Myriad Heavens: Rise of the Rune God

Chapter 234: Chapter 235: Truck Kun

Meanwhile, At The Academy

The Multiversal Reincarnation Central Academy had a courtyard near the eastern dormitories where the Truck-kuns liked to gather between missions.

It was a wide open space, which was necessary for practical reasons. Truck-kuns were not small. Fitting several of them into a normal common room had been tried exactly once. The resulting structural damage led to a formal policy change and a very awkward conversation between the Facilities department and the Department of Vehicular Reincarnation.

The courtyard worked much better.

On this particular afternoon, six of them were parked in a rough circle. Their engines idled in the way that meant they were relaxed and talking rather than on standby. Their chassis gleamed in the academy’s artificial sunlight. They came in different sizes, different models, and from different universes of origin, but all of them were unmistakably Truck-kun.

”Market share is down again,” said the largest one, a heavy-duty freight model who went by the designation TK-7. His voice came out of his cab the way all Truck-kun voices did — through speakers that sounded vaguely apologetic no matter what they were actually saying. ”Third quarter in a row.”

”I saw the numbers,” said TK-12, a sleeker model with aerodynamic paneling that she maintained with visible pride. ”Twenty-two percent drop in successful transmigrations. Twenty-two.”

”App-kun again?” asked a younger truck near the back.

The silence that followed was answer enough.

TK-7’s engine rumbled with something that functioned as a sigh. ”App-kun is eating our entire market. You know what App-kun does? A weird little icon appears on someone’s phone. Just sitting there. Glowing slightly and enticing them. And people — people who would never walk out in front of a truck, people with functional survival instincts — they just tap it.”

”Because it’s shiny,” TK-12 said flatly.

”Because it’s shiny,” TK-7 agreed. ”No dramatic last moment. No physics. No technique. Just tap and transmigrate. The whole thing takes four seconds and the target doesn’t even have time to be surprised.”

”That’s not reincarnation,” said another truck, an older model named TK-3 who had been in the department longer than anyone else present. ”That’s just digital abduction. There’s no craft to it. No timing. No reading the target’s movement patterns to calculate optimal impact angle.”

”Tell that to the metrics department,” TK-12 said. ”App-kun has a ninety-four percent first-attempt success rate. You know what our department average is?”

Nobody answered.

”Sixty-one,” she said. ”Sixty-one percent. And that includes the assisted completions.”

”The targets keep getting more athletic,” the young truck said. He had the slightly defensive tone of someone who had recently had a mission go sideways in a memorable way. ”The academy simulations don’t account for parkour. Nobody accounted for parkour. When did regular civilians start doing parkour?”

Several engines rumbled in reluctant agreement.

”It’s not just App-kun either,” TK-7 said. ”Lightning-kun is up. Heart Attack-kun has been quietly expanding. I heard Falling-Bookshelf-kun is piloting a new initiative in the academic sector.” He paused. ”Falling. Bookshelf.”

”Specialized niche,” TK-3 said. ”Libraries, universities, private collections. Low volume but high completion rate. The targets are usually distracted.”

”Meanwhile we’re out here in traffic,” TK-12 said, ”competing with every other vehicle on the road, working around crosswalk signals and traffic cameras and — and dashcam footage, by the way, which is a compliance nightmare the legal department is still not done dealing with — and App-kun just exists on a server somewhere collecting souls.”

”It doesn’t even need fuel,” the young truck said, with genuine bitterness.

A long silence settled over the courtyard.

TK-3’s engine cycled through a lower register, which was what he did when he was being philosophical. ”This department has been operating since the early multiverse. Long before smartphones. Long before the internet. We were the original method.” He paused. ”There’s dignity in that.”

”Dignity doesn’t show up in the quarterly report,” TK-12 said.

”No,” TK-3 agreed. ”It doesn’t.”

The academy’s scheduling system sent a pulse through all of them at the same time — the internal notification that meant mission assignments had been updated. One by one, the Truck-kuns checked their queues. Their engines adjusted to the particular frequency of beings who were about to go back to work.

”Three targets,” TK-7 said. ”Two in Sector 7, one in a universe that doesn’t have a designation yet. New territory.”

”I’ve got one in a corporate district,” TK-12 said. She didn’t sound thrilled. ”Office worker. The file says he’s about to quit his job over a disagreement with his manager.”

”Good timing then,” TK-7 said.

”Allegedly.”

They began dispersing. The circle broke apart as each Truck-kun oriented toward their assigned dimensional coordinates. The courtyard cleared out with the unhurried efficiency of beings who had done this many times and had long since stopped being precious about it.

The young truck was the last to leave. He sat in the courtyard for a moment after the others had gone, engine still idling.

He pulled up a file. It was not his current mission queue — it was an older file from several years ago by multiversal standard reckoning. A completed mission. Or rather, a mission that had technically been completed under unusual circumstances. It had then been flagged, reviewed, and ultimately closed with a notation in the remarks column that read: Standard completion(It wasn’t). Target successfully transmitted. Outcome: pending long-term observation.

The target’s name was in the file.

Runar Cross.

The young truck’s optics dimmed slightly as he reviewed what the observation system had logged since then. He cross-referenced. He pulled data from the monitoring thread the academy kept on all active reincarnates.

His optics went very still.

He read the entry again.

Then he read it a third time.

The monitoring data was — there was no other word for it — significant. Cultivation realm, current power level, recent events, ongoing development. The academy’s observation system logged everything without commentary, just raw data. But the raw data was enough.

The young truck sat in the empty courtyard for a long moment.

*I wonder how he’s doing,* he had thought before, in the vague general way you wonder about something you did once and don’t expect to hear much more about.

He was no longer wondering in a vague general way.

He looked at the current logged status.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he closed the file, oriented toward his mission coordinates, and pulled out of the courtyard.

He had a target to get to.

But on some level, in whatever passed for the back of his processing system, the young truck was thinking about a man who had done a backflip over him on a city street several years ago. He was wondering — with considerably more complexity than before — exactly what he had set in motion that day.

The Heaven-Defying Comprehension Mantra had cost him a thousand merit points from his personal savings.

Looking at those monitoring logs, he was beginning to think he had undercharged.