Deadworld Isekai

Even for those with rotten luck, they're never unlucky in every respect. Something has to give at some point.

Was Matt facing a giant worm? Yes. Did it seem basically invulnerable to any attack that he might make on it that wasn't flat-out suicidal? Sure. Could it win by just falling on him? Absolutely it could.

But was the worm faster than Matt? No. He had to work hard to keep ahead of it, and he wasn't so much faster that he could turn around and take pot shots or out-maneuver it. All he could do was stay out of its attack range and even build up a small lead without burning his stamina down too fast. That was good luck, because the worm was big enough that standing on a boulder wasn't anything near a real defense against it.

“Damn.” Lucy generally kept quiet during fights, but this particular battle was devolving into a running match. “I don’t think this thing is gonna give up.”

“Nope, but it can’t catch us, either.” Matt suddenly swerved at a 45-degree angle, changing their course substantially.

“Do you think it's trying to lead us somewhere? A trap? It looks like it's pushing us in a direction,” Lucy said.

“Nope. I have a plan for that,” said Matt.

“Which is?” asked Lucy.

“I change course every time you curse,” said Matt.

It couldn’t last forever, though. From time to time, despite Matt’s zigzags, they’d get run into an obstacle, whether that was a short cliff, a ravine, or whatever. Matt was hopeful that the worm would make a mistake and launch itself into the ravine or crash into a rock wall. Unfortunately, his luck had worn thin and the worm seemed to have baseline knowledge of the terrain of the forest too comprehensive for that kind of trick.

Eventually, it was clear to Matt, at least, that they were at an impasse. As he ran, he tried to build some sort of long-shot weapons, but he was hard-pressed to think of a situation where they would be effective. Just the weight of the worm was enough to kill Matt.

“I know I ask this a lot, but how was even a full party supposed to kill this thing?” Matt asked.

“Ranged attacks and magic, probably,” Lucy listed off. “And you’d be surprised what a level 10 tank can stop. They might not be able to hold this thing off forever, but they could take a couple of shots while it was exposed. Maybe keep it from sinking back into the soil when it breaches, if their strength was high enough.”

Matt supposed he could see that. If someone had endurance to tank the damage from a single hit and strength to keep part of the thing elevated, someone else like Leel could cook the worm. Matt didn’t have anything like that, but the image did give him some inspiration, provided he could get away.

“We have to go back to the ravine. Probably a few times.”

“Why?”

“We have to build a bridge.”

Running back to the ravine, Matt ran alongside the gap until he saw what he was looking for: a big, old tree that had made the mistake of growing close enough to the edge such that it could be made into a bridge. Activating Spring-Fighter to get several seconds worth of lead, Matt bashed his shovel into the base of the tree like an axe with all the momentum he could get, and then ran away. It took the better part of an hour of circling, but between his enhanced strength and unbreakable shovel, he finally had a good portion of the tree trunk carved away.

As he came around on the tree the final time, he ran as fast as he could, leapt, and slammed into the tree as hard as he could. These days, as hard as he could was pretty hard. With all his stats running at full, he made for a pretty good human battering ram and felt the wood of the tree crack and groan under the impact of his body. Whatever satisfaction he felt from that was quickly erased as the tree sprung back in the opposite direction. Instead of snapping, the tree swayed before going down in Matt's direction.

Matt desperately rolled out of the way, but wasn’t fast enough to keep the tree from pinning his legs to the ground. Judging by the pain, it broke both of them.

“Matt! Incoming!” Lucy screamed.

The worm was coming in hot and heavy. Matt didn’t have the strength or the leverage to shift the tree outright, and did the only thing he could do, grabbing his shovel and digging ineffectively at an awkward angle to get enough dirt moved that he could squeeze his legs out. It shouldn’t have worked at all, but the digging skill had always been wonky in the sense that it just generally made him better at digging. He could dig faster and with better form, but he also could penetrate the dirt better than he should be able to with a given amount of force.

By the time the worm had arrived and came out of the ground, he had cut a shallow trench on the side of each leg. Using every ounce of his strength, he spread his legs out to the sides. As each leg moved into the trench, the ground and bark of the tree ripped deep gashes in his skin, but he was free.

Matt had other problems besides being trapped, though. Both of his legs were shattered, and he had several tons of worm hovering over him waiting to crash down and end things. He didn’t like it, but he really only had one option. Pushing off with both hands and flaring Spring-Fighter, he pushed directly away from the tree, skidding back on his butt just in time to avoid the worm’s crushing attack, then fall into the ravine.

—

“Matt. Wake up. Fast.”

