She observes her feelings like they’re happening on a holo-screen, as if they belong to someone else. Similar to one of those soap operas her grandmother loved to watch, she looks at each twist and turn of passion with a clinical gaze.
“I’m really fucked, right?” She nods to herself, not even flinching at the curse she just uttered. Here she is, inside a GalaxSec base filled with dead people, clutching the skull of the psychopathic kidnapper that tortured, maimed, dismembered and disembowelled her body multiple times. Clutching it like he is some long lost lover. Only in hindsight does she recognise the compulsion. Douglas is not one to make direct demands easily, but the few he made… She’d followed them all. The most vivid memory is when he asked, no, commanded her to give him mana. She had followed him through the desert multiple times, kept walking behind him like some lost puppy. She’d even punched him when he had asked, a feat she’d otherwise never even be capable of. And she had given him her mana, without thinking. She had clutched his naked leg bones and poured her own magical power into the skeleton. Wanting to distract herself from this unpleasant realization, she calls up her most recent notifications. She also asks about what classes she can become now.
[ Rolling lvl 3 ]
[ Footwork lvl 10 ]
[ Footwork has reached lvl 10; Fighter 2/4 ]
[ Blocking lvl 10 ]
[ Blocking has reached lvl 10; Fighter 3/4 ]
[ Dodging lvl 10 ]
[ Dodging has reached lvl 10; Fighter 4/4 ]
[ Fighter class; all relevant skills are max lvl. Please evolve class or pick a third class ]
[ Tier 1 classes available: ]
[ Official ]
[ Vendor ]
[ Tier 2 classes available: ]
[ Associate Mage ]
[ Associate Wizard ]
[ Associate Antimage ]
[ Associate Runologist ]
[ Associate Arcanist ]
[ Associate Sublimator ]
[ Associate Spell Crafter ]
[ Associate Formationist ]
[ Associate Spell Weaver ]
[ Associate Phlogistonator ]
[ Associate Dephlogistonator ]
[ Associate Calcinator ]
[ Associate Decalcinator ]
[ Associate ERROR Scientist ]
[ Associate ERROR Researcher ]
[ Associate Martial Artist ]
[ Associate Knight ]
[ Associate Barbarian ]
[ Associate Berserker ]
[ Associate Soldier ]
[ Associate Ranger ]
[ Associate UNKNOWN Fighting Master ]
[ Associate Spellblade ]
[ Associate Battlemage ]
[ Associate Paladin ]
[ Associate Runic Knight ]
[ Associate Rune Tormentor ]
[ Associate Monk ]
[ Associate Flame Fist ]
[ Associate Ice Lancer ]
[ Associate Earthen Defender ]
[ Associate Air Assassin ]
“And there you have it. Levelling multiple base classes will allow for more complex secondary classes. Spellblade? Seriously, isn’t that a little cliche, blue boxes? I gotta admit, Rune Tormenter sounds pretty nice. Carving people up, making their wounds into spells powered by their own mana? Very cool. The elemental classes are kind of boring though.” She then waves away the screens. Although there are some rather tempting options in there, she is looking for something more; something else.
Evot Gilihezal has only ever known one passion in life, and those fantastical sounding classes do not cover it. No, the sole reason why Evot even agreed to bring the skeleton that raised her to this place is because of the treasure it holds. She had only heard of it in legends, heard of its majesty and dustiness whispered of in the corridors of the government offices she had worked in for so long and so hard. But, as she is now, those heavenly halls will remain out of reach. She will need more tools before she will be able to breach that paperwork nirvana, and she even lacks the tools to create the tools to create the spells she will need.
Dropping the skull to the floor, she only dedicates enough attention to the metal thing to make sure it lands right side up before leaving.
Evot has found herself in the GalaxSec base after Douglas managed to pierce the hardened wall, somehow. The Ancheevi mercenaries had flown down from the sky seconds after Douglas had lost the light in his eyes, which happened the moment they finally reached this place. They had immediately begun interrogating her, demanding answers. She hadn't been able to provide them, even had she wanted to help the opportunistic scum. Evot is more than willing to admit she is lacking a lot of information and common knowledge when it comes to Central happenings, but she recognised the high spec mercs for who they are. No doubt, the team had been sent here by greedy men in expensive suits, looking to round up the profit margin at the end of their fiscal year at the low cost of the death of a border planet. So Evot had stalled while playing the clueless damsel in distress.
The tech on the comms bike had actually given her a lot of useful information. She had gleaned that the base had gone into some form of an emergency shutdown. The GalaxSec base had activated a stasis freeze field, powered by its central fusion core, at the height of the Histaff infection, some fifty odd years ago. And that core had been failing. So when the Histaff Gargantuans had approached, she’d only been all too glad that Douglas had taken action, slinging spells left and right, causing more chaos and taking the spotlight from her.
Then the dumb skeleton had somehow pulled the power of the sun from its bony ass, and punched a hole into the base with a transparent blue fist. He had shattered in the process, and Evot had only managed to remain in one piece through a lot of luck and some strategic rolling around.
