ROD - Chapter 122

Chapter One-Hundred-Twenty-Two – War Chest – Part Three

There are no classes that interface with the System directly. We surmise this is for a reason. The System doesn’t want us peering into its abyss.

-Former UWO Researcher Chambers-

Time is still slowed to barely a crawl, I sit for what feels like days, ruminating on what I did. They were stuck in there, toiling for a cause that they would never see with their own eyes completed. It is profoundly… beautiful.

Time begins to sway as I deconstruct the time rift spell, slowly so as to not create an explosion that would kill everyone near here.

Air stirs for the first time in years. Fresh air, not this recycled garbage that I’ve been breathing. Real, natural air. It is almost sweet on my tongue after so many years without it. Time rifts are strange. The spells around them, stranger still.

Carl is still casting defensive wards. I turn and look at him for a moment. It is strange to see him moving again, he was like a statue for years.

He slows his movements, peering closer at me, his hands lower warily, “What happened?”

A few moments pass before I speak. I’m still not used to speaking again. The tongue forgets itself when not used often.

“It was like you said, I couldn’t access my System interface in the rift. I think it’s designed to be resistant to temporal anomalies,” I say, tracing my hand on the wooden table, the feel of the grains is beautiful across my hands that have not felt more than the painfully slow beat of my heart and the even slower march toward movement in years. “Though the design doesn’t much matter now. The shadows figured out how to use it.”

“You seem… different again,” Carl says, warily, leaning down slowly to pick up his pipe.

My eyes feel wet still as I say, “I made a world inside of a pocket dimension and gave a thousand shadow clones autonomy to do whatever they wanted.” I pause, my voice becoming a whisper, “They’re all dead… but they lived… truly lived…”

Carl blinks at me, “Delusions can help keep the mind from breaking, parsing them after a rift will take time, lad. If I was you, I’d count my lucky stars that I was alive. I’d also not dabble in magic again for at least a few,” he strikes a match and raises an eyebrow, “Years.” After clearing his throat he says, “Some people can become obsessed with it, you seem to be one of them. Best to take it in small doses.”

Thinking about the deviation I met, I mutter, “They must have recycled the soul shards using some kind of randomized spell fluctuation… why else would he be so different from me? How many years passed in that dimension?”

“On second thought, a few decades away from magic might be the remedy,” Carl chuffs, giving me a concerned expression. He thinks I’ve gone insane. From his perspective, it’s hard to blame him.

“Archmagus… Carl, thank you for everything. I should be going though.”

Carl’s eye twitches, “What are you doing? Trust me, whatever you think it is, think about it twice, hell maybe even three times.”

“I have thought about it a thousand times,” I whisper, looking down at the pulsing symbol of a torch on my palm, “I’ll not lose anyone else.”

Time slows as I weave my thoughts into intentions, Carl tries to cast wards of restraining, but they will never finish in time. I’m moving too fast for that.

While I was stuck in time’s flow, I thought of how to make the time rift spell more useful, more portable too. Having used Triage to distort time before in my perception, it was a similar line of approach. So long as I am close enough to a Ley Line or an abundant source of mana I can keep time slowed. Not so slow that years pass in a few moments, but slow enough that I won’t be encumbered by needless fights.

My pace is even and measured as my thoughts stray into possibilities. There is much that I have to learn still from the deviations. There is a steady stream of memories flooding my mind, theories… hopes… dreams. Most were a peaceful people. Living in harmony, but there were those who strayed from the fabric, those who ran along the edges and embraced the fringes of theoretical magic. They were pioneers, all of them.

I stride through the countless steps toward Clayton and the others. Each step becomes the tempo of the rising action that I feel coming. There are three things I must do before the final confrontation, before the crescendo. Inspect Abyss’s inventory and find whatever Mythren left for me in there. His cryptic words ring in my mind.

When Abyss is usable again, ensure that you check your inventory thoroughly, there may have been some things that it consumed during detention. If you find something that shouldn’t be there… it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to bring it out of your inventory.

What exactly might be lurking in the false Abyssal inventory that Mythren created for me? Such a thing should be investigated. There wasn’t time to do so before, but now I have some time until they land in New York.

Second priority is to take as many objects into Abyss’s faux storage as possible, and then re-deposit them while traveling between Ley Lines. That should ensure the velocity is… adequate.  

Third priority is to recreate the runes that obscure the system and establish a foothold on the Ley Lines in New York and prepare for the inevitable confrontation that will come after Cortez and the rest of them land.  

