Apocalypse Tamer 2: A LitRPG Adventure, page 49
part #2 of Apocalypse Tamer Series
“If we can help it,” Basil replied. He locked eyes with Leroy, who had managed to rise back to his feet, his hands covering his chest wound. “Do you think your daughter would want you to throw your life away for nothing?”
“I’m doing this for her,” Leroy shouted back, spitting blood. “I hear her! I hear her voice, spurring me on!”
“Oh, for the love of…” Basil planted his halberd in the sand like a flag. “Plato, stay back.”
“Wait, what are you doing?” his best friend asked, his eyes squinting in worry.
“Beating some sense into him,” Basil replied as he took a step forward. “Like Samson with the Philistines!”
Leroy swung his left arm at Basil in a vain attempt to keep him at bay. He missed. Basil lowered himself to dodge the attack, and then punched his foe in the chest, right where Plato wounded him beforehand. The false god let out a hiss of pain on impact.
“Your daughter isn’t speaking to you,” Basil said, his voice brimming with pity. “That voice you hear? It’s your loneliness trying to fill the silence.”
“Shut up,” Leroy hissed as he held his bleeding chest. “I know…I know the truth.”
“Yes, you do.” Basil snorted. “And that’s why it hurts so much.”
He punched Leroy in the face with enough force to knock out a tooth.
“I want René to come back to life,” Basil said, before following with an uppercut. “I want Orcine to pull herself back together and Kuikui to return. I even want that old French Major back, so we can settle our differences once for all. I want my father to come back from the dead and stop being a raging alcoholic who threw his life away the first time.”
Leroy stumbled back on the sand and fell to one knee. Plato watched on, silent as a tomb.
“And I’m never going to get any of this.” Basil shook his head. “Because they’re all dead and they can’t come back. I can’t turn back the clock, Leroy, and neither can you. They’re gone.”
“You’re wrong.” Leroy stubbornly rose to his feet. “I can bring them back. I can bring her back! I just need more time, more data!”
“All you’ve created are phantoms trapped in a snowglobe while the world crumbles to dust,” Basil replied. “Half of whom you murdered in the first place.”
“If I can revive them, then it’ll be all right in the end.” Leroy raised his hands and tightened them into fists. “Once you’re gone, I’ll make everything right.”
“You can’t.” Basil dodged a punch, then another. Dismaker Labs’ former programmer had no experience in hand to hand combat, nor the strength left to present a challenge. “Even if you somehow manage to trap every soul on earth in this place, it won’t return their old life back to them. The Apocalypse Force, the Unity, your colleagues…they’ll keep killing. Keep hurting. One day, they’ll find their way to this place and destroy it.”
Sensing an opportunity, Basil backhanded Leroy and forced him back. The false god touched his bleeding jaw, whimpering in pain.
“You can’t run away forever, Benjamin.” Basil had learned this lesson the hard way. “Think. Do you think that’s truly what your daughter would want for you? To hole up in a pyramid for the rest of your days? To waste your time running after an illusion?”
“You know nothing!” Leroy snarled back. Tears rained down his bloodied cheeks. “You don’t understand! If I fail…if I fail, it would have been all for nothing! The things I’ve done, the lives I’ve destroyed…”
He let out a screech of pain and despair.
“There’s no coming back!” Leroy exhaled. “No coming back from that…”
“That’s true,” Basil agreed. “You can’t ever fully make up for what you’ve done. That’s harsh, but it’s true.”
His words hit Leroy harder than his fists. The false god stood still, staring at the ground. Had Basil finally gotten through the walls he had built around himself?
“If you truly feel sorry for your crimes, then you must atone for them,” Basil said. “Truly atone. Not by covering up your mistakes as if you had never fucked up, but by making up for them in the real world. You’ve going to get out of this pyramid and help us fix your shit.”
“No.” Leroy shook his head in denial. “No, no, you’re wrong. I just have to bring them back. Yes, that’s right.”
“You can’t.” Basil inhaled sharply. “Summon her.”
“Summon…” Leroy looked up at Basil in incomprehension. “Summon her?”
