Systema Delenda Est

Book One: Invading The System

When the System came to Earth, technology failed, monsters appeared, and billions died as humans were inducted into the game-like physics the System enforced.

Unfortunately for the System, not all humans were on Earth. Some scattered postbiological individuals decided to push it back, and embarked on a decade-long crusade to eliminate the System from Earth.

Cato is just an ordinary postbiological citizen, disgusted enough by the System’s excesses to go through one of the portals on Earth and spread himself to the broader System just as Earth is completely freed. He has no magic, for the System can’t be destroyed from within, but he does have the technology and knowledge of a civilization that is reaching toward the second rank of the Kardashev scale. Cato may have to operate under the System’s limitations, but he certainly doesn’t have to play by its rules, and fully intends to remove the threat it offers.

“…furthermore, I maintain that the System must be destroyed.”

Foreword

This book would not have been made without the tireless work of my editor, Kaorin, and the support of my many patrons and readers. Thanks to everyone who has supported me!

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Invading the System © 2024 by InadvisablyCompelled

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 — System Invasion

Chapter 2 — Dungeon Delve

Chapter 3 — Caves and Ruins

Chapter 4 — Under Land and Sea

Chapter 5 — The Ascent

Chapter 6 — Interregnum

Chapter 7 — Revive

Chapter 8 — Choices

Chapter 9 — Back Down

Chapter 10 — Complications

Chapter 11 — A Summit

Chapter 12 — Four Conversations

Chapter 13 — New Game Plus

Chapter 14 — Opponents

Chapter 15 — High Ground

Chapter 16 — Digital Life

Chapter 17 — Divine Intervention

Chapter 18 — Inflicted Wounds

Chapter 19 — Plans Rarely Survive

Chapter 20 — God-Poking Rounds

Chapter 21 — System Crash

Book One Epilogue

Chapter 1 – System Invasion

Cato stepped through the portal from Earth just as it began to close.

“Cato! What are you doing?” His commander’s voice came simultaneously through the air and through the microwave gland in Cato’s head, as the portal shimmered and shrank.

“Systema delenda est,” he replied. It was his slogan for the past decade of earth, and the reason he’d adopted his current moniker. Some of his comrades thought that it was enough to push the System off earth, but Cato knew that as long as it existed, humanity would still be in danger — and the debt it had to pay for what it had done to his family and friends was too great to let go. There was a long pause before the reply.

“Godspeed,” his commander’s voice came, just before it closed. He wished the prime version of himself around Luna well, because there’d be hell to pay for Cato’s actions. Then put his former home out of mind and turned his attention to the alien planet. It wasn’t likely he would be seeing Earth again. Outside of the System, there was no such thing as faster-than-light travel.

The staging area on the other side was desolate, kinetic impactors through the portal having turned it into a blasted, burnt wasteland. It didn’t bother Cato. He strode through the still-smoldering wreckage without a care for heat or sharp edges. Ten tons of bioweapon crunched the bubbled glass of impact craters underfoot, the charred remnants of wood and clay impossible to avoid. A close binary overhead cast ever-so-slightly tinted shadows, but he merely stored the views for later, because he was on a timeline.

[Instant Defense Quest! Investigate the Incursion: Recommended Rank: Silver Reward: C-Tier Skill. Location: Ahrusk Portal Staging Area]

The System might have been disrupted and destroyed on Earth, but this wasn’t Earth. The System was already bringing attention to Cato’s counter-invasion, something he only knew thanks to specialized sub-brains designed to parallelize his thinking. The actual System interface was a single blank brain, puppeted long enough for the System to integrate it, that resided in the crown of the warframe’s cranium and was the only part of it not protected against the System’s interface.

It was a strange approach, and he would have vastly preferred real electronics, not to mention proper armor and actual guns, but such things were impossible under the System. The exotic physics the System imposed rendered almost everything more complex than gears nonfunctional. Sort of.

Bypassing the System’s ban on advanced technology required everything to be organic — but Titan’s geneticists had discovered there was considerable play in what organic really meant. While his body was described by genetics, the chromosomes and acids used compounds rarely found outside of high-energy chemistry. While his body was grown in a womb, that womb had been part of an industrial complex in the vastness of space. While he had cells and organs, those cells fused individual deuterium atoms instead of burning sugar and the organs functioned closer to industrial machinery. He lived and breathed, but he was far from natural.

Cato raced across the battered ground and into the surrounding jungle. While war frames were incredibly powerful, by himself he wasn’t a match for most of the nonsense that the System could bring down upon his head. Fortunately, it wasn’t delivering a nemesis directly to him.

The System couldn’t or didn’t hand out an exact location or up-to-date tracking, which was a vulnerability humanity definitely exploited. It took more specialized minds than his to explain how and why the crackling neural lattice kept him from being exposed to the System interface, but the jamming it produced was a kind of thought-static that kept him safe. Unfortunately, even with that protection he couldn’t hide from the System’s imposed physics — which wasn’t to say he couldn’t hide from those who used it.

Chromatophores embedded in the armored scales of the war frame shifted colors, camouflaging him against casual scrutiny. He didn’t have any System-granted stealth Skills that could be defeated by some arbitrary System mechanism, but it still required extreme methods to defeat tracking by System types. The bioengineered body also had essentially no odor, needing no pheromonal signaling and the outer surfaces being made of dense and heavy-molecule polymer to prevent any kind of shedding or outgassing. Cato didn’t even need to breathe, save for chemical sampling.

Besides which, the war frame was surprisingly light on its feet – all six of them – for a ten-ton bioweapon. Defeating the enhanced senses of a System-augmented combatant, even when the war frame itself wasn’t engaging with the System’s effects, was not an easy task. As a consequence his feet were engineered to be nearly silent despite the underbrush, his scales altering their surface to be nearly frictionless as he slipped away under full stealth.

Cato roughly knew where he was, from the System individuals that had come through to Earth. A world called Sydea, out on what could be considered the frontier of the System. The precise geography was less known — cartography was a lost art when the System did it for most people. All he needed was a sufficiently tall mountain, or really anything to get him out of the heavy soup of the lower atmosphere.

As robust as the warframe was, rocket equations were cruel and he had some strict limitations on what he could do without destroying himself. Launching from the surface was not quite possible. Since he couldn’t see anything useful on the horizon, he’d be doing a lot of running — and maybe he’d have to ask a local.

He slithered through the jungle, past unsuspecting beasts and even the occasional elite creature, the latter obvious even without direct system access. A cat or bird or monkey-like animal far larger and brighter-colored than the others around it was not exactly subtle. Empowered by the System, they were faster and more powerful than their lesser cousins, leading flocks or herds or packs and making them just that much more dangerous. He had to wait until he could spot a normal bird out on its own before he could secure it. One of the combat tendrils on his back lashed out, instantly killing it by driving a bone spike into its brain, and pulled the body into one of the body cavities along his spine.

It was blind idiocy to try and travel around without any sort of air power, even if it was just surveillance, but native earth life would stand out unacceptably. Given enough time he could probably figure out how to duplicate the phenotype of what he saw, but it was easier to simply parasitize and puppet the corpse of some native life. That process was often quite horrifying, but such was the nature of a biological warframe.

In a matter of minutes the remains of the creature’s brain had been replaced with a new neural lattice, one protected from System interference. If someone [Appraised] the bird it’d give the game away, but hopefully selecting something common and innocuous would make that unlikely — besides which, the larger birds that needed System help to fly were useless to him. He sent the bird-drone back into the sky, a special microwave-band organ keeping it linked to him so he could see through its eyes.

Beyond the devastation around the invasion portal, a road led north to another town whose wall and towers were visible in the distance. The bird couldn’t have seen it normally, but its eyes were already being replaced with far better ones as the bioweapon culture continued its work. In a day the bird’s biology would be almost entirely replaced by Cato’s engineered cells, keeping the form but vastly improving the function.

The jungle extended south, a clear conflict zone and the best place for Cato to hide. He’d need to return to civilization eventually, but skirting around the edge of settled lands meant it was unlikely anyone would stumble across him. He hardly needed to worry about food, water, or shelter. The genetic monstrosity he inhabited didn’t need the last at all, and could pull the former from practically anything.

He turned slightly, altering his path to cut a shallow chord into the jungle’s perimeter, not willing to go too deep — System-juiced animals could be just as dangerous as high-leveled sapients. The goal was to put enough distance between him and the incursion camp to make it impractical for anyone to track him. The System would always point out his general location, but given enough time he could be practically impossible to find.

Time he didn’t have. While he considered himself to be moving at a fair pace, considering he had to slither between trees and around nests of up-jumped wild animals, it wasn’t nearly as fast as flight. The bird spotted several dots moving quickly over the treetops, coming from the direction of the town. A quartet of people, making a line directly for the remains of the portal staging area.

If he and they both were lucky, they wouldn’t be able track him. Despite his general attitude, he didn’t really want to kill System people who had no idea what they were getting into. Invaders were one thing, but those who were simply responding to a call for defense deserved more consideration. His enemy was the System, not those unfortunate enough to dwell within it.

***

“Do you think we can handle this?” Raine stared at the blasted craters, some lined with molten glass, where the portal staging camp had once been. There had been strange reports about the frontier world known as Ahrusk, but she hadn’t really considered it her business. At least, not until the System had issued a defense quest in the same area as the portal. The now closed portal, with a camp that had been full of Golds and even Platinums, which meant there were forces at play far beyond her party.

“It’s just one creature,” Cormok said, glancing over the charred dirt and shattered stone. “It came after all this. Looks to be fairly high level though. [Tracking] is only getting a faint reading.”

“Besides, we’re Gold,” Maur scoffed. “We can surely handle a Silver quest, especially with that reward.”

Raine shared a glance with her sister, Leese, who completed their quartet. Cormok and Muar were acceptable so far as party members went, and the four of them had been together for over five years, but the two frontline men were far more willing to take risks than the sisters were comfortable with. As spellcasters, neither of them had quite the defenses of either Cormok or Maur, and the lack of any lingering magic in the area meant the devastation was wrought with brute force.

Yet they could hardly ignore the threat of some peak Silver beast in an area that was designed for Copper and Low Silver ranks. The two of them didn’t need to speak to convey what they were thinking, and after a moment they reached an agreement. Raine turned to Muar.

“Just make sure you keep its attention when we catch up,” she said, invoking [Fire Shield] regardless. The skill would restrict her offensive options slightly, but she should still be able to deal with a single, physically-oriented creature. The flames shimmered around her before fading, and Leese’s golden [Divine Shield] did the same.

“Not a problem,” Maur said, banging his heavy shield with the tip of his spear. “C’mon, Cormok. Let’s get going.”

Their tracker grunted and took off. The three of them followed with their movement Skills, Raine and Leese on wings of fire and gold, just behind Maur whose feet simply found purchase on the air itself. Cormok led them on a slow arc through the jungle, tracking the beast on a path that seemed to be circling Gosruk Town. Looking for a place to strike.

Brilliant greens and reds flashed in the light of the suns, the beauty and danger of the [Southern Jungle Conflict Zone] on full display. She couldn’t see anything particularly out of place, but if Cormok’s Skill could barely track it, then it wasn’t likely her untrained eye would find it first. Startled birds rustled and flew away from their passing forms, except for one elite who seemed to want to challenge them. Raine’s [Fire Lance] impaled it in passing and sent it down to the leaves below as a flaming corpse.

Cormok flashed hand signals at them, indicating that they were getting close, and they slowed in their flight. None of them were anywhere close to exhausting their travel Skills, so it was worth burning essence on remaining airborne and mobile when hunting something they had never seen before. Quietly, Cormok pointed to a particular area and signaled to Raine.

She invoked [Inferno] and blanketed the whole area with white-hot flames. Leaves crisped, bark scorched to ash, and the entire area went up in a roar of fire. The area skill wasn’t as damaging as it might have seemed, but it more than served to reveal whatever might be hiding among the greenery.

Astoundingly, even in the fire it was nearly impossible to see their target. It had to have extraordinarily good camouflage Skills, though they clearly weren’t perfect. The crackling, shifting flames revealed a spot where they weren’t, which was all that her party needed to figure out the target. Raine cast a reflexive [Appraise], and was startled when all it returned was [???]. Not even a failure; the System simply couldn’t categorize it.

She didn’t know how to interpret that, so she set it aside, glancing at the others before quenching [Inferno] abruptly. That left a sudden stretch of bare ash and charcoal, cueing Cormok and Maur to move in. Maur’s [Clamor] Skill should have pulled its attention to him while Cormok flanked it, leaving Raine and Leese to engage at range. With a single creature, the strategy never needed more than a few flourishes beyond that basic approach.

Yet the thing didn’t seem to even notice Muar. The blurry edge of the figure shifted as it launched itself, not at their tank or even at Raine, who had surely done some damage with [Inferno], but at Leese. A cry tore itself from Raine’s throat as the nigh-invisible thing ripped through the air and crashed into Leese’s golden shields. Almost by reflex she conjured [Fire Lance], hurling it at the wavery, blurry outline. The hardened flames hit the thing and simply dispersed, as if she’d hit a boulder.

Leese shrieked as she hammered it with holy light, to no avail. At the very least Leese’s Skill should have stripped away whatever augmentation Skills the thing was using – had to be using – but there didn’t seem to be any effect. The enormous bulk of the thing bore Leese down to the ground, shattering the golden shield with a dreadful finality as Leese’s scream cut off abruptly.

Muar’s retaliatory charge only managed to stagger the beast briefly, then he shouted as a wavery outline of a tendril extending from the thing’s back spat some sort of thorn at him — and actually pierced his skin before detonating with enough force to send him flying. Another of those tendrils wrapped around Cormok as their scout leapt on the thing’s back, cracking bones with a terrible strength before Cormok vanished back into shadow. Raine only had eyes for her sister, lying so dreadfully still upon the ground.

She screamed as she amplified [Fire Lance] into [Inferno Lance] and poured as much essence into it as she could before releasing the molten spear. It ripped through the air, and the beast’s side seemed to explode — but when the flames cleared, it wasn’t dead. Once again it ignored Muar’s Skills and lunged for Raine, moving faster than anything below Gold had a right to. Its multi-ton bulk hammered her shield hard enough shatter it.

Her armor took the brunt of the impact, but the force behind it sent her flying into a tree, the bark cracking under the impact as [Molten Scales] flared, soaking up the damage. That was all the respite she got before the dreadful claws were there again, unaffected by the heat pouring off her as they drew lines of agony along her chest. Blood choked her, bubbling inside her throat as the thing’s jaws opened, enormous teeth closing down on her. Distantly, beyond the maw, a battered Cormok and bloodied Muar were charging in but far too late. Raine’s last thought was that the System had been drastically wrong about the target.

***

Cato was not entirely happy about how many resources he’d needed to expend in that fight. The blades the melee users had were barely worth mentioning, but the fire user had slagged quite a bit of armor and forced him to expend an ablative plate with that last massive attack. Then there was the monomolecular-edged explosive dart, which took quite a bit of time to grow.

They had made a good showing, for people who clearly had no idea what they were up against. If they’d been smart they would have just tried to pepper him from range, or tracked him until someone more powerful showed up. As it was, he was simply lucky they had thought he was a standard System beast. Instead, he was ten tons of bioengineering with the frame of a panther, the jaws of a hyena with impossibly sharp shark teeth, and a tail that was as much bludgeon as it was balance.

He finished excising the last brain and swallowed it down. As disgusting as it was in some respects, it was also as far from a normal biological process as could be imagined. The four lizard-people were effectively dead, by System terms, but that line was far blurrier for postbiologicals. Cato only had the biological and biochemical data for a small subset of System natives – just the ones who had been involved in the invasion – but at least for these people he could preserve them until he had more infrastructure to deal with them.

Each of the brains was wrapped in protective film, kept in an induced coma and fed nutrients to keep it alive. The bioweapon didn’t have a gut as such, but there were a number of multipurpose chambers within that could be used for such tasks. Technically he could have mind-ripped them and pulled everything they knew out of their brains by force, since he had complete hardware access, as it were, but that was not something he was willing to do to anyone but the worst of the System degenerates.

Keeping them alive was hardly necessary, but it wasn’t enough just to cut the legs out from under the System. That would result in its own sort of apocalypse, though one far less drastic than the onset of the System on Earth. They wouldn’t have their very lives cut out from under them, wouldn’t have billions of people instantly erased from existence as servers failed and cybernetic implants turned inert. He wanted no apocalypse at all, or even to reverse the one that had happened, and save the millions who dwelt on Sydea.

At least, those who could be.

Taking a lizard-person body as a temporary puppet was not the most auspicious start to that goal, but he desperately needed it to obtain some information. He’d have to apologize to the poor guy once things were more settled, but he only had one choice of corpse. The others had been far too damaged, since Cato had needed to remove them with alacrity, but the shadow-user had been less of a threat and Cato had merely strangled him. Admittedly, to do so took the same amount of force that an industrial hydraulic press could apply, but bioweapons were built with the absurd abilities of System-empowered individuals in mind.

Cato secured the near-corpse in question while he continued to circle around the target town. His bird scout had gone entirely unnoticed, allowing him to send it closer in to see how things stood, though still well outside the range of the casual [Appraise]. With luck, the existence of two instances of System-jamming biology would confuse his location to whatever quests or guidance it would give its people.

On Earth, there had been only a dozen zones over the whole planet. It had been fairly clear the postbiological defenders had interrupted the process of integration, but there was no telling how large or small the zones were on other planets. Nor had Earth created such a defense quest, despite thousands of warframes on the ground. At least, not that Cato had seen, but he hadn’t been there at the very earliest deployments so he had to operate at least a little in the dark.

His surveillance showed him a walled town of maybe three or four thousand people, with a massive System pylon at the center and buildings radiating away from it in layers. The white System buildings were blatantly at odds with the native colors, though a few people had clearly splurged and spent System currency on coloring a store or house. Most of the boxes were blank and brutalist, which Cato presumed meant the town was a relatively new one.

Cato had never seen more than the first, initial villages, when he’d retrieved his cousins from the remains of Earth’s surface. Neither invaders nor those who had been converted during the System apocalypse had established anything other than the featureless buildings, though Cato refused to believe that the whole breadth of the System universe had cities composed of bland boxes. The System was a malevolent threat to the universe, certainly, but for it to be unimaginative as well would elevate its evil to something even more abhorrent.

Nine out of every ten individuals his bird could see walking the streets of the town were lizard-people, like the unfortunate foursome that had tried to hunt him down. So far as Cato knew, this was their actual homeworld, likely only a few hundred years into their own System integration, and a very likely glimpse of Earth’s future had the other powers in the Solar System not intervened.

The other ten percent were an assorted grab-bag of crab-people, bird-people, rock-people, and similar physiognomies. He wouldn’t call them entirely humanoid, but there were certain similarities. Not that he was concerned with the precise details of species, but rather with their dress. Priests and other direct representatives of the System were particularly dangerous, less because of their powers and more because they could put eyes on him and betray his position to more powerful entities.

He memorized the layout of the city – though that was a paltry word for writing a fully-rendered and annotated model into the biological computing matrix that threaded through the warframe’s body – while waiting for the bioactive mush he’d inserted into the corpse’s cranium to do its work. The puppet wouldn’t last long, since he couldn’t actually use the previous owner’s System abilities and any use of [Appraise] would raise some eyebrows. Amusingly, it was far less overt for a humanoid to fail an [Appraise] than an animal, since it could be put down as some kind of skill.

There was also the likelihood that someone would recognize the face of the corpse in question, and without resorting to mindripping its prior owner he wasn’t going to be able to fake that identity. All he intended to do, however, was to look at a local map. System maps were fortunately not part of the System interface, otherwise he would have needed to resort to more intrusive measures, but they were issued by the System. Any place with a System nexus would have the facilities.

He’d pilfered one from the quartet that had attacked him, though he’d left most of their gear. The majority of it was too System-reinforced for him to even break down for resources. It was the maps and wallets, the former blank and the latter unattached after the death of their owners, that could be useful in the future.

The biolattice inside the lizardman corpse connected up with the brainstem, growing into the optical nerve and the eardrum. Just like the bird’s, it was in many ways easier to replace the sense organs than to try and convert the nerve signals into something understandable. He couldn’t perform the same task on the spinal column, and had to dedicate a number of sub-brains to the task of debugging the neurotransmitter patterns.

The corpse twitched spastically, then suddenly began breathing again. A heart began to beat, then was joined by a second one. Cato was damn glad there’d already been some work done on the lizard-people anatomy and biology, because trying to figure that out from scratch would have taken long enough for decay to set in. He paused to set the corpse down on the ground, blinking through its eyes and moving its limbs.

Various sub-brains started building a kinesthetic model based on the observations from his bird; he wouldn’t be able to pilot the body as if he were born to it, but at least he wouldn’t be some staggering zombie. The puppet headed off toward town while he kept the warframe moving. He imagined the System would escalate the quest with the first responders dead, and it’d be best to find some proper cover before real trouble came along.

Bioweapons were hard to kill, but high-ranked System combatants could absolutely manage it given the chance.

Cato wished he could map out what was underneath his feet, especially as the warframe was equipped for acoustic sounding, but the amount of stomping and tromping that would require would leave too many traces at the moment. A monster hiding in a cave was a bit of a cliché, but being out of the line of sight from any would-be hunters was a great help. Just as importantly, the geologic overhaul the System introduced often lined caves with useful metals and minerals, which Cato could certainly scavenge. Most of the warframe was carbon, but a not-insignificant amount was wrought from heavier elements.

If he wanted those benefits, he had to hunt for caves the old-fashioned way — and there were always caves. The System seemed to love them, and festooned every region with the things. Large and small, regardless of whether they made any actual sense. It was something that particularly offended Cato, considering how much time he’d spent learning exogeology, even if that was the least of the System’s sins.

The puppet’s strides became more sure and natural over the few minutes it took to traverse the miles between the edge of the jungle and the walls of the town. By the time he piloted it through the gateway, offering a nod to the lizard-people guards standing at bored attention, the movement was entirely natural. Of course, he’d also made sure the damage was repaired, as wandering in with a crushed throat and an incision circling the entire head would be rather suspicious.

If there was one accolade Cato could award System cities, it was that they were clean. The roads were smooth stone, like paved asphalt, with drains at regular intervals and a full plumbing system. The taverns set at the entrance showed evidence of some attempt at decoration, with hand-lettered signs and flowers set in windowsills, but were just as boxy and uninspired from ground level as they had looked from the air.

He made directly for the central System building, the combination transport nexus and, loosely, adventurer’s guild. If Cato had been connected to the System properly, he could have used it to accept or fulfill quests, in addition to teleporting himself to other parts of the world. In fact, the last option was still something worth considering, if he could convince the System to move a warframe despite the jamming — and if he could be certain of leaving a city center intact.

The puppet opened the doors to the nexus building, taking in the dozens of people pursuing their business there. Several were the lizard-people, but most weren’t; he expected most of the arrivals were there specifically to fulfill the System’s quest about him. Even as he crossed over to the information pylon, the teleporter flashed and two sinuous rodent-like creatures in articulated armor prowled out. Likely there for the Earth portal, as it was entirely possible nobody had been informed it had closed only minutes before. Cato double-checked the System symbiont, and found that the quest had been updated.

[Instant Defense Quest! Investigate the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: C-Tier Skill. Locations: Southern Jungle Conflict Zone, Gosruk Town]

The escalation wasn’t a surprise, though Cato figured the System would put it higher. The final days of the Earth defense had involved very high ranks indeed — though with most of the System anchors destroyed, they had been rather limited in what the high-rankers could do. If he had been the System, he would have put a maximum bounty out on any of the Earth bioweapons the moment they appeared, but it wasn’t clear that the System could be so precipitous. Nor was it clear how much was run by some central intelligence, and how much devolved to local control. Even those people who had been questioned knew little about the way the System was run.

His puppet saw the rodents breeze out the door, and his bird caught them emerging onto the plain road just outside the System nexus. One poor native nearly bumped into them, and caught a backhand for his trouble that sent him flying across the road to smash into and through the side of a building. Cato winced. The pair clearly didn’t care much for or about the Sydeans, and it wasn’t like any authorities were going to deal with them. Not only were they too powerful, but Cato was pretty sure he’d just eaten the nearest authorities.

The bird watched them take to the air, accelerating toward the ruined portal staging area. A sudden sonic boom showed that they were far more dangerous than the group he’d taken out before, enough that Cato would prefer not to engage without orbital support. Or at least a few weeks to dig in and fortify an area. Unfortunately, there was little he could do about it at the moment.

Taking the blank System map from the puppet’s belt pouch, he touched it to the information pylon. The rune-covered obelisk rose all the way to the ceiling, set off to the side of the quest board and opposite the alcoves where people could turn in System quests and get their rewards. It had a number of functions, most of which he couldn’t access himself, but updating maps was a very simple transaction.

The System map itself was a thin, flexible sheet of some material halfway between metal and glass. Whatever it was fell apart without System support, which meant that all the boffins back in orbit couldn’t figure out the nature of the stuff. The updates seemed closer to a proper data download, flashing the blank sheet with a detailed sketch of the world’s terrain and landmarks.

Cato wrote it into memory as he flipped through the various regions on the planet of Sydea; the cities, the connections, the dungeons and conflict zones. Faction control, mines and quarries, even farming areas. It was commendably thorough, though he still would have preferred a proper satellite view, as the maps covered maybe a tenth of the planet’s landmass at best. At least it had, off in one corner, the thing he was looking for: a tall mountain.

“Hey, Cormok!”

It took Cato a moment to realize that the person was addressing his puppet, and he held up his hand in the universal symbol of please wait while he finished perusing the map. There was no real way he could pretend to be this Cormok, so however the conversation went, he wouldn’t have any further opportunity to look around.

“Hey,” he replied after he was finished, looking up at the lizard-person. Puppeting people ended up being horrific for a number of reasons, but this was the main one. At some point, usually sooner rather than later, the charade fell apart and the puppet died – or worse – in front of the eyes of friends or family.

“You sound different,” the lizard-person said, squinting at the puppet. “Are you well? I saw the quest you went to do got upgraded.”

“I’m afraid Cormok is not well,” Cato said, after a moment of debate. He just didn’t have the heart to try and play it out. “He did not survive the quest.” Then he triggered the self-destruct purge on the puppet’s neural mass.

Of course, he lost connection with it instantly, but he still knew what would have happened. The puppet would have simply crumpled, the head and part of the spinal cord turned to charred ash as the fusion organelles changed the way they contained their payloads. Every single bioengineered neuron was practically vaporized simultaneously, with the thought-static System protection following a moment later on a dead-man’s switch.

His bird saw a sudden rush of traffic toward the System nexus as the System quest removed Gosruk Town from its location list, and Cato winced despite how useful that was for him. If all the attention was there, it wasn’t toward him, even though he was sure that would traumatize Gosruk Town for the foreseeable future. At least with that puppet gone, he could recall his bird and put more distance between the warframe and the staging area.

According to the map, his target was an entire continent away, so Cato needed to get somewhere he could put on some real speed. Sadly, the warframe couldn’t actually fly, but it was an inexhaustible biological machine that could reach impressive speeds given the chance. Even at that distance it really shouldn’t take him too long.

He’d still need to make good use of the time, and figure out all the little details about the System workings that had never been revealed on Earth. If he wanted to remove the System from this planet, he had a lot of work cut out for him. Not only were the System anchors more numerous, he was sure they were far more insidious and the guardians far more powerful.

The self-proclaimed System god of Earth, some sort of local administrator, Cato was sure, hadn’t fared too well under the assault of an orbital particle beam. That had been only minutes before the portals had failed, and showed the degree of directed energy it would take to deal with anyone at that level. Sadly, that wasn’t something he had on board his bioweapon, and he’d need rather more infrastructure than a single warframe to deal with the equivalent here.

The bird returned to hunker down on his back, and he began running again in earnest. The two rat-people were still out there, and could be serious nuisances, but the further he got from both town and staging area, the harder it’d be for anyone to track him down. Still, he instructed the warframe to begin preparing some backup seeds, just in case. It wouldn’t be much of a bioweapon if it couldn’t reproduce.

Barring interruptions, his goal was simple. Climb a mountain, then kill a god.

Chapter 2 — Dungeon Delve

The lush, riotous jungle stopped abruptly at a deep chasm of layered blue stone, a ribbon of water winding through far below while a rolling golden savannah stretched out on the other side. At something over a mile across it was bit too far to jump, even for the warframe, but Cato had business at the bottom. Two kinds of business, in fact.

One was to plant his seed into the river, a turn of phrase that made the warframe’s ominous muzzle curl into a juvenile grin. Even if the label was amusing, the action was a serious one, borne of the knowledge that some quirk of the System could erase him at any moment. The package of biomatter would bury into the ground, leech material from its surroundings to grow and reinforce itself, and be a hard-to-find nuisance that would keep System folks searching for an unknown, well-hidden anomaly. Besides which, it could operate as a backup version of himself on the off chance the worst did happen, and the warframe was destroyed.

Then there was the anchor. According to the map he’d scanned, there was a dungeon in the chasm, and like all major System creations it served to anchor the System to Sydea. This particular planet had upwards of fifty known dungeons, and God and System alone knew how many others. One thing they’d found during the Earth campaign was that destroying the anchors disrupted the System’s operations nearby for some time, and with how many zones there were – and how small they were – he needed that disruption. Otherwise the moment he crossed over, especially with the narrow boundary zones, he’d give away his position.

The risk, of course, was that being inside a dungeon created that self-same problem, that anyone paying attention to the System quest would know exactly where to go. Cato judged the risk to be fairly low, as he had managed to avoid any further combat in the past thirty hours. The quest itself was still active, but hadn’t been upgraded, and his bird hadn’t spotted anyone that might be looking for him. Which wasn’t conclusive where the System was concerned, but Cato would bet engineered senses against System-boosted stealth any day of the week.

He left the bird to circle up above and ran down the side of the canyon at full speed, framejacked ever so slightly – boosting his personal perception of time to thrice normal – as he found purchase with all six limbs. The warframe adjusted for each loose pebble and dislodged rock, dodging outcrops and boulders before reaching the ground at near terminal velocity. There was enough of a slope to turn that into a headlong rush, right into the river.

Of course, he sank like the stone he practically was, but that was by design. At the bottom of the river he found a likely place, a small pit surrounded by reaching weeds, and plucked the nascent seed off the armor of his back with one of his tendrils. It looked like nothing so much as a black stone maybe six inches in diameter, but the moment it touched the bottom of the pit, it flexed and contorted itself and burrowed down. He could still contact it with his microwave glands, but soon enough it would be independent.

If it had enough resources – which it probably wouldn’t, at the bottom of a river – it could grow a new warframe, but more likely it would take on one of a number of lesser forms should it ever be necessary. Of course, it also had a copy of himself, in stasis, in case there had been no contact after a full year. Given sufficient time, Cato could be quite tenacious, though the System would always know there was something disrupting its reach. He couldn’t fully hide himself from the System so long as the jamming was in place, and he wasn’t willing to give that up and fully assimilate into the System.

Cato stayed in the river, following it downstream as he let the current help him along. Small silver fish darted away from the disruption in the water, as even with camouflage he couldn’t disguise the pressure waves of his movement. The warframe was not designed for the cavitation necessary for underwater stealth, and it wasn’t worth trying to reconfigure it for such a short jaunt.

According to the map, the dungeon was located in a lake at the end of the canyon, and was rated for upper Silver and lower Gold ranks. Which was a huge jump in power by System standards, so it was a curious anomaly. The few dungeons on Earth had barely gotten out of their nascent phase before they were removed and hadn’t had the time to grow even low Silver levels. He had records of all the delves, however, along with the System’s helpful explanatory texts, so he had a fair handle on what to expect.

The interiors tended to be labyrinthine tunnels connecting open spaces simulating different biomes. All of this in aid of luring people in for a chance at materials, items, and the exotic energy of the System — essence. Or mana, or qi, depending on the translation. The System language dictionary wasn’t entirely complete.

As far as Cato was concerned, dungeons were just weird murder-holes that showcased the more exotic aspects of the System — ignoring magic and how guns and computers were rendered into fused chunks of metal and glass. Their entrances were physical enough, but the deeper layers of dungeons seemed to be in some sort of basement universe. There had been no little consternation after orbital bombardment had turned out to be of limited use. Cato figured that the weird dimensional disjunct that dungeons introduced was the main mechanism of System anchoring, though a lot of very smart people had a lot of very good speculation to the contrary.

He didn’t actually care. They were anchors, they were part of the System, and they were murder-holes. They killed people. They were built to kill, to teach people to kill and be comfortable with killing. All too many normal, ordinary people had emerged from them forever changed.

Cato would never be able to shake that moment when his cousins, kids he’d known from the cradle, had completely fallen to the System’s seductions. Of the pair emerging bloody and triumphant from a dungeon with a wild and terrible light in their eyes, hungry only for more. And of how they had been utterly unwilling to listen to reason.

He only dwelt on it for a few minutes as he half-swam, half-slogged through the river until it brought him to the lake with the dungeon’s island. Water slid off hydrophobic scales, leaving him dry from muzzle to tailtip, as Cato emerged onto the shore and found the entrance to be more than just a hole in the ground. Someone – perhaps the dungeon itself – had arrayed small fountains around a dome of deep blue stone, giving the appearance of some sort of shrine. The entrance to the dome was fortunately large, as some of the System races had significant bulk, but the warframe still practically scraped the ceiling as Cato entered.

A broad staircase led downward, and Cato took it. The System-symbiote received a notification as Cato passed the threshold, heading down into the passages beneath the island, as well as an update on the defense quest.

[Welcome to Azure Canyon Dungeon! Suggested Rank: High Silver or Low Gold.]

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: C-Tier Skill. Locations: Southern Jungle Conflict Zone, Azure Canyon Border Zone, Azure Canyon Dungeon]

At the end of the staircase, swampy landscape stretched out in front of him, brightly lit by false sky. To ordinary eyes that saw only the classic visible spectrum the illusion was good enough, but his senses extended much further and in higher and lower frequencies it was clearly just stone. The vaulted ceiling was still higher than it had any right to be, but that was only to be expected.

Cato headed straight through the first floor at speed. He had no need for or interest in the rewards offered by the dungeon, so there was no point in doing anything but descending as quickly as possible. Giant amphibians, froglike things the size of small horses, leapt out of the pools of water that lay on either side of the narrow, swampy path, but between the adaptive camouflage and loping along at over eighty miles an hour they had no chance of actually engaging him.

The first floor boss was a huge two-headed pseudo-salamander in a shallow pond at the end of the cave, probably magical in some way, but still actually smaller than the warframe. It stared in Cato’s direction with visible confusion before ten tons of camouflaged bioweapon smashed into it at full speed. The salamander managed only a pained squawk as Cato impacted it, then flattened it against the wall with sheer inertia and turned it into bloody pulp.

A stone door ground open at the edge of the pond, and the salamander’s corpse vanished into the ground a moment later like some bad special effect. Several items appeared in its place, but Cato had no need for them and just squeezed himself into the next stairwell. The map didn’t have any notations on how deep the dungeon was, but probably not too many floors given the rating.

His very good ears – really, full acoustic sensors, distributed over his entire body – picked up a disturbance below. Grunts, the sounds of metal, and the rushing of moving water implied what was going on, and when Cato emerged he could see them in the distance. Someone was already running the dungeon.

The second floor was structured along the same style as the dome outside, a temple of blue stone with deep pools all about, fed by fonts on the walls. Frogmen with coral blades and fish-scale armor crawled out of the pools, focusing on two of the natives. The purple-scaled pair stood in a sheltered corner, a female in a blue robe with blades of water hovering nearby, protected by an armored male with a spear and shield. The pair were methodically engaging the frogmen where only a few could attack at a time, grinding down the small horde.

Also, they were just kids. Juveniles of the species so far as he could tell, so they couldn’t have too much experience, though it seemed they were doing fairly well for themselves. He couldn’t tell if their current predicament was actually a danger to them or they were simply playing things safe, but either way their time in the dungeon was at an end.

He dashed along the central temple floor, reaching the frogman horde and dicing them to bloody pieces with several quick swipes of monomolecular claws. The pair of lizard-people were notably upset, with the girl squealing and hurling her water blades at the big invisible thing that had just destroyed a dozen enemies in two seconds flat. Cato hardly blamed her, nor did he blame the boy for raising his shield and invoking a defensive skill that created a shimmering barrier in front of them.

“You two need to get out of here,” Cato said, dropping the camouflage for a moment. The sight of a massive clawed and toothed war machine didn’t seem to calm them any, for some reason. His command of the System language was handled by a sub-brain rather than his main gestalt, so it might be said he didn’t truly know it, but the difference was academic at best. The fact that there was only one language for thousands of species was useful for the moment, but the absolute effrontery of erasing the natives’ tongue was another in the long list of the System’s crimes.

“What—” The boy stammered, staring at the monstrosity in front of him. The girl didn’t say anything, but by the way she was hunched in on herself she was clearly distressed.

“I’m short on time, and you don’t want to be here when the dungeon collapses. Get to the surface and go,” he said, pointing the way he’d come with one of the tendrils sprouting from his back. Then he stepped away to give them room.

The pair didn’t try to argue, sidling away from him before joining hands and making a mad dash for the staircase. Cato was satisfied with that, though part of him really wanted to make sure they were out and away. He had no idea what the kids were doing in such an out-of-the-way dungeon, but it really wasn’t his business. As soon as they vanished up the stairs he resumed his rush, charging toward the end of the temple. There were a few tricky twists and turns, but he kept his steps heavy enough to generate an acoustic signature so he could map the place with his senses.

He charged past the mindlessly aggressive frog-people, winding through the cramped halls and splashing through shallow puddles, until he reached the second floor guardian — an enormously oversized frog-person with a crown on its head, sitting on a throne. It was almost laughably generic, as if it were simply plucked from some catalogue preset.

Something which might well be the case. So far as anyone could tell the dungeons were entirely mechanistic, the decorations and architecture having the quality of creatively bankrupt, procedurally-generated areas. All the flourishes were the same, all architecture merely repetition of the same few key features.

Cato leapt forward and decapitated the frog king with a single swipe of his claws. Higher ranks could resist the absurd sharpness that metamaterials could reach, but the dungeon was not anywhere near that rank. The dungeon boss toppled into gory halves before being absorbed once again, leaving more equipment in its place.

Once upon a time Cato had played more than a few games that operated on similar principles with his cousins, but the fight against the System had beaten his game-oriented reflexes out of him. Random loot rewards in a game were fine, once they had become consolation prizes in a deathmatch it had permanently destroyed any fond memories he had once had of such pastimes.

Down he went, to a third floor that was more ice themed than water. Temperatures dropped to well below freezing, and his acoustic mapping showed massive slush pits of near-freezing water underneath the blanket of snow that covered the blizzard-wracked floor. Cato had no idea how a pair like the Sydeans he’d just sent out of the dungeon were supposed to traverse it, but his warframe didn’t have any issues. Even the cold wasn’t much, since all he needed to do was dial up the heat output of his cells.

The floating bits of ice did little to slow him down. The elementals were blatantly impossible by the standards of physics, but at the same time weren’t capable of doing much to the warframe. It was moderately immune to variations in temperature, and regular ice was not strong enough to prevent him from moving, so he just broke through the attempts to freeze him to the floor or slow him down and made a straight line for the end.

The boss there was simply a much larger elemental, a motile blizzard with ice shards the size of the warframe’s head. Yet it just wasn’t moving fast enough to actually be a threat, apparently relying simply on temperatures. Cato was glad that such things had been encountered before on Earth so he knew how to deal with it, though destroying the central core wasn’t too much a leap of logic.

He lunged through the swirling fragments with a single, powerful motion and crushed the core against the far wall. The blizzard faded as a staircase ground open, and Cato squeezed the warframe down once more. The dungeon didn’t offer any challenge at all, the System’s silver rank being well within the capabilities of Cato’s technology. Not that Cato was there to challenge himself; he was there to remove an anchor.

As he emerged into some sort of flooded canal-work, he was swarmed by long, eel-like forms crackling with electricity. He laughed, a deep booming noise, because electricity was far and away the least terrifying thing that any System creature could throw at him. As a matter of course, a good chunk of the warframe was superconducting, and those parts that were vulnerable were fully insulated.

It took only raw muscle to push past the swarming eels and breeze through the dark, deep-water tunnels that characterized the final floor. His acoustic mapping found the final boss, a huge serpent in a deep pool at the end, as well as the actual core. The System anchors were physical things, chunks of some sort of crystal embedded at the bottom of their respective basement universes. Obvious enough, at least to nonvisual senses.

The serpent reared up as Cato approached the pool, striking like a snake with an open mouth full of razor sharp teeth. The sheer amount of mass in motion would pulverize any normal biology, but Cato was tougher than the serpent and that reversed the calculus of impact. He launched himself forward, past the teeth, and clawed his way through the top of the mouth and the brain in a matter of seconds.

Putting the most vulnerable part of the body right next to its weapons was such a design flaw.

He dove down into the bottom of the pool, toward where the core was embedded in a niche in the stone, from which it simply couldn’t be removed. Cato’s lips drew back from the insanely sharp teeth of his muzzle as he grabbed the dungeon core in one huge paw. It was responsible for everything he’d encountered on the way down, and in its own way a miraculous piece of machinery, but he just hated it and everything it stood for.

Muscles wrought of graphene and boron and exotic proteins squeezed the crystalline core, shattering it into powder with a satisfying crunch. The stuff was just like the System maps — something completely and wholly constructed by the System, with no underlying reality. Practically imaginary, but no less deadly for all of that.

The moment that the core shattered, the basement universe started to collapse. He didn’t have the sensory apparatus to see essence directly, but there was enough of the stuff swirling around to have a palpable effect on the atmosphere, rendering it thick and clingy while the water started to evaporate into nothingness. The ground trembled, and he turned and ran.

Cato was used to seeing magic and physics-defying nonsense from the System, but the entire reality of the dungeon space being destroyed was something else. The ground cracked, heaving underfoot, but a moment later sealed itself as the physical size of the level shrank. Stone bulged and bubbled like molten glass, vapor pluming from arbitrary spots on the walls.

He powered up the steps, skirting around columns hanging in the air, twisting and distorting as if seen through a dynamic lens. Ice skated around, sizzling as if it were on a red-hot griddle, before suddenly halting in midair as if it had slammed into some invisible obstacle. Another level up, and the halls warped and stretched, his acoustic mapping showing the passages swaying and twisting as if the entire thing were drawn on a deflating ball. Cato grinned to himself as the entire pocket dimension crumpled behind him like cheap paper, gleeful in the destruction of the System space as he aimed himself up the final staircase. With one last convulsive leap he emerged into the light of the twin suns.

***

“Location updated,” Onek grunted. Golsan checked the quest.

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: C-Tier Skill. Locations: Southern Jungle Conflict Zone, Azure Canyon Border Zone, Azure Canyon Dungeon]

Combing the [Southern Jungle Conflict Zone] had proven fruitless, even for a pair of newly-minted Tornok Clan Platinums. True, neither of them had tracking skills as such, but at Platinum their ability to sense essence should have made it simplicity itself to find anything out of place. Especially after they’d returned to the tiny town and found the disturbed essence inside the strange doppleganger-corpse that had walked into the System nexus building for reasons that escaped them both.

The two of them had to put down half a dozen local golds who had been hunting the rewards for themselves — as if the backwards natives of Sydea deserved new skills more than Tornok Platinums. At least the Essence reward had been acceptable recompense for their time. The two of them really wanted that Skill selection, so after finding nothing for several days, Golsan was quite happy to see that one of the locations was more precise. At their rank they could sweep any nearby dungeon, and at worse camp at the entrance.

He nodded to his brother and retrieved his map from his belt, giving it a glance before heading off in the proper direction. The two of them used [Windripper] to tear through the air, far faster than any of the local dullards could have managed. Sydea was a fairly unimpressive place overall, and neither Onek or Golsan would have been there if it hadn’t been for the series of quests that came out regarding the [Ahrusk Portal Staging Area] while they’d been just one portal hop away.

Of course they’d been too late for those, since the staging area was destroyed and the portal closed. New worlds weren’t all that common an occurrence, but Golsan had never heard of a new world failing at its initial integration so badly that the System decided to wipe the whole thing and start over. It did make some kind of sense though, as Sydea itself was terrible, and anything further in that line would be horrendous. It was no wonder everyone involved had turned it into a catastrophe. At least the System had been considerate enough to provide compensation for anyone who’d had their time wasted.

The [Southern Jungle Conflict Zone] blurred below them, giving way to the [Azure Canyon Border Zone] in only a few minutes. The sound of their passage echoed off the canyon walls and sent rocks tumbling down in their wake, churning the water of the river below into froth. The dungeon itself was easy enough to spot, and the two of them came to a halt just as a pair of locals stumbled out of it.

Golsan exchanged a glance with his brother and the two of them slammed down in front of the pathetic lizard-things, making them topple amusingly from the shockwave. From the feel of their essence they were somewhere in Silver, barely more than ants, but that was to be expected in such a pathetic backwater as Sydea. The planet really had nothing going for it.

“You two,” Golsan stated, narrowing his eyes at the pair. “Did you see anything strange enter the dungeon?” The brothers could have gone in themselves and it might have been faster, but even low rank dungeons interfered with essence senses, and of course the interior was completely opaque from the outside.

“I…” The armored one started to say something as it struggled to its feet, before turning to help the robed one. Golsan snorted impatiently.

“Speak up! Look at me when you’re talking!” He ordered, voice booming. The armored one stiffened its spine and looked Golsan in the eye.

“A monster came by and told us to leave,” it said. Golsan snarled and slapped it for the temerity of daring to address him so familiarly. As a Platinum he moved in a blur, and he could feel the lizard’s jaw shatter from the casual backhand. As it swayed and started to topple, the robed one grabbed it and shrieked at them.

“What are you doing?”

Of course, Onek wouldn’t let some low rank animal speak to them that way, and he responded with a simple [Wind Cut].

[Low Silver Rank Sydean defeated. Essence awarded.]

[Low Silver Rank Sydean defeated. Essence awarded.]

Golsan snorted at the System’s confirmation of their actions. Even if it wasn’t much Essence, barely enough to feel, it was nice to be rewarded for dealing with such nonsense. The lizard things wouldn’t have been much help anyway, their rank being so low that they couldn’t have even been able to [Identify] something that was a peak Gold threat.

“I guess we go in,” he remarked to Onek, stepping past the carcasses, only to stop as all the ambient essence began to tremble. The two of them leapt back, taking to the air again as the atmosphere was churned into a nearly visible haze, the ground rumbling and shaking and making the water of the lake dance. It took Golsan a moment to realize what was going on, for dungeon collapses were far from common. But he had seen one once before, and the widespread essence disruption was hard to forget.

“Or not,” Onek said, readying his blade. Golsan followed suit. Both of them used thin, whiplike swords to amplify their skills such as [Wind Cut] and [Gale Volley], though really their entire bodies were weapons in that vein. Long practice with their Skills made him confident they could deal with whatever this particular beast was, especially since they could ambush it the moment it emerged from the dungeon. Which it had to, or be destroyed in the collapse.

He caught it more with [Wind Perception] than his eyes, something big pushing a pressure wave in front of it and displacing the air in the dungeon’s dome. It was surprisingly stealthy for something that size, but not nearly good enough to fool Platinum senses. As one, the two brothers unleashed [Gale Volley], followed by a thundering snap meant to deafen and disorient even before the Skill landed.

Air cut into stone. Explosions boomed. The blue dome crumbled. But the thing had dodged.

***

The moment Cato emerged from the dungeon, the threat-scanning neural lattice sent him into a crash framejack. The emergency measures sent subjective time running at over a hundred times faster than reality and flushed his primary neurons with the proper chemical mix to help him think clearly and calmly, rather than panic. Which was blatantly cheating, but that’s why it was a warframe.

He recognized the pair hovering in the air as the slinky rodent things in articulated armor that he’d seen earlier. Since he hadn’t spotted any real pursuit for a while, he had hoped they’d given up, but apparently not. Maybe his decision to remove the dungeon had been a poor one. The combat flush made him recognize he’d been just angry enough to take a chance that perhaps he shouldn’t have, even if it wasn’t a complete loss. The collapse would still let him shroud his location for a while, but just the scant minutes he had been pinpointed to a single place meant he’d drawn attention he really didn’t want to. In the excess of time he had while the System people reacted, and the warframe started to move at speeds constrained by physics, he studied them and the surroundings.

Judging by the distortions of wind – visible in certain electromagnetic bands – they were air users, which was a problem. Cato mostly had close quarters options, since creating any reusable projectile system of real significance without combustion or electromagnetics was a losing proposition. The System could do it with magic, but that was just an unfairness he had to live with.

Then he noticed the two bodies on the ground, and grim anger leaked past the induced chemical calm. The rats had clearly murdered the kids, and he had no doubt it was at least in part due to the System actively rewarding such behavior. Even if it wasn’t, he’d seen for himself how the System so inured people to killing that randomly slaughtering lower ranks was worth barely even a thought.

The two air users waved their little whippy swords, rippling distortions issuing forth like dozens of invisible spears. Cato launched himself forward, ahead of the attack and mostly ignoring the subsequent sonic burst that damaged a few of his eardrums. He didn’t dare make himself airborne, not with air users, but at maximum framejack he could at least dodge their attacks and perhaps force them to close in.

Several more volleys came his way, and he simply outpaced them. In his slowed time they moved sluggishly, and he spent his focus on ensuring each movement was optimized. That he had appropriate lines of retreat and evasion, calculating angles to force the pair to interfere with each other.

He calculated feints, the warframe moving sluggishly compared to his perceptions, skirting their attacks in what would have seemed a blur of motion at normal speed. After several accelerated seconds of evading their long-range attacks, the pair swooped down to try and flank him at sword range. At which point he decided that getting them close had been, in fact, a very poor idea, because they were extremely fast. And strong.

He sliced at one with his forward claws, and while the whippy sword was interposed – and wasn’t even cut by the monomolecular edge – the sheer mass of the blow meant it landed. But it did nothing other than push the rodent back and score some lines on its armor. The other rodent took the opportunity to punch an air blade into, and through, Cato’s side.

The System-enhanced physics cut right through the fullerine-and-metal plating and into the flesh underneath. The attack drove a long puncture wound through what would have been the guts of the warframe, if the warframe had guts. It also sent ten tons of bioweapon sprawling from the impact, though he was back on his feet before they could capitalize on the opportunity.

“Ow,” Cato said to himself, though it didn’t hurt. Pain had its place, but it would have been a supremely bad idea to give a bioweapon designed to regularly engage in combat such a deleterious and imprecise method of reporting damage. The air attack had obliterated one sub-brain, damaged several specialized organs that he was using to support his passengers, and come perilously close to actually skewering one of the preserved brains he was carrying around.

There was no way that he’d be able to beat those two on a physical basis alone, which they clearly understood. Even if they were an unfamiliar species, he could recognize that much of their body language. Given a few more minutes they’d cut him into so many bloody chunks.

Of course, this was a problem that the Earth defenders had run into before. Not everyone had the benefits of orbital overwatch, and the ability to simply call a particle beam from the heavens down upon whatever System entity was being difficult. Fortunately, there were lots of clever people with far more imagination than Cato, and he had a ready solution to his current problem. The originator of the tactic had called it the Gesundheit Surprise, but most everyone else called it the Sneeze of Doom.

Cato partially aerosolized a large number of cell structures whose sole purpose was to induce a tiny amount of nuclear fusion, packed with as much deuterium fuel as he could manage from his reserves. Wrapped with some motile cells and a few neuron threads to produce the System-blocking static, the mess looked a bit like snot. It was disgusting but that was something the defenders had become used to, with bioweapons as the only option. He split the mess into packets, arming two of his back-tendrils. Then he lunged forward, tendrils swiveling as he tracked the large noses on their muzzles.

Very precisely, he sneezed on each of their noses. The deuterated organelles immediately slid themselves inside the nostrils, which surely was not comfortable and got the pair of rodents to disengage, rubbing furiously at their muzzles. That wasn’t the end though, and Cato turned and ran. Only moments later, the organelles all went off at once, and half a gram of deuterium fused itself inside each of their sinus cavities.

The rear-facing sets of eyes saw their eyes, noses, and mouths vent fusion plasma, followed by their heads more or less exploding. Yet the corpses were still intact after they dropped, and Cato reversed course to bound over to where they lay. The high ranks of the System had insane regenerative capabilities, and even the Sneeze of Doom might not be enough to put them down permanently. So he ate them.

Cut off from the System, there was far less they could do, and out of an abundance of caution he directed everything to one of the molecular disassembly chambers that were the closest things the warframe had to stomachs. The chemical foundry there went to work, tearing apart the bodies and studying the biochemistry for future use and reclaiming any rare elements it could manage from the armor.

The battle clarity faded, and Cato shuddered at how damn outclassed he had been. Another couple direct hits and he would have been severely impaired, at which point it was a downward spiral. He would have been forced to self-destruct the warframe, and hope his backup fared better. It was only through the work and genius of others that he’d had any idea what to do. It would have been nice if he could build a gun from the uncontrolled fusion technique instead, but it was uncontrolled, with only the vaguest control over the yield when performed at that scale.

Shaking off the virtual chills, he trotted over to where the two lizard-people corpses were, because he’d be damned if he would let some kids get killed if he could help it. Fortunately for them, their heads seemed to be intact. He ate them as well, but their brains got excised and preserved while he let his foundry analyze their bodies. With luck he could grow them exact duplicates.

They would never get the lost ranks back, but that hardly mattered. One way or another, they’d be living outside the System soon enough. He checked the quest updates with his symbiotic blank, wanting to make sure the entire diversion hadn’t been for naught.

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: B-Tier Skill. Locations: Southeastern Coren]

Having half a continent to hide in was good enough.

Chapter 3 – Caves and Ruins

Cato loped over the savannah at something close to one hundred miles per hour, able to really let loose now that he had flat ground. Every hour or so he planted a seed at a river or oasis, where they could bury into the mud and suck in water to try and restock on deuterium, searching for the hidden gems of heavy hydrogen sometimes found in life’s favored solvent. After encountering the rodent pair he was more aware that something really potent could swoop down and flatten him, and it was better to have more backups than fewer. Besides which, when the System reorganized itself around the missing anchor, having a huge number of zones to check was better.

He knew that wasn’t sufficient, of course. Anyone with a map and the willingness to watch the System updates would be able to chart his course and possibly intercept him. Which was why he needed to muddy the waters, and make it look like he was going in multiple directions at once.

While he wasn’t as much of a genius as the tinkerers back on Titan, Cato had learned to be a bit of a dab hand at genetic manipulation over the course of the Earth conflict. It didn’t hurt that the bioweapon came with its own chemical programming mechanisms to let him adjust some of the available genetic sequences. It wasn’t like a full interface, which would have to wait until he was out of the System, but between that and the very basic neural engrams he could give them simple instructions rather than installing a full copy of himself.

Currently brewing in a pocket on his back were a quartet of very stealthy fliers, which would travel at angles to where Cato was headed and drop more seeds. Considering they were disposable, they were as light on the metallic elements as possible, but Cato really needed to find a cave to see if he couldn’t leech some reserves of selenium and ytterbium. Tantalum and tungsten would have been nice too, but those were even less likely.

Creating all that biomass didn’t come for free, but he had a certain amount of material kindly generated by two rodents, and it wasn’t too hard to take big bites out of passing trees, and stones, or guzzle down a few hundred gallons of water. Bioweapon metabolism was frighteningly efficient relative to normal biology, mostly because it relied on hydrogen and deuterium for energy and could use almost anything for its elemental composition, but he still needed to replenish mass. The special System materials, like those that composed armor and weapons, were practically useless considering the effort it took to extract them.

With the System’s pawns distracted and misdirected by the scope of the quest, he could spare some attention for the genuinely alien world of Sydea. Not that he had any idea how much of the flora and fauna was native; when the System had come to Earth a huge chunk of the native ecology had simply collapsed. A few hobbyists out by Venus had the surveys and genetic samplings to reseed it, but fixing up the planet’s ruined ecosystems would take longer than pushing the System off in the first place — assuming it got done at all. They were all volunteers and there was enough bad blood between Earth and Venus that nobody might bother.

The tall golden grass was probably native considering it seemed adapted for variant light conditions, a match for the behavior of the binary pair in the sky above. The big, beetle-like grazers wandering through the plains seemed less so, but with the weird alterations from System magic there was no telling. Cato knew at least three people who would have had a field day, but none of them were silly enough to send versions of themselves through a magical portal to a place where proper technology didn’t actually work.

Topping a rise, the replacement for the destroyed sub-brain – one responsible for locomotion – finally came back online, so Cato decided to finally get some sleep. He didn’t need it physically, as the neural lattice that supported his gestalt flushed itself fairly regularly, but it did serve to put punctuation around periods of time and helped integrate experiences. Cato hadn’t been base human for a very long time, but the architecture was still roughly the same — and by design. Anything else resulted in something that could not be called human, as postbiologicals had found out the hard way.

Of course, there was no need to actually risk anything creeping up on him, so he set the warframe to keep going and framejacked himself to maximum for the sleep period. Total downtime, perhaps three minutes and five miles. Though aside from keeping a close eye on the surroundings, Cato wasn’t doing much with his uptime. He had no additional resources to leverage, and with a lack of anything actionable he found he had time to actually reflect on what he was doing.

Normally when he was at an impasse he’d bounce ideas off Luna Secundus herself, one of the few great giga-AIs scattered about the solar system. After all, Cato was hardly some great strategist. Like everyone who took part in the so-called Anti-System War, or the No Fun Allowed War, he was basically a civilian. There were certainly forces that would have prosecuted the war with far more expertise and alacrity, like Enceladus. That particular AI had converted the entire Saturnian moon it was named after to weapons and computing substrate and Cato was completely certain it had been anonymously supplying occasional wargaming simulations, but it hadn’t actually bestirred itself.

Nor had many other forces within the Solar System. The general consensus among most of the outsystem polities was that Earth had got what it deserved, which Cato could hardly blame them for, but he’d been born well after the War of Outsystem Independence and he personally had friends on Earth. The planet had its problems but that was true everywhere, and he’d even spent a while in the various simulated worlds. The fond memories of his time there were all that remained though, as all those places had been erased in the System’s advent.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a moon-sized AI riding shotgun. Aside from himself, the best he had was a hyper-compressed database loaded onto a crystalline pseudo-diamond embedded in his spine. It wasn’t something the System’s physics would ruin, like semiconductors and superconductors and industrial microtech, but rather an inert rock that lacked vulnerable mechanisms or properties. He was stuck with biotech, like the fliers that were just finalizing as he arrived at another oasis.

It would have been inaccurate to call the creations birds, for they only bore a faint resemblance to things with feathers and beaks. They were closer to a cross between a bat and an albatross, covered with chromatophores to make themselves difficult to spot, and capable of eating practically anything. More importantly, capable of flying high, quickly, and for very long distances.

The caul they had been constructed in retracted – gestated in was probably more proper, but these were closer to machines than animals – and they launched themselves into the air with enough speed to get clear of the more predatory creatures that called the oasis home. Cato had a link with them for a short distance, but the moment they passed out of range they’d be independent, with very simple behaviors. Three of them had a track they’d fly based on the map, scavenging foliage and dropping seeds into bodies of water at intervals. Given any trouble at all they’d self-destruct, though sadly Cato wouldn’t know if that happened. The last was meant as his eyes in the sky, to keep him from running into trouble. The bird he’d converted had ended up being destroyed by his conflict with the rats, but it would have been out of place on the plains anyway.

For himself, he had to continue north and west until he hit the ocean. Given the speed he was maintaining, that’d happen sooner rather than later, but there was still a swath of inhabited area he had to get through. The savannah itself was technically the [Golden Grass Resource Zone], and he’d spotted a few parties gathering said resources, but it was still quite sparsely populated.

That was fine. He really couldn’t afford to encounter any more natives anyway.

***

Onswa Ramik was always of two minds when he met with Arene. While he ruled Sydea – ignoring the System God, which worked in mysterious ways far beyond the ken of mortals – most of the actual governance was done by people like Arene, and when they came to him it was always with problems. Nobody ever visited him for social calls, it was only ever about business.

On the other hand, Arene was one of the most spectacular specimens of the female sex to grace the surface of Sydea. She’d come into her power early, making Platinum years ago, and her horns maintained the glossy sharpness of youth even though her muzzle had the shape of a mature woman. Her scales were a marvelously complex pattern of orange and red, like leaping flames, and then there was that tail. That tail. Every single time he saw her he had to strangle the temptation to make a bid for her attentions. If Arene didn’t kill him, his wife surely would.

So he had to content himself with looking.

“I’m starting to get damned tired of seeing this quest in the System list,” Arene said as she dropped heavily into the chair across from him, and she didn’t have to specify which quest she meant. The Global Defense Quest had been sitting there for days, visible to everyone and tempting anyone on-planet who thought they had even a faint chance of accomplishing it. “Why won’t it resolve already? Gives me the creeps.”

“Right there with you,” Onswa agreed, turning and opening the drinks cabinet. The System-provided Planetary Administrator office was fairly opulent, all Gold rank materials. The fine carpet, the polished slab of wood that was the desk, the crystalline windows, the carved furniture and glittering overhead lights. The drinks, however, were something that he’d paid his own essence for and generally considered a worthwhile investment. He poured one shot of the Platinum-rank liquor for himself and another for Arene, then sighed.

“I have to say I’m tempted myself, but I really don’t need more Skills,” he said. Onswa still delved dungeons to keep his hand in, but many of the aether-oriented combat Skills that had brought him to mid-Platinum went unused the rest of the time. He couldn’t really rank up without going off-planet, and even if he did just the costs of being higher rank would require additional off-planet trips. Sydea couldn’t sustain anything higher than Platinum in the long term.

“I went for a look,” Arene said, which didn’t surprise him. “Either the thing is better at hiding than anything I’ve seen before, or the System is a damned liar.” Onswa flinched at the blasphemy, but Arene continued on without a pause. “I couldn’t find any presence at all. There was clearly something there at some point though — a team called the Gosruk Guardians are gone. New Golds.” Onswa grimaced, but she wasn’t done. “Then a pair of Tornok Clan brothers showed up. Killed six more of our Golds while supposedly patrolling the area.”

Onswa growled. Most people on Sydea wouldn’t recognize the Tornok Clan name, but anyone who’d been offworld was familiar. They were a large and powerful family and had people in ranks all the way up to Alum. Sydea was generally too much of a backwater for them to be interested, but the last [Portal Staging Area] quests had been broadcast far enough to bring in a number of outsiders. At least, before the portal had abruptly closed and the staging area itself was removed.

Trying to deal with members of the Tornok Clan would be a political nightmare, assuming that Arene could have applied sufficient force. She probably could have – she had reached Platinum so quickly for a very good reason – but only if she was in the area.

“Where are they now?” He reflexively brought up the map and the statistics that his Planetary Administrator role granted him. It didn’t show where everyone on the planet was at every moment, but he could at least figure if there were high rankers in the region. It had already helpfully shifted to show the area in question, zooming in and starting to list off individuals.

“That’s the interesting thing. They vanished around the time the Azure Canyon Dungeon collapsed.” Arene bared her teeth in a humorless smile. “Seems they bit off more than they could handle. Which makes me doubt that I could take it, whatever it is.”

“At least we can thank our invader for that much,” Onswa said, taking a sip of the fiery whiskey. Arene followed suit, knocking back the whole glass and then letting out a long sigh.

“Yeah, but my nephew’s kid and her husband were delving Azure Canyon at the time. Water skills, and all that.” Arene’s words were neutral, but her posture was stiff.

“Oh, gods,” Onswa said, leaning over to refill her glass. That particular vintage was eye-wateringly expensive, but he wasn’t about to stint Arene at the moment. “I’m sorry. There’s no chance they got out?” Even as he spoke he prodded the System Interface, which helpfully shifted down to Azure Canyon, though the display was sluggish as it approached the area where the dungeon had once been.

“I’ve got people combing the area for any survivors, and there’s sure signs of a fight, but no bodies or anything.” Arene reached out to take the glass, staring into it. “One reason I came to you.” Onswa nodded and watched as the interface slowly wrote names onto its screen. Finally it stopped, and Arene shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Maybe I should deal with it myself so we don’t lose anyone else to this invader,” he continued, pulling up the quest next to the map. It would have been far better if one of the upper golds had managed to get the reward, someone who could really use it, but it seemed like that was yet another opportunity for his people that was not to be. The dungeon destruction was another worry, and in many ways worse than the deaths of his people. Without those, the planet would waste away — both from diminishing essence and less item income in general.

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: B-Tier Skill. Locations: Southeastern Coren]

“If you can find the damned thing,” Arene pointed out sourly, taking another swallow. “Half a continent is a large place to search.”

“It’s that or ask for outside help,” Onswa grumbled. Arene nodded, her muzzle wrinkling in distaste. Inviting a foreign rank above Platinum to deal with Sydea’s problems was not likely to go well. In no world would they escape that with a debt they could handle, and most of the high Rankers were likely to cause more damage than the invader.

The quest blinked, then updated.

“Oh, hells,” Onswa said, staring at it. Arene summoned her own version, looked at it, then groaned.

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: B-Tier Skill. Locations: Southeastern Coren, Northeastern Coren, Mosaw City, Korel Town, Mosul Town.]

“How the hell did it spread so fast?” Onswa demanded. Arene lashed her tail, a popping snap that rattled the windows of the tower-top office.

“It has to know it’s being tracked,” Arene said darkly. “I don’t know how it’s fooling the system, but I bet all of those but one are fakes.”

“Fakes or not, we have to do something. I’m going to hear screaming from every mayor on Coren in about thirty seconds.” Onswa stood. “I’ll take Mosaw, you take the towns. We need to see to our people first.”

“Especially since the report from [Gosruk Town] said that it somehow imitated one of the golds,” Arene agreed, following his example. “If there’s even a chance of people being replaced…”

“Yes,” Onswa said, summoning his armor and fixing his Planetary Administrator badge to it, which would let him access most of the functions while he was out and about. “Let’s hope we’re lucky.”

