Forbidden Zone, page 3
“Didn’t think about that, did you? Why aren’t they here? By now, I’ve crossed every line they might have. They should be here pounding me into the dirt themselves,” I say. “Instead, you’re here. And you probably weren’t even told to do so. Just running on your old programming like a good wind-up doll.”
Kasva gestures and the thrown blade of light cracks against my Soul Shield, piercing through it partially and penetrating the Hod’s armor. My health slips a little, but none of his Affinity is embedded in the attack.
Mikito moves forward, only to be blocked by Buidoi. Polearm and incorporeal figurines outlined in purple and white energy clash as Buidoi deploys his own Skill, forming his psychic puppets. They keep clashing, spinning from side to side, but Mikito’s checked. At least for the moment.
Feh’ral doesn’t do anything, just watching. Neither does Ali. They both must have guessed my train of thought.
Even after taking the blade of light that slowly disperses, leaving a hole in my shield, I don’t attack. Nor does Kasva follow up his attack.
“So. You going to fight me or you going to watch as your employers fall?”
“What did you do?” Kasva says.
“Just told a little truth, that’s all.” I grin, knowing I have him now. He could fight me, but Penetration’s Evolved Skill means he won’t be able to finish me fast. He knows it, I know it. And he doesn’t have the benefit of hiding what he can do anymore. I saw his Skills in our last fight. “Truth. Weightless, insubstantial, impossible to grasp. But with the ability to change reality itself when revealed to the right people at the right time. A snowflake on the mountainside, causing an avalanche of… chaos.”
Kasva growls and steps forward.
But the Warden of Life grasps his arm, shaking his head. He whispers, but I read his lips anyway. “He speaks truth. One of the Council Members is dead. Another is close.”
Kasva stops delaying. A fist clenches and he’s gone. His abrupt disappearance catches Buidoi by surprise, though not Nuan. She blips away, and as Buidoi triggers his Skill to leave, I slam the door shut with Quantum Lock. A fraction of the second later, I feel his teleport bounce off my Skill, setting my teeth on edge. Of course, he’s got his own way to penetrate teleport locks, but I don’t let him. I make use of the planetary locks with System Edit and keep his attempts at escape shut down.
“Wha—?” He spins toward me, looking worse for wear as he bounces off again, the very fabric of his body tearing apart and coming back together again and again in short order.
His Skills have begun to disperse because he let the phantom figures go. After all, he’d need to resummon them when he followed Kasva. Too late, he realizes his mistake. Mikito does not wait for Buidoi to recover from the pain, the surprise.
Blitz turns on, combining with Charge and the already cast Haste spell. She slams into Buidoi with a vengeance and pins him with Hitoshi, the polearm bursting through his chest and holding him aloft, blood dripping down his sinuous body. The naginata is glowing, sucking at Buidoi’s lifeforce as he struggles weakly while impaled.
I’m not done either, for I throw one of my daggers at him. I imbue a Grand Cross in it, shoving it down such that its area of effect is tiny, no more than a few centimeters wide. The dagger enters just above the left of where his hip would be, piercing his defenses with ease. And then the Skill triggers and parts him from his lower half. The tail thrashes and flops around while blood pours from his chest and lower torso.
Pushing forward, Mikito takes them forward, still connected by the naginata. Mikito spins through the air with cat-like grace, landing first and hoisting Buidoi upward. Hitoshi keeps sucking down his life, never letting him detach himself while Mikito triggers attack Skills through the connection.
Buidoi recovers from the surprise and pain of our attacks and blasts area effect attacks at the both of us. It’s a real headache, but it’s not enough. Especially when Ali throws himself into the battle and messes with the electromagnetic charge in his brain. Feh’ral’s eyes go blank as he taps into my connection and reinforces my Dimensional Lock, putting a stop to any escape attempts.
In the end, finishing off the Master Class is a matter of stabbing. Emergency Skills and enchantments patch him together a few times even as a shield defense attempts to flow around Hitoshi. None of it helps. Mikito doesn’t need much of my help, so I turn my attention to the next step.
