Chapter 5: A Stale Spark
Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
Elephant Music - Scandal
https://youtu.be/s5HxoTiVLtQ
Mid Afternoon - Early Summer : Year 0 | Month 0 : Nellysford, Virginia
World: Earth | Rank: 6 Population: ~1,895,413,000
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*Siiizzle* Looking over my shoulder at the mountainous black corpse, it's deep blue blood boiling as it spread across the ground, my typically cold, heartless stare, weathered by centuries of slaughter and destruction, flickered with something...
Although truly brief, only lasting a moment.. I felt a sympathy... Pity...
Despite its body being so disconnected from human it could hardly be recognized as sentient, as I looked over the steaming pool of its blood, I felt like I was staring through a window in time, looking at my younger self, reduced to a mangled corpse after dancing too close with death.
If I hadn't been so lucky to survive every such encounter, even by the slightest hair.. I would have been the same as the creature before me.. a corpse left to rot in some unfamiliar world after losing a single dice roll.. a single, uncontrollable coin flip.
But, no matter how much I saw my past self in that creature's blood, fate had already shown its favor—the strong survived while the weak became nutrients.. fuel in a never ending cycle of death and growth...
However, despite wishing to respect the creature's death and at least make its death not go to waste, the system paid it no such favor. Giving me a mix of shitty items and failing to even give me the xp for the kill because of a series of errors, the flicker of light in my eyes faded with a bitter chill.
It was the result of fate's whim.. and no matter how terrible the taste it left in my mouth, I couldn't do anything about it.
Though.. as I recycled and salvaged the junk it fed me, thinking I could find a use for the raw materials or its mana core at some point, the displeasured snarl that curled my lips laid a canister of fuel in my soul...
I was already sick of it... Sick of things feeling so suddenly out of my control after my reality check with the system wipe...
But.. while I truly did feel sick and bitter, being back on Earth with almost no attachment to the system made the reality check feel like an opportunity.. like a chance to finally break from the chains that had been unknowingly wound around me for so long.
But I didn't have the power to grow the crack in the labyrinth's walls...
Not yet at least...
*Vwoop* Swiping away the system's panels with a frustrated wave, I found my gaze drifting to my hand, looking at the ring hidden under my glove. It was the equipment ring that held Draco, my greatest weapon.
But after the wipe, it seemed a sturdy black-mythril ring was all it was.
*Snap... Cllllink* Disconnecting my glove from my sleeve, the metal plates folded away to reveal my scarred, callused hand decorated with a single deep black ring, glimmers of green and blue seemingly flowing through it even now.
It looked alive.. as it always had.. but as I tried recounting my muscle memory to pull Draco out, nothing ever happened...
No system alert or sign of movement...
"Haah..." Letting out a heavy sigh, the determined fire slowly igniting itself in my soul was quelled before it could reach the fuel laid next to it.
Unfortunately, just as the wipe was an opportunity, it was undoubtedly a setback. If I wanted to change anything, I needed far more power than I had now.. perhaps even more than I had before the wipe...
However, while the energy I assumed to be mana bursting from me told me the fuel for that power was there, I had no means of controlling it just yet...
To do that, I needed a teacher... -A mage...-
Finally looking up toward the horizon I watched the fleeing jet disappear behind, I slipped my glove back on, hiding the scars once again before lowering myself.
If I wanted to find a mage, I needed to find civilization.. and my best bet to do that now was to follow the smoke trail.
*Crackle-WOOOSH* Bolting to the horizon, I threw everything into my run, smashing through the sound barrier near instantly before rapidly slowing down.
Compared to before the wipe, it felt like I was sprinting through molasses, but thankfully, Earth wasn't even near as huge as the worlds I was used to.
After a few minutes of steady, rhythmic running, only touching the ground once every couple kilometers, I spotted a thin, strip-like clearing across the forest, and turned so my next step would land on its edge.
*wwooooOOOOSH-CREAK-CRRRRACK* The moment I landed, my foot plunged into reinforced concrete, shattering it before sending a shockwave through the forest that flattened trees and splintered the Earth.
As it turned out.. it wasn't just the creatures that were weaker in lower rank worlds. -Shit.. whoops...-
Nervous I might've broken something important amidst the powdered concrete around my feet, I gently stepped out of it before turning around to find myself on a long, straight path bridging opposite horizons. -A road?-
It was so overgrown it was a bit hard to tell, but beneath the roots and vegetation, the entire clearing was paved with concrete, and after making my way toward the middle of it, it seemed like it wasn't totally abandoned.
