Broken System Ch. 53-54 (Patreon)

Ch. 53 - Discovered

Benjamin was dreaming about fast food when he awoke to a short, sharp shake in the darkness before dawn. As he opened his eyes, at first, all he saw was a silhouette, but it quickly resolved into his friend Matt’s face. His finger was pressed to his lip as a warning for silence before he whispered, “Someone’s coming. We’ve got to move.”

Everyone was up and getting ready, packing everything they could then. No one asked what he’d seen or where they were going. They just started to move. Benjamin noticed that they were moving deeper into the hills and away from the city, but when he asked why they were doing this, Matt just said, “You’ll see.”

He did, too. Just as dawn started to color the horizon and they rounded the crest of a hill that, Benjamin saw the torches finally. There were two at the wall and two more walking toward the campsite they’d only just abandoned. He couldn’t make out any details on the silhouettes, but that was more than enough to tell him what was going on.

Someone was on to them and judging by the way they lingered around the wall and the path they took, he could only guess that it had something to do with the way that Emma had breached the wall last night. The way that they had both done so, he thought, cursing himself for not being strong enough to stop her.

As they moved quickly and quietly to stay ahead of their pursuers, they discussed what to do. Benjamin thought that the best answer was to avoid them, of course, because if they killed the guards and they never returned, then the whole place would be on alert. “They’re going to find our campsite,” Matt said, obviously twitching to fight. “That’s going to put them on alert just the same, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Matt conceded. He honestly wasn’t sure.

What he was sure of was the fact that he needed to finalize his data leak spell. They were out of time. If the people following them got close, they would be the perfect test subjects, if nothing else.

He looked through his spell list and was saddened that he was down to only one free spell again after this. Despite his growing list, to him, it felt like he never had enough. There were just too many possibilities, and even with his ability to optimize and fine-tune them, he felt like he was falling behind his friends.

Spell List:

Life Drain (1 mana): Drain a small amount of life/level from a target you touch.

Blood Burn (0 mana): Convert one health to mana in a target every round for rounds equal to your level times two. Excess mana can cause mana burn.

Vampiric Bolt (3 Mana): Launch a projectile that does a moderate amount of damage at range, returning the life to you.

Arcane Armor (4 Mana): Absorbs 10 damage per level before disappearing

Creation (Lesser) (0+ Mana): Convert raw materials into simple finished goods with a cost related to complexity, quality, and amount.

Earth Works (1+ mana): Manipulate 1 cubic foot of earth or stone per level as if it was clay for a few seconds mentally, creating simple shapes.

Hasten (4 mana): Let someone move and twice their normal speed for 10 seconds per level.

Terminal (0 mana/hr): Access other systems interfaces.

Codex v1.2 (1.5 mana/hr): Code, Compile, and debug runic magic programs, spells, and scripts at double speed.

Data Leak (9 mana): cascading breach to exfiltrate system data using 0 day vulnerabilities in mental resistance.

Chains of Ice (2 mana/creature): Bind a man sized creature in place with elemental ice, doing some damage.

Fire Spray: (2 mana/level) A short range burst attack that does a moderate amount of damage in the form of a cone of fire (30 degrees of arc per level) 15 feet.

Gale Shield: (3 mana/minute) Create a wall of wind to disperse missile weapons

Lesser Illusion (1 mana/minute): a convincing short range illusion that makes something look like something of similar size and shape.

Brute Force (1 mana/hr): Sequentially try 20,000 combinations per second on runic interface until password is discovered.

Party Status Beta (1+ mana): display the health, mana, special abilities, distance, and direction of all members of the party within 100m

Status: (0 mana) Report status, time, direction, and other variables.

He literally was, of course. He wasn’t quite to level 5 yet, but they were all level 6, and Raja and Matt were both almost level 7.

As they lay in wait for whatever was about to happen next, Benjamin cursed the soul scar that he was still dealing with. The Throne’s present made him feel the loss less during daily activities, but in moments like this, he felt like he should have been able to basically call in an airstrike on these guys, and instead, they were nervously waiting in the shadows and hoping they would go away.

Well, I’m waiting nervously, Benjamin corrected himself. Matt wants to charge down there and crack some skulls!

He was probably going to get his chance, too. Benjamin decided grimly after the two sets of lights converged and began to walk toward them again. What was strange was that the guards were following the same path that Benjamin and his friends had minutes before, though he wasn’t quite sure why. If they knew they were out here, why not just walk straight to them?

“I think they’re using some kind of tracking magic or something,” Benjamin offered, not sure what else to say.

“Fine,” Matt said, shrugging him off. “If we can’t escape, then we’ll pick our battlefield. You still got that illusion spell?”

