Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
In the House, In a Heartbeat - John Murphy (28 Days Later Soundtrack) [Metal Remix]
https://youtu.be/c8QNTsOJ1kc
Chapter 26: Ranks
Mid Afternoon - Early Summer : Year 0 | Month 1 : Arlington, Virginia | East Coast United States
World: Earth | Rank: 6 | Population: ~1,893,120,000
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*CL-l-l-lank—s-s-s-splash* Listening to the countless metal pieces fall into the pool of molten earth with a patter, the magma around me flashed with the memory of an endless ocean, my stance widened, and breathing slowed... "Hooooh..." -This might be kind of fun..!-
From that point forward, I was to become the conductor of a play. -That bastard knows I'm hurt.- He wanted to use me as a shield from the System, and to use the System as a tool to finish me off. -I just need to make it seem like these enforcers end up killing me somehow...-
But not having any idea how to do that yet, I needed to stall for time. -At least until Michael gets here...-
That wasn't a simple matter though. To minimize damage to my surroundings, I needed to keep the enforcers levels as low as possible, so that meant I not only had to keep from breaking them, but dodge their attacks entirely. If an enforcer so much as grazed me and it didn't do any visible damage, it would never use the same weapon again, then when its tried everything, the units would get recalled and replaced with whatever the system believed could be more effective while raising the level accordingly.
If I got bad luck, even low level enforcers would be hard to stall. -I just hope Earth's squishy ground doesn't trip me up...-
*Vwoop* 'Feeling' space warp again, I ducked and turned to let a heavy, grey metal fist encased in shockwaves rip past my back. *woooOOOM* -A melee type... Good start...- Knowing melee units were never alone though, my eyes darted across the mess of grey buildings to find the other before a flash of light and a blanket of wash of warmth washed over my leg. *BRRRM* "Tch..."
Snapping my eyes back through the gap between the melee enforcers arm and my back, I found a smaller, white-armored unit similar to the first I killed. -It just had to be another gunner...- It was nearly a worst case scenario. The unit only had two different attacks.. and one of them was now proved ineffective. -There goes my one slip up...- But now that I had it in my sights, I was certain it wouldn't catch me again.
*Tink* Pushing up the melee unit's fist as a blade began extending from its upper arm, a line of sparks were drawn across my back before I turned. *Pop-WOOOSH* Bolting out of the molten pool toward the gunner, the glow in its chest intensified, the wide barrel in its arm shrunk, and I clipped the lip of the crater with my boot to throw myself to the ground. *Snip-CRACK*
Almost instantly, a beam dozens of times hotter than the first passed over me before expanding and carving a tunnel through the city's outskirts. *BRRRRMMMM* It erased entire sections of buildings in a blink. -Shit.. I can't let him shoot into the city like that...- Enforcers were meant to take precautions to minimize casualties. It was why whenever they appeared, everything in the vicinity got teleported a 'safe distance' away with gates.
But looking through the bore the beam had left, I saw open horizon.. and less than a second later.. watched a half-vaporized, burned body fall from the upper floor of a pierced building...
As it had always been, safe distance was subjective.. and the enforcers didn't account for how much energy the environment could absorb... -I can't let him shoot below the horizon again.-
But I was never given another chance.
*Beep* With a noise nearly too soft to hear, the enforcers' sensors turned red before vanishing into gates with a yellow panel:
'Level re-evaluated: >4000'
-W..what..?!- My eyes went wide. -What is that for?!- *Tap-Crrrunch* Skidding to a stop, I snapped back to where the gunner once stood.. where the air rippled with heat.. only to see a few strands of my long black hair glowing orange with heat... -Ah...-
Though I managed to get my body under it, all it took was the beam grazing a single strand of hair for the enforcers to get a gauge on me...
...A good one.
*Vwoop* Feeling space warp again, my eyes snapped to the side just in time to catch another robotic fist with my face. *WH—CR-CR-CR-CRUMBLE* Smashing through buildings like they were made of paper-mache, I slammed into the city's outer wall hard enough to cave in the base before throwing myself to the ground as fast as I could.
*WOOM* Closing the distance with another gate, an enforcer twice as towering as the other appeared with its arm morphed into a long blade and the wall exploded with the screech of splitting atoms. *SKREE-WOOOOOM*
With the exponential scaling of levels, Earth's materials simply couldn't hold up. -This.. might be bad...- *WOOM* Sinking into the ground with my landing, my chest tightened and pupils thinned. If I continued to dodge normally, it was just a matter of time before I misjudged the force the ground would let me exert and get caught by another attack.
-I need something sturdier.- I needed something metal.
But.. there was only one thing that solid in the vicinity...
Snapping its sensors to my face, the enforcer's arm spun, the blade twisted, and the sword path drew a line across my chest.
But compared to the first swing, this was nothing. *Fwip-tap—* Pressing onto the blade as it neared my side, I ripped myself out of the molten pool just in time to throw my head back and have the long lance of the other enforcer miss me by a hair. -There you are.- *—CRRRRACKKKK*
The first attack it launched from its gate smashed through the sound barrier as carelessly as a beam of light, punching a hole through the air that blew a molten streak across the inside of the wall.