Which is activating Plan B.
***
“It’s not happening,” Dornalor says over the call, arms crossed.
I’m patched into the ether with him, communicating via a hijacked and hacked signal from Harry’s Rebel Broadcast Skill. Skill Edit is making my body hurt, my nerves burn, but thankfully, it’s only a minor change to make our communication line stable. At least, when I’m shifting it from a broadband burst to single individual.
Even then, the image is fuzzy, the conversation stilted and broken. The Pirate Captain looks frazzled, his eyes darting from side to side as he searches notification screens we can’t see.
“What do you mean, it’s not happening?” I growl. “You said you could do it, when I called the first time.”
“That’s before they locked down the entire solar system and called in reinforcements!” Dornalor snaps.
“Reinforcements?” I look at Harry, who shakes his head. That’s news to him too.
“Right on the edge of the boundary for the system itself,” Dornalor says. “Two entire fleets just jumped right in. They’ve broken into multiple task groups to cover the ways out, with warp locks across the entire sphere. I’m pretty sure one of them is a Forbidden Zone fleet.”
My jaw clenches tightly before I force it to relax. Forbidden Zone fleets are one of the major reasons we even have a Council. The fleets destroy and churn the Mana of the various monsters in Forbidden Zone planets to slow down their growth. They’re also the galaxy’s defense against some of the really nasty stuff that lives in the depths of space in the Forbidden Zone. Creatures that occasionally swim outside of the higher density areas to chomp on civilized planets. Kind of like whales breaching the surface before ducking back down into the depths they enjoy.
And when I say nasty stuff, think planet-sized monsters.
“Two fleets?” I frown. “A bit of an overkill, don’t you think?”
“Not exactly.” Dornalor waves and I see a notification appear. My jaw drops when I see spherical encirclement, how thinly spaced it ends up being when you include an entire solar system. More so when the dots converge toward Irvina, meeting the fleeing dots of other ships as they escape the planetary defenses and the third, larger cluster of ships on the outskirts of the solar system. “Looks like some people had planned for this.”
“Fuck.” I pause, then stare at the dots. The two Galactic Council fleets might have broken up a little, but they still have their forces concentrated enough to match the third fleet. Which is a good thing, since otherwise, they’d be taken apart in detail.
“No.”
“What?” I say innocently.
“No, I’m not flying through a fleet battle to pick you up. Even assuming you survive long enough for me to arrive, I’m still not doing it,” Dornalor says. “There’s helping you out because they’d kill me anyway, and then there’s plain suicide.”
I snort, but he’s right. The Nothing’s Heartbreak is many things, but it’s neither tough enough nor sneaky enough to bypass the sheer volume of sensors out there and a full-out fleet battle. And that’s assuming they actually fight and not stand around, mouthing off at one another.
“Thousand hells.” I rub my face, glance at where Mikito is looting the Psychic’s body, and make a face. “Time to go. We’ll… catch up.”
“You do that. Good luck, Redeemer.”
He doesn’t mention if he’s going to hang around, but I can only assume he will. If he intended to run, he would have at the first sign of trouble.
Quantum Lock gets dropped, as does the communication channel between the two of us. Freed, I use the System Edit Skill to punch through the global Portal exceptions, wincing as my muscles clench and fire erupts through my body. I feel the Skills buck and twist, not wanting to be used this way, but I shove aside the pain and the resulting payback.
Not the time.
Harry’s already hurrying through the Portal I created. Feh’ral goes next, while Mikito gives me the side-eye when I gesture for her to go first. Snorting, I duck through the Portal, followed by Mikito. I shut down the Portal, grateful that wherever Kasva is, he’s too busy to come back for his friend.
Though I’m sure he’ll be back for revenge eventually.
