System Programmer Chapter 32: Figment

If you ever had a small child, you have undoubtedly been woken up by them. If the child is a baby, their unending cries would cause the unfortunate parents endless sleepless nights. Fortunately, such a stage eventually ends, but it's not uncommon for a toddler or preschooler to wake one of their parents in the middle of the night because they need to go to the bathroom or are hungry. A loving parent would probably react a bit grumpy but still kindly pat their child and handle their business. Of course, the matter at hand was somewhat different. Being woken up by a daughter that doesn't exist and he had personally slit the throat of a few hours ago didn't exactly fill Joshua with parental love. To put it simply, he was utterly terrified. As soon as he had seen her, he had jumped up and backed off and was now staring at her with his body placated against the wall of the room.

"Daddy, I'm hungry, can I have some toasts now?" the thing asked, with an adorable voice.

'Don't talk to it. No matter what, don't talk to it.' he thought.

'Think, Lockman, think! This is clearly my soul world, it cannot be another trap from Delila, she's dead. My soul world consists of objects I created personally… in other words… did I create this thing by accident?"

The appellation 'thing' instead of 'child' is of great importance here, for Joshua utterly denied to recognize this little girl as a human being. If he had accidentally made it materialize, he just had to dismiss it like all the rest of the objects in here. Unfortunately, his attempts were fruitless as he desperately tried to make her vanish. Her little dress was now colored entirely black as blood kept streaming down her neck.

"Daddy, don't you want to play with me?" it said, a sad look in its eyes.

'How is this possible?' he thought, gulping.

'Luna! Show me the last log entries!" he ordered the system.

The log appeared in front of him and he clearly saw the line.

[>Creating daughter: Diana - 50% upkeep]

'FIFTY FREAKING PERCENT! This abomination is taking up half my resources! I have to get rid of it immediately!'

The monster was starting to get bored of being ignored so it made a step forward to climb on the bed. Not wanting to let this thing close to him, he made a door appear right behind him, he kicked it open, jumped through the opening and quickly locked the door. He then altered the room to remove all exits, no doors, no windows. Once that was done, he let out a deep breath.

'Phew, this should buy me some time. I still don't understand how I conjured this thing… I never made something appear I didn't want before… unless…'

His eyes suddenly grew wide, he just remembered what happened in the room the Crow had placed him. He accidentally made some bizarre giant eyeball thing appear.

'That eyeball called itself a figment of my imagination, I guess that matches. This thing ain't real, it's just something I dreamed up.'

He remembered how that eyeball had eaten all the other animals he had drawn and had a very bad feeling. His gut was right, a few seconds later, he heard a crunching sound, someone appeared to be eating something. He saw in horror a hole starting to form in the wall in front of him, that little monster slowly tearing it down with her teeth. While thinking what to do, he quickly checked his energy reserve. His available stock was decreasing while the total that abomination was consuming was steadily going up. It didn't surprise him as the eyeball had told him it had devoured the other drawings in order to have more energy for itself.

He needed a solution before that thing ate his entire soul world. It had climbed out of the room by now and was walking toward him, still smiling. Without hesitating, he made a machine gun appear in his hand and unleashed the whole clip on the creature. Thanks to the aiming a.s.sist, he didn't miss a single bullet. The little figure fell over backward, yet Joshua felt it was too soon to rejoice. He had the feeling it would somehow get up. Indeed, a few seconds later, it stood up again. Its body was now covered in bullet wounds, all leaking that disgusting black blood. The creature was crying now.

"Daddy, why are you so mean to me?" it said.

Joshua was trembling in fear by now. In a desperate attempt, he bit his lip and charged forward.

"FINE! IF BULLETS DON'T WORK, I'LL CUT YOU TO PIECES!" he yelled while replacing his gun with a sword.

In one strike, he cut the monster's head off and kicked it away. Unfortunately, just as he feared, the rest of the body just ran after its head and picked it up. Holding it in its hands, it turned back to Joshua.

"Daddy, please stop! It really hurts!" the detached head said, still crying.

"S-stay away from me!" he replied. He realized too late he had broken his own safety rule and talked to it. Honestly, had he been in physical form, he probably would have wet himself by now.

He had considered running outside his soul world, but that wouldn't help. The creature would just start devouring his soul world. Who knows what would happen once his entire world was eaten, he might even disappear.

