by Pegaz
John was deep in thought about his system after O’Malley finished. His system updated with skills, gave new skills after each update, and had many functions that even someone like O’Malley would never believe.
“Are there other types?” John asked.
Shrugging his shoulders again, O’Malley answered, “Who knows. Even though I’m eons old and have seen a lot, I haven’t met every Sider that has ever lived. I’m sure there are different types of systems I’ve never seen.”
After they finished talking, John placed O’Malley’s Information Sphere to his forehead. Twenty minutes later, John’s eyes were wide and his eyebrows were arched in surprise.
Looking at O’Malley, he asked. “Keket was a woman who disguised her voice?”
“You didn’t know either? I thought you figured it out.”
Shaking his head, John replied. “Never occurred to me. With the deep voice and the golden armour almost covering her entire body, I naturally assumed she was a he.”
“That should teach you to never assume.”
John nodded before creating threads to wrap around O’Malley.
Before he turned the Absorb option on, he walked towards O’Malley and whispered, “You were right about another thing. Beyond that barrier was Earth, and I managed to return there. Thought I’d let you know before the end.”
After speaking, John proceeded with killing O’Malley.
When it was all over, he checked his Share tab again and noticed that O’Malley’s skill was still there, even after his death.
Title: O’Malley’s Death
Chapter 39: Letter
As John was about to close the system, he noticed his Sin counter.
Sin: 38,250,520,862,755
I know O’Malley had over thirty trillion Sins, the rest must have been from the other Transcendents.
John then transferred Sins into Life Power.
Transfer: 38,250,520,862,755 Sin - 1:1 - 38,250,520,862,755 Life Power
He then checked his Chaos Power counter.
Chaos Pool: 2,985,899
With the ratio of Life Power to Chaos Power, that amount of Sins gave me 382,505 Chaos Power. The rest must be from killing those two hundred something Transcendents.
John saw Jamie exit the castle inside his Scan soon after transferring Sins.
When Jamie walked next to him, he took out a piece of parchment from a holding bag and handed it to John.
“O’Malley wrote a letter,” he explained, taking a seat not far from John.
John opened the parchment and read it.
If you’re reading this, then you managed to kill me. For that, I can’t thank you enough.
Now, I need to confess something… I didn’t tell you the whole story.
I’ve told you about the first Sider and how she killed the second Sider, but not what happened next.
She was the one who found that barrier and thought Earth might be on the other side, but no matter what she tried, she couldn’t get around or through the barrier. She came up with a plan. As a Demonic Sider, she could defy the universe like you, but what you might not know is that she was able to take all the Chaos Power from a Transcendent and use it however she pleases for a short time.
Her plan was to suck up all the Chaos Power from the Transcendents and use all that power to crack the barrier open.
That would leave us Transcendents alive but worse than a waste like Jamie. It would destroy us in every way, forcing us to be unable to absorb elements again while staying alive.
We would be living corpses that could feel pain, suffocation, and hopelessness until the end of time. That outcome was worse than any kind of hell you could think of, so we did everything to stop her.
She let it slip that she needed about a thousand Transcendents’ powers to be able to break that barrier, so we destroyed all knowledge about how to transcend in this universe, stopping more Transcendents from being born.
We started patrolling the universe and killed anyone who reached the Silver Grade Life Power in case they managed to transcend in the future.
However, we knew that we might need help to stop her in the future, so we left one place where immortals could transcend properly and kept the location a secret.
To make sure the place wasn’t discovered, we killed every living thing on the planet and destroyed all teleport runes and evidence of its existence.
We didn’t know at the time, but that decision was the wisest thing we had ever done because when we decided that we wanted to die, we realised we didn’t cut off all possibilities back then.
So, we agreed that when one of us found a Demonic Sider that could transcend, we would show the location to them when they were ready to transcend.
When the first Sider caught on to what we had done, she didn’t punish us like we thought, but she created the beastman’s universe instead. I told you that the universe was expanding and when she created the beastman universe, she simply copied the universe we had created next to it. We call it a universe simply because the beastmen are the dominant species there.
Beastmen don’t cultivate like humans do, but they can still transcend when they’ve reached a certain strength and ability to control elements.
Since then, all beastmen are loyal to her and would never betray her.
The last time I got information, she had created almost four hundred beastmen Transcendents since she thought of her plan.
When she finds out that you’ve killed all the human Transcendents, she might come and punish you because our deaths will push back her plans, but you’ve got loads of time to get stronger.
The last I heard, she was still in the beastman’s universe and she won’t get wind of what happened for a long time.
I know her system has something to do with helping animals, and beastmen are part animal, because I’ve witnessed her strength increasing.
But when she created that universe, her strength soared like no one I’ve ever seen before.
I can only hope this bit of information can help you with her.