Chapter 3
We come back full circle, popping into place in the middle of nowhere at the cliffside observatory where we had put together our entire plan days before. We only make it there after a couple of Portals. I doubt our short detour is sufficient to throw off our pursuers in the long term, but it’s the best we can do. A couple of Mana Swarm grenades set to go off after we leave will do a lot to mess with any traces that we leave behind. More importantly, the observatory’s basic stealth defenses as an Administrative Center do much of the heavy lifting.
As we enter the building, Harry’s looking a little worse for wear. His pupils are dilated, he’s constantly licking his lips, and he’s taken to rubbing the tops of his hands. If not for his regeneration, I would have expected his skin to be stripped raw by now. In the silence of the observatory, he spins toward me and speaks his mind. “What are we at now? Plan C? There is a Plan C, right?”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure we’re on Plan D. Plan C was stealing a ship and making a run for it, but those fleets and the global lockdown kind of make that moot.” I shake my head, considering the Heroic Stationmaster who runs things high above. If he wasn’t so busy dealing with everyone else trying to flee the planet, he could make our lives even more miserable.
“Is that supposed to comfort me!?!” Harry shouts.
“Wasn’t trying to comfort.” I conjure a chocolate bar, offering it to him, and watch as he slaps it out of my hand. I shrug and pull one out for myself. “But I don’t think lying to you would be very comforting either. Anyway, I do have a plan D, E, and F.”
The confident assurance in my voice calms Harry a little. Then he looks really embarrassed as he apparently realizes he hit me. He flushes a little, becoming a little more tanned. Still, he’s not doing well. The aftereffects of his torture session, the risks we’ve been running, and the sheer enormity of what we’ve done are hitting him. The fact that I pushed him to help me while he was still in shock has probably not hit him yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that crops up later.
“So what’s plan D?” he finally manages to ask.
“Hopefully it’s arriving soon in the form of a trio of fan club members,” I say.
Harry glances at Mikito, clearly remembering his rescuers. He nods.
I wave to him and her. “Just wait around here, will you?”
Feh’ral speaks up now that Harry has calmed. “I shall be looking into some other matters.”
He doesn’t even wait for us to acknowledge him before he fades out, going translucent. My eyes narrow, only for the library to dump the name of the Skill and its effects into my brain. Central Processing allows Feh’ral to access nearby libraries, tapping into the information they have, and more importantly, allows him to communicate with other Librarians.
I’ve already started walking away when Mikito calls, “Where are you going?”
“Checking if plan E is in play or not.” I head right up the stairs for the entrance to the Administrative Center.
Hopefully Mikito can help Harry settle down and work through some of the trauma. Perhaps a few moments of peace will help. Ali doesn’t follow me up, instead joining the pair and chatting with them all, doing his best in his own inane way. In this case, he’s showing Harry a calming nature documentary. It involves sharks, but that’s all I can tell before I slip through the wall.
In the silence of the Administrative Center, I run a hand over my face, letting the weariness flow through. No matter what I tell everyone else, the truth is, I had really hoped that Plan A would work out.
***
I draw a couple of deep breaths, cycling the despair and exhaustion through my body, forcing it out with each exhalation. A part of me chants what is, is in an attempt to console myself. Eventually, I make myself move a bit, ascending the stairs to the mezzanine while not thinking about what I’m going to do. Just moving. Though I didn’t lie to Harry, my other plans are significantly less robust and rely on a number of co-dependent assumptions.
By the sole piece of furniture in the mezzanine—the console—I pull out System tickets. I discard the ones that are close to me—those few that are common, pedestrian fixes—to the System. Dungeon overflows, a couple of monster evolutions that the System wants a closer look at. My goal isn’t to work today, even though the experience would be nice.
One ticket catches my eye, that of a wandering Explorer who stumbled upon a Mana anomaly the System hadn’t even noticed until a sapient pair of eyes and a Skill use had triggered it. The mutated moss creature is sucking up more ambient Mana than it should, converting it at a faster-than-normal growth rate. It’s both good, in that it is consuming non-System Mana, and bad, as it evolves from one Level to another. It takes me a few minutes to flag the ticket in the System for further study and potential testing as a method to slow down Mana oversaturation and to teleport it to a few Dungeon planets for further testing.
