Chapter 15

　　The Ghost in the Hell

　　The world had stopped. For a moment, Maria felt the world pause around her as she herself felt her mind racing to keep up with everything that was happening. Her body was seemingly stuck permanently looking forward at the horror that she had wrought, the disaster that she both knew would happen and was seemingly incapable of stopping from happening.

　　Detective Quinn died, somehow Maria had in her want to advance as quickly as possible, caused an explosion of force and energy to erupt from her body and blast Detective Quinn like she was nothing. Maria locked eyes with Detective Quinn, her eyes were glassy and lifeless, already showing the signs that the life that had been there a moment ago was now well and truly gone. The only thing Maria could do was stay still while she waited an extraordinarily long time for something to happen, for something to change.

　　"What is it this time?" A voice rang out through the silence and frozen frame of the world.

　　"Apparently the Champion was killed before Integration began. We are here to view and confirm that the one who was designated as the Champion actually died." A second voice said.

　　At least Maria interpreted the mental waves she was passively picking up as voices. For a second, she wondered what was happening, then she remembered her breakthrough, just before everything happened. Maria had expanded her mind not once, but twice, reaching a node beyond the initial phases of being a psychic.

　　With this new evolution, Maria found a few things. First, she now found that she could hear the voices of these System Curators, as Maria was now beginning to think of these random talking voices. She wasn`t hearing them, at least not in a way that her mind could process as sound. Instead, she was feeling their thoughts and somehow able to interpret them.

　　The odd thoughts that she was hearing and the random sounds of things moving outside her bathroom stall that she was now frozen in place in were the only warnings. Then she saw a monster break into her field of view.

　　AHH!

　　The monster was a giant floating pulsing eye with tendrils of muscles that were reaching out and touching Detective Quinn`s body. Seeing the actions taken by the monster, Maria was so happy she was bound in place for otherwise she would have screamed out in horror. Instead, she could only look on in her forced silent state.

　　"Well, if this is the Champion, then I can safely say she is clearly dead." The first voice, speaker? Entity? Said.

　　With that, a second entity that was also a giant floating monster, but this one seemed to have a face, a torso and arms. But rather than legs that touched the ground, this one too just floated in the air. Seeing the second creature appear, Maria could only see in her frozen view, how a monstrous clawed hand appeared on the door, and then seemed to pull its way in to stare at a frozen Maria.

　　"I guess we found the cause of death." The second and seemingly more knowledgeable speaker said.

　　"Yeah, looks like she was breaking through a threshold." The first speaker said, reaching out and touching a frozen arc of lightning.

　　"That would be my guess as well."

　　"What should we do?"

　　"Us, nothing. We will just report it. More than likely they will have us do a full reset of the world."

　　"Why does it matter?"

　　"What do you mean?"

　　"Why does it matter that the Champion died early?"

　　"Oh, that`s simple. That is because this is the seventh and final trial for this planet. If they fail this time, that is it, the planet and all its inhabitants get wiped out, and harvesters can come in and feast on the remains." The second voice said.

　　Hearing that, Maria`s eyes bulged, or at least they would have, had she been able to do anything other than stare forward in muted horror.

　　"Oh, so it is because it is the last time that they are making sure everything goes through without a hitch?"

　　"Exactly. The last thing we need is to be audited and found out that we let a planet fail its final run with a discrepancy. They would make us redo it anyways, and the harvesters would be a few years behind their schedules."

　　"So, harvesters are already ready to move in?"

　　"They`ve been ready. Who do you think funded the Integration process for this planet to begin with. We are talking about crazy stacks of cultivation resources that entities have invested trillions into claiming. In a way, I almost feel sorry for the inhabitants of these baby worlds. They have almost no chance, they spend years cultivating and training, only to finally fight against the very investors who want their planet and its resources for themselves. The Investors must last seven complete tries, and on the seventh try they keep what they can hold."

　　"Wow, makes me glad I was born on a planet that was already integrated."

