Chapter 219

Zea appeared behind the screen, where Luke was waiting for her with some clothes. She took one look at him, flinched back, and stumbled.

“Easy there,” Luke said. “You’re okay. Everything’s fine now.”

“Okay, why am I naked? What happened to your face? And where the hell are we?” she asked.

“Oh, well, uh… What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Big metal woman about to bash me over the head with a rod.”

“Right. Well, that happened. Killed you in one hit.” Luke took a breath and added, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Zea asked.

“No? Why would I lie about that?”

“Well, I’m obviously not dead. That’s kind of a dead giveaway that you’re full of shit. Also, clothes please,” she said, holding out a hand.

Luke passed them over and said, “No, you definitely died. I brought you back to life like how I was going to do with my family, remember?”

Zea paused in the act of pulling her pants on. “For real? You got to the God Machine. This is it?”

“No, this is where the doorway back to my world is. I brought my family back first so I could send them back home. My brother and sister are still here, and my dad should be coming back in the next hour or two with my uncle so I can disinfect him. Some shit went sideways and we’ve got some problems to deal with.”

“You don’t ever do things cleanly, do you?”

“Doesn’t seem that way. On the bright side, I took care of the demon invasion.”

“What, all of them?” Zea asked. “How long was I dead for?”

It was nice that she had so much confidence in him. There was no doubt at all that he’d done what he said. She just wanted to know how long it took. He spent about two minutes getting her caught up to speed on most of what she’d missed while he created a few other things for her. Once she was fully dressed, including boots and a coat, and had brushed her hair out, she was finally ready to step out from behind the screen.

Lizzie and Curt had waited patiently, even though neither of them understood a word of Thalian. Luke introduced them by switching back and forth between the languages for about thirty seconds before he decided to just dump rank 3 [Thalian] into his siblings’ heads.

“So you’re the girl he’s got the hots for?” Lizzie asked once they were all speaking the same language.

“You’re… kind of short,” Curt said. Lizzie cuffed him in the back of the head and he shot her a dirty look.

“We are… together,” Zea said, choosing her words carefully. “At least we were prior to my supposed death.”

“I’m telling you, you really died,” Luke said.

“Hmm. Sure. And you’re level 1000 now and a half-step away from being a god, somehow. I really just don’t see the current gods allowing that.”

“Well, I mean, it’s not like they have a choice. They can’t come down here and do anything. Their whole Covenant thing was a load of shit. It wasn’t a promise not to interfere. They literally can’t.”

“I think between the six of them, they could come up with something.”

“Five,” Luke said.

“What?”

“The five of them. I killed Zixin.”

Zea blinked and said, “Come again? You killed a god?”

Luke nodded silently.

“Okay. I have… a few questions. First, how? Second, why?”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about it,” Luke said. He titled his head and pointed up at the sky with his eyes a few times. “But mostly because they didn’t want to give your soul back.”

Everyone turned to stare at Luke there. “Wait, you killed a god to get your girlfriend’s soul back?” Curt asked. “Dude, you know Hercules didn’t actually kill Hades in that movie, right?”

“Shut up,” Luke said, giving Curt a shove that sent him stumbling a few steps.

Luke faded out of the conversation after a bit and said, “System, English isn’t a skill in the system, but do you think we could make it one? I mean, that knowledge is in my head, and in my brother and sister’s. Can we extract that and turn it into a skill?”

“It’s possible, though a larger sample size would be better. What is the purpose of this?”

“I thought about giving it to Zea so when I recommend she go spend some time on the other side of the doorway, she’d have a head start on the language barrier. She can’t keep it, obviously, but knowing it now and speaking it should help her retain some residual knowledge. I figure a day or two should save her weeks or months of work.”

It turned out losing a skill might remove all the precise knowledge it provided, but it didn’t take away a person’s memory of doing the things the skill let them do. That obviously wasn’t as good, but it gave them an idea of how to do something, even if they no longer had the skill to go with it.

“As a sort of proto-skill, we could craft [English]out of what you three know. It’s not possible for me to estimate how much is missing from it, but for your purposes, it would make the recipient able to speak fluently for casual conversation.”

“Perfect. Let’s do that and drop it in Zea’s head.”

“What the fuck!” Zea yelled in English a second later.

“Guess that worked,” Luke said.

“Hey, asshole! Don’t just add new language skills to my brain. That’s so rude!”

“Whoops,” Luke muttered. “Sorry about that.”

He walked back over to the group and gestured to Lizzie. “My sister had an idea about you visiting our world for a temporary, or maybe not so temporary, stay. Just until the whole end of this world crisis gets sorted out. I thought that if you do decide to spend a few days over there, it would be easier if you have some exposure to our language first.”

“Cool shit. Maybe ask first and language dump my brain after I say yes next time.”

“Right, right. Sorry,” Luke said. Apparently not even [Omniscience]could save him from acting like a jackass sometimes.

Zea glanced over at Luke, frowned, and said softly, “You don’t think you can stop it, do you?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“So then… everything…” she trailed off and looked around.

“Well, I guess the trees will still be here, but that’s about it,” Luke said.

“Shit.”

“Pretty much,” Luke agreed.

Before their conversation could continue, Bill Bennet stepped out of the doorway, another man carried over his shoulders. It took Luke a moment to recognize Duncan, who was squirming furiously trying to free himself and whose face was contorted with rage.