“Your daughter,” Basil said, his voice sharper than a knife. “If you are so powerful, if that’s truly her voice you hear in your head, then surely you can compel her to appear. If you’re truly a god, then you will succeed.”
“I…” Leroy’s eyes widened in dread at the impossible task. “I… No, she’s shy, she…”
“Drag her here if you must,” Basil ordered, before losing patience. “Summon her!”
Leroy expanded his wings and attempted to take flight. He tried to run, to the sky, to nowhere. Basil didn’t let him. He grabbed the false god by the leg and dragged him back to earth.
“Summon her!” Basil snarled. Leroy struggled to escape, but he lacked the strength to. “Summon her! Bring her back!”
“I…” Leroy cried, his voice weakening. “I…can’t.”
The words were so weak, barely a whisper. Yet they carried the crushing weight of defeat.
Basil released Leroy. The false god didn’t try to run away this time. The fight had gone out of him, snuffed out like a candle.
“I can’t…” Leroy admitted, burying his face in the sand. “I can’t…Celia…”
The wind blew between them, and the fake world collapsed in its wake. The crimson sky cracked open like an egg. The illusory sea washed away the beach into nothingness. The lies Benjamin Leroy had built around his heart collapsed one after the other.
“That’s all there is,” Basil said sadly, Plato standing at his side. “I’m sorry, Benjamin. But you’ll have to live with it. As I did. As we must all do.”
Basil saw pictures of people flashing before his eyes. René, Aya, Orcine, Kuikui, and so many others. They appeared to him in a blink, and then they were gone without a sound.
The reaper was an impatient force; it rarely waited for last words.
The world was swallowed by light, and Basil was no longer on a beach when he regained his sense of sight. Instead, he sat on the cold hard floor of an art gallery, with his girlfriend kneeling at his side.
“Good to see you again, handsome.” Vasi moved to embrace him, and he welcomed her with open arms. Basil almost wondered if she was yet another illusion, but the way she held him tightly told him otherwise. It was her, entirely her. “So good…”
“Were you worried for me?” Basil asked with a thin smile, before kissing her on the cheek. “I received my lady’s favor.”
“I would have sent you a handkerchief to wear in battle, but I was strapped for time,” Vasi mused with a smile as she broke the hug. “I hope it helped.”
“It did.” Vasi helped Basil rise to his feet, and he scanned the area with a glance. Shellgirl was pouring a healing potion down Plato’s throat under the gaze of the Mona Lisa painting. Basil’s halberd lay on the ground, next to Vasi’s broom and Plato’s newfound holy weapon. Rosemarine was nowhere to be seen, as for Bugsy…
“I got him, Boss!” The centimagma’s tail had coiled around a defeated Leroy. The false god’s chest showed multiple bloody wounds. “He won’t run away!”
Basil doubted Leroy wanted to. The false god’s gaze was as hollow as his body was limp. He looked dead while alive, breathing yet crushed within. Smacking him back to reality had just been the final nail in his coffin.
Although Benjamin Leroy only deserved scorn for destroying the world, Basil couldn’t suppress a pang of pity at his sight.
“Where’s Rosemarine?” Basil asked, worried for his tropidrake.
“Keeping an eye on Kalki in the basement,” Vasi explained.
This comment earned Basil’s full attention. “You’ve found him?”
“He’s trapped in the neurotower’s forcefield,” Vasi confirmed. “We had to leave him behind for now.”
“We were so worried for you and Plato,” Shellgirl admitted. “You can’t fathom how many treasures we had to leave behind!”
“I can imagine,” Basil said as he finally took the time to examine Plato’s new sword. He immediately recognized Charlemagne’s sword, Joyeuse. “Nice catch.”
“A shame you didn’t choose to wield it yourself,” Vasi said with a smile. “You would look dashing with it.”
“Not as much as me,” Plato said before offering the sword to Basil. “Yo, dog, wanna try it?”
Although Basil struggled with the idea of cheating on his halberd with a sword, he couldn’t resist the urge to touch the holy blade’s pommel. His fingers burned when they brushed against the golden sword, forcing him to pull his hand back. “Argh!”
