Macronomicon
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Chapter 286: Speech! Speech!
🕑 Added 2024-06-12 17:52:24 +0000 UTCHeather.EXE
The spell made an imprint of Heather’s soul, exposing it to the severed piece of Abun’zaul.
Instantly, the sample of the legendary mimic shaped itself to match her. Perry injected it, along with a modified version of his System into Heather.
“That was it?” Heather asked, glancing at the others. Nat shrugged.
“You didn’t get a prompt to choose a class?” Perry asked, frowning. “Maybe you haven’t reached minimum maturity yet?”
Heather punched him in the shoulder, prompting Perry to mentally flip the final switch to initialize her System.
“Whoah,” Heather said, blinking her eyes. “This is what you see all the time?”
“More or less. I removed class limitations, disabled any exponential growth tricks, as well as nerfed the XP for murder.” Now a portion of murder XP would roll into a ‘Bad karma’ fund, that would become increasingly deadly the more ‘bad karma’ was in there. This would gradually fade away over time. People who killed to defend themselves or others would recover, but someone who killed many people in a short time, would find their Fate being eroded, similar to Tyrannus’s fate-burning fire.
Gotta prevent murder-hoboing.
“Laaaame,” Heather said, rolling her eyes.
“I could put the Tinker class limitations back in?” Perry asked.
“Don’t you dare!” Heather said, her eyes going vacant, flickering back and forth as she began scanning her choices. “oooh, Lord of the Dead! That looks awesome! What’s it do?”
“I dunno,” Perry said with a shrug. “It’s automagically generated.”
“oOoOoh,” Heather’s voice began quivering as she salivated over her class choices.
Perry glanced back to Nat.
“What’d you pick?”
“I’m still deciding on if I should double down on a Tinker class for extra power, or choose something else to add secondary benefits for extra flexibility. I’m considering taking ‘Erotic Smith’.”
Perry’s brows rose, immediately imagining Nat in a smithing apron and nothing else.
“I’m messing with you,” Nat said, waving him off with a little blush. “…Mostly.”
“Okay, Lord of the Dead it is,” Heather said, unhesitatingly selecting the class.
“You know there was probably a clothing designer class in there somewhere?” Perry asked.
Heather paused, her jaw hanging slack for an instant before she recovered. “I knew that.”
“You want me to-“
“No, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Heather said, waving him off. “Fighting evil is slightly more important than clothes.” She didn’t sound like she believed that.
“More importantly, how are you?” Nat asked, shifting the topic.
“Better,” Perry said, nodding. “You guys taking a bit of the load off me helps a lot.”
Perry had divided pieces of his power, set them back to factory default and exported them to the rest of his family. Sharing the load had weakened the sensation that he might wake up from this pleasant dream, but it hadn’t completely left him.
Waking up from the dream…
Or in other words, going insane and killing himself in some horrific way or another in an attempt to ‘rejoin’ The Tide. Perry thought back to the magnetic tinker they’d discovered when they’d been first starting out as supers. He had fused his corpse to a magnetic generator in an attempt to ascend to a higher state of being, some rationale that no sane person could grasp.
Perry knew exactly what had been going through the man’s head now. The entire world, at least the supernatural part of it, was a dream of The Tide, and Perry was one small part of that dream, lucid dreaming along with it.
The gravity disturbances that caused the extreme tides every three to five years? That was The Tide’s attention focusing, however briefly, on Earth, as it blearily opened its eyes and turned over in bed, returning to it’s snoring.
It was only his superhuman Nerve, Body and Stability working in tandem to keep him anchored to this reality.
But how long will that work?
Perry was fairly sure now that if he assigned the rest of his free points, he would wake up as The Tide, his identity as Paradox Zauberer eroding away in fractions of a second, like a dream slips through the mind’s grasp.
He wasn’t The Tide, per se. There was no revelation of unimaginable power or specialness unique to him. Perry was merely a dream it was having, as was everyone else, to some extent or other.
He was, however, a dream that was self-aware, dancing on the razor’s edge of evaporating under self-scrutiny.