　　"I know, tell me about it. While we might never have a fighting chance to rise above our station in life, at least we won`t have to deal with the idea of our planet and everyone on our home planet being ruthlessly slaughtered for resources."

　　"So we have confirmed that this is the person that was marked to be the Champion, and that they are in fact dead. Should we just mark a new champion?"

　　"No, no, no, no, and no. We do not mess with the system. At least we don`t mess with it on that level. Our orders are clear, we go in, confirm that something happened to the intended champion, and since we are this early in the process, we are to just reset the world again." The second and more experienced voice said.

　　"Okay, but aren`t there others that can be a Champion?"

　　At that Maria all but heard the sudden pause of the second speaker. "Hypothetically, you might be right. But hypothetically the investors have placed a lot of analytics into all the potential Champion candidates and have chosen this to be the Champion they wish to fight against."

　　"But she`s trash. I mean she dies well before the moment when the investors come down to lay claim to the world`s resources." The first speaker states.

　　"I know, which might be why the investors have chosen her to be the Champion. In fact, if we told them about this and the fact that it would cost billions of resources to restart, they would likely tell us to go ahead."

　　"Wow, new planets really don`t stand a chance."

　　"No, they really don`t." The second voice agreed.

　　"Say, what do we do with this one?" The first voice said, gesturing with a tentacle towards Maria.

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　　At that Maria could almost feel her heart stop, well her whole body was already stopped, but she could feel fear welling up in her mind that had somehow managed to stay active during this restart. The only reason she could think that this was happening to her was that she was at the second stage of the Mind and second stage of her Core. While she couldn`t feel her Core, she could feel the power coursing through her mind, as even now she could feel the way her mind was caught in its zenith, its pinnacle of expansion and awareness. During this time, Maria felt that there might be something to the idea that for a time during one`s personal breakthrough there is a chance that you can go beyond the normal constraints of a mind and are allowed to see beyond the immediate and get a glimpse of the universe in its entirety. It was during this time that she now found her body paused. Had this moment come just a second later, her consciousness might have very well been sealed within her body, frozen forever in a state of unknowing. Yet, she was here, her mind went so far beyond what was known, what Maria thought was conceivable, that all she could do was look on in amazement and take in everything that she was given.

　　The Gods had wanted her and humanity to fail. Well, first off, from what she was being told they were not Gods, but rather investors who were targeting her planet for resources. At this point Maria herself didn`t know what was happening, nor why such a big deal was placed on the resources of her baby planet. Logically she knew that her new planet might have untapped resources that would make evolving so much easier. Maria could understand that, as even with a relatively small area under her control, she understood firsthand the impact that being the sole cultivator for a territory of land would cause her, especially if she could tailor the type of resources that were coming out to be specific for her and her cultivation base. That was why she was able to press through not one but two bottlenecks all in one go.

　　With this type of exponential growth possible, Maria could easily comprehend the way the Gods, or corrupt investors, would find it well worth the effort to come to a pre-integrated planet and push them along before the planet was fully ready. At least, that is what Maria was able to infer from the two workers who both seemed to empathize on one level with the inhabitants of Earth, feeling that the plight everyone was being put through was immoral on some level. While also being glad that they themselves were not the ones being subjected to such a condition.

　　"What do you mean, what do we do with this one?" The second entity asked.

　　"It clearly has evolved in some way. Do we eliminate it from the code?" The first entity asked, clearly indicating Maria with its slimy tentacle.

　　"Nah, that is too much. The reviewers might see that, and state that once again we stacked the deck in favor of the investors. We are just going to note that this individual had a pre-integration evolution, and reset the world back to its baseline, for its final run. Then we will be done with this task." The second voice said.

　　"Oh, how much longer do we have here?" The first speaker asked, a note of worry in its questioning thoughts.

　　"That`s right, this is your first contracting job, right?"

　　"Yeah." The first speaker said, a note of reluctance filling its voice.

　　"Don`t worry, you`re doing fine. So long as everything goes to plan, you should be picked up and be allowed to come with us to administer the next integration."

