System Escape (Natural Laws Apocalypse Book 4) Page 2

  “Yeah, I haven't seen anything like those before, the tentacle things that is,” Rob said. “Where did they come from, they look like they'd want to be in water, not out in the air.”

  Nick shrugged.

  “Don't know. They just showed up in that place one day. All the goblins and hobgoblins that had been trying to take it over from us were gone and they were there instead.”

  Sounds like whoever was the Dungeon Master there decided that more goblin types weren't the best option for their dungeon, so they changed them, Marc thought. I'm guessing that way at least, from what I saw of the control screen of the other dungeon. Either that or some sort of tentacle thing got in there and managed to claim the dungeon before changing everything to resemble itself.

  “It looks like you managed to take one of them out, though,” Felicia said. “One of those dungeons is in ruins at least. Or was that just a Safe Zone that got destroyed and never converted?”

  “You know about dungeons? Good, you're already a step above the other professors then. They refused to believe that the Safe Zones we built could become dungeons and start creating monsters. Even after they started spilling out monsters all over the place,” Nick replied.

  “Yeah, we destroyed one already,” Jeff said, grinning. “So we know a little about them.”

  “We did too, that's what those ruins are, but since we lost a couple of people doing it, the professors declared that we wouldn't be trying that again. Instead, now we lose a person or two a week trying to defend what we've got from all the monsters spilling out,” Nick replied.

  Marc shook his head. He thought he ought to have a hard time believing what Nick said about the professors, but somehow he didn't have any problem believing it. He'd seen enough people refusing to believe aspects of the world after the System arrived for that belief to come easily.

  “So, the professors are in charge? It looked like you were with them also,” he said.

  “I am, and I'm not. The three of us are the Triad, their stupid name for it, but I was outvoted. Just like every other time they've taken a vote on something ludicrous, I was outvoted.”

  “So, a bit of a disagreement?” Ella asked.

  “More than that. They're pissed off at me. Just about every resident of the Safe Zone here that has a combat class listens to me more than them. I've trained them, helped them raise their stats so they have a better chance to survive and the other two professors have done little but sit on their duffs and try to teach stuff about the System that they don't really know enough about to teach. So the combat classers listen to me and everyone else listens to the professors, because they don't want to do the physical conditioning needed to increase their stats at all.”

  Nick sounded utterly disgusted with the whole thing, but Marc caught several of the student-aged people who'd stuck around nodding in agreement. Because of that, he was pretty sure that Nick wasn't lying about things.

  “Well, it sure sounds like this is going to be an interesting visit,” Marc said. “So, they forbade all the residents here from taking out the dungeons?”

  Nick nodded.

  “Good thing we aren't residents then, isn't it?” Jeff asked, catching Marc's train of thought and grinning at him.

  Marc just grinned back at the Thief.

  Nick started laughing.

  “Not only are we going to get along. I think I might actually decide to like you fellows,” he said.

  * * *

  They continued to chat with Nick for a few more minutes before starting to head to the dining hall, Nick and the students that had stayed with him showing them the way.

  “So, what is this place called, anyhow?” Jeff asked.

  “A Safe Zone,” Nick said.

  “No, I mean its name. Marc here named our primary one Any Port,” Jeff said, shaking his head.

  “Oh, that,” Nick replied, then mumbled something under his breath.

  “What was that?”

  “It's called Uni, Uni Safe Zone, okay?” Nick said, slightly defensively.

  Jeff started laughing and when he stopped he looked to Marc.

  “Hey, at least there's someone out there who is worse at naming things than you are,” he said.

  Then Jeff turned back to Nick.

  “So where is the holder who named this place? I want to give him a hard time for his naming scheme.”

  Nick shook his head, a frown crossing his face.

  “He was one of the guys we lost in the dungeon.”

  “Shit,” Jeff said. “Sorry, I didn't know.”

  “Who's in charge of the Safe Zone now then?” Marc asked.

  Nick looked confused and cocked his head to the side.

  “No-one, why? If we want something added in, we just look up what it needs and make stacks of the materials, then the new thing shows up.”

  That's wrong, Marc thought. I'm pretty sure there has to be someone in charge, someone who's giving the commands to build things and the like.

  “I'm not sure—” Marc began before noticing the student behind Nick who was shaking his head vigorously. The same student noticed Marc's gaze and slammed his index finger against in his mouth in a classic hushing gesture.

  “I'm not sure I could handle having our Safe Zone run itself,” Marc continued, catching on.

  If there's someone actually in charge, but they don't want to deal with the Triad, I don't want to tip their hand, he thought.

  “Yeah, I know, it's kind of weird,” Nick said, “but we've kind of gotten used to it. Got a couple of guys doing research on what exactly we can make and how much the things cost so we know what we want, at least.”

  And the only way to do that research, as far as I know, is to have at least read access to the build pedestal. So someone does, and apparently more than one someone, but I'm not going to say a thing about that, unless I find those someones and get them alone.