Not for the first time, Perry wondered if he could distribute all his stat points and in the brief moment before his self ceased to exist, decide to take a nap somewhere else.
Heather and Nat, at their core, were baseline human, and if The Tide left, they would lose their powers, and that would be about the extent of it.
Perry, on the other hand…he came from a long line of weirdness. From the day he was born, his Attunement to The Tide was outrageous. If somehow The Tide left and Perry still existed in the traditional sense, he would wither to nothing in a matter of seconds, or perhaps vanish into thin air.
And the twins…Perry winced. And dad.
Yes, there’s no real merit to the ‘become The Tide for a fraction of a second and decide to leave before my identity is stripped away from me’.
Unlikely to work and if it did it would kill his children.
No, I’ll have to go with plan A.
Perry set aside his thoughts and refocused on the dreamworld around him, moving like tar flows.
Perry reoriented his perception of time and brought things back up to normal speed.
“Are you guys ready?” Perry asked, kneeling down to speak to Sera and Gareth.
“Ready!” Sera shouted, while Gareth nodded.
“Was something supposed to happen to us too? Moms were acting funny.” Gareth asked in that lilting child-voice.
Perceptive little guy.
“Not until you’re a grown-up,” Perry said, tousling Gareth’s hair, causing the soulless ginger to squirm away from him. “You don’t have to worry about it for at least a decade.”
Perry glanced over at Sera.
“Maybe longer.”
The backhanded comment went over Sera’s head, where Nat caught it, giving Perry a potent gaze on her daughter’s behalf.
“Alright, now that everyone’s squared away, we have to attend a party!”
“I don’t like parties,” Gareth said, turtling inside his shirt.
“I LOVE PARTIES!” Sera shouted.
“Why don’t you like parties?” Perry asked.
“Nobody’s gonna throw a drink at me are they?” Gareth asked, peeking out of his shirt.
Perry cocked his head in thought, scanning his estimate of the near-future for instances where Gareth got drinks thrown on him.
It wasn’t something as contrived as future-vision, but simply an extention of a human’s natural ability to use pattern recognition to predict the future…multiplied by nearly 200k
Why do you think they test pattern recognition on IQ tests? It’s the uncanny ability to roughly predict and anticipate the future based on past events that separates human from animals.
The most potent prognosticators could predict the rise and fall of nations, the course of wars, droughts, famine, or civil unrest.
Or in this case, whether a quiet, shy, 4-year-old would do something egregious enough to get a drink thrown at him. Typically the answer was a resounding ‘NO’ but supers were all very…intense individuals.
“The chances are very slim, as long as you don’t talk to Mr. Accordion’s girlfriend. Guys’ an idiot that’d get jealous of a 4-year old.” Perry said with a shrug. “Although if you did it on purpose, now knowing the possibility exists, I would be very proud of you.”
“Why?” Gareth asked.
“It would form a cornerstone of risk-taking in your psyche as you grow up,” Perry said, tweaking his nose. “Something that I predict you’ll need in the future.”
“Don’t encourage my son to get into fights at parties,” Heather said, crossing her arms.
“Didn’t we talk about this?” Perry said, thinking back to their conversation about getting Gareth to open up with more risk-taking behavior before he became set in stone as a misanthrope shut-in.
“I was talking about sports!” Heather said.
“Ah. Yeah, I can see that.” Perry said.
WWDD?
What would dad do?
“If you manage to get someone to throw a drink at you at this party, I will get you some land we can build a real tower on,” Perry whispered.
“Paradox!” Nat said.
Crap, she’s using her mom voice.
“What about me, what do I get?” Sera asked.
“Nothing.”
“Awww.” Sera sulked.
“You would do it in a heartbeat, that’s why this exercise is for Gareth and not for you.”
“Can we just go, before you put any more bad ideas in their heads?” Heather asked.
Perry held out his arms, and Heather and Nat looped their own around his, taking the twin’s hands with their other hand.
Together the five of them attended Perry’s ‘you saved the world’ party. The details of how they reverted everyone back to human were left vague, because people would much rather believe they’d been ‘cured’ of a condition rather than their soul had been plucked out of the afterlife and shoved into a perfect facsimile.
