273, 2/2

Erick stood on the very top of Mount Everest, just because he wanted to see the world from the highest point. It was gorgeous; clouds and cold and the bright sun overhead. The air was thin, and wind whipped into Erick’s clothes and across all the little colorful flags strung over the mountain peak. Erick remained undisturbed by the cold, and the flapping of flags was almost zen-like.

Some coat-clad sherpas trekked up the mountain with their clients, reaching the top as Erick stood there. They saw Erick. They paused. All of them wore thick coats and had climbing gear on, and two of them were breathing in oxygen masks, but Erick was still shaped like a very buff Irish man in some tight clothes, and that was all.

One of the clients called out, “What the fu—”

The sherpas instantly told him to shut up and say nothing.

Erick just smiled, and with the freezing air tugging at his hair and at his voice, he said, “Don’t mind me. I just came to see the sights.”

And then Erick floated into the sky and vanished in a snapping pop of resons and Layer-stepping, leaving Mount Everest behind with another weird story for sherpas to tell each other, and some [Greater Regeneration]s active on every single person on the mountain. Erick truly could have stayed longer, but he had some scoping-out to do.

Erick didn’t go too far.

First, he popped over to Layer 99,082, just one Layer further from Margleknot’s direction as regards to Earth on Layer 99,081. And there was nothing in that solar system. Sure, Earth was still there, but it was a rocky nothing with thin layers of water and atmosphere, and no moon in the sky.

Layer 99,080 held no Earth at all, though the Solar System was still there.

Erick went back to Earth on Layer 99,081, and with a quick trip to the moon, Erick settled in on the dark side of the moon, because the moon was empty and so was Mars, and so was all the rest of the solar system. He could build anywhere he wanted out here, and no one could even see him do it, unless they moved around some satellites. Erick found himself actually quite mad that humanity was still stuck on Earth.

Maybe they needed an impetus to explore again.

And Erick kinda wanted to poke that hornet’s nest anyway.

So he decided. He was going to make a home here, and it would be permanent, and ostentatious. He wasn’t going to do anything to help Earth right now, but he would definitely be back later. Probably ‘sooner’, too, at least as much as this specific timeline was concerned. Mainly, though, Erick was here, and he saw people in pain, and he couldn’t stop himself from helping at least a little. Or at least that was the rationalization he gave himself as he made some plans.

With the tickling of static-filled moon dust in his nostrils, having gotten there just because of static forces and probably Erick’s influence on the world, Erick raised his hands, and cast a spell that he hadn’t gotten to use on Fenrir.

[Seeds of Atunir].

The dark side of the moon was currently half-facing the sun, and it had almost no atmosphere at all, so the light and dark was rather harsh. Craters were like black crescents upon the pale grey surface. But then light blossomed in the void. A white dot coalesced from nothing and then shot into the harsh shadows below, where it buried itself and then began to grow.

Golden light vibrated through the lunar surface, sending cracks across the chiaroscuro land. And then towers began to grow. They rose like spires, like bamboo, floor after floor popping into existence and then widening at the base as the tip of the spire grew and grew upward. The surface of the moon dropped away from Erick as it broke in the thrust of the spires, and Erick floated away from the growing magic, to give it more space.

As the first tower finished growing, the golden glow of it all turned to white, and the top ten floors of the tower sprouted short branches filled with giant [Kaleidoscopic Radiance]s, like the tower was holding a full head of grain, ready for harvesting. This grain shone down light, and along with all the similar lights throughout the entire structure, and all of the other magics therein, a river flowed from top to bottom and life spread out across the lunar surface. Gravity took hold, and permeable, shimmering barriers of mana held in the air far away, thanks to a little bit of Domain work that kept it all together. Tens of kilometers of space was suddenly made livable.

Slimes popped into existence everywhere, on every floor, and on the surrounding land, and soon, flickering systems of [Renew], [Undertow Star], and [Terraforming], began to take from the life that now existed, to solidify the system.

Absent any Malevolent actors, the whole thing worked without a hitch. As Erick watched the systems come online and then reinforce themselves ten times over, in ten redundant ways that would all repair each other if they were messed with, Erick was pretty sure that this really should have worked on Fenrir…

Nothanganathor had prepared too well. Erick wasn’t even sure what he had done to throw Erick here, to Earth. Had it been a ‘surround and consume’ strategy? Perhaps.

