Chapter 56: Questions Answered (Patreon)

Logan had to do some quick thinking. Although he was reeling, there was no time to process what he was seeing. His priorities were to protect himself and protect his resources. For all he knew, the group would turn their noses away at an S Grade spatial collar. But through trial and error, Logan refused to believe it was a garbage-rated item, despite its bizarre alphabetical order. If they saw it, they might take it.

The other consideration was his sociopathic rope. Logan remembered what it had done in the presence of the two murderers, but that was at his direction. Since then, it had gotten more powerful and independent. It had communicated its glee at refusing commands, and if it got loose, who knew what the hell it would do. Better to be safe than unintentionally come across as hostile.

Before the group moved closer, Logan turned and faced the portal, crouching and reaching for his boot as if he were adjusting a non-existent shoelace. Shielding his hand and the Cursed Rope from view, he willed it inside his spatial collar. [Mimicry Armour] was fully deployed as a suit of armour, covering his neck and hiding his spatial collar, but his Karma pool was depleting as he stood there.

He hesitated. It was possible he’d need his full exoskeleton suit if they attacked, but Logan was betting against it. Plus, it would go over like a lead balloon if he approached them and then started asphyxiating due to lack of Karma and he had to dissolve his armour while talking. It was better to come across as in control and as prepared as possible.

With a sigh, Logan dissolved half his armour, letting the sandstone collapse and the sand fall from his legs, chest and back. He kept his talons and armguards, and then sculpted a layer of exoskeleton around his neck and throat to cover his spatial collar. He hadn’t tested this particular formation, but he was betting the Karma drain would keep up with his regeneration rate.

Logan glanced down and snorted. He looked like a poor-man’s version of a gladiator.

He straightened and then slowly turned around.

There was another factor in his calculation. Even if the group were hostile, there was a fundamental problem.

[Errol Silverdagger: Level 76. A Silverthorn male. Highest stat: Strength.]

[Arsen Silverdagger: Level 89. A Silverthorn male. Highest stat: Endurance.]

[Thorin Silverdagger: Level 92. A Silverthorn male. Highest stat: Strength.]

[Princess Asthea Silverdagger: Level 45. A Silverthorn female. Highest stat: Agility.]

Their levels were off the charts!

Logan had thought he was impressive since the System integration—with abs and defined biceps, his muscles interwoven with layers of steel—but these people were like bodybuilders on steroids. They had massive shoulders and necks covered in fine, silver hair, as if their natural body hair had been ramped up to the ninth degree. Their armour was a mix of red and silver, but although it appeared antiquated, it glinted like high-tech metal, looking slick and impenetrable.

The tallest man, Thorin, was holding a broadsword that was ten inches in width and double the length of Logan’s baseball bat. His face was pockmarked with scars, as if a grenade had spattered him with shrapnel, a deep, grooved scar denting the bridge of his long nose.

As Logan approached, he ran his eyes down Logan, focusing on his armguards and giving his talons a close look, before sneering with the side of his mouth. “Arsony sey non dig and daly,” he said, and the other men laughed, jeering.

“Day non lay,” the woman snapped.

Logan had a good ear for languages, but that wasn’t any he recognized. It sounded like a bastardized version of French warped with Latin.

“Sey non rare?” she asked, smiling gently at Logan.

It sounded like she was asking if he liked his steak rare! “I don’t understand.” Logan gave her a helpless look.

The woman raised her eyebrows. She was tall, but next to these giants, she looked short in comparison. Her face was elegant with high cheekbones, and a fine dusting of white hair covered her skin. Except for the ears, which pointed straight up and moved like a wolf’s as they tilted back and forth, these people could pass for human.

Asthea took a step towards Logan, the others making growling, protective sounds in their throats. She snapped at them again, letting out that same incomprehensible language, and they settled down.

Logan glanced from the woman to the hulks behind her, his eyes cautious. They didn’t seem like they were hostile, but he was in a new world, and anything was possible. For all he knew, they were the type to lure someone in with kind smiles before biting their head off once they got close.

Asthea lifted her hand, and it took everything he had to not twitch his new talons.

