Emerging from the portal, standing on the plateau he had built, Ethan look a min to look around. The site of the Endless Plains left conflicting feelings inside him. He was amazed at its raw beauty, the dazzling complexity of a ring world, orbiting a nebulous cloud of pulsing cosmic clouds. Rolling hills, forests and mountains, lakes and rivers gave the sense of a land untouched by humans, but the pure outrageousness of where they all were found, left no argument for it being manufactured.
Looking closer to where he was, he saw the crater he was standing in the middle of, wondering how deep he could go. Wondering if he could actually dig to other side, like he had thought when he was a kid, and tried to dig all the way to china.
“Hey Joe, can you dig all the way to the other side of the ring? Like I am assuming I am on the inside, but can I get to the outside?”
“If you survived everything between the lower levels, and the other side, sure. It goes without saying, don’t do that.”
“Someday, I guess. Hey, I have been thinking though, is there a way off the Endless Plain? I mean, getting my family here is better than leaving them in a weirdo System breeding camp, that is used to hold me hostage to its whim. But once here, I don’t really have a plan. I’ve been thinking about it, and as much as I want to take the System down, I don’t have a way. Yet.”
“There are plenty of ways off the Endless Plains. That isn’t an issue. The issue, is that this is the best place to gain the power needed to survive else where. Once you leave, you can never come back. Similar to how your family can never go back to the Training Fields.”
“So a bunch of one way tickets. Got it.”
“Pretty much. Do you see the nebula above you? That is the Nexus. It is the mechanism that connects all versions of the Endless Plains. If, and when you reach there, you are free to leave. The issue is what, you and your family are no where near powerful enough to reach there.”
“Are we talking a minimum level? Or do we need skills or some magic spell?”
“All of those are valid options to get there. The issue is casting off the System. You have already started breaking the bonds the System hold on you. It has labeled you as such. The [End]. So far you have used skills, abilities, and even our profession with the aide of the System. You have to be able to do all of that, without the System.”
“What does that even mean?” Ethan was confused, and even more lost.
“It is a long road. When we get your family back, I will tell you about it more. You aren’t the only one with plans. For now, focus on getting stronger, faster. You have been here for almost two weeks by Earth time, That is almost most half a year for your family. The longer they are there the harder it will be to get them here.”
Laughing Ethan couldn’t help it, “Nah, Rebecca hates being penned up like that, if I know here, she is like a caged animal bidding her time. You shoulda seen her when we lived overseas, Europe was the hardest for her. She loved the countryside, but hated London. She hated the cameras. Said it was like she was being watched everywhere she went-”
Sadness took Ethan by the throat. Choking on his words, he missed his family. Reaching deep within, he activated [Soul Connection] and sent his sadness, and longing for them. He felt a wave of longing respond. He knew they were waiting. Relishing in the shared emotions from Rebecca, feeling somewhat closer to his wife.
Resolving himself, he pushed his emotions down, he couldn’t stand there talking to himself admiring the view all day. It was time for action. One more thing before he set off, and forgot it like the rest of his ‘worry about later’ list.
“Joe, one more thing. My Magic stat went up, any idea why? I thought that was gauge of potential or whatever?”
“Aptitude. It is probably due to two factors. One, and the most important, is you just took on a Magic focused Profession. And while it wasn’t your first, or I am sure your preferred choice, you turned out to be pretty good at it. Even if you spent most of your time making ammo-” Joe said, interrupted but Ethan.
“For now, it’ll make sense once I start farming XP.”
“Right, as I was saying. Making ammo. You excelled, and found a profession that fits your skill set, and mind set. Second, and I hate to be the barer of bad news, but all those consumed resources… You can’t take them out of the dungeon. I am assuming, the System took them back, and compensated you a stat point or two in Magic.”
“There wasn’t anything that indicated that, though. Shouldn’t there have been rules or whatever?”
“The System restricts information, many of its rules are meant to be discovered. You would have realized it as soon as you checked your Internal Well, or the Resources Status Screen you created for yourself.”
Rolling his eyes, Ethan began to walk down the hill he had created.
“Of course it does.”
Ethan continued to ask questions of Joe. Making his way out of the crater, putting his new Aegis to work, sending out his cutting tool to climb the side of the crater. Raising the blades up with [Gravity Control] then sending them flying towards, and into the crater wall, Ethan was able to create hand and foot holds to pull himself up. He could have climbed up the chains, but the crated wall wasn’t vertical enough for that to be necessary. He was hoping the hand and foot holds counted towards his climbing skill.
