Untitled Original Project Ch. 1 (System Apocalypse) (Patreon)

A/N: Had this idea for an original novel knocking around in my head all the way back before I even started writing An Iron Resolve.

To be clear, this does not necessarily mean I'm starting another daily free write yet. Rather, I wrote this first chapter completely bereft of any further outline/plans to continue it, specifically because I want to get feedback and gauge interest in the idea.

Elevator Pitch: System Apocalypse Regression Fic where the MC goes back in time to basically speedrun his way to max level and 'win' the 'game' that the world becomes when the System arrives on Earth. Complete with a tyrant in the future that never was to make the MC look like a good person, despite him probably being a bit of a selfish dickhead in his own right.

-x-X-x-

Dilapidated is one word that can be used to describe the waterfront warehouse, but frankly even that would be an understatement. The place is in shambles, with massive holes in the roof allowing natural sunlight to come pouring in from above. It’s clearly not been used for its original intended purpose in quite some time… which makes it perfect for its current inhabitant.

“Isth si a akef antch. Ouy ouldw eb a oolf ot inkth mi tuallyac antingch.”

There in the center of the ruined warehouse, a kneeling figure can be found in the center of what can only be considered a ritual circle. Cloaked and hooded with their head bowed the figure’s features are completely hidden from view, though they certainly give off the stereotypical vibe, all things considered.

“Isth si a akef antch. Ouy ouldw eb a oolf ot inkth mi tuallyac antingch.”

Especially since… the ritual circle they’re currently knelt in is actually glowing with the raw thrum of power. Whatever they’re doing, it appears to be working…

“Isth si a akef antch. Ouy ouldw eb a oolf ot inkth mi-!”

C-CRASH! KRA-THOOM!

Until, of course, a massive quake cuts off the would-be cultist, dust filling the warehouse as the ground shakes. This is no natural quake, however. The ground shakes not because of tectonic plates deep beneath the earth, but because something has come in for a landing.

When the dust clears, the hooded figure is still in the center of his ritual circle, though it’s glowing far dimmer than previously. And before him, looming where the rest of the ruined warehouse had once stood, is a massive, hulking dragon. Gleaming black scales cover the hulking monster as a skull bigger than the hooded figure’s entire body moves forward. Slitted reptilian eyes bigger than the cloaked man’s head blink languidly while observing their prey. Finally, after a long moment of silence, the dragon’s massive lips peel back into a toothy grin, revealing rows and rows of deadly, sharp teeth.

“Foolish Caleb. Did you think I would not notice? Did you think the Great Karshan could be fooled by such trifling distractions for long?”

There’s a brief pause, and then the hooded figure lifts his head, pulling his hood back. He reveals an average face with rather boring brown hair and brown eyes, and a wry smile as he tilts his head to the side.

“Figured there was an even chance, yes. You’ve been getting lazy. Slow. Predictable.”

The dragon rears back at that, looking quite aggrieved for a moment before letting out a bark of laughter.

“Hah! I’ve never heard you be so bold with me, Caleb! My Royal Adviser, talking back to me? Where was this bite before?!”

Caleb simply shrugs.

“There’s no point in hiding my true feelings anymore.”

“No? Perhaps because you think all I can do is kill you? Is that it? Oh, but there are fates far worse than death. I could burn you with dragonfire and keep you alive with phoenix tears, for instance.”

The dragon leans forward with a sadistic grin across his inhuman face, his serpent-like tongue forking out to lick at his rows of fangs.

“I could crucify you outside of my palace as an example to anyone who dares to reach beyond their station ever again. And maybe I will, Caleb. Maybe I’ll make you suffer untold torments for the next hundred years before I let you finally die, hmm?”

Caleb seems unbothered by such threats. In fact, there’s a glint in his eye as he looks up at the hulking dragon, so much larger than him.

“It’s too late now. I have no reason to be afraid of you anymore, Kyle. You-urk!”

Whatever he might have said is cut off by the dragon suddenly lashing out, a talon bigger than Caleb’s forearm impaling the robed man right through the chest and lifting him out of the ritual circle. Already greatly dimmed, the glow of the ritual circle dies as he leaves it behind and finds himself dangling in midair.

Leaning in closer, the dragon sneers at his prey, growling ferociously.

“My name… is Karshan.”

It takes a moment, but finally Caleb stabilizes himself, grabbing onto the talon and lifting his head with a smirk.

“Your name was and is Kyle, you egomaniacal little shit. Stealing the form of a dragon doesn’t entitle you to pretend like you aren’t human, ‘Dragon Warrior’.”

“You forget yourself! Is it not as our forefathers always said?! If you can be the dragon, BE THE DRAGON!”