Matt didn’t remember much of the fall, just a jumble of ping-ponging off ravine walls, snapping bones, and stinging pain. And then he was knocked out. A mercy. The fall would have certainly killed a normal person, but as he woke up, he could feel Rub Some Dirt On It in full effect, doing its best to knit his bones back together. He put some weight on his arm, only to have it bend at an alarmingly strange angle when he tried to use it to stand up.

“Not quite there yet, huh? That was stupid, Matt. Really stupid.”

“Yeah, I know. But what was I going to do?”

“No idea. But probably not that. A whole tree falling on you followed by a dry-land cliff dive is probably a new world record for things going wrong for us.”

“Us?”

“I got dragged along for that wild ride, Matt. Do you know how weird that is for me? It’s weird. It’s like being the ball part of one of those elastic-band yo-yos.”

“Well, sorry. Any sign of the worm?”

“Not yet.” Lucy stamped her feet. “It’s all rock down here. I’m not sure it could get down here, even if it wanted to. At least not without using the same route you chose.”

That was good. Matt healed pretty fast outside of combat, but it was still going to take time to get him back into fighting shape. For now, there was nothing he could do but hold still and let his healing skill do its work. Technically, there was one thing that he could do. Talk.

“Hey, Lucy? Remember when we were talking to Leel?”

“Yeah, that asshole. What about it?”

“You promised you’d tell me about your past, where you came from. I was sort of hoping you’d bring it up during our vacation, but you didn’t. I just… like, listen. You don’t want to talk about it, and I’m probably an asshole for asking, but…”

“No… Matt, I get it. You have a right to know. And you're right, I have been avoiding it. For a long time, it didn’t matter. And now everything is so weird it’s hard to know what matters. But… I just wanted to seem normal, you know? I don’t want to be a thing to you, like how Leel thinks of his necklace.”

“I understand. I'm sorry.”

Lucy sighed. “It’s fine. And honestly, there’s not a lot to tell.”

“I’m interested, even if it’s boring. There’s not a ton to do down here anyway.”

“It’s not a matter of boring, Matt. There’s literally not a lot to tell. Do you remember when I told you that a guardian is supposed to be a voluntary job title?”

“Yeah, and then the system took that away. You mentioned it, that I wasn’t supposed to be able to even find you.”

“Well, yeah. But it’s not just that. It’s not just a job that we're able to quit, it’s a job we don’t have to take in the first place. We get a choice. When I got my choice, it was in a weird sort of office environment, with some different system instance beaming information about the job directly into my head, showing me images of other guardians doing their jobs. It looked fun, so I accepted.”

“What about before that?”

“That’s the thing. There was no ‘before that’. It was just that. I was me, I was in a room, I had a choice, and I didn’t know enough to understand how weird that was. And then I was alone on a planet. You were the second conversation I can even remember having.”

“So…” Matt was shocked. He had always assumed when it came time to learn about Lucy, he’d also learn about some sort of guardian race, living on some kind of guardian planet somewhere. This was different. “So do you think the system… built you?”

“I used to. And that’s part of why I didn’t tell you about any of this. We had a good thing going, and I didn't want to ruin that by potentially being some kind of system-controlled sleeper agent.”

“You aren’t. I don’t know a lot, but I know that. It would have activated you by now, for one. But, Lucy, you also just aren’t. I know you. You aren’t going to betray me.”

Lucy sniffed a little and looked away. “Thanks, Matt. I was hoping you’d say something like that. It means a lot.” She took a couple seconds to compose herself, rubbed her face with both hands, before she turned back. “Anyway, I thought about it, and I don’t think the system even could build something like me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Think about it. You’ve given the system a lot of trouble, right? That’s because you are a free person, with free will. You can sort of do whatever you want, within the confines of what you can actually do. From the system’s perspective, that’s probably a pain in the ass. We know it can build bodies because it built you one. So if it could build people like me, why wouldn’t it just… do that? You know, just program their heroes. It would be easier. We know the system would like that.”

“Fair. So… where did you come from, then?”

Lucy’s hands flopped down by her side, and she looked up at Matt with a distressed look on her face. “Matt, I don’t know. I obviously have a full personality, right? It takes a life of experiences to create that. I want some things, I don’t want other things, I can make choices. It doesn’t seem like all that could just pop out of the air, right?”

Lucy plopped down on the ground in despair. Matt ignored what pain he felt from his still-knitting bones, propped himself up, and scooted nearer to her. He couldn’t touch her, as much as he wanted to do something to comfort her. But at least he could be near her, and let her know he was there for her. Lucy took a few moments, forced herself to stop crying, then looked up at Matt again.

“I’m just, you know, I’m obviously a person, right? I’m somebody.” Despite her best efforts, she started crying again, unable to keep the sobs out of her voice.

“But who am I?”