Chapter 150 - Being

Brock fell through the darkness of the shadow realm in silence, the vague silhouette of a woman falling to his right. Amusement and curiosity radiated from her, but Brock paid it no notice. Instead, his mind was elsewhere.

It… it can’t have been an Error, right? Brock reached up and scratched his chin. She must have been watching my fight with Zin somehow. Is she going to use it as blackmail? Something else?

He hissed out a breath and let his eyes wandered the deep darkness around them. All that can really suffer is my reputation but… I mean… there’s no way, right? How would she even know what it was called? Errors don’t have nameplates above them.

Well… I’m pretty sure we… they… don’t… Despite his attempts at trying to convince himself, Brock found his certainty on the matter fading rapidly. While it was possible that she was going to attempt to blackmail him, all that could suffer from that was his personal relations and worldwide reputation.

Sure, he believed they were pretty big things, and probably exactly up Minerva’s alley, but he wouldn’t actually suffer any harm. He doubted anyone would try to kill him even if they knew, either. But if not for blackmail… then had she really seen an Error? He didn’t even… of course, he knew more of them existed out there, but he’d thought he was the only one on Earth.

Perhaps they were a tad bit more common than he believed. But if the Error she found was anything like the one I became, she shouldn’t be alive…

Fortunately, as the darkness sloughed away and he fell upwards, Brock knew his questions would find answers soon. He glanced to his side as Minerva’s daughter popped up from the shadows beside him. Then, his eyes moved to survey the area. His brows furrowed.

There was… nothing here.

A monstrous mountain range stretched high in the distance, and all around them lay a wasteland of a landscape, populated by the melted remains of old housing, puddles of muddied, green water and charred flora. Although, at least for that last one, new life seemed to be peeking through from the remains.

Above him, the sky had turned a light tint of green, and occasionally, emerald lightning streaked between the dark clouds. Gulping, Brock breathed in through his nose. The air felt thick and tasted heavily of sulphur.

The entire climate felt rather hot and humid, and Brock felt something that he struggled to sense making his skin itchy. Fortunately, it seemed to have no other effects, at least in the long term. Radiation…?

A disfigured snarl to his left brought him from his thoughts, and he glanced over as the offending creature’s head was lopped off by a tentacle of sharpened shadow. Judging by the scabbed, hairless skin and the grotesquely altered body, Brock knew where they were immediately. He spared one last glance for the rad-beast – as they’d been called – and gulped.

This is where Minerva disappeared? Fucking Russia? No wonder she went missing.

There’d been rumours about the rest of Russia. King’s Cavity was down in one corner of it, and while people had settled in other parts of it, a very large portion of central Russia had been rendered a literal fucking wasteland. Many people suspected that the aging from the Original Life affected the country’s nuclear power plants and missiles, resulting in explosions that utterly ravaged the landscape.

It had been seen in other places too; parts of the USA, North Korea, and a seven other countries had been affected, although none as bad as Russia had been. Scientists who had been studying the enigmatic Original Life believed that the cascading nuclear explosions fed off each other using O.L. as a conduit, creating some sort of resonating super-explosion.

Needless to say, the result spoke for itself. Due to it, many theories had emerged that painted Original Life as a form of hyper-advance radiation. Brock found it interesting, but understood none of it, not even how they were testing and finding out these things.

All he knew was that Original Life resonated with the nuclear explosions somehow and now Russia was permanently fucked.

“The world’s ‘strongest’ man has never been to the Russian Wastes?” the redhead looked at him with a grin, her arms crossed over her chest, “I thought you travelled all over the world to help people.”

Brock glared at her, “No, I haven’t. Where’s Minerva?”

His companion chuckled at pointed up toward the mountain range in the distance. A violet glow illuminated the peaks from within. The occasional strike of emerald lightning lit it up in a different colour, “Up there. It’s long walk, so we better get to it.”

She clapped at him and began following her own advice. Brock furrowed his brows and gave chase.

“Why the fuck didn’t you just teleport us to where she was?” he gestured up at the mountain wearily, “Now we’ve gotta walk there…”

The woman glanced at him from over her shoulder and snorted, “If I could have, I would have. My mother’s currently in one of those Rifts. The energies they emit disrupt any form of teleportation and this was the closest I could get us.”

“A Rift? Why’s she in one of those?” Idly, Brock peered up at the violet glow from within the mountains. He thought he suddenly knew where it came from.

His guide waved her hands in the air, “according to her, the System itself told her to go there. She said it said that Errors were unable to enter Rifts.”

The System told her directly to enter a Rift? Brock felt like he was only gaining more questions the longer his companion talked, “She said… Errors were unable to enter Rifts?”

He was rather fearful of what would happen if he tried to enter, even if he planned on at least attempting to do so, out of a hope that he wasn’t truly an Error. Although, that did rule out Minerva’s having knowledge of him being one. Unless the Rift was meant to oust him to her daughter and catch him on camera or something.

That seems… too technologically complex for someone born before my mum. He snorted. She can barely use her phone.

“Yep. That’s what she told me. She went there to escape it, and, just like the System said, it couldn’t enter. Or at least, she could see that it didn’t follow her in.” she glanced at Brock as he opened his mouth to speak, and she beat him to it, “if you’re going to ask about the Error itself, I dunno anything about that. You’re gonna have to ask my mother.”