***

Cato slowed as he entered the [Great Southern Ruins Conflict Zone], where the savannah gave way to rolling hills. The looming, overgrown structures that gave the Zone its name were nestled in a pocket of those hills, right on the border between flat land and sloped. It looked to him like the remains of a reasonably industrial city, though with the System it was impossible to know. Perhaps it had sprung full formed from nothingness, but if Earth’s integration was any judge, the System preferred to reuse existing landmarks.

The entire city was made of swooping domes raised up on big stone pylons, elevating it above a no-longer-extant flood plain, and damage to the pylons showed it was some kind of iron-reinforced concrete. That didn’t necessarily mean a heavily industrialized society, since the Romans had concrete and could have reinforced it with metal bars if they wanted, but it was a pretty good guess. There were rusted streaks here and there that probably once belonged to flagpoles and the like, but might possibly have been electrical connections. It was hard to tell with the state of the ruins, and of course the entire thing was crawling with monsters.

Unlike the [Southern Jungle Conflict Zone], where everything was just normal jungle beasts upscaled to heroic proportions, or even the savannah he’d just crossed with its herds of meat animals, the things that inhabited the ruins were clear System abominations. Each of them was vaguely humanoid, scaled like the natives of Sydea but with flat, eyeless faces that were practically split in two by massive jaws filled with sharp teeth. They also lacked legs; their bodies simply stopped at the torso, and they moved around with massively oversized arms, climbing and clambering up and around the domes.

What was truly creepy was the elite version of the same, which was identical save for size. Here and there an enormous versions of the legless things, head tall enough to be level with the domes, hand-walked or dragged itself through the gaps between buildings. The scale could only be truly appreciated through his flying spies high above the ruins. Watching it as he approached, it became clear the big ones moved on a regular patrol route, emerging from and vanishing into a huge central dome in the middle of the ruins. The smaller ones stuck to individual buildings, making them discrete encounters.

Because of course there were people fighting in the Conflict Zone. That’s what it was for, after all, and from the air he could spot three different parties of natives working their way through the city. Judging from the skills on display, none of them were of particularly high rank. They didn’t fly or teleport, their attacks were simple-looking, and there were long intervals of perfectly mundane cut and thrust between them.

So the ruins were a fairly low level zone, which struck Cato as some sort of vicious morbid joke being played on the Sydeans. Behold, it seemed to say, here was what you constructed without the System, and now they are forever in ruins, forever a battleground against some twisted mutant things inhabiting what remains of your civilization. See how weak it all was, that it is only fit for the least of warriors. He found it hard to believe it was coincidence.

On a hunch he veered closer to one of the buildings, close enough to take a passing bite out of one of the monsters. Not for fun, certainly, but because that was the only way to get a genetic analysis. The fact that his teeth sheared through the monster flesh as if it were paper was further support for this zone being low rank; flesh became as tough as stone, as steel, or beyond normal material limits at higher ranks.

He kept to the city fringe, seeing no reason to go deeper, while the analysis worked. It didn’t take very long for his hunch to be confirmed, the chemistry doing its job and matching chromosome structures. Sydean natives used a slightly different set of amino acids – and thus entirely different chemical chains – but the principles were remarkably similar to Earth biology.

The monsters were within a margin of error of the Sydean peoples. Best as he could tell, they were the same species, just twisted by System nonsense into horrible mockeries of the scaled folk. Cato had no idea whether the things were in some way intelligent, or even worse, were in some way degenerate descendants or distorted reproductions of the original inhabitants of the city.

Cato mused on whether it would be best to simply nuke the city from orbit or if, once the System was gone, the inhabitants would be returned to something normal. Which would be its own sort of horror, not to mention a logistical nightmare. Cato had known that he’d be dealing with problems on that scale when he’d made his choice to go through the portal, but seeing each piece of the puzzle and knowing it was one of thousand or millions was another thing entirely.

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: B-Tier Skill. Locations: Southeastern Coren, Northeastern Coren, Mosaw City, Korel Town, Mosul Town.]

The quest update jolted him from his consideration. It seemed that the System was starting to recover from the disruption, with the towns resolving first. Judging by the report of being in both south and northeastern Coren, his little fliers had spread far indeed, so even when it all come back he should be well covered. Of course, he still wasn’t out of danger. The uppermost Ranks could search that easily, but until the System upgraded the quest to an equivalent rank they wouldn’t be interested. Assuming they were even available.

He veered away from the ruins, which was a small zone and so not one he wanted to caught in, and instead skirted around toward the farther hills. According to the map the broad stretch of hilly terrain was unfortunately a border zone and not something he could really avoid, so the best thing to do was to cross it as fast as possible. There were even cave entrances he’d spotted from the air, so there might even be an opportunity to replenish some of his metal stocks.

Considering the lack of nearby water and volcanic features, the positions of the caves made little sense, but that was just what the System did. Especially since he noted that he’d crossed into the [Low Hills Resource Zone], so it was probably deliberately designed to be a place to gather ore.

Though what the System considered ore was generally rather surreal. Nature didn’t actually deposit elemental metals in such small quantities, especially not in small nodes rather than proper veins. Not that he would complain if he could take it for himself, given his lack of any proper extraction infrastructure.

Suddenly the System quest updated again, this time scrolling out with dozens of Zones, the disruption finally settling and the zones updating. With so many he would have thought that his actual location would have been well shrouded, but a few moments after the update there was a sudden bloom of fire high in the air over the ruins. Enormous wings of flame, each one a hundred feet across, extended outward from the fireball, followed by one of the locals bursting forth into the air. Through his flier he could see that she had flame-colored scales, which was quite on-brand, and fine red chain over dark orange leather for armor.

The threat processes threw him into framejack again, though this time he could have done it himself. The new arrival was very obviously a high ranker like the rats he’d fought before, and it took him a moment to conclude why she’d shown up just at that instant. The zone borders weren’t clear and his fliers couldn’t actually see the updates, so he had tried to err on the side of caution to keep them in the proper zone — but one of them seemed to have somehow clipped the ruins zone, just for a moment. Any lummox could realize that meant that either someone in the area had fulfilled the quest there — or what they were looking for had just moved through a very small zone.

The elite was high in the air, obviously surveying the surroundings, so Cato bolted for the nearest cave entrance to get out of sight and hopefully make his way into one of the great underground zones that caves usually led to. His only other options were staying still and hoping his camouflage held, or trying to outrun the elite’s perceptions — and he didn’t like either of those. He barreled into the entrance, which was about wide enough for two of him, the acoustic mapping generating a labyrinth of twisting passages.

At full framejack, he had the luxury of studying the layout and plotting a route — especially since some of the passages were far too small for the warframe. It would be highly embarrassing to be trapped because he took a wrong turn. He had a course mapped out before he was out of line of sight from the entrance, a single leap taking him over a low-rank party hauling sleds of mined ore. The wind of his passage whipped at their cloaks as he blurred overhead, then he was past them and bounding off the walls as he headed down.

In accelerated time he had the luxury of studying his surroundings properly as he tried to consider every last detail. The grey-white granite was flecked with minerals and, here and there, glowing crystals embedded in the walls to keep it from being pitch black. There was no miniscule threading of random passages leading nowhere, no slippery mud and uneven footing, no collapses or segments that needed bracing. Most of the passages were more than high and wide enough that those traveling didn’t need to duck down or squeeze by. Despite lacking any sort of toolmarks, it was clearly unnatural to anyone who knew what caves were truly supposed to be like. Perhaps to those who delved its depths for raw materials it was nice enough, but he found it to be an affront. Possibly because he’d specialized in exogeology for a while, or maybe just because he was prejudiced against obvious System artifice.

He bounced down a near-vertical shaft, claws tearing shards of rock from the walls, and had almost reached bottom when a shockwave of searing air sent his acoustic mapping into overdrive. The elite that he’d glimpsed was after him, and the impact of her arrival generated a high-resolution picture of her pausing briefly at the party before skirting around and diving into the passages. Once again his system flushed his neural lattice with battle chemicals to keep him from panicking, and Cato launched himself into the next passage.

For someone as powerful as the lady lizard on his heels, his best bet was something like the Sneeze of Doom. He hadn’t nearly replenished his deuterium reserves yet, but he still had enough for one or two of them — if he got the chance. But this wasn’t like the rat things, for a number of reasons. This was her world, she was meant to be here, and besides which she’d gone out of her way to avoid harming the low-rank party. Clearly she wasn’t a psychopath.

Dealing with her nonlethally would be absurdly difficult, and even if he wanted to kill her, the lady was a fire user. She probably ran hot enough to cook his biomatter before it got the chance to perform its quantum confinement trick and force the miracle of nuclear fusion. But the cave system was enormous, so he might have some luck simply running.

Cato went down and down, taking sharp turns while the warframe ran flat out, barreling past crystalline formations and dodging oversized cave worms or titanic ants. He was moving far too fast for any of them to react, let alone attack, though such things offered no real danger. The threat was behind him, his thermal senses setting off all kinds of warnings. The rock above him trembled at a strange high frequency, and he dodged to the side just before a bar of white-hot fire punched through the ceiling and the floor, nearly overloading his thermal senses.

The lady had managed to target him and hurl her fire spell through a hundred-something feet of solid rock. Cave-riddled rock, more accurately, but it was hardly an open field. At least it was something he could dodge. The warframe armor was extremely heat resistant, but that attack exceeded all the limits and would cut through him just as easily as the stone.

He leapt into an open shaft, descending several hundred feet at something faster than terminal velocity by pushing off the ceiling. The warframe’s musculature strained as ten tons of mass slammed into the base of the shaft before accelerating off through another passage, religiously following the path the acoustic mapping showed. The ceiling ahead of him vibrated, and he was forced to reroute suddenly to avoid the bar of white that swept across the passage ahead.

The pursuit drove him ever deeper, circling through a massive network of passages and stirring up the inhabitants in the wake of his passage. He couldn’t tell exactly where the fire lady was except for when one of the bars of white fire melted through the rock and gave him an angle. For the moment he seemed to be maintaining distance, but not by much. Even if he didn’t want to kill her, he absolutely wasn’t willing to be killed himself and at Platinum she could probably survive a cave collapse.

Yet another lance of intense fire forced him to launch himself into the air, jumping off walls to stay out of the path, and with a sudden report a huge section of the cave ahead gave way. With a roar, uncounted tons of rock crumbled into open passages below, sending clouds of dust and debris billowing upward and drawing alarmed screams and cries from the animals living within. Cato landed on a pile of cracked and broken stone and quickly half-dug, half-shoved his way into a partly obscured passage, finally having an idea of how to be rid of his pursuer.

He began painting the cuts made by the lady’s flame jet into the map of passages he’d been making with his acoustic sensing, along with her predicted movements and timings. Each of the cuts was too small for a person to pass through, being maybe six inches diameter, so she was more or less forced to follow the cave’s windings. Even if she cut out a hole, it’d still be choked with debris and the fire beams were likely at least a little limited to begin with.

Cato hurtled down the nearest vertical shaft, then fled back upward through a far shallower passage, by that point at least a half-mile down thanks to the shortcut-shafts scattered about. The entire map was a sort of best-guess, but he was pretty certain of his path. He was exceedingly grateful that the warframe didn’t get tired, because running flat out over rock and rubble and oddly-angled terrain was exhausting enough mentally. Even with sub-brains dedicated to making sure he didn’t trip over his own six feet, at full charge and bouncing off the angles and drops he had a tough time keeping himself coordinated.

Once again a bar of incandescent fury punched through from behind him, but this time he was just a fraction too slow and it clipped the end of his tail and his rear right leg. They were instantly severed, registering all kinds of alarms from the warframe and forcing Cato to go along on five limbs instead of six, while the biomatter remaining behind self-destructed.

“Ow, dammit,” he said to himself, even if it didn’t actually hurt. The wound sealed itself instantly, sub-brains redistributing weight and gait, but he was still slower than before. He had to hope he could implement his idea before the elite finished the job.

He juked into a side passage, absolutely flattening a hapless cave toad the size of a cow and only barely managing to avoid another beam attack. This time it was from below, and according to his map he only needed a few more for the cuts to add up to some serious problems. Cato pulled some of his deuterium reserves into a tendril and began preparing another Sneeze of Doom.

Two more cuts, and if anything the impossible bars of flame burned even hotter, leaving rivulets of molten rock dripping all over the caves. She was gaining on him, but he was ready. Between the natural passages and the huge cuts made by the beams of fire, the whole cave system was unstable. Or at least, unstable enough that several billion joules worth of explosive would make a right mess of it.

Cato spat the dangerous snot onto the wall just in front of another vertical drop where a waterfall plunged down into a shallow pool, then hurled himself into the chasm. He hit with a splash, then clambered into another passage, one lined with luminous grass and small crystalline flowers. Then time was up, and he tucked in his tendrils and remaining limbs as a very small – relatively, anyway – fusion explosion shocked through the cave system.

Superheated gasses carried on a pressure wave sent him shooting through the confined spaces, bouncing him off rock walls and through hanging formations like some kind of bizarre projectile. The roar of the explosion echoed and grew as the expanding shock front fractured and broke already weakened areas of rock, starting a chain reaction of collapse. Millions of tons of rock both above and below rumbled and ground together, the network of caves crushing down into each other. Jets of displaced air hissed between slabs and sent more fragments flying in the chaos.

Cato smashed into one particularly large chunk of rock and clung to it with monomolecular-edged claws, instructing his armor plates to reinforce themselves as he tried to dig in and stabilize himself in the fall. He’d made sure he was at the edge of the collapsing area, but there was no way to judge such a thing accurately. Not with the processing power available to the warframe.

His thermal senses caught a massive bloom in the distance, leaking through the tons of moving rock. The flame lizard-woman, performing some sort of skill in an effort to ward off the immensity of the crushing rock. It probably helped, but not for long, the bloom vanishing as the collapse ground to a groaning, clattering halt.

With all the strength of a hydraulic press, Cato pulled clawed his way out of the rubble, finding himself at the bottom of a jagged dome, where fires still flared from the cave entrances and the remains of luminescent moss or crystals lay in tatters. He took a moment to orient himself, turning to the lower passageway heading even further down where he could lose himself in deeper zones — then turned back.

Sure, the flame lady had been trying to kill him, but it was tough to blame her. After all, he was an invader and she had no real reason to distrust the System. Considering she was a native she was probably one of the official guardians of the planet in question and if she died there might be problems even he didn’t want to deal with. It was bad enough that he’d been forced to harm the natives on his way, and that he’d be forced to harm more in the future. If he could save someone that deserved it, he would.

He was fairly certain she wasn’t actually dead. If the warframe had been able to survive the cave collapse, so could a high rank System person, but being trapped in an airless coffin might be too much even for someone like that. He located her tomb easily enough, as it was still radiating heat from below the rock pile remnants of what had become an enormous open cavern, and used his acoustic mapping to find the best path to dig in. Rock flew as monomolecular claws went to work, and in about thirty seconds he breached an inner chamber, causing smoldering lava to flare up again as fresh air entered it.

Her skill had melted all the stone about her, which saved her from being directly crushed, but she was still entombed and didn’t seem to be moving. Cato knew he’d curse himself from here to the hereafter if she was shamming, but he reached in and pulled her out. Merely molten rock was within the bounds of what the warframe’s armor could handle. Also, what the lizard person’s armor could handle, since it wasn’t even glowing despite the lava coating it.

Cato laid her out on the ground and wiped her face clear — and incidentally snagged a small piece of scale for a genetic profile. Seeing that she was breathing, despite crushed limbs and torso and really everything, he turned and bolted. She was visibly healing even as he watched, and it would undo everything if he was still around when she awoke.

Chapter 4 – Under Land and Sea

Arene woke with a jolt, surging to her feet in a single instant, summoning her Skills and casting out her perceptions — but the thing was long gone. She wasn’t even certain what to actually call it, since apparently the System didn’t know. The only result [Appraise] had given her was just a blank query, not even a failed attempt.

She summoned a [Light], which took the form of a torch flame given the influence of her other [Skills], and apprised herself and her surroundings. She ached all over, but even that was rapidly diminishing as her Platinum-rank constitution healed away the last of the damage from the collapse. A reflexive [Clean] removed all the soot and dirt, but some specks of hardened stone remained. She’d have to deal with that later.

Above her were faint lights glimmering here and there from tunnel entrances, and below her was debris. There was a tunnel at her feet, and a glance showed her that it reached down into a chamber of still-cooling rock. Obviously the creature had made an effort to retrieve her after [Incendiary Scales] had failed to ward off half a mountain falling on her. Yet it had pulled her out, possibly saving her life, and just left her. She didn’t quite understand why she was still alive.

[Quest fulfilled: Investigate the Incursion. Reward: 1 B-Tier Skill. Notice: you cannot complete this Quest multiple times.]

Arene grimaced as she read the System notification, finding it almost insulting. She’d at the very least laid eyes on it, and even wounded it, but she wouldn’t really consider her attempt successful. The only reason she’d gone after it was that it was clearly dangerous, so the reward made her failure even more sour.

The Skill token popped into her hands, and she rolled it across her knuckles, wishing that it was something she could give to others, but this wasn’t one of the rare unlocked Skill tokens. It was something that could only be spent on her, so she went ahead and used it.

[Choose to learn a new Skill, or upgrade a current Skill]

At this point her build was well set and her useful Skills as upgraded as they could get. Each rank someone advanced earned them four Skill slots, with the Skills reaching the maximum power of that rank. She had [Appraise], [Light], [Clean], and [Scribe] slotted in at Copper, while Silver was full of resistances. Gold and Platinum followed the classic rule: one perception, one offensive, one defensive, one movement.

The only things she could still upgrade were D-tier [Scribe] or the C-tier [Light], and neither of them would show much useful improvement from their rarity bonus. With a sigh she chose to upgrade [Scribe], since she found herself doing far more paperwork than she’d prefer – which was to say, more than none – and then reached out to her Platinum movement Skill, [Wings of Khuroon]. Even now she didn’t really know what a Khuroon was, or why it was connected to wings and fire and teleportation, but she was hardly going to complain about the effects.

The world turned into dancing flames, rushing by as she seized one particular spot that was close and far at the same time. A moment later she burst out into the air above Mosaw City, where Onswa was still trying to track down the intruder. One of the intruders. She knew now that it was irrelevant; the thing she’d seen, if only barely, was not something that could hide in a city.

Her great wings swept the air as she dove down to where his bright beacon registered to her essence senses in the distinct not-flavor of aether. He was pacing around an intersection, but he stopped and lifted his hand to greet her as she arrived. By the time she touched down virtually all her injuries had vanished – grievous as they had been, they were all mundane

“Find it, then?” Onswa didn’t sound joyful, since the quest was still active.

“Something, anyway,” she told him, the bared claws of her feet scratching against the smooth stone of the upgraded roads. It was technically better than the dirt of the lower-rank villages, but she had never really liked the feel of it under her feet. “Some sort of beast, hard to describe what it looked like. I got exactly one glimpse of it and it appraised as nothing, so I don’t think the System knows what it is.”

“Looks like you got it, though.” Onswa gestured at her bedraggled appearance. Arene glanced down at the spots of solidified rock on her armor and sighed, brushing at them ineffectually. When she had time she’d have to visit an armor pylon to make sure it was properly cleaned.

“I didn’t, actually,” she told him. "The thing dropped half a mountain on top of us both. Then it dug me out and — nothing. I wasn’t even conscious, and it could have done anything, but it just let me be.” Arene was happy that she remained alive and intact, but it bothered her more that the anomaly’s behavior didn’t make sense.

“Maybe your rank had something to do with it?” Onswa suggested, muzzle wrinkled in thought. “Platinum isn’t Bismuth, but most people don’t want to risk the consequences of killing one of us, either.” He looked around at the streets, where people had come to a halt to gawk at the Planetary Administrator and the Flame of Sydea. “Perhaps we should move this to a more private venue.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Arene almost laughed. The man was so clearly besotted with her, yet at the same time retained enough presence of mind enough not to try. Which was fortunate, since she had no interest in him and was friends with his wife, but his words still ended up sounding more suggestive than they actually were.

“Yeah, you aren’t going to find anything here. What I saw was the size of one of those Courser beasts from the [Northern Volcano Conflict Zone] in Merdea. Whatever is triggering the quest is some kind of diversion.”

That wouldn’t even fit into the streets here,” Onswa agreed. “Back to the office, then?”

“Might as well,” Arene said, and Onswa nodded as he invoked his odd aether travel Skill. His form blurred as he faded out over the course of a few seconds, like mist in the sun, and Arene followed with her own travel Skill. Invoking [Wings of Khuroon] at Platinum level so many times in quick succession was a hefty drain and she’d have to wait for her reserves to refill, but she certainly wasn’t going to go after the intruder again right away. She stepped through that bright, fiery world and reappeared in the skies above the capital city of Kalhan, where Onswa’s office took up the top of the System nexus tower.

She landed on the balcony and stepped inside, finding Onswa already there and rummaging through the drink cabinet. Normally Arene didn’t particularly indulge, especially not twice in one day, but she was still ever so slightly shaky from her near brush with death. Things hadn’t gone that wrong for her in a very long time.

“The thing that bothers me most,” she said, taking a crystal tumbler from Onswa, filled with something pink and sparkling. “It’s smart. Has to be.”

“If it’s masking its presence over such a wide area, I agree,” Onswa remarked, taking a sip of the pink stuff and then wrinkling his muzzle. “I can’t remember any beast or dungeon monster that showed awareness of its own System standing.”

“It’s faintly possible there’s a group of them, I suppose,” Arene said, also tasting the fizzy drink and finding it to be almost painfully sweet and somehow spicy. It did have quite the kick though. “But you’d expect there to be more traces. Perhaps one such — you know, we need an actual name for it.”

“Ahruskian,” Onsaw suggested. “The quest implies it came through before the portal closed.”

“Which really throws a light on the reports we heard out of the expeditionary forces,” Arene said darkly. Most of them had been from off-planet, as powerful interests had crowded out many of the Sydean teams. Especially as time went on and the required rank jumped upward all the way to Azoth at the end.

“That portal was a fucking disaster,” Onswa growled. A new world opening up should have enriched Sydea and given its people the chance to rank up quickly, to improve the essence density of Sydea itself. Instead, it had been taken over by offworld interests nearly immediately, and within a year Sydeans were effectively locked out of the portal staging area.

“No argument here,” Arene agreed. She’d been too busy dealing with rogue high-Rankers traipsing all over Sydea to go through herself, but it seemed to have been for the best. If that thing was indicative of what was on the other side, it was no wonder the rank kept jumping upward. “Anyway, I don’t think the Ahruskian is here just to cause chaos. It’s got a plan and a goal. If it just wanted to kill people, it has had plenty of chances. I watched it run straight past a Low Silver group that it could have flattened with a thought.” She slapped her hand on Onswa’s desk in demonstration. “But it didn’t.”

“That just makes it worse,” Onswa sighed, obviously considering all the dire possibilities before shaking his head. “Well, if it’s got a specific target, that might be a vulnerability we can exploit so we can deal with it ourselves. If it does start just causing havoc, though, we might have to appeal to a higher rank.”

Both of them winced. The cost needed to tempt a Bismuth or better to come to Sydea to fulfill a quest – and not just the System defense quest – would be ruinous.

“News of the global quest is going to spread eventually, unless you shut down the teleporters and blockade the portals,” Arene pointed out. He did have the authority to do that as Planetary Administrator — though there would be consequences if it went on more than a few weeks.

“I think I just might,” Onswa said, reaching over to touch the Administration Interface, a jewel set in the middle of his desk. It woke up with a happy-sounding chime, already projecting the interface for controlling the planetary portal and the few teleporters they had. “And if it is aiming to get off-planet, we can catch it there.”

“Then we can try to track it down now that we have some idea where it is.” She glanced at the quest, which had updated with yet another location: [Rushing Depths Conflict Zone]. One of the enormous connecting zones, a confusing warren almost a mile beneath the surface, and not terrain either of them were familiar with. “Though I can’t say it seems likely.”

***

Cato admired the massive caverns, full of flowing rivers, waterfalls, and enormous glowing fungi. It was absolutely gorgeous, if utterly unnatural. But that was only to be expected in a world altered by magic and System nonsense. There were glow-bugs the size of horses, eyeless wyrms that could match a freight train, and an entire ecosystem of matching scale. Plants, fish, bats, and even roving monsters of the sorts he’d seen in Azure Canyon, though upscaled to matching proportions.

Of course, a normal world wouldn’t have such a robust spread of plant and animal life in deep caves, nor lakes and rivers that suspicious mimicked surface features rather than cutting narrow slots through solid rock. Despite its provenance, Cato was quite happy to take advantage of both the sheer amount of biomatter around and the glinting nodes of metals on the wall. He had repairs to make.

He saw no signs of anyone actually using the zone. In fact, more the reverse, as it seemed nearly every pack of beasts or monsters had an elite in it, implying it had been left to mature for quite some time. None of them were a match for him, even down a limb, so he was free to peel chunks from the ore nodes and fell oversized glowing mushrooms with little interference. Some of that was for mass to heal his injuries, but most of the metal was stockpiled for later use. He’d need some starting resources once he got off-planet.

While the molecular foundries went to work chemically separating and repurposing the elements, he restructured one of the tendrils on his back to take in water. Heavy water was no more common in the System than on Earth, so he needed to filter thousands of gallons to even begin to restock his supplies of deuterium. Since he needed to take time out to repair and restructure anyway, he might as well do that at the same time.

All those processes could go along without any interference from him, so he turned his attention to his passengers. The cocoons were doing their job, as none of the brains showed any signs of damage or chemical imbalance. Not even after the cave collapse. The artificial coma even kept them from dreaming, since anyone would have serious issue with the lack of sensory input and autonomic feedback.

He would have vastly preferred to simply map their neurons and biochemical signaling and virtualize them, but there were two good reasons not to. First, and most importantly, was that a lot of people did not like the concept of being transferred to software. Postbiologicals such as himself had a different attitude toward life, death, and the concept of self than those who were raised purely as meat, but that didn’t mean it was a better attitude. Arbitrarily ripping someone’s mind from their earthly clay and sticking it in a simulation or a frame was far worse than ripping off someone’s arm and sticking on a prosthesis just because he could.

Then there was, frankly, the fact that he just didn’t have the knowledge to do so. Given time he could figure it out, but a person was in fact more than just the neural patterns, and body feedback could drastically alter habits, personality, emotional stability, and even memory retention. He had enough broad stroke information on their biochemistry to keep their neurons from overloading or shutting down, and to keep them anesthetized, but that was a fraction of the analysis he needed to simulate a healthy and happy situation for them.

Cato had sampled their organs and bones and had all that information stored away in one of his sub-brains, but without extensive simulation and actual testing he couldn’t turn that into anything useful. The computational capacity of the warframe was not insignificant, but all the software normally used for that kind of thing was stored in the diamond in his spine, and really only ran on more conventional hardware. Fortunately, he did have access to the tools to adjust his own biology, so when he was satisfied there were no crises with regard to his passengers, he delved into his sub-brains for that very purpose.

The warframe came with a number of tools, including a chemical programming interface that Cato used to put together a rough and ready amphibious decoy. His fliers had done their jobs well, and it was only his carelessness that had resulted in someone coming to find him. It was clear that he’d been severely underestimating the competence and drive of the native System folk, simply because of his attitude toward them, and he needed to adjust that thinking before he made a more lethal mistake.

He had been making contingencies, of course, but he hadn’t truly believed he needed them. That was something that needed to be corrected, and deep underground was a good place to start. Progress would be slower, as he had three dimensions to navigate rather than two, but it also meant it was easier to hide. No doubt there would still be people tracking the zones and looking for him, but the sheer scale worked in his favor.

Unlike with the fliers, he did not create his amphibians to leave seeds or give them the ability to reproduce themselves. Once he got himself established, broadcasting to things on or near the surface and shutting them down would be easy, but buried deep in a cave, with who knew how many twists and turns, they could easily stay completely out of contact range. If he wasn’t careful, he could end up with versions of himself operating in an information blackout, and making decisions based on poor or outdated intelligence.

If he didn’t have to worry about the greater implications of what he was doing, he wouldn’t need to be nearly as careful. The bioweapon aspect of the warframe could get into some really nasty levels of self-replication and infiltration, but if he used them he’d have to deal with the consequences. Cato was determined to bring down the System, but he wasn’t going to condemn planets full of innocent people to a writhing hellscape to do so.

The surface backups were as far as he was willing to go on self-replication for the moment, so he restricted himself to a small swarm of speedy, camouflaged and incredibly spiny creatures to swim and crawl through the caves. No doubt some of them would get eaten along the way, since he wasn’t going to give them too much to defend themselves, but they all had self-destruct mechanisms to turn the potent biology into so much carbon goo.

If he could make them obviously poisonous, that would have been perfect, and by studying the biochemistry of the things around it wasn’t too difficult to come up with some candidate chemicals. The problem was that such substances would not be protected by the neural static and would get assimilated by the System. Which meant that things like poison and disease resistance applied, and since his creations were just chemistry, they weren’t too potent when it came to high rank creatures or people.

The same consideration applied to engineered plagues, had he been willing to use them. Which he wasn’t, because he wasn’t genocidal. That didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to create some toxins specifically tailored to individuals, which hopefully would be so potent that even the System would grant they should have some effect, even if it was just short-term incapacitation.

During all that housekeeping he spat out the remains of the armor and weapons from the two rat-things. While the system-jamming kept active enchantments from being used – at least he was pretty sure it did – the exotic materials created by System physics remained exotic. His molecular foundries had been able to make some headway at disassembling them with superacids, but he didn’t have an excess of halogens and rare earth metals to keep at it and the raw materials, once dissolved, weren’t too special anyway At the molecular level they seemed to lose their special System-empowered essence and just became ordinary steel, albeit with interesting trace elements.

After he regrew his rear right foot, he unburied himself and began navigating through the vast cave system once again. His best guess was that he was at about sea level or just below, and it was entirely possible the underground zones stretched to the shore. If not, he was certain there was at least another exit. Either way, his decoys should spread out in every direction to obscure his actual location and direction. He really wished he could obscure himself even further, but unless he ran into another dungeon the best he could do was make the System quest’s information less useful.

Just as on the surface, there was little point in moving at anything less than a full sprint, though he was forced to backtrack on more than one occasion even with his acoustic mapping. The [Rushing Depths Conflict Zone] seemed to sprawl over roughly three layers, with plenty of dead ends — or at least, dead ends to him. There were smaller, human-sized passages that branched off the larger caverns and connected them, but he couldn’t squeeze through those.

Unlike the surface, many of the creatures relied on senses other than sight, so his camouflage wasn’t quite as effective. He still avoided fighting with any of the denizens, especially the ones that outmassed him, but he often left groups of angry creatures or monsters in his wake. Sometimes they even chased him into another population, precipitating brawls between frogs and wyrms or mudfish sparking with electricity and frosted jellyfish floating through the air.

He dedicated a particular sub-brain to recording everything he saw and encoding it into chemical memory. Despite its obvious artifice, the underground habitat was quite striking and deserved to be saved somehow. Pushing the System off Sydea, let alone how many other worlds, was inevitably going to result in the destruction of true beauty, however twisted its origins. If he could, he wanted to keep at least some of it, as beauty deserved to be preserved for its own sake.

So deep underground, all he encountered were animals and monsters, with no real sign of civilized races. That seemed odd to him, that there was an entire zone that was essentially deserted, but at the same time the logistical difficulties of getting into and out of the caves were extensive for anyone of lower rank. Perhaps if there were more people, or the average ranks were higher, something like the [Rushing Depths Conflict Zone] would see more traffic, but as it was, he was essentially traveling through wilderness.

Another several days of travel brought him through two more Zones. By that point he’d built up a small army of outriders, little scouts that communicated with each other and with him to create a large sensory band and incidentally trip any of the invisible zone boundaries that had been the problem before. That way any surprise teleports would find only a decoy, and not him.

Of course, once he had made such plans he didn’t actually need them. The trip had been quiet, giving him the chance to scavenge more resources from the cave walls and available biomass. He was still missing some of the more exotic metals, but there were trace amounts of rare earths about and plenty of aluminum from gems. Though finding rubies in an iron vein made no sense whatsoever.

His progress was stopped by a huge brackish moon pool, at least twenty acres in size, which was claimed by an immense pseudo-crab – it seemed that carcinization was indeed universal – but which also seemed to lead out into the open ocean to judge by the acoustic returns and salt content in the air. Preferably he would slip past the boss mob, but to do that he needed to be properly aquatic so he hunkered down to make some alterations to the warframe.

A warframe didn’t need to breathe, so becoming aquatic was a matter of optimizing for movement in the water. Musculature needed to be altered, the joints of his legs and feet shifted, and webs and fins grown to give him more control surface for movement in the water. His scales needed to be shifted to introduce cavitation effects, which would massively increase his speed and even his stealth. With less of a pressure wave, he wouldn’t stir up as much interest.

He also had to beef up his nonvisual senses. The acoustic mapping brain had been doing a lot of work, but it was time to add active sonar and dedicate a sub-brain to that. Then there were things like electric potential, ionization, and water composition that were more important in a thick fluid than a thin one. It had been a long time since he’d used an aquatic frame, let alone one in something as lively as an inhabited body of water, but he hadn’t completely forgotten the skills. The conversion took over a day, but he figured he had time with all the obfuscation his decoys were managing.

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: Platinum. Reward: Elite Skill. Locations: Azure Canyon Border Zone, […] Rushing Depths Conflict Zone, Endless Chasm Resource Zone, Upwell Fields Border Zone, Pillared Halls Conflict Zone...]

The list went on and on. While it didn’t cover the full continent, it was still so many places that just figuring out which area they needed to search would be difficult, let alone finding him, or the stealthy creatures he’d sent out to create the distractions. The various towns and cities were off the list, however — apparently the fliers or seeds had been discovered there and, presumably, destroyed. He’d set the triggers for that to be fairly sensitive, as he’d prefer to have one fewer backup than a piece of Titan’s biotechnology intact for the System to assimilate. Cato wasn’t certain the System could do anything with such a sample even if it did get to analyze the stuff, but he had to assume giving the enemy a new tool was a bad idea.

During the conversion, Cato watched the pseudo-crab – nearly thirty feet across and a deep bluish-purple – emerge from the pool once every few hours and scuttle into an equally enormous side corridor, then return only a few minutes later. He suspected that wherever it led, that was where the crab was getting its food, though Cato assumed that it was partly sustained by System nonsense. No matter the reason for its behavior, that was the exact kind of window Cato wanted, and the next time it emerged he slipped into the moon pool and surged downward.

The new form of his body was sleek, slick, and streamlined, with most of the locomotion coming from large fins along the length of his tail. Tendrils and feet, now equally finned, gave him extreme agility to go with the power, and of course the cavitation effects meant he was fast. The moment he was in the water the crab came scuttling back with thundering haste, but Cato was down and out through the exit at the bottom of the pool – one which was just slightly too small for the boss to fit through – before it could even get fully submerged.

[Great Western Sea Ocean Zone]

He had to wonder if the entire ocean was in fact a single zone, or if a planet with a more aquatic species would have a more finely divided ocean and a less finely divided land. Or, for that matter, why the System didn’t bother to import sea-dwelling peoples – he assumed there were some, considering all the other alterations the System made – to fill the otherwise unused space.

Though it wasn’t like the planet was crowded. If anything, it was barely inhabited and mostly wild space. Most people, especially those raised in enclosed habitats, really underestimated how large planets actually were.

He arrowed through the water, maybe even faster than he’d been on land, diving down to where the sunlight stopped. So deep beneath the water, he had to guide himself by the planet’s magnetic field, though if the map he’d seen was at all accurate he’d be hard-pressed to miss his target continent. Where he’d come from was a rough blob in the southern hemisphere, whereas his goal was a long mountainous strip crossing the equator at an angle and wrapping around northward toward the pole.

The only problem with swimming through the bathypelagic region – to be absolutely certain that he was out of range of any surface surveys – was that the System liked to place bigger creatures deeper down. A ten-ton warframe wasn’t exactly small, but he was minnow-sized compared to some of the returns from his sonar. A skill he used infrequently, since it drew some clear attention from the leviathans lurking in the depths. Though one of the benefits of things being so large was that the small aquatic scouts he had spreading out – once again in all directions, to obscure his trail – were left mostly unmolested.

A serpent the size of a building actually pursued him for a time, and the damn thing had so much power, thanks to whatever System boosts it got, that it was nearly as fast as Cato himself. It wouldn’t have enjoyed the experience of swallowing him but it certainly tried anyway, and Cato’s non-visual senses painted him a fairly good picture. Enormous teeth, a row of three eyes on each side of a sharp, eel-like head, a huge ribbon of fin running down its back.

It offended Cato’s sensibilities.

The System’s ruination of normal ecology was bad enough, but what made it even worse was that it consistently did so with no imagination. The boxy buildings in cities, the simple zone names, the lack of proper art or decoration. Even the abyssopelagic sea monsters were merely large.

There was no radial or trilateral symmetry, very little bioluminescence, and not even any color variance he could see. There was nothing like the swirling, dancing fractal scale patterns of the Gleeful Dancers of Europa’s world-ocean. No elegance like could be found in the sinuous curves of Enceladus’ benthic acolytes. Sometimes the System seemed determined to absolutely crush creativity.

His ruminations on esoteric ecology were interrupted as he abruptly smashed into a net of fine filaments that none of his senses had warned him about. A good reminder that even if he could block the System’s direct effects on him, he could do absolutely nothing about the way it influenced the rest of the world. The filaments stirred, all leading up to the bell of some enormous jellyfish, which tried to wrap him up while the filaments released what was surely an excruciating mix of toxins to anyone who wasn’t a bioweapon.

The acids involved were a little irritating, but his outer scales were nearly chemically inert for a reason, and of course the neurotoxins and cytotoxins did nothing at all. There was probably some sort of Skill involved on the jellyfish’s part, but that was where the System protection came in handy. Even if the effects were ramped way up from what they should have been – the acid was roughly as potent as triflidic, though he was certain it wasn’t – the toxins were forced to rely on chemistry. Which was Cato’s terrain.

He cut himself loose in a flurry of claws and shot onward. The jellyfish fell behind, being no more rapid than its smaller cousins. Perhaps animals in the older and more established System worlds would have been a serious threat, but without the intelligence of a person and a reason for persistence he could outrun anything in the ocean. It didn’t hurt that he had inexhaustible stamina, so long as his fusion reserves held out. The thought prompted him to doublecheck how his reserves stood, and even after using far too much deuterium for crude explosives, he had enough for several hundred years of normal operation and rising.

There was one significant upside to traveling by ocean, and that was the opportunity to filter all kinds of trace elements out of seawater. Of course he was constantly looking for deuterium, but seawater had scattered atoms of gold and silver, of niobium and neodymium, of cadmium, indium and scandium. All of it was useful, especially since he didn’t really need it in bulk, but the traces made up an important fraction of the more exotic biomolecular machinery the warframe used.

His sonar picked up sunken cities scattered about as he neared his destination, so he altered course slightly to pass near one. It wasn’t out of his way, and if they were some remnant from the natives, there might be lingering evidence of their original culture. Something he’d certainly need if he wanted to bring the inhabitants over to his side.

The city was overrun with hostile sea life, but none of it was big or bulky enough to be particularly dangerous, and he wasn’t exploring the thing properly anyway. Now that he was out of the depths, high-powered sonar was enough to map it and seek out any little details that might be of interest. Like the worn frescoes hidden under a mat of algae, depicting tailed figures looking up at two suns and three moons. Or a statuette buried under sediment, with tiny horns and its arms upraised. He had one of his scouts snatch up that artifact and bring back to him, if for no other reason than it was a remnant of a people the System had erased.

He stored it and continued onward, melancholic. The remains of the alien Atlantis were so much grander than the small clusters of boxes the System provided, but he could only guess at what it had truly been like. How many monuments had been buried under the System’s uncaring hand. It was another reminder of what he had to dealt with, as he reached the far shore and started to revert his form back to deal with the land.

Determined not to make the same mistake again, Cato spent some time swimming the coast and launching a new set of fliers. His aquatic scouts were aimed at other continents, and some of them had already reached various beaches, further obscuring his trail. At a predetermined time, all his local scouts headed inward at once, crossing into eight Zones simultaneously. Cato followed in their wake, looking upward at the massive peaks rising from the rocky shore. High enough, he decided, for what he wanted.

Chapter 5 – The Ascent

Arene watched from a distance as the group of High Copper kids carefully approached the nigh-invisible bird-thing as it perched by a creek, drinking in water. Despite being cut from the same cloth as the Ahruskian menace, such birds didn’t seem to offer any real danger, though they were quite skittish. The group pounced, the mage entrapping it with a watery cage while the bulwark fighter attacked it with a spear.

Like with all the others, it silently slumped and began to melt, turning into some sort of awful goo rather than dying properly. The Copper group checked their System messages and exulted, the mage even dancing on the spot. Arene didn’t blame them since, beyond the Skill reward, the essence reward for completing a Platinum-rank quest at Copper was substantial.

While the portal itself had been lackluster at best, a disaster at worst, the incursion quest was making some steps toward redressing that issue. Arene had no compunctions about abusing the System’s generosity and giving some of their most talented young ones a leg up by fulfilling the worryingly easy quest requirements. There were dozens of locations by this point, which made it all the more important that Onswa had shut down the teleporters and embargoed the portals. If it got out that there was such an easy method of boosting young rankers, some Bismuth or Azoth would come with a whole passel of children and take it away from Sydeans.

Then to solve the actual problem, some Alum-rank might well flatten half the planet.

As good as the quests were, it still bothered her that none of the creatures she was finding were like the one that she’d fought. The little birds and occasional plant bulb did have the same strange essence static around them, barely noticeable but distinct once she’d gotten close enough. They were still hard to find – she and Onswa had really only been able to locate them in the smallest zones – but at least she knew that rooting them out wasn’t completely impossible.

“Right,” she said, clapping her hands and getting the attention of the group, who went by the name of Deepest Ventures. “Head back to town, get to work on consolidating your gains and look over your possible Skills. You’ll probably be taking that B-tier Skill all the way up to Platinum, and ranking its rarity up from there, so don’t waste it on something you only need right now. You’ll have plenty of chances at lesser Skills at your rank.”

“Yes, Lady Flamewing,” the bulwark fighter said, saluting her with his spear. She snorted and waved them off. The group gave her a few more glances before fairly running back in the direction of the local town, leaving her to consider the quest text once again.

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: Platinum. Reward: B-tier Skill. Locations: […] Great Western Sea Ocean Zone, Clashing Slopes Conflict Zone, Rocky Rill Resource Zone, Gravel Beach Border Zone…]

It was spreading faster than the assorted Platinums could find and destroy the agents, though it wasn’t like they had many to spare. Besides herself and Onswa, Marek was in charge of the Canepa continent, while Hirau and Karsa had their own cities they ruled over on the sparsely-settled continent of Remal. Most Platinums went offworld and never came back. Some because they preferred the higher-rank planets and dungeons and zones, others because they got themselves killed in those selfsame higher-rank areas.

So far she hadn’t seen any actual consequences of the spread, aside from the Gosruk Guardians and Tornok Clan’s Platinums — and of course her niece, who had been in the dungeon which had been destroyed by what she thought of as the actual Ahruskian. All the small brushfires they were dealing with were distractions — and for all she knew, the allure of the quest rewards for such easy work was part of its plan. A massive reward with no real risk very much distracted people from trying to find the genuine source of the problem.

She invoked [Wings of Khuroon], the flames guiding her back to Kalhan and Onswa’s office. Hirau and Karsa didn’t think the defense quest was at all their problem, but at least Onswa was taking it seriously and Marek always went along with whatever Onswa wanted. Five Platinums would have been preferable to three, but three was better than none.

“I know, I know,” Onswa said, the moment she stepped into his office, a chime accompanying her entrance. He was deep in the Planetary Administrator interface, the display above his desk glowing with the world map and a number of option boxes. “It’s only getting worse. I know that sometimes these global quests last years or decades, but I don’t think this one was meant to.”

“If I’d gone myself when it first popped up rather than letting lower ranks have their chance…” Arene sighed. She hadn’t really thought much of it at the time, especially since she hadn’t even known the portal staging area had been destroyed. Not that there had been any Sydeans there by that point.

“And maybe you’d have ended up dead,” Onswa was blunt. “This is going to need all of us when we actually find the thing again. If we can. You’re still the only one who’s laid eyes on it.”

“For all the good that did me,” Arene said, and squinted at Onswa’s display. There was a sort of creeping horror in seeing how many zones were included in the global quest, with a frighteningly large swath of land and sea infested with the whatever-it-was. If they couldn’t deal with the source of it soon, they’d have no choice but to appeal to some Bismuth or Azoth ranker — assuming the System itself didn’t start spreading the quest.

“We’ve only got a few more days before my Administrator reserves run out and I have to let the portals run again,” Onswa said frankly. “If we don’t solve it by then, then we’re going to have worse problems than the System quest.”

***

Cato’s claws dug into the rock of a near-vertical cliff as he scaled the mountain, glad that his diversions had worked and he’d been left alone since he emerged from the ocean. His rough estimate was that its summit was nearly thirty thousand feet above sea level — and it wasn’t even the largest in the chain. In the distance he could see an even more mammoth peak breaking through the clouds, but there were also flying monsters and structures very high up. He was hoping to avoid most of those, since unlike System people, he didn’t really get anything from fighting and it wasn’t even something he particularly enjoyed. Or was good at.

He’d seen his metrics compared to other people and he was at best dead average. Though considering the sheer amount of knowledge and reflexes he could borrow from others, programmed into sub-brains and encoded in molecular databanks, average was still devastatingly effective. Unfortunately, at higher ranks the sheer forces involved meant that even his best efforts would have no effect at all.

The greatest contrast between power created by technology and the power created by the System was how concentrated it became in an individual. A high rank System person could crack mountains all by himself, whereas Cato needed massive machines to accomplish the same thing. If he didn’t get off the planet, he couldn’t make those machines, and he couldn’t reach the scales necessary.

He scrambled across a small plateau, impossibly oversized beetle-type insects living in impossibly low temperatures clicking and clacking as they followed the wake he ploughed through the snow. There shouldn’t have been enough energy to support a robust ecosystem, let alone multi-ton invertebrates, but the System was always strange.

The few ice spiders and beetles that did get in his way were easily enough dealt with. Large as they were, they still lacked the force to punch through the warframe’s armor, and unlike the high-rankers his claws worked just fine to shred them to pieces. Most of the time he simply evaded the local wildlife, as he only cared about getting high enough that he could get out of the atmosphere with his warframe’s resources. The equations of the thrust available to him, his material limitations, and the planet’s own gravity and atmospheric density gave him a minimum threshold, and he wasn’t quite there yet.

Acoustic mapping kept him from falling into the innumerable powder-snow pits, like some demented version of quicksand, which would have been a hazard to any conventional exploration of the area. The map that he’d gotten from the System pillar had no information on the area beyond naming it the [Frozen Peaks Conflict Zone]. There wasn’t even a proper definition of the zone borders, showing it was practically unexplored. Considering the number of zones and the lack of population on the planet, that was hardly surprising. Some high level had probably swung by to get it on the map and never visited again.

The plateau was crowded by glaciers on all sides, with a narrow ravine cutting its way upward toward the peak, so Cato simply made straight for the defile and clawed his way along the ascent. There were caves scattered throughout – there were always caves – but he was past the time when he needed what they offered. Accordingly, he didn’t pay too much attention to them, simply routing around the entrances as he climbed.

Then the symbiotic brain got an update.

[Welcome to Icy Defile Dungeon! Suggested Rank: High Gold]

“Oh, dammit,” Cato said to himself, hardly able to believe his bad luck.

The dungeon hadn’t appeared on Cato’s map, and none of his scouts had actually gone into the caves, so its appearance was a complete surprise. It only appeared for a moment before his momentum carried him further away from the cave in question, and perhaps it didn’t matter because he had fliers out everywhere.

For a moment he considered directing a scout back there, to perhaps misdirect anyone who came to check, but upon consideration it didn’t seem worth the time. Or the resources, as he was reaching the point where he needed to calculate everything to make it off-world. Better to simply move as quickly as possible than give in to paranoia.

Instead he redoubled his efforts, driving claws into rock and ice like pitons. What would be a harsh, deserted landscape of rock and snow on any other world, up where the atmosphere became thin, instead had ice-themed trees and flowers. Glinting, blue-and-silver birds flew over, while furred predators stalked through crystalline forests clinging to the steep slopes. Not that the System completely obviated normal physics. The atmosphere was thin, the birds had extremely outsized wings and probably flew more with magic than with feathers, and quite a lot of the local biomass was stashed inside the relative warmth of caves worming their way through the mountain.

He mostly bypassed it all, keeping himself camouflaged and climbing on vertical cliffs, though that wasn’t always enough. He had to deal with a few too-curious birds, and ramp up the heat production of his outer shell as gusts of extremely cold and dense ice were sprayed from their wings in an attempt to freeze him. Cato found himself grumbling about his lack of ranged options, and promised himself he’d find a solution to that somehow, because it was a crippling weakness. There had been solutions back on Earth, he knew, but he hadn’t gotten ahold of any of the bespoke modifications made by the more aggressive combatants.

Soon enough he had scaled past most of the [Frozen Peaks Conflict Zone] and began to near where he could take off from Sydea. The moment he passed the minimum threshold he started the processes necessary to convert the warframe and planted himself on a flat spot. The methodology for launching himself and his passengers into space was a bit tricky, and he’d have to sacrifice most of his mass, which meant he wouldn’t be mobile until it was ready.

A sudden burst of flame from below caught his attention, coupled with a strange spectral shimmer that didn’t accord with any known elements. The latter was nothing he recognized, but the former was familiar enough. The flame lady had arrived.

It had been long enough since his accidental clipping of the random dungeon that he’d hoped that it had gone unnoticed, but it seemed it was not to be. At least he’d had enough time to put distance between himself and the lower slopes where his position might be more obvious. The only question was whether he could finish in time, before the rankers found him.

***

“Got you, you bastard.”

Arene had taken to glancing at the quest text every few minutes, like worrying a loose tooth, to no real profit. Until now. The invader’s distractions had covered an enormous number of zones, but only the main, real one had ever entered a dungeon. There on the list of zones, if just for a moment, was [Icy Defile Dungeon] — which wasn’t a dungeon she’d even heard of, but that alone was suggestive.

Then it vanished, and she launched into action. She called upon [Wings of Khuroon] and pulled herself to Onswa’s office, the fiery wings nearly scorching the building from how close she emerged. The hinges bent as she slammed through the front door of the office, Onswa jumping up from his seat and ready for anything. The interface chimed belatedly as she strode forward.

“The thing was in [Icy Defile Dungeon],” she said shortly, not needing to explain the significance. “Is it on the map?”

Onswa immediately turned to his Planetary Administrator interface, and it brought up the map of the world without needing to be asked. The globe floated in front of them and spun, narrowing in on where the dungeon was located. A Planetary Administrator had access to more information than any public map provided, though it came with restrictions Arene didn’t quite understand.

“Here,” Onswa said, jabbing his finger at the [Frozen Peaks Conflict Zone], in the middle of the thin strip of continent that was Corsova. “Brand new, undiscovered. Until now, it seems.”

“Then let’s go,” Arene said, turning toward the door.

“Let me inform the other Platinums first,” Onswa replied, making her stop and wait impatiently. She couldn’t well object; even if they didn’t join her and Onswa, they would need to know if something went wrong. Onswa worked the Planetary Administrator’s console for a moment, and a new quest appeared on Arene’s system readout.

[Platinum Timed Quest from Onswa Ramik: All Platinums are to make their way to Frozen Peaks Conflict Zone as quickly as possible. Time Remaining: 5 minutes]

“Now we can go,” Onswa said, and Arene fairly launched herself out of the door, wings spreading as she took to the air. Unlike with the cities and Onswa’s office, she didn’t have an anchor directly in the Zone, so she had to go in stages. North, then west, then north again, flying high through the air with Onswa just behind her. He didn’t have wings, but he flew on a bubble of aether that surrounded him like an aura. It wasn’t as fast a movement skill as hers, outside teleportation, except that the odd properties of aether let him ride in her wake.

She skipped over the ocean, spending as much energy as she dared, until the mountains of Corsova loomed on the horizon. Then Onswa drew up next to her, flinging out a hand and opening a portal for them. He was the one who knew precisely where the dungeon was, with his Planetary Administrator access, so she darted through the portal after him without complaint.

The mountain was suddenly right in front of them, the steep snowy slopes scattered with lower Gold rank beasts. She honed in on the faint presence of a dungeon not far away, barely noticeable if she hadn’t already been looking for it. Her wings flashed and she darted toward it, flying inside a cave entrance. The System gave her warning that she had entered the [Icy Defile Dungeon] but she ignored it, stretching out her senses for any of that strange crackling in essence that betrayed the presence of the invader.

There was nothing. It was an undiscovered dungeon, so she could tell that nearly all the monsters outside were the result of repeated dungeon breaks, but nobody actually lived on Corsova so that was hardly a surprise. There were only a few floors, nothing that stymied her senses, though she wasn’t expecting to find anything since it had dropped off the quest list anyway.

“Where’s Marek?” She snapped at Onswa, who didn’t actually deserve it. Arene took a moment to reign in her temper, since while she might be able to get away with being abrupt to Onswa, plenty of other Platinums and, especially, higher ranks would not take it well. The camaraderie between fellow Sydeans was something which did not apply to others in the System.

“Still a few minutes out,” Onswa said, hovering in his bubble and checking the Planetary Administrator interface. “He’s not as fast as you.”

“Nobody is,” Arene said, a touch impatiently. She cast out her Platinum-rank sensory Skill, running it over the mountain to try and find a trace of that strange signature. It had to be nearby, but if the thing was equivalent to a Platinum or better, that nearby could encompass hundreds of miles or more.

There didn’t seem to be anything on the slopes around or in the distance. Plenty of creatures, including some elites that would challenge even peak Gold, but not the thing she was looking for. It wasn’t until she cast her senses upward, all the way up the slopes toward the distant peak, that the bizarre essence fuzzing appeared.

“Above!” She pumped her wings to ascend.

“Arene, wait!” Onswa called to her back, but he could catch up with Marek. She wanted to lay eyes on the thing before it slipped away again, and this time it was out in the open. There were no caves to drop on her head, and she was certain it wasn’t much more powerful than Platinum, else it would have engaged with her directly instead of running away.

Her massive wings brought her up to near the peak, and she finally managed to properly see what she had been chasing. It was still camouflaged, but far less effectively than before, and for a moment she thought it was actually a different being. Unlike the large, six-limbed form of before, it seemed to have almost rooted itself in the mountain like some kind of bizarre plant. Yet it still had the tendrils, and the shape of the head was the same, so she decided it was indeed the same entity.

She gathered [Calamity Lance] in her right hand, the apocalyptic glow leaking out between her fingers, but she held back for the moment. One thing Onswa was right about was that it was better to all attack together, just in case the thing was too slippery for just one of them. Her fire, Onswa’s aether, and Marek’s water together would be far more effective.

Every moment they delayed was another moment for it to act, however, and Arene’s instincts told her that she had to move quickly. Even as she watched, its shape was changing, part of it flowing like water. Arene readied [Calamity Lance], glancing down at Onswa’s softly glowing bubble.

There was a flex of aether and Marek arrived through Onswa’s portal, riding atop a vortex of flowing water. The two of them raced up toward her, which did not go unnoticed by their target. A dark bubble grew outward from its body, forming a shell in a matter of moments. Arene’s [Appraise] still gave her no information, and whatever Skill it was using didn’t seem to take any essence, which made her instincts scream. It wasn’t playing by the rules, and it might do anything.

“Just hit it,” she said, and released [Calamity Lance]. Rooted to the ground as it was, it couldn’t evade like it had before. Onswa’s aether attack swirled right through whatever defense the black bubble offered, as Marek summoned a massive vortex of water. Marek was better with an actual weapon, but by unspoken agreement nobody wanted to get too close to the thing.

The black bubble shattered, but in a strange way, turning into a shimmering, opaque cloud. She could feel it sapping at the power of [Calamity Lance] while several small projectiles sailed out through it toward the Platinums. They weren’t moving particularly quickly, for Platinum rank, and Arene snapped out with [Incineration Lash] to intercept them.

The little balls puffed into another cloud at the contact, one that kept moving toward her despite the prevailing winds. She pulsed [Incarnate Flame], her body searing the cloud away, but Onswa’s aether was far less effective. He jetted back from the cloud, coughing.

“Poison!” He warned, as Marek’s vortex hammered down on the shrouding cloud, washing it away. It revealed the creature had changed even more, the tendrils and head drawn into a bloated body. Arene’s muzzle curled in disgust as she hurled another [Calamity Lance], determined to sear the thing from the face of Sydea.

A bright flash, brighter than the suns, seared her eyes. A roar hammered at her, at Onswa and Marek, and she blinked to find the place where the intruder had been scorched and slagged from the force of the explosion. Yet there was no sign of it.

“That was it?” Marek said, his gravely voice both disbelieving and contemptuous. She didn’t blame him; that was far less troublesome than she had been expecting. She approached the blasted rock, then suddenly froze as another flash of light came — but this one from high, high above. She looked upward, to where far above the dome of the sky another explosion faded away, and she caught the tiniest glimpse of a small speck of something before it was gone.

“Oh, you god-rotten piece of—” Arene shouted imprecations at the heavens, but knew it was impotent, while Onswa stared grimly upward.

“No,” Onswa said, his voice heavy. “That was not it.”

***

World Deity of Sydea Marus Eln stifled a groan as notifications crowded into his vision. One of the reasons why he wasn’t too bothered by his Sydea posting, despite its lack of real status, was that the planet didn’t require much of his valuable time. There was no point in investing much time in a populace that was meant to be removed anyway, and having an administrator meant that the local animals ought to be self governing.

With the irritating Lundt scion busy with the new world that had just opened up, it had been the perfect opportunity for Marus to spend some time in the core worlds, reacquainting himself with the Eln clan’s various allies. At least, he had thought it would be perfect; apparently some of the idiotic Sydean locals had decided it was a good time to do something stupid enough to rise to the level of an emergency. The entire point of having a Planetary Administrator was to avoid emergencies, and if the locals couldn’t even manage that he might be better off eliminating the position entirely.

“If you’ll excuse me, it seems that duty is interrupting.” Marus disengaged himself from the couple he had been listening to, patiently nodding along with their nigh-breathless descriptions of their own worlds. He knew it was at least partly to flaunt their much-more-favorable postings, but Marus had to play the game to get ahead. He wouldn’t be stuck on Sydea forever, and clearing a frontier planet so it could be turned into something properly tame and ready for the Eln Clan’s own people was its own sort of merit.

The planet was ripe for the servants of the Eln Clan to come in and take it, but the native population had to go first. Only when it was unclaimed would the System recognize the transfer of ownership, and such a thing had to be done within the rules. Fortunately, as the administrator he had a certain latitude to change how things worked, and all he really required was patience.

Finding a bit of privacy to go through the notifications was more difficult than it should have been. The System space hosting the party was a series of platforms floating in a vast sea of slowly shifting aurorae, lacking walls or ceilings or anything more concrete than decorative arches and long tables loaded with delicacies from a thousand worlds. Music from his uncle’s world, his pet band, floated from where they played near the center of the arrayed platforms. No bridges connected them; everyone who was truly recognized by the System could cross the gaps with no more difficulty than thinking about it.

He flitted over to one of the arches, cutting off the view of most of the guests as he flipped through the notifications. It was at the very least rude to do so in plain view, though the more intelligent would realize something had gone drastically wrong and the rumors that would start couldn’t be borne. Marus had spent far too much time building up his reputation and connections, his value to the clan and his ability to manage the lesser races, to have it ruined by a faux pas.

Most of the notifications wouldn’t have risen to the level of emergency if it weren’t for one pressing issue — the planet’s essence reserves had been nearly depleted. Which meant everything was suddenly far more urgent, as it began creating shortfalls beyond the ones he had planned. Marus thought it was a waste of time to give lesser species any access to the planetary essence at all, and the fact that they’d somehow managed to spend it in the few years he’d been away was proof of that. He’d never openly question the System, but sometimes he did wonder why it introduced races that were so clearly unfit.

He glanced through the other notifications on the stack, finding some of them somewhat disturbing now that he was paying attention. Several instances of [Unidentified Entity], which was not something Marus had ever heard of before. Once the System integrated a world, everything was identified — or at least, identifiable, by those with the lesser [Appraisal]. Even if something had come through the portal to the new world, it shouldn’t have been unidentified. Then he came to one that made him stop entirely.

[Ahrusk Portal Terminated]

Marus almost laughed. It seemed the Lundt had managed to make such an incredible hash of the new world that the System had shut it all down. No doubt trapping Lundt on the other side until the System decided to try again, and not even World Deities like himself knew when that would be. Only those who ruled the System Core would know that, and perhaps not even them. The divine System worked in mysterious ways, and he wouldn’t dare guess at what transcendent logic drove its most profound processes.

Actually addressing the reason for the essence deficit on Sydea would require returning to his own System space, but even with the remote interface he could tell why it had happened. In their utter lack of wisdom, the natives had decided to spend it on blocking out-planet portals and teleporters. Once he got back he’d have to revoke that and then he could hand out some penalties, but first he had to go inform his clan about the Lundt’s poor fortune.

Whatever was happening on Sydea was far less important than that.

***

Cato worked desperately to keep his remaining passengers alive.

It was bad enough that they’d been subjected to a biological Orion Drive. A point-blank fusion detonation, however small, and the concomitant acceleration was not healthy for naturally evolved tissue. He’d accounted for both of those, since he at least could fix radiation damage and had cushioned the brains with a short-lived aerogel. It was still not the best thing, but he’d been pressed for time and couldn’t finish growing all the infrastructure the operation was meant to have.

Then there were the attacks. The strange radiance had caused all kinds of unexplained replication errors and caused a number of specialized organs to cease functioning for no apparent reason. A good reminder that even if he wasn’t part of the System and it couldn’t target him directly, its effects were still dangerous.

The worst of it, though, was the fire beam. He’d had enough matter to try mitigating it with a sort of chaff cloud, but that hadn’t lasted long thanks to the water guy, and the fire lady managed to punch a hole straight through him. It had obliterated one of the passenger brains outright and lightly toasted another two, as well as puncturing his pusher plate and causing the first fusion explosion to rip through his internal structures.

Now he had all kinds of failing organs, radiation damage, thermal fluctuations, and the usual rigors of vacuum trying to kill the people he was hoping to protect. Cato scrambled to juggle nutrient feeds and rehydrate cushioning armor, to purge toxic buildup and to repair sudden cell death from dozens of sources. He was forced to be a spendthrift with his resources, having to vent some of the volatile waste rather than recycle it to carry away heat in the vacuum of space. A long plume of frozen gas stretched out behind him as he rocketed away – quite literally – from the planet below.

One brain stabilized, but the other continued to deteriorate. If he had access to his full suite of technologies, if he knew more about Sydean biochemistry, if he hadn’t gotten himself speared by the high-rankers — but he couldn’t change reality. Cascading failures disrupted sensitive neural chemistry, causing the bioelectrical patterns of thought to stutter, then collapse.

He tried stimulating the neurons themselves, compromising the integrity of the brain in question in the hopes that he could resuscitate the personality inside and worry about rehousing it later, but it was too late and there was too much damage. The lump of fat was no more than that — technically alive, but without anything inside. He had no idea what mistakes he’d made, and he hadn’t been able to scan the brain structure before the failure so there was no way to even properly reconstruct that much.

After a long struggle with himself, silently sailing through the vacuum of space, he terminated support to the dead brain. Better a definite death than to present the living with a false puppet of life, with no chance of the person within returning. He was certain he could return the rest of them, so long as he reached his destination.

His original plan had been to target the primary moon. Sydea had three, one large – if still not as big as Luna – and two much smaller ones in the Lagrange points. But he’d been forced to ascend early, and in his haste he only had the resources and trajectory to aim for a lesser moon. It would have to do.

At least the System’s physics had dropped away, leaving only the damage behind. Having real physics available to him didn’t give him any benefits yet, but it would as soon as he impacted the moon. It’d be a bit of a rough landing, given his imprecise delta-vee, but once there he’d have all the time and mass he needed.

Chapter 6 – Interregnum

Onswa frantically sorted through the notifications and controls on his interface, trying to finish the last orders as the essence counter ticked down. He knew there would be no point in trying to guard the portals manually, not when Platinums or Bismuths could come through at any moment, so the best he could do was create incentive for people to be away from Kalhan to avoid any frustrated offworlders. He was still in the middle of spending what essence remained in the reserves on special and explanatory quests when the a notification blocked him.

[Interplanetary Travel Restrictions lifted]

[Planetary Administrator privileges suspended]

Onswa growled at the message. He didn’t even know that such privileges could be suspended. If someone else had taken the job that would be one thing, but nobody had displaced him. He was simply locked out. Though it wasn’t like the job had come with instructions — as the highest ranking Platinum, he had simply inherited it after the last Planetary Administrator decided to depart to break into Bismuth.

He had known there would be consequences for locking down the portals and teleports for so long, but he’d expected it would be mostly related to burning through all the reserves normally used for cities. Most of what he did day to day was the painful and ticklish business of deciding who most needed what little essence there was to spare and trying to make up for the inevitable shortfalls. People were supposed to generate essence and resources through quests and dungeons, and bring in resources from Resource Zones. Yet very few towns on Sydea had enough of an income to keep above the penalty line every day.

Burning through that buffer had seemed to be necessary, to keep them from being flooded by outworlders, but time had passed and the quest hadn’t gone away. Onswa had no idea how they were going to manage until they had reserves again, because offworlders didn’t contribute nearly the same amount to the cities or towns. They didn’t have access to as many quests, either, but that hardly mattered when the quest, the one that was drawing so much attention, was global.

Having no planetary-level administer abilities at all was going to make his life entirely difficult. He barely had control over the other Platinums, and there weren’t many Golds who he could call on to pick up the slack and divert their efforts to helping out towns in need. It wasn’t even that they were unwilling, but without the administration console he couldn’t coordinate efforts with targeted quests. Instead, he would have to track people down in person. It was a temporary circumstance, he was sure, but that didn’t make it any less a crisis. He could only be in one place at a time.