But while I stared into the underside of a glowing hot lance passing by just centimeters above my face, I found myself smiling.
'Fun'.
*Tink* Jumping off the blade, I spun around the lance only for the sword's trajectory to twist, chase, and smash into it. *Creee—CLANG* If the ground was too weak to make use of, I'd simply use their bodies.
*Cl-l-l-l-ink—* As the lance retracted beneath me, I hooked my foot under its base and used the accelerating blade to spin me, cartwheeling me over the lancer's head and letting me grab its collar before its arms inorganically twisted, and the lances in its arms telescoped with a needle of white forming on their tips.
Though, with something solid in my grasp, they would never catch me. *—WOOM* Slipping beneath the lances, I threw myself down the enforcer's back before grabbing a gap in the plates at its waist and finding a firm footing in the crease of its knee.
That was the moment the fight ended.
With plenty of creases and gaps to grab, footings sturdy enough to dart off, and their swings slowing as they reached me to avoid damaging one another, the great creations of the System became mice biting at a cat.
They were simply toyed with.
But as the dance continued, my sharpening rhythm grew mindless, and my smile began fading, the enforcers' hypersonic movements slowed to that of snails with a reality-bending warp. *Vwoom* -That must be him...-
I couldn't even finish that thought of recognition though. "~WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!~" Before I could even find him, Michael's voice boomed louder than the most deafening of explosions.
But I couldn't let him do whatever he was doing. "Don't call the enforcers off yet!" Snapping my eyes to him, I watched his hand freeze over a panel. "Make it seem like the enforcers managed to kill me!"
His face instantly washed with an unbridled confusion.
Knowing he could see the shattered bones still trying to heal beneath my armor and flesh, I spoke as bluntly as I could. "Someone from another world rode my gate back and is using the System to finish me off! I don't know how, but you need to make it seem like they succeeded!"
Slowly turning up to me, Michael's wings stuttered—feathers flaring like knives. "~The System.. isn't after you?~"
"WHAT KIND OF ELF DO I LOOK LIKE TO YOU?! Just hurry and play along!"
Holding my gaze, rage crowded his eyes only for duty to strangle it. Biting his lip, he turned and drove his fingers through a lattice of ambered time to navigate his System.
Before a moment later...
*B-Beep* Yellow panels chimed into being in front of my face: 'Target eliminated. Recalling Enforcers.'
*Pff—Vwoop—Vwoop* Sound returned in crumbs as the enforcers were swallowed by flickers of darkness from the shells of gates, and Michael's grip on time eased. *CRRRRRRRAAAAACKKKK* The residual echos of shockwaves instantly boomed, shaking the entire city like an earthquake before slowly easing. -Perfect...-
Somehow, the damage seemed minimal, even as I landed on molten ground next to a half-kilometer-wide gash in humanity's greatest wall.
But Michael was far from pleased.
Drifting over me like inevitable judgement, he stared at me with a displeasure he could only reign with calculus. "~You have no idea what kind of mess you just made...~" Time softened more with every word, but the air seemed to almost sharpen to daggers. "~Since you may be my only hope of cleaning it, I'll listen—just this once... You best pray its a good explanation...~"
I didn't waste another second. Giving him everything between pain-laced breaths, from the abduction, the death, and the months on Leviathan, to the 'administrator', the cores, and the elven smile that split the sky upon my return, I spilled everything.
Dishonesty would do me no favors, and from this point forward, I needed Michael's help just as much as he needed mine.
It was a mutual understanding.
...But when I finished, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed from somewhere older than the Atlantic. "~You must be the incarnation of disaster...~" But with every fraction of a second that passed, his anger eased more. Until eventually, he managed to form some thoughts. "~Why, Lord, must you test me as such...~" Passing one more sigh, he finally turned back to me. "~Since we're somehow in the same boat, let me show you exactly how much you screwed up... Open your System.~"
*Vwoop* I opened it with a single thought.
"~Go to 'System Rank and Balance'.~"
*Flicker* A wall of graphs and charts immediately appeared, separated into three sections: 'Mana Rank', 'Monster Rank', and 'Population Rank'.
"~The sections of statistics you're looking at are the three subranks every world has. They are used by the System to determine a world's overall rank, when to supply monsters, or send foreign system mercenaries. If one is higher than another, either monsters or mercenaries adjusted to the mana rank will be sent to the planet to balance out the lopsided rank.~"
It was something I had heard mentioned before, essentially being the balancing act the System used to grow worlds.
However, while the charts were meant to all look nearly identical to one another, that wasn't the case here...
Looking at the charts side by side, the monster rank and mana rank seemed similar to one another, mostly following the same trend until the mana rank jumped a few percent with my initial arrival...
The population rank though... "Ah..." It's movement.. wasn't so minimal...
-That.. can't be good...-
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