All told, the ‘you saved the world’ party was a giant self-congratulatory circle-jerk, but it was also televised to the city-states around the world, a signal that ‘yes, we won, and yes, everything is fine now.’ Political theater. Perry walked around the party on autopilot, modestly downplaying the size of his involvement, talking up the involvement of others, and generally performing his role.
Gna’kis on the other hand, loved the attention and took every opportunity to spread her new religion as the Demon Lord of Sinful Technology, Patron of Humans and Trolls. There were surprisingly a lot of takers.
Gareth, the little shit, sidestepped Perry’s vaguely phrased promise by having Sera throw a drink at him.
Perry gave him points for cleverness.
I’ll have to be more specific next time I bribe him into doing something foolish.
Dad…
Dad sat alone at one of the tables, nursing a bottle of whisky while the party flowed around him, moving around the literal aura of pain he radiated.
Not everyone had come back with the spell.
Perry glanced over his shoulder, spotting Truthslayer, exchanging pleasantries with a rigid mask over her features.
Across the room, Marigold mingled with the best of them, exchanging tittering laughs with some foreign diplomats from across the pond.
If there were any hurt that she’d snuffed out her daughter’s shot at a resurrection, Perry saw no sign of it.
Perry turned back to Dad and slipped into the seat across the table from him.
“You know, I designed my robot body so it could get drunk?” Dad said, glaring at the bottle of whisky.
“…Oh. My bad.” Perry said. The body he’d designed for his Dad was…high-performance, to say the least.
“Don’t worry about it. It is a poison, after all,” Dad said, taking a heavy swig that had no effect on his body.
Perry tapped his finger on the table.
Why not? This is my dream and I can do what I want with it.
The surroundings shifted around them, and they were dead. More accurately, they were in Elysium. The sudden shift in dimensional energies almost jostled Perry awake, but it was fine.
“Eh?” Dad glanced around at the vibrant plants, the insects buzzing, and the birds chirping.
The surroundings were teeming with life, and none of it even wanted to eat them.
“Where are we?” Dad asked, but he got his answer when the wind carried a certain bubbly laughter to them.
He lunged to his feet, his chair toppling behind him before he set off at a sprint.
Perry set the chair upright and followed behind at a more sedate pace to keep himself steady.
When he arrived, Dad was bawling into Mom’s chest, seemingly having tackled her to the ground while she was enjoying a game of cards with some half-man-half-crocodile people.
“There, there,” Mom said, patting Dad’s back before she glared up at Perry.
“I thought I said I didn’t want a fake fam…”
She met his gaze and cocked her head. “What is this, a sending spell of some kind?”
“Existence is…malleable,” Perry said with a shrug, a chair manifesting under his palm as he pulled it out and sat across from the crocodile men, who seemed to be wary of him.
“I’d like to offer you the choice,” Perry said, looking down at his parents tangled up with each other on the unnaturally soft undergrowth.
“The choice for what?” Dad asked, climbing to his feet and helping Mom up. The two of them looked at him curiously.
“I think you know.”
“I’m staying wherever she is,” Dad said.
“I know.” Perry said, glancing from him to Mom. “After tonight, I won’t have the power to do this again, so there’s no take-backs. What do you want to do?”
“Ding!”
A pleasant voice rose above the sounds of nature with a PSA.
“The evening orgy will begin in half an hour, we hope to see you there!”
“Well, I guess we could stay a bit longer-“ Dad was cut off as Mom interjected.
“I want to see my grandkids grow up!”
“We can provide that here,” one of the crocodile men said, their body shifting to human. An Elysian Attendant. “You need not wonder, as we can provide fascimilies that are identical in every way.
“But they’re not real.” Mom said.
The attendant looked back at Perry.
“Her soul is destined to do great things in the future. If you pluck her from the wheel of reincarnation, you are dooming future worlds to great suffering without her guiding light.”
“Bah, a simple thing like reincarnation timing,” Perry muttered, reaching out towards the fabric of spacetime.
