Sponsored Apocalypse, ch 15

So...somehow I didn't post this last night.  I was super tired.  This chapter might still have more errors than usual, so apologies for that.

Anyway...

Hope you like it!

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When I woke up, my mouth tasted like something had died in it.  It took me a minute to remember where I was and what had happened.  There were notification windows hanging above me, but I waved them away.  I was not usually a morning person anyway, and notifications were definitely not the way I wanted to start my day.

I took a few minutes to just think about everything, digest it, before getting up and checking out my private bathroom.  On the way, I grabbed a cold water.  The room had a vending machine, with all the prices being free.

At this point, I was past being surprised by anything.

The shower felt great.  After I got out I was feeling a bit more human, a little more chipper.

When I left my room, Aldina was already in the sitting area.  There was coffee in a coffee pot on a counter along with a mig that was presumably for me. An MRE sat in the table.  Another had already been opened.

"Morning.  Breakfast is ready."

I grunted and shrugged, then poured myself a cup of coffee.  When I sat down facing Aldina she said, "I said I would level with you.  This isn't fun for me, so please just listen while I spill my fuckin guts.  Or do you need to wake up more first?"

After another shrug, I waved a hand at her to continue.  I fished my little antique pocket knife out of my pocket to open the MRE packet and start fishing around for something that looked edible.

“Alright.”  She sighed and rubbed her face.  “First of all, I should probably explain why I’ve taken you along and shown you this place.  Everything.”

“The thought did cross my mind that you were being awfully nice to me for a random homely guy,” I said mildly.

“You’re actually not that bad looking, but yes, you’re definitely a rando.”

“Thanks…I think.”  I opened a packet of Skittles and tossed a few back.

“So what you might not be aware of is that…you are actually not normal.”

“Okay, now you’re definitely taking shots at me.”  I frowned and took a sip of my coffee.  It was terrible, but I still shivered in satisfaction.

“No, let me explain.”  She held up a placating hand and sighed.  “I am not good at stuff like this.  Okay, just gonna do it quick, pull it off like a Bandaid. You already know you have a powerful, rare skill.  Most people can only heal while they sleep.  It’s also a way for this new world to incentivize us to sleep, even after more people get such high Endurance that they don’t really need to rest much anymore.  But even so, the healing takes time.  Your ability does it fast enough to watch.

“But you already know that.  And that’s not the only reason I was willing to take a chance.  Survival is so, so much easier with another person to watch your back.  Actually a group of three to five is probably most ideal, but still, better two than one.  And your skill and fighting ability  are not the only reasons.

“See, most people are going to need like a week to really accept what is going on.  The world has already changed, but people in general don’t always adapt really fast.  You, on the other hand, spent the entire first night of our new nightmare fighting, you also took risks and reached level ten.  What very few people could have possibly known was that the first night after the system boot, XP rates were way higher than normal.  People who didn’t fight last night are already way behind you unless you just find a safe place and sleep for a week.”

I shook my head.  “How can you possibly know all of this?”  Even given my theory that she was like me, someone who’d ha a quest before the end of the world, her level of knowledge and how specific it all was just didn’t make sense.

“That’s because…this is not my first rodeo.”

“What?”

My name is Aldina Mazzariello.  But I’ve had to legally change it twice now.  In this world, this dimension, I was Aldina Smith at first.”

“Uh…”  I had no idea what she was getting at, and she must have heard the confusion in my voice.

“I’ve died twice already, Miles. The first time I died was right after the apocalypse started on my original world.  I died fighting off…basically raiders.  Even though I got some of the fuckers, they did me in.  They got my family, too.  I was all torn up when I actually saw my brother, Jake. He showed up looking like something out of Gremlins mixed with coke, acid, and steroids, with a little bit of Halloween and waking nightmare.  He wasn’t human anymore, but he was still my little bro.  I died in front of him.  Kind of selfish of me, but I wanted him to get revenge for me.  Right as I died, he did something, though.  Somehow collected and saved my soul.”

“Your soul?!”  I interrupted.  This story was getting crazier by the second.  If I couldn’t see status screens and the world wasn’t currently overrun by monsters, I would have dismissed the entire thing.