Then Evot admits to herself that only the thin veneer of bravery and ‘aha, this was my plan all along’ bravado is keeping her from breaking down completely. She allows herself a small sniffle as she faces the biggest fear of her life so far.
The naked woman finds herself in the central lobby of the GalaxSec central base. The very building she is standing in was dropped from orbit after the planetary population reached a certain threshold, ages ago. She had looked up the exact number and date sometime in the past but had forgotten it not too long after. The synthetic walls around her typically should have housed a bustling collection of sapients, all of them either innocent hopefuls or seasoned cynics looking to squeeze money from the massive institution that - she assumes - even now spans the entire galaxy.
But instead of the hustle and bustle she knew so well from holo-tv and her many hours of wistful GalaxSec related browsing on the GalaxNet, there are only dead people. The lobby itself is rather pristine, which makes a twisted form of sense. All the evacuees would have long since crammed themselves into the deeper bowels of the ancient structure, fleeing from the Histaff infection. They would have hoped that the most ancient and most advanced piece of technology on the planet would have had some way to keep them safe. They were most likely right, but for some reason, they still all ended up dead.
The ramp leading down into the proper reception area is filled with fresh dead sapients. A representative cross-section of Evengi’s most common races is clearly on display, small statistic facts bubbling up inside Evot’s mind. She happily runs with the weird direction her mind is going in as she tries to look at the still coagulating and liquifying remains in a clinical manner. Walking down the broad, spiralling ramp, she is still disbelieving of the fact that she has found her way over here. The ancient walls look a little less amazing than it was shown in the videos and holo’s, though. Instead of the pristine light blue perfection that she expected, she sees streaks of moisture and dirt on the smooth surfaces. The large number of dead beings might be a cause, but Evot sees multiple layers of grime and stains on top of each other. Just the few weeks of Histaff induced panic before the end of her life shouldn’t have been long enough for this amount of filth to accumulate. She also
takes note of the fact that all the furniture is clean, somehow, their shiny surfaces contrasting with the dirt everywhere.
She manages to reach the first reception area with only minimal vomiting. Wiping the bile from her chin, she takes in the large circular set of office counters. As any first area of reception should have, the first floor below ground level is filled with desks, seating areas, and vending machines. Her eye twitching at some more memories trying to bubble up - these ones of chowing down on the horribly expensive snacks on a space station - she sees something odd. Instead of the chaotic hustle and bustle, she reads something else from the way all the still bodies are splayed around the area.
Where she would have expected them all to be crowding the many, many counters, she sees semi-permanent tents set up next to sectioned off play areas. Still smaller forms are lying next to each other, random toys clutched in appendages of many shapes. Large silent forms surround them, almost as if wanting to protect their offspring long after they died. She sees more and more incongruities as she walks over to the first method in which the GalaxSec institute is known to filter and discourage potential visitors. Pulling one of the numbered pieces of paper from the machine, she nearly pisses herself when her number immediately shows up on one of the many holo panels hanging from the ceiling.
“It’s my turn! Right now? I don’t need to wait for hours or days?” Hesitantly walking towards the flashing counter, she steps over the many dead people. The fact that all the corpses are very fresh indeed is weird, but far from the oddest thing she has come across so far. Her nose has long since gone dead due to the overload of bodily fluids in the air, and she makes sure to avoid all the goopy bits, stepping around puddles and oozes.
She reaches the lit up counter with only a few detours and happily starts waiting for someone to show up. Then the reality of the situation sets in, and Evot peers over the counter. A rather beleaguered looking female of a species well known for their tendency to work in customer services lies dead behind the high desk. Evot looks around, purposely doesn’t think about why all the corpses don’t freak her out more and climbs over the barrier. She steps into the island of empty space surrounded by desks, nervous about the fact that she is blatantly breaking every single social convention when it comes to public spaces. Taking a deep breath, and gagging from the smell right after, she walks to one of the many cabinets standing against the central pillar.
Any form of bad feeling and nervousness disappears the moment she pulls one of the many sheets of paper from the sliding drawers. The paper is so dry, it starts creasing the moment she takes it out. The tips of her fingers feel leathery as the bone-dry document pulls the moisture from her skin. Scanning over the page with an experienced eye, she puts it back, rifling through the rest of the drawing. “No way… No provenance?”
Her face turns into a stern mask as she pulls out more drawers, scanning them quickly. “And no original order. This one is alphabetic,” she mutters to herself. “And this one is sorted by client number, while this one is based on most recently used?” Her expression now truly thunderous, she slams the drawers out in disgust. “The rest too?” Going through the rest of the drawers, she keeps finding chaos. Every single drawer holds papers in no particular order. “It’s almost as if the people working here don’t even care about proper archival principles. No way, right?”
