The Allbright System - A Sci-Fi Progression LitRPG Story

Thea focused heavily on analysing the behaviour of the mass of enemies in her scopes over the next couple of minutes, trying to discern certain traits that were common among duplicates.

She felt a lot of pressure bearing down on her as time passed, as she had stopped actively partaking in the defence of the UHF fortifications. With every minute she spent analysing, she got more and more desperate to throw away the entire idea and go back to shooting as many enemies as possible that came rushing up the hill towards their trench lines.

Despite all that mounting pressure however, Thea managed to stay moderately level-headed, as the rational part of her mind told her that she’d do little good doing so, compared to most other UHF marines. Her choice of weapon simply wasn’t made to cut through hundreds of bodies.

Her rifle was called a designated marksman rifle for a reason.

Its main attribute was accuracy after all, not fire rate or area denial.

‘If I had the ability to duplicate myself, where would I be? What would I do in this situation…?’ she thought to herself, trying to extrapolate the enemies’ thoughts based on her own.

Her scope slowly swayed over the mass of roaming enemies, which had started resembling a horde of zombies, rather than a semi-organised group of charging soldiers.

The Stellar Republic’s soldiers had stalled in their advance, ever since the first trench line had been breached. They were struggling a lot with getting a foothold in between the first and second trench line, as they couldn’t simply run over each other’s bodies anymore.

Being stuck in the first line of trenches, they had to clamber up the trench walls first, in order to move towards the second line of trenches. Once somebody died on top of the walls however, it was hard for the following soldiers to continue their advance.

As such, a lot of dead bodies had started piling up in and around the Stellar Republic occupied trenches, with more being dragged into the trenches by duplicates every second.

It seemed as if they were trying to fill up the entire trench with dead bodies, in order to create a rudimentary, highly morbid, bridge from the level-ground in front of the trenches to the hill behind them.

The duplicates weren’t simply taking a corpse and dumping it in however, but were instead carefully placing them to reinforce the existing ‘bridge’ structure of the previous efforts.

Observing this careful behaviour, Thea realised one thing:

Whoever was controlling the squads of duplicates carrying out the ‘building’ task had to be spending an exorbitant amount of concentration on it. There was no way that such sophisticated actions could be a simple command, without any micromanagement.

She had no idea what commanding duplicates entailed, but she was fairly certain there was no typical communication required, as she had observed the mass of enemy soldiers for a while without finding any sort of comms units.

Following that logic, she started specifically searching for soldiers that were looking like they weren’t actively doing anything substantial.

Quickly, she managed to find what she was looking for.

In her sights was a small group of soldiers, which looked identical to the ones doing the ‘building’ of the corpse bridge. The special part about these soldiers however, was that they were simply walking around near the back while looking around the trench line, further down towards the bottom of the hill. They were about 80 metres away from trenches that the rest of the soldiers were working on, yet they did not appear to be partaking in the efforts at all.

Thea took some additional time to observe the odd group of soldiers, before making the decision to take them out, having grown more certain that they were behaving oddly compared to the rest as she spent more time observing them.

She had identified four of those individuals in the group of seven soldiers. The other three seemed to be behaving even more weirdly, but Thea hadn’t found a reason for their odd behaviour yet. Those additional three seemed to simply be walking around aimlessly, while not even looking at the trenches whatsoever.

Deciding that she had wasted enough time, she took aim at the first group of four.

With ruthless precision and speed, Thea managed to rapidly dispose of all four of the marked targets in less than two seconds. She doubted that they even had time to realise what was happening to the rest of the group, before they themselves had found their end.

Zooming back out with her scope to get a wider field of vision on the battlefield, she noted with glee that over three dozen soldiers near the corpse bridge had simply dropped to the floor, unmoving! She had successfully taken out at least some original bodies!

“Yeeees! Finally, some fucking progress!” she muttered to herself, as she began frantically searching for her next targets.

