The Systemic Lands

Chapter LXIII – Day 863 – A Human Football

Chapter LXIII – Day 863 – A Human Football

I hugged the Divine Empress disguised as her child. She might be an idiot brute, but she was a dangerous idiot brute. I had been stuck in this accursed tower for too long. With her death, I would take her stats and meta-points for myself and then claim this Michael’s stats and possible meta-point.

A plan years in the making, countless setbacks, countless failures, idiots everywhere including my Homunculus. Now no more. It would all be reversed in an instant. “Imbue Life!” My energy entered the Divine Empress, cutting off her skills. A neat trick I had developed to create a small growth inside a person, sending out incoherent thoughts to disrupt skill formation.

She pushed me away before I could act again. I didn’t care about the illusions anymore and needed to focus for the next part. They dropped away. “Null Refraction!” I verbalized the skill to have better control over the modules and direct its power. I aimed for her head, but only managed to take out an eye. The energy in her body was thick, but I would bunch through.

“Null Refraction!” She brought up her arm in time to block the attack. Her reaction speed was impressive, but she would die momentarily with how her energy was disrupted.

“DIE!” Impossible! Her energy self corrected instantly purging all the curse damage and disruptions within her body. I only had a moment to act as she rushed at me. Using my ultimate trump card that I had created just in case she had come upon me in my incapacitated state.

I drew on the energy of the tower, it was familiar, too familiar. And dumped it into the air in front of me. It would only last a split second, but that much energy was toxic. I could already feel the curse damage creeping back up into me.

The Divine Empress’s arm turned into putty. While she had a tremendous amount of energy within her, it wasn’t enough to resist the disruption field I created. While I could only use the trick here, at the tower where the energy of the tower was far higher than the energy of the surrounding air, its power and ability to distort anything in its path was immense.

Even with the curse damage, I would be able to purge that easily enough over time, from this short use. The Divine Empress’ arm turned to putty, as its energy was overwritten and disrupted. Blood and other chunks splattered against my face.

“DIE!” She just ignored that attack! I couldn’t adjust the disrupt field or make another one. She was too quick. I quickly tried to anchor my energy and harden the Astral Projection. Her foot slammed into my side.

“NOOOOO!” My sonic module was still connected as my Astral Projection broke apart and her leg hit me. I went flying off the tower. Bits of flesh and blood falling away in a trail behind me. My consciousness was barely hanging on. I refused to die here. After everything I had been through. I just needed to survive, and the Divine Empress should die shortly or be crippled, and I could finish the job.

Focus, I needed to focus. I needed to form up another sonic module quickly. I was losing altitude and blood rapidly. The energy quickly formed and locked into place. It was unsteady and wouldn’t last, but it was enough.

“Astral Projection.” Focusing I forced the energy to form in a specific pattern from memory as best as I could remember. The human body was complex, which was why I needed an example to work from to get the best result.

I didn’t have time for any of that. My organs were blobs without structure or function. The connections to my physical body were poor. Blood flow was stabilized along with oxygenation. That was key. Now to deal with the rapidly approaching ground.

Pain coursed through me, and I barely held onto the Astral Projection. It was bleeding energy rapidly, but I needed to finish adjusting its properties before I tied off the various modules. I forced myself to focus. The Calamity had been much worse, and I had been far more desperate back then.

Adjust the force pull to face the opposite direction. Hundreds of little invisible flaps to control my movement through the air. Dammit, this was the worst of the worst rush jobs, but I didn’t have time. The ground was seconds away. I tied it all off, while attempting to stop my descent.

My speed was too high and my Astral Projection poorly constructed. “Astral Projection.” I used the skill again, which caused the Astral Projection around my body to tremble and buckle. Trembling meant that the energy was losing cohesion and there was a risk of the skill falling apart. Buckling meant that the skill was being impacted by outside energy, which threatened the structure.

I had no time to care about that, as I formed up a curved air ramp in front me. I hit it and my trajectory was adjust from a downward angle to an upward angle, buying me more time. It collapsed behind me as I continued to fly away from the tower.

Even with the extra time I had bought, I had built the Astral Projection around my body too poorly. I wouldn’t be able to land gently and my energy was stressed at the moment. Too much drawing from the environment and adjusting skills.

I slammed into the frozen once, twice, and then rolled to a stop. The cold was affecting me as I forced myself to stand. That was a bad sign. I had lost a lot of stats. My mind quickly processed what had occurred and why I had missed such a thing.

