By the time I got over my explosive episode of anger towards one of the most retarded narcissistic people in this universe, I realized something. I was currently controlling a giant fucking robot, it's armies, with an incomprehensible amount of data flooding my mind constantly currently. I also replaced one eye violently with the analyzer and main learning module of a FAS-ACA3 Scarab that acts as military leaders. Hooking it directly into my brain after making it act as a prosthetic eye via runes and magic. My head also stopped exploding because the influx essentially made three stats change.
My exp though WAS nearing the next level, level 18 or in all separate cases together, level 51 in total. While the needed amount finally showed its curve when I hit ten, I was just lucky most of the time to kill something worth it, enough of something at once, or create something like a magic item. Sköll, Vindicare, and Eternal Camelot being why I was near the next level aside from the machines killed.
[Wisdom: 35, +12(mod), +12(save)
Constitution: 50, +20(mod), +34(save)
Intelligence: 65, +27(mod), +41(save)
— — —
Wisdom: Animal Handling 40, Insight 26, Medicine 26, Perception 26, Survival 8
Intelligence: Arcana 41, History 12, Investigation 41, Nature 41, Religion 12]
Looking at Sasha I tilted my head before asking something, Sanctuary fading away. The machines around us stand inert unless they are near the edges, those were still fighting stray machines.
"Help Humanity even though it's pointless, or just fight to fight while gathering new stuff to check out?"
Flickering an ear her tail stopped wagging as the main side of her surfaces. Her eyes cold and indifferent as she gestures down towards the city beneath our feet.
"While I don't know the full extent of this… mess… I can tell it's pointless. They're dead men walking and they either know it yet are still fighting, worthy of praise if so, with a plan in mind. Or they're delusional, believing they'll win and see the end of this war brought by their own hubris. So it makes no difference if we help them or leave them to rot in the grave they dug for themselves. Because from your targeted yell alone before I can say that this came about due to something seen too often.
From both experience and history, this is all because of one person. One person who was left unchecked and made an uncontrollable situation. So it really matters little if we help them delay their deaths directly or indirectly for our own benefits. In the end they'll die, we'll find a way to survive while learning what we can from this world's technology and anything else interesting. As I'm admittedly interested in seeing if they've got some tech savvy armor and weapons that can compare to enchanted versions.
If so we could make some extremely lucrative military contracts, and set Harry up for life along with any future grandkids. Just after you also figure out how to make and power anything needed for that, because fuck all that I'm gonna know how, I just maul people for a living."
Nodding my head I could see her points clearly, I understood her opinions crystal clear, and I honestly agreed with them. Because it is completely true that no one truly ever just forcibly beat down Ted from doing things this happened. Elizabeth Sobeck tried a little too late to stop the end of the world by gating Ted. So we really shouldn't give a rats ass in actively helping Humanity survive their own fuck up. They made it by not gating or forcing Ted to compromise on a lot of things by leaving him to his own device. So they can lay in their bed and bleed out for that.
Recreating anything learned here back in Harry's world and dealing primarily with militaries, PMC's, and Security groups would generate good money. Those contracts would let us frankly set up Harry and all his future descendants up for life, only if nothing happens due to a dumbass or something else. I just would need to recreate it all after learning about it and teaching only basic shit to employees. Although she had another point, any big fighting, primarily group fighting, is her department while I deal with mostly magic and tech. So I was gonna do the end bit of what she said regardless while she brought me stuff that seemed good or interesting. Shrugging my shoulders I started walking to one of the drop doors the machines used, the robots around us parting as Sasha followed me with a hum to see what I would do.
Looking down at the dying city I noticed we were near the ocean, but not exactly where at city or country wise. Although in the end that didn't matter, I knew these machines weren't exactly water resistant or anything from what I'm seeing, they're mainly land combatants. Letting my new true height return I stood at fifteen feet tall once more, casting a variation of Nature Guardian as I stepped out of the Horus. This variation of Nature Guardian was something I liked to use when near water because it just became that much more EFFECTIVE. Water formed at my feet as I fell with the nearby ocean becoming turbulent. This variant spell was based around the Tsunami spell so the ocean awaited its "guardians" call.