The dragon rears up into the air at that, taking Caleb with him and looking significantly enraged by this point. However, then he stops in his tracks, finally noticing something he probably should have noticed before.

“You… your blood. Why are you not bleeding?”

Indeed, the talon is punched all the way through Caleb’s chest, but there’s not a drop of blood. Not staining the impaled man’s robes, nor leaking from his mouth. Instead, it’s like there’s no blood in his entire body.

Reptilian eyes flicker down to the darkened ritual circle.

“… What have you done? I stopped your ritual! I cut off your chant! What have you done?!”

“Heh… idiot. Who says you stopped my ritual? Who says you weren’t fooled by those trifling distractions of mine? Who says you made it here in time at all, fuck face?”

Before the dragon can respond to that, the world itself begins to shake, causing the massive creature’s eyes to widen. He shakes Caleb’s form on his talon, roaring furiously.

“What did you do?! WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

“Not… what I did. But rather, what the real me did. See, I’m just a copy, a moment captured in time… of the ritual that the real me performed thirty minutes ago. He was gone long before you got off your fat ass long enough to investigate what he was up to.”

“Gone… what does that mean? He left Earth? How would he even do that?!”

Caleb, or rather the copy of Caleb, just laughs spitefully.

“Of course not. My creator isn’t a spatial wizard, after all. You know exactly what his discipline is. And you know what he’d tell you if he were here right now.”

The dragon immediately freezes in place at that, before slowly beginning to shake his gargantuan head.

“No…”

“But since he isn’t here, I’ll say it for him.”

“Don’t you dare…”

“Tell me, O’ Great Karshan… what is the most powerful form of magic?”

“Stop it! Stop that right now!”

“It’s not something tripe or cliche like love. Or something simplistic like evocation.”

“Do you know how many times we’ve had this conversation?! I’ve heard it before! I don’t need to hear it again!”

The time copy of Caleb just smirks as he finishes his monologue.

“No… the most powerful form of magic is and always will be… CHRONOMANCY!”

The dragon throws his head back in an almost-human groan that speaks of someone who has heard this time and time again, and always denied it as totally ridiculous and completely false.

“For fuck’s sake, he’s not even here and I’m having to listen to this drivel! Just shut up and tell me what’s going on!”

‘Caleb’ shrugs, still dangling from the talon he’s impaled upon. The world around them has continued its shaking while they talked, and said shaking seems to be growing more and more violent by the moment.

“I already did. Where did the real me go? He went back, you pig headed, arrogant ignoramus. Back to before it all began. Back to the beginning. He traveled back in time.”

There’s a silent pause as the dragon digests this for a long moment. Of course, the world itself does not seem keen on waiting for him. The sky is beginning to tear apart. The ground is quaking more and more violently by the second. The ocean that the ruined warehouse was sat next to is churning like it’s going to rise up any moment and wash away the land.

In the end, for all that the copy of Caleb has done nothing but insult the dragon so far, Kyle or Karshan or whatever you want to call him DOES eventually arrive at the best question he can ask at this point in time.

“… Why are you telling me this so freely?”

It just doesn’t matter that he asks it. Grinning wickedly, ‘Caleb’ pulls himself just a bit further down the talon, so he can get right up into the dragon’s face.

“Because, fuck face, it’s too late. That ritual you stopped me from performing wasn’t going to end you, it was saving you and everything else. It was keeping this moment in time alive for a little bit longer so you and I could have this conversation, and so I could laugh in your face. Real me won’t remember any of this, but he wanted to leave you one last middle finger and he wanted to make sure you knew WHY reality itself was crumbling around you before the end.”

Suddenly spreading his arms wide, the copy laughs uproariously.

“Put simply, Kyle… this timeline is dead, the past already altered by real me’s entrance into it! Whatever he does next isn’t for either of us to know or care about… because in about ten seconds, we’ll both cease to exist!”

“No…”

The dragon whips his head around, taking in the rapidly deteriorating state of the world around him. For a moment, he even tries a few things, powers that are availed to him due to his nature. Nothing that works, of course. Nothing that can stop what is coming… because in the end, there’s nothing to stop. In the end… all there is, is Nothing.

“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

-x-X-x-

Caleb pauses on a street corner as cars zip by. Waiting for the sign on the other side of the crosswalk to tell him he can pass is… a strange experience after the last twenty years he’s lived through, but he’s not about to risk his second chance jaywalking only to get hit by a car and die before the System even arrives.

The umpteenth glance down at his phone lets him know the date hasn’t changed. Still a week until System Initialization. A week until the world as everyone around him knows it ends and becomes the game that he’s been living in for the last twenty years.