Lucky enough, it did, and he got the notification as he climbed over the edge.
“Sweet, glad that worked out. Now I just gotta find the biggest baddest monster, avoid them until 25, and farm some XP. Any suggestions on where to do all that?” Ethan asked.
“I already am having doubts this will work. But if you want something big, I would aim for the mountain region. There is always a Drake of some subspecies at the peak. As for farming ‘XP’, between the next two Safe Zones is a lowlands valley, you won’t find any more Cervine monsters, but there are creatures similar to them. They look like your Deer, but are actually reptiles.”
“Nice.” Ethan said as he sprinted away from the crater, through the now much brighter forest.
It took half a day on the Endless Plains to reach the edge of the low lands valley. Ethan didn’t see any of the creatures Joe had mentioned. But that didn’t matter. He wasn't planning on fighting them up close and personal. He had asked Joe, if he was sure they were here, and he said they were, so that was all the confirmation Ethan needed.
As soon as he got a couple kilometers past the edge of the plains, Ethan blinked up, and kept blinking higher. He finally stopped when he felt the air finally getting thinner. He knew he could go higher, as it still wasn’t hard to breathe, but this was far enough for what he had planned. Summoning his reflect disk from his Aegis, he focused his [Gravity Control] on maintaining an equal push, to his body weight, as he stepped on it. He still couldn’t fly. Or float.
But he could, from training in the profession dungeon, concentrate on smaller objects for long periods of time. And the half meter disk was perfect for what he needed, and that was a platform. Pulling the Bag of Holding Shit from his belt, he pulled out one of the first ammunition prototypes he had made. It was a simple sphere, it looked very much like an over sized brass golf ball. He had remembered reading somewhere that the dimples on a golf ball gave it stability, caused it to go further, and faster.
Ethan was going to test this. He had made the core of the brass ball able to store a small amount of Mana, activating something else he had learned in the dungeon. Part of his studies had shown him that weight reduction was possible with the right inscriptions in the Mana flow. He had spent some time reverse engineering the flow, and found a way to increase the weight.
It was all a wasted effort, as the next book he had studied showed him how to do it, much more efficiently. He hadn’t scrapped this one though, because it turned out the way he did it, made it unstable. He had no idea what that meant, and was about to test it to find out.
“Joe, just checking, but can you sense the ground from here? I am about to test something, and I have no idea how to tell the difference between a regular shot, and one that is unstable.”
“I can. But it isn’t as detailed as I think you’d like. It is like looking at a far off horizon.”
“But you’ll be able to tell if something… extra happens, right?”
“Maybe. Depending on what it is.”
“Good enough for me.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Ethan summoned a small amount of Mana, and sent it into his hand, holding the brass ball. Ever so slowly he injected the Mana, afraid it might just exploded in his hand. But it didn’t, it kept taking the Mana, and little by little the weight increased, until he couldn’t hold it anymore. Switching instead to his Bracers. Controlling three flows of Mana was his maximum. Especially, two involving Gravity. He hadn’t needed to train more than that, so he was careful not to push himself so far up in the atmosphere.
Finally the small brass ball reached it’s peak Mana compacity. 1.5 Tonnes.
Focusing on his reflective disk platform, ensuring it didn’t change directions on him, Ethan activated his Bracers, and his [Gravity Control], pushing them out through his Domain, increasing their power output, he sent all of his gravity skills to center on the brass ball, increasing its weight a hundred times.
Instantly the ball shot down at a blinding speed. Ethan lost sight of it almost immediately due to how small it was, no bigger than his hand. In fact, many of his munitions fit in his hand. It had never occurred to him, until that moment that he could have, or should have made bigger ones. He just figured smaller was better, so he could make more of them.
I guess I should find some ore veins, and make at least one big one, just in case.
The sonic boom from the ball brought him out of his thoughts, moments later. Then Silence. Only a single man, standing in the air, Tunica flapping in the crisp wind.
Ethan held his breath, waiting. Seconds dragged on, and just when he thought he failed, a shockwave raced across the plains, and upwards. The shockwave made the sonic boom sound like a child’s cry. He teeth chattered, his bones vibrated. He even lost focus for a second causing him to fall a short distance, be for he caught himself and blinked back up, landing one again on his stabilized disk.
A massive dust cloud covered the impact site. Drifting towards the mountains, his eventual goal, obscuring his vision.
