Chapter 152

“First, I want to revisit my initial assumption. Can my family be brought back from the dead?” Luke asked.

“They can,” System confirmed.

“And I could do that right now, if I were at the command console of the God Machine?”

“That is correct.”

“I don’t need to upgrade my bloodline again?” Luke pressed.

“You do not. You will have full access to all bloodline skills at the command console.”

“And they’ll come back just like how they were before? No zombies or undead of any kind. No spirits or whatever. I’m talking about flesh and blood, just like the day they disappeared. I want them ready to walk through the doorway back to Earth.”

“That is the state they will appear in, if you so desire. Alternatively, you could resurrect them at the level they died at. Their final statuses remain in the system’s archives for use as a template to reconstruct.”

“Probably not necessary,” Luke said, “but I suppose it’s good to have options. Next question! Getting back home. Can I teleport us all back to the doorway in Tenebrous Valley?”

“As you currently are? You could not.”

“What would I need to do in order to make that happen?” Luke asked.

“You would need to add all the skills required to learn to cast a powerful teleportation or gate spell. Would you like them listed?”

“I don’t know. When you say I need to add them, do you mean by grinding out levels for AP?”

“No, you could restructure your current build at the God Machine, or simply add enough XP to your total to gain the AP needed if you’d prefer.”

“Okay,” Luke said. “To make sure I understand this correctly, I can’t currently teleport anyone, even if I was at the God Machine, but while I was there, I could make alterations to my status that would allow me to? It would just be a matter of doing it?”

“That is correct,” System said.

“So there is nothing I need to do in preparation prior to reaching the God Machine to accomplish my stated goals of reviving my family or teleporting them across the world to the doorway back to Earth?”

“There is not,” System agreed.

Luke glanced over at Zea. “That seems pretty airtight to me. How about you?”

“System seems sure,” she said.

Luke wanted to agree, but some niggling doubt in the back of his mind made him keep pressing. “If there’s nothing I need to do, what about anything I might want to do? Something that might make it easier, for example.”

System shook his translucent blue head. “Nothing you do prior to reaching the God Machine will have any measurable impact on your goals. You would save yourself only a few seconds at best for each skill you obtain during your travels.”

“Okay. What about Zea? Would I be able to teleport her to wherever she wants to go as well?”

“I do not have enough information to answer that question,” System said.

“What more information do you need?” Zea asked.

“The most pertinent information is the destination,” System explained. “Many teleportation spells have limitations both in range and familiarity with the selected location. More powerful spells can often work around these issues, but not always. Some locations are impossible to travel to using this type of magic.”

“It would be reasonable to assume I could go to most locations?” Zea asked. “Like, for example, Luke could send me back to Valtira the city, even if he couldn’t teleport me to a specific room at an inn he’s never been to.”

“That is mostly correct, though with a powerful enough scrying spell used in conjunction with a gateway spell of sufficient range, he could in fact open up a path for you to a room at an inn he’s never been to in Valtira.”

“That’s specific enough for me,” Zea said. “I am assuming it won’t be an issue for him to acquire the skills and spells needed directly from the God Machine once we get there?”

“It would not,” System confirmed.

“I think that about covers any concerns we had,” Zea said to Luke. “Unless you can think of something?”

“Nothing comes to mind. Thanks for the help, System.”

Satisfied that he would in fact be able to resurrect his entire family at the God Machine, Luke dismissed System and settled down for the night. In the morning, the work would begin anew, and he couldn’t deny that he was somewhat excited for it. It wasn’t that they’d made no progress over the last few months, but sitting on a ship while it moved had left him with an excess of energy. Soon, they’d be moving under their own power again, overcoming obstacles and defeating monsters.

“It might be worth it to get back on a ship that’s going down the coast to a southern city,” Zea said.

“God, no. No more ships. I’d rather walk.”

“Even if it’s safer and faster to sail?” Zea asked.

“I have plenty of time,” Luke said. “I’m kind of surprised you’d want to get back on a ship so soon anyway.”

“I got a lot done over the last few months. Most of it was to help you, but with another month or two, I could get myself set up quite nicely.”

“Fair enough. So I guess the plan is to get to the God Machine, reset you to level 1, bump you back up to… I don’t know. Level 10? 15? Something like that, and send you back to wherever you want to be?”

“More or less,” Zea said.

A few months ago, their plans had been much more nebulous. Luke didn’t even know for sure if Zea was going to accompany him across the ocean, and he wouldn’t have blamed her if they’d parted ways back in Sicanti. She’d decided to commit to the journey, and at this point, they were only a few months from ending it.

