Quickduckling
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Afterlife 2.0 Chapter 35 — Fixing this whole mess
🕑 Added 2025-06-01 20:58:38 +0000 UTCWoo! The benefit of having no release schedule is that sometimes I can just sit down and write an entire chapter in two hours, then publish it. Hope you enjoy!
Standing in the centre of the ritual room as I looked over the five circles maintaining the rift in reality, only one thought was going through my mind.
We’re fucked aren’t we?
The thought that every person who had created this entire problem was burning in hell brought a smile to my face. But now it was my job to fix this whole mess in less than an hour. I wanted to scream, but that would be an unproductive use of my time at the moment.
Instead, I was frantically trying to get a simulation of the ritual running so that I could see what the hell they were even thinking, trying to do things the way they did. But it wasn’t working at all, and I didn’t know why. Oh, actually, I have something that should help.
I dumped the bookshelf I had stored in my Inventory, filled with tomes of ritual summoning. Then I selected one of the more complex works and began reading. I needed to know how their scholars thought this was a good idea, because intent played a role in the outcome of rituals. Or at least I was pretty sure it should, that’s what the little voice in the back of my head was telling me, despite not having any evidence to prove this fact. That little voice hadn’t let me down yet, so I was hoping it was [The Roots That Bind]’s comprehension boost in action.
“What’s this little wedge symbol they keep using? It doesn't make sense, it seems important for some reason, but I can’t figure out how,” I asked aloud. The more complex tomes didn’t mention it, but then they didn’t really talk about maintaining holes to another Plane, so I didn’t know how much use they even were for this subject. It almost seemed like it was just a random addition, but it was placed right after the bridge in the primary circle, which meant it was doing something incredibly important.
“I have no idea how I could even possibly know what you’re talking about.” Autumn chimed in.
“Yeah, that’s a fair point. I don’t see any method they’d be using to hold open the Planar hole. So obviously, that symbol would be doing most of the work. But what the hell does it even represent?” I continued. I needed to know what the symbol was in order to counteract it. If that was holding the hole in the Plane open, then my main goal here was to reverse it somehow.
“I still don’t have any idea,” Autumn replied. They had decided to sit themselves atop the bookshelf so they were right next to where I was working, which was very convenient as I valued their opinions.
“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it. What does a wedge have to do with a bridge? Nothing, it doesn’t make sense. The story they’re telling here in the ritual doesn’t make any logical sense…” Suddenly a conclusion came to me, “Oh fuck it’s a godsdamn doorstop, what moron used a doorstop after a bridge symbol. Oh my gods, please make sure that whoever decided to do that is thoroughly punished for the transgression of using a doorstop to hold open a bridge. What’s with these people’s obsession with bridges anyway?”
I felt a bit of Mana leave my body, and moments later, a sense of confirmation washed over me.
“Oh, thank you, nobody really listened to any of my other prayers, I appreciate whoever that was hearing me out,” I muttered. Good burn in hell, half assing your godsdamn Planar portal what the hell were you thinking.
“What was that last part?” Autumn asked, “I think I might be following along. The next symbol is supposed to hold the doorstop in place, right?”
“Just responding to someone answering my prayer, ignore that. And no, that’s a reference symbol that connects to this circle over…” I pointed to where the symbol was referencing another function, and was greeted with a black charcoal patch on the ground. “There. That’s where their defensive array was. Heavily stressing the past tense.”
Someone blow my brains out, please. Or no, wait, I don’t have brains, annihilate my Core? I don’t know, just let me sleep forever.
Were they writing rituals using traditional symbology or something? You have to update your scripting language, my guys—you can’t just use the same symbols forever. What even was this defensive array? A shield glyph, something in a script I didn’t understand, likely their targeting system for what the shield was supposed to work for, then a footman. It was as if they were using sixth-century ritual design in the modern day.
There was something to be said about symbols maintaining power over time if continuously used, but did anyone actually use a shield in this society anymore? Did footmen even exist? If not, then relevance wasn’t carried forward, and you’d actually have a worse outcome than if you just came up with new symbols. Additionally, this didn’t even specify what to target; it was just a broad ‘stop bad things,’ which is the worst way they could have done this.
