Universe's End

"Well then?" Rory asked the creature, raising his voice. "I don't have all day. Come on!"

He did, in fact, have all day. It's not like he was about to hit up the nightlife of a planet with only eight people, but Rory had no intention of dragging the encounter out.

The Jackalope tilted its admittedly cute head at him. Half expecting it to charge him with its small set of antlers, he was surprised when the air around it began to wrinkle, warping as if space was bending until four black orbs had formed, dark as the void of space.

Well, that doesn't look good.

Instantly, the orbs launched forward, forcing Rory to leap out of the way and land on the ground before jumping out of the sudden tucked roll. A single glance backward showed four perfect orb-shaped holes in the wall behind where he had been standing.

If it wasn't obvious, avoid the space-deleting orbs.

The jackalope did not attempt to close the distance, content with firing more orbs after him. Thankfully, they appeared to have a linear path; they weren't tracking him as they flew, vanishing the moment they collided with anything.

The downside is that whatever they touched, they seemed to erase matter.

Yeah, don't get hit.

Rory wanted to draw closer to the monster, but the issue was that the closer he got, the less time he had to react and avoid one of those space-deleting orbs. He was playing defense with no way to turn things around.

Something. Think!

Rory continued to dodge, flinging his body every which way as the spheres flew about recklessly, with no end in sight. Hours and days of work were being shredded as the orbs erased matter, his camp deteriorating more and more by the second.

"Stop… Breaking…my…. Shit!" Annoyed at watching his work go to waste, Rory finally flung himself forward, leaping at the jackalope with his bat raised overhead, taking advantage of a brief moment of respite where no orbs formed.

Gotcha!

Time slowed as he brought the bat down toward the jackalope.

Quite strange; this moment feels like it's dragging on.

What should have only taken a moment had dragged on for several seconds as a more malignant thought began to form.

Wait… Don't people say everything slows down just before they die?

Eyes widening slowly, Rory saw his mistake. A tiny black orb had formed just a step behind the jackalope, one he hadn't noticed at first as it was formed behind its antlers and not between.

Shit!

Time unfroze, and without thinking, Rory did the only thing he could think of as the orb was sent flying directly at his face. Swinging the bat down prematurely, the orb collided with it.

The good news was that his face survived being erased.

The bad news was that the same could not be said for his bat.

"God damn it!" Rory yelled, examining his bat, which had been reduced to a handle after he threw himself away from the damned jackalope. "I just made that!"

He was down a weapon, his camp was being destroyed, and still, he had made no progress on killing the damned thing.

Tossing aside what remained of his bat, he withdrew his combat knife, spinning it to hold it pointed downward. For a moment, Rory considered flinging the knife at the jackalope. Still, it was his only weapon left, and generally, tossing away your only weapon was considered a bad idea.

It's not like I'm a trained knife thrower anyway.

He needed to close the distance without being erased.

How!?

At the rate things were going, his camp would be destroyed, and he would be forced to flee.

That or he would die.

Think, Rory. Think.

Desperate, he flicked open his interface, skimming the small overlay for anything that might help. He had his vocation, Significance Triumphs, physique report, and contacts if he tried to pull them up, which he didn't, and aside from that, there was nothing else. No special power-up button, nothing.

If this System was modeled after a video game, it isn't a very forgiving game.

About to give up on it, Rory nearly dismissed the interface when he once more thought back to the contact screen. He considered trying to message the world spirit for a moment, but either she wouldn't save him, or it wouldn't reach her in time.

But I can do something else.

It was something the world spirit had shown him, and while it was a long shot, he was desperate. Dashing toward the jackalope, he saw an orb appear above it, ready to rip through his chest.

Not so fast.

With his interface still open, Rory tapped once with his free hand before flicking it away.

Toward the jackalope.

For the first time since it began its assault, the jackalope moved, startled by a golden-hued display flickering into existence suddenly right before it.

Using the split-second distraction for as much as it was worth, Rory dove at the jackalope, dodging the hastily flung orb, his knife slamming down hard.

Sucking in breath after breath, far more winded than even he had realized, Rory's brain rebooted after a moment of inhalation.

Did it work?

The fact that there didn't appear to be any holes in his body, something his physique report confirmed, was already a good start. Tearing his eyes away from his interface, he took stock of the sight before him.