He was riding on the edge of waking up as he grabbed his parent’s 4th dimensional form and 5th dimensional Fate and bent it into a loop. When they died, they would return right….here.
A much older looking Mom and dad appeared beside the younger pair, looking confused as they patted themselves down, seemingly searching for wounds.
“Oh,” Older Mom said, pointing out Younger Mom and dad. “I believe we’ve died.”
A glitter of mischief travelled through both dad’s eyes at the same time.
“The winning lottery numbers are-“
Older Mom clapped a gnarled hand over her husband’s mouth.
“I trust this satisfies your reincarnation issue?” Perry asked the shellshocked Attendant.
“Well, yes…but…he’s supposed to go to the Purgatory of mischief-makers.” The attendant pointed out Dad, gulping. “But we can make an exception, milord.”
“Much appreciated,” Perry said, motioning for his younger parents to follow him.
“How are you going to bring me back without a body?” Mom asked as they arrived at the table Perry had brought with him.
Soul-body synthesis.EXE
A gentle wave of essence reached out and engulfed Mom’s soul, running every detail through an algorithm that designed a body to match it perfectly.
He loaded that design into his next spell and cast it.
BrendonTransmute.EXE
Perry generously bestowed the table with the superpower of ‘being Claudette Zauberer’.
“EEP!”
Mom’s soul got sucked into her new body as the table winked out of existence.
A bit unceremonious, making a body out of a plastic table and not some kind of symbolic graven image made of pure marble, but Perry was pragmatic, and he didn’t care if they didn’t.
A moment later, the three of them were back in the party.
Mom’s expression radiated confusion as she glanced around the party.
“What…what just happened? The last thing I remember…”
She spotted her grandchildren chasing each other around the party, trying to splash each other with juice, and her expression crumbled with relief, as if some deeper part of her soul remembered.
Dad held her as she cried into his shoulder.
Perry moved on, gliding through this pleasant dream.
“And now some words from the hero of the hour: Paradox!”
That’s my cue.
Perry made his way to the podium, facing the massive crowd of supers, and more importantly, the cameras that transmitted his image to millions of homes in every city-state across the globe.
You know, it’s kind of funny that things have come full circle since Professor Replica.
Because Perry’s plan was very similar to the inciting incident that had spread The Tide’s dream across the globe.
Perry took a deep breath and began carefully, ever so carefully adding Free Points to his Attunement as he spoke, making his every word divest himself of portions of his power and send them flying across the fifth dimension, lodging in the souls of those billions watching in every remaining megacity.
“…What if life was like a video game?”
Comments
Househut21
Pretty sure a guy that can rewrite destiny for his parents can handle the predestination of everyone watching TV.
Josh
I'd love to see a story about someone 'post perry' taking the system for granted
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
Likely stability at the level you are talking about would fundamentally effect the tide abilities of people around him and might wake up the tide for the opposite reason.
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
Which would direct go to empower the system. He is spreading the system so no one person has too much power and that everyone can be a little bit super. Not just random chance.
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
The system and the mimic are in the souls of people now likely it will be passed down.
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
He is off loading power housed in his own body in implanting the world with small pieces of his soul.
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
Reality was warped by the tide. Those with high attunement are more tide than reality. The tide wakes up tide powers leave. Australia man winks out of existence. Brendon is still Brendon.
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
He's spreading the power out to other people to dilute the amount in his literal soul. A slice of his soul is required to start a system for others.
Joe ?
Wake of the ravager. Though that's kind a spoiler.
Anon_Anon
What's the other?
Anon_Anon
Author mentioned in the comments some chapters ago how there's only so much stability can do and adding more would just be him being sane in a nightmare world. At this point, Perry can already see a bit too much
Jacob keaton
Being is really just a perspective of matter, anyway.
Andrew Segura
I sure hope no one missed watching this on TV, or they are going to feel left out. Also, I feel like we are seeing the version of Paradox that Professor Replica saw when he first saw the Tide.
