Universe's End

“First things first. System, initiate monster beacon.” Rory said out loud. A seven-day countdown suddenly appeared in the corner of his vision. “Thanks.”

“Next.” Rory stepped out from his array center. “Preparations for war.”

With a month's worth of falling behind, the only way to catch back up was to take advantage of the scaling rewards the waves presented. It would be a challenge to tackle them without bending or breaking, but one he had to undertake. With his unique skill set, Rory could make up for what he lacked in outright combat prowess -he’d had that beaten into his skull- and turn things around.

“Walls provide a strong initial defense, but I need to keep monsters focused on the walls.” Rory began pacing, airing out his thoughts. “A gate. I need a gate.”

It had been acceptable to use an opening in his walls to funnel monsters through for a while, but it was at the point where monsters were getting far too dangerous to handle with that method, not with his current combat capabilities. Even with his now boosted attributes of cognition and flexibility, Rory was confident that if forced to confront more than a singular Triumph Fox at a time, he would be ripped apart, unable to deal enough damage faster than two of them could tear him apart, even if he were better equipped for not taking quite as many hits directly.

“Gate. New bow. Beef up my walls if I can. Weaponize Inscription… And I guess that’s enough of a task list for now.”

Priority number one would be the addition of a gate. Having begun to understand Ascensions and how the Sys- how E.O.N worked, Rory was sure that no gate had magically appeared on his walls because he’d never actually built a gate into the walls, to begin with.

There is also the question of what to do with my hard-earned metal.

He lacked both the literal skills as a blacksmith to do anything overly ambitious with the metal, as well as the raw quantity of ore to do much more than something small.

You know, that’s an interesting thought.

He had about enough to make a knife, but why bother when he already had his trusty crafting knife? Which brought him to a budding thought.

Can I improve my knife directly with the ore?

Ideas forming, Rory shelved them for the time being. He would need time to consider them further, and more importantly, he had a gate to begin working on. He imagined a grand portcullis that could come crashing down, but that was far beyond what he could do for the time being. What he could do was chop logs into slabs, pasting them together with his faux-cement and then further binding them with a twine of vine and monster sinew. Without any metal hinges to swing upon, his gates would be closer to barricades that, once installed, would be in place until they were either destroyed or the wave ended, and he could safely remove them. Even if he did manage to make some makeshift hinges with what little metal he had, they’d hardly be anything of high quality.

It was a terrible option for convenience, but he was hoping that after successfully clearing the next wave, he could use the gathered Ascension energy to incorporate the gates into his walls without needing to manually install and remove them each time.

“Time to show that I’m not called the Architect just for show.”

Grabbing his ax, Rory left behind his campsite, finding the trees closest to his clearing that his claimed land now dominated. Rather than looking for already downed trees or branches, Rory intended to bring down a healthy tree. It would be difficult, back-breaking work; the healthy trees felt hard as iron, but with his improved stats and the desire to succeed, Rory would prevail. He doubted his ax would, but then, if it broke, he’d make a new one.

At first, his plan was simply to find two or three thinner trees, but scanning the area, he felt a spark from his eyes as his gaze landed upon a rather thick-looking tree, powerfully built, imposing over all the others nearby.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The intelligent part of his brain insisted he not bother, but that spontaneous impulse that had suddenly latched onto the tree would not be denied.

“Stupid Eye for Potential,” Rory grunted, already hefting the ax to swing.

The first swing of what was bound to be many.

------------------

Elsewhere

“Hah!” Dancing around with grace that was entirely E.O.N gained-

“Yeah, fuck you!” The woman snarled with vicious satisfaction with her victory over the stupid ‘system’ and its tacky name.

-the woman slammed her spear through the skull of what looked like a cross between a monkey and a dog, a strange mix that, had it not been trying to rip her face off right before her eyes, she would have never even been capable of imagining such a monster.

Panting in exhaustion, the woman swung her body over the deceased monster, using her momentum and spear as a pole vault as she avoided yet another one of the primate canine’s teeth.

Last one.

Yanking her spear free, she aimed for a single second, feeling the skill activate before launching her weapon forward with superhuman strength, a strength that, according to the bell curve next to it, ranked her as the strongest person on the planet.

I have a little bit of flexibility and a whole lot of strength. I will probably need some more durability soon, though.

As if proving a point, she felt the familiar ache of her muscles threatening to quit on her as she pushed them near the snapping point, something that came far more easily than on Earth.

