Chapter 30

Erandius watched as another missile collided with the Arcadia , exploding pointlessly. He could have stopped it, but the ship had run the calculations and it was more energy effective to allow it to hit and explode, then fix the damage, then it would have been to shoot the missile down.

It was a two percent difference, but the Arcadia was all about efficiency. Erandius wasn’t certain whether it was more demoralizing for the forces firing at him to see their weapon’s damage hit and cause no damage, or if shooting it down would have been worse.

He had shot down a nuclear warhead a few hours ago, but the simple explosives in the other ballistic missiles that were being sent at him weren’t worth that sort of energy expenditure.

He sighed, wondering what the poor bastards were thinking. He could ask, but ultimately, what was the point? He’d already given them the tools they needed to survive, and they were still clinging to the trappings of their old world order.

“ Arcadia, you can handle the defenses from here on out,” he announced. “I don’t care anymore.”

“Yes, Erandius,” the ship agreed. “Technically I could have handled them from the beginning.”

“How are the delvers adapting? How is the system adapting to the delvers?” he asked.

“The goblins have claimed the first few floors. They apparently resemble mythological beasts to the humans of the surface, and the combat response from the inhabitants has been less hesitant than we initially believed it might be. Deeper floors have been seeded with various apocalyptic methods from the collective consciousness of the population. They actually seem to think of the end of their world quite a bit.”

“Of course they do. They’ve already lived through it once. Or their ancestors did,” Erandius said, sighing. “Stories like that don’t just go away.”

“Would you believe me if I said that they predicted the return of the system?” Arcadia asked.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Erandius countered. “It’s only been sixty eight thousand years since the dregs of the original system were disabled to avoid drawing the attention of the Antithesis while the surface was reseeded with lower life forms.”

“That’s exactly it, my lord,” Arcadia said. “They’ve been without a system all that time. They’ve forgotten it, forgotten what it was like to have one. And they still predicted its return.”

“They’re human. Humans think of the impossible all the time,” Erandius said, and he signaled to the ship that he was done talking now. The ship respected his wishes.

He thought back to the boy who had contacted him early in the system initialization. And he thought back considerably further, to another teenage boy. The son of his lover. Not his own son, not by blood. The relationship with the boy’s mother was a secret one, borderline taboo as he was the sworn protector of the royal family and she was his charge.

He was her Titan, and she his goddess.

But the boy?

She had asked Erandius to keep an eye on him, and to teach him, and that was all. But when the gates to the fortress had been under siege and the Antithesis had come in force, the boy, barely level two hundred, had commanded the walls like a champion.

And like everything else that the Titans had done to protect their world, it hadn’t been enough.

He sighed and bit into an apple. The same apple he’d eaten millions of time. He pulled up the listings and found the boy’s position in the dungeon. He was facing one of the apocalypse scenarios that his people had come up with. Surprisingly deep in the dungeon for a young lad, with a team that was well suited to go much deeper.

At least, if they could survive the coming challenges together.

Erandius reviewed Eli’s progress, watching the boy grow in levels and leadership along the way.

The resemblance to his lover’s lost son only grew stronger. He felt bitter sorrow well up in his chest, but he didn’t push it down.

Sorrow was better than ennui.

He tapped the interface and changed the parameters of floor seven through ten for the lad. The system thought for a moment, then clicked into place, suggesting a compromise between the recommended parameters and his own entry.

He considered for a moment, then approved the system’s compromise. He didn’t really care, and if the boy continued to survive he could always teach him the true history of his people at a later date.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

