Chapter 94

Luke ranged back and forth in a zig-zag pattern while Zea marched straight ahead. Every few minutes, he’d loop back and check in before starting another lap. They kept this up for days, and without the XP split or the slow pace, he quickly jumped up from level 26 to 29. Of his 84 new AP, 30 went into rank 4 of [Unarmed Martialist] and 15 were spent on [Tactical Insight].

He also got a lucky break and ranked up [Power Strike]naturally after nearly a whole day of bashing some sort of earth elementals made out of a heavy, jet-black stone when they got closer to the mountains. Considering that the system shop would have charged him 50 AP for the upgrade, he was pretty psyched about it.

That left him with 48 AP, which at one point in time he would have considered an obscene amount. He stuck 15 into [Remote Access], kept 20 on reserve for [XP Mask], and banked the rest towards an upgrade of [Life Surge] in another 3 levels.

He noticed Zea shooting him uneasy looks one night while he continued to work on mastering cooking to the point where the system awarded him the skill. Somehow, despite her instructions and his best efforts, he still couldn’t produce anything that could be described as anything better than barely edible, and the system wasn’t giving any points for persistence.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Just trying to figure out if you’re starting to go crazy yet.”

Luke started to make a joke, but then he paused and really thought about it. He knew there was a cultural fear of high level people going insane, and he even knew what caused it. “What would the signs be?” he asked.

“Hearing voices is supposed to be the first one.”

“Well, you can probably check that one off. I’ve been hearing System since about two minutes after I got here.”

“I don’t think that’s what it means,” Zea said.

That was probably true. System was, as far as Luke knew and assuming he could trust the apparition, a manifestation of the God Machine itself. The voices people heard would be their own XP congealing back into a fragment of a god and whispering to them. He didn’t really understand why the XP did that, but it was easy enough to find out, he hoped.

“System,” Luke said, making Zea jump. Since modifying her own status to be able to interact with System, she could see him now, but it still made her flinch. More than once, he’d overheard her muttering about going insane herself.

“Yes, Luke?”

“Please tell me everything you can about the condition known as XP Madness.”

“Certainly. As we’ve previously discussed, this is caused by an accumulation of XP over a period of time. The XP begins to form into a sort of miniature proto-deity. Due perhaps to the nature of the donor god as a hivemind structure, this proto-deity has an instinctual drive to connect to others and to return to the hive. That drive gradually becomes stronger with time, and with accumulated XP, until the host creature begins acting erratically and oftentimes violently.”

“What does ‘erratically’ mean?” Luke asked. He wanted to know the signs so he could monitor himself for the first hints of them.

“They get twitchy,” Zea said softly. “Nervous tics. They always seem distracted. Sometimes they start making weird noises. Then when people confront them about the behavior, they start getting violent. They lash out, and things escalate. Eventually someone ends up dead. Hopefully it’s whoever got sick, but usually it’s a whole lot of victims first since no one can stop a guy leveled up to 40 or 50.”

“That is all essentially correct,” System said.

“You know… that kind of sounds a lot like my uncle,” Luke said. “When Aunt Sophie disappeared, we all just kind of chalked it up to stress over the situation. His wife was gone, nobody knew where she went, and he got grilled pretty hard by the cops over it. Things just kind of kept getting worse over the next year. My cousin went next, then Dad, then my older sister and brother, one after another.”

“Then you,” Zea said. “But how would your uncle have XP Madness? Was he someone from this world that somehow made it to yours?”

“He was from Georgia, as far as I know,” Luke said. “But then again, someone in my family tree must have been from here originally, right? How else would we all have this bloodline?”

“The gods used a mortal man as a focal point when constructing the God Machine,” System said. “This is the origin of your bloodline. They opened a door to another world as far away from the God Machine as possible and cast him through.”

“And that would be my ancestor,” Luke said. “But it doesn’t explain what happened to Duncan. He’s not even actually a blood relative. Aunt Sophie is my father’s sister. Duncan is just her husband that she met in college. His only connection is who he married.”

“Well, the door still exists, right?” Zea asked.

Luke glanced over at System, who said, “Yes, it does.”

“I didn’t see any magic doorway leading into a wardrobe when I first got here.”

“Maybe it only opens at certain times,” Zea suggested. “Or under the right conditions.”

They both turned to System, who shook his head and said, “I am not able to answer that question.”

“Okay, well, let’s assume that’s true. Are you saying that Duncan walked through, killed something, got some XP, and then went back home?”

“Or something walked through and he killed it in your world.”

“When I was really little, I remember my parents talking to my aunt about some animal that had gotten into their basement. They were all really freaked out about it and wouldn’t tell any of us kids anything,” Luke said. “That was fifteen years ago. So if my uncle killed it, he got a few points of XP, and all the sudden he’s connected to the system. But that’s so little, it doesn’t explain how he would get XP Madness.”