“So, sense anything funky?”
“It was definitely powerful. But I didn’t sense anything additive. If that is what you are asking. I did sense the ball growing in mass at an uncontrollable rate though.”
“Oh, that could be bad, are black holes still a thing?” Ethan asked, guessing he should have asked that sooner.
“Yes, but I doubt you’d be able to make one. It wasn’t that bad, the weaving would have given out long before that happened.”
“Oh, good. So test successful then?” Ethan said, as the notification started pouring in. “Not bad at all, definitely a success. Let me know when I get to 24, and we can take a break.”
Ethan reached back in his bag, and pulled out another failed munitions, he had tried to make it go faster, but reducing the friction on it. He had ended up having to add a simple ring attached to the bottom of the cone shape due to him not being able to hold on to it.
This one always makes me think negative friction is possible now. It just wants to leap out of my hand.
Repeating the same process as before he activated his Domain, and a second later it was screaming towards the surface at speeds exceeding sound. The sonic boom reached him, and he started counting.
1.2.3.4-
The earth shattering boom came just 1 second faster. He chalked that up to a success, even if he had only made one, and would never make another. This went on for hours as Ethan painted the valley in craters. Testing each failed creation. Some were better than he had hoped for, others were meh, and only because of the force behind them. The one that surprised him the most was the one he hadn’t thought much off. The manual that taught him the weave said it could store Mana for later use. It was meant to be a weave that you used in conjunction with another. He had purposefully left that weave out of the creation process, interested to see what would happen. As it descended it gathered Ambient Mana and channeled it into the ball of metal it was housed in.
It was similar to what happens when you connect to 9v batteries together, and forget about them. They heat up, until the internal structure pops. Only this time, it was a pure Mana ‘pop’ and not a dry flacky mess of carbon and nickle. The pop was several hundred meters of rampant ambient Mana, exploding outwards faster than the shockwave, but it ended being more interesting than anything. He did get an achievement for it though.
[Mana Bomb]
You have used the Ambient Mana to forge a force of destruction grater than you could otherwise, far out pacing your own Mana compacity.
Reward:
+3 Intelligence
This continue until night began to creep across the plains. It was always an odd sight. Night came like someone was dragging a huge tarp in front of the Sun, but there was no Sun. As far as he could tell, the cosmic cloud in the center of the ring was the source of daylight. So there was some sort of magic at play, because the cosmic cloud never changed in luminosity. It did however change hues, so Ethan figured that was how you were supposed to tell the time. He just hadn’t figured that part out yet.
Ethan canceled his gravity skills and free fell. Heights no longer bothered him, he had learned as long as he had something left in his Mana tank, he could blink and cancel any momentum. Which was great for moments like this, but he was starting to think he may want to learn a skill that allowed for that momentum to continue.
Enjoying the air rush past him, he let his body relax, enjoying the feeling of letting go of control and just letting it all go. A small voice in the back of his head told him to let go completely, don’t activate blink at the last moment, don’t make a move. Just let the ground keep coming up, closer and closer. Let it all go, forever. It wasn’t worth it. None of this was worth fighting for, his family will carry on without him. They’ll be better off with him gone. Happier even. Because he was holding them back. All of his anger, and rage, his depression. His nightmares. His fears. All of it was just hurting everyone around him. He should just let it all go, and let it happen. He’d done enough.
Blinking a few times to shift his body, he walked off into the forest, upset at himself for thinking those things. Those thoughts he could never tell another living person. Ever.
----------------------------------------
Ethan did what he could the next day to ignore the depression he felt. Methodically he tested one failed creation after the next, ignoring the notifications, skill level ups. But that voice was ever present, it had even ruined what little sleep he could get. There was a small part of him that knew it was right, and another part of him that tried to convince himself it wasn’t true, and that that was just his self doubt convincing itself it was right.
The hours dragged on as Ethan mercilessly wiped, whatever monsters he was killing, off the face of the Endless Plains. He had never actually seen any of the Teklor Serpents. He only knew their name from the kill logs he browsed the night before, after he laid down at the base of a tree far enough into the forest he wouldn’t be attacked at night. Not that he was worried about it, as far as he could tell, Joe didn’t sleep. Joe had assured him he would sense anything in the night, but that just made Ethan feel worse.
Joe was proof of his fuck ups. Joe was just another person who he had inconvenienced by existing. Ethan was sinking deeper into himself and his dark mood when Joe finally spoke up.