This next batch of targets was a lot harder to find however, as she didn’t have an easy group of soldiers to go off of. With the bridge builders, it had been easy enough to extrapolate their behaviours and search for identical looking copies until she found some that fit her criteria.

Without anything to go off of, however, she simply had to carefully observe and look for the odd-man-out in every squad, as much as she could. About a minute of careful searching later, she found her first target since the bridge squad:

Behind a squad of enemy soldiers that were actively trading fire with the UHF lines near the second trench, which were taking cover behind a pile of corpses, was a singular soldier that had not fired a single shot.

The female soldier of the Stellar Republic was instead actively looking to stay out of sight, while a continuous, albeit slow, stream of identical looking soldiers kept peeking out from behind the corpse pile to take shots at the UHF fortifications at the second trenchline.

If not for her elevated and slightly off-set position at the far western side, Thea would never have been able to spot this hiding soldier at all. She began to realise just how troublesome this whole duplication ability truly was for the UHF.

They could not afford actively searching for these outliers with a lot of marines, as they would simply end up being overrun by the duplicates before they could find them all. But without a lot of marines searching for them, it was unlikely they’d find a substantial amount of the original bodies to make an impact.

Pushing those troubling thoughts to the back of her mind for another time, she took aim at the female soldier hiding behind the corpse pile and took the shot.

This time she was able to observe the immediate impact of her actions, as half a dozen identical looking soldiers ceased firing from behind cover at once, falling straight onto the ground wherever they stood, no longer moving a muscle.

“Five down… couple thousand to go…” she muttered to herself, half in celebration, half in exasperation at the sheer volume of work ahead of her. Taking a deep breath, she started scouting for her next target, feeling like she finally found a way to make an impact on the larger battle at hand, rather than wasting her energy cells on shooting duplicates en masse.

Looking over the battlefield once again, Thea quickly glanced at the timer in the top right corner of her vision.

With a feeling of dread, she realised that less than half an hour had passed since the beginning of the assault…! It felt to her like she had spent nearly half a day shooting at the approaching masses of soldiers, scanning for priority targets and carefully executing original bodies, yet the reality of the situation was evidence to the contrary.

“Fuck me… I’m supposed to keep this up for another seven or-so hours..?!” she muttered to herself, half in desperation. Old Man James had always said that combat was more exhausting than she could imagine, but she hadn’t truly understood what he meant up until this point…

Despite her moderately young age, she had often ended up in precarious situations in the Undercity which ended up in physical violence. While her superior physique compared to most denizens of the Undercity had seen her through a lot of them, thanks to Old Man James’ teachings and support, she had not always come away from them scot-free.

He had ended up having to stitch her up more than once, both on a physical and emotional level. Thea had not had the luxury to be soft in the Undercity, even with all the advantages that she enjoyed from being under Old Man James’ tutelage.

He had made it abundantly clear to her that he’d drop her onto the streets in a heartbeat, if she ended up relying on him too much. While she did not truly believe that he would do so, she did not want to test the old man’s convictions and patience needlessly, which resulted in her building an armour of faux maturity around herself.

Whenever possible, she’d try to do things on her own, even refusing any help offered by her few friends in fear that it would seem like she couldn’t handle herself. She had even started asking Thomas for credits after helping out in the arcade, to bring home some money to show Old Man James that she did not completely rely on his assistance!

To her, this was undeniable proof that she could handle herself, yet Old Man James had often laughed it off and said that she didn’t truly understand what it meant to be independent, similar to how he kept saying that she didn’t truly understand the exhaustion of combat.

With the latter being proven right in this exact instance, she feared that there was a possibility she would find the first one to be true as well…

The battlefield had seen an equally tumultuous transition, as the first 200 metres of the UHF trench lines were unrecognisable from the semi-pristine state that Thea had seen when she first arrived at the western front.

Corpses were strewn all over, with barely a speck of the red-brown dirt visible underneath, wherever she looked. Despite many being piled up to build rudimentary cover for the advancing Stellar Republic soldiers, there was simply such an unfathomable amount of dead bodies or blasted off body parts, that she doubted anyone would be able to clear up the battlefield after the fact, regardless of manpower involved.

