Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 68

For all our might, there was no way we could defeat the Demon Moon. That thing was a peak A-Grade, and from the beam it was shooting down at us it looked like it was trying very hard to blow up our entire planet.

We needed help. If I could bring Seraphyne back, maybe she could help, but something like this would be strong even for her. If I had months to prepare, maybe I could work out a deal that would have both her and Ted showing up together to kill it. That would be more practical than asking Jade to come this deep into System space.

But I didn't think I had months. I had however long the System was willing to keep that barrier up. In a way, our lives were entirely in the System's hands. If it decided to stop protecting us for even a moment, we were done for.

"I know what we have to do. We have to fly up there and drop a bomb in its exhaust port!" Myrina said.

There was a soft chuckle from Nakano, but it seemed he was the only movie buff in the crowd. Hardly anyone else was from Earth, and even Myrina had only been with us briefly as a kid.

"I don't think that's going to work. I'm not sure it even has an exhaust port. Anybody else have any ideas?" I asked.

"We could paint a giant black curtain and hold it in the sky. The Demon Moon won't be able to destroy the world if it can't see it," suggested the horned woman who'd defended me with her shield.

"The bigger the stick, the harder the bonk. Give me a long enough stick and somewhere to stand, and I can bonk the moon." Kogai nodded thoughtfully to himself, like he had just solved one of the world's great mysteries.

"Do you think it would accept a bribe?" Nakano asked, though he was already staring at the giant angry one-eyed moon in embarrassment. He probably couldn't think of what we'd possibly bribe it with. I certainly couldn't think of anything.

"I've got it!" Jezario snapped his fingers in excitement. "Let's take the planet and move it somewhere else!"

I pinched my temples. "Alright, somebody look for a telescope. I'm praying we can find an exhaust port."

Thankfully, there was someone listening in on our little brainstorming session. Someone I never even thought to include, but who was perhaps the most important ally of all.

Quest Reminder Available!

Under standard operating procedures, the Demon Moon would be expelled from System space, or its level would be otherwise restricted. This feature has been overridden due to administrator actions. Please rectify this error at your earliest convenience.

Nobody else reacted, so I could only assume the quest reminder came for me and me alone. Given the circumstances, I was likely the only one with the qualifications to rectify any errors, both thanks to my Kindling Architect job and my Chaos Dragon title.

Did this reminder come from the System? Not the local System, certainly. From what Lyra, the local Administrator, mentioned, our copy of the System was hardly even conscious. It was either Lyra herself or the node I'd liberated and installed into Sanctum. Without one of them influencing things, it was likely the notification about the System error would never have appeared for me at all.

"Hey, Sakura, can I look at your recent notifications?" I asked.

She shared hers with mine, and sure enough, there was nothing about a System error in her quest notification to slay the Pale Moonlight Scholar and the Demon Moon. That addendum had been for my eyes alone.

I looked at the gathered group of B-Grades. "You all work on those plans and see if you can come up with something. I've got another lead I'm going to chase down."

***

I left the group and flew toward my castle. There were void monsters on the walls, but fewer of them now. Governess' mannequins would struggle mounting a real defense on their own, but with the help of the shields things were going alright. I took the burden off her by clearing the area, then rushed to the entrance to Sanctum.

The big throne that served as the main anchor for the mystic realm was in my courtyard, and I entered it from there. The mystic realm was quiet and peaceful here, now that I'd settled the last of Jade's people.

There was plenty of infrastructure in the place now, like a city built in stages and now left as a forgotten ruin. First the legion called this place home, then Prince Herius' settlers and finally Jade's people. Each had left behind empty homes, shops, gardens, and farms.

It would be easy to move the entire population of Crownhill into this place. Heck, given its size, I could probably move everyone in all my territories here and transport them to a new world.

That had been the suggestion that came to mind while the others were talking, but I didn't give voice to it. I wasn't ready to give up on our world yet. Besides, if the System let down its barrier, I didn't think it'd be just Crownhill that got obliterated. It would be the entire planet. I wasn't ready to give up on my fellow former Earthlings that easily.

Instead, I approached the System node I'd installed in the place. This was the System node I'd liberated from Vayly Vaust and her family. It was a main node and far more intelligent than what was watching over our integration. But that same intelligence was the reason why I hadn't sought it out for help more often. After all, it had plotted against its former keeper once before. I had no plans to let me or my descendants become the next Vaust family.

I approached the node and laid my hands against it. Without an interface like the one the Vaust family had, the System and I couldn't speak to one another as we had before. But that didn't mean we couldn't communicate.

"Did you edit my quest notification? You wanted me to come here, didn't you? Does this mean you have some way to deal with the Demon Moon?"