Or at least that's what the little voice in the back of my head said, and since the comprehension boost came with explanations, I felt like I could trust it a lot more than tomes on ancient traditional symbolic encoding practices.
“Okay fuck it let me completely redesign their defensive array. I might need your help with this if you don’t mind,” I asked, then, after confirming that Autumn was willing, I walked over to the completely burnt circle and started planning how I wanted this to work. “So we need to prevent anything from crossing over, at least until I can kill the rest of the ritual by overloading the whole ritual array, including the filter you’re sitting on, at the same time. Then that part you’ll be helping with will spread and hopefully repair the Plane. Which should insta-kill everything in the Plane like The Lady did, and close the hole they’re drilling.”
“Great, what do I do?” Autumn asked, jumping down from the top of the shelf to follow me.
“Just stand there doing nothing for a second. Hopefully, this doesn’t make them angry with us.” I glanced around the room, noting that it was completely under the influence of Malifactum currently. “Actually, maybe I should prepare some kind of defense for us because this could be a problem. I don’t want to be continuously warding off attacks from those goo creatures while re-routing the ritual. One moment.”
I had an idea of what I wanted, and luckily, it shouldn’t cost that much to create static defenses, since I’d already figured out how to make Natural Order Mana. I pulled up a quick simulation and designed a basic structure, just a ball made of wondersprout with a small circuit at the base that stored Nature Mana and generated thorns filled with the Natural Order type of Nature Mana. Those thorns would then be flung towards sources of unnatural Authority that the device detected. The fact that Maleficarum entities didn’t have any personal aura control made this the best targeting system to use. My new Skill [Living Circuits] made the task trivially easy. They wouldn’t have to last that long, and the Natural Order Mana basically carved holes through the goo creatures anyway, so wastage or circuits breaking down should be fine.
I started placing them around the room, on the ground, on the walls, and the ceiling. Then filled them with Mana using my remote circuits. For a moment, I allowed myself to bask in the gentle aura of the Wondersprouts. Even though I was generating my aura using Wondersprout material, there was something about how they acted naturally that was nice. Not nice in the way Eryx’s aura was, where I felt like I was at home, in the environment I was supposed to be, but still nice. After ten seconds of basking, which to be honest was a little overly indulgent, I moved on to the next task.
“Okay, sit in the middle of the circle I’m making,” I told Autumn, as I drew a triadic ritual on the ground.
“That isn’t a circle, it’s a triangle,” Autumn said, to which I just gave them a look. They eventually just moved into the centre and sat down quietly.
“Alright, now I think I have to work backwards here. Because if I just link the circle to the other one, you’ll be turned to dust as the power courses through you, and you alone.”
“What was that about me turning to dust?” Autumn asked, but I just held up a finger in response. I needed to think.
I was just feeling this out, but I thought the best defensive wards would be vibe-based. Luckily, Rootspeech was the perfect language to do this in, because Nature was the ideal counter for Maleficarum.
The first logogram I needed to add a target to reject, I felt a connection with a specific idea and channelled it into a single symbol.
Rot that doesn’t feed, teeth without hunger, roots ripped out, the silence after birds flee, sickness in a grove, a queen who no longer follows the natural path, the devouring itself, an end to all things.
I took these ideas and created a symbol based on that ideal: an upside-down crown covered in a swarm of leeches, a circle of thorns pointed inward, and a mouth featuring crooked teeth that aimed to consume it all. Channelling all of the false fury I held within me, I wrote upon the world the enemy of us all.
Autumn glanced at the symbol once I was done and nearly knocked themselves over crawling away from it, “What the fuck are you writing.”
“What’s necessary,” I muttered in response.
The next was the boundary, the protector of forests, and the restoration of Nature. The Mother Tree itself, its roots digging deep into the world, foreign invaders blocked at the pass.
This one was somehow simpler. In Rootspeech, the symbol was just a tree, with roots that bound everything within. It felt like this one was already representing something that was already part of Nature and was much simpler.
“Alright, sit in the middle of the circle and channel all your Mana into the ‘Natural Order’ kind. You’ll be the focus of the ritual.” I said once I had completed the design.
“And it won’t reduce me to dust?” Autumn asked.
