NOVEL NEXT 76 – Deus ex machina
I gasped as I blinked my eyes open again. I found Frank starting out into the distance and followed his gaze.
A massive tsunami of white magic rolled over the land away from us, faster and faster, speeding up exponentially. I would have felt terrified if I didn’t know that it was supposed to get rid of the zombie plague. As it stood, I was merely… unnerved.
We had done this. We had launched a planet-sized spell right here in the real world.
It suddenly hit me like a sack of bricks.
Sure, I had known the plague and the mana thing were terrible and would have a massive impact on the world if we hadn’t done anything. But seeing this just hammered home the fact that this wasn’t a simple game anymore. I wasn’t just sneaking into a game world to have fun. My actions had resulted in a very visible global event, not to mention we still couldn’t be sure whether it had even solved anything.
How had this even happened? It hadn’t even been two weeks since I’d first ripped open the portal in my room. How had everything escalated this quickly?
I swallowed as the sheer scope of what I was capable of finally dawned on me. The genuine god-like power I wielded. I had only opened two portals so far and it had already resulted in this.
There were dozens of different portals everywhere. Not to mention, there were other types of portals, apparently. I’d barely even scratched the surface.
It scared me.
Did I really want to open any more of the portals? To potentially unleash even more chaos upon our world? Were the consequences worth it?
“By the way, you, uh, turned into your ultimate form again for a second there,” Frank piped up, breaking me out of my introspection.
I blinked at him before turning back to the sight of the magical tsunami rolling over the city.
“Right…”
I… couldn’t bring myself to care at the moment. Although, thinking about it, maybe my true true form could somehow help. Maybe it would allow me to see what was inside the portals before I opened them, or maybe it would give me precognitive dreams that could actually help or something.
Or maybe not.
I stared down the cliff and my eyes soon spotted the drone I’d shot out of the sky earlier. Deciding to do something useful rather than brooding, I nimbly made my way down to it and inspected it.
I’d actually done a lot more damage than I thought. The camera was in pieces and one of the propellers was completely chopped off. This thing wouldn’t be flying again anytime soon.
I felt a bit guilty that I’d destroyed someone’s drone. It had to have been expensive…
It couldn’t be helped, though. We couldn’t risk letting evidence of us leak onto the Internet.
…That sounded like we were criminals covering up our crimes. Ugh…
I knelt down to the thing and fiddled with it for a bit before detaching the half-broken camera, opening it up, and snatching the memory card. I returned the camera and then climbed back up. Frank threw me a raised eyebrow and I showed him the card, to which he nodded in understanding.
We continued looking out for a good few minutes even though the surge of magic had long disappeared over the horizon.
“Alright, well, that’s that, I guess?” Frank looked questioningly up at Casey, who began to fiddle with the staff, trying to replace the crystal with the orb.
My stomach clenched once again, and I hoped to god… uh, hoped to whatever higher beings there were, that this stunt had accomplished something positive.
“Actually, hold on!” Frank yelled at Casey again and pulled out his phone. “Let me check something first.”
Since we were up on a mountain, Frank cupped the phone to stop his voice from echoing too much. The phone rang two times before the recipient picked up.
“Hey Ken– Wha– Yeah, yeah, I saw! It was crazy! What the hell was that?!”
I rolled my eyes, seeing Frank play it up.
“Yeah, it felt amazing like… Huh? Your headaches are gone?” I could see the grin on Frank’s face and a hint of hope welled up inside me. “The weird blue spots suddenly flaked off? That’s awesome! Haha! Yeah, you know–”
I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath as I tuned the rest of his call out.
I couldn’t believe it. It had actually worked. We didn’t need to go fight the octopus right after this. We had averted the zombie apocalypse.
But I couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t over quite yet. Maybe it had only alleviated the symptoms, but had done nothing about the virus itself, and it would get worse again. Or maybe it didn’t cure everyone, and those who were still infected would infect others and eventually start the pandemic all over again.
Fortunately, Frank’s bright smile as he ended the call shooed my depressing thoughts away, and for the moment, I let myself think that we’d done it.
We gave Casey a thumbs up and she returned it before preparing the second round of using a global-scale spell.
That still felt crazy. We had so much power. What if we decided to take over the world or something? Who would stop us? We could just as well spread something malicious through the world with that staff.
I shook my head.
I had to start taking responsibility for having this much power. No more opening portals willy-nilly. If I ever opened any new portals, I needed to be extra careful about any side effects they might have on either of the worlds. No more pandemic plague or flooding the world with mana.
Several minutes of waiting to make sure the surge had reached the entire world later, Casey held the staff in front of herself with both hands, closed her eyes, and concentrated.
This time, there wasn’t any huge flash of light, but I similarly got the feeling that space itself shook with power. Was… Was that me feeling mana pushing its way through? Probably.
The feeling got more and more intense and I braced myself against the cliff face as I tensed up. It began to get pretty uncomfortable.
“You think there’s gonna be another boom…?” Frank whispered to me, his expression similarly strained to mine.
“Probably not… She’s pulling mana toward her this time, it wouldn’t make sense to explode it out again,” I reasoned.
“Dang, you’re right…”
After about fifteen minutes of enduring this, the feeling began to gradually abate. Both Frank and I let out a sigh of relief as we slumped once it stopped completely.
I looked up at Casey and she continued to hold her position for a couple more minutes before she also slumped with a tired sigh.
“Everything good, Casey?” Frank asked as he stood up.
Casey looked down at us and nodded. She then rummaged in her pockets, brought out a ruby seed, showed it to us, and then threw it into her mouth before disappearing in a swirl of flames.
Frank and I both mimicked her and a moment later, I once again found myself inside my room next to my potted plant. The two of them had ended up at Casey’s in the meantime.
I stood there for a moment, processing everything that had just happened.
Then I took a slow breath. Inhale and exhale.
It seemed to have worked. That was the good news.
I still couldn’t shake off the bad feeling, though.
