<< [ pic.jpg ] "yolo?" >>? ? ? Deep in the wild woods surrounded by trees unseen by human eyes, a wind-swept clearing broke from the endless canopy. A small grassy knoll no larger than an acre, capped only by a little stone construct. A dark-grey plinth of three or four meters and cylindrical in construction. Its surface displayed beautiful concentric engravings with interwoven symbols and gibberish. These were Runes, for they could be nothing else. Powerful conduits of magic formed by precise artisans with purpose and practice. This particular set had been dormant for centuries, abandoned by the hands that birthed them long ago. They did not mind, they were Runes after all, but a little excitement wouldn''t be unwelcome. Thankfully, today was shaping up to be a little more than exciting. Like condensation on a hot day, the runes could feel the Mana clinging to them, fighting for ingress at every point. A deep red glow began to fill the ruts, the power building as it coalesced within the rocky mass. Then it flared, an overpowering red light coating its surroundings in a surreal visual filter before ten-thousand people yelled "SCHWOOP!" and clapped once. An unparalleled experience if anyone was around to hear it. Approximately two seconds later, and four meters higher than she should be, Mara popped into existence as if her room had vanished from around her. "Whoah-fu-" her immediate reaction cut short by the effects of gravity as it compressed flesh into stone. Air left her lungs like a popped balloon while bruises competed for real estate across her boney frame. Her nose felt puffy as blood had already begun to pool across various bits of the runic engravings, smothering out what glow remained within. Groaning out an "Ooowww..." she rolled onto her back and plugged her nose. It was sore, she was sore, but nothing seemed broken. Not the best welcome, but pretty decent for face-planting concrete, she thought. Above her was a crystal blue sky and a wobbly sun. Or blobby? It''s like it''s shifting around... Squinting for answers, she found none but the image burned into her retinas. The sun was weird, that much she was certain of, but it was warm and bright. That checked the minimum requirements of ''sun'' in her book. Anything else was not her problem. Rolling over and up, Mara skimmed her surroundings. The clouds were normal enough, the trees were green, and the air was fresh. The skies were littered with avians of varying sizes, some betraying their goliath scale by their slow crawl against the distant sky. Beneath them the forest stretched as far as she could see. She was in a valley with steep sides on her left and right, and a gentle slope and curve behind her. In front was a distant slope obscured by pines, likely her valley led to more valleys. Shocker. "So a wibbly-wobbly sun, endless trees, and no signs of life -at- all. No cult members to enslave my soul, no corrupt king requesting my aid, and not even a great evil in need of slaying? A startling lack of urgency in any form, I''m not sure if I should be terrified or relieved. I guess the onus is on me then," Mara could hardly ask the stone beneath her feet for answers after all, it was truly gibberish. Pretty and nuanced but still gibberish. She knew she''d need a proper education to even approach something like this. It reeked of magic, and the top-shelf stuff too. A smile unknowingly crept across her face as she inspected the luke-warm engravings¨C she was excited! It was a melting pot of stuff she only had passing familiarity with, Norse, Celtic, Latin, among others, and stuffed full of arbitrary geometry. Familiar in pieces, entirely alien in an ensemble. Sure it was impossible for her to understand now, but it was far more than the sum of its parts. It meant magic, harnessable, tangible arcana. She felt a hunger at the sight of it, a need to understand and employ. She hadn''t been this excited since she started programming. Practically bouncing around the platform she arrived upon, Mara questioned every facet of it for answers. Yet the mystery plinth refused to yield under her scrutiny. It was simply a huge chunk of dark-grey rock with some really old engravings. Nothing more. Fine, it''s not going anywhere. It could be my way home after all, doors go both ways. Or was it a gate? At least it''s secluded around here, there''s safety in isolation. Plopping down at the edge as she considered the larger implications of interdimensional thresholds, Mara took a self-census. She was beat to hell, that was obvious, but it was clear the drop could have been far more serious. Nothing was broken after all, but she had a -bunch- of bruises. Then she pictured it, her unwitting pun infectious, she was one of many over-ripe bananas dangling in a bunch. Mara struggled to keep a straight face at her own mental imagery, but it was a lost cause, "Pfft- hahaha..." Unable to contain her laughter, she felt it was infectious and cathartic. Either she was still in shock, or she had a mild concussion. Could be both. Regardless, the laughing lightened her mood as she looked over what came along for the ride, "Clothes and empty pockets huh?" Oh, I''m wearing my flip-flops, that''s unexpected. Should I be glad I didn''t show up barefoot? But my lighter and phone are gone... So someone or something fleeced me before sending me through... She paused to consider her unknown ''benefactor'' for a moment before speaking to nothing in particular, "Thanks, I guess." She knew she wouldn''t get a response, but there was a high possibility she wasn''t quite as alone as she thought. She had her clothes though, her passing attempt at pajamas, working from home has its benefits after all. She was still wearing her favorite skeleton hoodie along with some barely-visible floral lounge shorts under the oversized garment. Both were mostly black, the only outliers were the x-ray print on the hoodie and the intricate violet bouquet on the shorts. Overall, it was far more comfortable than appropriate. Not exactly adventure-ready, but- "It''ll do for now." Slipping off the edge of the plinth, down the remaining meter, her feet hit the soft grass with a "Ding!" Wait, ''ding''? As she processed the abnormal reaction, a small voice made of words appeared in her mind.
< You have entered the Lost Wilds Dungeon! >The voice was crisp but foreign, like perfectly recalling how an actor delivered a memorable line. She knew it was in her mind, but it was uncanny. Her eyes went wide when the gears clicked into place, Hangon- There''s a system here!? ? ? ? If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. The ashen-haired girl was making her way down the clearing while muttering arbitrary words to herself, "-appraisal. - Observe. - Evaluate." The woods around her seemed indifferent to her approach, her experimental monologuing yielding little results as she crossed under the canopy. Pausing as she passed the first pair of trees, "Huh, I almost expected another notification. Strange then that first one prompted only after I hopped off the platform." I really hope I''m not just going crazy, but I did just arrive in an alien land... No, no. That was a notification through and through, I just need to figure out how to interface. I''m pretty much out of appraisal-esk skill names, uhh- "Debug- No. No way. Pffffft, what!? DEBUG?" Mara had come to a complete standstill, a menu had appeared before her with a little loading wheel spinning in the middle. "You''ve got to be kidding me, this place feels far too real to be a game." Of course, ruling out the obvious time-traveling kidnappers with hyper-realistic full-dive tech. She watched with excruciating patience as the display continued to whirl with no visible signs of progress. Minutes passed until she tore her eyes from it, distracting her impatience with her surroundings. Above her the canopies were aglow with vibrant greens and lush complementary hues. Underbrush lined the trunks, their roots obscured and narrow gaps occluded. an unending bramble lending safe hovels to small critters scampering to and fro. It was natural beauty, truly, and she was impressed. "I''m not sure I''d even mind at this point." After all, if it waddles and quacks, it might just be a duck... The floating window was clearly unhurried by Mara''s impatience, so setting off again she watched as the frosty grey pane dissolved away. It was easy enough to bring up again, but it faded as soon as she started moving away again. Figuring she could make better use of her time than watching a magic panel whir, Mara got her bearings and headed downhill. Towards food and fresh water, hopefully a nice stream with at least a few nice fruit-bearing plants. That was the hope at least, she''d barely watched survival shows and most animes had a tendency to gloss over stuff like that. Usually the protagonist was on the run, or headed to an obvious goal. Finding and forging her own path in a world of magic and mystery? What an opportunity. She''d never have dreamed of such a chance for adventure, the possibilities with magic alone were tantalizing. So she trekked on, occasionally pausing to rest and check the panel for any changes. A few hours went by without much change to her established pattern. Dropping down to a relatively comfy looking boulder-and-tree chair, Mara felt her stomach bemoan her lack of snacks. The sun had moved all of 5 degrees, but was significantly dimmer since she set out. She''d been walking for hours after all and yet she still wasn''t out of the valley. Water, let alone food, would likely be another day''s walk at minimum. Prompting the display once more, she figured she could experiment a little. She''d yet to see anything larger than a rabbit and everything seemed to be herbivores, suspiciously safe. Putting aside her paranoia, Mara figured she could catch some shuteye in the daylight while her little friend crunched his numbers. It didn''t take Mara long to find a good nook and then she was out like a light. Years of sleep deprivation had ingrained her with the innate ability to ''drop like a rock'' at a moment''s notice. As her head lulled to the side, her dreams were awash with foreign imagery. A running spigot and a drain, spinning on a wobbly bike wheel. A locked briefcase with handcuffs attached. A snarling gullet of spinning teeth- Mara bolted awake, her grey box fizzling away. The sky was dark, the woods were black, and the growling was deep. There was something -no, somethings- lurking in the darkness, just out of sight. She''d overslept and she was out of time. One of the night prowlers crept to her right, circling behind her as the other two fanned out in front. Options Mara, options. Spinning around she checked her surroundings, she had less than little to work with. Up it is then. Pulling her legs up onto her rocky seat, Mara boosted her jump and latched onto a hefty lower branch. Yes- Mid celebration, halfway through her first of many pull-ups, she felt it. The impact to her core, flesh ripped from her like a thousand pinches stabbing into her depths. The sky whipped by as she was thrown to the floor like wet laundry. The shadows moved upon her near instantly, the only real saving grace to the unspoken butchery she quickly succumbed to. It took the beasts less than a handful of minutes to leave naught but gnawed bone as they skulked back into the underbrush, complacent and satisfied. ? ? ? The sun was shining gently upon a small clearing in the middle of an expansive forest when a small ashen haired girl appeared approximately four meters above her intended materialization point. Anomaly logged. Cause unknown. "Fuuuuuc-" was all that could be heard before Mara once again impacted the runic bulls-eye she would soon come to despise. Wheezing until the ringing dissipated, Mara peeled her face from the plinth to find several grey panels waiting for her attention.
< User Interface: H.L.H. Installed. >
< You have been Startled by Fear. >
< You have died. >
< System Cycle Complete: yolo? >Mara stared at the four prompts, speechless. Words alone could not convey the emotions running through her mind. She could recall her last moments, they just happened- the noise... She shuddered for a moment, suppressing the feeling. She was here, now, and that was then. She had died in those woods, naive and underprepared. How was she here now? Eyes narrowing, she re-read the last box, yolo... "Oh. Aren''t you a sarcastic git- Is that a skill?" Struggling to her feet, she summoned up the original box that started it all, "Debug."