“Yes.”  She took a sip of her coffee.  “Not sure how.  What you need to understand is that even a few days after the end of my world, my brother was already powerful enough that he could have probably killed our friendly neighborhood giant that has killed our friends.”

I didn’t respond, just waited for her to explain.   Powerful enough to kill the giant? I thought.  That thing was like a force of nature.  Even four people armed with guns hadn’t even slowed it down.

Aldina sighed.  “Fuck, I know so much now it’s hard to just organize it in a way that makes sense.  My original world was not like this one.  I was an evil world, that means it was controlled by evil Gods.  This one and my last one are run by the good side.  That doesn’t mean good, as in giving a fuck about you and me, though.  It’s more of a…divine ideology thing, I think.

“Anyway, after I died, I saw everything my brother did.  I’m sure he didn’t know.  But yeah…I saw it all.”  She shook her head.  “He fought a fucking God.  Sorta.  And even though my emotions were like…nonexistent as just a soul–which was weird as hell–I still wished I could do something to help.

“Jake won.  He was so goddamn tough.  Maybe I never knew him as well as I thought, because he was…a hero.  Looked like a nightmare, but he just kept getting the shit beat out of him over and over again, risking his life.  Protected the fucking world.  What’s really crazy was how he started becoming like a post-apoc folk hero, or a legend.  Before he even found me dying, he’d posted stuff on the internet to help people.  In fact, I’ve awakened my magic three times now using the method he shared online.

“So anyway, he saved the day.  But he was being scouted.

“And he eventually agreed to work for a dark goddess.  Become what’s called a Champion.  One part of the deal was for me to be reborn.  I know my little bro, and it makes me feel guilty as hell that I’m pretty sure he did it mostly for me.  And the whole time, I’m pretty sure the goddess knew I was watching.  She even winked at me.  Not gonna say her name.  No reason to draw attention.”

“A goddess?” I said.  I was starting to understand why Aldina had told me it was a big decision for her to tell me everything.  I sort of felt like someone reading a wiki article about a new game, and also getting a glimpse of the background code.  My instincts were telling me that some of this information was stuff I was absolutely not supposed to know.

“Yes.  And she kept her word.  From that moment, everything faded.  Then when I was around eight years old, again, I suddenly remembered all of my past life.  Everything.  This time around I had great parents again.  It was weird but… I loved them.  I really did.  And they died in a car accident.  Cruel fucking joke by the gods or the universe or whatever.”  She drummed her fingers on her legs, showing the most vulnerable expression I’d ever seen her make.  “That almost made me start smoking again.  I smoked in my first life.  Still miss it sometimes.”  She gave a shaky laugh.

I almost asked her if gum could be a good alternative, but I didn’t want to just make noise.  There was no way she hadn’t though of that already, and it wasn’t really relevant to the story.  Instead, I just sat quietly and listened.

She continued, “So that time around, I didn’t know the world was going to end.  I thought that I just had a new lease on life.  Like, I reinvented myself.  In my first life I’d been an attorney, and it was fine, but I really wanted to do something different.  My second parents died in my early 20’s, which gave me a decent inheritance and some time.  I floated around, doing a little of this, a little of that… Hell, I was even an influencer for a while.”  She laughed.  “Believe it not, that ended up being one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had in my life.  In fact, that’s what I was doing when the end of the world happened.

“I figured out fast what was going on.  And I used my online platform to try telling people how to survive.  I did like my brother had and even told people about magic.  … It backfired even worse than my brief experience with a changed world in my first life.  In my first life, my first world, bad guys also learned magic which made things complicated probably a bit earlier than they would have been.  But in a Good world, people have this…system.”

“There was no system in your first world?” I asked.

“Nope.  No XP, no menus.  Some people could spontaneously develop powers but that was about it.  Learning how to fight, how to use magic, how to use your powers, it was all just hard work or insights.  But these Good worlds have the system.  Sort of like training wheels to help more people survive for longer.

“In my first world, learning magic was a game changer that saved a lot of people.  In a Good world, it meant that whoever learned magic wouldn’t be able to use the system anymore for their magic gains without jumping through hoops and spending extra points.  So people cursed me, at least until the internet went out for good.”