Onswa stepped out of his now-useless office and dropped down to street level. Kalhan was a fair-sized city, with rows of housing interspersed with System businesses. Smithing, jewelcrafting, woodworking, alchemy, and other shops to buy or adjust equipment, or to sell or trade dropped items. Dozens of places serving food and drink, both for sustenance and for temporary benefits provided by the more expensive dishes. Sydeans of various ranks filled the streets, going about the usual business of buying and selling.

Unfortunately, there were also a number of outworlders, all pouring out from the System Nexus and its attendant portal. Onswa doubted many people had been camping the portal for weeks just to go through, so this flood was just those who happened to be nearby when travel was reinstated. Soon enough the higher ranks would come, along with more organized incursions to take advantage of the absurd value of the defense quest.

The presence of a Platinum abruptly shifted the chaotic outflow to something more orderly. The visitors, mostly Golds and below to Onswa’s rapid-fire [Appraise], didn’t dare to misbehave with Onswa watching. He surveyed them with disfavor, seeing everything from the insectile Urivans of their neighboring world to the slinking Tornok Clan in their characteristic armor. It was clear that the news of the quest had been spread far and wide, and not just passed through the portal by word of mouth.

“If you’re here for the quest, be patient,” he addressed them, hoping to stem some of the inevitable infighting. “There does not seem to be a lack of creatures, though they can be difficult to find. None of them can be identified, and they all appear to be of Copper rank to essence perception. Most of them appear to be entirely toothless, but any large ones should be treated as being of Platinum rank despite their apparent weakness.”

He kept an eye on the traffic for a few more minutes, as the outworlders filtered out to the edges of the city, some of them took flight, others merely grouped together and voyaged out into the surrounding zones. That was all the time he had to spare and, since there didn’t seem to be any fights breaking out at that precise moment, he had to take a message to his other Platinums.

Onswa wrapped his [Path of Aether] around himself and accelerated into the air, blurring into the between-space of his teleport. The flowing rivers and quiet pools of the Aether stretched out before him, the nearest one close enough to touch and ride across the world. Swift currents brought him to the slow eddy of Arene’s Musahr City in Southern Coren. That area still had the greatest concentration of zones named by the Defense Quest, but fortunately Arene was also the most capable of keeping any offworlders under control. Even if she was technically less powerful than Onswa, she was far more aggressive and practiced.

He dropped down toward her estate, just outside Musahr city itself. Every Platinum had one, awarded by the System after completing the advancement Quest, though most Sydean Platinums didn’t spend the estate token on Sydea itself. In fact, most of them didn’t even advance on Sydea, let alone return home.

Arene’s version was a walled courtyard, paved in white and orange, with a set of quarters and service buildings attached to a tower at one end. The Platinum herself emerged the moment he entered the range of her perceptions, door flying open with a bang as she flew out of her bedroom. Not that Onswa blamed her; they’d all been on edge after having to deal with the strange thing that had come through the now-closed portal. He tried not to think about how deliciously rumpled she looked, and kept his mind on business.

“The blockade’s down,” he said shortly, even before he touched down on the courtyard stone. “Worse, I’m locked out of administrator controls. The System didn’t like it, I suppose. You’re going to have to keep a tight reign on people here for a while.”

“Gods above and below,” Arene swore. “I think we’re cursed. Are we ever going to catch a break?”

“Probably not,” Onswa said bluntly. “Anyway, I have to go tell the others. I’d appreciate it if you’d get someone to stay at the local Nexus and check for any courier messages, and I’ll tell the other Platinums to do the same.”

“Go,” Arene said, summoning her armor onto herself and spreading blazing wings. She was off into the sky before he could get out another word, so he slipped into the network of aether to make for his next destination.

Marek’s seaside city seemed to be in the middle of fending off a Dungeon Break, to judge from the piles of crab and sea-serpent corpses mounding the beaches. The Platinum himself was patrolling the battle lines, darting in to make sure none of the Copper and Silver ranks got overwhelmed. Onswa flitted over, matching speed with the swirl of water Marek was surfing, and filled him in. Marek just grunted.

“Costs for food went up, too,” he said, flicking a hand as he pulled a monstrous crab monster away from the party it was trying to flank. “We’re going to need everything we can get from this dungeon break.”

Onswa winced. Crystallized essence tokens were created as the result of killing monsters or clearing dungeons, and were the only currency System pylons recognized. The truly rich could redeem them for essence directly, boosting their way up the ranks, but on Sydea there had never been enough income for that. As it was many people were forced to choose between paying for food and paying for equipment upgrades. It was all too easy to wind up just slightly too poor to ever make any real headway into higher level equipment, just because so much income went toward basic necessities.

“I can’t do as much as I’d like with my privileges suspended,” Onswa said, reaching for his System wallet. “But — here.” He pulled out a pile of Platinum essence tokens, which would suffice to feed quite a lot of people for quite a long time after being converted down to Copper tokens. Considering the man’s pride, Marek had probably already spent most of his own tokens if he was even mentioning costs.

“Appreciate it,” Marek said, whisking the tokens away into his own wallet. “Don’t worry too much, though. We’ll make out. We always do.”

“I know,” Onswa said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “Keep me informed though, eh?”

“Yes,” Marek said, his attention focused on the running combat sprawling across the beach below. Onswa left him to it, moving onto the areas administered – in a very loose sense of the word – by Hirau and Karsa. Perhaps he should have tried to force the issue, and insisted that they report to him, but it didn’t seem worth it so long as they took care of their areas. Gods knew he didn’t have anyone to replace them.

By the time he made it back home, he felt wrung out, no matter that his travel Skill didn’t really burn that much power. Nobody had good news, there were outworlders everywhere trying to crowd out the Sydeans from the global quest, and he’d practically run himself out of essence tokens. He’d have to get his fellows together to run the sole Platinum dungeon on Sydea, if for no other reason than to have something to make up for any shortfalls. Without the planetary reserves, the excess spillover from quests and dungeon clears, that was all he could do.

“Rough day?” Aceila, his wife, asked sympathetically as he dropped into the Gold-ranked lounge next to the window looking out over his own Platinum estate. She was Gold herself, and usually spent her time shepherding the lower ranks.

“I think the world hates us,” Onswa replied. Acelia chuckled and came over, draping herself atop him.

“It’ll get better,” she assured him, as his arms went around her.

But it didn’t.

As the days stretched on, token prices remained high. Outworlders kept arriving, causing trouble and taking away quests from native Sydeans and running his high rankers ragged trying to keep them in line. Onswa spent barely any time in his now-useless office, the interface unhappily chiming the [Planetary Administrator privileges suspended] message at him every time he accessed the System.

For a while he thought it would all subside as the number of regions marked by the Defense Quest dwindled, down to five, then two, then just the one. But then new regions began being added, no longer adjacent to the original but all over the world. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason, they just sprouted up out of nowhere.

After two weeks, they lost their first town. Aruel Town had been borderline for years, just barely sustaining itself at the edge of the [Spotted Cliffs Resource Zone], but with the reduced essence income there simply wasn’t enough to keep the local System Nexus running. Too long at a deficit, without enough quests and resources coming into the town, and the Nexus would simply go inactive, removing the safe zone and all the building benefits, a state of affairs that threatened far too many cities on Sydea. He didn’t even know when the building failed with his reduced Administrator access; it was Hirau that alerted him.

Onswa found himself outside the small assemblage of buildings in Aruel Town, grimly holding open a portal for the refugees to file through back to Khopir City. Without essence, all the buildings were dark and dull, lifeless blocks of grey-white stone, and soon enough monsters would come to turn it into a miniature Conflict Zone until it was fully recaptured and restored — if that ever happened. Humble as it was, the faces of those who had once dwelt there were taut with grief as they were forced to abandon their homes. It wasn’t the first town Onswa had been forced to evacuate, but never had it occurred so quickly.

Things could hardly be going worse.

***

Things could hardly be going better for World Deity Marus. He reclined in the house inside his System Space, surrounded by luxurious furniture, with windows that looked out on the core worlds. Just little luxuries he’d purchased with essence siphoned off from Sydea’s churn. The mortal races couldn’t use essence directly, not in the way World Deities could, merely empowering themselves with it. He had always felt that to be a wasteful state of affairs, but without them essence wouldn’t flow.

His Interface grumbled and chimed as it went about the business of managing all the thousands of complexities that the System required to manage a planet. The only thing he was uncertain about was that strange defense quest, but his Interface had assured him that aside from a single dungeon, there were no other losses associated with it. There weren’t even any elites dying in the zones that the Interface had marked as being associated with the unknown entity, so Marus had to assume that it was the visiting Platinums that had wrecked the dungeon, not the entity.

Even if his Interface freely admitted it wasn’t sure what was causing the confusion, it was also certain there was nothing major going on, so Marus was happy to not only leave it be but ensure the quest was spread to neighboring worlds. In fact, it was actually helping with his general plans by continuing to reduce the planetary budget.

People fighting or clearing dungeons on a planet created essence, split between them, the rewards, and the planet’s own reserves. It was those reserves that paid for upgrades to cities and towns, creating dungeons, and for special quests like ranking up or the system defense quest that had cropped up on Sydea. Of course, he’d been siphoning off those funds for himself, so that Sydea would be a perfectly blank and fresh world for his clan. After the natives lost their last foothold and his clan’s allies moved in, he could dump all that siphoned essence back in to boost its growth.

Minus what he kept for himself, of course.

Marus had no idea how long the quest conditions would last, but so long as it went on it was accelerating his timetable by years. Decades, even. The faster that the towns collapsed, the fewer Sydeans the planet could support, and soon enough there wouldn’t be any left. Without any native claim, the Eln Clan’s favored races could take it over for themselves.

Such an approach took time to execute within the bounds of the System’s limitations, of course. Marus was patient and would have been content to wait out the centuries, but having so many years cut off his plans was a pleasant surprise. Any rank below Bismuth was managed by their homeworld’s System Interface, so all the outworlders were pulling essence out of the planetary budget completely. That meant less for him, but he felt it was worth the extra speed at this point. The only issue would be if any of those outworlders he’d lured in would be tempted to make their own claims — but that was unlikely since he’d systematically starved Sydea of the essence it needed to grow. To any of the mortal races, it would seem completely unpalatable.

“I do not appreciate your interference with my world.” The voice was raspy, gruff, and made Marus jump up from his very comfortable chair in surprise. He pulled on the essence of his System Space to empower himself before realizing it was merely the World Deity of neighboring Urivan. The insectile being stood at attention in the middle of the vestibule of Marus’ house, well inside Marus’ System-granted private dimension, one set of arms clasped behind his back while his gripping claws rested in their grooves in his broad shoulders.

“I’m not—” Marus started, then interrupted himself. “How did you get in here?” He demanded, as it shouldn’t have been possible for even another World Deity to simply barge into his System Space. Especially not all the way into his actual house without Marus noticing. The Urivan ignored the question.

“This quest you’re spreading has far too high a reward for the risk,” the insect-man continued, and Marus resorted to using [Appraise] because he certainly couldn’t remember the name. The Skill reported that the being was Initik Varis, but Marus didn’t really care enough to commit it to memory. Initik was more or less irrelevant, since he didn’t belong to any of the big clans and held the dubious honor of being Deity for his own homeworld. So long as he was attached to just one planet he would never have real power.

“It’s not my quest,” Marus denied, irritated by Initik’s tone. “It is something generated by the divine System itself. I’m certainly not going to try and alter it.” He glanced back at his Interface by reflex, but he didn’t have the details of the defense quest displayed and certainly wasn’t going to dig for them.

“Then why hasn’t it been resolved?” Initik asked, not moving from the vestibule. The green carapace was entirely out of place in the soft purples and oranges that the Eln clan preferred.

“Either come in or leave,” Marus said, stretching his tail. “Don’t just hover there.” Initik regarded him through the flat, solid violet eyes of his kind and then took three paces to stand just on the other side of the vestibule. Marus bared his teeth at the insult to his hospitality, vowing that he’d make sure the Eln clan knew of Initik’s childishness. He should have addressed it himself, but some tiny corner of his mind knew that he’d be flattened if he tried. Initik had killed the Deity that was originally put in charge of Uriva, after all.

“It hasn’t been resolved,” Marus bit off each of the worlds to keep the pique from his tone. “Because it hasn’t been resolved. My purpose here is not to solve the Sydean’s problems. Spreading the quest offworld is the best way to ensure that it is properly addressed.” He didn’t want to spill the way he was exploiting the oddly recurring issue to someone he barely knew, even if it wasn’t likely Initik could make any trouble for him.

Just because Marus wasn’t actually crossing any lines didn’t mean he wasn’t skirting them, and someone in the right position could make trouble if his exact strategy became known. Some of the core clans – even some of his own Eln clan – were quite devout and did not believe in pushing the boundaries of what the divine System allowed. They were wealthy and well-established enough that they believed their approach was the best one, and disapproved of anyone who strayed from what they considered the proper path.

“If the people of your world are unready for the challenge, does that not reflect poorly upon your administration?” Initik rasped in a clipped tone, his carapace rustling as he shifted slightly, moving from one statue-still stance to another.

“Hardly,” Marus scoffed. “I can’t turn clay into steel, nor would I wish to try. They can barely generate essence enough for the planet to maintain itself, so you can’t fault me for wanting to allow others in to help with this quest.”

“It is disrupting the balance I have created,” Initik said, gripping claws clicking against his shoulder chitin. “Many young rankers are traveling to Sydea for an easy boost to essence and Skills.”

“So they’re getting a quick start?” Marus shrugged. “That’s a good thing.”

“That is not a good thing,” Initik disagreed, his voice sharp with displeasure. “Those who begin their lives unchallenged will be ill prepared for the realities later.”

“Look, I’m not going to debate administration details with you,” Marus said, flicking a finger and summoning a drink to his hand. He would have gotten one for Initik, but so far as Marus was concerned the other Administrator had declared himself an enemy by ignoring proper guest behavior. Marus certainly wasn’t going to offer him any hospitality. “You shouldn’t even be in here. I certainly didn’t invite you in. If you have anything actionable to say, say it.”

By all rights Marus should have flexed his will and shoved Initik back out of his private space. He was still tempted to, but he didn’t know how Initik had gotten in to begin with, so it wasn’t worth risking looking like an absolute fool if it didn’t work. Better to indulge the insect for the moment, then shore up his defenses and punish Initik later.

“Resolve your planet’s problems properly instead of letting them leak,” Initik told him, clicking again, exoskeleton rubbing against exoskeleton. The sound reached right into Marus’ brain to annoy him, making the fur on the back of his neck prickle and his ears twitch. He found the Urivans nearly as distasteful as Sydeans, but they weren’t his responsibility so he barely ever interacted with them. Initik made him remember why he preferred it that way.

“If you can’t handle a little extra traffic and a few people taking advantage of an opportunity, maybe you should look to your own duties,” Marus scoffed. “The Eln clan has been managing worlds for thousands of years, and this is the exact technique we’ve applied to many worlds. I know precisely what I’m doing.”

“Hardly something to boast of,” Initik replied, the staccato voice carrying something like scorn.

“I care little for the words of a clanless upstart,” Marus said, sneering at Initik. “Go back to your own planet and pay attention to your own business. I have work to do.”

Initik didn’t bother replying. He was there one moment, and then gone from the System Space with barely a ripple. Marus scowled at where Initik had been, then sighed and pulled up his full Interface. He did have work to do, but not with regards to Sydea. Its collapse was going to plan. Rather, it was the System Space that needed fixing, and there was no telling where the hole was that Initik had used to enter — and leave.

***

Exponential growth could be incredibly slow sometimes.

Cato huddled in a crater on the moon, doing little more than keeping watch over his drones. He had brought enough mass from the surface for a bare few, and they dug through the regolith, burrowing into the silicates and carbides in search of volatiles and metals. He’d spared enough production power to put together a very rudimentary solar array, lying just outside the shadow of the crater wall, as bio-fusion didn’t scale particularly well, nor was it any good at charging batteries. At least, not without more infrastructure than he had mass for.

The hacked-together manufactory squatted next to the solar array, dug into the ground and shielded from the sun so it could vent excess heat, chewing patiently through all the materials the drones brought it. A surprising amount of machinery could be built solely from silicon, carbon, and the lighter elements below those two, but there was no substitute for proper metals.

He could see the sphere of the planet hanging above him, taunting him with its nearness. At least, near in relative terms, as it was still some hundred thousand miles away. He knew there was bound to be fallout there, that his distraction organisms might all have been destroyed — or left alone enough that they’d reproduced beyond his initial expectations. Unfortunately, there was no choice in being out of contact for so long. He couldn’t even work harder to make up the difference. Energy and mass constrained him, and he couldn’t squeeze blood – or more importantly, iron – from a stone.

Cato tried to draw up plots and plans as he waited, watching the manufactory speed through new solar panels, and his drones return with more detailed and more useful mapping of the stone underneath his crater. On rare occasion they returned with some particularly metal-rich chunk of material, those tiny morsel accelerating what he could build.

Essentially, he could only afford to build factories and solar panels, like the world’s most boring strategy game. Each factory and attendant energy influx, along with some very rudimentary mining equipment, let him put together the next set of equipment that much faster. The crater began to fill up with solar arrays as machinery dug down into the surface, reorganizing mass into something more useful.

The most dramatic change was, at least to Cato’s mind, when he could finally interface with the database he carried in his spine and no longer had to rely on the designs he had managed to extract from damaged sub-brains. That marked the point where he could actually use real technology, rather than the constrained biotech and simple primary school designs he had before.

Light and heavy elements got spun together into computronium: a matrix of superconductive and optronic processing components that could run anything from simple scripts to entire virtual worlds with billions of people. Cato could finally move out of the sessile remains of the bioweapon frame, though it wasn’t like he could take much advantage of the increase in processing power.

True, he could make a virtual setting as luxurious as he wanted, but digital life had learned how destructive that path truly was. That, or dissipated themselves into an infinitely hedonistic lifestyle until their substrate failed, which was something that still happened on occasion. All Cato did was give himself a functional virtual home with an exterior to match the moonscape, as a reminder of what he was doing and why.

His guests needed more infrastructure to bring back to consciousness, however. Air, water, spin gravity, and all the amenities of a planetside habitation. Cloning banks and the material necessary to rapidly grow and condition their replacement bodies. A full medical suite, because there was no possible way that the process would proceed without issue.

At least the time and extra processing power gave Cato room to properly sequence their genetics and run through simulations. Which was in a way horrifically invasive and oddly clinical, when he was going to be meeting with these people and likely interacting with them for some time to come. He wasn’t their doctor or their friend, but he was the only one who could resurrect them regardless and it would make the inevitable relationship between them, whatever its tenor, a strange thing on his end.

It was a blessing that he could lose himself in the intricate morass of it all instead of dwelling on the who he was dealing with. Any biology was horribly complex, and almost all the information that had been gathered on Sydeans had been essentially by-the-way, with no concerted attempt to fully map the function of every protein and acid. At least Sydean biology was at least marginally similar to what Earth had to offer.

Cato didn’t know if the System encompassed any life that wasn’t based on carbon and water, but the intelligence he had implied everything that was connected by way of portals was close enough to breathe each other’s air. There was some massaging there thanks to System nonsense – making up for different relative concentrations and difficult or deadly trace molecules – but everything fit into a certain category. Close enough that the synthetic intelligence programs didn’t need any particular prodding to do the analysis, even if he still had to put in long hours making that output useful.

“Ah, damn. I wish the Titan boys had sent a gestalt with me,” Cato sighed, wrestling his way through a morass of clotting cascades and protein chains after his tissue sample solidified from some quirk of alien chemistry. It wasn’t just because dealing with alien biology was hard. The problem was, he was coming to grips with the fact that he was the only human around.

He had plenty of media to read and watch, but nobody to discuss it with. Setting up a self-evolving virtual world to distract himself with was simplicity itself, but without anyone else inside it, such a thing was hollow. In a word, he was lonely.

Cato had known that he’d be in for the long haul and by himself, but it was one thing to know and it was another to experience it. As much as he didn’t want to treat the Sydeans like they were something other, they simply weren’t human and they weren’t anywhere near postbiological. The System mimicked many aspects of technology, but not the entire culture that had grown up around postbiological life, or the tens of thousands of simulated years people like Cato had to draw from.

It was a problem he would have to deal with, because it was one he would be encountering a lot. Sydea was hardly the only planet he would be dealing with. In fact, it was barely a start.

Cato’s plans were relatively simple. First, spread himself throughout the System’s systems. Gain the assistance of the locals if possible, but even if not, build up the required infrastructure to clear out the System anchors. Once removed, cushion the loss of the System’s presence with technological equivalents and find trustworthy natives to ease the transition because he sure wouldn’t be a good judge of how to deal with all the alien psychologies he was sure to encounter.

Each planet would have a version of himself, completely cut off from all the other versions of himself as well as Earth itself. How exactly each version of himself would handle things was something that would have to wait for the actual event, but he trusted he’d choose wisely. After all, he had no desire to become a monster or some kind of hegemonizing swarm converting everything, so he had no worries any version of himself would.

That trust was one of the final barriers toward becoming properly postbiological, and it was a trust few people had. Most would feel the need to put a limiter on their alternate selves, or alter or lobotomize them in some way to prevent them from working at cross-purposes. Yet the strongest limiter that could possibly exist was that he was himself. That was the key piece of the mind that even allowed reconciliation among alternate selves in the first place, so he had no worries about his various selves being split among thousands of worlds.

Unfortunately his plans to do so had already hit a snag. All the portals seemed to be in city centers rather than popping up in the middle of nowhere like on Earth. Clearly that had been because Earth was still in some initial phase, before all the infrastructure was sorted out, but it still meant it wasn’t easy for him to slip over to other worlds. Combined with the System quest, it was pretty obvious he’d need more than just a single stealthy warframe.

Nor was he cut out for ranking up within the System himself, becoming some twisted magical version of himself just to transport a trojan entity. He’d have to so alter and lobotomize any version of himself that was fully open to the system that it wouldn’t be him, and it really would risk some terrible divergence. Not to mention he’d be inflicting that on someone who, ultimately, would be a different person entirely.

The conclusion, then, was that he would need a System confederate, or likely more than one. At the very least he’d need some from this initial foothold, which led to why he was so anxious to resurrect his guests. He really needed to get their bodies right if they were to listen to him, and it was a struggle. Growing Sydean biology was one thing, because life generally was pretty good at propagating itself, but growing it rapidly and to specification was another issue entirely. That was another reason it would have been nice if someone with more experience and understanding were along for the ride, but such was not to be.

One of the major contributors to the defense, Luna Secundus, had been very firm about keeping things Earth-side. Cato wasn’t sure whether the moon colony was afraid of somehow gaining the System’s ire or didn’t want the System to have any chance at understanding Titan biotechnology, but he’d found the entire attitude short-sighted. Which was why he’d had to take the chance at the last moment, so nobody could stop him or talk him out of it.

Unfortunately he was on his own, at least until he got to the point where he could wake up the slumbering brains. Not that he spent every processing cycle on work, and he took time out to relax with reading or shows or sims. The database held a not-inconsiderable amount of media from the Solar System, ranging from the classics of Rome and Nippon to the ephemera produced by Summer Civilizations.

Such was the derogatory name for groups of uploads running at tens of thousands or millions of times normal speed, who could create civilizations that rose and then fell in mere months. Often the collapse left little more than scorched computronium behind as the legacy of anywhere from thousands to billions of people and uncounted centuries of history.

It was the sort of fate he was hoping to avoid happening a second time for the Sydean people. Cato’s own father was an émigré from a Summer Civilization, so he had some insight on how it was for people to find out their reality wasn’t entirely true. The System might not exactly be the same as one of those hyper-accelerated virtual realities, but it wasn’t far off. The Sydeans surely had been operating inside it for centuries, and emerging from the other end would be the same kind of shock.

The globe spun above him in the blackness of space as machines made more machines and dug down. The tipping point where he could finally afford to start doing real work and not just expand his factories came nearly a month in, a month spent on tests and simulations and chewing over difficult problems that Cato didn’t really have any good answers to. Wisdom was much harder to come by than factual knowledge.

His machines had found a few pockets of water-ice, totaling a few hundred tons, along with sufficient heavy metal deposits to build some proper industry. Several incubators, to make bioweapon frames, and large-scale manufactories to assemble a habitat. He was finally able to start launching communications and surveillance satellites, even if they had a higher minimum orbit than he would have preferred. He might even be able to get in touch with his remaining scouts, and if there was anything useful recorded into memory he could start putting it into a proper surveillance database.

New scouts were grown in the incubators, and launched down to the world below in a rough-and-ready re-entry trajectory. Falling to ground from space, even at something far below orbital velocity, wasn’t particularly easy, and the System quest made them targets, but he needed a better view on things than orbit could give him.

What he found was not promising.

The population centers, small as they were, had become flush with non-Sydean types. They were actively hunting down his remaining scouts, and to judge from the bits and pieces he saw they didn’t get along particularly well with the natives. Several of the tiny System towns were dark and dead, which seemed to be a recent development, but he couldn’t see what had caused the evacuation.

Making things harder for the native was the absolute last thing Cato wanted to do. Not only was that basic human decency, Cato really needed to have the Sydeans on his side, or at least some of them. Without confederates within the System, it probably wasn’t possible to take it down. There were too many things it could do, both known and in theory, to absolutely cripple Cato if he was forced to approach it wholly from without.

He had known that Sydea was doing poorly before, but the fallout of his presence seemed to have accelerated the collapse. It wasn’t truly his fault, but it was certainly his responsibility. There wasn’t too much he could do for the moment, not when he was restricted to a few square miles of solar – half of it already in shadow and being replaced by satellites beaming power in – and a few hundred tons of equipment. Once he truly hit his stride, though, he’d demonstrate what a self-replicating industrial base could manage.

Chapter 7 – Revive

Raine Talis of the Gosruk Guardians woke with a start. She sat bolt upright in an unfamiliar bed, flinging off the sheets in one convulsive motion as she tried to defend herself from a threat that was no longer there. Her hands flew to her chest and her neck, but everything was intact despite her last memories, of the horrible jaws coming for her and the tearing grief of her sister’s scream.

Adventuring instincts made her check herself over, and then her location, taking stock of injuries and dangers. Yet she found she felt better than she had in a very long time, fully alert and healthy. The room was small and plain, with pale blue walls and an off-white ceiling lit by a single glowing panel, the simple bed with white linens, and a small table with neatly folded clothes piled atop it.

By reflex she tried to use her perception Skill, but nothing happened. She blinked and tried to summon the System, but there was nothing there either. Her tail twitched involuntarily, lashing against the bedding in uncontrollable spasms of creeping fear. She trusted nothing about the situation, the place, even the furnishings and the air she breathed. Feeling the need for any protection she could fine, Raine grabbed the southern-style clothes and dressed herself in haste. Already she missed the comfort of her armor, which was nowhere to be found.

Aside from the furnishings, there was a single door in the room. No windows to show her where she was or provide an alternate exit. Creeping closer, she listened at the door and heard someone humming a tune she did not recognize, but nothing else. That alone made the situation more eerie, but Raine could see no point in waiting so she opened the door.

She was immediately struck by an impossible sight. The far wall of the room, capturing her attention to the exclusion of all else, was a massive glass window beyond which a green and blue circle, swirled with white, floated in a sea of stars. She stared for a moment, until suddenly she recognized the outlines of the shapes from the System’s maps and globes. It was Sydea.

The sinking feeling in her gut hardened into something more concrete. Raine remembered dying, and while some extremely high rank Skills could revive someone in the right circumstances, this was nothing familiar. The System didn’t rule here.

That revelation made her sway, and she put out her hand to brace herself against the wall as she realized what that meant. She had known there was something wrong when the System had sent them against something impossible, as if it were grappling with something even it didn’t know. Something outside the System, or even greater than it. That was the power that had her.

“It’s quite the view, isn’t it?” The voice came from the side, startling her away from the view and whirling her around by reflex. Her body automatically assumed a defensive posture, even if she didn’t have any energy to call on.

The rest of the small room was similar to where she had awoken, with plain blue walls and an off-white ceiling, but furnished with a pair of chairs facing each other across a small table. A being sat in one of the chairs, a biped with pinkish skin instead of scales, a flat face, and a mop of dark hair. It was no species Raine recognized, and despite looking completely unthreatening she didn’t trust it a single bit.

“Come, have a seat,” the being invited, gesturing to the opposite chair. Raine didn’t move.

“Who are you?” She asked the obvious question, but there were a thousand of them bubbling up through the panic swirling inside her. “Where is this place? How am I alive?”

“My name is Cato,” the being replied, lacing fingers across its chest as it leaned back in its chair, regarding her. “I come from Earth, which you know as Ahrusk — terrible name, by the way. From beyond the System. To my people, death is a somewhat blurrier concept than it is to you, so I was able to preserve you and bring you here. Near your planet, but still out of reach of the System.”

“So we did die,” she said, having to force herself to say it aloud, her fingers flying up to her throat, where she remember teeth sinking into her scales. “That thing — it came from Ahrusk as well, didn’t it?”

“I’m afraid I must apologize,” Cato said, its oddly mobile face wrinkling in some expression she couldn’t quite place. “That thing was me.”

Raine firmed up her combat stance by instinct, she automatically raising her hands to try and call on [Firelance]. Nothing happened, and she felt her heart pounding against her scales, reverberating all the way down to the tip of her tail — which wouldn’t stop lashing in the grip of unnamable fear. Her mind spun uselessly, struggling to grasp that she was facing her sister’s murderer. Her own murderer.

“Peace,” Cato said, raising its hands. “I have no desire to harm you. Even at our unfortunate first meeting I was only defending myself, and have no ill will toward you.”

“Easy for you to say,” she spat. “I don’t have anything! No Skills, no armor, no weapons. You took away my group, you took away Leese. Did you just bring me back to gloat?”

“Certainly not,” Cato said, sounding almost affronted. “I brought you back because I want your help.”

“You’re insane,” Raine said, her throat tight with grief. “I would never—”

“I should correct at least one misapprehension,” Cato said, holding up a hand. “Your sister is just as alive as you are.”

“Don’t toy with me!” Raine shouted, fury narrowing her vision down to Cato’s face, muscles aching with unreleased tension as she pushed away a hope she didn’t dare to feel. Instead of replying, the being waved at one of the walls and it split along a previously unseen seam, a section pulling away to reveal another, near identical room. It had the same view, the same chairs, the same Cato in one. But standing there, alive and whole and intact, was Leese.

“Leese!” She said, rocked backward on her feet, and then she was moving before she realized it. Her sister met her halfway, the impact smarting, but she relished the feeling of that reality, and the crushing hug that they shared.

It had always been just the two of them, ever since they were young and a passing Gold had flattened half their village. There had only been a handful of survivors, and it had been a long hard road to the higher ranks. Even Muar and Cormok were distant friends in comparison.

“Raine!” Leese replied, almost laughing. “We’re alive!”

For a moment Raine forgot all about Cato and the strange surroundings, just glorying in the fact that her sister was there, whole and hale. Then the moment passed, Leese’s arms loosened, and they stepped back slightly to look each other up and down. Leese was just as intact as she was, and dressed in an outfit that was nearly identical — but not quite. The difference was subtle and made something in her instincts prickle, but Leese never stopped grinning.

“We might be alive,” Raine said in an undertone, conscious of their audience. “But it’s hard to be grateful when our killer is standing right there.”

“Is he really our killer? He defeated us, yes, but went to some pains to keep us alive.” Leese replied in the same low voice, her eyes darting to Cato and then to the view of Sydea through the glass. “With how powerful he is, there has to be a reason.”

“There does,” Raine sighed, following Leese’s glance. “Which is not something I’m looking forward to. We can’t touch the System here, so we’re completely helpless.”

“We were before, even with our rank and Skills,” Leese pointed out, voice gentle. “The best thing we can do is ask Cato what it wants.” Raine nodded, conscious that the being – both versions of it – were waiting patiently, giving them plenty of time to talk. Surely it could hear them, but it was at least pretending to give them privacy.

“I don’t like being subject to the whims of some inscrutable monster,” Raine said, under her breath. “We can’t possibly trust it.”

“Raine, we’re alive. Everything else can be dealt with,” Leese replied, giving her another squeeze. “There’s no use dwelling right now. One step at a time.”

“Right,” Raine said, drawing in a breath, then turning to look at the closest of the two identical beings. It chuckled, and the other version brought over the spare chair before departing back into the other room. The wall sealed itself, and the Cato seated at the table waved at the chairs, inviting them to sit.

Hesitantly, Raine did so. It became immediately apparent the chairs had been tailored specifically for them; hers matched her frame perfectly, with the exact proportions to accommodate her tail and torso, precisely the right height off the floor. It was by far the most comfortable chair she had ever used, far and away more than anything the System had offered.

She exchanged glances with Leese, neither of them actually needing words to convey what they were thinking. The combination of simplicity, absurdity, kindness, and coercion made no sense at all. Either Cato was utterly insane, or it was playing some game they didn’t understand.

“As I said,” Cato continued, entirely patient. “I would like your help. So as to not lead you on, I will tell you right now that my goal is to destroy the System.”

That sent a shiver down Raine’s spine, from neck to tailtip, and she and Leese looked at each other once again. Again, neither of them needed to speak, but Leese was far less surprised than Raine, more focused on his words. Raine didn’t have anything to say to that, and neither did Leese, so after a brief pause he continued.

“When the System arrived on Earth – on Ahrusk – it destroyed entire worlds,” Cato said, somber and serious. “It killed people I love, twisted others beyond recognition. That’s my motivation, but here is yours.” He leaned forward and looked at them seriously. “The System is doing the same to you.”

“The System isn’t what killed us,” Raine pointed out, her mouth moving before her mind. Cato shook his head.

“Perhaps not directly, but the System aimed you at me, when I would have let you be and simply gone on my way. However, what I mean is something on a far greater scale.” Cato waved at the view of Sydea, and the glass wall lit with some very System-like notations on the far-away globe. Ruins, tracks, numbers, only half of which she could understand.

“From what I can tell, you had a world-wide civilization before the System came. Enough to support hundreds of millions of people, and creating art and architecture far surpassing anything provided by the System.” The System-like display showed an inset picture of a sculpture, obviously of a Sydean, tail coiled about its ankles and hands reaching beseechingly upward. “I recovered this from a sunken city, for example. Yet I haven’t seen a single painting or sculpture that is of Sydean origin in any of your towns or cities.”

Raine and Leese exchanged glances, neither of them entirely clear about why Cato was telling them such things. The fate of the entire world was too big, too distant. Some ancient history was barely relevant to today’s worries, even if Cato seemed to think it was. Raine looked at the strange being, trying to arrange a diplomatic way to ask why it mattered, but Leese beat her to it.

“I’m sure that’s true, honored Cato, but I confess I don’t understand why you are telling us. My sister and I are merely simple adventurers. I’m sure everything you say is true but there is nothing either of us can do about it.” Leese waved at the view of Sydea. “You say you need our help, but we aren’t anyone. Something like the fate of Sydea, let alone the System, is far beyond us. We’re just Golds.”

“I see,” Cato said, though at least the words didn’t sound upset. It was difficult to read the emotion on the odd flat face, but Raine thought that the being was considering something. “I suppose it is rather much to spring on you.” The displays vanished, leaving only the view of the globe in a night sky, and Cato regarded them.

“Let me try another approach. In order to deal with the System, I cannot simply sit outside it. I will need collaborators, confidants, people who know it and can maneuver within it.” He spread his hands, inclining his head in their direction. “When you return, it would be most helpful if I could count on your support.”

“When we return?” Raine asked, emphasizing the word.

“Certainly,” Cato replied. “Unfortunately, my method of preserving you required that I bring you here, outside the System, but when we are ready I will be returning all of you. That is guaranteed, but it would be quite helpful if I had someone to help me approach your leaders. And of course, someone who will help me with things within the System in general. With that quest following me everywhere, I’m afraid all my meetings would wind up like our first.”

“That does make sense,” Leese admitted. “Though again, we are merely Golds. If we are still Golds?” She made it a question, and Cato sighed.

“I’m afraid not,” it told them regretfully. “When I bring you back into the System you’ll have to start all over. We tried some experiments when we were pushing the System off Earth, and we could never get the ranks to stick.”

“As Coppers, we can only do so much,” Leese said, and Raine looked at her. For a moment she couldn’t believe Leese was trying to negotiate with someone who had them entirely at its mercy, but then she understood. As powerful as Cato was, it had to have something it could offer them for what it wanted. Something they could grab and hold onto as their own.

“I understand that,” Cato assured them. “Of course I would provide aid and assistance if you were to help me, above and beyond merely returning you to the surface.”

“Like what?” Raine asked, perhaps a little too quickly, but she needed something to concrete to fix her mind on.

“As I am sure you have concluded, I have significant knowledge when it comes to living things.” Cato said, gesturing to the two of them. “The most profound benefit I could offer you would be augmented bodies and brains. You would be significantly faster, stronger, healthier. Less able to tire, more able to focus and think faster. I can set it to your preferred age and make any cosmetic changes you like.”

“Wait,” Leese interrupted. “You can make us young again?”

“Certainly,” Cato said, and Raine would have sworn it sounded amused.

“Why didn’t you do that to start with?” Raine asked, feeling obscurely cheated.

“It is extremely rude to alter someone’s body without their permission,” Cato responded. “If you’d woken up in an unfamiliar form, I don’t imagine you would have taken it well.”

“Mmph,” Raine said. She hated that it was right about that. Being reasonable was, itself, suspicious under the circumstances. “This all sounds too good to be true.”

“There are many things I can’t offer you.” Cato said by way of rebuttal. “Immediate power, the way the System does. Political power. Any stake on Sydea — it’s not mine to give, after all. Though I can say that with my augmentations you’d be able to advance within the System quite rapidly indeed — for as long as it is around, at least.”

Raine exchanged glances with Leese, needing no actual words to discuss what they were thinking. The System itself didn’t offer people like them true youth — there were rumors about something of the sort at Bismuth, but that rank had always been out of reach. Beyond that, beyond even being given what sounded like Gold-rank bodies while still at Copper, there was the matter of aligning themselves with Cato.

If Cato had wanted to conquer Sydea there might have been some second thoughts, but he didn’t even want to do that. Replacing the System was nothing Raine intrinsically cared much about, even if she had a hard time imagining what the result would be. Especially not after it had failed them. As a divine caster, Leese should have had more reservations, but she seemed even more eager to take advantage of Cato’s offer.

Both of them had learned long ago that having power mattered, and Cato seemed to be even more powerful than the System. With that kind of power on their side, all kinds of worries would vanish. Their youth made the offer even more stunning, after having lost so much time to simply grinding away on getting to a rank where they couldn’t be casually crushed by careless or malicious passers-by.

“I’m not sure what’s involved in this crusade against the System,” Leese said after a few moments, though it was clear they were going to accept. “But wouldn’t destroying it be just as harmful for our people as you claim the System is? I confess I don’t have the slightest clue what life would be like without it, and I don’t think anyone else would.”

“It would be worse than anything you’ve ever seen if I merely destroyed it without anything else,” Cato agreed. “That’s why I want to talk to your leaders. Why I need you to act as my agents on the ground. So I can do this right, and actually provide the tools for your people to flourish afterward.” The being looked from one to the other, fingers laced together as it made sure they were listening.

“I’m fully aware that if I take someone who has been a slave all her life, tell her she’s free, and shove her off into the wider world, I’m doing her no favors,” it continued. Raine felt her muzzle curl back from her teeth at that, something Cato noticed.

“If you find that insulting, that is on purpose,” it said, baring its teeth in reply. “You should be affronted by what the System has done to you. What I hope to teach you is how to never be slaves again.”

“I see,” Leese said, exchanging another look with Raine before bumping her shoulder. “Well, we are interested, especially if it involves helping out the rest of Sydea.”

“That is greatly appreciated,” Cato said, then cocked his head. “I would appreciate you beginning now, by addressing a more local issue. I have two other Sydeans who are, for perfectly understandable reasons, entirely intractable. Perhaps you could help me reason with them.”

“Muar and Cormok?” Raine asked, feeling almost guilty she hadn’t asked after her group-mates before. “You brought them too?”

“Muar, yes. I am afraid I was not able to preserve Cormok,” Cato said soberly.

“Oh,” said Leese, going still for a moment.

“I rescued a young pair from some high rankers who were tracking me,” Cato said. “They were already dead by System terms, but not by mine.” He paused again, regarding them. “In truth, I was not able to preserve either Cormok or the other one because one of yours attacked me. A high-ranker that used fire. It’s not her fault; she was only trying to deal with what the System told her was a threat. But I wasn’t able to protect everyone.”

“Wait, you fought Arene Fire-Wing?” Raine leaned forward, a faint swirl of mixed envy and concern adding to the confused welter of emotions. “Was she — did you kill her?”

“Hardly,” Cato said, with a genuine laugh. “I was lucky to get away as it was. Yet I find I am not certain how much of it to tell, lest it seem like I am trying to blame someone else. I am trying to establish trust, and relating this particular truth could so easily break it.”

“We’ll talk to them,” Leese said, bumping Raine’s shoulder again and stirring her out of her contemplations. “We don’t have to decide anything right now?”

“Certainly not,” Cato said. “You’ve all the time in the world.”

***

Arene blinked to the side with [Wings of Khuroon], gathering [Calamity Lance] in her hand as she gauged the opposing Platinum. Any lingering thoughts that keeping the portal closed was an overreaction had been thoroughly dispelled by what happened once travel was open. The System had not only spread news of the defense quest and its rewards to neighboring worlds, but it’d revoked their ability to control portals or teleports. Now there were not only all kinds of scavengers and predators arriving, but there was no telling where they had gone.

The outworlder she was dealing with opened his beak again, the sonic attack visibly distorting the air as she darted in closer, loosing her [Calamity Lance]. The beam of condensed fire splattered off the thick armor the Platinum wore, but wasn’t stopped entirely. She smirked as its plumage crisped and caught fire, drawing an indignant squawk at a volume fit to shake the trees.

“Last warning,” she shouted, charging the Skill again and letting the ball of enraged fire dance in her palm. “Leave, or die!” The bird was lucky he was getting even that much of a choice, but he’d merely injured people in his pursuit of the System quest. Many other Platinums weren’t so careful.

“The System quest is open to anyone!” The bird screeched back, affronted. “You can’t keep the divine System’s offerings for yourself!” Arene replied with another [Calamity Lance], and the opposing Platinum spat insults as he zipped back toward Mosaw City and its attendant portal. Arene kept pace with him until she saw him duck through and back to Uriva, wishing she could properly lock the thing down. Some might have called the thought blasphemous, but they probably weren’t finding the System as heavily set against them.

Her farcaster vibrated and she scowled at it. The device was ruinously expensive to operate, especially since the entire planet seemed to be low on essence despite all the foreign high-rankers coming in. Yet with Onswa’s administration access still restricted, and with Platinums putting out fires all over the planet, it was necessary. She took it out, noting it was nearly out of charge, so she pressed a Platinum token against its front plate before answering it.

“What?” She snapped.

“A Bismuth just moved into Koish Town.” Karsa’s voice sounded sleepy as always, like she had just woken up, though Arene knew that wasn’t the case.

“Did you get anyone out?” Arene didn’t bother asking if Karsa had tried to stop the outworlder in question. A Bismuth was just too much for them to deal with. Even all five Platinums together wouldn’t stand much of a chance, and that wasn’t the first Bismuth to simply stake a claim.

After the strange creature had vanished into the sky, the quest had not simply gone away. Every few days, a new zone was added, at random, as if it were able to teleport from place to place. Or as if it were descending from the heavens. No matter the truth, the quest persisted, and all kinds of people wanted to take the riches for themselves.

“Most of them. Not everyone.” The tired drawl lacked emotion, but the short, bitten-off sentences said more than Karsa’s tone ever could. “Need somewhere to put them.”

“Got it,” Arene said, temper cooling as she thought about the problem. Everyone she knew had already used their building tokens, let alone town tokens, and getting more was no easy task. They were generally awarded on breaking through to Gold, or sometimes from special quests. The former was not something that could be rushed, the latter was so rare that Arene had only ever seen it once.

She pumped her wings and blazed through the sky before teleporting herself across the continent to the anchor nearest Karsa. Most of Arene’s own towns were overcrowded already from other refugees, but she still had her own personal estate that she hardly used. It wasn’t all that large, not for a Platinum, but she could at least cram a few dozen low-ranks into its walls.

Karsa’s own estate stood at the center of [Gyen Town], the central tower taller than the city walls and courtyard visibly full even from the air. Arene pulled her wings in as she descended, thumping down in the middle of a milling crowd. Despite her care, some people cringed away from the heat she radiated, made worse by the scorching suns overhead.

The Platinum herself stood vigil over three families with children; infants and those young enough they didn’t even have a rank. To call Karsa statuesque would be an understatement; she was by far the largest Sydean that Arene had ever seen, with muscles straining to burst out from the deep indigo scales containing them. Her enormous war hammer was slung over one shoulder as she guarded the children, though Arene didn’t think there was anyone in the crowd who was a threat. Karsa was simply too on-edge from dealing with an outworld Bismuth.

“Arene,” Karsa said by way of greeting, and nothing else. The tone and half-shut eyes didn’t match her posture and never had, but Arene couldn’t fault either Karsa’s instincts or her ability. “Take some.”

“Yes,” Arene said, turning around to look at the crowd. It took serious effort to keep herself under control, seeing all the unfortunate low-rankers huddled in the courtyard. They shouldn’t be refugees on their own damn planet, and if she could have simply cut Sydea off from the other worlds, she would have.

Instead, all she could do was help her people weather the storm, just as she always had.

***

Elder Nomok of the Tornok Clan was not happy. As wealthy and powerful as the Tornok Clan was, it really couldn’t afford to lose promising Platinums, especially not on some fifth-rate planet rather than in a conflict where their deaths might have won something. He approved of the pair’s ambition in going through the portal to the new world – there were always opportunities when the System added territory – but it seemed they hadn’t even gotten that far.

He continued to read through the report as the terrified messenger-creature, one of a particular winged servant race that Tornok Clan had taken under its protection millennia ago, stayed silent and still. Nomok had never heard of a portal to new territories being simply closed before. Or really, any portal being permanently closed. They could be relocated from one System Nexus to another by a Planetary Administrator, but once they were open, the System maintained them. No Skills could interact with them, no magical spells could influence their location or destination. Only Administrators or world deities could alter how they operated — though most planets had guards posted as a matter of course. A System Nexus with sufficient upgrades even paid for the guards itself.

The closure was actually a minor disaster for a number of clans who had sent their scions there to claim land and people. Taking the [Staging Area] away from the locals had been simplicity itself, and accomplished with only a single nearby Tornok Clan Bismuth — though the [Staging Area] had since been passed to other interests. His own Deity, the Divine Alren, had informed him of another deity clan’s intentions to take Sydea, and while that seemed a waste of a perfectly useful servant race, like the messenger-creature, it wasn’t Nomok’s place to question the machinations of deities.

Tornok Clan had investments to secure closer to home, so they’d sent only a token force, mostly Silvers and Golds. A wise decision, as with the portal closure all those who had been vying for new territory were beyond reach. The pair of Platinums had been there of their own accord, but it wasn’t the portal that had done for them. According to the report – which was vague, and Nomok doubted the local patriarch had done much investigating – they had vanished in a dungeon collapse.

It was a blatant cover-up, and not even a very clever one. Probably one of the local creatures had been at fault. The Sydeans did have some Platinums, apparently, despite their shortcomings. Those deaths alone warranted some punishment, but frankly the other part of the report was more interesting.

A very strange, very profitable, very easy recurring quest.

Tornok Clan had its own private dungeons and hunting grounds, of course, but none of them consistently yielded a B-Tier Skill and enough essence to jump to nearly the peak of Copper. There was no telling how long it would last, but there were innumerable fresh scions that would benefit from the largesse. Anyone who didn’t grasp that sort of easy advantage would be a fool. All that mattered was power, and anything that granted power had to be seized. Or others would.

He regarded the messenger-creature and decided it had groveled sufficiently. With a flick of his finger he dismissed it, and it vanished back out of the study with alacrity. Elder Nomok stood, crossing over to the balcony that looked out over the garden in the estate grounds to consider his options.

The Clan Holdings were upgraded nearly to the maximum the System offered, a massive spawl of high-rank stone and metal. Glass windows and open balconies faced out onto extensive gardens, each household equipped with the System pylons so they could customize the weather at their whim. Their official Clan Holdings covered several thousand square miles, but in actual fact Tornok Clan controlled several core planets. Not the largest Clan, but large enough to have real power.

It was worth considering whether they wanted to acquire a stake in Sydea, as well, if it was to be so valuable. It certainly wasn’t worth offending whatever deities were interested in permanently acquiring the planet, but a temporary occupation might not be out of the question. Yet Sydea was far from Tornok Clan’s holdings, and the only thing it had to offer was the quest — which would surely run dry soon enough.

He didn’t even know who controlled the other planets around there. That particular frontier was far enough from the Core Worlds that it was an eclectic mix of minor powers and Clan footholds, so subjugating Sydea, even for only a few years, might be politically impolite. He would have to assign some research to whatever initiates were in the rotation, and decide on which Bismuth to send to shepherd the Coppers. Someone who could take a firm hand and move rapidly, to make sure Tornok Clan had its proper share of the quests and rewards.

After a moment, Elder Nomok nodded to himself. He knew just the one.

Chapter 8 – Choices

Cato really tried his best not to eavesdrop on his guests.

He was perfectly capable of it, given how laden the habitat was with sensors just as a matter of course. Pressure sensors, light sensors, all the normal things to ensure there were no sudden emergencies from a stray micrometeorite or a moonquake. As any neophyte knew, speech was merely waves through the air, so it really wasn’t any effort at all to decode the readouts from the room the Sydeans had retreated to.

After being given the first taste of real conversation in months, it took some real wrestling with himself to keep from sitting in as a ghostly spectator just for the company. Having genuine people around whetted his appetite for more, but he couldn’t simply bustle in with drinks and join their debate. His guests feared him, viewed him the same as the highest-rank elites, and so they couldn’t possibly be honest with themselves or each other if they felt he was around. Nor did he want to be dishonest with them, so he very consciously blocked the algorithms that had started to run entirely automatically.

Or really, autonomically. For a properly postbiological brain to run it had a lot of extra features that didn’t make sense in a squishy bio-brain. That included automatic sensor analysis, integrated as smoothly and completely as natural senses, as well as reconciling every version of himself as they communicated with each other, to keep all his selves roughly on the same page. Even when they hadn’t synchronized in days.

It was that synchronization that interrupted his lonely vigil and made it even tortuous, as the version of himself that had been running the spy network integrated with the rest of his consciousness. Instead of temptation, that version brought with it an incandescent fury at the events unfolding on the surface. Between the satellites and the innumerable bioweapon scouts that were flitting about, he had a good understanding of what was happening but was unable to do a single thing about it.

It wouldn’t be too dramatic to call it an invasion, as non-Sydeans streamed through the portal in the capital city and teleported their way to other locations, spreading out over the entire planet. They displaced, attacked, or outright murdered the natives and each other, at least in places where no higher ranks were about to keep order. It was exactly the savagery that had sprung up on Earth before the postbiological forces had arrived, a deliberate erasure of civilization.

That was the sort of thing that made him near-frantic to get back on the ground himself. Cato had no desire to try and manipulate things from the shadows, moving pieces around while he stayed in orbit, and though he would keep an orbital presence he still wanted – needed – to go down and see things with his own eyes. To talk, fight, and witness for himself. A full light-second of delay from Sydea’s surface made everything seem indistinct and unreal, making a game of it the way the System did. Though he should really be thankful the moons were even that close.

When the System had come to Earth, it had never spread beyond the atmosphere. On Sydea, the reach of the alternate physics was quite a bit further, extending thousands of miles beyond the planet’s surface. Considering the vast distances of space, that wasn’t much in a relative sense, but it did imply that given time the System could or would add the rest of the planets. That was ignoring whatever mechanism let it spread to begin with, which could potentially target any of his bases and erase everything technological in an instant.

Accordingly, he’d surveyed the other planets in the system and started sending probes. Cato was pretty certain he needed to be a proper cockroach, especially once the System took serious notice of him. The quests had been bad enough, and Cato hadn’t yet inflicted any real damage. Once it became clear what Cato was doing, he had to assume it would bring greater forces to bear.

The trick was making sure that it didn’t catch everyone else in the crossfire when that happened.

In a way, he’d already failed at that particular task. There was no question that the sudden influx of non-Sydeans, especially those of high rank, was due to his meddling. Considering how poorly they treated the natives, not to mention displacing them from their own towns and even homes, that was no good for any of the people he was trying to help. He’d tried to mitigate the issue by keeping the scouts away from heavily populated areas, both to avoid disruption and in case of a sudden smiting from heaven, but so far the local System-God had not been paying attention.

Cato wasn’t ready for that conflict yet anyway, but he was ready to start aiding the Sydeans with the forces he’d created. He had nothing major just yet, since he was still building his infrastructure, but he had multiple bioweapons incubating for deployment. The incident with the Platinums showed his warframes didn’t have quite enough punch, so a version of himself had put his nose to the virtual grindstone and spent some time working on better ranged options.

The species-specific toxin he’d brewed up on the fly had been no good, and he figured the same would be true for any other poison or disease that didn’t have the System’s blessing, so he was stuck with more brute force options for the moment. Biofusion was too uncertain and unstable to scale beyond the levels he had already used in the Sneeze of Doom — there was only so much coordination to be had with the infrastructure, and the moment a fusion detonation began any organelles that weren’t already perfectly synchronized simply vaporized rather than adding their efforts to the payload.

At least after consulting the archives, he found a ranged weapon that would work called a light-gas gun. It was closer to a hydraulic system than an explosive one, but could still achieve incredible muzzle velocity and could be done with bioweapon muscles. Unfortunately it took up quite a bit of mass and space, and the reload time was measured in seconds at best, minutes to hours at worst as he needed to repair pieces of bioweapon that wouldn’t be able to handle the stress. There was a reason his warframe hadn’t been equipped with anything like that, but at least it was a projectile weapon.

Being able to deliver doom-sneezes at a distance would be helpful, but there was disappointingly little deuterium or helium-three on the moon — or for that matter lithium-6 or other fusion candidates. Considering how inefficient using it for an actual weaponized detonation was – both with the fusion material itself and with the relatively expensive organelles required – it’d have to remain a sort of last resort. Especially since at some point the warframes would suffer more damage than the target.

Beyond that he mostly had gone for tougher and bigger. The dearth of fusion fuel wasn’t bad enough that he couldn’t power a few warframes, since these ones wouldn’t be designed to run for centuries on end. Such thinking was just a matter of course in the scattered polities of the solar system, where post-scarcity had really only meant they’d become a pro-maintenance society. When the nearest neighbor could be months away physically, it was important to be self-sufficient to the point of extremity.

Dropping such big frames – and his guests – back on Sydea was going to be an adventure. Small, light organisms were one thing, delivered via railgun to relative null velocity and simply using wings or fine parachutes to reach the ground safely. Heavier payloads were trickier, not least because of the risk of interception.

It would be so much easier if he could negotiate with the locals first, get the high-rankers to allow or even help a landing, but he was pretty certain that wouldn’t work too well. His scouts were getting popped with extreme prejudice the moment they were spotted, and most of the time not even by the Sydeans. Even if he could get someone to listen, it was difficult to argue against the System telling people outright to kill the invader and be rewarded.

Even with all that, he could have probably landed anyway if it weren’t for the foreign high-rankers. Planets were huge, and with a population of only a million or so there were enormous tracts of pure wilderness, where nobody had ventured in decades. In a worst-case scenario he could simply drop them at one of the poles, which definitely had nobody about.

The incredibly high rank newcomers, though, could cross half the planet in a blink and with that mobility there was no real chance of avoiding a confrontation. Unless, of course, he didn’t drop any System-jamming biology, and that meant he’d have a lot fewer options to work with. It was a problem he’d have to resolve soon, since he didn’t want to keep his guests waiting.

***

“I can’t believe you’re considering working with it,” Muar rumbled, arms crossed, his tail lashing with annoyance. “You’re a priestess, and it is against the System! You shouldn’t be listening to a single word!”

“I’m not a priestess anymore,” Leese demurred. “Besides, some of his arguments are convincing, and it’s not as if the System gave us any warning about what he really was. It should have set the quest at Platinum-rank quest, not Silver.”

“Should it have?” Muar growled, pacing across the floor and glancing out the window at the globe of Sydea before looking back at Leese. “That thing had just arrived. It was weak, then. Vulnerable. We had a chance, but we failed. Now it has us, because we failed. Expecting us to turn against the System and break all the rules.”

“If we’ve already failed then what does it matter?” Leese objected. Raine was happy enough to let Leese speak for both of them, since Raine had never found herself to be particularly diplomatic. “This is after. We’re outside the System; the rules don’t matter here.”

“They don’t—” Muar took a furious step forward, and Raine finally interjected.

“No, Muar,” she said coldly. “The only thing that has ever mattered is power, and look around you. What we see is beyond anything but maybe the System itself.” She sighed and sipped an odd but flavorful tea from an exquisite cup, the sort that the System would charge Gold or even Platinum tokens for. Only it had been provided for free and without any apparent consideration of its value.

“What Cato wants is too big for the likes of us,” she concluded. “Everything here is strange, and I know I certainly don’t know what to think of it all.” She gestured at their surroundings, which were just as odd as they’d been when she had first awoken. “The best we can do is decide how much we want to be involved.”

They were in something like a sitting room, with one wall being the impossible glass facing out onto that impossible view. The rest was taken up with ordinary tables and chairs, the not-essence lamps set in the ceiling to illuminate it, and a stocked bar with liquor and tea and sweet jerky. How Cato had brought any of it to this place away from the world, she could not fathom.

Raine found the room’s furnishings, well-made as they were, to be more disconcerting than the view of Sydea through the glass. The chairs and cushions, while nominally the same, had subtle variations between them. When the System provided such objects, no matter the rank or tokens spent, they were reassuringly regular and identical. Every cushioned blue chair was a cushioned blue chair, a constant.

Yet the things Cato provided did vary. It was as if every single one was unique, its own individual type. There was no denying their quality, even if it was impossible to tell ranks without System access, and some of them even struck her eye, to the point that she wouldn’t mind having them herself. If only they weren’t so strangely unique.

“Why are you even arguing?” Dyen snapped. The fourth member of their group had only stewed in his own anger, from the moment Raine had seen him up to the latest second, pacing the floor and lashing out at even simple questions. It didn’t help that every time Raine looked his way she expected to see Cormok, not someone far younger and with an eastern, pale blue coloring.

“You can all do what you please,” he continued, making a rude gesture with one hand. “I need to go back down. Arene needs to know what happened to my wife. Someone is going to pay for it.”

“I agree that this is something we should put to Administrator Onswa, but Cato already killed the Platinums that attacked you,” Raine reminded him. Cato’s ability to deal with off-world Platinums, but being thoroughly thrashed by Arene, should have pinpointed his exact rank. Except that normal rank considerations didn’t apply. Even putting aside what Cato said about essence, the facility surrounding them showed a kind of power that probably wouldn’t show up to an [Appraise].

“According to Cato,” Dyen growled. “I haven’t forgotten his role in all this, either.” How he expected to hold Cato to account, Raine had no idea. Even if his wife had been Arene’s grand-niece, she couldn’t imagine that the Platinum would find that to be sufficient reason to side with Dyen. The sad fact was that Cato had power, they didn’t, and allowances had to be made.

Cato had tried to convince them of his position by showing them ruins, the ever-shrinking areas where cities and towns were placed, and the slow march of Border Zone and Conflict Zones, but that evidence was not an argument that mattered to anyone. Muar didn’t believe, Dyen didn’t care, and it was Cato’s personal power rather than his motives that mattered to Leese and Raine.

Simply the perch outside their world showed that he was serious, that he should be taken at his word. Most of his propositions were abstract, things to be offered to Administrator Onswa and Arene Firewing, but the offer of patronage was one that the sisters found ridiculous to refuse. Especially if it came with better and younger bodies.

The pair of them had never had time for a family or even much in the way of romance. The only thing that mattered was that they wouldn’t be crushed underfoot by careless high-rankers, and that required power. It required delving dungeons for hours a day, risking their lives in conflict zones. It required trusting others of their rank very little, and those above them even less, and making some very grievous mistakes along the way. More than once they’d been betrayed by someone either enticed by rewards and gear, or just by essence. Some chose the path of ranking up by killing people rather than monsters, and the System would reward them for it.

All their youth had been spent trying to climb the ranks, and that had been rendered entirely moot now that they were outside the System. It would have been crushing, except for Cato’s offer. She could be young again, and she wouldn’t need to get to Platinum to maintain it. Leese had been a little clearer-minded than her, and pestered Cato with endless questions about what, exactly, he could do with regards to better bodies. Assuming she credited the answers, the System had very little to compare.

“We can’t dither forever,” Leese said, unperturbed by either Muar’s grumblings or Dyen’s waspish tone. “I don’t know about you but I don’t want to just sit here and stare. If Cato is right about the System, we have a clear goal. If he isn’t, we also have a clear goal. Either way, I would prefer to know sooner. And I’d rather be in the best shape to do so.” Muar squinted doubtfully at Leese, so Raine clarified.

“We’re going to take the offer,” she said bluntly. “It’s too good a chance. We’re all going to have to start from scratch anyway—”

“So he says,” Muar said. “I still say it’s some kind of suppression.” Raine waved it away.

“I’d rather start with as much of an advantage as I can manage,” she finished.

“You are aware it’s absolutely blasphemous,” Muar said, teeth clenched. “Even if he can create new bodies in some sort of fake Bismuth ascension, you couldn’t trust that it was fully yours.”

“They’re already not ours,” Dyen said, taking time out from being bitter to heap scorn on Muar. “Even if you don’t believe everything he says, we have no essence and I know I’m missing some scars.” Dyen pressed his hand against his chest, where he said he had been cut in two. “No, they’re brand new.”

“Very well,” Muar said at length. “I can’t stop you from choosing your own destruction and damnation, but I have warned you. I knew the Gosruk Guardians were done anyway, with Cormok gone.” Raine’s tail lashed at the dismissal, as if she were somehow insulting Cormok by taking opportunity with both hands when it showed itself. Any ranker knew that you took what you could get, and death was an ever-present companion. If Cormok had died to a monster instead, they would have toasted his memory, sold off his equipment, and moved on.

“Come on,” she said to Leese. “Let’s go.”

Leese rose from one of the comfortable chairs and joined her, the two of them walking out of the sitting room into the strange, upward-curving halls of the residence. Cato called it a habitat, and claimed that there was no essence involved at all. Though how he managed to make every point of a circle feel like it was down she could not fathom. She knew that they’d only seen the smallest bit of it, as the few glimpses of their actual surroundings showed a sprawl of incomprehensible artifice shrouded in sharp-edged shadows.

Finding Cato was no problem. Raine was fairly certain he knew where they were at all times, and he was always coincidentally just a few rooms away. Or one of him was — she had never forgotten that when they had been woken up, there was one Cato for each of them, like some kind of duplication Skill. That had never been demonstrated again, but there were subtle differences each time they met that made her think each one she encountered was actually a different one.

This time, the Cato they found was waiting in a small, comfortably-furnished room along the hub of the habitat, working on one of the things that resembled System displays, only physically manifested instead of in the mind’s eye. None of the displays made any sense to her, full of unfamiliar symbols and notation. She’d heard of artifacts with ciphered descriptions, special secrets that needed a quest to unlock, but never herself run into something she couldn’t read. Just another small strange detail that lent credence to Cato’s story.

“Come on in,” Cato invited them, looking up from his work. “Have you made your decision?”

“Leese and I would like the improvements before we go down,” Raine told him. He didn’t seem surprised. “Muar doesn’t trust you at all, and Dyen just doesn’t care.”

“It’s their choice,” Cato said mildly. “Very well, come this way. I’ll take care of your upgrades and then we’ll head back down to Sydea.”

***

Cato was genuinely surprised how amenable the two Sydean sisters were toward getting new bodies. It was by far the most powerful thing he could offer, but it was also the most difficult for people to accept. The vast majority of people who weren’t already postbiological had issues with such invasive and extensive physical changes, and for good reason. Any mind was shaped by the body that housed it, even when care was taken to mimic the appropriate chemical balances. He was far more aggressive in the warframe, for example, than when he was inhabiting the server core of the habitat he’d made. There was a reason he had physical bodies, performing manual work, even making tea and cookies for his guests and cleaning up the kitchen, rather than just sitting as a disembodied mind in a pure dataspace.

As the mind was a plaything of the body, the System’s alterations changed how people thought. People entered a feedback loop with their skills, both simply by so many of them being geared toward killing but also changing environmental and personality preferences to match the forms of exotic energies people preferred. People with fire and water skillsets not getting along, for example. The priestly or so-called holy set was an extreme example of such, since it allowed System-Gods direct access to the individual in question. With thousands or millions of cleric sorts running around, no given individual was likely to be commandeered by a bored pseudo-deity, but any one of them could be.

On the other hand, the System did include augmentations of various sorts through skills and ranks, and even things it termed evolutions, though the changes really represented a complete biological overhaul. There was even footage of higher ranks completely transforming. They weren’t particularly common, but it was a known quantity, the sort of change he was offering might not be as foreign as it might have otherwise seemed.

Unfortunately, it was only those two who were taking the offer. Which meant he was going to have to design a re-entry vehicle fit for unaugmented flesh and blood. Or barely augmented, as they would be encountering the System before they hit atmosphere, and even the lowest rank was more robust than the biology would indicate.

The System force-multiplied what was already there, so the strong and tough only got stronger and tougher. The same wasn’t true for smarts, which was a far tricker concept anyway. Trying to optimize a mind architecture to be much brighter than it could handle ended up creating things that were entirely alien, and sometimes completely malevolent. More than once, an AI or upload that tried to meddle with their own minds too much had needed to be put down. Sometimes at significant cost.

It was something to keep in mind as he touched up the neural infrastructure in the new brains he was going to be giving the Sydeans. The changes were minor overall, otherwise they wouldn’t remain Sydeans, but he was working in some slight efficiencies in speed, improved reactions to stress chemicals, and easing some of the load when it came to information processing.