　　"Everything goes to plan?"

　　"Yeah, the planet gets conquered, and the investors are happy with their new spoils and provide us a kick-back."

　　"Is that how it works?" The first voice asked.

　　"No," The second speaker said, looking around as if someone other than the giant eye and Maria were able to watch him. At that, the second speaker gave a wink with all five of its eyes. "Of course not, we are an impartial and independent review board hired to administer these trials for newly identified planets that have met the minimum threshold needed for integrating into the system. While we are directly paid for by the Investing team that wishes to lay claim to the identified resources, so long as we do everything by the book, we will be fine, and no issues will come. This is why, we will not be eliminating anyone who experiences an evolution before the Integration occurs. We just follow the guidelines of resetting the individual and the world and everything should be fine."

　　There was a moment of silence as the younger of the two took a moment to grasp everything that was being said.

　　Honestly Maria would have almost had a hard time following along, but her mind was open to the universe. From her high position of being one with the universe a lot of things came to her easily. The first and foremost thing was the fact that she could somehow interpret the brainwaves of these creatures and read them as if they were being spoken in her own native languages that she spoke fluently. The second thing she found was that she could tell the emotional states of the two that were doing this investigation into what happened. It was clear that the first speaker was unknowing of the procedures, while the second speaker seemed to rely on following the procedures as a means to make sure he would continue to be employed.

　　Honestly, it made Maria feel a little disgusted with the universe as a whole. Clearly, there were greedy investors who hired a company to force her planet to Integrate. While the company that was hired was obviously encouraged to make it so the investors got their way, there were still rules and regulations that needed to be followed. This meant that there had to be good entities out there, anti-investors, or whatever they would be called. These would be entities that fought against investors` abilities to have a clear path to conquering a newly integrated planet and claiming their resources.

　　It also seemed like the investors had to wait several years before they could come down directly to Earth and start challenging the people of Earth for its natural resources. In her mind Maria remembered these entities calling them Gods in her mind, and that is what they were. They were large and powerful entities that were nearly impossible to stop. Yet somehow Maria and the others had fought them to a stalemate, or maybe they just fought until it was declared that these Investors, the ones who called themselves Gods, had won.

　　Suddenly Maria had many more questions fill her mind, like what about the four fates that she saw, the ones that were seemingly mad that she was not a Champion but had found them anyways. Were those investors, or were they good Gods, or if not good, then maybe neutral? Thinking back, they mostly seemed neutral, well all except for the oldest one, the one that forced the other three entities to provide her with their blessings. So many answers were coming to her racing mind that was suddenly able to piece so many odd and distant data points together that things for once seemed to finally make sense. She knew this was what a breakthrough did, that it forced the component of her that she was evolving to expand, but this, this was something she never thought possible.

　　Maria`s mind was racing, evolving, and expanding. At first, her mind had been forced to be in the confines of her body, limited, but with the forced evolution, there had been cracks that appeared. Cracks that her mind had used to escape before her mind would slam back and contract in on itself.

　　"Got it, so what do we do now?" The first speaker said.

　　"Now we wait."

　　"Wait?"

　　"Yes, we are doing an investigation of the scene. This investigation is required by law to take thirty minutes to conduct properly." The second speaker said.

　　"But we can see clearly what happened. Being 73556984 here evolved and at the moment of evolution the entity that has been designated as the Champion for this planet got too close and was caught up in a cultivation backlash." The first speaker said.

　　At that the second speaker nodded in confirmation. "That is correct. We can also state unequivocally that it was a direct blast of cultivation energy from a Tier Two cultivation upgrade that struck the Tier Zero champion in the chest and caused immediate cardiac arrest."

　　"Tier two?"

　　"Yes, if you see here," the second entity stated looking at and poking one of the giant lightning bolts that were just sitting there hanging in the air. "Here you can see the width and circumference of a tier two cultivation blast."

　　"How is that possible? I mean you said she was already Tier Two before the Integration?"

