Arthur stared blankly out of the mothership’s bridge viewing window at the battle that was being commenced an incredible distance away from him. The ships had been moving further and further away from Earth ever since the battle began, yet even though the ship was hundreds of thousands of kilometres away from Earth – the battle looked as though it were happening right before his very eyes it was that eye-catching.
He’d spent the last few weeks in a myriad of different places across the world, fighting with a broad array of uber-mighty world bosses and yet the titan that had emerged from the Earth’s core and its power almost defied description. Arthur had grown a considerable respect for the Imperium’s general due to the man’s clear strength and intellect, but even so, the man’s power was probably only about 10% of the giant snake’s own so far as he could tell.
However, the general had not been ignorant of the possibility that the snake’s power would dwarf his own and had prepared long and hard. An unimaginable quantity of poison had been secured, stored, and enhanced before it had been forcibly infused with the world core – a poison fruit trap prepared for the world eater. Though no one, including the general himself, had been certain about whether or not the poison would be effective, anything and everything that could potentially weaken and harm the monster had to be employed and tested otherwise the chance of victory would have been almost certainly zero.
Looking at the fight between the two giant figures reminded Arthur of the first day the system had arrived and how his entire world had been destroyed in mere hours. How everything that he’d cherished was taken away from him. Most of all, the universe-shattering fight reminded him of when he’d somehow defeated the Vicious Wolf Alpha by using an acidic pipe cleaner bottle to burn its mouth, allowing him the opportunity to kill the monster that in all other respects than intelligence he was inferior to.
Since then, he had become one of, if not the, strongest Earthling known to the Imperium. He’d reached a level of personal power that would have been unthinkable for anyone to achieve prior to the system, and impossible for most to achieve even now that they possessed the system themselves. Arthur had slayed mythical monsters in mere hours, ascended the realms of cultivation in a few weeks to a level that usually took years of practice to achieve, and acquired such a large number of system coins that he’d needed to increase his Coin Pouch perk to the second tier to just about store them all.
Yet, Arthur didn’t feel half as accomplished or hopeful as he had back then. For though he now had something approximating great power, his grandson was barely clinging to life, his home planet was now nothing more than space debris, and most of the people he’d cared about in his life were gone forever – with even their graves having now likely been consumed by the world serpent. The only thing that Arthur could think about was a single question. What, if anything, did he even have left after everything that had happened?
The only thing that he could think of was his dream and his last remaining grandson. The dream that he would soon return to the only life that he’d ever really known. To the profession that had matured him into the man that he was and that had provided him with a foundation for how to live his life so as to help and serve the needs of others. More than anything else in the early stages of the apocalypse, he had leant on this dream of his to keep his mind stable and focused – always trying not to jeopardise the integrity that he’d carefully cultivated over decades of life, after serving dozens of masters.
Yet in recent weeks his dream had not been enough to keep him going. The pressure of everything just proved too much to bear with only the cheap fuel of a dream and so it had taken him truly thinking of Lucas' future to keep him sane and focused on his various tasks. The boy was clinging on to his life despite all the pain he had gone through, and even though Arthur could not bear to look at the boy writhing in agony without tearing up in despair and misery, his grandson’s desperation to stay alive was one of the few things recently that demanded that Arthur not give up hope. To remain strong for his grandson’s sake.
Yet, as the battle between man and god-beast raged on, Arthur started to doubt whether the general’s dirty tactics would be enough to bring down the world serpent, and thus his strength of conviction wavered. No matter how many hundreds of gallons of poisonous purple fluid the serpent greedily gulped down its chasmic gullet, its speed never slowed, and its attacks never hinted at relenting – as if it were completely unaffected by both the poison and the general’s continuous sword slashes. It was obvious to Arthur that the general would eventually run out of stamina, and the battle would thus conclude in tragedy.
Then, Arthur saw something extremely alarming. The planets of the solar system were all moving in a singular direction at a rapid speed – reality visibly warped around them as they hurtled towards the direction of where Earth had been and where a giant man fought with a giant snake. Arthur blinked twice in disbelief as he observed the goings on of space all around him for he just could not believe what it was that he was seeing.