“Probably? That’s the hope.” I replied and clapped a hand on their shoulder. “Good luck.”
“Why do I need luck for this?” Autumn grumbled but sat cross-legged in the centre of the circle anyway. Their Mana began taking on a new meaning as they channel Intent into themselves and out into their aura.
When I figured they were ready, I drew the final glyph, connecting it to the main ritual.
Nothing happened for a moment except for the transfer of Mana as the rituals bound themselves to each other. Then, with a thrum, the Mana in the room changed, becoming more solid somehow.
“Alright, that should be good now, I just need to—” I was cut off when the ground convulsed, a ripple of energy passing over the facility. The lights flicked, and out in the hallway, I heard a crackling noise of metal being shredded. Inside the room, we were seemingly unaffected. Autumn gave me a concerned look. “I think we’re fine—”
The crackling of wood shattering filled the room as my artifacts opened fire on the black substance that had started oozing from the walls.
“I just need to hurry the fuck up okay, let me finish this one second,” I said, hurrying over to the primary ritual. “Just need to redirect all of the Mana through the ritual and over to the other facility. That should fuck up everything they’re trying to do on the surface.”
“You don’t need to explain it to me, I have no idea what you’re doing anyway,” Autumn said. I ignored them, already thinking of how to modify the funnel. It turned out I didn’t have to think that hard to find a solution, though.
The way they were doing it wasn’t completely terrible. They had a filter that took any corruptive overdraft and moved it to the other facility. Well, assuming their goal was to kill everyone in the other facility, that is. If they wanted to keep this running for a long time, then it was the worst setup I could have ever imagined. I had a feeling that part of their goal was to kill everyone over at the other site, though, because this seemed like it was built to do just that.
Unfortunately, they didn’t filter the energy properly. A rotting fruit was probably the worst filter symbol they could have chosen, or at least I couldn’t think of a worse one off the top of my head. I couldn’t complain, though, because it made my job incredibly easy. All I needed to do was remove that filter after reinforcing a few parts of the ritual so that the energy funnel wouldn’t stop. To strengthen the structure of specific symbols I wanted to keep, I used Latticedew Veins as it was the most robust material I had available. The higher the Mana concentration that ran through it, the more robust it became, which was exactly what I was looking for.
Finally, using my internal Fire circuits, I flash-burned the rotting fruit symbol off the floor. The amount of energy moving through the ritual began to increase rapidly. The primary ritual began undergoing a failure cascade as the energy ramped up and the symbols I hadn’t reinforced started to burn out. The oozing substance from the walls began spraying into the centre of the room, attempting to replace the burned-out symbols, but my automated defense system kept preventing its attempts. I found a nice place to sit down and watched as the entire facility's Mana supply was sent through my funnel over to the other building. The circle Autumn was sitting in began to overcharge itself, multiplying its effect and hopefully repairing the Planar boundary without dusting them.
A humming noise started to grow, and the Latticedew began to glow brightly, replacing the grey lighting in the room with a bright blue that immediately washed out my vision. This prompted me to do something I probably should have done earlier: I used [Living Circuits] to automate the amount of energy sent into my eyes based on the feedback they received. A small amount of fine-tuning later, and I could see perfectly despite the fluctuating lighting as symbol after symbol exploded until the room was left in the dark, completely out of Mana.
The ground stopped shaking except for a short rumble as the other site’s circuitry presumably exploded violently from the energy it had received all at once. Looking upwards at the roots of the world, I saw the hole in the Plane had been closed. I finally allowed myself to let out a sigh of relief.
“Alright, I think that went pretty well!” I said, getting up from my sitting spot. To the leaves that were hanging off my cloak, I added a glow effect using Light Mana, which lit up the room as a replacement for the Mana-based lighting that was now completely dark with the entire facility drained of Mana.
Autumn was sitting in the circle, shaking slightly. They looked up at me. “Is it over?”
“I think so? Let me just check my notifications.” I replied. I had quite a few, which boded well.
Comments
Clara
“Alright, I think that went pretty well!” Oh no, you jinxed it! Also it's quite sad that she's not getting her deserved XP for all of this 😔 imagine the levels...