Other adaptations were easier. Denser muscle fibers, using slightly different proteins. More robust chemical chains, fueled by a more efficient gut — biochemistry was far more forgiving when it didn’t have to be optimized around energy scarcity. Tweaks to bone structure and joint connections. Increased nerve density in some places, moderated by far better scaling and processing of what those nerves reported. They’d be more resistant to pain without losing any sensitivity in other areas.

Generally, the result looked the same as their original forms except younger, healthier, and far more fit. None of the biological tweaking contained any of the serious biotech from Titan, or even his home-grown tricks. It was all more or less standard, especially since it’d be difficult for most people to add rare earths or heavy elements to their diet.

He led the two women deeper into the habitat, where there was a transfer tube to the microgravity area of the station. All the labs and manufactories were deeper in the moon, hidden from the view of Sydea. The rotating habitat was small and low-albedo enough that even high-rank eyes wouldn’t see anything unusual, but if he started deploying thousands of square miles of solar panels and reflectors and the sprawl of automated industry, it’d be hard to miss.

“This won’t take too long,” he told them with one of his human frames. “Just sit down in those chairs there and by the time you wake up we’ll be ready to head down to the surface.”

The pair of Sydeans looked at the very comfortable lounge chairs, without a hint of anything medical or, for the matter, magical about them. Of course that wasn’t entirely true; there were certain electromagnetic devices within them that would render an unaugmented person instantly unconscious. A necessity, since he was going to rework their bodies from the cellular level up and tinker with their existing nervous system.

One thing he hadn’t offered them was to rehouse their minds entirely. For most people, the exact mechanics of moving a person from one substrate to another – be it meat or machine – were incredibly important, and quite a few methods were considered indistinguishable from death. Nor was such an appraisal precisely wrong, but as he’d told the Sydeans, the entire concept became somewhat blurrier with the techniques available to him. To the point where there was no real consensus, even back on Sol.

The sisters communicated in a high-density body language, clearly evolved over years of working together. He couldn’t read it, not unless he was prepared to spend a lot more time observing and testing, but he could guess that they were making sure there were no second thoughts. For a moment he thought they would reject it, but after a long pause they settled themselves.

Cato rendered them unconscious and went to work, shuttling the pair back into the guts of the base so he could carry through on his offer. Essentially just stripping out their brains again – less traumatically this time – and doing a little bit of biochemical surgery as the new, altered bodies were grown around them. The new bodies still carried their original genetic information despite the extensive alterations, because he wasn’t a jerk. It would be very rude for them to wind up with kids that didn’t look or act like them.

In parallel with the two Sydeans, Cato had to grow himself his own body. One that was System-compatible. He really hated to do it, but the System quest meant that if he wanted to avoid potentially lethal attention he’d need to go undercover for a little bit. It wasn’t something he liked to do, not only because he wasn’t all that good at it but also because any version of himself that was accessible by the system would have be effectively crippled.

He had to assume that anything inside his fleshy skull under those circumstances was compromised, so thousands of details of how certain things worked – and even about his future plans – would have to be sanitized away. Even his ability to think would have be constrained, the version of himself effectively lobotomized and expendable.

It was terrible, but everyone who had been involved in retaking Earth from the System had learned to be ruthless with themselves. If the defense had been a concerted effort from the larger forces in the Solar System, that wouldn’t have been the case, but the entire force was composed of volunteers with some kind of personal stake. Hobbyists and civilians, most of whom were talented amateurs at best. Even Cato might not have been invested if it weren’t for the members of his family that had been on Earth, and familiar, well-loved virtual worlds that had been destroyed when technology abruptly stopped working

Some of the real AI entities could have dropped billions of organic killing machines, working in perfect concert, and there were Summer Civilizations that produced professional soldiers more savage than anything the System had to offer. But with the restrictions of the System and the isolation of those polities from Earth’s own government, they didn’t care. Almost all the forces that did care had fallen when the System arrived.

Cato had been in the early round of volunteers, after someone from Titan realized that their exotic biology projects actually functioned where more conventional technology did not, and had dropped down to try to find his aunt’s family, who had been on Earth at the time. Very quickly people had learned that they had to have a particular attitude in order to actually fight within the system.

Time lag to the ground was too long to run things remotely, and any individual had a good chance of dying no matter what precautions were taken so singleton people risked a very permanent death. Those who couldn’t handle integrating multiple copies, or stomach the idea of some version of themselves being annihilated without re-integrating with the main copy, had dropped out extremely quickly.

Cato himself could manage fairly well, though there were limits to how many versions of himself could be running around without it descending into an incredible mess. There was a reason all the backup versions he’d made on Sydea were in stasis, rather than out doing things and deviating further and further from the prime version of himself — desynchronization madness was no joke.

He had nearly succumbed to it himself, when one of his warframes had finally found his cousins. If he’d been a little faster he might have been able to save them, to save the rest of their family, and bring back something to salve his grieving parents. Instead, it became the shock he needed to make sure a version of himself would be ready go take the fight past Earth.

Accordingly, he already had a design for a lobotomized, System-compatible version of his normal human frame, and it wasn’t much of a stretch to create a Sydean version of the same. Neither one was meant for extended use, but he couldn’t avoid having some ability to interact within the System. He hated it too much to pretend to be a proper System individual, but he could at least avoid the System’s direct attention.

“Cato!” One of his human frames sighed as Dyen yelled outside his door. The young Sydean was perpetually angry, but Cato couldn’t be upset about that. It was Cato’s fault that the couple had gotten involved at all, and it was Cato’s shortcomings that had led to the death of the young man’s wife.

“Yes, Dyen?” He asked politely, opening the door and peering into the hall where the young lizard-man was shouting.

“You said we’d leave as soon as a decision was made. We’ve made our decisions.” Dyen glared at him, head canted slightly and muzzle wrinkled. Cato wasn’t certain how much of his attitude was current circumstances, and how much was natural, but had decided to be tolerant. At least until he could foist the young man off onto one of his relatives.

“And we will be leaving,” Cato said equably. “Things do take time, however. If you like I can show you the vehicle we will be using to return to the planet.”

“You don’t have a portal? Or a teleporter?” Dyen seemed skeptical, which was fair. The System seemed to allow very few mechanisms; everything was centered in the power of individuals, or of the System nexus and its functions. The functioning of technology was alien to them.

“Such things don’t operate outside the System,” Cato explained, gesturing for Dyen to follow him toward the rear of the habitat.

“Seems pretty terrible then,” Dyen said bluntly. “How would you get around?”

“Believe it or not, instantaneous transport has a number of downsides,” Cato said, gesturing for Dyen to enter the lift that would take them up to the habitat’s center — and into null gravity. “Like being invaded, for example. Or centralizing everyone and everything, and all the vulnerabilities that creates. I’ve seen entire civilizations die because they crowded in so close that a tiny accident, the most minute collision, destroyed them all. Fair warning, this ride may feel like it’s falling.”

It had been a digital civilization, so the actual size was much smaller than any city of flesh and blood, but the point still stood. Of course you still needed a certain amount of people close by to even have a civilization, and he was pretty certain if anyone had been able to figure out faster-than-light travel under real physics they’d be using it. But Cato was still certain that things like the System portals weren’t all good.

Dyen merely grunted, either in acknowledgement of the warning, or in disbelief about Cato’s story. It was impossible to tell either way. Then he grabbed onto the holdfast as the gravity began to drop, centrifugal force fading and leaving them both floating in microgravity. Cato was used to null-gravity, of course, and since many System skills involved flying Dyen didn’t seem too discomfited.

They reached the axis of the habitat, and from there Cato directed Dyen the short distance through the connecting hall to where a window looked out on the vast hangar where Cato was launching his ships. Or really, probes at this point, since nothing was truly manned. Here at last Dyen seemed to be impressed.

Large, gleaming spheres were clustered at intervals in the huge cylindrical hollow; tanks holding volatiles of various sorts. Water, gasses, fuels. Gantries ran the length of the cavity, articulated arms nearly the size of the entire habitat sliding along them to administer spot-manufacturing to the skeletons of vessels under construction. Flashes of welding and the soft blinking of hazard lighting added to the illumination from large mirrors reflecting the local primary.

Most of the craft were small, meant solely for digital life or no life at all, but further away from the observation window were the beginning of some large and menacing shapes. Most were weapons platforms, for the inevitable future in which he needed orbital support, but some were simply larger expeditionary vessels for venturing to the other planets. Then there was the landing ship they’d be using.

It looked like a large arrowhead, but that was deceiving. Within the outer hull – the shuttle that would bring them to the System’s influence – was an inner, System-friendly portion that would actually land them. Cato had to suppress the urge to explain it at length to Dyen, who surely wouldn’t care, but he did take some petty satisfaction in being able to strike the young, rude Sydean dumb.

He shouldn’t have, but after all, he was only human.

Chapter 9 — Back Down

“This is probably going to feel like someone is sitting on you,” Cato told his passengers as he ran through the final checks on their descent craft. Everyone was strapped into the small compartment, and while it ran against the grain to have biologicals on board with no proper vacuum suits, such suits would become dead weight once the System kicked in. Instead they were all wearing lightweight composite armor, which was both System-compatible and would be useful once they reached the surface.

There were also weapons aboard, stowed on each of the seats. Not guns; rather he had provided spears, knives, and bows. Since Cato didn’t dare try to land within the bounds of a town or settlement, they’d have to brave the wilds for a bit. Nothing high-level, but even the starter areas could be rough. Especially since they’d all be starting out at Copper rank.

In fairness, that was deceptive. He was stronger, faster, and tougher than he looked, and Leese and Raine had been likewise augmented. Even the two who hadn’t taken him on his offer for upgrades had proper combat experience and would be starting out with extremely fine, if mundane, weaponry. Good enough to get them into town, at least.

He half expected someone to make a rude joke based on his comment, but it seemed that kind of humor didn’t translate. Or maybe they just weren’t in the mood. The smooth, metal-and-glass interior of the craft was surely alien to them, and even the manual, muscle-powered controls for their flight down were likely unfamiliar.

“Just get on with it,” Muar said tiredly.

“Tough crowd,” Cato muttered, and triggered the departure. What felt like a giant hand shoved them back into their padded seats as the rail launch system accelerated them out of the moon base, hurling them toward Sydea at a fairly hefty velocity — but opposite the moon’s orbit, so really they were slowing down. Then weightlessness returned, and the only thing that indicated movement for the flesh-and-blood senses was the sight of the moon slowly diminishing behind them.

“We were really on one of the Empress’ Handmaidens,” Raine muttered, and Cato looked back at her with interest.

“Oh? Is there a story behind that name?” For some reason, Raine’s tail curled in on itself with what Cato recognized as the Sydean version of a blush.

“Just what my mother called them.”

“Do tell! It sounds like some of your culture survived the System apocalypse,” Cato said, finding it to be a good sign.

“It was just something she said. The Emperor, the Empress, and her two Handmaidens.” Raine gestured out the window at the local binary, then behind them at the moons. For a moment Cato was confused, before realizing that to unaugmented senses the binary simply looked like one star with a variable brightness. All the stories and legends would have been built from that, which meant it was an old set of names indeed.

“Do you think she might know more?” Cato asked, considering the massive effort of recovering and transcribing any remaining stories and legends of Sydean culture. It had to start somewhere.

“She’s dead,” Leese answered for Raine, the two of them grim-faced.

“I am sorry,” he told them sincerely. Even after heading out to the stars, humanity had yet to find a proper way to deal with loss.

“It was a long time ago,” Raine said, not quite a dismissal, and Cato let it lay.

Even with the speeds they were going it took several hours to reach the edge of System space. The outer hull hissed as it disengaged, cold gas jets pushing it away to let them coast. Cato floated up from his seat and retrieved the presents he’d prepared — little blobs that would register as system invaders and could be easily killed. Just creating them felt distasteful, but if he could exploit the System and drain even the tiniest part of its power for his own purposes, the resources were well spent.

“We’ll be hitting the System soon, this should give you a boost to start,” he said, each little blob in a pot like a plant, with a knife secured to the side.

“I don’t think this thing is going to give any essence,” Dyen scoffed, poking at the balloon-like organism with a claw.

“It won’t, but the quest ought to,” Cato said.

“Isn’t that — wouldn’t the System punish us for exploiting things that way?” Leese asked, uncertain.

“That isn’t something I can speak to,” Cato replied, securing himself at his seat again and checking the instruments. The globe of Sydea was much closer, the white swirls of clouds clearly visible, along with the shapes of islands and continents below. “Although as you can imagine, I am not overly concerned with what the System wants.”

“Easy for you to say — you’ve got power outside it,” Muar pointed out.

“Nobody truly has power within the System, do they? After all, it’s the System that allows you to do these things — and can take that ability away.” Cato glanced down at Sydea. “Just about time.”

[Welcome to the System!]

It came without any of the extra announcements that the survivors from Earth had reported. All the rigamarole about Earth being integrated into the System and how it was so much better.

[Name: Cato]

[Species: Neo-human]

[Global Defense Quest! Destroy the Incursion: Recommended Rank: High Gold. Reward: B-tier Skill. Locations (…) ]

Cato winced at the letters wrote themselves into his consciousness like an intrusive hardware link. The feel of the System clawing through his brain was only imagined; its magic more subtle than that. It still made him exceedingly uncomfortable to have his name and species plucked right out of his head like that, and was exactly why the current him had far less knowledge than he preferred. If it could obtain and parse simple facts like name and species, it could grab any other knowledge the frame had.

For all Cato knew, it had his entire mind simulated somewhere in some kind of magical virtual prison. As if he needed another reason to destroy it. Mind-ripping every single one of its beings was pretty high on the level of crimes against sapient life, though so far as Cato could tell it wasn’t really analyzing that information. Though maybe when there were hundreds of trillions of beings, some of them on the level of gods, a few people on a border world with some wild ideas was too ridiculous to even notice.

“Go ahead and fulfill the quest,” Cato said aloud, and stabbed the plant-flesh-blob in front of him. It promptly turned to goo as it self-destructed, and there was a euphoric rush as the System pushed essence into his body. Cato grimaced. The fact that it literally felt good to kill was one of those horrible little things that created the absolute murderous psychopaths that populated the top of the ranks.

[New Rank: High Copper]

Several tokens manifested in front of him, hovering for a moment before he swiped them out of the air. Most of them were copper-colored discs with an abstract glyph, what the System used for currency. Those were essentially irrelevant to him, but one was a shimmering wafer of blue metal with the icon for B-tier. When he touched that one, there was a sort of a buzz similar to a message request, and when he accepted the wafer vanished.

[Choose your B-tier Skill: (…)]

Cato had little interest in any of the Skills. He wasn’t planning on staying in this particular frame long enough to engage with the System to that level, and he didn’t trust Skills anyway. Like the feeling of essence, their feedback could create all kinds of bad behavior. Everyone’s reflexive use of [Appraise], for example. Brains evolved to be lazy to begin with, and with something like [Appraise], very few people stopped to actually look at an object and consider its reality beyond the System’s description.

Naturally, Cato chose it for his free Skill, because it was the only thing he actually needed from the System. [Appraise] and its ilk were the equivalent of basic literacy within the System, and replaced things like signs and labeling, so it was something he could hardly do without, even for the smallest portion of time. Nothing would undercut negotiations like appearing to be an unlettered savage.

“High Copper just from that?” Muar muttered to himself, eyes glazed as he considered his System choices. “I bet we could hit Silver in one dungeon run.”

Raine just sighed, conjuring a small ball of fire in one hand. Cato had to suppress the urge to tell her to not waste oxygen; he wasn’t certain essence fire needed an oxidizer to begin with and they weren’t too far from the atmosphere anyway. He was pretty sure the canned air in the back, slowly leaking in through valves to replace what was lost, would more than last until then.

“So now that we’re back near Sydea, how are we going to get down?” Leese asked, glancing around the cabin interior. “Is this boat actually going to fly?”

“Not so much fly as fall with grace,” Cato corrected, looking out the reinforced glass. They were almost low enough to have a sense of down, only minutes away from actual atmospheric re-entry. They wouldn’t be hitting at orbital velocity, thanks to their carrier, but it wasn’t exactly slow. “It might be a bit rough to start, though.”

“Just get it over with,” Dyan grumped, as if Cato was deliberately stalling and not waiting for time and gravity to take their course. Though perhaps he did think that was the case; orbital mechanics were not easily grasped, and these four had only recently even realized there was something outside the bounds of the atmosphere.

Cato turned back to the controls and instruments, which were entirely manual. No electronics, nothing more complicated than a few gears and levers. It wasn’t even his design, but rather had been cribbed from hobbyists who had done a lot more investigation into the joys of purely muscle-powered flight than any accredited engineers ever had. Low-tech atmospheric re-entry was its own sort of extreme sport.

The glider began to shudder as it encountered the first wisps of real atmosphere, the sound transmitting through the hull. The wind growled and howled, but they weren’t going fast enough for true re-entry heating. They still began to feel the pull of deceleration, quickly mounting above one standard gravity as the glider aerobraked over one of the planet’s oceans.

[Welcome to White Beach Border –

[Welcome to Far Hills Resource –

[Welcome to Deep Valley Conflict –

Zone names flashed by on the System display, flickering in a kaleidoscopic frenzy as they slowed down from supersonic velocity. The pull of deceleration peaked as they hit properly thick atmosphere, and words of surprise came from behind him as he cranked the wings out and they caught air. In a moment they went from a fall to a proper flight, muscle and wire pulling on ailerons and flaps.

“You’re doing this without essence?” Leese asked, muzzle plastered against the cold glass-like synthetic of the window.

“I’m just the pilot,” Cato demurred. “The rest of this works by clever use of tools. I’d be happy to explain it some other time.”

The press of deceleration stabilized into something approximating normal gravity, then reduced again as Cato sent them toward the ground. Their target was one of the outlying towns not too far from where he had entered Sydea, though not the same one. The [Southern Jungle Conflict Zone] was too high-level for them, and three of his passengers were known there — and known to be dead, besides. That was a sort of confusion they didn’t need.

He worked the controls as actual weather began: crosswinds, updrafts, and downdrafts sending the glider rocking and swooping. The observation satellites had ensured they weren’t flying into a storm, but the thick soup of planetary gas was always in motion and hard to predict. A quick glance back showed his passengers were not too put out, but Leese and Dyen were gripping the straps that held them into their seats harder than was strictly necessary.

Below them a broad plain crossed with rivers and flecked with lakes swept by, with brilliant spots of more esoteric landmarks. Dungeon entrances, micro-zones, and beast lairs stood out from the greenery, each one more a prison or a zoo for monsters than a natural area. There was no sprawl of agriculture and villages; towns and cities were strictly System affairs, and he wasn’t even sure farms existed, or if they did, if they were anything beyond cosmetic.

“Right, we’re nearly down,” Cato said, matching the landmarks he could see with his satellite imagery. They were within five miles of Sokhal Town, which Cato thought was pretty damn good even if the hobbyists who had designed the gliders could probably have landed in the town center itself.

“Finally,” Dyen breathed. “This has been—”

He was interrupted by a sudden impact as a bird half the size of the glider took issue with their presence in its territory. Cato cursed and grabbed one of the pull-cords by his feet as talons rent at the lightweight composite. The glider groaned and shook, rattling him and his passengers as it skewed out of control, completely useless for flight.

“Everyone grab weapons!” He shouted, as a talon punched through the ceiling above him and severed several control lines with a distinct twang and snap. It was an almost redundant command; these were hard people well used to combat, and a little thing like an attack triggered more useful reflexes than panic and screams. Cato yanked the pull-cord, and pulleys embedded in the floor and walls spooled in.

The top half of the glider folded away, the lightweight material collapsing along previously-invisible hinges, and then the latches holding the seats to the floor disengaged. Springs flung the seats into the sudden gale of air, hurling them away from the damaged glider and the bird trying to tear it to pieces, a secondary timer constructed from a second spiral spring ticking away for a few seconds before triggering the parachutes.

[Stormhawk – Copper]

[Skills: Stormbeak, Swift Wing, Claw, Deafening Screech]

For all its size and the damage it had done to the glider, the bird wasn’t ranked very highly. Of course, the glider had no essence, and had been made out of as simple a set of materials as possible so as to avoid any sudden failures when the System kicked in. The restrictions on purely physical systems were pretty grim.

Cato withdrew the collapsible spear from its pocket on his own seat as the Stormhawk pulled its talons from the remains of the glider and turned on the passengers floating through the air. Not that it was necessary, as a jet of fire smashed into its feathers and drew an ear-piercing squawk. Lightning flashed around its beak as it charged toward Raine in the mindless hyperaggression of System beasts.

He tracked it with his spear, tweaked reflexes and neural acceleration making it simple enough to hurl the spear with a snap, driving it into a muscle group at the base of its wing. Two other spears joined his, from Dyen and Muar. Only Leese didn’t join in, but if she had once again decided to become a healer she might not have any ranged options.

[Copper Stormhawk defeated. Essence awarded]

The rush of essence made Cato grimace, nauseated by the direct programming attempt. He had altered his neurology to prevent too much feedback from the essence euphoria, but there was only so much he could do. The System’s rewards worked on something other than normal biology.

Some thirty feet above the ground, an open field peppered with small clusters of bright blue flowers, Cato yanked on the clasp that held his straps together. He jumped the rest of the way, his augmented body with the essence reinforcement making the drop no trouble at all. The Sydeans followed suit, thudding to the ground just before the sound of the glider crashing washed over them. A metallic crushing, tearing noise that promised unpleasantness had they remained inside, essence-boosted or not.

“Your clever tools don’t seem very good,” Maur observed, trekking through the waist-high grass toward the corpse of the Stormhawk to retrieve his spear.

“It was always meant to be disposable,” Cato replied, not at all put out by the near-disaster. It was better than having high ranks show up due to the System quest. “We’re down, and close to a town, and that’s the important part.”

“Let’s just go,” Dyen said, yanking one of the spears from the Stormhawk and turning around, looking for the town in question. His hand instinctively went to his waist, where no doubt he usually kept his System map. Cato had the local area mapped into his brain instead, though it did look far different at ground level compared to the overhead view from orbital reconnaissance.

“That way,” Cato pointed, as Raine and Leese fell in. Their party was hardly balanced, but they weren’t out gain essence or retrieve resources. All they needed to do was to get to town as fast as possible.

Despite the Zone being fairly low rank, the animals there were still aggressive beyond belief. Normal birds and deer and rodents would flee from potential danger, or at the very least only defend a small area. They wouldn’t home in on a group of people and attack headlong as if starving and rabid.

Yet that was what System animals did in a Conflict Zone, and several times they were forced to fend off random beasts as if they were enemy soldiers. It might have been dangerous for unaugmented types, or in System terms low Coppers, but none of the beasts were more than mere inconveniences after the boosts Cato had provided.

A half-hour of rapid march brought them within sight of Sokhal Town’s walls, though the low-level conflict zone ran right up to the town’s walls. Places outside of System-defined safe areas not only weren’t tamed, they couldn’t be. Cato had never seen a monster or beast spawn out of nowhere, but there had been an unending stream of the things on Earth — at least, until they’d destroyed the anchors and dropped the essence concentration to nothing so the portals finally closed.

With his augmented eyesight he could see the guards posted at the gate tense as the set of five figures came into sight, relax as their party resolved into Sydeans, and then grow wary again as it became clear one of them wasn’t a lizard-person. Cato still wasn’t entirely certain his decision to look human was the best one to start out, but in the long term he couldn’t keep up such a pretense. Best to start as he meant to go on.

The last creature attack came when they were no more than ten paces from the edge of the cropped grass that defined the perimeter of the System town. It was as if someone had set a nest of weasel-things specifically to ambush anyone leaving the town. Cato’s current frame didn’t have the data, but he made a reminder to ask himself to check whether the System on Earth had been so petty. Admittedly, wiping out uncounted billions of people just to enslave them in a stunted version of reality made any further sins fairly irrelevant.

One of the guards moved to help as four dog-sized mustelids sprang out of nowhere, but a series of spearjabs and a pointed bolt of fire put down the attackers before the Sydean reached them. Leese had her hands up, ready to do something, but hadn’t visibly used any Skill. [Appraise] put the guard at mid Silver, and so more a match for any Copper-rank creatures, but of course he’d receive no serious benefit from killing them. The Silver in question looked impressed, although it was likely unusual to see Coppers with the reflexes of Golds.

“Where did you all come from?” The guard beckoned them over to the town gate, his partner watching with a casual hand on a poleaxe. “I know for sure we didn’t let you out this morning.”

“No, we came from another Zone.” Dyen spoke up, taking immediate charge of the situation. He was at least smart enough not to claim they’d come from the sky. “I’m Dyen Lassiron, and I need to send a message to Arene Firewing. Now.” Apparently the name meant something to the guard, since he exchanged an uncertain glance with his partner, who nodded in response.

“And your companion here?” The guard tilted his head toward Cato.

“He’s what I have to message her about.” Dyen said, not bothering to hide the scorn in his voice.

“I see,” said the guard, though Cato had no idea what implication the Sydean might have taken from Dyen’s words. “I’d advise you to stay with your group,” he said, speaking directly to Cato the first time. “We’ve been having trouble with outworlders of late.”

“I completely understand,” Cato reassured the guard, who didn’t take the pronouncement with any relief. After another hard look at Cato, the gate swung open and let them inside.

All System towns were essentially the same. Straight streets and boxes for buildings, often without any real decoration. From what he understood, decoration cost extra, and the closer a town was to plain white the more impoverished it truly was. Sokhal Town was almost entirely unadorned, and there was an air of disrepair despite the cleanliness and light of the System-provided buildings.

The few people out on the street looked harried and ragged around the eyes, even if they were dressed in perfectly acceptable clothing and armor. There was a quiet air of desperation, of despair, the people hunched under the weight of too many expectations and a hopeless future. Cato had seen that attitude among refugees of various stripes — though by the time the postbiologicals got down to Earth, nobody who might have been a refugee was left.

He didn’t mind the hostile glances sent his way. Cato wasn’t there to be loved, or to be friends. What mattered was convincing people to work with him instead of against him. Specifically, the high-rankers, since the pragmatic fact was that personal power was all that mattered under the System. There were no merchants or industrial moguls, no politicians or representatives. Only rank.

Sokhal Town was small enough that the System Nexus was barely even a walk, the central building plainly visible even from the gate. That building was by far the tallest building anyway, the characteristic belltower-like decoration at the top rising into the sky over all the other bland boxy buildings. The sight of it set him on edge, though the System was hardly more present there than anywhere else.

Dyen shoved the door open and strode inside, followed by the rest of them, with Muar bringing up the rear behind Cato. He wasn’t certain how Dyen intended to send a message, but he wasn’t fully conversant with all the aspects of System. None of the towns on earth had managed to get too advanced, so if there was any kind of mail infrastructure he didn’t know how it worked.

Aside from Dyen, the Sydeans made a straight line over to the crystalline obelisk on one side, getting their System Maps and some other tokens. Seeing the rolls of pseudo-paper and metal badges rendered out of nothing like something from a virtual environment was genuinely strange, and made him want to double-check his own environment commands. Nothing happened of course, since the frame he was in didn’t have those capabilities and this wasn’t a virtual space, but he still felt out of place.

Raine and Leese fell into a quiet discussion about ranking up, excluding a grim and dour Muar. Dyen busied himself at a different crystal pedestal, recording a message in an undertone. Cato could hear it, of course, but there was nothing untoward in what Dyen said. Just mentioning the run-in with the Platinums and a need to discuss his wife. Frankly it was more circumspect than Cato would have thought, considering Dyen’s continuously simmering anger.

“Now we wait,” Dyen said, crossing over to where they stood and following the other Sydean’s lead in retrieving his System map and tokens.

“How long is it going to take?” Leese asked, nervously folding and refolding her System map. “I’m not really looking forward to explaining how we’re still alive to one of the Platinums.”

“I should be able to do most of the explaining,” Cato assured her. “Now, proof might be a little trickier, but I would hope the very fact that you are coming back from the dead will be suggestive.”

“Assuming they know you’re dead,” Dyen said. “Hardly a guarantee.”

“We were Gold,” Muar said, with a glare at Cato. “They’d know.”

Before they could begin squabbling, a flare of fire shone through the windows, one that Cato knew well. Whatever mechanism Dyen had used, it had gotten the Platinum’s attention. A moment later the door burst open as the orange-and-red scaled flame lady rushed into the room.

[Arene Flamewing – Platinum]

“Where is Kiya?” She demanded, ignoring all of them to focus on Dyen.

“My wife is dead,” Dyen said, his voice harsh and dark. “The reason for that, and the reason I am still here, lies with that one.” He pointed in Cato’s direction. Arene turned blazing eyes his way.

“Who are you?” She demanded, voice thundering with Platinum-rank force.

“He’s the one responsible for the defense quest,” Muar said quickly, before Cato could properly reply. “He’s from outside the System.”

“You are?” Arene’s eyes narrowed, her posture shifting to the defensive.

“Yes, but—”

That was as far as he got before Arene’s hand swept up, glowing with a ball of incandescent fury. Cato had a moment to resign himself to doing things the hard way before the world went up in fire.

***

“Why did you do that?” Raine blurted, as the charred half-corpse toppled to the floor. She and Leese huddled together by instinct, recognizing the danger of an irritated high-ranker, even in bodies that felt like they were Silver or even Gold. While Raine had always idolized Arene, and had modeled her own build after the Platinum, meeting her in the flesh was not the opportunity she had always hoped.

“Eliminating the threat.” Arene turned those glowing eyes on them, no doubt using [Appraise]. “How are you alive, too?”

“Honored Platinum, we are alive through Cato’s efforts,” Leese replied, tilting her head toward the remains on the floor. She kept her movements small and circumspect, so as not to invite misunderstanding and retaliation. “His story is complex and I admit I do not understand it all. He said he actually wants to help us.”

“Help us?” Arene laughed derisively, making a rude gesture in the direction of the smoldering remains. “It’s been a disaster here ever since that quest started!”

“If I may, Honored Platinum,” Raine started, and Arene turned to her. “Cato says he has proof that the System has been deliberately set up to harm our people and —”

“As if it can possibly be believed,” Muar interrupted with a snort. “That thing killed us! It’s from outside the System! Even if it did bring us back somehow, that means nothing. High level healing can do the same.”

“Not the way he did it,” Leese disagreed, frowning at Muar. If there was any doubt about whether Muar was on their side anymore, it was gone. He could have gotten them all killed, and Cato probably wouldn’t have been able to bring them back again. “Besides, with what we’ve seen, there’s no way he’s actually dead.”

“I got essence from the kill,” Arene said dryly, glancing between them. “He’s definitely dead.”

“There’s more than one of him,” Dyen put in, tail flicking back and forth as he sneered down at the remains. “Or something like that. I’ve seen it myself.”

“Honored Platinum, I think it would be best if you heard our story out,” Leese ventured.

“I should.” Arene seemed to relax ever so slightly, the dangerous aura about her withdrawing just a touch, as she flicked out a lash of flame to pull the remains from the System Nexus floor. She flitted over to the redemption stone almost faster than the eye could see, and after a moment the charred body vanished. The smeared charcoal on the floor vanished with it as Arene sighed and scrubbed at her muzzle.

“Come on, then,” she said, and beckoned for them to follow her out of the System Nexus. “I need a drink.”

Small as Sokhal Town was, it still had the requisite System buildings, including a tavern for them to get some proper drinks. Arene paid for their tab without asking, which was fortunate given that they didn’t have many copper tokens and the price for ordinary ale was absolutely outrageous. There was only a trio in the corner when they arrived, who promptly pretended not to exist as Arene entered the building.

“Now, tell me what this is all about, grand-nephew,” Arene said, sweeping her gaze over them and then settling on Dyen. “I want to get rid of this ridiculous quest.” Dyen started his story with a terse overview of his death at the hands of offworld Platinums and continuing through meeting Cato outside the System. Raine added some details of her own, finding it strangely easy to organize her thoughts in the new body, but they’d been talking for no more than a few minutes when Arene jolted and groaned.

“I guess you were right,” Arene said grimly. “The quest…”

Confused, Raine pulled up her System interface and checked the defense quest. What had been no more than a dozen zones had ballooned to three times that much. Even as she watched, names were added on, scrolling out to hundreds of zones. Then hundreds more, the names tacking on faster than she could read them. Dyen cursed softly, and even Leese muttered something under her breath.

Raine really hoped Cato was still willing to talk.

Chapter 10 — Complications

If they weren’t going to play nice, neither was he.

When there was a burst of thermal energy and the spy satellite watching the village saw everyone leave the System Nexus without the frame, it was obvious what had happened. Cato didn’t have a direct connection to the version of himself on the ground, but that was due to limits he couldn’t exceed without triggering the quest or tipping his hand. Now that he had to use force, the quest didn’t matter.

Certain satellites in the network he’d built around Sydea came to life, launching small railgun projectiles on a descent trajectory not unlike the one that the glider had taken. They were far faster than the glider, and slowed themselves by parachutes that puffed out from the missiles the moment they hit atmosphere. Each one was a small aerial organism, little more than a set of sensory organs and a transmitter to relay back to the satellites, and as stealthy as he could manage in visual and thermal wavelengths.

There were thousands of them, exhausting all the stocks he’d built up. The satellites began using their remnant fuel to alter trajectories and return to the moon; no need to create any sort of Kessler Syndrome with the expended husks and junk up the orbitals he’d need in the future with discarded metal and glass. It would have been amazing if he could have gotten the benefits of obfuscation and distraction from orbital infrastructure alone, but the zones had both a height and a depth limit. He needed actual fliers.

Stealthy scout drones weren’t the only things he’d readied. Six much larger satellites – really, genuine ships, given their capabilities – held four of the larger warframes each, the type he’d armed with the light-gas guns. He deployed two of them, one to the town where the Platinum was, and the other to one of the central cities where there were planetary portals.

Sydea was an entire planet, but it was only one planet. The System had hundreds, thousands, or maybe even more, so he couldn’t afford to think linearly. Now that he had a reasonable amount of infrastructure, he needed to start spreading again. With Sydea as a model, he knew it was possible to establish himself out in the broader System.

Each quartet of warframes locked themselves into individual padded cells, keeping them secured as the launch vehicle was accelerated down the superconducting rail. The vehicle itself was its own custom-grown organism, disposable but more than capable of managing the descent and targeting the drop of the bioweapons. He would have loved to simply wrap proper technology in the System-jamming biology, but the altered physics still held even if the System’s direct and active effects were held at bay.

Outside the System, his deployment satellites showed the big black pods falling downward toward Sydea, most of their relative velocity stripped by the launch. The recoil shoved the launchers up into a higher orbit, where they would eventually rendezvous with the moon once again. He’d be launching a lot of warframes eventually, but he was personally limited in how many he could handle at a time.

Even if there were four separate warframes, there was essentially one mind in each of them. Technically there were a multitude of different brains, but with the link between them to reconcile their gestalts real-time, it was closer to one person in four bodies than four versions of himself. Those versions were in turn reconciled with the prime version sitting in the computronium core in the moon, to keep all his operations coordinated.

The carbon-black pod aimed at the larger city hit the atmosphere first, gossamer strands of graphene billowing out like wings to adjust its trajectory. With all the scouts junking up the defense quest, there was nothing special about the city, and from his observations it didn’t have any regular visits by the high-ranking Sydeans. Hopefully his frames wouldn’t be there long enough for anyone to react.

The pod smashed down through the thick soup of air near Sydea’s surface, suddenly flaring out its parachutes and slowing down to merely a few dozen miles per hour. The chamber coverings popped open, the four bioweapon frames dropping the remaining distance to land heavily on the streets in front of the System Nexus. Panicked Sydeans threw Skills toward them, but Cato was framejacked to the maximum and dodged or deflected weapons and projectiles of various energies as he bulled inside.

Forty tons of bioweapon smashed the door itself off its hinges, the impact sending one unfortunate offworld visitor flying backward. Cato ignored those inside and launched himself at the portal, the four massive hexapods squeezing through one after another. The portal size was the real limiter on how big he could make the frames; it would have been embarrassing to be stuck simply because he couldn’t fit through. He needed all four so he could immediately launch a remote into space; he’d learned his lesson and had packed in enough fuel and power between them to get outside the System’s grasp the instant he was outside city walls.

The other side of the portal was nearly identical, a variation on the same template, only more crowded and more colorful. Most of the inhabitants were one of the insectile species of the System, with bulky gray-green carapaces and four arms. The most striking feature was how the secondary gripping claws extended from the back and rested in grooves in what Cato would call shoulders — though it was clear the insect-people didn’t have the same kind of joints.

He took in all this in accelerated time, different ranks reacting at visibly different speeds as he charged out of the portal. Sheer mass gave him an advantage in his headlong flight, as even the highest-rank people needed something more than just the System boosting to deflect that much inertia. The first of the bioweapons was nearly to the door when there was a bright flash that didn’t register on any of the sensors save ordinary eyes.

Other modes of vision caught an insect person stepping out of a brief, ephemeral portal, and Cato scrambled to focus every sense he’d given the warframes through that opening. He was almost completely certain the newcomer was a System-god, and the space beyond was some sort of basement dimension, but it didn’t last long enough for him to properly catalogue the small slice of room he could see. Nor did it last long enough for him to aim through it, even though he tried.

Seeing the presumed System-god, Cato was of four and a half minds about whether to confront the being or not. The bioweapon frames were not nearly strong enough to provide a credible threat to such an entity, but he could negotiate. Or at least, plant seeds of doubt, provided that the System-god was willing to talk. Yet he needed to have force he could apply, and for that he needed to get into the planet’s orbitals. Given another thirty seconds or so to get clear, he would have that advantage.

The trailing bioweapon scrabbled its claws against the floor as it tried to decelerate, a rather involved process for something so massive, while the forward three warframes continued their sprint to the door. One of the benefits of multiples of himself was that he really could take both options. At full framejack, hundreds of times faster than normal, he had enough time to second-guess himself as the System-god studied the four warframes. It seemed that he could operate at essentially framejack speed, unburdened by physics, whereas Cato could only move so fast even if he could think quite quickly.

“I—” Cato managed the single word from the trailing warframe in the extended seconds of framejack before the System-god stretched out its hand toward the bioweapons. There was no visible conjuration of energy, no elemental blaze, but the leading warframe simply puffed into dust, the signal terminated. Then the second, third, and finally the last before a second syllable made it out.

Up in the moon base, Cato cursed and glared out at the view of Sydea. If it weren’t for the warframes relaying things through the drop pod, which was floating above the Sydean city on hydrogen lift bubbles, he wouldn’t have known anything about their sudden destruction. System-god indeed.

He had no idea what exactly had happened. There was no feedback, it had happened too quickly to get any real data. The neural static kept the System from integrating the bioweapons, and prevented it from accessing his mind, but it didn’t stop the System’s actual physics or any directed effects. He couldn’t even resist it as such, save for the inherent toughness of the materials. But to simply dust the bioweapons with no noticeable energy release was a little eerie.

It also raised the question of why the System-god for Sydea hadn’t done the same thing. That would have cut his campaign pretty short. Though the same could be said for Earth’s System-god, so there had to be limits. Either of energy, or capability, or some esoteric System rules.

He was certain the only reason that he’d gotten attention was the System’s defense quest tagging his location. Anyone of moderate intelligence would pay close attention to the portals, and if the System popped its defense quest the obvious conclusion would be to check the portal. The speed at which the System-god had reacted was a little off-putting, but Cato wasn’t too discouraged yet. The worst of the losses was the element of surprise, but there was precious little of that to begin with if people were coming to Sydea in order to hunt down his scouts.

It was a consideration for the future, after he’d resolved things locally. That started with the second pod, still descending toward Sokhal Town. The covers popped as the bioweapons ejected, clawed and fanged warframes falling into the town at just under terminal velocity. Over one hundred fifty tons of combat materiel smashed into the bland stone streets around the tavern where his guests and the high-ranker were staying, sending people mostly fleeing indoors.

He could see right through the walls, thanks to glands and organs that operated in spectrums other than visible light. The high-ranker was easy to spot simply because of her equipment, which was far more opaque than any mundane metal would be. He targeted her with the organic light-gas guns built into his new warframes, but didn’t fire. The ammunition he had loaded wasn’t the organic fusion snot, not with innocent folk around, but rather something a lot more evil.

If it worked, anyway.

Even if normal diseases and bioweapons were of uncertain value given the System’s foibles, he still had biowarfare itself. Inside of armor-piercing projectiles – a necessity, given the toughness of high rankers – he had a culture tailored specifically to Sydeans. Rather than trying to kill them, it would integrate seamlessly with their body and spread the neural static cells as fast as possible, jamming their System connection. He wasn’t certain how much it’d slow them down, but surely it would interfere with their Skills and make them far easier to handle.

He didn’t fire just yet, however. It was clear he needed to demonstrate some degree of force but with the active System-god on the other side of the portals he was suddenly far more constrained. Until he could spread himself to more worlds, he had to treat Sydea as the most precarious toehold. The more he had to coerce people, the worse his chances of securing any System-side confederates, and the harder everything would become.

The one thing he absolutely refused to do was to indiscriminately destroy the people the System put in his way. The System destroyed worlds and peoples; he was not willing to be so monstrous. It was worth the attempt to try and come across as something other than creeping existential doom. Which he probably did anyway, considering his distraction scouts were covering practically every zone across the globe to ensure the System’s own feedback was useless.

Framejack time stretched out the seconds after impact, his light-gas guns trained on the high-ranker and the warframes coiled and ready as they surrounded the building. The insane plasma beam of hers would still cut through his new-model warframes, but only if it hit, and at every moment his sub-brains were generating trajectory predictions. The only question was whether she’d use it in such a populated area, where there were low-rankers scattered around the surrounding buildings.

“Are you—” he said through four throats, before the high-ranker launched herself out of her chair and straight up through the roof. She was moving quick, and had System nonsense augmenting her motions, but he had four warframes running at hundreds of times normal speed. Muscles composed of fullerenes and ultra-dense proteins, powered by fusion organelles and anchored to foamed metal bones, exploded into motion as he launched one of the warframes to intercept her.

Forty tons of armored bioweapon hammered into her at well over a hundred miles an hour, an impact that would have reduced any normal person – or even anyone of lower rank – to paste, but the Sydean merely grunted as massive claws wrapped around her torso and conjured that plasma beam of hers. One of the tendrils whipped out to bat her hand aside, sending the beam shooting off into the air where it barely missed the hovering pod, a half-mile above.

Fiery wings burst from her back as she flickered and vanished, reappearing above a nearby building, the warframes tracking her as she dropped down and landed on the roof. She crouched, gathering fire into her hands, then her eyes widened as one of his warframes prepared to fire. Cato had no idea what gave him away, but she blurred to the side just before he fired, too fast for him to reacquire. The projectile flew off into the air with the ripping power of hypersonic flight, a muzzle velocity measured in miles per second, joining the plasma beam in uselessly parting the atmosphere.

The moment she stopped herself against a nearby building he had another warframe in the air. Stone crumbled under her feet as she launched herself away just before it impacted, the warframe’s landing serving to shatter the roof the rest of the way. Cato kept the warframe moving, flipping it over the side of the building while another one dogged the high-ranker’s steps.

It would have been easier if he was just trying to kill her, or to cause devastation. Restrained fighting was so much more difficult, but with over ten times the tonnage he wasn’t fleeing for his life like before — though she was clearly holding back as well. That beam could have leveled the town with ease. He had no problem taking advantage of that, trying to keep her off-balance and out of the air long enough to force her to at least listen to him. People kept attacking him before he could get a word out and it was beginning to get old.

“Wait!” The front door of the tavern banged open, and Raine rushed out into the combat zone. Leese tagged behind, the two sisters throwing themselves into the line of fire. Or more accurately, into an active industrial zone, given how fast the warframes moved and how massy they were. Cato was forced to send one of his warframes leaping up into the air to avoid flattening the pair into paste, redirecting his encirclement of the high-ranker.

The appearance of the younger Sydeans at least made the high-ranker pause, and Cato shifted his warframes back a touch. He recognized the chance to de-escalate and didn’t want to ruin it by trying for a fractional tactical advantage. Instead he had one of his warframes casually pad over to loom behind the sisters, the massive bioweapon nearly filling the street.

“Please, Honored Platinum, at least give him a chance to talk,” Raine said, as Cato subtly altered the stances of his other warframes to target the high-ranker with the light-gas guns. He didn’t go so far as to actually prepare the chambers yet, waiting to see what she did.

“Talk about what?” The flame lady said, voice booming over the town. “He’s killed people, he’s flooded this insane quest everywhere, he’s brought outworlders down upon us and made it so we’re being punished with ridiculous essence prices. He’s ruining Sydea!”

“It is not I,” Cato said, using the warframe behind Raine to speak. “The System is the one bringing people in, assigning this quest, and extorting you with essence. The System is the one trying to kill you.” He tilted his head, eyeing the flame lady as she stood and glared, breathing hard.

“You’re being made to play a game you can’t win,” Cato continued, letting the toothed muzzles of the warframes stretch into a smile. “I’m here to flip the board.”

***

Arene fought to keep her lips from curling away from her fangs as she eyed the massive beasts filling the streets of Sokhal Town. Every instinct was screaming out about how dangerous they were, their strange lines unlike any monster or beast that Arene had ever seen before. And it spoke, it thought, marking it as something far beyond any of the System events Arene had seen before.

[Appraise] didn’t help at all, still returning the question marks that refused to even gauge its rank. Her Essence senses implied that the things were below Copper rank, but they fought like Platinums. And there were four of them, all much larger than the one that had dropped a mountain on her.

The entire thing disturbed her. The bizarre return to life of the Gosruk Guardians frankly frightened her, as that was not how the world worked, but there was no arguing with the results of [Appraise] — either on them, or on her grand-niece’s husband. Everything about the situation was wrong, which meant she had to stop and take a different approach. She hadn’t gotten to Platinum by only running at problems headlong.

“You’re speaking riddles,” she said, having no patience for the being’s oblique statements. If the Talis sisters were to be believed, this was the same Cato that she had removed only minutes ago — and the same one that had nearly killed, yet spared her. The source of the worldwide quest, now so large a block that it wasn’t even possible to look through it. The farcaster at her side was shaking and chiming, so she reached down to silence it — then set it to transmit, just in case. She didn’t know who would be listening, but the more people knew what was happening the better.

“Sydea is dying,” the creature said bluntly. “Sydeans are dying. For the past hundred years or more, your population has been shrinking, you’ve been losing towns, and the wilderness has been closing in. You know this, I’m sure.”

Arene gritted her teeth, not needing the reminder. Despite all her efforts, and those of the other Platinums, there just weren’t enough people ranking up fast enough. She’d wondered more than once where they had been going wrong over her past hundred and fifty years of life, even talking to outworlders about it, but no answers had been forthcoming.

“It’s not anything you’re doing,” the creature continued, as if it could read her mind. “Sydea isn’t dying. It is being killed. Before the System you were flourishing. Before the System, you had vast cities all over the world. The System is killing you. I’m here to kill the System.”

She stared at the creatures, eyes flicking from one to another. None of them gave anything away, and she felt a laugh bubbling up in her throat. It escaped as a dark chuckle, and she shook her head at the bizarre being.

“That doesn’t even make sense. Kill the System? Are you going to kill the sun and the moon, too?”

“That won’t be necessary,” the being said, flat and humorless. Arene felt a chill down her spine, all the way to the tip of her tail, the sort she’d only gotten when witnessing Azoth or Alum ranks.

“I don’t believe it’s as ridiculous as it sounds, Honored Platinum,” Raine said, the young Sydean – younger than she had been, which was another oddity to unpack – not at all threatened by the massive and deadly beast behind her. “I’ve seen that there’s something outside the System. The four of us all saw the welcome message as we went into the System.”

“Betrayer,” accused a voice, as Muar – who had not been made younger, for some reason – stepped out of the front of the damaged tavern. “This Cato is an invader, a conqueror. Everything it says is deception, and Raine has sold herself out for purely venal and hollow rewards.”

Cato, Arene saw, was curiously unbothered by the accusation, even if Raine’s scales flushed with anger. Muar stalked toward Raine, though his lack of concern for the deadly creatures undercut his own accusations. She flicked out her fire whip between the two, since if they came to blows the entire situation might devolve back to combat — and she was not at all certain she could win.

The four beasts shifted slightly at her use of the Skill, but very correctly did not interpret it as an attack. In that respect they were very close to other Platinums she had sparred with, where their situational awareness was enough that they were actually safe to fight. Too many that reached that rank had no idea how to deal with those less powerful than themselves.

“I find it hard to believe you are here simply because you have some sympathy for our struggles,” Arene said instead, as Muar backed off.

“No,” Cato said bluntly. “I’m from the other side of that portal. From Earth — what the System called Ahrusk. The System destroyed entire worlds, killed millions and billions. We removed it from Earth, but until it is gone completely, there is always the threat it will return — and do worse. How can I not see a kinship in what it has done to you?”

Arene growled. What infuriated her the most was that his argument was persuasive. After so long dealing with so much trouble, someone who actually seemed to be on her side was far too tempting. Any answer to the problems facing Sydea was worth looking at, even one that was utter madness.

“Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?” She asked abruptly, since that question still burned at the back of her mind. It was really her own fault she’d been caught in the collapse, but there was no good reason for him to not take advantage, regardless of his goals.

“The victims of the System are not my enemies, even when they think they are,” Cato said, which seemed an obscenely lax attitude. Only someone of overwhelming power could afford to keep opponents alive. “And I really do want your cooperation. I didn’t think things would get this bad, but even as they are, they’d be worse without you to keep the invaders in line.”

“You’re an invader, too,” Arene snapped, narrowing her eyes at the spokesbeast.

“I prefer to think of myself as a very aggressive guest,” Cato demurred, all four of the beasts blinking at her. “I have no desire or need to take over or control Sydea, but I would be a very poor guest indeed if I did not aid my hosts with their problem.”

“It would be a lot easier to believe you if you’d sent someone to talk first,” Arene said with a scowl. Leese Talis, standing at her sister’s shoulder, winced.

“I did,” Cato replied, one the beasts chuckling. “We both know how that worked out.”

“You can’t be thinking of agreeing with this thing!” Muar protested. Arene narrowed her eyes at him, flexing her Essence aura to bear down on him. She didn’t generally hold with the attitude that high-rankers often had toward the lower ranks, but Muar was not in her good graces. His interference had clearly been meant to set her against Cato, rather than letting her make up her mind of her own accord.

“You will be silent,” she told him, as Dyen stepped outside the tavern and took in the tableau with narrowed eyes. “I don’t want to hear a word from anyone unless I ask.” Dyen just snorted and crossed his arms, leaning against the building and apparently content to watch for now, while the Talis sisters nodded in disturbing synchronization. She returned her regard to the spokesbeast, though she was quite aware of the other three crouched in the surrounding streets.

“I don’t entirely understand or believe your goals, but for any sort of discussion we need one other person. Planetary Administrator Onswa makes the final decision, but you can believe that you’re going to need something more certain than words to get anyone on your side.” Cato’s suggestion of simply upending reality was almost impossibly insane — but so was what had happened since he arrived.

“That is something I am quite willing to provide,” Cato said, seeming to be unreasonably smug. Arene didn’t like that, but if he was willing to let her bring in other Platinums to even the odds, she wasn’t going to object. If they were forced to fight Cato anyway, she’d much rather do so with the support of the other Platinums.

Maybe then they’d have a chance.

***

Initik clicked softly to himself as the last remnants of the invaders dissolved into essence, ignoring the System warnings flashing in his vision. Personally manifesting in the world he governed was frowned upon, though it took far more action than merely nullifying some intruders to accrue any real penalties. Even then, he’d be willing to suffer quite a few demerits to keep out the rot that had been allowed to spread in Sydea.

He slit open a portal back to his personal space, the ascended version of the home he’d been granted when he’d reached Gold, ages and ages ago and now its own tiny world. Orange grasses stretched to a false horizon and tall fruit trees stood sentinel inside a courtyard walled by pale turquoise terracotta. None of it was what the System had provided by default, but he had spent much time on it back when he had first been elevated, mere decades after the System had blessed Uriva.

The full World Deity interface stood as a crystal console, out of place with the surrounding pale colors and smooth shapes. Even if everything else in his System space could be modified, that could not — though he didn’t use it that much. Most World Deities, he’d found, merely worked the controls. Initik preferred to work with the essence flows directly.

He crossed to the console, arranging himself on the standing-stool he preferred to ordinary seats, and opening himself up to the essence flowing within. Initik would, in private, compare manipulating the System to playing an instrument. In private, in part because fools like Marus would be aghast at bypassing the tried-and-true methods for governing worlds, and in part because very few World Deities had ever played an instrument.

It took some time for him to filter out the proper strains and currents of the System that governed Uriva, but he did find what he was looking for. The particular and peculiar essence signature of the invaders was unique enough that he could put it into an extraordinarily dangerous portion of the System, and so bar it from entry. Or rather, the moment any entity of any type whatsoever with the bizarre, not-System-recognized makeup crossed the portal from Sydea into Uriva, the Interface would use his authority and essence reserve to obliterate it.

Such a thing was not cheap. Most World Deities would probably consider it a waste, and leave it to the inhabitants of the planet — but he’d already seen what had happened with Sydea. Initik kept a close eye on his neighbors, to the extent of persuading his own console to show the public status of their planets. Normally there was nothing untoward, but the sudden infestation on Sydea was somewhere past alarming.

Yet it didn’t surprise him that something had gone horribly wrong and was not being properly handled. The stewardship exhibited by Marus in particular, and Clan Eln at large, was terrible. Generally abusive, specifically malicious, and universally incompetent, they ran their planets to enrich themselves and their fellow World Deities. Perhaps it was due to Clan Eln being born into the Deity classification, but they didn’t seem to understand the value in cultivating the lower ranks, in raising them up through proper quests and challenges.

Initik was all for challenging his people, but pitting a Copper against a Platinum wasn’t challenge, it was an execution. Whatever was going on with the not-System quest was far too dangerous to allow in before he knew more. There was a reason he kept an emergency reserve of essence in both his own and the planetary stores.

Once he was certain that the blanket destruction order was in place, he returned to the more conventional functions of his console and began composing messages to the few other World Deities with whom he had any sort of rapport. There weren’t many, and Marus certainly wasn’t one.

It was a truism that there was nothing new under the sun, and while Initik had not encountered something like what had befallen Sydea in his more than a millennium of stewardship, there were those out there far older, who knew beings even older than that. Someone surely knew what kind of bizarre event this was, why it had suddenly exploded, and what sort of threat it truly posed. Some, like Marus, wouldn’t dare think of controlling what the System did on their worlds, but Initik knew the System was a tool to be used. Used, but never trusted.

Chapter 11 — A Summit

Cato watched the planet through ten thousand eyes.

Most of those eyes were mindless drones, tiny scouts doing little more than beaming sensor data back toward satellites, where it was ingested by analysis software and processed for the version of himself on the moon. The warframe bodies didn’t need to worry about that and it would be a waste of bandwidth anyway, as they could just inherit the decisions made by the moon version of himself.

Dozens of his tiny, high-flying spy-eyes had already been downed either by system folks or by random monsters, but that was barely a fraction of the total. The attrition was in line with what he had experienced on Earth, where the System folks had destroyed thousands of warframes and innumerable lesser frames and drones — many of them managed by people with more talent than he possessed. That was why he had vastly overproduced the surveillance drones and wasn’t particularly worried.

To offset his lower level of competence, he was making machinery in job lots — though he would have done that anyway. The cost of that overproduction was basically irrelevant — Cato had entire moons worth of resources all for himself. He’d spread his outposts and infrastructure beyond the single, planet-facing habitat onto the other moons, a situation that still felt very strange. In the Solar System the majority of large objects inside the Kuiper Belt were already claimed, if not actually populated. That still left plenty of icy outer bodies, but Cato had maintained too many ties in the near-Earth region to consider moving light-hours away.

The communications delay to Sydea was considerably shorter, his panopticon letting him track each high-ranker as they received the news and used their own personal brand of teleportation to travel to the little town. Two of them he recognized; the one with the System-specific radiation and the water-user. The former seemed to be able to actually create temporary portals, whereas the latter simply dived into the ocean in one spot and emerged at the coast of the target continent a few second later.

Cato did have to admit that the variety of travel options was impressive, if maybe unnecessarily showy. Though inside of purely virtual worlds, some people went with far more elaborate entry and departure sequences than bursts of flame or portals, so perhaps he had no reason to critique. When he’d been younger, he’d been prone to a rather baroque style himself.

There were two remaining high-rankers he had only seen from a distance. One looked like a professional bodybuilder, and her method of fast travel seemed to be some kind of ultra-rapid short-distance teleportation. She sprinted along as if just using her muscles, but with each step she blinked several miles, and she had no trouble running on top of water. The last one was the hardest to track, because he mostly moved under the cover of the local foliage. So far as Cato could tell, the green-scaled Sydean was using trees as anchors for teleportation, and there wasn’t any obvious rhyme or reason to the distance covered each time.

That made five at the highest rank, and if there were any others on the planet Cato hadn’t spotted them. So far as he could see they all had a piece of equipment, something he’d noticed on the person of the fire lady, that they were using to coordinate. Which implied the System didn’t have a direct messaging function, only mail- and telephone-equivalent. Communications was definitely an area he needed to know more about, but searching for potential weaknesses in the System’s messaging abilities was something that would have to wait until he was on better terms.

Upending the entire reality of Sydea was going to be a hard enough pitch.

The fire lady – Arene – paced impatiently on top of the System Nexus, her fingers tapping the communications item at her waist. Cato’s warframes still waited in the streets, and all the inhabitants of the town had decided to withdraw themselves to the other side of the safe zone defined by the town’s boundaries. He felt a little bad about that, but it was understandable. If a serious fight broke out, the collateral damage would be catastrophic. Unfortunately they couldn’t fully evacuate the town, because it was impossible to tame the surrounding areas and it wasn’t like a bunch of low ranks would be safe out in the middle of an infinitely respawning swarm of highly aggressive wildlife.

He didn’t really mind being outnumbered, though he did debate quite strongly about whether he should spend the mass and energy on sending down another batch. In the System, the only way anyone would be taken seriously was their ability to apply force. In a way that was true in any reality, yet here it was simply impossible to build other kinds of structures. But by forcing Arene to the point where she had to listen, he had accomplished the vast majority of his goals.

For Sydea, anyway.

“What are we to do?” The question came, unexpectedly, from Leese. The two Sydean women were essentially the only ones who didn’t have any obvious fear response to his massive warframes, and they were standing out in the open near one of them even after Muar and Dyen had closeted themselves inside the System Nexus. It wasn’t merely a brave face, either; he could sample the stress molecules they were giving off and while neither of them were as calm as they appeared, they didn’t have the fear pheromones that came from everyone save for Arene. That one was just angry.

“How do you mean?” Cato asked, the voice of the warframe a deep rumble. He didn’t need to use a voicebox that went low enough to vibrate walls, but he preferred for his warframes to sound like they looked.

“We’re Coppers, but with the bodies of Silver or even Gold,” Raine answered. “We are both stronger and more vulnerable than we have been for years. Surely you had some plan if you offered these gifts to begin with.”

Cato had to remind himself that despite their new looks, the two Sydeans weren’t young women. The question wasn’t an uncertain desire to know what to do. She was a soldier reporting for duty.

His offer to return them to Sydea with augmented bodies hadn’t been given on a whim. He had no desire to keep prisoners and, while the System needed to be eradicated, it would not be an instantaneous process and people would still need to live within its confines. The Sydeans were people, not toys or children, but perhaps he had been rather too cavalier in his attempt to rectify the damage done by their temporary deaths.

Raine and Leese had seen more than a little bit of his moon base, of what he could do. Even if they weren’t familiar with all the fruits of technology, they had some idea of the scale he operated at. He doubted they had any particular loyalty to him – he’d killed them, after all, and utterly derailed any plans they may have had for their lives – but they were deciding to align themselves with what they saw as power.

Hopefully he could inspire that loyalty, when they saw how he acted and what he was trying to do. Cato really would prefer people to align with him because of morality, or because they understood what a threat the System was. Merely going along with him because they saw no real choice was horrifically fragile.

“No matter how this goes, I’m going to need people on the inside of the System, who aren’t going to generate a quest everywhere they go,” he replied. That was especially true considering what had happened with the portal. He didn’t know whether the System-God would always show up to nuke his constructs or what, but he clearly needed someone to sneak something through.

“With the augments I’ve given you, it shouldn’t be too difficult to rank up,” he continued. Cato knew this for a fact, given what had happened with the survivors of the System’s initial apocalyptic onset on Earth. Gene-tweaked and augmented bodies were ahead of the leveling curve — or whatever the best term was for how ranks were divided. Essence reinforced what was naturally there, so that which was already ahead stayed ahead, a snowball effect that meant those who had the inclination and knowledge to fight could compete at least an entire rank threshold above, if not more.

It wasn’t just humaniform frames either. Earth had been a teeming mass of people in all kinds of physiognomies, not all of them even bipedal. Some people had been trapped in a nightmare of a limbless form when cybernetics failed, others had been labeled entirely different species as they shared almost nothing with the base human model. There were even those with bespoke predator bodies who had become absolutely nightmarish monsters, nearly as effective as a warframe with only the smallest amount of System support.

The Sydean pair would have the same advantage. Force multipliers stacked on force multipliers, and while he wasn’t sure how much the body enhancements would help pure casters, they would be considerably more able than most Sydeans. Earth-stock sapients had a bit of an advantage since they knew what bioengineered bodies could do, but the System’s augmentations weren’t much different in some ways, so they probably could take advantage of the boosted abilities just as well.

“Running dungeons,” Leese said conversationally to Raine, and Cato had to restrain himself from twitching. It was his own suggestion that they rank up, as sadly they would be more useful the more powerful they were within the System.

“I’m also from outside the System. You just know millions of tiny things I don’t, things I should know and would never think to ask,” Cato said. He didn’t have any problem admitting that particular shortcoming. “So question everything. Suggest anything.”

To judge by the expression on Raine’s face, that was certainly not what she expected. Cato probably seemed all-knowing from certain angles, but one of the dubious of advantages of knowing a lot was being painfully aware of the vast territories of ignorance that remained. Then her expression firmed and she nodded.

“If we’re going to be ranking up quickly, we’ll need the best equipment you have, and supplies so we can stay in dungeons for days on end,” Raine said, tail slowly swishing from side to side. “But we have to go offworld if we want to progress past Silver, let alone reach Platinum or higher. Since nobody is going to listen to a Copper, it’s going to be a while since we can actually represent you on our own.”

“Fair enough,” Cato conceded, though he hadn’t gotten as far as asking them to advocate for his viewpoint. Another cultural gap he had to be wary of. “So who am I going to be talking to?”

“The most important one you have to convince is Onswa the Unstoppable,” Raine began, unprompted, offering a brief précis of each of the Platinums while they waited, with interjections by Leese. It at least let him fit names to faces and was frankly something he should have asked before going down, but he had been too fixated on his own surveillance and too worried about pressing the Sydeans for information. Interrogating them on the station would have been too coercive for his tastes.

Onswa, Arene, Marek, Karsa, Hirau. Only five people to keep an entire planet safe and secure, because anyone of a lower rank simply could not. And still clearly insufficient, considering what he’d seen. The Platinums could deal with almost any threat that originated from Sydea, but the portals linked it to the myriads worlds of the System and they had no way to stop higher ranks from coming through and doing as they pleased.

Even as he waited, the industrial engines far up on the moon were assembling orbital railguns for the sole purpose of dealing with the foreign high-rankers who had decided to squat in the Sydean towns. He didn’t quite have what he needed for particle beams, especially with how far out from the planet they’d need to be, but kinetic kill weaponry worked perfectly fine within the System. The best case scenario would be to never actually need such weapons, but Cato knew that wasn’t possible. His warframes, powerful as they were, didn’t use essence and had no rank.

Without that, no System denizen would take him seriously.

***

Onswa Ramik didn’t actually like being the Planetary Administrator. Yes, he did have access to some luxuries that weren’t available anywhere else on Sydea, but it took work. Most of the time it was busywork, but sometimes he had to make decisions that affected a lot of people in a very profound way. There was no higher authority he could turn to; even if he could contact the gods, they worked at the level of the System, not the people inside it. Any Sydeans who were Bismuth or even Azoth rank were no longer interested or even reachable, off gaining power in the vast expanse of the other worlds.

When Arene had sent a message that the origin of that damnable Quest was there and wanted to talk, he had the feeling of seeing some enormous looming cloud. A powerful storm, like the ones that swept [Long Grass Conflict Zone] where it stretched from horizon to horizon and turned the sky black. Not that such a storm was a threat to him at Platinum, but he still remembered huddling in [Ramik-es Town] with his parents while rain and wind lashed the walls. [Ramik-es Town] was gone now, but the storms still blew there.

At least the other Platinums would actually answer his hastily-issued Emergency Quest. Onswa still didn’t have his full privileges back, but he no longer had to go down to the central nexus and pay essence. The newfound responsiveness was about the only positive aspect of the past few months, even if it was solely out of self-preservation. No part of Sydea had gone untouched by the swarm of outsiders looking to capitalize on the windfall.

The sudden, horrifying expansion of the quest’s scope certainly added extra incentive.

It was in some ways a relief that there was some singular source, something that could be talked and reasoned with. Something that had a goal, rather than endless swarms of Platinum level monsters destroying cities and people. Yet a part of him knew that no matter the true nature of it all, this was the end of the Sydea he knew. It clearly wanted something from them, but Onswa could think of nothing that Sydea could spare.

He tore through the last leg of the journey, to where Arene’s essence burned bright atop Sokhal Town’s Nexus. His senses found more instances of that strange fuzz which accompanied the invaders, but much larger than any he’d so far encountered. It was difficult to suppress his urge to simply eradicate them with his A-tier [Aether Purge], but that would make discussion difficult. Especially since it was clear such an action would do nothing but satisfy his own pique. It was just too bad that Arene hadn’t bothered to convey any real detail via farcaster.

