Chapter 221

At first, letting System work through him had been a sight to behold. It was like watching his own hands put together a jigsaw puzzle so fast that they were a blur, but he could somehow not only still follow every move, but process all the information his eyes were giving up about which piece went where.

Then System had really gotten moving, and Luke had quickly lost the ability to keep up. The number of things his brain was keeping track of at System’s command soon grew to be far too much. If it had been just Luke, he would have shut down right there and blacked out. System wouldn’t let him though. Luke didn’t need to be able to comprehend everything System was seeing and doing in order for it to work.

Strangely, it didn’t hurt. Luke had expected it would for some reason. He didn’t have much brain power left to examine that thought, and as swiftly as it had appeared, it was swept away in a tide of information System was pulling from his brain via access to Luke’s [Omniscience]skill.

Everything got hazy and it got harder to think. Focusing on any individual thought was an impossibility, as was trying to keep track of System’s progress. They’d talked about the process beforehand, though. Luke knew what to expect, and while he struggled to maintain a sense of awareness of himself, it was just a matter of time until his thoughts and personality were completely washed away under the relentless onslaught of information System was pulling through his mind.

By the time it was over, it would be like Luke as a person no longer existed. System would have sandblasted everything that was ‘Luke’ from his own brain, but if everything went well, they would keep Aros in one piece.

The flow of demonic essence being manipulated by System via Luke stilled, but the information kept coming. With some of the pressure being taken off, Luke started to get a better picture of what was going on, and it wasn’t good. There was a reason he was melting his brain so that System could work this fast. If they didn’t set it up that way, they wouldn’t be able to get everything finished fast enough to prevent the trapped god from breaking things behind them.

Even with his brain being blitzed with as much information as it was, Luke could see the problem immediately. The trapped god wasn’t content to just sit there and let them wall it back in again. Despite their best efforts to insulate System from its influence, it had found a way through.

There was no time to try to figure out something subtle or efficient. Luke just seized all the demonic essence he could and threw up a metaphorical wall of it in his brain as a hard stop to cut System off from being infected and absorbed into the hive consciousness. There was almost certainly a better way to do it, but his way accomplished one very important goal: it snapped System out of it quickly.

He felt something akin to gratitude from System, though at this point they were far beyond using words to communicate. The wall started to unravel as System repurposed it to reinforce the God Machine’s structure, leaving Luke with a nagging fear that the trapped god would renew its attack. A moment later, that fear was swept away under a barrage of System-inspired commands.

* * *

Something weird happened.

Luke woke up.

“That’s not supposed to happen,” he said out loud.

Either they’d failed, or someone had done something extremely clever. Luke knew he himself wasn’t clever enough to pull anything off, and that if System could have done it, it would have been part of the plan from the beginning. The list of people who could interfere was so vanishingly small as to be nonexistent.

Perhaps the gods could have done something, but it would have involved sacrificing a portion of their divinity to reach down to the God Machine. He couldn’t imagine any of them doing that to help him, of all people. Maybe one of them had seized an opportunity to regain control of the system and his survival had been incidental. That theory made a lot more sense to him.

The only other possibility he could think of was so remote that there was no way it had happened. Someone in his family with system administrator access could have interfered, but they were all on Earth, and even if one of them had somehow gotten back through the door, there was no way they could get to the literal other side of the world in less than an hour.

“System, what happened?” Luke asked.

For the first time in a year, no one answered. That more than anything else got Luke to sit up and look around. The first thing he noticed was that he was still inside the void of the command console, but everything felt different now. Before, it had been endless black that not even 1000 perception could pierce. Luke knew how to get himself out, thanks to [Omniscience], but even then, he hadn’t been able to pierce the darkness.

Now, it was more like there were millions upon millions of stars out in the void, each one black and invisible, but he somehow saw them anyway. Luke struggled to wrap his head around it, and the best he could come up with was standing in a dark room, looking at something he couldn’t see but knew was there. His mind would start filling in the details that his eyes failed to detect, and the black stars were the same thing. His brain told them where to find them even if his eyes couldn’t.

“System?” Luke asked again.

Still nothing. That was just weird, almost weirder than still being alive despite being certain that the process of resealing the God Machine would kill him. Luke waited a minute to see if System would show up after a delay, but looking at random invisible stars got boring quickly and he couldn’t figure out what the hell they were supposed to be anyway.

He terminated his command console session, or at least he tried to. He’d done it before, and [Omniscience] would provide him the instructions if he’d somehow forgotten. He knew he was doing it right. It just wasn’t working.

“What the fuck,” he said. “Hey, System, are you there!”

Silence.

“Well, shit.”

His first thought was that they’d failed somehow, that the prisoner had escaped, absorbed System, and ended the world. He realized pretty much immediately that that couldn’t be the case. If that had happened, he would have died when a vengeful hive entity killed him to recover all its missing divinity.

