The Systemic Lands

Chapter 559: Day 5,036 (2) – Massive Screwups

Fiyaz finished talking about our Empire, and I used that time to carefully observe everyone. There was no one that stood out that much. There were some questions, but Fiyaz pled ignorance. No one was staring at me either, which meant my deception was holding.

This sword sounded interesting, but there was clearly something missing about this weapon they weren’t telling us. If it was so powerful, who had it and why couldn’t I spot it.

“What exactly is your current situation?” Fiyaz finally got around to asking. I paid close attention to this as Raji Gupta let out a long sigh.

“We are trapped, but it gets worse. The three cities to the West are a complete mess. We have tried punitive expeditions in the past, but there are powerful enough warlords, previous demons under Gregorovich who have settled in, and Al Qaeda has taken to terrorism if we cross the border. There are no other cities that way. The rest are to the South and East, the old Indian Sultanate.” He let out a heavy sigh at this.

“You mentioned your Empire having 19 cities, which is impressive. We used to have six cities. There was even talk with the cities in the Southwest about the possibly of joining our nation. Instead, we screwed up, or Gregorovich cursed us with that monster. Now it stalks the lands, killing anyone who enters them without exception. Well, some people get in and out, but it never lasts for long.” I listened intently as Raji continued speaking.

“We have tried killing it for years. Nothing works. It runs away. It hides. It kills from stealth. It is impossible to fully kill. But it gets worse than that.” Well, if the monster was limited to six cities, that wasn’t so bad. Those six cities were permanently lost. Sucked if you were Indian and entering the monster’s area of control with no chance of escape. That was like showing up in the Forbidden City while the Divine Empress was in control. There was nothing you could do. I was curious what he would say that would indicate that the situation was even worse than he said.

“The real issue comes from the sword itself. No one knows who created it. Blame has been passed around. But its purpose was and is defeat Gregorovich, declaring him evil. It has only gotten stronger in time.” There was silence after that, but that didn’t’ seem like an actual ending to this story.

“Where is the sword now?” Fiyaz asked.

“The latest wielder of the sword just perished. The sword hides until it picks someone. Then they come along and demand that everything be handed over to them, to empower themselves. We can’t fight the wielder of the sword. Eventually when they think they are strong enough, they got out to fight Gregorovich’s monster. They battle, and the sword holder perishes. The sword flies off, and eventually returns, with a new wielder. Repeat, over and over,” Raji explained.

“The sword is controlling the person?” Fiyaz asked.

“Yes. But people hear of its power. And only stronger people are picked. That is why we have gone to an isolation strategy. The sword only picks Indians, and we are in short supply nowadays,” Raji said.

“Yet, it still picks people,” Rurik challenged.

“Because there are people of Indian descent from other parts of the world. And it could be selecting people who know Hindi,” Raji countered. “That is why everything is now in English. A compromise of our council.” That last part was directed at our group across the table.

“We need to assassinate the sword holders. They clearly have no chance against the monster. We are trapped and helpless. Each sword user sucks the life out of our crystal supply. We can’t get anymore, either,” Rurik said with the sound of someone who has had this argument a load of times already.

“You can try killing whoever holds the sword, we aren’t going to do that.” Raji and the other Indians who were in attendance nodded. “This is not our battle to fight.”

“You just want to purge us,” Rurik countered, and the Russians nodded at this.

“Purge? When more of you Russians show up every day? We Indians are becoming less and less. Those murders were never explained to my satisfaction either,” Raji said.

“We caught the culprit,” Rurik countered.

“And killed them before they could say anything,” Raji responded instantly. It was a like a verbal ping pong match back and worth with how quickly each of them responded. We had been completely forgotten about.

“They were killed. That is the end of it. Bah, you people are completely hopeless. You made that stupid sword, and everything to blame is on you,” Rurik said with a calm down. Despite the back and forth, they weren’t going over the top.

“My apologies. Our council is divided on the issue of what to do. Hence, we do nothing while gaining strength during the time period the sword is not around,” Raji said.

“Can’t you bargain with the sword, or the wielder?” Fiyaz asked.

