The Systemic Lands (Dark Progressive LITRPG)

Michelle

I watched as Michael and Clarissa yelled back and forth at each other. I looked over at Captain Francis who was listening in as well. It was bad. On a scale of one to ten, it was really bad. I had never seen Michael so mad, especially regarding Clarissa.

Out of everyone he had the most trust and patience with her. I guess that was the reason why the blowup was so bad. When something went wrong that he had trouble accepting, it went really wrong. I considered intervening, but no violence had been done by either side despite how heated they were.

I also didn't know whose side I would interfere with either. Probably Michael's side, since I liked him more than Clarissa, but he was being a bit of an idiot. Also there was the sense of fear about trying to slow him down in the slightest.

If I intervened against him, he would go right for me. That was a key weakness of any summoner, themselves. I would be annihilated instantly. Thankfully things began to calm down, but I could tell Michael was still incredibly pissed.

He went off to the sider of the tower and began talking with Clarissa quietly. "At least that ended peacefully," Captain Francis said and I agreed with him. If that argument had spiraled into violence, it would have been disastrous.

While I thought Clarissa had an inflated opinion of her abilities, she also wasn't wrong that Michael wouldn't be able to create a stable government. He was many things, but killing people at every screwup while trying to make people obey what you wanted wasn't possible after a certain point.

For a small group or even a single city, that strategy could work. But at a larger scale it would run into a lot more issues and begin to fracture. It didn't matter how charismatic you were or how clever, you needed a functioning bureaucracy to manage a larger civilization.

"That had the chance of going really wrong," I muttered.

"But it didn't. While Michael might be enraged, he didn't lash out," Captain Francis pointed out and I nodded at that. It would have been more correct to say he didn't physically lash out. I felt a bit bad for Clarissa and the verbal beating she had taken, but she had allowed a massive screw up on her watch. Anyone else, even me or Captain Francis, and I was pretty sure Michael would have melted the person he could attach blame to for the disaster.

The fact that his relative had arrived, gave me hope that mine were still out there somewhere. I knew they were on the VIP list. Looking around the nervous soldiers looked slightly calmer now that we were all sure things wouldn't go down a dark path.

Just imagining the disaster if Michael killed Clarissa was hard to fathom. It would have been the end of everything. The nation would split. I couldn't tell if Michael would just pack up and leave or if it would become like the Dragon Empire.

"Well someone is going to die. Either Jacob or whomever is controlling him," I muttered.

"That is for sure. But it isn't going to be simple. Jacob…his skills and knowledge are immense, and I am not talking about System generated skills," Captain Francis pointed out. The biggest thing was to understand what kind of meta-point we were up against.

That was the first priority. Once that was figured out we could win any kind of might without a huge problem. While Jacob had tricks, stats, and knowledge, he could be overwhelmed.

Clarissa

We stood there in silence looking out over the city. Michael wasn't saying anything, but I wasn't about to just walk away if he thought the conversation was unfinished. That could just make him more angry, which was the opposite of what I wanted to happen.

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I was worked to the bone ever since we defeated the sphere. It would have been better if we had all died or it had won. That way I wouldn't have had to clean up the mess afterwards. But of course that didn't happen.

It took everything I had to not scream back at Michael. I knew the moment I did that, this would end terribly. I hated feeling helpless. I hated feeling trapped. I hated that Michael put me in this position. I would never say what he did was easy, but if he thought he could magically wave a wand and make everything work out organizing all the people, he was delusional.

He knew that, but it didn't help that I had felt threatened and afraid and there was nothing I could do about it. That powerlessness, was incredibly aggravating, and chilled me to the depths of my soul. It was a betrayal of trust in so many ways.

And at the end of this discussion, there would be one hard truth. I was helpless against him. There was nothing that I could do if he just decided to kill me. All my preparations, plans, and support network were just paper compared to his overwhelming might. Any chance I might have had was lost once he got his meta-point.

While trying to scheme might work, there were greater threats out there like the sphere. All of this meant I had to just suck it up and try to argue back calmly while he raged at me. Despite all of that, I understood where he was coming from. That was the worst part. A part of his family had shown up here and the processes set in place had failed.

The only coincidence was the arrival. Everything else was just exploiting the sphere destruction, which had caused my absence. I was incredibly annoyed with how the entire situation was handled. The entire VIP process would be getting an overhaul in the future.

While it was unfortunate that it failed, our enemy clearly had insider knowledge. He knew the pressure points and the weaknesses of how things were run. Michael could go out and get stat points to make himself stronger, but it wasn't simple to make the government stronger. There was no easy way besides hard work and diligence to make the government run smoothly.

There was no magic level 8 bosses who dropped competent subordinates at my feet. I had considered what the System would offer if I asked it for a government I could easily manage. Would even the Almighty System with its tremendous power be able to come up with something. My bet was that I would just get a mind control skill of some kind.

But the problem with everyone following a specific set of instructions was two fold. People would not work hard to improve their own situation and there would be no adaptability. Those were key issues the Dragon Empire suffered from and how Michael was able to pull of his heist. It was frankly a huge miracle that it worked.

It was tempting to just walk away. Leave it all behind, but I knew Michael would not be able to manage things and he would just get angrier and angrier until he went on a killing rampage. Then I would have wasted a decade of my life for nothing.

By everything holy, it would be nice to have an enemy like the Divine Empress again. At least that was clear cut in terms of how the situation needed to be handled. Now everything needed to be constantly questioned and checked.

Every single procedure, code, and process would need to be redone and overhauled. Since Jacob knew quite a bit, it was far worse than the sphere in some ways. The very foundation was crumbling under everything I built.

Now Michael shouting at me wouldn't help anything, except make him feel better. He still wasn't saying anything, content to wait for now, which was fine. Better than shouting each other, or waiting to get murdered.

I wiped my eyes. I wasn't going to cry where everyone could see me. I refused to show weakness in any way. While I didn't have an overwhelming number of stats to display my combat strength, I planned to display my mental strength by holding firm against his outburst.

Michael, just why did you have to be such an asshole. While he apologized, I hated this feeling he had pushed upon me with no way to respond. I couldn't have an outburst like he had. I couldn't shout. I could only point out the reality of the situation under his relentless verbal onslaught.

"We will find her Michael," I said something I probably shouldn't have. It was a spur of the moment decision.

"I just have to bury her in my heart again," he replied. I knew each word he said right now was a struggle, but once we located the culprits he wouldn't be able to wait to think through this issue. There was nothing more I could say that would help the situation. The main thing now was finding the people who did this and killing them.

Hopefully the sphere issue would hold until things settled down. There were so many loose threads that I really needed to start working on getting them under control or at least making progress in the right direction. I think that was what made Michael realize he couldn't blame me for what happened. He needed the support that I provided for him.

Removing me would have left a gaping hole in the middle of the government, which would create a power struggle. Michael liked to joke that it was only his presence that kept things stabilized, but my presence did as well. Which also made it difficult to find someone competent and trustworthy to take my place.