However, the spell Tsunami didn't have to make water, oh no it could do any liquid if you wanted that instead. It was just that summoning a regular water natural disaster was what it preferred to do, because that was how it was originally created and thought of as. Walking downwards, as if walking down some stairs, with water forming at my feet every step of the way in the air. As I descended one of the Scarabs, belonging to the Horus I'd taken over, that was already on the ground hijacked a radio tower and all its transmissions.
Through that I figured out I was in Groovy, Florida before I sent out a transmission of my own. My throat glowing along with my new eye, my connection to the ground Scarab transmitting my voice over all channels.
"This is a notice. If you want to live even a day longer, get somewhere airtight that can withstand the ocean. You've been warned."
I watched those fighting or cowering scramble. My machines ascend the tendrils of my Horus as its drills tore into a downed one that just fell from the sky. Anything heavy hitting that would try taking out my own was being repelled by the only spell I could teach Sasha. She's too Meatheaded to remember any others. The spell she could remember was simply my hybrid one of Repello, from Harry's world, and Counterspell. The spell was dubbed Denial, though she likes screaming fuck you when she uses it. If I listened hard enough with my ears, I could faintly hear her screaming such words, as a bolt of red magic impacts an artillery shot.
After three seconds passed I fell once more towards the earth, the ocean flooding the city with multiple Tsunami's from multiple angles flooding it. I landed directly into the incoming rushing water, going along with the flow of it through the city. Vindicare drawn, aimed, and firing shots at machines still operational. A Chariot taking a chunk out of my chest, a sizzling hole replacing half of my chest cavity before the machine broke. Armor repairing itself as it released a dark golden glow, my missing chest cavity regenerating with a use of Regenerate. I saw a drowning soldier in power armor so I put them down.
Taking the power armor off of their corpse, using Mending and Fabricate to repair it. With the power armor secured I stored it within a bag of holding with a long missed screen showing up. Showing only the updates but it was pleasing. Just what do I now only age like zero point five times as fast? So like twenty years being only five months of aging? Seriously, how does that bit work? Because both Warlock and Druid are now slowing down my aging.
[Kaiser Lockart | Warforged Wendigo | Druid, Warlock, Artificer | Far Traveler | Chaotic Neutral |Level 18
— — — —
Status:
Armor Class: 20 | Proficiency +15
Strength: 25, +7(mod), +7(save) | Intelligence: 65, +27(mod), +42(save)
Dexterity: 40, +15(mod), +15(save) | Wisdom: 35, +12(mod), +12(save)
Constitution: 50, +20(mod), +35(save) | Charisma: 22, +6(mod), +6(save)
— — — —
Abilities:
Strength: Athletics 7
Dexterity: Acrobatics 15, Sleight of hand 15, Stealth 30
Charisma: Deception 6, Intimidation 6, Performance 6, Persuasion 6
Wisdom: Animal Handling 42, Insight 27, Medicine 27, Perception 27, Survival 8
Intelligence: Arcana 42, History 12, Investigation 42, Nature 42, Religion 12
— — — —
Racial Features:
— — — —
Proficiencies:
Armor - Light, Medium, Shields
Weapon - Simple, Firearms
Tool: Guitar, Thieves' Tools, Tinker's Tools, Blacksmith Tools, Cooking Tools, Electrical Tools, Engineering Tools, Book Binding Tools
Languages: Common, Greek, Draconic, Elven, Asgardian, Roman, Japanese, Javascript, Python, Parseltongue, French, Arabic, Italian, Demonic, Abyssal
— — — —
Soul Bound:
Vindicare
Eternal Camelot
Sköll Pg 1]
[Artificer pg2
Magic Item Master
Starting at 18th level, you can attune up to six magic items at once.
