Mind's Reach [ LitRPG, unique class, weak to strong, dungeons ]

As the warm feeling washed over him, he was blinded by white light. As he was able to see again, he found himself in an unfamiliar, but strangely familiar white void.

He could only see himself, looking down, everything was where it should be, taking inventory, he found that he still had all his weapons, his full Item Box with Player gear and sustenance. He could feel that he was on a floor, or at least something solid he could walk on, stomp on. Placing a Psyhand on it and jumping, he felt like everything moved as it should; it felt normal except for the never-ending white void.

He started walking, not feeling like it made any difference which direction he chose; he just began walking. Using his Psyhands to feel around, making sure the floor didn't suddenly disappear, or that he was about to walk into something. He felt confident with everything, and he just needed to keep walking.

Still having plenty of food, water, and various drinks. With the Aether crystal in his storage, he could use his phone. Although he didn't have a connection, he had some games on there, as well as videos of Dia, Janik, and the kids, which provided him with entertainment and a way to measure time. With all the shit he had been through, he felt surprisingly fine.

"Well, that's fucking boring," a thundering voice echoed in his head. "Not even a sense of dread, of fear, you just accept this place and keep walking."

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time; the fact that it sounded annoyed brought Sam great pleasure.

"I can't say that I'm sad to have disappointed you," he replied as his lips curled into a grin. "It's not like I haven't been through worse. A calm white void without any apparent danger? Oh noes, whatever should I do?!" Ending his statement with an extremely forced, over-the-top, sarcastic voice, he didn't hide his amusement at all.

"Well... when you say it that way," the disappointment in the thundering voice only grew.

Which had Sam's smile growing in tandem with it.

In front of Sam, he saw nothing as was the norm in this place, but as he blinked, a humanoid shape was standing in front of him. It looked valuably masculine and humanoid; it looked like a badly inked-in silhouette with a vaguely shadowy outline, making it hard to see exactly where it ended or what it was. But based on how it moved and stood, Sam could tell it wasn't larger than a normal human at this point. Which contrasted to the gargantuan one who brokenly explained things to him earlier.

"I assume you didn't like me destroying the tower wa-" Sam was interrupted before he could complete the sentence.

"Fucking right, I didn't like you destroying the wall. I mean..." The Entity started pacing back and forth. "Why the hell do you think it was so hard to destroy? I mean, you shouldn't even be able to do this much damage, who the fuck gave you the ability to-"

As the Entity spoke, Sam felt like it was looking at him for a brief moment as it stopped itself from continuing. "Ah... That explains it."

Sam didn't respond, but rather waited for continuation as he took a moment to Appraise the Entity; it only returned an error.

"Someone made you an Ascendant. And what's this?" It spent a few more seconds looking over Sam, taking a few steps to the side, almost as if he wanted to inspect him as well. "I see, that explains some of it..."

Not caring too much what the Entity was thinking at the moment, Sam broke in with a different line of questioning. "What happens now?"

"Oh, I plan on removing you." The lack of any facial features made this statement all the more harrowing.

"But why? I'm just a-" Again, Sam was interrupted.

"No, you're not 'just' anything. You know too much; your Ascendant-boosted class is cheating. I mean, you keep adding everything into Spirit, that Invisibility is far too customised and..." dismissively waving his hand, he changed gears, stepping in closer to Sam.
"You were meant to be entertaining, now you realise you can damage our structures, something that should be impossible."

"Well... Though it kind of is my fault, it's also not my fault that I can do this, you know." Sam defended himself in a somewhat passive-aggressive tone.

"No, well, that's true to a certain point. Suppose the engineers could have done a better job and locked things down as unable to be damaged, but I think they had some plan behind it... I don't know." The Entity was sounding increasingly frustrated.

"Why are you even doing this?" Sam asked through the silhouette's frustration. "I get the need for entertainment and... well... fuel, but.. Why wasn't this just made clear at the start?"
Asking a seemingly simple question in Sam's mind, after all, he felt confident that if people at least knew about them dying would fuel the system, they would still do it.

"Last time we found out that knowing things made them too careful," the Entity responded casually as he seemed still hung up on his earlier frustration. "So w-"

This time, Sam was the one who interrupted. "What do you mean, last time?"

