GalaxSec: A Sci-Fi LitRPG (Skeleton in Space Book 2)

by Andries Louws

  “Mana.”

  “Mana?” they reply in unison, like some stupid married couple.

  Douglas wonders where that thought suddenly came from while pointing at his forehead. “Guide it from there,” he adds before legging it. Those two need some time, and Douglas has a lot more soul binding to do. “SI, minimal occupation?” he asks, wondering how many people he will have to get going again.

  “Minimum volunteer personnel count is not met.”

  “Okay,” says Douglas with a nod, already walking up the stairs. He is pretty jazzed to go and train his magic some more under the guise of getting personnel numbers up. He hears some more excited chattering coming from behind him, most notable terms being ‘Universal Language’, ‘gained Mana Control’, and ‘check your classes’.

  This is then followed by squelching sounds that make him distinctly uncomfortable. “How many volunteers?”

  “Zero.”

  “What?”

  “There are only unregistered life forms in the base.”

  “How do they become volunteers?”

  “All deceased members will need to file a triple zero hexagon alpha three form, contesting their automatically applied deceased status.”

  “Where?”

  “Please direct all procedure specific inquiries to the relevant personnel.”

  Douglas feels like sighing deeply. The information coming into his mind about spell shapes, mana control, and advanced engraving tips might be sped up many folds, the non-magical drudgery seems less likely to budge to this trend of speeding up.

  Reaching the lowest floor that’s actually occupied, Douglas goes on a Soul Binding rampage. Opening all the small closets containing cleaning supplies and stacks upon stacks of empty paper sheets, he patiently casts the spell on everyone he comes across. Knowing the workload ahead of him, he doesn’t bother feeding them mana stones to speed up their resurrection anymore. Instead, he just casts the spell and moves on, not even waiting for the beings to start moving. He wanders through toilets in all shapes and sizes, resting areas that contain a varied collection of furniture and meal preparation areas that look more like steel plated torture rooms. His mana is half gone, and he is a couple of dozen beings in when someone taps on his shoulder.

  Turning around he sees Evot, the small woman now dressed in a smart uniform, the silver badge stuck to her modest chest. She looks at the ground in an odd manner, one foot tapping the floor in a random pattern. “Hello,” he begins.

  “So, um, Douglas…”

  “Yes?” he answers, his voice somehow softer than usual.

  “Could you show me that blue hand spell shape, please?”

  Smiling at her, he gently layers mana across the simple shape. The shape is projected in the air, a small blue limb appearing just in front of the formation.

  “Thank-you-so-much,” she blurts out. “Here is something for you to eat.”

  She looks down while handing him a package. Douglas grabs the single bar, tears the thin film from what turns out to be a grey stick of dense matter, and chows down. The faintest hint of a sickly sweet taste reaches him, and his half-empty mana pool starts filling fast. “Thank y…” And Evot is gone, fading pitter patter of feet hitting the floor the only proof that she was ever there. Looking at the direction from where she came, Douglas just stares ahead for a bit.

  Then his mana is full again, both his manastone filled skull and the nexus on his forehead, and Douglas resumes casting. The floor turns out to hold a relatively low amount of sapients, not even reaching a hundred. The first being he has Soul Bound stirs slightly as Douglas walks by on his way back to the stairs. He eyes the slowly wriggling oversized worm for a bit. Determining the forehead on that thing had been a challenge, but Dougals is pretty sure that the smelly end is its head. He then loses interest due to the lack of any visible bones whatsoever. He once again hopes that he guessed its forehead position correctly before walking towards the next level.

  Again, he is a couple dozen Soul Binds in when he is interrupted yet once more. This time, instead of a blushing woman, it’s two clinging slimeballs. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Constable. What is your plan?” asks the larger one.

  “Plan?”

  Ungud nods his many slimy flaps. “We’ve both managed to get some work done on mapping out the functions of this blue box system, but there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. Our mana is empty and rather slow in trickling back in, so we were wondering if the sole ranking officer on board has orders?”

  “SI, minimal occupation?”