As little slimes walked around and they gained little Dark Marks in their souls, Erick wondered if ‘the God of Magic Nothanganathor’ would come for those Marks, or at least if he would sense them. Melemizargo certainly could… Maybe. Maybe Shadow could, too?

The magic of the tower only took 20 minutes to set up in such a way that only a Wizard could take it down, or a very concerted effort of poisoning the land and nuclear-bombs-every-hour-for-a-year.

Erick made another tower, and then he started adding some details.

Balconies like shelf-mushrooms. Visitor centers. Signage and low walls, just so people would know where they were, and so that rivers went where they were supposed to go. Gardens went up next, filled with all the vegetables and fruit that anyone could ever want, all of it edible. He even put up some meat-like plants, with sausage-like tubers that drooped from heavy branches. Those tubers grilled up wonderfully, if one were so inclined to do that, and they were filled with proteins; they were basically big beans, almost like the Erick Beans that Erick had made back on Veird. Erick had eaten these ‘meat beans’ on Margleknot when he went out to eat with Yggdrasil, and they had been delicious.

An hour after landing on the dusty, airless surface of the Moon, Erick now stood on the edge of a white city of towers that grew upward from water-soaked soil, their branches forming balconies, their insides forming floors that housed slimes that tumbled and played in the water slides. Fresh dirt grew strange plants that grew under rainbow radiances, or which glowed in the darker spaces, providing their own light into the void. Air and water poured out of platinum-raining clouds here and there.

It was good.

… Erick’s Lightning Path was telling him something. It had been flickering the whole time he had been building all of this. Erick’s skin prickled and a subtle rage held in his heart, because he knew what was coming, now that it was closer.

Erick turned, and said, “Hello, Nothanganathor. What the fuck do you want?”

Nothanganathor stood beside Erick’s Welcome Center, looking like an older elven man with white robes and white horns. Erick wondered why he was an elf, but then of course he was an elf; elves were both the big bad evil guys of the Old Cosmology, and also the main powers of the Old Cosmology. Erick had never seen Melemizargo’s human-sized form, but that guy had probably been elven-shaped, too.

After the Sundering, on a newly-created Veird, Nothanganathor had the elves killed first, because he hated them the most.

The Greatest Evil Erick Had Ever Known, said, “I want to make a deal.”

Erick scoffed. And then he laughed. And then he shot a [Luminous Beam] into Nothanganthor’s face. Erick had denied atomic magic in this space, so it didn’t do any big explosions. Light from a quasar went right at Nothanganathor, and the God of Magic ignored it, like Erick was shining a flashlight upon him. Nothanganathor allowed the attack to continue for a moment longer. He was about to wave his hand and stop Erick’s spellwork, but Erick did that instead.

Nothangaanthor said, “You are understandably upset.”

Erick composed himself, and said, “You would be, too.”

“Yes, I would be, and I have been. You have seen the results of my anger. This is why I am here to make a deal, because I don’t want you coming after me like I came after Melemizargo.” He began, “It is anathema for the Darkness to kill its Wizards, and to take away the power of those it has given power to, so I have no real lever to use against you aside from the general one of killing everyone you love and making your life a living hell. But I am above that, now. I have won, and you—”

“Get to the fucking point.”

Nothanganathor nodded. “Do whatever you want, Erick, and don’t come after me.”

Erick almost thought about it. He almost went down a thought hole. But then he realized that he would get more information out of Nothanganathor if he aired his thoughts, so he said, “The fact that you are here trying to make a deal at all, means that I can win against you.”

“Correct.” Nothanganathor said, “And that will incur me murdering everyone you know and love. I even stripped Malevolence from Earth right before you got there, but I can certainly put it back. Chances are, that if you win, you could even undo everything I have ever done to get to this point. But I have already won, Erick. Winning once is all I ever needed. I have secured my victory in ways you can never imagine. If you even get close to ‘winning’, then I’ll be back to having Malevolence, and thus on a trajectory to be right back to where we are now.

“The war would be a repeating cycle, because I won’t kill you, because I need you here to act on behalf of the Fractal, to take up the job of where I left off; to cleanse this universe of corruption.