“So why did you learn magic right away then this time?” I asked.

“We’re gonna get to that.”  She scratched her scalp and scrunched up an eye.  “If I fuck up my order I’m gonna miss stuff.”

I waved my hands apologetically.  “No worries.  Just do your thing.”

“Alright.  So anyway, my second life was my first experience with a Good world.  Apparently most worlds, at least ones like Earth, end up going down the shitter at some point.  IT’s all part of this Eternal Struggle between the gods.  Setting off a metaphorical bomb in the middle of an early information age world like this one is optimal for finding Champions and other actors for the greater stage, or to go to… “higher” worlds.  My brother is in one of those right now.”

She put both hands on her head and hissed.  “Shit.  So hard to tell this right.  I’m sorry.  Feels like I keep skipping around.”

“It’s okay” I said.  “You said that this is the second time you’ve spilled your guts.  Was the first time with Amanda?”

“Yeah.  How did you figure it out?”

“Wild ass guess,” I said.  It was the truth.

“Oh.  Well, yes.  I told her because she was one of the best, most caring people I ever met and I knew the ‘Lypse was going to chew her up and spit her out if I didn’t help somehow.”

“How did you get her to believe you?”

Aldina laughed.  “She just did.  That’s the kind of person she was!  She trusted me, and she knew I was sane, and that was enough for her.” she started to get misty eyed.

“Enough of that.  Anyway. I also learned the hard way that I couldn’t use my advancement points as easily to strengthen my magic, so I found other approaches.  Training, concentration, enlightenment.  I used my points in other ways to help keep me alive.  Turns out I was pretty good at…well, all of it.”

She gave me a proud smile.  “I was, at one point, one of the strongest mages on Earth.  It caused some problems with some of my old fans, of course.  My very existence proved that my magic advice hadn’t been a scam.  But by that point, I kind of just didn’t give a fuck about what anyone said.  And if anyone got violent…”  She grew quiet.  “Everyone had been through a lot, including me.

“But then the rules changed for the offworld invaders.  Three months after they came, all hell broke loose.  What I told your friends.  It was war between…everyone.  The monsters got stronger, too.  This might be a Good world, things are easier here, but it’s still a meat grinder designed to force the most talented or luckiest killers to rise to the top.

“At first, I was right up there.  But then…I got captured.”  She made a face.  “Turned me into a slave.  Taken to another world through a portal.  I served as a war trophy, was forced to work as a maid for years.  When I finally escaped and came back to Earth, everything had changed.  We got beaten.  Humans were no longer the dominant species on the planet.

“I led a guerilla group for a while, trying to do the whole Red Dawn thing…with magic.  But they eventually got us.  So I died a second time.

To make a long story short, I was visited by a god.  I was given an offer too good to refuse.  In exchange for being brought back to life and getting a certain amount of information, like where to find my brother, I agreed to become a Champion after hitting level 20.  Level 20 is when we get our first class.”

I rubbed my thumb against my forefinger, considering the woman sitting across from me.  She was either telling the truth, or was one of the best actresses I’d ever met in my life.  I said, “So is that the motivation for you?  Save this world?”

“Nah.” She shook her head.  “I am not my brother.  Besides, I learned my lesson on the last world.  No good deed goes unpunished.  Anyone I actually see who needs help, I will help them.  There’s no way I’ll just turn a blind eye to something too gnarly.  But the entire species?  I’m not sure I’ll ever be strong enough for that, and even if I was, it might not be worth the effort.  I tried to help more and more people during my second life.  What did it get me?  I was made a slave and eventually watched everything I’d done be proven pointless.

“Now my goal is to find my brother.  Even though I’ve been alive for…”  She apparently counted in her head, looking at the ceiling.  “Almost ninety years now, time moves differently between the different dimensions.  He’s still alive, still struggling, trying to save my original world.  Jake saved me.  I want to help him. But to do that, I need to get a hell of a lot stronger and then find him in the first fucking place.”

“Wait a sec, hold up,” I said and raised a forestalling hand.  “You are ninety years old now?  So you’re actually an old lady…what…”  I searched my memory for a term I’d heard before.  “A regressor!?”