“No, it is impossible. We have tried many times. Sure, there might be some concessions at the start, but they get more and more determined. And while Rurik is correct, we might succeed in an assassination, the sword will just fly off, and the process would start again. But next time we might be in danger,” Raji said.

“He is right about that. The sword is too powerful. And we are trapped in this never-ending battle,” Rurik added. There was a long stretch of silence at this. It was honestly an embarrassing situation they had found themselves in.

Kind of like the Astrologer and the Divine Empress, but only reflections of themselves, fighting afterwards. It would be like if the Astrologer’s Homunculus had fought the Divine Empress’s child after the main people in the feud had mutually killed each other off.

Just hate continuing on and on, with no end in sight. That was the definition of insanity, getting stuck in a loop like this. If I was in their position, I would have taken extreme measures to get unstuck. I would kill off most of the people but the one’s I trusted. Then I would implement a massive program.

Ignoring the cities to the West, which they weren’t controlling for whatever stupid reason, I would set up grinders in all the zones of my control. New arrivals would then be sent out into the zones controlled by the monster, trying to bring back as many crystals as possible. Just send the new people to die and get some benefits from them.

As for the rest of the people, educate them about the sword. To make sure they understood not to pick it up and how it brainwashed people. Spread that story war and wide and how all the past users had died off uselessly trying to kill that monster.

That would make the internal situation better. By concentrating on a few grinders in the surrounding zones, rather than the free for all going on, things would be much better. In time the top people would be able to push out to other zones. Instead, all I saw was apathy and people who had given up.

They were completely useless in my mind. In fact, useless might have been too kind. These old men were parasites sucking on the life blood of what little they had left. It was clear that this sword was the only reason they had any chance against this Gregorovich.

I also did the math, there were three cities to the West. This city of Meech, and six cities that used to be part of the Indian Sultanate. That was 10 cities, which meant about another 5 to 10 cities were in the Southwest. I wondered what they all thought of this massive dead zone.

It clearly showed there could be lasting fallout from wars, if the people hated each other enough. This sword and the monster were clearly special. Not something that a regular skill could create. That meant meta-points.

Thinking about the situation and since Gregorovich was missing, I would assume he was the monster. How he became desperate or angry enough to do that was something I had a hard time wrapping my mind around. Unless he ran away and was living the good life grinding with a portable store. That was always a possibility.

Just leave a monster of mass destruction behind and then leave. The monster had clearly crushed the Indian Sultanate. It was an impressive strategy, but another pointless waste of a meta-point.

And then the sword. What a massive asstardic meta-point use. It wasn’t retard, that was insulting to retards. It was asstardic, since whomever had thought of such a thing clearly had their head up their ass and was completely oblivious. Creating something with a will of its own was not something to be taken lightly.

Now it was out of control, following whatever Almighty System programing it had. It was like creating an AI, but not realizing an AI would not think like people do. It was the problem of car system. If you just told an AI to get to the store, get groceries as quickly as possible, using time as a metric. It would be a disaster.

The AI would requisition a tank or helicopter, crushing everything in its path. Driving through buildings without a care in the world. Then it would just take the groceries without paying and then return. It would be very logical while doing all of that but completely stupid.

The fact was it didn’t look at the wider context. Whomever created the sword and the monster, got so caught up in their petty battle, it was literally sucking the life out of the Systemic Lands. Their entire purpose was to destroy each other without taking other things into account.

First there were other nations. First the United City States, then the Dragon Empire, and now the Empire of Purgatory. The infighting created fallout of such epic proportions, even the Divine Empress would have had to be impressed with how crazy the fallout was.

Second, it completely missed the fact that we were trapped in the Systemic Lands and needed to be working on a way to get out. I could get nations fighting. I could even get asking a meta-point for a powerup, but creating a monster and a sword with no control just made me want to scream in rage.

It was such a useless decision that it made my mind boggle at the wastefulness of it all. This was precisely the kind of reason I chucked the woman into the void who got pregnant and might have birthed the anti-Christ. Sure, it sounded like a joke, until you are hip deep in monsters and swords, with no good way to get rid of them. It was completely asstardic. There wasn’t even a scale, it was off the scale in stupid land, or whatever imaginary place these people lived in to make such requests.

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