“The only question is how much pain are you willing to endure to get to that point, and at which point in our future wars do you finally falter, either won over by my good stewardship of the Dark, or by how well I treat those who work with me. I will endure anything I have to endure to ensure this reality is the real one. Can you say the same?” Nothanganathor rhetorically asked, “You once called yourself the ultimate forgiving sort, so how long do we have until you eventually forgive even me? It’s not like you won’t have your daughter, and Earth, and all the rest of everything you want. The only thing you do not have is Melemizargo, and you didn’t even like him all that much. He deserved everything I gave him, Erick, and more.”

The sounds of rain in bamboo-like towers filled the bubble habitat. Water rushed down waterfalls and through nascent rivers. Lunar dirt collapsed into those rivers, as water expanded across the surface of the moon. The water froze when it got out of the protected space, piling up like a glacier.

Erick felt a rage settle into his mind, and body, and soul, like a cup that was overfull.

“Forgiveness is for those who desire it, or those who I can force into compliance. You are neither, and you will have NOTHING.”

Erick desired Nothanganathor GONE—

Suddenly Nothanganathor exploded into gore which then turned into white sparks that burned away everything that was left. The God of Magic and Darkness was gone, but he was obviously still alive. Erick had just forced his removal—

Erick fell onto his ass, his emotions too wild to understand right now, his body seemingly not working. But that was just a chemical reaction. Too much was happening and had happened, and it was all catching up with Erick and his too-fast heartbeat. Just a chemical reaction. Nothing serious. Nothing was wrong with his soul. Nothing was wrong with him…

Nothing was wrong with him.

Everything was wrong with everything else.

Nothanganathor’s very words were destabilizing. Dangerous. It was the same as the Shades, in Erick’s first year on Veird. To listen to Nothanganathor was to be dazzled by words while he stabbed you in the back and drowned you in power till you were mutated into something else and made to act even towards your own detriment. Listening to him was a terrible thing. Thinking how he wanted was even worse.

And now he was a fucking god, and everything was horror.

– – – –

Erick ended up sitting on his ass for a good hour and having a good cry half of that time.

Eventually, Erick was on his back on the surface of the moon, looking up at the void sky, at the stars, and Earth’s sun. Nothanganathor didn’t live on that sun at all —Erick had done tests while he was crying; a lot of tests, some of them reaching through time and all the way to the solar surface— and Erick was glad the bastard was gone.

As his tears fell away and turned to ice on his skin, Erick sighed out once more.

He needed to collect himself.

He also decided he was hungry as fuck, so he zipped back to Earth and got himself to a nice restaurant —in Toyko Japan, because that side of the world faced the moon at the moment— and he walked into the entrance area, wearing nice black robes. There was a bar and some people were wearing white, and Erick almost transformed their robes for them, but he stopped himself at the last moment.

White was a terrible fucking color! Black was best!

Erick was 6’7” and massive compared to everyone else, seeing as he probably weighed a good 275, and all of it was muscle. That fact turned heads almost as much as his robes. Other people were wearing robes, because that’s what kind of restaurant this was, but those were formal robes. Erick had on mage robes. Many people wondered where the fuck he had come from. Some cosplay event? Or was that just a new style?

And now that Erick was here, his whims were faltering, and he was thinking straight again. He found himself calming, and he was glad for it. Why did he pick this place? It was too fancy. The bar in front was open to everyone, but the main restaurant in the back was special.

This place was the kind of restaurant that required long reservations and rarely had any openings at all, but Erick wanted to treat himself. That’s why he had come here, he decided—

He realized he was thinking like he was back on Veird for a moment, expecting to get prompt service and for people to know him, but…

This was fine.

Better than fine.

Erick could relax and be a nobody for a while. For a day or three.

He was still so unbalanced.

Why was he here?

Whatever.

Erick walked past the bar, down the garden path, spilling out invisible mana as he went, filling the world with his sight and senses, to check on the world as he walked. Nearby bamboo fountains filled with water, dumped themselves, and then clicked when they turned back up, only to fill with water again, as people in nearby buildings spoke of this and that, and the people in the restaurant up ahead talked about matters of family and one girl talked to a floating camera as she ate dinner. By the time Erick got to the front door, he knew enough of the language to be passable, though reading it all was a bit beyond him, for now. Reading Japanese would take at least another twenty minutes of seeing everything around him.