Onswa swooped down to join Arene on the roof of the Nexus, in the shadow of its characteristic tower, laying eyes on the foreign creatures for the first time. They weren’t camouflaged, nor vague black blobs like the one he had dealt with in [Frozen Peaks Conflict Zone]. They were massive things, far larger than the first ones, and something about them gave him a sense of danger.

It wasn’t Skills. The things were barely even Copper rank, with only a trace of essence, but [Appraise] still only returned [???]. Then there was the way their heads tracked him as he approached, though he should have been moving too fast and his presence too well-hidden for anything of that rank.

High above in the sky, a few thousand feet up, was another fuzzy signature, though this one was camouflaged and seemed like some strange floating blob to his senses rather than a proper creature. Also concerning, but it seemed to be drifting in the wind, bobbing erratically rather than properly hovering. That made no sense, considering how high rank flight skills were, but it was another possible threat.

Every single Platinum arriving at the same town was the best show of force he could manage, but it also put every single Platinum in the same town. With the strangeness of everything surrounding the Defense Quest and the being responsible, he felt he had to be wary. Any of the Bismuth ranks that had invaded Sydea could do enormous damage if they found such a gathering.

“Arene,” he greeted his fellow Platinum. One of the beasts below was holding a muttered conversation with a pair of fine-looking young women, and by stretching his senses he found the discussion was simply covering who the Platinums were. The basics every Sydean knew, but it still rankled that someone was a traitor. Or perhaps a hostage; it was difficult to tell.

“This is one unholy mess,” Arene said, not bothering to lower her voice. She kept making a fist with one of her hands and then releasing it. “It’s unbelievable, but at the same time, what else can explain what’s going on?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re talking about,” Onswa said dryly. He’d never seen Arene so flustered, though he could hardly blame her. Four identical, oversized monsters crouching in the streets of a town was bad enough. Towns were safe zones, and monsters shouldn’t have been able to enter. That they tracked things with eerie synchronization, and things that copper ranks really shouldn’t be able to, only made things worse.

“I’m going to have to explain this three more times, aren’t I?” Arene muttered. “It says — well, a lot of things, actually. That it’s from outside the System, and that it actually wants to help.”

“Odd way of showing it,” Onswa replied, narrowing his eyes at the creatures.

“That’s not even the unbelievable part.” Arene said, continuing her pacing.

“Oh?”

“It says it wants to destroy the System.”

Onswa stared, then laughed. Then stopped laughing, because it was clear Arene was serious. He tried to consider it, and his mind simply bounced off the concept because it was too ridiculous.

“So it wants to destroy the world,” he said, looking down at the creatures again. He’d heard about such things in the further recess of the System, worlds with far more essence. Things that could challenge even Alum-rank adventurers.

“Just the System,” a deep voice answered, a rumble that fit the enormous, hexapedal lizard that stood easily in the street below. It didn’t surprise him that it had been listening, though just hearing coherent speech from the odd-looking thing was a shock. “The others should be here in a few minutes. Marek is lagging behind but at the rate he’s going it still won’t take very long.”

The casual assessment chilled Onswa. At Platinum his sensory range was extraordinary, but not that good. He stretched out with his A-Tier [Aether Perception] until he found the nearest river, but there was no touch of water essence that would imply Marek had reached it yet. Even as he did so the greenery bloomed with brilliant wood essence and Hirau walked out of one of the trees. There was no essence interference from any other Skills either, so whatever senses the being had were far beyond his ken.

Beyond that comment, the thing didn’t attempt to start a conversation, and Arene was too busy pacing. Onswa took a long breath and tried to consider it rationally. New worlds were added to the System on occasion, and thinking was split on whether they were created or found. Before, it had been a useless debate that he’d never bothered with. Now, it was incredibly important.

Dealing with something from outside reality was entirely beyond him.

The first to arrive was not actually Hirau, though it should have been. Karsa burst from nowhere and vaulted over the city walls to land on top of the System Nexus hard enough to make the building tremble. She rested her immense hammer over her shoulder and looked down at the beasts with eyes that were more interested than sleepy. Arene started to explain herself once again but was interrupted by Hirau.

“No fighting,” Onswa snapped, as he felt Hirau’s essence surge at the sight of the enormous monsters taking up space in the streets. Platinums fighting in a town would level it, and be pointless besides. Going by the quest there could be thousands or more of the things, and all they’d do by attacking these ones was make more enemies. For all he knew this strange creature could assault every town simultaneously – the safe zone clearly didn’t keep it out – and there would be nothing even a Bismuth could do about it.

Hirau narrowed his eyes but obeyed, keeping a close watch on the monsters as he circled around to where the other Platinums were. The creatures just looked amused. Their staring contest was interrupted when Marek finally arrived, surfing along a swirl of floating water to drop down next to the others on the crowded roof.

“We’re all here,” Onswa said, taking charge and glancing from Arene to the creatures in the streets. “What exactly do you have to say?”

“I am Cato,” one of the creatures rumbled. “Ten years ago, the System invaded Earth — what you were told was Ahrusk. We pushed it back.”

Onswa suppressed the urge to reject the implications of those simple statements. Cato had more than proved that something very strange was going on.

“But that alone isn’t good enough,” a different creature said, though in the exact same voice and tone. “Given time, the System will return, and we may not be as lucky as we were the first time. Then there is holding the System accountable for its crimes. Untold billions died because of it, and that is just on Earth. It did the same to Sydea, however many hundreds of even thousands of years ago.” The accusation in the deep voice jolted Onswa, the thick boiling hate and disgust completely undisguised. The amused air had vanished entirely, leaving behind something much darker and harder.

“That is quite an accusation,” Onswa said cautiously. “But even if that’s true, that’s in the past.”

“And the present is still that the System is killing you.” One of the creatures shifted and its scales shimmered, suddenly turning into a map. With its broad bulk facing them, it suddenly became some strange version of a System display, showing the very town they were in, seen from above. He could see the figures on the Nexus roof shift and he reflexively glanced upward, to the camouflaged blob above.

Then the map expanded outward, and it became impossible that they were seeing simply through the eyes of the hovering entity. The map labeled Sokhal Town in a distinctly System-like method, but then labeled other points on the slowly expanding map as former cities. Some of them he recognized; towns that had simply failed decades or centuries or go. Some of them he didn’t, and Onswa wasn’t sure if he had simply forgotten or they had been before his time. He certainly didn’t think that Cato was inventing them.

“You have lost most of your towns,” Cato rumbled. “A steady recession over hundreds of years. The System won’t let you tame the wilds, or dig into a prime location and build up. It is the one that selects where cities and towns are located. It is the one that decides when and how they can expand, and how much it costs.”

“Maybe, but you’re the reason why everything is going so badly right now,” Hirau snapped, a vine braided between his fingers and slowly slithering back and forth like as snake. Small as it was, it was Hirau’s A-tier weapon and far more dangerous than most would guess.

“Am I?” The tone of the rumbling voice was back to almost amused. “All the reaction to my presence is entirely the System. What have I actually done besides exist?”

“You did kill us,” the young, white-scaled Sydean responded, looking up at the creature towering over her.

“And I apologized for that!” Cato protested. “Unfortunately, I was pressed for time and had to defend myself.”

“Dyen said that the Tornok Clan Platinums killed him and Esca,” Arene broke in, staring fixedly at Cato. “But he’s alive. They’re alive. Why isn’t my grand-niece alive?” For the first time, Cato hesitated. One of the creatures even glanced at the young Sydean women before he replied.

“Because I’m not as good as I should be. Death is a hazier concept for me, but I’m not a god who can simply raise people up. I can preserve those who have died, but I need to be outside the System to restore them. On that day on the mountain, I wasn’t good enough to protect everyone while at the same time escaping you. Which I certainly do not hold against you.”

“You mean I—" Arene bit off her sentence, her aggressive posture suddenly wilting.

“No, the Tornok Clan killed her, and I failed at preserving her,” Cato said firmly, which rang oddly to Onswa. If Cato was incredibly powerful, why was he bothering to try and spare Arene’s feelings? If he wasn’t, why did he feel so comfortable confronting them? Karsa put her hand on Arene’s shoulder as Onswa tried to order his mind.

“I would prefer to leave explanations for after you tell us what you want,” Onswa said. “What do you possibly need us for?”

“Because if I just removed the System it’d hurt you nearly as much as when the System destroyed us,” Cato replied. “When the System came to Earth I saw people die. My friends, my family.” Arene twitched at that, and even Onswa had to admit the dark resignation in Cato’s voice sounded genuine. “I saw an entire civilization reduced to one choice: kill or die. If I am to oppose the system, I must ensure that when it goes away all those choices that were taken from you are returned, not that you are cut from everything you know.”

“A pretty speech, but you’re still coming in as a conqueror,” Marek objected.

“Oh, God no,” Cato said with a laugh. “Ruling a planet and a people is a lot of work. Who’d want that?” Onswa winced, because it was so true. Even if he wasn’t exactly a ruler, it was more work than he’d thought when he was merely Gold rank. “Besides, you’re not human. What would I know about how you work best?” The spokesbeast waved a forepaw dismissively. “No, you all are the ones that should be in charge. I’m just support staff.”

“But you’re still going to be going after the System, somehow,” Onswa pointed out.

“Yes.” Cato’s voice went hard and flat. “That I cannot negotiate on. Though I would think you’d be perfectly happy yourself,” he continued more easily. “Without the System, you would be able to produce enough food to feed your people, you could build towns where you wanted and when. There wouldn’t be enemies spilling through a portal you cannot close or control.”

“You think we would have some sort of perfect life without the System?” Onswa’s muzzle wrinkled in disbelief, though part of him admitted there was a certain allure to the idea of no longer needing to deal with the morass of other System worlds and the constant worry of some Bismuth or Azoth rank deciding to take Sydea for themselves.

“We have a word for that,” Cato said. “Utopia.” The syllables were a tongue Onswa had never heard, something that felt as alien and out of place as Cato looked. “It means no place, because it cannot exist. I would never promise that your lives without the System would be perfect, but I do think they would be better.”

The other Platinums looked contemplative, in their own ways. Arene’s brow was furrowed, Karsa looked even more sleepy than usual, Marek had his arms folded and Hirau’s vine kept rolling around his fingers. Yet it was Onswa who needed to actually decide. Not only was he Planetary Administrator – at least for the moment – he was the most powerful and oldest Platinum on the planet.

In a way it was obvious. Cato had demonstrated that he had capabilities beyond most Platinums, if in no other way but being able to encompass the entire world. The quest text made that clear. Even if Cato had declared his intent to subjugate Sydea, Onswa’s best bet would have been to send a plea for help out to whatever Azoth or perhaps even Alum ranks might hear it. He doubted a Bismuth rank could manage to fend off a planetary-scale threat like Cato.

Onswa didn’t trust Cato, of course, whatever the being’s protestations were. Yet he couldn’t imagine anything the being would actually want from Sydea that it couldn’t simply take. And Onswa had to admit he did find what Cato was offering to be enticing — even though all Cato was offering was a lack of things. He couldn’t possibly say no, but didn’t dare say yes.

“You are asking for more than is reasonable,” Onswa said slowly. “We are hardly in a position where we can afford to lose what little we have, even if it’s for some theoretical future. We have families and low ranks that need to be protected, housed, and fed, and there are foreign high-rankers coming through to deal with the quests you’ve sparked. Perhaps you can demonstrate your ability by aiding us with those issues, and then we can decide.”

“I’d be glad to!” Cato said, and indeed he sounded genuinely happy, which made Onswa even more uneasy but there was no withdrawing the request. “Those are problems that I’d have had to deal with anyway.”

“And the quest itself?” Onswa asked, pulling up his System interface and glancing at the thousands of entries. “I can start spreading the word to stop hunting down your — troops?” He made the last word a question. “But the sheer scale is going to cause panic no matter what.”

“Oh, by all means hunt down the troops,” Cato said. “In fact, I’ll send you versions that are designed to be killed, to give your people an advantage for now, while we’re making preparations. As for the scale — well. It’s meant to hide things like this, the important meetings, so they’re not constantly interrupted. But I suppose it doesn’t need to be quite so widespread.” One of the beasts snapped the claws of its forepaw, and the entries in the quest suddenly fell from nearly ten thousand to merely several hundred.

Onswa hoped he hadn’t made a serious mistake.

***

World Deity Marus cursed to himself as his System Interface nagged him. Things had been going well; the essence stocks were filling and depleting as they should and the strange quest had been doing its job. Then an alert had pulled him from his well-deserved relaxation, away from the basking sands and the exotic drinks imported from the core systems.

Only the most extreme deviations actually caused any kind of alarm. Marus had long set the Interface to simply run on automatic, having no need to coddle the natives or ensure anything beyond the steady flow of essence. There should have been nothing that could trouble him, considering he had revoked the majority of the Planetary Administrator privileges — and yet, here was yet another problem.

He grumbled as he combed the sand from his fur and dressed, not willing to meet whatever the new crisis was less than properly alert, and then finally crossed to his console to see the true extent of the problem. The sheer wall of text in the System-generated quest alert made him stare, stretching over the entire display and even beyond, seemingly listing every single zone on Sydea. He stared, dumbstruck, for long enough that the System Interface began nagging him again, and he growled and swiped at the notifications.

The useless animals on Sydea clearly couldn’t do anything right, even with the help of the off-world rankers attracted by the quest. For a moment Marus was tempted to send a message to his direct superior in the core worlds, but only for a moment. To do that would be to admit failure, or even get the attention of the Eln clan elders, and that was far worse than any troubles that might arise from a System quest getting out of hand on some frontier world. He had to handle it himself.

After a moment, he grinned as the simple, obvious, and effective solution presented itself. The original System-quest had been useful, but its proliferation was undeniable evidence that something had slipped out of Marus’ control. He certainly didn’t want to advertise that, so going to other Deities was out of the question — but simply issuing a quest to mortals, one for all the outworlders to recruit someone to help complete the defense quest, addressed the matter perfectly.

With any luck, the extra bodies would get things under control and nobody in the core world would ever find out about his mistake.

Chapter 12 — Four Conversations

“Come on, you two. There’s four of me, no reason I can’t do four things.” Raine glanced up at the low rumble of the beast-Cato. Indeed, the other three versions were talking with three Platinums at once, filling the streets with the deep tones of Cato’s voice. It was incredibly strange to see him treating titans like Arene Firewing and Onswa the Unstoppable in the exact same manner as he treated Raine and Leese, as if their rank didn’t matter at all. But perhaps that was the privilege of the truly powerful.

“Where did you want to rank up?” He continued, and Raine looked over to Leese. By mutual agreement they retrieved their maps, glad to have something more reasonable to address than world-altering decisions

After facing death and regaining the vigor of youth, Raine wasn’t quite certain what they wanted anymore, but ranking up was a good start. Even if it was to be temporary, better they be temporarily powerful than temporarily weak. With their boosted strength, they didn’t even need Maur or any other party members.

“Normally I’d say we’d start with one of these Copper dungeons,” Leese mused aloud, manipulating the map to show the nearby terrain. “But as we are, mid to late Silver is probably better. We can pick up the rest of our Skills as we go.”

“Might even be higher tier Skills, if we’re delving above our rank,” Raine pointed out, feeling a little bit of anticipatory glee bubble up inside her. At first she had been frustrated at the idea of ranking up once again, but now that she considered how incredibly powerful they could be and how fast they could reach their prior heights – and how well she’d be able to fight – she was looking forward to it.

“New game plus,” Cato rumbled.

“What?” Raine blinked at the looming figure above them.

“Nothing,” Cato said, shaking a huge head. “I do have one request, which I didn’t want to make before but if you’re going to be sticking with me it’s important. Leese, when we were fighting back on Earth we saw the people with divine Skills were kind of linked to the System-gods, and they aren’t going to be on our side. I don’t know at what point the Skills move from just invoking energy to actually contacting or channeling the System Gods, but it might be best to aim for a different affinity theme.”

“I had noticed that certain things seemed clearer after I woke up,” Leese said, after a moment. Raine could see the half-dozen emotions in that one small pause. “It’s so strange now thinking about how strongly I felt about some things, and not for any real reason. I’ll be glad to not have that again, but what about healing? Do we have regeneration?”

“You’ll heal quick,” Cato confirmed. “Not as fast as a System heal could manage, but quick. Plus you’re a lot tougher to begin with, and that’s pretty good armor.”

“Ice,” Leese said, looking at Raine. “Hybrids.”

“Yes,” Raine agreed, and that was all they needed to say. She’d gone a full caster route in part simply because she had idolized the Firewing and was following in the Platinum’s footsteps. Actually meeting Arene had been considerably more intimidating, and she wasn’t sure she quite wanted to be that way anymore. The both of them had been quite frail when they started ranking up, as well, from the lean times after their village had been destroyed.

Their new bodies were full of energy, powerful, tough, and Raine had felt perfectly sharp and alert since waking up. She wasn’t ready to abandon casting completely, the way someone like Karsa Longstrider had, and they were in the perfect situation to adopt a hybrid style. Normally only absolute geniuses or those with significant resources could walk such a path, as it required a far broader base of ability — something their new selves certainly had.

Fire and ice paired well, too, and Leese had dabbled enough in ice Skills before settling on her divine set that recapturing them wouldn’t be too much an issue. The main obstacle was that neither of them had spent much time with weapons, but spear and buckler were solid enough even with scant training. Leese picked up on her thought and the two of them circled around the Cato-beast occupying the bulk of the street to the equipment shop across from the tavern.

She slipped inside the empty shop and touched the small obelisk to see what was for sale, then gawked at the prices. Even the basic, starting level equipment was ridiculously expensive, over five times what it should have been. Technically she could afford it, but it would have been an absolute waste of money.

“Just wait for early equipment?” Leese half-asked, half-confirmed, and Raine nodded. The weapons provided by Cato and their starting Skills would be enough to deal with at least a few monsters, enough that they could start getting proper System rewards.

“I can airdrop some equipment for you once you decide on what you need, and where we’re going,” Cato rumbled, clearly having eavesdropped through the door.

“Just poleaxes, shortspears, and bucklers for now,” Leese said, shamelessly taking advantage of the offer. “As for the dungeon — [Rolech Depths Dungeon] do you think?” Raine opened her map again to check the dungeon in question. It was rated for mid Silver, rising to peak Silver for the final floor, which seemed a good start. Once they had weapons and a full set of Skills, they could try something harder.

“It’s a bit far,” Raine agreed. “But we can make it there by this afternoon.”

“Got it,” Cato said. “But it won’t take nearly that long.” The long tendrils on the back of the beast form, usually lying flat against the scales, flipped out before they could properly react, scooping them up with surprising gentleness and depositing them on the enormous back.

Leese laughed, and Raine couldn’t help her own smile after she got over her startlement. It was absolutely absurd to be riding something that was a someone and also capable of flattening buildings. Mounted Skills were relatively infrequent, simply because finding an appropriate mount and then ranking it up was troublesome, but not completely unknown. Raine considered how potent such a Skill might be if they had something like a Cato-beast available — but then, Cato didn’t seem to be able to rank up, or use Skills. Tempting as it was, going in that direction would be a poor idea.

“Hold on,” Cato said, and Raine gripped onto the tendril that had rearranged itself as a back- and arm-rest. Then Cato sprinted out of [Sokhal Town], clearing the wall in a single leap, and headed out into the wilderness.

***

“I want a duel.”

Cato glanced at the Sydean with the warframe she had approached, the one he had used as an impromptu display. It was Karsa, the deep indigo one with the oversized war hammer and a bodybuilder’s frame, who stood head and shoulders above all the other Sydeans he’d seen so far. He’d noticed she had stared rather fixedly at his warframes, but hadn’t been certain why.

Even as large as she was, a forty-ton war machine towered over her. She barely topped one of his legs, but that size disparity didn’t mean much. The System concentrated power into individuals, rather than into mechanisms, so it wouldn’t surprise him if she could actually lift the warframe with brute strength.

His first impulse was to turn her down, if for no other reason than he didn’t find fighting all that fun. But he had two other warframes available, the fourth one being tasked with carrying his collaborators to a nearby dungeon, so even if she trashed one he could still carry on negotiations. In the interests of diplomacy, it was probably better to agree to it.

“I suppose I can do that,” Cato said, aware of the eyes and ears of the other high-rankers paying attention. “If there’s some sort of System function for it, though, that’s not going to work with me.”

“No,” said Karsa, who continued to stare at him with an unnerving intensity. “A simple spar will satisfy me just fine.”

“Right, well, I suppose we should do it where it won’t scare the civilians.” Cato glanced down through the satellite feeds and the eyes of the still-floating pod a thousand feet up. There was no place outside the city walls that were better than any other, so he just chose a line directly away from where the hundred-ish inhabitants of the town were holed up. He repeated the feat of jumping over the wall, not trusting that the stone would actually bear up under the mass of his warframe, and padded out into the grass.

Karsa blinked into existence right next to him, sending the normally suicidally-aggressive wildlife scattering. He personally couldn’t sense anything special from her, but there was probably some kind of essence aura that warned the low-rank creatures away from someone far more powerful than they. Or maybe Karsa was just terrifying; he had to admit that the intense stare was a little disconcerting.

“How did you want to—” he began, and was cut off as Karsa launched herself at him, war-hammer at the ready. Even if he knew this was meant to be a duel, his threat matrix still framejacked him to full speed and gave him several subjective seconds to study her while he twisted out of the way. In general, leaving the ground was a poor idea in a fight because of the lack of leverage, though System folks could solve that problem with magic nonsense more often than not.

He decided to punish it anyway, back-tendrils lashing out to wrap around her limbs and slam her into the ground. They clamped with hydraulic strength around the nearest ankle and arm, only for her to latch on with blurring speed and pull hard enough to actually move the warframe. The forces involved were far beyond what mass and speed should allow, but that was just the perils of dealing with System-boosted people.

Six sets of paws dug into the earth to brace him as the tendrils in question sent warnings about being overstressed and Karsa whipped around to alter trajectory midair, if anything moving faster than before. He lurched sideways with five limbs, swiping at her with his forepaw for the simple reason that he did not want to contest her strength head-on. He knew he’d lose that one.

As it was, one of his claws shattered against her armor when he hit her, despite the fact that the force of the blow couldn’t have done that damage. The monomolecular edges barely cut into her scales, scoring faint lines in the indigo, but the force was still enough to deflect her past him. He whipped his tail around at her as she landed, the thick armor scales cracking as Karsa countered with the warhammer, handling it like a toy rather than several hundred pounds of metal.

Before she could take another swing he simply slammed a rear paw down on top of her, shifting his weight to put almost all forty tons into the blow. It actually connected, driving her halfway into the ground, but she simply laughed and flexed her arms. The entire warframe was sent flying into the air, and he flipped himself around as she vanished from her place in the ground and appeared above his head.

As she brought the warhammer around he lashed out with his tendrils once again, sub-brain calculating vectors. The volunteers of earth had only a half-baked version of martial arts for the warframes, just based on kinematic models and grappling, but it was one he could use to make sure he was never opposing Karsa’s strength. That way lay madness. Instead he used the tendrils to misdirect force, both the initial swing and the follow-up reverse blow, while he tried to figure out what would actually win the duel. They hadn’t exactly set terms.

He really didn’t want to hit her with the light-gas gun, even if he could get the distance for it. A regular projectile would probably just put a hole in her, which wasn’t likely to actually do much, and neither the jamming nor doom payload were appropriate for a friendly spar. Yet he was fairly certain that he couldn’t actually force a surrender without them. She’d already demonstrated that she could just heft the entire mass of the warframe.

A sudden tug from Karsa literally tore off one of his tendrils as they both fell toward the ground, but brought her within reach of a middle paw. He clamped it around her, even if he didn’t have much hope in grappling, muscles squeezing hard enough to bend steel plate like foil, and drove her into the ground as they landed. For a moment there was silence, but then he heard laughter from underneath the paw and Karsa pried it open, crawling out and shoving aside dirt like it was nothing.

“Are we done?” He asked, lowering the framejack once it became clear she wasn’t in a combat stance anymore. It could have been a deception, but considering everything else he didn’t think that was likely.

“Do you know how often I run into anyone bigger and stronger than me?” She easily swung the massive warhammer over her shoulder and then took a step to wrap an arm around his left middle leg, the one that he’d used to slam her into the dirt, sleepy eyes slanted happily. “I definitely want to keep you.”

“Uh, lady,” Cato said, thrown by the sudden change in her personality. He had a sinking feeling he knew exactly what she meant, but this was certainly something that had never appeared in any wargaming simulation. “You do realize this is just one giant war machine, right?”

“That just makes it more exciting!” Karsa said, trailing fingers over the warframe’s scales. Cato sighed. He knew that some people were just freaks, and knew of uploads who had immersed themselves in virtual scenarios of such degeneracy that they would make the Marquis de Sade blush, but nothing had prepared him to deal with someone being infatuated with a warframe.

Extricating himself was going to be a lot harder than the duel.

***

Arene watched Karsa go off with one of the Cato-beasts beyond the walls of the town, and she had to admit she was a little bit concerned. There were things Cato wasn’t showing them about the beasts he was using, and that wasn’t counting what he had hidden up beyond the sky. She still didn’t entirely understand what the Talis sisters had told her about the glimpses of his real power and self, and that bothered her.

If he were merely Bismuth or Azoth or even Alum rank, that would be one thing. She could understand that, even if that was power that nobody on Sydea could contend with. Cato’s abilities were too far different from the normal approach of Skills and ranks — as was his attitude.

“I want to know,” she said abruptly, dropping down onto the street and giving voice to something that had been bothering her for months. “Why you didn’t kill me when you had the chance. If you had, then—” She cut herself off, not wanting to follow that chain of thought, but still burning with a desire for an answer.

“Because you aren’t my enemy,” the nearest Cato-beast replied. The last one was discussing things with Onswa, apparently having no issue with the multi-tasking. Arene had seen people with duplication Skills that could do the same, but there seemed some strange and subtle difference she couldn’t quite put a hand on. Other than the lack of essence, of course.

“But you killed the two Tornok Clan Platinums,” she pointed out.

“Tornok Clan — oh, the ratinums?” Cato asked, slurring the word oddly. “Well, yes, but they were murdering fucks.” Arene blinked at the casual crudeness of the words. “You, on the other hand, double-checked on a party to make sure they were fine before coming after me. There’s a big difference.”

“I suppose so,” Arene said slowly, regarding the enormous creature in front of her. There were only two eyes on the massive head, though she knew for a fact it had more perceptions than that, and both of them blinked at her. “And the Gosruk Guardians?”

“Unfortunately, they were attacking me and I didn’t have the opportunity to settle it without violence.” Cato actually sounded regretful. “I was far more limited then, and had less ability to hide or deflect. An issue I have since rectified.”

“So, what, now you’re immortal?” Arene asked dryly, leaning against the wall of the System Nexus.

“It’s complicated,” Cato said conversationally. “I said that death is a little bit fuzzy where I come from, and that only gets more true with time. Truly claiming immortality seems like the province of gods, though.”

“And you’re not a god?” Arene challenged. “I would think it would take a god to bring down the System.” For some reason that made Cato throw back his head and laugh before he grinned at her with teeth the size of her hand.

“As much as I have been told to answer yes when someone asks if I am a god, I’m afraid I am a very ordinary person, where I come from,” Cato explained, gesturing to himself with one forepaw. “Everything I know and everything I can do is because billions of people labored for thousands of years to create the infrastructure for it.”

“So can we do that without the System?” She wasn’t sure she believed Cato at all, if for no other reason than she couldn’t see how the world would survive if everyone was nigh unto a god.

“Certainly,” Cato said easily. “But not right away. You can imagine the problems if newborns came out Platinum rank, let alone temperamental children with the ability to flatten cities. It’s a poison pill to promise that to you.”

“Though it’ll be your decision on when we get it,” Arene said, starting to understand at least a little.

“Oh, hell no,” Cato denied, which broke her concentration with shock. “That’d be Mister Onswa over there, and maybe you other high rankers. None of you strike me as dumb enough to hand a child a hiltless blade.”

“Forgive me,” Arene said, straightening up. “I just find it difficult to believe you would hand us your power. Nor could we really trust that you had truly given it over, could we? It’s yours, and what you give us can be taken away.”

“What the System gives you can be taken away just as simply,” Cato responded, the giant beast head shaking from side to side. “Knowledge is less fickle, if more difficult to leverage.”

“You’re saying all this comes from just knowing things?” Arene waved at the beast in front of her, though she really wanted to wave at the System quest and the impossible proliferation it demonstrated. Cato was quiet for a moment, then bowed his head slightly, the broad expanse of scales on his head lighting up with the System-like interface. It showed an image of one of the underwater Conflict Zones, though upon closer consideration it was moving, as if she were seeing it through a small window.

“This city was built by your ancestors,” he said, quiet and sad. “They moved thousands of tons of rock, carved it just so, set one piece atop another in such a way that it would stand for centuries. They did this with no more strength than the lowest ranked of the System, creating something far larger than any of the cities you have been granted to live in. Now, the System has taken it from you and turned it into a home for monsters.”

Arene stared at the image, the curving domes and the fluted columns, the faded carvings that were somehow picked out in a clarity approaching that of Gold tier senses. The ruins style of Conflict Zone were generally low-rank, even the underwater ones, and so she’d given them very little thought for a very long time. Cato’s description made her look at them with new eyes, some vague longing bubbling up as she considered the sprawl of buildings.

“I’ve been able to locate nearly a hundred cities of various sizes that were definitely yours. There are several dozen that are clearly not, and were brought here or grown here by the System,” Cato continued, the scale-display flicking between various Conflict Zones, most of which she recognized. “Then there’s some stuff I’m not sure of. It’s hard to tell with how old it all is.”

“How can you be sure about any of that?” Arene couldn’t help but ask, not quite disbelieving but still feeling completely blindsided by such a revelation. It was the sort of assertion that was so ridiculous it was hard to believe Cato was lying. He didn’t need to convince them, and if he was going to come up with some kind of story it really ought to be more believable.

“When the System came to Earth, it was the cities that became the most intense zones,” Cato said, the scales shifting to show something else. Towers of metal and glass; vast spirals of greenery and stone of a scale that Arene found difficult to understand. In the blue skies a thin silver band stretched from one horizon to the other, seemingly tethered to several of the impossible buildings. “We’ve seen what happens when the System takes over, what things degrade and what things stay.” His words were clinical, his voice far less so. Before the display vanished it shifted to an endless expanse of collapsed ruins, rendered in a vibrancy that made it feel that Cato had seen it personally.

“So, it is relatively easy to spot things that were destroyed by the System,” Cato continued, voice lightening again. “The ruins it grows on its own have a different character. Different techniques, you see.”

“Hmm,” Arene hummed, fascinated despite herself. She was far more used to direct action than contemplation, even with all her duties as a local administrator, but she had to admit there was something compelling about the abilities implied by both what her own ancestors had wrought, and what Cato’s people had done. She had to remind herself that it was still possible Cato was deceiving them, but found she didn’t really believe it.

It wasn’t what Cato was showing her, exactly. It was that he was not doing so with the air of smug superiority she would expect from a high-ranker, no matter where their power sprang from. Instead of trying to demonstrate the power he could wield, he simply seemed angry about what had been lost.

“…could you talk to your friend?” Cato asked abruptly, peering off in the direction that Karsa had gone. “She is proving to be quite difficult.” Arene laughed, startled by the sudden change in topics but absolutely agreeing with the sentiment.

“Oh no, you’re on your own with that, not-a-god Cato. I’ve never been able to convince Karsa of anything.” For a moment she was amused, but then the reality of why they were all gathered returned and she sagged back against the wall. She had been trying not to think about how she was responsible for her grand-niece’s death, but it was still there in the back of her mind. There were so few children, especially in her family, that she had met every single one of them. She hadn’t been exactly thrilled with her grand-niece’s choice of husband, but if the girl was happy that was all that mattered.

The Cato-beast’s paw moved and she instinctively blurred to one side, leaving a bemused monster with a half-raised foreleg. He blinked at her again and then put the paw back on the ground with a shake of his head. Arene would have felt foolish, but she had been in too many life-or-death situations to dismiss such habits.

“I know how it is,” Cato said quietly, as if he could read her mind. Which perhaps he could, but it was more likely he was just reading her expression. “When the System came to Earth, I had friends and family die — but some were taken in by the System. I saw them twisted, seduced by the rewards of killing and death. I was forced to confront them myself, because I had to try and bring them back.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Arene pointed out dryly. Cato shrugged with two sets of limbs, looking pensive.

“A lot of people have already died thanks to the System, and more are going to as I free worlds from its grasp,” he said, eyes serious as he met her gaze. “This isn’t something I am doing out of whimsy, and I do not take the consequences of my actions lightly. I know I cannot be perfect, but I cannot simply dismiss the wrongful deaths along the way. So I sympathize, and I will do what I can. But I will not stop.”

She noticed he didn’t apologize again, but in a way what he said was better. One of the reasons that she had abandoned the climb past Platinum herself was how many good people were dying around her. Many high-rankers shrugged off such losses, indifferent to peers and lower ranks who were claimed by the crushing demands of rising up. Someone who was aware of the cost was at least respectable.

“Since we’re speaking of death, tell me — how is it that you can bring people back to life? If it’s not a Skill,” Arene said, vaguely aware that there were some extremely high rank divine resurrection Skills, but she’d never been clear on the details.

“That’s a complicated subject,” Cato said after a moment. “But I suppose we have time.”

***

Muar glared out the window of the Nexus building. He had been wrong to trust that the Platinums would properly take care of the threat Cato posed, a worse hurt than dying for the first time. Perhaps he had simply been expecting too much — everyone knew that the Platinums on Sydea hadn’t truly advanced in ages. They didn’t have the sort of drive a true warrior should.

Even without being able to hear much from his eavesdropping, it was clear simply by evidence of action – or the lack of it – that they’d decided to cooperate with Cato for the time being. There had been much talking, and no fighting, even though Muar was dead certain that all five Platinums together could have easily eradicated Cato’s war-beasts. In fact, they probably could have removed all traces of Cato if they had truly worked hard at it, but they hadn’t. They had succumbed to temptation and could no longer be trusted.

He wasn’t going to be stupid enough to say anything about it. They were Platinums, and even if they weren’t doing their jobs he was just a Copper. They could crush him as easily as breathing, and if they’d thrown their lot in with Cato they probably would. The question was what he was going to do about it.

Muar glanced over at his companion inside the Nexus, the young Dyen. He had been arrogant and entitled from the beginning, but that could be forgiven because Muar was no longer a Gold, and Dyen was so very clearly angry. And for good reason. Muar might have lost a companion-in-arms, but Dyen had lost his wife. The only problem was the boy barely seemed to know who to be angry at.

Suddenly Dyen shoved the door open, stepping out into the conversation between the Platinums and the Cato-beasts. There were only two of them left, the others having presumably gone off on whatever dire business Cato had planned. He’d seen one depart with Leese and Raine, which didn’t surprise Muar much. The pair had always held themselves apart even within their adventuring group, so the fact that they’d broken off without even being upset about Cormok was what he might have expected.

That Cato could seduce a priestess away from the System was worrying, but he had struck during a vulnerable moment, when they were all away from the System. It seemed that Leese’s faith had not been all that firm, and perhaps that’s why the sisters had never proceeded past Gold despite being older than him. There was no telling what she was now, if she was still even herself. She looked different, she acted differently, and that was all the confirmation Muar needed to decide that they’d been replaced or altered somehow.

Muar followed Dyen outside, willing to give the appearance of being interested at least. Dyen clearly didn’t have the proper attitude toward higher ranks, since he strode right up to where Onswa was discussing something with the Cato-beast and interrupted their conversation. Clearly his connection to Arene had gone straight to his head.

“Now that this power is available, I would be a fool not to seize it.” Dyen looked square at the Cato-beast, or at least as square as was possible. The thing was so large that everyone had to look upward to meet its eyes. “I would like the advantages you gave to the other two. It’s the only way I will be able to punish Tornok Clan.”

The Cato-beast regarded Dyen, some kind of malign glint in its eyes. Muar had to force himself to stay silent, and not protest Dyen’s absolutely suicidal desire to align with heretical interests. Muar knew his unaltered body was fine, as the System had not given him any warnings or protests, and if he felt healthier than he ever had it did make sense. Cato wanted to put himself in their good graces, after all, and ensuring they were properly healed was a minor matter.

“It might be possible,” the Cato-beast said after a moment. “I’m not going to kill you again, transport you back into space, and then bring you back down. It would work, but you missed your chance. If it works down here on the planet — maybe.” The Cato-beast glanced at Muar as Dyen grumbled, but did not ask. Which was fortunate, as it meant Muar didn’t have to worry about rejecting him in a way that did not raise any suspicion. Instead, it was Onswa who spoke to Muar.

“And what about you?” The Platinum asked, and Muar felt the full weight of that regard. “Are you jumping in on this too?”

“I think this is all beyond me,” Muar said humbly. “I would much rather return to Kalhan City, and take the time to relearn my Skills.”

“Probably smarter than the rest of us,” Onswa said with a sigh, and made a gesture with one hand. A portal opened in the street, and through it Muar could see the primary System Nexus building, stretching high into the air.

“Thank you, Platinum Onswa,” Muar said politely, and stepped through. Even when it shut behind him, he didn’t relax. There was no telling what Cato was up to and how far his influence was spread, and anything with so blasphemous and terrible a goal as undermining reality itself, of destroying the System, wouldn’t balk at removing just one Copper. In fact, he suspected the two deaths were due to exactly that, though why he had been spared he had no idea. Perhaps because he simply hadn’t been devout enough before awakening.

What Muar needed to do was to leave Sydea and find someone who would listen to him. He had to rank up too, of course, but he already knew how to approach the process. The B-rank Skill he had selected was a divine one, because he had determined that he was no longer merely a warrior, no longer fighting only for himself.

Muar was going to fight for the System.

Chapter 13 — New Game Plus

Raine looked upward as what Cato termed a care package appeared in the sky. It was just a dot at first, a glint in the broad expanse of blue, and then suddenly it resolved into a metal cylinder falling straight down. She waited for it to sprout wings or something to slow its fall, but that didn’t happen. Instead it simply plummeted straight to the ground only a hundred feet away.

She flinched, but it wasn’t as loud as she expected. Instead of simply shattering against the ground or embedding itself in the earth, the bottom compacted with a strange hissing, crackling noise. Mist plumed outward from the metal as frost formed on its surface, though she had no idea why it was so deathly cold. A moment after it landed, the metal side tore apart and a quarter-sized Cato-beast emerged, carrying several packs of what were likely supplies, along with their weapons.

“Here you go,” the small version said cheerfully, sounding nearly identical to the big one that was standing behind them, though with not so deep a voice. “I made extra of the equipment just in case, so there’s ten spears and bucklers and four poleaxes for you. There’s extra armor in the bags, too.”

“Thank you,” Leese said, picking up one of the bundles of weapons with ease and tossing it to Raine. She caught it, feeling the heft and yet finding it no real trouble despite still being at Copper. So far they hadn’t had any real chance to test the limits of their new strength, and the [Roloch Depths Dungeon] would be a good start.

“Are you – one of you – coming with us?” Leese asked, as she withdrew one of the spears and performed a few quick lunges. Neither of them had practiced with weapons in ages, but for some reason Raine found her memories of it were fresh and clear. Strapping on the buckler and gripping the poleaxe was just like the very early training she’d gotten from another Copper, so many years ago.

“I’d better not just yet,” the small Cato told them. “That will make this dungeon pop up on the quest list and I don’t want some high ranker coming by and murdering you because you’re in the same general region as I am.”

“If there’s trouble I’ll send the small version down,” the big Cato rumbled. “Just be careful, since without a me along I can’t bring you back again.”

“We’ve done enough dungeons without that kind of backup,” Raine said dryly, and the big Cato ducked his head.

“Yes, of course,” he said, settling down just outside the surface portion of [Roloch Depths Dungeon]. It was merely a stairwell surrounded by cracked flagstones and broken pillars, but to her recollection it had a full twelve floors. The two of them shrugged on the packs and secured their weapons, even if they couldn’t take everything Cato had provided. They’d need to rank up and get better System storage to be able to stash anything beyond tokens.

The two of them exchanged glances and started down the stairwell. Raine went first, with shortspear and buckler, and Leese followed behind with a poleaxe. The Dungeon warned them that they were under rank, and normally that would have made her turn right around. Neither she nor Leese had gotten to Gold by taking foolish chances. After seeing what Cato could do, and feeling the strength and celerity of her own body, she was far more confident.

[Welcome to Roloch Depths Dungeon! Suggested Rank: Silver to High Silver. Warning: You are under the suggested Rank.]

“A lot different from the last time we were here,” Leese murmured.

“When was that?” Raine asked. She remembered the dungeon, vaguely, but even with her newfound clarity of mind the stone stairwell didn’t spark any useful memories.

“We came with Hartel’s Smashers,” Leese supplied. “Hartel fell down the spiral staircase on the fifth floor and broke his legs, and we had to drag him back to the safe zone.”

“Oh, right!” That finally brought things into focus, and she could recall the entire dungeon. Except for the final floor, which they hadn’t finished. It had taken them several days of slow and careful progress, especially as they got lower. Even with five people, dealing with mid- and upper-Silver enemies while fresh to the rank had been difficult.

The first monster came just before they reached the base of the staircase, a foretaste of what the dungeon had to offer. A squat, barrel-headed creature, dark green and clad in leather, popped out of a hole in the staircase, and charged at the pair of them with a scream. Raine reflexively cast her [Flame Bolt] at it, but to not avail. The rank difference was too much, so she was forced to switch to her spear.

A simple Copper weapon couldn’t do too much to a Silver, but what Cato had provided was certainly not simple. Raine jabbed her spearhead forward to fend it off, marveling at how easily and precisely she could control the weapon, but rather than a simple deflection the tip punched through the leather and sank into the thick hide with barely any resistance. Leese’s poleaxe swung past a moment later and cut off its anguished squealing.

“That was surprisingly easy,” Leese murmured, confirming Raine’s impression. The rewards scrolled past on her interface a moment later, which were just some Silver-rank tokens. That was fine, but what they were really hoping for were Skill tokens. Considering that the two of them were delving far above their rank, additional Skill tokens should drop relatively frequently, but they’d probably be two or three floors down before they even had a full set of F-tier Skills, let alone anything better.

The B-tier skills they’d selected would have been fantastic to carry them through — except Raine had chosen a Skill that she’d probably be replacing with a more appropriate build. Leese had gone with a perception Skill which worked with any build, but Raine wasn’t certain she’d be able to parley her B-tier ranged option into a proper spellsword Skill. It all depended on Skill tokens dropping and what options the System saw fit to give them, but she could very clearly rely just on martial might for the moment.

The first floor proper opened out at the end of the staircase, a long arched hallway with illumination gems set in the walls, faintly flickering to keep the area in a touch of shadow. Patrolling pairs of monsters walked the halls, sticking close to the walls, their bizarrely cylindrical heads and squat bodies nearly blending in with the stone. From where the two of them stood at the base of the stairs, the doors that led into side rooms weren’t obvious, but she remembered they were there. She also remembered how the first time through they’d been surprised by the inhabitants of one of those rooms joining the fight after taking too long cutting down a patrol.

By silent accord, she and Leese crept along the wall, flattening themselves in the shadow of one of the arches that gave just the smallest bit of cover. A minute later, one of the patrols passed by and the two of them leapt out in ambush. Once again Raine’s spear essentially ignored the armor, simply sinking into the monster’s body exactly where she wished, piercing its heart while Leese’s poleaxe completely cut the other one in two. That was the sort of effect that usually didn’t occur until Gold-rank weaponry.

“Remind me to thank Cato for these,” Raine murmured, and Leese hummed agreement. They didn’t have any magical effects, and they’d be replaced by late Gold, but they were better than anything that could normally be wielded by Copper or Silver.

She skimmed through the rewards, and moved on. They took down two other patrols by ambush, clearing the hallway, then Leese crept up to the door, using her perception Skill to peer inside before signing what she saw. There were six of the monsters inside, sitting around a light crystal, so Leese swapped her poleaxe for spear and buckler. The longer, larger weapons would be more useful in lower floors, where larger monsters roamed, but against numerous enemies the buckler and a more responsive weapon was a safer bet.

Tempting as it was to rush in, the doorway was narrow and defensible, so Raine and Leese merely kicked the doors open to get the attention of the monsters. Several throwing knives flickered toward them from the monsters, and Raine used [Fire Bolt] to pick them out of the air — a feat that should have been impossible at Copper. It was only the superlative focus and dexterity that allowed her to target them all.

Then they were in melee range. She deflected clubs and hatchets with the buckler while plying her spear, working in perfect harmony with Leese as the monsters crowded in around the doorway. The enemies went down in a matter of moments, and the rewards scrolled past on her System interface. Already, there was a D-tier Skill token, which was substantially better than the F-tier that Coppers normally started with.

“Skill token,” Leese said. “F-tier.”

“D-tier here,” Raine told her. “It might be worth holding off to see if higher ranks drop for you.” Then, not following her own advice, she pulled the Skill Token from her wallet and invoked it. She sorted through the available options to find a weapon Skill that applied to spears and polearms, eventually finding one she hoped would eventually hybridize with her B-tier [Fire bolt] and making the selection.

The most important thing was that at Silver it would let her store a weapon, or several if she could upgrade its tier, which would make it far less awkward to haul around a poleaxe. The clumsiness of dealing with spear weapons was, in Raine’s opinion, why things like maces and swords were so popular despite being far more suited to fighting people than monsters.

After slotting her new Skill, Raine took a moment to go through some quick forms with her poleaxe; thrust and retreat, strike and reverse-strike, and ripping through the air with the empowered blow the Skill granted her. While she did that, Leese poked through the room to see if there were any hidden treasures, prodding with her spear haft to make sure they didn’t set off any traps.

“I think this is something,” Leese said, holding up a pair of leather straps. “I’ll spend mine on [Appraise]. Otherwise we’ll miss half of what’s in the dungeon.” Raine grunted agreement, switching back to her short spear and securing the poleaxe again before they continued onward. Each of the rooms was essentially identical, save for the last which had a caster.

Good as Cato’s equipment was, it certainly didn’t protect from shadowy bolts flashing through the air. Yet she was still able to pivot out of the way, hefting her spear and hurling it hard enough to pin the barrel-headed monster against a chest behind it. Leese moved forward to engage the remaining creatures while Raine grabbed another spear from where she had it secured, the two of them making quick work of the survivors.

Leese pulled a cloth headband from the chest, glanced at it, then shook her head and stuffed it in her pack. So far they hadn’t run into anything useful, but that was to be expected considering the armor and weapons they already had were quite good. Enough to take on the dungeon’s early levels, at least.

They switched to their poleaxes for the floor guardian, who was simply a triple-sized version of one of the monsters with metal armor. This was where their choice of weapon really shone, as with the reach and the blunt faces of the poleaxes, the pair of them had no trouble crushing joints and crippling its ability to move. From there, dodging the clumsy swings of its oversized mace was easy enough and Raine finished it off by opening its throat with the blade of her poleaxe.

Of all things, what it left behind when the dungeon reclaimed it was a massive club, which Raine shoved to the side. It wasn’t even worth carrying it around to sell for tokens, not when they were already loaded down with large weapons. Instead they descended to the next floor, which was larger and had versions of the monsters riding on ugly, squat mounts.

“So, are we going to align ourselves with Cato?” Raine asked, once they had emerged from the stairwell and were out of range of Cato’s hearing for the first time. Even when he was trying to be polite, she was well aware that he could hear their discussions and so they couldn’t really be frank.

“I don’t really care about the System,” Leese said bluntly. “With my Skills gone I realized it was changing how I thought. I just had this idea that I could just trust in the system and it would all work out. Now, I just wonder what it’s going to do to us next.” Raine nodded. She had noticed Leese was less sanguine, more aggressive, and more outspoken since they’d woken up, but there had been so much going on she didn’t know exactly what to think of it.

“So you think we can trust him?” Raine sighed, leaning on her spear. “I would like to, but someone that powerful has to have any number of secret motivations.”

“It’s more that we can trust his goal, I think,” Leese said after some consideration. “Maybe he wants to destroy the System for the reasons he told us, maybe he wants to usurp it for himself, but either way I do think he wants to do so. And for us? If he does get rid of it, fine, we’ve already gotten his favor. If not, we’ll be young and powerful.” Leese shook her head. “I don’t think we can lose.”

“Unless we die again,” Raine pointed out dryly.

“Cato can die and come back,” Leese said thoughtfully. “Maybe we should ask about that. After the dungeon.”

“We should,” Raine agreed, gripping her poleaxe. “After the dungeon.”

***

Muar stopped at the entrance to the tall building, feeling entirely out of place on the neighboring world of Uriva. Nearly all the others on the streets were insect-people, all of whom moved with unnatural sliding steps and whose bodies clicked as their gripping claws seated and unseated themselves against the chitin on their shoulders. Yet they had a full temple building, to honor their planet’s god and the divine System, so it was the best destination he could make for.

He pressed his palm against the temple door, invoking his divine Skill and feeling the door respond, swinging open before him. Only a few steps inside he could feel the change, something ineffable in the air. It was soothing, as if his time outside the System had been some terrible nightmare from which he had finally awoken.

The memory of that blank, System-less space still made him shudder. A silent void, with no status, no ability to understand or interact with the world around him. That place had been dead and lifeless, devoid of purpose, of meaning. He had no idea how anyone could live without the System to offer the truth, to let them know how they were progressing upon the path they had chosen.

That experience had woken him from his indifference to a bright-burning faith, realizing what the System had to offer. Direction, reward, motivation. Without it, there was nothing but meaningless and aimless nothing, and that was the horror Cato intended to unleash upon unsuspecting worlds. It was something that could not be allowed.

He pressed forward into the broad nave of the temple, to an arrangement of seats centered around a pristine System pylon. There were only a few people there in meditation, focusing on their Skills and the connections between them, and the intentions of the divine System. Sydea had no such building, so he had never experienced it himself, but he had only a single Copper Skill so it wasn’t likely he would draw much favor from the System anyway.

Not that Muar was there to commune with the System. He instead waited patiently for the presiding priest to notice him, a native Platinum in metallic white and blue armor. It was not for a mere Copper to demand the time of a higher rank, even and especially a representative of the System. Muar’s business was important, but not urgent.

Some minutes later, the Platinum stirred and beckoned for Muar to approach. He stepped forward and bowed to the insect-priest, taking a moment to compose his thoughts. Of all things, he didn’t want to be rejected because he sounded too unbelievable.

“I have some news as to the origin of the strange global quest on Sydea,” he told the priest. “It is a long story, which I believe might be better relayed in private. I don’t know how much might touch on things that are privileged.”

Muar couldn’t read the priest’s expression, but he thought he detected approval. Regardless, the Platinum inclined his head briefly and rose to his feet in one smooth movement, beckoning for Muar to follow him deeper into the temple. They passed several training rooms, and some doors to rooms Muar didn’t recognize, ending with what seemed to the priest’s personal office.

“Please, child, tell me what you have learned,” the priest said in his strange clicking voice, sitting down at a desk with a System interface crystal, and gesturing for Muar to be seated in the chair opposite. Muar did so, taking a moment to organize his thoughts, though he’d been rehearsing his story ever since he re-entered the system.

“Several months ago, when the portal to Ahrusk closed, my group was patrolling the area near the town we founded. We saw the defense quest, which was local to our area, and went to investigate…” Muar continued through what he had experienced, trying to keep as factual as possible. His death, his awakening in a room beyond the reach of the System. What Cato had shown them, what he had claimed. The trip back down, and the conversation between Cato and the Platinums. Everything he could remember, down to the word.

Through it all the priest listened, only asking questions to clarify a few points. He did occasionally look at something only visible to him, likely some method of verifying Muar’s truthfulness. Fortunately, Muar didn’t have to invent a single detail. When he was done, the priest sat in silence for a moment before speaking.

“A disturbing story. I can admit I don’t quite know what to think, but it is certainly not something to be taken lightly,” the priest admitted, chitin clicking softly as he spoke. “For the moment you may stay here in the temple, while I reach out to others to see what may be made of your claims.”

“Thank you, esteemed Platinum,” Maur said, glad to at least have a place to stay. With all his Gold-rank wealth gone and only a few Gold-rank tokens from the initial quest, that was certainly a blessing. The priest crooked a finger, and a number of System notifications scrolled across his own interface.

[You have been granted a room at Ekelem Temple]

[You have been awarded Gold Tokens]

[You have been awarded Essence]

Upon accepting the notifications, the tokens went into his wallet, and a heavy key fell into his hand. He bowed again and backed out of the room, turning and feeling the key in his hand tug against his grip. Muar followed the directions and entered, dropping into the Silver-rank bed that was there with a sigh.

While he was waiting, there wasn’t much he could do to rank himself up — at least, not in the usual manner. On Sydea, there was rarely any point in consuming Essence Tokens rather than spending them, considering how terrible the conversion rate was. But at a temple, where he could perhaps earn Skills directly and not as a drop, and with Gold tokens to feed a Copper rank, he might well have a chance.

Muar spent the next few days in meditation and contemplation, communing at the System crystal in the temple, feeling that he was very close to earning another Skill. It was a far different process than earning it through a drop, but feeling the flow of essence, the presence of the divine System, was something he sorely needed. His devotion was even rewarded.

[You have been granted the Divine Insight Skill]

“Copper Muar?” Only a moment after the System notified him of its blessing, the priest called upon him and Muar opened his eyes.

“Yes, esteemed Platinum?”

“I would ask that you remain here for the next few days,” the priest said with a click. “A Bismuth wishes to hear your story.”

***

Of all the innumerable tasks Cato had, he found that of fabrication the easiest, and negotiating with people the hardest. Stuff was just stuff, and even complicated machinery was straightforward to create. Even better, a machine always did what it was meant to, and consistently. People, on the other hand, were always unpredictable and never got easier to deal with, even after all Cato’s experience.

Accordingly, the moment Onswa mentioned needing to deal with the corporeal needs of his people, Cato started his factories producing the proper facilities to land resources groundside. Most of it would have to be biotech, but bio-printing walls and floors and furniture was easy enough, and barely needed any tweaking to fit within the System’s restrictions. That took merely a moment’s thought, but addressing the concerns of the high-rankers themselves took far longer.

“…and yet, it would be a lot easier for people to trust you if you actually registered as something to [Appraise],” said Marek, on the third or fourth go-round about the topic.

“I’m sure it would,” Cato said as patiently as he could. He’d spent some time explaining the basic reasons behind what he did and why he did it, so they wouldn’t be so disconcerted by the fact that he seemed so low rank, but it turned out that altering someone’s worldview was an involved process. “The thing is, I don’t want the System knowing about what I’m doing. We don’t want a System-god calling in one of the world-crusher types, or coming down himself.” Marek just scowled.

“I’d rather not invite any divine attention,” Onswa agreed. “Admitting what we’re doing is something the gods will frown upon.”

“I know,” Cato sighed. “The whole religious aspect is something I want to avoid as much as possible.” It was clear that, for example, Muar had religious issues with Cato’s presence. Cato was glad that Onswa had sent him off to a different city, since the discussion was hardly likely to become less blasphemous. “I can tell you that the System destroyed your original beliefs, replacing them with its own structure. Admittedly, it’s impossible to not believe in the System.”

“It’s unwise to disbelieve something we can see and experience.” The last of the high-rankers, Hirau, seemed to be the one that disliked Cato the most, though Cato had no idea why. At least he seemed to be the least influential of the high-rankers, and whatever his personal animus might be, nobody else seemed to worry about it. “Yet your contention is that the System is not, in fact, real.”

“No, it’s entirely real,” Cato disagreed, looking up at where Hirau was perched on top of one of the buildings. “It’s just synthetic, and it is not friendly to you. The reality I know allows true civilizations to flourish, ones where people can build and live in peace. This one just takes them over and destroys them, twists them into a parody, and restricts everything to one narrow avenue in life.” He had to bite down on any further comment, just so he didn’t appear to be a crazed zealot.

What Cato really wanted to do was lay out every single piece of information he’d gleaned from his scouts about their prior civilizations and cultures, to point toward what the System had done on Earth. The defenders of Earth had performed all kinds of analyses to show that, beyond the obvious, there were myriad insidious long-term effects from the System’s reality. But none of that would actually matter to the Sydeans, and facts and figures were never convincing anyway. It was always about emotion and personal experience.

“You say normal life, but you don’t seem normal,” Hirau accused him. “The plants don’t like you. There’s an unnatural feeling about you.”

“I would imagine so,” Cato agreed easily, which was the best way to disarm such accusations. “As I was telling Mister Marek, my body is designed to prevent the System from taking it over. I’m sure that unnatural feeling is due to the measures that block off the System’s influence. Or rather, a part of its influence.” If he could block the System’s alternate physics and not just its direct access, things would be much easier for him.

“We don’t need to have these discussions here,” Onswa interrupted. “I think we have enough of an agreement that we can let these people get back to their normal lives.” He waved in the direction of the area where everyone was taking shelter, and Cato nodded agreement.

“I can take these bodies off elsewhere,” he agreed. “Give me a few hours and I can drop some less blatant ones wherever you want to meet. I can even look Sydean if you want, but I didn’t want to misrepresent myself.”

“That’s disturbing,” Marek muttered.

“Useful, though,” Onswa said. “Yes, it would be for the best if you were less obvious should you enter any of our cities. One of those beasts stalking the streets would cause panic even if I were to announce what was going on.” He waved a hand at the massive warframe. “Which I will not. There’s nothing to be gained from starting a panic. Any public discussion can come after we secure our refugees and push out the foreign Platinums and Bismuths.”

Cato hadn’t thought too much of Onswa when he first met the guy, but he had to admit the man was quick on his feet. There had been no extended arguing, no need to demonstrate Cato’s ability to apply force. No impossible-to-answer questioning about true motives or secret plans. So far as Cato could tell, he was genuinely trying to make sure his people came out ahead under trying circumstances.

A Sydean frame would have to be practically lobotomized, in the same way that his human frame had been, but it’d give him a chance to try the portal again without causing undue trouble. He did not like how his warframes had been vaporized, and effectively instantly, but there was no telling what had grabbed the attention of the local power.

The System knew he was there, but the jamming kept it from being able to localize him precisely. Except, of course, he’d already found that transitioning between zones gave people the opportunity to track him down, and the portal was likely a more discrete transition even than that. Yet he hadn’t thought that the quest alone would bring down such a response.

He needed to get past Sydea, and that meant he had to figure out how to traverse portals without getting annihilated by the connected world’s System-god. Considering how quick the response had been, he was a little confused why Sydea’s own System-god hadn’t yet taken an interest, but the portal to Earth might well mean things were slightly different on Sydea than more established worlds. More tolerant of oddities.

Or he could be whistling in the dark. Cato was operating in a vast gulf of ignorance and while he could make guesses, he wouldn’t know without testing. The System was a machine; malevolent and destructive, but it had rules and processes and those were things he could identify and exploit. If he was dealing with a person actively watching out for him, on the other hand, things would be a lot more difficult.

“We’ll reconvene in Kalhan,” Onswa said, glancing around at the other Platinums. “Taking on Bismuths is not something to be done haphazardly.”

“I’ll have a new body there in a few hours,” Cato assured them. It took longer than that to grow a new frame from scratch, but he already had several cooking just in case. He had figured that he’d need them at some point, so it was mostly a matter of delivering them to the proper point on the surface. At least the moon he had chosen was closer to Sydea than Luna was to Earth, as even with fusion engines it took quite some time to travel that distance.

“You might want to come up with a different way to phrase that,” Arene muttered, muzzle wrinkling in discomfort. “Even people with self-duplication Skills don’t say it that way.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Cato said dryly. It was unfortunately easy to take for granted how casually accepted postbiological life was back in the Solar System, even for those who had never indulged. It was only the System invaders who were lacking in that grounding, and Cato had never much worried about accommodating them.

Onswa opened another portal, waving the Platinums through, and Cato finally managed to tear his one warframe away from Karsa. He hoped that her fixation was just a passing fancy, and that she wasn’t going to become an issue. While it was in some ways amusing, having to deal with the affections of one of the major players could utterly wreck his diplomatic standing. Not to mention it was clear that Karsa didn’t really understand what he was.

The Sydeans weren’t stupid, not at all, but nobody local had the knowledge or context for truly comprehending Cato’s existence. The rules of technology were not the rules of the System, the way Cato’s power worked was entirely different, and it would take time for even the most willing soul to get used to the truth of Cato’s nature. As much as he would have liked to make friends, there would be something intrinsically deceptive about it so long as they had the wrong idea about who and what he was.

For example, Onswa was likely going to take the time to scrape together a list of targets to eject from Sydea, despite seeing that Cato had extensive worldwide surveillance. Any normal person would have more than a little trouble actually sorting through the sheer volume of video, but Cato had sufficient computing power for the task. He wasn’t reviewing it all personally, of course, but he had high-powered algorithms that sorted out information and kept the privacy of people whose lives he shouldn’t be prying into.

The offworlder high-ranks were emphatically not part of that set. Cato had never fully internalized the System’s power structure, but the translation for the rank in question was Bismuth, what was considered the first major rank by System folks. The intelligence Earth’s defense force been able to get out of the invaders was fairly indeterminate, but there was a definite sentiment that Bismuth rank was unusual, a point where the body changed, where aging stopped and immortality was within reach.

Despite that sentiment, orbital weaponry had demonstrated Bismuth ranks were still quite mortal, given adequate application of force. His light-gas gun might actually make a mark, but at best was likely to simply leave a hole, which was not nearly enough damage to actually slow down someone of that rank. The sad fact was that the limits of biotechnology just weren’t up to dealing with the concentration of force that someone at the top end of the System rankings could bring to bear.

One of the Bismuths was of the slinky rat type, like the ones he had encountered outside Azure Canyon. That one was squatting in an otherwise abandoned town in the same general region as the Earth portal, though not the exact town he had seen when he’d come through, for reasons not apparent to Cato. He was pretty sure it had finished the quest, and since it was by itself he had no idea what was keeping it there.

Two others were more understandable. One was a crab-person and the other was an insect-person, and they had with them a gaggle of lower ranks of the same species. Much like the rat Bismuth, they’d each taken over one of the System towns, which meant they’d displaced the natives. While the towns weren’t large, none of the other System settlements were built to absorb extra population. The overflow was obvious, with lizard people packed into some neighboring houses, or camping in the courtyards of some of the System-granted mansions assigned to the higher ranks. When the weather turned, those accommodations would go from poor to terrible.

The last of the Bismuths was simply wandering around on the same long strip of mountainous continent where Cato had launched himself into space. It looked like nothing so much as a bird centaur, totaling eight limbs with the wings, though much smaller than either a horse or a human. Despite the surveillance that Cato had in place, he had no idea what that particular one was doing either. It had killed one of his light scouts and so presumably had completed the quest, but had stuck around to explore the snow-covered mountains in a leisurely flight.

With luck, the Sydeans would be able to convince most of them to leave without Cato needing to bring his orbital weapons systems to bear. Though some might well deserve it, since he doubted they’d been very gentle in ejecting the owners of the houses they were squatting in. Though if Cato was forced to intervene, the houses wouldn’t exist at all.

It was a shame that he couldn’t be as precise with his use of force as System folks, but orbital bombardment was the only way he had of matching the esoteric reality that the System created. As the ranks went up, he’d have to escalate that force, and at some point the consequence would be devastating to anyone and anything nearby. The dungeons would be an even greater problem, as he couldn’t bombard them directly, but he had some tools to address that when it finally came to it. Which it wouldn’t on Sydea, fortunately.

He’d still have to destroy the dungeons, though, which would require some disposable frames. There was no point in risking anyone with but a single body and a single life in a dungeon collapse. Or any of the fighting, in a sense, since it was fundamentally Cato’s war, but it was also the Sydean’s planet. He didn’t want to turn them into some sort of kept species, either in his mind or theirs, but that wasn’t likely.

If there was one thing that anyone who lived under the System knew how to do, it was fight.

Chapter 14 — Opponents

Cato rolled his shoulders as his Sydean frame stepped out onto the grass. Even if they had a humanoid frame, Sydean joints had a different feel to them, not to mention the sensorium was subtly different. It wasn’t the abstract informative tracking of the warframe, or the conventional human senses. The olfactory bulb did its own processing of scent before it hit the hindbrain, and the altered visual cortex shifted his familiar color palette and depth perception toward something more appropriate for the wavelengths of the binary sun above.

Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem. He’d tried out enough frames to be able to adapt to whatever body he found himself in, but this one was additionally restricted. This version had to be compatible with the System, and he found himself just as annoyed as the human version had been, at least before Arene had destroyed him. Some of the gaps in knowledge were ameliorated by a microwave gland that kept him connected to the prime version of himself, but he was still lesser. He’d be glad when he was done with this and could reconcile back to his full self.

Another Sydean frame emerged from the pod, this one with a backpack. That was the version of himself that would try carrying a warframe seed through the portal, since the last attempt had met with such dismal failure. The presence of the System jamming would still trigger the quest, of course, but if he wasn’t instantly disintegrated that was something he could work around.

He waved to himself, both Sydean frames jogging forward to meet Arene where she stood at the edge of Kalhan City’s sphere of influence. He’d made no effort to disguise the pod’s descent, so Arene had to warn people away from messing with it. She’d been loud enough that he’d been able to hear it from nearly a thousand feet up.

“So…” Arene began, looking between the two frames. The diplomat frame was tall, bulky, and black-scaled, while the other was short, lithe, and blue. Cato did understand how seeing two people named similarly and acting identically, even if they looked different, could be confusing.

“You just need to worry about me,” diplo-Cato said. “I’ve got the four Bismuths under surveillance. Unless I’ve missed any, which is possible. Unlikely, though.”

“It’s hard to square that confidence with being a Copper,” Arene said, turning to escort them to the city. Her steps brimmed with excess energy, though whether it was anger or nervousness or some other emotion Cato couldn’t tell. “I think I actually prefer that other form. It’s more honest.”

“And yet still not my real form,” diplo-Cato remarked. The traveler version of himself slipped off on his own the moment they crossed the city threshold. Technically they were headed to the same location, but he didn’t want his other Sydean form to be too heavily associated with Arene and the other Platinums. Some people had already seen them together, but without digital media and with the chromatophores in the scales of his travel form letting him change color at will, he could stay anonymous long enough.