The jackalope remained where it was, except now there was a knife stabbed through its skull, pinning its head to the ground, the handle bloodied by how hard he had been gripping it.

I won!

A swell of excitement welled through him; simultaneously, a notification appeared on his interface display.

"Wave cleared. Nearby Caerbannog colonies cleared. Jackalope neophyte vanquished."

"Neophyte?" Rory paused as he digested the meaning. "That's alarming."

Neophyte, otherwise known as a beginner, novice, or apprentice. The Jackalope that he'd only managed to kill through a rather creative application of the System, well, system, was merely a beginner-level variant.

"Wait, does that mean there are more out there worse than that?"

The system notification said nothing.

Slowly rising, Rory stretched his arms overhead, noting his somewhat bloodied shoulder. Based on the physique report, it looked worse than it was.

"Update:" Rory read aloud as a new notification appeared. "System Patching. Abuse of System infrastructure."

His interface was replaced by the iconic spinning circle, which disappeared seconds later, and a new notification appeared once more.

"System Patch implemented: Usage of display sharing now blocked on hostile opponents."

Well, that sucks.

The System had ordained information bombing as an unintended mechanic, meaning that his plan to abuse the tactic had died before he could use it to its full potential.

After the interface abuse was handled, his display returned to its earlier appearance and continued where it had left off with the wave.

"Settlement expansion rewarded. Display Growth Pathways? Y/N"

"Growth pathways?" Rory questioned out loud as another notification appeared.

"Growth Pathways: Potential System offered pre-formed evolution methods for System based systems."

"Being called the 'System' makes it more confusing than it should be, especially when you say things like 'System-based systems' or stuff like that," Rory called out, unable to ignore the repetition any longer.

The System clearly disagreed, as no notification of name updates appeared in response to his comment.

Well, it's a system, not a thinking person. I shouldn't be too surprised.

"Display Pathways? Y/N." The System prompted.

"Sure, why not?" Rory said as he mentally clicked the yes option. Instantly, what looked like an inverted family tree appeared, or several appeared. They all shared one thing in common, starting with a singular option.

Fortress Path: Wall resistance increased.

Idyllic Path: Amenity effectiveness increased.

R&D Path: Firepit potential capacity increased to Hearth.

"Well, those are… something," Rory said after a moment of thought. "Are those the only options?"

Pre-defined system paths are limited via planetary ascension capacity.

"Hmm, unfortunate, I guess," Rory muttered. They seemed rather… basic if he was being honest, but it made sense that he couldn't do much more than that, given the limited nature of the planet.

Actually, wait a minute…

Ignoring the Pathways momentarily, he flicked them to the back of his display overlay, bringing the main screen to the forefront. He looked at the section he'd ignored for the most part.

Vocation: Architect of the Precursors.

Those by the name of Architect are regarded as the progenitors of monumental accomplishments, both literal and metaphorical.

I wonder…

"Hey, System?" Rory questioned, aware that the system seemed to be able to respond to questions presented to it in real-time. "This… vocation, thingy, title, whatever. It mentions being 'progenitors of monumental accomplishments,' both literal and metaphorical. Ignoring the metaphorical part, does that mean I have some affinity, I guess, for things related to architecture?"

For a moment, nothing happened until a new notification appeared.

"Vocational skill sets are granted the ability to interact with the world more intimately. Explore possibilities of one's vocation and unlock potential not linked through martial prowess."

Rory smiled as he saw the notification, a reasonably generic game-sounding description. Knowing the System was connected to everything, it likely had some idea of where his mind was going, and the fact that he had gotten a generic-looking message instead of a direct dismissal or such meant that he was on the right path.

"Wonderful. Second question, it mentions 'pre-formed' and 'predefined.' Does that insinuate that you don't need to necessarily stick to what is offered?"

When no notification appeared, a smile spread across his face as he closed the Pathways.

"I think I'll attend to that on my own if that's the case."

He could almost imagine a sense of annoyance from the display, but that couldn't be possible; it was nothing more than a mindless construct created through weird cosmic magic-y nonsense.

Wasn't it?

"Alright, ignoring the Settlement Pathways for now, is there anything else related to the wave we need to cover?"

A text box appeared, which Rory read out carefully.

"Initiate Wave Beacon? Y/N. Denial incurs a one-week cooldown."