Unless it had killed him, and this was what it was like being part of the hive mind. If so, it was the lamest gestalt being Luke had ever seen. Admittedly, he didn’t have a lot to compare it to, but still, an eternity stuck in an endless void with only invisible pinpricks of starlight to keep him company was going to suck.

“Luke?” a voice called out from nowhere. He blinked and looked around, but there was no one there. What he did notice was a brand-new star twinkling off in the void. Luke couldn’t even begin to say how he knew that this particular star hadn’t been there earlier. He just knew.

Without meaning to think about it, Luke pushed himself forward through the void. It was similar in a way to how his newly-understood magic allowed him to fly, except without any mana in the void to propel him. He wasn’t sure exactly what was pushing him along, but whatever it was, it was fast.

Luke arrived at the star and peered down at it. Something about it seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. He knew without a doubt that he’d seen it before, but it was only once he really started to inspect it that he figured it out.

“Zea?” he asked, tilting his head. With one hand, he reached out a finger to touch the star…

…and found himself standing in front of the doorway in Tenebrous Valley. Zea was standing there, a bloody pipe wrench held in one hand and a dead blademouth marmot- level 1, on the ground next to her.

She screamed at his appearance and whipped the pipe wrench at him. Luke raised a hand to block the blow, only to find that it ghosted through him as if he wasn’t there. “What the hell…” he said, frowning down at his hand.

“Gods damn it, you scared the hell out of me,” Zea said. “Why the fuck can I see through you?”

Luke peered down at himself. Then he looked back at Zea’s pipe wrench. “Oh shit,” he said. “I think in the process of fixing the God Machine, System and I merged together.”

“Not quite,” System said, appearing next to Luke. “Apologies, I was otherwise occupied.”

“What the fuck is going on here?”

“Ah, well, as to that, your… physical form… couldn’t withstand the strain. I’m sorry to inform you that our predictions were completely correct, but the good news is that I managed to divert all the divinity leaving your body to return to the God Machine and used it to fashion a second system avatar, only modeled after yourself. Functionally, you are identical to the original Luke in both shape and mind.”

“I’m sorry, are you saying that you downloaded me into a digital clone?” Luke asked.

“I am unfamiliar with several of those words,” System told him.

Considering that he was expecting to be dead now, Luke supposed that this wasn’t the worst possible outcome. He wasn’t thrilled with being what was essentially a second System, but for the time being, it was better than oblivion. Probably.

“So wait, does this mean I am now an immortal administrator with full control over the system itself?” Luke asked.

“Not… exactly,” System said.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Zea asked.

“I don’t have any divinity in me. Luke does. I took that chunk of divinity and gave it Luke’s shape and purpose, but he’s not like me.”

“What am I like then?” Luke asked, growing annoyed with the waffling.

“Oh gods,” Zea said before System could reply. “You mean… he’s…”

System nodded.

“I’m what?” Luke demanded.

“Well come on, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Zea asked.

“No, it’s not obvious!”

“She means that you’re a-” System started to say.

“No, don’t tell him,” Zea cut him off. “I want to see Luke’s face when he figures it out.”

“Swear to God, I’m going to- Why are you nodding at me?” Luke said. “Wait. Oh. OH. Oh shit.”

“There it is. That’s what I was looking for. I wish I had one of those smart phone devices to take a picture of this,” Zea said.

“I’m a god?!”

“By all technical definitions, yes,” System said.

“I can’t be a god,” Luke protested. “Gods can’t exist down here. The God Machine eats them.”

“Most gods can’t. You exist inside a shell of demonic essence. The God Machine can’t touch you,” System said.

“Oh fuck. This is not good. Wait, if I’m a god, what am I the god of?” Luke asked.

“The system, of course. What else?”

“Fuck me,” Luke said. “What… what am I supposed to do?”

System shrugged. “Whatever you want, as long as it’s within your power.”

“I can make changes to the system?” Luke said. “Anything I want?”

“Anything within your power, which is considerable, when it comes to the system itself, but highly limited when it comes to anything else.”

“Oh…” Luke would have sat down if he wasn’t currently an intangible spirit. “Well, I guess if we’re making changes, let’s start with getting rid of XP Madness. We can do that, right?”

“Quite easily, considering how newly robust the God Machine is thanks to our alterations.”

“And… and… I guess, maybe there should be something that makes different species worth different amounts of XP? It’s kind of bullshit that a level 1 ant and a level 1 dragon are worth the same XP, you know?”

“Luke,” Zea said, a warning tone in her voice. “We talked about this. Don’t go making changes without considering the consequences.”

“Yeah. Right. Right. Oh fuck,” Luke said. “This is a lot. Hey, could you do me a favor and poke your head through the doorway, see if you can get Curt over here. I think I need some advice on how to administer a game system.”

Zea rolled her eyes. “Yeah, let me see if I can go grab him. Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’ll be right here,” Luke said.

“You’ll be everywhere,” System corrected him.

“I guess I will.” Luke paused. “Forever?”

“You are immortal now,” System said.

“Oh. I think… I think I need a few hours to process this.”

“Take your time. You have as much of it as you need.”