The pervasive smell of burned ozone from all the laser weapons, coupled with the ever-present aroma of burned flesh, that had wafted up from the bottom of the hill since the beginning of the fight had also managed to reach a certain critical mass, slowly overwhelming her helmets’ air filtration system. Even though the change had been gradual, making it a lot more bearable overall, Thea had needed to actively try and ignore the smell over the past few minutes.

She was thankful that her mind had not fully processed the actual reality of the battlefield in front of her, as she wasn’t entirely sure how she would react to the abject terror of the massive loss of human lives that had already occurred. Just the number of corpses that had been thrown into the first trenches to build the rudimentary bridge alone, was easily eclipsing the amount of humans that she had seen in her entire life in the Undercity…!

Pushing those thoughts aside as best she could, both to try and suppress the emotional damage it was undoubtedly causing to her psyche, as well as to focus on her self-imposed mission at hand, Thea continued actively scouting the battlefield for targets.

It didn’t take long for her to find a new set of targets: A small group of soldiers had taken up refuge behind another pile of corpses, around 60 metres in front of the second line of trenches.

Similar to the female soldier’s duplicates from before, Thea could observe around three dozen soldiers continuously peeking and shooting from behind the cover at the UHF marines in the trenches. Many would get shot and killed by the return fire of the UHF side, but there was a seemingly unlimited number of reinforcements coming from behind the corpse pile.

From her perspective, Thea could make out a total of six individuals, which looked like original bodies to her. She didn’t have the time to accurately judge each and every soldier behind the cover, as every second she wasted on such judgement was another second that she wasn’t actively helping the UHF’s defensive efforts, but those six individuals were very suspect in her eyes.

Just as she was about to take the first shot at the soldier she figured to be the furthest original body from her position, she felt a tug in her mind. Taken aback by the sudden feeling, she stopped dead in her tracks.

“What…?” she muttered, focusing her attention inwards to figure out what was going on.

Much as she tried however, she couldn’t figure out what had caused this weird feeling. It had felt like a slight headache, but only for an instance and in a… non-malevolent way, if she had to describe it.

Scared of losing her opportunity to take out the group of original bodies, she went to aim at the same soldier again. As she was about to pull the trigger, the feeling returned.

“What is happening!?” she let out in frustration. It felt like something was physically preventing her from taking the shot… just like before…!

“It couldn’t be…? The simulation…?” Muttering to herself, a myriad of thoughts raced through her mind.

Was the simulation helping her out again?

Would something bad happen if she shot that particular soldier?

If so, why would the simulation help her out again, wasn’t this supposed to be a challenge?

Regardless of the reason, she decided to trust the feeling and aim at another one of the marked targets instead. It had saved her life before, after all.

Slowly getting her body and mind back under control, she squeezed the trigger, expecting the feeling to return and hold her movements…

The bright red laser of her Mjollnir pierced through the head of the soldier she had been aiming at, vaporising the majority of his brain in an instant.

Taken aback by the fact that she had successfully managed the shot, she nearly forgot that there were more targets to take out. Scrambling to get the next shot lined up, she was getting more and more confused by the weird feeling that kept showing up, seemingly at random.

Two more shots followed in the next second, successfully taking out another two original bodies, causing over a dozen soldiers near the Stellar Republic’s frontlines to drop dead. At this point she saw as one of the remaining targets, the closest one to her which she had purposefully left to be taken out last, looked in her general direction and started running for cover from her position.

“Shit!” she cursed, as she tried to get a bead on the running soldier. Just before he managed to jump into cover, hiding himself from her position, she fired.

The blazingly hot laser from her rifle soared through the air, hitting the fleeing soldier in the back of his head in an instant. His dead body crumpled to the ground mid-run causing him to slide a bit further towards the cover he had aimed for, finally placing him out of Thea’s sights… barely a fraction of a second too late.