Brock went quiet. She’s good.

As their conversation died down, they quickly swapped from a brisk walk to a maxed out run, allowing the both of them to outpace cars effortlessly. The mountains loomed increasingly high in the distance as they approached. Brock recalled the amount of time he had left. 44 hours. Still a lot, huh.

They were assaulted by rad-beasts – the unofficial official name for any monster further mutated by the nuclear radiation – around a dozen times as they closed in on their destination. Brock found them disturbingly sad creatures, formed of scabbing flesh and mutations that left them looking disfigured and often times with extra limbs or critical deformities.

Old pets, birds, wildlife. They’d all been elevated from simple animal to horrific abomination. If not for the hundreds of twisted and charred humanoid corpses he saw along the way, Brock might have wondered what would have happened to the people that had been teleported here after the Tutorial.

The answer was obviously that they didn’t last long. And those that survived weren’t any better off. A few times Brock sighted what appeared to be zombies, their flesh peeling and organs dragging behind them as they wandered the expanse aimlessly.

The humans that hadn’t become zombies had become something far worse. Mounds of fused flesh and bone prowled the wastes in herds, consuming those very same zombies or unlucky rad-beasts and merging their flesh with their own, growing ever larger and more ferocious. Brock found it… disgusting.

According to the System’s nameplate when a herd had tried to attack them, they were simply known as ‘The Flesh’. Their level seemed to average around 95. Brock was horrified to so much as think about what would result when they evolved to E Grade.

Something super fucked up, that’s what…

Fortunately, they were soon leaving the disturbing wasteland and venturing up the rugged mountains. The stone felt rather warm, a phenomenon explained by the veins of glowing emerald ore that ran along the mountain face. From the way it left Brock’s skin itching, he felt it was obvious that it was a product of radiation.

He glanced at one as he climbed, Minerva’s a few meters above him and over to his right. It’s probably some sort of super Uranium or something. It’d be a good power source… probably…

They were attacked a few times by mutated birds who seemed fairly intent on their flesh, but Brock dispatched them effortlessly by expanding the air within their lungs, raining guts and blood downwards. The assassin climbing alongside him had given him a gaze that contained something resembling fear afterwards.

Brock had no idea if he’d be able to expand an E Grade persons body with air until it exploded, but he liked to think he could. It gave him a little more confidence that way.

Eventually, they were met with a plateau, and his guide led him deeper into the mountains. As they trekked over mountain peaks, and traverse the ranges, the violet glow slowly became more prominent in his vision.

Until finally, they were standing a dozen meters or so away from a rift in space and time. It looked somewhat like a crack in the fabric of space, leaving a gaping hole for someone to enter from. It pulsed with a violet light, and lightning of the very same colour constantly flickered along its surface, sometimes snaking out and carving divots in the earth around it.

Needless to say, it was an imposing sight. Especially considering that the Rift was over twenty meters in height. Electricity practically suffused the air, and the raw energy carried along its currents left Brock feeling lightheaded as he breathed it in.

“…Holy shit…” he muttered.

His companion glanced at him. Lightning struck the earth several meters away from them, melting dirt to chunks of twisted fulgurite. Occasionally, purple electricity sparked upon its surface, “Quite imposing, right? I’ve entered a few, and they’re all pretty much the same. Let’s hop on in then, shall we?”

I think Minerva is trying to kill me.

Carefully, Brock followed the woman as she strolled leisurely toward the Rift. Lightning continually struck the earth around them, sometimes landing mere meters away from them, but strangely enough, it never hit them directly. Inwardly, as his stress mounted at the thought of trying to enter the Rift, his Ascendancy throbbed with reassurance.

It… was going to be ok.

A minute later, they were standing before the tear in space. A sound akin to the crackle of electricity and the clattering of glass continuously radiated outward from the Rift as its mass flickered and shifted, and Brock glanced at Minerva’s daughter as she chuckled.

“Ladies first.” She grinned. He grimaced.

Hissing out a breath, Brock put his hand forward first. Currently, he felt so aware of the black substance lying beneath his skin that it made him want to chop his limb off. As he gritted his teeth, his fingers brushed the surface of the Rift. It was cold, and made his hairs stand on end from the ambient power.

Then, after sucking in a quick breath, Brock plunged his hand past its flickering violet surface. His appendage went in without fanfare, and on the other side, an icy chill met him. A cool breeze followed. I’m… not affected?

Despite his immense relief, Brock felt concern flare within him. He was an Error. He was certain of it. The System had said so, Zin Keene had said so, and Brock had the memories of the fucking monster to prove what those around him had been claiming. Yet, in spite of Minerva’s daughter saying that the System said Errors couldn’t enter, here he was.

Either she was lying… or there was something different about him. Zin had said something about him being the dominant personality, which he assumed meant he had control over the body by default instead of the Error, but what if it also meant that while he had control, he used his body?

Sure, the blackness lay underneath and would probably surface if it ever gained control again, but outwardly, it looked like his body and it acted like his body. Which would mean… I’m able to shift between two states of being…

Just like the System told me I was back on that first day in the Jungle…