Janus and Oblivion

by Noam Oswin

  “I should have given this some more thought.” He said. “Joining the AAA.”

  She gave him a harsh look. “You didn’t?”

  “I thought about it for like a year.”

  “A year.” She said, scoffing. “Knowing the AAA is for life? That was overwhelmingly stupid of you.”

  “I really hate that word...”

  She tried to avoid turning her gaze to the podium, were several sanitary staff mopped away whatever was left of Lance off the platform. She swallowed, forcing herself to not empty the contents of her stomach as she got a glimpse of the carnage there.

  It surprised and annoyed her that daydreamer seemed to be capable of looking at the stage. His brows were narrowed in focus, concentrated, almost as if he were trying to decipher something, or to at least understand something.

  She almost felt the same. Now, now that her fate was intertwined with that of over seven hundred people.

  “You were right, about this morning.” He turned to her. “I didn’t know why I was here. I thought this would be my ticket to riches and fame–”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m just thinking about whether or not I’ll be the next one squeezed like an orange on a podium in front of seven hundred and fifteen people.”

  She blinked at the number. It was close to her estimates. “How do you know the exact number of people here?”

  Daydreamer blinked as well, slowly scratching his head. “I... just do?”

  He just... did? She wanted to pursue the question, but didn’t. There would be time for that later. He lightly nodded in her direction, changing the topic. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” she responded sharply. Too sharply, she realized. Daydreamer made a gesture to the podium. “Do you still know why you’re here?”

  She swallowed heavily. If anything, her reasons for being here just became more prominent, more real. “Yes.”

  Daydreamer nodded. “Good. I’d hate to have been splashed by water this morning for nothing.”

  She did not grimace or back down. It was, in her mind, a justifiable action. He did not seem to be fishing for an apology, and instead he extended his hand forward again. “We never had the chance to introduce ourselves properly.”

  They hadn’t, had they? She took his hand, noting his attempt at giving her a strong grip. She smiled, and gave him the same treatment, watching him try his hardest not to wince. “I’m –” he cleared his throat to return it to a deeper sound. “I’m Juma.”

  “...Sophia.”

  “Well...” he coughed. “Sophia, what do you think of taking charge of things in the Lance Brigade? You know, seeing as how if one person ends up running, we’re all dead.”

  Taking command? Could she? They hadn’t even undergone the actual training with ridiculously high mortality rate. The training that was supposed to weed out the weak from the strong.

  “Survive the training... and we’ll see.”

  He tossed her a goofy smile, and she resisted the urge to scoff. She doubted a peasant boy with zero combat experience would last a minute against a nightmare, and so, she smiled back at him.

  It was most likely the last pretty smile he was going to see.

  Chapter 13

  Past

  When I was twelve, my father attempted to teach me the difference between how wealthy and non-wealthy people thought. He posed a hypothetical scenario:

  You are placed in the center of a soccer field, given a ball and asked to score three consecutive shots to a small painted circle in the center of the goalpost. You are given five hours to prepare to do this. If you successfully score the three shots, you are given five million pounds. You may not move closer to the goal post, pick up the ball, throw the ball, or increase the size of the target. Miss one, and you receive nothing.

  He asked me, “How do you spend your five hours preparing?”

  Younger and not yet savvy, my answer was along the lines of, “Practice as hard as I can for the five hours.”

  My father hadn’t responded. Instead, he called my brother, the prick, and asked him the exact same question. Five hours to prepare, three shots, five million. As much as I hated my brother, his answer was better.

  “I’ll use my contacts, search for a suitable professional player, call him up, and tell him that I’m willing to pay him £25,000 per shot, if he can make three shots in a row in the perfect center of a post.”

  My brother’s method would guarantee a higher chance of success with monumentally less effort, and losing £75,000 was considered an acceptable loss for the remaining gain of four million nine hundred and twenty five thousand pounds. I, on the other hand, would have spent five hours kicking and practicing, exhausting myself, actually reducing my chances of succeeding once the time came, and would end up with zilch.

