[System Decay] Chapter 22: What Happened to the Planet(s) (Patreon)

The world around Ayla fell away as Will’s tutorial completed, her surroundings fading from the complicated, multi-faceted system board of a helper back to her drab reality.

She was never going to get used to that. Even though she couldn’t directly influence the world as a helper, access to the system—real access, not the paltry pieces the administrative organization granted her here—it reminded her of the old days. They hadn’t been the best, but they’d been much better than her life in this cell.

“Cell” might have been dramatizing it a bit, but it wasn’t like there was much else to go here. Her room was populated with spartan facilities with enough to survive on and a limited interface that allowed her to gain insight into the planets that were slated to be integrated, but not much else.

There were no windows, but Ayla had seen a glimpse of their positioning while she’d been transported from Earth’s surface to her new assignment. She was fairly certain that as of right now, she was located somewhere on the far side of Earth’s moon, a peculiar location that literally nobody on the planet had the capability to see right now.

She clicked her tongue nervously. Though she’d passed messages in a similar fashion a number of times already, Ayla never got any less anxious about whether or not this would be the time she was detected.

As a tutorial helper, she was already pushing it with the way she didn’t pretend to just be another facet of the system. She was technically within regulations, but if an administrator came to observe, she doubted she would get away with what she did.

She’d overseen and been through enough tutorials to understand the strengths and weaknesses of quite a few parts of the system. No matter what the mandated propaganda viewings told her, Ayla knew with her own sensory organs that the Administrator’s hand no longer played a role in tutorials—if the Creator of All was even still alive.

Tutorials were monitored by the system to report deviant activities from the non-Users who had given up everything to support those who chose to fight. For most non-Users, this wasn’t that big a deal, but for someone like Ayla? Indentured, captured, enslaved, a problem element but too useful to be executed? It was necessary.

In the last moments before a tutorial ended, though, the spatial distortion and collected energy expenditure of the system getting all its ducks in a row, as an Earthling might say, gave her a short window to speak without monitors.

The censors built into the suppressing, silencing chain that bound her throat still caught her, but they would not report her.

Will was promising. It had been… Ayla couldn’t remember how many cycles it had been since the last time she’d watched someone survive an extreme difficulty tutorial.

Whether or not he was the kind of person who would reach a hand out to her, she didn’t know, but her game was not one of desperate hope. Ayla had been a helper for a long, long time now, and seen hundreds, if not thousands, of scrappy Users to their new lives or to the grave. Hers was a game of numbers, not of character.

A new notification appeared on one of the system screens.

Ayla frowned.

There shouldn’t be new Users here, she thought. The tutorial period is over.

A second one appeared.

The notifications were as good as a call to order, so she raised her tired body back out of the bed she’d somehow fallen into and returned.

Her current form’s eyebrows raised at the first notification, dread tingling through her body.

NOTICE - Administrative Colony Sol-3E will have an unscheduled visit from Dread Executor [REMOVED] in [1 hour].

The second notification was worse. Far, far worse.

“Oceans below,” she said. How many years ahead of schedule was this? What planet was this?

NOTICE - Second impact for Sol-3 has been rescheduled to be significantly earlier. Please await your tutorial assignments.

Ayla collected herself, using the tiny bits of magic that were still allowed to her to reshape her body to create a form more suitable to the details of the next planet.

One day, very soon, she would have the pieces in place. She would be able to act.

Until then, she just had to keep her head down and keep working.

#

“It might be easier for you to just look at the system notifications for the grand scheme of things,” Lev said uneasily. “It’s been a lot.”

Will shrugged. “Sure thing. You have a direction you want to go towards?”

“There’s a town nearby that we’ve been taking jobs and dungeons from,” Allie provided. “The people there are kind of weird, but it’s not too bad.”

“Sounds a lot better than caves to me.” Will paused. “Wait. Hold on. I have a vault key. We should probably grab whatever loot we can from there.”

“Are you sure?” Trevor said. “You just fought a boss none of us could even touch.”

“I’m assuming Dylan was bullshitting about doing most of the damage?”

Allie snorted. “He didn’t even get close to the ogre. He spent all his time trying to, I dunno, guard me? I was faster than him by a lot, so he didn’t really succed at that either.”

“Sounds about right,” Will said. “You all are missing a whole bunch of elements, so let’s get to this vault and get you some. You do know what a vault is, right?”

“Yeah,” Lev said. “We’ve opened a few. Solo bosses, mostly.”

“I’ll add you to the party so we can share the map,” Trevor said, extending a hand. “Is that okay?”

“I don’t have a problem with that.” Will took it.

[Trevor Garcia] would like you to join him in his party. Accept? [YES / NO]

Interestingly enough, Will’s party tab split. He was now in two separate parties—one titled Lev’s Party and the other with his own name attached to it. The latter’s had Caiyeri, whose name was currently greyed out with an OUT OF RANGE indicator next to it, while the former showed the details of everyone he’d just joined—except Dylan. Someone had kicked him out already.