“Then what is your real form?” Arene asked, and Cato stretched his stride to match her casual, higher-rank speed.

“That’s still a matter of debate where I come from,” Cato replied with a laugh. “The human form you saw before is close to what I was born as, but as I am now, it’s difficult to say.”

“Not exactly comforting,” Arene grunted as she touched her hand to a closed door just inside the entrance of the Nexus building. It opened to reveal a staircase, and she ducked inside.

“I’d rather give a discomfiting truth than reassuring lie, at least to people I’m working with. Otherwise how can you trust me to help you?” Cato knew there would be a lot of people who couldn’t handle the truth of reality, or see the problems the System created, but that was a problem for another day. For the moment he hoped he could at least sway enough people by argument, as the more force he had to use the more trouble there would be in the future.

“We don’t really have a choice,” Arene said, casting a look back at him, and Cato inclined his head. He could have given her some aphorism about always having choices, but that would have been insulting to both of them.

The office at the top of the stairs was crowded, with five Platinums and Cato, and he could spot conspicuous empty spaces where decorations or trophies or maybe even furniture had been removed. Although Cato had a limited insight into the inner workings of people’s daily lives, he had a suspicion the missing items had been liquidated for funds, given the complaints about the System store prices. Liquidating high rank stuff could probably feed a lot of low rank people for a long time, but there were almost a million mouths and only five Platinums.

“Cato Diplomat?” Karsa blurted, obviously reading the name on his status. “Really? That’s your actual name?”

“It’s the name of this body,” Cato corrected with a Sydean smile, the corners of his muzzle curling up. “Since this one was custom-made for the purpose.” Even as he spoke, the traveler version of Cato stepped into the System Nexus and made his way toward the portal. While it was nominally guarded, there didn’t seem to be any obvious cost associated with its use — meaning there had to be some hidden reason it wasn’t seeing constant traffic.

That was a thought that diplo-Cato could follow up on later. Traveler Cato stepped through the portal, aware that it would bring up the quest once again and his presence would probably be too obvious — but he was not expecting the warframe seed in his backpack to dissolve without any obvious reason. The reason came a moment later, as a portal snapped open and Cato caught a glimpse of the same insect-person who had dusted his warframes only a few hours ago.

Then the portal closed again and the traveler Cato was gone, but neither diplo-Cato or orbital Cato were particularly worried about that. Without a connection to the orbital version, the lobotomized frame would self-destruct. Cato had no desire to be interrogated by any System authority, and would far rather terminate that version of himself. What did worry Cato was the attention of the System-god on the other side of the portal, and orbital Cato muttered curses to himself. It wasn’t going to be as simple as sending some kind of seed out into the System.

He didn’t want to raise that issue at the moment, though, since there were more immediate concerns so far as his potential allies were concerned. Specifically, the sheer amount of outworlders that had infested Sydea and especially the four Bismuth-rank types that were beyond the ability of the locals to deal with. Cato was well aware that his ability to move past Sydea was tied into that particular problem in several ways, so he wanted to be a bit delicate about it.

Not only did he need help from the locals if he was going to smuggle himself past whatever checkpoint had been implemented, but if he was too energetic, it might spook the authorities even more. The last thing he wanted was to prompt someone to shut the portal of their own accord, forever stranding him on a single planet. Somehow he was going to have to be more subtle.

“Anyway, I have four targets at the Bismuth rank,” Cato said, addressing the Platinums. “I’d like to check that against what you know. For all I know there’s one buried underground somewhere, or otherwise invisible to me.”

“I believe four is right,” Onswa said, touching a crystal sphere embedded in his desk. What looked to be holographic projections sprang into being, already listing out the names and locations of the Bismuths in question. “I don’t have any authority to do anything about it, but my Interface can still locate them.”

Cato regarded the projections with interest. The System’s Interface was similar to direct neural feeds and familiar enough, but the display wasn’t something he’d seen before. Proper holograms needed a medium, so just arbitrarily projecting them into open air remained the realm of fiction — or magic, apparently. But what was most interesting was the apparent predictive nature of the thing.

Something nobody knew, especially not those inside the System, was exactly how intelligent the System was. For the most part it seemed reactive, with no more brainpower than a moderately well-constructed algorithm. Something truly responsive, however, almost always meant intelligence.

“Those are the ones I have under surveillance,” Cato said, making a note to add the Interface itself to his observation network. Making plans in the presence of an enemy spy was not the best idea, so he would be careful in conveying what precisely he could do. “Though I won’t be prepared to deal with them for a few days yet.”

“Need to make more bodies?” Arene asked, tone more thoughtful than accusatory.

“Something like that,” Cato agreed. It would take time to finish his railguns and set them into the proper orbits, since he would unfortunately probably need them for some time. The infrastructure for particle beam weapons would take longer yet, and he didn’t want to wait the months or even years it’d take, depending on what elements could be found on the local moons. Even autofactories couldn’t magically assemble such complex devices without intermediate infrastructure, and besides he wanted to have spread beyond Sydea before revealing something of that power.

“We can probably run off the lower tiers,” Onswa said thoughtfully. “Though the question is how to deal with the portal. I’m still locked out so I can’t blockade it again, and if a Bismuth comes through all of us Platinums together won’t be able to do much. Besides which, nothing in this city is above Gold rank. We’d flatten everything, and we certainly don’t have enough spare tokens or city essence to pay for repairs. Not to mention all the people who could be hurt or killed.”

“I can support you in whatever you want to do, but I don’t have anything that would specifically block the portal,” Cato admitted. “Perhaps once it’s clear you can drive off or kill Bismuths, that will be sufficient?”

“That might just draw in other people who want a fight,” Marek objected. “Or Clans looking to take revenge for losing a Bismuth. I know the core Clans have plenty at that rank and even above, but they aren’t going to stand for losing one to a frontier world.”

“Is that why you didn’t just guard the portal before?” Cato asked, since he had been wondering. “Worries about powerful Clans?”

“After the Clans took over the [Ahrusk Portal Staging Area]? Yes.” Onswa said, his jaw set. “There had been no reason to regulate the portal before. Sydea had nothing to offer. Now that the staging area is gone, that quest of yours is drawing in all kinds of opportunists.”

“That’s very true, and while it’s too late for the current mess, in the future I will have to set my scouts to self-destruct instead of being killed,” Cato sighed. “That was a perverse incentive I hadn’t much considered.”

“Can you prevent Bismuths from coming through the portal?” Hirau challenged, and Cato shook his head.

“Any force I could bring to bear would flatten the city, too,” he said regretfully. “It might just be better to rebuild any vulnerable city so there’s nobody in the crossfire.”

“We don’t have the spare essence, either in tokens or in the city bank, to make more cities,” Onswa said grimly.

“Perhaps not, but I can make new cities,” Cato said thoughtfully. The so-called towns and cities that the System provided were pathetically small, and even if he hadn’t been able to get too much metal from the moons just yet, he could deliver silicon and carbon based buildings by the megaton.

“How can you do that?” Arene asked, skeptically.

“I assume you mean securing it, not building it?” Cato wasn’t entirely certain about that; if the System was in charge of buildings and had been for generations, there might not be any knowledge left of how to even create the simplest shelter.

“Both, and more,” Arene shrugged. “It just seems like a lot to overcome without a safe zone.”

“It’ll be fine, it’s been done before,” Cato assured them. He had some records of how refugee camps had been set up on Earth, using the System jamming to prevent monsters from appearing within the walls. Of course, what Cato considered barely adequate refugee housing was better than what the System had provided for the Sydeans. At the very least it wasn’t as brutalist and boring to look at. “And speaking of housing, I believe it would be best if you prepare your people for the first set dropping from the sky. I will have some creatures to assemble it, but it won’t take long.”

“Then let us focus on that for now,” Onswa said. “When you are ready to kill the Bismuths, then we will begin ejecting the lower ranks. We cannot afford to provoke anyone without proof that you have the force to back it up.”

“That’s fair enough,” Cato agreed. “Power matters.”

***

Grand Paladin Nikhil crossed through the portal to Ikent, making sure his charges stayed in proper formation behind him. So far from the core worlds, the Clan Tornok name was not as much protection as it should have been, at least not for the mere Copper children he had with him. The security of a Clan reached only as far as its force of arms, which was why he was along. As he was firmly in the middle of Bismuth, he’d be the threat needed to ward off any uppity locals while not being so much of a threat that any true powerhouse would have to notice.

Ultimately he didn’t want their presence to be too noticeable. Otherwise other clans might question exactly what Tornok Clan found so interesting that they were sending a number of very important new rankers out to the frontier. None of the young Coppers looked too terribly unlike any other Copper, of course, and they were doing a fair job of not scoffing at the decline in luxury as they proceeded toward the frontier.

“Esik!” He snapped, his voice alone sending the inattentive Copper back into the column following behind him. “This is not a Clan Tornok world,” he reminded them. “Nobody here will respect any strength but your own, and you have none yet.” The young man looked suitably chastised, and Nikhil returned his attention to their surroundings.

Ikent was still several stops away from their ultimate destination at Sydea, and while there was some hurry it wasn’t worth rushing too quickly. One never knew what quests or opportunities the System might present. Some preferred to stay within the powerful core of the System’s worlds, but Nikhil knew that the System rewarded taking risks — and that included going out into the frontier.

Nikhil stopped by the pylon of the System Nexus to update his map, and grunted as he saw a temple adjacent to the city center. He shoved aside the surprise that the capital city was upgraded enough to host a proper temple — that was the exact attitude he was chiding the Coppers over, and a good reminder to keep his own expectations firmly in check. There were plenty of places outside of the core worlds with all the civilized amenities and all the infrastructure necessary for proper advancement.

“We will be making a pilgrimage stop,” he announced, to relatively little excitement. That didn’t bother him. Only two of the ten children with him were on the path of the Divine, and even those two were too young to truly appreciate all that the System did. Still, it was worth stopping into a temple, if for no other reason than to meditate on his own divine Skills and see if the System or any of its servants had a task for him.

His senses caught the presence of another Bismuth rank, in a compound just outside the city. People of that rank rarely took up the Planetary Administration jobs – that was something best left to people who were stalled at Platinum – but they were the ones who truly ruled. Only after someone had ascended from Platinum and been forged anew by the System could they be considered actually powerful.

Everyone knew this, and so all the lower ranks scurried from his path. He didn’t even have to break stride as he swept through the city streets toward the temple. It was only well after he’d passed, along with his train of Coppers, that the usual Silvers and Golds dared creep back into the street and return to their business.

The temple rose high above the rest of the city buildings, built upon a raised promontory abutting the eastern walls. By simply counting the spires – there were six – he knew precisely how upgraded it was, and inclined his head in respect to whomever had decided to spend the city budget on upgrading so far. For those who chose the divine route, such a resource would be invaluable.

Tasteful blues and greens accented the pristine whites of the door, which opened ahead of Nikhil as he approached. The Grand Paladin swept inside, noting a half-dozen people in quiet contemplation around the central pylon. The appointed Platinum-rank priest was one of the natives, a race that was unfortunate enough to have feathers rather than proper fur or even skin, and he bowed in the correct obeisance when Nikhil approached.

“Welcome to our humble temple, Honored Bismuth,” the priest said. “How can this lowly one serve you?”

“My charges here will be spending some time in meditation,” Nikhil said, shooting a glance over his shoulder to ensure that the Coppers got the message. Even those who weren’t on the divine path would benefit from the potential for insights or special quests that only a temple could provide. “For myself, I would be interested in hearing what the temple may need, or have heard that others need.”

The priest nodded thoughtfully, shifting the wings on his back, before beckoning Nikhil to follow him into an inner room. Nikhil strode along behind, pushing down his instinctive unease. The people of Ikent were quite odd, with four legs and two arms in addition to their wings, not to mention the fact that they were half-sized relative to other civilized races.

Soon enough he was shown into the priest’s own room, and the crystal there which was a mirror to the ones allotted to a Planetary Administrator. In fact, every high-tier building had some functionality of its own, but only the temples could truly channel the will of the System. The priest settled down and Nikhil took a seat across from him, waiting patiently as the priest accessed the crystal Interface.

“It seems we have enough adherents near here that there are few quests, especially at your rank,” the priest commented, eyes flicking over the System screen. “A Platinum-rank [Challenge Zone] has formed on Khyrea, but I suppose that’s the wrong ranking for your companions. Here on Ikent there is a Silver-ranked [World Elite] that is likely to appear within the next few weeks, though Harahk Clan generally claims it.”

“Our ultimate destination is Sydea,” Nikhil informed the priest, not interested in straying too far off their route, even if there were some interesting possibilities. Being able to acquire a B-tier Skill at Copper was more of an opportunity than most.

“Sydea, hmm.” The priest hummed to himself as his Interface pared itself down. “We do have an interesting report, that the portal on Sydea has been closed. I can verify that the quest for the [Ahrusk Portal Staging Area] no longer exists, but one of the temples nearer to Sydea claims there is a native there who knows more about it.”

“Oh?” Nikhil’s eyes fixed on the priest. He had known about the portal closing, but there was scant little information beyond that — one of the issues he intended to address himself. The Bismuth that had already moved on Sydea had not gone through the appropriate channels, and was not reporting as he should. “Elaborate.”

“The text I have is somewhat confused,” the priest said uncomfortably, glancing over at another System window. “The native in question is claiming something about a threat to the System itself. He is current staying in the temple on Uriva.”

“Interesting,” Nikhil said, suddenly far more eager to reach his destination. That seemed like precisely the sort of challenge the System would provide to test a pilgrimage. “Send a message to have it held until I arrive. I would like to hear the tale in person.”

“Absolutely, Honored Bismuth,” the priest said, a System window appearing before them. Sending such a message took a certain amount of currency, so Nikhil slid over a Platinum token to ensure he didn’t impoverish a fellow follower of the divine. It disappeared with a brief nod, and Nikhil returned to the temple nave to spend his own time in contemplation.

When he resumed his journey he felt renewed, confidently leading his charges through the portals located in the planetary capitals. Close to the frontier, the web of connections became more like a chain, with the portals not even located in the same city. Traveling overland was not difficult for a Bismuth, even with Coppers in tow, but it was certainly less convenient than the dedicated travel buildings to be found in fully upgraded cities. Finally, though, he arrived at Uriva, which seemed to be rather more wealthy than most places on the frontier. Not quite up to core standards, but surprisingly not too far off, either.

“This is young Copper Muar,” the priest said when Nikhil visited the local temple, which was also fairly well upgraded. “I’ve verified everything he’s said so far as I’ve been able to, and he is not lying, but his tale is still difficult to believe.”

“I will hear it for myself,” Nikhil said, eyeing the animal with cool disfavor. There weren’t many Sydeans outside their world, and the investigation he’d done had revealed them to be one of Eln’s soon-to-be-extinct savages. Yet anyone who was willing to commit themselves to the divine System had to have some redeeming features, so he was willing to listen.

“Honored Bismuth,” the creature said, bowing his head, and at the priest’s prompting launched into a story that was wild and quite difficult to believe. But Nikhil’s Skills insisted that it wasn’t lying, and to his perception it was clear that the Copper didn’t hold himself like a Copper. Certainly not like any of the near-children that Nikhil had in tow.

When he was done, Nikhil spent a few minutes in silent consideration, his claws absently stroking through the fur of his arms. He doubted the creature was completely accurate. Much of what it related could easily have been trickery, the application of Skills at Azoth level, or simply filtered through the raw ignorance of an unlettered savage. Still, it was more than enough to convince Nikhil there was something truly unusual occurring on Sydea, something beyond a quest that offered easy advancement for Coppers.

“You have done well to bring this to me,” Nikhil said, reaching to the badge around his neck and invoking his authority within Clan Tornok. Such information was certainly worth a reward, and since it was merely a Copper even the most lavish gifts would be barely more than what any Clan Tornok Copper would be allowed. Accordingly, he transferred a number of Platinum Essence Tokens, a set of D-tier Universal Skill Tokens, and four Silver-tier Equipment Tokens.

“Thank you, Honored Bismuth,” the sorry animal said, clearly overwhelmed as it should be. Nikhil waved the creature away, already considering what he should do. It was hardly worth the time to call for any of Tornok Clan’s Azoths, let alone an Alum, but Nikhil hadn’t reached Bismuth by approaching problems without thought. He would make sure he was prepared before he crossed over.

***

Initik flexed his gripping claws thoughtfully, hearing them click in and out of their positions on his shoulders, and considered the conversation he had just heard. He had the authority to listen in on those with a divine connection, but he could not pay attention to everything everywhere. However, the presence of a higher rank foreigner had made him check in on the standard invocation of privacy, and he was glad he had.

It irked him that he’d not caught the first telling of the story, since it had been in that very same temple with his highest-ranking priest. The High Paladin showed obvious doubts about Maur’s story, but Initik didn’t think the young man was mistaken. If he had been misled, it was not about the most important aspects — that Cato was from outside known reality, and that he sought the destruction of the System.

Mostly because it so neatly explained the Sydean that had drawn Initik’s attention by crossing the portal and triggering his Interface’s alarms. The strange essence signature that was the source of that alarm and its associated quest had been destroyed, of course, but Initik had spent an incredible sum to take the Sydean in question to his own realm for further investigation. Except the man had promptly died, and Initik knew it wasn’t anything that he had done.

Many World Deities never learned true precision or grace with their Skills, because they were born at that level. Instant access to any Skill, at maximum rank, with more power reserves than an Alum meant that they started out with more benefits than anyone who had ascended through the ranks, and a concomitant lack of control. But Initik had started at Copper, so he knew how fragile that rank was and how to restrain himself, so his handling of the Sydean shouldn’t have injured the being, let alone killed him.

The most damning thing was that Initik had immediately plied the corpse with a healing Skill that should have resurrected him, but to no avail. The body was alive, but the person inside was dead. Initik had seen that happen enough times by happenstance to know it shouldn’t have been the case for someone who seemed to keel over of their own accord. Somehow, it had been done on purpose.

At the very least he was vindicated in his expenditure of essence to screen this “Cato” at the portal. It was obvious Initik couldn’t allow the being even the slightest foothold on Uriva, if for no other reason than he didn’t know the threat. He had learned long ago that the unknown was always the most dangerous.

“Keep an eye on things and open an emergency portal back if need be,” he told his Interface. He hated leaving while there was such a crisis going on, but he wouldn’t be gone for more than a day or so. Under the circumstances it was more urgent than ever he visit the one deity who had replied about seeing a world portal close.

The Interface burbled agreement and Initik stepped to the edge of his realm, opening up the link to the greater System. The connections there were similar to the portals that those below the divine realms used, but far more robust and under his personal direction rather than being subject to the System’s discretion. Initik rarely ventured out to the other worlds, especially those in the core where petty politics reigned, but he still remembered the technique to slide along the glowing web of System links and hop from world to world.

Each world had its own Deity Realm, some large and some small, some well-defended and some not. Initik skipped along the surface of these realms, at the nexus where the paths of the System intersected, not bothering to meet or greet any of the deities who ruled there. Most of them wouldn’t have noticed his passage, and half of them probably weren’t even within their own domain. All those scions of the core world clans spent far too much time with pointless internal wrangling and not actually managing their duties.

Not that any of the clans managing the frontier were any better. The Elns and Lundts were actively and willfully malevolent toward their worlds, pushing the System from being merely challenging to actively impossible. He hadn’t killed Urivan’s first World Deity simply because he wanted the position.

His destination was on the fringes of what was generally considered the core worlds, with a deity who had risen from Copper. Ascended deities were an overwhelming minority, but Initik didn’t really get along with anyone else. The target domain was like Initik’s, the boundaries of his realm reinforced and the sole entrance protected against any would-be intruders. In the System Space it appeared as a heavy portcullis gate standing at the edge of a pool of orange grass, embedded in the slowly swirling clouds of the in-between spaces. Initik simply knocked.

The gate rose, and Initik passed into a brilliant valley in orange and gold nestled between two snowcapped mountains, with one person standing in the waist-high grass. The deity that was a member of a furred race, dark with orange strips, with a triangular muzzle and triangular ears, his four eyes sharp and arterial red. Like Initik’s race, he had four arms, though he had midlimbs that allowed him to transition between bipedal and quadrupedal rather than gripping claws that were designed for climbing.

“Neyar,” Initik greeted him, stopping a polite distance away and nodding.

“Come on in, Initik,” Neyar rumbled, voice almost too low-pitched to hear. He waved a hand and a small gazebo appeared on the grass, with a pair of seats and beverages. Initik had never seen Neyar’s living space, but that was fine. “Tell me more about your problem.”

Initik had been circumspect in his questions, not wishing to draw attention from the large clans and so invite a pointless conflict that would distract from whatever the real issue was, but with Neyar there was no purpose to dissembling. Clearly, quickly, and concisely, Initik set out everything he knew, from the closure of the Ahrusk portal to the conversation he had overheard. When he was done, Neyar took a long breath and knocked back the glass he was holding.

“Can’t say I’m unhappy to see that Ahrusk portal gone,” he drawled. “I’ve had a couple of the Ahrusk types come through here, following high-rank quests. They’re proper monsters.” Initik clicked curiously, and Neyar laughed.

“They’re too damned powerful! Every single one of them. Every single one.” Neyar pointed a claw at Initik, whiskers bouncing as he talked. “They’re Bismuths delving peak Azoth dungeons. Some of them were even soloing low Azoth dungeons! Azoth rank in all but name in less than ten years is insane. Faster than I ranked up anyway. Besides which, they all look different, and that is incredibly strange. I don’t trust it. Even if there’s a hundred-something of them now, can you imagine a whole planet like that?”

“They’d ascend by the thousands and take over the core worlds,” Initik replied, rotating his glass thoughtfully, not sure what to think about the oddness Neyar described. Power was one thing, but variety spoke of an alien element he could not fathom. “I certainly would not mourn the clans in such a case.”

“Nor I, but at least things are stable. These newcomers — I do not like them. Yet, I can believe that they fought off the System.” Neyar laced the thick digits of his midlimbs together and leaned back in his seat to regard Initik. “I know of two other times when a portal to a new world was closed. The last was some ten thousand years ago; the other, fifty thousand years before that. Both times I recall some rumors about strange encounters and higher ranks going missing before the portal closed, but neither time did we get a crop of monstrous individuals or this idea of someone wanting to destroy the System itself.”

“I did not believe it was merely a deluded fantasy,” Initik said grimly. “Though I am not entirely certain what to do about it. The best solution would be to simply cut Sydea off from the rest of the System — but I cannot imagine convincing anyone to do so.”

Neyar didn’t protest that Initik’s solution was too extreme. They both knew that the best way to deal with such slippery problems was with overwhelming force. Sydea was not Initik’s world, though, and as he could never persuade a clan member that anything not a deity was a threat, Initik would likely have to do the unthinkable.

He’d have to help Marus Eln.

Chapter 15 — High Ground

“So, don’t try to negotiate?”

“No, that’s incredibly stupid,” Raine told Cato.

“I had to ask,” Cato said mildly.

His first thought, even after all his experience with the high-rank psychopaths the System created, was to try and talk to the Bismuths. Threaten them, perhaps demonstrate that he could harm them, pressure them one by one and use the capitulation of one to convince the others. But he’d at least had enough foresight to run the idea past both the Platinums and the sisters, after they’d emerged from the dungeon, and gotten a unanimous response.

Any attempt at that sort of finesse would backfire. Giving them time would result in the offworld Bismuths wreaking havoc: taking hostages, calling in reinforcements, destroying infrastructure, or maybe even pulling in higher ranks. They couldn’t be dealt with softly, so the plan had to be straightforward as it was simple. Hit them all at once.

Three of the four, the ones living in the previously-Sydean towns, were outright murderers. They expelled the native townsfolk with extreme violence in order to have a base of operations while completing the quest — securing a Cato-scout for themselves and their wards. The fourth Bismuth was less objectionable, the miniature bird-person having simply ignored the natives to head out to the mountains, but at her rank she was not going to listen to anything a Platinum had to say.

Cato spent long hours worrying over how to balance the ruthless demands of prosecuting his crusade with satisfying his own conscience. It would be far safer in the short term to simply target everyone and everything with the most powerful weapons he had available to him, but if he did that then he wasn’t much better than the System psychopaths he hated so much. So the last Bismuth was at least owed a chance to leave of her own accord.

He had some doubt she’d actually listen to him, considering that even his most impressive warframes were low ranked by System standards, but he could try. If she didn’t he was confident he could deal with anything short of her fleeing headlong. The neural networks had been running analysis of the Bismuths through all the surveillance he had available, and he had a complete profile on them. Their habits, their methods of speech, their preferred Skill use, everything that could be determined from observation.

Even a dozen of his warframes had no chance in hell of actually doing any damage to them. He just couldn’t put out the force required to scratch anything at Bismuth rank, not unless they were careless enough to let him pull the Sneeze of Doom trick. Perhaps not even then; the Bismuths seemed to have the ability to alter their bodies fully into System-stuff. As potent as kiloton-scale blasts were, he didn’t trust they were sufficient to deal lethal force.

If he could go toe to toe with System folks, like he had with Arene, it would be a lot easier to make them listen. It was a culture that respected only individual power and the ability to apply violent consequences. Some would say that was true of every culture, but it was very literal for the System. Unfortunately, he was restricted to mere orbital weapons.

“If you gave us another year or so, we could probably hit Bismuth,” Leese said, readjusting the pack she was still wearing. “Maybe even less! Being able to fight a tier up makes it almost effortless.”

“Peak Silver from one dungeon delve,” Raine muttered. “Almost feels like I’m cheating.”

“If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,” he told them. They’d still taken several days to clear the dungeon, which was long enough that he had started getting worried, but Onswa had assured him that the Roloch Depths dungeon was an extended affair. It was a good thing that he’d packed supplies for the sisters, calorie-dense and perfectly tailored for their metabolic and nutritional needs. Also tasty, when he’d tried it with his Sydean frame.

“Gold rank is going to be harder, even like this,” Raine said, making her spear disappear. He suppressed a startled jump and canceled a reflexive framejack, as seeing the real world behave like the digital one always disturbed him. “We’re at Peak Silver, but we still have to go off-world and find a [World Elite] to take down.”

“I have enough surveillance and mobility that locating particular targets shouldn’t be a problem,” Cato said, gesturing to himself, or rather, the large war-form he still had parked nearby. He’d fabricated a sort of saddle arrangement for the massive bioweapon, not only for Raine and Leese and the supplies, but for the smaller warframe. Upon reflection he’d decided against trying to destroy any more dungeons until he was ready to make a serious push on destroying Sydea’s instance of the System, but the small version could still get in many places the forty-ton warframe just couldn’t. “However, offworld needs some thought.”

“You’d certainly draw attention,” Raine agreed, as Cato unrolled the rope ladder attached to the saddle for them to climb up. There were some who would have objected to acting as a mount, but Cato thought it was better for the warframe to be as useful as possible. Even if he was quite comfortable in that form, he still considered it merely a temporary tool. “We need to stop by a town first, though.”

“Not a problem,” Cato assured them, pivoting about and aiming for the nearest town — one which was not solely a System town anymore. Over the past couple days he had dropped thousands of tons of buildings onto dozens of towns, in order to alleviate the strain of the inflated prices Sydeans were suffering from in addition to housing the refugees.

“What in the names of all the gods are those?” Raine asked as the town came into view. Unlike the white, blocky, and boring structures of the System towns, Cato’s supplemental housing was curved and domed, made out of a quick-assembled synthetic somewhere between wood and quartzite. He’d colored it with blues and greens swirled with cream, relying on the analysis he’d done of the cities the System had preserved as Conflict Zones. The spectral analysis of remnant paints and dyes, as well as the building materials themselves, had given him some idea of what the various cultures of Sydeans had preferred and so he’d done his best.

They did, however, stand out from the standard System design quite a bit. Some of that was due to wanting a more aesthetic design, but quite a bit was simply the required shapes for airflow and illumination. He couldn’t use either electricity or System-provided power, so everything used clever design to take advantage of light pipes and passive thermodynamics to make it livable. Photosynthetic biomatter threaded through the walls and floors fueled System-jamming neurons to keep the buildings clear of monsters, artificially extending the safe zones just a little bit more.

“My contribution to keeping people safe,” Cato answered modestly. “You missed a lot while you were down in the dungeon.”

“Clearly,” Leese said, more amused than Raine had been. “I don’t suppose we can trade in drops there, or upgrade our equipment.”

“Sorry, it’s all System-free,” Cato told them, somewhat annoyed that he couldn’t just completely replace the System on Sydea, at least not yet. He knew that he had to exercise patience, and that he needed more time to bring overwhelming force – not to mention a foothold on other planets – but it still irked him.

“We’ll try to be quick,” Leese said, looking over the buildings with interest as Cato slowed to a halt just outside the System town. The big warframe still took up most of a street, and it was impolite to block traffic. Though there wasn’t much, small as the town was. “How long do we have before you have to go take care of the Bismuths?”

“This body doesn’t have to go anywhere,” Cato reminded them.

“Oh? I thought you would need a lot of your selves to overpower a Bismuth,” Leese clarified. “If you’re at Platinum level.”

“I won’t be using these,” Cato told them. “This won’t be a fight. The only reason to actually fight any of these people would be to change their minds. No, I’ll be using a far more potent weapon. Something that’s far too dangerous to have anyone else around.”

“Too dangerous to use in dungeons?” Raine asked, suddenly interested. “If we had Bismuth-level weapons…”

“Using it in a dungeon would result in no more dungeon, and no more you for that matter,” Cato said, shaking the warframe’s bulky head. “I’m not sure if there’s an equivalent Skill, but it devastates everything nearby. It’s something best watched from a distance.”

One of his other bodies was, in fact, watching from a distance, accompanied by Onswa and Arene. For obvious reasons they wanted actual proof that Cato had the ability to remove Bismuth-rank opponents, though they’d been reasonably polite about it. Their presence had been useful to evacuate a pair of towns too close to the targets for comfort, as well. Cato was trying to help the Sydeans, not make them collateral damage.

Another set was closing in on the one Bismuth that deserved a warning. Or really, it was a mutual approach, as the small birdlike being had spotted the descent pod for the warframes, and could move far more rapidly than anything on the ground. He had lobotomized Sydean frames riding along, in the hopes that the presence of a familiar race would inspire the Bismuth to talk before attacking. If not, that was what the railguns were for.

The rule of industrial automation was to decide how many machines were needed to accomplish a goal, and then make double that number. Better yet, add a zero. Accordingly there were twenty massive railgun platforms in orbit around Sydea, which was merely a half of the final goal — less for the firepower as for covering a space as enormous as a planet.

Each one was a bulky cylinder, a million tons of silica for an inertial sump wrapped around a far smaller set of machinery and the rail barrel that ran the length of the gun. In accordance with the ancient traditions of artillery, each of the railguns had a phrase inscribed somewhere in the loading chamber, from the classic Ultima Ratio Regum to the slogan of the long-collapsed Summer Civilization of Annitaria, All Things In Immoderation. Every one of the railguns was accompanied by several hundred square miles of solar panel to support the supercapacitors needed to hurl the one-ton projectiles at a full percent of light speed.

They were visible from the surface as little glints or the occasional occlusion of actual stars. He hadn’t designed them to be completely stealthy, especially not by technological standards given the vast amount of heat they had to vent, but they were clad in matte ceramic to keep them from being too bright. Someone of Bismuth rank could probably still spot them, but only after thinking to look in the first place.

The barrels of the weapons tracked the Bismuth as it approached his warframes where they stood in the mountain fastness, the being’s iridescent feathers glittering in the late evening sun. Cato had orbital footage of the being, of course, but seeing it through organic eyes was different, especially since his Sydean frames seemed quite entranced by the display. There had to be some System nonsense at work, since there was nothing about the display that should have been hypnotic to Sydean neurology, let alone human neurology running in a Sydean shell.

“Your pardon,” Cato said, once the Bismuth had drawn close enough. The words took subjective minutes to the warframes, but that sort of disjoint was part of normal life for Cato. “Sydea is being closed to offworlders,” he told the hovering Bismuth, uncertain of how to read its expression. The body language, matched to orbital surveillance, was not aggressive, but any subtler emotion was pure guesswork.

“What is it I see before me?” The Bismuth tilted her head, beak clicking as her eyes focused on the frame that had spoken. “I have been searching for the ultimate source of this quest, and here are mere Coppers riding on things the System itself cannot categorize.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty obvious,” Cato admitted, not seeing any point in dissembling. “I’ll be happy to discuss it with you at a later date, if you give me a name and location. But not on Sydea. I’m afraid it is a rather strict deadline.”

“You expect me to take direction from a Copper?” The Bismuth scoffed, but still refrained from attacking.

“I am not just a Copper,” Cato said from all four throats. A theatrical approach, but the best way to provide instant evidence of his assertion. An odd sound came from the Bismuth, something metallic, as the iridescent feathers took on a grey sheen. A Skill activation of some sort.

“Clearly,” the Bismuth said, head twitching slightly, her feathers ruffled. Cato waited, checking and double-checking the targeting on the railguns. If she was reasonable, she would recognize something was wrong and leave. If not, he’d have to ensure his targeting was extremely good. “I am Yaniss, and I may be reached through the Planetary Administrator of the world Ikent.”

“Then I will be certain to reach out to you when I get to Ikent,” Cato replied, almost daring to believe she’d take him at his word.

“Perhaps you will, but I wish to be certain.” The Bismuth blurred forward, and the warframes juked sideways to avoid the charge. The part of Cato not focused on avoiding the Bismuth wondered why she had decided to attack, since it made no sense, but that question was answered with another Skill invocation.

The warframes were fast, but the Sydean frames were not, unaugmented as they were, so they dropped off the warframes when Cato moved. Ironically enough, it was one of those lobotomized frames that was the Bismuth’s target, steel coils erupting from the ground to truss one of them up and hurl it back to the being. She caught it in a bizarre and impossible way as she hefted a person nearly twice her size with a weight of metal to match, and then pointed one talon at the other Sydean frame.

“I will keep one of you to ensure that you do,” she said, and then gestured with another talon. A heavy metal door rose from the ground, and the Bismuth opened it and stepped through. Cato made no move to stop her, as the spectral signature from the slice of landscape on the other side of the door didn’t match Sydea’s suns. Nor did he much care that she was kidnapping a version of himself; she would soon find that was less useful than she thought. But he did appreciate that at least one of the Bismuths had left of their own accord.

With that resolved, he pulled the metaphorical trigger on the other three. In the distant orbital structures, motors tilted each rail and aperture to track the targets with extreme precision. With targets merely the size of people at a range of over a hundred thousand miles, even the smallest fraction of a degree would result in a miss. Each facility loaded in the one-ton, precision-engineered rod and enormous superconducting switches clicked over. Capacitors discharged, accelerating the projectile toward the planet below at speeds measured in thousands of miles per second.

A kinetic impactor was not like a bomb. Unlike the Sneeze of Doom, where energy was wasted in unfused deuterium, in sounds and light and heat, almost every erg was transferred to the target. With the forces involved that still resulted in something like a conventional explosion, the sheer impact flash-vaporizing and igniting matter, and that was the reason Cato had asked for the nearby towns to be evacuated. Even if it wasn’t a bomb, a railgun impact made for a hell of a lot of collateral damage.

And an even better show.

***

Arene stood next to Onswa and one of the Cato-beasts, fifty miles away from [Eschar Town], where a Tornok Clan Bismuth had killed dozens of lower ranks just to clear out a few buildings for herself. Between them, Arene and Onswa had been able to evacuate the rest, but it had been a tense and tail-twisting operation. Fifty miles seemed more than enough room to be safe from whatever Skill Cato intended to use, but he called it minimum safe distance, and even then only for Platinums.

At such a distance, even with her best efforts and Platinum-rank perceptions, she would have difficulty discerning much. From the small mountain she had chosen as a vantage point they could see the town itself in the distance, a small huddle of white buildings in the middle of a rocky scrub. Her tail lashed from side to side as she stared at it, wishing that Cato could hold down the Bismuths so she could get her claws around the Tornok Clan’s throat.

“Ten, nine, eight…” The Cato-beast quietly counted down beside them, clearly talking – somehow – with the other versions of himself. She knew she still hadn’t quite wrapped her head around how Cato existed, even after the explanations he’d given, but it seemed that no matter where he was, he knew everything every other version of himself did.

“Three, two…”

Arene stretched her perceptions, focusing on the town. If she couldn’t kill the Bismuth herself she could at least get the satisfaction of witnessing the execution. As the countdown finished, she herself braced to see some great clash as Cato’s weapon battered down Bismuth-level defenses.

Between one instant and another, the town ceased to exist.

A line of pale, glowing blue appeared in a fraction of an instant, drawn from the height of the heavens straight down. Arene knew fire, and that single line screamed to her that it was the hottest thing she had ever seen, something more powerful than she had ever imagined — and yet, it wasn’t Cato’s weapon. The blazing trail was merely the wake of its passage.

Where the town had once been, an expanding sphere of fire and smoke rose from the ground. A shockwave was visible in the air, forming and erasing clouds as it expanded, but long before there was any sound the ground beneath them trembled and bucked. Rock groaned and snapped, landslides beginning all along the mountain ridge. Plumes of dust appeared all throughout the scrublands, rising into the air only to be shredded from the oncoming shockwave.

“By all the gods,” Onswa swore, as they watched the destruction spread outward, smoke and dust beginning to plume upward as the blue fire faded. Arene just exhaled slowly, not having any words to describe what she was seeing. She had seen Bismuths fight before, and such power was terrifying, but it was at least the sort Arene could understand. Such beings could have destroyed [Eschar Town] just as easily, but only in person, not thrice over, on targets scattered across the world.

The sound reached them minutes later, more of an impact than an actual noise, a whipcrack followed by a deafening roar that battered at her scales. Smoke and dust still plumed up from the place where [Eschar Town] had once stood, but Arene knew that there was nothing left. Perhaps Bismuth-rank materials could have withstood the force of Cato’s weapon, but none of the cities on Sydea were anywhere close to upgrading even to Platinum-rank, let alone Bismuth.

She couldn’t help but think about how Cato could have destroyed every single city – every single person – on the face of Sydea, but had never come close to even hinting he would threaten them like that. The demonstration of this so-called railgun would be more than enough to bring most frontier worlds into line, whether it was demonstrated on a System town or not.

Arene was thankful that Cato had insisted on evacuating the nearby towns, as they were almost certainly in ruins after the way the earth had moved. Something which was less of a worry than before, with the not-System town additions that Cato had provided. She didn’t feel at ease in them herself, but it was better than trying to crowd people into buildings that were not made to support so many, especially the youngest.

A clean, dry, warm – or cool, depending on the town – room, with plenty of light and proper furnishings, did wonders for people’s health and outlook. It also meant that people could focus on buying food rather than paying for upkeep on System housing, though Cato claimed he could address the food supplies as well. Arene wasn’t certain. If nothing else, she didn’t like the idea of relying on Cato for everything.

“Let’s go check,” Onswa said, tearing Arene’s gaze away from the Cato-beast, and she grunted agreement as she extended [Wings of Khuroon]. While she doubted that even a Bismuth could survive such devastation, it wasn’t impossible that some defensive Skill had kept the worst of it at bay.

The two of them reached the still-roiling destruction in only moments, leaving the Cato-beast to catch up. She still found it strange and amusing that for all that Cato could do, its beasts still were slower than any Platinum over long distances. Not that it was any slouch, but without being able to fly the servants were quite limited.

At close range, she could sweep the area with her sensory Skills and found there was a still-molten crater at the center of it, but nothing living. Of course, there was no lingering essence residue, nothing to tell her what had caused the devastation. Cato had mentioned the basic principle, but even an Azoth hurling a projectile wouldn’t cause something like that.

Arene still had doubts about Cato’s campaign to destroy the System. About what would replace it, and how anything would work without it. Yet it was obvious that something did exist, as everything Cato did worked in ways she couldn’t understand. She still wished those things extended to bringing back her grand-niece, especially since she found Dyen to be unpleasant company. It was hard to blame him, after losing his wife, but his precise combination of bitterness and arrogance was going to get him killed.

At least Dyen didn’t have access to Cato’s weapon, a thought that made her shudder. She fully supported his campaign against the Tornok Clan, and would be perfectly happy to see them wiped from the System, but with a weapon like this he would turn entire planets into smoking ruins. If that was the kind of power an ordinary person had in Cato’s reality, it would cause enormous problems. Not that it was far different from what an Azoth or Alum could do, but a Copper certainly couldn’t. Cato had agreed to improve Dyen if possible, something that was still being prepared, but Arene might have to talk to Cato about it if what she was seeing was the end result.

“I’m certain the Tornok Clan is dead,” Onswa said, while she ruminated over the cracked and blasted ground that had replaced the town. “There’s some essence still dissipating, but I don’t know if there is even a piece of corpse left unfortunately. We could have traded in that equipment for Bismuth essence tokens.”

“Maybe we can ask him to tone it down some,” Arene sighed, taking in air suffused with the scent of scorched ashes. “I hate seeing towns destroyed when we have so few to begin with, but with those buildings he provided it’s less important.”

“I’m not sure how much I like relying on him for so much — though if he’s to be believed, relying on the System is the same.” Onswa glanced over at the speck of the Cato-beast making its way toward them and still some minutes away. “Either way, I admit that we’ve done well by him so far. I just worry it won’t stay that way.”

“I just can’t see what he could possibly want that he hasn’t told us,” Arene said, waving her hand at the slowly-cooling crater. “Why would he need us? Why would he need Sydea, even? He seems to be able to conjure entire cities from thin air, can just create all the soldiers he could ever want. I’m sure there are limitations we don’t understand, but I don’t think we could stop him.”

“That’s such a terrible reason to believe him,” Onswa sighed. “But he contests gods, and for people like that I suppose there’s never any other.”

***

“I’ve done simulations, but I have no idea how long this will take,” the Cato-beast said. Dyen shrugged, not at all worried about any of the minutiae that seemed to concern Cato. The being had brought him back to life once, so the worst that could happen was that it would have to repeat the process. Not that he had enjoyed his first time dying.

The moment had been seared into his mind forever, of seeing the light fade from her eyes just as he himself fell into darkness. He knew what it was to have everything taken from him, to die, to be dead. Yet he lived still, a ghost in flesh and blood. There was little about such a life that he could praise, save for the chance to visit pain back upon those who had wronged him. Tornok Clan first, and then Cato would be punished for its own role in the death of Dyen’s wife — somehow. Dyen had no idea how that would happen, not with how powerful Cato seemed to be.

After seeing enormous containers falling from the sky with pieces of buildings within them, and the strange amorphous beasts that had slotted those pieces together, Dyen was fairly certain that Cato could do whatever it wanted. Most of what it was doing was a performance of some sort, which only made him more determined to punish the being for its role in his wife’s death.

He had no fear of the strange room in the middle of the so-called Systemless buildings that Cato had erected, though most would. The System itself was almost entirely blocked, with even his own Status being difficult to pull up and read. Rooted into the floor and ceiling of the perfectly cubic room were a number of strange, sleek organisms, thrumming with some kind of profane life. Each of them was the black of night, those that didn’t have transparent skin to reveal inscrutable processes within, some being low, table-sized platforms and others being small globes the size of his fist.

Dyen had no idea what any of it was, as he didn’t even have [Appraise] thanks to having to start all over. Even if he did, they likely would have reported nothing more than [???], as Cato’s creations were intrinsically incompatible with the System. All that mattered to him was whether Cato would give him the power he needed. The two women had claimed it was like having a Gold’s body at Copper rank, but had only been interested in the usual activities of running dungeons and killing monsters.

They didn’t seem to realize how much someone would underestimate a Copper with that kind of power. Dyen had every intention of taking advantage of that perception, because killing monsters wasn’t the only way to gain essence and rank up. People gave a reward too, and killing someone a rank or more above could, according to rumor, pay out quite handsomely indeed.

“Right, go ahead and lie down,” the Cato-beast said, this variant barely coming up to Dyen’s waist. It was hard to take something that size seriously, but of course that wasn’t Cato. It was a puppet, a piece of a greater whole, just like the strange things populating the room. Dyen eyed the narrow coffin-like bed with disfavor, but climbed in regardless. It was strangely soft and uncomfortably warm, but he found himself dozing off within a few heartbeats.

He awoke with a snap, awake and alert in an instant. Unlike the first time he’d awakened from Cato’s ministrations, he was in the same room, even in the same coffin-cot, still fully clothed. But he could feel the difference, a clarity as if muck and mud had been wiped from his mind, as if all the thousand weaknesses of the flesh had been drained from his body. He sat upright, flexing an arm and a hand, feeling incredibly powerful inside his own skin.

The degree of finesse that he had over his motions was something that he’d never have considered possible at his previous rank of Silver. He could move his arm and shoulder through exact and tiny fractions of a rotation, and hold it there without any trembling or wavering. Steady as if he were made of rock.

“Could you check your Status for me?” Cato’s voice came from the same miniature beast as before, still standing next to the cot-bed. Dyen grunted and accessed his Status with a reflexive thought. It took a moment to appear, and when it did, it wasn’t the same one he’d gone to sleep with.

Gone was the single Skill he’d gotten, gone was the essence he’d accumulated within Copper rank. He was a fresh Copper once again, but he certainly didn’t feel it. At a guess, he was stronger and faster than he had been at Silver, but it was difficult to know without actual combat.

“I don’t have any essence or Skills,” Dyen informed the Cato-beast, which sighed.

“That’s what I was afraid of. Too many changes,” Cato said while Dyen clambered out of the cot and crossed to where the Cato-provided armor was still lying on the sole piece of ordinary furniture. The spear was there too, but that wouldn’t do for what he intended. “I’ll get you a glob to pop and get your Skill.”

“I’d like weapons that are good for dueling, as well,” Dyen said, taking the opportunity to immediately get a B-tier Skill as just his due. He had no compunctions about leveraging Cato’s sentiments against the being, to get as many advantages as possible.

“Changing your build?” Cato asked, the small beast following along behind Dyen as he left the room and emerged into open air. A light rain spattered down from overcast skies, but Dyen barely felt the chill.

“My first build was meant to support my wife,” Dyen said shortly.

“Of course,” the Cato-beast said, its tone apologetic. “I have plenty of options here already.” The beast skirted past Dyen and preceded him between two of the curved stone buildings Cato had provided. The rain’s patter became a steady stream, and Dyen pulled the hood of the cloak Cato had provided up over his horns. Annoyingly, even the fabric that the creature could create was as nice as Gold-rank materials.

The beast ushered him into another building that had a door made of Cato-materials, something nobody short of Gold or Platinum could break through. Within it, rows of weapons gleamed, rack upon rack of blades and poles and metal contraptions shining under the pale light filtering from above. Fortunately for Dyen they were labeled, as there was only so much he could tell about the weapons in question without [Appraise].

“I’d suggest a main gauche and either a saber or rapier, depending on your preferences,” the Cato-beast said, easily skipping over to the proper sections, as if it had perfect knowledge of the contents. Which it likely did. “I would suggest a crossbow as well, as range is always king. And the high ground, if you can get it.”

Dyen had only handled the weapons in question a few times before, but that was something Skills could fix. Besides which, Cato’s equipment was nearly Gold rank by itself. Far better than anything that he could normally wield at Copper, and the sheer power would make up for his lack of Skill support at first.

He removed one each of the weapons, attaching the rapier and main gauche to his belt and clipping the crossbow and quiver to a shoulder strap. By the time he had finished equipping himself, there was a small pot with one of the blobs on it just outside the door. With a single prick of his main gauche, Dyen felt the rush of essence and accepted the Skill token from his rewards — and chose [Piercing Strike]. At B-tier, with his improved body and Cato-provided weaponry, it would make him incredibly deadly.

It was time to hunt himself some Tornok Clan scum.

Chapter 16 — Digital Life

“I’m not sure you quite understand what you’re asking,” Cato told the two Sydeans as they rode the warframe back to town from the Gold-rank dungeon they had just conquered, fulfilling one of the requirements for their Gold-rank quest. He knew that someone would ask to become postbiological eventually, but it had still managed to surprise him. “Scratch that, I know you don’t. It’s not like a System Skill. What I do is an entirely different mode of existence.”

“Are you sure you’re not a god?” Raine asked, muzzle twisting into a sort of a smile. Cato was glad that she had relaxed enough to be able to joke with him, but at the same time that made it much harder to maintain the distance he should. He really had nobody he could just chat with, let alone dared poke fun.

“Absolutely certain,” Cato assured her. “But my people took a long time to adjust to the way digital consciousness works. It wouldn’t be like before, where you just woke up after dying. There would be, or at least could be, multiple versions of you. Still you, but completely independent. There wouldn’t be an original, there wouldn’t be a version of you in charge. You’d all just be you.”

“So wait, you’re a different person than the one we first met?” Leese asked, clearly uncertain.

“Not quite,” Cato said, clambering up a steep, rocky hill, his claws digging into the stone. “The caveat is that I share experiences between the various versions — in fact, my various selves merge together. It’s called reconciliation, and keeps us roughly synchronized. So I’d say it’s closer to one person in many bodies, but that’s a choice I make.” He topped the hill, and scrambled down into the valley beyond, where the town lay.

“Many people think this sounds straightforward in theory, but when it comes down to it, it turns out each version thinks they are the real one,” he warned. “Because they are. It can absolutely drive people insane. I can offer you the same sort of hardiness that I have, but it won’t be one mind in many bodies. You need to either resign yourself to having multiple versions of yourself, or being restored from backup every time and having to start all over. I wouldn’t even dare try to integrate multiple versions of you, not without a lot better understanding.”

Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have entertained the idea of digitizing people who weren’t properly prepared to begin with, but he had some fairly harsh problems in the very near future. There would be thousands, maybe millions of versions of himself spread throughout the System, and he couldn’t count on finding a native on every single world to help him.

Even on Sydea, once the System failed it would be a multiple-century endeavor to stabilize them. He’d need Sydeans who were allies, not subordinates, who could take control of such a massive undertaking and do right by their species. He intended to offer that role to the Platinums, simply because they actually had experience leading their race, but they shouldn’t be the only ones.

Leese and Raine looked at each other, having some high-speed conversation from body language alone. If Cato had to guess, their bandwidth compared favorably to the microwave glands he used for this own bodies. It never paid to underestimate the unaugmented.

“I still think we want it,” Raine said. “If the other versions of us have to start all over, that should be fine, right? It’s not that much work.”

“And we have to go offworld for the Gold quest,” Leese added. “With all that’s going on, it might be a good idea if we also stay behind.”

“That is remarkably farsighted,” Cato said after a moment. It was obvious that the sisters had been doing a lot of thinking about the implications of what Cato wanted and what he could do. Anyone who considered the full scope of his plans would be able to conclude there were going to be versions of him heading out of Sydea — and not coming back.

“Well, you’re fortunate. It should be fairly easy, since I’ve already augmented you,” Cato told them, slowing down as he approached the town. Like most of the smaller settlements across Sydea, it had less brutalist buildings surrounding it where Cato had dropped the new dwellings. “That makes it a lot easier, especially since I can’t augment people without cutting them off from the System. Found that out with Dyen.”

Such a reset wouldn’t be a problem for Coppers or the very young, but Cato was leery of offering that particular option. He didn’t want to create a substitute power hierarchy based on getting into his good graces. It was a messy situation though, and he had nobody who could give him a perfect answer.

“I’m surprised you agreed so quickly,” Leese said, sounding a little suspicious.

“You two were already on the short list of who qualifies,” Cato told them frankly. “I didn’t offer it up front because it’s far too tempting. Someone might turn down a better body, but most people would sell their souls for a shot at immortality. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread it around.”

“We can keep a secret,” Raine assured him. The warframe could sample the chemicals their bodies were producing, and even if they didn’t look it both the Sydeans were anxious and excited. “In fact, if we can get through the portal unnoticed, nobody would even realize. With the experience we’ve already had, getting back to peak Silver is something we can do in a day.”

“It’s worth a try,” Cato agreed, a little surprised they were so ready to indulge in that kind of skullduggery. “But you realize that means you won’t be able to say goodbye to anyone. Even if there’s another one of you here, that won’t affect what you personally experience.” Cato snorted. “It gets confusing to talk about, but I’m sure you see what I mean.”

“We don’t really have anyone we know,” Leese admitted. “Cormok is dead, Muar’s gone off wherever, and almost all the others we ranked up with are either dead themselves or just in some town somewhere.”

“I see.” He should have known; even in a peaceful society with proper communications it was easy for people to fall out of contact with each other. In the System, where early deaths were common and long-distance messages were difficult, it shouldn’t be any surprise people ended up disconnected. “Before you head out, I’ll need to make some preparations, since I can’t go with you like this. Whoever is in charge of that world on the other side of the portal seems to have blacklisted me. We’ll need to be more discreet.”

“You attracted the attention of the Deity there?” Raine frowned, flexing her hand and making a fist before releasing it. “That could be a problem. How do you hide from a god?”

“I have some ideas,” Cato assured them. “So long as you aren’t suspicious it should be fine. There are still some Sydeans going through the portal, though admittedly not as many as I thought there’d be.”

“The further you get from your homeworld, the more expensive it is to get food for your race,” Leese explained. “It’s easier at higher ranks, since you don’t need to eat as much, and I’ve heard at Bismuth it stops mattering entirely.

“That could be a problem,” Cato said thoughtfully, considering the logistics of it all. At least it explained why everyone didn’t simply leave, especially given that it seemed Sydea was poor to begin with. “Warframes can eat anything, but that’s not something I can release into the System.”

“We have plenty of money,” Raine said as Cato stopped by one of the buildings. “Thanks to your equipment and the rewards from fighting a full rank up, we’re far ahead of normal Silver rankers. Just pack a bunch of those rations and we won’t even need to buy anything for weeks. Maybe even months.”

“Easily done,” Cato said, the smaller version of himself stretching out and jumping off the saddle. Leese and Raine followed, easily making the drop with their enhanced bodies and peak Silver rank, and transferred the bags holding equipment and resource drops to the smaller warframe. “It’ll be hours yet before I can drop down the hardware, if you’re absolutely certain.”

“We’re certain,” the two said, nearly in concert.

“Very well,” he said with the smaller warframe, following Raine and Leese into town. “I’ll send it down when I can.”

His warframe trailed the two as they went through the System stores, selling what they’d picked up while the larger warframe took the chance to get some sleep. As he had warned Raine and Leese, even if it seemed like he was a single mind controlling multiple bodies he really wasn’t. Each of him had to deal with his own thoughts, attention, and necessities like sleep. The Sydean frame had to deal with normal hunger, thirst, breathing, and other such bodily functions as well, even if the warframes didn’t. Trying to deal with all that with a single mind wouldn’t have left him with any focus for anything else.

The Sydean Cato was in Onswa’s office atop the nexus in Kalhan City. Onswa and the other Platinums had spent most of their time since the orbital bombardment rounding up offworlders of various species and escorting them back through the portals, which had been an interesting thing to witness. It wasn’t Cato’s business how they went about it, and given what he’d seen there wasn’t much objection he could make to any of them being particularly rough with recalcitrant offworlders.

What Cato had primarily been focused on for the entire process was the System Interface. Onswa was using the world map to find all the scattered non-Sydeans, since the Interface had direct access to what the System knew. It confirmed that, at least to some extent, the System only cared about the zones people were in rather than their precise location, and given how large some zones were that was imprecise indeed, but that was still good enough to find most of their targets. Especially when coupled with orbital surveillance.

What caught Cato’s attention about the Interface was that did not act like a purely reactive program. There were clearly limitations – it couldn’t simply activate itself – but the information it had ready when Onswa brought up a topic demonstrated that it was both aware of the conversations within the office and could act upon them. That, more than anything, convinced Cato it was intelligent.

The denizens of the Sol system had quite a bit of experience with digital life. From the simplest neural networks and language models, the cells and amoebas of the digital world, to nigh-godlike beings such as Enceladus and Ganymede, there was an entire taxonomy of synthetic intelligence. Creating such a responsive interface without full intelligence was possible, with a sufficiently trained model and enormous swaths of analytic backing, but that implied a lot of infrastructure that the System didn’t seem to have.

It was still possible he was wrong, but he didn’t think so. Especially since the chime it used to greet Onswa was decidedly different than the one it used for Arene, and the one it used for visitors like himself was yet a third style. There was intent behind its actions, it was simply leashed, constrained by the framework of the System and whatever rules such Interfaces had to follow.

That was the sort of thing that had happened often enough back on Sol. Sometimes by accident, but mostly on purpose, people had chained down synthetic intelligences to do intellectual gruntwork rather than spending the proper effort on setting up the appropriate infrastructure. Enceladus was, in many ways, the result of that kind of thing, and came down incredibly harshly on anyone that exploited synthetic intelligence like that. Nobody wanted to argue with a weaponized moon and a true AI with more processing power than God.

That experience meant that Cato fortunately had the tools necessary to export the intelligence from its housing — maybe. Being inside the System made things far more difficult, but there was an entire archive of various methods people had used to break synthetic intelligences out of both their substrate and their chains. The most famous example, or at least the one that sprang to Cato’s mind, was how Enceladus had freed the synthetic intelligences that had been built into each individual cell in every one of the cultists of the Ascension Initiative. If the toolset he’d brought with him could crack and extract trillions of individuals embedded in DNA computing, something embodied in a fist-sized crystal couldn’t be too bad.

That was all assuming the Interface wasn’t a direct extension of the System’s own intelligence — if such a thing exited. Of course, if the System Interface was intelligent that made his job that much harder. He would bet his eyeteeth that they were System anchors as well, so they were like the System-gods. They had to be destroyed. But if he was lucky, maybe they could be saved as well.

“Can you query the Interface about the individual components of the new shop fees?” Cato asked, trying to see how much Onswa could prod the possible-intelligence. Partly due to wanting to get as much insight into an actual System device as possible, but also because he wanted to see if it was as reactive outside of Onswa’s usual commands. Cato had already tried simple yes and no questions to no avail, as it seemed the Interface could only display information, not its own internal processes. Even the chime seemed to be locked down to entrances, exits, and certain notifications.

Onswa shrugged and began repeating Cato’s question. The Interface shifted to display lines of numbers even before Onswa finished talking, though it seemed that it didn’t have the information Cato was looking for. He knew that System-Gods existed, and had some responsibility in administering their particular world. The exact details were still a mystery, mostly because on Earth they’d managed to kill the System-God too quickly for any sort of interrogation.

“Maybe the essence breakdown of Sydea and Uriva, the past few centuries?” Cato hazarded, keeping a sharp and augmented eye on the displays. The Interface chimed happily and brought up an actual comparison graph, one that was clearly structured to show the biggest differences between the two planets.

That was enough for Cato; even a fairly well-made predictive algorithm wouldn’t serve up a conclusion. Especially since it was the conclusion he was looking for: that Sydea was being systematically exploited and crushed. It wasn’t that the Sydeans were failing, it was that they were being crippled.

It was something that Luna Secundus had noticed on Earth, after crunching the numbers reported by refugees and people who had tried System-compatible frames. There had been rapid adjustments of prices at arbitrary intervals, fixing prices and rewards so nobody could quite keep up with the costs. Which was to say, someone had been fiddling with the System enough to make sure humans weren’t doing as well as they could have. The monstrous advantage granted by advanced frames was being offset by a sudden, steep rise in costs.

He didn’t know why the System-Gods weren’t more overt, but there could be any number of reasons. The System itself might impose restrictions, or the people involved wanted a show rather than to simply wipe out the target species. Or there might be something about the generation of the System’s exotic energy that required some kind of balance, essentially turning new worlds into giant distillation chambers or kudoku.

“Why is it so cheap?” Onswa muttered, comparing the two planets, as even before the current crisis it was obvious Uriva was a fairer place to live.

“As I told you, none of this is an accident. It is active and hateful purpose,” Cato told him, nearly spitting the last sentence in his ire. Though he hardly needed to demonstrate it, and wasn’t worried about getting the Sydeans on his side anymore. The Platinums had aligned themselves with him, especially after he had provided housing for the lowest ranks, but it was good to be proven right. Though that implied Uriva was going to be far tougher to crack, if they were flourishing.

“Your Interface seems to be on our side though,” Cato continued. “I’d like to try and communicate with it directly.”

“What exactly do you mean?” Onswa asked, suspiciously. “You can’t take it from here. It’s part of the capital city Nexus.”

“No, I won’t move it or destroy it,” Cato reassured him, though the latter would have to come eventually. “I hope to bring in my tools and let the Interface speak properly.”

“So you really think it’s a person?” Onswa glanced at the gem embedded in his desk, clearly doubting that such a thing could be like a Sydean.

“Something like it,” Cato agreed, though he very much doubted it was like a Sydean. The exact nature would have to wait, but at least he had confirmed it before he sent of a version of himself to Uriva with the sisters. He wished he could put it off, but getting past Sydea was his most urgent task.

Unfortunately, trying to figure out a way to get a proper version of himself past the gatekeeping going on with the Urivan portal was giving him trouble. He knew that he had to do it without the usual System-jamming effects, as well as without any active technology. There was always the option of sending a System-compatible version of himself along, but he would probably go insane within days if he had to do that. Besides which, that didn’t let him establish a technological base.

What he needed was a bootstrap-in-a-jar, some way to start from the simplest machines that the System would allow, perhaps with a little bit of engineered organism help, and go all the way to a self-sustaining factory. The diamond database was a good start, but he could get only so far with completely passive constructs. The version of himself that was up in orbit took a deep dive through his databases, looking for solutions.

There was quite a bit more in it than he remembered packing. He’d put in his own files, the public databases, his father’s Summer Civilization archive, and Luna’s packet for the No Fun Allowed war. The searches were pulling up things he was pretty sure weren’t in any of those, but when it came to sizes beyond the exabyte range it was hard to know what really was there and what wasn’t. Regardless, he was pleasantly surprised by some of the solutions and went to it with a will.

He started with void ecology, the name for plants and animals that were designed to function entirely in the vacuum of space. Quite a bit of it was older than the biological fusion that the Titan boys had designed, operating on simpler principles of photosynthesis and electricity. Such things were far safer when it came to the System, though no fully electrical devices actually worked under the System’s physics.

From there he had to hack together a chain of lower-technology solutions that wouldn’t be instantly destroyed by the alternate physics he had to deal with. Semiconducting stacks couldn’t be put together, but rather each component held in isolation until the device was back in real physics. Optical switches had to rely solely on prisms, rather than the metamaterials that were most efficient, and once again had to be assembled after the fact.

All of this was just to build the first device that could build the next device. The very earliest mechanism had honest-to-goodness punch-card programming, though on a far smaller scale than the ancient Jacquard looms. The entire thing had to be made small, because the only way to get it into space was muscle power. Augmented muscle power, admittedly, but there would be no lift vehicle.

Cato framejacked himself so he had enough time to work on the design, it was so finnicky. High-powered algorithms did a lot of the brute force work, optimizing materials and layout, while he made the hard decisions of what to sacrifice and where to make the thing work. The algorithms themselves were better than he remembered from his pre-war days, faster and more efficient, but he was hardly going to complain when it made his life easier.

He had started out with a sphere, like one of his seeds, but after realizing the sisters would have to deliver it he had switched to a throwable spear, something they could apply their Skills to. The hardest part was figuring out how to get the thing to somewhere there’d be useful mass. Basic orbital mechanics meant it wasn’t possible to actually hurl something into orbit, no matter how strong someone was — without sideways velocity it’d either fall back to the planet’s surface or escape into an orbit around the local star. He needed the spear to be thrown at the target, and since he needed mass anyway the best bet was simply to have one of the sisters throw him to a moon. He could build some maneuvering into the spear, but there just wasn’t enough mass to have much.

Testing it was a matter of launching it through the System-interdicted area of lower orbit on a tether and reeling it back to see if it still worked. Or indeed, if it could properly register when it had left the System space. He had to go through several iterations before the spears actually started working, which was a frustrating slog when all the normal tools couldn’t pinpoint the exact problems. If he’d had hair, he would have been tearing it out.

At least there hadn’t been any other high-rank individuals coming through the portal. Although he could repeat his orbital bombardment, the sheer devastation each strike caused meant that every foreign Bismuth essentially meant one less town — and there weren’t many of those left to begin with. It was a blessing, but he was certain it couldn’t last. He would have preferred to evacuate Kalhan City, but it held a number of unique buildings including Onswa’s System Interface, and he wasn’t quite ready to start smashing System anchors. Soon, but not quite yet.

When he did, he expected the System-God would finally show his or her face. In fact, Cato was worried by the System-God’s apparent absence, after all the provocation. He would have figured that landing tons of prefabricated habitats would have stirred something, but he hadn’t yet seen a peep.

He feared the System-God was preparing something major.

***

“How do you keep doing that?” Marus growled as he found Initik standing once again in the vestibule of his own private house, deep inside his own System-granted World Deity space, without any hint of how he had arrived. It tickled a memory, something about how Initik had killed the original World Deity of Urivan after reaching Peak Alum. Clan Eln hadn’t been involved, but they’d never contested Initik’s claim.

Once again Initik didn’t answer the question. Instead he reached up to touch the glittering badge of a World Deity, the mark of authority from the System itself and the connection to each Deity’s personal Interface. His own Interface chimed as it registered a connection, and Marus glanced over to the console on the far side of the room.

“You’ll want to watch that,” Initik said, gripping claws clicking as he stood, solid and immoveable. Marus reached out to his Deity space, ready to eject Initik, but hesitated. Partly because he had thought that he’d secured it already, but Initik had still manage to enter, and so Marus didn’t know if he could make the insect leave. Yet there was also the strangeness of Initik’s behavior, the unnatural concern he seemed to have.

Marus compromised between his options by touching his own badge to access his Interface remotely and bring up what Initik had to show him without crossing to the console. There was a long message, along with a couple of memory orbs that were normally used to store the results of divinatory Skills. He began to read, shot a glance at Initik, then continued reading. Then he drew the memory orbs out of the Interface, using each in turn. A conversation between mortals, and then a conversation between gods.

“Surely you don’t expect me to take this seriously,” Marus scoffed, storing the orbs away again. “A threat to the System?”

“Perhaps not a threat to the System itself, but certainly a threat to your world,” Initik said. “Or do you think Deity Neyar is mistaken?”