  “Minimum volunteer personnel count is not met.”

  They both look at each other for a bit. There is a glowing interplay between the two, slight and subtle patterns appearing on both slimy beings. Then the curvy one asks, “You want to do what now, honey?”

  “GalaxSec Trainee Constable. How can I help?” Douglas spews one of the lines that he learned again. He receives no reply in response to his enthusiastically broadcast answer.

  “Wait, I think I get it. The entire planet is surely dead, only Histaff clusters left by now,” speculates the blocky one.

  “And there is nothing to do for one of GalaxSec’s finest on a dead planet,” answers the curvy one.

  “And with this mana thing, if I may extrapolate slightly, the landing thrusters could be empowered enough to reach a stable orbit.”

  “Then we could rig up the plasma core directly into the stasis generator, which is just a modified warp bubble field generator, after all.”

  “We’d need specialized tools though.”

  “And multi covalent bonding class fabricators.”

  “Which we do not have here.”

  “Have you seen the scribbles on our Constable, over there?”

  “Haven't been able to take my eyes off of him, no need to be upset, honey, it’s just professional fascination.”

  “If you weren’t such a slithering slimy hunk, I think I’d jump his bones.”

  The duo laughs for precisely two seconds, unsettling something primal in Douglas. He had been following the conversation so far, which is actually a first for him.

  “No problem, Officer. We will get everyone reinstated as official volunteers. You just do the Soul Bind thing, sir!”

  Douglas is over the moon. For once, he actually managed to keep up with the conversation. The precise meaning of each word is still percolating through his mind, but he understands the rough concepts enough to get what they were talking about just now. Also, he is overjoyed at the fact that the grey duo has managed to glean so much from just a few words. Instead of being ignored, as was the case with Katare, or needing to endlessly explain things, as is the case with Evot, these two just get it.

  “Evot is deputy,” says Douglas, sensing where this is going.

  “And there he goes, preempting my own question. A constable’s deputy has the power to instate people into the GalaxSec volunteer corp. With her, we should be able to set up the minimum occupation of qualified, certified, and duly appointed of volunteer functionaries. That way, we can start officiating that sorry lot still waking up downstairs.”

  “Your ruthless efficiency really makes me want to flush my slime flaps right here and now.”

  Slapping at the large grey being, the curvy one blushes with a blue tinged lightshow. “Ungud, not in public. We can do more later. First, we’ve got stuff to do. Now, dear, where might this Evot be?”

  “Archive.”

  “Thanks, you’re a doll.” And off they go.

  “Bye, Douglas, see you later!”

  Waving at the retreating duo, Douglas once again thinks that those two are alright. No wasted words, just logical trains of thought that lead to logical conclusions. Getting back to his task of forcing souls into small engraved spell shapes, Douglas casts his magic with peace of mind, knowing that stuff is being handled.

  The rest of his task goes by in a blur. He casts Soul Bind after Soul Bind, occasionally using his other spells in orde
r to get through locked doors or to lift fallen furniture.

  “Douglas?” comes Evot’s voice when he is nearly done on the third floor from the bottom up.

  “Yes?” he asks hesitatingly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Quickly coming to the conclusion that her voice is coming from the badge stuck to his ribs, he talks into the golden star. “What?”

  “THAT THERE ARE TWO SHMEE-SHMEELAHS RUNNING AROUND! I nearly had a heart attack when they showed up, and even more so when they started grilling me!”

  “What?”

  “You know what, never mind. Thanks for the mana hand spell shape, it’s really useful.” *CLICK*

  Wondering why that click sounded oddly aggressive, Douglas decides to not think about complex stuff like that. Instead, he continues to perform the soothing and relaxing task of stapling the souls of dead people back to their corporeal form. He even feels like humming to himself after getting back into the mood. He barely notices it himself, but his happy mood causes a strand of thought to slip into the vocalization part of his forehead.

