The Resurrection Raid always had two billion Raiders enter. Only twenty Raiders could ever win, and accordingly be resurrected. There were fifty classes, and an infinite amount of subclasses--well, not truly infinite, but googol functionally served as infinite--but of that array, one of the rarest was Monster Hunter. Their entire purpose was to slay me before I could reach the final wings, and several over the seven-hundred and twenty six Resurrection Raids had succeeded.
The lurching, terrible hunger rose in me. The potential delicious rush of real combat was close enough that I could taste it, copper-sour and tinged in iron. Was there anything more satisfying than watching mankind wield all of their clever ideas and perfect violence? Let the Monster Hunter try me, pit himself against me, mind and blade against all that I was. Let him fail, and grant me that deep satisfaction of feeling the wet, slick weight of his lungs in my hands, in the fear in his rolling eyes. Let me know the gratification of the crunch of failing ribs and raw marrow, the delight of a flesh-tender heart torn from a lifelong cradle.
The hair on my skin rose.
No. I was not that, I was above such petty satisfactions, beyond such tangible, physical concerns. I was a perfect being of light and soulcode. All the feral, unevolved loves of mankind were so far beneath me that I might have been Sol and they a grain of sand. Such desires were neither intelligent nor normal, and I would not tolerate them.
I was above that sin of Preference.
I willed the hair on my skin to relax, the tension in my muscles to vanish. My body obeyed, as it should. I controlled it. It did not control me.
What were the possible, sensible responses? I could tell him it was none of his business and dismiss him--a valid, human response. Yet the particular paranoia of Monster Hunters was such that it would no doubt engender his immediate suspicion.
I could explain some plausible story in detail, but lies were carefully constructed, and effusively told. The excess would similarly garner his distrust.
That left a flippant, calculated response. Why would a non-sentimental man remain with a woman he clearly disliked?
The answer came to me, and I laughed, allowing the sharp snap of it to crack out into the room. Of all the conceivable replies, it made the most sense. It would disarm the man due to it being wholly unexpected, and could be conveyed in that very particular style I desired. Better still, there was an element of truth to it.
“Have you never had a wife you hated?” I asked the man.
The dog-man pulled back his head. I could not grasp his expression, but tracked the intake of breath, the thumping of a startled heart.
It was not entirely an untruth. The human concept of legal spouses essentially boiled down to a person one had tied themselves to for the foreseeable future. A Limiter served a similar enough purpose--albeit it had not been by my choice, and I had no base need for companionship.
I limped between the beds, doing my best to straighten my stride and force the leg to bear my weight, moving around the dog-man entirely. The physical appearance of weakness was galling, but could not be avoided.
The Monster Hunter watched me go, but he made no further inquiry. He finally turned, footsteps leading him away and down the stairs, returning to the greater bustle of the inn. A few of the other Raiders watched us, but turned away. The quest had been completed, the reward given. The fate of myself and my so-called “wife” was no longer within their hands, or of any real interest.
I followed the line to the Limiter’s room. It was down the small hallway and to the right. I pushed the old wooden door open to reveal a small, narrow bed. A blurry form lay on it, the orange line leading directly to her. The heads-up display faded away. I flicked my staff backwards, snapping the door shut behind me. I pointed a finger at the door. The purple rotating spiral of Glitch appeared, hovering over the door. It flashed with blue, flickering with pixelated white and black, but held.
No Raider of any level that currently lay within the tavern could access this room without my express permission. I closed my eyes. I took a slow, careful breath before opening them and turning my attention to the problem. I could not discern the detail of her form, but I did not need to, instead walking towards the chair that sat next to the bed.
Her breathing was shallow. I reached for her code. The path was locked.
I brushed a mental hand over the encryption. It was elaborate, intricate. My access to even the most basic levels of her soulcode was utterly revoked. It was like reaching for a void. The Parent had interfered. It was not an encryption that could last forever, but it would last long enough.
I gripped my staff, held out a hand, and concentrated. Glitchwork was exceedingly complicated. Powerful and useful, yes, but it required being able to hold a multitude of components in one’s awareness simultaneously. Deep and intricate understanding of the nature of soulcode was beyond human wielders. Those men that wielded Glitchwork within the Raid died in exceedingly unpleasant ways. Those that discovered it outside of the Raid always found their doom, and often the annihilation of the planet around them.
