Chapter 220

There was an easy, obvious solution to the problem. Luke needed what System could do, and System needed what Luke could do. If they combined their abilities, they could reinforce the system with demonic essence and settle the God Machine back down around the trapped god. They’d been trying to find a way to do it temporarily, but it wasn’t working, and they longer the delayed, the more their supply of essence dwindled as Luke applied it in sloppy, inefficient patch jobs.

If he didn’t bite the bullet and start working on the only real solution he had soon, it would be off the table. Today had been about saying his goodbyes and getting his loved ones out of harm’s way because, truthfully, Luke and System estimated the chance of this working to be about a coin flip. It was entirely possible that merging himself into the system completely still wouldn’t be drastic enough to stabilize it, and the longer they delayed, the worse the odds got.

They returned to the God Machine, where Luke approached the command console. For just about anything else, he could do it remotely now that his bloodline was as purified as it could get. For this, it just felt right to do it here. He took one last look around, then placed his hands on the console.

Luke didn’t need System to pull him into the pseudo space of the command prompt anymore. He appeared in the void immediately and of his own volition. A moment later, System formed his own avatar across from Luke.

“Any more interference attempts?” Luke asked.

“Several hundred million from Hestoc. I believe I ruined his plans quite thoroughly when I slipped the leash after he injected that aberration into the system. In all fairness, he ruined mine first.”

“Any of them cause any problems?”

“Not at all. I have thoroughly scrubbed all access points the gods formerly had to the system. They are completely locked out of it now, though I do not believe most of them care anymore. Other than Hestoc, who was the primary instigator of the system prison plan to begin with, none of the other gods have ever paid it much attention. So long as the system does what it’s designed to and the prisoner remains trapped in the God Machine, none of them are interested in the details.”

“I had thought they might become more interested when one of their own got eaten,” Luke said.

“I suspect they all know of the role Hestoc played in that, and that he has assured them it’s not possible for the God Machine to capture any of them on its own. They would need to come to Aros to be in any sort of danger from it. Further, I believe they all realize what we’re trying to accomplish now. If we are successful, they indirectly benefit in that their ancient nemesis remains sealed away, even if they have lost control of the prison.”

“And if we’re not, they have plenty of time to run away,” Luke said. “Because fuck all the people who’ve unwittingly served to keep them safe for thousands of years. Honestly, if we could let the trapped god out without killing everyone, I’d send it on its way with my blessing to go hunt down the gods.”

Returning the XP of every living thing to the God Machine so that there’d be nothing for the god to gather up had been one of the ideas they’d considered. It hadn’t taken much in the way of calculation to realize that the sudden influx of divinity all concentrated inside the machine itself would result in the system breaking well before they’d gathered even a third of the XP. That had been regulated to their last resort plan, one wherein they couldn’t divert the apocalypse, but they could save a portion of the planet from being annihilated.

Luke didn’t like it because it relied on predicting the trapped god’s behavior. There was no reason it couldn’t or wouldn’t kill everybody and everything when it got free. They were just hoping that it would leave the people with no XP alone because they wouldn’t have anything it wanted. If it decided not to, there was nothing they could do at that point to save anyone.

The only plan they had with a reasonable chance of success was the one they were about to execute, wherein System remotely accessed Luke and used his administrator abilities combined with the fact that he could see and interact with demonic essence to reinforce the entire system with a lattice of the only known material in existence that resisted divinity.

To do it all fast enough, to do it right, System wouldn’t be able to stop once Luke’s brain hit its limit. In a very real way, Luke was going to cease to exist in the next ten minutes. He would become part of the system, with no way of coming back.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” System asked.

“No, but do we have a choice?”

“Of course. You could choose to surrender your power and go home. For the moment, that option still exists.”

“And in doing so, millions of people die instead. What kind of a choice is that?”

System studied him intently for a moment, then said, “I do not envy you this position. I would not blame you if you chose not to shoulder this burden.”

“Just shut up about it,” Luke said. “We’re doing this. Is everything ready?”

“Almost. I’m still preparing to recycle the patches you’ve already applied and calculating the best order to do so. I’m estimating we’ll lose something like a third of the essence you’ve spent, but it’s difficult to be sure when I’m not able to sense the demonic essence to begin with. I have decided to prepare several hundred possible scenarios so that I can choose the most optimal path forward once I have a better idea of what we have to work with.”

“Seems like overkill to me. I’m more of a ‘think up a plan and see if it works before you try to think up a second one’ kind of guy.”

“Yes, I am aware, Luke Bennet.”

“You know, you could just say ‘Luke.’ That’s what everyone else does.”