"Oh, did you think you humans were the first creatures to be given this gift? To be given access to, what did you call it, Aetheria?" The Entity's tone of voice changed to an almost condescending flavour. Sam could almost feel the smile on its featureless face.
"That world has had many names: Seralya, K'zzurh'tha, Varn, Thaskoruun, Nyelorith, the list goes on."

"Varn?" Sam commented that, of the list of weird names, one word stood out. It was the word that Dia's language used for Earth. Or rather, not Earth as in what Humans had named Earth, but her people's name for the planet.

"Caught that one, did you?" The feeling of the Entity's non-visible smile grew as his tone changed into glee. "Have you put it together yet?"

Wanting to burst out in anger, it put things in a different perspective.
Why were some races sapient? They could talk, they could think, and refer to culture or things that happened a long time ago. Why were the Dungeon mobs not mindless but lacking the criteria of having lived longer than a few hours?

Hesitantly, Sam answered the questions for himself and to the Entity.
"The creatures from Aetheria, the ones that can talk, not the ones in the dungeons... They are from the other worlds?"

"Right you are!" Gesturing condescendingly towards Sam, it looked like he was giving a child credit for doing the simplest of tasks. "You people have been killing each other for a long time now, enslaved other races for the dumbest of jobs."

"But... what happened to them? What happened to their worlds?" Sam's anger turned into worry.

"When there weren't enough of them left, or they weren't interesting enough, we took what we needed and moved on." The Entity's voice changed from wide glee on Sam's behalf to a nonchalant tone, as if speaking of something casual and normal. "The ones inside remain, the ones there are far descendants of those."

"That's horrible..."

"It's not too different to what you do to your animals. Imprison them, give them a field to eat, then harvest them in your way." The Entity's tone changed into a judgmental one. "At least we give you control over your lives, we give you gifts."

"The System's influence affects us, the way things are scaled incentivises taking huge chances, th-"

"Is it? Or did you jump at the first opportunity to become someone, to have your existence matter to someone?" Interrupting Sam, yet again, the sound of a smile was back in his voice. "And with how you have structured your economy around it, you incentivise yourselves more than we do."

"Yes, it fucking is! I've felt it myself." Sam honestly responded. He knew it for a fact; he had thought about it many times before.

Simple choices are skipped over, biting over more than what's smart to get faster progression. Sure, some might be impatience and greed, but something as simple as covering his face when he became a Dungeon boss, or other simple safety concerns.

He could almost feel the Entity not liking that tone.

"And yes, sure. I wanted to be someone, I wanted power, I wanted money, I wanted friends, but I didn't want any of this horror shit; my skin still crawls when I think about it."
Using a few seconds to try and control his emotions, his gaze lowered towards his feet as his voice sank to almost a mumble.
"I didn't want my family dead."

Lifting his face back up with renewed anger and more volume to his voice, Sam pointed questioningly at the Entity. "And for what? Your sick entertainment? The fuck gives you the right?!"

"Power, intelligence," the Entity started listing as it walked around Sam slowly, in a tone like he's trying to pick only a few choices from a considerable list. "It's somewhat hypocritical of the ant asking why we put it in an ant farm for our amusement."

Having perspective forced on him yet again, Sam hated it to his very core that he saw the point. "Ants aren't intelligent, not sapient, it's not the s-"

"Not the same? Do you think that whatever your species coincides with intelligence, sapience, compares?" Ending its statement with a taunting chuckle, it continued. "Like how your cows get enrichment from a bigger farm, more varied nature, we gave you the System, we gave you power."

"You gave power to murderers, people killing other people for fun. How's that fair?" Sam blurted out, remembering several PvP encounters.

"You... you don't even see the hypocrisy in that statement, do you..." The Entity replied with a surprised chuckle before he waved his hand casually, which opened several monitors around him, all facing Sam.

Each monitor played a different scene of Sam fighting in PvP, though a few of them were indeed him protecting himself, but not all. He murdered a man in his sleep by choking him with dirt, he snuck up on other Players in the jungle, attacking them unprovoked. Being bored in his Boss's room after a long time, he, under the guise of protecting himself, attacked people as soon as they landed.
"You lecture me on giving power to people who murder others, then what are you?"

"No, that's different. The system affected me. I was in a survival situation, and I had to attack to survive." Sam felt his voice break; he had regretted some of his actions before, and it didn't help having it shoved in his face like this.

