Broken Council: A Space Opera Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG (The System Apocalypse Book 10) Read online

  Broken Council

  Book 10 of the System Apocalypse

  By

  Tao Wong

  License Notes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Broken Council

  Copyright © 2021 Tao Wong. All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2021 Sarah Anderson Cover Designer

  A Tao Wong Book

  Published by Starlit Publishing

  69 Teslin Rd

  Whitehorse, YT

  Y1A 3M5

  Canada

  www.starlitpublishing.com

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989994-45-0

  Print ISBN: 978-1-989994-46-7

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-989994-47-4

  Contents

  What Has Gone Before

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Books in the System Apocalypse Universe

  Glossary

  Erethran Honor Guard Skill Tree

  John’s Erethran Honor Guard Skills

  Paladin of Erethra Skill Tree

  John’s Paladin of Erethra Skills

  Grand Paladin Skills

  Junior Administrator Skills

  Other Class Skills

  Spells

  Equipment

  What Has Gone Before

  John Lee has come a long way fom his mountain campsite in the Yukon when the System first initiated on Earth. He’s helped stabilize Earth’s politics, travelled across the galaxy and, in his latest adventure, helped the Erethran Empire choose its next Empress.

  Along the way, he’s continued his search for an answer to the first Quest he ever received – What is the System.

  At the end of his recent adventure, he achieved a new height of power, a Heroic Class. Except, unknown to most, is the fact that his Heroic Class shown to all – Grand Paladin – is but a ruse, a lie for what he truly gained. For John found a Hidden Class, that of a Junior Administrator of the System.

  It’s a secret with dire implications and those who would keep it hidden have already acted, attacking Earth’s embassy on Irvina, the capital of the Galaxy.

  Chapter 1

  The Portal opens five hundred sixty meters in the air. When I step through it, I free-fall. Beneath me, the herd of L’liest CaTues cover the ground like the bison herds of yore, their mottled brown and green skin hiding the trampled earth beneath.

  The L’liest are six-legged scaled behemoths whose bellows reach me high above, as does the never-ceasing pounding of their feet. They’re tiny figures to my eyes, belying their actual size tens of meters tall and half as wide. Spirals of razor-sharp spikes, dripping with poison, jut from their bodies in a vicious pattern. From their six-eyed, conical faces, roars of dissatisfaction and grunts of anger erupt in rhythmic regularity as they search for prey.

  In the distance, the earth shakes and rocks dance on cracked, sun-baked pale-yellow clay. The desolate vista is broken by the occasional glimpse of purple cacti. Around me, as I plummet, the sky is lit with the pale-yellow light of the dying sun, a massive thing in the last couple of million years of its life.

  A surge of will and I call forth their Status information.

  L’liest CaTues (Level 187)

  HP: 18,736/18752*

  MP: 2457/2457

  Conditions: Hardened Skin, Scaled Protection, Poisonous Fog, Acoustic Beat, Power of the Herd*

  * Health is shared among all members of the herd, as is damage.

  Beside me, as I fall, Ali hovers, cross-legged. My tiny, six-inch-tall Spirit companion is clad in his usual orange jumpsuit. Skin the color of tanned wood, with a sculpted goatee, his fingers play across invisible screens as we plummet.

  “You know, I’m sure you’ve done dumber things in the past. But I am forgetting them…”

  “It’s the pressure. I’ve done a lot dumber things,” I reassure Ali. Even as I speak, I’ve split my attention enough to begin the process of calling forth my Skills. I start with the simple ones.

  Soul Shield for protection.

  A Thousand Blades to give me access to copies of my Soulbound sword.

  Aura of Chivalry for the damage bonus and intimidation effect.

  Eye of the Storm to concentrate their focus on me.

  The Evolved Penetration Skill to give me a secondary shield defense.

  Then I kick on my Hoverboots and float. The creatures below are trumpeting their dissatisfaction, my Soul Shield shimmering as their audio attacks slam into it. I’m not in my Hod right now, the power armor stored away. Replacing it would be expensive, and between my evolved Penetration Skill shielding and Soul Shield, I should be safe enough.

  Lastly, to add shielding points to my Penetration Skill, I call forth a Beacon of the Angels. The ritual glyph forms in the air, a circular oval of light showering the herd with pure, unadulterated energy.

  L’liest CaTueses crisp beneath the azure glow of formed energy, scales cracking, poison mists burning away. They thrash and scream as a damage counter in the corner of my vision ticks up.

  Beacon of the Angels is an area effect Skill, a near-perfect Skill for dealing with the horde. Near perfect since the radius of damage is insufficient as portions of the damage dealt are split between the entirety of the herd. Those caught outside see a small blip down, tens of hit points before their natural regeneration pops them back up.

