System Lost: My Own Best Friend

The dream never ends. Always the same. They take me, they bind me, they spout their delusions, fear, pain, the dagger falls, and I die. Then I awake once more into the same dream. Again and again. This is all that is. Perhaps all that will ever be. Sometimes it feels like it's all that ever was. I can scarcely remember who or what I was before. If there even was a before.

No matter how many times I experience it, the fear never wanes. I weep and bray as my prayers to the Goddess go unanswered. The cultists exalt in their mad fantasies, their cruel dagger gleams in the dim candlelight of their lair, I scream as the leader plunges it into my heart and once more I'm dragged down into the endless dark, only to awake once more.

But something isn't right. Different. This isn't the dream. There's pain, but it's too real to be a dream. I try to lift myself up, but everything feels wrong. My head is too light, my skin too cold and smooth, my legs...blood and acid, what's wrong with my legs?

I force my eyes open, and find myself met by the sight of an unfamiliar cavern, lined with strange flameless lanterns and presented through a bizarre black frame in front of my eyes. I raise a hand to my face to feel what it is, but the sight of my own hand makes me forget all about it.

I stare in mute incomprehension, trying to make sense of it. Pale furless skin, chipped and dirty fingernails. My arms are covered by some sort of long black sleeves of smooth cloth. When I look down at my legs, it finally sinks in. They're the wrong shape entirely—bending in the wrong places, with the heel too far down and weird fleshy feet.

I'm not in my own body.

I try to fight the panic rising within me. It's fine. I'm alive—somehow. Except...

I look down at my body—or whoever this is. They're injured—badly. Judging from the sticky pool of blood I'm lying in, very badly. Now that I have time to focus on it, I feel weak and sickly. There's a tremor in my hands that goes beyond fear and panic. I'm dying.

I take a deep breath to calm myself, and clasp my hands to my chest.

Reverse Entropy.

...

Nothing happens.

I blink, then try again.

Reverse Entropy!

Still nothing. I try to focus on the holy scripture, but...panic well and truly sets in—it's not there! The Goddess has abandoned me! The World Engine's blessings are gone!

I scream in terror, but even that comes out wrong. Too high in my throat—a high pitched whine instead of the guttural cry I intended. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters without the Goddess. I try to flee this accursed place, staggering clumsily to my feet and awkwardly struggling to find my balance. I make it all of two steps before a tug on my neck sends me crashing back down with a tearing sound.

The fall sets my entire body aflame with pain, myriad injuries screaming out to make themselves known and insisting that this is no time to be inflicting more trauma. One particularly insistent stabbing pain in my gut forces me to roll onto my side and vomit.

Some disconnected part of my mind that refuses to accept this new reality calmly observes the curdled blood amid the ejected bile and notes that it's a sign of internal bleeding. The patient needs to be seen by a healer urgently.

But I'm the patient. And I'm the healer. Or was. Now, I am nothing. Cast aside and cursed to die, alone and afraid once more.

I weep helplessly for a while, then cast my gaze up towards the sky, blocked by the cavern ceiling as it may be. My futile attempt at prayer comes up short when I notice the statue set into an alcove in the wall.

Blood and acid, that's a Guardian! It's a sign! An omen! The Goddess may have withdrawn her hand, but her gaze remains ever vigilant.

I crawl over to the statue, unable to muster the strength to do anything more. I work my mouth to speak a prayer, but the sounds are all wrong. I don't have time to relearn the nuances of speech in this strange body, so I speak the prayer only within my heart and hope that I have the Goddess' ears.

Oh great Guardian of the World Engine, answer my plea! I do not wish to die here. I remain ever your faithful servant, carried astray by the vicissitudes of fate and the malicious forces of Chaos. Please grant me light in this moment of darkness, that I might live again to carry out your will.

For a long, hopeless moment, there is no response. I fear that I truly have been abandoned, that this intermission is just another facet of my endless nightmare. I don't want to die. I don't want to go back to that dream. Even if it means a new life, a new body, I want to live!

I feel the Guardian's gaze upon me. It reaches down to touch me, and at last I feel the Goddess' grace return.

[Contact with unregistered entity confirmed. Connecting with World Engine.]

[ERROR: Oh dear. This wasn't supposed to happen.]

[WARNING: What to do now? Hmm...]

[FATAL ERROR: Well, I've already done everything I can, so I guess you'll have to figure it out for yourselves.]

[FATAL ERROR ENCOUNTERED - ESCALATING...failed. (OVERRIDDEN: Actually, there's one other thing. I have no more power here, but you do.)]

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

What? What is this? This isn't how the World Engine is supposed to—

[Attempting to automatically resolve issues.]

[Entity#null::Skill{Reverse Entropy} does not exist.]

[Resolving closest match: {Revitalization}]

A soothing warmth rushes through my body, causing the pain and sickness to abate.

[All issues successfully resolved. Try not to break anything else, please. It's hard enough avoiding my little brother's notice as it is, and I've already done too much.]

