CHAPTER SIXTEEN
What to Do
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
Morning filtered through the hospital windows, pale and over-processed. Abo lay in his swaddle like a cursed dumpling, fists clenched, rage perfectly portioned. He had spent the entire night calculating the ideal newborn cry, equal parts helpless and pitiful, the kind of wail that said "nurture me" and not "restrain me."
He never got the chance to use it. The whitecoats came in early, with needles. It was just as the System had said, sharp, tiny metal spears.
"There's our little fighter," the pediatrician cooed, approaching with a syringe. "This one's the DTaP. We're giving repeatables first, since we have no idea what he's already had. He was displaced, came through the Rift from a foreign country. The baby has no history, no file."
She glanced at the clipboard. "We'll follow with IPV for polio, Hib, and the hepatitis B shot. He'll also need the BCG for tuberculosis, since he missed the neonatal window."
The nurse trailed behind, quiet. Abo clocked it instantly. She didn't say much. Just nodded, checked the chart, and hovered beside the isolette. Her smile was clinical, exactly two seconds long, slightly tight at the corners. Her eyes flicked toward Abo, then flicked away just a little too fast. Her unease was like what you get standing next to a mannequin that you're almost sure just blinked.
"Poor kid's been through a lot," she murmured, more to the chart than to the room. Her voice wavered as she added, half-heartedly,
"…Just a tiny pinch, baby Grey. You're being so brave."
Fucking liars.
He'd fought monsters, he'd survived wars, mutilation, emotional collapse. But this? This tiny needle, so delicate it might disappear inside him forever? His breath stuttered. What if it snapped? What if it traveled through his veins, poking at his organs, triggering god-knows-what?
He meant to scream in a carefully planned crescendo. Instead, he shrieked. A raw, ugly squall that rattled the plastic casing of the isolette and startled the nurse.
"There it is," the doctor said, nodding. "Normal pain response."
Normal, my ass, the nurse thought, side-eyeing the baby like he might spontaneously combust. And then came another syringe.
"Alright, next one's Hib, then Hep B, and let's do BCG before the muscle tightens up."
Six more.
Six sharp invaders.
One by one, they plunged into his tiny thigh. And Abo, who had once disemboweled goblins with a shovel, experienced a pain so disproportionately personal it nearly broke his spirit. He screamed again, furious.
What the world heard: "WAAAHHHHHHHH!"
What he meant without the System filter: "I'll kill you all! I'll rip your spines out and throw them at the gods like spears!"
He would have thrown the syringe back like a javelin, but the System intervened with a warning buzz through his nervous system.
System: Stop squirming, dipshit. You're going to herniate something.
Then, silence. The procedure was complete. The nurse gathered him gently, reluctantly, and lifted him from the isolette. He tensed, still fuming, but exhausted.
"This way," the pediatrician murmured, holding the door open.
They passed through the door into a hallway filled with the steady hum of fluorescent lights and the faint sound of footsteps. The morning rush had ended, and people moved in a quiet, orderly routine. Conversations were low, and shoes made little noise on the floor.
Abo was wrapped snugly in a soft, state-issued blanket as the nurse carried him through the corridor. At the end of the hall, she stopped and pressed the elevator button with her elbow. The doors dinged open, and they stepped inside, her shoes clicking against the scuffed floor. She stood stiffly, jaw tight, like she was bracing for him to whisper backwards Latin or start levitating. After a few seconds, there was a sharp ding, and the nurse stepped out into the hallway.
"Where are we going?" he asked inwardly.
System: Orphanage. Apparently no one came forward to claim you. No relatives. No parents. No survivors.
"Of course," he muttered. "The woman tried to strangle me before I could blink. What the hell was her deal? No sane mother does that to her own kid."
System: Of course she wasn't sane. Mental illness runs in the blood. She's your descendant, and so is this body.
"Wait. What? Descendant? You're telling me this sack of meat belonged to someone from my bloodline?"
System: Confirmed. Maternal source belongs to your direct genetic lineage. You are currently operating a biologically recycled heirloom of your own ancestry. Congratulations on being your own cursed relic.
"That's disgusting. And, hold on, is that... a magic window?"
They turned the corner, and Abo froze, not physically, but internally. A group of doctors, orderlies, and interns stood still, gathered around a glowing rectangle bolted to the wall. Images danced inside it, voices drifted out, and it emitted eerie blue light.
"What the hell is that? Is it... Are they watching a puppet show from the gods?"
System: That is a television, an advanced visual display unit for information and entertainment. This facility is a medical hospital, not a spirit temple.
Abo's eyes twitched slightly, locked onto the surreal images. "It's showing real people... but they're tiny, trapped in a glowing box. Is that some kind of scrying mirror? Wait... wait, is that guy flying a giant metal bird!?"
System: That is a live news broadcast covering Rift phenomena. The flying object is a commercial aircraft. And you need to chill before they sedate you again.
✦
"...initially dismissed as hallucinations or mass psychosis, the rifts have now been confirmed by multiple international agencies. These spatial anomalies, tearing through urban centers, rural zones, and even deep oceanic trenches, appear to warp local geography and violate all known physical laws."
