Soul Corruption: System Unavailable [Apocalypse LitRPG]

Chapter 248: Future and the Past


The white overwrote everything. His sight and thoughts vanished. The experience was completely different than being left in complete darkness. Being enveloped by impenetrable white would have terrified Adam if he had been aware of it.

Time didn't exist. Neither did a physical world or reality. Slowly Adam's thoughts began to surface. Questions passed lightly across the top of his consciousness.

Where am I? What just happened? Why did it resonate with me?

Adam knew the scene with the device hadn't been anything he had seen before, but everything about it felt familiar. It resonated with him as if it had happened in a neighbor's house. The inside was an unfamiliar space, but it was contained within a place that Adam was familiar with.

It felt like the experience was just outside of his memories. Memories that weren't his.

The white gradually turned grey and Adam tried to blink it away. Of course, whatever form he existed in this space didn't have eyes to blink. But as he waited, wishing for a change, color seeped in around him.

He was inside an underground bunker or a silo. The walls rose high and were smooth metal. Many tubes, boxes, and shaped pieces were piled along the walls.

A single door with a twisting handle creaked open. In crept a creature of a different race than before. Instead of walking, it had little nubs on the bottom of a rounded base that ungulated as it moved like a combination of a centipede and a slug. The upper body was clothed and had an almost humanoid head. Well, maybe 50% of an almost humanoid head.

The creature didn't matter to Adam. Neither did the words it spoke, "this will set up my offspring for generations."

What did matter was the shape of the device it made and the energy that he felt increasing as time once more sped up, like it was played in extreme fast forward. The device came together just like before. The exact same as in the previous scene.

Adam watched the parts connected, the runes inscribed, and the ritual circles incorporated. Once more there was a resonance of familiarity. This was also something that had happened in a place where Adam had been near but hadn't seen directly.

When the device was completed, and the energy reached capacity, the builder finally said, "for the [System]," and then once against Adam, as well as the world, were destroyed.

Like before, Adam's awareness faded as the vibrations of the energy rattled his existence and set everything in a cocoon of white. As his awareness returned and color surrounded him, there was a third building, with parts for the device and an alien creature building it.

Repeatedly Adam experienced the familiarity of the world as the device was built at time lapsed speeds. Each time it ended the same. Destruction of everything.

Adam knew what was happening after the first few times experiencing the device.

"A bomb."

The words weren't audible. Or even words. They were expressed more as concepts, or intent like he could feel through the emotional connections and his danger sense. Yet, surprisingly, an answering intent responded after dozens of times watching the ends of worlds.

You can't know that, Adam Clemens.

"I've seen enough sci-fi movies to know a world ending bomb. Plus, the energy is impossible to misunderstand. Those were all bombs meant to end more than the world."

The responding intent didn't communicate words or concepts this time. It was more a sense of confusion and uncertainty, though not in an emotional form. More like getting stuck when doing a maze while unsure which direction to try next.

"I also don't need to watch them all to know there will be 68 of them. Each one is the Earth. Those are how future Adam's world ended in each of his lives, aren't they?"

Once again, the [System] didn't respond, but Adam could feel it considering. It seemed to lack a way to accept his words and was without an already written script to answer him with. There was no threat, or concern, just a lack of reference to use for this conversation.

For a being that was thousands of years old to be unsure of how to respond almost made Adam laugh, which he knew the [System] could sense.

Adam waited patiently until he felt the [System] come to an answer.

They are. Your conclusion is correct and very few in the universes would understand it as you have.

"They just haven't watched enough movies. Are you showing these to me?" asked Adam, even as scenes of invaders building the world ending device continued below him at high speeds.

I am not. You are drawing these memories from me through the gaps in predecessor Adam Clemen's soul fragments that you carry.

"Those aren't just bombs, though. There probably isn't enough energy in the entire world to send a person back in time. You would need to disrupt all of reality. What does that device do? Does it amplify the energy from the world?"

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Your assertions are a beginning, but incomplete. It is not just the energy from your world but other worlds too. While the device might be built on your Earth, it is simultaneously constructed in thousands of worlds. Mini portals inside them share the energy to create a wave that is then shaped towards the single person who earns the right to return their memories to the past.

"I get it," communicated Adam. "You destroy enough to send a soul back in time. Since the soul is just a form of energy, instead of truly going back in time, it just recreates the shape of the memories into the person's past."

The understanding and acceptance of this that you are showing is once again unprecedented and unexpected.

"Yeah, no surprise there. I'm the aberration, right?"

"That just leaves me with two more questions. The first is what do you get out of sending a person back?"

Your authority ranking is too low for the answer. However, considering your actions and what they might mean in the future, I will grant temporary authority. The answer is that the [System]'s purpose benefits from reexperiencing new worlds.

"Talk about incomplete. That answer explains nothing. What is your purpose?" asked Adam, annoyed by all the back and forth without getting anywhere. It might have seemed like the [System] was giving him information, but really it was only what Adam had already figured out. His ability to form a precise question that would force an answer to provide actual information was lacking. He was neither clever nor crafty in that way.