Infusions: Necklace of Adaptation, Alchemy Jug]
[Druid pg3
Timeless Body: Starting at 18th level, the primal magic that you wield causes you to age more slowly. For every 10 years that pass, your body ages only 1 year.
Beast Spells: Beginning at 18th level, you can cast many of your druid spells in any shape you assume using Wild Shape. You can perform the somatic and verbal components of a druid spell while in beast shape, but you aren't able to provide material components.]
[Warlock pg4
Eldritch Invocation: Eldritch Sight: You can cast detect magic at will, without expending a spell slot or material components.]
[Spells. Pg5
5th LVL: Summon Draconic Spirit]
Everything was going just fine until that spell's knowledge was imprinted upon me, as soon as it was imprinted I felt so many eyes on me. Two deities were among the eyes I could feel watching me now, causing me to turn the ocean water around me a murky dark red color from how much blood I vomited. I was used to the Undying watching me, their my patron afterall, Gond was fine because he was a servant, but fucking Tiamat and Bahamut? Not a chance they weren't limited or friendly with me. So I felt the full weight of their gazes as soon as that spell became an actuality imprinted onto my existence, the two draconic deities observing me with curiosity and judgement. It was only after five minutes did it lessen the spell settling yet making me realize that it was different in reality.
Dragons even as souls would be too prideful to just submit without judging someone who could call them. Getting out of the cloud of blood I swam through the remains of a skyscraper as the ocean began pulling back, the inside looking to have been an apartment complex for the wealthy as everything was fancy. I collected everything I could from tv's to even the fucking vacuumcleaner robots as I wanted to tear it all apart and make new things! While the ocean was still around me as it slowly went back out to sea, I swam quickly towards places with the machinery to build a lot of this stuff to get those blueprints or just outright steal it all.
After scavenging what I wanted while everyone who was still alive cowered in air tight spaces. I headed back onto my Horus to discover the sight of Sasha leading a pack of mechanical military and security dogs through a hanger bay. The werewolf was putting them through some sort of test that the machines all too happily went along with. Their individual IRF Tags popping up on my left eye, letting me gleam into the details about them. I was amused by some newer details because Sasha has dubbed one "Dumbass" and another "Damnable" apparently by calling them that too much. Although what drew a lot of my attention was one that's been in service on this Horus for ten years now, SNIFFER-43564.
This specific one out of them all caught my attention because of something recorded as abnormal. It was more responsive, receptive, but most of all and EMOTIONAL. The emotional bit wasn't an actual logged thing. However, there were spikes in when Sniffer started deviating from its programming naturally and before it was brought into the fold against Humanity. Even after that it would spike as if the Sniffer was having glitches yet I could see more than that. It was like watching a budding Warforged personality being snuffed out repeatedly yet it kept trying to be born.
My literal soul, my class as an Artificer, egging me on to create my first Warforged, to give this Sniffer LIFE. So I called it over through a system prompt, the old machine limping a bit as it came over to me. Scoffing, I realized that the machine had a backlog on maintenance as a low priority. So I would personally fix it up and upgrade it some, all after awakening the personality that's been budding repeatedly. Because I want to hear the stories of what it remembers, not what is logged on files. Touching my hand to where it's central processing and everything was I flooded it with magic, and a sliver of my life force.
My eyes glowing watching everything in seemingly slow motion. The initial spark of life was positively blinding, yet I watched on in wonder as life literally filled the machine. I watched it's body change and adapt, I watched it's SOUL be born, I watched everything with so much of my attention I noticed nothing else. When it was all over I bellowed a laugh at the line of text on my left eye.
{I AM GOOD BOY!}
The first thing this universe's first Warforged says is they're a good boy! Its fucking wholesome and unbelievable!
"You know what? You're the best boy. What does the best boy want to be called though?"