With a mini sonic boom, the spear launched forward with speed that even the greatest athletes on Earth could never have come close to matching. So fast was it that it instantly ripped through the final monster, leaving the hectic battlefield suddenly quiet.

“Gonna take more than that to best me.” The woman cackled, her short, chopped curls bobbing around her head. “Hey, Aelia, you there?”

“Allison, please, must you call on me so casually?” A second woman appeared, standing an entire head over the first. “You know you’re the only one that calls upon me so freely. The rest have the decency not to treat me as if I were a dog to come to your beck and call. Every time you do this, you distract me.”

“Ehh, it's not my problem that they’re self-conscious. Not like you’re some god or something that needs to be revered.”

“You try my patience every time.” The world spirit rolled her eyes. “And there is a thing as too much self-confidence.”

“Hah, let me ask you this: would you show up if I weren’t your best prospect?”

The world spirit went silent.

“Exactly. Not only was I the first to clear five waves, but I was also the first to kill a Territory Alpha. No one else has done anything close.”

“Not quite.” The world spirit tutted. “You overstep yourself if you forget that in that regard, you aren’t as alone as you would think.”

Allinson frowned. “The Architect.”

It was a thorn in her side, a reminder. The first person to achieve the first-ever ascension, he’d earned a major law, and then he’d gone on to create the damn system.

She’d had the last laugh by renaming it, though.

Stick that to them. Your precious system went and got a new coat of paint.

It was petty; she knew that. Yet, between how tacky it was that some overarching existence that seemed to exist above them calling itself the system was, alongside its constant reminder of how she’d been one-upped from the very beginning, she’d decided to rename the system first, instead of adding skills right away as she’d intended.

It had all ended well anyway; clearing her fifth consecutive wave had been damn close to suicide, but in doing so, she’d been gifted a hefty amount of ascension energy, a brand-new spear, and another law creation in short order after the last.

“So, what is it you want?” The world spirit questioned. “Or are you again pestering me for information regarding the Architect?”

Allison frowned again; the world spirit had gotten ahead of her.

It's not like I’ve been trying that hard to be slick about it.

“I get it. You won’t tell me where to find him.”

“Not like it would matter; at your current capabilities, it would take you thousands of years to ever reach there on foot.”

“You won’t tell me his name.”

“I’m not sure how that would help you in the first place.”

“And you won’t tell me his current ascension.”

“Correct.”

“So, new question.” Allison waved at the corpses nearby. “I just finished clearing out another one of these nests that marks one hundred. Surely, I deserve a little reward from you, our patron.”

The world spirit sighed. “I do not directly look to favor any of you. I push you to grow, and you help me advance through your growth. To give you more would stunt my growth, and in return, it would stunt yours.”

“I don’t care about the little details.” Allison waved the remark off; she’d never been one for planning anyway. “But what I want is simple enough. He’s called the Architect, right? And I’m called the Spear, but I’m not bound to Spears. Does that mean he isn’t a literal Architect?”

It had always seemed strange to Allison that someone with the title of ‘Architect’ had managed as well as he had. But, if it was something more… ‘vague’ or metaphorical, perhaps she could parse more about her rival.

And yes, Allison was aware calling someone she’d never met her rival was perhaps childish, but ever since she’d come to this new world, she’d dedicated herself to living and acting as she wanted and felt was appropriate.

Unconsciously Allison rubbed at her nose, a habit born on Earth from days she’d gently spent poking at her often-broken nose in those final days.

The point was that after she’d imagined this Architect as a figure looming somewhere far away, a figure always one step ahead of her, it had become her purpose to prove him wrong.

“...Yes, his skills are not limited to Architecture. It is indeed a title, a Vocation of a more esoteric nature.”

“Eso-what?”

“Esoteric, conceptual, a state of-”

“Yeah, got it.” Allison cut the world spirit off. She didn’t really understand, but all she cared about was that she was correct in her assumption that whoever they were, they weren’t literally winning by building houses. It was merely the name of their Vocation.

Speaking of.

Allison pulled up her interface with a flick, and a dark, auburn screen appeared with her data. Her Physique showed that while exhausted, she’d managed to clear the nest with little struggle.

It's not like it matters; these monsters reproduce like mad if you don’t claim the territory itself.

Which was fine; it kept her from wanting when it came to fodder for ascensions.