“San hosan,” she said softly and held out her palm, her expression earnest. She was holding what looked like a marble or a round gemstone.

Logan tried to return her smile, but he suspected it came off as unhinged. “Is that for me?”

With a soothing noise like she was coaxing a horse, she held it out again.

“Yeah. I think you want me to have that. Thanks?” Logan held out his armoured hand and let her drop it into his palm. As soon as he grasped it, the marble rippled, sides dissolving like sugar in hot water, tiny particles seeping into his exoskeleton glove. Logan had a second to be alarmed before the System squashed his panic before it could begin.

Ding!

[You have been granted the skill, Universal Language! This common skill allows you to comprehend all spoken languages and respond in kind.]

“Do you understand me now?” asked Asthea.

Holy shit. Logan had known skills were powerful, but he’d started to think of them in relation to combat. There was [Idiot’s Inspect] and Tasha’s [Identify], but those seemed like rote skills—skills that everyone obtained eventually. If he could learn languages at the drop of a marble, what else was out there? For all he knew, there was a marble that granted him the ability to be a rocket engineer.

“I can understand you.” Then he cleared his throat and shifted in place, eyeing the men behind her. “Sorry to crash your ‘party’ or whatever this is. The System didn’t give me a choice.”

She shot him an incredulous look. “You’re in the training dungeon. Entering the portal and coming across our ‘party’ as you say, isn’t something that just happens. Especially…” She ran her eyes over his armguards with a twist of her mouth. “Especially for someone of your level.”

Errol growled and paced behind Asthea, his large hand holding onto a curled-up metal whip that was like a steel cable. Its width was immense—the cable three inches across, barbs on the ends like a scorpion’s tail. He was the smallest of the men, but that wasn’t saying much. He was still over seven feet tall, his spiky hair standing on end like a hedgehog. “You’re not seriously thinking of letting this cur compete!”

Thorin threw his massive sword over his shoulder and sneered. “Errol’s right. His world hasn’t even leveled up yet. He has no Class! Are we really going to let him tag along? He’d be a soncontal.” The last word wasn’t translatable, but Logan didn’t need a translation to know it had to be derogatory.

Asthea blew out an annoyed breath. “We have to! All must complete the training dungeon to get through the trial! Unless you want to kill this weakling, I suggest you shut up and stop whining!”

Logan straightened his back. Weakling? Thanks a lot, lady. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. She was barely 15 levels above him.

Asthea’s scowl wiped away as she gave Logan an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, their fangs are bigger than their bite.”

Logan eyed them warily. “These are your… guards?”

“They’re family. And overprotective because of it. But they’re also my guards.” Asthea ran a hand through her long white hair, straightening out a tangle. “We should start over. You’re obviously from a newly integrated world based on your lack of Class. I’m Asthea Silverdagger, Princes of the Silverdagger Clan. I’m on my trial of awakening, and these big lugs are here to guide me along. And you…” She stared at something above his head, that same glazed look everyone got as they read System messages. “And you are… ‘Idiot’? Is this translating incorrectly? Perhaps it means something different in your culture.”

Logan snorted. Just great. He thought the name was supposed to be hidden, but it would be just like the System to introduce him to aliens by giving him the worst introduction possible. “No, it means what you’re thinking. I didn’t choose it, the System did.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Highly unlikely.”

“My real name is Logan. And ‘Idiot’ is hardly the worst it’s called me. It even insults me when giving out skills.” Although come to think of it, the insults had dropped lately.

Asthea frowned. “System messages are nothing but respectful.” Then giving him a considering look, she seemed to fight with herself before blowing out a breath. “Hold on.” Holding out her hand, she scrunched her eyebrows and then snapped her fingers. Just like that, another marble appeared between the tips of her thumb and index finger. It was like a slight of hand or a magic trick, but Logan suspected it was something more easily understood than a magic trick.

A spatial storage device.

Thorin got sight of it and his scowl deepened. “Asthea, tell me you aren’t going to waste that on someone who calls himself an idiot.”

“His world could end up a powerhouse! Helping him might serve us well. Stop thinking with your muscles and start thinking with your brain.”

