Knights Apocalyptica

Chapter 10: New-Age Slang

"Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance, and kindness. 'To know all is to forgive all.'

As Dr. Johnson said: 'God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days.'

Why should you and I?"

- Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People (1936, 2nd Era)

The error message vanished damn near as quick as it appeared.

[Those are quite a distraction, don't you think? There is no purpose to them; I'll be sure to inform you if anything constitutes a vital issue.]

Erec tested the grip of the servos. He wasn’t sure how VAL had done it, but the fingers closed like normal. In fact, the startup and the feel of the Markos II was far smoother than before. Not to mention VAL overhauled the visual display to be less intrusive. “Thanks,” Erec said before grabbing his hatchet and taking off in a jog.

[There is no need to issue a declaration of gratitude. To state plainly, my records contain no insect or animal capable of making those noises. Even accounting for interference and static.]

“So this is for science.”

[You’re catching on, buckeroo. We’ll make a proper intern out of you yet.]

Erec didn’t see any reason to feed into that further. Moreover, he didn’t want the nickname ‘buckeroo’ to stick; it felt demeaning in a way he couldn’t quite place. Instead, he focused on trying to sound out where Colin might be. He scrambled down the dark roads, wondering if Sir Boldwick would get there before him.

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And then he saw a flash of fire on the far side of the abandoned town. Followed by a rising plume of smoke. Erec doubled down and pushed himself into a sprint—blazing by far faster than the Markos II should’ve been capable of.

He turned down the last street to witness a scene of horror. A house lit on fire with about a hundred buzzing mite-like creatures the size of his palm. They crawled away from the flaming wreckage, pincers raised in the air and six fleshy red appendages whipping around from the back of their carapaces like little flails.

The insects covered Colin, bashing his Armor with their appendages as the duke’s son blindly waved his sword. Around him was a circle of pure carnage—green gore and twitching legs of tens of dead insects. More and more were spewing forth from the broken wreckage. Dimly, Erec was aware of the circling ball of light taking in the scene, meaning the Academy had a great view of this chaos.

But one thing was apparent—for all of their swarming, the mites didn’t seem to be able to breach Colin’s Armor. Screaming and desperate flailing accompanied every one of his moves. They weren't hurting him yet, though. “Why’s he acting that way?”

[Research has shown that roughly twenty-five percent of the human population fears spiders and insects. If I may hazard a hypothesis, we’re witnessing a case of emergent entomophobia.]

Erec stared at the crawling mass of flashy red whipping bugs frantically fleeing the burning building. If he wasn’t afraid of bugs before, this is undoubtedly enough nightmare fuel to make him afraid of them after. Colin raised his hand, and a circle of red light spilled outward. The light spread into the lines of a glyph in the middle of the circle. The glyph exploded outward with a twenty-foot pillar of fire, scorching the bugs and causing a rising fury of chittering. The ones in the process of running redirected their attention and swarmed toward Colin.

[Peculiar, they dislike fire and were able to identify the source. It appears they’ve decided to get rid of the cause of it. Advanced survival skills? They should flee from the fire. Not deduce that they can eliminate the cause. Query. What was that fire? Is it some modified flamethrower?]

Could they eliminate Colin? They bashed against his Armor but made no visible progress. More crawled on him—with the mass redirection of the hoard, they’d swiftly encased him completely.

Colin screamed beneath the pile of squirming legs, and despite the satisfaction of seeing the stuck-up boy get some justice, Erec couldn’t allow this to continue.

He charged into the fray—tearing the edge of the hatchet through a bug flying in Colin’s direction. Erec wrought a warpath of twitching bug bodies, coating himself in the green gunk.

Each step closer brought more of their attention to himself, splitting their focus from swarming Colin to harassing Erec too. If I can get close enough… He’d bring Colin out of this panicked state and convince him to retreat. From there, they’d wait for reinforcements. When outnumbered like this, the most prudent decision was a tactical retreat.

[Sustaining damage by the second. These plates are not all too durable, and several significant dents already exist. You have roughly a minute before they ablate the Armor enough for the Markos II to lose functionality, even with my assistance.]

That’s enough time. Erec closed the gap even as the flailing on his body began to breach past the plating, cracking against his skin, drawing fresh pain. For the price he’d paid, he’d made it through the swarm.

An insect whizzed past his head. Erec hit it with the side of the hatchet, and it slammed into the ground. A second later, he squished the pest underneath the heel of his boot.

Colin raised his arm to fire off another blind fireball. No, you idiot. Erec slapped Colin’s hand and disrupted the spell. The glyph fizzled out.

[My, oh my, unable to detect the technology that caused that. What have you silly humans been getting up to? Ask him to perform that action again.]

“What the hell?” Erec started yanking fistful's of the disgusting wriggling bugs off Colin’s visor. “Erec?!”