“Yes,” Benjamin sighed, “But I don’t really see how it will help us in a situation like this.”

Honestly, Benjamin regretted getting it. It was a fun party trick, and he’d wanted to better understand how the illusion runes worked with a little experimentation since he needed to understand how to mimic the visual component of bound to serve before they strolled into that compound, but it was too limited.

The spell had allowed him to do that much, but otherwise, it had been a waste. It was simply too limited, and made some bizarre choices. It could make any one of them look like strangers or a bizarre version of each other easily enough, but trying to make something natural looking… well, that was a horror show just waiting to happen.

It was a buggy mess, and he hoped to try to figure out how to make it work better someday. Right now, though, Matt was steering them toward the closest tree in the wavering sea of grass, though he hadn’t yet figured out why. If he wanted to fight them, then this spot was as good as any, wasn’t it?

When they got there, Matt ordered, “Alright, Raja, get up as high as you can and wait - your job is to get the stragglers. It’s better for us if they all disappear. Everyone else, dump your bags by the tree - we can use them as bait for our kill zone.”

Benjamin opened his mouth up to protest, but Matt continued. “I get it. You want survivors for your experiment. No problem. We’ll take at least some of these bastards alive, but the rest - we’ll get them before they get us; now, what’s the range of your illusion magic.”

“Like 10 feet, but it only works on one target, so…” Benjamin said hesitantly.

Matt brought everyone together in a big bear hug while they were standing near the tree and laughed. “Alright, we’re all one target now. Come on girls - raise your hands and make like a tree…”

“I’d rather stalk round behind them,” Emma muttered, but she still raised her hands with everyone else.

Benjamin had no idea if this was work. Until now, one target had meant one person. They’d never tried to see if two people touching constituted a single target. As he cast the spell, though, he saw very quickly that it did. Sort of.

As soon as he focused on making them appear like a tree, he saw Nicole and Emma’s faces turn to bark, and little leaves seemed to sprout from everyone’s fingertips, but like a buggy simulation, every movement and every breath made the illusion twitch. It was an unstable thing, and it obviously didn’t like being used to cover several people at once.

Benjamin stilled his mind and focused on his breathing, which helped some, but he couldn’t help but imagine what the small group of them looked like. If this hadn’t been such a tense situation, he was sure that Raja would have been laughing at the deranged, squat little tree that they were all pretending to be.

Finally, Benjamin couldn’t take it anymore and hissed, “Put your arms down,” willing them to look more like a boulder instead. That was much more believable for their size and shape, and with their heads, all tucked down toward the center, he imagined that they made a decent enough rock, except for the stray fluttering piece of granite clothing.

No sooner had he completed this transition, though, than he heard them pushing through nearby grass. They were almost here, and he felt so exposed. They all did, probably, but based on the party status screens, he had the lowest hit points in the group and was going to be the first one to go down if things went sideways.

“But who cares if the beasts take a nibble! We’ve still got more than we can eat and almost more than we can ship!” It was the first thing that he heard clearly before anyone stepped into the clearing of waist-high grass where Matt had set up their ambush. The speaker was an older man, but beyond that, he couldn’t say much about them.

“Because one rat will become ten if we let it fatten up,” a younger man with a deeper voice said as they entered the clearing, and Benjamin finally got his first look over Emma’s shoulder. “You saw the same tracks I did. Three or four becomes twenty in an awful hurry.”

He took the scene in all at once. In the dim light, he watched two men enter the clearing and saw the light of torches showing that there were still more behind them. That wasn’t what drew his eye, though. In the dim light, he couldn’t really see much behind the leader’s cowl, but what he could see were the half dozen dogs that were straining at leashes held by the second man. No, not dogs, he realized as they moved further into the open area. Goblins, or something similar.

Obviously, he’d never seen goblins before now, but with their green warty skin, red eyes, and aura of violent evil, it was hard to imagine what else they could be. That changed the math entirely in his mind and likely everyone else’s too. They were functioning like bloodhounds, and for a terrible moment, Benjamin thought they were about to lunge straight for him. Instead, they went toward the packs instead.

That made sense. That was where the food was, and these things looked half-starved.

“See!” the younger man said. “They’ve been here and gone from here already.”

As the other men entered the clearing and the glass swished shut behind them, Benjamin counted 3 men, one of whom might have been a mage, a woman casually holding a short bow, and half a dozen goblins. “I’ve got the hounds,” Matt whispered. “Benji - get the mage.”

Benjamin was hoping for more guidance than that, but he didn’t get it. Suddenly, without any warning at all, Matt broke the huddle and charged silently forward. The woman with the bow had time to turn and open her mouth, but she didn’t get the chance to fire a shot or shout an alarm before they were on them.

