Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
Paul Atreides (Suite) | Dune (Soundtrack) by Hans Zimmer
https://youtu.be/mTaqUyfV19A
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Chapter 21: A Second
Mid Morning - Early Summer : Year 0 | Month 0 : Sector E6
World: Leviathan | Rank: ERROR | Population: 22
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The stare of a being unbound by time.. its deep.. silent.. but telling: a pause not just to size up and judge, but to greet and introduce.
Merely from a look in the eyes, gods could discern everything they needed to know about a person as if viewing that person's memories directly.
But that has never been the case, and while I once found it anomalous, assuming the System simply gave them the information...
Once you mature with unrivaled power... Once you fall victim to time as they had, you understand.. its not magic...
Its merely the intuition of a being that has seen everything...
Gods, guarding and watching over mortals for tens, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, have seen everything you could possibly experience.
Every leap. Every fall. Every birth. Every death.
They are beings who have seen every possible correlation and causation. When they looked you in the eyes, it's like a swordmaster recounting a fight from the cuts and scars left on the environment.
However, while I had never noticed it before, in the eyes of such a being, there too was a difference between a swordmaster who recounted swings he only learned through sight or text.. and ones he learned through practice...
Standing on that ridge.. catching the gaze of that elven man sat at the bottom of the oak.. I noticed it for the first time...
The look of familiarity... The reflection of myself in his stare...
He wasn't a being born a god... Though long passed, he too once had mortal flesh.
Perhaps.. that was what made him feel so different.
After matching my gaze for a moment, the man rose without a word, clasping his wrist behind his back before stepping down the mound of flower-covered rubble with gentle but methodical steps.
His head was high—his shoulders held back—his eyes never leaving mine.
Unlike most gods I had known, he lacked the gleam of arrogance in his approach—opting to reserve his confidence with caution...
...Caution he.. didn't bother hiding.
Coming to a halt in the field between the oak and the base of the mountain I stood on, he took one last pause, letting his long white hair sway in wind that didn't follow the ripples in the flowers before speaking through closed lips. "~It isn't kind to barge into another's home without word, you know.~" His voice was calm and sultry, laden with formality and devoid of warmth—echoing straight into my head without care for the kilometers of atmosphere between us.
He was irritated, but seemed almost unable to show it...
However, we weren't enemies. "If I had any voice in the matter, I never would have come here in the first place."
Hitching breath as if taken aback, the clouds that shaped his body churned. "~You are no mercenary.~" His tone darkened like a monarch who caught a servant in a lie, "~You have no registry, no name, no tether, and are certainly no mage capable of coming here yourself." His eyes instantly drilled into my chest. "~Who could possibly forced an uncollared monster like you here?~"
"A jack-ass." Bitterness coated my tongue instantly. -I need to be careful how much say here...- Not wanting him to alert another administrator like the one I somehow broke away from, I reserved the truth.
Not that I knew much if it at that time anyway.
"~I see...~" Squinting with a pause, the man's caution compounded. "~So, what brings you to me? To this world?~"
"I need help getting to another world."
"~Hoh..?~" His brow instantly raised. "~And what is the name of that world?~" Motioning to open his system, his caution rapidly began easing.
"Earth."
The ripples in his hair almost seemed to stutter as silence washed between us. "~I'm.. afraid I'm not familiar with that name...~" Turning to his system, a deep confusion finally washed over his expression. "~Do you know it's 'World ID'?~"
-World ID...- It was a unique string of numbers, letters, and symbols every world had. Able to be found in almost anything, from items acquired in that world, to logs of transactions with system gold, it was typically common knowledge, especially so to residents. -But I didn't think of grabbing it when I was fucking there...-
Getting annoyed, my mind churned to try and remember something.. a glance.. a gloss where I could have seen it...
But there was nothing at all.
...Until...
Looking over my shoulder to find Bella looking at me, confused, I checked with her. "Do you know Earth's World ID?"
"World.. ID..?" Tilting her head, her eyes drifted for a moment before something finally clicked. "Ah." Hopping off my back, she walked off until just her tail remained touching me before robotically sputtering, "Eden2020A."
Turning back to the god, unsure if I needed to repeat it, I watched as he tapped through a number of panels before suddenly stopping his finger just above one.
In a single blink, his expression froze—his eyes darkening before finally turning back to me. "~That is.. quite a low rank world...~" Anger, displeasure, and skepticism washed over his face in an instant. "~What is a being like you going there for..?~"
I paused before straightening my expression. "To retire my days as a slave."
His expression paused, keeping his eyes locked on my chest as if to look into my soul before closing his panels with an idle wave. "~Okay.~" The few remaining emotions on his face vanished instantly—his response blunt and punctuated. "~I will permit it... However, I cannot use a normal gate as the rank difference between this world and it is too wide, I do apologize.~"
Feeling something was off, I wanted to object.