She let out a sigh of relief as she relaxed her body a bit, before returning her thoughts to the previous issue. “That was closer than it had any right to be. Just what is going on with that stupid feeling?!”

Using her weapon’s scope, she zoomed in again on the last remaining soldier she had originally marked as an original body. Just then she realised that he still hadn’t moved an inch from his previous position.

“… he’s not an original!”, she quickly concluded under her breath, eyes wide open in surprise.

Having more time to take a closer look at this soldier, it became apparent to Thea how wrong she had been to suspect him. While the other originals looked around, shuffled in their cover and sometimes even peeked over it to adjust their commands, this one was standing nearly entirely still. Outside of shifting his weight from one leg to the other, the soldier hadn’t moved at all since she started shooting.

“Is this feeling helping me identify originals…? Is that it? Is the simulation trying to tell me I should continue with what I’m doing in this way?”

Thea tried figuring out what was going on with this weird situation, but had little to go off of. Frustrated at her inability to really find an answer, she simply decided to test her theory.

Over the next few minutes, she continuously took aim and shot at over a dozen soldiers that she quickly marked as potential originals. Where before, she’d spend at least a minute per target, she now only spent a couple of seconds finding and marking potential targets instead.

Out of the seventeen marked soldiers, the weird feeling stopped her from shooting four of them, which she later confirmed were not originals. Every other one she had managed to kill, she also confirmed to have been an original after the fact.

“This is it! It’s helping me identify the originals! I can do this!” she exclaimed in glee after spending a couple moments going over her findings.

Spurred on with elation at her apparent invisible helper, she went on to reap across the battlefield with uncanny precision and efficiency.

Around ten minutes later, as she rapidly thinned the ranks of original bodies in her field of vision, a shift in momentum could be seen on the battlefield for the first time.

The area she was clearing out started to be able to hold the Stellar Republic’s advance!

She guessed that she had taken out around a hundred-or-so original bodies by now. This proved to be a huge hit to the offensive, as each original would usually spawn anywhere upwards of four or five soldiers at a time in a continuous stream. If one were to extrapolate the kill-count for all the duplicates that had died as a result of her actions, she’d likely be closing in on five-hundred kills or more!

Her efficient reaping had not gone without notice, however.

As she was about to take out another group of originals, they suddenly ducked behind cover, away from her position. At the same time, a large number of projectiles and lasers started pouring in her direction.

She had come under fire for the first time since the beginning of the battle!

Surprised by the sudden turn of events, she ducked into her foxhole, hiding away from the rain of gunfire coming towards her.

“Well.. it was good while it lasted.” she conceded in defeat. There was no way she’d be able to continue her sniping if her position had been exposed like that…

Suddenly, her comms sprung to life: “Private, you still alive? What the hell just happened over there?” came the confused voice of Squad Leader Kellerman.

“Ahh.. Good to hear from you again, SL. I figured out a way to efficiently identify originals. Took out like a hundred of ‘em or something… seems they’re quite mad about that. I’m pinned down here now, gonna have to change location. Any way you could give a girl a hand?” she answered with a cheeky tone in her voice, glad to be able to talk to someone friendly for once.

The constant battle of attrition they had been in had definitely taken a toll on her psyche, she realised when talking to Kellerman. The simple fact that hearing his voice had relaxed her entire body and mind proved that she had been straining her entire being for a while.

“You figured out WHAT?! … Ahhh whatever, we’ll talk about this later. I’ll have my squad cover you for the next ten seconds, get out of there. Start running when you hear the shots.”

Kellerman replied with exasperation. He was clearly taken aback by the nonchalant attitude that Thea had portrayed at reporting such a monumental development.

The UHF had spent countless hours trying to come up with an effective countermeasure to the duplication ability, yet this one random private claimed to have found one in less than an hour of active battle? That was beyond preposterous!

Around thirty seconds later, Thea started hearing a deluge of gunfire crack towards the battlelines in front of her. Peeking out of her foxhole, she saw that Kellerman’s squad had repositioned further towards her side inside of their trench and opened fire at the soldiers that were suppressing her location, killing dozens and causing the others to duck for cover.

