Chương 42: Chapter 20: Unwelcome Revelations

Dyen had fairly run out of people to kill when Cato asked for his help.

There was no point in going after the low ranking Tornok Clan. They were weak, useless things, and only the higher ranks were worthy of his time. All of them would die eventually, of course, but to spend effort massacring hapless Coppers and Silvers would be to demean himself — and undermine his vengeance. At the same time, he'd found that the upper ranking Tornok Clan – the ones who had given the orders, who encouraged the behavior, and the ones who were ultimately responsible – were out of reach.

They were Azoth, on a planet full of Bismuths and Azoths, in Estates that had System protections he was far from being able to bypass. For the most part he had busied himself with hunting down other assassins to rank up, having absolutely no loyalty to the Assassin's Guild. More the reverse, given how virtually every contract seemed to be motivated by spite and pique rather than justified revenge.

Targeting assassins meant that none of his kills would result in the sort of random destruction that had killed his wife, and the capelet made finding assassins simplicity itself — or at least it had until he noticed System-produced versions appearing here and there. Cato had ensured that Dyen's was part of his body, and thus superior, but the equipment he had recovered from several of his theoretical compatriots was obviously inspired by the original version.

[Revelatory Companion: B-Tier Companion Beast Improves passive senses and provides extra sensory input] His was better, but it still meant that hunting down the high-rank assassins, those who had somehow found out about this new piece of equipment and procured their own, was no longer straightforward.

His usual approaches having stalled out, he was glad to have an actual reason to stray away from Tornok Clan space — and have help promised for when it finally came time to deliver the final retribution to those who had taken his wife from him.

After Cato contacted him through the incredibly odd not-quite-a-Skill, he stretched out and invoked his Skills before leaving his bolthole. Dyen passed through worlds like a shadow, flitting from portal to portal under full stealth and with Skills that meant he was barely corporeal most of the time. Most people who ascended to Bismuth looked forward to the opportunities of the core worlds, but Dyen had never had any interest and never would.

He cared little for the increasing grandeur of the capital cities as he approached the inner worlds, where the network of portals narrowed down to a central convergence, nor did the higher-rank essence signatures make him feel like he was in the company of his peers. All he cared about was reaching his target.

A concern that went up in flames when he crossed the portal to the inner worlds, and everything unraveled.

Blazingly powerful protections snapped over all the myriad portals in the expansive Nexus, and his stealth Skills blared warning as equally potent identification Skills or artifacts tried to pry past his obfuscation. He had a fraction of an instant to think, plenty of time given how much more facile his mind was compared to a normal Bismuth, and decided the trap was specifically for him.

Tornok Clan wouldn't dare to accost or entrap every traveling Bismuth, even with the danger of Cato and especially when the [Crusade] was sending people in and out of the core worlds. He pulled on his Skills, not bothering to try and go backward through the fully protected portal he'd come from, instead flitting forward toward the less guarded portals leading deeper into the inner worlds.

The heavy, ominous essence signature of an Azoth appeared just as he slipped through a small crack in the barrier into the next portal, his stealth Skills draining energy as they worked harder than ever before to keep him hidden.

Dyan caught only glimpses of the various capitals as he jumped through, pursued by – presumably – Tornok Clan elites. He took portals at random, just trying to stay ahead of their sensory Skills and lose himself in the press of suddenly far higher rank individuals that populated the inner worlds.

Cato's gifts showed their worth as Dyen could take in and analyze the movements of people and the streams of essence projected by artifacts in a snap, sliding in, around, under, and through layers of security and unsuspecting bystanders.

The headlong flight lasted no more than a few minutes, but it seemed like ages as he crossed a dozen worlds, at every step having to contort his Skills to keep himself hidden and fend off opposing Skills trying to search him out. He jumped from shadow to shadow, suppressing his own essence, not even breathing and, as he'd learned from Cato's capelet, making sure even the wind of his passage didn't bear a single trace of his presence.

Even when it seemed he'd lost his pursuers, Dyen did not relax. That was the best way to get ambushed, and it was a technique he'd used himself a time or two. Instead, he used the opportunity to open a passage to his portable Estate and slide inside, leaving only a finger of a shadow as a connection to the world outside. Whoever was searching for him wouldn't be able to find the signature while hidden, and his private space had a profile even more miniscule than his own.

His Estate was a simple one, almost entirely given over to storage with a small and spare living area. At Bismuth he had no need to eat or drink or sleep, and so there seemed little point giving any real space to such fripperies. Instead, there were shelves and racks and chests of niche-use artifacts and single-use crystals, some of which he had taken from his kills and others that he had purchased from the System.