When I had merged with the tower to surrive with the calamity, by body had merged with the energy. Stats were ingrained knowledge and energy constructs within a person. They weren’t called on externally. That was why even when a person lost store access, they didn’t lose their stats. Skills were trickier.

While a person had a chunk of them, they were all mental and not based on the physical body. Also, the system in control of this place would reference a person’s energy pattern and activate the skill, creating an interface.

I had lost my body but kept my mind. Since energy was based on thoughts and thoughts based on energy, I didn’t lose the unique signature I could call on for my skills. But my body had been completely cursed and destroyed, and I had a new body. I had been adjusting to it and an Astral Projection couldn’t use the Body stat.

Everything else wasn’t really a concern. My Spirit was barely affected along with my Regeneration, Sense, and Channel stats but my Body, Mind, Perception, Aura, Endurance, and Absorption had all been degraded.

The stats I had been focused on using too heavily, or in specific ways. The mental time compression from Mind was kind of there, but my mental resistance and ability to sense mental attacks was gone. My other stats were similarly damaged.

I had never heard or seen such a thing before. A blue left beast rushed at me. Null Refraction. The energy binding the monster together was ripped apart. Even though I had lost Power Word Shatter, it just made things more difficult.

The anti-point had only scraped away so much, but it had also missed quite a bit. I had the time to work out several of the holes that had been left in my memory. While I wasn’t as good as I was before, I was no novice in terms of energy manipulation.

I noticed a woman approaching with several monsters using reconstitution, or false summoning. It was a cheap trick of little value. I willed myself to rise up into the air, but my Astral Projection trembled, and I collapsed to the ground. The cold was seeping into me, which wasn’t good. If I had known about the cold, I would have made my Astral Projection around my body differently to handle the environment.

Dammit! I didn’t risk forming up another Astral Projection for my body until a couple hours had gone by, but I might not make it until then.

“What is a child doing out here?” the woman approached and asked as she scanned the surroundings. She was definitely smoking out. Once I got my body back, I would give her some attention as a reward.

“Help, please?” I begged to make her lower her guard. I imbued the sound I sent out with thoughts of children and protection. It was a subtle technique, but it was near impossible to notice and only the truly strong could resist. Even the Divine Empress struggled against energy imbued sounds, triggering thoughts and memories inside of her.

That was what was truly the best about this technique. It used a person’s own thoughts against them, making them arrive at a conclusion naturally. It wouldn’t deter someone if they were truly determined, but it would make them consider certain things.

This woman was thinking about children and protection and would immediately arrive at the conclusion she had to help me. She had the look of a woman who had a kid or two. I could tell, it was all about the hips and the breasts.

“What happened, who did this?” she asked me.

“Divine Empress. Help me get back to a city, please,” I said while holding off on triggering any more thoughts. Too much and a person would get suspicious, which would ruin the technique. The trick was to hit them once, maybe twice and then let their mind do the work.

“A horrible woman. Here, let me help you on one of my summons so we can get out of here,” she replied. She helped me up and I was mentally sneering at her. Calling these summons? More like energy barf that is utter garbage.

We quickly left. I then felt my skill break. No! Impossible! HOW!? The skill completely and utterly disappeared. I no longer had So I Predict. It was gone. The penalty for a wrong prediction. Champion Michael had done more damage to her and the System considered him the killer.

I wanted to scream and rage. All my plans ruined. They were ruined! Two meta-points lost, and I would never get them back. She would have died in time, but you just had to meddle. I should have killed him right away, but I needed him to play a role in deceiving the Divine Empress and I wanted his stat points and possible meta-point as well.

The Avatar had hinted he had one. I would have become unstoppable. Now I was a cursed, ruined child. Weak and injured. It would take time to heal. I noticed an airship approaching the tower. Of course, he had an airship.

I saw the tower sink in the distance. Someone had claimed it. I had managed to send tendrils to the golden pillar while trapped so I knew all about it. I would have claimed it if it wouldn’t have killed me. I would just kill Michael and take it from him.

He was going to die no matter what after ruining everything! I watched as the airship flew off over my head, cursing Michael for how he had ruined everything. I was going to get my revenge no matter what for what he had done. I had nothing else to do, and the more everything descended into chaos, the easier it would be for me to take advantage and eventually take over.