Esper Labyrinth - ESP - Superhero - LITRPG

The Instance was bustling with activity. The sounds of people and vehicles coming together to form an orchestra of mismatched individual songs.

I could make out steps in the distance as well as nearby. I could make out hundreds of thousands of floating cars and buses and far larger hovering containers that buzzed about in defiance of gravity.

It was a different ambiance than any of the previous Species Cities we had visited, in that the people here walked and drove about without a single care in the world. Their minds unclouded by the more mundane worries of life. Such as the possibility of missing out on a training opportunity inside a new Instance, the possibility of failing to land a good job right away or the very real possibility that the Seeking Drake would teleport into the city and turn everyone into fine carpets or upholstery.

No, the people in this small contained world didn't worry too much about the goings-on within the greater Labyrinth. After all, why should they?

They were a perfectly respectable species of psionic frog people and they had a long history of minding their own business. The kind of history you can only get when you happen to be one of the very first empires to rise up within the Labyrinth. The kind you can afford to keep intact because your race has produced two Divines. One of them being the very first one to create the System in real time eons and eons ago.

Why should they care about some petty war between Hazimon the Dragon and some new up and coming prospect? Why should they give a toss about other, less reputable empires seizing on the opportunity to fleece the Kenari dominions for all they were worth? Why should they be bothered with all that nonsense?

I drew in a deep, calming breath. Right alongside a whole Instance's worth of thoughts and feelings. Again. My little parasites squirming with fresh agony as they took on the brunt of my suffering.

"Does it feel nice to be able to use Telepathy again?" Benevolent Mercy asked from beside me.

"In a way." I admitted. "I did feel oddly blind, deaf and dumb without being able to see the developing future. Especially when the original predictions I made all went up in smoke after our little trip down memory lane. It's nice to know there is still a way forward and that we are, if anything, ahead of schedule."

I took another deep breath to silence the screaming minds begging for death within my body.

"And it's nice to know humanity will make it. That's always a plus."

I turned to the other side. Expecting some snarky response from the Seeking Drake.

There was none however. He was in a new form. Some manner of giant clam. With a shell that was covered in nasty-looking spikes. Also, he was actively trying to keep himself asleep so that he could ignore the boring parts of our current mission.

I envied him. Because that meant he didn't have to deal with Crushing Void.

"Of course master! Yes master! Your exalted species will no doubt take to the stars like a thunder phoenix rising from the ashes! The ashes being the old Kenari regime! Yes master! Of course master! Your glorious plans will come to fruition in no time at all and we will all live on happily ever after!"

"Stop that!" I snapped. Not for the first time. "You don't need to suck up to me as if I were the Drake! I'm not that scary!"

The three vivisected nervous Systems belonging to Harrowing Wail, Silent Stillness and the Veiled Assassin all wriggled within my own body. Their minds trying to give voice to ever-silent screams as my own cells kept healing them just enough so that they didn't count as dead.

The Veiled Assassin had risen back from the grave once already and the other two were traitors who'd been given the very same trump card I'd so helpfully stolen from the Drake that one time. I wasn't about to take chances.

Neither was the Crushing Void. Apparently.

Because he got down on his very flexible salamander knees and kept singing my praises.

"Oh master! Glorious master! Grand ever-seeing and all-knowing master! I can only repent in shock that I wasn't there to witness your overwhelming conquest of the vile traitors! Oh the sadness I feel now that I wasn't there to serve your every want and need when the time came!"

He drew a cocktail from a storage ring. A human cocktail. Peach-flavored. With a little umbrella and everything.

"Okay dude. Stop. I appreciate you going all this way to figure out what I like and getting me some drinks, but stop that. You're my ally. Not my manservant. You don't have to keep sucking up to me like that. I really am not nearly as evil or scary as the Drake."

The Drake's clam-like shell opened just enough for him to give me the side eye. Then he snorted in derision and went back to sleep.

"Okay, that's a bit unfair right? Mercy? Right?"

She made a very human face at me. Exaggerating her neck muscles as her frown went as deep as her facial nerves would allow.

Then she pulled out an actual newspaper made of actual paper and pretended to read.

"Fine. Be that way." I huffed.

Now turning back to the very important task of waiting for my turn. I allowed my mind to wander among the thoughts and hopes and dreams of the populace here as my body relaxed on the bench.

Then my body helpfully refused to relax as I re-experienced all those lovely moments of adjustment from the time I originally got the Shifter Type. There was something about the thing we were after, the permanent stable rift to Pandemonium, that simply would not let me rest. Not even when I commanded my body and all the cells inside of it to release the happy juices to my central nervous system.

I kept being forcefully put on edge and then I kept reflexively reaching for my own connection to Pandemonium and my own Intruders. And then I would try to relax and find the task impossible because I kept tossing and turning due to how bloody uncomfortable these bloody clothes were. Then that feeling would keep me on edge again and I would end up feeling as if thousands of slithering insects were crawling on my skin. Every fiber and thread serving to annoy me more and more until I started contemplating the very real possibility of strangling the tailor who'd sold it to me.