Bill still had close to 60 levels worth of stats and skills fortified by twenty years of practice. No normal person had a chance of escaping his grip. “Got him,” Bill said. “I saw Sophie and Josh already came through the door.”

“Yeah, Josh went right after you. I guess they didn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary,” Luke said.

“I don’t really blame them,” Lizzie added. “I’m only still here because Luke and Curt are still here. No offense, Zea.”

“None taken. We just met,” Zea said.

“Oh, who’s this?” Bill asked.

“This is Zea. My… uh… special friend and we never defined it after that,” Luke said.

Zea just rolled her eyes and said, “So you’re the dad?”

“That’s me,” Bill said. “This guy here is my brother-in-law, Duncan, fresh from the Earth side of this portal here so that we can get the voices out of his head.”

“Speaking of which,” Luke said, tossing an [Analyze]at Duncan. “We were right. He’s got 4 XP from killing something that was level 2. Or I guess four somethings that were level 1 maybe.”

Luke used [Inflict Status] to hit Duncan with an [XP Reset]. He instantly stopped thrashing and fell comatose. Everyone exchanged uneasy glances at the abrupt change, but Duncan didn’t appear to be hurt. He wasn’t bleeding out of his ears or nose or anywhere else, at least. “Is he going to be okay?” Bill asked.

Luke shrugged. “You probably know more about XP Madness than I do. What’s the prognosis for a guy with 4 XP that’s had over a thousand years to work on its host?”

“Can’t honestly say that I have the slightest clue. That’s the kind of thing I’d ask System.”

“It is unprecedented,” System said, appearing between Luke and Zea. “I’m afraid I can’t predict the kind of long-term psychological effects contact with the prisoner would have. Adding in even more variables like the difference at which time flows and the fact that this person received XP on another planet makes it even harder to guess. I can confirm that he only connected to the system three minutes ago.”

“Have there been any cases of people recovering after suffering from XP Madness?” Bill asked.

“I’m afraid not. Many people have managed to delay or resist the symptoms, but no one has recovered from it prior to Luke Bennet’s contributions to the SysAdmin bloodline’s toolkit.”

“Hey,” Zea said quietly, grabbing Luke’s home and dragging him closer. “What’s up with System? He looks weird and he’s not being a pain in the ass about answering questions.”

“Oh yeah, he’s super helpful now. Turns out he just didn’t like you,” Luke said.

“What!” Zea yelped.

Luke smirked at her and she swatted his arm. “Be serious. The world is ending,” she said.

“Fine. The gods had him tied up with a bunch of rules that were sometimes contradicting, usually on purpose, so he couldn’t be used by any of them against the others.”

“Damn, that sucks,” Zea said. “He’s… better now though? How’d he get out of that situation?”

“Used my administrator abilities to override his protocols and terminate a bunch of them.”

“I don’t know what most of those words mean,” Zea admitted.

“Me neither,” Luke said. “I’m just telling you what he told me.”

“And you’re not worried about that?” she asked.

Luke shrugged. “We’ve had bigger problems to deal with. And I mean, I’ve got [Omniscience] as a skill now. I feel like I’d know if it was a problem.”

The look Zea gave him was so heavy with skepticism that he hunched his shoulders defensively and muttered, “I would.”

“Right,” Bill said, cutting through the other conversations going on, “I think we’re good here. Much as I’d love to go visiting old friends and old places, I get the feeling a lot of them aren’t around anymore. I guess not much of anything from my time is around anymore.”

“Well that dragon that killed you was until a few weeks ago,” Luke said. “Well, probably. I killed the one that attacked me near the God Machine.”

“Luke, son, I love you, but sometimes you need to learn when to shut up. Read the room please,” Bill said.

Luke glowered at the group, mostly at Zea and Curt, who were both snickering, but Lizzie got some too with her mocking head shake. He gave them all the finger, then gestured to his father to continue.

“As I was saying, it’s time for the Bennet clan to go. There’s nothing we can do here but wish Luke luck. Zea, you are welcome to come with us, temporarily or… otherwise. God knows I don’t want it to come to that, but I think we all know how dangerous life is here.”

Zea glanced uncertainly at Luke. “Do you think I should…?”

Luke sighed and nodded. “I really do. If I can fix this, then you come back and get to say you spent a few hours in another world. If I can’t… you get to live, even if it’s not here.”

“As a level 1 with no stats or skills,” she said.

“Aw, it’s not so bad. You get used to it, plus Earth’s got a lot of technology Aros doesn’t even have concepts for. Get Lizzie to take you to the movies and introduce you to the internet. Cell phones are going to blow your mind.”

“Ah yes, the time-wasting thing you were obsessed with. Sounds… enticing.”

Luke fully realized he was stalling. Saying goodbye was hard when he’d just gotten them back, but they couldn’t do anything except die if they stayed on Aros. One by one, he stripped them of their XP, said his farewells, and sent them through the doorway.

Zea was the last through. She stopped right at the doorway and glanced back at him. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked.

He smiled and said, “Just that I love you.”

“You’re such a dork. I love you too.”

Then she was gone and the doorway closed.

Luke knew he’d never see any of them again. It was time to stop fighting the inevitable. If he was going to prevent the apocalypse, there was only one solution. “Are you ready, System?”

“I am. Are you sure you wish to do this, Luke Bennet?”

“Don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

“No, I suppose we do not.”