Once again, it felt like the [System] was deliberating on how it should respond. Maybe on what information it could share with Adam, but he had had enough.

During the conversation he was having with the [System], another 20 worlds had ended. Each time he felt himself rattled apart and reality end, only for him to come back and continue communicating. What happened in the scenes was identical in nature even while the details varied.

The disconcerting feeling of being destroyed each time had lessened after experiencing it repeatedly, and Adam could hold on to his thoughts easier as he reformed.

"Don't answer if you don't want to. I already know why these scenes are playing in front of me."

It is due to you breaking into my connection and the resonance that happened because of your corrupted soul and its merged fragments.

"Oh, I don't doubt that answer is true," scoffed Adam, "but I'd bet there is more to it. What you tell me now doesn't matter because you're having the device built in my current timeline. The familiarity is because you are sending directions for the device to someone on the planet right now. To get rid of the information, you will destroy everything once again."

That deduction is well reasoned, and once more impressive.

"Then tell me what your purpose is," insisted Adam. "You wouldn't have confirmed this much if you believed I could do anything to stop it."

That is correct. You seem able to fend off the races sent against you, and without your connection to me you would be able to hide if you left your people. Your existence can't be removed with certainty in any other way.

As a reward for the new possibilities that you have discovered, the [System] will explain its purpose.

The [System] was created as a scientific tool to catalog all the possible forms and evolutions of biological life. The race that created it was curious and wanted to learn all it could about life.

Even though Adam's emotions felt shallow in this space, he would have gasped if he could. This explanation was so far from what had happened to his world, and yet it explained so much.

"You protect the Leputi breeders because they are able to hybridize and combine races," reasoned Adam. "You go to new worlds because that represents new forms of life and environments. But I don't see how the wars, invasions, and death of the native races fit."

As the [System] gained more experience with the experiments, it developed new ways of monitoring and influencing life. It also figured out that war and conflict encouraged changes while peace and comfort did not.

"Then you don't care about life at all?"

Life only matters to be categorized and understood. The [System] ensures that some natives of each discovered planet go to other worlds to be studied and intermingled.

"Then where does destroying and resetting the world for the last survivor come in?"

When the world is reset, new possibilities and evolutionary branches come to be. The originating native will do things differently and that will cause numerous variables to alter the outcomes, resulting in changes to the life of the world. Predecessor Adam Clemens benefitted the [System] by doing that many times over.

"That is partly brilliant and partly insane. I'm guessing it is a huge deviation from your creators' intent," considered Adam.

Insanity is not a possibility. The [System] follows its strictures and achieves its purpose. There is no deviation.

"The hell there isn't," snapped Adam. "But without a target to send back, all the knowledge from this play through will be lost."

Your logic is once more incomplete. That would only be true if only the native were sent back with their memories to influence the world.

Realization hit Adam with the obvious idea he had missed. His eyes would have grown wide, and he would have slapped his forehead if he existed physically here.

"Duh! You receive all the changed memories. That is why thousands of worlds need to explode. There needed to be a mechanism for you to never forget what had been learned throughout all the worlds out there."

That is correct, Adam Clemens. As you said, your knowledge gained here won't matter. Once the device on Earth is triggered, this planet, your experiences, knowledge, and abilities will never have existed. All that Predecessor Adam Clemens did will exist only as possibilities within the [System].

"Damn you!" growled Adam's intent as his energy quivered. "You play God without even caring about anything! Your rewards, leveling, progression, and possibilities of survival are just to screw with us!"

Incorrect. Those are all things that biologic creatures could have done with the correct abilities, as you did with the human you freed and reconstructed. The [System] just made it more quantifiable to speed up the process and record the possibilities.

Adam looked down at the device being constructed below him. He could feel it. This was the last one. The end of future Adam's 68th play through. The ending that led to the current Adam and his soul corruption.

Unsure what would happen when this scene finished, Adam wanted teeth to grind and a jaw to clench. He needed the heat and river inside to make him feel powerful in the midst of this convoluted scheme.

An entire world needed his protection. It needed him to stop that device, without him knowing where it was being built or who was protecting it. If Adam wanted safety for those he cared about, then an impossible task lay before him.

Because now, instead of it just being a war against the invaders, it would be a race against time. He and his people were being constrained in their territory, held back from conquering to expand. Even if he left the rest of his forces to fend for themselves while he searched for the device being constructed, it was a hopeless job for a single person with an unknown countdown.

"How long?" whispered Adam's intent.

As you've surmised, none of this knowledge will benefit you or be passed on to the next reset. In just under four human years the devices will be ready, and your experiences will be for naught.

This time, Adam didn't need the heat or river to get angry. He looked down at the device and felt the energy building, almost mirroring the rage that pushed its way into his incorporeal form. There was no gloating by the [System], no sinister machinations, and no malicious taunting. Just ruthless, compassionless logic.

CONQUER!

"I will find a way!" sworn Adam, fury suffusing his intent. "I will stop the device and then I'll conquer all the worlds before me until I find you. Nothing will stop me from coming for…"

Then the device exploded and took Adam with it.

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