“Maybe-” Zea stopped and shook her head. “No.”

“Maybe what?”

“I was going to say, you told me time moves at a different speed between worlds. What if XP works on our time, even in your world? Does that make sense?”

“Uh.”

“If it does, then even having just a few XP, if a single month of your time is a century here, that XP would have had thousands of years to slowly eat away at your uncle’s mind.”

“And this thing became a voice in his head, told him to shove people with the right bloodline through the doorway, which just happens to be in his basement?”

Zea shrugged. “It had to be somewhere, right?”

“Kind of convenient, isn’t it?”

Then again, that house had been in his family for generations. His aunt had inherited it from his grandfather, who had himself been born, grown up, lived, and died in that house. It was more than a hundred years old. Whichever ancestor had originally been from Aros could have built his home on top of the door.

It was all speculation. Someday, it might be important, but not today. What was important now was knowing the signs of XP Madness to watch out for in himself, though as he understood it, it was a factor of amount and time. He had a lot of XP, but he’d only had it for a few months. There’d been no XP at all for over nineteen years.

“System, you can tell when XP Madness starts affecting me, right?”

“I can make a guess based on your total XP and how long you’ve had each point. It is only an estimate, but I believe you have about twenty-five years left before you begin showing signs that would be noticeable in someone else.”

“What about me?” Zea asked.

“Fifty-two years. Keep in mind that these estimates are predicated on the highly unlikely scenario that you never gain another point of XP ever again.”

“It’s fine. You said we could purge the XP at the God Machine,” Luke said.

“That is correct. You can purge XP, Luke. Zea lacks the capability.”

“But I can purge hers too,” Luke pressed.

“If you so desire.”

“Well there we go, then. We just need to get there and everything will be fine.”

Zea gave him a flat stare and said, “I don’t think it’s so easy as just walking up to it. We’re not even on the right continent yet. I think you should slow down on the XP grind. A few more levels and you’ll only have a year or two left instead of decades.”

“That’s just until I start exhibiting symptoms. I’ll still have some time before I go full-on cuckoo, right System?”

“Universally, in all cases of XP Madness, the host has already begun to lose control of their mental faculties prior to symptoms becoming apparent to other creatures.”

Luke’s face fell. “So you’re saying I actually have less time than you predicted?”

“Shit,” Zea swore. “This just keeps getting worse.”

“That is correct, Luke.”

“Time to stop screwing around then. I think I’m strong enough to get us through the wilderness. How far are we from Sicanti now?”

“Six hundred miles,” System said. “Though if you intend to continue avoiding crossing the mountains, you will need to go approximately one hundred fifty miles out of your way.”

“So seven fifty total,” Luke said. “We can do that in a week as long as nothing big gets in our way.”

“And we have the amaril,” Zea said. “I know I can sell that in less than a day. Might not get the best price for it, but I’ll get us enough for passage across the ocean. The biggest wait will probably be on a ship leaving port. It’s not like that happens every day.”

“As long as we’re not killing anyone in the city, it should be fine. We do still have years left.”

“System,” Zea said. “Once we cross the ocean, we’ll land in a city named Naldrin. How far is it from there to the God Machine?”

“Two thousand eight hundred and forty miles.”

Luke let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of walking. But if we can take roads for most of it, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Maybe we could buy a few teleports to speed up the process with some of the extra money,” Zea said. “Maybe. It’s pretty tightly regulated, at least in Valtira. Even if you have the gold, that doesn’t guarantee a slot.”

“If not, we’ll figure something else out. One step at a time. First, we get to the city, then get on a boat. Then we’ll work out the next step.”

“System, once a day, I want you to update us with your best estimate for how long until we begin to have symptoms of XP madness, not when others will start to notice,” Zea said.

“Understood. In that case, my estimate is that Luke has twenty-one years left and you have forty-six.”

“Still plenty of time,” Luke said, trying not to sound worried.

“Only if we can fix it. What if we can’t? What if we’re completely fucked?”

“We’re not fucked. We’ll make it there. I’ll put it all back the way it’s supposed to be.”

“I’m not so sure anymore,” Zea told him bluntly. “This is crazy. What happens when it’s not just a church inquisitor trying to stop us? How far will we get before the gods agree to ignore the Covenant and just squash us?”

Luke looked over at System, who regarded him blankly. “I am not able to speculate on the motivations or actions of the Pantheon.”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve told me, several times. Thank you, System. That will be all.”

The apparition disappeared, and Luke sat down next to Zea to comfort her. “They haven’t done anything yet,” he said. “If they could have, they would have as soon as I got here.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Me too.”