Chapter 212

It took a few seconds for Luke’s brain to unscramble. When it did, he realized he was about half a mile away from the cathedral out in the open plains, balanced on his knees with Zixin’s hand around his throat.

“I would like to take a little time to gloat, but honestly, you’ve got too many tricks. Actually, now that I think about it, System.”

“Do you require assistance?” System asked as he appeared nearby.

“Just a bit of information. Am I correct in assuming that this human’s system interface was corrupted?”

“That is correct,” System said.

“You… traitor,” Luke gasped out.

“The system is our creation, not yours,” Zixin told Luke. “Were it possible, we would have unlinked your line from it completely back when your ancestor first served as the lens through which the system connected with all mortals.”

System merely observed, his expression neutral as he stood there. When Luke tried to reply, Zixin tightened her grip on his throat. “No, you’re done speaking. No mortal has ever cost a god so much divinity, though let’s be honest. It was none of your doing, not any more than the arrow is responsible for the archer’s decisions. You were merely a weapon wielded by another.”

[Profile corrupted. Restoring…]
[Unable to restore from back up.]
[System profile is being rebuilt… 46%.]

The system windows floated across Luke’s vision amidst black spots, somehow as stark and clear as always despite the fact that Luke couldn’t make out more than the pale blur of Zixin’s copied face a foot away. Even as he read it, the percentage ticked up another point.

“Who did it?” Zixin demanded. “You might as well tell me. Your system is broken, which means you won’t be pulling any of your little tricks.”

The pressure eased up, just enough for Luke to suck in some air. He wasn’t sure exactly what a corrupted profile did, but it definitely hadn’t taken his XP from him. He could still feel all the strength and power his body had built up over the last year, still had all the knowledge his various skills had stuffed into his head. That one little inhalation was enough air for him to last thirty minutes. If Zixin gave him a chance to get a full breath, he’d go hours without needing to breathe again.

It wasn’t going to be strangulation that killed him. Whatever she’d hit him with, it was so strong and so fast that he hadn’t even seen it happen. He still had no idea what she’d done. It was obvious that she’s done it exactly right too, just hard enough for him to black out, not so hard that he died from it. Luke was going to live exactly as long as the avatar of the Goddess of Death wanted him to, and not one second past that.

Unless he pulled something out of his ass to stop her.

The problem there was that she knew all his tricks. Even if he could do anything, it wouldn’t be a surprise to her. She’d been dealing with the SysAdmin bloodline since they’d created it back in the beginning. Luke wondered if it was always called that, or if that was just some weird in-his-head translation to the real name.

“Well?” Zixin demanded, pulling him back to the present. Luke gurgled something that could conceivably have been a reply. Zixin just snorted and, without lessening the pressure at all, said, “Try again.”

“Never saw them,” Luke said.

He was in precisely the wrong situation for his skill sets. Brute force was out. Zixin was level 100 and a fucking god on top of that. Even though she was, presumably, missing almost all of her power thanks to the trapped god’s appetite, she still outclassed him by an unfathomable amount. If there was anyone in the world who knew all his tricks, it would be one of the gods responsible for designing the system to begin with. So his backup plan was out too.

Or was it? Sure, Zixin probably knew every trick his family had previously used, but he’d invented some new ones. Well, System had made it happen, but they were his ideas. Either way, he had no reason to believe he couldn’t use [XP Reset] on her, other than the fact that his connection to the system was fucked right now. And he had no reason to believe she knew anything about it, not unless she’d been watching him closely. Hestoc had made it seem like the gods couldn’t just sit up there, wherever they existed at, and peek down at the world freely. It cost them something to interact with it.

That didn’t mean Zixin couldn’t find out about his new skills, but unless she thought to look, she wouldn’t know. Luke might just survive this anyway, but only if he could keep Zixin from killing him long enough for that profile rebuild to finish. It was only at fifty percent now, but it was steadily going up.

“Wrong answer,” Zixin said. “If you don’t know who did it, you’re useless to me. One more try.”

“Just a hole in the void shaped like a person. Had a masculine voice,” Luke said.

[System profile is being rebuilt… 53%.]

Luke tried to pry Zixin’s fingers back, but it was like trying to move a statue’s hand. There was no give to them at all. Even slamming his hand into her wrist didn’t budge her. He tried to channel a [Power Strike] through his fist, but that fizzled out without ever getting all the way down his arm.

“That’s a start. What did he say?” Zixin asked. When Luke didn’t answer right away, she added, “System, confirm for me that the redundancies have all been fully established in the system. The loss of the lens would change nothing, correct?”

“That has never been tested,” System said.

“But it is fully built?”

“That is correct. Please be aware that this administrator has stated that he is the last of his bloodline. If the redundancies fail to operate as expected, his death could result in the collapse of the entire system.”