There were limitations to the single-use crystals, most of which had contradictory effects and some of which made it actively difficult to perform anything but a single task. Relying on them rather than learning to properly use Skills was a great way to wind up dead, but they were unequivocally useful for special circumstances. Like being pursued by higher-rank agents, or trying to track people he hadn't seen in years.

He exchanged his usual equipment loadout for one more geared toward movement and stealth, and less toward combat. For the most part he worked from ambush, destroying people with a singular strike of incredible magnitude, but that wasn't what he needed. Instead he needed to move fast, move light, and follow traces that were days old. If he wasn't familiar with Raine and Leese it probably would have been impossible — especially with their own obfuscation artifacts.

They were masquerading as something other than Sydean, and only his familiarity with the pair meant he could tell any different.

Dyen arranged several consumables to be easily available, and then crushed one crystal that rendered him entirely ephemeral. Only then did he emerge again, closing his Estate behind him and flitting back the way he had come. The technique was old, simple, and yet still worked. Whoever was looking for him would certainly not check on the worlds they had already chased him through.

Once he had worked his way nearly back to the threshold world where all the portals came together, he let the effect lapse. All the predatory, high-rank presences were gone, the hunters off searching for him in further worlds while he tracked down the slightest whiff of where Raine and Leese might have gone. To that end he crushed another crystal, temporarily focusing all his not-inconsiderable perceptual prowess in a single direction.

Essence trails sprang into being around him, the wakes of passages stretching back days or possibly even weeks, and he began hunting. There was the possibility that the pair had been caught by the trap on the nexus world, but he knew that Cato had provided the sisters things that Dyen couldn't even imagine. It was more likely, to his mind, that they'd escaped in much the same way. Forward, not back.

He crossed several worlds before he picked up their trail, barely distinguishable from the wake of other high-rankers who had passed through. Anyone who wasn't already familiar with them would have never noticed, considering how well they blended with the surroundings. Clearly the two had upgraded their movement Skills since he'd last met, likely once again due to Cato's gifts. Having a god on their side really was unfair.

Yet Cato wasn't everywhere, couldn't be everywhere, and here in the inner worlds those two were unsupported. Dyen didn't really pity them, but he had to be serious about tracking them down if he were to get what he wanted. He very much doubted Cato would feel like extending any more of his power to Dyen if the sisters never resurfaced.

Their hurried path mimicked his, leading from portal to portal with eddies and twists that showed heavy use of movement Skills, not to mention the wake of the pursuers. Perhaps even combat Skills, though the particular tracking crystal he had used wasn't meant for that sort of investigation. There were crystals that offered more specialized boosts, but most of them seemed useless to him.

Dyen kept a stock anyway, since after encountering Cato he was very aware that he was woefully ignorant and the usual, straightforward approaches were not the only ones. There was no telling what would be useful, and when.

Dyen pursued their trail deeper into the network of the inner worlds, their trail looping and skating sideways here and there, but always going deeper. He spent several days following their circumlocutions, tracking punctuated by spates of hiding from the occasional Bismuth or Azoth that pricked his instincts, until he fetched up at one final portal. Unlike all the others it wasn't merely a circle in space, but a sphere hovering above a disk of Alum-ranked metal like its own miniature world.

A portal to the Core Worlds.

As Dyen approached it, a System notification appeared.

[Warning: At Bismuth Rank, it may not be possible to return through this portal.] He considered it for a moment, then decided it didn't matter. Dyen plunged through.

Raine Uriv had no idea what to do with herself.

Cato had made it clear all the way back in the beginning that somewhere, somewhen, something would happen that made a version of her accidentally divergent or worse, accidentally redundant. There would be – there were – thousands of her, tens of thousands, and in the chaos of war anything could happen. But that had been some abstract lecture, a remote contingency that had never crossed her mind — not a reality that she had to live.

She and Leese had returned to their normal forms, no longer needing to masquerade as Urivans or pretend an interest in ranking up in the System. It was far more comfortable than their subterfuge as a different species, and their surroundings were certainly meant to be relaxing. They were in virtual world not quite robust enough to be called an aestivation, a cozy little villa surrounded by greenery, but still obviously artificial, and she certainly didn't feel relaxed.

"What is the point of…" Raine began, but trailed off, not quite knowing what she wanted to say.

"Of us?" Leese finished.

"It's strange. There's so many of us, I know that in my head, that it shouldn't matter, but nobody else has lost five years."

"Ten years, or more," Raine corrected her.

"With the time compression." Cato had provided a very, very brief summary of the goings-on for the past few years, and otherwise tried not to bother them. They'd clearly missed a lot in the broad campaign, but insofar as Uriva itself, not much had been done. Mostly just buildup for the inevitable invasion — one that might no longer be happening.

