Vol. 4 Chap. 40 Comes Around

<<Wake up! WAKE THE FUCK UP!>> Truth could vaguely hear the System screaming at him.  The crushing pressure of the serpent above made it almost impossible to focus. The sense of his body being pressed into pulp encouraged him to shift himself. He tried to sit up and almost puked from the nausea. Giving up, he began to slowly crawl towards the door. He was lucky- he hadn’t gone far into the room at all. A few steps, he had thought. It felt much further now.

The door just pushed open from this side. No need for any locks. Truth had a vague idea that he was the first person to set foot in this room since the Eminence's shadow was summoned. Why would anyone go in at all? But you had to have a door, because if something went wrong in there, you really wouldn’t want to wait around getting in.

He managed to push the door open and crawl out. The door swung shut behind him without his help.

Truth lay on the side of the roaring torrent of sewage, sucking in breaths of too-thin air. For a moment, he thought the collapse had happened, that the cosmic rays were just ignoring them. After a few minutes, his heart calmed down. It was just the normal amount of cosmic rays. He had gotten used to the super saturated environment in the chamber of the Snake That Eats Its Own Tail.

It was alright. Laying on the ground and gasping like a landed fish was about the limits of his ability at the moment.

How long were we in there?

<<I don’t know. Maybe a day? Not much more than that, unless time got weird in there.>>

Truth nodded. He was hungry, desperately thirsty, and needed the toilet. Which, knowing what was at the end of the sewer system, gave him very mixed feelings. He climbed to his feet. Shaky. Very shaky. But nothing good would come from lying here, so he started shuffling away from the chamber. His body felt strange. He couldn’t quite put it in words.

So. A lot happened in the last day or so.

<<Fair to say.>> The System’s voice was bone dry.

How far back do you think we got made?

<<At least since the Succubae checked in at the Hotel. Maybe as far back as Conjin. If I was the friend with the broken leg and a thumping hotel bill, I would be above average pissed. Given their level, it wouldn’t be hard to at least ask around with Internal Security.>>

Let me run to see where I would go and what I would do?

<<And who you would meet and how you were doing all this, I assume. They know for sure about Incisive and Obliteration. They will take steps. Not to mention that they will be searching for you a lot more specifically.>>

How much do you think they attribute to me?

<<Does it matter? You are comparatively high level, clearly effective, clearly a lot has been invested in you. It would be a major coup to take you off the board.>>

At long last. Recognition. Truth couldn’t laugh. The situation was more than just bad. The System agreed.

<<Yep. You are doomed. Just astonishing levels of doom. Your ability to torture yourself has always been your defining characteristic, and even for you, this is going to suck. I’d think you were a masochist, but sadism has really been your thing, hasn’t it? Well, chin up. You will have the chance to talk with some professional sadists in the near future. Won’t that be nice?>>

Hooray.

<<I knew that would cheer you up. ‘Torturer’ has such a negative connotation. Let’s focus on how to turn that frown upside down!>>

No, negativity seems pretty appropriate.

<<Actually, maybe not.>> The system sounded hesitant. <<I’m trying to figure out what happened to your body. It’s… changed. Again.”

I can feel it. How?

<<Ah, how to put this… seamless?>>

Not following you.

<<The Nephilim body cultivation system is all about locking down the cosmic rays inside of you. To the point where it becomes difficult to cast spells. Less like armor, more like sealing yourself in plastic. The idea is that it keeps your apertures from collapsing, but in exchange, you become a pure body cultivator. That’s not quite accurate- they can do magic. But basically that. This is something else.>>

Yeah?

<<You basically get the benefits of both systems. You can cast easily, but also hang on to your energy like it owed you money.>>

I mean, that’s good, but why are you making it sound like such a big deal? We were already doing it with the Meditations.

<<That IS why I am making such a big deal out of it. It took what you were doing and pushed it way, way forward. While simultaneously improving your body cultivation and its alignment with your soul. What the Astral Dowsing Fluid did way back at Level One, the Shadow of the Excellency pushed four steps forward.>>

Damn. So basically, everything I was doing, I am now doing… better.

<<I have a feeling it’s not that simple, but yes. Leaving aside your improvements in body cultivation and your nice little bump in astral cultivation, it’s your thinking that really benefited from our time in the Chamber. Can you remember what you were thinking about when you fainted?>>

Just that we were all rats, because rats eat each other. And that humans- The vertigo came back, the sudden nausea. He was half expecting it this time. Humans help each other. Not for any particular reward, but because that’s what people should do. And while it might not be “realistic” to run a society on that basis, I know damn well that “reality” is an illusion.

He could feel the vertigo coming under control. Not gone, exactly, but he could function.

<<Yes. Like the scales of Incisive. Someone provided the form, the mass of humanity provided the belief, and the power comes from… somewhere.>>

The “real” is an illusion we cast on ourselves, because we can’t imagine a different world. Like the Praegerites and their notion of Hell.

<<Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joys of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being deprived of everlasting bliss?>>

There was a pause.

<<I have no idea where that came from, so I am going to blame you and your deranged reincarnating soul.>>

They had made their way to a junction. Truth turned left, because why not? Any direction is as good as another when you were this lost. The demons were splashing and hunting happily. Presumably he could beat directions out of an imp, but he would rather just not be noticed. No rush. The longer he stayed invisible, the better.

MegaShroom. We need to keep an eye on it. If they go after it, then we will know how tightly they were able to keep us surveilled. If they don’t, we will know we managed to break contact periodically.

