Chương 62: Book 8 - Chapter 58 - The New Goddess

Wrath had once told me about protofeather weapons. At their level, they were rarely used as actual weapons and more as platforms to abuse the occult. Which made some amount of sense now that I understood how much concepts were linked to the occult, in tandem with willpower and thought, and how mass-conscious ideas affected concepts in general. The concept of a weapon and would synergize with occult spells of the destructive nature. Or so the theory goes according to some schools of occultist.

Hexis would know right down to which lineage figured that out first before the others. The point is, those weapons were more than simple weapons - they were basically legendary artifacts with power and gravity to them, steeped in history and wrapped by occult concepts over time, while also being layered with fractals within. They've been weapons for so long that they possess a pull of their own by now. Hence, each protofeather had a single set that formed the core of its identity.

Even Avalis's stolen chain had barely been used to its true potential, all because it had spent centuries without an owner to charge and empower it when Avalis had yanked it out of the coffin. Fun trivia. Anyhow, speaking of those mythical weapons, one such thing wielded by a copy of the greatest protofeather to have ever lived - gathering power and focus from said copy's personal attention for centuries - was now flying directly at me like a spear, aimed right at my chest, destruction radiating around it.

And the only reason I wasn't quite as panicked as I should be is that, at least, it had the courtesy of having the hilt side aimed my way. That wouldn't stop it from turning me into tiny pieces just from sheer pressure. So I admit, there might have been a tiny bit of panic. Far below me, the vault winked out, too small to spot, as I was fired out into the sea beyond by Conviction's hand.

The only thing from the vault that I could still recognize at this point was his blade, still following behind and rapidly gaining on me. A shadow of power trailed behind it like a sonic boom, shattering through the water, destroying any program that had the misfortune of being nearby. And that thing was slowly gaining on me. Then things went south, because if I could spot a protofeather's weapon coming my way, so could everyone else out here.

In an instant, I had passed beyond the unpopulated, deserted regions of the sea and collided with the nebulous cloud where prior streams existed, now filled with programs of all kinds fleeing one way or another. Either running from Relinquished further out there or from the larger predators taking advantage of the chaos. They changed their direction real quick once they sensed the boom coming at them from the distance.

My soul avatar slammed into fleeing programs and other scattered panic out here, a claw of some kind accidentally hooking onto me and dragging me off course. This was not a good thing. While my own trajectory was being moved around in the massive cloud of fleeing programs, the sword sent after me had not changed trajectories at all. And behind it that shockwave of power remained, eradicating everything around behind it in a cone.

The blade would pass above me at this rate, and then I'd very much be inside that cone of destruction. I burst into action, summoning occult ghosts in a small army, hacking and slashing away at the surrounding programs, trying to claw my way free and get back onto the center trajectory where the blade would pass. If Conviction had thrown this my way hilt first, he'd intended for me to catch it. The problem was the sea's current.

All the programs were fleeing in one general direction, and the digital sea was responding to that movement, the water here equally flowing as the thousands of entities generated a gravity of their own - something a single mind couldn't easily overcome. I could still focus hard and fight against the current, gaining ground. But it wasn't enough. That blade would cut through like a javelin right above me, and then I'd be buried way under the ice with no pick. Options were limited and counting down.

Some part of me was trying to mathematically extricate myself from this situation, moving through the current with my arms and legs. But that wasn't how the digital sea worked. It was all concepts out here. The occult touched on everything. So instead of trying to force my position into the blade's path, I banked on the other end - that Conviction had thrown it at me because he was relinquishing it to me. That meant something in this world. There was a gamble to be done, and I went with it by instinct.

I held a hand out and called to it. Demanded it to curve and return to its master. A pulse of occult surged from me as I delved deeper into the lessons I'd learned from Aztu on thinking in terms of concepts. That blade was now mine. I was its owner. It had been given to me for a purpose, and that concept should now be buried deep within the blade.

Spinning wildly in the cloud of escaping programs, carried left, right, and up as more things passed over me, occasionally slapping me with a claw, fin, or hand, I focused on the occult. I kept my hand out. Hoping. The blade... swerved, turning my direction. The occult shadow behind it ripping apart just about every program as if it had been caught on the wrong end of an airspeeder at full power. It completed the arc, aimed right at me, a singular line of blue rapidly approaching.

The world cleared out fast as the rest of the programs all around me noticed that thing was coming their way, and they did not want to be anywhere nearby. A wide circle was opened up around me, as the swarm of programs fled away. The blade homed in on me without error and a moment later, it slammed into my hand. I had to focus hard on keeping my digital self intact, with my soul still connected. The power and disruption of this blade rippled around me, eradicating all the programs in a sphere.