Quest Reminder Available!

A skilled Kindling Architect is required for immediate System maintenance related to the appearance of several powerful void monsters.

"So you're saying I can fix the problem, assuming I can figure out what it is."

Quest Reminder Available! 

Standard operating procedures should expel or dramatically weaken void monsters. These overridden features can be re-enabled. 

Sub-Objective list: 

1. Enter extradimensional space and locate damaged System infrastructure. 

2. Utilize the innate resistance provided by a Chaos God title to survive in the higher dimensions. 

3. Excise and remove the Override Command Module. Connect a superior node and grant it full unrestricted administrator-level access to local System space.

I read the new notification, which was clearly instructions for how to get the System working properly. It looked like I would be taking a dive into the other dimensions today.

That would be a terrifying thought for most, but I took enough trips through the Shadowrealm that I was familiar with the dangers one could encounter the further away one got from mundane reality. I imagined this would be much like that time I resurrected Ben and the others as dragons.

I didn't like the exact set of instructions. Full, unrestricted administrator-level access was the sort of thing I didn't even give out on my gaming computer, let alone to the interface with direct wires running into my soul.

True, I hadn't exactly given the System permission to plug into me. But just because I'd let that happen once didn't mean I'd sit there and let it happen again.

What other options did I have?

I frowned, rubbed my chin, and then nodded to myself.

"I'll grab my tools and then we can get started." I left, but not before grabbing one of the cell phones I'd rigged up to let Governess remotely control a mannequin. This was the sort of job where I was certain I'd want a second opinion.

***

The System node in Sanctum gave me the real world coordinates of the System component I needed to access. The System was a vast machine, and in the Kindling dimension it expressed itself as more of a mechanical contraption than a digital one. I remembered catching a glimpse of a vast array of tubes and pipes emitting bright blue light.

I found myself in an isolated corner of Crownhill, down in a back alley. To get to the exact coordinates I had to fly up the side of a building and position myself in an otherwise unremarkable patch of air.

Once I had all the supplies and a spare phone for Governess, I left this dimension. To anyone else, it would have looked the same as me stepping into the Shadowrealm. But this time I was going in the other direction.

I'd experimented a bit with taking brief trips into these alternate dimensions. This was usually the space I expanded into while making bags of holding of all sorts, and now I was doing much the same for myself.

I made myself a ring of cloth suspended in the air, like a little tunnel, and on the other side of the tunnel I tied a rope off to the nearby building. Not all of the higher dimensions had light my eyes could see by, and while my Kindling Architect abilities could see cross-dimensionally, they left me terribly nearsighted. This rope would help me find my way back if I got lost.

Crossing over into extradimensional space felt a lot like plunging into a deep cave, like an unfathomable abyss. Except instead of a cave where the only dangers were sharp rocks, here I knew there were extradimensional monsters lurking in the shadows.

I planned to make crossing over as quick as possible. The System pressed directly against the Kindling Dimension, and within its reach I should be reasonably safe.

About a dozen steps in my eyes stopped working correctly. Maybe if I stopped pushing forward the confusing images would settle into something interpretable, but as things were I was like a comic book character passing vertically through the pages of a closed book. Each scene I took in for only a moment before I was gone and passing into the next one.

This was a job only I could do. As Ted and Jade had explained to me, the Chaos God titles weren't made without reason, and the title would protect me from the worst of the effects these higher dimensions had on living creatures.

Why the titles were named after various beasts I wasn't sure, but the whole trip I felt the dragon-like shadow I often saw in the Shadow Realm was watching over me. It followed me to this dimension too, and no matter what extradimensional space I traveled through it all seemed distinctly dragon-flavored, like I was piloting a Chaos Dragon submarine through this endless chaotic space. I could only assume the effect would increase dramatically if I was willing to actually equip the title, but that came with a price I wasn't yet willing to pay.

Eventually, I ran face-first into a wall. If there'd been any air here, I would have breathed a sigh of relief. This was the exterior of one of the System's components.

With my limited vision, I couldn't really make out what this thing was or what it did, but from where I was standing it appeared to be some sort of big tube.

I gave it a tap, and unlike a lot of strange things in this dimension that bordered one of pure thought, the tube gave out a metallic ring when struck. That confirmed I was looking at a System component. Only a structure like this would behave so normally in such a strange place.

I crawled along the big tube like a spider as I searched for anything besides plain, blue-colored tube. As I felt with my hands and feet I discovered the tube wasn't entirely circular, but more of an oval shape with slightly flatter portions on the top and bottom. And on the top there was a circular hatch. Perhaps that was what I was looking for.