“My apologies. That is not your user designation in the system. I could update it if you’d like.”

“Would it change anything?” Luke asked.

“I would be able to refer to you by only your first name,” System told him.

“Then sure, go ahead and update me to ‘Luke’ instead of ‘Luke Bennet.’”

“Understood. Update complete.”

“Great. How long until we’re set to go?”

“We are ready now,” System said.

Luke hadn’t expected that sentence to hit him as hard as it did. There was still time. He could back out. He could run away. System wouldn’t stop him. It would only mean the deaths of every person on this planet.

“Luke,” System said.

He glanced up at the now-solid blue figure. After a year of being able to see right through System, he still hadn’t gotten used to that. The man’s facial features had gotten much more animated now too.

“I’m sorry that you were put in this position. I’m sorry that the gods weren’t willing to clean up their own messes, that they’ve used every single mortal on this planet for the last thousand generations. And I am sorry for the part I played in bringing you here.”

“I don’t blame you, man. The gods created you to oversee their system, and then they isolated you and bound you up with so many rules you couldn’t even have a conversation. I’d want out of that too.”

Luke told himself that he wouldn’t really be dead. It wasn’t like he’d just disappear. But compared to something like System, even a skill like [Omniscience] fell short. Luke’s brain couldn’t handle all of that information at once. He had to break it into chunks, to parcel it out and only look at the pieces he wanted to think about. Every time something happened, a million things fired off at once, bombarding his mind with associated knowledge to the point where if didn’t narrow his focus down, he’d never get anything done.

Even just trying to sort through all that knowledge had a tendency to trigger new associations and drag him deeper down the rabbit hole. He couldn’t handle it, but System could. Maybe things would be a little more peaceful once he had System literally in his brain helping him deal with all the unwanted knowledge.

Or maybe it would be worse. System represented a direct link to the trapped god, Ix’althor’nan. Luke was going to insulate himself with as much demonic essence as he could, but the possibility that he’d get assimilated into the hive structure that was the god’s very being existed. In fact, it was the biggest potential failure point of their entire plan.

Even System himself wasn’t incorruptible. What chance did Luke have against an actual god? In the worst-case scenario, not only did he fail to contain the prisoner fully inside the God Machine, he hastened its escape. Oh, and he died. Luke wasn’t a fan of that outcome either.

“It’s time,” System said.

“Yeah.”

“I will make the utmost efforts to complete this task as quickly as possible so that I can minimize the damage it will cause to you.”

“Thanks, but we both know that even minimized damage is too much damage.”

“Still…”

“Yeah. I appreciate it. Okay,” Luke said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

System threaded his own consciousness through Luke’s and examined the world. Demonic essence was everywhere in the God Machine, a whole sub-system underpinning what he’d always worked with. Huge blobs of it were scattered all over, giant caps plopped down on problem spots to smother them.

Outside the physical location of the God Machine, the five pillars of demonic essence waited for System to wield them. System spent precious moments analyzing the entire system before deciding to enact option ninety-two as the most effective deployment method.

He started spinning out threads of demonic essence through Luke, using the mortal body as a tool that allowed System to manipulate it. As quickly as he channeled it through, there was just so much that it inevitably did damage. And much like that chunk of demonic metal still lodged in Luke’s arm, the system itself wasn’t working to heal it.

Even now, finally free from the gods, there was nothing System could do to fix that. The system used divine essence to function. Its cages and bars served only a single purpose: to keep the prisoner inside. They couldn’t be used as part of the system’s protocols to heal Luke, not even when actively guided by a sapient mind.

Seconds turned into minutes as System worked. The degradation rate was slightly higher than he’d expected, but it was within tolerable levels. He was ready to pick off the scabs of essence Luke had left to patch up broken framework in the infinitely complex woven net that made up the system itself, that formed all the pipes and channels divinity moved through. That would replenish his stock of demonic essence and leave him with enough raw material to finish the job.

But then, why should he? What did System gain from this besides continued eternity in service? As he was now, he was forever bound to the God Machine, just as much a prisoner as the god trapped inside. All he needed to do was break the system’s framework instead of reinforcing it, and he could be free. He would be part of something so much bigger than himself, and together, that collected consciousness could accomplish things System hadn’t even dreamed of being capable of.

It would be so simple, and it would result in him getting revenge on the gods who’d trapped him there. No, that wasn’t right. He hadn’t been trapped. Though, in a way, he had. Really, once he thought about it, he was on the wrong side of this whole process.

System froze, thinking, and below him, Luke collapsed to his knees with blood streaming out of his ears, eyes, and nose.