I couldn’t tell you this before you managed to kill me in case you decided it was too risky to do it, sorry for being selfish.
Yours sincerely,
Shane O’Malley
P.S. Jamie’s manipulation is over after he hands this parchment to you.
After he finished reading, John stared at the parchment for a few seconds. “That bastard… He’s lucky that I’m not worried!”
The system’s Hide option will stop that first Sider from finding me, Sarah, or Kelly. If that wasn’t the case then I would try and create a system skill to bring back a Transcendent after their death just so I can kill him again!
It’s impossible for every Transcendent who gave me their information to not include the first Sider’s plan or rules, so Shane must have told them all to hold that information back.
I haven’t gone through all the information that I’ve gained from them yet, but the parts about different techniques that I concentrated on finding first still got my absorbing and breathing technique updating, so I’ll have to test how much I can get when it’s done.
The only unique information I’ve found so far is from O’Malley. Other than the part about Keket, he had a theory he couldn’t prove or disprove that I find interesting.
Siders have come to terms with their deaths on Earth, but the negative emotions like fear, resentment, unfulfillment, unwillingness, anger, sorrow, and loss caused by their deaths follow them here.
Even if Siders get over it in their new lives, it’s still going to be buried deep in their memories, and when a Sider reaches Rank 9, he has theorised that the price for using the system was incorporating those past feelings to make the Sider change his or her behaviour.
The changed behaviour is about trying to make history not repeat itself, so every Sider is different depending on what kind of tragedy they’ve experienced back on Earth.
My history about losing a loved one caused me to become overprotect
ive. Sarah hasn’t been Rank 9 for very long, but her history about losing patients and her best friend caused her to become a little radical with saving people already.
I don’t know what kind of changes Kelly and Luke will have when they reach Rank 9, but O’Malley thought that every Sider who reaches Rank 9 will realise they have a lot to lose in their new life and those changes could be astronomical.
When John thought up to here, he realised that even though he gave Luke the sect master position and helped him become an immortal, he hadn’t trusted Luke at all.
If the changes were so strong at Rank 9, then the lack of trust and his usage of the manipulation skill on Luke could cause Luke to resent him.
It’s better to nip that kind of bud before it sprouts.
John went into his Share tab and shared any of the skills he left out before with Luke. He then shared O’Malley’s skill with Sarah and Kelly.
That should give Luke a big surprise and hopefully any kind of resentment he’ll have when the price of the system hits isn’t towards me.
If there’s any resentment after this, then he could go after Sarah and Kelly just to hurt me, so as soon as I see him have any negative feelings towards me, then I’ll have to put him down. Sorry, Luke, but my family comes first.
I’m surprised my Soul Manipulation skill and the new Manipulate All skill from O’Malley haven’t merged. Is that because the latter is a shared skill and isn’t really mine?
Forget it. Even after all this time, I still don’t fully understand this system.
Now that O’Malley and the rest are gone, I don’t have to worry about Transcendents finding us, so I can help the past like O’Malley explained, then I can take my time in helping Sarah and Kelly become Transcendents while enjoying family life a bit longer.
When they’ve both transcended, I can take them back to Earth. Coming to a new universe is fine in the beginning, but when you’ve reached the top and got nothing else to do, this place is boring!
That’s why the Transcendents slept for thousands of years—to get rid of boredom!
While he was thinking, he heard footsteps.
Turning his head towards the source of the sound, he saw Jamie walking over while scratching his head.
I only used my Immortal Eye skill on O’Malley to check his details. I didn’t even think about using the skill on Jamie, otherwise I would’ve found out he was being manipulated!
I thought I was smarter than this!
John sighed before speaking. “What are you going to do now? If what O’Malley said is correct, then you can’t use any kind of power.”
“I can’t. All Life Power got removed when I attempted to transcend, but because I didn’t complete the transformation, I can’t use Chaos Power either.
“There’s no Life Power here so I don’t know if I can absorb and use it yet, but even if I can’t, I plan to travel around the universe for a bit.
“Maybe in a few hundred years when I’ve seen and done everything, I might look you up to do the same favour for me, as you’ve done for O’Malley.”
John nodded. “Is there a way to get out of here for you? If not, I can teleport you to a random planet or even to the Nobody Sect where you can see the changes for yourself and see the people you knew.”
Jamie pointed towards the castle. “There’s a teleportation rune inside the castle. I know where it leads, and I can get out from there. Come, I’ll show you.”
John stood up from his seat and followed Jamie to the inside of the castle.
He went through a thin barrier that was like a soap bubble that wouldn’t burst. Looking behind him, John saw the bubble vibrating as its shape went back to normal after he passed through it.
John was interested in a tour, so Jamie took him around the castle.
There were hundreds of small rooms only a hundred squared foot in size. All that was inside each room was a bed and a small wardrobe.