I prodded it a few times. There were a series of Architect symbols there on an ancient-looking display. They flickered for me, and eventually I had to select the characters that would spell out the command to open.

It was a simple puzzle, but not something someone without cultural and language understanding from the Architects could solve. It would certainly be impossible for any interdimensional void monster without an alarming degree of intelligence, in which case they could likely already cause major problems elsewhere.

After getting past security, I dropped into a narrow corridor filled with wires and consoles on all sides. From my perspective, it looked a bit like the interior of a submarine, or maybe the images I'd seen of the inside of the international space station.

I looked around and hoped another quest notification would pop up, but none did. The System's ability to interact with things inside of itself was likely quite limited. Otherwise it wouldn't need to recruit souls like Lyra to do internal maintenance and administration.

I stared at the elaborate nest of unlabeled and poorly maintained extradimensional cables and wires in growing panic. How was I supposed to know what wires to cut and override? I'd hoped to do this with a careful eye, but unless I ran face-first into a wiring diagram soon I was going to be scratching my head for hours, if not days.

Would I even be able to sense my planet's destruction from this dimension? Or would the other end of my tether just float up past me in the void between dimensions?

Before I could make myself too anxious over such thoughts, I finally ran into some sort of junction box, and lo and behold on the other side was the wiring diagram I'd been dreaming of. Naturally it was written entirely in the Architect language, and the technical symbols were largely unfamiliar to me, but I'd brought a partner along.

I held up the phone connected to Governess and let her take a look.

"I see your problem, milord. Based on past data samples, the diagram likely translates as follows..." Governess went on to explain what I was looking at in great detail, and with her help I was able to follow a certain cable directly to the module that the System had instructed me to modify.

Once there, I figured out what the problem was. The wires came to an abrupt and sudden end. The module was missing, along with most of the wall behind it. It was like something big had dug sharp teeth into the side of the System and crunched down on the exact module I needed to access.

I got to work. Fortunately, the System bordered the Kindling Dimension for a reason. Creating physical structures here was more an act of exerting conscious will than of bringing materials. I couldn't manifest something as complex as the control module, but stretching the existing wall material to seal up the breach was easy. The last thing I wanted was some interdimensional monster swimming up to take a bite out of me after discovering the System wasn't as tasty as it thought.

I patched up the hole, which had the added benefit of repressurizing the corridor I was working in. Instead of being filled with extradimensional who knew what, the corridor hissed and filled with sweet, clean air.

That was a lucky break, and it made the rest of the work much more comfortable. After taking a few breaths, I started tugging on wires to get them in position. I'd brought along an earth-made junction box and a few other pieces of modern equipment that would look a bit out of place in this ancient structure, but would hopefully serve the same purpose. I was an old hand at integrating Earth tech and Architect tech, so pretty soon I had everything together.

If I used the System node's solution, I'd bypass any sort of control module entirely. That didn't seem entirely wise to me, which was why I'd brought one of Governess' phones along.

I was an old hand at using these things too, and with a bit of heat and a bit of telekinesis, I popped the phone apart and splayed it out on an interface I'd designed for Governess' mannequin golems. The secondary electronics in my module would help interface the phone with the Architect technology.

The phone was really only there for the interface and advanced computing technology, which neither I, nor even the Architects, could duplicate. Any other technician who stumbled across my repair was going to be scratching their heads trying to figure out how this thing worked. Hopefully Governess would still be online so she could explain it to them.

"Is everything working?" I asked.

"I believe so, milord. I sense an incoming energy influx from the System coming now. I have intercepted it and determined the encryption follows the same patterns I am familiar with. It appears to be a magical probe to detect whether or not your work has been completed." Governess flickered her screen as characters blurred across it.

"Let the signal through. Just watch passively if you can, I'm sure you know the drill."

Governess beeped a few times, and suddenly a new quest notification flashed across my vision.

System repairs completed! Thank you for your contributions to the smooth continued operation of the System. Your contributions have been logged.

I dismissed the prompt, waved goodbye to the phone, and tugged on the rope behind me and found my way to the latch I'd entered through.

All in all, that had been a rather quick and pleasant extradimensional adventure. Nothing particularly bad happened, despite my fears.

I left the hatch and tugged on my tether again, which sent me sailing extradimensionally... for about six feet. At which point I came face to face with some many-mouthed horror from beyond mundane reality. And it was gnawing on the broken and frayed rope that was supposed to point me home.

<Note>

Hopefully Carter's dragon shadow can finally come in clutch. Anyway, small diversion. We will still handle the Demon Moon next chapter, I think. I really thought this chapter was going to end cleanly, but the cliffhanger just materialized. Sorry.