"Is that a machine gun?”
“Sure is. Picked up this beauty at a military surplus store. Well, it was more of an illegal arms auction, but semantics semantics. This'll be good for using on those green things.” The man stroked the barrel of the machine gun. This must have been a dream come true for him. Even in America, people weren’t allowed to just fire off military grade weapons. Now could do so to his heart’s content. The government had probably fallen by now, and if it hadn't, then they were too busy now to worry about things like an illegal machine gun. Especially when it would help to defend the country.
“Ok. By the way, did you see any other survivors anywhere in the town? I saw a lot of dead bodies, but nobody was alive except for you.”
The other man shook his head before spitting on the ground.
“Damn gremlins musta killed them all off. I didn't see a soul, cept’ for you.” Jeffrey continued to clean out his machine gun and Sam sighed. It was just the two of them against the monsters. He looked outside, it was already getting dark. Something strange had happened with the sun and it looked to be a lot smaller than usual. That was a question for the morning however and he found a vacant cot in the corner of the room.
In a distant Quadrant of the Multiverse
Tantalos Veruvax chuckled as he watched the antics of his newly purchased universe’s inhabitants. The first day was always most enjoyable to watch. Seeing mortals dying to the scum of the Multiverse was enough to make his day. The gremlins were so weak on a normal scale that they weren't even culled when they overpopulated an area. Against these people, they were more than enough to kill them off.
Most of the civilizations in the universe had already been wiped out. The vast majority of them had been backwards societies, the equivalent of the Stone Age back on Earth. Only a few had advanced technology and those were the ones that had survived. Curiously, with the absence of higher technology, one species was performing better than the others. The humans were at a point in their development where they were starting to phase out their current technology for more advanced digital tech, but they still had older devices that didn't rely on computing.
Tantalos smiled as he remembered the fall of the Cherunax, a race of cyborgs that had transcended normal mortal parameters. Their suits had stopped working as soon as the System arrived and in desperation, they had tried to launch an antimatter bomb. Unfortunately, the bomb worked, but the controls didn't and their entire solar system had been wiped clear off the map. The amount of destruction that unenhanced technology could achieve was quite impressive, even to Tantalos, but there was no real point comparing it to the rest of the Multiverse.
Some civilizations had fused the System with their tech, but they still relied mostly on leveling and stats to even the board. It was going to be a nasty surprise for the humans when they found out that their weapons would only be effective against the very weakest of monsters.
Tantalos sighed as he sat back on his chair, playing through the day’s highlights in his brain. His intelligence was so high that he could easily see everything that was happening inside a universe at once. And he was only a B Ranked Ascendant. The actual gods could monitor everything inside the entire Multiverse at once. He was afraid of only one thing, those impossibly powerful beings.
Once, millions of years ago, he had committed the equivalent of a bank robbery on a vault universe. Unfortunately for him, he had stolen the wrong item, a keepsake that belonged to one of the Ninety Nine Creator Kings. One of them had come for him and he remembered vividly what had happened to him. For billions of years in subjective time, the god had kept him inside a mental hellscape where he suffered through an uncountable number of incredibly painful deaths. It was only thanks to his enhanced mind that he was able to avoid going insane during that. He shuddered as he remembered that, and he cleared his mind. It was time for some diversions.
He couldn't control the monsters spawning inside the universe, as it was only a result of the integration of the universe into the System, but he could throw a few curve balls into the mix. Firstly, the herpetopede that his project had found. With a surge of power, Tantalos enforced his will across the multiversal divide, using his universal ownership orb to channel it into it. An infinitesimal spark of his own intellect drifted off through the void and into the universe.
Earth, Jeffrey's hut
Rax was hungry. That was the first coherent thought that the herpetopede had possessed in his entire life. He vaguely remembered the previous day, when a strange pinkish creature had saved him from a group of gremlins. He hissed as he remembered the gremlins. Back on his home world, a place where all of his kind lived in harmony with the sapient inhabitants, there were none of those foul beasts. He felt an urge to find his savior and to pledge his undying allegiance to it.
A moment later, he felt pain such as he had never felt before. His entire body was being remade and he could feel his legs lengthening, becoming more efficient, his neurons developing, his brain becoming like that of a sapient’s. With a wailing cry, he lost consciousness.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Sam was woken up by a high pitched squealing noise, coming from where the herpetopede had been. He realized that the creature was in some sort of distress as he listened and he bolted into the room. Jeffrey was already there, the man standing over it with a hammer.
“Jeffrey! What are you doing?”
The man looked over at Sam.
“What’s it look like? This thing got possessed or something! Look!”
Sam rushed over to the creature. It was barely recognizable as the thing that he had rescued earlier. It had gained about 50 percent more length and it was far stockier than it had been before. Its tongue darted in and out of its mouth trying to draw in air. Jeffrey moved to strike it, but Sam put his arm in the way. A crushing force bore down on him as his arm met Jeffrey’s but the man quickly withdrew his hand.
“If you wanna cavort with the thing, then fine. But if it comes for me, then it's dead.” Jeffrey said in exasperation as he threw the hammer aside and went back to his room. Sam was about to tell the man not to say cavort in that context ever again, but he was already out of the room. Sam sat down by the creature.
“What am I going to do with you?” He said as he looked at it. The thing let out a noise and its eyes opened.
“Where… am I?”
Sam jumped back. The herpetopede had just spoken to him! Its voice was a sibilant hiss, but it was still very clear what it was saying.
“Can you understand me?”
The creature nodded at this.
“Were you the pinkflesh that saved me?”
“Pinkflesh? Does it mean human?” “Uh, yes. I was. My name is Sam. Do you have a name?”
“I am Rax.”
“Just Rax? No surname?”
Rax tilted its head.
“What is this surname thing? I am a fertilizer of my species, what need would I have for a surname? I didn’t even have a normal name before something filled me with knowledge and intelligence,” Rax said in his hissing voice.
“Fertilizer? So you what, help make more herpetopedes?”
“I would find females and wait for them to lay their eggs before I fertilized them.”
“Oh. I’ve heard about that before. We have some creatures here that do that.”
Rax nodded absently as he looked around the room.
“You saved me, so I want to follow you. Will you let me be your companion?”
“Sure, but how do I do that?” Sam asked.
“You need to add me to your party.”
Sam stared at the herpetopede.
“What, like a birthday party? Or something like in a game? How do I do that?”
“You need to focus on me and imagine forming a bond between yourself and I. It should give me a prompt to join your party.”
Feeling a little stupid, Sam stared at Rax for a long time. With a chime, he received a new notification.
Rax has joined your party!
Sam opened up his status to see if there was anything there about a party.
Sam Atlas
Human
Mortal Tier
G Rank
Class:None
Level 6
Strength
16
1.00x
Constitution
12
1.00x
Resilience
11
1.00x
Dexterity
9
1.00x
Intelligence
9
1.00x
Wisdom
11
1.00x
Health 120/120
Mana 90/90
Stamina 160/160
Skills:1
Titles:0
Marks:1
Party:1*
Sam selected the party button.
Party:1
Rax:Level 6. Health 140/140
It was like the interface in one of those old school RPG’s, which Sam had expected, judging by the current bent of the System. A moment later, something strange happened.