The host of the restaurant was a man dressed in fine Japanese robes, standing behind a thin podium with a touchscreen on top. A bunch of words and time slots were on that screen. The man smiled as he looked up at Erick, and, trying to be inoffensive, said, “Good evening, sir. Do you have a reservation?”

He knew damned well that Erick didn’t have a reservation—

Erick calmed himself.

Erick pulled out a small gold bar about the size of his palm, and set it on the counter, speaking in broken Japanese, “It’s gold. I want a nice dinner with some of that good beef you have in the back. The aged stuff, or whatever that stuff is set aside in the big cooler. I have more gold, and I want a lot of food.”

The host paused as he listened to Erick’s broken words, his eyes focusing on Erick, but he looked at the gold four times, quickly. When Erick was done talking, the man said, “I am sorry sir, but we have a 6 month waiting list and cannot accommodate you—” Erick had been about to get mad, but the guy saw that and rapidly added, “But I can make a call to other people on the list, and ask if they would like their spot to be bought out. Buying out a slot is currently 1.5 million yen.”

… Erick realized that he shouldn’t get mad and that he appreciated these guys doing their jobs. People probably came in demanding slots all the time. What was 1.5 million yen? Like… $10,000? Maybe something like that. How much was that bar of gold? Erick didn’t bother to check up on current prices even when he had handed out 250 kilos to Betty and Mary. One kilo was more than the price of a buy-out, for sure… had to be, right?

Erick was probably too high strung right now.

Erick simply said, “Sure. That works.”

A woman in a kimono stepped out of the main dining room and walked up to the host. She had been looking in from behind a grate of carved wood shaped into phoenixes and dragons, and now she was here because she needed to talk about the gold that Erick had left out on the host desk. She pulled the host back behind a curtain and the two of them spoke in some hushed tones about accommodating Erick.

The host came back out, bowed, then said, “We apologize for the delay. We will have an appraiser come and verify this, uh, gold, while you take your seat.”

The woman in the kimono did a little curtsy, asking, “Will sir be alone today? Or will someone be joining you?”

“If someone joins me then I will be surprised. Just put me anywhere visible.”

Erick wanted to be around people and especially strangers, right now. He did not want to be alone.

The woman curtsied again, and then led the way beyond the carved phoenix and dragon archway, into a fancy room of black lacquered wood, gold accents, and paper sculptures serving the place of paintings on the walls. The area was open and quiet, and tables sat far apart from each other, with drapery hanging just off of the ceiling, just to denote one space from another. The woman took Erick to a low table beside a window overlooking the city, and a nice pillow would be Erick’s seat for the evening.

It was to the side of the main dining room, and Erick would be eating in the same room as what appeared to be a celebrity taking photos of her meal, with a tiny drone that floated around her, silently and cleanly, an older couple on a nice date, and some shady people with guns hidden in holsters hidden in their robe-jackets. Erick found himself glad for the humanity, just being there. Even the shady people were a great addition.

Today was a time of relaxation, and planning, and also seeing how Earth would react to small magics, so this was a good assortment of people to have in the area. Erick hadn’t really chosen this place, but now that he was here, he knew he had picked it because the food looked great, and the woman taking photos of her meal seemed famous. Her drone was the fanciest one Erick had seen, and it even had some sort of official news-like sigil on it, so it was ‘fine’ for her to have it out and about, or something like that? Erick wasn’t sure about what was going on with the culture of drones flying in the air and taking photos and whatever, but it seemed fine.

This was a better introduction of magic to the world than trying to appear on the news. Simpler. More cozy.

Warm sake was already sitting out at a table for five, waiting for Erick’s party of one.

Erick said to the woman seating him, “I am going to eat a lot today. All of the best stuff you have. Just a warning.” And then he held out another gold bar the size of his palm. “Here. A down payment. I am not paying in cash or credit and I don’t want change.”

The woman’s professionalism was cracking, but she took the gold bar —almost dropping it— and chuckled a little, saying, “I will alert the kitchen, good sir, though our dishes are prepared half in advance. If you wish for quantity, we can accommodate.”