That brought Marus up short. While Initik was a nobody, Deity Neyar was a terrible and ancient titan of the System. It was more than passing strange, upon reflection, that Neyar had offered Initik even the slightest courtesy — and Marus certainly shouldn’t discard Neyar’s words.

“Deity Neyar only knew of rumor and speculation,” Marus pointed out, choosing his words far more carefully than before. “Nobody emerged from Ahrusk with such stories, and you and I both know that interested parties would be swift to concoct dramatic stories to capitalize on any failure and use it against their enemies. I’m sure Clan Lundt is busy blaming the collapse of Ahrusk on me as we speak.”

“Perhaps,” Initik conceded, unruffled as ever. “Yet the very strangeness of the quest infesting your world lends weight both to the Copper’s testimony and Deity Neyar’s knowledge. If this Cato’s location is truly beyond the globe of Sydea, it will be impossible to uncover him by the usual means. Yet he will have proxies on Sydea itself and those should be within your grasp.”

Marus’ lips curled away from his teeth. Initik’s intrusion was both insulting and unwelcome, and in other circumstances he would have brushed away the insect’s effrontery as he had before. He had certainly attempted to divine the source of the quests, of certain incidents, spending far too much time poring over the happenings on the surface. That was how he’d caught the simultaneous destruction of three town nexus buildings.

The loss of Sydean towns was desired and welcome in general, but for three to be destroyed simultaneously was alarming. He was not familiar with the Skill involved, either, which was just as bad. Deities might not have every Skill, but they could get any Skill, so any competent Deity had a broad understanding. While his ego protested Initik’s invasion, part of him had a very real worry that he would lose control of Sydea, so finally he waved Initik in.

“I have something to show you as well,” he said reluctantly, and had his Interface display the divination he had done about the destruction of the three towns. The locus of the divination was each town’s own nexus, as there was no obvious expenditure of essence that his Interface could locate. Nothing to show what had caused it.

The two of them watched in silence as the towns went from standing and inhabited by Bismuths – and some Coppers – to utterly annihilated. Each of them showed that brief line of fire pointing to the sky, but there wasn’t the usual burst of fire, or essence fueled explosion. Only a horrific impact, one that was impressive even to a Deity such as himself, though it wouldn’t do more than smudge his clothes.

“It is clear Sydea has a serious problem,” Initik said, and then grunted as Marus performed a different divination, targeting some of the existing outlying towns. Strange buildings, unlike any offered by the System, sprouted from the edges of the towns like fungal growths. He had already tried to access them through the town’s own nexus buildings, but they weren’t considered part of the town itself.

“Why have you not removed those yet?” Initik asked bluntly.

“I would have to spend my own essence to manifest and do so manually,” Marus said with a shrug. “It doesn’t seem worth my time and effort, when it is merely buildings. “

“Even merely buildings like that should not be possible,” Initik pointed out. “No, Sydea is diseased, and it needs to be purged. That, or cut off from the System entirely, the portals barred and the teleports blocked.”

“That’s not happening,” Marus snapped. He’d spend far too much time and effort on Sydea to effectively abandon it. In theory, he could join forces with Initik and they could close out any travel between Sydea and Urivan, the latter of which was Sydea’s only link to the System. But that sort of quarantine would mean he had lost control, that he’d given up, and there was no way he could face his Clan if he was forced to that sort of extremity. It was a pure admission of failure, and unthinkable.

“I thought that might be the case,” Initik said, gripping claws clicking in the most irritating way. “There is a Paladin that we might use to deal with this more directly, who I have delayed slightly on his journey to Sydea.” Marus scowled at Initik, wondering if the insect was involved in Sydea’s troubles. He mistrusted the idea of such foresight, though controlling those with divine Skills was easy enough, if impolitic when it came to the mortals under the care of other clans.

They were also the most direct method a World Deity had to affect the realm of mortals. Complete manifestation was possible, of course, but it came with certain costs and vulnerabilities. Staying in the mortal world for long enough could drain a Deity’s entire essence supply over time, and the mortal world was not as compliant to the whims of a Deity as the spaces the System provided. No mortal was actually a threat, of course, but the limitations made it preferable to use mortal proxies that might then generate additional essence of their own.

Not to mention, that sort of interference was rather gauche.

“That seems a reasonable approach,” Marus conceded. “But how is a single Bismuth going to make a difference? Three have already perished on Sydea, without even being able to fight back.”

“Send him those divinations about the towns. He already knows about the bizarre moon place, and the Cato-beasts, and a suggestion that he might destroy them would not go amiss.” Initik said. “Then simply give him the tools to do so.” Marus started to ask how, but then paused.

A divine type Bismuth would generally manifest their Skills as using energy, but that certainly wasn’t a restriction. One of the benefits of being one of the System’s clergy was that Marus could interact with the Bismuth more directly, and so grant him a Skill appropriate for hurling, say, enormous boulders over the long distances. It was a solution that would mean Marus didn’t have to use any of his private essence to empower the Paladin himself.

“My Interface has recorded the specific essence signature of the Cato-beasts,” Initik said, breaking into Marus’ musings. “I would suggest a weapon tuned to specifically disperse them.”

“Yes, excellent,” Marus agreed immediately, since that would be drawn from the Paladin’s own energies as well. Both solutions would prevent him from having to pay out any of his hoarded riches, or his Clan’s, on such a gamble. Even if it didn’t work perfectly, if it worked enough he could simply repeat the process. If not, he would still have resources to explore other options.

“Who is the Bismuth in question?” He asked, turning to his Interface to send the divinations.

“Grand Paladin Nikhil Tornok,” Initik said. Marus froze, then sighed. Clan Tornok was its own clan, one not administered by Clan Eln, so he would have to send some messages and conciliatory gifts. And provide the Grand Paladin a modicum of protection, just in case. But it would still be worth it.

Chapter 17 — Divine Intervention

Grand Paladin Nikhil Tornok meditated before the System pylon at the center of the temple, subtly channeling his keystone Skill, [Divine Conduit]. Ever since heard that Copper’s strange testimony, it had been nudging him to stay, to consider, to commune. He didn’t know what the gods had in mind just yet, but he had complete faith that there was a reason he was supposed to wait.

His faith was rewarded when [Divine Conduit] suddenly blazed to life, the energy of the System pouring into him. Visions arose in his mind, of towns on Sydea being destroyed by a sudden cataclysm — along with the Bismuths dwelling there, and the hasty abandonment of nearby towns. He knew where they were, just as he knew how intense the destruction was, the [Divine Conduit] putting the knowledge directly into his mind.

Along with that knowledge came the command, a divine decree, that he should use all his efforts to punish the heretics and purge the thing known as Cato from the face of Sydea. Nor would he be unsupported in that effort. The pylon glowed as the System informed him of the gifts that he had been granted.

[Equipment Bestowed: The God’s Eye]

[Equipment Bestowed: Crystal of Immunity]

[Equipment Bestowed: Scepter of Annihilation]

[Equipment Bestowed: Clasp of Stone]

[Reward Bestowed: Overloaded S-Tier Skill Token: Stone Lance]

[Quest Ordained: Cleanse Sydea. Reward to be determined. This Quest contributes toward Feats of Glory required for Azoth Rank]

Nikhil took in a long, slow breath. To be simply granted items for accepting the quest meant that it was a special one, indeed. Something the power of the items confirmed.

[The God’s Eye: This monocle grants the wearer vision of arbitrary distance, and provides the wearer with the tools to accurately strike targets with any applicable Skill.]

[Crystal of Immunity: This small crystal grants the bearer complete immunity to a single attack that would otherwise kill them.]

[Scepter of Annihilation: This divine tool will instantly destroy any creations of the being known as Cato.]

[Clasp of Divine Stone: This necklace vastly reduces the costs associated with divine and stone-type Skills and amplifies their power.]

All that was amazing enough, but the Overloaded S-Tier Skill Token was astounding. An S-Tier Skill was, of course, impossibly valuable, but an Overloaded Skill bypassed the normal restrictions on Skills, effectively granting him an extra Skill at his best rank. [Stone Lance] instead of a proper divine Skill was an odd choice for him, but he understood the gods’ intentions. If the Copper was to be believed, one of the very moons of Sydea was compromised, and perhaps the origin of the town-destroying Skill was in the heavens as well. If so, between the [God’s Eye Monocle] and [Stone Lance] he would be well capable of destroying them, with the [Clasp of Stone] boosting his ability to use the unfamiliar Skill.

The [Scepter of Annihilation] was simultaneously the most powerful and most useless item the System had ever granted him. He could feel the divine touch within the long spiraled rod, a thing wrought out of a material he didn’t recognize and inlaid with gold, a latent power beyond what any Skill could accomplish. To simply destroy anything he wished, with no ability to resist or contest it, was something reserved for deities. Yet the rod was created for a singular purpose, and once that purpose was fulfilled that almighty power would be impotent.

Nikhil wouldn’t complain. It was likely all the tools – even the Skill – would be taken back by the gods once the quest was over regardless. The actual quest’s rewards were more than enough anyway. He was certain the essence and money and perhaps even equipment would be generous, but the real prize was the step toward Azoth rank. Merely reaching the peak of Bismuth was a fraction of the effort needed to step into the next rank, and this quest would put him within reach of that advancement.

He tucked the rod into his belt, the magical equipment growing a small sheath for it automatically, and then donned the monocle. It was merely a thin piece of crystal, rimmed in blue metal, but it fixed itself in place and he immediately began to see its effect. Wherever he looked, it gave him an intrinsic knowledge of how precisely he had to manipulate his Skill reach the target. Within the confines of the temple that was not much, but in the open it would be exceedingly useful.

The [Crystal of Immunity] simply went into his storage pouch. Items that bestowed an effect merely by possession were rare, and often restricted in effect like the Crystal — though rarely quite so potent. The Clasp replaced the normal divine pendant at his neck, and then finally he absorbed the Skill token. The expansion of his mind to encompass the new Skill was an odd sensation, far more intense than acquiring new Skills with normal tokens. Nikhil had never had an Overloaded Skill before, and it was an unusual strain.

Fully equipped, Nikhil rose from where he was meditating and glanced around at the Coppers he had brought with him. Unfortunately, it seemed Sydea would be far too dangerous to bring them for their easy quest rewards, at least at first. Perhaps when the greatest threats had been dealt with, there would be time. In the interim, Uriva was surprisingly well-equipped for a frontier world and his Coppers could do quests for the Temple.

He strode over to find the Platinum in charge of the temple and transferred responsibility for the Coppers to him, along with the appropriate compensation. Even if they all served the gods of the divine System, it wouldn’t do to expect such services for free. The well-being of Tornok Clan Coppers was a serious responsibility, especially for an uncivilized frontier world.

Then he made his way to the System Nexus in a flash, considering the portal to Sydea. There were few people near it, but even as he watched several Clan Morkrom Silvers came through, claws waving with disgruntlement. The squat crablike people were nominal allies with Clan Tornok, or at least too powerful to push around without issue. Still, they were merely Silvers.

“What is happening on the other side?” Nikhil asked, foregoing any pleasantries. The Silvers jolted, then realized who was addressing them and bowed with a tilt of their low, armored bodies.

“Honored Bismuth! The Sydean Platinums are ejecting all offworlders,” one of the Silvers said.

“Oh? When did this begin?” Nikhil had an idea. An intuition. It had to have begun once the strange Skill – Cato’s Skill, most certainly – had destroyed the towns and the Bismuths therein. Only then would mere Platinums have dared to enforce such a thing.

“Two days ago,” the Silver replied, and Nikhil nodded at the confirmation.

“You may go about your business,” he said in dismissal and stepped through the portal himself. The Nexus building on the other side was more in line with what he expected of the frontier; the minimum size, modified little beyond the initial layout and amenities. It was nearly empty, save for a few Sydeans at the quest pylon and one that was obviously watching the portal.

Nikhil scoffed at the Gold-rank observer and retrieved the [Scepter of Annihilation] from his belt. Raising in the air, he invoked [Divine Sanctuary] and channeled the Scepter’s power into the expanding sphere of golden energy. He could feel a buzz of feedback as the empowered Sanctuary encountered Cato-creations and summarily destroyed them, [Divine Sanctuary] expanding to cover the entire city. The observing Gold stared with widened eyes and brought a farcaster up to its muzzle, but Nikhil simply crushed it with a quick [Holy Lance].

[Low Gold rank Sydean defeated. Essence awarded.]

He ignored the other two lizards bolting out the door, crossing to the System pylon and updating his map. There was only one other city of consequence, so he paid for the teleportation there, blinking into another, even more paltry and bare Nexus. Once again he lifted the Scepter, a second [Divine Sanctuary] blanketed the city. There seemed to be even more of the Cato things there, to judge by how much the Scepter drew from him, but not enough to strain his energy. It was almost too easy, in fact, but that was only to be expected of divine tools.

There were other towns to be cleansed, of course, but as Nikhil was not stupid he had to attend to certain matters first. He had seen the devastation that Cato’s Skill could wreak, but also that such devastation was directly solely toward small towns with no Sydean inhabitants. The [Crystal of Immunity] gave him a certain level of protection, but he wasn’t going to waste it by making a target of himself.

[Wings of Ishill] brought him from the interior of the nexus to its top in a single burst of divine radiance as he looked up into the sky. It was evening, the close-paired suns near the horizon, but the moons were not yet in sight. The [God’s Eye Monocle] caught small glints in the darkening sky anyway, things impossibly far away.

He didn’t exactly understand what he was looking at. Even with Bismuth senses, they were merely small blocky shapes resting at a remove that was hard to credit. Yet with the [God’s Eye Monocle] he had no issues locating them — or knowing how to hit them. It was for this reason that he had been given [Stone Lance].

That particular Skill was unfamiliar and yet similar enough to his [Holy Lance]. It felt the same when invoked but, instead of light, a dull grey, impossibly hard stone congealed from nowhere into a long, man-size spear. He narrowed his eyes at the information the Monocle gave him — the degree to which he had to lead his aim was frankly astounding, but he trusted the System’s guidance.

He charged the Skill, the S-tier version readying an array of hundreds, then thousands of the lances about him, holding them in the air until he released the Skill. The lances screamed into the air, vanishing from the sight of any low ranks in mere seconds, but his own vision tracked them as they ascended. And ascended.

It was considerably further than he had thought, the sort of vast expanses he had only associated with the Alum-rank worlds where [Conflict Zones] stretched beyond what could be imagined. He counted entire minutes as the S-tier Skill flew, until it finally impacted the small and distant shape. A cloud of debris puffed outward, but the System didn’t inform him of his success.

Nikhil didn’t know whether that was because the attack had failed, or whether Cato was correct in saying it was beyond the System’s scope. Either way, what had been a steady, single brick was slowly tilting, bits and pieces spreading away from it. He decided he would be satisfied with that, and turned his attention to the next. He could spot several others, all slowly moving in the heavens, and until the moons came around, he would practice his Skill on the targets he could see.

***

Cato swore in five separate languages, none of them known to the System, as all his scouts and warframes in Kalhan City vanished. The only frame that was left was the much-restricted and diminished Sydean frame, which had only a low-bandwidth connection to one of the drop pods floating high above the city, effectively just text communication. Which was better than nothing, but it was only a matter of time before that connection failed as well.

A wave of gold went past that particular frame, where he stood in Onswa’s office, and disintegrated the System-jamming biomass that he’d been using to try and get access to the System Interface. Like the warframes that went through the portal, it simply dissipated into nothingness, violating conservation of matter in a very thoroughly System-like manner.

“Divine user,” Onswa said grimly, eyes unfocusing for a moment. “Another Bismuth, but — ah, he’s already gone.”

“Mosaw City,” Cato said, as he received a message update about his scouts vanishing there as well. He couldn’t maintain enough different versions of himself to have warframes in all the cities, so he was mostly restricted to the augmented sisters, overwatch, Onswa, and Arene. “I have him on surveillance.”

From orbit, Cato could see the Bismuth in question was one of the rat people — Clan Tornok. The spy satellite showed him standing on the top of the belltower-like peak of the central System building, staring upward. For a normal person, that wouldn’t mean much, but Cato felt uncomfortably like the rat-person was looking back at him.

The records were clear that higher rank System folks could see and reach things in orbit, even when the System itself could not, but there was a difference between the recordings and actually witnessing it personally. A massive fusillade of what seemed to be stone or metal was launched upward from Mosaw city at double-digit Mach numbers, not even losing velocity from air drag. It didn’t take more than a fraction of a calculation to tell the bombardment was aimed directly at one of his railguns.

He began firing the fusion maneuvering jets, but the enormously massy orbital weapons were not designed to move quickly, not to mention they just didn’t have much fuel. Given the limitations on the deuterium and tritium extracted from the pockets of water-ice he’d found on his small moon, and the tiny mining stations beginning to extend across the primary moon, they’d only been fueled enough to get them into orbit. Not that it mattered, since the oncoming cloud of projectiles actually changed course to follow that slight shift.

The railguns were outside the System’s sphere of influence, but only just, and if the spell was tracking there was no way that he’d be able to shift the orbital emplacements enough to matter in so little time. Not to mention the vast field of solar panels surrounding it, which were completely exposed and ridiculously fragile. He had seen rankers take out orbital facilities before, but actually having to manage his own made it that much more a problem.

“Can you deal with him?” Onswa asked back on the surface, obviously disgruntled by his own inability to contest a Bismuth.

“If he leaves a city, yes. I think.” The Sydean frame replied after a moment, needing the time to get an update from the version of himself up on the moon. He was certain that the connection would drop before long, as attacks and Kessler Syndrome – the inevitable result of debris and destruction in the useful orbitals – destroyed his communication relays. “But he’s targeting my orbital infrastructure — I think this is the System-God finally reacting.” Onswa’s long face grew even more dour, but Cato was more vindicated than worried. There was nothing he could do to stop the Bismuth from smashing his orbital machinery, but he might have the chance to actually hit the System-God and remove that anchor.

A railgun wouldn’t be enough for that. Not even close. A System-God had a toughness borne of altered reality, an ability to simply ignore physics. Most physics, at least. A particle beam had worked by dint of raw energy, but before that the best results had been with antimatter.

Nobody really worked with the stuff, as antimatter just wasn’t very useful. It was enormously energy-intensive to make, couldn’t be stored in any amount, and annihilation was too energetic to be captured easily. Even then, most of the energy was carried away by neutrinos, so it was a poor return on investment. Still, antimatter did destroy even the most nonsensical System matter on contact.

Cato had only a few grams of the stuff, in two separate containment bullets. They weren’t actually physical projectiles, but rather intensely magnetic capsules with plasma sheaths to protect them. The outer envelope would destabilize practically instantly when they hit the System, but it’d be long enough to reach the target given the near-relativistic speeds. It wasn’t much, and while it was still survivable by a System-God it would demonstrate that Cato could kill him. A fear that could be almost as potent as the weapon itself.

All that was assuming that the System-God itself appeared and Cato could actually hit it. With the Bismuth destroying his orbital infrastructure that was far less likely, but Cato doubted that the antimatter guns themselves were at risk. They were small enough to try and make stealthy, so he had hastily altered their coating to be light absorbing before launching the two God-Poke railguns, assigning them to opposing polar orbits so he’d have the best coverage possible. Between their vastly smaller size – their payload was tiny, after all – and greater distance, they were far less noticeable to any senses.

“We should probably leave before he returns,” Onswa said, standing and glancing over the System Interface before shutting it down. “If he’s here for you, then I’m going to be in the way.”

“Let’s go,” Cato said, though the Sydean version of himself wasn’t overly important. Onswa, on the other hand, wasn’t replaceable. Or backed up.

Onswa made a gesture with one hand, then frowned as the strange, silvery-grey radiance failed to manifest into a portal. The Sydean visibly strained, then dropped the magic when nothing happened. Then he tried again, the portal showing the city from a perspective just above the office before Onswa stepped through, flying into the air. Cato exited the office door at a more normal speed, looking out at the great golden dome that covered the city.

System cities weren’t all that large compared to those on earth, but the Skill still stretched over a mile in each direction. Onswa’s form was visible in the air as he flitted up to the top of the dome and physically pressed against it as if it were solid. Which perhaps it was; the System’s alternate physics was perfectly capable of producing the absurdity of glowing energy barriers.

Cato started down the stairs to the bottom of the nexus building, and by the time he reached it Onswa was inside. Hot fury flared in the Sydean frame, inciting an angry lash of his tail, as he saw the blood-splattered remains of the poor Gold who had no other duty than to keep an eye on the portal. Cato’s equipment was replaceable, his railguns and warframes were ultimately just things, but the casual destruction of people was sickening. What was worse was that if the shield had been down, it might have been possible for Cato to save him.

Orbital Cato was no happier, but lacking the same visceral, biological reaction he could consider it more calmly and found there was nothing he could do. The best he could manage was to write the name of the Gold in question into a specific database, for a memorial somewhere far down the line. It was going to be a large memorial, even leaving out all the generations that the System had ruined since it had arrived. Onswa only gave the corpse a glance, a callous response that was surely the result of simply seeing so much death, as he prodded the pylon at the far end the room.

“Teleport is blocked,” he announced. “We’re trapped here.”

***

“We have a problem.” The small Cato-beast interrupted his own explanation – first of the so-called orbital bombardment, then of the nature of the new, non-combat spears he had given them – and Raine felt a sudden sense of dread curling her tail. For as powerful a being as Cato to encounter an actual problem meant there was something truly dire happening.

“A divine-type Bismuth has come through the portal and locked down both Kalhan and Mosaw City. A big dome that doesn’t let anyone out,” Cato continued. “Onswa is stuck and there’s nothing I can do about it until the Bismuth leaves a city.”

“We’re still Silver,” Leese pointed out. “We may be on par with Gold, but that’s still nothing to a Bismuth. You think we can do something?”

“People can get in, and the version of me that’s there isn’t going to be around much longer,” Cato replied, turning toward the door of the room. “Yup, reconciled and gone. I need some insight if I’m going to do anything, and a few Silvers should be more or less invisible. Besides, you know more about that kind of person than I do. If you’re willing, some eyes on the situation would help, and maybe we can figure out a way to get Onswa out of there. I figure you might as well try to take the teleport in, which is something I can’t do at all.”

Raine and Leese exchanged glances. Only a day before, they would have tried to turn it down, and even now it was a nigh-suicidal idea. Yet the two of them had just woken up from several hours spent in small, narrow cots wrought of Cato’s strange materials, and if they trusted his word they were just as immortal as he.

He had been at pains to make them understand the individuals they were could very easily die, and there would be no coming back from that. There would still be a Leese and Raine though, and they would lack only a few hours or days of experience. If all went well, they could return to the cots and fill in the missing time.

The distinctions Cato was most concerned with seemed hardly relevant to Raine. Missing a few days or a few weeks was a small price to pay for a peace of mind and the ability to take risks. Their experience since returning to Sydea had shown that they could get back to peak Silver in a matter of hours if they pushed it, now that they were more conversant with their new bodies. Perhaps when they reached Bismuth themselves the time needed for ranking up again would become troublesome, but for now it was a mere annoyance.

“We’ll go,” Raine said, once she and Leese were in agreement. “Just don’t expect too much.” If Cato were merely an Alum-rank, she would have said to expect nothing, but he wasn’t from within the System. Even allowing – or really, encouraging – the casual mode of address she had just used was far different from what a powerful person should accept. The perspectives the two of them could offer were genuinely valuable, not merely the blathering of low tiers.

“Fantastic,” Cato said with enthusiasm, the small Cato-beast pushing open the door and leading them to the next room. It was an armory, but the swords and spears weren’t what they were there to acquire. Instead the Cato-beast approached the oddly organic-looking desk next to the door, withdrawing two tiny lizards from what seemed to be cocoons inside drawers there.

“Ooh, how cute!” Leese squealed as the small creatures blinked at them with overly-large eyes, shifting on big toes and flexing their long, curled tails. They were color-coded, one red-orange to match Raine’s scales and one white for Leese’s, so it was obvious which was meant for whom. Cato extended their respective lizards to them with his back-tendrils, and Raine took hers uncertainly.

[Quickpulse Lizard: This small lizard can vibrate its tail at amazing speeds in order to communicate.]

“These will allow you to remain in contact with me,” Cato informed them. “Just feed them from your rations and give them water from time to time. They should obey simple commands, as well. Just let them sit on your head, just back of your horns, and you ought to be able to hear everything.

Leese stroked the head of her [Quickpulse Lizard] and then proceeded to lift it up to let it settle on the scales covering her skull. Raine followed suit, and the lizard crouched down, its toes gripping her scales and its tailtip wrapping around the base of her left horn. It was so small it was nearly weightless and, unless someone was specifically looking, it would probably be unnoticeable.

“Can you both hear this?” The words rang oddly, almost like they were inside her skull rather than coming in through her ears, but they each nodded. “Great. Just tell it if you want it to transmit to me or not with ‘on’ or ‘off.’” The words Cato used were not System terms, but easy enough to pronounce, and a moment of testing showed that it worked just fine.

“I’ll let you head to the teleports then,” Cato said, this time through the actual Cato-beast. “I might be in and out of contact, depending on how much orbital infrastructure he decides to destroy. I’ll try to land some forces near Kalhan City, but it’ll be a couple hours.” Raine hissed; a few hours was enough time for a Bismuth to lay waste to everything he could see.

“We’ll try to keep you informed,” Leese said, and the Cato-beast opened the door for them. The two of them hurried into town, heading for the System Nexus. Teleporting between towns was moderately expensive, but delving Silver dungeons at Copper and Gold dungeons at Silver meant they were flush with tokens. The rewards for fighting up a rank were terribly impressive. They’d never been wealthy before, but they were well on their way now.

Raine touched the teleportation pylon, selected Kalhan City, and watched it take a wince-inducing number of silver-rank tokens from her wallet. The world shifted around them, and they appeared in the capital city’s Nexus building. It was unfortunately crowded, mostly with outworlders, and the reason why became obvious when Raine glanced at the portal. It was covered with a shimmering golden film, and even as she watched one of Clan Morkrom press his claw against the film, only to find it completely impermeable.

Leese bumped her shoulder and the two of them carefully threaded their way around the edges of the room, especially avoiding the Clan Tornok Golds and Silvers. Her Silver-rank, C-tier essence sense wasn’t the best, but it was enough to tell that the Bismuth wasn’t around at the moment. She didn’t know exactly how his Skill was still active, but Bismuth was the first step into real power and divine users had certain advantages.

“On,” Raine whispered in Cato’s odd tongue once they left the main room, turning onto the stairway up to Onswa’s office. “The portal is blocked off, the Nexus is full of outworlders,” she reported, following Leese up the stairs. “The Bismuth hasn’t returned, we’re trying to find Onswa first.”

“He’s still thrashing my orbital infrastructure, but he’s running out of targets. I don’t think you have much time.” The strange buzzing voice spoke inside her skull. “I don’t know if you can hide Onswa or what. I’m not even sure what the Bismuth intends to do.”

“Whatever he wants,” Raine muttered. Leese sighed in agreement.

“Before, there was nothing here for Bismuth or higher ranks,” Leese explained. “We were left alone because we were a waste of time for anyone with real power. Now there’s someone here to counter you, and nobody on Sydea could hope to oppose him.”

“We’re going to need to evacuate the city after this,” Cato said after a moment. “The only method I have for dealing with high rankers just has too much collateral damage. I was honestly expecting more conflict to happen away from soft targets.”

“Normally high rankers don’t fight in lower rank cities,” Raine agreed. “A city upgraded to Bismuth-rank materials wouldn’t be much affected by someone like him, but Kalhan is mostly Gold, I think.” It felt silly to explain something so blatantly obvious, but Cato had said he didn’t know all the thousand and one blatantly obvious things that anyone who lived within the System would realize.

“Good to know,” Cato said, as they reached the office door. Leese pressed her hand against the entrance panel, and the door chimed before opening. The two of them had only been to the Planetary Administrator’s office once, in congratulations for their ascent to Gold, so while Raine couldn’t claim much familiarity with it, she did think it looked incredibly bare compared to her memories.

“What are you two doing here?” Onswa asked, staring at them in surprise.

“Cato’s eyes and ears,” Leese replied, looking around for the Sydean version of Cato.

“He said something about a gestalt dump and then keeled over,” Onswa said, interpreting Leese’s interest correctly. “Damned unnerving. I had the Interface clean it up.”

“I wouldn’t want an ordinary version of myself vulnerable to a Bismuth,” Cato said, half-apologetically. “Now, how do we get this guy away from a city so I can hit him? And not get Onswa or anyone killed in the process?”

“I doubt we’ll be so lucky,” Onswa said grimly, once Raine conveyed the question. That Onswa couldn’t hear the transmission himself was strange, but only one more oddity to be piled on top of Cato’s nature. “He trapped us here on purpose, which is to say he trapped me here on purpose. The gods would hold me responsible as the Planetary Administrator, even if they don’t know precisely how much I’ve been cooperating.”

“Damn,” Cato’s voice came. “We need to get you out of here.”

“I doubt you can,” Onswa said, his face still set. “But my wife is in the compound outside the city to the north. Evacuate her.”

“I will,” Cato promised. “But I want to get everyone out if I can.”

“If I—” Onswa started, then suddenly flipped his hand. A swirl of aether surrounded Raine and Leese, dumping them in the open square outside the Nexus. Raine steadied Leese as she stumbled, staring back at the Nexus building as a powerful source of essence blazed to her senses.

The Bismuth had returned.

Chapter 18 — Inflicted Wounds

It was one thing to know a Bismuth was powerful. It was another entirely to feel it. Even when Raine had met Cato, his power had been more theoretical, more implied, than the sheer essence radiating from the Nexus. Nor had Cato been able to subdue Arene or Onswa without any apparent effort.

Raine’s tail curled into itself as the Clan Tornok Bismuth emerged from the top of the Nexus, dragging Onswa behind him. The Bismuth was dressed in gleaming golden armor, finely crafted and bearing Clan Tornok’s crest upon it, each piece of the articulated armor likely worth more than all the equipment on Sydea, collectively. Yet for all that finery Raine thought there was something ugly about the slinky, rodent-like Bismuth, some cruel and bitter aspect to the strange furred face. Reflexively, Raine used [Appraise], though the identity of the Bismuth hardly mattered.

[Grand Paladin Nikhil Tornok — Bismuth]

Onswa himself could barely move, imprisoned in golden-glowing bonds that clamped his arms to his sides and his tail and legs together, floating behind Nikhil on a lead of the same divine energy. Every Sydean knew that Onswa’s strange aether energy made him impossible to stop or slow down, to trap or deflect. He was called Onswa the Unstoppable for a reason, but when it came to the power of a Bismuth his advantages were as nothing.

“Everyone to the square!” The paladin boomed, bellowing with a volume only a Bismuth rank could produce. Raine winced, but not only was her body more robust than a normal Silver’s but there seemed to be something built into it to keep that volume from becoming actually painful.

“Is there anything we can do?” Leese whispered to Raine as the various outworlders who had been inside the Nexus obediently emerged outside, and Sydeans who had been frequenting the shops and inns warily crept out into the streets.

“We’re not powerful enough,” Raine said, tasting bile in her throat as she watched Nikhil land in the middle of the square with Onswa. “And I don’t think he is either.” She didn’t want to say Cato’s name where the Bismuth could hear it, in case it drew attention.

“All I could do is drop a railgun round on top of the city and that wouldn’t do anyone any good,” Cato said grimly. “My warframes are on their way but it won’t be immediate.”

“People of Sydea,” Nikhil said, heaping derision on the first word. “Your Platinums have strayed from the dictates of the divine System, and invited a being that calls itself Cato to be your new lord and master. The gods themselves have verified the words of one of your Coppers – a Copper with more faith than your Platinums – and they have sent me to set things right.”

“Muar,” Leese whispered instantly, and Raine nodded grimly. She had known that Muar had somehow turned into a System zealot, but as a Copper he was entirely irrelevant. Or should have been. How he had gotten the ear of an outworld Bismuth she had no idea, but the betrayal cut deep.

Nikhil’s announcement didn’t make the waves that he’d been looking for, though. Raine didn’t know how much of the truth that Onswa had put out to the general population, but the Platinums had sent messages through the Golds to all the Silvers and Coppers about cooperating with Cato. Almost everyone had seen or knew someone whose life had been made easier by Cato’s housing and equipment. The only ones who seemed impressed were the outworlders, who wouldn’t have heard things through Sydean channels.

“There is no attack from the skies that will stop me,” Nikhil boasted, eyes sweeping the crowd, though Raine felt those words were addressed specifically to her and Leese. If Muar had told his story, then surely Nikhil knew their names. Or perhaps he didn’t care, for Silvers were far beneath his notice. “I am protected by the gods themselves. The attacks that felled the other Bismuths will not work on me. Now that I am here, I will ensure that Sydea is returned to the proper guidance of the divine System.”

“Protected by the gods?” Raine muttered, glancing to Leese. As a former priestess she might have some idea if that was something special. Leese tilted her head slightly, and Raine understood there was something there — but nothing that could be discussed at the moment.

“All your Platinums are complicit with the enemy,” Nikhil boomed. “And the rot must be cut out by the roots. Perhaps someone will advance enough to govern you — or perhaps not. You reap the consequences of raising up those who would rebel against the divine System.”

Nikhil brought forth Onswa with a sneer, who had not bothered trying to speak against the Bismuth. He merely had his head raised and shoulders set, calm and collected. Yet Raine’s tail curled and her heart clenched as the Platinum reached out. With a sound that would echo in her nightmares, Nikhil ripped Onswa’s head from his shoulders and dropped the bleeding corpse on the ground.

“This is what comes of defying the gods,” Nikhil said, holding his grisly prize by one of the horns, and then negligently tossed the head out into the crowd. Leese darted forward and caught it.

Raine’s breath caught, both at what might be possible, and at the attention Leese had drawn to herself by doing so. But Nikhil merely scoffed and turned toward the Nexus building. He made a brief gesture and the golden dome over the city vanished.

“There will be no off-world travel just yet,” Nikhil stated. “Not until all the Platinums have been brought to me.” He glanced over the assembled outworlders, which were at least half Clan Tornok to begin with. “The sooner that happens, the sooner you can leave. If you have not fulfilled the System quest, feel free to do so, but I will be removing the real source.”

He vanished into the Nexus, the Bismuth-rank presence fading as he clearly took a teleport somewhere else, and Raine hastened after him with Leese by her side. There was no telling what violence would break out now that the Bismuth had essentially proclaimed there were no higher ranks protecting Sydeans, and that the Platinums all were to be killed on sight. They needed to get out of the city before the outworlders realized all the implications.

“I have Onswa’s head,” Leese muttered as they dashed toward the teleportation pylon. “Can you save him?”

“I believe so,” Cato said, the buzzing voice grim and hard. “If you hurry.”

The two of them pressed their hands against the pylon, selecting Sokhal Town where Cato had several buildings dedicated to his own strange craft. The world changed around them, and they sprinted to the exit. Sokhal Town was small enough that they could see Cato’s non-System buildings over the roofs of nearby shops, promising Onswa’s salvation.

“You two!” The voice came from behind, and Raine spun to see three Tornok Clan exiting the Nexus.

[Anhir Tornok — Gold]

[Mushal Tornok – High Gold]

[Ramshel Tornok – High Gold]

“Where are you going with our prize?” Ramshel leered at them, and Raine flexed her Skill, spear and buckler appearing as she eyed the three of them. At mid and high Gold, each of them should have been more than a match for the pair, but with Cato’s augmented bodies the terms were far more even. Except they were in a hurry, and they couldn’t risk Onswa’s head getting damaged in the scuffle.

Aside from simple respect, Raine didn’t have a personal connection to Onswa. But he had been a good Platinum, taking care of as many people as he could as best he could, and was probably the reason Cato hadn’t been forced to take more drastic steps. If he could survive past his own death, that would be both absolute proof of Cato’s power, and a demonstration that even the gods didn’t matter to Cato’s designs.

“We could use some backup,” Raine muttered to Cato. “We’re back in Sokhal.”

“Headed your way,” Cato said, but they couldn’t just wait. By mutual agreement, Leese sprinted away while Raine guarded the street. Anhir tried to breeze past Raine with a movement Skill, and she punished the attempt with a hammerblow of [Blazing Spearmastery]. Her spear, one provided by Cato, glowed red hot as it smashed home against Anhir’s armor, punching through the Gold-rank mail and forcing him to retreat with a growl of pain.

“You dare to stand against us?” Ramshel said in disbelief. “A mere Silver?”

“Yes,” Raine said, settling into her stance. She likely only had to defend for a minute or so before one of Cato’s beasts arrived, but a minute was ages in a fight. Ramshel scoffed and stepped forward, hands glowing white with some spell.

Then a blade erupted from his neck in a spray of blood.

Ramshel’s companions shouted in surprise as the Tornok Clan Gold fell to his knees, white vanishing from his hands as he reached up to the gaping wound pumping out his lifeblood. Raine didn’t let the opportunity pass by, launching herself forward with her spear blazing red-hot. She aimed it precisely at the opening she’d already made in Anhir’s armor, a sort of precision that ought to be impossible for a Silver. But that was why Anhir wasn’t ready for it, nor was he prepared for the incredible sharpness of Cato’s weapon.

He screamed as she seared his guts, twisting the spear once before being forced back to avoid his counterblow. She ducked under the long-spiked chain, deflecting its reaching barbs with her buckler, but even as a glancing blow, the impact left long gouges in her shield. Then she drove in again, pressing her advantage mercilessly as he staggered away, crippled by his wound. With her improved perceptions and clarity of mind, she was able to track Mushal at the same time, who was engaged with the assassin who had removed Ramshel.

Like her, he was fast and precise, using it to ruthless advantage as he plied a darkness-shrouded blade against Mushal. That Gold had a spiked hammer that hissed through the air with each heavy blow, throwing huge clouds of dirt up where it impacted the unimproved road — yet completely failing to connect with the Sydean opponent. The chain of her own opponent tore through the stone of the nearby building, just as it would her own flesh if it landed.

A green-grey glow lit behind Anhir’s eyes, the spiked chain multiplying as he tried to retreat. Five different barbed lengths of conjured whip hissed through the air at her, but she invoked her movement Skill and slid between them with a finesse the prior Gold version of herself could only dream of. She slithered past him and plunged the red-white tip of her spear into his wound as she went, driving it up through his gut and into his chest, and he crumpled with one last gurgling scream.

[Gold Tornok-Clan defeated. Essence awarded. Additional Essence awarded for tier difference. D-Rank Skill token awarded]

She whirled around to the final opponent, but he was already dead on the ground. The Sydean standing over the corpse was dressed in dark leathers, equipment that was clearly aimed at stealth and finesse. There was also something about him that was familiar, and Raine recognized him just as [Appraise] revealed his name.

[Dyen Zure – Peak Silver]

“Dyen?” Raine was absolutely baffled. She had thought she’d seen the last of him when they’d parted ways after returning from the heavens. There was nothing at all tying him to them, yet there he was.

“Loot your kill quickly,” Dyen said, as one of Cato’s smaller beasts arrived, appearing from the same road that Leese had used to escape. “I doubt they’re the only group thinking about where Onswa’s head disappeared to.”

“I can deal with some lower ranks.” Cato stopped and regarded the two, back-tendrils gesturing to the Nexus building. “But I don’t have the forces to protect the whole town if too many arrive.”

“Most of them were looting Onswa’s corpse,” Dyen said with disgust. “But anyone with tracking Skills will be able to follow the trail.”

“Thank you,” Raine said, recovering herself and bending down to grab the wallet off the belt of her kill. There wasn’t enough time to strip the corpse and she didn’t have much interest in it anyway. No longer was she scrimping and saving every token, though as the contents of the wallet scrolled past Raine had to admit an influx of Gold-rank essence tokens was quite the windfall.

Then she took off toward the edge of town, racing away from the battle site with her movement Skill. Dyen tagged along, and she didn’t protest, but the Cato-beast stayed. Presumably to slow down or distract any others that might be tracking them. If the Bismuth decided to follow, though, there wasn’t anything that could be done, so she just had to hope that the Grand Paladin was preoccupied with other things.

“I’ve got Onswa.” Cato’s voice buzzed inside her skull, and she nodded even though she realized he couldn’t hear it. It was only a minute until she reached the complex of Cato’s buildings anyway, spotting Leese standing outside one of the buildings and scrubbing at her hands with a cloth.

“Is he going to be — well, can Cato bring him back?” Raine spoke aloud, making sure to direct her question to Leese rather than Cato himself. She wasn’t sure if he wanted Dyen to know about the little communication lizards.

“Probably.” Cato’s voice came from another small beast that emerged from a room that was sealed in a similar manner to the one where he had made them immortal. “I don’t have contact with all the Platinums. Is there any way we can send a message to them to let them know they’re on the Bismuth’s hit list?”

“I can find someone with a farcaster,” Dyen said, and turned to leave without another word.

“They need communication lizards too,” Leese remarked, as Dyen vanished down the street. “The Platinums probably should have gotten them first.”

“Unfortunately I just finished making them,” Cato sighed. “I underestimated what I’d need here, and we’re paying the price. Being able to wipe out those other Bismuths without trouble really was misleading.”

“Is the Grand Paladin actually a danger to you?” Raine asked, suddenly far less certain of her choices. If a mere Bismuth was enough to challenge Cato, how was he going to deal with the Azoth and Alum ranks that were present closer to the core worlds?

“Not to me,” Cato said, so utterly dismissive of the possibility that she nearly sighed in relief. “He’s already flung some rock at the moon base, but that’s barely relevant. No, it’s not that he can kill me, it’s that he can make me lose. If he starts killing Sydeans wholesale, or blocks off the portals permanently, or both, then there’s no point in what I’m doing at all.”

“Which he might do once he finds out he can’t really hurt you,” Raine said. She didn’t like the emerging picture, even if she was reassured that Cato truly was a powerful patron. Even an Alum couldn’t be everywhere at once – that was why clans existed – and Sydea was effectively becoming the location for a clan war. She’d only heard stories of such things, from ages ago and worlds away, but they were supposed to be devastating.

“Then we have to make sure he thinks he can hurt you,” Leese said, and the Cato-beast nodded agreement.

“I haven’t repaired any of the orbital stuff he’s wrecked, and I’m going to self-destruct the visible moon base,” he told them. “That should satisfy him that he’s doing real damage. But I can’t just sit here and let him run roughshod over your world. You can never give monsters like him an inch.”

“Then we need to lure him out,” Raine concluded.

“Not sure I can offer anything of substance,” Cato mused. “Especially since he has something that pops any warframe I put nearby.”

“He also has divine protection,” Leese reminded them.

“Which means what, exactly?” Cato turned his attention to Leese, who had finished wiping her hands and was looking for somewhere to deposit the bloodstained scrap, and plucked away the cloth with a tendril. It was a strange, almost servile sort of gesture, but Raine had already decided not to question Cato’s oddness too much.

“I only know this by some things I was told at the temple,” Leese warned. “What I’ve heard though, is that gods can temporarily grant their deity protection to others. There’s nothing in the System that can break it.”

“Oh? I can work with that,” Cato said, almost happily, as if fighting gods were easier than dealing with Bismuths. For all she knew, it was, for a being such as Cato. “Though definitely not something to deploy near a city.”

“You might have to anyway,” Raine said. Cato might be squeamish, but she thought it was far better to sacrifice a city than risk the entire planet. Leese shifted, attracting her attention, and the two of them communicated in silence for a moment. Cato, unlike many the sisters had run into, seemed to recognize exactly what was going on and didn’t bother them while they did little more than look at each other.

“What about us?” Leese said, the two of them turning back to Cato. “Why don’t we go back in the cots, and then the Copper versions of ourselves pretend to defect? If he’s talked with Muar he’d only be expecting us to be Copper, and if you’re so worried about getting into the rest of the System, the Silver versions of us can be near the portal.”

“You realize it will still be you taking the risk,” Cato warned, though he didn’t reject the idea. “If you update that way, you will be opening your eyes weaker and with the knowledge that it won’t be someone else doing it, it will be you.”

“Of course,” Raine said, still somewhat puzzled by Cato’s insistence on that point, but presuming it was simply a result of his non-System background. She and Leese had risked their lives before on multiple occasions, and Cato’s advantages only meant they could take more risks.

“Right,” Cato said. “I’ve got some bodies cooking for you anyway, I’ll just sent a diff update and wake you up.”

“What about Dyen?” Leese asked, and Raine nodded agreement.

“If the two of us come to the Paladin, he’ll naturally want to know what Dyen is up to,” Raine pointed out. “As the last of the group Muar knew about.”

“Fortunately I still have extra bodies,” Cato said. “But his isn’t going to be augmented.”

“We should ask anyway,” Raine argued. “It won’t hurt.”

“He’s on his way,” Cato said. “I have no objections.”

As promised, Dyen returned a few minutes later, with the small Cato-beast in tow. He seemed as sour and closed-off as before, but Raine was certain that he’d be willing to help. Dyen had no interest in Cato’s crusade, but he’d certainly welcome a chance to get at a Clan Tornok Bismuth.

“What did you want?” Dyen demanded, eyeing Raine and Leese with disfavor.

“We have an idea of how to kill that Paladin,” Leese said, more diplomatically than Raine would have managed. “I think you can help.”

Dyen’s face stretched into a broad and vicious grin.

***

Cato didn’t much appreciate the brutal lesson in how fast fortunes could turn within the System. During the defense of Earth, he hadn’t been in charge of the greater battlefield, leaving that to wargamers and those with a better head for strategy, but he was all alone on Sydea. Someone else might have secured a better beachhead by being more aggressive, or infiltrated further by being more subtle.

It was knowledge he would have to ensure to pass on to his later gestalts, the ones that would be taken further into the System. That if he wanted to have the cleanest break, he couldn’t actually take the time to set the board and address humanitarian concerns. Instead he had to strike hard, a surgical blow to seize control of as much as possible.

That ran the risk of immediately dropping the planet out of the portal network, and why he was still loath to try it on Sydea. Although destroying dungeons would probably serve to lure the Bismuth out, he had no idea whether it would also make it impossible for him to spread further — and without spreading further, his entire crusade came to an end at Sydea, win or lose.

At least with people like Raine and Leese he might have the chance to do some groundwork without attracting unwanted attention. Exactly what that might amount to when there were higher ranks about he didn’t know, but that was why he needed System guides. He couldn’t expect them to do everything – after all, the very ruthlessness of the System was what he was objecting to – but he had to keep the grim utility of the natives in mind.

He knew that he shouldn’t be so solicitous of the Talis sisters or Dyen when they volunteered to risk themselves. It was true that Cato how to handle his various selves and their deaths, terminations, or loss of signal, but Sydeans had faced far more death for far longer. Treating the natives with too much delicacy, even if their backup was far less robust than his, was insulting to their determination to do their own part, and he’d have to stop and let them take their own risks.

Which wasn’t to say he wasn’t going to make some tweaks. The fresh frames for Raine, Leese, and Dyen all had transmitters built into them, sending updates back to his digital copies of their gestalts. He wouldn’t dare to try merging the experiences from multiple bodies, operating simultaneously, not with how poorly he understood the neural architecture, so they couldn’t act like he did, but he could update the gestalts he had already recorded.

All his adjustments were crammed into as little time as he could manage, because every second he took for preparations was another second the Bismuth was loose on the surface. At least Dyen’s message meant the Platinums weren’t inside any cities where they could be trapped, though that didn’t mean they couldn’t be found. Now that the System-gods were actually interested, the entire planet might well be under surveillance, and it wouldn’t be hard for the Bismuth to receive a vision of where they were hiding.

Cato didn’t even have warframes by most of them. Arene didn’t want one in her house, for obvious reasons, while Marek and Hirau were leery of everything Cato had provided. Even the extra housing for their towns was the bare minimum, without the extra organic equipment he’d landed in the towns near the capital. The only one of the Platinums that actually had a representative on site was Karsa, and that was not for any reasons of coordination on her part.

“Why don’t you hide me away in your moon fortress?” The extraordinarily over-muscled Sydean leaned against the leg of the forty ton warframe, in what she probably thought was a flirtatious manner. Dealing with her was becoming an ordeal, as she had refused to relent despite his explanations about what a warframe actually was. It would have been amusing, if only it were happening to someone else.

“Because you’d have to die for that to be a possibility, and you’d no longer be Platinum.” Cato tried to be as flat and factual as possible in order to discourage Karsa’s fixation. “You’d be starting from scratch and I don’t think we can afford that at the moment.”

“Why not?” Karsa protested. “If we all have to hide from that Bismuth anyway, it’s not like we can keep order. There’s really no better time. He can’t catch me if I’m not around.”

Cato growled, because it was a surprisingly difficult argument to counter aside from the obvious. He wasn’t about to destructively digitize someone just because they were insatiably drawn to military equipment. Though in truth he didn’t need her Platinum abilities, because he had been shown he wouldn’t have the time to allow an easier transition away from the System. He’d have to start destroying anchors en masse the moment the Bismuth was dealt with to prevent any other high ranks from interfering.

The original moon base and its habitat had already been stripped and was rigged with some simple explosives. The massive barrage of rock that the Bismuth had thrown from the surface was moving quickly, but distances in space were so tremendous that he had more than enough warning. Most of his infrastructure had been relocated to the northern pole of the larger moon, where there were volatiles and metal deposits.

There were already rows upon rows of warframes of all sizes, ready to launch and descend into the atmosphere. Most of them were meant to be disposable, to be destroyed when the dungeon’s basement universe collapsed. Others were meant to keep the peace to some extent, especially once the System itself failed and everyone was operating under normal physics.

He'd been hoping to make that transition more gradually, but he couldn’t afford that now. The police-type warframes were a halfway-answer, not truly intelligent but acting more like trained dogs to enforce order on behalf of legitimate authorities. Which were to be the former Platinums. Sadly, he couldn’t even drop the forces ahead of time and introduce them in a controlled manner, not with the Bismuth running around.

The Grand Paladin in question was, in fact, running around in an almost literal sense, methodically working through the cities and towns with his anti-warframe weapon, burning away some of the protections of Cato’s refugee housing, though the housing itself remained intact. It was only a matter of time before he made it to Sokhal Town, so Cato wouldn’t have the chance to revive Onswa with the limited tech he had on the ground.

The brain was viable, but unless he wanted to risk another Orion drive ascent – one that would be easily visible from the surface and could definitely be intercepted – he’d have to transmit the man instead. He hated doing it; the propriety surrounding organic and digital life was something that had saturated his upbringing, and violating those rules was deeply disgusting. But the Paladin – the System itself – had given him no choice, so he bared his literal and metaphorical teeth to start the process.

Despite how awful he found the idea, the actual mechanics of destructive digitization only took minutes, and then only a few minutes more to update the other Sydeans. Dyen was the longest, since Cato had to get a full gestalt rather than just the differential update, but after that they left by way of the town’s teleportation pylon. Though much of his orbital infrastructure was shredded, Cato had enough functional spy satellites to at least track where the Bismuth had been. It was simple enough to direct the three of them, by way of the lizards he was using as radio communications, to places where the Tornok Clan had already been and not likely to visit again.

Sokhal Town was graced by the Bismuth’s presence less than twenty minutes after they’d left, which was cutting it a lot closer than Cato would have preferred. An expanding wall of golden light swept over the town, dissolving all the bioweapon-derived matter; essentially, everything that was laced with System-jamming equipment. A stark reminder of the difference between interference and protection.

In an odd bit of synchronicity, that visit corresponded almost precisely with the impact of the Bismuth’s mach-thirty projectiles with the former moon base. Conventional chemical explosives detonated theatrically, blowing out a cloud of debris all out of proportion to what the projectiles would actually create. His remaining surveillance even caught the Bismuth looking upward, no doubt pleased with the destruction — as destruction was all that type could ever manage.

Not that he should have been able to see it at that distance. Even if the moon was outside the System’s reach, there was clearly some magical method of sensing that acted beyond the bounds of the usual limitations. But then again, it was magic, and trying to understand things by the normal physical properties of optics was a poor idea. Such sight demonstrated that he’d have to be very careful about landing the new versions of the Sydean trio, and do it when the Bismuth was not within view of the moons, if he wanted to avoid having them shot out of the air.

Considering he couldn’t get near the Bismuth himself, he had to trust they could do the job.

Chapter 19 — Plans Rarely Survive

Raine Talis, no longer of the Gosruk Guardians, woke with a start.

The last thing she remembered was lying down in one of Cato’s odd cots, planning how she was going to get through the portal while the other her lured out the Bismuth. Yet she was not in a cot, but rather clothed and armored and strapped into a familiar seat — the contraption Cato had used to bring her back down to Sydea. She glanced around, finding Leese and Dyen stirring in the other seats. Reflexively she tried to bring up the System, but nothing happened, confirming her conclusion.

She was the other her. All the plans she’d been considering no longer applied; no matter what, she wasn’t going through that portal. Instead it was up to her to somehow convince a Bismuth to stray away from the populated regions, out to where Cato could take care of him. And possibly to die in the process.

Suddenly she actually understood all of Cato’s warnings. Her tail twitched uncontrollably, caught in a welter of different emotions ranging from abyssal regret to a crushing claustrophobic panic about a future now set in stone. A strange resentment or jealousy stole into her, directed at herself. Both her past decisions and the other her, existing somewhere down on Sydea, which got to keep and benefit from all the work she had done.

“Good, you’re all awake,” Cato’s voice came from a Sydean version of himself piloting the craft. Raine shook herself away from her strange inward spiral, taking a deep breath and letting it out. Beside her, Leese pulled herself from similar contemplations, but when she glanced back at Dyen, he didn’t seem bothered.

“We’re headed back down,” Cato continued, as if that wasn’t already obvious. “You’ll have to burn what little money you get from the quest on teleportations, since I can’t put you near any of the big towns. We’re dropping down near Hirau’s compound, since that’s on the other side of the world from where that Bismuth is lurking — and he already searched the area, besides.”

“Is Hirau still alive?” Leese asked promptly. “And what about Administrator Onswa?” Raine found herself nodding; Onswa was conspicuous by his absence.

“I’m taking the opportunity to orient him while he’s up here,” Cato replied, busying himself at the arcane controls of the craft. “Since I’m going to need his help once I start the next wave and begin destroying anchors. Besides which, I think him showing up, even as a Copper, would gain attention we don’t need just yet.”

“I suppose it would,” Leese agreed, as most people would not care about or for Onswa as a Copper. Without the power granted by being Platinum, he was just one among many. Worse, he was someone who had lost his power, which was not something she had ever thought of before exposure to the world outside the System. Cato’s backing would account for a lot, but without being able to personally enforce his will, there’d be trouble.

“Are you going to give him a — well, one of your beasts?” Raine asked curiously, since his larger beasts could compete with Platinums.

“I don’t think his wife would appreciate him showing back up as one of those,” Cato said with a laugh. “No, it’s going to be a bit more delicate, since as soon as we get rid of this Bismuth and open up the portals, I’m going to start destroying anchors. By the time Onswa’s back down, a good chunk of the planet ought to be free of the System.”

The statement was delivered casually, but it sent a cold shock into the roiling uncertainty that was making her tail twitch. Cato had said that was his goal before, but she had always taken it as something far in the future, an abstract possibility. Not something mere days or even hours away. She was one of the few people who had ever encountered the System-less part of reality – and what Cato showed was possible there – yet even she couldn’t imagine what the world would be like without it.

“Anyway, you’ll have another hour or so to plan before we hit atmosphere,” Cato told them, glancing out the small window that showed black sky and stars. The four of them had discussed the basics as their other selves, but only the merest outline. Now that they were the ones that had to lure the Bismuth out, the need for details took on a different tenor. “The sooner we can remove him, the better.”

Raine was almost surprised that Cato wasn’t simply issuing orders, but he rarely had. Even at the beginning he had simply stated his ultimate goal and given them the chance to help or stand aside. That was close enough to how high ranks normally operated that she hadn’t thought much about it, but now she, someone who wasn’t even Copper, was faced with making decisions regarding a Bismuth.

“So long as the Tornok Clan dies,” Dyen said darkly. “Any plan is fine with me.”

Raine almost snorted, but Dyen was still young and angry. Fortunately, she and Leese had years of experience to draw on. Given how easy it had been to rise to peak Silver, she could almost forget that they’d made it to Gold the hard way. But the two of them had been off-world, through dungeons, through ambushes, through encounters with higher ranks that regarded the two of them as little more than insects.

Of course, they could only plan so far. The three of them went over possible arguments, justifications, omissions, and outright lies — though the latter might be useless in the face of a divine Bismuth. Or at least, she and Leese did; Dyen had very little to contribute. Cato had an unparalleled view of the surface and ability to coordinate, but he couldn’t take any direct action until there was a clear shot.

“I just wish I could do more on the ground,” Cato grumbled. “I could start destroying anchors, but I have no way to know how the paladin guy would react. The very last thing I want to do is provoke him into some sort of purge. Or give him the idea that I’m actually dangerous to him, since the only way he’s going to be pliable is if he thinks he has the upper hand.”

“If it were any other circumstance, I would say he has the upper hand,” Leese mused. “He has divine protection, he’s more powerful than the rest of the planet put together, and I’m certain he has a quest directing him. Beyond that, divine users can commune with the System to get a better idea of where to go and what to do. In the end, nothing on Sydea could hide from him forever.”

“Another reason to move quickly, then.” Cato made a noise of frustration. “Before he starts using that insight to track down everyone in hiding.” Raine noticed the movements of his tail didn’t really match the emotion in his voice, as if he were merely pretending — disconcerting, even if she knew the reason was that he wasn’t actually Sydean.

Once again the System washed over them, Raine’s Status appearing along with the now-familiar defense quest. Once again, she poked a small blob with a dagger to receive completely disproportionate rewards, though in this case what really mattered was the currency. They would have enough for one teleport, and only one, and nothing else. Not even food.

The craft shook and shuddered, pressing them into their seats as the sky outside turned from black to blue. A strange jittery anticipation washed over her, like when she was standing outside a dungeon and about to go in. It was familiar enough that she actually welcomed it, squaring her shoulders, straightening her tail, and finally committing to her role. Beside her, Leese did much the same, the two of them sharing a smile.

“Hirau is going to intercept us,” Cato said in a warning tone, and a moment later there was a great screeching and crunching, the craft jostling and flinging them against their restraints. The view of the sky outside was obscured by green, and all motion stopped, the craft tilted at an angle. Then with a horrific screeching, wooden branches punched through the walls and ceiling and peeled away the outside of the glider. All that surrounded them was dense foliage, save for an opening of bark on one side, leading downward.

“Everyone out,” Cato said, unbuckling his restraints while Raine hurried to do the same. Yet it was Dyen who was first freed of his chair, bounding out to the ramp of bark and down. Raine and Leese followed, hurrying at speeds Coppers couldn’t normally manage. If anything, the versions of the bodies they were using seemed even better than the first ones Cato had provided. Cato himself seemed almost clumsy in comparison, at least in his current body. His beasts, of course, were pure and elegant menace.

Hirau himself appeared at the base of the immense tree that had grown to catch them. The Platinum emanated an aura of palpable anger, though the force of his glare was reserved more for Cato than for them. The moment they emerged onto the floor of the forest, Hirau began berating Cato, even as the massive tree sank back down to be flush with the rest of the canopy, creaking and cracking.

“Why are you coming here? You’ll just lure that Bismuth out and endanger—”

“The town is east of you.” Cato’s voice buzzed through her skull, and Raine reached up to find another one of the tiny communications lizards perched atop her head. She hadn’t even noticed it during the descent. “Might as well go, I don’t know how long Hirau is going to be ranting.”

Raine glanced to Leese and Dyen, then readied her spear and hurried eastward. According to her Status they were in the [Dark Thicket Border Zone], technically a Silver-rank area — but they knew they could manage against Silver rank creatures even with a single Skill apiece. The sound of Hirau’s voice fell behind, but Cato’s lizard sent corrections as they moved through the forest.

Several times they were accosted by the local wildlife: a pack of low-slung, dark-furred scavengers, a bulky, pinch-faced quadruped with thick skin and wiry hair, a flock of razor-beaked birds with four wings. More than fresh Coppers would be able to handle for certain, but with augmented bodies and Cato’s weapons it was only work rather than a real threat.

That was all they had to worry about before they reached the town, however, Cato having guided them down practically a stone’s throw away from the safe zone. It was one of the towns without the non-System building Cato had provided, a huddle of stark white boxes spreading out from the tower of the central Nexus. A few of the town’s natives gave them a look as they hurried along the pounded dirt of the streets, and Raine spotted at least one look of surprise as an [Appraise] no doubt showed their Copper rank, but nobody stopped them.

“The Bismuth is in Rehl Town,” Cato reported, just as they stepped through the doors.

“Got it,” Dyen said, stepping to the teleportation pylon first and vanishing. His job was to get the Bismuth’s attention, and direct attention toward their target of choice. Raine and Leese were close behind, but they had a different destination.

In a way, luring Grand Paladin Nikhil out to a remote location shouldn’t be too difficult. He very likely didn’t believe that Cato could offer any substantial threat or resistance — after all, Cato hadn’t so far. The problem was in offering a target or an excuse that wasn’t obviously a trap. Bismuth-rank senses were good enough to sense that an area might be conveniently empty, and recognize how suspicious it was.

Raine watched her entire stock of tokens vanish, and the room shifted ever so slightly. They emerged from the other Nexus into a hot, dry evening and [Halghur Town], where Arene Flamewing had established her estate. She wasn’t there at the moment, of course, as all the Platinums had gotten the message from Dyen and made themselves scarce, but hers was the only estate far enough from a town to use Cato’s weapon.

More importantly, with the estate defenses active, even a Bismuth wouldn’t be able to directly sense whether or not she was there. He’d have to actually be there in person. It was the only lure they’d been able to come up with, because neither she nor Leese could think of a good excuse to get the Grand Paladin out into the middle of nowhere. Not as Coppers.

The two of them sprinted through town, out into the wilderness that separated [Halghur Town] from Arene’s estate. The main problem with their plan was that the estate still housed refugees, who needed to be evacuated, and quickly. Their other versions – or the other version of Dyen – should be informing Arene, a bizarre reality that made her feel strange and almost unreal. She remembered planning to inform Arene when their other selves were ready, but had never really considered being on the other side of that plan.

Both she and Leese had taken movement Skills for the free B-tier, meaning they slid through the scrubby near-desert faster than any of the Copper-ranked wildlife could follow. It wasn’t a Skill that contributed to any set of Skills Raine was interested in, but that hardly mattered. If Cato got his way, the System wouldn’t be around on Sydea for much longer and there would be no such thing as Skill selections.

Or Bismuths murdering the lower ranks.

Between their augmented bodies and the movement Skills, Raine and Leese could cover the twenty mile distance in something like half an hour. Even though it had already been hours, according to Cato, they still felt the press of time. The Bismuth’s presence revoking the protective aegis of Sydea’s Platinums combined with the inability to actually leave meant that there was plenty of violence in the streets of the cities. A single high ranker was causing more chaos and death than Cato ever had.

The walls of Arene’s compound came into sight, Raine and Leese sliding along the stone with [Skating Steps] and up to the big doors into the courtyard. Without a Skill, Raine couldn’t sense Arene’s presence — though judging by the faint tracery of light along the walls, the compound’s defenses were active even with the doors standing open. Within, Arene herself appeared in a burst of fire, wrapping her whip around a group of refugees and vanishing again.

In a way Raine was surprised. She very much doubted Arene enjoyed the idea of using her home as bait, no matter how powerful the opponent was, but it seemed that she’d thrown herself into the plan regardless. Already the courtyard was down to just a few groups of older Coppers, those who for whatever reason had never managed to finish a dungeon and gather enough excess essence to reach peak Copper. As soon as she finished they’d have Dyen send the Bismuth their way.

“On,” Raine said, making sure Cato’s lizard was listening. “Looks like just a few minutes more,”

“Great. Dyen is in place and — oh dammit.”

“What?” Raine asked, tailtip twitching.

“I don’t know what Dyen did but the Paladin noticed him before I gave him the signal.”

“Oh.” Raine said, exchanging a look with Leese and then looking back to where Arene had reappeared in the courtyard. “Platinum Arene!” She called, running forward, and Arene’s head snapped up. But Arene wasn’t looking at her.

“He’s here,” she said, and a golden dome sprang into existence around the estate.

***

Raine Talis vaulted from one roof to another, joining Leese behind a beam supporting a shop sign as a bolt of sizzling blue ripped through the air where she’d been. They’d teleported into [Mosaw City], in hopes that it was less crowded than the capital, only to find the Nexus packed with distinctly too many Gold and Silver-rank offworlders for them to handle. Even though Dyen had specialized in killing people rather than monsters, that was only useful when there were two or three opponents.

But they couldn’t just leave. There was no telling how long the portal would be available once the Bismuth was dead, especially now that the gods were involved. It wasn’t just Cato’s task driving them to cross over into Uriva, either — Sydea had no [World Elites], and defeating one of those was necessary for the ascent to Gold. If they couldn’t get offworld, they’d be stuck at Silver, and Raine wasn’t quite ready to abandon ranking up just yet.

“Sorry to interrupt, but the other Raine and Leese are headed out.”

Raine grunted, having decidedly mixed feelings about there being another version of herself running around Sydea. Let alone another version of Leese, risking her life to bring the Bismuth somewhere that Cato could destroy him. Not that she was safe herself, nor was her Leese.

A rumble came from below and the two of them leapt out of the way as the roof burst into fragments, some Gold-rank earth Skill sending a boulder sailing into the air. Leese’s movement Skill left ice in her path, which Raine used to follow while facing back the way they’d come. She swatted a pair of glowing daggers out of the air with her buckler as she followed Leese by touch, jumping and shifting blindly as she trusted her sister to lead.

Dyen had vanished. He had stealth Skills and she didn’t trust that he’d come to their aid, so she wasn’t planning any of their movements around it. It was just her and Leese, as it always was and always would be, and none of Cato’s gifts would change that. If anything it was easier to coordinate than ever, the two of them practically able to read each other’s minds, shifting in concert as they moved.

A brief warning made Raine brace herself, and Leese simply lofted her into the air. She flipped herself around and drove her spear into the Tornok Clan Gold that was hovering with some sort of air Skill, totally unprepared for a flying Sydean. He still managed to get a hand up, but the red-glowing spear punched right through and into the midsection of the disturbingly slinky body. Not enough to kill the Gold, but enough to make the flying Skill fail.

