I straightened and gave Zephyro a quiet smile as thanks for holding me up. If he had Megabytes of Logic to his name, that explained why he had such an easy time cleaving through enemies. Especially if they were worth less than a percentage point of his collected Logic. It also meant that my suspicions had been correct, and DPM file size directly correlated to power in this weird new reality I found myself in.

I stumbled over that word, Reality. It certainly felt real, didn’t it? The fire was warm, the wind harsh and occasionally speckled with sand. Buildings collapsed exactly like I had seen in the real world, and the screams…

Everything was the same.

If it hadn’t been for anomalies like the Ferals, and the occasional glitch, I wouldn’t be able to tell that all of this happened inside a machine. A machine powered by Logic.

I took a deep breath, trying to cool down from the exertion of looking at Zephyro through the lens of Ardor.

Even before the Retreat, I had never been able to fully figure out my Wish. I wielded it quite comfortably, true, but I never understood why it did what it did. A stick could turn into a torch, but it could also turn into a spear, depending on the circumstances. Eventually, I had realized that the concept I held in mind had been an important factor in determining what happened to an object I imbued with my wish, but even then it had never been an exact science. Hell, the readouts Chris was feeding me were the first time I had ever seen it properly quantified at all.

In the years of my absence, my Wish had somehow been converted into Logic, and now it was seemingly everywhere. Was it possible that we had a mistake back in the bunker, amplified my output far too much, and instead of advancing my Personality Matrix into an AI as we had intended, my Wish had somehow turned every piece of technology around me into an AI?

I raised my hand and stared at the skull skill clamped around Pharus, absent-minded. Just like the brittle bone, that theory had far too many holes. How had I ended up inside the laptop? Why were there still ferals decades after the initial event? They should have eaten each other until only one remained, and with less than 5% Logic transferring after a kill, the amount of Logic out in the world had to be either insanely massive or even infinite to produce the number of Ferals we had seen so far, let alone even more outside the bunker walls. And it couldn’t be infinite because I was trapped in here and had lost my ability to regenerate my wish.

{CPU Load: 27%}

{Core Temp: ▼ 72° C}

I sighed, rubbing my temples.

“Are you alright, Sultana?” Zephyro asked.

“Yeah. Just missing a lot of pieces to this puzzle, and I hate it.”

“Ahhh, Sultana, all will be revealed in time, inshallah.”

“Like your plan to get us out of this mess, for example?”

He chuckled. “Indeed, Sultana. Your wisdom shines like the cool evening sun.”

I didn’t point out that the sun was long gone, swallowed by the collapse approaching us from all sides.

“Alright then, let’s get to it.”

Zephyro looked over his shoulder, then nodded. “As you command, Sultana. Should be mere minutes.”

A rhythmic clatter echoed over the plaza, growing louder rapidly.

“Ah fuck,” I breathed, shoulders slumping slightly. “You jinxed it.”

At this exact moment, a hideously mutated scorpion clattered out of a nearby alleyway. Its pincers were completely misshapen, one claw replaced with a chainsaw on one side and mashed-together rebar on the other, the other claw boardroom-black, sparking electricity like an arc furnace. Its tail had been replaced with a triangular device, humming ominously and glowing blue like a forgotten nightlight.

[D3-C0nstruct]

[DPM filesize: >XX LKB]

[>>Calculate exact filesize?]

I quickly accepted the prompt and staggered a little as the heat overwhelmed me once more.

{CPU Load: ▲ 100%}

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

{Core Temp: ▲ 77° C}

Luckily, my CPU had time to cool down, or else it probably would have melted. As it was, it merely got dangerously close to losing Arx again.

[D3-C0nstruct]

[DPM filesize: 1.56 LMB]

That was not good at all. And just as I was thinking that something stirred in the darkness beyond the arch at the center of the square. I looked over, and if Pharus hadn’t been wrapped around my arm like it was, I might have dropped it, too, hyena skull and all. Whether from exhaustion or shock, I couldn’t tell.

A giant snake slithered through the marble arch. I thought I had seen it before, culling fleeing citizens on the main thoroughfare like a child taking bites out of a cookie, but I couldn’t be sure anymore. As it was, I would almost have described its entrance as majestic, if its body hadn’t been so hideously mutated.

Instead of scales, it was made entirely of segmented, mismatched electronic parts. Unknowable machinery hummed and whirred, fans whined desperately, and metal teeth gnashed against each where no body should have mouths. Its main face didn’t just sport two, but eight fangs, and they all dripped with the same acid I had come to associate with burning pain.

[The Eternal Riddle]

[DPM filesize: >XX LKB]

[>>Calculate exact filesize?]

“It must have eaten the wolf,” I mumbled to myself, stunned.

“What?” asked Zephyro. His own eyes wide as he stared up.

“Wait… Zephyro, you see it too?”

“The hellish abomination under the Arch?” He replied, still staring at the mass of scrap metal and nightmares.

“Yeah, that one…” I said, voice as small as I felt.

And then he did something that surprised me; he turned and smiled.

“What is one more foe, Sultana? The more there are, the more they are as sand under our feet.”

I scoffed. “That’s some damn ugly sand. So you’re saying you can take it?”

“Inshallah.”

Bemused, I noticed that gave me more confidence than I would have thought. Probably because I didn’t know the strength of that thing.

I wouldn’t even attempt to analyze a Feral that called itself The Eternal Riddle, though. Instead, I scrounged up what resolve I could and bashed the hyena skull still clamped around Pharus against the ruined mosaic, shattering the former into a thousand pieces.

“I think I saw that snake before, on the main thoroughfare. You know, when...” Panicked eyes and an unspoken plea flashed in my mind.

“Ah, Sultana. Yes, that is the way of the Ferals.” There wasn’t even a whisper of reproach in his voice. “They will band together as long as they need to, but once one of them gets stronger than the others, it shall devour all of them and add their strength to its own. God knows; In their madness, they know only greed.”

I had just opened my mouth to answer when a house on the other side of the Plaza exploded and dozens of spiders poured out of the gap. They ranged from small, nimble beasts no bigger than my forearm all the way to monster-truck-sized arachnids that left deep gashes in the ground wherever they walked.

I cursed. “Spiders, left side of the plaza.”

“Ya Ibn el Sharmouta!” Zephyro spat. I did not need a translation for that one. “How many? And how strong?”

I had plenty of foes to choose from, but identifying the most dangerous one was still an issue. Ardor took too long to provide me with the data I needed. Whenever I needed to scan an enemy, valuable seconds ticked away until I got useful information, and there was always the risk of my target being so complex that I would completely wreck my CPU.

Again I fought my urge to just charge in and let the dice fall as they may. I told myself over and over that I had learned that even the smallest enemies could pose the biggest threat on the battlefield.

Case in point: the tiny spider from earlier, the one Zephyro had to kick through a wall before it actually died.

Rushing in wasn’t an option unless I wanted to get myself killed.

I had to keep calm.

I mustn’t fail.

There were just so many…

I was alone.

I wasn’t strong enough.

I wouldn’t be able to—

I was useless.

And so my thoughts began their spiraling descent at the worst possible moment.

It was typical.

I was so damn stupid.

My blood pulsed in my ears again.

Oh no, please…

[>>User CHRIs is currently busy: Code_dojo.exe]

[>>User CHRIs is currently available]

[//compile remote_access_array_alpha_001.exe]

[>>compiling… 1%]

I gasped. The words raked my brain, and my attention reset to the moment. If Chris hadn’t finished when they did, I would—

[>>compiling… 3%]

Hope flashed, then flickered.