“No.”  She shook her head.  “First off, every time I have experienced being a child, it’s not like I was an adult in a smaller body.  The hardware is not quite there.  It actually usually turns out in my favor, but… being fifteen again, twice, meant I was a really mature fifteen year old, but I was still a teenager.  The best way to explain it is to use people with hormone imbalances or mental illnesses as an example.  Our biology is really powerful and affects our personalities.  Me remembering my past lives could help me deal with puberty easier, but it still sucked.  Again.  And Again.

“Second, a regressor is someone who goes back in time.  I didn’t.  This is not another world I was transported to where I’m existing in another body, either.  As far as I can tell, through causality or something, I have always had the exact same body, which doesn’t make a ton of sense when you consider how unlikely it is for anyone to visit another dimension where they already exist.  So I’m not a transporter or a regressor, I’m a bit of both.”

I goggled.  “How do you know all those terms?”

“Duh.  I’ve died twice.  Sure, in my first life I didn’t care much about science fiction, but dying of blood loss from gun shot wounds, then riding shotgun and watching as your brother kills vampires with a fucking saber will get your attention.  So I read a lot, trying to understand everything, trying to make sense of it.”

“And you’ve had ninety years to do it.”

“No, only sixty.  Ish.  I was around 30 when I died the first time.  Right now I am in my late 20’s.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say.  Instead of addressing her age anymore, I pointed around us.  “And what about your…bunker.  And the tunnels and stuff?  This place cost tons of money and the tunnels must have taken tons of time.  What have you been doing here.”  I tripped over my words a bit.  “In this world?”

“Whelp. This time around I figured I’d be in a world that was gonna get hit in the face with a baseball bat again.  Especially since I agreed to become a Champion.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“That’s a convo for later.  Maybe never.  Anyway, I planned for the end of the world, so I needed money.  You ever seen Hot Tub Time Machine?  I never even checked to see if it exists in this world.  Anway, I, ‘invented,’ a bunch of popular songs that I’ve memorized.  Had to learn music first.  That was kind of hard but not too bad.  The hardest part was getting certain people to take me seriously, but after I proved my shit could sell, I got tons of credited songs.  That means royalties.  Lots of them.”

“Sounds like cheating to me,” I accused.

“Of course it was.”  Aldina laughed.  “Sure beats going through Law School again and racking up student loans.  Again.  This time, in this world, I decided that I was going to do everything I want to do.  Revenge on the assholes who enslaved me before.  Power to never be at the mercy of some two-bit aliens or petty despots again, and helping my brother.  Where he is right now is…not a place that we would survive very long right now.”

“Higher worlds, right?” I asked.

“Yes.  Worlds where the average monster or warrior is far more powerful than our world.  One top of that, once we leave the lower worlds, the training wheels come off.  At that point, everything anyone gained through the system in a Good world like this one will disappear unless you’ve internalized it, or understand it.  There are no shortcuts in the higher dimensions.  And that is why I learned magic the original way again in this go-around.”

This was all a lot for me to take in.  Before I was even able to formulate a reply, I got a notification.

[Congratulations!] You now understand the truth of the universe now to a basic level, and you are far ahead of most of your world!  Keep up the good work!

Three Advancement Points awarded!

“What is it?”  Aldina must have noticed something was off, so I told her what just happened.

“Ha!  That’s lucky as hell.  Three points is three full levels.  And the higher level you get, the harder it is to level anymore.  You basically just got some for free that won’t affect your normal level progression.”

While she was speaking, I frowned and checked my other notifications.  I’d almost forgotten that I’d waved some away when I woke up.  What I saw made my jaw drop.  Once again, Aldina asked what was going on.

“I…got credit for killing that big troll while I was asleep.  Uh…”  I shrugged, then said, “I looks like I went up four levels.”

“So you’re level fourteen now?”

“Yes.”

Aldina goggled.  “That means you’re the same level as me now.  Wow.  How lucky are you?”  She sipped her coffee.  “And you got credit for killing the troll hours later, and as far as I know, I didn’t get any.  Weird.”  Her expression became pensive, and I let her think.

I opened my character sheet, looking at the new changes.  Everything else was the same except now I had a whopping 13 Advancement Points!