But it wouldn’t be their best stuff, was left unsaid.

That was fine.

Erick sat down and began drinking his sake as the woman headed off with her gold bar. The rice wine was good stuff. Burned a little. Tasted like warmth. Erick allowed it to affect him, and then he pulled out some papers from the sleeve of his robes and set them down in front of him, to the side. Maybe he’d write on them, maybe not. He also spied on everyone’s phones and the other tech he saw everywhere. Cameras were stuffed into hidden nooks and crannies all over the place.

A hallway over, there was a room with video feeds, and the restaurant manager was arguing with the host as he waved hands at the video feeds. The gold bar Erick had given the host sat on the small table in front of the camera feeds. It was soon joined by a second gold bar, placed there by the woman in the kimono. And then all three of them were arguing, while a fourth guy was on the phone, asking an appraiser to come up from the street down the way. This was a nice place, in the upper districts of wherever he was right now, and there were jewelry shops down the way. They had a guy who could appraise weird stuff.

Mostly, they were worried about what it meant that someone was paying with bars of gold.

Soon, a guy on the other end of the phone was rushing out of his shop, letting his apprentices work the gold that they were working on to make fancy rings and otherwise. That place had two apprentices working on tiny mythical creatures; drawing out gold and hammering it and then putting diamonds and otherwise into the gold. Some big black boxes in the back of the jewelry shop caught Erick’s attention. They seemed to be gem-furnaces, or something like that. They made diamonds, rubies, and emeralds on demand. There seemed to be a space for a fourth machine, but it wasn’t there, and Erick saw signs on a bucket of sapphires that told the workers to use them sparingly.

Their sapphire machine was in the shop.

… Erick tried not to think about Poi—

An older woman in a very nice kimono came around and showed Erick the menu, which only had ten items on it.

Erick said, “All of it. Even the wine. And do the steaks five times over.” He handed the server another gold bar, taken from his empty sleeves, saying, “And I’m serious. Not joking. Serve it as the cook decides to cook it up; whatever way makes the best meal.”

The server did not seem too amused at whatever Erick was pulling, but she accepted the —again— surprisingly heavy bar of gold, and she professionally said, “We don’t have enough steaks prepared to do the steak course five times over, but we will ensure you have the best experience possible tonight, sir…?” She fished for a name.

Erick provided, “You can call me ‘Dragon’. ‘Black Dragon’ if you want. It’s weird; I know. It’s fine. Don’t worry about making it seem realistic.” Erick said, “I’ll take some more sake, too. Big bottle, please. The expensive stuff. Not those tacky gem-encrusted bottles you have; the one in the black box in the manager’s office. I want to know what it tastes like.”

The woman’s eyes briefly went wide, and then she did a professional curtsy, her kimono moving elegantly, as she ducked backward and walked away.

Erick [Duplicate]d all of the food in the back before she got there with his outrageous order.

When the older server arrived in the kitchen she quietly ranted about Erick, telling the cooks his demands. The cooks didn’t know what was happening yet, but they rapidly found out, and the server began telling everyone what was going on up front. No one believed her. She had to show off the gold several times. Soon, everyone had gathered. Everyone believed.

Soon, cooks in white chef outfits were poking their heads out from behind corners, wondering who was seated in their restaurant. Erick drank his sake, not looking their way, until other people in the restaurant started looking their wa—

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Ai yaaaah!”

It was half of a scream, half of a yelp of pure surprise.

One of the cooks had just checked on their freezers and prep rooms. That’s what Erick had heard. That’s what everyone had heard. The influencer and her floating drone turned toward the noise. She spoke to her flying camera about how strange that was. The gangsters looked concerned, but they were more concerned about whatever the fuck was going on with the foreigner in their restaurant, and was that gold he was handing out? Maybe if the gangsters wanted some, Erick would just give them some. They seemed to be commiserating over some bad thing, too, but they weren’t talking openly about it. The old couple were too enamored with each other and talk of the past to notice the happening; they were on a date, and all the rest of the world did not exist.

