System Finale: An Apocalyptic Space Opera LitRPG (The System Apocalypse Book 12) Page 5

  “I didn’t ask,” I protest.

  “You were going to. Weren’t you?” I hesitate, but that hesitation is more than enough for the perceptive reporter. “I knew it. Fuck you, John. You sodding fool, you’re always trying to drag me down. It’s no wonder Lana left you. Why anyone sane keeps you light years away.”

  I flinch a little at his accusation, though a part of me knows it’s true. Those who are stable, who learned to move on and aren’t hell-bent on destroying themselves, they know better than to associate with me. I wish he was wrong, but I don’t say a thing when he stands and walks off.

  “You’re a goddamn user, John. And like any other addict, the moment you’re done, you just throw your drug away. Except we’re the drugs, and the damage you do… God. I don’t know why I agreed to come.” Then he’s out of the sliding doors. I see his hand twitch and I know, just know, he wants a door to slam. A way to vent his anger and hurt.

  There’s not much I can do for him, so I sit there and watch him leave. I let myself stew in his words for a few seconds, but then I move on. No different than before. There’s no startling revelation here, no life-changing moment of enlightenment. The sessions of screaming my head off have stripped away any sense of falsity.

  I know what I am and what I want. And yeah, if Harry’s there, if he’ll let me, I’ll use him. Until he’s no more than a shrub. Then I’ll move on. Not without regrets, I’m not that much of a monster. But without hesitation, certainly.

  So maybe it’s a good thing Mikito and Bolo have been taking their time finding me.

  Maybe.

  Chapter 5

  I keep thinking he’ll come back. Keep thinking we’ll have a chance to converse again. Maybe I can convince him to help. Or maybe he’ll tell me to go dig a hole and bury myself in it. Something. Instead, a week passes—a relatively quiet week with only a single torture session—before I accept that Harry isn’t coming back. Either that, or Sephra has decided not to let him return.

  I cling to that second option, just as I cling to the idea that Mikito and Bolo will bring me back. I clutch the thought tightly, holding the belief in my heart to warm the cockles of my soul in the deep of the night.

  So when they eject my cell into the void, I’m just a little surprised.

  ***

  There’s no warning, no indication of a problem. There’s no need to be. Unlike a regular prison, whatever goes on on the other side of the door—the one that leads to normal reality—is hidden entirely. You could set off a nuke on the other side and it wouldn’t get to me, not unless they wanted it to. Which means if there’s a problem—like, say, a focused Samurai and an obstinate Dragon Lord running around causing trouble—there’s no need to alert the prisoners.

  There are more than a few tragic stories of individuals believing they’ve been abandoned in dimensional prisons or dimensional rifts, where they eventually succumb to the loneliness and despair and kill themselves, only for their rescuers to stumble in moments later to find the corpse cooling. It’s such a ridiculous trope, but like most good tropes, it has enough of the ring of truth and morality that it keeps being played, over and over again.

  Now, I know they’ve detached me from the normal prison due to a few reasons. Firstly, it’s not as though I’m physically attached to anything, so it’s not like a ship cutting its mooring lines free. There’s no lurch, no change in motion or sway that alerts me.

  No, it’s much simpler and all due to the fact that I’m a System Administrator. One second, I have my usual restricted access to the Ticketing Board; the next second, I’m getting a bunch of new notifications and my restricted access widens to its full levels.

  Mana, good old Mana, flows around me faster than ever, pushing into the dimensional plane I’m in, eroding the enchantments that keep my Skills and abilities at bay. That’s a good thing, especially since I can’t break the damn things around my wrists and neck without help.

  “Bad news… the stability of this dimension is also being pulled apart,” I mutter out loud to myself, missing Ali now more than ever. The Spirit has a much better knowledge about secondary dimensions. He could figure out how long this will take to break down. How long it will take before I become…

  Well. That’s the other question, isn’t it?