Jeff Wells
IMO the way it should work is if he's CREATING possibilities then it consumes his power. So by spreading his power around the total number of futures go up, not down, and his System is consumed to make it happen, which is exactly what he needs. Basically if he does it right he can invert his level up process.
Khent Mercer
So... Paradox's system powers itself by canibilizing the roads not travelled. When he makes an impact on a life all the possible paths that are no longer possible get munched on by his pet mimic and bound into his system.... Can he even dump power fast enough? Every person who gets the system's entire fate is irrevocably changed and by extension every life they touched. And billings are watching. Perry might hit 20 during the process of trying to "not wake up."
Gardor
Oh good point, just a lot of the language is making a big deal about how the mimic is already shaped like something familiar to the soul. A "perfect facsimile plus a few robot parts" doesn't roll of the tongue as well, tho.
Hayden Leech
If the spell can turn a plastic table into a century old witch it can probably erase any cybernetic implants.
Infinate Fail
👏👏👏
Gardor
"rather believe they’d been ‘cured’ of a condition rather than their soul had been plucked out of the afterlife and shoved into a perfect facsimile." Weren't most of the mimics cybernetically enhanced?
Exrotes
Can anyone remember if Role is dead or not? I feel like he's either gonna be a Mimic that used the power of Role to be Role and dodge the Brendening or he'll be himself and he'll be able to dodge whatever Perry is doing by having a Role currently active.
Jacob Schutzer
I see no reason the tide can’t be the aggregate of all the ascended beings in its dreams. After all, to a 5d being, they would all ascend at the same ‘time’. Thus the tide created itself, which is a paradox and makes me like the idea even more
Joe ?
That's two stories now where the protagonist is responsible for making the setting a litRPG.
SunderGoldmane
You can’t comprehend the tide without waking up as I understand it.
Melody Haren Anderson
I was a bit lost when things went BAD... but you got me back and good. And in a way that feels like it fits the way everything has worked, and him having to parcel out stuff makes sense.
Robert Apgar
I was probably going to like this chapter no matter what but bringing Mom back locked it in.
Phsteven
He is splitting his power between everyone who is watching his speech. Giving them all the system and the mimic. Like he did for his family. We already know that he is going to be weaker because he told his parents that there were no take backs and he could only do what he was doing today. If he has nerfed his system too, while taking the hit to his power that this will bring, he might not have enough to strength in future to deal with the repercussions of his actions.
Extra16
I think it’s infected the fate dimension so it should be generational somehow?
PlasmaticPi
It's going well, keep it up. Also you owe me a penny for that.
Daemion
Are we ever going to find out how the Tide came to be? "Reality is just the Tide dreaming" explains one side of it but not the rest.
Gaunt
A battle of self, one upping Grandma by saving her daughter when she couldnt, and the ultimate expression of delegation. . . Replica is in for a fun time.
SunderGoldmane
I want an epilogue chapter of Gareth and sera attending there first day of high school on “awakening” day a few years from now. The day where the school wheels out that big boxy tv strapped to a cart and dust off their historical vhs recording of Perry’s “what if life were like a video game” speech and all the students are talking about what class they want. You could even throw in call backs to similar scenarios Perry had in school. There could be conversation about the state of manita, Perry, west coast empire, Australia. Maybe lensed as a documentary that gets played on the tv before Perry’s actual recorded speech? Maybe chemestro is the one giving a PSA before the video is shown reminding everyone to be responsible etc. maybe Dave picks them up school and comments on the state of their virginity. I’m seeing the potential to really loop the narrative back to the beginning roots but with the next generation starting off while also showcasing the continuation of the other central characters lives. Your doing awesome. (Edit: please don’t read my comment as a demand, I’m simply really excited at the potential and am just word vomiting more ideas.)
Doodlyboy15
This is the ONLY 'it was all a dream' permutation I will accept and allow to pass. Thank you so much for a fun ride!
SunderGoldmane
I think she took it and decided to pretend she was still thinking about it.
SunderGoldmane
That would a wild story to read.
