Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
In the House, In a Heartbeat - John Murphy (28 Days Later Soundtrack) [tal Remix]
syoutu.be/c8QNTsOJ1kc
Chapter 26: Ranks
Mid Afternoon - Early Sumr : Year 0 | Month 1 : Arlington, Virginia | East Coast United States
World: Earth | Rank: 6 | Population: ~1,893,120,000
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CL-l-l-lank—s-s-s-splash Listening to the countless tal pieces fall into the pool of molten earth with a patter, the magma around flashed with the mory of an endless ocean, my stance widened, and breathing slowed... "Hooooh..." -This might be kind of fun..!-
From that point forward, I was to beco the conductor of a play. -That bastard knows I'm hurt.- He wanted to use as a shield from the System, and to use the System as a tool to finish off. -I just need to make it seem like these enforcers end up killing sohow...-
But not having any idea how to do that yet, I needed to stall for ti. -At least until Michael gets here...-
That wasn't a simple matter though. To minimize damage to my surroundings, I needed to keep the enforcers levels as low as possible, so that ant I not only had to keep from breaking them, but dodge their attacks entirely. If an enforcer so much as grazed and it didn't do any visible damage, it would never use the sa weapon again, then when its tried everything, the units would get recalled and replaced with whatever the system believed could be more effective while raising the level accordingly.
If I got bad luck, even low level enforcers would be hard to stall. -I just hope Earth's squishy ground doesn't trip up...-
Vwoop 'Feeling' space warp again, I ducked and turned to let a heavy, grey tal fist encased in shockwaves rip past my back. woooOOOM -A lee type... Good start...- Knowing lee units were never alone though, my eyes darted across the ss of grey buildings to find the other before a flash of light and a blanket of wash of warmth washed over my leg. BRRRM "Tch..."
Snapping my eyes back through the gap between the lee enforcers arm and my back, I found a smaller, white-armored unit similar to the first I killed. -It just had to be another gunner...- It was nearly a worst case scenario. The unit only had two different attacks.. and one of them was now proved ineffective. -There goes my one slip up...- But now that I had it in my sights, I was certain it wouldn't catch again.
Tink Pushing up the lee unit's fist as a blade began extending from its upper arm, a line of sparks were drawn across my back before I turned. Pop-WOOOSH Bolting out of the molten pool toward the gunner, the glow in its chest intensified, the wide barrel in its arm shrunk, and I clipped the lip of the crater with my boot to throw myself to the ground. Snip-CRACK
Almost instantly, a beam dozens of tis hotter than the first passed over before expanding and carving a tunnel through the city's outskirts. BRRRRMMMM It erased entire sections of buildings in a blink. -Shit.. I can't let him shoot into the city like that...- Enforcers were ant to take precautions to minimize casualties. It was why whenever they appeared, everything in the vicinity got teleported a 'safe distance' away with gates.
But looking through the bore the beam had left, I saw open horizon.. and less than a second later.. watched a half-vaporized, burned body fall from the upper floor of a pierced building...
As it had always been, safe distance was subjective.. and the enforcers didn't account for how much energy the environnt could absorb... -I can't let him shoot below the horizon again.-
But I was never given another chance.
Beep With a noise nearly too soft to hear, the enforcers' sensors turned red before vanishing into gates with a yellow panel:
'Level re-evaluated: >4000'
-W..what..?!- My eyes went wide. -What is that for?!- Tap-Crrrunch Skidding to a stop, I snapped back to where the gunner once stood.. where the air rippled with heat.. only to see a few strands of my long black hair glowing orange with heat... -Ah...-
Though I managed to get my body under it, all it took was the beam grazing a single strand of hair for the enforcers to get a gauge on ...
...A good one.
Vwoop Feeling space warp again, my eyes snapped to the side just in ti to catch another robotic fist with my face. WH—CR-CR-CR-CRUMBLE Smashing through buildings like they were made of paper-mache, I slamd into the city's outer wall hard enough to cave in the base before throwing myself to the ground as fast as I could.
WOOM Closing the distance with another gate, an enforcer twice as towering as the other appeared with its arm morphed into a long blade and the wall exploded with the screech of splitting atoms. SKREE-WOOOOOM
With the exponential scaling of levels, Earth's materials simply couldn't hold up. -This.. might be bad...- WOOM Sinking into the ground with my landing, my chest tightened and pupils thinned. If I continued to dodge normally, it was just a matter of ti before I misjudged the force the ground would let exert and get caught by another attack.
-I need sothing sturdier.- I needed sothing tal.
But.. there was only one thing that solid in the vicinity...
Snapping its sensors to my face, the enforcer's arm spun, the blade twisted, and the sword path drew a line across my chest.
But compared to the first swing, this was nothing. Fwip-tap— Pressing onto the blade as it neared my side, I ripped myself out of the molten pool just in ti to throw my head back and have the long lance of the other enforcer miss by a hair. -There you are.- —CRRRRACKKKK
The first attack it launched from its gate smashed through the sound barrier as carelessly as a beam of light, punching a hole through the air that blew a molten streak across the inside of the wall.
