Chapter 13 - A New Path
Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
Rok Nardin - The Last Goodbye
syoutu.be/PCmkyDcSvmY
Early Evening - Early Sumr : Year 0 | Month 0 : Sector J14
World: Leviathan | Rank: ERROR | Population: 23
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Wooosh The caress of a breeze.. smooth and gentle, yet oscillating with every stir of motion... It's subtle.. so much so it's one of the first things your mind ignores if it needs to focus on sothing.
But in that mont.. as I opened my eyes, standing atop the weathered, decaying remains of the suite I once bathed in, my recognition of its presence returned to like the growing glow of a freshly powered fluorescent bulb.
-Am I.. alive..?- Feeling the threads of my gambeson slowly start moving on their own, washing my skin with the sensation of static, my gaze fell to watch the black strings squirm, weave, and patch huge the huge gashes in the cloth.
It was worse than I had ever seen.. looking like I had thrown it in a wyvern nest...
But sohow, rather than finding my flesh beneath deford, mangled, and scarred as the damage suggested.. I found the opposite—streaks of fresh, youthful skin sliced through the echos of past battles as if they were scars themselves.
It was like the gashes in the cloth were made by a blade coated in the world's most powerful elixir. -W..What the hell..?-
But in a sense, it had.
Feeling around my abdon, questioning if my senses were right.. if I weren't actually just still dreaming.. I no longer felt my intestines beneath, just thickened muscle around an amorphous mass of energy I could only assu was my own mana core.. sohow morphing as I pressed against it. -That can't be right... It.. definitely shattered...-
Mana cores were rigid and crystalline, and from everything I knew, the core being ruptured spelled death, or at the very least was completely crippling.
But sohow, I still stood.. feeling the grace of mana surging beneath my fingertips... -My.. body lted...-
Feeling my expression scrunch with confusion, I turned my attention to the image my mana painted of the inside of my body, only to find sothing completely unlike what I knew.
Inside my body, everything had been rearranged or evicerated.. my entire digestive tract below the stomach ceasing into nonexistence as thickened muscle took its place.. my heart no longer pulsing as a single organ, but instead many scattered around the new web of veins laid throughout my body.
It was like my body had optimized itself.. shedding what was unnecessary in place of building more.. denser muscle...
And I certainly felt it...
Despite feeling far less mana surging from my core, I felt lighter than I had since the system wipe.. my movents feeling less restricted, and my body feeling less like a glass statue that'd shatter if I swung too hard.
-But.. none of that explains where I am...- Looking up from my clenching fist, my gaze drifted back over the endless sea of green beneath a wash of white and blue.
It looked like I was on Earth... -But that can't be right...- The horizon was too far.
Far too far...
"Where.. am I..?"
Beep The familiar chi of the system rang my skull without a mont's hesitation. "You are in sector J14 of ERROR class world, Leviathan."
-Huh..?!- My expression tightened in a blink. "Excuse ?" -Since when did the System tell you anything like that..?- Rushing to motion my hand and open my system, a panel that was both familiar and not appeared before .
Like it had on Earth, the purple panel listed all sorts of important information like the planet's na, class, and population, with tabs sorted below it to access my inventory, skills, and profile among other things.
But unlike before, above everything was a stripe of yellow tabs I had never seen: 'Planetary Details', 'System Rank and Balance', 'Available Missions', and even a tab ominously nad 'Log'. -What the hell is all this..?-
Tapping 'Planetary Details' without thinking, the entire panel flashed yellow before morphing into a holographic sphere littered with multicolored shapes, surrounded by dozens of button-like icons labeled with a language that looked more like scribbles than anything coherent. -Is this.. a map of this world...- Reaching up and tapping the globe, an array of lines appeared over everything, with the thickest tracing a half circle from pole to pole. -Is that where the grid starts..?-
Quickly counting out the rings, I found two tiles that could be sector J14, before tapping a large red dot within one of them.
Beep A panel materialized in front of the globe instantly.
But it was the last thing I could have expected.
Contained within the panel was every detail I could imagine of a being I couldn't even see—the local system panel of a wyvern thousands of kiloters away, with its level, class, and even na displayed beneath a thin yellow bar reading: 'Marked for Elimination. Cannot be granted System use.'
And that was when it clicked...
The yellow panels, be it the globe, the tabs on the ho page, or the disclair on the local system panel before .. they all contained or gave access to information I was never ant to see—the type only ant for the eyes of a very specific type of being...
An administrator.
The realization made my stomach churn. -Why.. am I seeing these..?- Looking down at my extended, glove-covered hand, my gaze grew heavy. -What.. happened to ...-
Theories instantly erupted within my mind, questioning if in the final monts I could rember, when mana burst from Draco's blade, if I sohow inherited that administrator's system.