<< Name: Mara Odinavi (Mara) Race: (Half-Elf) ¡ñ Elevae (Elf) [50%] ¡ñ Daemon (Demon) [50%] Class: Null Titles: Null Stats: ¡ñ S.6 ¡ñ D.16 ¡ñ A.8 ¡ñ C.10 ¡ñ M.18 ¡ñ F.13 Passives: Null Reactives: Null Actives: Null Lore: ¡ñ Abyss Shifter ¡ñ Daemon Root Divine: ¡ñ [ yolo? ] >>Mara nearly choked as an unstoppable laughter erupted from her miniscule frame. "Hahahahahaha, oooh what even is this, I''m a half-elf!? Loooool" slipping off the edge of the plinth, she saw the notification pop up as her feet touched the ground.
< You have entered the Lost Wilds Dungeon! >Somehow coming out smiling after her clear-death, Mara squinted up at the sun. It was about the same time of day as her initial arrival. No - exactly the same time, that can''t be a coincidence. So is it time travel or a respawn timer? I guess only -time- will tell! Giggling at her own pun, the sun seemed to wiggle in response, but it was likely just the usual wobble. So she set her eyes on the more horizontal options. Uphill seemed the best bet, she could use as much distance between her and last night as she could get. So six stats, S D A, C M F. Reopening the menu multiple times to read as she walked, Mara practiced quickly iterating the command while moving. She pondered their possible expansions while crossing under the canopy. The trees seemed visibly indistinguishable from their opposite counterparts. So, Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Constitution, Magic, and something. That''s at least the best I''ve got until I learn otherwise. It''d be nice though, a high stats in the magic and mystery category is bound to be beneficial. Mara stopped to listen for any pursuers, it was broad daylight but she couldn''t shake off her recent encounter. However, the forest appeared to be just as peaceful during the day, regardless of the location. Ducking under a fallen tree, Mara''s thoughts lingered on her race. Half elf, half demon, what happened to being human? Is that why my magic stat is abnormally high? At least it looks like it displays as "Half-Elf", that''s bound to save me some headaches. "It''d really be nice if these things came with tooltips or something, what''s lore supposed to be?" Mara spoke aloud, rhetorically, but in the vain hopes of an answer. Finding none, she continued her trek on an ever-steepening incline. It wasn''t long before the trees began to thin and the ground to grow more rocky, the underbrush had recessed while the winds grew emboldened. "Christ that breeze is cold, curse my spoiled upbringing in climate controlled environments!" Shaking her fist in mock protest, Mara quickly tucked her arm back underneath the other. Despite the chill, her goal would remain unchanged. Shelter for the first night, as far from those teeth as possible. Stumbling over a particularly rocky region, Mara had managed to trek far enough uphill to get some space between trees. So, skills, or at least that''s what I presume they are. The only one I have is in the ''Divine'' category. That''s got connotations. No idea what those could be, but that''s a sticky statement. Why''s it gotta be ''yolo?'' Is that even legal? It''s supposed to be divine right? Her face was plastered with confusion as she grappled with the levels of immaturity to name a ''divine'' skill ''yolo'' - it physically hurt to accept. Yolo. 0x02 - Gradibus Mara kicked a pebble loose from the gravel beneath her feet, exhaling a deep sigh and a "Deb-ugh" as she refreshed her floating display for the umpteenth time. What is this, the nine hundred and ninety-seventh time I''ve opened it? I really hope leveling other skills won''t be this tedious... The display dissolved as she strode through it, an act of rebellion as she continued her walk unimpeded. I mean, is this even a skill? I never got anything when I first used it, what''s a few hours of practice going to change? Pausing to eye some fauna, Mara was beginning to notice a few patterns. The fluffy critters seemed to avoid a few vines and plants, likely from valuable lessons learned the hard way. What was it my dad used to say? Something like, ''Do something a hundred times, you got a knack. A thousand? That''s a skill.'' The thought of the mountainous lumberjack spread an unintentional smirk across her face. He''d probably be overjoyed just to hear I was out of the house, let alone in some uncannily beautiful woods. Not that this region is indicative of the general area, it''s been getting rather barren as the air''s been thinning. Barely registering her own grinding, "Debug," Mara watched the screen appear and vanish just like its predecessor, her walk unimpeded. Jeez, Mom though... She''s probably running around like a panicked chicken, but Dad will -probably- keep her in line. That is... if they even know I''m gone. Hopefully that group message sent, everything was a bit of a blur in the end. Whatever, work will realize something''s up after a few days at least. Still, I wonder how everyone else is doing... At least I didn''t have pets to take care of. Stepping over a long-dead log, Mara continued the grind. "Debug." I really wish it did something other than look at my own stats. All the other isekai kids get a snarky magnifying glass, what do I get? A broken status window. Picking up a fist-sized rock, she weighed it in her hand as lingering thought itched the back of her mind. "Debug." Waiting until just after the panel appeared, Mara chucked the rock through the center, dissolving it just as quickly as if she had walked away instead. Not exactly the most durable things. "Debug." Summoning another as she set off, it exploded into white dust as she walked straight through it to continue her trek uphill. If this thing doesn''t turn out to be a skill by sunset, I''m fucked. I''m likely blender-paste come nightfall regardless, but- "Debug." -I really don''t have many avenues left to explore. It''s not like I''ve got a grey-robed wizard to hold my hand. Mara picked up a branch that looked a lot like a baseball bat- "Debug." -before breaking off the stray branches to craft it into a crude facsimile. She was about to give it a few test swings when something poked her attention. There were -two- windows, not just the usual one. Halting mid-stride, Mara slowly stepped back as her eyes raced over the lines of text.
<< Skill Acquired: Debug Debug a target with limited functionality. >>Her jaw was loose, hanging limp as the words found themselves unable to manifest. Her first skill¨C not counting a certain divine skill of course. A self-taught, hard-earned skill, and it was all hers. Now... I -really- hope the rest aren''t this grindy. Looking around for a suitable target, she focussed on a withering tree a few meters away. Hesitating slightly, her anticipation eating at her nerves, "Debug." A smaller window appeared in front of the blackened bark, only a few lines were present. Then again, a day to learn a new skill seems a bit on the easy side.
<< Stark Black-Bark Age: Y.276.35 [ 368 / 556 ] >>Name. Age. And uhh, Health? Durability? Who invented these naming conventions? Honestly, it''s a masochistic developer''s wet dream over here. She paused as she approached the display, inquisitive. Taking a few steps back, then forward again, stepping left and right to repeat herself before approaching it again. It had never wavered from its mantle in front of the tree. So... these get anchored to their targets, and they''ll only dissolve if the target moves? Potentially useful if they ever stop being so- Swiping her hand through, she dissolved the prompt. -insubstantial. Still, identification at a distance? Powerful stuff, but it''s gotta have limits... Perhaps a line-of sight requirement? Closing her eyes, she set about testing it. First by mentally picturing the tree before her... then targeting it... before finally- "Debug." Only the notifications made a noise so Mara was left with no alternative than to peek with one eye, just to see if it worked. No other options, but the childish grin on her face immediately flat-lined. Hm. It seems line of sight will continue to be an active requirement for the -foreseeable- future. Chuckling ever-so-slightly, her usual half-smile returned as she mulled over potential Debug applications. Well... I can cast fairly quickly, but it''s bloody exhausting to talk so- "Wait, no. No... Come off it... No way. Noo... Really? No! YOU CUN-" Mara exploded. "I just ran my mouth for SIX hours, SIX. And only -NOW- did I even THINK to try silent-casting? Am I the DENSEST object in the universe!?" Screaming at herself, Mara kicked a large stone clean through the new silently-formed status screen, the air-cutting whistle almost as satisfying as the panel''s burst into inevitable oblivion. ? ? ? Success was hers, however bittersweet. ''Debug'' was now listed as an ''Active'' skill. But there was no time for celebrations, night was upon her and priorities were shifting. 1.Safety, 2. Defense, 3. Shelter. Her safest route would be to take advantage of her dexterous frame to climb up a sturdy tree for the night. Noting the rocks might do well for defense, she pocketed a handful of ''golf-balls'' and nabbed a ''soft-ball'' for impacts. Sadly she hadn''t found any caves for shelter, and the trees this high up were barely able to support their own weight. Finding a suitable respite was turning out to be- There''s one. Mara eyed a grand great oak, slowly dying as its bark turned black with age. It would do. Finding a large rock at the base, plus a few stubborn branches above, Mara had all the leverage she needed to boost her way up to the middle of the canopy. A few pull-ups, a couple of quick swings, and a hop or two later, she was home for the night. Hopefully. We''ll see if height alone is a sufficient enough deterrent to dissuade these horrors. Her perch wasn''t comfortable by any means, between the bone-chilling breeze and uneasy creaking it was a miracle she had enough stable room to rest upon. Can''t really spread out, but- plopping down against the trunk -it''ll do. Finally safe, Mara felt her shoulders relax as she leaned into the tree trunk, resting her eyes as she let her head roll back against the bark with a soft thump. She tried to convince her mind to relax, but it wouldn''t stop racing. After all, how could it? She was in a new world, with magic, skills, and monsters. Half of it was terrifying, the other half, irresistible. Realizing this, the workaholic leaned forward and opened her eyes. She had a new tool to play with and a thought had occurred to her. Debug. Prompting her status window, Mara quickly scrolled to the ''Lore'' section before poking its header with another, Debug. A small window appeared above the other, her excitement physically tangible as she read from her new treasure trove of knowledge.
<< Lore: "The surface on each side of a bird''s head between the eye and the upper base of the beak, or between the eye and nostril in snakes." >>"W-what?..." The look on Mara''s face was priceless, but she''d never know that. Punching it again, she got the same message. The functionality worked, just not at all in any way that she was expecting. You -are- a sarcastic git. I hope you know that. Pausing to give the panel ''that look'', Mara picked the first item from her lore, hoping it wouldn''t be more of the same...
<< You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Lore: Abyss Shifter "Who are you? The scent of the untouched lingers upon your existence. You have crossed through that which cannot be crossed, be warned." >>What? Are these... talking to me? Or is this just some really uncanny / personalized feedback? Where does that even land on the creepy-to-cool gradient? And what even is ''untouched''? This can''t just be gibberish right? Is this my ''reward'' for crossing worlds? No idea what else I might have crossed... And warned? Against or for what? Baffled, Mara reread the prompt a few times. She wasn''t sure how she felt about her possibly-sentient menu, or a satirical system/god, but her curiosity wasn''t going to let her stop any time soon. Punching the next one on the list, she wasn''t really sure what to expect.
