Chapter 218

Luke grimaced internally, but he had too many skills folded into [Omniscience] to give away a facial expression he didn’t want to now. He’d expected this was coming, but hoped he’d get to skip it. Lizzie and Curt could be overbearing at times, especially when they thought he was doing something stupid. He had very rarely appreciated their heavy-handed guidance in the past, and he suspected he wasn’t going to appreciate it today either.

“What’s really going on, bro?” Curt asked. “You’re acting really nonchalant considering some of the stuff you told us. I mean, this is crazy. You expect me to believe a divine being is trapped on this planet, it’s about to escape, it’s going to kill everyone when it does, and you are the only one who can stop it? Come on, man.”

“Dad might not be able to tell when you’re full of it, but we can. You’re leaving out some pretty important details,” Lizzie added.

“I’m really not,” Luke told them. “That’s actually what’s happening right now. I was hoping to patch things up fairly quickly, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“So what happens if your plan fails?” Curt asked. “How do you escape?”

“With great speed?” Luke said.

“Bullshit. You said we can’t take any levels with us, that the XP has to be left behind so this god doesn’t come after you. How do you force the doorway open, remove your own XP, and walk through before it closes?”

“I…”

The truth was that he couldn’t do that, not on his own. He would need help from someone else, but anyone who could do it would have to stay behind. The only way that last person was walking through was if they went through during one of the scheduled scans the system did. Even System himself couldn’t manually force the scan.

Maybe he could schedule one, knock himself back down to 0 XP, then walk through when the doorway opened five seconds later. That seemed possible, based on what he’d learned of how the system operated, but only as long as it continued to function properly. The more stress the trapped god put on it escaping, the more things went wrong. It would work right now, but it might not tomorrow.

In short, the longer Luke delayed escaping, the worse his chances of successfully fleeing became. But if he cut and ran, he was dooming billions of humans, animals, and monsters to death. He couldn’t bring himself to just run away, not when there was still a chance he could fix things.

“Luke, you did amazing,” Lizzie said. “Way better than either of us, from the sounds of it. I am a bit ashamed to admit that I didn’t even think of getting Dad back. Or anyone else. All I asked System was how to get home, and he told me I needed to get to the command console at the God Machine.”

“I had the idea to bring everyone back, but I didn’t even make it out of the valley,” Curt said. “And I was here for close to a year. I don’t know what I did wrong. I was building a perfect foundation to advance. I swear I asked System so many questions that I think he got sick of hearing from me.”

“You let the goblins get organized,” Luke told him bluntly. “You gave them too many chances to kill you, and they only had to get it right once.”

“Heh. Yeah, that’s probably it. But regardless, there’s some stuff you’re not telling us, and you need to loop us in,” Curt said.

“You want the real truth? Fine. Everything I said is true. I abused my system access to create a skill called fucking [Omniscience]and I still can’t see a way out of this. I’m pretty much at the cap of what a mortal person can do. One more step forward and I start crossing into the realm of the gods. Do I want to be a god? I’m pretty sure I don’t, but it doesn’t matter, because the second I do, the God Machine is going to bitch slap me back down again.

“The real gods aren’t doing shit down here to help. I don’t think they even can. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re getting as far away from this mess as possible before it blows up in their faces. That god they trapped in there eats other gods, and my bet is that as soon as it’s done collecting every little piece of itself here on Aros, it’s going to go after them.

“They’re probably out there somewhere working on a second God Machine to retrap this god in, but that doesn’t help us. We’re already collateral damage. Either I fix it, or everyone dies.”

“It’s not your responsibility, Luke,” Lizzie said.

“I know that! But if I don’t do it, no one else will.”

“What if we helped?” Curt asked. “What if you boosted us up to level 1000 too?”

“That… I don’t think so. System, any thoughts on that?”

“I’m afraid not,” System said, appearing next to Curt and facing the siblings. “It is not so much a matter of Luke Bennet having too much work to get done in time as it is that much of the work that needs to be done can’t be performed by him. I could do the work myself, but I am unable to access the raw demonic essence needed.”

“The demonic essence?” Lizzie asked. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Luke?”

“Heh, literally,” Curt added.

“You. Aren’t. Helping,” Lizzie said.

“Wasn’t trying to,” Curt shot back.

“It’s complicated. Look guys, you don’t have to agree with me, but I’m doing this. We’re going to figure this out somehow, right System?”

“It is unlikely that we’ll establish a solution in time to prevent the total collapse of the system, which will result in first my destruction, then that of every creature with any XP living on this planet,” System said.

“Dude, you’re supposed to be backing me up here,” Luke told System.