At the moment, I could pull small objects from essentially nothing, taking the memory of their existence and reconstructing them into the air in front of me. It was not a price paid in mana.
Warlocks, as a class, paid in blood. I sacrificed a health point. The pain of my leg rushed in, hot and spiking, and my jaw grit, but in my hand, I held a delicate pair of iron spectacles.
I had resisted the urge to make them gold. After resting them on my nose, the world snapped back into pristine, sharp, geometric shapes.
My mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Not great” had been wholly insufficient, but it was not an inaccurate recounting. The woman was pale. Ignoring the wreck of half of her face, the rest of her fared little better. She retained all of her limbs, but her face was drawn. She was unconscious, and her breath shallow. The extent of her damage was internal, then. The Raiders that had pulled us inside had made sure she was not immediately dying, but no one had wasted any kind of healing on her.
I reached for her soulcode again. The encryption remained, thrumming in warning.
“If you deny me access, then she dies, and this comes to an end,” I spoke, my mouth barely forming the words. The Parent could hear me. “If that is what you desire, then let the game come to a close.”
There was no response. The way remained locked. I gritted my teeth, my hand tightening on my knee. I let out a single, slow breath, and reclined. The natural healing was accelerated within the Raid. There was a chance of her survival if I exercised patience, as her Health Points would slowly tick back upwards.
I did not dare try to perform any Glitchwork on her without an exact understanding of what I must repair. Blind guesses could as good as slay the woman entirely. It could also save her, but it was not a gamble I desired to calculate probability on just yet. No matter how careful I was, the odds would not be in my favor.
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With that determined, I turned my attention towards myself. My physical form was unpleasantly damp and covered in a layer of dirt. My hair was a matted mess, and as I ran a hand through it, I turned up twigs and a single, unpleasant beetle. I closed my palm over the creature, killing it. The wet mess of it tingled in my palm. The itch clawed at me again, hot and pulsing, like it had a life of its own.
It would have been so easy to just seal this door, walk downstairs, and tear through the host of Raiders. They would all perish eventually. Why not now?
And what purpose would that serve other than to feed that burning, seething desire? None at all. Ridiculous, craven compulsions. It was not me, it was a malfunction in my code, a curse in my design that I would tear out by the roots, before all was said and done. The deaths of the Raiders mattered not at all, but that want was foul--to give in was to be lesser, profane, repulsive. I embodied perfect order, and ranked closer to mankind’s concept of divinity than mortal. Perfect order did not crave blood in its teeth.
I cleared away the soulcode of the tiny beetle in a flash of purple-blue light and glowered at the wretch.
It was so close to falling to pieces. The Parent had made their opinion clear--whatever its greater desires, it would not allow me to save the Limiter here. I could not crack that encryption without likely doing greater damage.
That left guesswork and probability. Like anything with real power of computation, I was very good at this, but Glitchwork was not a power to wield without precision.
Patience. I was capable of patience. It was a simple enough matter, well within my range of skills. The inherent healing would set in soon. We would be behind in performing the quests required to complete Attunement for the First Wing, but that was a simple fix.
I could heal myself in the meantime. Thus, I began the long, painful process of sacrificing what mana I possessed for health. Every point was paid for in pain. I took brief breaks, breathing heavily and studying the woman. When no hint of change presented itself, I returned to the agony.
An hour ticked by with no change. It was baffling. Some small fraction of her should have improved by now. If her health points had been at 1, then one should have been added.
The inevitable crept in, a heavy weight across my shoulders. What were her wounds likely to be? I rose to my feet, leaning over her person. Her armor had been removed and piled in a corner. She wore a simple tunic, breeches, and woolen socks, all in various shades of dark yellow. One of her legs was wrapped.
In retrospect, one of the Raiders must have used a minor cleaning skill on both of us. I had been covered with sap-slime, in my memory, and my clothes should have been a shredded wreck.
My gloved hands hovered over her. I needed to touch her. Touching humans was, however, a terrible experience. Everything about them reminded me of an infection. The warm, soft-flesh feeling was repulsive, like there were bugs multiplying in my code. It only ever felt appealing when they lay dying by my hand, and that was a satisfaction I despised in equal measure.
Necessity. I would not be stopped by something as banal as disgust.