She didn't blame Cato for wanting to negotiate with Initik. Even if she didn't like the World Deity in question, he hadn't behaved badly enough to make it personal. The problem was that it left both her and Leese entirely at loose ends. There was no need to try and subvert the populace, and any other tasks they could have taken up were already claimed. Everything that they had done, prepared for, sacrificed for, and been captured for was rendered irrelevant.

They were irrelevant.

"I mean. We don't necessarily need to do anything," Leese said, though they both knew that wasn't really true. Yes, they knew that they could set up their own virtual world, pursue any hobby or interest they had, and completely retire from the campaign — but they didn't feel like they'd earned it. They hadn't accomplished anything, and it sure didn't help that there was nobody they could retire with.

They had each other, of course, but as immortals with near-infinite possibilities, that just wasn't good enough. Forever was a long time to spend with only one person, but there wasn't anyone else. Cato was a distant god, and they were surrounded by aliens that they didn't know or understand. The two of them had always thought that what they would do after the campaign was a thing for a far distant future, when they would know more and be more. Not something thrust upon them before they'd even started.

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"Relaxing isn't very relaxing," Raine muttered, and Leese laughed, though it was more in agreement than anything.

"Maybe we should—" She was interrupted by the chiming of the visitor alert, the doorbell as Cato liked to call it. Of course, he was the one asking for admission; a fresh reminder there wasn't anyone else. The only other digitized intelligence around was Yaniss, and she definitely didn't have a presence on Uriva. Raine exchanged looks with Leese and then admitted him.

"How are you two doing? Ready to be done moping?" Cato's words jolted her, and she cast an astonished glance at him before remembering that he knew them better than they knew him. Quite literally; this Cato had spent years with them, their other selves, that she and Leese had missed out on. The address was oddly over-familiar, and perhaps she should have been insulted, but the words hit just right. She was ready to be done moping.

"What do you have for us?" Leese asked.

"Since I assume you're not ready to vanish into a retirement aestivation, I have two options that I think might work. One is just to head out to the frontier; we can target a planet for you rather than spinning off a new Lineage, and you can start again there." He paused, and Raine shrugged. The idea didn't excite her any, even if it wasn't terrible.

"The other is to take control of the diplomacy project here," Cato said.

"I can send you the details of the agreement, but if we're going to get Initik on our side – and maybe some of the other System-Gods – then we need to prove that we can actually do what we say we can." He flipped his hand, projecting a simulacrum of a large, rotating habitat orbiting one of the moons along with the data of how long it would take to reach that orbit, and a surveillance feed of a number of Urivans gathering together in a town on that moon's surface.

"Setting up the environment is easy enough, but I'll need liaisons to help the chosen Urivans adapt. And Initik decided to tap the group that you ran with before, though I'm not sure if it was meant as a favor to you or just because he considers them already potentially compromised." Cato shook his head.

"Regardless, they wouldn't all be total strangers."

"That might work," Raine said, considering the little model with interest. The more she thought about it, the more she liked it: they wouldn't have to be inside the System, they had found the Warden's Claw to be nice enough people, and it was actually important. Maybe more important than any of the other preparations on the other worlds. Getting World Deities on Cato's side would radically change the entire campaign. Even if it was only a few. She looked to Leese and the two of them came to an unspoken agreement.

"We'd be interested, I think," Leese said.

"We can stay Sydean, right? I don't think we want to change ourselves again."

"Certainly," Cato assured them.

"This isn't subterfuge anymore. Though of course I'm going to make sure if Initik decides to pull the environment into the System you won't be trapped again. I think we've learned that lesson."

"Yes," Raine said fervently.

"Then I'll let Initik know. There's no rush, though," Cato added, as he dismissed the habitat model.

"Even with all our infrastructure, it's going to take time to finish preparing everything."

"I think we'd prefer to get started sooner rather than later," Raine replied. She was already starting to feel stir-crazy, not at all relaxed by the tranquil surroundings of the virtual world.

"Easy enough," Cato said, flicking his fingers to send messages to them.

"There's a bunch of sims that will help with the orientation process. But first, mail call." Raine's personal interface pinged her, showing hundreds, thousands of messages for both her and Leese. She exchanged glances with Leese, and then opened one at random.

It was from herself. Or rather, from another version of herself, busy on some other planet, sending well-wishes and advice. The message was short and blunt, but it was still encouraging — as was another message, a softer one, from a different version of Leese. Odd as the messages were, they were more encouraging than she would have thought.

