Chapter 59: Oathbreaker (Patreon)

Her head would not lift. Whatever sat above her was big, and her body knew it before her mind did. Her chin stayed angled toward the floor, and looking up was not an option.

A ring of blue light closed around her, and then a second ring formed around the monolith.

What is this?

“Tera.”

Her voice came out small under the pressure on her chest.

“Tera, I can’t move my head.”

Tera did not answer. The channel was dead, the way a radio goes dead when someone cuts the wire.

“Tera, answer me.”

She looked at the back of her boot, and Napoleon was on the floor, his legs bent backward and his sensors dark. He had been pressed against her boot a second ago, and now he was a piece of metal lying on the floor.

The Operator tried to crouch, but her knees barely bent before the pressure forced them back down. She reached toward the edge of the ring instead, slowly, and her palm hit something that was not air and not glass, just a wall.

Is this a fucking cage?

The pressure on her shoulders shifted, and gravity in the lab changed. Her knees gave. Her spine compressed. The breath she had been holding pushed out of her chest, and the next breath had to be fought for.

I can’t move.

The monolith was no longer pulsing like before, and its black surface rippled slowly, with small flakes coming off the edges and falling into the ring at its base, sand-sized or smaller. Whatever pressure was crushing her was crushing the monolith too, and the system was shedding pieces of itself onto the floor.

A voice came out of it, not the voice from the stairs in front of the red door, not the laughing voice from a minute ago, just new.

“A judgment?”

“A pathetic creature like you triggered a judgment?”

She breathed through her teeth.

“A disgusting, insignificant being like you dared call upon the Portal.”

It was not talking to her. The system was speaking past her, aiming the words somewhere over her head.

The voice climbed.

“Oh, great Portal. You who have been called, why do you consider the pact has not been honored?”

The system continued, faster now.

“I swear I have fulfilled every condition I committed to with the traveler.”

“I swear I have protected her.”

“I swear everything I have done has been in her favor.”

First time I hear him scared. It’s nice.

“This traveler lies. The oath has been honored.”

Something broke in her chest. She could not stay quiet.

“Fuck you. You tried to sell me. You were going to hand me over like a piece of merchandise.”

Something cut her off mid-sentence. She tried to keep talking, but the words would not come. The pressure on her shoulders did not move, and the monolith remained silent.

A hand pushed up through the floor.

White, large, passing through the stone the way a hand passes through still water. The Operator had seen that entrance before.

“What is he doing here?”

A second hand came through next to the first, then the top of a head, then the rest of the body. The single black eye turned to her.

Great. The Guardian, right after I screwed him over with the saga, and he probably still thinks I conned him.

He stepped fully out of the floor and turned his head toward the monolith, then bowed slow.

“System. A pleasure to see you in this position.”

He let out a small laugh, and the monolith stayed silent, only its surface pulsing once and shedding more flakes onto the floor. Then he turned to her.

“Operator.”

She could not answer.

“We saw each other recently, and I did not expect to see you again so soon, not like this.”

He walked between the rings of light, between her and the monolith, and sat down, crossing his legs.

“My Lord, the Great Realm Portal, has asked me to be present at this...”

His head tilted.

“What do you call it? A judgment?”

Her mouth still would not open.

“Judgment. I have never been part of one, nor have I known one to occur.”

The single eye moved toward her.

“I am his voice now, Operator. That’s an honor, and honestly, I owe it to you. You called on him, and that gave me the chance to stand here. So whatever happened between us before, I can let some of that go.”

The Guardian held her gaze for a moment before he spoke again.

“Understand, Operator, he would never concern himself with something like this. But when one of his own uses his name in vain, or breaks an oath sworn under it, the repercussions are catastrophic.”

He turned toward the monolith.

“That is the only reason he would appear in this manner. He is watching everything.”

His voice slowed.

“If the Operator called upon the Great Realm Portal without grounds, the result is what one might call erasure from existence.”

Erasure from existence?

“And if it is determined that one of his own has not honored an oath, given how long the System has served him, this would be considered a first offense. But the punishment will be considerable.”

She could not speak. The pressure was crushing her down, her hands flat on the floor, her arms shaking under the weight.

“Easy, Operator. Under his eyes, he sees everything. There are many worlds, many dungeons, many places to oversee, and he is not present in all of them. But when an oath is broken, he places his full attention. He has watched everything that came before, and he is watching now.”