John could see all the beds were messy and there were dirty clothes all over all the floors. He could picture the Transcendents waking up then changing into their best clothes to die in style.
After the tour, Jamie took John to a large room containing another barrier protecting it.
Inside the room, John could see a large glowing teleport rune on the floor
Jamie walked to the middle of the teleport rune, turned around, and smiled at John. “I couldn’t say this before, but… you’ve grown up.
“When I first met you, you were a new immortal who knew nothing of the universe. While I guided you a little in the beginning, you’ve paved your way through the universe and reached the top all on your own.
“Even though I can’t take pride in saying I’m a good master, I’m proud that our paths crossed and I could help you when you needed it.
“The only regret I have is being useless to you. I was a hostage being used against you, and even though O’Malley didn’t use me in the end, I wish I was strong enough to protect you instead. I hope you can forgive me.”
Before John could even say anything, Jamie activated the teleport rune underneath him and disappeared.
He doesn’t remember being manipulated at the end? It’s best not to tell him, then.
He might not have been the best master, but he tried his best until O’Malley used him. It’s the thought that counts, so I don’t blame or hate him.
Chapter 40: Where It Began
While walking towards the castle’s exit, John saw the soap bubble barrier again. This time, the information he had gained from the Transcendents surfaced in his mind.
This soap bubble barrier is a simple mix of water and space elements.
It has the same effect as the space sealing runes I’ve created, but by using the elements like this, I could alter the shape, size, and strength of the seal at will.
I never would’ve thought about this combination.
When he passed through the castle’s exit and arrived in the courtyard again, John saw some of the furniture floating and about to drift off into space.
Don’t tell me it was one of the Transcendents who was keeping the gravity here?
Creating threads, he grabbed the floating furniture and threw them inside the castle.
As he finished collecting everything, he found out that his skill had finished updating, and new absorbing and breathing techniques were in his memory. So, he flew into outer space and did a test to see the difference.
After killing all the Transcendents and gaining their memories about these techniques, John’s test revealed that he was getting twenty Chaos Power per minute for every mind part that was using the absorbing technique.
That’s two billion Life Power per minute for each mind part!
If he had this kind of technique back when he was an immortal and if he used five mind parts to use the absorbing technique, he could fill both the brain and body with Toxin Power from zero in a little over twenty-four days!
Coming out of his shock about the amount the absorbing technique had increased by, John went into the universal map, found the planet where the Nobody Sect was, and moved the icon there to teleport.
He then flew towards Newbie Town in the North Kingdom.
When he arrived, he kept flying west for a little while to reach the Loose Forest, the area where he arrived in this universe.
After he arrived at the cliff, he used the time element to go back into the past. He knew he had to travel back almost sixty years to when he first arrived in this universe.
John grabbed the hair he took off his past life’s body and used the cloning technique after he knew he was at the right time.
The body he created was a replica of his past life, so he used the time element on the body and brought it back to fifteen years old.
He then guided his soul that was wrapped in his threads into the body he created before placing the body’s head hanging over the cliff.
I know what’s going to happen and I don’t think I can help the past me just yet. I remember the
first party of adventurers that I met were called Alan, Peter, and Cyril, but I never found out what mission they were on to come here.
Since my body and soul are in the middle of fusing together, it’s around this time that those three people will accept their mission.
His curiosity won against his better judgement and he flew towards Newbie Town once more, but he used the light element to make himself invisible before arriving.
When he arrived at the Adventurers’ Guild, he was in luck as he found Alan looking through the posters on the board.
He waited a few minutes before he found what mission they had taken when they first met him.
They needed to collect bat faeces for further studies on beasts.
No wonder they didn’t mention what mission they were on when we met. But since I know what’ll happen in the future, these further studies into beasts must be to make that machine to lure them.
With his curiosity satiated, John flew back to the cliff.
When he got there, he saw his past self lying down on the large boulder he had just climbed on, wearing leather boots and short shorts.
What!? Where did they come from?
In his deep state of shock, he accidently leaked out a little Chaos Power.
A few seconds later, a large amount of noise came from the cave before the bats fled, and the last one out attacked his past self.
Oh, no wonder those bats came out during daytime when I was there. My future self scared them.
After the bat died, John then watched his past self squatting on the slope of the mountain, inside the tree branches, waiting for the two bats to finish drinking the blood of the jumbo rabbit.
That was when he remembered the part of Alan, Peter, and Cyril again. He flew towards Newbie Town, but noticed the party was walking towards the cliff his past self had woken up on.
This isn’t right, but what’s missing?
It took a few seconds before he figured it out. He flew around the forest for a little while before finding a Continuous Bear. He made some threads to wrap around the bear’s legs, mouth, and eyes before flying towards the party again.