“Ah, saddening.” Vasi sighed. “Only those of royal blood can use Joyeuse in battle. And here I hoped you were a secret prince in shining armor.”
“Sorry,” Basil replied with a thin smile. “I’m the proud heir of a long line of dirt-poor peasants.”
“Why can Mr. Plato wield the sword then?” Bugsy asked in confusion.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Plato asked back. “Look at me. I am the very picture of royalty.”
Vasi grinned ear to ear. “Well, he is the king of cats.”
“Meow, that’s right,” Plato replied with unbearable pride. “The tiger is king of the jungle, it is known!”
“I have my doubts,” Basil mused. “But we can check that later.”
They would need to settle Leroy’s fate first.
The group gathered around the false god. Bugsy dropped Leroy on the ground, with Plato and Shellgirl pointing their weapons at him. Basil didn’t bother to threaten him with his halberd. The board member had clearly given up on life.
“How do we return the world to normal?” Basil asked sharply. “You helped design the neurotowers, didn’t you? How can we use them to subvert the System?”
“You…you can’t,” Leroy replied, his voice brimming with guilt. “Once the Trimurti System initialized…the situation escaped our control. The Neurotowers summoned it to Earth and provided it with energy, but they do not control anything.”
Basil had expected as much, but he didn’t like hearing this information either.
“Your particular neurotower harvests souls from all over the world,” Vasi pointed out. “If we destroy it, it will be a blow to the system.”
Leroy shook his head in denial. “Destroying Naraka won’t solve anything,” he said. “Redundant neurotowers will take over to keep processing souls. The network will adapt to any unforeseen scenario. And if you destroy them all, the cosmic egg will crumble on itself.”
“An egg?” Bugsy squinted in confusion. “What egg?”
“When we activated the Trimurti System, our planet was trapped inside the seed of a new universe,” Leroy explained. “This egg’s shell…it acts as a Level barrier regulating who can get in.”
“So, the barrier is not a sphere,” Basil whispered as he remembered the ISS’ last transmission. “Shiva isn’t holding a sphere in its palm, but an egg.”
“Shiva…yes, that’s an appropriate metaphor.” Leroy chuckled weakly, as if laughing at a joke only he could understand. “Once an Overgod is selected, the cosmic egg will hatch to unleash them on the cosmos.”
“But…what about the world?” Shellgirl chewed her lip. “Once the egg hatches, what will happen to it?”
“Depends,” Leroy whispered back.
“On what?” Basil asked sharply.
“On the Overgod, I suppose.” Leroy looked down at the ground. “We didn’t plan for the aftermath. Either you win or you run. That was what Maxwell said. I didn’t care about either…so long as I had her…and now…”
Leroy cried while Basil clenched his fists in anger. Whoever won, there was a chance the world wouldn’t survive it.
“How do we halt the process?” Vasi asked with a frown. “How can we stop the competition?”
“I already told you, you can’t.” Benjamin Leroy looked up and stared at the witch with weeping eyes. “Don’t you understand? There is no escape. The Trimurti System won’t stop the competition until an Overgod is selected. It’s the only way out. The wheel of death will keep spinning, one way or another.”
Plato pointed his sword at Leroy. “All I hear is that you’re useless to us.”
Leroy showed no fear; only quiet acceptance of his fate. He kneeled and waited for death. “Send me to Celia,” he said, closing his eyes. He looked almost pleading. “Send me to her.”
Plato lowered the sword for the killing blow.
Steel clashed against steel, as Basil’s halberd stopped his best friend’s blade within an inch of Leroy’s throat.
“Why?” Plato asked in confusion as he removed his blade. “He deserves death. You know that.”
“You’re wrong.” Basil scowled. “He deserves worse.”
Basil grabbed Leroy by the throat with one hand and lifted him above the ground. His high Strength stat showed its worth again.
“You think death will be your salvation?” Basil locked eyes with his enemy. Leroy was a broken soul, all but pleading for death. “I deny you this mercy. One way or another, you’re going to help us fix the mess you’ve made. It’s going to be a hard, thankless job, but you will do it; even if I have to drag you all the way through.”
Leroy didn’t answer, so Basil threw him on the cold hard floor.