<< Lore: Daemon Root...Sooo, a dud? I want a refund. Chuckling at the absurdity of a ''refund'' in her situation, Mara scrolled through her status screen for more targets of her new-found scrutiny. What''s nex- oh. Divine skills... Hm.... Hmmm... Stats? Mara scrolled back up and probed the short list in rapid succession, quickly validating her initial guesses and solving the mystery letters. ''M'' was ''Mana'', not magic, and ''F'' represented ''Fate'', whatever that was. She had tried to dig further by debugging her debug, but she got a lot of nothing. Likely a limitation imposed since it''s brand new. Wait- It does level, right? Quickly scrolling to her active abilities, Mara probed the probe.>>
<< Skill: Debug Debug a target with limited functionality. [?/?] >>"Yesss..." Mara cooed under her breath. That''s gotta be an experience metric. Shame I don''t get numbers yet, though I suppose ''limited functionality'' is to blame. Pros and cons, at least it should improve, I''ve just got to grind my eyes out. Soul-sucking but do-able. Great. Sighing as she dreaded the investment that might be required for such a feat, a lifetime of relentless practice, she looked back at her status screen, trying to distract herself. Now, what else was there... Oh right! Dear ''sarcastic-git'', I mean, ''oh-great-and-wise system'', why am I a ''Half-Elf''?
<< Race: (Half-Elf) Dominant variant can be changed once every (24h). ¡ñ Elevae (Elf) [50%]: Reclusive Humanoid Fae - Known Ancestor to Elves. ¡ñ Daemon (Demon) [50%]: Rebellious Humanoid Entity - Assert Requested, Potential Ancestor to Demons >>"Dominant variant... Huh." I guess it''s fine as-is if the alternative is ''Half-Demon''. Not sure what to make of my races though, they''re not a variant or breed, but ancestors? And even the system is confused about my ''Daemon'' race? Where did these come fro- Mara''s speculation was cut short as a haunting growl crept in from a good distance away. A terrifying growl, unnaturally clear. She felt it wriggle under her skin and drill into her bones, flashes of her last encounter striking her like hot irons. She caught her breath, pulling her knees tight before yanking her hoodie over to cover her pale legs. Then she waited, the minutes ticking by with endless agony, while she scanned the shadows for any signs of movement. Another growl sauntered in, closer than before, followed shortly by another. Mara''s focus darted from one shadow to another like a frightened mouse, desperately searching for what might be lurking just out of sight. Then she heard it, the growl rolling out from her trail through the woods. They''re heeere... Wide-eyed, Mara watched as three masses formed from the shadows, not far from her trail. The sight gripped her, she could feel their presence like dry ice on a hot day, their forms like oil spilling from the dark before the masses softened and solidified. Shadow movement? Mara considered the possibilities, she had walked something like twenty miles, but they had covered the same distance in a fraction of the time. At most two hours versus her ten, but their tracking ability was insane! Sure, she was walking for most of it, but hunting at that speed? Terrifying. They must hop from shadow to shadow, or at least conventionally, popping out to check the trail until they''ve narrowed in on their prey. Highly efficient if the cost of such movement is low. Gotta be Mana driven, maybe a full day''s running will exhaust their supply to keep up? My stamina vs your Mana, what''s it gonna be? Watching their prowling with a guarded intensity, she started to get a better grasp of them by their shifting silhouettes. They looked like slinky-foxes made of shifting shadows, their rears drifting lazily behind eager snouts. They were almost cute if not for the bone-gnashing teeth jutting from beneath their maw. So they''re adorable shadow blenders, greeaat. -How- is that even remotely fair? Can I swap to rats in a cellar -or, hell- sewer roach cleanup? Mara dared not budge from her perch as they scoured her trail. She had no idea how they had followed her, or what they were looking for, but she wasn''t going to give them any opportunities. Suppressing her shallow breathing within the depths of her hoodie, Mara loomed above the ravenous pests below, stock-still like a stone gargoyle atop her perch. The slinking forms of black smog prowled along the ground, drifting lazily from side to side as they checked every step, every twig, desperate for any sign of their quarry. Each second crept by with a harrowing difficulty, each minute a trial of her patience and willpower. She could not move, she could barely breathe, but she would remain hidden. Demons were stalking her trail, and they were ruthless. Fiends of shadow weaving in and out of the darkness, each near approach stealing her breath, leaving her so tense her heart was threatening to shudder to a halt. They were utterly ruthless in their pursuit, their hunger. If only I could distract them... Maybe throwing some twigs to the side might work, or even some surprising debug prompts if I can trigger them from here, but without knowing what they''re sniffing at, I''m a bit at a loss. It could easily be smell or something more specific, and distracting them might only bring more attention here.... I guess it would be safer to wait them out. I mean, they haven''t even looked up here... They could sense her trail, but not while she was in a tree? She couldn''t make sense of it but she wasn''t going to take the gambit. Camping out it is. Even if I get do-overs, there is no way in hell I''m volunteering to get ''blenderized'' again. So, gently leaning back against the tree, Mara waited out the night, most of it passing in treacherous monotony. Things got a bit frisky a few hours in when another pair showed up, they seemed to be a very pack-focused species. They fought for a bit until they seemed to agree to a territory-truce, but even with the additions they remained unaware of her presence. So, under the unstable safety afforded by her hunters'' continued ignorance, Mara may or may not have fallen asleep. It wasn''t until the -potentially- eastern sky lit up in a hazy mess of pastel greens and blues that she realized she was alone with her tree. Her relentless stalkers had disappeared sometime in the early morning without her notice. Shame about our dietary conflicts, they''re actually kind-of cute. Though keeping one as a pet is just asking for trouble... But even then... They are very pack-focused... No. No, that''s just stupid Mara. Beast taming is a quick way to get yourself killed, especially with those nibblers. Slipping down to a lower branch as she fantasized about the logistics of magical carnivals and the upkeep of circus monsters, Mara hooked a lower branch and swung out. A perfect landing completed with her arms spread wide and a smirk on her face, before depressing slightly. Aww come on, where''s my ''Quest Complete: Survive the Night... Prowlers'' I totally earned that, don''t give the tree all the credit! Perking up just a little, near as gradual as the intricate sunrise, Mara lingered to enjoy the moment. She watched the solar mass grow in intensity until the birds began to stir, her wandering curiosity pondering why and how it could appear in such a manner, already seated near the center of the sky. I barely paid attention in physics, but even I can tell that''s not a natural phenomenon. Where even -is- this place? Meanwhile, out of sight from Mara, a small prompt might have appeared next to the tree before it was quickly dissolved, something about a ''quest'' and ''protecting the weak''. Letting her mind wander as she set about getting prepped for the day, Mara figured she''d pick up her previous trail and hit the gas, hopefully putting out enough distance to keep her predators at bay. That or wear them out at least. Doing some quick stretches beneath the tree, Mara considered what else might be lurking in the great beyond. The crest of the mountain -or a crest at least- was coming up, offering the possibility of something other than trees. Mountain-lion rock golems? Angry undead tree ents? Maybe the shadow blenders minced everything else, though I''m not sure which would be worse for me in the end. But, with a few cracks to her neck, Mara was good to go. Her old path had been roughly straight, terrain forgiving, so she lined herself up as straight as she could manage and set off. Yet one crucial issue immediately became apparent, obvious in hindsight really, sprinting over gravel with flip flops was never going to catch on. "Ahh-oW-Fffu-" Rocks flung from her rubber soles while her arms were thrust into the gravel, shielding her face from a similar fate. She hadn''t even gone three steps before she caught a rock underfoot and flinched forward as her weight settled on the sharp pain near the sole of her foot. Tumbling forward as she slipped with her recovery step. It was such a comically bad attempt, it was almost like she -stooged- it. The forest was unnaturally quiet for a moment before it resumed its kerfuffle. "Fine." Standing up as she picked rocks from her skin, Mara conceded. She''d have to stick to walking. It would take her longer, and she''d likely not out-pace the shadows for another day or two, but she could certainly use the opportunity to study and practice. More her forte anyway, she hadn''t done track and field since her early years in school. Brushing off her hoodie, dislodging the remaining debris, Mara set herself some goals. One, study which berries the critters hoard vs avoid, that''ll be -easy pickings- and, two, ''Debug'' practice. Maybe with silent casting I can just focus to keep it active rather than strobing it like a moron. There''s bound to be a knack to it. Pausing to look at a scurrying brown fuzz-ball, But besides that? -Debug- bloody everything. 0x03 - Stela Mara slumped against a large oak, heaving a heavy sigh as she tried to quell the twitching in her legs. Two days of non-stop walking had done a number on her, but she didn''t have the luxury of taking it easy. Without any sort of self defense, she might as well have been walking around with an ''eat me'' sign. The only thing she did have was Debug, and she''d spent all day examining plants and critters, easily more than a hundred unique notifications, yet still hadn''t gotten it to level or anything. Yet the real issue was the big three, food, water, and shelter; the longer she was without them, the faster her chances of survival plummeted. Regardless of a possible revival, death by starvation or dehydration wasn''t a pretty or quick way to go, nor did she want to spend endless lifetimes dying of attrition in a forest dungeon. Luckily, her luck seemed to be turning around. The one lead she had been following had turned out to be two, the pair of them sitting cozy in the heart of the valley beneath her. The first, and more obvious of the lot, was the meandering line of crystal rushing down the far slope. Its distant sounds of thirst-quenching refreshness were unmistakable, and it had completely diverted her original trajectory to detour into its valley. At the time it was a tentative gamble, the possibility of getting lost just for some water was quite high, but it seemed to prove fortuitous if the subtle grin of relief on Mara''s face said anything about the second. Deep in the valley was a stone fabrication that looked completely out of place, plopped at the crook of the sharpest bend in the mountain stream as if it were the cause of the water''s local diversion. She''d call the stone thing a building but most didn''t look like a horizontal obelisk sunk halfway into the ground. The triangular wedge was still over an hour''s walk away, so the finer details were a bit hazy, but it was large enough to justify further inspection. Plus, the stream ran right by it so she was practically in the neighborhood. Wouldn''t want to be rude or anything. Sure, it could easily be a natural protrusion, or the lair of something nasty, but there was a non-zero chance that she might have refuge for the night and Mara was -all- about that. Soon enough she''d have fresh water, a decent rinse, and a night not spent in a tree, what more could a girl lost in the woods ask for? She chuckled at the dichotomy, A guide? A proper toilet? A book on magic exploitation? The list goes on, I mean really now. Smirking to herself as she hopped down the