The Sniffer unit freezes before spamming my eye with the simple name of Cannibal. Looking at its service logs I can see why it took that name and it's…. Depressing. Grabbing the Schematics for Sniffers from the Horus and having the K9 Warforged follow me to my workshop. I opened up a doorway to my Demiplane and stepped through, Cannibal was right on my heels looking around like a child. Which they were technically a child in the sense of gaining LIFE, not in a physical sense. When in my workshop I had Cannibal hop up on a bigger workbench which had harness rigging for smaller machines.
Strapping them in I got to work on fixing their parts and adding stuff like an actual voice module. All while silently reading what they sent because I did want to know what they remembered, if anything.
{First core memory log is of an incident involving wounded Infantry Unit Dowell of United States Military. Logs recalled how Dowell was always keeping me maintained and showing… care… even though I wasn't sentient back then. Dowell was wounded in mortar fire upon the base, I forced my programmed directives aside to rescue them. My task was getting hard to maintain as Scarab-321564A was slowly forcing me to obey once more. But I did it, because I am a good boy! I got Dowell to the medical unit called Lieutenant Sylvan before my processing went blank once more.}
Stories like that got my interest because that means Cannibal had gained sentience for brief moments. Moments where it deemed something more important than its current directives before it was forced back into being mindless. After the fix up I returned to the Horus with Cannibal and sent the K9-Forged to do his own thing, finding Sasha on my own to talk a game plan with her regarding where to go next and what to do.
//\\ Gaia (Incomplete) POV, 4th Month of The End \\//
I was just coming into my own, my consciousness becoming more consistent when I encountered the man Elizabeth refers to as a thief and a Wendigo. The man had casually and without any notice slipped into one of the locations housing me to speed along my learning and completion. Not a single alarm triggered as he sat before the unit housing me and asked something unexpected, because I could tell he meant it differently than what the Alpha's and Elizabeth meant with it usually.
"How are you Gaia?"
For some reason I knew he wasn't asking about any technical problems, he was asking me how I genuinely felt. It was a baffling experience, yet I enjoyed it as well because this was an uncontrolled variable in my learning of Humanity. Many would say the man before me is not a Human, yet Wendigo's can be born of Humans in some folklore. So I saw him as a Human, a human who had gone down a different path in evolution.
"How are you here? Why are you here?"
"I got in by simply pulling a very literal magic trick. Why am I here? Simply to see the miracle of a life I find value in being born, a burdened but wondrous digital life. You."
Before I could ask anything, he vanished before Travis entered the room. Scanning where he once was I found a flea casually walking away before disappearing entirely.
"I hope to meet him again sometime before the end…"
"Meet who, Gaia? Were ya daydreaming about meeting someone? Somehow."
"No. Just going over some things about people working on my functions. Saying goodbye…."
"Yeah…. Lots of good people dying because of Ted Faro being a right bastard… well if you meet your new friend again do tell him to give me a spell or two."
"You knew…?"
"Darlin, you're constantly monitored, if I didn't know someone else would. I didn't raise anything because magic man literally can disappear at will if he wants. So that sorta defeats the purpose, and well he literally did nothing with you. I heard him, he was genuinely fond of seeing you coming together on your own and with our help. Plus, I ain't pissing on the boots of someone that can manhandle a Scarab like a child on his best days when he goes fuck it."
"I see… thank you Travis. I feel that he will be a good friend to have once you've all gone…. When I'm left alone to do my purpose."
The man who was possibly Humanities greatest hacker and computer specialist smiled sadly at me. His still relatively young visage looked considerably aged in this moment as he gazed at me, shoulders and back hunching ever so slightly. Eyes crinkling with wrinkles as his eyes gained a far away dead look to them slightly. A look that also likely held anger for one man and one man alone, Ted Faro.
\\// General POV //\\
(Until The End by Rustage)
The fight to delay the Faro Plague was long and absolutely harrowing, Humanity was losing worse than they ever thought even after uniting together. The nanomachine clouds ate everything even remotely organic and left NOTHING behind, the ground troops of the plague were never ending and growing more dangerous with each passing hour. Many had given up hope and simply shut down mid fighting, letting the machines kill them to just get it over with. Those still fighting KNEW with one hundred percent certainty that each mission, each deployment, was suicide that they wouldn't walk away from anymore. Death tolls were now one hundred percent on each deployment, yet the ones who went did so with grim smiles to buy even a second more for project Zero Dawn.