But while I stared into the underside of a glowing hot lance passing by just centiters above my face, I found myself smiling.
'Fun'.
Tink Jumping off the blade, I spun around the lance only for the sword's trajectory to twist, chase, and smash into it. Creee—CLANG If the ground was too weak to make use of, I'd simply use their bodies.
Cl-l-l-l-ink— As the lance retracted beneath , I hooked my foot under its base and used the accelerating blade to spin , cartwheeling over the lancer's head and letting grab its collar before its arms inorganically twisted, and the lances in its arms telescoped with a needle of white forming on their tips.
Though, with sothing solid in my grasp, they would never catch . —WOOM Slipping beneath the lances, I threw myself down the enforcer's back before grabbing a gap in the plates at its waist and finding a firm footing in the crease of its knee.
That was the mont the fight ended.
With plenty of creases and gaps to grab, footings sturdy enough to dart off, and their swings slowing as they reached to avoid damaging one another, the great creations of the System beca mice biting at a cat.
They were simply toyed with.
But as the dance continued, my sharpening rhythm grew mindless, and my smile began fading, the enforcers' hypersonic movents slowed to that of snails with a reality-bending warp. Vwoom -That must be him...-
I couldn't even finish that thought of recognition though. "~WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!~" Before I could even find him, Michael's voice bood louder than the most deafening of explosions.
But I couldn't let him do whatever he was doing. "Don't call the enforcers off yet!" Snapping my eyes to him, I watched his hand freeze over a panel. "Make it seem like the enforcers managed to kill !"
His face instantly washed with an unbridled confusion.
Knowing he could see the shattered bones still trying to heal beneath my armor and flesh, I spoke as bluntly as I could. "Soone from another world rode my gate back and is using the System to finish off! I don't know how, but you need to make it seem like they succeeded!"
Slowly turning up to , Michael’s wings stuttered—feathers flaring like knives. "~The System.. isn't after you?~"
"WHAT KIND OF ELF DO I LOOK LIKE TO YOU?! Just hurry and play along!"
Holding my gaze, rage crowded his eyes only for duty to strangle it. Biting his lip, he turned and drove his fingers through a lattice of ambered ti to navigate his System.
Before a mont later...
B-Beep Yellow panels chid into being in front of my face: 'Target eliminated. Recalling Enforcers.'
Pff—Vwoop—Vwoop Sound returned in crumbs as the enforcers were swallowed by flickers of darkness from the shells of gates, and Michael's grip on ti eased. CRRRRRRRAAAAACKKKK The residual echos of shockwaves instantly bood, shaking the entire city like an earthquake before slowly easing. -Perfect...-
Sohow, the damage seed minimal, even as I landed on molten ground next to a half-kiloter-wide gash in humanity's greatest wall.
But Michael was far from pleased.
Drifting over like inevitable judgent, he stared at with a displeasure he could only reign with calculus. "~You have no idea what kind of ss you just made...~" Ti softened more with every word, but the air seed to almost sharpen to daggers. "~Since you may be my only hope of cleaning it, I'll listen—just this once... You best pray its a good explanation...~"
I didn't waste another second. Giving him everything between pain-laced breaths, from the abduction, the death, and the months on Leviathan, to the 'administrator', the cores, and the elven smile that split the sky upon my return, I spilled everything.
Dishonesty would do no favors, and from this point forward, I needed Michael's help just as much as he needed mine.
It was a mutual understanding.
...But when I finished, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed from sowhere older than the Atlantic. "~You are seriously the incarnation of disaster...~" But with every fraction of a second that passed, his anger eased more. Until eventually, he managed to form so thoughts. "~Why must the Lord test as such...~" Passing one more sigh, he finally turned back to . "~Since we're sohow in the sa boat, let show you exactly how much you screwed up... Open your System.~"
Vwoop I opened it with a single thought.
"~Go to 'System Rank and Balance'.~"
Flicker A wall of graphs and charts imdiately appeared, separated into three sections: 'Mana Rank', 'Monster Rank', and 'Population Rank'.
"~The sections of statistics you're looking at are the three subranks every world has. They are used by the System to determine a world's overall rank, when to supply monsters, or send foreign system rcenaries. If one is higher than another, either monsters or rcenaries adjusted to the mana rank will be sent to the planet to balance out the lopsided rank.~"
It was sothing I had heard ntioned before, essentially being the balancing act the System used to grow worlds.
However, while the charts were ant to all look nearly identical to one another, that wasn't the case here...
Looking at the charts side by side, the monster rank and mana rank seed similar to one another, mostly following the sa trend until the mana rank jumped a few percent with my arrival...
The population rank though... "Ah..." It's movent.. wasn't so minimal...
-That.. can't be good...-
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