Ch. 54 - Murky

The predawn light was a terrifying time for a battle. Everyone, even those closest to Benjamin, was reduced to a thin, flat silhouette of a person. If they stood still, then he might have been able to tell who was who, but once the fighting started, that became impossible.

Benjamin didn’t even bother to try. All of them had their assignments, and his at least wasn’t charging toward him. He kept his focus on his singular target, the cowled man, and as he let his illusion spell fall away, he drained a little of his own life to top off his mana, and then, as soon as he had a clear shot, he cast vampiric bolt.

The scarlet blast of violent magic briefly illuminated the battlefield like a flashbulb, and the picture it painted was an ugly one. Nicole was slitting the throat of one of the guards, Emma had disappeared, and Matt was literally ripping a goblin in half while most of the rest of the pack had fastened their disturbingly wide mouths onto his arms and legs.

That tenth of a second was all the time Benjamin needed to be grateful he hadn’t chosen to lock in his warrior skills so long ago. Combat was a painful, terrifying experience.

All those thoughts left when the level two spell hit his target, greedily devouring the life force without leaving a wound as it impacted the man in the chest. In the process, it interrupted whatever spell it was that the other man had been in the process of casting and scattered the green runes that had been starting to form into a dangerous-looking spiral above the battlefield.

That wasn’t the most important thing that happened, though. Benjamin had used this spell on several creatures, large and small. He’d grown accustomed to the rush of energy as the stolen lifeforce came back to him, filling his body with strength and vitality.

He’d never used it on a conscious, sentient being, though, and this time, when that energy came back, it was polluted by the thoughts and memories of a stranger.

Suddenly, he could taste pipe smoke and the feeling of slavish obedience to forces that he could barely name. For a moment, Benjamin stood paralyzed there as he reminisced on children he’d never had and places he’d never been.

It felt like a bad trip, to be honest, and even as the battle raged around him, he just couldn’t shake himself free of its dizzying fast-forward grip, and he was forced to endure the unwanted voyeurism of someone else’s broken life. Then it was over.

Everything was. By the time he’d broken himself free and looked for an opportunity to cast something else, the fighting was all but done.

“Did we get them all?” Matt yelled.

‘Maybe. Maybe. Yes.’ Raja sent to everyone’s interface and narrated some bit of action only he could see in the tall grasses. Benjamin ignored that, though, looking past his bleeding friend, the ruined corpses of the goblins he’d fought to the mage he’d just shared an unexpected moment with.

The man’s throat had been slit by Nicole in the aftermath of Benjamin’s attack, and he was clutching it as he suffocated on his own blood, but his wide eyes lacked the darkness that the Rhulvin marked their brainwashed slaves with. Everyone else seemed to be dead, at least until Emma came back through the trees dragging the squirming archer woman by her hair.

“When you’re done with this one, I’m taking the armor off her corpse,” Emma told him with a look of pride. “I think she’s just about my size.”

“Don’t let that one bleed out,” Benjamin yelled, ignoring her as he pointed to the mage. “I have questions for him.”

Matt looked at Benjamin skeptically, but all he said was, “Sure. We’ll get these two tied up, and then you can do your juju, and we’ll see what we learn.”

Benjamin thought it was a little strange to watch Matt work in the aftermath of the battle as he healed other people while he still bore terrible wounds himself. It was no more strange than watching him fight, though. The way he’d handled the goblins had made it clear that his friend was using his anatomical knowledge of the body to literally take it apart. Benjamin had never known much about that sort of thing, but he knew that joints that were incredibly strong in one direction crumpled like a soda can when you twisted or bent them wrong, and that’s exactly what Matt had done to the little vermin.

He dreaded the day he had to watch his friend face off against actual humans and use all that medical knowledge that should have been devoted to saving people to murder them instead. Seeing how easily Emma and Nicole carved up people with their small blades wasn’t much better, though.

They tied up their two prisoners while the sun rose, and Benjamin noted that he’d leveled up during that combat, but he ignored the notification and instead cast data leak. For a moment, nothing happened, then everyone got an alert on their party interface.

Mind Control Magic Detected! Attempt failed!

“Is it supposed to do that?” Matt asked, but Benjamin only nodded. He was waiting for the data to come in, and so far, he’d only gotten 6 rejections, including the overseer, who sat there gagged, staring daggers into his captors.

A second alert washed over all of them again, just as expected as the recursive function kicked off, and then finally, after agonizing seconds of waiting, their captured huntress sent him her password, which he immediately used to unlock her system and examine her.

He smiled and relaxed visibility as his spell finally worked, and even as he leaned forward to pull off her gag, he launched a script to pull as much data off her system as possible so that he could review it later. He had no way of knowing what it was he didn’t know, so he just wanted to find out more so he could figure out what questions to ask at this point.