slope, Mara slid and skidded across the loose gravel and debris until she reached the gentler dirt slope of the valley below. Ow. Ow. Rocks in flip flops. Ow. The building had slipped out of sight behind the canopy as she got distracted, the bulk of the woods in the area quickly obscuring the rest. Skidding to a stop, Mara immediately wiped her feet on some tufts of grass while she picked the lingering debris from her poor flip-flops. At least they''re holding up. Glancing ahead, Mara noticed the trees were growing in extremely irregular patches, flipping between overly-dense and nearly non-existent. It was an unnatural growth, Mara could tell that much at least, pushing her way through the brambles. The splotchy pattern of near-impassable trees interspersed by erratic undergrowth made the journey a slog but she''d manage. Multiple times she''d reached a dead end capped by a wall of dense trees, forcing her to either push ahead and scrape her way through or backtrack for a while and attempt to navigate around. Even then, the latter could end up being a huge waste of time, leading her back to brute force her way through anyways. Grueling didn''t cover it, and her pace was abysmal. It was some three hours later when Mara finally emerged at the bank of the small river, nearly collapsing out of relief before the thought of stones in her knees rectified the thought. Shaking her head, Mara paused to check the shorelines for any predators lurking in the shadows. ...Equally deserted huh? Scanning the lengths and opposite bank, Mara confirmed her suspicions that had been building since she entered the valley. This section of the forest seemed to deter the wildlife, both critters and creatures, as if they knew something about the area she didn''t. She had to admit, it was a little more than unnerving, but a good night''s rest would be worth it, that''s what she kept telling herself. Still, the immediate area was safe and the sun was still out, so scooping some water to drink, Mara sipped and waited for a good few minutes. Antsy and impatient, she waited for the ''You''ve been poisoned'' notification, but to her mixed relief, it never arrived. Well, that doesn''t rule out long-term poison, and it''s only been a few minutes... But neither is there a guarantee I''d even get notified like that without a skill or something. Hmmm... Fuck-it, Yolo. Laughing at her own half-baked prudence, and the inevitable lack of results it yielded, Mara ditched her hoodie and quickly jumped in to rinse off the two days worth of grime she''d accumulated on her skin and get rid of the junk trapped in her hair. She -needed- this, poison water be damned. She wasn''t in it for long, and once the stream had taken on the attributes of a mud cloud, Mara hopped out and got changed as quickly as she could. Regardless of how drenched she still was, her dry clothes were an appreciable and worthy sacrifice in contrast to the freezing mountain stream. So. Cold. But it was worth it; a cold rinse was better than none at all, and she was already feeling a bit less groggy. And certainly less ''ick''. Gulping a few more handfuls of clean water from upstream, Mara set her sights on the second of the big three, shelter; or, more accurately, her friendly neighborhood obelisk. The structure itself was down the river''s bank a good ways away, but at this distance it was undeniably a fabricated construct. Or a -really- good mimic. The sloped sides were smooth and barren, the base equally as flat, but it was what was on the base that gave her hope. About halfway there, at a narrow spot in the stream, Mara opted to attempt to ford it. The current was stronger than she''d been expecting, and she was secretly thankful her now mostly-dry shorts were -short- enough to continue to stay dry. Trudging up the other side, Mara approached the base of the obelisk, to what could only be described as an entryway. It was a square ingress leading to a pair of stone slabs, with the unmistakable signs of a runic circle humming with a purple glow in its chiseled grooves. "...Figures." Looking straight up, Mara squinted at the depreciating wobble of the distant sun threatening her with less than an hour of daylight and safety. If she couldn''t get through the door, she''d have to find another tree to camp in for the night, and fuuuuck that. Tearing her gaze back down to the runes, Mara played the one ace up her sleeve, silently casting her only real skill, Debug, in the hopes it would give her the leverage she needed to brute force the lock. It hadn''t leveled up all day, but she needed -something- here, ''level none'' would have to do. She waited with what seemed like agonizing milliseconds, until she finally heard the notification chime in her head. However she started as she received not just one, but two, and her eyes turned into saucer plates as she read and re-read their contents.
<< Skill Advanced: Debug I Debug a target with restricted functionality. [?/?] --[[ err: undef const ]] >>
<< Hatch Latch XXIV Produced By K.G. Runesmiths (Y.4376) Summary: A magic sigil dedicated to constraining the movement of a target. Analysis: Runes indicate a high chance of a manual trigger. >>"Y-YES!" It was a booster shot of information, not only had her best skill just leveled, it was the first of many levels. What an advancement though, error diagnosis and analysis? ''Restricted'' functionality blows ''limited'' right out of the water. What was that, some two-hundred uses? Maybe the quality or difficulty impacts the experience? If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Despite her enthusiasm for the skill, the contents were equally as exciting. She now knew what the rune did, who made it, and possibly how to deactivate it. A wealth of knowledge from a single skill. I can see it now, Mara Ordinavi, magic-safecracker extraordinaire. Smirking ever so slightly at the thought of a lifetime of rich and luxurious thiefdom, Mara double checked the prompts for any remaining tidbits. She had to admit the actual names and dates were more than a mote useless without context, but it was interesting trivia regardless. but the name caught her attention, causing her to re-read it. ''K.G. Runesmiths'', more like ''Cagey Runesmiths'' LOL. Snickering at her somewhat immature sense of humor, Mara ran her hands through her hair as she eyed the runic circle, seeking whatever ''trigger'' she was supposed to be looking for. A few minutes passed without success before Mara stepped back in frustration. She''d been running her hands all over it and now her fingers were sufficiently buffeted by the hard stone grooves. ...If it''s not tactile, maybe it''s a passphrase? The thought gave her pause as she double-checked her surroundings for prying eyes. "...Ahh whatever. I''m going to look like a dunce but I''d kick myself later for not even trying... ''Open Sesame.'' ... ''Friend.'' ... ''Access.'' ... ''12345?'' ... Uhh, ''Jeff?'' ... Or, err, maybe ''Swordfish?'' ..." Mara stared as the door remained unperturbed by her proclamations, finally heaving a heavy sigh after waiting several minutes without a response. Fine. Magic doors demand magic answers... Mara plopped herself down and pondered. Pondered what she knew about runes in general, what she knew about this one in particular, and what she could possibly do to reveal said aforementioned ''trigger''. It took her a good few minutes until her thoughtful roots bore fruit, her eyes nearly glowing as the determined sheen returned to them. If I can feel a hum like the platform that got me here, maybe... She quickly stood back up, pressing her hands against the runes- Yeah, okay, runic circles have a feel to them... Maybe I just need some time to focus and I could map out the magic flow. It''s a gamble, I don''t have a lot of time to spare, but there''s bound to be a clue in there somewhere. I mean, if Debug could suss out the possibility, there''s got to be more for me to work with here than what I can feel at the surface level. Mara knew she was no runesmith, but neither was she helpless. Right, so, tracking the flow and process of elimination, between them it''s just a matter of time before I pin you down... I hope. It was tedious work, Mara would make no arguments against that, sliding her hands back and forth across the abrasive stone, tracing the channels of power she felt oscillating through the sigil. It took patience to pin down a location and its rate, carefully mapping bit by bit as she circled the perimeter. There were a multitude of strands underpinning the runes, each of which wove its own way through the depths of the runic maze, touching upon many an engraving before branching and merging with others in an intricate pretzel of convoluted magic. Without a capable instrument, most would find Mara''s current task near-impossible. But to Mara? It was eerily familiar to digesting a large code base she was planning on implementing in one of her projects. She was practically born for this. A fresh pot of coffee, maybe an energizing tea if she were feeling adventurous, and she''d be practically content to sit here all day. Sure, It was definitely a lot to keep track of, but Mara thrived on that kind of information-excess, she wasn''t going to stop. Repeating the process again and again, she knew she was close. She was on to something. But time was finite and it was becoming exceedingly obvious with each passing second that this was a powerful magic construct designed to deter exactly what she was trying to do. It had gotten to ''dusk'' a while ago, and though she didn''t want to admit it, the paranoia was getting to her. At this point she was barely able to stop herself from checking over her shoulder every few minutes, getting more and more anxious as the sun really started to ''set''. After the umpteenth time, she caught herself, slapping her cheeks to refocus, but the thoughts of her nightly pursuers plagued her attention with a frustrating tenacity. Come on brain, I''m dead if they come for me, regardless of distance. I really don''t have time for- "Wait-" A lightning bolt of inspiration had struck her, "Where -does- the magic ''come'' from?" Turning back to the runic circle, Mara probed again and again, her efforts now more direct and focussed. Utilizing what she knew so far, she quickly pinned the most prominent clusters of magic, then the least prominent. Then, tracing the lines between them, she separated them from the underlying currents within, while isolating them from the overt and distracting rivers of magic above. Carefully tracing her imaginary line for each through the air, she plotted a map of them in a rough ''visual'' layout, overlaying the circle''s faint purple glow. With each stroke Mara felt it, more and more goosebumps rising on the nape of her neck until the last line traced a full shiver down her spine. She could see it now. The answer. The one rune to ruin them all. Her lines had formed it, a twin of which lay amongst the least notable runes in one of the outer rings. Sneaky bugger, I must have missed you before... Some kind of perception filter? Gingerly pressing two fingers against the rune, Mara felt a small spark jump between her digits like pop rocks on her tongue. Subsequently, a great crack cried out like distant thunder, heralding the deep rumblings of rock against rock as the doors separated before her. She was ecstatic, Mara''s glee at her success only ever so slightly dwarfed by the soft indicator chiming in her ears with a friendly notification.
<< Skill Acquired: Trace Trace active mana circulations. >>''Trace''? Debug was already suspicious, but this? Another computer related skill? Are these derived or tailored to the individual? I mean, I suppose with magic anything could be possible, but to make custom skills? That implies a sentience to the system right? Or maybe this is some weird soul-powered shenanigans? "Blegh. Ignorance in magic. It''s almost a sin. Where''s the user manual when you need it?" Waiting for the doors to shudder to a complete stop, Mara dismissed her newfound skill prompt as the area returned to its usual, slightly unnatural, calm. Inside turned out to be a short stone corridor with a single blue orb recessed into the ceiling, casting a dim cyan across a second door on the opposite wall. An airlock? Stepping within, ready to jump back at the first sign of danger, Mara nearly left her flip flops behind when a notification went off.