Yeah, fuck that. Rory shook his head, instantly clicking the no option. Rushing into his first proper monster wave should have been the end of him. The Jackalope had been an enemy he had no right beating and had only succeeded through what was effectively a bug in the system, something the System hadn't considered, given he was likely the first person to take advantage of it in the first place.

"Wave Beacon deactivated. Next Activation allowed: One hundred sixty-seven hours, fifty-nine minutes. Wave continuation denied, distributing wave rewards. Challenger modifier: 1x."

Now, that was interesting. If he was inferring correctly, you could initiate the next beacon after clearing a wave, denying the rewards from the first beacon and increasing the overall rewards. It was worth considering, but his little 'settlement' had barely survived a single wave. Without the rewards of his first wave, there was no way in hell it would survive two in a row.

"Actually, what are the rewards anyway?" Rory asked.

"Reward multiplier: 1x. Rewards offered: Triumph energy distribution."

Before he could question what that meant, another notification box appeared on his display.

"Well… That's interesting."

It was what looked to be a slider of all things, directly above a birds-eye view of what must have been his raggedy camp. Of note were five things that appeared to have a soft red outline. Himself, his walls, the firepit, his shelter, and his pond of all things.

Interesting.

Clicking on the walls, the simulated model of his camp zoomed in on the walls, displaying several more pieces of info. First was a status on the integrity of his walls.

Seventy-six percent. That's not terrible, but it's also not great, given that they weren't ever directly targeted.

Next to the integrity status was another button to click, simply stating repair.

Is it that easy?

After clicking on the button, a slider appeared next to it. Curious, he began dragging it back and forth. He quickly learned that the simulation would respond in real time, displaying how much of a repair job they got based on how much energy he gave them. He also learned that dragging the repair bar to full drained some of the total energy rewarded for completing the wave.

So, basically, it's a convenience tax. If I don't want to do it myself, the system can repair my stuff; it just takes from my rewards.

Perhaps it would be more useful if he had some sprawling territory, but he could patch it up for now.

With a brief mental command, the repair information was dismissed. With the walls still selected, Rory began experimenting with the main slider that seemed to control the overall energy earned. Sliding it entirely to the right, he saw a time-lapse of the wall simulation morphing, no longer the crude walls he had built but several feet tall walls of solid wood that appeared as if they had grown straight out of the ground. Several seconds later, they changed even more, now showing the same wooden walls but with a hardened shell of perfectly packed clay or something like clay.

Ahhh, I got it. So, this is like a controlled version of what happened to my shelter.

It confirmed that the energy rewarded was the same ascension energy that had improved himself, his walls, the world spirit, and seemingly everything else.

Valuable.

Part of him wanted to accept the simulated improvement to the walls then and there, but patience could go a mile where instinct could only go a foot.

I never liked that phrase, but my boss loved to throw it around.

Experimenting further, Rory tried testing how it would affect his other options. After the walls, he tried his fireplace, unsure of the changes. Sliding it directly to the right and allocating the total resources, the simulated fireplace went through not two but three changes. The first was an upgrade from a rather pathetic pit in the ground to a small walled structure composed of hardened mud or clay. Several seconds later, it changed again into what looked like a variant of a brick pizza oven. The final change was into what was nothing more than a more robust and larger version of the prior brick oven.

Weird how the options only seem to be cooking related.

"System, do I have any control over the changes?"

"Settlement evolution determined via Settlement Leader of Settlement Profession Heads."

"Profession heads?" Rory chewed the thought over. It wasn't immediately pertinent, but it seemed to suggest that his assumption that they wouldn't be alone on the planet forever had some truth.

But, also, that's not exactly what I was asking.

Taking the answer and extrapolating, Rory figured that some control was allowed, albeit only from select individuals.

"Well, considering this is a settlement, population one, I doubt anyone else is exactly higher ranking on the hierarchy than me," Rory muttered.

He slid the slider back to zero, focusing on a mental image before once more maxing it out. Rather than transforming into a three-stage oven as before, his fireplace underwent a different evolutionary path. The ascension energy was now only enough to gain a single degree of change after the preliminary change into a proper fireplace. From a standard firepit, it transformed into the most rudimentary kiln he'd ever seen.

Not exactly like I've seen that many, but still.