"I'll keep you looped in," Cato told them.

"And get you some databases to go through. Once I get the factories over here, I'll let you be in charge of the habitat specifics."

"We will take the charge seriously," Leese said. Raine nodded silently, considering to herself.

They knew exactly how powerful Cato's tools were, and how complex things would be outside the System, which made such a responsibly by far the heaviest one they'd ever been given. There were innumerable details, nearly infinite possibilities, and they would have to make all the decisions — with Initik's cooperation relying on their success. For the first time since waking up in the new paradigm, Raine felt like there was a purpose calling to her.

"I have every confidence in you," Cato told them.

Cato hated how life refused to have a consistent narrative. Good and bad jumbled together, so much that would have in some ways preferred more bad news on the heels of the Sydean Lineage's disappearance, instead of the whiplash hope that this latest development could win him the whole campaign. A single ally from the self-proclaimed World Deities might well give him more access and intelligence than all the worlds he'd already claimed.

At the same time, the Sydean Lineage might well have disclosed everything they knew to some core worlds System-gods, threatening everything he'd built.

Initik's true support was years away, but the potential fallout of the Sydean Lineage was an immediate concern. They didn't know all his secrets, but they did know enough that he needed to start making some moves before the System people could figure out how to use that intelligence – or the Sydean Lineage themselves – against him. He wasn't about to try a massive military campaign, since he wasn't ready for that, but it was better to start the social campaign before the System-gods beat him to it.

Accordingly, he decided to pull the metaphorical trigger on the leaflet campaign. As simple as it was, such a psychological attack might well be far more devastating than any military approach. At least, history had shown that propaganda was effective, and the truth was that now that his presence was known, there was no reason not to advance his cause while he was still spreading out.

He began with the worlds that were already familiar with his presence, the ones that he'd allowed to defeat his forces in the annexation incident. That way he could see the general reaction without compromising the knowledge of exactly how deeply he was entrenched. Boiling the frog slowly, if he was lucky.

On each world, mass drivers were re-tasked to send small packages into the atmosphere. The leaflet bundles were light enough that aerobraking served entirely to slow them down, each bundle puffing into individual papers once the surrounding air was dense enough to crush the packing foam and free the simple mechanical securements. He'd tweaked the leaflets themselves to be fairly fragile, degrading relatively quickly — if for no other reason than he'd be dropping a lot of them.

Thousands over every city and town, and even over every dungeon on each planet.

The view from his orbital surveillance was impressive in some ways, but the view from the ground was even better. Various Lineages were on the ground, deep undercover as Coppers or Silvers, and some of them broadcast the sight of the papers floating down like strange snow. Some people took it as another attack, and here and there bolts of fire or whips of water cut through the air to destroy the floating pages.

He also heard noises of fear, particularly from the Copper and Silver ranks, which was less amusing than the mis-aimed attacks. Cato never wanted to incite terror from those who were simply living their lives, which was exactly why he wanted to ease people through the transition rather than do it by force. Being guaranteed some continuity of law, of property, of hearth and home and food and drink did wonders for quelling unrest, but only if he was able to make those guarantees.

Eventually, people did realize that the pieces of paper were merely words and pictures. He doubted anyone would believe his proclamations outright, but that was fine. The point was to sow doubt, and he could – and would – drop propaganda for years. Hopefully he could make some inroads against the reflexive System hatred, and the pervasive opposition of the Crusade quest.

Except, of course, for the divine users. Cato hadn't seen any priests as such, nobody going around evangelizing about whatever moral code was ascribed to the System's machinations. It wasn't necessary, not when what the System wanted was so transparently obvious, but divine users were effectively the true believers, and it didn't take long for them to start denouncing the propaganda.

"Do not even consider the lies that Cato is spreading!" One Bismuth paladin shouted in a town square only minutes after the leaflets began dropping from the sky, glaring around at people who quickly abandoned any attempt to pick up or even look at the stray papers. Amusingly, since the papers weren't enemies it seemed that Skills in general weren't designed to deal with them, at least not without significant collateral damage, so they weren't being destroyed very quickly.

"These words only exist to taint your spirit!" Another, more priest-styled divine user said in an entirely different city, on an entirely different world, after the third batch of leaflets fell from the sky.

"Stay strong, and burn this heresy wherever you find it!"

Despite the people proselytizing about how evil he was, Cato was relatively pleased with the leaflet drop. Millions of people were reading his assurances about what life would be like without the System, about how little he wanted to affect their ability to live — save for no longer needing to fight every day, of course. Maybe only a few percent would believe him, but historically almost all changes were wrought with that few percent of the population.