At its center, the thick vegetation thinned to reveal four shiny metal rails half-embedded into visibly charred concrete. -Hm... What are these for..? Transportation?-
Railways, or more specifically electromagnetic ones weren't something I was totally unfamiliar with, some of the more technologically advanced worlds I had been to used them for long distance heavy freight transport, and by the sounds of the rails faint, almost inaudible hum, these weren't any different. -Sweet. That simplifies things...-
Eventually walking out onto the charred area to follow the rails eastward, assuming the rails being charged meant they were in use, a series of huge electric arcs jumped through my legs to light the vegetation behind me on fire before suddenly ceasing with the electric hum of the rails.
-Whoops...- The electricity wasn't enough to even get my skin to tingle, but after stepping back and snuffing out the fire I accidentally started, I decided to keep my distance. -I hope there wasn't anyone using that...-
Trying not to pay it any further mind, I made sure the fire was out before returning to running, this time making sure my steps remained light enough to not shatter the brittle Earthen concrete. *FWOOOSH*
But I couldn't stop every crack.
Making my way down the long, straight set of rails, the hills rolling away from the mountains steadily flattened out before the light leaking over the horizon started shifting, growing in brightness before I blew past an old, long-forgotten road sign: 'I-65 - -- - Charlottesville, 13 Kilometers - -- - Richmond, 124 Kilometers'
The names hardly rang a bell, my time away from Earth had long since weathered memories of such details into nothingness.
But a town was a town, nonetheless.
Or at least.. that was what I thought...
As the remaining thirteen kilometers closed and the town was supposed to come into view, the horizon simply turned white, as if the sun was laid at the end of the tracks eternally flooding the sky with so much light it was blinding. -What in the world?- Unsure what it was, I started slowing down out of caution, nervous I'd plow through something in the blinding haze, but as the gap between the final trees widened, and the light grew brighter.. I found that to be a needless concern.
"What the..." The 'town' was nothing more than a field of glass pebbles that stretched to every horizon, glistening like a mirror from every angle to create a horrifically blinding ocean of light—the result of a blast akin to a meteor impact.
But, while the intense radiance should have sterilized everything, beneath the thick smell of heat and minerals, there was something organic too.
Eventually slowing to a more gentle halt a just inside the lights embrace, I reached down to pick up a small, but slick, glassy pebble from within my shadow.
-Hm...- It was oily, covered in a slick slime-like substance that made the smooth, glass amalgam shiner than a mirror and so slick the ocean of pebbles could act like a viscous liquid.. a place to hide and a place to hunt... -How fascinating...- It was the excretion of a creature perfectly adapted to the puzzling environment...
So perfectly adapted.. it was puzzling. -This city must have been gone a long time...- Even with mana, the time it took for creatures to adapt so thoroughly couldn't be scoffed at...
To the extent that I had to bring to question if the 550 years I jumped through the system even matched how much time had passed on Earth... Or perhaps.. if the inconsistent ticking of my system clock wasn't either the system breaking or my mind playing tricks on me...
It made me wonder.. if I had truly spent just five hundred years alone...
Eventually shaking my head, hoping to clear the darkness from my mind, if only for a moment, I tossed the pebble back into the pool, its landing passing a clack over the bed of rocks like a signal.
...A dinner bell.
*Clackle-FWOOSH* Before I could even turn away, the sea of light blended into a wall of shiny scales, the slender underbelly of a snake shadowing its body with an open maw, its fangs, the size of my arms, staying tucked away as it aimed to swallow me whole.
Though, an attempt was all it was.
Subconsciously reaching up and swatting its snout, expecting to slam its head down into the bed of rocks, my hand passed through it like it was an illusion. *Fwip*
Almost instantly, the monster's body, even parts beyond the touch of my fingers, were reduced to mist, spraying its remnants across the pebbles while fragments of bone peppered everything behind it like a blast from a shotgun. *CR-R-RACK*
But, my mind was too consumed by nagging questions and uncertainty to recognize or care. -How bothersome...-
Eventually breaking myself away enough to get back to the road, I turned away from its edge and picked back up the pace, sorting the bothersome emotions that lingered whilst making sure the road continued beneath my feet.
Unfortunately though, my troubled mind wasn't so easy to calm...
Even as the glass ocean turned back into lush green forest, I struggled to find the same peace I had momentarily found on the mountain.
But.. perhaps it wasn't peace I was looking for...
Perhaps.. I was simply looking for truths amongst the feast of lies I had been stuffing my face with for eons...
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