The Guardian leaned forward, looking straight at her.

“What happened between us with the saga changes nothing here. I will not favor the system, and I will not favor you. I will be just, because he is watching me too.”

Something loosened in her chest, not relief, just a little room to breathe.

He lifted his hand toward her.

“Operator, the claim is yours, so you speak first.”

The gravity crushing her body let up, not all the way, but enough.

“That son of a bitch knows everything. He knows he tried to sell me, trade me, whatever the hell he was going to do.”

Her voice scraped going out.

“Before I came into this dungeon, he made a promise. He would protect me, at least in this first dungeon, and I would have a chance to grow. After this one, fine, I understood he would never give me anything because he hates engineers, but in this first dungeon, I was supposed to grow. If there were dangers, that was on me; dungeon problems, that was the deal.

“And then he tried to sell me, to a man in this world, to enslave me comfortably, in exchange for some fucking creatures.

“That’s not protecting me. That’s not letting me grow. If they lock me in a comfortable house, how do I grow? A slave with a salary, that’s all I’d be.

“He didn’t honor the fucking oath.

The Guardian listened, hands resting on his knees. When she stopped, he answered.

“All right. Is that all?”

She was burning, not thinking.

“Is there more I need to say? It’s clear. He fucked me.”

She was opening her mouth for another sentence when his hand moved, and the words stopped in her throat.

Not again. I can’t talk again.

His hand moved a fraction more, and the monolith pulsed.

“My dear system.”

His tone softened, almost regretful, as if he were speaking at the funeral of a colleague.

“It pains me to see you in this position, as fellow administrators, but the Great Realm Portal wishes to hear your perspective.”

When the system answered, the fear was gone. The voice came out steady, ready, every word in place.

“My God. My Lord.”

The system spoke past the Guardian, aiming the words at the Portal.

“The oath I made to this traveler has been fulfilled. I have given her more than I swore.

“I promised her growth. Look at her. She has a new evolution system, mutation, and she possesses it because of me.

“Her engineering role lets her grow as a technician, not as a person. She is weak. The mutation system makes her strong; it will let her grow, and I honored the promise of growth.”

She wanted to scream. Growth means nothing if I’m locked in a comfortable room. The words pushed against her closed mouth and stayed there.

“I told her surviving a dungeon was her responsibility, that I would give her the best conditions. And what did I do? I led her to a zone where she had practically no danger. With whom did she fight? Practically no one. That spider, which was stolen, by the way, from the evolution zone, which does not belong to her, I permitted her to keep it. I permitted it to be changed for her defense. That, too, was given.

“And she’s ungrateful; she doesn’t understand what she’s been given. The humanoids in the zone were beneath her, and if she hadn’t been in the evolution process, she could have killed them herself. But because she was, she used the spider she stole to defend herself, and I permitted that too.”

The Guardian was watching her, and she could feel every sentence the system spoke pulling the judgment further away from her.

“Everything I have given her has been to protect her. She has had no real danger; she has grown; she has evolved. She has a system no one before her has had in the evolution zone. If she plays her cards correctly, she can grow further. That is what I have given her.”

The gravity on her body rose, not crushing, just pressing. Her engineer’s mind ran the math against her will, and the math wasn’t good. She could feel it now, every argument from the system that hit; the Portal pressed her body harder. The case was holding, and the gravity was telling her so.

The thought came up without permission. He’s right. Every fucking word.

The system was not finished. It moved on to Eron, to the negotiation, to the oath he had made Eron swear: that Eron would keep her safe in this world, that the mutation evolution would continue under Eron’s care, that the promise of growth carried through even after the trade.

“At no point have I broken what I promised.”

The pressure climbed another step. The system’s argument was winning, and her body felt every bit of it.

She could not breathe and could not speak and could not refute, because everything the system said was true.

The Guardian’s hand moved, and the words came back to her throat.

“Anything to say, Operator?”

She screamed it.

“It was my decision!”

It was the only sentence she had.

“They were selling me. They were trading me.”

“Operator.”

The system did not miss a beat.

“In this dungeon, in this place, it may seem simple to you. You have not faced real danger, because of the promise I made. But in the second dungeon, the third, the fourth, weak as you are, you would not survive. What I did, I did for you.”

The pressure on her tightened, but she could still speak. She let the rage come up before the pressure could shut her up again.

