Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 164: Frontier
Wow. What a mindfuck.
While everyone absorbed the truth of Trapper’s words, they took turns peering through the spyglass—recording their observations so that they could report them to Earl, Dialla, and the rest of the settlement.
Now that he knew what he was looking at, Edge did his best to commit every detail to memory, since the information might prove vital to the town. The Titan’s Nose was only a few miles away from the borderlands. It was close to where the two unknown biomes came together, offering a view into each.
The first was a desert filled with bright orange sand and pale pink cacti. The plants had to be hundreds of feet tall to appear so large from such a distance. It was a harsh land, but also full of life. His jaw dropped as he took in the sight of flying beasts with thirty-foot wingspans or more. From this far out, he couldn’t tell if they were reptiles, birds, or something more exotic.
Everything he could see was big, including some massive creatures that could give the padamas and garax a run for their money. Even this brief view was enough to make Edge completely certain that he never wanted to set foot in the strangely-colored wilderness. At least not at his stage. He watched as a herd of stallion-like beasts went running from the flying predators, only to be ambushed by a different manner of hunter instead.
The ground beneath the horses gave way, forming a circular pit like an antlion’s trap on a gray whale’s scale. Two of the stallions fell into the sloping cone, never to be seen again. He couldn’t tell what was in the bottom from this angle, but he was sure that it was bad news. It looked like the rest of the quadrupeds would make it to safety, as they darted into a grove of oversized cacti.
Edge couldn’t have been more wrong. Because that was when one of the towering pink plants moved. It must have been a different species than the others, although it looked almost the same. The mega-cactus reached down in a flash and scooped up one of the fleeing beasts—impaling it upon a thousand spiny thorns before opening a mouth the size of a cavern and tossing the unfortunate creature inside.
He shuddered, then turned his attention to the other biome. He was ready to record his findings and get the fuck out, before anything spotted them and decided to have the crew for a light snack.
Forming a marked contrast to the neon desert, the adjacent landscape was covered in sparkling ice—thick even in the summer heat. No. That’s not ice, Edge realized. It looks more like gemstone or glass. The crystal forest glistened in the sunlight, throwing wild patches of color for miles in every direction. Although the unusual minerals were prevalent, there was still plenty of ground covered in regular dirt.
Many of the plants were made of living crystal too, though there were numerous species that weren’t. Most striking of all were the crystal beasts. Edge took in the sight of butterflies with glass wings. Of packs of wolves carved from amethyst and jade, and dozens more species formed from different types of gemstones.
This must be the biome the garax came from. It fits with what I saw inside its core. Trapper finished recording their observations into her journal, while everyone ducked behind a boulder to shield them from view of the creatures prowling below. Then they left the summit and began climbing back down, each hunter lost in thoughts of their own.
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While they walked, Edge pondered the mystery of the planet’s frontier. On any other colonized world, everything would have been mapped from the moment that the first settler set foot onto it. With drones, satellites, flying vehicles, and a wide variety of scrying spells, charting the surface would have been almost effortless. But thanks to the System, the frontier of Ord was something else entirely.
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Even though people had been living here for centuries, only a small fraction of the planet had been explored prior to the anomaly. There were two reasons for this unique situation. The first was the red-shield, which prevented any unauthorized transportation, scrying, or communication. The System only allowed teleportation to and from the planet in orbit, and in a few other instances—such as newly arrived tourists synching with their puppets and then portaling to the starting zone of their choice.
As a result, you couldn’t just step out of a portal and into terra incognita. Exploring the surface had to be done the old-fashioned way—heading out into the unknown, then surviving to tell the tale. Every wave of settlers had been pioneers too, and many people had died before regions safe enough to set up the spaceport and the starting zones had been discovered.
The other barrier to easy exploration was the magical phenomenon known as the Fog of War. Most people believed that the fog had been created by the System too. Although no one was sure, since the AI had merged itself with the planet’s core long before the first human arrived.
The Fog of War was a layer of magic that prevented the surface from being viewed from the air, or with any manner of perceptual-enhancing spells. It wasn’t an issue in the settled areas. In explored regions, which extended a few miles beyond where people had physically stood, the Fog of War receded, and everything worked the same way it did on any other planet.
But in the unexplored regions known collectively as the frontier, orbital observation, reconnaissance from flying vessels, and sense-linked drones couldn’t pick up anything beyond an impenetrable sea of multicolored fog.
Before the disaster, expanding the frontier was a major aspect of life on Ord—one of the biggest draws of the Prison World feed. In part because of the inherent attraction of exploration, a primal joy as old as human civilization, and in part because of the treasures that the System had seeded throughout the frontier during the early days of its inception.
While these thoughts passed through his mind, the hunters made it down to ground level and began hiking south as quickly as they could. No one said a word. They were still grappling with the magnitude of the bombshell revelation.
They pushed themselves hard, eager to put as many miles as they could between themselves and the host of high-stage beasts they had observed in the adjacent biomes. Edge took advantage of the opportunity to ponder everything that he knew about the System. The dominant force on Ord, and the orchestrator of the most profitable form of entertainment ever created.
After magic came to Earth and the AIs rose to dominance, they had uncovered the existence of the portal network. The network was an ancient artifact that granted access to countless life-bearing worlds, including the planet Ord.
Before revealing this paradigm-shattering news to humankind, the hyperintelligent machines had used it to further their own ends. Many chose to leave the Earth entirely, and many more spread their offspring across the galaxy—seeding the stars with magtech-based life.
The very first entity from another world to arrive on Ord was the AI now known as the System. After installing itself into the planet’s core, it had fed on the concentrated magic permeating the globe—transforming itself into one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy within a matter of years.
Once it had established its supremacy, the System began expanding its reach. In less than a century, it had become the economic powerhouse that it was today, at least before the disaster. It created the red-shield first—locking everyone else out and preventing any other AIs from challenging its dominance.
When it was ready, the System reached out to governments across the galaxy with a proposal. A solution to a pressing problem and a chance to generate a staggering fortune in the process. An endeavor that the System called the Prison World Saga.
With the dawn of magic had come a new class of criminal—individuals who were powerful enough to wreak havoc on a global scale. Wiping them out invariably resulted in a tremendous loss of life and resources, but the System had come up with a way to get rid of class SS threats without the need for violence.
Working together, the AIs began casting powerful rituals that transported troublemakers of all stripes to Ord—the only prison that was strong enough to hold them. Then they turned the resulting chaos into a form of entertainment unlike any other. An entirely new form of multimedia, collectively known as the feed.
After agreeing to the System’s terms, the League of Machines had developed the simucast network and puppet technology—adding a new wrinkle that made the Prison World broadcasts even more profitable than they already were. Puppet tourism.
By the time that Edge was done pondering his digital overlord, they were halfway back to the farm. The hunters stopped to eat dinner in a sheltered location and were back on the road half an hour later.