  I’m still in my little slice of reality, everything outside of me hidden. I’m in a different secondary dimension for sure; the question is which one? If I was the one creating the prison, I’d make sure that whatever secondary dimension my prison cell was locked to was a dangerous one. Something entirely inimical to life.

  Not something partly inimical like the shadow dimension we spent so much time in, but something entirely opposed to life. Void, entropy, a howling mass of energy… all of those would work. Tough as I am, with my Skills locked down, I doubt I’d last long in one of those. Especially since I don’t have the Hod or even my newer power armor.

  “Fuck…” I bite my lip, considering my options.

  There’s one that might help. A little. It’s also dangerous, potentially shortening the lifespan of the dimensional cell I’m in. Doing so could screw up Mikito’s plans, make it harder for them to save me. If I sit and do nothing, that might be what she’s planning for.

  I have to sit back and trust her… or take things in my own hands.

  “Thousand hells.” I pace a little, running a hand through my hair. I’m glad the System seems to feel thinning hair is a deficiency, because if not, between the stress I’m dealing with and the pain, I have a feeling I’d be rather bald. “Stay or go?”

  My neck gets cracked, my pacing resumes. I poke at the clothing I have—just simple jumpsuits with no defenses or anything. I eye the chair, then take a few moments to break off the feet to give me a pair of clubs. Pitiful weapons, but they might be better than nothing.

  That thought is reinforced when something slams into the side of my little bubble of reality and the entire thing shakes. It’s big, so, so big that it could slam into the side of a building and make it all shake—and still have mass leftover. So big, it impacts the very barrier of reality.

  I gulp a little and bounce a bit more, waiting. I can’t help but wonder why they let me loose, what has happened. If Mikito really did plan for this to happen, and if not, if this is my end.

  They say you come to see things clearer when you’re about to die, see all the regrets and opportunities you’ve missed. Mostly, all I feel is the boiling pit of rage within me growing, the refusal to let this be it. If I’m going to get dropped into the middle of… something, I’ll go out swinging.

  I mime the motions with the pair of broken sticks, waiting, my stomach curdled and angry.

  Then I lurch as the entire prison cell twists and pulls, something clamping onto the dimensional plane, holding onto it with its mouth. It’s very, very big mouth. I can’t help but think not again as I’m threatened with being eaten by a monster.

  Then an all-too-familiar feeling rushes through me.

  And time, sped up for so long, reasserts itself once more.

  I return to normal reality in the mouth of something big and nasty, just as the walls of my dimensional plane pop and everything comes crashing back together.

  Hard.

  ***

  When I talked about how things don’t go so well when you return to reality without taking the proper precautions? Well, the good news is, being inside the mouth of a dimension-hopping creature actually counts as proper precautions. Most living things have some level of stability, an aura of personal reality imparted by their sentience, Mana, and the System. A dimension-hopping creature just has a lot more of it.

  The bad news is that the sudden yanking from one world to another breaches the dimensional barrier keeping everything together. Everything that’s contained—which definitely includes me—explodes out of the creature’s mouth, causing it to roar.

  That’s the good news.

  Yeah, being spat out of a giant monster’s mouth, getting coated in saliv
a and stinky, half-rotten breath is good news. After all, I’m not getting swallowed or being introduced to new and novel stomach acids or finding out that said creature swallows razor blades and hardened rock to help crush what it eats.

  Instead, I just fall hundreds of feet without any of my usual Skills or spells to stop me. Orientation takes a bit, my head still ringing from the roars and a piece of the table that clips me on the way out. In between the debris of the prison cell, I get my first glimpse of the ground below and Xy’largh.

  The sky is blue, closer to twilight blue than the bright blue of Earth mornings. Clouds roam the skies, some of which I plunge through, the mixture of acid and water within burning my skin as I drop. So, acid rain is a thing. As are giant green conifers, some of which look like skyscrapers. It makes me wonder exactly how high I am, how the atmosphere is managing to hold up here. Then again, the entire damn planet is heavy—the gravity is at least one and a half times that of Earth normal.

