Velik did not have the first clue how he’d survived, but he suspected it had something to do with the massive golden ball spinning in place in front of him. He tried to drag himself to his feet, only to discover that while he was somehow completely uninjured, he couldn’t remember having ever felt weaker. Gone was his speed and his strength, and he felt practically blind.
Is this what everyone else felt like when they lost the system? And… is that my system in that ball?
“What the hell just happened?”
[The previous system anchor has been destroyed. I have removed your essence, specifically your divine aspect, to serve as a new anchor. The system is now being reestablished.]
Now they bother to answer? Couldn’t do that five minutes ago?
But he just took a deep breath, finished pulling himself upright, and noted somewhat sourly that being naked sucked a whole lot more when he didn’t have several hundred points in physical to insulate him from the world. Luckily enough, the heat emanating from the ball was driving away some of the chill of the night.
“What… What happens now?” Velik asked. “Do I get my essence back, or…?”
[No.]
Anger flared in Velik’s chest. “So that’s it, huh? I work for the gods, fix their clusterfuck of a mess, basically die to deliver you here, and I don’t even get so much as a ‘thanks for the hard work,’ after I go through hell for their schemes and get robbed blind for my time?”
[There were no provisions for your survival. I opted to maintain your life as it cost nothing to do so at this point.]
Morgus, you absolute bastard. “They planned for me to die,” Velik said.
[Incorrect. There was no plan. There was only a loose set of guidelines and opportunistic positioning to take advantage of the chaos your entry into the wider world caused. Your survival or lack thereof was entirely in your own hands.]
“That will be quite enough of that,” Morgus said from behind Velik. “I wouldn’t take the system’s words to heart. It is an unfeeling machine that was given parameters to work from. It does not know the reasoning behind our actions.”
Velik spun in place, surprised to be snuck up on. Nothing really did that to him anymore, and on the rare occasions when something did get the drop on him, he was used to reacting instantaneously. Full seconds going by before he could respond to a threat was an unsettling feeling.
“Come, walk with me while we let the system finish its work. I’ll explain what I can.”
“How are you here?” Velik asked him. “I thought you weren’t allowed to… you know…”
He gestured vaguely at the god who appeared to be nothing more than an old woodsman at the moment. Morgus chuckled and scratched at his beard, then nodded his head toward the gaping wound in the metal shell of the massive centipede.
“The Compact was a sort of treaty of mutually assured destruction between the Pantheon and Legra. She executed her clause via her proxy, that dragon son of hers, and we weathered that storm. The Goddess of All Monsters has lost a significant amount of her leverage, which loosens the restrictions on what we can and can’t do.
“I have no doubt that a new Compact will be established soon enough, but for the moment, I’m free to undo some of the damage this whole debacle has caused. Part of that is giving you the explanation you deserve.”
“Seems like the least you can do since I survived what was apparently supposed to be a suicide mission,” Velik told him.
Morgus rolled his eyes. “As I said, the new system was not made aware of our contingencies. It was merely given a list of objectives to accomplish.”
[Preserving your life was not among that list.]
Velik’s eyebrows went up while Morgus scowled back at the shell. “That’s because we weren’t expecting him to die in there!”
“It saved me twice,” Velik said. “Reisha had me, but it brought me back then.”
“That was part of its protocols. You have to understand, this essence parasite has been hanging over our heads for a while. We’ve come up with a number of contingency plans for various eventualities. There was no way to know which way things would shake out, so the system isn’t entirely incorrect when it says this whole scheme was rather opportunistic.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Keeping you alive through to the end was absolutely vital. You were carrying the seed for a new system, one that doesn’t rely on a pair of calamity-class monsters being held in stasis to serve as an essence hub and processing center.”
Yes… those are words. I understand most of them.
Morgus squinted at Velik, probably reading his mind or something. With a huff, the god said, “None of us wanted you to fail. Getting rid of the old divine beasts was only part of the plan, and honestly, we expected you to kill Tesir and then leave. When the rest of the divine beasts started dropping like flies, we pivoted to a more… complete… victory.
“Leaving that phoenix alive is a snag, though. Well, it’s workable. She’s going to be reincarnating for a few decades at least, maybe even a whole century considering how long it’s been, and then it’ll be more time before she works back up to her current strength, let alone surpasses it. There’s time to get something figured out there.”