The crescendo is rising, I can almost hear the chords being strummed. Each one feels as deliberate as the steps I am taking. Everything is connected. A persistent thought from when I was in the rift is that Ulana’s game is starting to shift the board. How much of this did she foresee I wonder…

Moving into the study on the second floor, I see Clayton still interrogating Karen. It’s been years since I saw him. Years since I saw anyone except for Carl in a state of panic casting defensive wards.  

“Where’s Carl?” Clayton asks, blinking at me strangely, “I didn’t hear you come up the stairs.”

“I’m going to the hospital that Fisban is located at,” I tell Clayton.

“Respectfully, that’s an obvious trap, and…” he pauses, looking at me closer, “What’s different about you… I haven’t seen you look like this since…”

I nod and he understands almost instantly that I’ve been buffed again. I can see it in his eyes as they widen then look back at the others whom we don’t trust.

He swallows, “What’s the plan?”

“Spring the trap.”

He nods, then looking at Starman and Vella, “What should we do with them?”

Looking at them, I say, “Not our problem. We have bigger fish to fry.”

Karen cackles, “You’re going to die.”

She’s probably not wrong. Death is just a new beginning though.

***

I step past the hedges once more, Carl is yelling at Clayton telling him to stop me. Whilst they converse, after sensing the connection is restored, I call upon Sage.

Sage’s voice travels into my mind.

Meat… Jimmy… is that you? Are you back? Something feels different again, and I’m locked out of your status board.

So, that part of the theory works. Good, I don’t need gods or admins looking at my status board.

“Sage, how many Ley Lines are on Earth? I’m working on a theory involving temporal instability at flex points. I want to see if that glitch we used before has been patched for normal magical travel,” I lie, because he doesn’t need to know exactly what I’m planning.

Sage’s voice is filled with heavy breathing as he speaks.

You are back. Oh… this will be fun. The number of Ley Lines… interesting, someone has removed that information from Earth’s file. Which is…

“Abnormal, but not completely unexpected. Sage, are you allowed to tell me the true names of the nine Marauder gods?”

No… and I don’t know them anyway. Such things are guarded closely.

“Shame, I was working on a binding ritual. I’ll scrap that for now.”

A binding ritual? Is there anything else I can do for you? I am eager to help…

“Check the current list of patches that will be coming, you can update me in a few hours. Also, tell Mythren that I’m going to give him access to my Nexus, but I want to discuss the details in person, exactly like the last time we met. Tell him it will be on my terms at exactly the time I ask for it, otherwise it will never happen. The phrase to start the meeting is as follows; get fucked.”

Is that supposed to be an insult or a troll at Mythren?

“Not for him, no.”

Understood, I will relay the message.

Clayton moves past the bushes, Carl is directly behind him, his eyes are wary still as he looks at me.

“What do you need me to do?” Clayton asks.

“Keep my body safe, I shouldn’t be long.”

He nods, giving a wry eye at Carl who’s chuffing so hard on his pipe that he hasn’t realized there isn’t smoke coming out anymore.

“He’s dangerous, nearly caused a fracture in time on a fucking whim,” Carl says, pointing his finger at me, “He should not be released into the world as he is now. The magic he was weaving… it’s insanity. Even the grimoire doesn’t let people do that.”

“It does,” I say, stretching my neck, “I read the Grimoire of the Magi you had hidden. Fascinating stuff.”

“You… you read it?” he stammers.

“How do you think I figured out how to create a true pocket dimension? You can’t mention something and expect me not to investigate it. The moment you mentioned the grimoire, was the moment I decided to read it. Though strangely, not all the pages were filled.”

Carl doesn’t even speak, he just stares.

“It only shows you what you need, and it only shows those it finds worthy,” Clayton says before swallowing, now standing with Carl, “How many pages did it show you?”

“Two hundred and nine.”

Carl’s pipe drops again as his mouth hangs agape.

Clayton looks at Carl, stepping between us, “He’s probably the only thing that could stop the Earth from being destroyed, so if he’s doing insane magic, I’m inclined to say it’s probably for a reason.”

“Youngsters these days… breaking magical laws for fun,” Carl turns, leaving his pipe, “I’m retiring.”

“You already retired,” Clayton sighs.

“Consider me double retired.”

My hand scrolls through my system interface until I find the new section labeled ‘Abyssal Storage’. A notification appears in purple.

[ Error… Due to restrictions on this storage space, manually viewing items requires the user to access through their Nexus. ]

He must not want anyone seeing what he accidentally left in there. What have you done, Mythren…

[ Enter the Nexus? ]

[ Yes / No ]

I select the yes option. Reality bends and light folds. But something is different this time. It’s slower as it does it. I can feel the code moving back and forth like the tide of a large ocean. Strange… I never felt the System before.