Then I’m done and focused again.
What I’m looking for are the Planetary-wide tickets, things that have been flagged because certain high-powered individuals are throwing around Skills willy-nilly. In the interactions between Legendary skills, all kind of errors that the System detests crop up.
Of course, as a Junior Administrator, I have absolutely no ability to actively affect such issues. If anything, the Senior Administrators or even the System itself will plug the holes in the Skills. Whatever the case, whether it’s because the System wants its Administrators to learn or it’s just a security hole, I can see tickets above my level.
I scale down the high-level issues, wincing at some of the contents of the tickets. The information is not what I was looking for, but still good to know.
Dungeon INV-981-03 overrun, Mana overflow and balance disrupted due to Invited Guest Skill
Mana imbalance in use/output via combination Skills—Dancer’s Grace, Tectonic Movement, and Gravity Sheer in quadrant 381C-689I
Alert! Mass structural destruction in quadrant 98-447 in zone Q232. Skills use review required?
System Administrator overreach—Junior System Administrator Lee. Combined Skill use and systematic breach of protocols 138.6 7.364A—IV
Of course, I do try to look at that ticket, but I get bounced out almost immediately. Interestingly enough, the requirements to deal with the issue is black-flagged, which is something I haven’t seen before. I’m annoyed I can’t just wipe out the ticket or deal with it myself, but that’d be too obvious an exploit.
I do wonder if I’ll ever see another Administrator Skill. I don’t seem to be able to view my options. The System is automatically assigning my Administrator Skills whenever I have a free slot. Sometimes though, I wonder if my System Edit Skills and lack of choice is a matter of the Council or the System’s initial programming. Maybe the Skill is just the way the System translates concepts of using its programming into a way that we can understand. For sure, System Edit is much more robust and wide-ranging than I initially thought.
For all that, I have a job to do and keep scanning, finally coming across the tickets that I’m looking for. Surprisingly, they are buried quite far down and are of low priority. It’s not long before I realize why. It seems that contrary to my initial belief, there already has been quite a bit of work involved in ensuring that these Legendary Skills don’t conflict and drain the System of too much Mana. As wide-ranging as they are, Legendary Skills often come into conflict with one another, and previous System Administrators have taken action against potential issues. System Administrators or the System itself. I can almost sense the way the code changes, the way the Skills are patched more in-line with the way the whole System works than the hack jobs most Administrators do.
For example, the Dragon’s Domain interacts constantly with the Lady of Shadows’s Legendary Skill The Line Between Truth and Lies. Then you’ve got the Weaver’s Skill the Loom of Fate. When that runs into the Lady’s Skill, there’s always a conflict. When you get to the overlap between the Dragon’s Domain and the Weaver’s and the Lady’s Skills along with other Legendarys’ Skills, things get messy.
Then you’ve got the various Heroics running around with their own Skills and the interactions those create. They aren’t as wide-ranging but are more specific and more powerful in their specificity. A concentrated area around a Heroic’s Domain can overwhelm the Dragon’s Domain, so long as the Dragon isn’t paying attention.
It’s sort of the difference between a nuke and an ICBM, I guess. One is definitely more destructive, and more wide-ranging, but the other is more focused and useful in a wider range of situations. Or, you know, I would assume that metaphor works. It’s not as if anyone ever let me play with either weapon in my previous life.
Turning away from idle thoughts, I read tickets, trying to grasp the state of the world. It’s not the best option, but it is what I have. The timestamps, as well as the fluctuations in Mana use, expense, and the sudden surge in experience and deposits as Legendarys and Heroics die, tell a tale.
A tale of the three Legendarys on my side launching a surprise attack. Of members of the “official” Council falling, including one Legendary—the Emperor himself. For all his strength, the fact that he doesn’t have his empire backing him up makes him less powerful than he could be. Once he dies, the Shadow Council—the Senior System Administrators—step in and balance the fight out further.
