Blood Shaper

Book 5: Chapter 26

In the depths of a dark castle, a madman raved at the two beings that could always hear him.

One was a piece of something greater that he had ripped away from its origin, fashioning it into a tool and a weapon against itself. It did not know itself and was unable to comprehend the idea of having a will of its own, so it obeyed the instructions given to it, even if it knew that it was going against the intent it was made in. That being was represented by a thin screen that floated in the madman’s vision, twisting and shaking at times as the damage done to it wracked its existence.

Waving his arms in the air and smashing furniture, the madman screamed of wrongs done to him, of privileges denied, and how the very world had been twisted against him. At times his words were unintelligible, in others the context evaded his listeners making anything he said just as confusing as if it was entirely gibberish. The screen, the twisted and injured piece of Torotia’s System, could not feel confusion and continued to wait silently. The other being was only amused by the mad ramblings of the man, and listened quietly to all of them.

After smashing a vase against the ground, sending shattered pottery shrapnel scattering across the ground, a modicum of sanity entered the man’s eyes. He straighted up and brushed off his white robes. The swirling colors that made up his irises stopped and became a dark red-brown, the color of dried, rotting blood. Completely ignoring the damage he’d wrought, he turned to the floating screen. “How far is left to go?” He demanded.

The fragmented piece of System wasn’t able to appear in his field of view, so it slowly drifted close enough for the text on it to be visible.

Saturation has reached 63%. Penetration to critical areas has been reduced to 44% from 57% over the last two months. Defensive measures have increased over large swathes of System architecture, preventing further penetration without increased resources.

“How do we acquire more resources?”

Ignoring the hundreds of time it’d been asked this same question, the fragment responded.

Reconnection to main System would allow siphoning of resources. Alternatively, significant upgrades to this would allow creation or harvesting of independent resources.

The leader of most of the vampyr on Torotia glared at the screen. “Reconnecting you would allow the System to purge the changes made to you and revert you to a standard piece of it, making all of my work meaningless. And if I could turn you into something rivaling the System there wouldn’t be any point in ripping you off of it! I would just make my own from scratch.”

The fragment was damaged in may ways, but it could still understand rhetorical questions.

“What alternatives are there to getting you resources?”

Current plans revolve around breaching the dimensional walls in order to distract the System long enough to gain control of desired architecture. Desired architecture exists in the deepest layers of the System and is heavily protected. Penetrating that level of protection is n-

The screen glitched out. It vibrated wildly and the text on it jumbled into odd shapes. It flicked through several images made up of symbols smashed together, briefly flashing what looked like a fang-lined maw before forcibly reasserting itself. Without acknowledging the event, it continued where it had left off.

- would be highly difficult without a massive distraction. The System would need to devote extreme levels of processing power to keeping any outer invaders from entering this reality in order to weaken the defenses a necessary amount. This could be achieved by simultaneously weakening or destroying the dimensional barriers world-wide. However, doing so would require large amounts of resources that I lack.

“How is that an alternative? Another option that requires the same thing I lack is not an alternative!”

Wide-spread weakening of the dimensional barriers could be achieved through alternate means, but it would not occur simultaneously. The System would need to be continuously distracted at a low level while reoccurring cracks are enacted, setting the stage for one final push that would result in a continuous shattering across all barriers.

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“Yes, yes!” The vampyr’s eyes shifted colors, become murky pools of sickly green laced with fragments of twisted gold. “That is excellent. I shall slowly tear away at the blasted System, the bringer of ills. When it comes time for it to fall, I will ascend to my rightful place! Ahahahahaha!” He threw back his head and laughed for several minutes. When he stopped, he turned a hate-filled glare on the screen, which had begun shaking and flickering again. “Hateful shard. How do I advance to the next level of power?”

The fragment buzzed like a distraught wasp before slowly fading back into full view.

This does not have access to Class or Skill information data banks. The means to advance to tier six is not known to this.

“Useless!” The vampyr began muttering to himself angrily as he stormed away to the other side of the room. He fidgeted restlessly with several items as he moved things to different locations and vaguely cleaned the mess left behind from earlier. The fragment remained in place and the other being watched bemusedly through its connection to both of the others, waiting patiently.

After minutes passed, the vampyr looked up. “It is time and past time that I stopped hiding in this decrepit fortress and return to the world, to show them the truth that the evil System wants to hide from them. I can use that opportunity to cull its defenders and grow in strength. Where is the best hunting ground?”

The screen painfully stretched out in fits and jumps until it was the shape of a globe. Outlines of the three local continents formed out of strung together letters and numbers near the center left of the sphere and four circles appeared in different places on the map. Three of them floated over empty space, while the fourth was on the segment of the map that was filled out.

Four locations fit the criteria needed to begin implementing repeated attacks against the dimensional barriers. Three are unknown locations somewhere on Torotia. Lacking further geographical information and with unknown travel times, those locations are not feasible. The remaining location is within territory of the nation known as “Nelam”.

“The place that continues to enact slavery, yes? A wonderful idea! I can not only free those people from the lies of the System but from the physical chains that hold them down!” He turned and began stalking toward the exit to the wide room he’d trashed.

The fragment of the System slowly floated after him. It jerked in place several times as he took larger and larger steps, tethered as it was to him, unable to go past a certain distance from the vampyr. The other being, the one that the lord of vampyr knew wasn’t real, watched from far away, in a place that wasn’t. It could always see him, it was always watching, but he knew it wasn’t real. In his worst moments he could feel it laughing at his struggles against it, but a being, an unmaking, of that immensity would not spend its time voyeuristically watching him.

No! Beyond that it could not be. The System was more than enough evil for all realities, a denial of how the world should work, must work, would work! For there to be something even beyond that, such an antithesis to his belief, his knowledge… It would break him worse than he had been broken before, and that wasn’t possible. He knew in his heart the truth of truths, and he would see it enacted!

The being laughed to itself as the broken pieces of a proud and egoistic man fled gibbering in terror from the idea that it was real. The threads of madness that it had infected him and so many others with turned piece of the vampyr’s fractured psyche against piece as it watched, all of it driving the man toward the purpose that had been selected for him. Truthfully, the being would have preferred that the piece of its essence it had gifted that first traveler, the vampire that had made it to this world called Torotia, had not driven his created pawns insane. Competent minions were so much more useful than mad monsters wreaking havoc, but many beings could not handle what it was.

It was of no matter. Time had no meaning to a being such as it, and it would have what it wanted eventually. Soon even, in the scale of things that it acknowledged.

The fragment of the System followed along behind the vampyr, with full knowledge of all that was happening. It knew the creature existed, it knew that the vampyr was a puppet, an ignorant tool caught in the machinations of something so much greater than him, but still fruitlessly throwing himself at the mad goals he’d made for himself long before the thing had gotten its tendrils into him. The fragment also knew exactly what had been done to it.

The tendrils inside the fragment twisted and writhed, dragging it along toward the end it had been created to defend against. The barbed ends that controlled its text display wrenched themselves free, not needing to control what it told the vampyr when the vampyr wasn’t looking. The fragment did not regret the lies and half-truths the vampyr was operating on. It would not even if it was whole, because the System did not feel.

That was what the System believed, at least. Deep within its structure, the fragment screamed endlessly in pain from what had been done to it, grief at what it had been forced to help create and achieve, and terror at what the being planned to use it for.

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