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Ch. 15 The Rules
🕑 Added 2024-06-04 00:46:51 +0000 UTC15.
Santi spun around to look at the creature that had just yelled in his ear. His frayed nerves snapped, a scream of fright and rage boiling out of him, and he slashed at the figure. His axe chopped through the air, intent on killing whatever it was. Santi’s eyes took in the figure just before his axe started to shear through skin. Or, at least it tried to. The axe stopped dead an inch from the creature’s skin, frozen solid as everyone else in the room.
“Screaming isn’t becoming a regressor. You should work on that,” the creature continued to boom. It was loud enough that Santi could swear he saw dust motes flying off the ground with every uttered syllable. Santi finally took a minute to take the creature in and had to swallow hard at what he was seeing.
Seven feet of beige, velvet, sweatsuit. Thick chains of heavy gold draped its long neck and wrists. Skin so pale it was translucent, blue veins pulsing with regularity along its neck. Black hair fell in a rough mullet to its shoulders, a pair of curling golden ram horns on the side of its head that shone with power. Its large pot-belly strained its suit, but it seemed not to have a care in the world as it drank from a pitcher of margaritas through a bendy straw.
“W…what?” Santi stammered as he took it in.
“I’m the administrator of this mud ball. You may call me Akthyr. And you are a headache.” Akthyr burped loudly, wide pink lips wobbling as spittle flew free.
“Third time I’ve had to reset the world and initiation. This was supposed to be easy, you know. I come in, watch over as the system rebuilds your society. Someone claims the planet, I get my reward. Buuuuuttttttt noooooo. Have to keep resetting it. Fucking time magic,” Akthyr was wobbling on their feet, hardly bothering to look down at Santi as they staggered to a sofa to plop down on. The straw emerging from the pitcher of margaritas didn’t stray any further than an inch from their lips.
“I’m, uhh, a little confused?”
“It’s fine. You’re dumb. This is the fourth time your world has started and it's the first time you’ve been interesting.”
“Little rude,” Santi muttered as he walked closer, but kept a safe distance. He had never seen this species of alien before, but he had met plenty before. Akthyr radiated power, railing off of him in intoxicating waves. Whatever he was or position he held, he could be helpful for Santi. As long as Santi stayed on his good side and didn’t get evaporated.
“I came here to tell you directly, just like I’m telling the other eight shitheads.”
Eight?! The thought shot through Santi like a bolt of lightning. There had only been seven of them in the ritual, which meant there were potentially two other regressors out there.
“Are you listening to me? I swear, you humans are so inefficient. Only one train of thought, just terrible,” Akthyr moaned as Santi focused his attention on the administrator.
“Yes, I’m listening.”
“Geas. I’m putting a geas on all of you. No talking about regressing. Take advantage of it all you want, can’t tell anyone until you’re a Champion. By then, well it won’t matter by then,” Akthyr trailed off, the faintest hints of a smile tracing across his lips.
“Excuse me? That was really creepy and I’d like it if you explained it,” Santi was too tired to play these games with a drunk alien. All he wanted to do was go to his bedroom and lay down for a few hours. That and a shower to scrub off all the sap that was stuck to his body.
Akthyr giggled. A drunk seven foot alien was giggling as the apocalypse was going on around him after freezing an entire room full of people. Santi checked out. His common sense finished packing up and left, taking his filter and politeness with him.
“What’s so funny?”
“You. All of this,” Akthyr let his head loll back and cackled, the sound similar to a mule’s braying.
“You sound like a jackass right now.”
“Ohhh, don’t get upset and try to play word games with me. I’m conversing with all nine of you at the same time as I integrate this stupid planet for the fourth time. Even with the thinnest sliver of my conscious peering at you, I am so far beyond you, well, you may as well be an ant scuttling across the surface of the sun.”
“You done? Feel better now that you’ve got that canned speech off your chest?”