Maybe the System was different, but in most populations the vast majority of people followed, rather than led, and were easily swayed when the winds changed.

Yet that success wasn't enough to assuage his worries over the disappearance of the Sydean Lineage. As much as he wanted to do more, the propaganda campaign was the only activity he was willing to engage with, as he didn't want to expose any other versions to being targeted. Between the Crusade and potential targeting by the System core, everyone was laying low.

Some versions had even underclocked themselves, not feeling like being distracted with aestivation worlds and yet having nothing in particular to do until time passed, and so they were running at ten percent of normal or even less. Cato wasn't entirely comfortable with that, as it was entirely possible to get disconnected from events in much the same way as with deep time, but it was hard to argue against it. There was a lot of waiting to be done, and automated industry needed only so much supervision.

All of the Lineages on the propaganda worlds were at least temporarily active, even if there wasn't much to do there but observe. No matter how many simulations he did, that didn't tell him what the reaction was actually going to be, or what alterations he should make. It wasn't exactly possible to poll the System populace to find out their most critical issues.

Two days into it, Cato-Sunac was still sorting through the sudden influx of data, as his observation creatures and orbital spy-eyes observed literally millions of people over dozens of worlds, when multiple portals opened at once. One in each of the worlds targeted for leaflets, which set off all kinds of alarms. The last time he'd seen that, the gods had likely been involved, and his cousins definitely had been.

The people who came through the portals seemed to be Azoths; confirmed by the sisters in the cities where they were physically present, and by general observation where they weren't. All different species, with one Tornok-Clan but the others exhibiting entirely different morphologies. Some of them were the first time he'd ever seen the species, even with all the thousands of worlds he surveilled.

"The [Crusade] just changed to an evacuation order," Raine reported from the surface of Sunac, echoed by the other versions across other worlds. Or at least, those versions of her that were Gold and above. Given the portal restrictions, it wouldn't matter or apply to those in Copper and Silver. Of course, neither Raine nor Leese cared about the quest at all.

"Huh, are they pulling out already?"

Cato asked, mostly rhetorically. So far, very few world deities had seen fit to actually defend their worlds all the way. Some had, whether due to an excess of ego or because they were like Initik and actually cared, but for the most part they had abandoned their posts. Immortal self-styled gods didn't seem to want to put their lives on the line.

"Hear this, Cato!" One of the Azoths boomed out, followed irregularly by the others, not quite synchronized over the various worlds.

"You will not be allowed to take the worlds of the System! No world that you have defiled can be tolerated by the divines, so let it be known that this is on your head!" Even as they spoke, the other higher ranks filtered back through the portals, heading back into the greater System. And with haste.

"What are they…" Cato didn't finish the sentence, not wanting to articulate the foreboding feeling the vague proclamation gave him.

"Anything else going on, System-wise?"

He knew the sisters would have told him if there was anything he should know, but he couldn't help the question.

"Just the evacuation still," Raine reported from Sunac.

"It's marked as urgent, but there's no other changes or notifications that I've gotten."

Still uncertain what exactly was going to happen, Cato began issuing orders to bring his forces in closer to the planet, a decision that was mirrored across all the propaganda worlds. Perhaps that was what the System elites were trying to do, to lure him in closer, but with all his factories and mining facilities at a safe distance, eradicating the existing forces would be at most a minor delay.

For three hours, there was merely the outflow of the higher ranks under the eyes of the Azoths,, then the portals in each Nexus, at least the ones the sisters could see, seemed to flicker and shuffle, so that each of the propaganda worlds had a single portal left. Whatever hidden countdown or message that the Azoths were waiting on occurred a scant few minutes later. All of them spoke, again not quite in unison but close enough that it was obvious that they were being fed their lines.

"This world has been condemned by Cato!"

On each planet, at the point furthest from the capital city Nexus, a dark spot appeared on the ground or the ocean. It expanded rapidly, a ring sweeping through the atmosphere and across the surface at hundreds of miles an hour, leaving only dust in its wake. Everything living and System-made, city or dungeon, plant or animal, dissolved into nothingness. It was exactly like how System-stuff dissolved outside its influence, but applied to ordinary flora and fauna, ordinary creatures — and ordinary people.

Cato watched in horror as that dark wave swept over towns, leaving neither inhabitants nor buildings intact.

It only took five or six minutes to cross the entire planet. FungusNet and FernNet kept transmitting all the way up to the end, as the ring crashed down on the capital city and the Nexus there, and the unsuspecting Coppers and Silvers who had no idea what was coming. Raine and Leese abandoned the frames for their respective orbital networks, unable to do anything against reality itself turning against them.

The portals closed. Signal lost.