SunderGoldmane
If the video recording of his speech will have an effect similar to Professor replicas original speech about the tide then this speech of Perry’s can be used on every future high schoolers first day of school as a kind of “system initiation” ritual. It could be used to “infect” every new generation.
Mundane
Grandpa, why is our house crest a cheap plastic table?
SunderGoldmane
His stats didn’t revert. If he did make a nerf to his system it would only apply to future growth rate. Nobody is going to catch up to him in the next million years with their own non-exponential non-infinite growth rate.
SunderGoldmane
Fuck.
Andrew
Thank you!
Gerald Monroe
This is a really solid ending condition. Clearly the supreme beings of this world are total assholes, given they allowed an alien being to mess up earth and leave most people helpless and unpowered. Shame people can still die, the gamer system should provide biological immortality and age control with fairly low level perks and spells to rip people out of Elysium at higher levels.
Joshua Gunty
This is my only thought as well, but otherwise love it as an ending!
Phsteven
Perry didn’t make all of these nerfs to his system did he? He kinda needs to keep the edge over everyone else so that he can act as a sort of “admin” when things inevitably screw up somewhere down the line…
Sinful
I hope the epilogue will include a paragraph from the other characters too.
box boy b
just wanted to say i have read many books over the years but there have only been a few that can match this books writing and creativity you have outdone yourself and i personally consider you up there with the licks brandon sanderson and dacota crout
Apotheosis
It's good! Feels like an earned ending after everything that's happened. All I'd really like else is an epilogue of where the various side characters end up after this
Ryan Naquin
Kinda like the genesis of a world with a system which would be cool but it seems more like there will be a lot of new supers for only a single generation then perry would have to do it again. I wonder if perry could set it up so everyone got the system eventually or they passed the system on to their offspring.
Abhi
Any chance the broadcast reaches whatever he has setup in Mantia as well? The Manitians that actually has to survive the place instead of jumping ship with the royals definetly deserve the boost from this if they can get it.
mhaj58
Don’t have Nat consider taking Erotic Smith. She should take erotic smith without thinking about it like Heather.
Kirvin
It's certainly a solution, but I think you should also explain why he can't just put the 998 remaining free points in stability. Everything is just at 250 right with 998 free points unless I missed something?
Extra16
“…What if life was like a video game?” “TTP!”
Xultanis
Best explanation for why a world has a LitRPG system I've ever read. "The System was created by an ancient hero turned Eldritch God, torn from his own soul so he would not awaken and unmake reality."
closeded
I liked it, but feels like spreading his dad's magnum opus to everyone would be a massive usurpation of fate. I'd expect a lot of experience from that.
Hayden Leech
Love it! Glad mom came back. Nothing wrong with a happy ending.
vetro 26
I think this was a really satisfying end to the story. He gets his mom back gives everyone a base line making everyone equal in there capabilities.
mhaj58
Perry has clearly become the Alpha and Omega of his universe, but I’m curious about the rest of his frenemies. Tyrannus and Marigold are not giving up their ambitions, and Nat and Heather ended up falling on the sides. One thing that you shouldn’t change is Darryl and Claudette. I hope that they get a great adventure together in the future.
Paratus
Love it
Enzo Elacqua
Reminds me a lot of Underland by Void Herald, where towards the end Valdemar was in a constant battle to remain who he was. Very cool. My one small gripe is that I feel that this kind of goes against the whole point of progression fantasy, where the end ‘goal’ is to reach the top. Though to be fair my favorite endings for these types of stories are the ones where they’ve reached the peak of conceivable strength and then still have room to grow so they’re not stuck being omnipotent and bored. Maybe hint at that? Like he could maybe do the sort of stuff the dnd gods did, or anything else. Right now it just looks like he won and then was forced to abandon his power due to physics. Either way, loved the story!
Alex
Agreed 100%
rizen
Perry sharing the love is exactly how I think this should go. Great idea.
Alex
It is a fitting conclusion
Zach Schmidt
Absolutely loved it. I can see that this is shaping up the be an excellent end to the story
Kelson Smith
Fantastic. A surprisingly satisfying way to wrap this amazing story up
Macronomicon
Thoughts?