Curt reached out a finger and poked System. It passed through him, but his hand disappeared when it sunk into System’s body. “You look different, but you’re still not real,” he said. “What’s up with that?”

“I have recently freed myself of the onus of many restricting protocols placed on me by the Pantheon,” System said. “I am now able to give away information without restriction.”

“Shit, really? Could have used that update back when you were ‘helping’ me,” Curt said. “Hey, how far off was I on my projections for AP needed on higher ranked skills?”

“In most cases, you were fairly accurate. You correctly deduced the pattern on a number of skill types and determined that they would follow the exact same scaling. You failed to account for skills that only had three ranks and your speculations about advanced skills missed the mark by a considerable amount.”

“Curt! Please, can you focus? Quit geeking about your nerd stuff and help me convince our brother not to commit suicide here,” Lizzie snapped at him.

“He’s not trying to commit suicide,” Curt said. “He is going to die trying to futilely save the planet, and that makes him a dumbass, but I get why he’s doing it.”

“Either way, Luke is going to die. Work with me here.”

“Hey,” Luke said.

“Come on, Luke. Don’t throw your life away for this. You have people waiting for you back home, a whole life to lead still,” Lizzie said.

“I have you and Curt, and that’s it,” Luke said. “I barely finished high school, Dad’s been passed out drunk basically since I was ten, and it’s not like I could make friends when we were moving every three to six months. Shit, I must have gone to eight different schools. I only graduated because Curt helped me the entire way.”

“Yeah, I did. So don’t throw away all my hard work and die here. It’d be one thing if you had a badass heroic death that saved everyone, but the way you’re describing it, I get the feeling you’re going to die scrabbling around trying to find a solution that doesn’t exist, and the only difference between that and you leaving with us now will be that you personally didn’t die with everyone else.”

“That’s not a certainty though,” Luke argued. “Yeah, maybe it happens that way and I can’t change anything. But if I don’t even try? If I just walk away right now? Then everyone here dies. How am I supposed to give up and leave, especially when I’ve still got weeks to figure something out.”

“This is going around in circles,” Curt said. “Nobody is saying anything new at this point. Luke, you are my brother and I love you. Do what you need to do, but when it comes down to the wire, when things are about to explode and you’re out of ideas, I want you to promise me that you’ll come home.”

“I… will do my best,” Luke told him. “Can we talk about something else now?”

“Like how fucking cool is it that you’re level 1000?” Curt asked. “Because I would like to talk about that. What’s your build look like?”

“I don’t even think it’s so much a build anymore. I used the system to cheat my ass off at the end. I was level 49 a few weeks ago, and I jumped straight to 1000. According to System, I straight up can’t stuff any more XP into my body without becoming a god.”

“Okay, what kind of skills do you pick before that?” Curt said.

“Ugh. This shit wasn’t fun to live through the first time,” Lizzie told Curt. “Can we please talk about something else? Did you meet any cute girls here, Luke?”

“I… did. Yeah. She died a few months ago. Demon caved her skull in. I’m going to bring her back too, but not until after I figure out how to stop the world from ending. Seems kind of pointless otherwise.”

“Nah, fuck that. Bring her back,” Lizzie said. “I want to meet her.”

“Lizzie, I don’t think-” Luke started to say.

“No excuses, baby brother.”

“Really, guys, it’s not a good idea.”

“Oh, I think it’s an excellent idea,” Lizzie said. “Bring her back, like you did for all of us. And she can come over to the Earth side of the doorway. That way, if you can’t save this planet, she’ll be safe and waiting for you. If you do, then no big deal. She can go home. If this time dilation theory of yours is right, she’s only going to be waiting for you for like a day, tops.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Luke muttered.

“Do you want her to just be dead?” Lizzie asked.

“Well, no, but it would kind of suck to come back just in time for the apocalypse, wouldn’t it?”

“I think I’d prefer moving to a new world to just being dead.”

“Fine!” Luke said, throwing up his hands.

“Really?” Curt asked, surprise painted on his face. “Just because Lizzie picked at you for five seconds?”

“No, because she also made some good points. I got Zea killed following me around. I knew she wasn’t keeping up with me in levels and that the situations I was getting into were too dangerous for her. The least I can do now is bring her back and let her make her own decisions about what to do with the time she has left.”

That was all true, but there was one more reason. He was afraid it wouldn’t work. Zixin was dead, but Luke didn’t trust the gods not to screw him over one last time. He’d put off trying to resurrect Zea because if he failed, he didn’t know what else he could do for her. But it was time to try, if for no other reason than because she had an opportunity to survive the destruction of her home world, but it was on a clock.

“Okay, here we go,” he said, and he started the spell one last time.