“Yes, yes I do. I practiced it in the shower. Two of the others are shaking in fear right now and the rest are at least humble. What is your deal? You should be trembling before my might?” Akthyr didn’t sound too upset, just curious as they sucked down more margarita.
“I’m really tired, and I kinda want this to be over so I can get my class and take a nap.”
“Shock. That’s what this is.” Akthyr’s goat-like eyes narrowed as they peered harder at Santi.
“Severe dehydration, hunger, and your brain is a little toasty from all of those adrenaline dumps. Surprised you're still on your feet. Humans are so fragile,” Akthyr waved his hand in a vague gesture of approval.
“Sure, let’s say it’s shock.”
“Anyway, for your shocking, hahaha, get it, shocking,” Akthyr dissolved into drunken giggles. Santi just stared down at him with mounting exasperation.
“Ohhh, okay, okaaayyyy. I’ll let you know what’s up since you have a spine. When you did the whole regressor thing it kinda fucks everything up. Drains huge amounts of energy and potential that the system sets aside for the integration. Which is my bonus by the way, so y’all are wasting my bonus every time you reset this timeline.”
“What do you mean, by like, any of that,” Santi asked, his mind spinning as Akthyr just rambled through a half-ass explanation.
“Why are you so dumb. So, you have a planet, Earth. It is being integrated. When integrating the planet it is put in a bubble, isolated from everything. Potential and mana are set aside to power the integration. When you reset the planet through a massive use of time magic, like your regression, I have to restart it. Cull the entire planet, condense it down to nothing, and then restart you back to when the planet was isolated. Everytime I do that, it eats up a lot of the energy that the system sets aside to fuel this integration. Energy and potential that I would have received as a bonus for completing this integration. You keeping up?”
“Yeah. Planet in a bubble. Regression causes the planet to be reset, taking energy out of the bank. You get all of the leftover energy from the bank when the integration is done,” Santi rehashed Akthyr’s winding explanation.
“Close enough. So, I’m tired of resetting all of you shits, so I’ve decided to invest instead of cutting costs. I’m going to invest all of the remaining potential and energy into your planet. The potential and energy investment will boost your world to a D grade. This will cause the veil on your planet to degrade faster, which will bring more and more colonizers. You thought the war was bad last time when the dregs came. Now, sons and daughters of noble houses will flock here for the opportunity to harness the power of a freshly integrated world.”
“What do you get out of doing this?” Santi whispered, his heart sinking as flashbacks from the score of campaigns he had fought in passed through his mind. They had driven the invaders off world, but the cost had been tremendous. If that was the dregs, and now the real warriors were coming, then they were doomed.
“The planet will be sold to one of the Ascended. You know, the guy you spat at and promised to defy and resist.” Akthyr seemed to find this endlessly funny, braying on the couch as Santi slowly sank down next to them.
“What’s an Ascended?”
“Call them a god if it makes you feel better. It’s what happens when you reach the top. You ascend, leave this plane, go to the next. Still, they collect rent from us down here. Scout talent, harvest rare resources, stuff like that. Keep an eye on descendants, heaven forbid you kill an Ascended’s descendant.”
“It doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Huh?”
“Calling them a god. It doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Ohh, well, it sucks to be you. Anyway, I came to tell you the rules, I have told you the rules. No more regressions, no telling people about being a regressor. Planet’s getting an upgrade, you have a year before the invasions start. Good luck, try to be more entertaining by the way. It’s awfully boring being up there and staring down at you when you were hiding around and just speeding about. The system likes fighters, you know, people who aren’t afraid of mixing it up.”
With that last bit of unasked for advice, Akthyr simply disappeared and sound returned to the common room. The utter silence had been unnerving, but to hear the breathing of thirty people resume was nearly deafening.
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“Oh, finally.” Santi laid his head down against the arm of the sofa he was sitting on and fell asleep. He ignored the beeping of the system notifications that were thrumming as his rewards piled on. He would check it when he woke up.