  I felt it was cheating. “But no one said I was allowed to hire people to do it for me!”

  My father responded: “No one has to.”

  I never forgot that lesson. It was one of the things my father taught me that I saw the value in. Here, in another world and lacking a physical body, I recognized the fact that attempting to continue levelling and garnering points as I had been doing, was essentially me practicing hard for taking a shot. Practicing hard, when I could merely find ways to delegate the menial task of farming experience for survival, and invest my time in other areas of focus.

  I assigned the 325 Genocide Points I got from killing the bats and tossed it all into my MP Regen, bringing it up to a total of 590MP/Hour, or approximately 9MP/Minute, or 0.15MP/sec. It was still nowhere near as fast as I wanted it to be, considering I had 3000MP available, and thus, it would take me approximately four hours for my MP to be refilled once I was out, but it was a decent starting point.

  Three hours after my creation of Adolf the Golem, I checked my [Genocidal] Title to see just how many creatures the monster had gone through, and how many points I gathered from it all.

  Species Kill Count:

  [Common Rabbit] x 16 = +160% Attack, +160% Defense, +160% Damage Dealt, +160% Damage Reduction against [Common Rabbits]. You Gain: 425 Points on Next Kill.

  [Common Bat] x 5 = +50% Attack, +50% Defense, +50% Damage Dealt, +50% Damage Reduction against [Common Bats]. You Gain: 150 Points on Next Kill.

  [Common Elk] x 12 = +120% Attack, +120% Defense, +120% Damage Dealt, +120% Damage Reduction against [Common Elk]. You Gain: 325 Points on Next Kill.

  [Common Deer] x 5 = +50% Attack, +50% Defense, +50% Damage Dealt, +50% Damage Reduction against [Common Deer]. You Gain: 150 Points on Next Kill.

  [Mountain Goat] x 4 = +40% Attack, +40% Defense, +40% Damage Dealt, +40% Damage Reduction against [Mountain Goats]. You Gain: 125 Points on Next Kill.

  [Silva Wolf] x 4 = +40% Attack, +40% Defense, +40% Damage Dealt, +40% Damage Reduction against [Silva Wolves]. You Gain: 125 Points on Next Kill.

  Available Points: 2575

  So far, Adolf had killed 12 Elk, 5 Deer and 4 Mountain Goats since I unleashed him unto the world three hours ago. The experience had bumped me up from Shade Lv. 1 to Shade Lv. 4, and it was getting increasingly harder to gain experience points from animals. Each kill reduced the total number of Experience Points, however, it increased the total number of Genocide Points. I did a quick rundown of the numbers.

  4 Goats = 25 + 50 + 75 + 100 = 250

  5 Deer = 25 +50 +75 +100 +125 = 375

  12 Elk = 25 + 50 +75 + 100 + 125 + 150 + 175 + 200 + 225 + 250 + 275 + 300 = 1950

  Total= 250 + 375 + 1950 = 2575.

  I had 2,575 points to assign to either my HP, MP, or Regen, all garnered from the cost of killing twenty one animals. I was having a hard time seeing the downside of this ability. The sanctity of the life of the animals aside, I could not see any incentives to stop me from continuing to accrue power in this manner.

  I decided to store the GP for now, to see how much Adolf would be able to accrue before nightfall. With the major task of farming points currently out of the way as a
challenge, I rapidly formulated a list of things that I needed to complete.

  Manipulating the single stick of chalk I created when testing my powers, I began to write on the ground in English. Seeing as how Janje did not know English, I doubted she would understand what I was writing.

  To-Do List

  Complete the Falling Trees – I Quest.

  Find information about this “Kadulja” person.

  Plan a way to kill this “Kadulja” person.

  Discover more about this world.

  Find out what the world was called.

  Find out its major threats and issues that could potentially kill me.

  Find out its strongest players and find ways to ally myself with them.

  Find out more about Janje.

  Discover if Janje was a ghost or specter bound to this cave.

  Find out what exactly is the Anathema attached to her.

  Find ways to escape or destroy it if need be.