"Why don't you just buy a Symbiote?" Mercy asked with exasperation. "It doesn't have to be a replacement and it doesn't have to be a forever solution."

"I will not betray Buddy." I repeated myself.

"Yes, yes. I know that. I'm very happy your love is as strong as always. But you're giving off some really bad feelings with that posture. I keep thinking you're one impolite comment away from massacring the local population."

I guffawed.

"Of course I'm not!" I said, expressing my offense. "How could you even say that? Who do you think I am? After all we've been through? After all we've had to endure together? I don't like going around setting fire to things you know?"

"Of course you don't master! Yes master! Well said master! My good master would never dream of hurting the innocent without a good reason!"

I got up from the bench and away from Crushing Void.

Instead, I moved about the interior of the hall. Examining the place with a bit more scrutiny.

The building itself was made of wood. A wet, soggy, soft wood hailing from the swamps of the Darahab home-world. More specifically, the exact same planet that Voice of Order was originally from. The same one who would later spawn Living Stitches.

It was the only building in the entire Species-City made from wood and from the looks of things it was the only one not built out of psionically-infused stone or metal. The kind the System used for the buildings you could simply buy out straight out of the Tutorial.

This meant that the hall we were standing on was technically the most fragile building in town, as all the other ones would have some level of System protection making sure some hooligans couldn't simply crash a starship into it.

Still, you wouldn't think that based on how the locals went about their daily lives.

The average pedestrian thought of this place as holy ground. Their eyes averting themselves from the still-vibrant wood every time one of them happened to glance over at the large hall. Moreover, those who did set foot inside of it seemed to be at least on the second Tier and all of them seemed to be perfectly content to merely walk around the inside. Breathing in some ethereal energy from the vibrating air.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

It was all superstitious nonsense of course.

The air was charged with the energy from beyond the Veil, but you could get just the same effect by degrading the Veil yourself. Not in this stable way where you'd ensure that an errant Intruder wouldn't manifest and try to bite your privates off, but the point still stood. This was a lot of pomp and circumstance for what amounted to a straw house in a futuristic utopia.

I peered at the carvings on the walls again. My eyes tracing the reliefs that had been chiseled in by hand as I meandered.

The first was a scene of Voice of Order. Kneeling in the swamps that were his home. He had been born a prince of a small kingdom and he had been borne in the waning days of said kingdom. In the relief, one could see other amphibious forms. Men and women with spears and metal helmets who crossed the great mountains at their border to invade the fertile swamplands of his home. Taking slaves where they could and killing where they could not.

They came with steel and fire and loud, hollering voices. They came with whips and the prince's people either hid deeper in the swamps or else hunted the invaders from the shadowed canopies of the trees.

In the end, the prince's father and mother were both killed in battle and he was left alone in a structure that could have been generously been called a keep of wood and dried mud. But the prince's eyes glowed beams of light in the carvings. The fire burned away the soldiers coming from the mountains and the prince, still in his infancy, set out to reap a bloody vengeance from his foes.

The next scene showed the boy, now a man. Standing amongst the ashes of the last defiant nation of his world. He stood above the rest. Flying like a Divine figure. Rays of painted gold and red flowing freely from his brow.

The prince, now a king, was seen lamenting his fate as a conqueror. For he was destined to be alone among his people. Standing above them, but never being one of them in truth.

He begged the skies for others like him. He begged for his people to be remade and to see the thoughts of others as he saw them. So that they could know each other's thoughts and feelings and could see that war was cruel and pointless. The kind king imagined that all his people would cast aside their hatreds if they saw each other for who they really were. For people who only wanted to be happy in their own ways.

I suppressed a sigh. With more effort than it should have taken.

"Ah, interested in the old histories I see?" Another figure spoke from the side.

I turned to see an old toad. More a mass of wrinkles and green mucous membranes than a living animal. She wore a robe which must have been a Symbiote. A long, red, flowing thing that reached down to her still-strong legs and feet.

She chuckled, and the chuckle came across as a joke.

"I suppose you would be interested. Seeing as how the System is down and all. One wonders how such a thing could have happened."

"I don't really wonder about that." I said sincerely. "In fact, I'm more curious as to how the System came about in the first place."

She nodded slowly.

I predicted the conversation from start to finish of course, but it was still nice to talk to someone. If only to get my mind off of Crushing Void's constant fear-fueled barrage of compliments. It was still nice to play things out.

"I see. I see." She opened and shut her wet, bright yellow eyes. "In the stories, it was said to be borrowed power that pushed Voice of Order into Divinity. It was said that he was already on what could have been called the 9th Tier, but that he had no System to guide him forward. It was said, if you can believe it, that he reached this stage without the System in the first place and that he did it all within three lifetimes. Being kept alive by his Shifter side. As you can see from the figures there…"

She pointed at a section of wall.