Morgus went silent for a second, then shook his head and gestured at the empty shell. “Either way, six out of eight’s not bad at all! And this thing isn’t going anywhere for a while, so let’s call it an even seven.”
Velik followed his gesture back to the centipede shell. Ignoring the idea of an ‘even seven’ for a moment, he asked, “The armor is alive?”
“In a sense. Nothing you need to worry about. Your part in that fight is over,” Morgus said. Velik gave him a flat look, and the god added, “You’re about three decades of intense magical studying away from understanding the basics of what that thing is. Maybe just trust me when I say you don’t have to worry about it.”
“Fine, whatever. So let me see if I’ve got this all lined up right. You sent me out with a proto-system and the hope that I’d eliminate a single divine beast. A lot more of them than you expected died, though I’m still not following how you arrived at your final kill count. This leads to the other side declaring a violation of the Compact and triggering their retaliation, which is also dead now.”
“Eslaka killed one of them after she figured out how to do a very basic version of essence harvesting from watching your system do it,” Morgus said.
“And now the Pantheon has free rein to do whatever they want since Legra can’t enforce the Compact. She tried and I stopped her monster.”
“Well, you delivered the new system node to the right spot and it stopped her monster,” Morgus said. “But, I mean, sure, you deserve some portion of the credit. Call it a group effort. You, the new system, and the gods, all working together to achieve the desired result.”
“Sure would have been nice to be in on the plan at some point.”
Morgus sighed. “Darshu doesn’t have to put up with this kind of attitude from his followers. Even that city with the tree who all agreed to become skeletons shows him more respect.”
A tree? Oh! That’s where I heard that name. Accelit was the name of that city from the legend about the corrupted world tree. Does that make… Is the system the tree in that story? No, that can’t be right.
Before he could ask his next question, the golden orb shot out of the centipede and into the sky. Night turned to day for a few seconds, then the light faded away. In its place, a second moon hung in the sky. It was so dark that Velik could barely pick it out against the stars, but a crimson line slicing down the center of the orb helped him keep track of it.
“What the—”
[System Enabled. Retrieving user profile.]
Velik jerked in place as sudden power flooded his limbs. His vision sharpened again and the world snapped into focus around him. He stumbled forward, only catching himself a second later. “What was that?”
“Technically speaking, once you leave the system boundary, you’re not allowed to reconnect to it. But, eh, I figured we owed you one, so I made a special exception. It’s not the power you had an hour ago, but…”
Velik pulled up his status and found he wasn’t really surprised.
[Name: Velik]
[Race: Human]
[Class: Crimson-Eyed Paragon]
[Level: 50]
[Physical: 24]
[Mental: 19]
[Mystic: 21]
[Free Points: 250]
[Decarma: 0]
[Skills:
[Dusk Watcher (Rank 1)]
[Spear of Penance (Rank 1)]
[Forerunner (Rank 1)]
[Crimson Calamity (Rank 1)]
[Reality Warp (Rank 1)]
[Empty]
“I thought you might like to be fully human again,” Morgus said gently. “That was one scar I could erase for you.”
“I…” Velik trailed off. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure how he felt about that He’d been [Duskbound] for most of his life, and then the new system had eaten that as part of his metamorphosis into a divine beast. Being a regular old human again wasn’t something he’d given a lot of thought to.
“Give it a try for a while. You might like it. If not, I’ll make you a deal. Just once, I’ll let you make some changes if this doesn’t suit you.”
“What do these skills even do?” Velik asked. “What is this class?”
“Did you think a champion of the gods just retires after taking care of his first apocalypse?” Morgus asked him. “Human civilization is in shambles right now. It needs all the help it can get. Things are going to work a bit differently, but the monsters are still out there. All I’m asking right now is that you do what you’ve always done.”
“Do I get a choice in this?”
The god stopped walking and turned to look Velik in the eyes. “Yes. You do. That’s what the do-over is for. If you don’t want this, if you want a normal life as a normal person, you can have that. Take as much time as you need to consider it. You have done more than enough in the service of the gods already.
“Now then, I have other business to attend to. I recommend you at least try out your new class long enough to make it back to civilization before you decide to give it up. Good luck, Velik, and thank you for standing up against the darkness.”
Then Morgus was gone, leaving Velik alone with his thoughts. “Crimson-Eyed Paragon,” he murmured. “Kind of pretentious. I guess we’ll see. Maybe it’ll grow on me.”