  “Well, that's handy,” Marc said. “Might've been more of a problem otherwise.”

  He glanced back to the student that had shushed him and noticed the look of relief and gratitude on his face. Marc made a mental note of their face so he was sure he could track them down later.

  With that, they were at the dining hall. Marc found himself, and his group, seated at a table with the Triad, Nick making sure to sit as far away from Professors D and B as he could. During the meal, Marc did at least find out their names as well as introducing himself.

  Professor Dayton and Professor Bey were both teaching a class called Rudiments of the System and when Marc found out what they were using for a textbook he nearly lost it. They proudly showed him a copy of his own book detailing the System and he found himself glad that he'd never actually put his name in print in the book. Since the data was directly from the System he didn't want to claim it as his own, so he'd just skipped that. Instead, all he did was pull out a copy of it himself.

  “Yes indeed, it's a very handy book to have,” Marc said, gesturing towards the pad he'd placed on the table. “If mine were a paperback it might even be battered and tattered already.”

  The two professors nodded vigorously, as though glad that he was agreeing with them.

  “Although,” Professor Bey said, “we have found it necessary to skip a few portions. Magic? Seriously? The author of this book expected us to believe that magic exists?”

  Marc had been looking away from the professor when he started talking and he saw Nick cringe, his face taking on a resigned look as though this were the start of a tirade he'd heard multiple times before.

  Marc decided to try to head it off with a quote.

  “Well, I'm sure you've heard the saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Perhaps that's the case here?”

  “While I'm sure that Mr. Clarke was a master of storytelling, I'm not sure that pertains here,” Professor Bey said, coldly.

  “Surely it's as though we were living in one of their stories now, isn't it?” Marc asked. “I mean, there were
stories about things just like what happened to us, or similar enough that the corollary can be easily seen. So why shouldn't another storyteller have the right of it?”

  Nick was now looking away from the table, his shoulders shuddering as though he were either crying, or as Marc thought was more likely, laughing.

  “Life is not a story!” Professor Bey yelled.

  “It isn't what it used to be either,” Jeff said, “So if it isn't a story and it isn't what it used to be, what is it now?”

  That shut both of the professors up for a few moments and when it was finally too late for a response to seem unforced, the two stood, almost in unison, and departed the table without a backwards glance.

  Rob looked over at Jeff.

  “And here I thought you'd lost your touch for pissing teachers off when you got out of High School,” Rob said.

  Jeff just breathed on his fingertips and buffed them against his jacket, grinning all the while.

  “That's all well and good,” Nick said, “but like I mentioned, a lot of the people here treat those two as if they really are in charge, even if they don't do squat. So you may have just made life harder for yourselves.”

  Marc shook his head.

  “Normally I'd agree with you and maybe yell at Jeff for that, but blatantly ignoring magic? It may not be magic as we know it, and just manipulation of the System's nanites, but the end result is much the same.”

  “Wait, what?” Nick said.

  At the same time, several of the students at the nearby tables, the ones who had been staying back with Nick, suddenly went tense, several of them turning their heads towards Marc.

  “What do you mean, what?” Marc said. “Magic is, to put it in layman's terms, a mathematical manipulation of the nanites that the System has infused our world with. Standard spells are like scripts, or algorithms, that anybody who knows them can run, but it goes beyond that. When you get down into the math of it, you can create your own spells or manipulate existing ones.”

  One of the students nearby stood up quickly enough that his chair went over backwards.

  “No fucking way! How do you know that?”

  “I've got a skill called Mana Manipulation,” Marc said. “I was a math major before the System came and know enough high level math to be learning the math of the System's magic system. The whole thing is just like another mathematical branch from what I can tell.”

  “Damn it, we were on the wrong track. We thought that it might be something based historically since there were so many stories of magic in the past,” the student said.

  Marc noticed that this was the one who had shushed him earlier on.

  “But, it's math? Just pure math?” the student continued.

  “Pretty much,” Marc said. “It's heavy on the symbols, which stand for concepts the System has encapsulated in them so you need to know as many symbols as possible for the most flexibility, plus variables. Spells are like equations with a number of variables that need values assigned. Also there are symbols to direct intent, determine effect, determine cause, and so on and so forth. Understand, I'm simplifying an awful lot here.”

  “What do the symbols look like?” the student asked.

  “One moment,” Marc said.

  He quickly ran off a variant on his Mana Dart spell. He changed the container value to represent the shape of the symbol for fire, and swapped out the damage value for a duration value. After a few more minor alterations he cast it, drawing the flaming symbol in the air with his finger.

  “That's fire.”

  Before the symbol had faded away, he'd changed the spell twice more, so beside the symbol for fire, was the one for earth, done in dirt, and the one for water, done in water.

  “That's a few of the symbols; fire, earth, and water.”

  He smiled wryly.