  Individual L’liest caught within the attack take more damage as only a portion of the damage is transferred. But their resistances, their Levels are high enough that I’d have to keep spamming the Skill to take out a single L’liest.

  All this takes place in fractions of a second.

  I hover, watching the effects of my attack—or the lack of them—and end up shaking my head. There’s a reason the L’liest have managed to survive this long and overrun an entire planet. Built up to this level, Power of the Herd is an insane Skill to overcome. You either have to get a whole army hammering at them in multiple assault locations to drive down the hit points of the entire herd or…

  Well.

  Me.

  But for now, I take my time. Spell buffs are cast, just the basics. Health and Mana Regeneration, some physical damage resistance.
An Elemental damage spell boost to add a little punch. And that’s about it.

  There are other buffs that might work and wouldn’t directly conflict with the buffs I already have. I could even have asked for them from the fleet hanging around in space above. But then I’d have to share the XP. And it wouldn’t be a proper test of what I can do alone.

  So.

  Me, by myself, to start. Until I tear down enough of the monster herd’s health that it makes sense for the fleet to get involved. I watch the living carpet of scales and furious six-legged monsters, a writhing, heaving mass of anger, and find myself grinning.

  There were other options. Other ways of doing this.

  Considering everything over the last few months, everything that happened since Katherine’s call, letting loose feels right. That I gain the support of the Erethran Empire as a by-product is a nice bonus.

  “You know, cackling madly to yourself isn’t normally considered normal, boy-o,” Ali says.

  “Bite me.”

  To punctuate my point, I raise my hand and call forth the first of my untested Skills.

  Immovable Object / Unstoppable Force (Level 1)

  A Paladin cannot be stopped. A Paladin cannot be moved. A Paladin is a force of the Erethran Empire on the battlefield. This Skill exemplifies this simple concept. Let all who doubt the strength of the Paladin tremble!

  Use: User must select to be an Immovable Object or Unstoppable Force. Effect varies depending on choice. Skill combines with Aura of Chivalry to provide a smaller (10% of base effect) bonus to all friendlies within range.

  Effect 1 (Immovable Object): Constitution, Health, and Damage Resistance (All) increased by 200% of User’s current total. All knockback effects are mitigated (including environmental knockback effects).

  Effect 2 (Unstoppable Force): Agility, Movement Speed, Momentum, and Damage Calculations based off Momentum increased by 200% of User’s current total. Damage from other attacks increased by 100%. Only active while user is moving.

  Cost: 5MP/s

  I only put a single point in this because I wanted to reach Domain. I’d even gone so far as to spend my Credits—okay, the Empire’s Credits—to get this Skill level.

  Now, I’m curious how it would affect things. A surge of energy sent a simple Firestorm spell down into the midst of the monsters, in the same area where I’d launched my initial attack.

  “So?” I ask Ali. I’d rather do that than run the math myself.

  “Nowhere near enough.”

  “I was hoping for a little more detail,” I mutter.

  “Really? You really want to know the math? Fine. The L’liest have a base fire resistance of 287% with their Power of the Herd Skill boosting that by another 63%. However, you’ve got a 90% Penetration Skill, allowing you to disregard all but 46.781% of that damage resistance. Now, your Firestorm does approximately a thousand points of base damage, which means you are dealing on average 532.19 points of fire damage,” Ali lectures me. “But that’s if you land a head-on strike, which excludes mitigating maneuvers, dodges, et cetera.

  “Which, luckily for us, the L’liest are too dumb to do. So, 532.19 points of fire damage is applied to their hit points, which is doubled by Unstoppable Force. However, you have to include critical damage strikes to those that didn’t blink, minus those that did, add in the base regeneration levels they all have, take away crowding effects—”

  “Enough, I get it,” I say, waving. “We’re doing around a thousand plus points of damage to the L’liest or so, but they’ve got eighteen thousand points just base. And that’s not including them shaving off a chunk for the rest of the herd.”

  “Exactly,” Ali says. “You aren’t doing enough.”

  “That figures,” I say.

  It’s one of the reasons why I bought the damn Skill direct from the System. It’s not good enough for a lone fighter like me. If combined with the Aura Skill in the front of an army, that ten percent boost would be amazing. Split across thousands, and if those thousands were elites?

  Either way, not my problem. I call forth the next Skill. It forms around me, seeming to twist the atmosphere by its very presence. I feel the Mana around me warp, change as my Skill takes it in-hand and make reality bend to its will. Immediately, I feel the Domain Skill working on me.

  Domain (Level 1)

  With chains that bind, and threads that extend from one to another, a Paladin is the center of events. In his Domain, enemies will break and allies will bend knee. Let the enemies of the Empire tremble before a Paladin with his Domain.