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The Entity didn't respond, just stared at Sam working through his mental images, his nonexistent smile growing.

"Fine!" Sam burst out. "I'm not perfect, I might be part of the problem. But that doesn't change the facts about what you're doing, in the name of harvest, in the name of entertainment."
In a flustered moment, Sam tried to organise his thoughts, which ended with him blurting out a question on his mind. "What are you even using the gathered energy for?"

Letting out a single chuckle, it responded. "The Human race has proven to be a very virile creature. Most other races we found had culture, procedures and tradition, slowing their reproduction, but you, your people. You're a self-replicating renewable resource." The metaphorical pressure of the Entity's smile grew dramatically at the end of its statement.
"You have been destroying your planet for quite some time; it wouldn't be long before it became uninhabitable for you. We helped you. Has it not gotten better since we arrived?"

Sam had inhaled and was about to respond before he stopped himself. With his knowledge of things, it had indeed gotten better. Most methods of energy creation alone were inefficient compared to Aether Crystals harvested in Aetheria. Flashlights, phones, cars, power plants... Everything had been converted at record speed, and though they had now become reliant on Aether Crystals for... everything.

"That's not the point; the point is that you're harvesting us without us knowing. Sending monsters against defenceless people in the name of Entertainment. Players know what they are doing, if... scaled... properly. Can at least defend themselves. The monsters I struggled with after being a Player for a while, you sent them to a normal neighbourhood. I watched my family, my friends, be torn apart, all because you fucks wanted some entertainment?!"
Sam felt he had a point at the start of his response, but it devolved into something more personal.

Taking a few steps towards the Entity, Sam continued. "You gave me the forced nightmares under the guise of Solo Dungeons, locked me up there and tortured me for rewards. If you're supposed to be our betters, what's the motivation behind all of that? The hydra, the flesh dungeon, when I was still new, no idea what was going on, the fucking bugs crawling into my skin. The fuck is wrong with you?!"

"Ah, that was interesting to watch." The Entity responded with amusement in his voice. "Is this different from the horrors you do with mice and other lesser animals in the name of science? We needed to know the limits of human Ascendants, even I have to admit that we might have made a slight mistake with that class of yours." The tone of voice changed into a more neutral one in the end.

Sam was happy to know this, that they had blundered, which was probably why he had come this far.

"You did a few things very different from the others. I'll give you credit for being inventive with your powers; the considerable amount of various semi-relevant media probably helped with this. You're one of the more technically advanced creatures we have tried this with so far. It has been interesting as well as entertaining."

As the Entity paced around, it seemed to come to some conclusion. "Oh, don't worry, you Humans are quite interesting still, and there are so many of you, so there is no danger in us moving on for a while yet." He put a strange tone on 'yet'.

This didn't sit right with Sam; nothing the Entity had said was pleasant. From the angle of a higher intelligence and power-level species, he understood the vague logic about taking advantage of lower life forms. He hated to think it, but the cattle comparison wasn't entirely wrong, not that it was correct either, as Humans were intelligent.
But, one of the main issues was the Entertainment aspect of things, the Human lives, the lives of any other race, meant so little that all the death, torture and more, was entirely fine in the name of generating power and being entertained.

"This needs to stop, you can't continue like this," Sam replied with a raised, angry voice. "I could even excuse the skewing of progress to make people take too large leaps, as long as they were aware of everything. You can't keep sending monsters to Earth, to people who can't defend themselves!"

The Entity sighed. "I hoped we could have more of a conversation; it's not often I get to talk to you creatures; it's not often I get to talk to anyone. But I suppose this ends like it always does."

Sam felt incredibly threatened as soon as the Entity lifted its hand towards him. Instinctively reacting, he made sure all his Aura Points were in Barrier, as he manifested his full swarm. As his 128 weapons were about to make contact, they stopped. Hovering in the air as if something had locked them in space. Since none of this triggered Static Charge, it wasn't considered a hit, so it wasn't a Defence rating.

Triggering Force Launch, he threw every weapon he could at his target, only for them to slide off as if not thrown hard enough. Despawning and manifesting his Psyhands, he picked up the weapons and went for another angle, spreading them out, aiming for a contracting sphere of weapons, but like before, everything stopped.