But after going back to my system's ho page and trying the other yellow tabs, I was just bluntly told I didnt have adequate administrative permissions.
And then, one by one, the other theories that this all could have been accidental happenstance faded...
Until finally, the idea it was all on purpose pierced my brain.
Administrators were ethereal beings, those not bound to the mortal plane by bodies...
But ever since the beginning, I believed them to be born that way.. arrogant beings born in another realm beyond the reach of my eyes...
However, in that mont, that idea faded.
At that mont, flesh decorated my bones.. but for an instant.. just before I woke up in this unknown world.. my body was reduced to nothing.
In that mont, I died...
But even in death, the System didn’t plan on releasing the chains it had wrapped around its slaves.
-Administrators.. are dead system users...- The revelation hit like a truck.
Just like , they were all prisoners of the sa contraption I was...
Even in death, we couldn't escape the maze.
But sohow, despite falling for the illusion that it was a way out, the chains binding my soul to flesh didn’t snap from Death's tug.
I was given a second chance... And while the cracks in the maze's walls had been resealed, the light of freedom that peered through them had already ignited a blaze.
Just as Bree had said all those years ago.. the only way out of a maze with no end was to carve your own path through its walls...
And the only way to do that was to find strength it couldn't possibly conceive granting...
The issue was...
Closing the panels to look over the sea of swaying grass, my mind raced, and a single question settled. -How do I get back to Earth?-
If I wanted strength beyond what the System could ever grant, I needed to not only learn of the System's inner workings, but find how mana could be shaped into the key to the power I desired.
I needed a ntor.. and on Error rank worlds, where sentient life was essentially non-existent, I wasn't going to find one.
Vwoop Quickly pulling up my system again, I imdiately moved to my quests tab to see if I had a mission for this world. I thought perhaps since this world was 'Error' rank, I could just do as I had before, and complete it to get the option to go ho again.
My mind, programd to use every straw the System gave in order to survive, reached for its hand.
But whether it was happenstance, or fate... It was blank.
I needed to find my own path.
But.. how could soone with no knowledge of magic or mana not only cast a spell, but teleport between worlds.
Looking around, over the surrounding, weathered wreckage I stood on, my mind drifted with my gaze, hoping to find a spark that could light an idea.
But even as minutes ticked into hours, nothing ever ca to .
In the past, I could either complete the mission I was granted, or violate the system's rules by damaging a world to a great enough extent that I was banished.
But without a mission, and without Draco or the raw physical strength to deal that kind of damage, even after pacing around the small section of the suite that was warped with until the sun set, I was at a loss.
I needed to find another way.
Eventually walking back to the bath, now long-dried, I reached down to grab my armor, still harboring the very sa stains I planned to clean what felt like just monts ago, and clamped it back on over my now-repaired gambeson.
Since I couldn't think of anything here, I figured I may as well wander around and explore...
But.. as the final glove closed around my hand, my eyes landed on sothing black within the grass below .. a tuft of chanical fur.
It was Bella, the little robot girl that got wrapped up in my insanity, curled beneath the underside of the wreckage like an animal trying to escape the elents. -She survived..?-
It was clear so ti had passed since we arrived in that world. But unlike the weathered, rusting suite, her fur was only covered by a layer of dirt and dust.
It was clear she hadn't moved in so ti, but at that mont, my mind bounced the idea of speaking to soone.. sothing... -If she was here—in working order—long enough to move down there... Maybe...-
Hopping down, the air changed in a blink, growing humid and still in the shadow of the wreckage.
It wasn’t a good place for a robot to rest…
But after reaching down, I picked her up as gently as I could, nervous her rigid body may collapse under its own weight if her internals had rusted like the suite.
But thankfully, that didn't seem to be the case.
Bringing her up onto the surface of the wreckage, I laid her down, brushing the dust off her fur before beginning to look around for a way to open her up.
If I could figure out how she was powered, I thought I could maybe bring her back.
But, I didn't get that far...
As I wove my fingers through her fur looking for so kind of maintenance hatch, I noticed sothing...
A presence...
Pulling my focus away, my eyes went wide, darting around to try and find where I felt it.
But rather than finding sothing creeping up on .. I found the miniscule presence to be originating from within the prison of dead machinery laying before .
She was a robot.. a being born from science.
Coming from Earth, it wasn’t surprising for so level of magic to be woven into the mix…
But sothing about it felt off…
The mana exuding from her wasn’t ambient.. it wasn’t just leaking from a core that fueled machinery…
It was a presence.. mana under the control of another living being.
She was.. alive…
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