Celestial bodies, literal planets, were moving as though they were mere pebbles being thrown in a particular direction by a mischievous child. Arthur could only stare in awe as the general soon began to glow with a resplendent golden light that momentarily outshone the sun in intensity, before dying down and as the light died down it revealed that the general had swiftly undergone some kind of metamorphosis changing his body's look completely.
His once red-ish skin had become almost the exact embodiment of the night sky with star-esque spots of light covering a pitch-black body. His eyes had become dense blue stars that burned with an otherworldly intensity, and his body seemed to the naked eye to house galaxies within, and if the look of the general alone did not project power the magical power he exuded was so dense that it seemed to thrum with the unquantifiable mass of the universe itself.
Space time visibly warmed around the Imperium's mighty general, and instantly Arthur knew he was the cause of the planet’s rapid movement, and an obvious leap of logic gave him a hint of what was going to happen next. He almost dropped to his knees as he imagined what was to come.
He’d heard only a scant few words from Oliver about what the multiverse called Astral Magic. This particular school of magic was wisely practiced and true practitioners were scarce. As to master Astral Magic was to master the magical energy that held together the multiverse itself and thus achieve the kind of power lesser men claimed was exclusive to the gods alone. And few nations, no matter how irresponsibly run, wished for the average person to know even the basics of this particular school of magic. For obvious reasons.
Mars was the first planet to collide with the goliath snake, its full planetary mass hurtling into the giant serpent’s scaled body with such force that the enormous planet-sized entity was sent hurtling thousands of kilometres away at impressive speed. At the point where it had been directly hit, a ginormous crack in the serpent’s scales had formed – a break in its monstrous armour that General Maximus instantly surged forward to exploit with the blade of his monumental sword.
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The serpent dodged the attack and lunged for the red planet that now sported a great crater where it had impacted the serpent, but the monster was set off course when thousands of asteroids pelted its head like godly javelins. The monster tried to devour the assailing rocks, but they were moving too quickly and too evasively – presumably because they were being controlled by Maximus from afar.
The general used the giant rocks to perform hit-and-run attacks on the ginormous snake, preventing it from getting close enough to chow on any of his planetary projectiles. It was clear that Maximus did not want Jörmungandr to eat another planet, and Arthur could only shiver as he anticipated the reason why. However, if his theory was right, then the general’s use of astral magic here was as risky as it was impressive to look at.
For if Jörmungandr somehow managed to consume one of the solar system’s planets that were now being flung directly at it, then Arthur could only guess what kind of power the beast would acquire as a world eater if it was already this powerful after eating only a single planet's core. In other words, the general was staking everything on his skill with astral magic and the beast being dumb enough not to figure out his plan, and though Arthur wished otherwise, he couldn’t help but fear that the man’s power and skill would not be enough.
“Mr Goodman!” A frantic female voice shouted out from behind him, breaking him out of his thoughts.
“Yes, Madame Corporal. What is it?” He replied, turning to face the woman whose face was the picture of horror and alarm.
She looked at him and said, “The girl… she… died in my arms. I’m so sorry.”
Arthur froze for a moment. He’d almost forgotten about Annabelle and Steven since the battle began but he remembered that the Corporal had been assigned to look after the sister by the general during his time off hunting world bosses.
Even though the girl had not been his grandchild, her loss still came as a shocking loss to him, another in a long string of them in a not-so-long period of time. Due to this experience, he endured the emotional turmoil brewing in his chest with stoic resilience, and asked sadly, “What happened to her? And what of her brother? Is the boy alright?”
“The monster’s roar was laced with chaotic magic. The ship’s magical wards prevented most of the energy from seeping through, but due to the fact that under level 15s are rare in the Imperium – the amount of chaotic energy the wards let in proved too much for the girl and…” The corporal replied, clearly a bit shaken up.
“The boy? Steven, is he alright?” Arthur asked again, hoping desperately that the boy was fine even though he knew he would be broken upon hearing the news of his sister’s demise. Arthur only hoped he’d be able to comfort the boy, but the loss of his sibling was going to absolutely crush the boy’s already weak self-esteem.
“He is alive, though my men say he is despondent and delirious.” She said, her voice trembling somewhat.