Ignoring her attribute display, which still informed her that she was the peak of strength investment and absolutely bottom of the barrel at both growth and Pneuma, she instead looked toward her Vocation itself.

Spear of the Precursor

Rank: Unique

Following in the steps of a supremely wise architect, the Precursor class Vocation indicates the presence of an individual with outstanding merits who paves the waves of the forerunners of civilization. The Spear excels at combat and piercing through the unknown with gusto, if not a tiny degree of limited foresight.

“Bah.” Allison shook her head, dismissing the vocation information and pulling up skills instead. Even her Vocation seemed hell-bent on praising the ground this ‘architect’ walked upon, referring to her as nothing more than someone following some pre-designed path. It even had the gall to insult her foresight.

Unless that’s a jab at my limited investment into growth.

She couldn’t be sure; that line hadn’t been there when the vocation had appeared, not until after her first time distributing her attribute density. While she could see the merit of growth, she would never bother throwing more than a sparse bit of attribute ‘points’ toward it. It was effectively stealing from your current potential to boost your future strength. Still, Allison understood that while ‘safeguarding against the future’ was ‘wise,’ something her father had told her plenty of times as a teenager, it didn’t matter if it stunted your growth so much that you never reached that potential in the first place.

What she cared more about was her Skills instead. Pulling it up, she skimmed over the less exciting skills, such as Scouting, and instead focused on one skill in particular.

Descender’s Spear: Rare. Skill level: Inexperienced

“Finally.” Allison sighed. She’d been trying ever since she’d gotten the skill to increase her skill with it, and only finally had it increased from low to inexperienced. The description of the skill itself was… well, she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Arriving from a doomed world, the way of your spear has a history that predates all existence. Bring down that false knowledge on foes standing in your way.

“Hey, Aelia, are you sure you can’t make anything of this?” Allison flicked her skill screen toward the world spirit, who sighed.

“You asked this last time. No. Everything Syste- E.O.N related-” The world spirit corrected herself after a glare from the woman. “-is largely unknown to me. The things I know by instinct are from before the changes made to the universe. Ask me questions regarding how ascension works, and I can offer insight; ask me questions regarding skills created based on your history, and I can offer no such things. At best, I can offer a hypothesis based on my own experiences with skills.”

“You have skills?” Allison questioned, surprised.

“Yes, I am as much a part of this universe as an acting member of it as you are. As you said yourself, I am no god. While not the same as yourself, I, too, will grow and change with the evolution of the universe we find ourselves citizens of.”

“Oh. So, what skills do you have?”

“Much as I won’t share information pertaining to the Architect, why would I disclose my information so freely?”

“Hmm. Fine.” Allison gave up pestering. “So, where should I go next?”

“Perhaps it would be worth revisiting your settlement? Maybe sprucing it up a bit before the next wave?”

“Honestly, I could care less about founding some sort of city.” Allison shrugged. “But you already know this, so you’re trying to be all sly about giving me advice because it will be somehow worth my time?”

The world spirit was silent.

“Good enough for me.” The woman turned around, marching off; after all, returning after her most recent hunting trip would be quite a trek.

Just you wait, ‘Architect,’ I’ll pull you down from whatever ivory throne you’re lording over.

-------------------

“Gah!” Rory slammed the door into place, huffing with exhaustion as he wiped away the sweat from his brow.

I’m not sure this was worth it, to be honest.

Stepping back, Rory placed his hands on his hips as he admired the work he’d put in. It had taken an obscene amount of work first to chop down the tree of his choosing; then, it had become a matter of splitting it into usable pieces involving even more arm-burning swinging of his fifth ax. After that, he’d begun slathering the crude but heavy planks with his trusty fake cement and binding them together. As a secondary afterthought, he’d quickly taken some time to carve into the inner portions of his planks before they were bound and ‘glued’ together, inscribing his ‘runes’ for earth and liquid, then inputting the tiniest bit of Pneuma into them. They weren’t meant to serve a significant purpose; they existed as stimuli for the gates to ascend more quickly in the future.

Or so he assumed and hoped.

Once the large gates were finished, he’d cut grooves into the side of the walls to fit the gates into the opening. He’d even melted some of his metal, which had involved a lot of burning wood and vigorous fanning with an oversized leaf to get the flame hot enough. Once melted into a small amount of molten metal, he’d poured it from its low-quality clay container into four molds in the general shape of how he remembered earthly door hinges. Heaving the gates into their respective positions after he’d glued the hinges into place, the final part of the monumental effort was sliding the bolts into place.