“How do you feel?” Benjamin asked.

“Feel?” she coughed. “Like I got two broken ribs, asshole.”

“I mean, now that the mind control is gone, do you feel different? The Bound to Serve debuff.” He tried again another way as he reviewed her character sheet and noted the odd name. “Vermistian is a very strange name. Are you from Earth?”

“Listen -I don’t know who any of you are, but I’m not saying anything until I… wait, how can I even tell you no?” she asked. A moment ago, the woman had been full of bluster, but as soon as she realized something was different, she deflated visibly.

“It’s okay,” Benjamin continued. “You’re safe now. You’re free.”

The woman didn’t answer. She just started sobbing, and when Emma moved to force her compliance, Benjamin stopped her. “Don’t. We have no idea how long she’s been trapped in her own head by their magics. What would you do if I had freed you after five years instead of five weeks?”

“Me? I’d Kill myself probably,” Emma said matter of factly, “But I wouldn’t have been a little bitch about it.”

Benjamin sighed. “Maybe the overseer will provide us with more answers.”

No one but Benjamin believed that might be the case as he changed his focus. He could tell from their skeptical expressions. Still, it took only a few minutes of stony silences punctuated by insults about the greatness of the Rhulvin before Benjamin got the idea.

“Do you think torture would help?” Matt asked, looking almost eager to take apart someone new.

“I don’t think we want to be the guys that resort to torture, “Benjamin answered. “It’s hard to think of yourself as the good guy after that. Besides—”

“Who says I want to be the good guy?” Emma shot back. “Maybe I just want revenge on everyone who thinks it’s okay to treat people like this.”

Almost all of his friends nodded at that, and honestly, Benjamin couldn’t blame them. The siren’s song of revenge got stronger all the time.

“Because,” he continued, not liking where that conversation might lead. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve learned a lot from this guy without him saying a word.”

“How’s that?” Matt asked, brightening as he became more curious than vengeful.

“Well, he’s answered a question I’ve had for a long time, for starters,” Benjamin answered with a smile.

“I gave you no such answers!” the mage shot back, shattering his confident demeanor with a single answer.

“But you did,” Benjamin insisted. “At least your system did. It betrayed you. For months now, I’ve wondered how the awful mind control spells you use on your captives work and if they would work on you, and the answer is very clearly no. Your system is set up totally differently.”

“You think this is the first uprising we’ve dealt with,” the man laughed. “We’ll crush you the same as all the others, and in the end, I’ll be reborn while you’ll be nothing but food for worms.”

“I can tell you what you want to know,” the huntress said before Benjamin could respond. “There’s only two other overseers on plantation 24. We don’t need more than that. It’s a safe location far from any of the hotspots. Besides there there’s the… the…”

The huntress suddenly started to seize, and moments later, she was foaming at the mouth as Matt laid her down and started to examine her. Benjamin figured out what the mage had done, at least in part, but too late.

He’d freed her, but he hadn’t hardened her system the same way he’d done for his friends, and somewhere, buried deep in the millions of lines of code that made up the magical engine, was some kind of self-destruct sequence he hadn’t yet discovered.

Benjamin ignored the smug grin on the face of the other man, as well as his words when he said, “You’ll get nothing from either of us, I’m afraid. The Rhulvinar cannot abide by traitors.” Instead, he focused on trying to log into her system to see what could be done to abort the process or fix it, but the whole thing had crashed and locked up. Given what he knew about soul wounds and the way the magic tied into the soul, Benjamin had a better idea than most about what was happening, and it made him twist in sympathetic pain, even as his anger boiled up and he launched himself to his feet.

Matt was too busy trying to save someone who could not be saved, and Emma had no interest in even trying to stop him, so Benjamin was on the overseer, punching him as hard as he could for almost a minute before Nicole dragged him off the guy.

“She was finally free, and you killed her!” Benjamin yelled.

“She belonged to us forever. Just as the rest of you do!” The monster spat back with a manic laugh. “All I did was put her out of her misery before she could dishonor herself further. I—”

His words were halted when Emma casually flicked one of her knives across the clearing, embedding it precisely in the man’s throat, reducing him to gurgles.

“You know - if you’d let me kill him in the first place, this poor girl would still be alive,” she said with a smile, “That’s on you, but hey - thanks for the armor.”

Benjamin was torn for a moment between trying to save the other man’s life again, but he buried that urge. There was nothing else they would learn here. Part of him wondered if he could use vampiric bolt combined with healing to drain enough memories from this man to tell him something useful, but the rest of him was repulsed by the idea.

“We should move,” Matt said, finally giving up on his patient. “There’s nothing more we can do for any of them.”