Entry 13
It is February 25th, Y1-PA. My name is Adam Clay, the so-called Commander of Earth's Solarium, and may God have mercy on our souls.
Lately, I haven't had the time to make diary entries because I was looking for a device good enough to store my diary without having them on the Sacred Code OS. It may sound miraculous to everyone, but sometimes you don't want the great overmind of all computers to get too deep into your head.
Slapping a "Suspecting Malcode" label on this tiny laptop was a good choice, though; even Solana wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole now.
There is a lot to unpack here, and I feel like my stress will kill me before the damn Jotnars do. I'm stretched way too thin, barely sleep, and the food sucks.
And it just keeps happening.
Going into the Rift to find a Seed of Light was a real Hail Mary; I wouldn't overstate it if I said everything now is held together by duct tape, spit, and prayers… a huge deal of the last, if you ask me.
But I now feel it more than ever: this sense of almost touching it, the power I can get my hands on, and the ability to exploit it to the fullest.
Ever since I got this Company Captain promotion and the management upgrades that came with it, doors started to open. I may not have given it too much thought, but the open management positions that became available gave too much of a boost to logistics.
When I first hit the Lieutenant rank, what seemed like ages ago, I was given the option to appoint logistical officer positions that coordinate based on Sacred Code parameters. Why haven't I been using them? My guess is as good as it was back then, but I had neither the time nor the brain cells to spare on reading the requirements of those positions, since even their names were a mouthful.
Like, what the fuck is a Platoon Chirurgeon-Gravedigger? I can't Google that because there is no fucking Google anymore… but Chirurgeon actually means Surgeon, if you believe it… I believe it? Who am I speaking to?
Anyhow, that was a fucking good position to have around, since we wouldn't need to keep bothering Biscuits, our overworked Chief Doctor (not Doctor) and Mess Officer, with endless assessment requests for the injured, whereas she could have gone to save real lives out there.
I had to ask the Sacred Code to let me rename some of these positions myself, but it wouldn't let me. Alternative names were possible, so we got to make sense of them for the uneducated grimdark buffoons all over the base.
That Platoon Chirurgeon-Gravedigger became Combat Triage Officer, basically a medic liaison, the guy who would do rapid assessment on who gets bio-patched and who gets the snip-snip for robotic cybernetics.
I gave the position to a medic called Needles, who wasn't really the best medic around, but she was quick with almost everything she did, so she was good at the job, heightening the return-to-line rates with ruthless disposal towards injuries that would take longer recovery time.
Some asked why I didn't give that position to Biscuits, but I wouldn't give my best doctor (not doctor) the position where people might blame her for losing their limbs and might (or might not) go after her in the cover of night. This happens… A LOT!
Who said Summoned Soldiers would act all lovey-dovey and follow the fucking will of their fucking summoner? Nobody, especially not this Summoner. Those fucking grimdark assholes are just impossible to control. You think I had any control? If not for the fact that there is this magic rune stuffed up my ass that makes them think I am some sort of Commander, I'd have been toast.
The only thing I could do to make this situation work for the best was to play on a fear tactic. Dressing up as a Justiciar, now that puts Men-at-Arms in line.
The thing with Solarium Justiciars is that they are under the Tribunarium, the only branch of physical government—vested in the Supreme Council of the Solarium—that has ties to the metaphysical government, the ATEN. Not even the Scriptorium, which oversees the Cult of Sol and the Solar Dogma, has that kind of power.
So in practice, Justiciars are assigned all around the other branches of the government as mobile judges and disciplinary officers. They choose their own assignments, have no ranks aside from political acumen and influence reach, and answer only to the Chief Judge of the Tribunarium, who happens to be the Grand Vizier of the Solarium, Jaffar the Undying, who, in a galaxy where there are no constants, is the only thing that refuses to perish.
Yes, it is game lore, but that guy is my personal hero.
So as a Justiciar, I can fuck around with whatever. But here's the thing: I am not a Justiciar.
Yeah, I found a cosplay item on Mallwart for a Justiciar coat one day, and it worked out. How and why is it still working? I don't know.
Even the Sacred Code is calling me Justiciar too, so is it all make-believe or something?
I DON'T KNOW!
I DON'T KNOW A FUCKING THING AT ALL, AND I AM DRIVING IN THE FUCKING DARKNESS WITH NOT EVEN A SINGLE FOG LIGHT ON!
Well, since I wrote it, I'm not going to erase it.
This is the point of this writing: to get it out of my own head, to figure shit out. That's what writing journals are for: coping mechanisms.
I tried working out and talking to others, but writing is the lowest effort thing to do, and it keeps me sane long enough.
So back to bitching… where was I?
Existential crisis, posing as a Justiciar, and appointing people to jobs that may (or may not) get them killed. Yes, let's talk about that last thing.
I'm worried about how the Titanites and the Lunarmen are so busy biting each other's asses. When one Lunar was caught trying to stab a Titanite in his sleep, I had to go out and act like a judge, which I am pretty much accustomed to by this point, all the lingo and aloofness. I then calmly sentenced him to death.
Public executions weren't my thing, since it would affect Company morale, and I needed the two sides to bury the hatchet somehow. So I took the guy to a faraway place near the beach, unsummoned him, and fired a blazer round at the sea. I then claimed that the punishment was not to honor his ashes in the hall of heroes established in the base, and to let the air and the sea claim his graying body.
