Chapter 11: The First Law
The silence did not last. It was broken by the screams. Not of terror, but of effort, of frustration, of nascent power slamming against the new, unyielding walls of reality I had just put in place.
The man who had been unraveling the wall was on his knees, vomiting onto the pavement. The grey, chaotic mush was gone. In its place was a perfectly normal, slightly scorched brick wall. He had tried to break it, and the Law of Equivalent Exchange had demanded a price. It had taken his energy, his will, his very vitality. He had learned the first lesson of the Glitched World the hard way: creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin, and both require payment.
Jake watched, a strange look on his face. "You... you put a tax on power."
"I put a governor on an engine," I corrected him softly. "Without it, they would have torn the world apart in a week." I could feel the subtle shifts through my connection to the World Seed. The rampant, chaotic glitches were stabilizing. The reality integrity alert for Sector 9 faded. The drop had been halted at negative three percent.
It was working.
But it was only the beginning.
Sarah pointed towards the city center. "Look."
A new structure was rising. It wasn't made of brick or steel, but of light and thought. Dozens of people were gathered, their wills focused. They were building a... a spire. It was clumsy, its form wavering between Gothic cathedral and brutalist obelisk as different minds fought for control of the design. But it was rising. They were learning to collaborate, to pool their understanding. The Equivalent Exchange law made it inefficient to work alone; collaboration reduced the personal cost.
"They're building a new world," Sarah murmured, a tear tracing a clean path through the dust on her cheek. "A messy, confused, beautiful one."
My admin interface—no, my Steward interface—flashed with a different kind of alert. It was Marcus.
"Liam, the signal is getting stronger. I've refined the translation. The 'cycles' in their ETA... I think I can calibrate it to our time. It's not good."
"How long?" I asked, the weight of the stars pressing down on me.
"Best estimate? Three years. Maybe less."
Three years. We had three years to go from a planet of chaotic, newborn gods to a civilization capable of defending itself from a logistics fleet designed to harvest worlds.
Jake heard the exchange. His face, which had been full of wonder and frustration, hardened. "An army. They're sending an army."
"Not an army," I said, the full implication of the message settling in my gut like a stone. "A salvage crew. They don't see us as a threat. They see us as a broken piece of equipment and a contaminated crop. They're coming to clean up the mess and take what's left."
The thought was more chilling than an outright declaration of war. We were an inconvenience, not an enemy. They would show no malice, only the cold, efficient purpose of a janitor wiping down a counter.
The glow of our victory faded, replaced by the grim reality of a deadline.
"We can't just wait," Jake said, his fists clenching. The old fire was back in his eyes, but it was different now. Tempered. "We have to get ready. We have to... to train everyone."
"And how do you train a god?" Sarah asked, gesturing to the chaotic, beautiful, struggling city below. "How do you prepare them for a war they don't know is coming?"
"We don't call it a war," I said, an idea beginning to form. It was risky. It echoed the very System we had just destroyed. But we didn't have the luxury of millennia of peaceful evolution. "We give them a challenge. A purpose."
I turned my focus inward, to the World Seed. I couldn't create quests. I couldn't force them. But I could shape the environment. I could create a... curriculum.
I pushed a new concept into the framework, a subtle nudge in the laws of physics. A gentle pressure.
It started to rain.
But it wasn't water. It was a fine, silver dust that settled on everything. It didn't wash away the grime; it interacted with it. People watched as the dust settled on broken concrete, and where their will focused, the concrete began to slowly, slowly repair itself, the silver dust acting as a catalyst, reducing the mental cost of restoration.
It was a tutorial. A gentle, system-less tutorial on how to manipulate matter.
Next, I shaped the wildlife. The few alien creatures that remained, now freed from the System's control, began to change. Their aggression faded. They became less like monsters and more like... training dummies. Their hides toughened, not to be a threat, but to be a resilient surface for a nascent telekinetic to practice on. A moving target for someone learning to shape fire.
I was not building a new System. I was building a gymnasium. A university. A playground for fledgling reality-weavers.
Jake watched the silver dust settle on his arm. He focused, and the dust swirled, forming a tiny, intricate model of the flaming sword he'd once coveted. He smiled, a real, unburdened smile. "A challenge. I can work with that."
Sarah created a delicate ice sculpture that did not melt, its structure perfectly stable. "We guide them. We don't control them."
The first law was set. The first lesson had begun.
We had three years.
And high above, in the silent, cold dark, the salvage fleet continued its slow, inexorable turn towards the anomalous little world known as Earth.
---
A/N:Author here! If you're enjoying the story of Liam ,please leave a comment and vote with your Power Stones! Every vote helps the story get seen by more readers