Thorin’s scowl became frightening in intensity.

Asthea rubbed her fingers together, her lips parted in concentration. The marble dissolved, leaching into her fingers as if it had never been there in the first place. “There. I’ve submitted an error report to my clan who will re-route it to the System. It should be logged with one of the System admins. Sometimes, new minions go rogue on newly integrated worlds.”

An error report? Like the System was an AI who was misbehaving? A jolt of hope ran through Logan’s body as he imagined a world in which a software patch could solve their apocalypse problems. If the thing had integrated onto Earth while experiencing an error, did that mean that the 365 days to survive bullshit was just that—bullshit? “You mean it’s not that vindictive and sarcastic after all? It won’t kill us in a year?”

“Oh no, don’t get me wrong. It’s vindictive. And it will kill you. But it doesn’t insult us. When it integrates new worlds, it deploys multiple copies to handle the workload. But those copies are not supposed to go off script. If they did, our whole society would rebel. The System doesn’t want that. The more worlds within the collective, the more powerful it grows.”

Logan’s trickling of hope sizzled into nothing. “It sounds like you’ve been dealing with the System for a while. You mentioned newly integrated worlds? Does that mean you managed to survive yours?”

Arsen crept forward, his icy blue eyes scanning over Logan before resting on Asthea. His expression noticeably softened as he rested his large hand on her shoulder. He seemed the oldest, a silver streak trailing from his forehead and down his long hair. The others had their hair pulled back, but Arsen had left his loose. He’d interwoven bright, odd-looking pebbles and crinkles of what looked like silver filaments into the wavy lengths. Despite his age and appearance, he somehow seemed more intimidating rather than less. “Time to get moving, Asthea.”

“One moment, Arsen.” Asthea didn’t snap this time, leaning into his touch before running a hand through her own hair. “Always in such a hurry,” she said, fondness in her voice. She focused back on Logan. “We became part of the collective over a hundred years ago. But we’re standing here, so we survived. But not all of us did. Not by any means. What message did you receive when the System arrived?”

Logan thought back to the message from day one. It was engraved in his memory and unlike other things, he could recall it with crystal detail. It reminded him of that phenomenon that happened to people during a major traumatic event. Recall the day before or the day after? Hell no. But they could always recall the day of. “It said something about Edict 10: Preservation of Species.”

“Ah, ours was the same. But there’s always a hidden motive. Don’t be deceived, those with the most power can sway the System. Just because it’s an AI, doesn’t mean its programming makes it ultraistic. Someone had to program it in the first place.”

“What are you saying?”

“It won’t prioritize a planet and integrate it unless there’s something in it for the other members of the collective. On our planet, we had a nonalson that could replicate itself whenever it was in danger. Once you bond with that animal, it’s a powerful skill. If the System hadn’t integrated us, eventually, we would have caused so much damage that the nonalson would have become extinct. Your planet must have the same. An animal with an extremely valuable skill. Something like the noncalregen or algimatonan.”

Logan immediately thought of Ernie and his mention of escaping the ‘sky people.’ Were these people wanting [Mimicry Armour]?

And what the hell was this gobbledygook? “Noncalregen or algimatonan?”

“You must not have this terminology, or the translation isn’t working correctly. The legendary skills of noncalregen or algimatonan. They’ve been searching for these skills for years in each newly integrated world. But at this point, it’s turned into a what we call a story. Make-believe? You must have a word for this.”

“A fairytale.”

Her smile reached her eyes. “A fairytale. I like that. The fairytale of fire breathing and limb regeneration.”

What? Logan couldn’t have heard her correctly.

“You’re saying the skill everyone wants is fire breathing and limb regeneration?”

“There are others, but that’s certainly some of them.” Her voice became wistful. “Imagine having a skill that breathes fire or that regenerates severed limbs instantly; you’d be a powerhouse in battle, fearful of nothing. No matter what happens, no matter what injury you have, it would just regenerate.” Her dreamy expression wiped clean as she refocused on him and became all business. “Of course, like I said, it’s a fairytale. If only, huh?”

“Sure, if only,” said Logan in a strangled voice.