Arthur only nodded in grim acceptance, before he took one last look at the battle scene playing out behind him and shook his head. Watching the fight and stewing in his fears would not be productive, and right now the boy needed him, and Arthur intended to be there for him during this tough time. God knows he understood the pain the boy was undoubtedly feeling right now. With the battle no longer being his top priority, Arthur asked the Corporeal to guide him to wherever they'd taken the boy.
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Steven sat on an infirmary bed yet he felt nothing.
Not the mattress. Not the damn nurse's hand administering his checkup. Not even his own blasted weight. The blood-soaked world he lived in had well and truly faded into the background and all he heard, saw, and felt was pain.
He heard her voice ringing out in his head. He saw her face flash in his mind over and over again. And he felt her death with his very own heart as if her life had been the only thing that kept it beating. Every one of his senses was being used to assail his mind with sensations of her.
His last remaining family. The one he'd sworn to his father that he'd protect. The one that had... been there for him during everything.
Now she was dead. Her low level and youth had been all but a death sentence in this fucked up world since the beginning of this damn apocalypse.
Before, he thought to himself.
Before the world got fucked up by the damn system, she had been a smart and happy girl who, if the system hadn't arrived, would have likely gone on to live a completely normal life - full of both the pleasures and sorrows of 21st-century living. She'd have probably gone to university, gotten a good career, and eventually found a husband and had kids and he'd have become Uncle Steven in a few decades.
He doubted they'd have gotten along very well, but that didn't matter to him anymore. She would have lived instead of dying a meaningless death due to some OP snake's deadly roar.
He felt a mix of emotions boil in his chest as he imagined her tiny head exploding. He felt a deep and abiding hatred unlike anything he'd ever felt before for the system, for monsters, and for the whole fucked up world that it had created.
A seething anger quickly followed his hatred as he effortlessly recalled the names and faces of those he'd lost to the system and its manifestations. Before her death, he had somewhat accepted the system for what it was but now... now he wanted to see it burn.
Just as the world serpent had torn apart reality with his roar, at that moment, Steven wanted nothing more than to roar in sheer fury and watch as the system came crashing down around him. But, that was impossible. His rage was of a hopeless, meaningless, insatiable sort. No amount of his anger, rage, or hatred could ever bring down reality and so far as he could tell the system was one of the building blocks of reality itself.
With this harsh reality in place, his anger and frustration quickly turned inwards and guilt took its rightful place as the central emotion in his mind. The more he thought about the last 3 months, the more guilt he began to feel. For was it not he and not anyone else who had done everything in his power to prevent her from fighting monsters in a vain attempt to protect her? Hadn't he thus been ultimately responsible for her low level and thus her death? A cold gnawing despair tore chunks out of his soul and he slowly lost a grip on reality. For while he could not tear down reality, he could very easily tear himself into a million pieces - especially when he seemed so guilty on the face of it.
What a twisted joke reality had told with his life. The protector unknowingly kills the one he wants to protect by protecting them. And no matter how much he hated the system, he couldn't help but remember the many times in which he could have made different choices. Times when he could have chosen a different path and saved her life. Perhaps if only... no. The bitter realisation popped into his head almost immediately upon thinking about what ifs.
Even if he had chosen an entirely different path for them both and gotten her to level 15, the girl would have probably died anyway. Whether by some earthly monster or the world serpent, in the end, it didn't matter to the system. All it seemed to want was the death of the weak and it had gotten what it wanted, over and over again, it had always gotten what it wanted from him. His mother. His father. And now his sister. It had claimed them all and left him all alone.
"Steven" A kind and pitiful voice spoke his name, piercing through his mind's otherwise impenetrable mental block.
He looked up, tears streaming down his face. The sight of Mr. Goodman looking empathetically down at him did nothing to soothe his pain. He couldn't get words out to reply to Arthur, but it was clear that the man did not expect any. Instead, the former butler simply sat beside Steven and the two sat in silence for many hours.
The ship rocked a bit every so often but the two took no notice. They would have probably sat there in complete silence for days, but soon their silence was interrupted.
A man whose whole body was smouldering walked leisurely into the infirmary, a smug look on his half-burnt-off face.
"Ah Mr Goodman, it's good to finally find you." The man said with such gravitas and gusto, that both Arthur and Steven identified him easily as the general. However, his next words, though destined to echo in the annals of human history, rang cavernously hollow to both Arthur and Steven.
"Rejoice Earthlings! For Victory is ours."