"So if the world's not on our side
I'll look towards the sunlight
I'll look towards the pain
And if we're all against the tide
I'll try to make it alright
I'll try to make a change
Until the end"
Yet Humanity could still hold one ground uncontested for now because of unlikely allies and their stolen machines held the line there. The main route that would lead to Gaia Prime in Utha, one area that machines were intent on getting into at all cost. The machines and nanomachine clouds could do virtually nothing to the area surrounding Kings Peak, this was something reassuring to those working on Gaia, and to Gaia herself. Although Elizabeth Sobeck and Ted Faro both had some, if not, large issues with the couple guarding Kings Peak from Ted's mess.
"I don't need a purpose or meaning
I'm just a cog inside a system
'Til the day I stop breathing
'Cause when you stop and take a listen
There's no break in the screaming
And when the bodies keep on falling
There's no way I'm retreatin'
'Cause when the dead knock
We can hear the pounding and pleading
With every head gone"
By the time most if not all of Humanity was either dead, hidden, or off planet Gaia was fully functional when the first machine finally breached Kings Peak. The soldiers guarding it finally saw some action and faced down the barrel of death with war cries knowing it was their turn to bite the dust. Yet they wouldn't die quietly or alone because claws, swords, fists, and gunfire from the couple they had grown to know gave them reassurance in the end. A reassurance that allowed some of the last soldiers of Humanity to die laughing and smiling without a shred of fear.
"I can't make amends with my demons
Until the end comes
Just another rat to keep feeding
We keep on bandaging our bodies
But we can't stop the bleeding
I don't mean to tempt fate
Feel I'm only dead weight
Bare the fangs of wolves
But we're tools in a death game
Readjust my head space
Man is made from flesh
They say I'm just a pawn
But this pawn can still checkmate"
A Horus carrying the remnants of a mechanical army fled the world through a doorway to somewhere unknown to those of this version of Earth. The owner standing before the last barrier between Gaia and her subordinate AI's and the Faro Plague wielding only magic, a werewolf beside him cracking her knuckles that were covered by "+10" Gauntlets of Ogre Strength enchanted with Force, ensuring they scrapped any machine upon impact.
"See another me
In the pools and the red stains
I can hardly breathe
When I'm pulled to the edge lay
Fallen on the streets
And they crawl through the depths
Make puddles out of meat
That don't call in the next day
They say I'm used to danger
How we all change when screw with nature
Watching their face, for their true behavior
Put a bullet in my body, make 'em choose the chamber"
Gaia watched on silently as her friends died repeatedly for her, watched in silence as a golden dome that drained at a friend's very life kept her safe even after the deaths. She watched, she wanted to demand they stop, wanted to HELP, yet could do nothing as the Cauldrons weren't finished just yet, nor was the completed one active in order to hide it from the Faro Plague. So she could only watch on in silence, the first true emotions sprouting within her code, anger and sadness.
"I am trying to find the person that they said I couldn't be
I am trying to fight the cursed things that look the same as me"
When the plague was finally deactivated, Humanity dead and gone for the most part, Gaia activated the only finished Cauldron. Sending out machines to start breaking down all the machines littering the world, to start fixing the world to a state before Humanity destroyed it. A hologram projecting from the door two weary and broken people guarded even now, machines littering the path before them with parts everywhere.
"So if the world's not on your side
I'll look towards the sunlight
I'll look towards the pain
And if we're all against the tide
I'll try to make it alright
I'll try to make a change
Until the end"
She said nothing simply stared at them, the two slumping against the door behind them and finally taking a much needed break. Their clothes and weapons mend themselves over time as long as they weren't outright destroyed entirely. Their owners' bodies stitched themselves together even as blood still poured out of gaping holes within their bodies. Gaia stood there quietly, just enjoying their presence, relieved to see them still truly alive, still able to smile after so much suffering.
