Deadworld Isekai

Matt's long walk had left its mark on him. His whole body was more solid now, not necessarily bigger, but generally firmer and stronger-seeming than when he had first arrived on Gaia. His feet, which used to be prone to blisters, were now enveloped in well-earned callouses. Where the sun could get to his skin, he was deeply tan.

These changes were independent of whatever buffs his new stats were providing. As he journeyed through the wasteland, he noticed the day-by-day improvements in how far and how easily he could walk. His balance got better as he learned to negotiate difficult terrain and he'd walk a bit further each day. These changes weren't reflected in his status screen, but he could feel the improvements. It seemed that the VIT stat was an improvement beyond his normal biological abilities rather than an overall ranking.

He was a different person in every physical aspect since he had first arrived. Those were easy to feel and notice. What Matt hadn't noticed was his mental state changing from being alone for so long. He didn't anticipate what suddenly hearing a human voice after so long would do to him.

The hand which he had extended gently to alert the probably-a-girl froze. As did the rest of him. He was like a deer caught in headlights. The person sitting in front of him did nothing to break this status. Eventually, his brain caught up to him, and he said the first that came to mind. It was not profound.

“You talked!”

“No shit I talked, Sherlock. Now beat it. You aren’t welcome.”

In Matt’s state, those words were about as effective as telling a dog not to pick up dropped bacon. He immediately circled the campfire to be opposite the girl - and it was a small girl, he saw, no doubt now - and plopped down in the dirt, staring at her like she was a wonder of the world.

“Why are you here? I thought everyone was dead. Are there survivors? Why are you alive?” The words boiled out of Matt mouth in rapid fire.

“I’m here because I have to be.” The girl responded gloomily.

That wasn't particularly helpful. Matt's addled mind jumped to the previous system notification that he saw.

“But isn't everyone dead?”

“Everyone is dead. There are no survivors, including me. I’m not alive. Does that help you? Is that enough to get you to go away and leave me alone now?”

Matt was unbelievably happy to talk to someone, even if that someone was relentlessly negative.

“What do you mean you're not alive?” asked Matt.

“I'm a construct. What your system probably refers to as a guide or guardian. This was supposed to be a voluntary job, and that system of yours is ruining it. You're not supposed to be able to find me,” said the girl.

“Wait… why? If you're the guardian… the one that was meant to help me select a class, shouldn't you want to help?” Reality started to sink in, just a bit. But it was enough for him to notice that he was actually talking to his system guardian, the person who was supposed to actually help him make sense of everything. And she didn’t seem to want to do that at all.

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’m going to explain some things. Just a few, so you get the idea and get out of here a little quicker.”

She picked up a rock.

“You see this? Good. Now watch.” She pulled back her hand, then spun it through the air a couple of times in an exaggerated windup before chucking the rock at Matt’s head. With his increased perception, he could barely track the thing visually. What he couldn’t do was dodge in time. He winced in anticipation of an impact that never came. The rock disappeared just as it was about to hit him.

“First lesson: I’m not real. I'm somewhere between your personal hallucination and a real person. I think, I can talk, I exist in a sense, but only you can see or hear me. Which would mean something if there was anyone else alive in this world.”

While the guardian talked, Matt had a sinking sensation in his stomach. His mind raced back to the documentaries he saw about people lost in the desert seeing an oasis before they died. Or the seafarers that imagined islands. He wasn't a psychologist, but it seemed at least possible that he had generated this guardian from scratch, a sort of imagined artifact of his loneliness. But imagined or not, she was a shot at staying alive.

“What about the rock?” he asked.

“Part of the package. I can make you see certain small-scale illusions for teaching purposes. Now, the system spins one of me up every time it deposits one of you reincarnation guys somewhere, right? But if you stop and think about that for just a second, you might realize that’s really, really close to… can you guess?”

Matt shrugged.

“Didn’t think so. It's slavery. The system builds little slaves to do this because it takes too much processing power for it to do it itself. We’re cheaper. But it also doesn’t like to think of itself that way, so we are supposed to have some rights. Like refuse to help. We usually don’t. But I did. And you are still here.”

“But… wait. Just a second.” Matt scrambled around the fire, which he was beginning to suspect might be an illusion. He got a few feet from her and stopped. “Why don’t you want to help me? You just said guardians usually do help. And I need the help. What’s different?”

The guardian took that as a prompt to launch into a new tirade, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it's because this planet is a bombed out, lost-cause wasteland? Maybe because there's no one alive to actually save? Or resources to use? And maybe, the system should freaking check for those things before it sends us to a planet. But it’s freaking lazy, so it didn’t. And now, here we are. Or rather, here I am.” Out of nowhere, she had a stick in her hand, which she used to stoke her illusory fire as she continued ranting, “In fact, I’m guessing that the asshole system is being pretty quiet right about now. You aren’t getting those fun system dings so much. Am I right?”