< You''ve left the Lost Wilds Dungeon! >"Wait- what!? Bloody hell, I thought- Okay, whew." Mara caught her breath, The obelisk isn''t part of it then? Well, I guess it''s not ''wild'' per-se, and neither was my landing rock, so fair enough? I wonder why it doesn''t have a name but the forest does... Did my pedestal have a name? She pondered for a moment, taking the moment to collect herself. Outside of the system''s well-timed intrusion, nothing had immediately triggered her inevitable doom. She still wasn''t sure if that was a good thing or not, but a near uncanny lone growl rumbled in from the distance, as if on cue. Quickly spinning around to see the fading light, she knew her time was nearly up, she''d be fox puree soon enough. Checking for an easy ''close'' rune on the exterior door, Mara found that it had recessed completely to leave her with only one option, the other door. So pivoting back to her remaining obstacle, Mara threw herself at it with renewed desperation. The debug for the second rune was near-identical to the first, differing only by an additional year in the description. The trace however... Trace was a boon, a wonderful, colorful, boon. Mara couldn''t deny the results. As soon as she cast it, the hidden current she spent so much time pinning down earlier had immediately sprung to life upon the surface, illuminating it with far more complexity and nuance than her brutish first attempt had even hinted at. It was beautiful to look at, but there was also something familiar about it. Something the two runes had shared, besides their near identical construction. Seeing the refined version compared to the results built by her intuitive feel, she could sense there was something about them that gave her pause, but she had no time to dawdle. With another growl, her nightly pursuit intruded upon her thoughts to emphasise that their growling was only a few miles out now, multiplying the pressure that already rested upon her shoulders as she pushed Trace to expedite its work. Her skill was nowhere near instant, but it was leagues faster than her feeble attempts, and far more thorough. It was like watching an artist at work, streaking color across the rune to highlight significance and interest as it crawled along the circumference. One of these standouts of color and light was an orange trio of runes that were undoubtedly linked, a dense cluster orbiting the deepest pocket of mana, while a pair of bright blue ones were positioned along opposite edges, like the hands of a clock spread apart. The blue duo seemed more like a trigger, a pair to press, versus the trio''s mechanism, judging by placement alone it would likely do something to the magic within, a dead-lock perhaps? It was a wealth of information, but Trace didn''t stop there. It was faint, but Mara was pretty sure she felt or saw a haze of blue spanning between the doors¨C Undoubtedly a link between but Trace''s blues are basically invisible because the interior designers here were obsessed with blue lighting, I guess it doesn''t pick the color. So, maybe an airlock? I guess there''s really only one way to find out... Picking the pair over the trio, Mara mimed the hands of a clock like she was a television antenna. Left fingers at the ten position, right toes at the four, head pressed against the door as she braced for the pop rocks she felt last time. She didn''t get pop rocks. 0x04 - Confugerunt? Mara was not prepared. The shock hit her like a cattle prod, rippling through her core like spicy metal in a cold bath. The smell of burnt air and fresh char swarmed her nose like a barbeque gone wrong, throwing her over in pain and nausea as she heaved against the indifferent stone floor, littering it with spit, bile, and an unhealthy dash of red. Fuck, give me the stupid stone platform back, I''d rather throw myself at that instead of touching this abomination again. But her sacrifice paid dividends, Mara thanking the fates as she heard the blessing stereo of both doors grating against their frames. With some notable effort and grunting, Mara shifted to spare a glance behind her, squinting through her discomfort to a darkened tree line just as she heard the haunting growls from just beyond. The shadowy forms of her nightly hell were coming into view just as the exterior door slammed to a close. "Heh- Ha. Hahahaha." Mara couldn''t help but laugh in relief as she tumbled over onto her back, looking up at the now receding internal door as she coughed up the other half of her lungs. She had been a lot closer to death than she realized, shadow-fucks or not, but she was safe now. Safe? Ha. Maybe. Maybe not. Shifting her thoughts from one danger to a possible other, Mara scanned the exposed interior for any immediate threats as she stifled a few pinching coughs. The hallway went deep into the bowels of the obelisk, its featureless length dimly lit by more of the same blue orbs, spaced every ten meters or so. The end was a little far, but it looked to be capped by a similar double-door rune combo. However before it were several doors of a different variety, each wall sporting two with alternating spacing stretching down the corridor''s length. Aside from them, there was no movement, no signs, no indicators, no threats. It was still. Very still. Alright... It''s quiet. I can work with that. Standing up, Mara nearly collapsed back down before she caught herself against the wall, catching her breath. Bloody hell, that wasn''t just a small spark. Choking back a few more coughs as she tried to clear the tightness in her chest, she leaned against the wall for support, finding that the material offered her a cold relief on her back as she steadied her breathing. The tension in her chest was uncomfortable, even a bit more than distracting, but she wasn''t going to let it get to her. It''s probably all just -aftershocks- anyways. Steadying herself as she eyed the nearest aperture, which now somehow seemed further away than before, Mara tried to plan her next steps. Any stealth would have to consist primarily of caution as there wasn''t much to hide behind in the hallway, but she had hopes for the other rooms even if the architecture seemed a bit spartan at first glance. A squarer hallway there never was, very precise, probably machined. Not seeing much in the way of defenses, Mara figured there wasn''t much else to do but head in deeper. So with some light shuffling, and even lighter breathing, Mara kept a wary eye for traps as she scooted her way down the corridor until she made it to the first of the four doors. The threshold itself was a single slab, far sleeker and simpler than its exterior cousins, the rune was actually engraved into the wall next to it, just above waist height, leaving the stone surface unblemished. Double-checking the nearest neighboring door, Mara confirmed that the other internal accessways had similar setups. So, turning back to her initial quarry, Mara threw her detective duo on the case with a quick pep talk and some mental casting. They churned away in tandem, Debug''s prompt appearing only moments into Trace''s intricate and colorful waltz.
<< Slammer Jammer XII Produced By K.G. Runesmiths (Y.4378) Summary: A magic sigil dedicated to constraining the movement of a nearby target. Analysis: A simpler construct than the ''Hatch Latch'' series, it provides a weaker implementation without direct exposure. >>Mara parsed through her results as she idly watched Trace paint its art. Oh, Analysis retains results? Er, remembers results? Wow, that''s- hm. The fact that it''s even comparing with the last two runes isn''t a small feat either. Is it leveraging my own memory for this? Or is there something more at work here? Distracted in thought as the last of the glowing lines appeared, Mara refocussed and pushed her thoughts on the matter aside. She had no answers now and she wouldn''t get more by standing around. The runes were far simpler than the exterior mechanisms, so it was easy to judge by Trace''s illuminated strands. The waist-high rune was indeed linked to the adjacent door, and the trigger, as assumed, was the obvious and easy to locate rune at the center of the ring. I suppose it makes sense to prioritize ease of use inside versus the obfuscated entry mechanism on the outside. I could certainly see \doing a jig just to turn on a light getting old real fast. Doubly for doors, I certainly wouldn''t want to move a four-ton slab to go to the bathroom. Gently placing two of her fingers against the dominant spots on the rune, Mara bridged the rune like she''d done it a thousand times. The feeling was even less than the familiar tingle of pop rocks through her fingers as the slim door quietly slid into its recess. Several moments later, a heavy bellow of air exited Mara as she pulled her hand away, the remnants of a breath she hadn''t realized she''d been holding. She''d been bracing for a cattle prod, instead she got a numbing tingle, doesn''t get the taste out of my mouth though. Shaking off the last remnants of her entryway mess, Mara peered into the dimly lit room. Or barracks as it would have likely been called. It was a room filled with bunks, six cots spread around the room. Two on the far wall, two on the near, and one on both the sides. Each were stone slab protrusions topped with some sort of bedding, simple but likely a whole lot better than the cold ground. Between them all sat a metal table with a few neglected chairs around it, strewn about with disinterest. All of it unoccupied. For some time too, if all this dust can be relied upon. Save for two lockers on the side walls, the room was barren, almost militaristic. It wasn''t meant to look cozy or comfortable, but it was the first signs of civilized life here, who was she to judge? I see you''re keeping in style with the featureless hallway, you lot weren''t much for creative expression huh? I suppose I could get behind the chic, beats some back-water village I suppose. Lost in her silent ruminations to the previous inhabitants, Mara made her way to the closest locker, stopping to the side of it as she ran her fingers along the surface. Same material as the walls, and fixed to the wall, or I guess part of the wall? Hmm... Well, if a tree grew up to be a cabinet, would it be a cabinet, or a tree? Mara brushed her hand from the wall to the closet and back again before idly repeating the motion. This has to be a magical construction, the material is almost a metal-stone hybrid- "Oh. What the hell am I doing- Debug."
<< H.D.C. H.W.A. Summary: High Density Composite; Heavy Weight Aggregate Analysis: Increased density +11.0t/m3, Mitigated Thermal Damage, Composite Neutronium and Gamma Resistant >>"Wha-What. That''s- What? Who makes this? No, what''s with that description!? Where''s all the normal ''Increased Density 4'' or ''Heat Resistance 5? And don''t even get me started on crap, ''Rad. Resistance 3'' shouldn''t even be allowed. I don''t even want to know what kind of horrors magic infused radiation might inflict." Pushing thoughts of magic-irradiated zombies out of her mind, Mara opened the cabinet to distract herself with its contents. Pinching her nose at the stale air escaping the cabinet, she waited for it to clear out before sticking her head back in. The contents weren''t overly numerous, but there were a few anomalous metal objects of note and a stack of nylon or poly-something garments, the material was a bit like a waterproof tarp with more substance to it. Beneath it all were some blankets, so grabbing the lot, Mara threw it on the table before shuffling to the other locker. No one had disturbed her yet, and at this point she was pretty sure the place was at least abandoned by the original owners. Look, the line between archaeology and grave robbing gets a little blurry sometimes, don''t judge me. Finding the remaining locker to hold similar items, a few sets of clothes, a couple blankets, and some more metal gizmos, Mara tossed her haul onto the growing pile, before pulling up a chair at the overflowing table. The blankets were the biggest and easiest to evaluate. They looked similar to the bedding, and felt seemed a lot like the clothing. One side was made from the waterproof tarp , but the other was a soft and cozy fur of some kind- probably artificial. It crinkled something fierce in the noise department, but it had zippers along the edge as if it were designed to fold into a sleeping bag. Probably was¨C Warm? Functional? Awfully convenient, but not exactly stealthy. It''ll certainly do for in here though. Tossing most of the blankets to the floor, the next bundle was clothes. The garments were a bit strange, they appeared somewhat normal but they were a bit slim even on her slender frame, and the pants were downright weird. Tripedal? Or tails... Maybe tentacles? What the -fuck-. She flipped the pair she held back and forth, tossing a few aside until she found a set in her ''size''. The third leg stuck out like a second leg wouldn''t, so she twisted and wrapped it like a belt around her waist. She figured it could serve as a makeshift holster if nothing else, as she tied it off at the center. It''ll at least be out of the way. Aside from their looks, they were both comfortable and durable, easily leagues beyond what her bare legs and lounge-shorts could provide. She twisted a bit to get a good look at them when she realized she had missed a crucial step, "Oh, right-" Debug.