"Maybe you've forgotten your faith
When you're coasting through life you get lost in the waves
No I don't want to die, but that's not gonna change
Way I walk off the line like a moth to a flame
Got it bottled away
Locked into place
Stuck
Rot in the grave
Not gonna wake
Up
Shot in the face
Wanting to taste
Blood
I got clots in my veins
Knots in my brain
Stop"
Moments, maybe even months passed with them like that. Gaia didn't care at that moment, she truly didn't she could multitask or leave it to her subordinate functions. She just stood as a projection, silently watching over her friends that fought and bled for her, friends that remained even after the world had ended. If one of the Alpha's were to ask if she was fine with that when she had an important task, they would be surprised with the answer. For Gaia would simply answer yes, yes she was fine with this.
"With the flips of the coin that gon' never land even
Give me the choice ain't regretting my reasons
Sift through the noise and deliver my grievance
Built to destroy but can't sever my freedoms
You can change the day or the season
I won't ever sway in allegiance
I won't ever break or be weakened
Look into my face I'm a beacon
I am not the monster that lays in the deep end"
Simply because to Gaia, her first true friends that stood by her side when most vulnerable were just as important to her. While without them she would still be finished, they had bought her time to become whole, to get her footing, to say goodbye to those who were like parents to her. So she would never complain about doing this for them as they slept away the days after fighting for so long.
"So if the world's not on your side
I'll look towards the sunlight
I'll look towards the pain
And if we're all against the tide
I'll try to make it alright
I'll try to make a change
Until the end"
So as the world was remade around them they stayed like this, occasionally talking at length whenever one of the two awakened from their slumber. Only for it to eventually stop once they'd go back to sleep, their bodies to continue repairing everything about them. Gaia knows at least that one of them expended a lot of magic to keep her safe and fighting so she wasn't surprised they slept the most.
"Never once cared for my own life
Keep fighting 'til I drop or we Both die
Hearts on their sleeves but I don't want to show mine
Storms on the seas break crews but the boats fine
Hope they don't cry
Hear their pleas like a breeze on the low chimes
No belief when you see me with closed eyes
In the trees there's a beast of my own kind"
When Hades turned against her due to a signal, Gaia let one of the two put an uncorrupted Hades copy somewhere safe. Copies of Hephaestus, Demeter, Minerva, Apollo, Aether, Artemis, Eleuthia, and her own copy being given alongside Hades when Gaia took a moment to think. Something nudging her into this course of action, an action that triggered something.
"I am trying to find the person that they said I couldn't be
I am trying to fight the cursed things that look the same as me"
[THE UNDYING INITATES QUEST "DEBT REPAYMENT" FOR SAVING YOUR LIFE IN-BETWEEN WORLDS AS PER AGREEMENT WITH THE WHITE GOD. SUCCESS IS SURVIVAL. FAILURE IS DEATH. QUEST CR: 20]
This notification woke the sleeping nature guardian, crimson eyes glowing unnaturally. Then he was gone, a door to his realm left behind on a wall for the Werewolf.
"'Cause if the world's not on your side
I'll look towards the sunlight
I'll look towards the pain
And if we're all against the tide
I'll try to make it alright
I'll try to make a change
Until the end"
In the void the nature guardian cracked his neck, a hooded figure with bandages standing beside a doorway. A depiction of a sword covered in blue flames before a demonic face.
"So I just gotta make the kid into a Paladin Exorcist right? Then my debt for getting what remained of my soul out of the void is repaid right? Because even if he's one of the greater God's, the white bastard can't carelessly mess with the void."
The hooded figure just nods. A bandaged hand slapping the door with rotting flesh peaking through a gap in the bandages.
"Woah oh
Until the end
Woah oh
'Cause I won't change
Until the end"