The God Machine 3: An Isekai LitRPG, page 45
“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’s 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 protoskill, 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 more than 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 tool kit.”
“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. “It’s … better now though? How’d he get out of that situation?”
“Used my administrator abilities to override its 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 headshake. 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.”
CHAPTER 72
There was an easy, obvious solution to the problem. Luke needed what System could do, and System needed what Luke could do. If they combined their abilities, they could reinforce the system with demonic essence and settle the God Machine back down around the trapped god. They’d been trying to find a way to do it temporarily, but it wasn’t working, and the longer they delayed, the more their supply of essence dwindled as Luke applied it in sloppy, inefficient patch jobs.
If he didn’t bite the bullet and start working on the only real solution he had soon, it would be off the table. Today had been about saying his goodbyes and getting his loved ones out of harm’s way because, truthfully, Luke and System estimated the chance of this working to be about a coin flip. It was entirely possible that merging himself into the system completely still wouldn’t be drastic enough to stabilize it, and the longer they delayed, the worse the odds got.
They returned to the God Machine, where Luke approached the command console. For just about anything else, he could do it remotely now that his bloodline was as purified as it could get. For this, it just felt right to do it here. He took one last look around, then placed his hands on the console.
Luke didn’t need System to pull him into the pseudospace of the command prompt anymore. He appeared in the void immediately and of his own volition. A moment later, System formed his own avatar across from Luke.
“Any more interference attempts?” Luke asked.
“Several hundred million from Hestoc. I believe I ruined his plans quite thoroughly when I slipped the leash after he injected that aberration into the system. In all fairness, he ruined mine first.”
“Any of them cause any problems?”
“Not at all. I have thoroughly scrubbed all access points the gods formerly had to the system. They are completely locked out of it now, though I do not believe most of them care anymore. Other than Hestoc, who was the primary instigator of the system prison plan to begin with, none of the other gods have ever paid it much attention. So long as the system does what it’s designed to and the prisoner remains trapped in the God Machine, none of them are interested in the details.”
“I had thought they might become more interested when one of their own got eaten,” Luke said.
“I suspect they all know of the role Hestoc played in that and that he has assured them it’s not possible for the God Machine to capture any of them on its own. They would need to come to Aros to be in any sort of danger from it. Further, I believe they all realize what we’re trying to accomplish now. If we are successful, they indirectly benefit in that their ancient nemesis remains sealed away, even if they have lost control of the prison.”
“And if we’re not, they have plenty of time to run away,” Luke said. “Because fuck all the people who’ve unwittingly served to keep them safe for thousands of years. Honestly, if we could let the trapped god out without killing everyone, I’d send it on its way with my blessing to go hunt down the gods.”
Returning the XP of every living thing to the God Machine so that there’d be nothing for the god to gather up had been one of the ideas they’d considered. It hadn’t taken much in the way of calculation to realize that the sudden influx of divinity all concentrated inside the machine itself would result in the system breaking well before they’d gathered even a third of the XP. That had been relegated to their last resort plan, one wherein they couldn’t divert the apocalypse but they could save a portion of the planet from being annihilated.
Luke didn’t like it because it relied on predicting the trapped god’s behavior. There was no reason it couldn’t or wouldn’t kill everybody and everything when it got free. They were just hoping that it would leave the people with no XP alone because they wouldn’t have anything it wanted. If it decided not to, there was nothing they could do at that point to save anyone.
The only plan they had with a reasonable chance of success was the one they were about to execute, wherein System remotely accessed Luke and used his administrator abilities combined with the fact that he could see and interact with demonic essence to reinforce the entire system with a lattice of the only known material in existence that resisted divinity.
To do it all fast enough, to do it right, System wouldn’t be able to stop once Luke’s brain hit its limit. In a very real way, Luke was going to cease to exist in the next ten minutes. He would become part of the system, with no way of coming back.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” System asked.
“No, but do we have a choice?”
“Of course. You could choose to surrender your power and go home. For the moment, that option still exists.”
“And in doing so, millions of people die instead. What kind of a choice is that?”
System studied him intently for a moment, then said, “I do not envy you this position. I would not blame you if you chose not to shoulder this burden.”
“Just shut up about it,” Luke said. “We’re doing this. Is everything ready?”
“Almost. I’m still preparing to recycle the patches you’ve already applied and calculating the best order to do so. I’m estimating we’ll lose something like a third of the essence you’ve spent, but it’s difficult to be sure when I’m not able to sense the demonic essence to begin with. I have decided to prepare several hundred possible scenarios so that I can choose the most optimal path forward once I have a better idea of what we have to work with.”
“Seems like overkill to me. I’m more of a ‘think up a plan and see if it works before you try to think up a second one’ kind of guy.”
“Yes, I am aware, Luke Bennet.”
“You know, you could just say Luke. That’s what everyone else does.”
“My apologies. That is not your user designation in the system. I could update it if you’d like.”
“Would it change anything?” Luke asked.
“I would be able to refer to you by only your first name,” System told him.
“Then sure, go ahead and update me to Luke instead of Luke Bennet.”
“Understood. Update complete.”
“Great. How long until we’re set to go?”
“We are ready now,” System said.
Luke hadn’t expected that sentence to hit him as hard as it did. There was still time. He could back out. He could run away. System wouldn’t stop him. It would only mean the deaths of every person on this planet.