“Ethan. You can stop.”
“What?” Ethan was brought out of his dark mood temporarily.
“You can stop. I tried getting our attention earlier, you hit 24 awhile ago, but you stopped gaining experience. The Teklor Serpent population is low enough there aren’t enough for you to kill at a steady rate, and you gain less experience for killing too many of one species. You’ve reached the maximum for now. I suggest you either kill the Alpha, and hope it gets you to 25, or move on.”
“Oh right, sorry.”
“Is there something you want to talk about? You seem out of it.”
“No, I just didn’t sleep well last night.”
“You didn’t sleep at all. And I know that isn’t true, remember, part of your Soul. I know what is bothering you.”
“Yeah I guess I did forget about that.”
“So, you wanna talk about it?”
“I’m just dealing with some stuff, Joe.”
“I can tell. But… Look, I wasn’t given all of your history, or memories. Hell, I wasn’t given all of my history, or memories. But I was given enough. I know what you went through, and it would have been nice for the System to magically fix it all when you were integrated. But it didn’t. I can tell you everything I know about human psychology or everything I know about proven therapy methods. But none of that matters now. I don’t even think it will help. To be honest, you, your mentality, they aren’t suited for that. We see millions, if not billions of humans who are just as broken, and vulnerable as you. But you, people like you, Veterans of war, you aren’t the broken and can be put back together type. You’re the broken and keep going type. You’re like a car with a flat tire, that just keeps driving on it. All of you are. There is a drive in you that doesn’t let you stop. Whether it is out running your problems, or running from them, I don’t know. But I do know this, you were a mess inside. When you first bonded me to your soul, I thought I was going to go insane. Then I thought I was going to be consumed by you. But I wasn’t, I felt all of your pain, your anger, and rage. The last two days, I have felt your sadness, your depression, and your self hatred. But you are still going. Still you move forward. Still you work towards your family. If there is anything I have learned since coming to the Endless Plains, and experiencing the world through your eyes it is this…” Joe Paused, waiting for Ethan, waiting for him to accept what he had to say.
“It is that you aren’t a failure. You aren’t a fuck up. Your family loves you, and needs you. You aren’t a failure, until you fail to get back up. Haley misses you, she feels that every second of every minute. Mark needs you, you are his world, he is so lost right now because you are the only person that makes sense to him. He is scared, and doing everything he can to prepare for when you come get him. Rebecca loves you, she has nothing but faith in you. You will only ever fail, if you stop. So broken or not, depressed or not, you will keep going. I know that much, if only to right your wrongs, you will keep going. So please, stop beating yourself up. No one blames you, but you. I am giving you permission to stop blaming yourself.”
Ethan released his Domain, canceling his control on gravity, and started falling.
He let the air rush over him, as he thought about his mood, his fuck ups. Even Rebecca and the kids. He thought about Joe, and how he was trapped. He thought about how he had promised Joe he’d free him. He thought about what Joe had said.
Long before he got close to the ground he blinked a few times, appearing at the edge of the plains once more.
“All that therapy knowledge tell you to say those things? Or did you mean any of that?” Ethan finally said.
“A little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B. Mostly true though. I would never lie to you, especially about your family. You put me in charge of [Soul Connection] remember? I have been trying to filter out all the emotions coming at you, but if I’m being honest, your mood has kept them at bay. You use your anger, and depression as a shield against the feelings of others. You think of it as a defensive measure, but the truth is, it is hurting you. It blinds you.”
“Fuck man, that hurts to hear.”
“You need to hear it though, you can’t move on from the past, if you aren’t willing to accept a future.”
“Can you open a channel or something to my family?”
“Almost. You are stuck at level 4. I don’t think it is an experience issue. I think you are subconsciously keeping the level low.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Yes, it is why I suggested severing your connection to the System. I told you you were already doing it. I can see your Soul. To be more specific, you have cut off the link you have to the skill, you aren’t giving it anymore experience. And before you go off thinking you fucked up again, I am pretty sure it is just because you are scared of what they’ll say, which is completely understandable. You don’t want to let them down. I suggest you focus on getting to them, and letting them tell you what they think in person. Let me worry about [Soul Connection], and you worry about completing whatever you have planned.”
After a long silence, Ethan finally spoke again, “Thanks Joe. I feel bad for making you swim around in my fucked up head. But I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you. I will do whatever I can to get you out of there, and until then, just know I’m trying to be better.”
“That is all anyone can ask of you.”