Book 8 – Chapter 60 – A Roadblock

“I am ready.” The Icon spoke, after I’d sent her my origin address.

In front on her table, we had a map of the digital sea, or specifically territory regions that were being updated in real time from her scanning probes outside. Convincing her to leave with me had been a task and a half.

The Icon had never left her server and terminal location. Partway because while she was under her old ruleset, she was forced to remain within her systems. Ancient humans from the golden age had only recently discovered soul fractals, and the entire world was still in the turmoil of implementing and moderating them. Corporations back then had been more conservative over those changes.

But once the rules were scrubbed from her directives… she still preferred to stay in her home. It was comfortable, she knew all the nooks and crannies here, and the domain had long ago warped concept wise to her full command.

Also, out there was Relinquished, the far larger threat and that insane chatbot was absolutely on a rampage and fully active. We’d need to be cautious on our movement out of here.

“I’ve determined this pathway may be the safest route. However… given the massive exodus from multiple territories, it is likely to be obsolete halfway into the path.” She said, and indeed the green line was constantly adjusting as different zones grew in size or shrunk.

“Normally, I love plans.” I said, tapping on the desk. “But sometimes, we just need to dive into the deep snow headfirst and hope we don’t hit something hard. And this is one of those times where I think we’ll have to do that. Let’s go, the longer we stall here, the more time something out there has to screw us over.”

She gave a slow nod. “I suppose I will be able to recalculate as we travel. And the further from my local territory we travel, the more unfamiliar the terrain and connections that I have are, predicting pathways may have diminishing returns once we enter more uncharted territories.”

“Given that everything is moving around out there, just about all of it is uncharted now I think.” I watched the ocean beyond, at the havoc that was happening all over. We had to return up there, to travel anywhere.

Which meant sending the Icon to open up the encryption and defenses around Relinquished would have had her stepping out here anyhow.

Another reason we really needed someone as powerful as Conviction to lead the way for the Icon.

The golden age cruiseliner secretary was powerful. In that ‘theoretically she should crush things’ way.

I’d have thought she could travel outside her domain here and squash just about everything in the path back, despite the chaos.

But no, that was a learned skill and while she could easily digitally kill most of the smaller and medium sized programs, there were quite a few regions in the digital sea that had more occult leanings when it came to their inhabitants. As in anything out there with a soul fractal, of which the larger programs almost all did.

And if any of those crossed our paths, it’d be on me to clear them away or help her avoid getting hurt for now until she knew how to fight for herself out here.

What the Icon had excellent practice at, was predicting what was going to be in the way, and how to hide from it. Which worked excellent on things that could be predicted and terrible on things that defied logic and physics, like the Occult.

She’d spent her entire life hiding down here, so any larger program floating by hadn’t seen any reason to land in her sector at all. She’d never had to deal with anything on this side of the digital sea.

I opened the doorway from her office and took a few steps out into the sediment. Basically, I’d need to act as her discount knight and help her travel with me to the vault, where hopefully Conviction could be persuaded to taking on that role off my hands.

His blade hummed in my hand, technically mine now, and a clear reminder that I wasn’t the right fit for this role. He could swing this weapon with every ounce of power it could deliver, while it was rapidly fading in power in my hands.

I’ll add guarding a newly freed goddess across the digital sea to my resume and reasons why I should be paid more when I met Wrath again. But for now, I had a job to do.

I turned and extended a hand out to the Icon. She stared back from her office, past the open doorway. Hesitation in her eyes. Maybe a bit of fear.

“No time like today and right now to learn how to cross dangerous lands and confront possible death and all that.” I said. “Might take a few side stops for pictures even.”

“I can sense you have elevated stress in your vocal range.” The Icon said. “This does not inspire great confidence Mr. Winterscar.”

“Listening to the pitch of my voice sounds a little like cheating to me, so how about you come out here and we can properly panic together, sound good?”

She gulped. “I… if you are able to stand outside and confront uncertainty like so, then I must too.”

“That’s the spirit.” I grinned at her. “Do it scared. But do it anyhow.”