I don't know what to make of that. The World Engine has never...spoken like that to me. Not so directly. The theological implications are...lost on me, actually. It's been far too long since I learned, and I was never all that studious to begin with.

What matters is that I'm alive. I still don't feel any connection to the World Engine or the Goddess, but as long as I'm alive, I can find my way back, surely.

Pain and exhaustion overtake me once more, but as I drift off into oblivion, for once I don't fear what comes next. The nightmare is finally over, and a new dream can begin.

* * *

I awake with a start, my head pounding. That dream. That wasn't a dream!

"Maggie, Vi," I call out. "Tell me you're awake!"

"Ugh, what?!" Maggie grumps. "It's too early for this shit."

"Tell me you remember it too," I insist. "The dream!"

"What dream?" Violet mutters blearily. "All I remember is nearly dying."

"The dream!" I press. Think, think! "We woke up, but we weren't us. And then...um...oh, sugar peas! I'm losing it!"

"No shit you are," Maggie deadpans.

"Not like that! I mean I can't remember—why can't I remember?!"

I feel like it happened before, the first time I woke up down here. I thought it was just a nightmare, but what if it was something else? A memory? It feels important, but it slips through my fingers like the finest sand in the world, fading away into distant fragments.

"Maybe you'll remember later?" Violet suggests hopefully. "There are a lot of things we still have trouble recalling."

"I guess," I mutter, taking in my surroundings.

I somehow managed to tear my cloak out from between the doors in my sleep and end up underneath the creepy statue. The candle pillow is right where I left it, and Nipper is eating happily from a puddle of what looks like—

"Eww! Nipper no! That's so gross!"

I scoop the worm up and drag it away from the puddle, deliberately refusing to give it any further thought, even as I notice the acrid tang of bile still lingering on my tongue.

"Looks like we had a pretty restless night," Violet observes blandly. "But we're alive."

"We sure are," I sigh, settling down with my back to the bag of candles.

I feel...good. Too good. I thought for sure I was dying, and there's a huge puddle of blood where I fell asleep last night, but now? Other than my head pounding like the ghost of hangovers past, the usual stiffness from sleeping on rocks, and a painful indentation on my face from falling asleep in my glasses—again—I'm...fine?

Not fine. But okay. I'm in pain, but it's mild pain when I was expecting—at best—a day or two of mind-numbing agony followed by a painful death. Not that I'm complaining, of course, it's just...weird.

"You're unusually quiet," Vi notes. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," I respond with a frown. "That's what. Even with our Resilience at—what is it now...?"

I go to check on my attributes, but the first thing I notice is not what I expect as I turn my attention to the omnipresent words floating around in my head.

[Level up!]

Medic is now level 10.

+3 Ego.

Medic has reached its maximum threshold. [Upgrade] or [Fuse] the class to unlock further progression.

"Huh?!"

"What now?" Maggie grumbles.

"I leveled up?" I say, making it sound more like a question. "In my sleep?"

I feel Maggie furrowing her brows. "Okay, I take it back, you're not losing it—that dream must have been important."

"Yeah..." I agree, unable to come up with anything else to say.

"Well, there's nothing we can do about it right now, is there?" Violet points out. "In the meantime, we've got no less than six tier zero classes mastered now. That's enough for each of us to fuse a new two-star class."

Heh. Leave it to Vi to keep us focused on what really matters—bigger numbers. She's not wrong, though. We're not out of the woods—caves—yet, and this is a huge milestone.

"So who gets what?" I ask. "I kinda forgot the original plan."

"We should review our options, but the main thrust of the plan is to try to spread out the attributes that we fuse into our main class, while still picking classes that complement our roles."

"Right, right," I nod along. "You do hunting and fighting, Mags does magic—super cute name, by the way—"

"Shut up."

"—and I do...what, exactly?"

For some reason Maggie and Violet both sigh in terribly suspicious unison.

"Every damn thing else is what," Maggie grumbles.

"Maggie and I were falling apart before you interceded," Violet says in agreement. "And even if we'd made it out on our own, we needed you to put us back together in the end."

"I'm still not entirely convinced that was my doing..."

"The point is," Maggie interrupts me. "As much as I hate to admit it, we do need you. To clean up our messes, if nothing else."

"This is weird. You guys are being weird! How come the only time you can work together is to gang up on me?!"

"I thought you wanted us to work together," Maggie says with false confusion. "Shouldn't you be happy?"

"What she means," Violet sighs, "is that even if Maggie and I have our survival covered, we need you to keep us sane."

"And to keep us from killing each other," Maggie adds flatly.

"Fine, fine, I get it," I say, trying not to get too misty-eyed. "Thanks guys. But seriously—what am I actually supposed to do? Like, which class do I take?"

"Well," Violet muses. "I suppose we're going to have to look at our options first, aren't we?"

My stomach grumbles loudly, thoroughly ruining the moment. I blush.

"C-can we wait until after breakfast?" I ask. "I'm fricking starving for some reason."