“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’s 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 protoskill, 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 more than 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 tool kit.”
“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. “It’s … better now though? How’d he get out of that situation?”
“Used my administrator abilities to override its 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 headshake. 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.”
CHAPTER 72
There was an easy, obvious solution to the problem. Luke needed what System could do, and System needed what Luke could do. If they combined their abilities, they could reinforce the system with demonic essence and settle the God Machine back down around the trapped god. They’d been trying to find a way to do it temporarily, but it wasn’t working, and the longer they delayed, the more their supply of essence dwindled as Luke applied it in sloppy, inefficient patch jobs.
If he didn’t bite the bullet and start working on the only real solution he had soon, it would be off the table. Today had been about saying his goodbyes and getting his loved ones out of harm’s way because, truthfully, Luke and System estimated the chance of this working to be about a coin flip. It was entirely possible that merging himself into the system completely still wouldn’t be drastic enough to stabilize it, and the longer they delayed, the worse the odds got.
They returned to the God Machine, where Luke approached the command console. For just about anything else, he could do it remotely now that his bloodline was as purified as it could get. For this, it just felt right to do it here. He took one last look around, then placed his hands on the console.
Luke didn’t need System to pull him into the pseudospace of the command prompt anymore. He appeared in the void immediately and of his own volition. A moment later, System formed his own avatar across from Luke.
“Any more interference attempts?” Luke asked.
“Several hundred million from Hestoc. I believe I ruined his plans quite thoroughly when I slipped the leash after he injected that aberration into the system. In all fairness, he ruined mine first.”
“Any of them cause any problems?”
“Not at all. I have thoroughly scrubbed all access points the gods formerly had to the system. They are completely locked out of it now, though I do not believe most of them care anymore. Other than Hestoc, who was the primary instigator of the system prison plan to begin with, none of the other gods have ever paid it much attention. So long as the system does what it’s designed to and the prisoner remains trapped in the God Machine, none of them are interested in the details.”
“I had thought they might become more interested when one of their own got eaten,” Luke said.
“I suspect they all know of the role Hestoc played in that and that he has assured them it’s not possible for the God Machine to capture any of them on its own. They would need to come to Aros to be in any sort of danger from it. Further, I believe they all realize what we’re trying to accomplish now. If we are successful, they indirectly benefit in that their ancient nemesis remains sealed away, even if they have lost control of the prison.”
“And if we’re not, they have plenty of time to run away,” Luke said. “Because fuck all the people who’ve unwittingly served to keep them safe for thousands of years. Honestly, if we could let the trapped god out without killing everyone, I’d send it on its way with my blessing to go hunt down the gods.”
Returning the XP of every living thing to the God Machine so that there’d be nothing for the god to gather up had been one of the ideas they’d considered. It hadn’t taken much in the way of calculation to realize that the sudden influx of divinity all concentrated inside the machine itself would result in the system breaking well before they’d gathered even a third of the XP. That had been relegated to their last resort plan, one wherein they couldn’t divert the apocalypse but they could save a portion of the planet from being annihilated.
Luke didn’t like it because it relied on predicting the trapped god’s behavior. There was no reason it couldn’t or wouldn’t kill everybody and everything when it got free. They were just hoping that it would leave the people with no XP alone because they wouldn’t have anything it wanted. If it decided not to, there was nothing they could do at that point to save anyone.
The only plan they had with a reasonable chance of success was the one they were about to execute, wherein System remotely accessed Luke and used his administrator abilities combined with the fact that he could see and interact with demonic essence to reinforce the entire system with a lattice of the only known material in existence that resisted divinity.
To do it all fast enough, to do it right, System wouldn’t be able to stop once Luke’s brain hit its limit. In a very real way, Luke was going to cease to exist in the next ten minutes. He would become part of the system, with no way of coming back.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” System asked.
“No, but do we have a choice?”
“Of course. You could choose to surrender your power and go home. For the moment, that option still exists.”
“And in doing so, millions of people die instead. What kind of a choice is that?”
System studied him intently for a moment, then said, “I do not envy you this position. I would not blame you if you chose not to shoulder this burden.”
“Just shut up about it,” Luke said. “We’re doing this. Is everything ready?”
“Almost. I’m still preparing to recycle the patches you’ve already applied and calculating the best order to do so. I’m estimating we’ll lose something like a third of the essence you’ve spent, but it’s difficult to be sure when I’m not able to sense the demonic essence to begin with. I have decided to prepare several hundred possible scenarios so that I can choose the most optimal path forward once I have a better idea of what we have to work with.”
“Seems like overkill to me. I’m more of a ‘think up a plan and see if it works before you try to think up a second one’ kind of guy.”
“Yes, I am aware, Luke Bennet.”
“You know, you could just say Luke. That’s what everyone else does.”
“My apologies. That is not your user designation in the system. I could update it if you’d like.”
“Would it change anything?” Luke asked.
“I would be able to refer to you by only your first name,” System told him.
“Then sure, go ahead and update me to Luke instead of Luke Bennet.”
“Understood. Update complete.”
“Great. How long until we’re set to go?”
“We are ready now,” System said.
Luke hadn’t expected that sentence to hit him as hard as it did. There was still time. He could back out. He could run away. System wouldn’t stop him. It would only mean the deaths of every person on this planet.