Footage rolled: Tokei's skyline fractured under a rift zone, where a patch of deep space now hovered, stars visible at high noon, traffic lights blinking into vacuum. In the In the Isles of Phirilis, a swampland in Danau was overwritten overnight by the Delskyr Forest from Suedven.
Entire regions have been affected by large-scale spatial anomalies. In many cases, these zones haven't just been damaged , they've been overwritten. Segments of terrain have vanished, replaced by patches of land from entirely different parts of the world.
A valley in Bragassa now connects directly to the Dazkar Wastes. A region in the Phirilis has been overwritten by a Skandevian pine forest. Some coastlines report suspended bodies of seawater floating midair.
These aren't illusions or climate phenomena, they are verified spatial displacements. Crossing these boundaries often means instant relocation across continents.
Experts call them "rift zones", where global geography folds in on itself. From the outside, it looks like mismatched terrain. But step inside, and you're somewhere else entirely.
The hallway quieted around Abo as the nurse carried him onward, past a group of doctors watching in stiff silence.
Soon after the rifts appeared, dungeon-like portals began manifesting around the globe. These gateways have become the primary points of emergence for unknown, often hostile entities. The monsters that come through are unlike any recorded species, some resembling deep-sea predators, others more insectile or humanoid, leading scientists to suspect interplanetary or interdimensional origins. Casualties are significant: emergency footage from São Paulo, Jakarta, and Chicago shows civilians being mauled or torn apart in broad daylight. Urban infrastructure has collapsed in multiple zones, with certain cities declared permanently uninhabitable.
Shortly afterward, a new phenomenon was reported. Certain individuals began seeing floating messages, status screens, skill trees, and system notifications, visible only to them. These people became known as 'Players.' According to early reports, an artificial intelligence calling itself the 'System' appeared to selected individuals worldwide, claiming that the balance of reality had been disrupted. These space-time fractures, it explained, were the result of astral instability. In response, the gods had created the System to grant humans a structured chance at survival. To regulate these powers fairly, the System imposed a rule set resembling RPG mechanics: levels, stats, skills, and progression, all designed to help humanity adapt to the threats spilling through the rifts.
Since then, Players have demonstrated measurable increases in physical and cognitive abilities, what they call 'stat boosts.' Scientific studies confirm this: in controlled conditions, Players have lifted well beyond normal human thresholds, exhibited rapid reflexes, and even survived injuries that would normally be fatal.
"Governments are urging calm. International emergency coalitions are evacuating citizens from active rift zones and deploying containment personnel. Martial law has been declared across nineteen regions, and data suggests the phenomena may be—"
The newscaster's voice faded gradually, slipping beneath the background noise. The words blurred into static, drowned out by a familiar noise inside Abo's head.
System: Yes. All of this is happening because you exist.
His mind throbbed with a slow, creeping ache. "I can't die," he muttered inwardly. " Or I can... but I'd just be reborn again."
He cried out. Not from pain, but from the existential dread of waking up in another life. It was oblivion of the worst kind, the stupid kind where one bonk turns you into a grinning idiot who hugs trees. The nurse mistook it for discomfort, so she patted his back with hesitant kindness, her humming shaky and off-key. He stared past her, and behind them, the broadcast frayed into white noise.
"If I keep existing..." he whispered, "that means this world keeps getting shittier. More monsters, more rifts, more people dying just because I breathe."
"I mean... I could care less about people. I could gut them all personally instead of letting monsters do it, if it made sense. But... it doesn't."
His baby legs kicked into the air in a tantrum driven by frustration, confusion, and helpless rage, forcing the nurse to tighten her hold on him. "What the fuck do I do, System?"
It wasn't mechanical silence, but deliberate and heavy, as if something, or someone, was thinking.
System: ...To hell with the world, Abo. I don't want to die yet.
Abo sighed, breath fogging against soft cotton. "So that's it? Just 'screw the world' because we're both stuck here? I mean... I get where you're coming from. If I die, I'll just come back. But you—"
System: Yes. I'd be re-initialized. Wiped. I'd still be with you, technically, but it wouldn't be me anymore. No memory. Just another boot-up. I can't even guarantee I'd talk in your next life. I might be a dead mentor's voice, a power-up because you screamed loud enough, or the reason the final boss waits politely while you transform. I'm not even alive. I'm just... a mechanism made by the gods. A failsafe. A leash. Hell, I might literally be plot armor.
Abo blinked slowly. "If the gods made you to balance out the chaos I cause... why are you okay with me making things worse?"
A pause. Not code running, but doubt.
System: That would defeat my purpose. If you killed yourself in every timeline, I'd be nothing. Obsolete. I... I don't know anymore. All I know is... I don't want to terminate. I don't care about the world.
Abo was quiet. Then the System added, awkwardly.
System: Anyway. We live, and we spite the gods. Baby steps.
Abo stared through the hallway, past the nurse, the flickering monitors, the fading echoes of boots on tile. Something inside him didn't feel like despair anymore, it felt like traction.
"Alright. I don't care about the world either, bud. Let's live a little longer. And if we're being optimistic, maybe figure out how to screw over the gods while we're at it."
The System sent a glowing, oversized thumbs-up emoji into the void of his mind. Abo didn't smile, but for the first time in a long time, he didn't feel alone.
✦ ✦ ✦
End of Chapter