Otherlife Nightmares: The Selfless Hero Trilogy (54 page)

Standing at the foot of the steps, Alexia dropped to her knees in the wet grass, staring up at him.

“Lord Runner! You’ve returned. Does the war go well?”

“It does! And of course I returned. I promised you, didn’t I?”

Runner let his hand fall and he descended the steps to Alexia. He held out a hand to her, shaking his head.

“Get up, silly. I must say, I’m impressed. A lot of work has gotten done. It’s amazing. It feels…like warmth. Home. Comfort.” Runner grabbed Alexia’s offered hand and brought her to her feet.

“I’m so glad to hear that. I must admit I feared what you would think.” Alexia beamed at him.

“I have a confession though and I apologize for troubling you with it. We’ve had problems with a few people. A very small number to be sure, but they exist. They disrupt life here and try to incite conflict. It’s good that you’ve prohibited harm here as I’m certain there would already be deaths.”

“That’s not good. Hm,” Runner uneasily said, his thumb and forefinger coming to his chin as he thought.

This place is supposed to be a safe haven. Where do I banish the banished from here?

“Could you send them to another world? I…I dug that pit and it wasn’t here. I would have to assume that there is another world like this? I’m so sorry about that as well. I don’t even know why I did it anymore. It felt good to do something, anything…the dark…” Alexia trailed off and shuddered.

“Hush. Have no fear or concern for it. What’s done is done,” Runner said as consolingly as he could. Laying his right hand on Alexia’s shoulder, he patted her gently. “As to the other world, that’s probably the best thing we can do. Let’s see…”

Opening his inventory with his left hand, Runner pulled out a six-foot staff. Honestly he couldn’t even remember why he’d picked it up or how he’d gotten it.

After breaking it into three pieces with his hands, he then pulled out two bars of steel. Rapidly he enchanted the broken staff pieces with
Day/Night Cycle On
,
Day/Night Cycle Off
, and
Banishing Bolt,
though it was connected to GMHub three instead of two.

For the first bar he granted it
Weather On
, and for the second,
Weather Off
. Melting the bars with his fingers, he slapped them in between the broken pieces as bands and then cooled them.

Mist spread over the staff as it reformed into an artifact. The wood had turned black as coal and the bands were a dull copper color.

Not exactly pretty. Function over form.

He held the staff out to Alexia. “Here you are then. It literally has no stats, that’d take time I really don’t have right now. It can make it day or night, and turn the weather on or off. The last ability it has is to banish someone from this plane. All you have to do is target them and activate it. Use it sparingly as they will be unable to return. I trust you to be merciful and understanding. People need time to adjust to this world and will resent us at first.”

Alexia bobbed her head energetically, taking the staff from him.

“Do you have any other needs?”

“No. None, Lord Runner. You provide so very much. We’ve created a storeroom to begin loading materials into. They’re in another chamber to the rear of the summoning room you came from.”

“Oh? Fantastic. I’ll see about working something out to collect it. Thank you, Alexia. Would you like me to return everything to night and turn the weather back on or would you like to practice that with your staff?” Runner asked, pointing at the staff she held in her hands.

“Would you mind doing it, Lord Runner?”

“Of course not. But I won’t always be here. I think it might be better to try it out while I’m here.”

Alexia looked nervously at him and then down the street. Runner followed her gaze and finally noticed hundreds of people gathered in the street and more coming every second.

“Ah. Stage fright? No worries. I’ve got it.”

Clearing his throat, Runner held up his hand to the crowd.

“Kind and gentle people, I bid you a good evening. I hope and wish nothing but the best for you all. Love and help one another,” he said.

A dark blot on the world such as I preaching love and peace. Ugh.

Glancing to the side, he nodded his head to Alexia.

“I’ll see you soon, Alexia.”

Runner dropped his hand and typed a few commands into the console.

/GMHub Settings

Day/Night Cycle On

Weather On

/GMHub Return

As he began fading out of existence, the sun vanished and the rain picked up again. Alexia began shouting something and held up her staff.

Teleporting…

And just like that, Runner was back in the inn room. Isabelle and Nadine were still deep in their conversation about economics.

In fact, if memory served, Runner recalled there was a function to speed up or slow time in the other plane. Did that mean he could slow it down and live a quadruple lifespan there?

How does that even work? I’ll bug Sunshine later about it.

For the time being, he was back here in Faren. Like nothing had changed at all.

At a point in time where everything was far more complicated.

Where he’d sentenced most of his crew to what was starting to seem like a death sentence. The counter had reached one thousand kicked out of life support.

Of the one thousand it had processed, one thousand had been ended. That didn’t even count the seven he’d murdered outright.

To top that little situation off, Runner happened to be the person who put them all here in this game. All done to save their lives of course, but it didn’t change who was responsible.

Then there was Srit. An actual doomsday AI reality.

Runner had unleashed an Armageddon-level event on the dominant species. An AI that by her own admission was leapfrogging from planet to planet even now. Taking control of each sector of the government piece by piece. She could simply decide that the Omega had run their course and terminate their entire electronic civilization.

Then there was the slightly less doomsdayish, yet similar AI situation. A server full of AI programs that were becoming sentient. They questioned morals, obligations, reality, and themselves. They had psyches and beliefs.

Like a disease, it was spreading. The server had changed with Srit and those he’d Awakened. Those who interacted with Awakened had a chance to Awaken as well.

Runner immediately thought of Mr. Personality. Bullard. Runner had no hand in directly Awakening him, but he knew the man was Awakened.

