The Allbright System - A Sci-Fi Progression LitRPG Story

“But anyone who has served long enough in the Corps knows that the UHF Marine Corps operates under an entirely different sort of governance: The Marines govern themselves.

“When you build an army out of people who can level city blocks before breakfast, personal politics stops being a side problem and starts being the very water you have to swim in.

“The Allbright System, in its infinite cruelty, doesn't care for unity, politics, or chain of command. It cares only for advancement.

“For the pursuit of perfection through conflict in its search for the Ultimate Warrior.

“And so, the Corps breeds monsters: Deliberately, with no remorse and no end in sight for how far they will go to create the most monstrous person they can.

“Generally, they are beautiful, loyal and efficient, those monsters of ours.

"Monsters who bend entire campaigns through the sheer weight of their personal strength. And while the Council loves their victories, it has to fear the independence that this very power brings.

“See… when one sufficiently high-Tier Marine can level a city by themselves, and another twenty can bend the laws of physics at their whim, you stop commanding an army and start managing egos, first and foremost.

“The Allbright System rewards selfishness disguised as ambition—because ambition, to the System, is progress towards its prime directive.

“This has always been the UHF’s greatest curse, but also its greatest victory.

“The Council cannot stifle the System’s hunger without starving its own armies from the very powers they need to contend in the Galactic War. To deny the Allbright System’s directive would be to cut the very muscle that keeps the Republic and Dominion to our sides trembling at our borders.

“And so, the Corps plays its own game beneath the Galactic War—one of politics, influence, and personal supremacy.

"To temper this chaos, the Council created the Proprietor system.

“Each Proprietor is the highest agent of the Council inside the Corps in all but name—a sovereign ruler of their assigned Star Sectors, chosen for loyalty to the cause, temperament and wisdom, as much as personal strength.

“To punch above their weight-class is all but a single requirement for a Proprietor, and one that they do not even sweat about. Aces among Battlefield Aces, were they ever needed to be deployed—the ultimate surgical weapons of the Council.

“Their very word is law within their domain, superseded only by the Council itself; nullifying the Corps own ranking structure and chain of command, when necessary.

“They mediate the conflicts that the Allbright System inevitably breeds inside the Corps, pulling their lesser peers back from the brink of mutiny and madness, back into the fold of the unity that is required for our Faction to exist.

“Some call them kings and queens, but I call them a necessary evil.

“Without them, the Corps would eat itself alive—its brightest stars burning each other out in a desperate bid to consume the rest, long before any enemy could.

“They aren’t chosen because they’re incorruptible—none of us are—but because their corruption is predictable, manageable, and, most importantly, aligned with the Council’s will.

“They are our guardrails, our arbitrators, our leash on the monsters of war we’ve built with our own hands.

“But make no mistake: The Proprietors are, by and large, the greatest monsters of them all.

“For ask yourself this—what kind of being does it take to not just leash, but command, the most dangerous monsters the Corps has managed to deliberately breed in seven centuries?

“What kind of being is required to make those who can level cities with a thought tremble at the sound of their name? To make the monsters yelp and lower their heads in shame, when their voices are finally raised?

“No—the true monsters aren’t the Ace Marines the propaganda reels glorify.

“They’re the very Daemons holding their leashes tight; the ones who make even demi-gods-in-the-making remember what it means to fear.”

[Excerpt from “The UHF Marine Corps’ Greatest Problem: The Monsters Of Our Own Making,” by Professor Emeritus Halden Virex – Former Advisor to the O-13 Council – PFC911]