“Don’t expect applause or handclaps,” Basil said with a scowl. “No angel is going to come down from heaven to tell you that you’ve been punished enough. Some people will never forgive you for what you’ve done, no matter how hard you try to make up for your sins. You’ll have to bear this cross for the rest of your miserable life. But maybe, just maybe…one day you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror and forgive the person staring back at you. That’s the best you can hope for, but that’s already more than you deserve.”
Leroy lay on the floor, defeated and silent. But he was listening. That was all that mattered.
“Let’s go free Kalki,” Basil said, before turning his back on Leroy. “We’ll see how we proceed from there.”
In spite of all his crimes, Benjamin Leroy had destroyed the world not out of greed or ambition, but parental love. Even in the depths of his madness, he tried to make up for his mistakes in a perverted, twisted way.
It earned him little sympathy from Basil, but just enough to buy himself a second chance.
CHAPTER 36
MAN VS WISDOM
“Are you sure of yourself, handsome?”
Basil glanced at Vasi as they walked down the stairs to the UNESCO building. He and his girlfriend closed the party’s march, while the rest of the team kept an eye on their prisoner.
Benjamin Leroy hadn’t made any effort to free himself from captivity. He walked alongside the team in utter silence, his gaze hollow and his back bent like an old tree. No monsters ambushed the team during their descent, although the Pyramid was probably still crawling with them.
None of the Bohens let their captive’s passivity lull them into complacency. All of them sent glances at Leroy from time to time, none more often than Plato. The feline kept his hand on Joyeuse’s pommel at all times, ready to cut down the false god at the first sign of resistance.
“He is dangerous and not all that stable,” Vasi warned Basil. “Letting him live is a gamble.”
“I know,” Basil admitted. Although he hoped the reward would outweigh the risks, he understood his wager could backfire spectacularly. “But he can’t turn his life around if he’s dead.”
“Do you think that’s even possible?” his girlfriend asked with skepticism.
“I believe so, yes,” Basil confirmed. “He’s not like Tamura or Hypathia, or even Maxwell. He understands that he has done wrong. He’s damaged goods all right, but he can still pull himself together.”
Basil couldn’t quite explain it himself. He felt it in his gut. Perhaps he saw a bit of himself in Leroy, or his brief stay inside the illusory world of Naraka had given him a glimpse into the man’s soul. Or maybe, just maybe, a part of Basil wanted to believe in the man’s better nature.
“I told you at the house that when faced with unrepentant evil, fire and brimstone really are the solution. That’s Old Testament justice. But the sequel has some good words too: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” Basil shrugged. “When someone stumbles on the perilous path of repentance, I should help them stand back up and not trip them further.”
Vasi looked at him with a coy, enigmatic smile.
“What?” Basil asked.
“I find you more charming when you speak of forgiveness rather than punishment, my bear knight,” Vasi said with a chuckle. “Your better qualities shine through.”
“Thank you,” Basil replied, returning her smirk with one of his own. “And for being at my side. It helps more than you know. Your deliveries saved our lives in the painted world.”
“I do not keep count, Basil,” Vasi replied. “But if you truly want to return the favor…I wouldn’t mind taking a holiday after we are done with our current Quest. Dungeon delving is exhausting. I think I need a break.”
That made two of them. “If we survive the Incursion, I’ll take you to Bulgaria,” Basil promised. “You’ll love it. It’s a beautiful place.”
“Are you planning to introduce me to your mother?” Vasi mused. “It’s a big step forward in our relationship.”
“Yeah, it is,” Basil admitted. “But I feel we’re ready for it.”
Vasi nodded slowly as they finally reached the dungeon’s neurotower, at the very center of a crumbling gallery larger than any other room Basil had yet seen. Rosemarine had been waiting there, slouching on the ground and keeping watch on a forcefield keeping Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana trapped.
“Mister, Plato, you came back!” The tropidrake rose to her feet and immediately licked Basil with her elongated tongue. The contact wasn’t enjoyable at all, but Basil accepted it with a smile. Plato simply leaped away to avoid suffering the same fate. “I missed you so much!”
