Engine (Unique)
HP: 115/115
MP: 75/75
Attributes:
Body: 24
Mind: 21
Spirit: 33
Free attribute points: 0
Abilities
Shape 5 (Transmute)
Consume 4
Iron Grip 3
Devouring Grasp 4
Volatility 3
Imbue 2
Trigger 3
Automate 2
Skills
Climbing 6
Unarmed Combat 1
Running 1
Stealth 5 (+)
Conduit 3
Split Mind 6
Spear 4
Deception 4
Affinities:
Goblinoid F
Iron F
Magnesium F
Mendau Wood D
Limestone E
I wanted to lie down, but planets don’t just save themselves.
So much to do. I should stay up and do… something.
The weariness was creeping up on me fast, but this was the first moment in a long time where I was alone and relatively safe. My belly was full, and I had a door between me and the world. That temporarily covered like… half(?)... of my physical needs? I’d been working with less for a long time.
I rose from the bed. The bed was dangerous. Its siren song would lure me to my doom.
No, I was doing this on the floor. I sat down and crossed my legs, summoning items from my spatial storage.
I’d collected a variety of materials to play with here, but not all of them were feasible to work with tonight… or this morning, rather. Much of my pure iron was already Shaped into my pistol and my ammo worms. I couldn’t work with those right now, considering I was in a confined space, and all the best gunfire had the tendency to attract attention.
Melee weapons weren’t out of the question, but I kind of had some of those already courtesy of the goblin ambushers. They were small but wicked things, but I could probably use them in a pinch, when my firearm wasn’t the right tool for the job. Mr. Grippy would always be at my side too.
I shook my head. I was rationalizing a choice I’d already made. I wanted to tinker, to experiment. I just needed to accept that and get the hell on with it.
The black ones were legion, and I was just me. It was time to even those odds.
Despite lacking eyes, my ammo can find me. I tell it to do something, and it does. Let’s play with that. Smartgun? Smartgun.
One look at the amount of metal I had on me told me that I didn’t have enough to make or test anything big. This was going to be a proof of concept more than anything else. Smaller portions of metal meant less time and mana Shaping.
I got to work.
Shape [4 MP/s]
My first victims were five of the goblin hatchets. They were made of something called ‘baptized bronze’ which, as a pleasant surprise, was more than willing to accept mana and do what I wanted. It wasn’t a fast thing, but I was practically flying through the Shaping process compared to what I could do with vanilla iron. First, I expanded the holes in the axheads to remove their wooden shafts. I’d need those to keep the mana flowing.
Status Gained: Engine [3 MP/s for 1 hour]
You gain knowledge of material: Mendau Wood [12/1,250]
Next, I went to work hollowing out tubes just like I’d done with my pistol, but this time, I’d scaled them down. I wasn’t trying to build a fully functioning firearm in a church basement. I just needed to know the limits of my… whatever it was.
How far could I stretch this?
I made a base for the construct, a simple half-dome that fit in the palm of my hand with a couple Trigger areas where I could feed mana and make my new contraption do things.
Mounting the barrel on top was fairly simple, just a hole that fit a melded pillar of bronze with just enough room to turn easily and a ball joint for more range of motion. Additionally, I put a tiny nub of iron on the tip of the barrel and designated it the sight.
The idea would be to get my smartgun to turn so that that sight would be as close to the chosen target as possible and keep it there until told otherwise. Simple in theory, but getting my smartgun to adjust its aim was a little more difficult than I’d anticipated. At first I tried gears that would turn to adjust the horizontal position of the barrel, but that required a lot of time consuming Shaping to pull off. I was confident I could do it, but that would be a project and a half.
Instead, I went with what I knew. I gave the base of the barrel and the back of the firing chamber a set of Automated, multi-jointed ‘legs’ that, again theoretically, would adjust themselves to point the barrel in the right direction.
As a safety measure, I only allowed the barrel to adjust itself by about sixty degrees in any direction, reducing the odds of my shooting my eye out.
The end product was, in a word, ugly. It looked like two mutant spiders using a cannon for a see-saw, but if it worked, I would call the night a success. This was more about pushing Automate beyond what I’d done before.
The final piece, a wafer thin plate of bronze, the ‘smart’ part of my smartgun, I inserted into the base of the barrel housing where all the component parts would have at least some contact with it. I spent an entire pool of mana (and some change) Automating it.
When you are Triggered, feed mana into the aiming arms. Bring the sight as close to your target as possible. Feed a small burst of mana into the firing Trigger. Repeat.