For as mind and body breaking of an effort as it was, mostly the latter, Rory couldn’t help but appreciate what had occurred. Back on earth, what he had done shouldn’t have been possible with his available resources and inexperience. The way the metal seemed to conform to his desires, the fake cement paste adhered far more strongly than its makeup would suggest, even how the gate stayed balanced as well as it did.

On earth, matter and reality simply existed. They did not have a will or obey others; they merely existed. Here, though, it was as if intent helped form and shape things in a way that couldn’t be explained purely scientifically.

“Otherwise known as magic,” Rory admitted with a grunt.

As for the gates themselves, they were damned heavy and solid and really damned hard to open, even with the addition of hinges they could, in theory, swing upon.

The practicality of reality was that unless Rory really needed to be entering or exiting from his settlement, it was better not to bother.

One task down.

“Many more to go.” Rory signed. He still had to make a new bow, his un-rotting jackalopes stored behind his shelter perfect for the task, or rather their antlers were. Then, he still had to adjust his Pneuma array, making it more efficient, lasting longer, and, most importantly, adding a secondary feature of drawing the focus of attacking monsters. Before he attempted that, though, he wanted to experiment further and improve his skill with his Inscription skill.

The worst thing I could do is make a mistake and inadvertently cause the walls to act as an always-active version of the monster beacon.

His list of tasks was short and to the point: fashioning a new bow, improving his array and, by extension, his walls, and perhaps the thing he was most curious about, improving his knife.

Of his tasks, one would hopefully accelerate his work on the others. An improved knife would make improving his walls and creating a new bow much easier. With the time he’d spent working on his walls, physically demanding but mentally lax enough that his mind could wander, he’d finally come up with a plan regarding how to improve the knife. He couldn’t simply replace the blade; by nature of being a magic item, it was unlikely to be something you could dismantle without destroying the power within itself, not without some unique technique or skill, if he had to guess. He could always try to recreate the blood-binding effect, but if it worked how he suspected, it would involve a lot of bloodletting from himself.

Instead, he would utilize his runes and his newest conceptual idea, a rune he’d test with the knife before hopefully expanding to using it with his walls.

First, preparations. Honestly, it feels like most of my time is spent preparing stuff. For something modeled after my understanding of video games, there is much less slaying of monsters than you’d think.

Grabbing a stick, he dragged it through the earth beneath him twice, forming the basis of what would be a sort of ‘barrier’ for trapping Pneuma, something he was required to do given his relative ineptitude with manipulating Pneuma directly. Next, he grabbed a tiny iron stylus; it would have been impossible to carve the runes he was about to carve into his knife using anything less. Standing within the circles, he began to passively gather Pneuma, keeping the bulk of his focus on the knife itself. He could have prepared the runes ahead of time, but intentionality seemed to hold a weight of significance that implied to Rory that he could achieve a greater result by doing it all at once.

With that reasoning in mind, the first rune that Rory gently carved into the side of his crafting knife was the rune he felt most comfortable with, one because of how easy it was to draw and two because he’d already carved it several times into his gates, his earthen rune. His intent with that rune was symbolic; it was meant to link the earthen nature of his stone knife and the metal he planned to work with. The second rune was an h and two superimposed o’s one upon the other, all contained within a circle, the rune representing fluid or liquid. It would link the molten metal and, at a more abstract level, the blood used in the knife’s initial creation. The third rune, second to last, was interconnecting bolts of lightning, the energy rune. It interfaced with the essence of his blood binding and ascension energy, or so was his intention when Rory inscribed it into the blade. How much of that would prove true was to be seen.

The final rune, just above the hilt, was nothing like his original five runes. It was entirely new and only born into existence as he carved it. At first glance, it almost looked like a rosebud, but that wasn’t what he was going for. Three circles surrounded a single point, with several orbiting lines like rays of light being dragged into a black hole.

That was also the point, the literal intention of the rune to mimic a simplistic approximation of a black hole, as the rune represented absorption. It served the most important purpose: first, the literal absorption of the metal he planned to gild his blade with; second, furthering the stated ability for the blade to grow alongside him, allowing it to drink in some of the essences that evolved all life and even non-living things.

