Die. Respawn. Repeat. 4: A LitRPG Adventure, page 16
Second, we are likely not actually dead. Ethan’s Trial allows him to return if he dies, so if you hang tight, we’ll be back. We have a way to navigate the Sewers, so focus on keeping yourselves safe. We’ll figure out how to complete the stage when we meet up. It won’t take us long.
Third, if you find any monster that the Interface marks as Corrupted, run. Do not try to engage. Seal it off if you can, but if you can’t, run. Stay as far as you can until we manage to find you.
Good luck. Hopefully, this note won’t be necessary.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
Adeya said nothing for a long moment as she read over the note. Then she folded it with a sigh.
“Well?” Dhruv asked. Adeya tapped her fingers on her knee, trying to figure out how much she could tell them. Part of her wondered if she was just jumping to conclusions, but the wording in that note…
“It was a set of warnings. Nothing we didn’t suspect already,” she said. “Nice to have confirmation, though. Basically, if we fail any prerequisite, a bunch of Trials are going to explode. So let’s not fail any of them. Everyone on the expedition team is alive, right?”
Her Interface said as much, but there was always the chance someone was in the process of dying. Thankfully, Novi nodded at her. Adeya sighed with relief, then glanced over the Interface to look at the rest of its numbers.
Current Firmament saturation: 91%
“Looks like the saturation went down slightly, so we’ll be able to use a few skills, but we need to be even more careful with them now that we know what’s going to happen,” she said, her brow furrowing. “I say we stick with evasion until Ethan and his team catch up to us again. The note said it wouldn’t take them long.”
“Did the note say anything else?” Taylor asked. “Because you look like something about it is still bothering you.”
Adeya sighed. No hiding it, then.
“I think Ethan might be working together with an Integrator,” she said. Unless Ethan had managed to dig deeper into Integrator records than even their best information-gathering Trialgoers, only an Integrator would know about the fatality rate of Ritual blowbacks.
Then there was the fact that the entire note was a persistent Firmament construct. As far as she knew, only Integrators could create persistent Firmament constructs on the fly like that. Firmament solidification was a skill she’d only seen demonstrated by her assigned Integrator when she was claiming an Inspiration.
Dhruv’s expression darkened. “Are we going to have to fight him?” he asked, clenching his fists.
Adeya eyed him for a moment. “You really think we stand a chance here, of all places?”
“Why would he work for one of them?” he demanded. “Look at what the Integrators have done! Look at what they’re doing!”
Adeya shook her head. “I wouldn’t be so sure he’s working for one of them,” she said. “Let me handle it. I’ll deal with it when they get here.”
“Are you sure?” Taylor asked.
“I am,” Adeya said. “You two should focus on reviewing what happened during the fight. You know the drill. After-action review.”
She would’ve participated herself, but she’d been out of the majority of the fight, and there wasn’t much she could have changed on her part. Adeya listened to Taylor slowly, haltingly going over the fight and what had caused him to trip, but for the most part, her thoughts were distracted.
The contents of the note ran through her mind again and again. That last line in particular, written with hesitation and uncertainty, from someone who was supposedly one of the scirix.
Adeya knew what it looked like when the Interface translated a language. Most of the note was translated, but that last line lacked the feeling of the Interface’s Firmament.
It was written in plain English.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
Even before I open my eyes, I can tell that something is different.
The air doesn’t feel like air. I can’t feel the ground beneath me. There’s no sound of birds, insects, or the rustling of leaves. I normally wake to the heat of the sun and the smell of damp earth, but even those things are absent.
Instead, around me is an all-consuming pressure that flows… past me, rather than pressing down on me. Good thing, too. If it pressed down on me, I think I’d be entirely dead.
When I do finally open my eyes, there’s a distinct stream of green-purple surrounding me and rushing past me. It takes me another moment to figure out what it is and what I’m sensing.
This is Hestia’s temporal barrier, and for the first time, I find that I’m awake as time rewinds around me.
My body stitches itself back together from the mangled mess left behind in the tunnels of the Sewers. I feel myself moving backward through the Sewers, through the city of First Sky, and then eventually back into Hestia and the ground above Inveria.
Instead of going back down into Inveria, though, my perspective shifts. I find myself floating higher and higher, above the planet, watching as time pulls itself backward.
A few things stand out to me.
The first is Gheraa and Ahkelios. They’re both being held in a bubble of solidified time, a mass of mutated Firmament that holds them in place as we’re pulled back through the timestream. That’s a relief—it means Gheraa was right. They’re being brought back right alongside me. Granted, they’ll be in some sort of Tear I need to get them out of, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
The second is my core. Fyran mentioned that this was a part of the core deepening process, but from the sounds of things, he hadn’t experienced anything like this. I can actually feel my core beginning to grow larger in this space between spaces. The Web of Threads pulls at its edges, and it grows to compensate.
The density of my Firmament decreases slightly in the process, but it begins spinning even faster, and it takes only a small mental nudge to help the process along. Firmament Control allows me to pull small threads of power from the timestream and feed them into my expanding core, making it grow a little more, spin a little faster.