  When I finished writing, nearly every single thing on my to-do list would end up coming back to Janje. It was currently getting close to noon, and as a Shade, I could not go out in the daylight. Thus, the only avenue of information I possessed was with Janje, as she most likely had the answers to every single one of my questions, regardless of how unstable she was. The problem was knowing when to tow the line to avoid summoning that Anathema.

  “Janje is impressed! Janje did not know Masakh could use Antediluvian Hieroglyphs! Masakh is scary!”

  Antediluvian Hieroglyphs? It was English. Plain, simple, English letters. Do you understand these words?

  “No, Janje can’t read it. Meg can though, but Meg wouldn’t care to. Meg is a meanie.”

  Of course your horror of a bodyguard/jailer could read English. Just perfect. I was tempted to snark out something, but I doubted if Janje would understand sarcasm. At the risk of the being appearing, I asked the question on my mind. What is Meg?

  “Meg is Meg. Meg is a masakh like you masakh, but Meg is a super masakh.”

  There it was again. “Super” Masakh. I found it hard to believe that something like that was an average monster. If we were using tiers, where did it rank? I was Tier 2, according to the message I got when I received my Monster Classification, and Janje said that only monsters of Tier Three and higher could cast.

  Janje, what Tier... is Meg?

  There was a soft hum. “Janje can’t really say. But Janje guesses Meg is around Tier 7.”

  That can’t be possible. It should not be possible. There were ten tiers, and if I was Tier 2, and Meg was Tier 7, what in the world was Tier 10?

  “Of course it is silly masakh. Tiers go up in a logarithmic scale you know! That’s why masakh are always scary!”

  Never before had two words settled such an uneasy chill over me. Logarithmic scale?

  “Oh! Silly Janje! Janje forgets masakh doesn’t know things. It means the Tiers go up in orders of magnitude. So Tier 2 is ten times stronger than Tier 1, and Tier 3 is ten times stronger than Tier 2, and one hundred times stronger than Tier 1. Tier 4 is ten times stronger than Tier 3, one hundred times stronger than Tier 2, and one thousand times stronger than Tier 1. Tier 5 is ten times stronger than Tier 4, one hundred times stronger than Tier 3, one thousand times stronger than Tier 2, and ten thousand times stronger than Tier 1. Tier 6 is a hundred thousand times stronger than Tier 1, and Tier 7 is ten times stronger than Tier 6, so, it is one million times stronger than Tier 1.”

  I knew what a logarithmic scale was. It was used in decibels for measuring sound and Richter scales measuring the magnitudes of earthquakes. My surprise came from the fact that Janje knew what it was, and more than that, the realization of the fact that “Meg” was a monster approximately a hundred thousand times stronger than I was. No, worse than that was the fact that “Meg” was just Tier 7. Meaning somewhere out there, there was a being of Tier 8 that was ten times stronger than it, a being of Tier 9 that was a hundred times stronger, and a being of Tier 10 that was one thousand times stronger.

  One thousand times stronger than that?

  What sort of insane world had Oblivion sent me to?

  I knew I said I wanted competition and I wanted to struggle, but this – this was absurd. Utterly, entirely, completely absurd.

  “Masakh? Masakh? What’s wrong?”

  I can’t win.

  It was simple, really. Oblivion clearly was smarter than I thought. The power of the [User] and the [Genocidal] titles had felt like a way to acquire strength at a rapid pace that would trivialize my problems. Except, it was not. No – if anything, had I lacked these powers, I would not be able to survive. I could create bullets of diamond at a snap and yet, there were beings over a million times stronger than I was. How? My limited mind could not even begin to create or imagine what type of power that was. Was it the power of gods? Molecular manipulation on an infinite scale? Power over the fundamental forces of the universe? What?

  So Oblivion sent me to a world where I could struggle all I wanted, and, at a point, I could acquire enough power to feel like a god, except, I would still be a small fish in a tiny barrel, unaware of the vastness of the ocean.

  A struggle in utter futility.