“A bit of a risk, isn’t it?” Zixin asked Luke with a cold smile. “But then, I’m already stuck down here. I’m already mortal. Ix’althor’nan isn’t a threat to me anymore, now is it? If the system breaks and the hive escapes confinement, that’ll be the rest of the Pantheon’s problem. And thank you so much for that.”

Luke gave her a weak thumbs up while he choked. “Happy to help.”

Sudden fury blazed in Zixin’s eyes. She took a step forward, bending him backwards until she slammed him into the ground and their faces were inches away. “Do not get flippant with me. You’re barely an infant in my eyes. A few paltry decades of life and you think you’re in any way my equal? Answer my questions, and keep a respectful tone when you do so.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’re already going to do that,” Luke said.

“No. I’ll keep you alive long enough to wish you were dead. Try me. Find out exactly how bad a Goddess of Death can make you hurt without actually killing you.”

Terrifying as that statement might be, it was exactly what Luke had been angling for. Pissing off the avatar of a god wasn’t what anyone would call a smart idea, but being tortured for a few minutes while his system finished rebooting itself or whatever beat the alternative of her squishing him like a bug.

“Oh no, pain. Never felt that before.” Luke gestured toward his own body, which was still liberally covered in burn scars. Half of the hair on his scalp had never grown back in, and his face was a mass of red webbed skin. Those continued down his chest and his arms, just about everywhere he had exposed skin, really.

[System profile is being rebuilt… 62%.]

“Look, tell you what. You don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here,” Luke said. “Instead of doing all this, why not make a deal? Maybe we can both get what we want.”

Zixin pulled him a foot into the air with her grip on his neck, then slammed him back into the ground. “I. Do. Not. Deal. With. Mortal. Insects.”

Earth and stone broke beneath Luke’s skull and back. By the time Zixin finished her sentence, she’d slammed him down half a dozen times and drove him a foot into the ground. Whatever other problems were going on with his system, [Dead Nerves] was still doing something. Luke knew he was bleeding, but he barely felt the pain.

“We’re already negotiating,” Luke said with a strained chuckle. That damn percentage needed to go up faster so he could switch from antagonizing her to being agreeable before she started really hurting him. “I know something you want to know. What’s it worth to you to find out?”

Darkness blotted out the sky as it radiated off Zixin in waves. “System, is this human mentally deficient?” she asked.

“I am not able to speculate on the status of his mental health.”

Zixin’s eye twitched and Luke felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. Apparently, not even the gods could get that sentient computer program to cooperate. He would have laughed if he wasn’t still physically pinned down and his throat closed by Zixin’s grasping hand.

He needed to find some way to distract her, just for a minute. The percentage was past seventy now and speeding up. If at all possible, he’d like to avoid spilling any secrets, just because he didn’t doubt Hestoc would find a way to get some revenge on Luke now that Zixin couldn’t stop him from mucking around in the system.

Unexpectedly, it was System who drew her attention away from Luke. “The God Machine is nineteen percent over maximum capacity,” he announced.

Zixin paused and looked over at him. “So what?” she asked.

“The prisoner has finished assimilating the influx of divinity. Structural stability is at risk of being compromised.”

“Why are you telling me this? I don’t care. Send a report to Hestoc. He’s ‘The Architect’ or whatever it is he likes to call himself.”

“A system report has already been generated and sent to all divine administrators. However, one report bounced back as the recipient is no longer a member of the Pantheon.”

“I am aware,” Zixin told him dryly. “Get to the point. What does this have to do with me?”

“You were not able to receive the system log in the standard manner,” System said. “I am using this opportunity to inform you of the problem before it cascades into something irreparable.”

“There’s not a lot I can do about it right now,” Zixin snapped. Then she paused, and said, “Or is there? Could I… claim the surplus divinity and use it to return to my former status?”

“You are speaking of a reversal of the prisoner’s tendency to eat all divine entities it comes in contact with?” System asked.

“Correct,” Zixin said. She frowned down at Luke, who had used the distraction to once again try to free himself from her crushing grip. “Stop squirming.”

“Oh, I’m not. Just getting more comfortable,” he said. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”

[System profile is being rebuilt… 96%.]

“I think… System, do you know who caused the God Machine to latch onto me and pull me down to Aros?” Zixin asked.

“I am not certain of the origin of the aberration. I can confirm that it was able to restrict my own access to the system and enact wide scale changes at impressive speeds.”

“Someone who knows the system well?” she asked, for the first time with doubt in her voice. “Not someone from outside the Pantheon?”

“I am not able to speculate further on the identity of the perpetrator.”

“Then that would mean…” Zixin trailed off.

[System profile has been fully rebuilt.]

Luke didn’t hesitate for a second. He slammed an [XP Reset] into the fallen goddess.