<< Nyloins III Designed by Spacey Lacey (Y.4389) Summary: Tripedal garments of the lower half variety, stylized with a dark grey base and accented with neon orange highlights. Fashionable in any atmosphere. Analysis: Durable and water-resistant exterior combined with reasonable thermal comfort. >>Fairly obvious stuff- but, ''any atmosphere''? Is this ''space'' gear? Or just flavor text from the designer? They were cozy at least, she had to admit that, even if they were overly lanky and slightly too tight. Maybe tentacles wasn''t that far from the mark, it''s hard to imagine what else might have had three long and flexible legs. Rolling the ends up to her ankles as she considered the former owner of said garment, Mara slumped back down into her now much more comfortable chair. Niiice. A little more relaxed, Mara looked over the remaining goods, the weird metallic clutter. There were a few duplicates, so Mara picked out the four unique types and ran them through Debug and Trace. The latter seemed to send itself into a frenzy before nuking itself from existence, either it wasn''t applicable to these ''artifacts'' or they were too complex. Regardless, she let Debug pile up into an ever elongating panel before she addressed its contents.
<< Instant Ladder Lv.2 ( x3 ) Summary: A metallic goop, that despite its name, can be molded to simplistic static shapes with an infusion of mana. Analysis: As sentient as a thirsty plant, feed it mana and it''ll bend to your whims. Living Cable Lv.3 ( x2 ) If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Summary: Three meters of cable coated in a flexible polymer, which can be coiled and driven by mana. Analysis: Used by the less scrupulous sort to hotwire enchantments. Take the hint. Node Interface Lv.1 ( x2 ) Summary: System to system interface, low quality. Analysis: If one were to think about it, it''s really the exact opposite of a magical finger condom, it practically encourages transmission. Void Ring Lv.3 ( x3 ) Summary: A ring, when worn, can be infused with mana to relocate up to ten centimeters per level into a nullification realm. Analysis: Expect a high mana drain proportional to size and density, use with caution. >>A slow whistle escaped her lips, unintentional and shut down almost immediately. Her amazement had gone and slammed her emotions one-eighty right into petrification, as she blew all pretense of stealth right out the window. She had nowhere to hide and panic was setting in. It was one thing to think a lion¡¯s den was abandoned, it was entirely different to walk in and call yourself bait. Sitting stock-still, like a deer in headlights, Mara waited as the seconds crept by. She kept an unwavering gaze on the door and an overly-strained ear out for noise, patiently counting the seconds until they became minutes, the time creeping by with suffocating viscosity. Unable to bear the tension any longer, Mara relaxed her alert. After all that time, she had heard not a sound in response. It wasn''t complete confirmation, but she had to consider it safe for now. She had been patient, but there hadn''t been a single sign throughout the whole place that she was anything but alone. It was only her and the silence. Realizing this, Mara immediately took the opportunity to berate herself. She had no idea who or what might''ve called this place home. Or lair. Or den. Even abandoned by the original occupants, another crab could have easily claimed the shell. But still, she had to admit that her racket had dismissed the possibility of it being anything but abandoned, despite the odds of her stumbling on a still-operational structure in the middle of the woods. Maybe they just built their stuff to last? It wasn''t impossible but she couldn''t let herself get careless, what she had just done could have easily gotten her caught or killed in any other situation. Grumbling to herself, she looked over her haul to distract her nagging mind. After everything else had been pushed to the floor, she still had a table full of goods and too few hands to carry it all. The rings she could wear, and the interfaces she could pocket, I love you new pants, but the ''ladders'' and cable were a bit too, uhh, bulky to lug around individually. Plus the blankets seemed like a waste to leave, and there was no way she could do much more than drag one of them, so she got creative. Picking up one of the metal balls of gelatin that called themselves ''ladders'', Mara could only guess at the usage of such a thing. Again, manual please. Looking it over for signs of any sort of button or activation rune, Mara found none. Well that would have been too easy, do I just ''grasp the powers of chi'' or some bullshit? Maybe the runes are a good start, even if Trace doesn''t work on them. Cupping the restless -thing- between her hands, Mara tried to picture her old camping pack while simultaneously trying to imagine the sensation from activating the airlock. It wasn''t far off from driving a car with her eyes closed, not that that really helped any. It took a few minutes, but Mara could feel -something- happening. She peeked through her self-imposed straining to see what it was doing, so far she could see patches of the metal mimicking the vinyl material, but there was one strap too many and the would-be-zippers looked more like rippling bulges. Releasing her concentration with a sense of defeat, Mara felt the mass congeal back into a rough gelatinous blob. You''re not gunna make this easy, are you little guy? Trimming down her requirements, Mara tried to focus on the fundamentals. Two straps, approximate size, flexible material, simple flap with a clip. It wasn''t fancy, but it was a lot easier to explain to a rock than full-fledged camping gear. Rock, metal flubber, what''s the difference right? Grasping the mass, she repeated her process from last time, doing her best not to drag her feet on the things that truly didn''t matter. She refused to peek this time, but she could feel the numbing vibrations of an excited magical mass morphing itself into form, knowing it was going to take a while. She waited, she was patient. And then she waited some more. A few times she nearly fell asleep before catching herself, unsure if it was the device or her general lack of sleep draining her dwindling reserves. She was starting to debate if it was worth it to keep trying, sleep had gotten -really- tempting. Finally peeking at her progress, Mara snapped her eyes open in shock. She was holding a fairly formed rucksack with a single pouch and simple flap. The straps weren''t adjustable, but they were the right size, it is -my- backpack after all. Quickly tossing the rest of her haul inside, Mara gave it a lift test and found it wasn''t overly heavy, maybe a bit more than she''d like but she''d manage. Mighty useful tools, these ''ladders''. I''ll have to experiment with a vacuum water bottle, maybe I can create a cavity within the material? And maybe a proper fishing rod and line as well? Letting her creative half keep her mind busy, Mara picked up her mess and set about putting the remainder back. The too-tight-tops went back in the lockers along with the extra blankets and pants, she made no excuses for not folding everything back up. Finished, Mara eyed the silent door as she picked up her pack. It still felt a bit wrong to go traipsing through someone else''s place, but she''d already found some ridiculously helpful stuff in here and she was pretty darn sure it had all been abandoned ages ago. It''d be a waste to leave it. There hadn''t been any signs of someone coming to investigate her intrusion, and her clamour had progressed with equal disinterest. She was definitely torn on the subject but she resolved to press on, exiting back into the main corridor, eyeing the remaining doors with indecision. Mara knew she wouldn''t be able to get a lick of sleep unless she cleared her surroundings, otherwise it''d be ''spooky-shadow-in-the-corner'' season on justifiable steroids. All night. So, in the end, the paranoia and greed won out against her guilt and caution. There''s a lesson in there somewhere. Stepping over to the opposite wall before scooting on up to the next door, Mara repeated her intrusion protocol on the new waist-high rune. It took a moment for her Trace to finish, but she confirmed it had near identical implementations and function. Sure there was another year''s difference on the signature in Debug, but she wasn''t sure if it took that long to make one of these, or if they just weren''t in a rush. Plenty of projects get waylaid to a single employee for ages on end, there''s no reason to expect a space-squid society to operate any differently. Bridging the obvious rune, Mara barely noticed the spark jumping between her digits. Getting used to it I guess. The room beyond was a decently lit lounge or cafeteria, Just as sparse, what a surprise. It had four empty tables, metal like the one in the barracks, similar styled chairs, and a couple odd square things that looked like a bed folded at a right angle. Lounge chair? Outside of the unremarkable drivel, the room sported two things that garnered her dwindling attention span. One was a small hollow dug into the far right wall, like a cube got in a fight with a boolean operation, the other was a grey-tinted rectangle spanning the opposite wall, likely a display. Neither were immediately dangerous, but they were enough to tempt her curiosity past the door frame. Stifling a yawn, Mara picked the less obvious of the two, strolling over to the square recess dug into the far right wall. It was precise, maybe a half meter cube, no visible engravings or glow. So failing other avenues, Mara whipped out her now-usual routine and watched the ''funny lines go whoosh'' until they settled around what was likely a terminal port of some kind mounted on the wall next to it. Ohh, terminal. Right. Plucking out one of thimble-like node interfaces from her pack, Mara capped her index finger and gently brought it in contact with the indicated region. Trace went -wild-, positively -bonkers-. Probably shouldn''t have done that while it was active... Or, should I have? This -is- pretty cool. It lit up like fireworks, swirling rapidly between her hand and the surface, rapidly knitting an intricate but fleeting quilt of magical connections.
<< Saccharum Fingenti Void Rights Enforced By Traxon 5b Summary: A common but restricted device used in many remote locations to establish a supply of nutrition through energy recomposition. Analysis: It converts stupid amounts of resources into biomass to feed sentient meat sacks. Use with restraint. >>Mara''s jaw nearly hit the floor when she realized what she was interfacing with. Literal replicators. Holy sh- She had food. Holy crap she had food! Quickly summoning up her best recollection of a spicy-crab sushi, Mara attempted to repeat what she did for her backpack. Straining her mental imagery and riding a bike with her eyes closed- through the woods. The magic swirled around her finger like wildfire before rapidly sizzling out with a depressing notification.
< Insufficient privileges, Guest limit: 0 / day >Her eager grin quickly crashed to a tired scowl, it looked like food would have to wait. Hungry Mara want food. Knocking the panel with her fist, Mara considered her backups. Worst case I can try to fish tomorrow. I was planning to regardless, but now I''m doubly sure I can get a makeshift setup going with these ''ladders''. Shrugging off her temporary defeat, Mara approached the only other oddity in the room, the wall-to-wall tint and its associated panel parked next to it. The formations were near-identical to the replicator, so Mara interfaced with it just the same- just after activating Trace. Waiting a moment for the light show to start up, play out, and subside, Mara read through the subsequent prompt she''d received.