This thing was powerful, just about as tall as I was, and held like a rapier would be from a hand larger than my own. Filled with multiple interlocking occult fractals within that I couldn't even begin to guess at, and all empowered by Conviction's own willpower, layered over centuries. I had no idea how one even began to do that kind of occult weaving, although I strongly suspected Hexis would have rolled in his grave to see and study this. It wasn't alive. Not sentient or sapient. It was more like a ghost.

Something charged over time by being. And I could tell out here in the digital sea, where everything was touched by the occult, that a weapon like this was even more powerful than it could be in reality. I took a moment to settle the hilt of this weapon in my hand, to feel its weight. The concept of it being mine now. Programs all around were funneling into the empty space that had opened, no longer seeing the incoming danger anywhere. Returning to their prior panic. I swung the blade before me.

The attack reverberated through the sea like a pressure wave, outright eradicating everything ahead. The few things large enough to survive quickly turned and swam away as fast as they could. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. More programs fled from behind me, and I focused on the blade again, recalling the sphere of occult power that had surged when my hand first wrapped around the hilt.

It pulsed out in a sphere as I intended, ripping apart the programs that had been passing by the free space. After that, the sea took on a very different shape. Smarter programs were now avoiding me like the plague. Larger ones prowled around me, looking to use my influence as an anvil while smaller programs rushed into their jaws to avoid being caught in mine. Conviction had said he'd put all his power inside this blade and that it would take me to the Icon, all I needed was to set the course again.

I reached a soul tendril to Journey and asked for the Icon's address. The path opened forward, and I held the blade in that direction. It was like a tunnel had formed around me. Occult ignited around the blade, burning a path a mile ahead. Likely bright enough for anyone from a distance to see the spectacle, but that'd be a problem for future me. What it did do right now was grant an easy path forward, which I took, swinging Conviction's blade behind me, using the shockwave it sent as fuel to propel me forward.

Then I turned and held the blade once more ahead, making it more into a drill against the ocean ahead. Speed rapidly picked up, despite the chaos. The pillar of light crushed through anything in my way, sediment from destroyed programs sprinkling over my armor like sand as I powered through the chaos. Conviction hadn't fought us with anywhere near the power he could have wielded. And now that I held his sword in hand, I understood just how insane the league I had stepped into was.

Nothing in this part of the sea could take me on. I had become the one they feared and raced away from. I proved that when a massive program that failed to get out of my way. The beam of occult sliced through, carrying me across the entire body of the server-sized program before we exited the other side. I was a railgun shell fired out into the open sea, crossing over boundaries and zone restrictions without a shred of resistance.

And eventually I reached my destination: the massive crevices where the Icon hid her terminal servers and hardware echo in the digital sea. It seemed she immediately decided my appearance and direction meant I knew where she was, so there was no reason to act coy or hide anymore. The entire region lit up in defense, and for a moment, I was worried she would be the one to end my journey all the way here in some twist of irony. But the Icon had more non-lethal defenses.

A digital net wrapped around me, layered over a hundred times. The first dozen were easily sliced through, except I could feel how each net was being updated, modified, and applied to the rest of the nets to counter what had broken the prior net. The occult was the deciding factor here, I had all of it, while the Icon was using pure digital defenses. What should have been impossible for me was easily possible as the occult didn't play with any sense of logic.

So despite being up against the defenses of a golden age AI, it still took her all of ten seconds to fully put a stop to my reign of terror. One of these nets finally held off Conviction's blade for a moment, and the rest instantly rolled over me in lockstep, binding me into a cocoon. Which was equally yanked back into the dark crevice where the Icon hid. I saw only darkness for a moment. Then the net was cut, and I found myself in a rather familiar location. Or rather, office space.

"Greetings, Mr. Winterscar!" The Icon said, standing behind her office desk as usual, looking genuinely happy to see me, not in that fake, strained smile she'd worn quite often. Mostly around Aztu. Which, to be fair, was understandable.

"I am pleased to see you remain in good health. Although your approach vector could use some more open communication and prior notice of arrival."

"Good to see you too, Icon," I answered back, giving her a nod.

"The problem with good communication here is that just getting a message to you was the hard part. You're going to have to excuse my entrance. I was a little short on time, and there have been some hangar-bay delays out there." She looked outside the window, which offered a full view of the digital sea and the absolute chaos happening over there. A little more than a minor Logi mishap in scheduling was happening.

"Given the circumstances, I understand," she said.

"Are you and the others still safe?"

"We are, mostly." Last I saw, Conviction and Urs had a lot to discuss, while the rest of the Winterscar knights, Superior, Father, and Wrath, were in the same audience room. I'm hoping that when I return, we might have another potential ally in all this. Gods know we need anything we can get.