“This is kind of far,” Lev said.

“It’s a mile,” Will replied.

“A mile through monster-infested woods. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go for it, but we hsould be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” Will lied.

He kept one eye on his system and the other on the people and environment as they walked, very conscious of his surroundings. His Perception stat was by far the highest, given it was a rank above everyone else.

Will felt incredible. He’d needed glasses before the apocalypse, but somewhere between killing the chieftain with a barrel bomb and teleporting out of the goblin encampment alive, he’d lost them. At bronze rank, though, his eyesight was sharper than it had ever been, as if he’d reaped the benefits of laser eye surgery twice.

The woods that definitely hadn’t been here when Arcadia had crashed into Earth didn’t trigger any of his reflexes yet, so he went back to looking at the system messages, flicking through them in roughly chronological order.

You have completed the tutorial. Welcome back to Earth.

As a result of a mana-rich planet colliding with yours as well as the advent of the system, over 10,000,000 dungeons have opened up across your planet with difficulties ranging from unformed to diamond.

In the coming days, your planet will be given challenges. It will need champions.

From here, it is your choice as to what you will do. You may choose to find or found a faction or guild, or you may strike it alone. You may simply try to survive, or you can thrive amidst the chaos.

There are [972,199,274] Earth-origin Users alive. There are [12] other survivors of extreme difficulty tutorials out of [1,000,000] initiates.

In [60] days, the Trial of the Champion will begin.

Your fate is in your hands, traveler.

NOTICE: The leaderboard is now active.

Will didn’t think that was that much to explain, but maybe Lev thought he wouldn’t believe them if they gave him the information.

“You three have been here for a while, right?” Will said, closing one window before opening the next.

“A few days,” Trevor said. “Time gets weird when you’re fighting for your life all day.”

“So you’ve done a dungeon or two.”

“Six of them now,” Allie chirped. “The last one was our hardest so far, but that ogre boss was way more powerful than anything we’ve seen so far.”

“Hmm. Is there anything you can tell me about them?” Will no longer had Ayla riding along in his mind, nor did the system seem to particularly want to explain the ins and outs of dungeon diving to him.

“There’s a few types,” Lev said. “We’re not sure if there’s more, but we’ve seen three types. There’s ones that are just a kind of portal-like door that go to a completely different space, then there’s ones that are contained in buildings or underground but are much larger on the inside than the outside, and finally the ones that are just regular buildings or caves. I know it’s a little weird, but that’s what we’re dealing with.”

Will recalled the parts of the Arcadian cave system he’d been able to access from a mere football field sized asteroid. “Not too weird.”

He continued checking through his notifications. A bunch of them were skill evolutions, some of which he’d already seen by putting them into practice. Those, he discarded before he reread.

Skill: [Ghostflame]

- Spell (enchantment).

- Cost: extreme mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

Draws from your blood, afflictions, and lifeforce alongside your mana. Cleanses all afflictions from you and all creatures living or dead in a 10 foot radius. Wreathe your fists in ghostflame. Inflict true damage upon any enemies you strike.

[Soul Siphon] (bronze) - Increases the base damage of this skill. A fraction of damage dealt with this skill is converted to health or mana, increasing the longevity of this skill.

That was a nice addition. Though Will hadn’t faced any serious repercussions from using the skill yet, he’d been a bit worried that overusing it would cause lasting damage. Having another source of healing was always welcome, no matter the source.

Skill: [Weapons Free]

- Spell (movement, teleportation).

- Cost: high mana (moderate mana).

- Cooldown: 12 seconds (6 seconds).

Bronze

Teleport any weapon within a 60 foot radius to your hands (if you can carry it) or your inventory (if you cannot). If a target is holding the weapon, they can attempt to prevent this spell from succeeding.

Bronze-rank addition: Instead of teleporting the weapon to you, you can instead teleport to the weapon. Range increased from 30 to 60 feet.

Will whistled, which prompted the others to stop and ask him if anything was wrong.

“The opposite,” he said. “Carry on.”

That was a bona fide teleportation skill, and it was much more generally applicable than the Eerie Step he’d been borrowing from teleport daggers. It was still limited, but that limitation could definitely be worked around.

Aside from that, what else was there? That earlier message had mentioned a leaderboard, and that was one of the new windows that appeared, binding itself to another predetermined spot on Will’s menu.

World Leaderboard

1. Lu Jie. Bronze 8 Portal Mage. Current sponsors: none.

2. Natalie Blurr. Bronze 7 Chaos Summoner. Current sponsors: none.

3. Hua Fang. Bronze 7 Warrior. Current sponsors: none.

4. Haoyu Fang. Bronze 7 Warrior. Current sponsors: none.

5. Osiris Adebayo. Bronze 7 Nuclear Specialist. Current sponsors: The Princess of Pale Fire.

Your current position on the world leaderboard is number 1971 of 972,198,871.

Regional Leaderboard

1. Kenneth McCarthy. Bronze 4.

2. Lily Teneli. Bronze 4.

3. Andrew Andrews. Bronze 4.

Your current position on the regional leaderboard is 16 of 792,412.