She quickly grabbed her backpack, which she had previously refilled with all the grenades and energy cells that she had placed around the foxhole for easy access and her rifle and jumped out of her foxhole.

With a running start, she sprinted towards Kellerman’s squad, around 30 metres away from her location. Being in the open like that, she represented an easy target for the Stellar Republic’s line.

Not a second into her sprint, shots started racing by her from the occupied first trenches. Luckily, the duplicates were not exceptional shots, so the first salvo missed her entirely.

Thea felt her heart beat in her throat, as her entire body was suffused with an exorbitant amount of adrenaline at the near-death experience of getting shot at.

“Fuck… fuck fuck fuck.. Fuck!” she yelled as she spurred her body to run faster towards the safety of the trenches ahead.

During the next salvo, she was not as fortunate.

Two shots, both projectile-based, hit her in the side, causing her to stumble and nearly fall on her face. Thankfully her armour had held and wasn’t penetrated by the low-tech gunfire of the Stellar Republic, but Thea knew, if this had been UHF marines, she’d likely be dead by now.

With a distinct feeling of mortality, she finally stumbled into the trenches next to Kellerman’s squad, after what felt like an eternity of running to her. In reality, the entire sprint had only taken her around four seconds, an exceptionally fast time, all things considered, but she realised that during combat, four seconds was a lifetime.

“Glad to see you in one piece, Private. You hurt?” Kellerman posed without looking at her, continuing his automatic rifle fire towards the Stellar Republic’s lines.

Taking a second to check herself over before replying, Thea replied: “Looks like I got lucky. Got a bit bruised by a couple of projectiles, but I’m fine. Thanks for the bailout guys. I’ll make it up to you, I promise..!”

Getting back on her feet inside the trench lines, she wondered how to continue, but Kellerman’s voice interrupted any thoughts she could muster on the topic.

“So… you said something about spotting originals? What’s that all about?”

Thea shook her head slightly to clear her thoughts. She HAD said something about that during their short communication earlier, but… how was she supposed to explain it?

“I… ehh… I got a gut feeling. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s working. I can’t exactly describe how or why, just that it works. You can watch me do it if you don’t believe me.” She tried her best to explain and dissuade any thoughts of her lying.

Kellerman turned to face her, taking a long look at the helmet that was hiding her face.

“...gut feeling’s not much to go on… but I’ll trust you on this. You’ve done good work before and I have no reason to doubt you. What can we do to help? Getting rid of the originals seems like the best way to get rid of these freaks for good.” he concluded, after staying silent for a few seconds of contemplation.

Internally relaxing and breathing a silent sigh of relief at his words, Thea thought about his words.

What COULD they do to help her?

She couldn’t exactly explain her process to them and expect it to work for them, after all. The simulation was helping her identify the originals quickly, for whatever reason. She couldn’t exactly tell them that they were all part of a computer simulation and that she had, essentially, cheat codes that helped her.

Realising that Kellerman was still waiting for an answer, she shrugged.

“I honestly don't know. I can’t explain my methodology nor can I mark the targets for you, as it requires me to take the shot to be able to tell. I guess… just keep me safe?”

With a similar shrug, Kellerman turned to his squad and barked an order: “Alright, you heard the lady. Protect her, as best you can. Try to make sure she has clear lines of sight and she doesn’t get murked by some freaks. Whoever’s fault it is that she dies gets put on punishment detail for a month!”

The squad’s reaction was split, with one half acknowledging the order, while the other groaned in exasperation.

“Fucking punishment detail for a MONTH?! I just got out of it, boss…,” one of them groaned in displeasure. “Don’t you dare die on me, girl,” he added towards Thea as he scooted over a couple of metres in her direction, to better cover her from potential enemy fire.

With a grin on her face, which was hidden by the helmet of her armour, she pulled up her rifle, stepped up to the trench lines and returned her focus to the grim harvest…