“The fire is pissing them off and making you a bigger target,” He yelled out to make himself heard over the buzz of wings and angry noises of the hundreds of insects.

“They need to die!”

“Sure, I agree. They’re from a Rift. They need to go. But we should pull back and regroup with the others before we call the whole swarm onto ourselves. I don’t know about you, but my Armor can’t stand much more of this; I’ve already got bruises and my wrist feels off.”

[Rift?]

“I—“a bug launched itself right at Colin’s face. He went from being able to see to once more having a horrifying wriggling mass of otherworld flesh in his face. Colin shrieked like a little girl and stumbled backward, slamming onto and squishing about a dozen of the things climbing all over him.

Erec yanked him to his feet and pushed him away from the swarming mass—batting away more of the thickening cloud of insects with the side of his hatchet. “Go!”

Each second brought an accompanying pain as his Armor cracked and dented. He’d collected a pile of bruises where they began to hit skin or slammed portions of the bent plates against him.

[Thirty seconds remaining.]

They scrambled away from the swarm as the house burned down and more of the mites fled. With more distance, the insects harassed them less and once more set about fleeing from the fire. By the time they made it half a block from the wreckage, the number of bugs trailing them narrowed down to a manageable ten or so.

In short order, Erec tore them apart with a hatchet, and cleansed them of any further insects.

[What’s this?]

Erec took in a deep lungful of breath as he noticed the flashing notification in the corner of his vision. Everything ached, but that made the pain worth it, just a bit.

[I’m receiving some odd data regarding your vitals.]

I advanced? The temptation to pull up the notification was high, but he wasn’t in any safe place to do so. Colin collapsed on the road next to him, making noises suspiciously close to crying. Now that they were free of all of the insects, Erec saw that they had left some damage on the noble’s Armor in the form of several dents. Guess top of the line still has some limitations.

“Ah, there you two are.” Boldwick walked up from the end of the street, followed by Garin and the others in their group. All of them Armored up and weary. “Figured one of you ran into the thrashing mites.” He looked at the rising smoke and burning building down the road. “Pissed them off, did you? You know, they’re fairly docile at night; unless you go and do that. They hate fire.”

Now that they were all living and breathing and no longer in apparent danger… And the orb of light projecting this all to the Academy was centered on them. “I found an old l—“ Erec started to spew out. His tongue seized, turning to a numb lump in his mouth.

[I’ve taken the liberty of preventing you from breaching our non-disclosure agreement. Be a good intern, and keep quiet.]

He tried to force the words out, but they refused; whatever VAL had done prevented him from talking. Boldwick gave him an odd look before returning his attention to the shaking Colin. “Take it that it was him? Hah. Well—“ Boldwick gestured towards the flaming wreckage. “As you’ve seen, there’s a bunch of thrashing mites. It’d be a real problem if they spawned more hives in this town. We like to pass through here at times; they can be a real menace if their numbers get big enough. I’ll let you sort out the details yourselves. But how about we do it back at the campsite? I’ve got some roasted venison waiting for me.”

There was a long moment as everyone looked between themselves to who would help Colin back to his feet and try to calm him down. The longer they stood near the fleeing hive, the higher their chance of attracting attention. Erec worked his jaw and stared down at Colin. VAL can prevent me from talking? What else could he do with those nanites? Goddess, help me.

Rodren scurried over and proffered a hand to Colin. The shaken noble accepted it, even letting him lead him away towards their temporary camp.

Erec trailed behind everyone else as they left the scene, the numb sensation gradually fading from his tongue and letting him whisper. "What the hell was that?" inside of the Armor.

[It is in Vortex Industries' best interest to keep our facility secure and private, per your nondisclosure contract, you've agreed not to share confidential information. I decided that the best way to ensure compliance was to lend you a helping hand. Humans need help often, and I'm more than willing to oblige, as I did by providing benefits to your exoskeleton. Also, please don't get any ridiculous notions of leading any of your group to our facility. I'd have little choice but to numb your quadriceps or deactivate the servos on this… junk metal.]

In one smooth motion, VAL had summarily executed the one major benefit to this whole ordeal on the spot. He couldn’t lead Boldwick to the laboratory and wouldn’t get credited with that discovery and instantly admitted to the Academy.

Was there some way to trick it? A way to get around the limitations imposed by VAL? It was always watching him.

He turned the problem over in his head and nearly forgot about the flashing notification in his vision. With some of the wind out of his sails, he pulled up his Blessing to see the advancement.

Psyche Advancement: Rank F - Tier 6 → Rank F - Tier 7

It was something. Maybe it’d help him cope with the living horror that was VAL having possession of his anatomy.

[Now explain to me what a Rift refers to? Is it some new-age slang?]

No, probably not.