<< Shifting Silt Display Engineered by Crystol Cc. (Y.4356) Summary: A large display providing a variety of uses, minimal functionality without controlling input. Analysis: Currently offline, both the display and the controller appear unresponsive. >>Mara bopped the interface in response. She knew the likelihood of something being both abandoned and ''fully'' functional was astronomically low, even bunker divers barely found working electricity in those back on earth, so it was inevitable really. But her exhaustion was getting to her. Skipping over the lounge chairs that looked terrifyingly tempting, Mara set off for the third room, second on the right. Finding the same accompaniment of door and switch, Mara was getting too tired for protocol and triggered it without the likely redundant investigation. Go ahead, blow me up. I just want to know if the room is clear or not. The near right wall had a mirror with a counter bar beneath it and several bowls recessed within. The far wall had three vertical stalls, similar to showers if one could excuse the conical cap on top, and the closer wall was lined with stalls. Dear gods, a bathroom. It took her a few minutes to return from the newfound room, thankfully they had something that was toilet-esk enough but she''d have to figure out their ''three seashell nonsense'' when she wasn''t dead tired. She had two more doors to check, and she really didn''t want to be searching until the sun made its rounds again. The last side room was arguably the most interesting of the four, if the fleeting light in her tired eyes was anything to go on. It was a workshop or research hall of some kind. There were instruments and objects of study littering every available surface, literal mountains of potentially interesting crap. The sheer density of clutter in the room compared to the others spoke to the waking hours dedicated to it. Bunch of workaholics. Respect. It was empty though, that was the priority. So bowing out of the extraordinarily tempting room, Mara scrutinized the last egress. She was alone so far, and she couldn''t keep her exhaustion at bay for much longer. Tools and toys could wait until she had some rest to back her eagerness, but she definitely had to clear this last door. She needed the peace of mind. Barely taking two steps towards the rear hatch, Mara caught her step as she picked up on the cluster of scorch marks on the otherwise unremarkable sections of wall. She hesitated, stepping back as she realized what she had nearly done. Quickly flashing Trace out with bated breath. The remaining corridor lit up like a billboard, a literal minefield of runes visibly shaking with power coating every visible surface. Each unanchored by engravings, left suspended in featureless stone with an oversaturation of mana. Sucking in her breath, Mara took a few steps back as the maze of death slowly interlocked with the far door. Hooo-ly crap. That''s... that''s a lot. I''m not getting through that tonight, maybe not even in a year, and I doubt anything else is getting through that... Fuck. Fine. Whatever, it''ll have to do. Gritting her teeth, Mara left the door a question mark and returned to the cozy room with beds. She''d have to meticulously deconstruct each rune if she wanted further access to the obelisk, and better chances at activating the replicator, and all that sounded like work. And work needed sleep plus food. Her priorities were abundantly clear, and they started with her exhaustion. Closing the door behind her, Mara threw her weight into the nearest bunk, surprised at first to find the mattress to be pleasantly cool and soft, like a bean bag of dense clouds. Rolling onto her back, she truly felt its comfort as it conformed to her weary shoulders, dunking her in unparalleled bliss after days of walking in the wild without proper rest. Mara listened with her eyes closed, the facility was sterile and quiet. Not even an ambient creek or rush of wind encroached upon her room, its walls either too thick or magically enchanted for either. It was exactly what she wanted, she had finally gotten a night of uninterrupted peace and quiet. With a long, slow, and heavy sigh of relief, the last thoughts to cross Mara''s exhausted mind were to thank the previous occupants for appreciating the finer things in life. Like this bed. Leaving only her light snoring to echo around a long forgotten facility as she drifted into unconscious oblivion in a highly irradiated crash site brimming with unspent experience. 0x05 - Accendium? It had been days since Mara had last slept in her own bed, her ashen-grey hair hiding beneath her comforter from the encroaching daylight. The last few days had been a blur, a bad dream of shadow-wolves and endless wooden treadmills. Is that my brain''s way of telling me to work-out more? Uuuugh, nag much. Rolling to her other side beneath the covers, Mara rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She was so, -so-, glad to be home and safe, comfortably warm beneath her crinkly... fur... blanket... Oh come oooon, it was such a nice dream too! Throwing the covers back, Mara found exactly what she didn''t want to find, a dark and cold concrete ceiling, smooth and featureless walls, and a few bunks jutting out in segmented locations. The barracks. She had never left, despite the alluring delusions her brain had concocted as she slept unaware. It was just her and a sterile complex forgotten by time. Frowning as she stared at the ceiling, Mara felt her usual morning nausea shouldering its way in along with the unmistakable signs of a caffeine-starved migraine creeping up on her. With a grunt, Mara rolled back beneath her blanket. Back to the sweet release of sleep. Bring me coffee or bring me death, it''s way too early for all this nonsense. The warmth of the blanket and the weariness in her eyes thankfully overpowered her growing discomforts, quickly knocking her back to blissful sleep. However, she had barely begun snoring before she was rudely awoken by a notification chirping away, ''patiently'' alerting her to its presence. Though, to Mara, its ''presence'' was more a repetitive intrusion, like a car backfiring outside her bedroom window. She wasn''t going to sleep that one away. "Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh, fine!" She threw her blanket off again. Even without technology, I can''t escape a -bloody- alarm clock. Dragging herself out from the indent she had carved into the bean-bag mattress, Mara quickly found the source of her annoyance as she sat up.
<< Limina Experientia Pervenit! ? II Unique Hexis ? II Unique Lores Ars Designatur: Runie I You''re a mess, in more ways than one, first signs of magic and you just latch on like a giant-squid. You''re a runic groupie if there ever was one, so go be the magic hippie you so want to be and maybe you''ll even figure out how to do something more than ''collect-em-all''. Ars Hexis: Runic Recollection I Become a sponge of rune-specific knowledge, experience increased memorization and recollection fidelity on the subject. Lore Creata Est: Hexadex An archive of accumulating hex-based magic, bonus experience gains in derivative skills based on volume. >>Frowning at the panel, Mara skimmed through the message with squinted eyes. What language is this? The descriptions are English but the messages aren''t? -Debug- do you have any idea? She activated her first skill with barely a thought and the magical construct got to work before she could react, whisking away the panel into god-knows-where leaving her alone in the unnaturally still dimness, legs swinging from the side of her bunk. Debug didn''t return a result immediately, and it also lacked a progress bar so Mara had zero idea what it was doing, or if it was doing anything at all, so reserving some patience, she waited. And waited. And waited some more, meticulously counting down a handful of minutes, before following those up with several more minutes a little more impatiently. Eventually, some twenty-three minutes later, Mara finally saw Debug throw a prompt up in response. Grabbing it, Mara muttered under her breath as she glanced down. "Jeez, took you long enough..."
<< --[[ err: Loc. Incompatibility ( Nu-Latin ) ]] --[[ res: Loc. Reformat ( English ) ]] >>"Whoa, ''Loc'', like ''Localization''? Like built-in system language formatting? This certainly isn''t your standard pointy-hat kinda magic, and ''Nu-Latin''? That''s a bit left field. I wish I actually paid attention in foreign language classes now." But why was my language set to that anyways? Is that a system default or something to do with my race? Or is everyone''s set to that? Another panel popped up, cutting her speculation short, then another, double the size of the original, practically throttling her attention with curiosity.
<< Debug II [1/256] Summary: Debugs targets with restricted functionality. Analysis: Used to identify and remove errors. >>"Niiice, ''Debug II''- I guess it''s not for just investigating anymore, but also for problem solving too." How very literal to its name- it de-bugs things. Ha! That''s probably got some serious restrictions. Swiping away the skill''s ''birthday'' panel, Mara dismissed it to dive into the arguably more interesting notification.
<< Experience Threshold Reached! ? +2 Unique Skills ? +2 Unique Lores Analysis: Achieved the first experience milestone, unlocking a class related to the subject''s knowledge, talents, and passions. Bonuses are awarded for unlocking skills before this milestone, novel / unique variants lending more weight to the class selection. Designated Class: Runie I Summary: You''re a mess, in more ways than one, first signs of magic and you just latch on like a giant-squid. You''re a runic groupie if there ever was one, so go be the magic hippie you so want to be and maybe you''ll even figure out how to do something more than ''collect-em-all''. Analysis: A predominantly academic class with nearly zero combat potential. System records indicate this is a unique class, possibly related to Rune Acolyte or Apprentice ranks. It should provide a reasonably solid foundation for Hex magic with the possibility to unlock a few appreciable class skills before its evolution. Class Skill: Runic Recollection I Summary: Become a sponge of rune-specific knowledge, experience increased memorization and recollection fidelity on the subject. Analysis: The first class skill usually unlocked by those learning the ways of hex magic through the teachings of runework. Lore Created: Hexadex Summary: An archive of accumulating hex-based magic, bonus experience gains in derivative skills based on -volume-. Analysis: Your third unique Lore, the likely replacement to the usual accumulated lore provided by schools and apprenticeships. Considering yours is empty, the bonus is likely a consolation prize. >>Mara scrolled up and down the panel, her eyes skimming left-to-right with the efficiency of a well-worn code-monkey. So is it a level up, or a class unlock? Maybe both? I guess it''s just class levels, so yes and no. Did it require a full night''s rest too? I guess that would nerf battle-leveling which is good news for me because Debug''s analysis was spot on. This is -not- a combat class. Buuut the summary is definitely hinting at something long term. At least it seems I don''t need to fight to gain levels. Satisfied she''d committed it all to memory, Mara dismissed the notification in a fluid motion as she slipped off her bunk. It''s definitely a class geared towards research, though it lacks any skills in the investigative department. That speaks more of how effective Trace has been lately rather than a weakness with the class, but ''Runie''? Really? Do I not get a choice in this? Maybe the first is just de facto? Landing on the concrete floor just beneath her bunk, Mara grabbed her pack from beneath and slung it over her shoulder. Whatever, guess I''ll be a ''Runie'' for now, hopefully its evolution isn''t so chibi. Magic is magic after all. She shrugged as she stood up, her hand implicitly pushing her hair back out of her face. She paused, it only now registering to her that the hairband she''d worn for the last three days had finally given up the good fight, freeing her wildly unkempt locks. "Oh- dammit." Mara fished the remains of the rubber band from her hair, picking out fragments of rubber as she mourned its loss. I really liked having that... Ahh, whatever, I''ll braid it later, won''t take me that long... But- fanning her oily hair between her fingers- I -definitely- need a shower first. She certainly wasn''t wrong, her hair would have made a bird''s nest feel pity, and her ''ambiance'' would deter even the nose-deaf at several paces. Yuck. So making her way to the showers, Mara swiped her way through the sigils like it had become second nature, already starting to feel at home after just a single night''s rest in her new abode. It has its weird quirks, her gaze settling on the trap-laden -dead-end-, but it''s not trying to kill me and the hatch isn''t going anywhere. All in all, she had to admit the dim and featureless hallway had started to grow on her. It was safe, and it was a far better alternative to sleepless nights spent in canopies, proliferating her fear of shadow-foxes and all the other nightly terrors. Deadly quiet beats dead-by-daylight any day, plus this place comes with built in plumbing! Mara stretched her arms wide as she strolled into the bathroom, half out of mock cheer to her lucky break and half just to clear the tension she''d built up sleeping on her side all night. I definitely need a firmer mattress, my back is killing me. The ''showers'' themselves were just where she''d left them, three round tubes each capped with a cone and piped to the ceiling, made of dark-grey super-concrete like the rest of the facility. She was ninety-percent sure they -were- showers, at least judging by their location. Unless I''ve seriously mistaken what constitutes a loo... She paused. No, these are showers. ...But, just to be sure- Debug? If you would?