  An eerie tune thus starts resonating through the emergency-lit hallways of the GalaxSec base. The first thing many of the magically awoken beings hear is this halting and somehow static noise of discordant humming. Douglas keeps moving through the scattered bodies, the concentration of dead people higher on the third floor. This floor seemed to have been used as a working area mostly, but Douglas stumbles across rather familial scenes now and then. He Soul Binds many small forms and makes sure to do groups that are huddled together at the same time. He vaguely remembers that he used to be part of a large group, and although it's rather faded, the one thing that he remembers from back then is that not being part of the group was bad. Or just not following the old guy’s orders, maybe?

  Douglas continues working and humming, right until his mana pool is bone dry. Knowing that the last smidgen of mana floating around in his otherwise empty forehead won’t be enough to cast the Soul Bind spell yet again, he stands up. His back pops something fierce, and Douglas swears that he needs to fix the metal joints between his vertebrae soon. He then sees Evot peering at him from just outside the room he is in. “Hello.”

  Giving a girly little scream, the woman falls backwards out of sight, obviously flustered. Douglas walks over and picks her up by the waist, setting her back on her feet.

  “H-hi, Douglas…” She pats herself down, hiding her face behind her hair. “The two Shmees are off looking for stuff, but we found out how to get this place rolling again.”

  Douglas nods at the woman, but she doesn’t really continue talking. Only when he taps her on her shoulder does she jump a little before continuing talking in a breathless manner.

  “So, we need you to do the resurrection thing with a few more people. You can then authorise them temporarily, which will allow them to then permanently authorise each other. Also, Douglas?” He keeps looking at her as she slowly peers at him from between her bangs. “The entire process you went through to join up was technically illegal, but because you have a badge now, and that badge was acquired under some legal pretext, at the very least, they can’t take it away.” Here she smiles. “So good job, bonehead! Without you, we probably never would have even been able to think about super boosting the landing thrusters and leave that way.”

  The brightest spark of emotion Douglas has ever felt emerges in his empty chest. Seeing Evot smile at him like that brings a small trickle of warm pride into being. At a total loss for what to say, Douglas just keeps grinning at her.

  “Right, let’s go then?” she mutters while shyly holding a hand out.

  Douglas just starts walking to the closest stairwell. Being proud of yourself is good and all, but magic and bones wait for no one. Evot scampers after him, her little legs having to do twice as much work for each of Douglas’s long strides. Douglas waits just long enough for her to walk ahead of him, as he realizes he has no idea where they need to go. He follows after her towards a rather pompous office. Instead of rough stone, this one is smooth and tiled, the occasional glowing light casting an even light around the office. A white chair, black desk, and brown closets make it look rather high class. The large window overlooking the mass of offices and cubicles also adds to the luxurious air.

  “This one, please. Ungud told me this is Invigilator Klattio, one of the managers.”

  Douglas doesn’t really pay attention to Evot as she continues talking about this and that. Instead, Douglas tries to limit his mana leakage once again. The walk over here let him regenerate just enough mana to try to cast the spell one more time, but it will be close. Knowing that wasting mana at this point due to carelessness will be really bad, Douglas focuses with all his might. A few minutes later, and the shining blue dot on the wrinkled face of Invigilator Klattio fades, and Douglas happily senses that he has a dust mote of mana left in the tank. “Evot?”

  “Bwa! Wha? Yes, Douglas?”

  Ignoring the startled yelp of the woman, Douglas stands up straight and looks her in the eye again. He doesn’t even think about the fact that she has been staring at him like a pervert for over ten minutes now. Nor does he acknowledge the fact that she is beet red once again, and fidgeting like a schoolgirl. He asks her the single question that has been bothering him for a while now. “Shifting bones or strong bones?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Showing Forces Shows of Force

  Wondering why Evot ran away like that, Douglas picks the one racial trait that he has been eyeing. Choosing the Reinforced Bones option from the list, he suddenly feels like sitting down. He then feels a surge of mana not his own pour in from his forehead, infusing his entire body. Sensing for the power allows him to feel his bones hardening, the internal and porous structure of his skeletal frame filling up. Douglas sees a problem, though. Previously, he had filled his entire skeleton with mana crystal. Now, for some reason, he has only his skull filled with the clear crystal. Then, just as he is about to cry foul at this stunt, the insides of his bones retract, forming new hollow spaces. Another surge of mana not his own floods his entire body, compacting his bones even more.