Pressing his hands to his face, Runner took a shallow breath. The nightmares had gotten better yet the stress of it all remained the same. At times he felt like forcing himself to log out and becoming a vegetable might not be a terrible idea.

Though that left the inevitable questions, “Who would take over? What about the group?”

Clearing his mind, Runner began preparing for the job tonight.

10:01 pm Sovereign Earth time

12/12/43

“Dead.” Runner growled and punched his fist into his palm. Upon arriving at the house, they’d found it empty and deserted. The only evidence as to what happened was the warning plastered to the door.

Armand had been killed by Jacob’s priesthood pals. Armand had been ruled a traitor and subsequently executed, with his land becoming forfeit to the crown. Jacob’s crown.

Jacob and his goons had certainly done their best to exterminate the line of Human royalty from the world.

Isabelle could only nod her head in agreement, squatting down on top of the roof they were hiding on.

“How could it be anything else? We have no idea where Basile is, so of course Armand is the dead one. Not the other way around. When Lady Fate isn’t bedding me, she’s trying to murder me. There is no in-between.”

“Suppose it’s a good fucking thing I know where Basile is then,” whispered a voice from behind them.

Runner’s head spun around. Hannah had set herself directly behind him and Isabelle. He couldn’t see her that well with her hood up and the dark night.

“Ah, good to see you, Hanners. So, you know where Basile is? That’s fantastic. Alive I hope? Could really use some good news.”

“Where he is? Yes. Alive? Yes.”

“I hear a but in there.”

“But Jacob has him. He’s in the dungeon of the castle. Apparently Jacob wanted to keep one fucker alive. I figure a puppet state or something like that,” she explained.

“Huh. Yeah, that’d probably do it. Well, that kinda ties up everything then. We need to get into the castle. Kill Jacob, free the heir, stabilize the region, live happily ever after.”

“Getting in will be pretty hard. Bastard has nearly all the guards on the castle itself. Very few in the town,” Hannah said. She shifted her weight from foot to foot. Runner could only guess she wanted to ask about the thief guild.

“I told the guild master to clear your bounty. Should be fine from here on out. I’ll send him a message to launch a distraction tomorrow night. I figure there’s only a few things worth protecting in a siege. One being food. Justinian attacks the silos, drawing the guards’ attention, we get Jacob.”

“Sounds like a plan, my lord. We should return to the inn room. There’s little else to be done here and now.”

Runner grunted and made a shooing motion at Isabelle.

“I’ll catch up, Belle. Going to fill Hanners in.”

Isabelle nodded and dropped down from the building and vanished.

“I didn’t.”

“Wait, what? You didn’t what?”

Hannah pulled back her hood to reveal that she hadn’t changed in any way, shape, or form. She remained a half-breed.

Runner felt his lips curl up in a smile and he couldn’t help but give her a quick hug.

“Ah. I admit I’m…well, I’m glad. You’re a very unique woman, Hanners. Being a hybrid is part of who you are, but it isn’t the whole of who you are.”

“I know. I realized that when I was flipping through the races. It really changed how I looked when I flipped to either Sunless or Human. I never noticed how fucking blended I am. Had huge tits as a Sunless though. Right up there with Sophia.”

“Again, I think you’re quite fetching as who you are. In other news unrelated to you being beautiful. We cleared the bounty from the thief guild. Not only is the bounty toast but the current leader is the champion to Amelia. Which means he’s ours.”

“Good. I’m tired of fucking looking over my shoulder every time we enter a city,” Hannah grumbled. Her fingers interacted with something in front of her as Runner stood up.

“Shit. I think we have a problem.”

“Another one? And here I thought we were—”

“Shut the fuck up. We actually seriously have a problem. Nadine’s map marker is inside the castle.”

“Uhm, what?” Runner asked, his heart shuddering into an erratic beat.

“Her map marker. It’s not at the fucking inn she was at earlier. Isabelle is heading to an empty room or possibly an ambush. Nadine’s marker is in the castle. I was just looking to see approaches and…that’s where she is.”

Runner stared at the same indicator on his own map. Nadine was in the castle. Which meant Jacob knew they were there and had already taken her.

Runner’s mind flipped to the way in which they’d met Jacob. Raping a crewmate.

“Amelia!” Runner shouted.

“Got it. I’ll tell Justinian to attack now,” the goddess replied, not even wasting the time to appear.

Runner dropped off the edge of the building’s roof and was off and running. Behind him he heard the clatter of Hannah’s boots hitting the paving stone and chasing after him.

Pinging the map on top of the castle with the “rendezvous” button for Isabelle, he ran on. Every moment mattered to him. Each and every second was another one alone with Jacob.

Runner’s imagination had already started going to all the worst possible outcomes of that situation.

Dodging past mobs of people, he didn’t slow or hesitate until he reached the front gate of the castle.

The walls themselves were not scalable, which left only the front gate as the entry point.

Activating
Stealth,
he started to work his way over. A hand clamped around his arm and pulled him up short. Runner felt himself pressed to the wall as his head whipped around.

Hannah silenced him with a finger across her own lips. Leaning in close to him she whispered into his ear.

“Wait for Amelia. She’ll not fail you. She’d sooner whore herself out to dogs than fail you.”

Runner wanted to rage at her. The idea of waiting was ludicrous. Yet it wasn’t wrong. Trying to get in now would only alert Jacob and possibly play right into his hands. Jacob didn’t know what Runner’s class happened to be. In fact, he might even assume it was some type of fighter.

Hannah was also right about Amelia. Amelia would rather die than let him down. He knew that to his very core. Of the three goddesses, Amelia never shied from telling him exactly what she wanted. Or would do.