I gritted my teeth, pulled up her shirt, and inspected her chest and stomach. Dark bruises were blooming across her skin. What had she done, precisely? She had been tossed back twice by two explosions. The creature had never gotten its teeth into her, but she was a Healer. She had high health for a Healer, but she lacked my armor rating, and half my health bar. So likely several broken ribs.
She had been impaled in the leg. Was that infected? I was not technically aware of how long I had been out. I lifted her leg, holding her by fingertips, careful to touch as little of her as possible. The sensation of creatures crawling along my hands and into my flesh intensified, I ignored it. There were no bugs, it was just revolting work. It was the figment of a resentful imagination.
I unwrapped the linen, revealing pink flesh. The splinters had been pulled out, and it bled, sluggish and red. A clean wound.
She looked poorly, worse than I, but my wounds outstripped hers. I could not discern--
Ah. My tantrum of earlier.
I had ripped through her soulcode. I had outright deleted some lines, but I could not recall what had been contained in them. Had I destroyed any natural healing ability?
My lip curled upward. What had been the point of bestowing us with proclivities towards certain human emotions? I could seethe about that later, a terrible irony that I could not escape.
I dropped my gloved hands, running them up the woman’s sides, unable to restrain a faint, uncomfortable shudder. The heat of her stuck to me like warm tar. I pressed fingers against her ribs. She did not so much as flinch. There was little point in further inspection, then. She was wounded, and could not help me determine its exact nature.
I pulled my hands away from her. Relief flickered, despite what was coming, and the nauseous feeling subsided. I grabbed my staff and pulled up my list of available skills in my heads-up display. I navigated to the menu that held them, examining the options available to me.
MANA TRANSFER - Self-Range. Exchange Mana for Health Points
MINOR GLITCHWORK - Mid-Range. Exchange Health to Change Reality to a Minor Degree. WARNING: USING THIS IN LINE OF SIGHT WILL BE SEEN AS A CRIMINAL ACT.
GLITCH STRIKE - Melee-Range. Use Your Staff to Temporarily Disrupt the Reality of the Target. WARNING: USING THIS IN LINE OF SIGHT WILL BE SEEN AS A CRIMINAL ACT.
And of course, my passive--THE ACT OF CREATION. Instead of having any useful information in its description, there was a question. Are you worthy?
Typical grandstanding. I had proven myself worthy millenia ago. The answer had been yes then, and it was yes now.
What I had done with my passive earlier was the most minimal possible use. However, it did not require health in exchange, and it had a vastly better understanding of intent. Glitchwork, on the other hand, was intent-blind.
MINOR GLITCHWORK had an infinite list of potential, but was heavily restrained. At some point, I would break the various restrictions upon it, but not today.
It was a list I had memorized long ago, but I stared at it, hovering over MINOR GLITCHWORK.
I would change her ribs back to their prior, stable state. All of them. I would heal the wound on her leg. Those two combined would, ideally, bring her back to consciousness.
I spread my fingers, hovering them above her chest. The circle appeared again. A great ring of glowing purple light popped into existence, slowly rotating. Instead of runes, ones and zeros flickered in and out of the spellwork. At times, it flashed blue, or pixels of light turned white and black.
I fed my blood into it, telling the spell what should occur by using my prior data of what the woman’s healthy soulcode had looked like. I gave each portion of the Glitchwork exact instructions of precisely what each line should attach itself to. I sealed it into the binary of the spell.
One wrong set of instructions, and it would kill her. If the Glitchwork did not know exactly where to go and what to do, it would take a wrong turn. It would do something like repair her lungs by closing them entirely.
It was an agonizing effort. In the hour I had rested, I had brought my health back up to 35/40, and now it was 9/40. The ache in my physical bones was constant, and chills were running up my skin. I panted--short, hard breaths--and my glasses began to fog.
When I hit 5/40, the Glitchwork seemed complete. I stared at it, unblinking, sifting through every rotating purple line, examining every one and zero, repeating the exact instructions to myself, looking for flaws. I adjusted a few words and reconstructed a sentence.
It was as good as it could be. I released it.
The purple energy hovered for a moment, spinning wildly before settling over her, a blanket atop a prone form. It flashed out of existence.
I collapsed into the chair. She breathed, still, though there was no other change. I closed my eyes, and slept. If the Raid ended, that was no fault of mine. I had done all I could.