  Standing back up, he wobbles for a bit, unused to this new feeling of heaviness and increased inertia. Moving around for a while, it doesn’t take him long before he gets used to his new center of mass. Despite feeling a lot heavier, his strength and speed feel about the same.

  The wrinkled man lying on the floor behind Douglas starts twitching and moaning, a sure sign that the Soul Binding has gone through the entire process. Not willing to get caught up in more difficult stuff, Douglas first makes his way over to Evot’s room. He ignores the damp mattress, heading straight for the small cabinet whose door hangs open. Douglas snatches all the rations he finds, immediately chowing down on more of those tasty bars. This one is sickly sweet with a distinct fake taste of some random fruits, and the boneheaded metal-clad skeleton takes a minute to enjoy his snack. Returning to his task with a figuratively filled belly, he resumes his slow and steady job.

  During his many, many casts of Soul Bind, Douglas feels the ground shaking occasionally. The shocks seem to increase in amplitude and number at a steady pace. Small trails of dust are falling from the ceiling and furniture now and then. Not really caring about any of that, Douglas just keeps on casting his spell over and over again. A few bodies into the fourth floor from the bottom, the sixth basement floor, and Douglas has the same revelation that happened with his Mana Stone Creation spell. Instead of merely activating the Soul Bind skill, he suddenly sees the spell shape hidden behind the skill in full. He saw some hints of it earlier, and has been painting mana over pieces of it for a long time now, but suddenly the new spell shape joins the rest of his collection. Its many factors more complex than any of his other spells, but not quite as complicated and grand as the Death spell.

  Telling himself to show Evot later, Douglas continues casting. It takes him a bit of effort, though. The sixth basement floor is where the medical machine is l
ocated. Apart from that mechanical monster, there are many small rooms with bars in front of them. Each of these little rooms contains at least one slumped over form. Barely being able to reach the fellows, and not keen on having to melt the bars time and time again, wasting mana, Douglas just casts the spell from a distance.

  “Douglas! Where are you?”

  The skeleton wakes from his meditative haze and looks around. He has been sitting in front of the medical machine for a long time, he figures. He managed to find a lot of stacked bodies inside the large white thing. Stuck inside small cold boxes, laid upon rolling drawers. He found one of the drawers half open, and only seeing the still thing inside clued him in on the fact that there might just be bodies behind all the closed doors.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, thank funk! Please come upstairs. We’re in trouble!”

  Hearing the panic in Evot’s voice coming from his badge does not put him in a good mood. He immediately jumps to his feet and starts marching up the stairs. It takes him only a few minutes to return to the reception area, the previously dead silent space now a rather confused hive of activity. The moment he steps out of the stairwell, all movement stops. Many of the beings he has soul bound from the lower levels that were previously milling around just stop and stare. All the sapients have some kind of blue glow somewhere on their body, usually their eyes. Evot is busily talking with the two grey beings, the trio of them standing behind the circle of reception counters.

  Ignoring the creepy feeling of being at the centrepoint of attention of all those people, Douglas takes a bit of time to observe the area for a bit. He sees slightly grungy shite walls, dark seats in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and simple furniture in the shape of standing desks. Instead of the simple patterns that adorn the hallways and spaces downstairs, the circular open area is very monotonous in color. The only markings on the walls are what should be expected from an ancient building. Small trails of dark grime and stains break up the otherwise smooth surfaces. All the furniture is in the same style. Either white or grey, each item in the room seems too functional for their own good. Wondering why he never really noticed the rather odd juxtaposition between slightly dirty, well worn, and undamaged, Douglas looks at the ramp going up. A good tenth of the large circular space is taken up by a large opening, a shallow ramp circling to the right and upwards behind it. His observations of the room done, he happily waves at the staring crowd.