How to Beat Fried Worms
Disclaimer: Worm is owned by Wildbow because nobody else wants it.
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Chapter 63: Excorciation
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Escaping the Earth's atmosphere hadn't taken Alec long at all. It only extended out about ten-thousand kilometers. Starting out, Alec could Teleport 1.8 kilometers at a cost of 50 SP and his base SP was 3000 while he regenerated 25% of that per minute, so he was getting back 750 SP per minute.
But that was before Alec's traits were factored in.
Temporal Perfection gave Alec back another 73 HP and SP per minute, and Character improved his attributes 8 points so long as he was unobserved, which ramped him up to 3800 SP while he was getting back 1,254 SP per minute for a total of 1,327 SP per minute. He could use Teleportation 26 times per minute which worked out reasonably well since it gave him an opportunity to re-orient between uses.
That was still, initially, only about 47 kilometers per minute. Without Teleportation leveling up, Alec would need somewhere around three and a half hours to escape the atmosphere.
In reality, he'd managed it in a bit more than two hours. Teleportation had leveled up pretty quickly under the conditions he'd been putting it through and its range had doubled at level 20. By level 40, he was moving 8 kilometers per use.
That still left him with the question as to how he was going to actually get to the moon, however. 8 kilometers times 26 uses per minute came up to 208 kilometers per minute which would be... doable. If Alec wanted to spend something like 30 hours just using Teleportation to try and go to the moon.
Honestly, though? That just sounded miserable. Doable and functional just weren't the same thing.
So, once Alec escaped the inexorable pull of gravity, he'd started doing something else instead.
He wrapped himself in a hug and used Vector on himself, applying momentum to his own body in the direction of the pale, isolated celestial body of the moon.
Alec had never actually tested how much kinetic force Vector would apply. By level 15 it would fire something off with the force of a 9mm bullet but he didn't know how it scaled or how it leveled before that point.
Well, starting off, it was significantly slower than just using Teleportation.
But, and this was the important part, there was no resistance in space to slow Alec down. He could, and did, just keep using Vector on himself to continue increasing his own momentum and speed!
Unfortunately, the Void Dragon did not have a watch on hand so he couldn't be sure as to how long it actually took for him to begin approaching the moon. He hadn't bothered trying to count and he just... kind of got lost in his own head as he kept on using the ability on auto-pilot.
Like Teleportation, Vector had hit level 40, and so too had the trait, Concentrate.
Which was nice, Alec supposed, but he quickly realized that he had a problem coming up rather quickly as the moon expanded in his field of view.
He was coming in hot and he'd forgotten that he needed to slow down!
Spreading his wings, the void dragon tried to re-angle himself as the pale surface approached-
Alec did not, in fact, succeed at bleeding off his momentum. Rather, he slammed into the lunar surface with sufficient velocity to crater it, sending rocks and dust flying high into the vacuum of space, barely constrained by the limited gravity of the tiny satellite.
From within the new crater, dozens of meters deep, Alec sneezed and closed out the window warning him that his Shield of Glass had shattered, absorbing the blow that should have turned him into a void smear across the surface of the moon. It was going to be a while before that was back up, actually a few hours as it recovered from the damage debt he'd just inflicted on it.
Woo! Rules Lawyering for the survival!
Alec silently laughed as he hurried out of the crater. The reduced gravity meant that the flying chunks of rock he'd sent up with his impact wouldn't be coming down any time soon, but... he still didn't want to get hit by them.
Once he was sure he was free and clear of the impact zone, the outer dragon stopped to look up. To gaze upon the Earth. From so far away, it just seemed so... insignificant. And yet, it held billions of lives. Billions of hopes and dreams.
They were all so very small, in the end, but that did not make them unimportant.
The terrestrial body reflected off the dragon's yellow eyes, the clouds upon it swirling slowly as the Earth continued to turn.
How many versions of the Earth were now barren? How many trillions had been eaten by the Warrior and the Thinker in their mindless hunger?
If he could, Alec would have sighed. He'd already had time to get introspective, now he needed to get to work.
Starting off, Alec extracted a metal ball bearing from his inventory. After an instant of focus, it was yet another Marker for him to teleport to. Saving him the long, long trip between Heaven and Earth.
Dropping the metal ball, Alec spared the Earth one last glance before he spread his wings and ascended with a mighty flap. He took off at speed, darting over the barren landscape until he reached the dark side of the moon.
The closest region that was fully obscured from the Entities. A place beyond what they bothered to observe, outside the range of all but their most potent Shards. It was, so far as the brilliant idiots were concerned, simply too resource intensive for them to bother watching the moon. Not when they'd already observed and analyzed the nearby space and genuinely lacked the intelligence to imagine something other, something beyond their experience that could even exist.
Running his tongue along his teeth, Alec's claws trembled.
It was time.
It was past time.
Reaching into himself, reaching beyond the well of SP that the administrator of his system had grafted into his soul, Alec touched something deeper. Something that had become fundamental to his self, his actions and his choices.
Dipping a metaphorical finger into the seemingly bottomless pool of magic that he'd been focusing on for what felt like years, Alec closed his eyes and held his hands in front of himself. Slowly, carefully, he molded a spell that he'd mastered and memorized, written into himself deeper than flesh or bone but well and fully soul-deep.
With a subtle pulse, a shimmer formed into the space before him, growing into an oval of light that was only just barely larger than himself.
For the first time since he'd been forced unto Earth-Bet, Alec cast Gate.
Stepping through the shimmering portal, Alec was met face-first with fresh, clean air. He could hear the sounds of water dripping nearby. He felt grass, live and healthy, underneath of his claws.
"Hah..." the dragon laughed, a knot of tension in his chest unwinding as he took in the sight of the cabins in front of him, the house over to his left, the orchard towards the back on the demi-plane. "Hahah!"
Just being there, Alec could feel a part of himself that had been deprived begin to awaken. It was as though he'd been dehydrated, with tacky lips and dry eyes that he'd been ignoring as best he could for as long as he could.
His head whipping to the right, to a small pond wherein a spire rose from the center with a strange, blue crystal dripping water into the pool below, Alec stumbled towards it. He literally tripped on his way to the pond but forced himself to move!
Burying his head under the life-giving, magically enriched waters, Alec drank greedily. The dragon filled his belly, filled his body with magic until he literally could not stomach any more.
And then he pulled his head free and rolled over, his stomach sloshing and his eyes burning as he stared directly into the artificial sun he'd made for his realm from a Light Elemental.
"Heh..." Alec chuckled to himself, tears burning at his eyes.
Earth-Bet didn't have magic. At all.
And he was a creature that -could- exist without it, generating it from himself ex-nihilo. But... it felt wrong. In a lot of ways.
It was like looking at a world that was drab and gray, colorless and lifeless.
--Creator?-- a voice asked directly against his mind. Looking to the side, Alec caught sight of what almost looked like a large, iron ball with limbs and an iron helmet for a head. One of his iron golems, made to maintain the demi-plane. The one talking to him had the number '5' painted on its chest. --Are you well?--
"No, Johnny," Alec admitted, his words slow and carefully enunciated. The dragon raised one claw and covered his crying eyes with his forearm.
"I'm really not."