But I couldn't tell where the lie laid.
*Snap-Vwoop* Getting pulled through a gate at the snap of his fingers, I watched the beautiful, flowery valley morph into a dark, vast land of volcanic rock beneath a sky blotted with ash.
*Beep* My system lit up in the same instant: '20 quests created. Granting to suitable users in system.'
"~You see, its difficult to break the system's rules—expensive too—and with my world on the verge of being cleaned, I can't afford to send you.~"
Seeing him point to my side, I looked over just for my gaze to be consumed by the gape of a colossal dungeon—it's nearly five kilometer-wide, circular entrance laying on the ground like the maw of a colossal monster.
"~That is at least for now.~" Finally beginning to ease, the elven man's expression lightened for the first time. "~Clear this dungeon for me, and I will send you where you wish. Is that reasonable?~"
Letting my eyes linger on it's void-like entrance, I tried to feel for presences inside before opening my system map and zooming to find exactly 20 dots seemingly inside the planet. -These must be the last sentient monsters on the planet...- And sure enough, backing to my main panel, I saw the population was now 22, ticked down by one after the death of the wyvern. -How nice of him to organize them in one place...-
It was basically an extermination request: one of the most common quests in worlds of this rank. -Is this what he thinks he's being sneaky about?-
It was work, but certainly nothing I wasn't used to.
However, with a pause, I fell into thought before simply peeling back my glove to show the faintly cracked, black mythril ring still on my finger. "Could you unlock this equipment ring for me? The System locked my axe in it."
In my final moments of being dragged away from Earth, I managed to somehow pull Draco out of it, but in my experimenting on this world, I couldn't tell how.
And somehow, while I was sure a god would know, the moment he laid eyes on it, his expression tightened. "~I'm afraid.. I cannot...~" Looking closer, he struggled to hide his unease. "~That mana lock is.. beyond my knowledge... The System doesn't even recognize it as an item.~"
-Oh.. that's not good...- Feeling my stomach twist at the possibility of Draco no longer being in it, I clenched my fist with a heavy breath before putting my glove back on. "Hooh... Alright..." -Of course it wouldn't be that easy...- "Well, since that leaves me without anything, could you get me a weapon?"
He was quick to nod before dropping a white, oversized sledgehammer out of a gate at my feet. *CRUNCH*
It was so heavy it cracked the ground, but... *tap-WOOM* ...It felt light as a feather. -Is this really the best he has..?- Considering the world's rank, the hammer felt.. cheap...
But I still figured it was better than nothing, and after pulling Bella back onto my back, I ventured into the abyssal dungeon entrance to begin the slaughter.
And a slaughter it was...
Being nowhere near the strength of the wyvern I initially fought several weeks prior, the monsters in that dungeon got culled like cattle, and to my surprise, the hammer actually lasted a few hits—the shaft snapping in half as I caved in the skull of the eighth monster: a huge armored turtle.
However that certainly didn't slow my pace. Spending less than a couple minutes on each of the remaining monsters, I breezed through the dungeon with ease before coming into the final room where the last target laid, setting Bella down, and killing it before it woke up.
It was a mercy killing—splattering its blood over the huge, glowing dungeon core at the center of the circular, open room with a kick to its temple.
But while my eyes were locked on that dozen meter wide, glowing blue dungeon core, debating whether or not to check it out.. the elven god appeared before me. "~What a terrifying thing you are...~" Motioning his hand to the side without wasting a single instant, precisely 20 gates opened to drop mana cores around the one at the center of the dungeon. "~This should be plenty, thank you. You've done me quite the favor.~"
Though I didn't know the purpose of extermination quests, seeing his caution finally disappear, I eased. "No worries." Quickly picking Bella up as she ran up next to me, this time holding her against my chest, I hopped off the final monster's gored head. "So, how is this going to work?"
"~Please just stay there.~" Moving between me and the accumulation of cores at the center of the dungeon, he brought me to a pause. "~If you are too close to those cores, they will kill your.. unusual friend there.~"
-What..?- It was a simple statement.. one I couldn't disprove...
But it felt.. wrong...
Since appearing here, his demeanor shifted—the pace of his words and jittering of his movements.. something changed...
But he had no plans to give me time to think. *VWOOOOM* Before I could move, the cores at the center of the room liquified, not releasing everything in a single blast, but morphing and collecting into a single, thick mass akin to living tar—funneling the gaseous release of mana over Bella and I.
But it wasn't enough to suppress my own exuding mana.. and while faint, as it swamped me, I felt like there was a second focused column of mana.. not moving toward me.. but running outside of the dungeon...
Feeling something was wrong, I opened my system again...
However, the main panel didn't greet me with what I expected... The world's population.. didn't read '2' as it should have...
...It read '3'...
And as I got wrapped in a gate without a chance to say another word.. I watched it tick to 2.. and then to 1.. before flickering into darkness...
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