“Bullshit. Pure bullshit. You did it because you hate that I’m an engineer, since the day I had this role.”

The system answered, and for the first time, it sounded honest.

“That is true. You creators, all of you, are chaos. But everything I did was to protect her. That’s my case. I never broke the oath.”

The Guardian turned to her.

“Anything else?”

She had nothing. She knew what was true, that none of this had been about her, none of it had been protection. But she had already run the argument in her head three times, and the system was right.

She said it anyway.

“He didn’t do it for me, he didn’t do it thinking about me, he didn’t do it because he was worried I would die in the next dungeon. If I died in the second or third, that would be wonderful for him. He did it for the Kanryx, he wanted to trade me for them; he wanted what they can do for him, and none of that benefits me. He never did it thinking about me.”

She knew it as the words came out.

I have nothing. I’m fucked. Everything he said is technically true.

The Guardian looked at her for a long second, then lowered his head, listening to something she could not hear.

He nodded, slow.

“The Portal has reached a decision.”

The pressure climbed. Her knees ground into the floor under the weight, her arms shook, and she put her forehead down because she could not hold her head up anymore.

Shit. What did I do? I’m fucked.

Then the Guardian fell silent, and the pressure stopped climbing as a voice came down from above.

That voice was nothing like the Guardian’s. It hit her like an earthquake, coming through the floor and through the walls, and through her teeth. She forced her hands up against the gravity, slow, every centimeter a fight, and pressed them over her ears, even though that did nothing to stop it.

“Why the Kanryx?”

Three words.

“Am I not enough?”

The system stuttered for the first time since she had known it.

“What? What do you speak of, my Lord?”

The voice came back stronger. The floor under her vibrated, not from the sound, but from something deeper.

“The evolution I bestow, the system I give in the dungeons, is it not enough? Why the Kanryx?”

The Guardian had his hands on his head and his eyes closed. The sound was hurting him too, and even he could not handle the full pitch, despite being its voice.

The system answered fast.

“My Lord, we are in this judgment. I will explain all of it, later.”

“You give me orders now? You decide when I may speak in my domain?”

The voice was titanic, shaking the surrounding air.

“Answer my question. Is my evolution not enough?”

The voice cut off.

The pressure on her dropped a fraction, enough that she could lift her head, and she lifted it the smallest amount she could manage, just enough to see the system through the ring of light around her.

The flakes coming off the monolith were bigger now, full pieces falling and gathering on the floor, and the surface where they had broken away looked pale, almost gray. The Portal was crushing the system the same way it had crushed her, but harder.

The Guardian opened his eyes and turned toward the monolith. The polite, soft expression was gone. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and now it was here.

He spoke slowly.

“My Lord asked you a question. He needs to understand why a second system is needed when he provides everything. If his evolution system is not enough, then what is it for? He delivers all of it, and he has done so for millennia.”

The system did not answer. The pressure on the monolith climbed, the pieces fell faster, and its surface twisted in waves like something fighting to escape from inside it.

“Please.”

The voice from the monolith was small. She had never heard it so small before.

“My God. My Lord. I cannot answer that question.”

An invisible force seized the monolith and pulled it.

The black surface tore upward out of the floor, ripped from where it had been rooted deep. The roots showed now, black and thick and many, extending down into something below, tightening as the monolith rose, resisting, then snapping one by one with sounds like cables giving under load.

The monolith screamed. The sound came from inside it, the system itself, and it was a child’s scream and an animal’s scream and a grown man’s scream at the same time.

The Guardian smiled, small, as if he could finally drop the politeness.

“The Great Realm Portal has made two judgments.”

His voice was light.

“First, the system, by failing to disclose why it requires a mutation evolution outside the one he provides to travelers, and by seeking an alternative for itself, becomes suspect. It requires further investigation. The system will be temporarily stripped of administrative power and taken to another zone for interrogation.”

He laughed out loud, finally letting out what he had been holding in for a long time. The monolith vibrated harder in the air above the floor, the last roots underneath snapping clean.

It was unplugged from the entire dungeon.

The monolith vibrated harder, and the screaming did not stop until suddenly it did. The black surface stilled, and an image formed on it, a man’s face, Eron’s face.

She stared.

The system’s voice came fast, words tumbling, no composure left.

“Eron, our deal is canceled for reasons stronger than my will. The Operator has already solved the mutation evolution problem; you can do whatever you want with her. I don’t think I’ll be able to communicate for some time.”