Staring at the corpses lying behind the counters, she feels like kicking them for a bit. Taking another deep breath, this time not even noticing the horrid smells, Evot walks towards the door at the centre of the reception desk circle. The door refuses to budge at all, so she stalks over to the closest receptionist, yanks a shining badge from between its feathered limbs, and holds it to the scanner. It beeps green before the door unlocks, and Evot stalks down the stairs. The second floor below ground level is partitioned into two sections. To one side, she sees cubicles, desks, and endless rows of small offices. To the other side, she sees more waiting areas, filled with all kinds of chairs. Everywhere, she sees signs of semi-permanent habitation. The GalaxSec base must have been a shelter for quite a long time to explain all the tents and temporary barriers she sees.
Evot can’t really care about any of that, though. She just wants to find out if her entire life’s dream is built upon falsities. Pulling open the first filing cabinet she sees, she confirms that her life’s goal is indeed bullshit. “No way. Did these root-eating meat-turds just put papers wherever while letting the base's Synthetic Intelligence keep track of it all?”
Rooting through more paper archives, she confirms that this is most likely the case. Here and there, she sees signs of someone attempting to keep the files in order. More often, though, she sees the infamous ‘just put them wherever’ archiving method. She also spots signs of the ‘let the intern sort it out’ and ‘we only need to store this for compliance reasons’ schools of thought. Evot knows these methods of managing archives very well. She’d been in the intern position for most of her professional career, after all.
“Right. So I’ve come this far, and I’m not about to let my dream end here. If I need to sort this place myself page by regulation complying page, I will do so. Come Histaff or high water, I’ve gone through too much excrement to fail here.” Flames dance in her eyes as she resumes walking through the base. She looks around the second floor a little longer, but none of the filing cabinets holds the interesting information that she wants. There are just requisition filings, personnel lists, potential volunteer pools, and a lot of complaints. Evot’s mood becomes more and more grim as she continues finding an ungodly amount of complaints. Most of the reports filed are simple things, like a lack of action after items have been reported stolen, or complaints about lagging and delayed responses. A few she finds are more worrying. Murders not addressed and blatant proof of corruption that is being ignored. She even finds a few bloody murder weapons and bits of vital information stuffed behind drawers. It’s all perfectly tagged and bagged, so she can identify the odd objects with ease. It’s just that a lot of them are extremely dusty and rather old.
Coughing from the dust that managed to avoid the automated cleaning processes somehow, Evot decides to try her luck on the lower levels. On the third floor, she doesn’t even find a single page, not a single terminal screen. Instead, there are just more dead sapients. The fourth floor below ground level is equally empty of anything interesting. She descends the building slowly, watching with a disillusioned annoyance that the neatly finished construction from up higher fades into rough stone walls and bare plast-crete and metal bracings. The lights still work, and there is ample yet confusing signage telling her where everything is. And still the entire base has a certain slapdash unfinished look to it by the time she gets to the tenth floor.
This is also where she is confronted by her first true barrier. A distinctly different style of hatch blocks her way at the bottom of the stairs. Featureless and unmarred metal instead of rough stone and compressed dirt, Evot knows that this is the official base. She knows that the piece of wall and the door in front of her were warped through space, dropped through the atmosphere without a care a long time ago. The historical feeling of the entire thing nearly stops her from burning the shit out of it.
From all the stories she'd heard, she had expected it to be harder. The dephlogistonating fireball in her hands might flicker and smoke a lot, it still burns the door with ease. Somehow her spells always come out as flagging and mismanaged fires. Where Douglas has the perfectly geometric volumes of fire or earth down pat, Evot’s magical escapades have had an amateurish air to them from the moment she cast her first spell. It takes her a total of ten minutes to burn the ancient door to slag, and she steps through without even allowing the thick black smoke to dissipate.
Entering the ancient base is yet another disappointment. Her daydreams of mystical technologies vanish into thin air the moment she steps into the clinical corridor. She recognizes several standard building regulations in their purest form, the corridors somehow manag
ing to be uncomfortable for the largest amount of races. Not taking a deep breath this time - as Evot has learned her lesson by now - she steps through the still glowing remains of the door and goes looking for archives.
She only has to burn through five more doors before she hits the jackpot. The hallways and seating areas she traverses are similar to the ones upstairs, only different in terms of materials they are made from. They are equally occupied by what looks to be dead civilians, and Evot grimly marches past them, not knowing what else to do. If there is one being that can help these people, it’s that idiotic skeleton upstairs, not her. Speaking of Douglas, she feels him above. She feels his being pulling at her. He isn’t yet far enough for it to become an issue, or even annoying, but she feels her tether to him constantly.
“Small price to pay,” is the way in which she talks herself down. There is archiving to be done, and what better place to perform the one thing she had always found peace and quiet in, than in the most ancient of archives? In front of her, just beyond the latest door she has burned to cinders, is the GalaxSec Standard Regulation, the complete edition. Stepping through the molten hole, she stands still, taking in the sights. The rows of archives disappear into darkness in three directions. To the front, she sees the central row of tall filing cabinets disappear into a false horizon. To both sides, she sees the wall on one side and stacks of paper binders on the other.
GalaxSec: A Sci-Fi LitRPG (Skeleton in Space Book 2) Page 22