　　"Good question, let me check." At that the second entity pulled up a device that looked like a computer tablet and began typing into it. "Ah, here it is, apparently 73556984 is a bit of a celebrity."

　　"A celebrity?"

　　"Yes, she was one of the final seven last time, but more then that she has been in the top one hundred each of the previous six iterations." The second speaker said, clearly speaking about Maria and her unique number that she was identified as. "Hmm, it is a good thing we didn`t remove her. With a track record like that, the Equalists would have had a field day of declaring these trials unfair."

　　"Really, over one entity?"

　　"Well yeah, they would claim that since she had always finished in the top 100 and had made it to the final seven last time that her soul had managed to retain its clarity. Meaning that she might be destined."

　　"You don`t mean it, that thing, one of the destined?"

　　"Look, I don`t believe it any more than you do, but you know those Equalists, they are always out there claiming that anyone can achieve enlightenment, which is how we came about to begin with."

　　"Yeah, I know. In the beginning the Equalists would come to new planets and directly fight the Investors and ruin the planets they both fought over. Eventually the battles became so brutal that no planets survived, so rather than destroying every planet as a means of attrition, they came out with the idea of us, the Arbiters." The first voice said mechanically, as if reciting form a long and grueling text lesson that he had been forced to memorize. Thinking about it, Maria figured that he might have actually been forced to do just that, to memorize everything he just said as part of his getting this position.

　　Chirp.

　　The tablet in the second entity`s hand made a unique chirping sound.

　　"And that is time. We now have to do what?" The second voice said, in a tone that said he was clearly testing the first entity to see if he knew the procedures.

　　Sigh.

　　"Now we have to make our official report, or request more time due to a discrepancy found." The first voice said, clearly annoyed by the whole process, but answering clearly.

　　"Very good. So did you notice any discrepancy?"

　　"Other than entity 73556984 over there having evolved twice, no."

　　"Good, so what is the procedure?"

　　"Annotate it, then if it comes up a second time, then we can mark for deletion, but not before."

　　"Very good. So now what?"

　　At that, Maria`s mind raced, as she realized that if she went about constantly killing Detective Quinn, well first she would be a monster, but secondly if she tried to do it to stall the Integration, then she herself might be deleted permanently.

　　"Now, we mark everything we found. Then initiate the reboot process."

　　"Very good." The second entity said, handing over the tablet to the first speaker. "Since you know what to do, then go ahead and hit submit."

　　"This is that whole two party review process? You fill out and I submit after reviewing?" The first entity asked.

　　"Exactly. Now once you are done, just put the tablet on my viewing table. I am going to go to lunch." The second entity said.

　　With that the first entity was just there staring at his boss, or at least the person who was clearly assigned to training the new individual. There was a moment of confusion as the first entity began reading out loud. "&Conclusion base reset of all humans back to normal standards. Yep, looks in order."

　　At that Maria froze, as she realized that if she was reset then her bonuses from having completed the last trial run, from having made it to be one of the final seven would be erased.

　　Click.

　　Eert!

　　There was an alerting beep that resounded, and suddenly the first entity looked flustered. "What do you mean there is an error?"

　　At that the entity looked at the data pad in their hand, then froze as they read something. At that he must have realized something was off about Maria as he looked up from the pad to her. "Entity 73556984 is not a known variant of human? What does that even mean?"

　　At that Maria, realized the entity was correct, she had wanted to choose something else during her evolution but had been stuck with the ***` as her new racial designation.

　　Name:

　　Maria Alvarez

　　Race:

　　Human ***

　　There was a pause as the giant eye looked extremely nervous, once again turning back to see if its boss would come back to help him, but they were clearly gone. With that, Maria could see the moment when the entity shrugged its tentacles in a what can you do gesture, then pressed a button.

　　"Override."

　　A pause.

　　"Please repeat command." The tablet spoke back in a mechanical voice.

　　"Override."

　　"Override protocol accepted. Initiating system reboot in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1&"

　　There was a moment when everything paused, then Maria felt a surge of light and pressure and then her mind went blank.