Putting every weapon in storage and remanifesting his Thoughtform weapons as Psyhands, he went to grab the Entity. Triggering the Telekinetic boost didn't help. As he tried to grab, to push, the Psyhands just slid off like he was covered in oil. The last attempt was to manifest physical objects to push, lift or affect, but everything either slid off, stopped moving or acted like he was too heavy.

The Entity laughed, a deep and hearty laugh, hard enough that he had to widen his stance to not fall over.
"This is what I mean," he forced out through laughs. "Your level of intelligence isn't enough. Do you think that I would allow the System's weapons or skills to work on me? What kind of idiot do you take me for?!"

Cursing internally, Sam looked for alternatives. He needed to test everything he could. If many weapons didn't work, perhaps it's a force issue.
Moving everything back, he manifested all his hands, triggering the Telekinetic Boost. He attacked his opponent with everything he had, focusing on attacking with a single weapon, the Shardspike Glaive. As he got closer, he activated Clustered Pulse.

The weapon was launched at point-blank range and hit the Entity. Sam's weapon fell to the floor as if it had made contact, but it didn't seem like anything had happened.

"Oh, interesting!" The Entity complimented. "That one actually hit, but do you think that any System based damage could touch me? You are an idiot. I control the numbers, I control everything, why would anything created by the System have any effect on me?"

Not even stepping closer to Sam, the Entity moved its hand in a slow wave, like miniking or faking a backhand slap, but as its hand passed Sam, something connected with him. A powerful force connected with his upper torso and face lifted him off the ground and sent him rolling along the floor.

[ Armour, Defence 260 has lowered the damage. ]
[ Barrier: 0 / 175 ░░░░░░░░░░ ]
[ HP: 5 / 570 ░░░░░░░░░░ ]

His health bar was empty, he felt like shit, and the numbers flashed in a sickening red to warn about his imminent death. Thoughtform shields didn't even activate, and Sentinel's Watch didn't trigger on anything.

Getting back on his feet, he chugged two potions back to back, slightly panicked as he had no chance to survive another one of those. Sam used this moment to try and connect to his Super user access. The rights increased not long ago, so perhaps he could gain something, anything.
Going through the same roundabout way as each time he used it, asking, pleading, trying to force it, requesting aid, and requesting higher access.

"Oh?" the Entity suddenly reacted. "You're trying to access the System, to gain something on me?"

This raised a question in Sam's mind. When he requested higher access rights, the Entity, the Administrator in front of him, reacted.
He tried again, asking, pleading, wanting, but it wasn't before he tried to force the upgrade that the Entity reacted again.

"Do you think it's that easy? Just asking the System to make you an Administrator isn't going to work. You can't just take it from someone better than you, someone stronger."

"So, if I were stronger than you, I could be promoted?" Sam asked hesitantly, surprised more than anything. He wanted to stall until his Barrier had recharged; if nothing else, it might let him survive another attack.

"Well, no. That's not how you get administrative rights; you need to earn it like any leadership position."

Sam was almost taken aback at the honest answer.

"Since your System damage can't hurt me, and your skills are entirely dependent on weapons, I think we're done here." The Entity's voice sounded bored, where it was interested and condescending before; now it was just monotonous and lacked energy.
It lifted its hand for another backhand.

Panicking, Sam wondered what he could do. All his damage was based on the System; he couldn't lift him, there were no external items like the dirt used before, and the gear in his inventory was System gear. He had consumables like Elara's poison, but that was also system-based.

"It was nice talking with you, you were entertaining and a potential thorn in my side, but this fixes that."

The Entity swung his hand again. Sam tried to dodge, but there was nothing he could do; he couldn't see it, and he didn't even know what it was. Even at their longer distance apart, the force connected with his body. It lifted him off his feet and sent him tumbling.

As the rolling stopped, he felt a warm wave of energy pass through his body.

[ Ghost-bound straps activated. Once a day, when you die, you revive with 1 HP. ]

Chukling once, the Entity walked closer. "That's cute, what are you going to do with your 1 HP?"

Sam forced himself to his feet, though he blacked out for a split second before the warmth washed over him. He felt surprisingly fine now, even with less than half a percent of health left.
"It seems you knocked some sense into me. I remembered something important."

The Entity stopped and looked at Sam with a tilted head. "Oh, and what's that?"

Triggering his Item Box, in his hands, Sam held metal chains, steel balls and some rocks.
"System-supported damage is not all I can do."