If the boy was destined to die anyway, then what would it matter if he learned the true history of his people? What would it matter if one more soul knew where the Titans had come from before vanishing into the void?

~~~~~~~

They found the altar they were looking for in one of the park’s playgrounds. It was right out in the open, an evil-looking circular table made of ebony and covered with runes. Eli borrowed some tools from the Tinkerers and pried out a few of the jewels that littered the surface. He carved a few new runes into the surface, inverted the skull that was sitting in the middle of the ritual, and then took the goblets of blood that were being offered to dark gods away and dumped them down the drain of the drinking fountain nearby.

With all of that finished, he put his own hand on top of the skull and pushed his mana into it.

You are Attempting to Claim the Necromantic Ritual of Rizen the Big Bad Evil Guy

Actions have consequences

Are you certain you want to commit to this course of action?

Yes/No

Eli quickly selected yes, warning everyone that they may be in for a boss fight if Rizen showed up to challenge them for the rights to the ritual. Instead, he got another prompt.

Ritual Inversion Complete

Necromantic Energies inverted

The Dead Can Rest Once More

Floor 6 Puzzle Complete

Bonus Applied to Floor Rewards

Advancing to 7 th floor in 30 seconds

Please Secure all belongings before Transference

Junior and Peter both gave him a high-five when the notification came up, and he felt a grin on his face at the stupid teenage camaraderie ritual. They checked to make certain that they weren’t leaving anything important behind—they’d bagged the jewels from the ritual and left only the non-valuable components—then they simply waited for the timer to run down.

A few seconds later, Eli was once more in the black space where the rewards were distributed, without even his body.

Floor 6 Summary (Hard)

Time Taken: 3:43:25

Rank: 7

Zombies Killed: 243 (speed bonus applied to experience gains)

Floor Boss Killed 1/3 (DJ Rotface)

Secret Locations Found: 2/49

Floor Puzzle Solved: Yes (Bonus Applied)

Loot: Runekeeper’s Intermediary Grimoire (Upgrade), Portable Campfire and Invisibility Runestones, Akov’s Open Sight Rifle, Intermediate Thaumaturgy Spellbook (upgade), Napalm (100L), Liquid Nitrogen (100L), 15 boxes .30-06 rifle bullets, 5 boxes 9mm ammo, Don the Hobo’s Magic Harmonica, Temporary Tattoos for Beginners! A Primer on Self Enhancement, Henna Tattoo Kit, Lesser Healing Potions X30, Lesser Mana Potions X12, 256,000 Experience (total), 62,000 Contribution Points

Eli’s non-present eyes bulged out at the list of the rewards he’d gained from completing the floor’s puzzle. The fact that they were ranked seventh had something to do with his disbelief as well. Was that out of the entire world? Or at least, everyone who had reached this point on Hard Mode?

He tried to take a deep breath, remembered that he couldn’t breathe right now and just focused his mind instead. Some of the gear was obvious on how to assign it. The rifle and ammunition only made sense to go to the sharpshooter, after all. And Grimoire and Spellbooks assigned themselves to himself and Luke, respectively, and didn’t allow him the option to change that.

He was less certain what to do with the napalm and liquid nitrogen. They were obviously intended for the tinkerers, but he felt a little nervous allowing them to play with such dangerous substances. He assigned them as communal property for now, hoping that the containers the substances came in would be found in the SafeZone of the next floor.

As for the harmonica, he gave it to Susan, figuring that she was a Bard, after all, and might have some use for it.

He was less certain about what to do with the tattoo kit and the associated book. He assigned them to himself for now, since he could always just give them to someone else later if he figured out why the system wanted them to have the items.

But most impressive of all the gains were the Experience and Contribution Points. The experience points his party had gained was something like five times what he’d they’d gotten for clearing floor 6. Solving a puzzle was that important?

He frowned, considering what to do with the bias. In the end, he decided to simply assign everyone one hundred percent and let the system sort it out. He could steal some from the noncombat classes, Lucy Lee and Jose Santos, but Jose had mostly come around, and he wanted to see what would happen to the Seamstress and Cook class if they leveled.

Were they like Commoner in a video game? Useless even if you leveled them? Did they maybe evolve? Did they make magic clothes? Magic food? It was worth investigating so that he could tell others, and this windfall of experience to do so more quickly than expected.

Finally, he stepped back to review his choices. Yeah, he was satisfied. He closed the window, and woke up on a boat.

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