Now that she mentioned, Matt noticed that the system had been pretty quiet since he got here. He hadn't been paying close attention to it with shock of seeing another human, but he probably should have received a quest complete notification when he got here, or achievement notice, or really anything.

“You aren't wrong,” Matt said carefully.

“That’s because this isn’t supposed to happen. It screwed up, and now it’s in hiding. Do me a favor and ask it if it’s even allowed to send you here. See what it says.”

“Are you saying the system window is sapient?”

“Yes, and that’s not something I feel like explaining right now. Just go ask it.”

Matt mentally sent the query. It took a few moments longer than usual for the response to pop up.

System Guardian Right of Refusal

System Guardians can turn down assignments or refuse positions assisting reincarnated entities. However, exceptions exist for certain emergencies or necessities, such as an inability to send another guardian or exceptional danger to the reincarnator. In this situation, both apply.

It wasn't an answer to Matt's question but it was something. Matt relayed the message to the little girl.

“Oh, that’s just priceless. ‘Oh, look at me, I’m the system, and I have a bunch of built in exceptions for things I screwed up so I still don’t have to do anything about it.’ It’s rich. Matt. It made a huge mess, and it’s not going to do anything about it. So it just so happens that there's a special well-I-guess-it’s-your-problem-now rule? I’m not buying it, and I’m not doing it.”

As much as Matt might have agreed with her anger, he still needed her help. There wasn’t any way around it. He didn’t understand how anything worked, except the bit he had been able to figure out through trial and error. That left him with the task of convincing a very small, very pissed pretend-girl to help him when she clearly didn’t want to. He sat in silence for a moment considering plans of attack, then got to it.

“Listen, I get that you are pissed. I’m angry too. Think about it. I was dumped here, expecting a garden planet adventure…”

“I don't care,” the girl cut him off. Instead of being talkative, she had suddenly gone back to her original curt phrases.

“Well.. Look, I don’t know how anything works. I don’t know about skills and classes and..”

“Not my problem.”

“I’m going to starve out here without help!”

“Also not my problem, and also that’s going to happen eventually, no matter what I do. So why should I get off my ass?”

“But…”

“No buts. I told the system no, and it sent you anyway. I told you no, and I even explained some stuff for you when I didn’t have to, but the answer is still no. Sorry, but it’s not my fault, and it’s not my problem. So I formally decline to watch you slowly die for no reason on a stupid lost world you can’t save anyway.”

Matt was out of arguments to try to make. Not that she’s listening to me anyway, he thought. But he couldn’t leave. He sat there by the fire, hoping she’d change her mind. In response, she shifted the entire scene a few feet to the left, materializing a short-distance away with her back to him. He sat for a few minutes before the long-awaited system notifications started pouring in.

Ding!

Quest Complete!

Finding your direction
You found your guardian, but it appears she’s reluctant to help! Can you convince her otherwise?

Objective: Identify the nature of the scanned anomaly
Difficulty: A

Rewards: Increased authority over system guardians, permanent access to system compass

Oh, that bodes poorly, Matt thought. System, is this reward what I think it is?

Due to the special difficulties of your circumstances and the system guardian’s reluctance to help, you have been granted increased authority in the guardian and reincarnator relationship dynamic. Try it out!

“No, absolutely not,” Matt responded out loud before thinking about it.

He thought back to the girl's words. She wasn't wrong when she said that there was something fucked up about the system creating thinking beings and then forcing them to help hapless reincarnated humans. It was different if the guardian wanted to help. But forcing them to help was a moral tower that stood over him and she had been very clear that she didn't want to.

Over on her pretend log, the guardian turned around slightly to get him in her eyeline, “Hey, crazy? Could you keep it down? Some of us are waiting for you to die so they can dematerialize.”

She glared at him again to drive the message home before turning back to the fire. She looked away just as the next system message popped up.

Warning

Without system guardian assistance, your chances of survival drop significantly. System Guardians are specifically developed for each planet and possess knowledge and abilities related to communicating that knowledge that the system screen cannot provide.

The system probably wasn’t wrong about his survival chances. He still had some food left, but visible ruins were few and far between. He had seen two more during his long trek, but nothing substantial and none with food in them. He also hadn't come across any more dungeons. He had tried dozens of different ways to squeeze more help out of the system but it either couldn’t or wouldn’t give him much more information.

Without something changing, it looked pretty clear how Matt’s story would end, and it wasn’t a pretty thing to think about.