  “I thought about doing air also, but wasn't sure you'd actually be able to see it. What I did was take the template from another one of the spells and alter it slightly to do what I wanted. See, the spell normally—”

  From across the table he was interrupted by a groan from Jeff.

  “Oh no, he's geeking out on us again. Can we leave yet? I'm not sure I want to listen to him explain again how you can make two plus two equal something other than four.”

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  The student Marc had been talking to approached him and stuck out his hand.

  “Todd, you are?”

  “Marc. I'm guessing that regardless of what Professors D and B think, that you've got a Mage class?”

  Todd nodded.

  “Yeah, Professors Douche and Bag are pretty clueless about a lot of shit. If they hadn't found that book they would've stayed being useless. As it is they've been working through their copies and decided what should be disseminated or taught.”

  “I'm glad they're finding a good use for my book, although I'd prefer they let people learn whatever they wanted from it,” Marc said, wryly. “Why don't people just buy more copies?”

  Todd shrugged.

  “Some of us have. A lot of people just wanted things to go on the way they were before so they let the professors determine what they learn.”

  “Normalcy bias,” Ella said. “This is how things have always been, so they must still be this way.”

  “Sounds about right,” Todd said. “Oh, and do me a favor?”

  Marc raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Umm,” Todd said, awkwardly. “I heard you asking Nick about the holder for the Safe Zone. Please don't mention that again, okay?”

  “I figured there really was one, but they didn't want it known for some reason,” Marc replied.

  “Yeah, there are holders, but pretty much the first rule of the Safe Zone holders is that we don't talk about the Safe Zone holders, and that's all I can say. Even that's probably too much.”

  Marc considered things for a moment.

  “Was the original holder getting harassed by the professors and their people to make stupid stuff?”

  Todd's face flooded with relief.

  “Well, if I wasn't sure that you were a holder before, I know you are now. It sounds like you're talking from experience.”

  Marc nodded.

  “I kept them reined in mostly, except for a couple of good ideas that I hadn't thought of. I have to ask, though, those other Safe Zones out there? Are they held by the same people?”

  Todd sighed.

  “Like I said, I can't talk about it.”

  “Well, you might want to see if the holders would like to talk to me at some point. If those are under the same holder you can Capture the land between the Safe Zones. Spawns can still walk into that land, but they won't actively spawn on Captured land.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You can Capture land and stop things from spawning on it. You just have to have the same holder for three Safe Zones and they all have to be within a certain distance from the largest of them.”

  “Okay, I'm making a judgment call here. We'll talk to you. There are three of us that co-hold this place. Arnie had given each of us different levels of access to the build pedestal before he got killed in the dungeon. After he was, we got a message that we'd all been promoted to co-holder. So, do we need to co-hold each of the others the same way for this Capture thing?”

  Marc shrugged.

  “I'm primary holder on all of our Safe Zones, so I've been able to connect them to Capture the land between them. I don't know exactly how it would work with multiple holders, but I can tell you that it can be done. Who holds those now?”

  Todd practically spat.

  “God, the professors are real idiots, you know? They sent out the captains of the sports teams to make these other Safe Zones. They gave no credit for intelligence at all, just sent the jocks. So, those dungeons? They used to be the Safe Zones created by the captains of the football team, the basketball team, and the lacrosse team. Honestly, the lacrosse one wouldn't have fallen it the others hadn't. Once they we
re in the middle of two dungeons, that was all she wrote. Hell, before they made those Safe Zones, I didn't even know we had a lacrosse team here.”

  “So, what are the other four?” Jeff asked.

  “Well, there's the one from the hockey team. Those guys are kick ass. They found a weapon in the shop that looks a lot like a hockey stick, except the part you'd normally hit the puck with is a double-sided blade. Then there's the soccer team, the track team, and the swim team. There's a few other teams that relieve the existing ones so they can have a break every now and again. The gymnastics team, mainly. You saw their transport into the Safe Zones. They slide down those damned cables and drop right in, then the existing teams have to fight their way back here or just take their break in the smaller Safe Zone. Of course the gymnasts come right back up the cable when they're done out there.”

  Jeff was shaking his head.

  “So the captains of the teams are the holders?” Marc asked.

  Todd nodded.

  “Yup, they sure are. It'll be an issue, really, getting two of them to release the holder slot to try this out.”

  “Maybe just ask them to add you in? Maybe they won't need to drop themselves off at all,” Marc replied. “Like I was saying, I don't know how it'll work with multiple holders.”

  Todd nodded.

  “It might work. We get a bit more respect from the sports teams now that we cleared a dungeon and try to hang in with Nick's conditioning all the time. If I tell them there's a chance we can stop some of the spawning? Yeah, they might be willing to give it a try,” Todd said.

  “Meanwhile, I'm thinking our group can pull some of the pressure off of you,” Marc said, looking around at his people.

  Rob and Jeff were both grinning. Ella was frowning, but nodding. Felicia had a concerned look on her face.