  Effect 1: All enemy combatants receive -10% attribute decreases, a +10% increase in Mana cost, and lose 25 HP per second while within range of the Domain.

  Effect 2: All allies receive a +10% increase in health regeneration, a 10% increase in attribues, and a reduction of -10% in Mana cost (semi-stackable) while within range of the Domain.

  Range: 10 Meters

  Cost: 500 Mana + 5 Mana per Second

  One of the biggest aspects of Domain is its significantly lower upkeep cost. For example, my Eye of the Storm costs me a ridiculous 20 Mana per second, which leaves me using it only occasionally to draw attention and keep the focus of enemies on me for a short period. As a taunt Skill, it’s incredibly wasteful, other than its ability to affect multiple individuals at a time. Then again, it costs so much because it is a taunt Skill, since direct affect Skills on emotional and mental states are more expensive than physical effect Skills.

  Whereas Domain, I could theoretically keep running constantly. Its upkeep is low enough that my natural regeneration leaves me able to keep it active, though obviously, I have fewer options if I do so.

  Unfortunately, its range is pretty short, and it doesn’t stack damage effects. While it increases my base attributes, it doesn’t increase my Mana regeneration at all.

  “All right, let’s try this again anyway,” I mutter.

  Another Beacon of the Angels hammers the angry herd below. Ali watches the damage logs while I wait for my Mana to regenerate. I idly throw a Firestorm too when Ali bitches about messing with test results.

  Now, you might be thinking, that’s great and all, but why isn’t the giant fleet in orbit showering kinetic weapons and beam attacks down onto the herd below? My Beacon of the Angels is pretty powerful, but it’s hard to compete with orbit-launched kinetic weaponry. Even with the penalties that the System places upon pure tech, there’s still something to be said about a gravity-drawn half-ton of mass.

  There are a few reasons, as always. There’s the issue of lost XP. Launching orbital bombardments on monsters is damn safe, so it means that the System reduces the XP gain quite a lot. In a world where everyone wants more experience to go up in Levels, no one wants to waste it.

  But more importantly, the System doesn’t let it happen. Oh, you can still drop giant rocks, and if you’ve got the Skills, you can do damage. But the farther away you are from entering a planet’s boundary, the greater the mass of Mana you have to push through. The greater the amount of Mana—and Mana generally is denser the closer you get to the surface—the greater the damage reduction.

  Again, tossing planet killers or other orbital strikes around is still possible, but the cost and time taken in many cases is incredibly high.

  As importantly, you need to have backup options—individuals on the ground to deal with the sudden increase in spawning as the attacks and subsequent deaths release a bunch of unruly System Mana. Without sapients on the ground to soak up the Mana, you have a different problem—unchecked Mana mutations. And those mutations often result in some truly scary monsters—the kind that can fire back at orbiting spaceships.

  It wasn’t always like this. At one point, it was possible to unleash a ton of nukes and kinetic strikes and then mop up a little. But thousands of years ago, so far back that most people don’t even realize it, that changed. It was one of the first major changes in the way the System worked.

  M: …this change in damage done via technology m
akes no sense. The Council should not be choosing to do this, not when we need to keep our planets from being overrun.

  J: Agreed. This can’t be the Council’s doing.

  K: Then who? The Council controls the System.

  M: I think that’s why we have the System Quest. To find out who controls the System, really.

  J: I disagree. If it meant that, it should have said so. Not ask what the System and Mana itself is.

  …

  The memory from the library surfaces, detailed correspondence from a time so long ago, humanity was still beating each other with sticks and huddling around a fire. It sweeps me away for a second before I wrestle the memory under control.

  I’m getting better at controlling the uncontrolled release of information into my brain. The Corrupt Questor’s library, the entire damn repository of their knowledge squeezed into my brain and then encrypted. The encryption has been breaking down, and with it, additional secrets are coming to the fore.

  “Are you done yet? Some of us are getting impatient here,” Bolo’s voice cackles over the communicator.

  I grunt, almost imagining the seven-foot-tall alien with his ram-horns glowering at my image. “Soon. Hold your… dragons.”

  “Why would I hold my dragons? Do you think we do not take good care of them?” Bolo growls. “That’s a lie! Any dragon the Knights take control of are well cared for. Who told you—”

  I kill the communicator, focusing on my next Skill. This is the big one from the Master Class that I wanted to try. It’s a pity I failed to Evolve it, but that’s the risk you run.

  Judgment of All (Level 6)

  An Emperor might sit in judgment of those who defy them, but a Paladin sits in judgment of all who fall before his gaze. Desire bends and debases itself. Duty shatters under the weight of ever-greater burdens. Morality shifts under the winds of circumstance. In the eyes of those he serves, a Paladin’s judgment must be impeccable. Under his gaze, those underserving will fall. So long as his honor holds true, judgment will follow.