Soon, the stoic older server came out, and she was quietly, profusely cordial, as she carefully opened the very expensive sake bottle and poured Erick a drink. It was pretty good. Worth the price? Sure. And then the first course arrived. It was soup, rice and fish, and it was absolutely delicious. Erick ate it all within five minutes.

The servers watched from the hidden cameras.

The appraiser was there now, huffing from being out of breath, and also staring at the three bars of gold and at his portable tester device, which was like a pen, which he could press against something and get the purity of it all. He had confirmed it. That was real gold. 99.9999% gold. Erick was absolutely sure it was 100% gold, but the machine didn’t seem to go that high. That was when everything got to be too much for the manager and the servers. That was when they realized that yes, this really was happening.

The fact that Erick ate the first course in 5 minutes was when everything became too much for the head cook.

He was disgusted as he gestured at the cameras, saying, “What is this! This man comes in and buys us off and disrupts everything and we have more food everywhere and he gobbles it up like a fat American! How is this— This is some kind of prank, isn’t it!” He poked the chest of the manager, saying, “You are doing this to me for some reason—”

The manager shot back, “That man has given us millions tonight, and we have dealt with rich weirdos before! Every single one of us on shift tonight gets a percentage of this bonus, and I want that bonus. You will do everything he wants. EVERYTHING. Or you are fired! If he wants you to dance for him, you will dance. If he wants you to sing, you will sing. If he has spies putting food into our walk-ins, you will accept the bounty as it has been given to you. As long as it doesn’t ruin our reputation, you will do it.”

Everyone else in the office backed up the manager, and soon the Head Cook was back to overseeing a kitchen, cooking food for a guy that ‘obviously had spies running around the kitchen’. It wasn’t long till the Head Cook had another idea about why he hated this; that much gold needed to be reported to the government. The authorities would need to get involved. Everyone told him to shut the fuck up and cook when he said that, even his apprentice, which had caused the Head Cook to do a double take at the back talk. The Head Cook went back to cooking, though, muttering about ‘autonomous drones’ and other shit.

Erick suspected one of those ‘ADs’ was what the influencer had floating around her head, taking videos.

Erick was spying on everything, though, so the Head Cook wasn’t too far off about that. Would he call himself ‘a spy that put stuff in the kitchen’? Based on the definition of the word, he probably couldn’t be his own spy… Or could he? It was a fun little philosophical question and Erick smiled at that thought, because it was so far out of the wheelhouse of whatever the fuck he was going to do about Nothanganathor that it was a good distraction. Erick was still reeling from Nothanganathor’s shittery, but it was nice to be able to relax with good food and wine and think about smaller things.

Tonight, it was time to drink away his sorrows.

Tomorrow… Tomorrow he would do something more.

He did cast some [Greater Rejuvenation]s on everyone in the room, though, as well as some tiny [Cleanse]s to get rid of lingering health issues. Microplastics and cancer still hadn’t been solved by the year 2047. A shame, really.

They were going to have to deal with so much more than that, soon enough…

Maybe he should appear in Tokyo Bay, like Godzilla, but with ‘breath weapons’ that made [Greater Rejuvenation] and [Benevolent Cleanse] towers. That’d be a hoot. As Erick ate eel, grilled to perfection and sticky with sauce, he considered what to do next in so many different ways.

He’d have to put a gate space up on the Moon so he could access Benevolence Itself.

Maybe he should make a personal Benevolence space, too, inside his Status, so he could haul things around without needing to make them all the time. Sure, he could pull gold out of the air through Genesis, but runic structures needed to actually be made, and there wasn’t always time for that. Maybe his personal space could be one of those spatial bags that Jane always tried to make or find, years and years before she found out the Script denied that functionality. Maybe Jane and the girls and boy had those bags now, wherever they were—

Erick stopped thinking about the people he cared about because that way lay ruin. They were all fine, because they all existed in the past, and that’s where Erick would make his attack, and his rescue.

When the steak came out Erick was a little bit happier, because it smelled divine—

Did he have to worry about elevating to godhood now?

… He didn’t feel any different, and he saw no divinity in the air, and his Status was still able to ping his position in the universe through the yorddle he had made with Yggdrasil, so Margleknot knew where he was, now, so he was still connected in that way… Hmm.

But…

Hmm.

Something didn’t sit right with all of that.