That was largely thanks to her. He didn’t think he would be even half as far as he was if he’d been on his own. Hell, without Zea, he most likely would have died in an inquisitor cell back in Valtira. No one else in his family had made it to the God Machine, though to be fair, he didn’t know for sure if they’d all been trying. Curt hadn’t even made it out of Tenebrous Valley. There was no telling what goals his other family members had been working on.

“I wonder if the people on the other sides of these walls think we’re crazy,” Luke mused. They’d kept the conversation quiet, but anyone with a perception over 15 or 20 would still have been able to hear what to them would sound like Luke talking to himself for half an hour.

“Eh, who cares? We’ll be back on the road tomorrow anyway since you shot down sailing.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Zea scooted across the bed and snuggled close to Luke. “If anyone is listening,” she whispered, “we might as well give them something to listen to.”

Luke snorted. “Maybe if you take off that cloak first.”

Zea’s seductive look transformed into a pout. “I like my cloak! It keeps me warm.”

“I thought that was my job,” Luke said.

“It was, and then I enchanted my cloak. Now I don’t need you for that anymore.”

“Is that so?” Luke said. “I guess I’d better work extra hard at all those other things I’m good for before you decide to enchant something else to replace me there too.”

“Yes, you should,” she told him quite seriously.

* * *

They were out of the city before the sun rose, much to Zea’s annoyance. Neither of them really needed the sleep anymore; Luke could and had gone multiple days in a row without sleeping, and then been fine to keep going after an hour-long nap. As much as Zea wanted to sleep ten hours a day, it wasn’t necessary and, this time, Luke stood his ground about getting moving instead of lazing in bed.

“I know we’re on another continent and all,” Luke said as they walked, “but things look surprisingly different. Different trees. Different animals. Even different colored grass. The houses all look different. The roads look different. The people look different. Okay, I guess that last one was expected.”

“All of them should have been expected,” Zea muttered darkly as she stomped along next to Luke.

“I know for a fact that your stamina is 27, that you can go two days without sleep and it won’t even slow you down. How is it that you’re this grumpy after getting a full six hours?”

“That’s my prerogative,” Zea told him.

“Fine, fine. I get it.” They kept walking in silence for another thirty seconds. “You know what hasn’t changed though?”

“What’s that?” Zea asked tiredly.

“Bandits. Fucking bandits everywhere you go.”

“Huh?”

Luke pointed down the road. “See that tree dropped across the road a mile away?”

Zea squinted and followed Luke’s finger with her eyes. “Eeehh. Maybe? Not saying you’re wrong, but your perception is over twice as high as mine.”

“It’s there. What do you think the odds are that a tree came down on this road that’s wide enough for wagons and goes directly into a major port city? I mean, Naldrin is barely ten miles back.”

“Stupid bandits to do it so close to the city,” Zea said.

“I suppose I could be wrong, but it seems pretty suspicious to me.”

A few minutes later, they approached the tree. A single glance was enough to confirm that it had been dropped by an ax. “Knew it,” Luke said. He stopped next to the trunk and looked around, then laughed and waved at a wide-eyed man hiding in a tree a hundred feet around the road. “There’s their spotter.”

“Uh, should we be doing something about that?” Zea asked.

Luke shrugged. “You think they’ll try to attack us?”

[Analyze] put the man at level 18, which was respectable but not dangerous to Luke. Most of his skills were only rank 2 or 3 as well. There could very well be stronger people in the band, but by the time the spotter was able to fetch them, Luke and Zea would be long gone.

He reached down with both hands, grabbed the tree right at the end, and heaved. It shifted in place and branches started snapping as he hauled it off to one side. “There, see. Road’s clear. We can be on our way.”

They glanced over at the spotter as they walked by. The man had some sort of green and black mask and a cloak to help him blend in, but [Detection]drew Luke’s eyes right to him. He watched them go silently, probably confused about the lack of XP he felt from them.

“You think they’ll come after us?” Zea asked.

Luke shrugged. “Let them. I’m not going to go out of my way, but I’ll put them down if they try.”

“Funny. I remember you having a very different attitude the last time we ran into bandits,” Zea said.

“Well that was a different situation. We needed XP, and money, and I was concerned about your safety,” Luke told her. “Now, they’re a nuisance that I’ll take care of if I have to, but I’m not going to waste a few hours hunting them down for no real gain.”

Zea considered that for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Okay, fair enough. We probably should get a move on at least. They might be annoyed about you hauling that tree out of the way.”

“I suppose that’s true. Plus it’s not like it’s a bad thing to get to the next stop sooner. System said we’re going to be on this road for about seven hundred miles, so figure a bit over a week as long as we don’t get sidetracked.”

“Come on, when do we ever not get sidetracked?”

“It doesn’t always happen,” Luke said.

“Ten gold says those bandits come after us.”

Luke was about to respond when he caught some movement out of his peripheral vision. “No bet,” he told her as he reached for the mace hanging off his back.