He won’t let it go like it did last time though. Last time around, Caleb had been a nobody. Technically he was once again a nobody right now, but in a week his life of relative failure and low achievement wouldn’t matter anymore. Still, the first go around, Caleb hadn’t initially applied himself very well. He’d taken his time, let things come as they did, and generally just survived by the skin of his teeth and the benevolence of others.

Really, he’d failed his way upwards into the position of ‘Royal Adviser’ to the ‘Great Karshan’. See, the way the System was supposed to work, as it’d been explained to them all on Initialization Day, was that Earth was effectively put in a quarantine while humanity got used to being within the System.

This was to keep the rest of the worlds in the System from taking advantage of Earth, presumably. The only way that Earth could be ‘unlocked’ and join the greater galactic community was through forming its own Triumvirate. The Triumvirate was made up of the first three people of a new System World to make it to the System’s maximum level, Level One Hundred.

While it wouldn’t lock everyone else out of reaching Level One Hundred, it was explained that Triumvirate Members and those who reached max level afterwards would be on very different playing fields. To be Level One Hundred was to be max level. But to be a part of the Triumvirate was to be something else entirely… or so it had been said.

All of this had been laid out in clear and concise terms to the entirety of the human race on Day One, otherwise known as Initialization Day. And afterwards there’d been a mad rush for power all over the world as people had scrambled to be the ones to form this Triumvirate. After all, if the System was to be believed, the three who wound up making up the Triumvirate would effectively rule the world hand in hand.

Everyone wanted to rule the world. But only three could wind up on top. And after a time, those three had seemed pretty locked in. Kyle Danver, Dragon Warrior, Bruno Forrest, Glacial Wizard, Theresa Vianelli, Purifying Cleric.

Those three had come out ahead of the rest in short order, managing to explode out into the lead. There were rumors that they had help from the US government… rumors that Caleb, through his decades long research into the subject, knew to be true. Which of course meant that the government knew the System Initialization was coming, somehow. He’d never been able to find out the details of that, much had been lost to, heh, time.

Still, those three, for all that they’d had a ton of support pushing them forward, basically became overnight celebrities, especially when they managed to all hit Level Fifty while the next highest over on Asia was only Level Forty-Two.

From there, they didn’t slow down either, only growing their lead until they were all in their nineties and the next highest were in their seventies. Everyone was either excited to have the trio as Earth’s Triumvirate and eager to see what the rest of the universe would be like once it was opened up… or they were at the very least resigned to the fact. It just seemed inevitable.

Until it wasn’t. Kyle hit max level first and turned on his level ninety-nine teammates, slaughtering them both. To hear him tell it, he’d had to fight them long and hard to kill them and secure his ‘rightful place as ruler of the world’. But from what Caleb had been able to glean, the betrayal had truly caught both Bruno and Theresa off guard, and they’d gone down without even having a chance to fight.

And then Kyle, who proceeded to transform into a massive fuck-off dragon, renamed himself the ‘Great Karshan’, and refused to retake human form again afterwards, had flown around the world and killed anyone who so much as looked like they were going to maybe reach Level One Hundred. And then when the governments of the world had gotten in his way, he’d destroyed them too.

What was supposed to be a protective barrier around their planet until they were ready to join the wider galactic community instead became a prison. The Great Karshan’s own personal playground, where he could do whatever he liked. His word became law, his edicts became ‘the way the world worked’, and nobody was left who could survive his wrath, let alone defy him.

Over time however, he’d gotten lazy. Complacent. First, he let people level past fifty. Then sixty. He let his loyal enforcers go so high as eighty so he wouldn't have to run around killing dissidents himself all the time. And for Caleb, his ‘Royal Adviser’, he’d ignored it when the other man had slowly climbed past ninety.

Much to his detriment. Caleb stood by his belief that Chronomancy was the most powerful school of magic bar none, but it wasn’t until Level Ninety that he’d begun to unlock its higher mysteries. Such as the ability to travel back in time.

He’s weaker than he’s been in twenty years right now… and yet, it was worth it. If everything goes to plan, it will be worth it. Caleb isn’t going to let things go the way they did the first time around. He’s not going to let someone like fucking Kyle control Earth’s future again.

The crosswalk light finally changes and Caleb looks both ways before crossing the street to the camping supplies store on the other side. He has a week left to prepare, and a laundry list of supplies he needs to acquire.

Then? It would be time to grind.

-x-X-x-

A/N: Please let me know what you think either through a comment or leaving a Like, so I can decide if there's enough interest here for me to make a full-fledged story out of this concept. If you guys, my most valued readers, aren't interested in this story, I don't see myself going further than this with it.

So yeah please let me know what you think!