"He was said to be a Divine figure among his people already. The unconquered sun, they called him. Heh. Funny. Because he then chose to be called Voice of Order and the next Divine called herself the Unconquered Sun."

She licked the outside of her face, though she had no lips to wet.

"He was the first of five and the Unconquered Sun was the second. It was said that the most powerful Divines to ever have a chance at living came together in the world beyond the Veil. To assure that they would be born and that they would grow to their power. Thus, mere possibilities in the ether became destiny. And all their births were ordained and set in stone. The evolution of their species set in motion."

"That is what they say." I agreed.

She turned her head to me. Quizzically.

"You do not agree?"

I shrugged.

"In my experience, people tend to say a lot of things when they have no idea what's going on. It's a general fault of sentient species as far as I can tell. It doesn't matter what you are, you'll end up filling in the gaps in knowledge with things you made up."

She croaked happily.

"Ah! A cynic, are we? Hehehe… what a breath of fresh air! I must say, we don't often see your kind around here."

She pointed a webbed appendage towards the open rift in reality.

"Most of them that pass through simply take a look at the gate there and fall to their knees. They tend to soil themselves too. It's quite comical."

I allowed myself a smile.

"I'll bet."

She hummed to herself some more. Going over the reliefs within her mind as she kept me company.

"So, what is it about the System that has you so very worried? Hmn? Why do you question how it came about?"

She stopped to suck in a breath.

"If you don't mind indulging a poor old woman's curiosity, of course."

"Not at all." I waved her worries away. "It's just that I keep wondering what all the strife was for."

She didn't have eyebrows to quirk up, but her eyes flickered in a rough equivalent.

"Okay. Hear me out." I began again. "You have the Tutorial and new species to bring in. Meanwhile, you have Voice of Order. His philosophy being that conflict is generally meaningless and a sad waste of time and lives. That it only breeds ill feelings between sentient beings and that it is a cancer to be expunged. All things I can more or less agree with on a fundamental level."

I started pacing around her. Pointing to the relevant carvings.

"He goes around saying that woe is him and his cursed existence. That all he ever wanted was for his people to see the world and each other through his eyes. That he wanted them to read each other's minds and come to terms with their differences and their similarities. He wanted to end old meaningless hatreds in favor of a future where they saw each other as one people in concert with nature, rather than a whole host of competing nations. Some of which he just finished conquering in order to have peace because his new neighbours kept declaring war on him because they ended up being scared of him."

"I don't see how that would be hard to understand." She answered. "He was alone. He felt alone and the loneliness crushed him. He needed others to keep him company. Others who could understand him. How is the creation of the System a mystery?"

"Because the System is everything his dream is not." I followed up. "If his vision had come true, then my Tutorial would have been closer to that of Novice difficulty. All the Tutorials would have been just like Novice Difficulty. There would have been no fighting. The very System would have discouraged fighting."

I huffed.

"That's what he says he wants. That feels right. It feels like something that someone in his place would want. I can completely relate to him."

She seemed amused. Her mind wandering and not realizing just how much I could relate.

"But then the System we actually got was all about violent competition. All about birthing monsters for no other reason than because people needed monsters to fight. Why? Why bother? That just seems like such a stupid thing to do."

"You say that, but fighting is how most of us gained our levels." She chided me. "Sure, we might go off to seek a master or two to teach us to merge abilities, but aside from that, most younglings get to level 50 by delving into Instances and killing monsters. I don't know how your Tutorial went, but I assure you that levelling without violence cannot compare. There is something that is simply different about putting your life on the line. Something primal that goes back to all our roots as animals. An urge to strive for better things. To conquer. To excel."

She croaked knowingly.

"It's something that you simply can't get otherwise."

She placed a webbed hand on my arm.

"I am sorry though. You don't seem like you had a good time of it."

The air shivered again.

Someone popped out of the rift. They threw up and attendants carried them out.

"Ah. It would seem that someone came out. Are you going in next dear?"

I shook my head.

"Well no. But actually yes. I'm not scheduled to go next, but I will be going next."

She croaked in amusement.

"How do you figure that?"

I shrugged again.

"The ripple of psionic energy is coming from the Voice of Order and he's trying to reset the System. This is the one place where the System still works. If only for a time. Yes, everyone gets to see each other's Systems, but I have a feeling that will work in my favor."

She laughed. A loud, hearty laugh.

"You speak like someone who's all the way up in the fourth Tier!"

I smiled kindly, and looked over at the guy who was scheduled to go next.

I saw his own System window. We all did, as the energy rippled around the room.

Then he saw mine.

The whole room went silent.

Her mouth dropped.

"Yes." I said with understanding. "The total Psy amount from all those levels is 4, 231, 200. But then you multiply it by two for every Title. And I have 30 Titles. So, you do 2^30 and multiply that by 4, 231, 200. You end up getting a number so high that the System Window can't fit it unless they shorten it like tha…"

The guy who was supposed to be next in line ran then. Until he reached a window. Then he threw himself out that window.

"Right." I said with calm courtesy. "I believe this means I'm next."