The process took it out of me and hurt my head, but it was worth it.
The System agreed.
Automate is now level 3.
With everything in their general place, I went about Shape welding the pieces together, connecting the legs and firing mechanism to the brain housing and placing Triggers where mana could be fed into the different Automated bits to activate and deactivate them.
“Okay, here we go,” I breathed, picking up the construct and eyeballing all the components. The base sat comfortably on my hand, heavy but not so much that 24 body couldn’t hold it steady.
Getting up, I set the remains of my sandwich plate in the corner of the room as a make-shift target. I eyeballed it, shifting my palm so that the smartgun was pointed slightly off to the right, and it would need to make an adjustment to fulfill its programming.
Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I prepared myself for anything. Then, I reached up and fed mana into the base’s Trigger.
Silence. Stillness.
Nothing happened. Not a damned thing.
Aw come one. What the hell?
I Shaped it again, diving into the component parts and checking for what went wrong.
Everything that needed to move was getting mana. Nothing was stuck on anything else. The brain was humming, the legs were tensed and awaiting instructions. Why were they just-
Oh. I’m an idiot.
I’d not designated a target…I just gave it a general idea of ‘targets’ when I’d Automated it. Maybe I needed to be more specific, perhaps keeping possible targets in mind when creating the instructions? Furthermore, I also did not give myself a way to designate a target after full assembly. Holy hell was I tired.
One more ax shaft Consumed and a full pool of mana later, I was one migraine richer, and I was down to just hoping to see something happen. I was starting to fall asleep on my feet, and I knew I was making mistakes. I just… couldn’t drop it.
When you are Triggered, feed mana into the aiming arms. Bring the sight as close to the ceramic target as possible. Feed a small burst of mana into the firing Trigger. Repeat.
Shape [4 MP/s]
Brain housing sealed once more, I fed mana into the activation trigger.
What happened was fast. The construct jerked itself to the side so suddenly, it nearly lept off of my palm. My reflexes weren’t fast after an entire, sleepless night blasting mana into delicate machinery, so I didn’t catch it. It toppled from my hand even as the programming took control.
*THAP* *THAP* *THAP* *THAP* *THAP*
Tiny balls of bronze, fired at a rate of approximately three per second, pelted the ceramic plate in the corner. The first hit it dead center, shattering the plate into three pieces, one of which, by some fluke of physics, flew up and into the air. The followup shots from the smartgun, four of them, chased that particular piece, stippling miniature gunfire over the target, blasting it into smaller and smaller pieces.
Bronze BBs and ceramic shrapnel hurled themselves around the room, pinging off hard surfaces and raking my skin, a storm of stinging debris. All I could do was cover my face and let it happen.
Out of ammo but still trying to fire, my smartgun hit the ground barrel first and bounced, its brain telling it to destroy all the ceramics in the room but without being properly upright, all it could do was flop on the floor like a fish. It clanked and clattered on the floor, its barrel snapping between the scattered pieces of plate that now littered my floor.
I brought my arms down and checked myself over. There was blood on my chest, but the wound had already closed.
Thanks, System.
Otherwise I was fine.
I bent down and carefully snatched the little murder machine up, then fed mana into the ‘off’ Trigger.
Now that I thought about it, there really was no reason to give the smartgun actual ammo for the test. That was dumb.
Still. Success!... sort of.
Regardless, I considered my time well spent. Again, the System seemed to agree.
You have created: Toy Auto-Turret.
You have been awarded 550 experience points. [650 base, -100 quality]
Huh. Auto-Turret. Sure, I guess you could call it that. Actually, yes, the System’s right on this one. I just made a tiny turret. Go, me.
I was exhausted, physically and mentally. Clustered ideas ground against each other in my head, abstract, delirious, wild, exciting, terrifying. My head felt like it was an egg, and a terrifying, roided up, baby chick wearing a red bandana was about to burst forth from my skull.
I laid down on the bed for just a moment and closed my eyes. This was nice. I could stay here for a few minutes… until the migraine passed anyway.
Despite my feverish desire for progress and downright giddiness to get started on another project, the softness of the bed got the better of me in less than a minute.
I dreamed of a rocky beach next to a black ocean.
In front of me was a scattered pile of driftwood, perhaps the shattered remnants of a once impressive ship or maybe an old hut. It didn’t matter. I just needed to leave and soon. I lashed the disparate pieces together with what little rope I could find in hopes of making a raft, but no matter what design I tried, I kept coming up with door frames. On the horizon, through the haze of humid ocean air, a great wall of water was rushing closer by the second.