<<You do have a tendency to head in seemingly random directions. At this point, you have run ops at both ends of the country, and you made a point of traveling by strange routes as much as possible. Whoever runs their roadblock programs is probably getting an earful, at the very least.  But let's table that for a minute and focus on your change of mentality.>>

It’s interesting to me that I had the breakthrough in a place where things are broken down and refined. Remember what Manda said about a forbidden idea? What if it’s this?

<<Mmm. This or something like this. It does seem to strongly suggest that this was something done to you. To everyone. This… redefinition of the real. And it's an ongoing process, or you wouldn’t keep feeling nausea as you try to think about it.>>

A conspiracy of the real, then? Defining reality one particular way so hard, going against that way of thinking makes you feel sick.

<<Or angry. I bet if you tried to explain this to someone, they would get angry at your nonsense fast. You have been more or less training for this for a while now.>>

Truth came to another intersection. Sooner or later there would be a door, or a stair, or a ladder. Or a dead end, but that would be something too. Why would you have a dead end in a system where everything was designed to flow down to the Chamber?

Who, what, when, where, why, and how?

<<Well, what, when, where and how I can’t answer. I tend to blame everything on Starbrite, but again, I have zero evidence for that. I do have an observation about “why” though, which would support the theory.>>

Lay it on me.

<<Who has benefitted the most from the world being the way it is?>>

Ah. Yes, that is usually the best first guess.

<<Follow up observation, it’s a lot more convenient for him if people think nobody’s going to help them and they have to help themselves for everything. Every person drifts along on their own little raft of self interest, desperately hoping the water stays calm. Even a small wave could tip them over and make them drown.>>

And if they banded together, they might build a stormproof boat.

It took a depressingly long time to find a manhole. It took even longer finding one that didn't have wagons running over it constantly. Truth spent another hour subtly testing the cover and environs, trying to ensure that there were no nasty surprises waiting for him on the other side. The way that old monster could suppress the foresight portion of Incisive was in some ways more alarming than his seeming immortality.

His caution proved to be wise. The manhole had a four centimeter thick iron bar bolted across it, enchanted, alarmed, cursed… and all that was a distraction from the real threat. The golem was almost impossible to see from the street, tucked in the shadows of a window frame twelve stories up. It’s sole job seemed to be to stare fixedly at the manhole. Presumably it would record and report if it ever moved.

Truth shoved a dumpster over the hole he had cut through meters of dirt, ten meters to the right of the manhole. It required more tunneling, and eating more dirt, than anyone could be happy with.

Told you.

<<Did I argue? Now where’s the backup to the backup?>>

In the dirt closer to the manhole. Remember how it didn’t feel safe? I’m betting it was lousy with earth demons waiting for me to pull exactly this trick.

<<But they know you have Incisive. They should have known you would know.>>

Yeah, but at the end of the day, it’s been twenty four hours and there are how many manholes in Harban? Even if they exclude all the ones on major streets, it is TERRIFYING to me that they could set all this up in such a short amount of time. I’m not docking points for failing to create a perfect trap.

<<Mmm. Merkovah must be happy.>>

Fair to say we have the System Astrologica’s attention now, yes.

Truth didn’t hang around the alley. Moving fast and keeping off the sidewalks, he managed to clear a couple kilometers before running out of cover. The streets were just too wide. And worryingly empty. Time to go to ground again, this time not in a sewer.

He avoided luxury hotels for the moment. That was not a pattern to repeat. Truth picked the nearest Citizen tower block he could find that he could reach without breaking cover. It was on lockdown. Promising, in a way. The city, and Starbrite, were spending yet more limited resources looking for him.

On the other hand, it meant that finding an empty apartment was likely impossible. He shrugged, found the door residents used to access the alley, and cracked the talisman lock. He wasn’t in a rush, and it wasn’t complicated.

No more violent breaking and entering, at least for a little while. Just vanish into the sea of people, diving in without a ripple.

He found an apartment with only one resident- an older man, passed out drunk in an armchair in front of the Scry. Truth spent a long minute looking at him. It wasn’t his dad, of course. The house was tidier, for one thing. This man was a citizen. He was drinking whiskey, not schnapps. There was no evidence of children in the apartment. No evidence of anyone else, really.

Truth went and scrubbed in the shower. He looked down at his clothes. They had held together, but were badly torn from the digging. He rubbed a bit between thumb and forefinger. It disintegrated. He sighed and opened his backpack. The zipper ripped out, the fabric of the pack disintegrating almost as fast as his shirt. The clothes inside were intact, but very fragile. Delightful. Another opportunity for involuntary nudism in the future.

He plonked down on the only other chair in the living room, watching the scry. It was some sort of rolling, perpetual news performance, where they replayed pre-recorded bits seamlessly dotted with “new” news.

He sighed and settled into the chair. It would be bull- He suddenly shot forward, staring intently into the scry ball.

They had a not-wildly-wrong portrait of him hovering in the air.

“Lockdown orders continue to be in effect in central Harban and are not expected to lift for another day at least. Widely believed to be responsible for hundreds, if not in excess of a thousand, murders, the National Internal Security Service has declared the terrorist known as the “Hell-Prince” Jeon’s Most Wanted. Any information leading to his capture will be heavily rewarded, likewise, anyone sheltering him will be considered a co-conspirator and executed.”

The beautiful presenter looked fierce. “We have him trapped, like a wasp in a bedroom. It’s every citizen’s duty to ensure he does not escape before he can be forced to reveal all his conspiracies. For the Nation, for the Citizens, for your safety and the safety of your family, the Hell-Prince must be captured. Now.”