  “Hey – hey! Janje can feel masakh getting sad! Bad! Bad masakh! Don’t give up! You can still become strong! It might take a thousand years or so, but you can reach the higher tiers! Janje believes in you!”

  Now I was getting a pep-talk from a disembodied voice. It was funny, amusing. Yet, there was some merit in what Janje said. I had come from a literal earthworm to being able to create Golems and fabricate diamonds from air. It took me only a week to do it. If I were to assume that I would continue to grow phenomenally in this manner, then Tier 10 was not unreachable. It might take centuries, perhaps millennia – but it was not impossible.

  Just really, really difficult.

  “Janje can tutor you!” she continued. “Janje is a master of Spirit Casting, Nature Casting and Soul Arts! Janje can help masakh become stronger!”

  Tutoring? I never even contemplated the possibility. My experience with tutors was never something I willingly sought out, but something forced upon me.

  Why would you tutor me?

  “Silly masakh! Janje is Masakh’s friend! Friends always help each other!”

  Friend? That was ridiculous. She was not my ‘friend’. She was a disembodied voice attached to a cave that I only met less than six hours ago. I was a floating blob called a Shade, and through our brief interactions, she believed I was her friend?

  Okay. I acquiesced. If she believed I was her friend, I was not going to waste my time attempting to correct her.

  “Masakh hasn’t had any friends before. Janje can tell. Don’t worry! Janje will be Masakhs best friend!”

  It was annoying. The amount of importance people placed on something as trivial as “having friends.” I did have numerous friends, in my past life –

  No. I was not going to lie. There were acquaintances, play-dates and the few times I was in a relationship, but I had no “friends” to speak of. I never entered kindergarten, and was home-schooled until my preteens. Despite attending a prestigious school with people of my social class in, I was socially awkward and erroneously thought that showing off my advanced knowledge from copious tutoring would win me adoration and adulation. It did not. Labeled a teacher’s pet on the first day, on the second people rolled their eyes when I rose my hand to answer questions. On the third, their legs began to ‘accidentally’ trip me.

  Moving past my preteens into my teens, the stage of social awkwardness died and was replaced by that of paranoia and distrust. I stopped bothering to actively participate in class and entered a rebellious stage that my father started forcing me to do menial work in hopes that it would humble me. I remembered constantly believing that the only reason people interacted with me was for the sake of having me as a “contact” should they require my assistance, or should they wish to have an “in” to my family.

  My coll
ege years had me realizing that life was transactional. I spent money, threw parties, and was surrounded by friends who were awed by how much of a splendid person I was, despite many of them even not knowing my first name yet alone capable of listing five facts about me. My first girlfriend was someone who “liked me for me,” and I was certain that taking her shopping to foreign countries and buying her an Italian car had nothing to do with it. Breaking up after refusing to spend millions on a party for her birthday was merely coincidence.

  It brought about a brief stage where I actively pursued conservative Church girls out of the desire to find someone who truly could not be bought. In the end, moral values were worth less than financial security.

  I pushed aside memories of the past and focused on the present. Janje was offering to tutor me in her magic. Janje believed I was her ‘friend’ and was unaware of how much “Meg” frightened me. I could use this.

  Janje can you teach me this... Soul Arts?

  Janje giggled. “No silly. Masakh cannot learn the same type of magic used by the –”

  The cave abruptly went silent. I gained the unusual sensation that Janje was remembering something.

  Janje?

  “Soul Arts... is used by the... Dryads... no – but – no – they don’t... it was not – wasn’t it – ” Janje’s voice was much lower, and much less childish than usual. I could already feel myself getting nervous.

  “Janje mastered Soul Arts... but... Janje is a masakh... isn’t... she?”

  The second I heard the third person pronoun, I knew that there was going to be trouble. Janje, calm down – calm down –

  “But – Janje surprised masakh could speak Ancient Dryadi – so – Janje calls Masakh, masakh – why – why would Janje call masakh masakh if Janje is masakh?” Her voice was reducing slowly in pitch. “What... what is Janje?”

  Janje is Janje right? I said, already planning to make my escape in case Meg showed up. Janje is Janje – you – you are you.