Static popping around him, Rory was drawn out from his inscribing trance, examining the runes he’d carved. They were serviceable, at least. Rory wasn’t terrible at art but was a far cry from Picasso.

Blade finished; Rory glanced down toward a pot he’d placed between his feet, which contained what remained of his gathered ore. The pot was made of his standard clay-like crafting material, and inscribed within it was the rune for fire, a line over three uneven orbs.

Now for the hard part.

With his knife, he had wanted to inscribe the runes during the process, but he’d felt no concern with preparing his container for the metal ahead of time. Mentally grasping the gathered Pneuma, a headache instantly splitting his skull, he began funneling it downward into the pot as it began to superheat. Within a heartbeat, the pot started to glow white with heat, the ore inside melting rapidly, like it was itching to become something new. The pot began to fracture; it wasn’t made to withstand such heat, but it needed to last only a bit longer. When the inside slurry was fully molten, Rory gently dipped the knife into the mixture. Changing the direction of the Pneuma from the pot to the knife itself, Rory activated the runes with a quick pinch of his intent. It was a strange sight, like a desiccated man inhaling an entire lake out of thirst, the metal vanishing as it was sucked into the knife, the absorption rune working in perfect cohesion with the rest of the inscribed runes. With little fanfare, the entirety of the molten metal was sucked up, the pot fully shattering just as it finished, revealing the knife in its entirety. It looked the same as before, except now it was vividly chromatic. Whether it was metal on just the surface or had been transformed entirely all the way through was a question Rory would investigate later. Surprisingly, the knife had lost all heat, as if in the process of drawing in the molten metal, it had used up all of the excess energy.

Curious, Rory used his analysis feature to examine the change in the knife.

Bloodbound Crafter’s Knife

Grade: Poor

The tool of choice for nearly any profession, the knife is considered invaluable. The first knife of a fledgling craftsman. This particular knife has been directly bound to the blood essence of its crafter and may grow alongside the skills of its master.

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Bloodbound Crafter’s Knife

Grade: Common

The tool of choice for nearly any profession, the knife is considered invaluable. The first knife of a fledgling craftsman. This particular knife has been directly bound to the blood essence of its crafter and has withstood its first advancement. How many more it will see has yet to be determined.

“It worked.” Rory smiled, also taking note of the change in the description and grade. “So, Common is a rank up from Poor?”

Everything else he’d made had been of either poor grade or exceptionally poor in the case of his armor. Technically, he also had a ruined grade bow, but he figured that wasn’t so much a grade as it was a ‘this is broken and won’t work’ indicator. Grade aside, the updated description also clued him in on how the knife worked. Unlike himself or the things within his settlement, it wasn’t as simple as having it ‘ascend’; it needed to be improved by direct work from a craftsman.

And he was the only craftsman around for…. Well, a considerable distance, at the very least.

Now, that’s something to ask Aelia. Just how large is this planet?

Pushing the errant thought aside, Rory tested the blade out. Finding a stray piece of wood nearby, the blade sliced through with a stupid amount of ease, but the minute he no longer cared to cut the wood apart, it was as if it suddenly dulled considerably. It could still damage the material but with far more difficulty.

“That’s nifty.” Rory whistled after seeing the improvement in the knife. He could cut down on his time working on carving wood, or anything for that matter, down to a fraction of what it was. Still curious, Rory slowly poked a finger against the blade.

Unlike what knives were famous for being, the blade was anything but sharp; it felt smooth to the touch. Pressing harder, still, it was as if the knife refused to damage him. With one final test, he slashed the blade along his forearm, half expecting a spray of blood.

Instead, it felt like he’d smacked himself with a hammer, the only damage received being the blunt force of striking yourself with a metal object.

“So, when it says it's a crafting knife, it means it.” Rory mused. Any hope of ever using it as an emergency weapon was instantly tossed out the window.

Metaphorical window, that is.

Examining the knife again, the runes he’d initially carved into the knife's stone layer were gone entirely, and the knife had an unblemished metal coat.

Does that mean I can inscribe another set of runes?

It was an interesting concept, but given what he’d learned about how the knife grew, it was better not to hastily add runes until he was ready for its next growth stage, which wouldn't be for some time.

With his improved knife, Rory was now more than ready to tackle the challenge of crafting a new bow and adding some runes to his walls.

Glancing at his gates and then his knife, Rory crossed his arms, taking a moment to revel in his success. “Architect. Hah. Well, guess it isn’t just for show.”