  All of which is another way of saying I’m falling fast with big, nasty things all around me, occasionally impacting me as I struggle to get outside of the debris field. Free falling has never been something I practiced as a human, and while I’ve done it a bit since the System advent, I’ve also had my mecha armor and flying spells.

  At least, I have to admit, this planet isn’t too different from Earth from up here. Grass is green, trees are green and brown, you know—the normal things. Mountains high up to the right of me, to what I’ll call the west since that’s where the sun is angling toward.

  Oh, wait…

  Suns. Two of them, neither shining that brightly, but that’s different. Also, I’m catching sight of a moon in the distance, visible in daylight. I know there are multiple moons around the planet, what with them hosting more than a few stations.

  All that, my brain processes in a few seconds. A ton of information, and somehow, I feel as though I’m missing something. And it’s not how the saliva burns or smells, nor the way it freezes on my body as I fall.

  Saliva…

  I blink as I feel something shift and pop in my head and everything clears. System-assisted healing finally finishes its job and I remember what I forgot. The flying monster.

  Spinning around, I catch proper sight of it at last. The giant, flying dragon that picked me up. I get a good long look at its gleaming purple and green scales, the way it arcs itself and flares its wings, the bulk of its body that makes a 747 seem small, the way its wings are huge, almost like a bat’s wings but double the dragon’s size.

  And the claws. Smaller, grasping claws in the front for use—not too small for usefulness, like a T-rex’s, but a good size to grab and grip and rend.

  Then it pulls up, giant wings deploying to break its dive and curve it upward. I’m thrown around a little by the change in air flow, but the damn creature corrects itself without a problem, long razor claws the size of my body closing around my free-falling form.

  I attempt to get away, but there’s not much I can do, not in the middle of space, not without my Skills. It grabs me, wings deploy outward with a jerk that slams me into the edges of the claws, then we’re gliding, the trees below all too close.

  And somehow, I’m not dead.

  ***

  First thought that goes through my mind is that the dragon’s bringing me home for snackies. You know, like how birds will drag back prey for their chicks to feed them. Of course, bringing back live prey seems a bit much, but what do I know about the feeding and care of dragons? That’s right, quite a bit.

  Stupid Library.

  Second thought, coming soon after that, is maybe the dragon is a friend. After all, Bolo’s a Dragon Lord, which means he must have had some form of a relationship with a dragon. The entire codependent relationship between the native Xy’larghs and the dragons is, at best, messed up. Since they weren’t exactly interesting for the System Quest, the Questors only have the briefest mentions of them in the library, their focus more on the actual processing of Mana through dragons.

  What I do know is that young dragons are considered overactive pests and monsters. At least until they age—Level—up and gain a higher level of sapience. Due to the variety of mutations the dragons have exhibited, the way they handle their children varies too—and that includes the way they socialize with Xy’largh society.

  You get the basic reptilian, non-transforming dragons who are just giant lizards with a lot of power and anger. They’re the most common by far, and they are mostly egg layers. These dragons are actually the best parents, laying eggs and caring for their children until they grow up enough that they can hunt on their own. Of course, once that happens, it’s the open skies for them.

  Dragons—all kinds—are rather territorial, so you won’t find them sharing homes very much. A mated pair is rare. The majority just go into heat, head for the closest mating grounds, get their freak on, then move onward.

  Oh, by the way, if you don’t know, Questors are really weird. The sheer volume of recordings of dragon mating rituals and studies I have in my head would have filled the vaults of the British Library and then some. Just… why?

  Anyway. Dragons. Lots of types, mostly reptilian, but some variant combination types—some whom might not be called “true” dragons and in common parlance get translated to chimeras—and of course, you have the transforming / tamed ones.