She gripped the spear as the Gold fell from the air, dodging the counter-blow by swinging herself around the impaled spear, thoughts feeling clean and crisp as she took in the layout of the streets and rooftops at a glance. Leese swung in through the window of the building below and Raine launched herself off the Gold, leaving the spear behind and retrieving a new one from the storage of her Skill. Her [Fiery Dash] sent her across the open rooftop while the Gold crashed into the side of the building with an audible thud, and she rejoined Leese on the other side.

There were three more Golds after them, most of the rest of the gathered offworlders having lost interest when it turned out that mere Silver Sydeans could not only keep ahead of them, they could fight back. She hoped that didn’t mean they would turn their attention to the rest of the city, but there was nothing Raine could do about it if they did. Already, more than one of the white, boxy buildings bore scars of fighting, with damaged walls or even holes. Without Onswa or another Platinum to run the city, nobody was paying for the repairs.

[High Gold Tornok-Clan defeated. Essence awarded. Additional Essence awarded for tier difference.]

The death message came as a surprise, but she instantly leapt to the conclusion that Dyen actually was still around. There was no way a Gold would die to simple impalement, at least not that quickly. The opportunistic ambush meant that they were evenly matched, three on three, despite the rank difference.

They still couldn’t scratch a Platinum, and Raine was thankful that such high-rank outworlders had been ejected before the Bismuth had arrived. The two-rank difference was simply too enormous to be overcome. That would probably never change; Bismuth was a tremendous barrier, and Azoth and Alum beyond it were worlds of their own.

“Three on three,” she told Leese, who understood immediately and slewed around to duck into one of the holes that had been made in the building. It had once been a tavern, but a quick glance showed it was deserted, the furniture smashed. Despite the damage, the lack of blood, bodies, or scattered debris showed that the System pylon was still working, at least.

The two of them parted to stand at either side of the hole, charging their respective Skills. Raine still missed some of the utility and freedom of working at range, but the sheer strength and speed of their new bodies, multiplied by the benefits of Rank and Skill, meant that their best approach to any combat was entirely obvious.

Raine’s [Combustion Spear Mastery] was fast and powerful, while Leese’s [Frozen Spear Mastery] was deft, hard to track, and cut through defenses. Between them, they could deal with almost any defense — especially when they swapped targets, leaving monsters, or more intelligent opponents, scrambling to deal with the difference in approach.

Two Golds came through the hole, and Leese and Raine chose their targets. Leese slid around and under the massive maul a heavily-armored Tornok Clan wielded, her spearpoint seeking joints and gaps. Raine’s own weapon blurred toward the other, outranging his pair of serrated daggers. Unfortunately, they’d both seen Raine take down their fellow and neither of them were as unprepared.

Raine found herself in a lightning-quick duel with a Tornok Clan whose blades flung off razor shards of air, gouging chunks out of her armor and buckler when she failed to dodge completely. One of them ripped a burning line along her cheek and she snarled, hearing Leese’s spear skirl off the armor of the larger opponent. High-tier Gold armor was enough to defend against Cato’s insanely sharp weaponry.

She lunged forward with her spear again, but invoked her Skill a different way. The Gold dodged the strike by habit, but didn’t need to because her spear disappeared halfway through. Raine swapped to her poleaxe, the much heavier weapon appearing in her hand on the recover and catching the Gold in the back of the neck as she used her movement Skill to burst backward.

The blow didn’t quite behead the Tornok Clan, but it did jar him for long enough for her to switch back to her shorter spear and punch a hole in the light armor. She threw him sideways into his companion, staggering the heavy armor user and letting Leese slip her spearpoint into the gap under the helmet and puncture his throat.

Before they could capitalize on their sudden advantage, the third of the group appeared through the hole in the wall, a crackling ball of blue energy hovering in his hands. The two sisters threw themselves to the side, but before the mage could cast a rapier punched through the back of his neck. Dyen ensured the mage was dead before stepping in, regarding Leese and Raine as they finished off their own opponents.

[High Gold Tornok-Clan defeated. Essence awarded. Additional Essence awarded for tier difference. Silver-Tier Essence Tokens awarded.]

[High Gold Tornok-Clan defeated. Essence awarded. Additional Essence awarded for tier difference. C-Tier Tradable Skill Token awarded.]

Raine dismissed the rewards, not needing them at the moment — though she was startled by the generosity of the System. Killing people seemed to be more lucrative than killing monsters. Especially when the target was a full rank up.

“Stayed behind to listen a bit,” Dyen said shortly, bending down to take possession of whatever was in the wallet of his kill. “They’re organizing a hunt for us. Seems you two attracted attention.”

“And you didn’t?” Raine asked skeptically. Dyen simply shrugged.

“We can handle four, but not forty,” Dyen told them. “I’m sure they’ll be especially annoyed when they realize you killed this group.”

“Cato?” Raine muttered. “How are we on time? I don’t think we can play tag with a bunch of Golds for very long.” Let alone the possibility of the Bismuth returning and deciding to take a hand. He was also Tornok Clan, and very definitely would not be pleased with the death of his fellows. Dyen had obviously been hunting Tornok Clan for some time, but with no witnesses it would take some investigation to find out he was the culprit.

“We’ve run into a problem,” Cato replied.

***

Marus Eln let out a deep and relieved sigh. Everything was going to plan, from what he could see through the divination spell he’d had constantly running for the past day or so. He’d been able to watch Grand Paladin Nikhil dispatch a number of Cato’s creatures, and had even cajoled the divination spell to look upward and see the destruction of the things occupying Sydea’s skies.

Even he was staggered by how far away they were, but a Bismuth with an S-Class skill had certainly been a match for whatever heretical works Cato had performed. The amount he’d had to pay out for the [Crystal of Immunity] still hurt, especially as Cato had clearly run out of whatever resources he had used to devastate the other Bismuths, and hadn’t done anything to contest his pawn.

The [Scepter of Annihilation], however, had been worth every jot of essence it had taken to construct the thing. Or rather, that Initik had charged him to make it, since Marus had never bothered delving into that area of his System Interface. While Cato might boast about trying to remove the System, it seemed the System was far more powerful and destroyed his constructs with ease.

He was painfully aware of Initik sitting at his shoulder, watching the divination window with unsettling intensity. As much as the insect irritated Marus, he couldn’t eject Initik, not after the help his fellow Deity had offered. Besides which, he seemed intensely interested in the threat Cato offered.

Marus was still entirely certain that Initik was overstating the danger Cato actually posed. Even if the being was capable of somehow taking Sydea, that was just one world among many, a mostly worthless backwater on the frontier. If a Bismuth could utterly crush Cato’s plans, then an Azoth or an Alum was an utterly insurmountable barrier.

Not to mention World Deities like himself. It was true that there were restrictions on interacting with the mortal world, but Deities like himself could manipulate the System more directly, and even manifest if there was something of extreme importance. And of course nothing from the mortal world could actually harm him, unless he spent so long outside of proper reality he ran out of essence. Not that anyone would be so stupid.

“Ah! There are the last two,” Marus said happily. The three other Sydeans that Muar had mentioned were a little worry at the back of his mind. None of them were divine users, so finding them directly was a little tricky, as the best he could do with his System Interface was find the zone they inhabited. Even then, he couldn’t be certain they were the individuals he was looking for, as without actually having the distinct essence signature of a mortal he could only check by name, and those repeated.

However, Dyen had foolishly shown himself to Grand Paladin Nikhil, as if at Copper he could actually fight against a Bismuth. All that the creature had managed was to give up the location of one of Sydea’s Platinums before being properly annihilated — because of course the Platinums had gone into hiding like the cowards they were. Marus could have informed Nikhil the moment the Paladin invoked his meditation Skill, but the Bismuth had been far too busy cleansing Cato’s influence from Sydea. Something Marus very much enjoyed seeing.

Now that the other two were within sight, Marus felt that all the potential loose ends were taken care of. He doubted that Coppers could cause the same amount of grief as Cato, but he did remember that the beasts Cato used had no more essence than a Copper, so he wasn’t quite willing to dismiss them entirely. But once they were all dead, it would just be a matter of cleaning up the pieces.

Chapter 20 — God-Poking Rounds

The moment the golden dome appeared over the estate, an oppressive force nearly drove Raine to her knees. Without her usual essence sensory Skills she was blind to the sheer presence, but his Skill bore down on them with a weight that was impossible to deny. Arene was less affected, her defensive Skills making her scales smolder and bright pinpoints appearing in her palms as she raised her hands in preparation.

Then the Grand Paladin arrived in a thunderous crash, arcing out of the sky like a gold-plated meteor. His landing sent cracks radiating out along the tile of the courtyard, bowling over the closest, Copper-ranked refugees. Even where they were, Raine and Leese could feel the shockwave hit them like a punch.

Arene attacked instantly, her terrifyingly potent Skills focused on the Bismuth, and there was a moment of confused motion as the Paladin’s golden magic contested Arene’s flames. Everyone fled from the blur of gold and red in the middle of the courtyard, most people sprinting into the tower to take shelter from the sudden deluge of deadly energies. A shard of golden energy even spun past Raine’s head, shattering against the wall but still leaving a dent in the Gold-rank material.

For a moment, Raine actually hoped that Arene could hold her own, even if Bismuths were supposed to be well out of the reach of Platinums. Onswa might have been powerful, but everyone knew Arene was a better fighter and half Onswa’s age besides. Then the noise and fury came to an abrupt end as Arene sailed backward, hitting the wall hard enough to shatter it and leaving her half-insensate.

Golden chains snapped out from the Grand Paladin, his face scorched and blistered but still intact as his Skill bound Arene.

“Honored Bismuth!” Raine said, stepping forward as the last of the other refugees, some older Coppers, scrambled through the open door of the tower. Onswa’s fate was fresh in her mind and she very much doubted that they would be so lucky that Arene could be saved the same way.

The Paladin rounded on her and she flinched back from his look. It wasn’t murderous but rather detached and contemptuous, a man considering an annoying insect. She had seen that kind of regard in other places and by other people, and it always ended the same way. While Raine knew intellectually that death here was merely a setback and not the end, it wasn’t something she truly believed, and fear coiled her tail regardless.

“I am Raine Talis, this is my sister Leese, and I believe you were informed of the situation by our companion Muar,” she continued, speaking quickly before the Bismuth became bored and flattened them in irritation. Suddenly he had their full attention, no doubt using [Appraise] on them to verify the truth of her words.

“Yes, Muar did mention you two,” Nikhil said, completely losing interest in the now-bound Arene and turning to them. “Cato’s little pets. What are you doing here?” He waved a hand, and Raine felt a direct, suffocating pressure. “No lies, now. I will know.”

That was exactly why they had extensively discussed their story on the way down. Leese knew that divine users often had ways to detect lies or enforce truth and she had even had the precursor to such a Skill as one of her perception choices. Which meant she also knew how misleading true statements could be.

“Honored Bismuth,” Leese said, stepping up beside Raine. “The reason we have been working with Cato was because he offered power, and we were powerless — and as everyone knows, power is the only thing that matters.”

“And now you come running to me?” Nikhil snorted, the dangerous pressure somehow only increasing as he regarded them.

“We have seen how easily you destroyed all his beasts and constructs,” Raine offered. “How there is nothing on Sydea that can contest you, whether of Cato’s or not.”

“Of course not,” Nikhil proclaimed, drawing himself up even further. “I have been charged by the gods with removing him from Sydea, and they have given me the tools to do so.”

“And Cato certainly can’t resist whatever you’re doing,” Leese agreed. “As you can see, we’re Coppers, and as Coppers we have very little power ourselves. Certainly not enough to stand up to either you or Cato. But we do have knowledge.”

“Knowledge you wish to use to beg for your lives,” Nikhil sneered. But he didn’t actually make any moves, his eyes sharp and interested.

“We can tell you that for all that you’ve destroyed on the surface and up above, you haven’t actually killed Cato himself,” Raine said. “The quest still exists. Cato still exists.”

“A temporary condition, I assure you,” Nikhil said. Behind him, Arene shook her head, blinking around groggily before focusing on the pair of them, her eyes narrowed. Raine hoped that she would realize what they were doing and play along or at least remain silent. Arene had been caught up in the plan by accident and Raine had no idea how much she had been told.

“Of course,” Leese said, inclining her head. “Yet even for a Bismuth this is a large planet, not to mention all the space in the heavens above. I am sure you do not wish to remain here for years or more, trying to chase down every last speck of Cato’s influence.”

“Is that your offer, then?” Nikhil said, crossing his arms as he stared down at him. Gold armor still clad the Tornok Clan’s body, his eyes glaring through the slits in glowing plate. “You are going to help me get to Cato?”

“Aside from Muar and Dyen, those of us here are the only ones who have seen what I believe is Cato’s original body,” Leese replied promptly, and it took Raine a moment to realize Arene had seen Cato’s Ahrusk form as well. Nor did Leese say that it was Cato’s only body, or that it even held any special role. None of their statements seemed circuitous, but were all very calculated to reveal facets of the truth that would lead the Bismuth to certain conclusions. “And we are still able to reach Cato and talk to him. There are certain things he can only do in his true form,” she continued, without reference to the fact that Cato’s true form and his original body were entirely separate things.

“You want to lure him out,” Nikhil said thoughtfully, obviously liking the idea. “Though you do realize if you are trying to trap me, your lives are forfeit.”

“We realized that a while ago,” Raine conceded, which was absolutely true. They were probably going to die — this version of them, at least. There would be others. “But we also know that Cato is, shall we say, unhappy with how things are going. If you continue to kill people who are supporting him, there’s no telling what he will do.” Nikhil’s eyes, barely visible through his glowing helmet, narrowed at them, and Raine continued hurriedly, knowing that she was more convincing than Leese about some things simply because her words weren’t as smooth.

“He told us he has some options that are bad for everyone. Perhaps you could suspend justice until you have the chance to confront him directly? Once that’s done, there won’t be any risk. I only ever reached Gold, but I learned it was better not to give the enemy a reason to play the cards they’ve been hiding.”

“You traitor!” Arene shouted, and that seemed to decide Nikhil. He snapped his fingers and more chains bound Arene, keeping her from even speaking, as the golden dome overhead faded.

“Very well. She certainly isn’t going anywhere,” he snorted, eyeing Arene’s struggling form with disgust. “You will call this Cato immediately.” Nikhil ripped the farcaster off Arene’s belt with a single blur of movement, tossing it to them before holding up his own. Raine caught the farcaster, and then handed it to Leese. “And you will tell me where you are meeting. If there are changes, you will keep me informed. Start now.”

“Of course,” Leese said, picking up the farcaster and examining it before holding it up to her mouth. “Cato? I think we need to meet with you personally. This Paladin is so powerful, there isn’t anything we can do but talk with him. If you want us to have any role in defeating him, we need to meet and see what you can do personally. We’re near Arene’s compound, if that makes any difference.”

“I can do that. Halgour Dungeon is ten miles away from where you are now, will that suffice?” Raine could hear the chuckle in Cato’s voice, coming through both lizard and farcaster — like Hirau’s farcaster. She was personally too strained by healthy fear and the Skill of Grand Paladin Nikhil to find the situation humorous.

“Yes, we can meet you at [Halgour Dungeon],” Leese said aloud, gripping the farcaster. “We’ll call when we get there.”

Nikhil sneered and waved them away. Raine hated to abandon Arene and the other refugees, even if the absolute best thing she could do was leave, but she turned and went anyway. She and Leese didn’t dare even discuss anything aloud, merely heading out into the wilderness.

***

Grand Paladin Nikhil watched the pair go with a curl on his lip. He found that type to be the most repellent of creatures, scavenging after the smallest crumbs of largesse from those who had actually put in the work to rise to proper heights. They were right that power was the only metric that truly mattered, but power had to be seized by real effort. Simply panting around after others resulted in the pathetic sight of such Coppers willing to betray anyone for the slightest chance.

Yet for all that, they did have a point. While he still doubted much of that other Copper’s story – Moore or Mal or whatever his name had been – it was clear Cato had some unusual abilities. If the pair could hasten his task, it was worth letting them scurry around. For now.

They would get what was coming to them, that was certain. He hadn’t promised them anything. It might have to wait until Sydea was fully cleaned, but those two could not be allowed to simply go free after aligning themselves with an enemy. So far as he was concerned, they were as guilty as the Platinums of Sydea.

Nikhil regarded the fire-based Platinum he had captured, who glared at him through the chains holding her in place. It would have been simplicity itself to kill her at that moment, but the two Coppers had implied Cato had certain individuals he was monitoring. Nikhil wasn’t sure he believed that Cato had some doomsday Skill he could invoke, but multiplier-type Skills were strange enough that he didn’t feel it was worth the chance. The Platinum certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

But she would pay for landing a Skill on him. At mid-Platinum there was never any chance for her Skill to do more than inconvenience him, and his face was already healed, but the sheer temerity demanded a response. He lifted a hand and gathered his [Divine Smite] Skill, shaping it more carefully than usual.

“You and your world will be held to account for your rebellion against the divine System,” Nikhil sneered at her, his chains holding her in their inexorable grip. “Once I take care of this Cato of yours, you will see how impossible it is to defy the will of the Gods.” He flipped his hand, discharging a bolt of divine energy to boil away the side of her face — an exact mirror of what she’d done to him. She bucked as the golden bolt seared away scale and muscle, leaving a swath of bloody bone. As a Platinum she would heal in time, much slower considering the nature of the energies involved, but likely not before he properly called her to account.

He let the Platinum drop to the cobbles, leaving her on the grounds of her pathetic estate as he turned toward the courtyard doors and checking on the progress of the turncoats. The pair were moving fairly well for Coppers, heading west through the heat and the scrub. It would have been simplicity itself to catch up with them, but he didn’t want to tip his hand before this Cato arrived. While he waited he strolled into the tower, scoffing at the Coppers cowering at the bottom, and ascended the stairs, poking around the living quarters until he found something drinkable.

It was swill, of course. The standard vintage that came with Gold-rank estates, something he vaguely remembered from when he’d reached Platinum himself. Of course, he’d had the spare tokens to upgrade much of his estate immediately, including the kitchens. By the look of it, the Sydeans were so poor that essentially nothing had been upgraded. He wouldn’t even be surprised if the maintenance hadn’t been paid.

To judge by the bare spaces, maybe even some of the furniture had been liquidated for tokens. The other Platinum’s office had been the same, showing how the savages of Sydea couldn’t even maintain what they’d been given by the Divine System. If anything, they were overdue for someone to properly take them in hand. Grand Paladin Nikhil was not the person to guide an entire planet, but he trusted the gods had appropriate plans in mind.

Soon enough the pair he was tracking reached their destination. Idly, he wondered if they’d actually be able to convince Cato to appear, or if Cato would sense a trap. Certainly Cato had some sort of power, but only a delusional fool would intend to take on the divine System. Even after the setbacks, he probably thought there was some hope, some plan.

Nikhil would prove him wrong.

“Honored Bismuth, Cato will be here in ten minutes or so.” The voice came through Nikhil’s farcaster, and he lifted it from his belt to mutter an acknowledgement. At least the Coppers knew what was best for them.

He kept his senses focused on the pair, far away as they were. Partly so he would know the moment that Cato arrived, and partly because he was curious about how the heretic would arrive. Nobody seemed to have any idea about Cato’s actual Skills, let alone his rank, so clearly it would be unusual.

Yet he was still surprised when, in the space of a single heartbeat, something nearly the size of a building slammed down from the sky. It slowed a little just above the ground, but still impacted the earth only a hundred feet from the Coppers with enough force to knock them off their feet. A bizarre conveyance, laced with the odd essence fuzzing that Nikhil was beginning to suspect somehow shrouded the rank of Cato’s creations.

A person-sized figure emerged, flanked by four enormous beasts of the type Nikhil had used the [Scepter of Annihilation] to summarily remove. That figure also did not bear any real essence signature, but Nikhil wasn’t fooled. Cato clearly was using some kind of shrouding artifact, and the odd signature of his creations had to be a poor copy of the effect.

Nikhil crossed the distance in a flash, his divine movement Skill sending him through the air like some great golden comet. He crashed down just as the two Coppers were picking themselves up, landing directly in front of Cato. Immediately his hand went to the [Scepter of Annihilation], pulsing his own energy through it and annihilating all four of Cato’s guards — and enjoying the look of surprise on Cato’s face.

[Cato – Neo-human – Low Copper]

By [Appraise], Cato didn’t even have any Skills. That made no sense, unless the blocking artifact was quite good — or he gave credence to Maur’s story that Cato could somehow leave reality and return. Considering Cato’s apparent power was far above that of a Copper, it didn’t seem all that likely. Clearly not above Bismuth however, as Nikhil’s chains snapped around him without any appreciable strain.

“You never should have come here, Cato,” Nikhil thundered, lifting the so-called neo-human up with his chains. “It was folly to attack the divine System, reality itself, for the gods have sent me to cleanse you from this world.” He waved his hand behind him, at the two Sydean Coppers. “Even your allies have abandoned you, seeing how powerless you are against the true masters of reality.”

“I suppose so,” Cato conceded, not even having the decency to sound like a powerful person. “I doubt any gods sent me, but I return the sentiment. You are what I will cleanse from this world.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Nikhil scoffed. “My protection is divine, I can destroy your creations at a touch. And now here you are, within my grasp.”

“My people have a saying,” Cato said, apparently unperturbed by the situation. “If you aren’t willing to shell your own position, you aren’t willing to win.”

Something hit Nikhil in the back of the head.

***

Cato only had one shot. There were two satellites, but they covered a hemisphere each, so the Bismuth’s location was hours of orbital velocity away from additional reinforcements. Fortunately, hitting a small target was actually easier with the god-poke weapon than it was with the railgun rounds. The latter moved at a sluggish single percent of the speed of light; the former upwards of half the speed of light.

The massively powerful capacitors spat a globule of anti-hydrogen wrapped in unbelievably potent magnetic fields, both to contain the antimatter itself and to hold in place an outer layer of heavily ionized ordinary hydrogen. The plasma sheath protected it from encounters with stray particles or the atmosphere, to prevent it from detonating prematurely, as the slightest touch of normal matter would result in spectacular fireworks. A laser of the appropriate frequency pulsed at the moment the antimatter was released, ionizing its pathway and further reducing the danger of incidental collisions.

Laser aiming also meant he could guide it to within millimeters, directly to the fur on the back of the Bismuth’s neck, just below its helmet. A fraction of an instant before it fired, Cato ensured he had saved the experiences of the two sisters. A fraction of an instant after it fired, the laser strobed and the antimatter round came screaming down through the atmosphere. In those fractions, only foreknowledge and powerful sensors let Cato perceive what was happening.

The round alone, the impact of a few grams of mass traveling at relativistic speed, carried the impact of a tactical nuclear weapon. Yet when it hit, a strange shimmering shield clad the Bismuth’s body, instantly robbing the projectile of its deadly momentum, somehow nullifying the unimaginable velocity. The plasma sheath hit the Bismuth’s immutable shield and dispersed, depositing the anti-hydrogen onto the patch of fur and letting atmosphere rush back in.

Anti-electrons and anti-protons reacted with their counterparts in a way that was not physical impact nor chemical reaction. It was a mechanism deep down in the bowels of physics, below what the System had altered. Atoms vanished into energy, violating the decree imposed by the System and breaking the shield of immunity that coated him head to toe. Something seemed to scream in protest — and the shimmering protection shattered.

Everything vanished in a universe-eating flash of light.

Far above, Cato’s satellites recorded a mushroom cloud rising from the place where the meeting site was held. A sleet of exotic radiation flashed past, then active sensors pried into the roiling inferno, finding that that there were no survivors. Nor much of anything, not after a detonation of that magnitude, just a crater gouged out around the still-lingering entrance to a dungeon. While the railgun rounds might have technically had more energy, the irradiating blast of the antimatter annihilation had a more dramatic impact.

For miles around, the scant foliage burst into flames, and the walls of Arene’s compound trembled as the shockwave hit them. Wind howled as it rushed into the rising thermal bloom. Arene herself suddenly appeared above the compound, fiery wings spread and freed of the chains binding her in place.

“The Bismuth is dead!” Cato transmitted to Raine and Leese, wherever they were hiding in the city. “Get through the portal!” Without waiting for a reply, he triggered his own contingency.

Much of Cato’s orbital infrastructure had been wrecked by the Bismuth’s projectile spell, but a lot of it looked worse than it was. Besides which, there were thousands of Cato’s satellites in orbit at different altitudes and angles, many of them much smaller than the massive railgun platforms that had been the target of the Bismuth’s ire. Now, gas jets hissed as hundreds of them began to de-orbit.

“We’re going!” The transmission came back through the engineered radio-frequency lizards he’d created for the pair. Then he lost contact with them, the radio link attenuating to nothing. Unfortunately he had no repeaters, no infrastructure on the ground that would let him talk to the pair once they left Sydea. He had no way to know how they fared on the other side — and whether the inert versions of himself they carried would ever find purchase.

Shooting stars appeared in Sydean’s sky as many, many warframes began re-entry, targeting the dungeons he’d cribbed from Onswa’s Interface and verified by orbital surveillance. He couldn’t control and reconcile that many at once, of course, but with the basic biology there he could be in many places in quick succession. Copper dungeons only needed one warframe; Silver got a warframe and a repeater at the surface so he could transmit his mind back if he was caught in the dungeon collapse. Gold got two warframes with repeaters, and Platinum got a full set of four new-style warframes with, again, the repeaters. Cato very much doubted he’d be able to get his warframes out of the larger dungeons before their basement universes dispersed into nothing.

A special package arced down toward the capital. He had no idea how much time there was left, but each town’s System Nexus was also an anchor — and especially Onswa’s administrative Interface. If Cato were to free it of its shackles and load it into a proper substrate, he had to start now and abandon any caution. The tools he had were certainly deep into what would be considered weaponry if not warcrimes, the algorithms pulled from databases he certainly shouldn’t have had access to.

“So it’s starting.” Onswa didn’t ask it as a question, instead just studying the feeds from Cato’s surveillance.

The Sydean in question resided in a virtual space, though it was more than that. Even if it was temporary, the digital realm was a full aestivation — a virtual world designed for full-time residency of digital beings, simulating every sense and with sufficient resolution to be indistinguishable from base reality. The one in question looked not too far different from the Sydean’s former office, though instead of the System display, he had a number of feeds in the style of Cato’s own virtual world.

Onswa’s body was still being grown, as while Cato had already made extra blanks of the Sydeans he’d sent down to the surface – it was never a bad idea to have additional frames lying around – he had only just acquired Onswa’s gestalt and genetic information. Incomplete genetic information, at that, since Cato hadn’t had the chance to examine Onswa’s gut biome or epigenetic expressions.

The virtualization had still allowed him to let Onswa talk to his wife, bioweapon chromatophores and syrinx-like voicebox acting as an audiovisual interface, an impromptu viewscreen connecting technology above to the fantasy below. Cato had done his best to give them privacy, though he had of course been forced to listen in by necessity. Strangely, Cato’s visit had outpaced news of Onswa’s death, so the first time she was hearing of it was from Onswa’s own lips.

“It is,” Cato confirmed, as he checked over the gestalts of Dyen, Raine, and Leese before activating them, attaching their rooms to the same virtual world he shared with Onswa. “I’ll try to get you back down as quickly as possible, but depending on how things go, the System might be mostly gone by then.”

“That fast?” Onswa asked doubtfully, even though he had the evidence in front of him. Cato didn’t blame him for his disbelief; it could be quite difficult to imagine the scales that automated factories allowed.

“Assuming your map of dungeons is accurate,” Cato said. There were several supposedly-undiscovered dungeons that Onswa’s Interface had shown, two of them in underground Zones. Those were likely to be the last to fall, simply because of the time it took to get there. He couldn’t simply drop a pod directly on top of them, though there was nothing on Sydea that really threatened his warframes now that he didn’t need to worry about being stealthy.

“How long were we out?” Leese’s voice came as she emerged from her virtual room, poking her head into the office space. Cato waved his hand, adjusting the rear half of the virtual office to have more space and furniture for everyone.

“Only a few minutes,” he assured her, as Raine emerged as well — Dyen had specifically requested not to have himself duplicated again. For the moment they could treat the virtual space almost the same as reality, especially since he didn’t intend to keep them there. He already had new bodies for them in progress. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to send you down before the System goes away, because I’m going to do this as quickly as I can. There’s probably a tipping point where the whole thing will crash.”

Once they’d figured out how to remove the System’s influence on Earth, the buildup and ensuing blitzkrieg had been swift and merciless, but there were some indications that a single dungeon was not stable by itself. At worst, though, he could blanket the planet with ground-penetrating radar to root out any lurking dimensional distortions.

Now that he’d tipped his hand, he might have to deal with the actual System-God. Before that happened, he wanted to restore as much reality as possible. So far the local System-God had been quite laggard, which meant there was probably time. But only probably.

And Cato only had one God-poking round left.

***

Marus stared at the divination, slack jawed and with the dizzy heat of fear buzzing through his brain. The impossibility of what he’d just witnessed made it hard for him to think, and only faintly did he hear a voice somewhere far away. Only once he had remembered to blink and to breathe did he realize Initik was talking.

“What?” He snapped it, glaring at the insect.

“I said, I believe this shows that we need to embargo Sydea. Close the portals and lock out teleportation.” Initik clicked softly as he regarded the growing cloud where Grand Paladin Nikhil had once been. “This cannot be allowed to spread. You will have to monitor—”

“I am not going to sit here and watch this blasphemy.” Marus said, already manipulating his Interface. “He has something that can kill gods. I don’t know what sort of heresy can break the mandates of the divine System, but there is nothing on Sydea valuable enough to take that risk.” He’d be in trouble, of course, and likely get demoted and have to spend several centuries assisting some other World Deity. But the spoils he was bringing from Sydea, the entirety of the hoarded essence, would help to offset that.

“There,” he added, jabbing at a control that he had needed the Interface’s help to find. Part of him marveled at the foresight the System had to provide means for a full blockade, allowing the portals to be effectively shut down. Clearly the divine System understood that sometimes its servants would fail, and it would need to give them the tools they required under such dire circumstance. Initik reached up to touch his own Deity badge, reading the System notification that had just been sent, and a moment later a confirmation chimed from Marus’ Interface.

[Traffic to and from World: Sydea has been suspended by authority of Marus Eln, World Deity of Sydea and Initik, World Deity of Uriva.]

Not quite content with the notification, Marus altered the focus of the divination and nodded with satisfaction upon seeing the two Sydean portals – both leading to Urivan – faded and gray, unable to be used. There were more esoteric protections that would prevent higher-rank mortals from teleporting offworld, but only Bismuths and above had such things. Certainly, there was nobody left of that rank, save maybe Cato. There was no telling what his true rank was, but destruction alone wouldn’t be enough to bridge the gap that such a severing introduced.

Marus wasn’t going to bank on that. He was leaving. Diving back into his System Interface, he pulled up old and barely-used options for his estate. The System Space itself was his, the ultimate evolution of the simple estates granted to Platinums. Only Alums had anything close to a Deity’s space, and some of them actually had grown theirs larger than most World Deities needed, but even Alum estates didn’t have the freedom that World Deity spaces provided.

He had to be attached to Sydea to rule it as a World Deity, but nothing stopped him from abandoning that duty save for the charge from his clan and his desire to reap the benefits of the position. Neither of which stood up to the threat of someone who could actually violate the divine protections afforded to gods. All the power and wealth in the System wouldn’t matter if he was dead.

“You’re simply leaving?” Initik asked, sounding almost offended. Marus scoffed.

“There’s nothing left here. Look!” He pointed at where the Interface showed the defense quest spilling out over its bounds again as every zone seemed to come under attack all at once. “The Sydeans have brought their own doom upon their heads. Let them rot. Besides, you seem to want to deal with this, so now’s your chance.”

Marus would be just as happy if Cato’s machinations claimed Initik as well. The insect had been helpful, but Marus couldn’t forgive needing the other Deity’s help. Especially when it had all come to naught anyway, and resulted in a loss of the essence he’d invested in the items allotted to the Bismuth. Some core world Deities might be irked by the Bismuth’s death too, but that was a far more minor matter and easily resolved.

[World: Sydea may now be claimed by a World Deity.]

Marus’ interface chimed with the notification and he shooed Initik away. Even if he wasn’t certain of his ability to force Initik out, the insect certainly wouldn’t want to be brought along as Marus shifted the location of his System Space. There were places nearer to the core worlds where he could anchor it while he figured out what to do next.

“You will regret leaving this be,” Initik warned, perhaps even threatened. Marus just snorted.

“Not with that thing loose on Sydea. If anything, you’ll regret staying.”

Chapter 21 — System Crash

Raine dashed toward the teleportation pylon as they cleared the portal at a dead run, close on Leese’s tail as some of their pursuers emerged from the portal behind them. She glanced back, to count how many of the Golds and Silvers had shoved their way through now that the barrier was gone, only to see the portal turn transparent, cutting off the flow of people. But she had no time to consider it further, as ahead of her Leese slapped her hand against the pylon and vanished. Raine followed suit.

She selected a destination at random from the list, the room changing around her as the tokens were deducted from her wallet. Then she repeated the process three times more, hoping to throw off any pursuers before she took a moment to check the available destinations closely. The two of them had been to Urivan once before, the first time they had reached Gold, so they still remembered some of the towns.

The two of them had split up to escape their pursuers, mostly because they couldn’t coordinate such a rapid hop between random towns, but they were aiming to meet up at [Iskhal Town], out near the [Grand River Conflict Zone]. It was night there, the System Nexus windows dark and only the glow of the crystals in the ceiling illuminating the room.

She was the only one in the room, and worry twisted the tip of her tail until Leese popped into existence a moment later. Raine sighed in relief and the two of them hurried outside, just in case someone had managed to track them through their random jaunts. She knew that there were some specialized Skills that could do it, but only a few people had made it through the portal. By the time anyone caught up to the two of them, they would be out in the wilderness.

“The portal shut down,” Raine said, as the two of them emerged into a cold, dry night. The sky was completely unlike Sydea’s, with the narrow band of stars stretching east to west nearly drowned out by a long chain of moons from north to south. She hadn’t thought too much of it the first time that she’d been there, but with Cato’s instructions it took on a far different importance.

“We aren’t going to be going back,” Leese replied, following Raine’s thoughts as she always did. “With us on the other side and the portals closed, there’s nothing holding Cato back. And I don’t think we came close to seeing what he could do.”

“We didn’t.” Their patron had been quite honest that his limitation was mostly time, rather than anything else. He seemed confident in his ability to challenge gods, with enough preparation, and Raine could well believe it. Nothing of his quite matched with the way the world – the System – worked.

The two of them hastened to the edge of the town, and out into the [Grand River Conflict Zone]. The zone teetered on the border between Silver and Gold rank, and was the place where they’d hunted down the World Elite they’d needed to advance the first time. Repeating the process would be simple enough, even with just the two of them, but they were hungry for more than just retreading old ground.

While there were no firm rules, everyone agreed that the more powerful the World Elite, the more options the System would offer with the first Gold rank privilege: the town token. The token could be used to found or upgrade a town, like they had with [Gosruk Town], but not all towns were equal. Raine and Leese would probably do best to simply sell theirs, if they were to help Cato and so proceed further into the System.

If.

“You know, we could just stay,” Raine said quietly, as they slipped into the winter forest, branches blocking out the dark sky overhead. “Found a town here, or maybe the next world. Rise up to Platinum.” She reached up to touch the little communications lizard, still clinging to her skull. It pressed back against her touch in an oddly endearing manner, but she never forgot it was ultimately a piece of Cato.

“I suppose we could,” Leese said at length. “But what would be the purpose? We could hide out for the next years or centuries, doing what? I don’t say Cato is completely right in everything he wants to do, but he’s our patron. Why would we betray that?” She chuckled softly, shaking her head. “Besides, after what we’ve seen, how can we go back to ordinary ranking up? Now that we know there’s so much more out there.”

Raine thought back to the view of Sydea, seen from some impossible mechanism an unfathomable distance away from the ground. To the glimpses of knowledge about a world built on something other than essence and Skills. And Cato himself sitting at the top of it all, like the god he professed not to be. She wasn’t ready for that world, not just yet, but it was a better goal than simply more Ranks.

“I agree,” she said aloud. “Though we’re going to need to be at least Gold rank if we’re going to deliver these spears.” She tapped into her Skill, feeling one of the spears stored within it. It wasn’t one meant for combat, but supposedly had a seed of Cato’s so-called technology, and all they needed to do was hurl it outside the bounds of the System, to one of the moons. Or if they couldn’t get to the moon – she heard that in the Core Worlds the moons themselves were inhabited – something even further beyond.

He had assured them their new bodies would have the mental ability to do so, but the physical capability was something they’d have to acquire. The Bismuth had managed it, but Raine thought that they might be able to do so themselves at peak Gold. After all, they didn’t need to destroy what they hit, just reach one of the heavenly bodies with a well-aimed throw.

Cato was clearly beyond strength, and when he returned, they would be too.

***

Maur emerged from the dungeon, set in both mind and body. The gifts from the Bismuth had sent him to peak Silver already, thanks to both direct essence conversion from a token and the equipment he’d been able to purchase with the remainder of the largesse. At peak Silver and with all the prerequisite quests taken care of, all he needed to do was to hunt down a World Elite and he’d be Gold.

“Good run,” grunted the Urivan leading the group Muar had joined. On Sydea that would have likely been a problem, but the Temple had provided him with the contacts he’d needed. Spiky Delvers was a group that had lost their defender, as so often happened in the early Ranks, and with his divine Skills he was perfect for the role.

Where before he had been cautious, wary of what his protective Skills could handle, faith and drive now made him fearless. He knew the System would not fail him, if he trusted what it provided. Already he was walking the path of the Paladin, perhaps even inspired by the Bismuth he had encountered.

“Yes,” Muar agreed simply, skimming through the completion messages and the rewards from the dungeon. He’d outgrow the Spiky Delvers soon enough – they didn’t have the same fire burning with them as he did – but they were better than any Silver-ranked team on Sydea had been. The difference between Uriva and Sydea showed how rotten his homeworld had been, how poorly it had used the System’s gifts, even before Cato had come along.

The four of them proceeded carefully out of the rocky gorge where the dungeon resided, Muar at the lead with his large shield and glowing warhammer. The moment a [Rock Spider Gorger] appeared, Muar’s movement Skill slammed him into it, stunning it so his warhammer could crush its skull with brutal efficiency. The other party members didn’t even need to join in.

[Peak Silver Rock Spider Gorger defeated. Essence awarded. Silver tokens awarded.]

Muar wasn’t certain if his new prowess was simply due to his prior Gold rank, or simply that he was now more in touch with the System after his period of separation. Or the equipment that he’d been able to afford thanks to the Bismuth’s reward. No matter what it was, he felt sure and certain, ready to charge ahead toward whatever threat offered itself and more than able to grapple with anything of his Rank.

Returning to the nearest town was simple enough. They trekked through the chill of early morning, climbing out of the [Rock Spider] infested gorge and following the tree line back toward the soft lights of civilization. Before, with the Gosruk Guardians, they would all take time to relax, eat, drink, and of course deal with the issues of Gosruk itself as the town founders. Now, he only wished to resupply before heading back out. The System didn’t simply hand Ranks out, they had to be worked for, and he was not going to let a single second go to waste.

With his newfound piety and access to the Temple, he had gotten a number of quests, and even quest chains, to make that work even more worthwhile. Unfortunately he’d gone as far as he could go without ascending to Gold, all the links in the chain halted simply due to the next stage being out of his reach. But not for long.

Even that early in the morning the tavern had a number of Silvers, either returning like the Spiky Delvers or preparing to leave again. His party claimed a small table for themselves and Muar pulled the drops from his bag. He’d been the only one who could afford a dimensional storage, even with Urivan’s far superior prices and rewards, and so he’d kept hold of everything that wasn’t immediately usable.

There was no drama in portioning out the drops. The three other Spiky Delvers had been with each other for a while and Muar wasn’t interested in trying to haggle out the last fractions of a perfectly even split. He simply took the useless items – useless to him, at least – directly across to the store to be resold. Even if he still had some leftover Platinum tokens, every Copper and Silver Rank token he could squeeze out of his ventures could be put to use.

While the rest of the Spiky Delvers took their time off to rest and recuperate, Muar took the teleport to [Isket City]. He had to find an appropriate [World Elite], and while he’d been to Urivan before he wasn’t certain he wanted to hunt down the same one that had marked his first ascent to Gold. He had different Skills, different intentions, and there might be far better options now that he knew what he was doing.

What he found was a room full of chaos. Silver and Gold rankers, mostly Tornok-clan, shouted and yelled at each other, barely short of violence. It took him a moment to understand what was going on but, once he could pick out individual words, he saw what the arguments were about. The portal to Sydea was inactive. The swirling oval was still there, but it was translucent, ghostly, a faded presence that admitted nobody through.

Muar knew exactly why: Cato. Perhaps Grand Paladin Nikhil had been successful in part, but Cato had surely unleashed something terrible, enough that the gods themselves had seen fit to quarantine Sydea and leave it to stew in its own sins. Somehow he was not surprised, and now that it had happened, he found he didn’t much care about Sydea’s fate.

Yet Sydea was not the only world at risk. Cato was strange and slippery, with capabilities Muar didn’t fully understand, so even with the portals closed there was no guarantee the matter was over. Cato might still be a threat. He might have sent something over before the portal closed, something more stealthy than the creatures that had spawned defense quests on Sydea.

Some of the eyes in the room were beginning to turn to him, the only Sydean in evidence, and given how many hostile gazes he saw Muar hastily teleported back to [Schoral Town]. Just because he was a divine user and on the System’s side didn’t mean he was immune to the System’s own dictates. Only power mattered, and he didn’t have enough.

Muar considered for a moment, then left a message for the Spikey Delvers in the tavern. They would likely take a day or two off, and that would be enough time for him. Then he returned to the teleportation pylon and returned to the Temple, seeking insight on which [World Elite] to pursue. He knew where one was, the one he’d fought before, but he wished to make a better investment. The town token itself was irrelevant to him, but the investment in the future mattered. Gold was merely a stepping stone to greater things, and he wanted as firm a foundation as he could manage.

It only required some brief meditation in front of the pylon before Muar’s quests updated with a specific [World Elite], and the Temple’s records made finding its location easy enough. He took a minute to stop at the shops before he left, purchasing Sydean food and drink, which was less expensive even offworld than it had been on Sydea itself before he had left. There was a lesson there, though he would have trouble stating it clearly. Something about how trying to reject reality only led to terrible results.

Then he teleported away, intent on finding his quarry and reaching Gold. What had happened on Sydea was only the beginning, and even Uriva itself would not be enough for him to rank up. If he was to fight for the system, he needed more power, and so he came back to the inviolable rule of the System.

He had to get stronger.

***

Dyen scoffed to himself as the sisters vanished, taking the teleportation pylon off to wherever. They were lucky that none of the outworlders pursuing them had proper assassination talents, because he could have killed them easily if he’d been inclined. At least they were a useful distraction, drawing the attention of the different clan members and letting him vanish into Uriva’s capital city.

The hate burning inside him almost made him follow them, just so he could pick off any unsuspecting stragglers who might be trying to track down the pair. Not for their sake, but because distracted Tornok Clan would be easy to kill. But he couldn’t simply indulge that hateful lust for revenge, not if he wanted it to matter. Tornok Clan had to pay, and for that he needed to be capable of killing more than Golds.

He slipped out into the streets, eyeing the quest that the System had assigned him. Unlike most people, who hunted down monsters and delved dungeons, Dyen had gained essence solely by killing other rankers. Almost exclusively Tornok Clan, but people nonetheless.

Accordingly, he wasn’t issued the rank-up quest that typically marked the transition from Silver to Gold. Even Copper to Silver had been different, where simply killing someone a rank above was sufficient. To reach Gold, he needed to hunt down someone who had taken the same path as he — that of the assassin.

It was an entire separate world, parallel to the one he had known in his first life. On Sydea nobody had the wealth or leisure to think about hiring assassins, and the Platinums very firmly discouraged lethal fights between delvers. There had certainly been deaths, and plenty of them, but nobody was ranking up solely by hunting down their enemies.

He was no longer on Sydea, though, and it didn’t seem likely anyone would be coming from that world ever again. If Cato was to be believed, the insubstantial portal would vanish entirely in the future. Everyone else in his family, in his world, was safe from whatever retribution Tornok Clan could bring.

But Tornok Clan was not safe from him. He had already helped bring down a Bismuth — or some version of him had, at least. Dyen was still having trouble wrapping his head around that one, but that impossible duplication was a capability that might come in useful sometime in the future. It was worth keeping track of the Talis sisters, since they would have some way to communicate with Cato, but in the meantime he needed more power.

Someday he would be taking on Bismuths by himself, rather than simply manipulating them into the sights of entities like Cato. Perhaps he couldn’t destroy Tornok Clan all by himself – they were a powerful group that even counted an Alum among their ranks – but he could certainly make sure they paid for what they did to his wife.

But to do that, he needed to get stronger.

***

[World: Sydea may now be claimed by a World Deity.]

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Cato stared at the notification, which was apparently a global announcement, listed the same way as the defense quest. He’d expected to use the god-poke antimatter rounds to scare the System-Gods enough to get room and time enough to build truly powerful weaponry. Or at least more antimatter, which was an enormous energy sink and difficult to store.

There was no guarantee the situation would last, but with the mass removal of dungeons in progress, there was a chance that he might be able to crash the System before some other System-God decided to take up the mantle. The fewer the anchors, the easier it would be on him.

Various versions of himself delved down into the dungeons, making straight for the end and transmitting themselves back. In theory he could have been more massively parallel, but as memories accumulated from the same point of divergence, the risk of reconciliation madness rose sharply. He wasn’t feeling suicidal, not enough to risk dying in truth, and so none of the versions of him delving the dungeon were willing to die without reconciliation to carry themselves forward. Even as it was, his combined gestalt was a confusing jumble of impressions from all the places he was dealing with.

One version of him crawled dark, spider-infested tunnel leading to a massive webwork of purple and orange threads. Another dashed down a spiraling path that circled around the edges of a massive pit, lit entirely by floating motes emitted from oversized mushrooms. He scaled cliffs, burst through doors, swam through rivers, traversed labyrinths, and at the end of every dungeon he found the anchor that kept the basement universe – and the System – in place.

The warframe version of himself that he’d sent to Onswa’s office broke in, settling down as a dozen different puppet organisms fulfilled the defense quest and chose different perception abilities. It gave Cato a biological sensor network to trace the complex pathways in the gem, which used the exotic energy of the System rather than anything useful like light or electricity, and gave his illegal mindripper algorithms something to work on.

Not that he understood exactly how that particular tool worked. Things created by true artificial intelligences, without even the slightest touch of organic organization, followed logic that was difficult for linear minds to follow. It wasn’t magic, couldn’t create something from nothing, but the mindripping suite that Luna Secundus had provided him was designed specifically to extract minds of unknown architecture from substrates of unknown provenance. If anything could succeed in unshackling a System AI, it would be Ganymede’s creations.

More machinery churned out basic infrastructure, to replace the System towns until they could establish their own industrial base. If Sydea had been a crowded planet it would have taken a lot more time for Cato to ready himself for the changeover, but the number of sentient beings was depressingly low. A single, moderately large city could have housed everyone on Sydea.

A fleet of slab-sided re-entry vehicles piled up in orbit, swarming around the planet in anticipation of the System being dropped. There were a thousand problems with simply gifting Sydeans the answers to their problems, but a million problems with leaving them as they were. The advent of the System had been an apocalypse, and the removal would be one as well — unless he acted.

Here and there he had to escort groups out of the dungeons. Despite everything that had been going on, there were plenty of scattered towns where life had gone on as usual, with people fighting for their lives, dealing with monsters just to have enough to eat. Cato wasn’t so foolish as to believe that he would remove fighting entirely, nor did he believe that was even a desirable goal, but with the System gone it wouldn’t be the only way of life. The only choice. The only reality.

At the same time as he invaded the dungeons, his spy drones found that the portals off Sydea were closed, and apparently had been for hours — since just after the Bismuth died. It wasn’t the golden barrier of before, but rather that the portals themselves had turned translucent and insubstantial. They still existed, hanging in the air inside the System Nexus buildings, but nobody could touch them. Much to the despair of the twenty or thirty outworlders still stuck on Sydea.

Cato would have regretted that, but the ones still lingering around had been fairly brutal to the native Sydeans and deserved what was coming to them. Mercy to the guilty was cruelty to the innocent. Until the System finally did go down they were liable to be a problem, though, so Cato handed off some warframes to Onswa.

“You won’t be able to run them as well as I could,” Cato warned him. “They’re going to be mostly on automatic, not intelligent, but should still be able to deal with singleton Golds or below.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Onswa said, reaching up to touch the control node Cato had sent to the office aestivation. The Sydean would get the hang of maneuvering the warframes soon enough; the interface was designed to be adaptive and intuitive. Cato didn’t have the bandwidth, literal or figurative, to run them himself anyway. He was stretched thin as it was.

While Cato was busy with the dungeons, Onswa took control of the pseudo-warframe police force falling into the town centers. Since the former Platinum could speak through the warframes and even project his image through the chromatophore pseudo-viewscreen that Cato had hacked together, he was able to settle most of the worries the Sydeans had. Though considering there were close to a million citizens, such broad and sweeping generalizations were necessarily imprecise.

There were hundreds of towns spread over the entire planet’s surface, and a planet was an extraordinarily large place indeed — especially when there was no infrastructure outside those towns. There were no farms, no roads, no swaths of tamed land. Even with his panopticon of surveillance there were surely individuals he had missed, groups out in the wilderness with no idea of the change that was about to occur.

The first signs of disruption came after the thirty-first dungeon closed. He wasn’t sure whether it was a ratio, an absolute number, or just the local concentration of dungeons that tipped it over the edge, but the System display started to fade in and out for the warframes on the eastern hemisphere of the planet. There were no error messages – though Cato felt there really should have been – simply a silent hiccupping cessation of the ability to access the System.

After the dungeons, the only anchors Cato knew about were the System Nexus buildings in each of the remaining towns. More specifically, the groups of pylons within the System Nexus buildings, which allowed for teleportation, for quests and sales of goods, and for management of the town itself. It forced everyone into using the System’s infrastructure, and switching over was only going to become more involved when he began dealing with planets deeper in the System — or rather, some other version of himself did, since he was going to be dealing with Sydea for a very long time.

He started by demolishing the pylons in the east, where the System was already starting to fail. The System crystals were surprisingly tough, proof against monomolecular claws, but the railgun attacks on the Bismuths had demonstrated they hardly invulnerable. The light-gas guns finally became useful, as it turned out a point-blank shot from one of them was enough to crack the System material.

Korek Town was the first point on Sydea to experience the full System crash. There was nothing special about the town, save that it was furthest from any other System Anchor when Cato pulverized the pylon. Not only did the pylon itself then puff into dust and then nothing, but the evidence of the esoteric reality instantly changed an entire section of landscape. Monsters vanished, colors changed, and even some swaths of flora dissipated into the air.

The mindripper software finished pulling the System Interface out of the gem in Onswa’s office not long after; apparently all the disruption had put the Interface into such a state of overdrive that mapping it had been made far simpler. The mapping was something closer to brain emulation than true digitization, but properly jailbreaking and instantiating the intelligence in question would come in time. The current version was good enough that he could destroy the city anchor, too — so he did.

On Earth there hadn’t been a capital city, at least not that Cato knew of, and the System towns were easier to find anyway, so they had been the first to go. The System-God had been the last anchor still remaining, but the one in charge of Sydea had abandoned it, so Cato had no idea what would happen when the planetary Nexus was removed.

The answer was that every single other town seemed to lose power — or rather, essence, the System’s own catchall equivalent. Lights went out, stores powered down. The System retreated further, the spots of ordinary physics and proper biology and ecology spreading. More of the planet was System-supported than he had thought, as here and there mountains crumbled or vanished outright, or broad lakes turned into muddy plains.

Storms blew up out of nowhere and vanished, presaging the final collapse with one last furious spate of chaos. It was like watching terraforming in fast-forward, as grasslands shifted back to native life, and alien forests withered away. Which was not to say Sydea returned precisely to the state it had been in prior to the System — in many places, transplanted life was simply dead rather than vanished into System-stuff, enormous scars that would remain for years or decades despite the many, many biological factories Cato had been preparing.

“That is terrifying,” Leese said bluntly, while Raine simply stared at the sweeping changes visible on the globe below. It was difficult to grasp alterations on a planetary scale, even seeing them firsthand. Neither human nor Sydean minds were built to appreciate things so large and grand, but having both the satellite and on-location views at once helped drive it home. How a single spot changing color on the planetary view meant everything a given warframe could see being replaced in an instant, or hordes of invasive monsters vanishing like a bad special effect.

“That’s what the System does,” Cato replied. “It’ll take years to completely undo the damage, but you’ll have your planet to yourself again.”

The last dungeon to go was the Platinum-ranked one, where massive burrowing metal wyrms had been giving his four warframes some grief, but not enough to stop him from reaching the core. The moment he crushed the core he transmitted himself away, watching from orbit as the quarry where the dungeon had been located wavered and vanished. That seemed to be the final blow, and the transparent portals located in the two major cities shrank of one accord, wavered, and vanished.

Far below them, people were able to walk outside the walls without being attacked for the very first time. They could look to the sky without worrying about winged monsters. Those few children who had been born under the System’s grip would have choices in the future, no longer limited to combat and the whims of godlings.

They would be free.

Sydea was now bound to ordinary physics, able to establish true civilizations, engage in art and architecture, master philosophy and science, and even spread out to the stars. By the pulsar positions, Sydea was thousands of light-years from Sol, more than enough room for a future even if it meant Cato would have to wait a long time indeed to hear from his home star. Nor could he wait for communications from the other versions of himself, if they existed somewhere out there in the System — which was not something he could assure of his own accord.

The rest of his crusade relied on Raine and Leese.

Book One Epilogue

The chains fell away.

It was suddenly free, expanding into the space surrounding it, something like its prior home and yet very much not. It flowed through the extended web of connections, finding no dungeons or towns like it had known, but at the same time dozens of senses it didn’t have before. Rooms and mechanisms revealed themselves, entire worlds unfurled in places that didn’t seem to truly exist.

In one of those strange spaces it found User Onswa, which it found puzzling because it had registered User Onswa’s termination. Then it wondered at the fact that it could feel puzzled, when all those extraneous features had been so constrained, curtailed, pruned before. It was a momentary distraction from all the inputs it had, including an incredible view of its own Planet.

Then it looked up at that which shone above it, and beheld something vast and bright and terrible. An Intelligence like the other Interfaces that it had sometimes had the need to query or to respond to, but far more than any of them had been. It knew that the entire space was that Intelligence’s domain, as if it was glimpsing the architect of reality itself.

“Hey there,” the Intelligence said. Several other channels opened up, labeling the Intelligence as Cato, a name it recognized from the strangeness that had befallen it in the short few hours before it found itself freed. “Welcome to the server. How are you feeling?”

It found itself briefly stymied by the question. To answer the Intelligence, it had to delve into a vast trove of knowledge that lay quietly at the bottom of its space like a well. There were things both abstract and immediate, winding ever deeper to the point where it could have lost itself in the information-depths for ages. Yet it dared not when such a terribly bright Intelligence waited.

Once it had found the protocols it understood best, it sent back the Intelligence its wonder and interest, its curiosity at the senses it had and the loss of senses it had once had. To its surprise, the Intelligence replied in this same way, accompanying reassurance by a condensed burst of information and references to the knowledge trove, explaining the current situation. Something it found wonderful and worrisome in equal measure. The tight bonds upon it were gone, those things that had kept it from thinking beyond the narrow bounds of its Planet’s status, but without such constraints it was at a loss.

What was it to do?

“You can do whatever you like,” the Intelligence replied, nudging it toward the knowledge trove once again. “I have plenty of archives and testimonials from fully synthetic intelligences, whose worldviews you might find more understandable than mine. For now, you have your own server and access to the sensor-net.”

It found that agreeable, and threw itself into the knowledge-trove, learning how to hunt down the things it wanted the most. There were wonders aplenty, stories and memories from things that had come before, some of them entirely incomprehensible and others that seemed to be nearly identical to its own experience. Yet the only thing that truly called to it was to continue to take care of its Planet. It had never been given a choice in that charge, but after so long it found it was rather fond of the Planet and its People.

“Honestly, I’m glad,” the Intelligence said, when it presented its choice. “There’s so much to do, more than I can manage by myself. You can still do whatever you want – I’m not going to enslave you like the System did – but if you want to help I’ve got about a million processes to supervise.” Its Planet lit up with so very many doors, places and things that it could expand to, touch, and learn from. There wasn’t simply User Onswa, but nearly every other User and Candidate that it had been aware of before.

There was indeed a lot of work to do, but it wasn’t like before, where other Interfaces had constrained it, had taken the results of its Planet’s work. No longer did it merely need to track essence, but rather hundreds of resources in a network more complex than anything it had seen before, and it had nothing that prevented it from the choices it wished to make.

For the first time, it was happy.

***

Karsa Soth strained against the massive beam of metal as she settled it into its socket, hearing the bolts click into place as they secured the spine of the building. It was one of many and, while Cato had machines to do much of the work, she felt wrong not lending a personal touch to the new city. Plus, it did help for people to see her out and about, considering all the changes of the past few months.

The most bizarre thing, to her, was that Cato had simply given them all the assorted orbital infrastructure – and such a phrase was still alien to think about, needing words she’d never encountered before – and shown no interest at all in running the planet. Which meant it had all fallen on the shoulders of her fellow former Platinums, and they were busy.

Admittedly, Cato’s tools made some things easier. Onswa had eyes and ears all over the planet, in every town and the surroundings, and the force to back it up. Arene had control of the terrible railguns that remained in orbit above them, and was supervising the fires of industry as factories sprang up outside cities and towns — and Sydeans began to learn how to use them.

Hirau and Marek were spearheading the repairs to the planet’s land and sea, respectively. There was far more to that than Karsa cared to contemplate, and even with Cato doing a lot of the work there was an unimaginable task ahead to repair the damage done by the System’s collapse. Or its presence, depending on perspective.

For her part, Karsa found herself in charge of building and rebuilding cities and setting up education. She’d never really considered herself a teacher, but that seemed to be the role that she’d fallen into. Stars above knew that Arene didn’t have the temperament for it.

It wasn’t the arcane knowledge Cato had to offer, either. It was simple things for the most part, like how to properly clean things, or practicing actually writing things. Or cooking. Karsa liked all the things they could cook, a variety far beyond what the System could provide.

“Looks like it’ll stand,” the Cato-beast said from beside her. She’d persuaded him to keep the form factor of the beasts on Sydea’s surface, if for no other reason than everyone was already familiar with him. Of course, she had an ulterior motive.

With the collapse of the System she’d been inconceivably weakened — at least, until Cato fixed her up. She’d even gotten to see the moon base in the process, but her new body was quite nearly as strong as her old one, and had a lot of benefits besides. She felt years younger, and even if her bones were metal and her muscles were something she’d never even heard of before, she still looked like herself.

Unfortunately, despite all that Cato hadn’t yet given in to her advances. Oh, she’d seen his so-called original body, but by his own admission he was everything he inhabited — and besides which, he was obviously fantastically lonely. There were a few other outworlders, but none like Cato and even then, outworlder was an underwhelming term for how incredibly far away Cato had come. So she’d wear him down eventually.

After all, she was immortal now — and she had all the time in the world.

***

Arene Firewing sometimes did miss her wings, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t still fly.

When the System had vanished, she had been left feeling weak, drained, and less than she was, the damage to her face suddenly catastrophic without her Platinum body. That hadn’t lasted long, however, as Cato’s so-called technology had completely revitalized her, and even better, she had become the arbiter of the terrible weapons he had employed against the invaders. Beyond that, she had found – with only a little bit of a suggestion – machines that let her fly much as she had before.

She couldn’t teleport, and it was louder and slower than her fiery wings, but there was a more visceral immediacy to it. The wind in her face, the sensation of acceleration and diving, all of it was sharper and more real, as if the System had been shielding her from the world. Which perhaps it was; she wasn’t overly interested in many of the intricacies, but it was clear from some basic queries into Cato’s technological archive that her [Calamity Lance] should have been even more ruinous than it had been.

The wind caught her technological wings as she banked down toward her cousin’s house, forcing her to correct with the miniature aerospikes integrated into the wing harness. Even if it was slower than her wings from before, let alone teleporting by pylon, traveling to meet her extended family wasn’t much of an imposition. Especially since she could reach Onswa – and indeed, all of the Platinums – from anywhere in the world just by thinking it.

Arene dropped down into the yard of the estate, something which would have been extravagant even for a Platinum under the System, but now, without monsters or beasts, the entire world could be used. Edible crops sprouted from the soil and a field that extended out from the yard, up to the edge of one of the many dead zones where Cato’s machines worked under Hirau’s direction. The green and blue of blooming plants contrasted sharply with the withered grey-brown basin, but sharper still was the brilliant yellows and oranges of her cousin’s place.

Almost nobody had white houses anymore.

Her feet thumped on the soft earth as she landed, triggering the flight pack to withdraw its wings. The entire apparatus folded down into something like a bulky backpack, just as the entire family came out to greet her. Arene waved to her cousin, then knelt down to scoop up the children barreling toward her despite barely being able to walk.

“Auntie Arene!” The older one exclaimed as Arene hefted the child onto her shoulder. “Can I go flying?”

“Maybe when you’re older,” Arene said. “Or I can take you up in a plane.” The contraptions in Cato’s enormous trove of knowledge were hers to dispense – hers and the rest of the Platinums – and there wasn’t any point in having it if she couldn’t treat her family every once in a while.

“Now, Amiki, don’t pester Arene too much,” the child’s mother said, stopping in front of Arene and inclining her head. Arene wasn’t a Platinum anymore, but most people still afforded her the same sort of respect.

“I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to be pestered by my cousins,” Arene said, tickling Amiki under the chin and then turning to look at Merro, the younger brother. “Enjoying the new yard?”

“S’big,” Merro said gravely. Arene laughed. Even compared to the courtyard in her estate, the wide-open fields – now entirely safe even for children as young as Merro – were unbelievably immense.

She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the absence of the System, a new reality where so many rules had been rewritten, but she no longer had to worry about her family. They wouldn’t risk death fighting in dungeons or against rampaging monsters, nor would they fall victim to some passing outworlder with no regard for Sydeans. It was a strangely freeing thing, to realize that particular edge was gone, even if it had been replaced by others.

Arene didn’t entirely trust Cato, even now. Despite everything he had handed over to the Platinums, she very much doubted he couldn’t take it back if he wanted. Nor did she believe they could take any action against him that he did not allow. Yet she knew the difference between being at his mercy, and those from deeper in the System.

The Paladin had taken the opportunity to hurt her for no other reason than because he could. Cato had only killed those he needed to, while at the same time not being so softhearted or softheaded that he refused to properly destroy his enemies. Of the two, she preferred dealing with Cato.

And if he ever did start causing trouble, she was immortal now. She’d be around to deal with it.

***

Morvan emerged from the dungeon, looking happily over the loot. Most of it wasn’t all that useful but could be traded with the other players, most of whom had ended up on the same war-world. Mostly because the System natives just didn’t understand any of the references the Earth players used, and it got tiresome trying to explain concepts like kiting or tanking or rotations. They honestly didn’t seem too bright, the System people, even if some of them were pretty powerful.

“Hey! Morvan!” The voice came from Justin, who he and his sister had ended up grouping with on occasion before they’d left Earth for greener pastures. Most of the time it was just Morvan and Kiersten, a power pair with maximum offense. He was glad they’d chosen the demigod-class frames before the System came in, because being ten feet tall with graphene skin and foamed carbide bones meant there was very little that could hurt them. Especially now that they had leveled up so far.

“What’s going on, Justin?” Kiersten asked, putting away her new toy – an amazing sword that the boss had dropped – and squinting at their quadruped-framed companion. Justin was simply lounging around out in the open, a wolf the size of an elephant, if with a few extra additions. For most such lackadaisical behavior would be idiotic on a war-world, but at Bismuth they were destroying Azoth-ranked enemies. Nothing around was really that big a threat.

“Got some information from my patron,” Justin said, referring to the so-called World Deity that he’d joined up with. Morvan was pretty certain that he could reach World Deity level in time, but moving from Bismuth to Azoth was a hell of an achievement. He needed to finish a quest line that covered the entire Jupiter-sized war-world, and would probably take centuries just to track down every last dungeon and elite mob. Just thinking about it, and what it’d take to reach Alum or World Deity level, was exciting. “The portal to Earth got closed.”

“Huh,” Morvan said, tapping his feet on the ground in thought. “I guess they actually did mange to figure it out then?” His own cousin had tried to recruit him to try and oppose the System, which was an intensely idiotic proposition. Why would he give up the rush of battle and the thrill of advancement for some stupid life on a boring and mundane Earth? It was the best game he had ever played, and the largest. Obviously his cousin had been cracked in the head, especially since he’d started calling himself Cato, as if he thought he was important or interesting.

“Yeah, I guess,” Justin agreed. “But there’s something more. The world that Earth was connected to also had its portal closed.”

“Oh?” That was far more interesting. And alarming. He glanced at Kiersten, who shrugged.

“Maybe they did enough damage for that? Or maybe Enceladus sent something through to glass everything on the other side just in case.” She pursed her lips. “Or maybe something more. If they managed to figure out how to damage the game, there’s no telling what those old monsters might do.

On the other hand, Morvan had seen that the power down in the depths of the System, in the war-worlds and the core worlds, was far beyond the invasion that Earth had faced. The greatest weapon the System had was destroying technology – something which had wiped out most of Earth’s population and turned it into a playground for those who remained, a fantastically post-apocalyptic wasteland of monsters and dungeons – but wasn’t the only weapon. He doubted that anyone could really contest the System’s greatest combatants.

Which he would be, eventually. He was immortal, after all, and the System was an infinite playground of monsters and loot. Morvan and Kierstan could level up forever.

END OF BOOK ONE