System Programmer Chapter 24: To Be Trapped or Not To Be Trapped...

Joshua looked the same as always. This, however, was just on the surface. For some reason, someone or something had tried to sabotage his mind. Joshua is what most people would call 'a pretty chill guy' but even he had his limits. Deep inside, he was boiling with anger. He slowly cracked his knuckles. Now that he knew what he was up against, it was time to retaliate.

He informed Catherine and Eric about what he had found. However, he told them to act as if he hadn't discovered anything and to continue to look for the source of the problem. It was probable they were being watched somehow. It would, therefore, be careless to let their enemy know their method of attack had been discovered. They should use the opportunity to strike back.

They had no objections and started a charade, they pretended to look for anything while they were actually on guard against what Joshua had told them. In the meantime, Catherine's spirit form joined Joshua and they were both looking at the display.

"It's great you found what was troubling you, but how do you plan on striking back?" she asked him.

"Well, my adorable little Catherine, do you have faith in my acting skills?"

"...What?" she said at first but then followed with," Oh, I see. You want to pretend to still be under the influence of the spell to drag out whoever is behind this?"

"More or less," he answered while materializing a skull in his hand.

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy," he said in a very dramatic way.

Catherine looked confused as she had obviously never heard of Hamlet.

"I have no idea what you just recited, but if anyone knows how to be dramatic, it's you," she said smiling.

"All right, then this is what we're going to do," he answered as he laid out his plan to her. It was a bit risky, but she believed Joshua could pull it off.

They decided to continue Eric & Catherine's little act for the rest of the day. Joshua remained inside, finalizing the details of the plan. The day was peaceful as they didn't run into any predator that posed a threat to them. They camped near the river, like before. While they obviously couldn't carry its massive body, they had taken some T-Rex meat with them and feasted upon it once again. Everyone went to sleep as Luna was keeping watch.

As planned, Joshua took action around six in the morning. He appeared in physical form next to Catherine who pretended to be asleep. He gently kissed her cheek and said out loud: "I'm sorry, I believe there is something important waiting for me there. I must go on alone for now."

He left the camp and wandered into the forest. It didn't take long for the usual signs to appear. The wind was howling, animals were making noise, some birds were singing,... The reason it took so long to locate the origin of the attack was that it didn't come from a single point. Instead, everything about the forest: be it the wind, the animals, even the flow of the river was emitting sound in a particular rhythm. The key realization had come from the woodpecker he had heard, it was pecking the tree as if he was playing an instrument. The whole thing was very subtle, and probably a weak version of the 'bizarre music' Damien had mentioned.

In any case, what was attacking him was sound waves. Furthermore, since the various sounds were forming an unusual symphony, he knew how to act against it. The previous day, he developed a noise cancellation function. As soon as Luna detected the melody, the system would send out anti-noise waves to negate their effect. Of course, it was possible the melody could be altered at some point, which is why the plan was a tad risky, but he had put Luna on the lookout to detect anything unusual in the ambient sounds.

As soon as the bizarre tune started to play, Joshua pretended to be under its influence once more. He let himself be guided by the melody and moved toward the loudest percussions. It didn't take long for another hole with a shining light to appear. He immediately scanned it. He saw that this light was actually a large coffin, embedded with various runes. One of them was obviously responsible for the light but he recognized the others. They were similar to the jar he had been trapped in before. In other words, once he would enter the coffin, he would be locked inside, with no way to leave on his own.

The logical thing to do would have been to ignore the coffin and retreat, however, he would never find out who was behind all of this if he did that. Hear out Joshua's reasoning: it was very unlikely that the whole world was against him in this case, which means someone had to have been manipulating the animals and the surrounding environment. With the appearance of the coffin, the culprit was still nowhere to be seen, which annoyed the hell out of him. It appeared that whoever was behind this, was still a safe distance away. So, still pretending to be under the influence of the melody, he slowly marched toward the chest. Once in front of it, he merely looked at it for a moment, before stepping inside. Without delay, the coffin closed in on him and he was trapped inside.

At the very least, that's how things appeared to be. Of course, Joshua would never have entered that coffin if he didn't have a way out. It's quite simple actually: after he had learned how to make his own runes, he had examined the recorded pattern of the jar he had been locked in. If there was a rune for locking something up, there had to be one to unlock it too. He had, therefore, prepared such unlocking rune long ago. He had tested it by applying the locking rune to a chest in his soul world and had locked himself inside it. Then he had activated his unlocking rune. It took him a few tries, Catherine had to let him out more than once, but eventually, he got out on his own.

Holding tight to the key he had materialized with the unlocking rune on it, he contacted Catherine. Normally he would have been cut off from her, but the key countered that effect. The coffin was slowly starting to move and Joshua guessed it would return to whoever was behind all of this. The link between them allowed Catherine to locate his position so she followed the coffin from a safe distance, the rest of the party following her.

The coffin soon sped up, but Catherine had no problem to keep up the pace. She was yelling around, pretending to look for Joshua, which made him smile. Inside the coffin, Joshua was actually pretty relaxed. The trip was fairly long and after a few hours, Catherine contacted him to inform him the bizarre music had completely vanished. It looked like his strange captor had completely dismissed the humans and was only interested in his soul. Perfect, they could follow him without much trouble.

It was evening when Catherine noticed Joshua had finally stopped moving. By now, they were far away from the river but thanks to Luna, finding their way back shouldn't be hard. They had been walking through the forest the whole day, moving at a fast pace to keep up with Joshua. Still, everyone's body was extremely strong and while tiring, such a long walk was something they could bear with. After Joshua stopped moving, they took a few minutes off to have a drink and a short meal before resuming their walk. Joshua had told her he was still in the coffin, his captor was apparently in no hurry to show up, so they both remained calm.

They were still in the middle of the forest, but the last kilometer, the area was becoming less dense in trees and soon they came out in an open clearing. Upon laying their eyes on the area, they couldn't help but frown. There was an old building in the middle of the clearing. They could tell it was very ancient since the surface was half covered in plants and the building was half buried in the ground. Furthermore, she could tell Joshua was inside the building, somewhere below the surface.

Hearing about this, Joshua got excited. He had avoided scanning the whole area in case his captor could somehow detect he was not really captive, but now that Catherine was entering the building it was time for him to break free. He activated the key and the coffin sprang open. He jumped out and took a look around. He appeared to be in some sort of research lab, not much unlike his own. Large vats full of green liquid were all over the place, containing the corpse of various creatures. Clearly, the liquid was there to prevent decomposition.

Only one thought crossed Joshua's mind upon seeing this: "This place is awesome!"

Chapter end