"So, all changes aren't created equal." Rory mused as he pulled back the slider and zoomed back out. After investigating how the energy affected his settlement walls and fireplace, he clicked on his shelter next. Maxing it out, unlike the oven evolution, which had contained three changes from its current form, or even his walls or the kiln evolution, which had involved two degrees of change, even maxed out on energy, the shelter only saw a single evolution, growing taller and broader so that it had more room.

Curious.

Sliding the slider back some, perhaps wondering if he had missed something, the simulated shelter degraded to what the live version looked like at approximately three-quarters of the bar.

I wonder if…

Pulling the slider back and forth, he quickly learned something else: Evolutions seemed all or nothing, as there were no partial stages. While that was true, it didn't prevent him from allocating energy in varying amounts, even if it wasn't enough to push further changes.

Meaning I can split it up over several waves.

The discovery could yield even more insight, but he had already moved on. There was no reason to give any attention to his shelter for the time being, as it served him just fine as it currently was.

Leaving myself and the pond.

Rory didn't even bother selecting himself. It didn't take a genius to realize it would dump energy into him, accelerating his ascension progress.

There is some selfish benefit to being the leader of a settlement, even if it's only a settlement of one.

Left with a final option, he clicked on the pond, the most curious option available. Unlike the other options—himself excluded—the pond was the only option that wasn't hand-made and had been a natural occurrence, something he'd found rather than made.

Slowly increasing the energy distributed to the pond, he was enlightened about another interesting detail. Everything else required only a tiny amount of energy to obtain their first ascension or evolution—his shelter was the sole exception, as, unlike the rest of the camp, it had already ascended before the wave.

The pond was a different story. It required nearly ninety-five percent of the total energy available from his reward for clearing the wave. And what was the dramatic change that would require so much energy?

Almost nothing. A single small stalagmite poking out from the center of the pond.

Well, chances are that it's something special if it takes so much.

Confident with what he had learned, Rory sighed, taking a seat as he considered his options.

Dumping energy into myself is out of the question; I've already got all I need to ascend, and I don't know if it carries over.

Next off the potential consideration list was his shelter, as he'd already decided the tiny shelter was fine for the time. It was not as if he were about to have any guests anytime soon.

Which leaves me, the walls, the firepit, and the pond.

The childish part of him that had imagined living in a fantasy city as a child wanted to dump energy into the walls, hoping to one day obtain towering marble walls.

But that's 1. Something that is some time away, and 2. Not beneficial in the short term.

He'd already declined the next wave from arriving next week, meaning he had no immediate need to grow his walls.

Which left the firepit and the pond.

I probably want to work on getting that kiln upgraded, but if I go straight to the kiln, I won't have enough energy remaining to upgrade the pond.

Perhaps it was the mystery of why the pond upgrade was so expensive. Still, even if logic told him the kiln would prove immediately valuable for making better tools and weapons, he couldn't shrug off the temptation of the pond.

"Guess that settles it," Rory announced, decided. Dumping enough energy into the pond to reach its evolution, he allocated the remaining dredges of energy toward his dinky little firepit, barely enough to improve it to something that could be considered a proper fire pit, not a glorified hole in the ground.

Good.

After several seconds of waiting, a single prompt appeared.

"Modifications detected. Confirm? Y/N"

"Yes, obviously."

Waiting expectantly to see the changes, Rory began to frown after two minutes.

Why isn't anything happening?

Like a lightbulb in his head, he was reminded of how his shelter had only appeared to change the morning after.

Either it takes time, or the day needs to end.

Rory frowned, unable to hide his disappointment; he'd been looking forward to watching the changes.

When no other notifications appeared, and his display remained unchanged on its 'home' screen for several seconds, Rory concluded that the energy was the extent of the wave rewards, no last-minute surprises.

Perhaps 1x multiplier rewards are limited to just energy, or maybe being the first proper wave means nothing else can be obtained in the first place.

He had no good way of assessing the truth for the time being, so as Rory tended to do with things outside his sphere of control, he dismissed the thoughts, turning to more pressing matters.

Namely… that.

His ascension progress had been maxed out, but it wasn't the only thing that needed addressing. His 'walls,' while not in terrible shape, weren't looking great either, as were several other things in his camp, which had suffered because of the jackalope spewing out the space-erasing orbs so freely. Beyond that, there was also the matter of the monster corpses. He didn't want to attract other, potentially more dangerous monsters; at the very least, he knew jackalopes existed and potentially more potent versions, too. If the corpses attracted them, well, that was probably going to be a rough experience.

