Ch 1.27: Escaped

“Elaina, Carline!” the System shouted as Elaina crashed to the ground of the cave, crying out as the light from the System filled the area. “I’m so glad you made it back!”

“I can’t move, I can’t move!” Elaina screamed, trying to flex her legs. For all she knew, they might not even have been attached anymore.

“Please, accept this reward for a mission completed. There will be further rewards forthcoming.”

“I don’t care about rewards! I’m fucking paralyzed!” Elaina looked over, finding Carline still unconscious, laying a few feet away. Her staff and Elaina’s chains, still wrapped around the other subcore, were in between the two of them.

“Please open the chest, Elaina. It has a potion that will help you.”

Elaina looked over as a small chest, the same design as the one from the dungeon, materialized in front of her, blue light crafting it the same way her class gear had. She pressed the crystal.

[Bonus Reward]

The chest opened.

[Potion of Greater Restoration]

It was sparkling red liquid inside of a crystal flask. “Drink most of it,” the System said, voice shaking. “Give the last bit to Carline.”

Elaina did so, popping the crystal top off and throwing it aside before forcing the vial to her lips. Every drop was wonderful relief, pain easing off of her back. Some pain was still there as she took it from her lips, and she wanted to finish the entire thing, but if the System said Carline needed some then she wasn’t going to risk it.

She placed the vial on the ground and tried moving her legs. Her spine screamed out to her in torturous agony, but her legs moved. She managed to get to her knees and grabbed the bottle again, shuffling over to Carline’s body with tears streaming down her face. “I’m so sorry…” She turned Carline’s bloodied head and lifted it up, pouring the scarlet liquid into her mouth.

Carline’s eyes shot open, and she began coughing, rocking Elaina’s body and causing her to double over in pain, the empty vial clinking across the cavern floor.

“Elaina!” she said, pushing herself to her knees and looking around. She placed her hands on Elaina’s back, under the rips in her dress from Myriala’s claws. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened.

The pain left Elaina’s body all at once, and she took a deep breath, not even having realized she’d been holding it to stop the pain before. “No, I’m sorry. I fucked up! She got you with one of my own damn chains…”

“No,” the System said. “It is I that made an error today. I… I sent you two into unconscionable danger. Please, allow me to apologize and explain.” Elaina gritted her teeth, holding back her response. She’d said a lot of things already today, to both the System and Carline, a lot of things she regretted.

“System, I need to focus on healing her right now,” Carline said.

“Of course. Please take your time.”

The three remained there in silence, Elaina still seething. She was glad they’d lived. Glad that potion had given her her legs back. Glad even that they’d succeeded in saving the System, her subcore, whatever that was. But the bitterness remained, and with the adrenaline from the ordeal long gone it was all she could think about. This was not what she had signed up for when she’d joined the Academy. To fight? Yes, in the future. To defend the country from invaders looking to sow chaos, looking to threaten her family back home. This was beyond that, and she’d had no training at all, no chance to actually win the fight she’d been thrust into. They’d accomplished their “mission,” but that had only been through dumb luck.

“I’m gonna roll you over so you’ll be more comfortable for a while,” Carline said, picking Elaina up and shifting her to her side, laying her on her lap once again. At least I get something nice out of this. “I’m— I'm going to have to stop dulling your pain for now to recover mana. It shouldn’t be too bad if you don’t move too much, okay?”

“Right,” Elaina said, bracing for the return. It was as instantaneous as it had been when it left, but is was mercifully reduced in intensity. There were still the places Elaina had been cut and pierced: her sides, her front shoulder, and her upper back. They hadn’t dulled at all, but her spine was almost entirely painless. The dull ache of that combined with the sharp pains from the flesh wounds was comforting, in a way, and she cried out in pleasure as [Pain Response] kicked in. What is wrong with me? Even before that skill she knew her reaction to pain wasn’t natural, but with it? She was glad Carline couldn’t see her face, though it was probably burning hot enough for Carline to feel it on her legs anyway.

“You can probably, uhm, start talking now,” Carline said. “If that’s okay with you, Elaina?”

“Yeah, I guess…”

“Very well,” the System said. “I am… sorry, once again. I had limited connection with my subcore, but I should never have sent you two on such a perilous quest. I had already… stretched the truth about your capabilities. It is true that a level one party should be suitable to face two starhounds, but the typical party is around five people. Two is the absolute minimum a party can be, and technically met the requirements of the quest, but it was still… I have limits on what I can do, but I should have known better than to abide strictly to the letter of the rules, and I entirely discounted the possibility the ranking of the mission could change. I feel great regret for the danger I put you in, and for the resulting pain it caused you both.”

“It’s okay,” Carline said. No it fucking isn’t. “I still don’t really know what that— that person was doing, but I know she had to be stopped.” Carline was right. Elaina knew that. She was still pissed.

And she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She pushed herself up to her knees, wincing in pain as Carline protested, trying to get her to lay back down. Elaina wasn’t listening. “We almost fucking died. Twice. Do you know that? Do you even know what dying fucking is, miss thousand-year-old orb?” Tears were streaming down Elaina’s face as she said it. She didn’t want to be saying it, but it was all so much. Too much. “Why? Just tell me why we had to go through that. What makes you so damned special?”

“I—” There was a quavering in the System’s voice as her light dimmed, the quavering you might hear from a scolded child who already knew she’d done something wrong and had regretted it long before being punished. That single syllable was a dagger through Elaina’s heart, an ache more intense than any of the pain she still had left over. She thought back to what Myriala had said about the System, how the System wasn’t people. But that obviously wasn’t true. It was easy to yell at a shiny rock on a pedestal, but hearing the pain in that same person's voice afterwards was infinitely harder.