  All the things that people call Dragons, they’re sort of the same, since many of the ones that can polymorph into—or start out—humanoid are also the ones most likely to work with and be the trusted steeds of a Dragon Knight. While reptilian dragon companions do happen, it’s rarer since they’re also more stubborn and less likely to agree. Also, full sapience is often much, much further down the road for them, and until then, it’s hard to keep a reptilian polymorph alive or tamed.

  On the other hand, the reptilian dragons are much more powerful in direct combat. Stronger physical bodies, higher resistance to damage, that kind of thing. The polymorphing kind have access to spells but not Skills or Classes, so they’re a little more limited. Then again—tell the four-hundred-foot-long sapient monster it’s weak.

  Go ahead. I won’t be waiting for your return.

  Long story short… this might be Bolo’s friend. Or it might just be your average, high Level reptilian dragon. I can’t tell, what with my Skills locked out. I struggle a little, trying to put my hands around the bracer on one wrist, hoping to pull it off.

  Of course, they don’t exactly want me to do that, and I feel the secondary defenses kick in. Spikes extend from within both bracers, punching through my muscles and bones to connect one side to the other. Just like that, any hope of pulling them off is gone.

  I don’t try for my neck. I can live—for definitions of live—with having my arms pin cushioned by finger-sized metal from the feel of it. I can’t do the same if it does that to my neck.

  I lie.

  I can live even if the damn necklace punches metal rivets through my neck. The System will keep me up and running. Not happily mind you, not well, but it will keep me up and running. But the chances of them choosing to add something more lethal if I struggle to pull the collar off are quite high.

  In fact, now that I think about it, I’m lucky they didn’t link decapitation options to me trying to pull off the bracers.

  I feel a chill run through my body at that thought, and it has nothing to do with the fact that we’re still flying high, where oxygen and external temperatures are damnably low. I’ve got a bit of a pounding headache from the low oxygen levels, but again, the System keeps me up and running.

  One last option right now is for me to tap into System Edit. I can swing into the Ticketing Board and potentially review the Mana flows and tickets to do with this dragon. I can’t actually hurt it, what with the Skill not meant for that—especially since I don’t have access to my own Skills—but more knowledge is good.

  More knowledge is very, very good.

  The deluge of information that comes when
I tap into the dragon’s Status Screen via System Edit makes my head hurt. I get everything from its names—Barachine’jaes, the Shining and Terrible One, the Blood Star, She Who Sinned—to its Titles—see above and a bunch more Slayer ones—to a whole listing of Mana flow diagrams, input and output, Mana mutation levels, and more.

  I admit, I get a little lost in the diagrams about Mana flow, the way her presence affects the environmental Mana and the incredibly high variance in changes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, not up close. Sure, I knew Xy’largh was special and I’d been watching the overall trends, but this is the first time I get to see individual details.

  And it’s fascinating. It also explains why the entire planet has managed to survive for so long within the Forbidden Zone.

  I’m so caught up in the information, I never notice when the dragon reaches her destination and decides it’s time to land. Of course, I do notice when she starts landing, what with the way she splays her wings—by the way, the entire flight thing has been rather more gentle and less bumpy than I’d expect, what with a certain portion of her entire flight being supported via Mana use—and slows down.

  I crane my neck around but being clutched tight in her claws doesn’t give me much of a view. All I can see is her belly, shining scales, claws, and out of the corner of my eyes, the fast-approaching stony ground around the mouth of the cave she is landing in.

  Very fast approaching.

  In fact, too fast.

  “Oh shiiiiit!” I scream, which seems to annoy my captor.

  We land with a crunch, the crunch mostly me. Bones shatter, muscle and tissue squish, then I pass out as the System’s healings and my body fail.

  Chapter 6

  “Gentle! I said gentle!” The voice is screaming as I wake up slowly. It’s a familiar voice, one I’m surprised to hear but find comforting in a distant way. I’m not exactly sure why though, as I wake slowly from dreams of chocolate fountains, a giant tiger, and a certain popular 90s blond actor feeding me chocolate-covered strawberries.