What is he doing?

Eron’s face on the monolith looked at her, only at her. He looked at her with the same calm she had heard on the radio, his eyes moving over her like he was checking off a list, and then he smiled, small, almost kind. He said nothing. The image cut.

The black surface went black again, and three circles burned themselves into it, red and deep, like a brand pressed into wood.

Three circles burned into the side of her neck as well.

She screamed. The pain went under the skin, and she fought her hand up against the gravity, slow, until she could press it against her neck where the heat would not fade.

The monolith screamed with her, the same pain, the three circles burning into its surface the same way they were burning into her neck. The roar that came out of it made the rings of light flicker.

The Guardian’s smile died.

“System. What have you done?”

His voice had changed. The Guardian had realized what the system had just done, his body tensing, his hands closing into fists on his knees.

The Guardian rose from the floor.

The system started screaming.

“My Lord! It was an attack of rage!”

“My Lord, forgive me! My God, forgive me! I lost control because they were taking my administration from me!”

The voice came back.

“Let this be a lesson to anyone who uses my name in vain.”

The monolith split.

The Guardian flinched and stepped back, surprised by the sudden attack.

A cut opened down the middle, top to bottom, and the two halves pulled apart in the air. Black blood poured out of the cut, thick and dark, splashing onto the floor below. The halves separated wider, and more blood ran out of the center, dripping down onto the floor in a growing pool.

The Guardian was on his feet. He was no longer smiling. He was afraid.

The voice came again.

“Even so, I require to know why you needed mutation evolution from the Kanryx, and why you do not answer.”

The black blood kept running, and the two halves shuddered in the air. Then, in one motion, faster than her eyes could follow, they were ripped outward and away, vanishing entirely.

The pressure dropped all at once, gravity returning to what it had been before. Her body fell forward onto her hands, and she let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.

She stayed on her hands and knees, just breathing. The pain on her neck was gone, and so was the heat.

She lifted her head and looked at where the monolith had been. There was only a circle of black blood on the floor.

She turned to the Guardian.

“Is the system dead? What happened?”

Her voice was a wreck.

The Guardian looked at her without speaking. He held her gaze, and the silence said enough.

She did not have the strength to look up at the Great Realm Portal. She kept her eyes on the Guardian.

The Guardian spoke.

“The judgment that was going to favor the system is annulled because one administrator failed to honor an oath. The traveler, the Operator, will receive a reward.”

A reward? But the judgment wasn’t going to favor me. What game is this?

The Guardian looked at her as if he had heard the thought.

“The system attacked you, Operator. It showed your achievement to Eron, putting you in danger, and it canceled the oath it had made with Eron, leaving him free of any obligation. Those are violations against you.

The system fucked itself when they took his administration away.

“The reward is on your screen. From this point forward, I will administer fairly: everything that occurs in this dungeon, the next, and the ones after. The system’s promise that this first dungeon would benefit you is canceled, and you will now have the same conditions as all other travelers.”

He paused.

“And this is a message from my Lord. Because one of his own broke an oath, you will be granted two compensations. You can see them on your screen. We will probably see each other again soon, Operator.”

He bowed his head.

The Guardian disappeared. He did not pass through the floor the way he had come, he simply vanished where he stood. The presence above her vanished with him. One second the Operator was facing the Guardian, and the next the lab was back around her. The rings of light, the red darkness, all of it had ended. The dim amber lights returned overhead, the smell of the cadavers reached her again, and the cold settled back into her skin.

A small click came from her left.

Click. Clack.

Napoleon was getting up. His eight legs unfolded one at a time, his sensors lighting up as the systems came back online, and he stood and turned in a circle, surveying the lab with his blades out. He stopped facing her, his sensors fixed on her face, and took one step toward her before stopping.

Tera’s voice came back.

I just saw all of it. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything.

She did not answer. Her HUD was flashing in the corner of her vision, and she lifted her hand and tapped through it.

Two notifications. The first one opened.

[MUTATION SYSTEM — SECONDARY FORMULA AVAILABLE]

[Select one]

Muscular Density Enhancement

Kinetic Output Amplification

Skeletal-Muscular Reinforcement

Tendon Reinforcement

Mitochondrial Optimization

She looked at the list. She did not select.

She tapped the second notification.

[EVOLUTION PROGRESS: 100%]

[Level 7 available. Accept?]