It’s going to be a while before I hit my limit like this, I can tell. Even with me manually pushing the process along, there’s a long way to go. Every so often, I pause to push my core’s density instead of its size, trying to keep the two mostly aligned—I don’t want my skills to suddenly be weaker if I can help it.
I do this for what feels like a long, long time, though I have no idea how much time actually passes. Subjectively, it feels like hours. Objectively? Beyond Hestia’s temporal barrier, the universe just seems… frozen.
I pay it no mind and focus on my core.
Two more abnormalities show up before the loop finishes its reset. I notice them as tiny specks in the distance.
The first one feels like Guard. He’s too far away for me to see, but I can sense his presence through the bond we share. There’s another figure next to him, extending its hand casually, and around it the timestream just… splits apart. Like it’s somehow defending itself and Guard against the reset.
And it’s not the only one. Somewhere farther away, in another Great City, I notice another similar abnormality—a second figure doing the exact same thing, creating a bubble of safety within Hestia’s loop.
I frown. That seems like a problem.
Before I can do anything about it, though, the bubble pops—
—and I find myself lying on the forest ground, staring at Hestia’s morning sky.
This time, there’s a pulsing mass of Firmament flesh near me that I can identify as the Tear containing Ahkelios and Gheraa. I grimace a bit as I rip it open, pulling them both free; Ahkelios coughs as he stumbles out, glaring at the temporal wound like it personally offended him. It probably did, considering he’s covered in what I can only assume is some kind of time goop. Gheraa just pretends to dust off his coat.
“We need to get back in the Empty City,” I say before either of them can say anything. “But something’s going on with Guard. I’m going to check on him before we go.”
CHAPTER 21
ANALYSIS
He-Who-Guards was impressed, and he quite hated that fact.
The most he ever remembered of a loop reset was vague flashes of color. The density of his Firmament and the unusual nature of his implanted core allowed him some ability to resist the loops, which was the only reason he remembered events between them. Even with all that, he’d never been able to sense them coming.
Certainly not like this, with enough advance warning to put up some kind of barrier against it. This wasn’t even Teluwat’s real body. He was reaching out through an agent and using that agent to cut apart the wave of reversed time crashing through Hestia.
It was a terrifying feat.
Not for the first time, Guard checked his defenses to make sure Teluwat—he refused to call him Raskar—hadn’t gotten through them. He’d tried more than once, sneaking small tendrils of memory-altering Firmament toward Guard’s core. His plan had worked, though. Each time he tried, Ethan’s Void Inspiration reacted to it, devouring that Firmament before it made contact.
He’d been worried at first that Teluwat might be able to tell he had some way to defend himself, but as far as he could tell, that worry had been unfounded. Teluwat didn’t react to his tendrils of power being consumed.
He knew better than to let his guard down, though.
“Thank you,” Guard told the Void Inspiration once more. It reacted by swimming a tight circle in his core, excited and pleased with itself. When he’d given it this task, he hadn’t expected it to take to it with so much enthusiasm. It was probably the main reason he was able to remain as calm as he had when Teluwat’s agent first showed up.
He’d been angry, of course. Furious.
But deep inside his core, he’d also been plotting.
He wasn’t foolish enough to think that the Void Inspiration by itself was sufficient defense. Even if it was, he refused to leave any of this to chance—anything was better than Teluwat finding a way to use him against Ethan. Guard might not have the same ability to manipulate Firmament as a Trialgoer, but he’d been training that ability, nevertheless.
More importantly, he’d also been working on his skill circuits. Condensing a three-dimensional construct into a circuit was difficult work, but he’d made good strides in the Grove.
It was part of the reason he was so silent. Every step he took was accompanied by the careful etching of a new circuit on the inside of his core, a practice that was similar to how Ethan’s own core contained skill constructs. These circuits, however, were designed to draw on the Firmament around him and create a protective barrier around his core.
The more Teluwat tried to use his skills on him, the more he could tune those circuits against those exact skills.
Circuit inversion. He’d done it once, and he’d practiced it even more since.
“So!” Teluwat said as the temporal wave subsided, sidling up to him. Guard reminded himself that Teluwat would expect him to call the crow agent Raskar; he needed to make sure he was playing along. “How about that, eh? Can you imagine anyone else doing that?”
“No,” Guard said, quite honestly. Ethan probably could, but given he triggered those loop resets by dying, he wouldn’t actually be alive to do it. It was a useful skill, though. Guard resolved to himself that he would pay attention to the skill construct being activated the next time it happened.
“Exactly,” Raskar said, puffing out his chest. Guard wondered if he knew how ridiculous he looked. He was a little out of breath, too, a fact Guard took careful notice of; he might have tried to make it look easy, but a feat like that no doubt took a monumental amount of Firmament. “Kauku won’t stand a chance against us if we work together.”
“Do you know what he wants?” Guard asked, keeping his tone even. He’d never mentioned Kauku by name.
“Oh, you know,” Raskar said with a shrug. “Power, revenge. The type of thing all despots want.”