So, order of business. Corpse disposal first. Camp repairs second, and ascension last.

He would have liked to have started with his ascension, but if it left him out of commission for any time, it would be wise to ensure everything else had been taken care of.

"So… corpse time."

-----------------------------------------------------

Corpse disposal involved three parts. First, Rory wanted to drain them of their blood. Blood had proved too useful for his cement paste, and bleeding himself to obtain it wasn't precisely Rory's definition of fun. Thankfully, it was a relatively simple, if messy, process. Slice open the bodies and wring their little bodies over his blood storage 'jars.' Drained of as much blood as he could feasibly obtain from their tiny bodies -without looking like some mass murderer- the next step was dressing the monster rabbits, which, contrary to what it sounded like, involved removing excess organs. Organs and other nasty little bits were removed, and Rory proceeded to skin the hides from the tiny rabbit monsters, again a rather messy process given that his experience was limited to what he'd seen on TV or in movies. Saving as much meat as he figured he could reasonably eat within a day or two, the rest he dumped with the organs, burying them.

All the while he worked, Rory couldn't help but poke and prod at the bodies, learning what he could about the biomechanics of the monsters. While he wasn't a proper biologist, his job involved poking and prodding test bodies in much the same way, and even his experience as a physical therapist had often required understanding how the body functioned.

Put simply, the little monsters didn't make sense, at least not within the logic of their old universe. The raw power output they had been capable of didn't match up with the muscle fibers and their density within the bodies. They were hardly more muscular or powerful looking than regular rabbits.

How then?

The most obvious answer was also likely the simplest.

Magic. Or whatever you wanted to call the quasi-mystical forces at play within this super-universe.

He left a single corpse untouched: the jackalope. He wanted to give it the proper attention it deserved, as, outside of what the world spirit had spoken of and System strangeness; it had been the first concrete proof of something akin to magic.

Hours passed as he worked, and not even halfway done with the corpses, Rory glanced at his damaged walls, sighing.

"Well, at least I know how I'll spend the next few days."

------------------------------------------------------------------

Three days it took Rory. Three days of glorified housework. He could understand why the repair function was even a thing; between processing his kills and repairing the damage of the last wave, he would have been left with only four days had he activated the next wave. Thankfully, he hadn't; Rory had never been overly prideful or arrogant, so he hadn't had any misinformed ideas about his survival odds if he did. Aside from manually repairing the walls, there had been two other changes to his campsite.

The first change had only required a single day, appearing the morning after the wave. His sad little fire pit had become something more, now a proper fireplace made of a packed and hardened clay-like material he hadn't yet stumbled across on the foreign planet. Testing it out, he'd uncovered that it was shockingly strong, stronger than ordinary cement or brick from earth.

That's nice, at least.

The final change was that over three days, the stalagmite inside his pond was slowly growing; each day, he found it slightly taller in the morning. With another four days, he suspected it would be complete.

I'm still curious about what makes it special.

With his walls repaired as best he could and the monsters either eaten or disposed of, he was left with two final tasks.

1. The jackalope. Unlike the caerbannogs, it had shown zero signs of breakdown or decay.

Convenient.

And finally, task number 2: He had been putting off the little issue of his ascension.

So… Which first?

With the jackalope showing no signs of degradation and the rest of his tasks finished, he could afford to delay; there was a chance that, following game logic, he would have better results studying and dissecting the jackalope if he waited until after his ascension.

And truthfully, his number one motivation for opting to wait on the jackalope and instead finally address the ascension?

He was excited, if only a tad bit. He had never been huge into games, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the thought of a good level-up.

Here goes nothing.

Laying inside his shelter in case anything unexpected happened, he closed his eyes, tapping into the barrier in his mind and punching through, energy flooding his body instantly.

And here we g-

"-o?"? Rory looked around, startled.

Where am I?

Only moments prior, he'd been inside his shelter, eyes closed. Now, he was standing in front of a plain steel table, floating in a void of blackness and stars.

As far as weird things went, this was already looking to take the cake. The only way it could get weirder was-

"Hello, Father."

That. That's how it could get weirder.

Sitting across the table where no one had been before, there was now a humanoid figure devoid of any features. The only thing that stood out was the fact that its body appeared to be filled with endless-

Galaxies? Alright, there is a galaxy thing calling me father. Right.

Things officially got weirder.