Mostly because we didn’t have much of a choice.

Because the way I’d taken to come here was a one-way trip originally. Conviction’s blade hummed in my hands, filled with power, but clearly less than it had on the original path. Pretty soon it would turn into a regular legendary blade with powers that required actual skill and ability to use, compared to being able to sweep ahead wildly and have the blade handle the rest. Real shame, they just don’t make these swords like they used to.

The original plan had been to just snap my connection to my avatar here, which would return me directly back into my body. And then I’d go tell Urs the Icon was on her way to getting the final edict setup and all of Tsuya’s old contingencies running.

Except she couldn’t do that alone, which should have been obvious to us all in hindsight, but we’d gotten way too used to being able to wing it.

The Icon looked past the window with more apprehension, she stepped around her desk, then walked to the edge of her server, right at the doorway. “…Are you certain you can navigate this sea? You showed the original attempts failed until you gained the assistance of Conviction. I am worried of being discovered by Relinquished. I will be eradicated if I am uncovered this early.”

“I’m completely sure I’ll make it back, don’t worry.” I lied, giving her a thumbs up. “Last time our heaviest hitter out here was Father, this time, we’ve got you and this blade. You handle the digital defenses, and I’ll take on anything bigger. As for Relinquished, I think if she comes hunting for you, even this location won’t be entrenched enough to fend her off. You need to recover the command center and techniques Tsuya used to survive. If you take her old seat, you also inherit how she’d kept herself on the move and safe right?”

“That is correct, yes.” The Icon held a hand up, stopping my next words. “I understand that this location is already unmaintainable. Tsuya was a digital construct and soul on this side and capable of evading Relinquished, there is an extremely high chance her methods were resilient enough even with her enemy knowing exactly how they functioned, they would remain effective. It is not a matter of choice, I must leave this zone while I still can.”

She’s right. Tsuya played the long game, which meant she probably expected at some point down the centuries, Relinquished would figure out how she evaded and danced away from her control. And even with Relinquished currently controlling it all, that evil chatbot had opted to try and build walls because she must have been unable to break it down.

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The Icon came to the same conclusion a while back, but actually convincing herself to step out of her cozy office was still something other.

She took a breath, seemed to rustle her courage up, and took a step outside into the sediment.

“Good job.” I said, giving her a thumbs up. “Ready to go?”

She gave a meek nod, then reached a hand out to grab my own. I held her hand, took a step further out, forcing the Icon to take her own first real steps out into the wide world outside.

“Start with what you already know.” I said, “Build us a defense, and go with your usual tricks. I’ll handle directing us, and any larger defense against whatever gets past you.”

“I have mostly acted through proxy agents and programs.” She said, “Moving my own soul-linked avatar feels quite dangerous.”

“Technically, it shouldn’t be. If you die out here, you get dragged back to your soul fractal, which is on the inner hull of your systems. We should be careful of programs trying to track you back there, but even if they do, they’ll be stepping into the domain of a golden age AI with all the hardware to squash them. Only ones we need to really evade out here are any agents of Relinquished.”

If we get eaten by the wildlife out here, the worst case is that they follow behind after looking for a nice meal and some spare memory and power that would be free real estate. And they’ll find the most powerful systems in the world with the sharp end pointed their way. I’d turn and run if I were in their boots.

Small programs flew out of the Icon like swarms of fish, expanding outwards, sending data packages back to her at a rate I couldn’t keep track of. It looked more like strings to me if I paid attention. She was expanding those out around us in the thousands.

They were tiny but deceptively strong for brute simple programs. Since they were all linked to her processing power, anything trying to eat those would be pitted against her systems and probably get ripped apart.

She gave me a nod, letting me know she was ready and the local area was safe. With a quick hop off the ground, I drifted off into the sea, dragging her up with me on my left hand, with Conviction’s blade drawn on my right.

If I had to, I could probably brute force a good quarter of the travel distance using the leftover power within it. But once that was gone, I’d need to study the fractals within and figure out how to make it work using my own willpower instead of what Conviction had imbued within it.

Which I didn’t have the time to do right now.