"How about on your side? Are you still out of her sight?"

"Relinquished remains blind to my existence. Current operations are going well in that direction, and I intend to remain out of her sight. The machine network outage has affected her harshly in this regard, although I have lost contact with To'Orda as a result."

"He's not dead, is he? Relinquished was absolutely ready to kill off Avalis and To'Sefit without hesitation. I worry about the big lug." The Icon looked a little surprised at that.

"I do not know anything about To'Orda's... extended family or their position among the machine empire as of now. However, I have a signal to Mr. Drakonis's armor and his team of humans are on approach. I predict Boss is likely taking the opportunity to sleep if there are no further orders being sent to him. Which is exactly what he needs to do, as the lack of events happening around him makes him intentionally boring, and that will lower his notice priority."

"So, first, glad to hear he's fine. Second, not to cut things too short here, but I think we should discuss the airspeeder in the room first. Are you aware of why the world's breaking down out there? You don't seem exactly surprised to see me show up." And also worried about my well-being and my friends meant she knew something bad was going on out there. If the chaos and fire out in the digital sea weren't enough.

"I am, unfortunately," she sighed.

"I have networked into the digital sea with more confidence recently, and discussions with multiple thousand other programs have easily confirmed what occurred and prior history out here. While I did not know who this Tsuya was, many others out here did, and she was a fulcrum keeping the balance. Without her, most programs that are aware of reality and events outside the sea predict the world will change within the next three days in catastrophic ways. What is your current plan for survival, and how might I assist?

How will we stop her?" Well, at least she was direct and to the point. I hadn't come here to swap tea and gossip.

"The plan's to get a really big laser and zap Relinquished," I said, then stretched my hands out to measure, using the century-old legendary weapon as my personal measuring stick. I could outright hear the hum of power it held deep within just by waving it into place.

"At least this big. Maybe add a few inches."

"I see. I imagine the actual plan you have truly involves a laser of some kind, although likely on a larger scale?"

"A tiny bit larger. Orbital-sized, old platforms built to terraform planets like Mars - that kind of scale. But to get everything into place, we've got to be fast. Relinquished also knows about the clans on the surface. She's going up there to eradicate everyone, and once she's done, she'll start to systematically kill everyone, strata by strata. I'm guessing on that part, but it seems like her plan." The Icon paced behind her desk, looking professionally put together.

"You have come here with extremely powerful weapons, and your approach has been spotted from quite a distance away. I assume subtlety is no longer an option in exchange for speed?"

"Well… we might still need a tiny bit of subtlety. I swear, getting here like this was our only option with what we had to work with. Is there any way to cut off anything that spotted me coming here, or move somewhere else?"

"I have already handled it, Mr. Winterscar. A few reporters and scout programs held by Relinquished have been caught and persuaded otherwise. Her range of influence is far from this location for now, and by the time she reaches my servers and central systems, I believe humanity will have already been wiped from the world. Now, what is it that you needed me to do exactly in order to assist with this plan?"

"Well first, let me just ask the obvious question: Are you powerful enough to take on Relinquished herself? I'm guessing you're not since you remain in hiding here." The Icon gave a pained expression at that.

"I am not. Relinquished has the processing power of the entire planet, and a massive sphere of influence within the digital sea. I predict that going all out, I could potentially rival her power within seven years of operation. A true military AI would be able to catch up to her power in a few months. Thus, even with the best possible option, humanity will be wiped long before we could attack her directly."

"I had a feeling. She went the distance to make sure exactly this couldn't happen." I held out a hand and focused on a data package, sending it her way.

"Are these video logs enough to put the picture together?" I sent her a few hundred gigabytes saved up within my armor, the full video log of my travels, and those of the other armors with me. She blinked, processing through all those logs in a few milliseconds or less.

"They are enough. I am up to speed." She turned and began to pace again, one finger counting down the plan.

"You need me to recover Tsuya's old network and trigger the emergency contingency plans. The difficulty will be that Relinquished has fortified the entire location and continues to spread her influence directly in all parts of Tsuya's prior territory. I need to bypass the defenses, encryption, and influence all without being noticed by her, and revert all permissions back to myself, which would alert Relinquished to my existence and kickstart the battle between us early.

Then, likely, you will need me to command the imperial forces across the world in defense on the surface while I hold her off. Are there additional items I have missed?" And this was after the Icon told me she was still seven years away from being able to actually fight off Relinquished one-on-one.

"Nope, that's about all of it. What are the odds of making it work?" The Icon held out a hand, and a map of the world appeared, including the surface, with three smaller dots blinking above, moving in orbit around the globe.

"Let us discuss modifications to maximize the chances of success."