“How does he intend to achieve it?”
“You don’t already know?” Raskar pretended to look surprised. “He intends to devour Hestia’s Heart, of course. Temporal Firmament and its skill constructs are perhaps one of the greatest powers ever produced by the Interface. Imagine what he could do with the skills granted to him! He’d be able to do anything your Trialgoer friend can do, on a scale far greater than you can imagine.”
“And is he close to doing this?” Guard asked.
“No, not yet. Or I don’t think so.” Raskar tapped the side of his beak. “He’s being delayed by something. I’m helping.”
“Helping?” Guard tilted his head. That was a slip of the tongue, if he’d ever heard one.
“Helping to delay him, of course,” Raskar said easily, but he changed the topic almost immediately after. “I’m surprised you aren’t asking more questions about your son, He-Who-Guards. Aren’t you worried about him?”
“Not at all,” Guard lied. “You have always kept your word. I have no reason to believe he would not be safe. My worries lie with what Kauku may have planned for the planet.”
“Indeed,” Raskar said. He stared at Guard for a moment, expression unreadable, and Guard in turn made very sure not to react. It was difficult—even now, his Firmament threatened to boil over with his rage—but he simply took that raging Firmament and bound it tightly into yet another circuit to empower yet another shield.
Teluwat couldn’t seem to tell whether or not his skill was working. Guard, on the other hand, could review the memories Teluwat was trying to plant inside him without allowing them to take root: all he needed to do was review the empty fragments of what the Void had consumed.
The reality he was being fed was an insidious one. He could see how it might happen. If he’d had a friend so close to him in the aftermath of Whisper’s Trial, it certainly would have. Teluwat fed him memory after memory of a friendship that had never been, creating a world in which he’d asked Teluwat to take care of his son in light of Whisper’s growing instability.
If he hadn’t taken the Void Inspiration with him—if he hadn’t known to be cautious of this particular Trialgoer, of all Trialgoers—the ploy might have worked.
Instead, the false memories only made him angrier. It showed him a world that might have been if his choices had been a little different. If Teluwat hadn’t stolen all memory of his son away from him.
“Has he been well?” Guard asked, realizing Raskar was still staring at him, waiting for more. “I worry that Palus might be unkind to him—no offense. Your Great City is not known for being particularly… habitable.”
“Not to worry,” Raskar said. “I made sure he would be fine! You’d be surprised how much I can do with my skills. You’ll see.”
“Of course,” Guard said, even as his core flared erratically; it took all his will to suppress it. “I look forward to it.”
“You’d better! I’m sure you’ll love what I’ve done,” Raskar said cheerfully. He reached out to take Guard’s hand, and Guard allowed it, mostly because he was distracted trying to hide what was happening.
Ethan was reaching out to him through their bond, and Guard needed to be absolutely sure Teluwat had no idea what was happening.
“Let’s go,” I say. My expression, I hope, is largely unreadable—mostly because I might have to deal with too many questions if either Ahkelios or Gheraa could tell how angry I am. I’m pretty sure they can tell anyway, but they know not to ask.
As much as I’d like to rush to Guard’s assistance immediately, he’s right. That approach would be far too risky. Teluwat has far too much power at the moment—better to keep him unaware of how much we know and plan around him. If he even catches a whiff that we might be on to him, there’s no telling what he might do to Guard’s son.
It’s a hostage situation, effectively.
“If you’re sure,” Ahkelios says. I give him a halfhearted smile.
“We’ve got a plan, but you’re not going to like it,” I say. “Either way, we need to get caught up with the Empty City and try to get the Ritual stage clear. The longer we spend there, the less time we have to clear up Tears on Hestia, and those are getting worse, too.”
I don’t even need Naru to come to me to tell me about them anymore. I’m not sure if this is a byproduct of the increased strength of my core or simply a result of how bad things have gotten on Hestia, but I can feel the fractures in the timestream more clearly than ever.
They’re all over the place. Where several of those fractures meet, a new Tear is created, opening up yet another hole in Hestia’s history. The more time we waste…
I shake my head. No use dwelling on it.
“Um,” Ahkelios says. “What part of the plan am I not going to like, exactly, and why won’t I like it?”
“You’re never a fan of plans that involve me dying a lot,” I say with a small grin. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you enjoyed being stuck in that Tear with Gheraa, either.”
“It was cramped and wet,” Ahkelios grimaces, and then he pauses. “What do you mean, dying a lot?”
“I’m not sure I like this plan either,” Gheraa says.
“Trust me,” I say. “As much as it’s going to suck for us, it’s going to be much, much worse for Teluwat.”
It only takes a quick explanation for the two of them to get on board. Ahkelios is shaking his head, but he can’t hide his amusement; Gheraa, on the other hand, doesn’t even try.
“Let’s get going,” I say, reaching for the Interface and retrieving the key. “It should be easier to find the expedition team this time.”
“Just try not to traumatize them any more,” Ahkelios quips.
I pause, blinking at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ahkelios raises a brow at me, antennae twitching. “You didn’t realize?”
“Realize what?”