Now that was interesting. The world leaderboard obviously provided more information on its Users, but both of them revealed names and ranks.

New quest: Like no one ever was

Become the very best.

- Reach the top position on your regional leaderboard. [0/1]

Reward: Random epic rarity magic item.

- Reach the top position on the global leaderboard. [0/1]

Reward: Random legendary rarity magic item.

Will was quite happy with his rankings—beating out over 972 million people was no small feat.

But even with that achievement, he could see that there was still a long way to go. He didn’t doubt that he’d made it past the chaff, but from here on out, advancing forward was almost certainly going to be harder.

At first, he was a bit confused as to how people who hadn’t gone through the extreme difficulty tutorial had higher ranks than him, but he realized eventually that while his skillset was perfectly designed to kill and survive, the others out here had had the days he’d been stuck in the tutorial to grind. He had potential, but he needed to use it.

“Do you know what the leaderboard is for?” he asked out loud.

“Yeah,” Lev said. “You get rewarded for being in certain percentiles or being near the top of either. It should say there if you look for the tooltips.”

“What does it rank?” Will asked.

“That’s also in the tooltips. It’s a weighted combination of doing what your class needs you to do, kills, boss battles, and rank, but mostly the latter.”

“Thanks.” Will bit back an exasperated sigh. He’d grown too used to relying on Ayla to provide him with information.

He continued scanning through the system messages, looking for anything that might clue him in to what those “sponsors” that the world leaderboard mentioned were.

NOTICE: Sponsorships are now open. Due to the completion of the tutorial by all parties across your planet, Users of the sovereign tier and above are now able to sponsor individual users. Sponsorship terms will vary between Users. A sponsored User may be required to attend events for a sponsor in exchange for goods that may be able to put them ahead of the competition. Sponsored users are, on average, 1,000% more likely to survive the first year of integration.

Now wasn’t that something. Will didn’t like the idea of a space corporation holding the reins to his existence, but he would have to wait and see. He didn’t want to make any major decisions right now, and it wasn’t like he had an offer on the table or anything.

For now, he had to get himself past the bottom of bronze. The first step of that was opening up this vault. The next would be clearing the dungeons here.

Will skimmed through the rest of the notifications to make sure he hadn’t missed any burning fires that needed to be extinguished.

They passed through the forest without incident, almost certainly thanks to the sigil. Will had gone back to suppressing his aura, making sure to control his breathing and mana flow like Caiyeri and Ayla had instructed, but even at bronze, he wasn’t strong enough to keep the sigil from sending the local wildlife scampering away.

The four of them made it to the vault without incident. Unlike the ones he’d seen in the cave system, this one actually seemed to be a vault of some kind, unlocked by a real key, albeit one that was a few sizes larger than a human had. Will assumed at first that Ung had stolen it, but given the size, it was possible he hadn’t.

Speaking of Ung, his club proved to be relatively unimpressive. Will took it out alongside the key, examining it. It gave a boost to the Power stat, which was good, but other than a crushing blow ability, that was about it.

Come to think of it, Will didn’t necessarily need it.

“Hey, Trevor,” he said, testing out the weight of the heavy wood-and-steel club in his hand, “Do you want this club?”

Trevor looked at it warily. “Are you sure? That’s a really powerful weapon.”

Will shrugged. “I have more.”

He handed the club over, the other student taking it into his hands reverently.

Trevor’s face lit up, then fell. “Shit. I can’t use this yet. Says I’m not a high enough rank.”

Oh. Right. The club was a bronze-rank weapon. Trevor did not have a corruption affinity to use it with.

“You can have it anyway,” Will said. “You all need to level up, or I’m going to leave you all behind.”

“There’s a bit of a problem there,” Lev said.

“A bit?”

“A bit,” Allie repeated. “A lot, actually. Some assholes banded together and decided to call what used to be the university their territory. As far as we can tell, that’s where all the easy dungeons are. We’ve been looking outside, but we did four of our dungeons in the university and have barely been able to find any at our rank outside.”

She spoke faster and faster with each word, as if she was going to fall over and die if she didn’t get everything she wanted to say out in ten seconds. Classic.

New quest: Liberate the university

Knowledge is power. Don’t let one group claim access to it all.

- Remove the [Iron Boys] party from ownership of [Everdale University]. [0/1]

Reward: Tablet of the Book. Awakening Shards. 100 bronze credits.

From the surprised expressions on everyone else’s faces, the quest had just popped up for them too.

Interesting. Why hadn’t it done so earlier?

“Well then,” Will said. “I reckon that with me on your side, what counts as ‘easy’ is going to change. Let’s get into this vault and count our options.”

He’d gone through a hell difficulty tutorial. Will wasn’t going to let a few dickheads stop him.

The rest of Lev’s party didn’t seem to share his confidence, but they didn’t need to. They just needed to stay out of the way.

Will opened the vault, and they followed him in.