Now, I'm sure you all realized an obvious solution by now: call for help! Indeed, he could just wake up Catherine and ask for her advice for dealing with a manifestation of your soul that has gone haywire. The problem was that Joshua was even more afraid of Catherine learning about this whole ordeal than the little monster in front of him. Thus, the ever so logical Joshua Lockman made the complete illogical decision to handle this problem on his own.

What followed were a few moments of pure chaos as Joshua was trying to run away as far as he could and the little figure kept following him. Above everything, he had to prevent this thing from leaking into Catherine's world. That would be a catastrophe.

He thought of it gaining tentacles to grab him and sure enough, a pair of large slimy tentacles grew on its back and grabbed his leg. He was expecting to it to grow large teeth suddenly and indeed as she dragged him closer to him, the head it had put back on its shoulder had its innocent smile replaced by large shark teeth. At this point, something hit Joshua and he thought the creature would be scarier with green hair. A few seconds later, its hair turned green.

Joshua burst out laughing and thought:

'It looks like I'm my own worse enemy. This thing is a figment of my own imagination, ergo, everything I imagine happening to it, actually happen. Very well, this might be the way out.'

As he was being dragged near the creature, he altered his outfit to look like Santa Claus.

"Hohoho! What do we have here!" he said. "Looks like a bad girl! Now, nice kids get nice presents, but mean children like you… well, enjoy little demon!" he yelled at it.

As he said that, a lot of wrapped gifts appeared in front of him. They all flew toward the thing and exploded. The creature let out a cry of pain and before it could react, all the gift wraps started to bind it and it was soon immobilized.

The tentacle had been broken thanks to his manoeuver so he stood up and had changed his attire to look like a dentist.

"Child it's time to visit the dentist. Look at those badly maintained teeth. I know you won't like it but it's for your own good," he told it in a mocking way.

A few bots equipped with dentistry equipment had flown toward them. Since the monster was currently immobilized, they had no trouble to start piercing down those teeth to give it some 'dental treatment'.

"DADDY!!!!!! STOP!!!!!!!!" it yelled, its voice no longer sounding like that of a girl but instead like some bizarre alien creature.

Joshua was breathing heavily, his eyes were livid but an evil grin had formed on his face, he was almost there.

"I know what every little girl is afraid off. Under your bed is a giant monster, you're afraid it's gonna come out and eat you, aren't you?"

Fear could be seen in the pseudo-girls eyes as Joshua made a bed appear under her. Suddenly a Hydra head came from under it and swallowed the creature whole before returning back under the bed. The 'girl' could only let out one final "Daddy" before vanis.h.i.+ng.

Joshua let out a 'Phew' and checked Luna's log. He frowned as it had not yet released the energy it was taking from his reserve, which meant he had merely contained it, it hadn't been destroyed yet.

Remembering what Damien had done, he focused for a moment. His soul world trembled for a few seconds before the area in front of him exploded entirely. Joshua grimaced in pain, but Luna notified him the upkeep was gone which relieved him. Unlike Damien who had blown up about 20% of his world because the Hydra had corrupted it. Joshua had merely destroyed a 5-meter diameter circle in front of him. Energy particles were floating all over the place and without delay, he started to close the breach he had created in his world.

An hour later, everything was patched up and he finally relaxed a bit. He could, therefore, allow himself a moment to review the incident. He wasn't sure how this 'daughter' had appeared this time but he guessed it had something to do with him being asleep. It seemed Delila had left him a mean farewell gift in form of this imaginary character who had decided to haunt him. Well, if that was the case, he could no longer afford himself the luxury of sleeping. He was sure it would come back if he did. No matter, he was a ghost and didn't really need to rest as long as he restored his energy. He checked the clock, it was about three in the morning.

With a heavy heart, he appeared next to the sleeping Catherine. He looked at the sleeping beauty for a moment and gently stroke her hair. To be honest, he was still somewhat afraid the 'child' would somehow appear in front of him behind a corner of the room and he felt the strange desire to climb into her bed and hug her tightly as if her presence would make bad things go away. Still, he was an adult, not a 5-year old and dismissed that ridiculous idea.

If he couldn't sleep, well there was one thing left to do. He marched straight for the library, checking every corner to see if there was no creepy ghost child on the way. Once there, he picked the first tome he came across, sat on a chair and started to read the rune designs.

He had somehow convinced himself runes would be the salvation to his madness.