Yes, it wasn't as hard-handed as I should have been. If it were an Earthling by mistake, I wouldn't have that unsummoning option, and I'd have to shoot them for real.
Fucking hell! What have I got myself into?
Of course, it is all my choice to be Commander. I am the one who made it clear in my head that I am The Summoner and Commander when I summoned them; they believe it at their core as the most basic form of logic.
And you can't tell me I'm summoning NPCs or some fictional people. Whatever they are, they're alive. I don't believe I gave them that life, but I gave them the bodies; that's why I am in this situation.
I don't get it; maybe I never will. I made peace with that. Maybe I'll go make peace by killing every fucking Jotnar out of my goddamn base and wiping the world clean.
Entry 14
February 26th, Y1-PA (PA stands for Post-Apocalypse, btw).
My name is Adam Clay, and I'm not crazy.
Can't believe I'm making two journal entries in two days back-to-back. It must have been quite the stress, huh?
Well, hopefully this writing thing doesn't lose its positive effect on me, so I'll need to create some gaps in the future.
So, I was mostly bitching about life in my last entry, which is cool and all. But when I spoke with Meg, she told me that I should appreciate my achievements more: "count my blessings," in her words.
So, without further ado, let's get down to what we've achieved so far.
Firstly, I think reaching this far was a real blessing that wasn't simply about luck, but about sacrifice and heroism. In a way, everyone around me is a goddamn hero: Earthlings, Wartopians, and hopefully you too, whoever you are snooping at my journal, ideally a thousand years after my death.
Secondly, many projects and operations were running back-to-back lately, some of which depended on the others, and without each of them, we don't stand a chance in facing the Jotnar. They are as follows:
Operation Wolf Hunt
Looking at the timetable, this operation started on February 23rd, three days ago.
It should have been done almost the same day; we found the monsters and defeated them, so it was enough. But discovering the Soviet-era nuclear submarine was a huge chance we couldn't let go; thus, Operation Wolf Hunt was halted for the sake of Project Soviet Nukes.
However, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. We lost our primary source of protein with the killing of all the wolves. This led us down the path to what can be described as the source of 90% of my stress those few days: Operation Don't Starve.
More on these projects later.
Currently, the main problem with Operation Wolf Hunt was the lack of vital information regarding the Rift World. For that, I had to turn to Envoy Kahori of the Alfari.
While Kahori was largely uncooperative regarding information about her race, she was so forthcoming when it came to our common enemy, the Jotnar, as well as the Rift World. She even stated that she was sharing all that as part of her debt for saving her sister, not once but twice so far.
She revealed a few important points, as follows:
"What you refer to as the Rift World is the great World Tree: literally, the tree on which all worlds grow from its branches like fruits. It has always been there, and it is nothing new for it to open to any world at any time. Our sages consider that when worlds ripen enough, they open to the Rift as part of their life cycle."
"Inside each Rift exists a Rift Guardian, an anchor being that maintains the connection to the World and the World Tree. Destroying them is the best way to close a Rift, but it is a huge undertaking. Lives will be lost just trying to put a dent in a single Guardian, let alone killing them. Elden Lords like Lord Kaimu are the ones who handle such foes. If the Guardians were to be killed, the Rifts wouldn't collapse, no. The Connection to the World they were seeking to reach would surely collapse; you'd be isolated in the Rift and would have to navigate your way back home through other Rift gates."
"There is another case: if a Rift Guardian were to come out of the Rift, that's the worst-case scenario. Rifts would transform into Fissures that would become permanent in a way, still possible to collapse, but it wouldn't be easy. Fissures are embedded in the world terrain, slowly transforming their surroundings into an image of the environment they came from, and depending on the environment, you can have places that are impossible to access."
"Is the Rift World interconnected through a network of Rifts? The answer is both yes and no. You can go anywhere on the World Tree in theory, but you have to understand: the Rift World is massive, an infinite number of times the size of this world. Some places aren't even accessible due to their bizarre environment. Places with void and no air; places with endless waters; places where existence itself starts to fold and contort in ways we can't begin to imagine. Then again, to jump between Rifts or World Tree branches, you have to find the interconnected points between them. Rifts within Rifts are exceptionally deadly and need certain Serai or specialized vehicles."
"We like to think of ourselves as the dwellers of the Outer Branches or the Outer Rift, in your tongue. Going too deep has proven time and time again that beyond certain points, our creation itself wasn't made for such depths. Just like all creatures, we were meant for one environment. We are content with what we have, since we are pretty sure we haven't even scratched the surface of this endless World Tree at all."
In short, this proved our hypothesis correct. The Rift is indeed massive beyond estimation, and many of the specialists who heard Kahori's testimony had a theory that the Rift World is a contorted view of our galaxy, where all worlds that have met its branches are connected in its endless web.
This was backed by the images and data collected by the Wolf Hunt operation team, which I returned with.
So in simpler terms, we know that:
Each Rift is a Dungeon with a Dungeon Boss that maintains it.
Each Rift can transform into a Fissure if the Dungeon Boss were to come out after reaching a certain point.
Fissures terraform their targeted worlds into an environment that fits the invading monster type. So if we are talking deep abyssal space monsters, then expect something wild.
Rifts can lead to other Rifts, but not directly. Specialized ships and equipment are needed to go through Rifts within Rifts, which is not as fun as it sounds.
This is the end of the world, and we're all doomed.
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