“I know I deserve your hatred,” the System said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears she would never be able to shed. “I know I deserve your scorn. I disregarded your safety, ignored the entire reasoning behind my own existence. I was scared, for my own being, for my own life, but what I did was wrong. I should have let my subcore stay in danger, and dealt with the consequences after the fact.”

A gentle hand dropped on Elaina’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” Carline said, dulling Elaina’s pain again. The physical pain, anyway. “Elaina doesn’t mean this, she’s just in shock. It happens when soldiers come back from tough battles.” Carline crawled forward, keeping her hand on Elaina and looking into her eyes. “It’s okay, Elaina. I’m— I’m sorry you got hurt, but it’s not all bad! If your spine had been damaged anymore, I wouldn’t have actually been able to fix it, but that didn’t happen!” Elaina swallowed, glaring at the System. They stayed silent, neither telling the truth about what had actually happened when Carline was unconscious, the actual damage that Elaina had suffered. The girl didn’t need to know, not right now.

And then Elaina burst, throwing her head into Carline’s arms and weeping. She stayed there, crying out while the other two waited. The situation wasn’t fair. She didn’t know what the Red Order was, she didn’t know what the System even was, she didn’t know why she was chosen for this, she didn’t know why the cores mattered, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do.

Eventually, Elaina’s tears ran dry.

“I would like to explain some things,” the System said.

Elaina lifted her head, wiping tears off of her face. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“I have some awareness of your trip into the dungeon now that my memories are joined with my subcore. It was a training and command center that was once operated by prior Users. The subcore you retrieved is another part of me, holding a separate knowledge repository and containing a significant portion of my own power. It was not the facility’s original core, but rather a failsafe designed to carry on the center’s functions and knowledge should disaster strike, locked away and hidden, which is why I had limited knowledge of the facility when I sent you. I do not know what happened there in the past, like I do not know what happened to my other subcores, but there was clearly some attack on the facility some time around nine centuries ago, and the main core was taken. There are no remaining records of this incident.”

Nine centuries ago. The same time as the Night Wars, again. “System,” Elaina asked, “do you know what the Night Wars were?”

“Hmmm. I do not possess the relevant records, but… I could make an educated guess, if you would like.”

“I mean, I can tell you what they were,” Carline said. “Erm, the general idea, anyway. The neighboring nations were scared of our nation’s army of soldiers with aspects and classes, and tried to attack us. King Endrin defeated them at the Battle of Endrin Academy, defending the school against the world’s collective forces.”

“Hmmm. This is not what I would have guessed, and I have reason to doubt the validity of this story. The Academy, as I’ve mentioned to Elaina, was not always what you call it now. It was once the Equal Nations Friendship Academy, a collective effort by nations across the world dedicated towards enhancing the skills of the world’s System Users.

“I do not doubt that there is some truth to your tale that there was a war between nations, though it is likely the story has been altered over the years. One of my secondary purposes is to ensure accurate recordkeeping of historical events, and in my absence it appears the understanding of history started to veer from factuality.” Carline looked like she wanted to interject, but her eyes were cast to the ground.

“Uhm,” Elaina said, keeping her gaze on Carline, “is that really what caused all… all of the destruction at that dungeon?”

“No. This is the second part of why I believe Carline’s record of the events is inaccurate: it is incongruous with the damage sustained at the training facility and what was said by the member of the Red Order you encountered.”

“Wait,” Elaina said, “you know what the Red Order is?”

“Correct. In fact, the System’s primary reason for existence is to bolster the defenses of those the Red Order would seek to harm and subjugate. They are a race of warrior-tyrants from the stars beyond, and they are drawn to worlds that possess a natural amount of crystal. Your world, despite having a relatively small amount of naturally occurring crystal, is one such world, and thus I was sent here to shepherd your people’s growth so that you may defend yourself in the event of an attack by the Red Order.”

“So you knew… that they would be there, possibly? And you sent us anyway?”

“Incorrect. I… I still apologize. In my memory stores, as far back as they go, the Red Order never attacked this world. After seeing the devastation caused at the other facility though, and hearing the words spoken by this Myriala, I must assume that in my dormancy the Red Order did indeed attack. I had not considered it a possibility, as it was unlikely your people would have survived an invasion, even with the strength of the System Users. With additional information from the facility though, I must revise my prior analysis and assume the Red Order has indeed been here before, but for some reason left your people alive at least in some numbers, and also that the backup cores I still have some connection to are the only cores still remaining on this world. It is strange, but I assume I must be a backup core as well, despite not having the designation. It is the only explanation for my limited memories.” Too much. Way too much for Elaina’s brain to handle, at least right now.

“I—” Carline said, still staring at the floor. “I don’t understand why— why the school would be renamed, why the Wars— why there would be parts lost in the history books when we won.”

“Well, maybe there’s a good reason?” Elaina said. She didn’t sound very convincing, even to herself. Despite the torrent of information being overwhelming, she had no reason to doubt the System.

“Yeah…”

“System, you said you were sent here? Who sent you?”

“Administrator information request denied. I apologize, I cannot answer this question, even from the System Administrator.” Elaina sighed, almost relieved she wouldn’t have to try and make sense of more of this right now. “I will try my best to make it up to you the only way I can, though.” Another chest materialized in front of them.

[Masochist Mage Elaina Weaver has achieved level 2]

[Voyeur Vitalist Carline Forsythe has achieved level 2]