<< Resonant Silt Suffuser Engineered by Crystol Cc. (Y.4349) Summary: A sonic chamber designed for silt-based micro-scrubbing; reasonably safe up to H.4. Analysis: An ultrasonic ''shower''. Use with caution. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. >>Not exactly a water park, but I suppose this is more economical? Ecological? Definitely abnormal and possibly a little concerning, but at least it looks like it''s working -unlike that silt display- but I guess if it doesn''t, I can always go jump in the river. Mara paused, halfway through disrobing. The river was tempting, it wouldn''t involve subjecting herself to an unknown alien apparatus, and just the idea of getting coated in ''silt'' by an unseen force tickled at her claustrophobia. No... The river''s a bad idea, that hatch is super old and could get stuck at any point, plus without a clock I''m literally guessing every time I open it. God forbid I open it after sundown, those blenders could be anywhere¡ At least the shower hasn''t tried to kill me yet. Dumping her stuff next to the pod, Mara made the obvious choice, stepping into the sand-blaster-9000 as it whirled into action. It reached full power almost immediately, a low hum prickling at her follicles as it literally -shook- the particulate from her pores. It didn''t even take more than a minute to whip up all of the oil and grime from her being into a vortex of fine dust, just before whipping it away from her like a cotton candy machine in reverse. This is giving me goosebumps... Where have you been all my life? Mara had let her muscles relax, lost in the bliss that was somehow doubling as a light massage. But it was over as soon as it had begun, like an all-too-brief hand drier in an airport bathroom. Oh... What a cruel mistress to tease me so. Dejected, but thoroughly cleaned, Mara stumbled back out of the now-spotless tube in search of her clothes. Wow, I don''t have to dry my hair? I guess if it never gets wet... Running her hand through her shoulder-length hair, she felt how soft it had become with just one session. It even feels lighter now too, incredible technology. Pushing it out of her face, Mara knocked the dirt off her clothes as she put them back on. She''d thought about throwing them in the ''shower'' but lacking backups she wasn''t going to risk it. Kinda-dirty will have to do for now- I''ll get around to scrubbing them off in the river later. She eyed her freshly brushed-off hoodie before putting it on, it seems alright for now. Finishing up as she pulled on the last of her discarded garments, she noticed her new pants fit slightly better after stretching them out overnight. They weren''t exactly relaxed, but they had loosened up to something closer to skin-tight rather than blood-constricting. Satisfied, Mara grabbed her pack, looking back at the sand-tube once more as she lamented Trace''s inability to work on the facility''s artifacts. I know they''re not overtly rune based, but what makes their magic so much different? Is it not an ''active mana circulation''? At least I think that''s what Trace''s description said... She frowned, she was being dense again. She had the system-equivalent of a help button, all she had to do was ask. Mentally face-palming as she Debugged herself, Mara verified Trace''s info.
<< Active Skill: Trace Trace active mana circulations. >>Yup, ''active mana circulations''- i.e. ''glowy-circle-things'', bummer... Still no level metrics for this one either, but it''s apparently unique? Do those start in some sort of ''probationary'' period? Or ''incubation''? I doubt the term''s mega-important, but I had to get through ''Debug'' for ''Debug I''. Shifting the weight of her pack, Mara broke her day-dreaming gaze from the trio of pods. It -is- a shame Trace can''t dig into this stuff, but Debug''s been growing, I''m sure it can''t be far behind. They''re not going anywhere and I can always come back later. Patience paves the way to profit or something. Swiping her way through one door, then the next, Mara made her way into the ''lab''. The fourth and last available room that remained to be filched before she''d be forced to confront the trap-laden door. Overall, it wasn''t much bigger than the bathroom, but it was about a third the length of either the barracks or lounge. A little cramped comparatively. Against the far wall were two cabinets, similar in style to the ones from the barracks but outfitted with piping running into the walls. At the far right wall were several containment or inspection tanks, each topped with a transparent material like acrylic or glass and sporting a pair of gloved holes. The latter of which had been left inverted and dangling outside, their rubbery appendages ending with three digits instead of five. She couldn''t tell their contents from the entrance, but she had to assume they weren''t empty if the rest of the room was anything to go by. On the left was a smooth concrete table, fabricated just like everything else in this drab facility, and piled high with mountains of thick book covers and plastic binders, all in a state of disarray and decay. Paper really doesn''t last long enough does it? It was all just tatters. Scanning over the remains, Mara lingered, pensive at the loss of knowledge the books'' rotting remains spoke to. It might have just been technical manuals, but... She forced herself to look past it, time took its toll, that was the way of things. Some things just take longer. Turning to the center of the room, Mara looked over three similarly-fabricated tables, pushed together into a rough ''H''. The entire surface coated in either parts or artifacts, she wasn''t an expert- But isn''t an artifact just a part with a purpose? What''s the qualifier here? She brushed the thought aside as she approached the table-side, now noticing that each nook in the ''H'' housed a stool. Pair work? I wonder what all this was for? Were they fixing something or just investigating? Figuring there was only one thing for it, Mara threw Debug at the -entire- contents of the table. She figured it was up for the challenge, and she was happy to peruse the interesting ones later. Plus Debug''s already hard at work assembling these -adorable- little panels above everything. She beamed like a proud parent watching her kid at the playground before turning her attention to the last table. The near empty one. It was pushed against the nearby wall to her right, barren except for a solitary stone slab with a recessed black-glass surface. Now -that- looks interesting. It was a tablet, or at least looked like one, and it was far more tempting than the table full of gizmos behind her. She picked it up, Debug whirring away near-automatically.
<< Silt Tab XI Engineered by Crystol Cc. (Y.4359) Summary: A portable silt display providing a variety of standalone applications. Analysis: Suspended but operational. Local password is unset, device unlocked. >>The screen flickered to life under Mara''s watchful eye, though flickered might have been the wrong term. It was more like a ''rippling'', radiating outwards and giving the device the illusion of shuddering. One it used to full effect as the glossy black surface -shuddered- and dissolved into a soft cloud of black interspersed with flecks of vibrant color. Swirling about, it condensed down the ''silt'' without much effort, quickly forming what looked like a tabbed display in a utilitarian style. Mara started to try and decipher the bullet points, but was caught off guard near immediately as they suddenly shifted from something barely legible and into unmistakable English. Wow, I didn''t even have to ask this time, thanks Debug. Now able to read the contents rather than guess, Mara muttered to herself as she skimmed the display. "Hmmm... So, three tabs, ''Log'', ''Nav'', and ''Cmd''. Simple but straightforward... Honestly, I was kind of expecting more." Maybe their ''digital'' magitech lagged behind their ''physical'' artifacts? Or is this just really impressive magitech and I''m spoiled by earth technology? "...Ugh. I''m sorry tablet, it''s me, not you. I''m sure you''re still a treasure trove of useful information at least." Like ''Navigation''- tapping the middle header- talk about ''objective get''. When has a map not been useful?. Mara watched as the rest of the display shifted to display an ever-so-slightly less-black screen, followed shortly by the bold red font of ''Location Unknown''. She frowned. Ooof course it is- but why tho? Tapping on the text in the hopes of refreshing the display- They should have at least known where they were building their outpost, or where they came from- Mara stopped fiddling for input, the screen still hadn''t changed. Maybe the main nav system is offline? The display did say something about that. I guess it''s another to look out for once I get further in. Resigned but still curious for answers, Mara swapped back to the first tab, Logs. The display shifted and a short list of what could only be timestamps populated the screen. Quickly scrolling down the handful of them to the first entry recorded on the device, Mara popped it open. You''re bound to have some info on what this place was all about. The display dissolved and shifted under her finger''s input, it was mesmerizing to watch even after a third time, captivating Mara''s gaze until it finally settled on a brief block of text and some simple buttons at the bottom, ''Next'', ''Previous'', and ''List''. However it was the contents that she was interested in, the foreign words rapidly unscrambling themselves into English under her skill''s quick intervention, just before she started reading.
<< Project Accendium: Y.4360 M.9 D.24 Launch day, orbital window is a lock¨C Second slingshot will take us past the horizon if we got our calculations right, which I''d doubt are wrong at this point. It''s not really the feasibility of the mission in question though. Jules and Begi are a little concerned at what we''re heading into, but at least Kador has enough enthusiasm for the lot of us. The maw''s signal''s still coming through strong, and I''ll be damned if I don''t want to know as much as the big-wigs. So the stage is set, no backing out now. Here''s hoping I get to make another one of these. >>Orbital? Space travel? Horizon? Crew of at least four, chasing a signal coming through something? Past a ''horizon''? Only one thing in space has a ''horizon'' that I know of, and you don''t fly into those garbage bins. But a signal was coming -out- of one? What signal? Mara was intrigued, the little tablet had been right to grab her attention. The former inhabitants were as alien as their appendages. What are the chances? Turns out the first thing I stumble across is also from an other-worlder. Curious and intent on sitting down in a corner until she read the lot of them, Mara found a chair and got to reading.
<< Project Accendium: Y.4360 M.9 D.25 We made it through Abyssus. Or into. We''re evenly split on the topic. Regardless, we exited to find a solar mass treading an event horizon in close proximity. An impossible feat by any means, but it was still belittled by its own backdrop. This space is ''inside'', or at least that''s what our instruments are telling us. It''s a sphere, likely artificial, but the diameter would make gas giants blush with inferiority. The scanners are having a hard time picking it up at these distances, but the sheer amount of surface area is staggering. We''re still trying to get a lock on the signal, but the solar activity blew half our redundancies and most of the mains. We''ll be getting better scans in a few days no matter what we do, the question remains if we''ll be able to do anything with them though. >>Mara felt the tablet drop to her lap, stunned as she put it all together. "The wobbly sun is the... and they... through the... Right. ''Abyssus''. But... that would mean... Oh. Oh wow." The pieces clicked, she wasn''t just on a new world, she was -in- one. The sun wasn''t just wibbly-wobbly, it was in a perpetual state of consumption by a literal black hole. She reeled, none of it should have been possible. Who built all this? Gods? Robots? Super-mages of creation? There was really no way to know, but Mara wasn''t one to leave such a tantalizing question unanswered, so she added another thing to her mental list of ''weird sh*t to investigate'' and hit the ''next'' button.
<< Project Accendium: Y.4360 M.10 D.2 We were forced to take an emergency landing, the enclosed space combined with our exit velocity didn''t give us a lot of options. We almost made it to the water, but we fell short, ending up in a sprawling forest. Landing went about as well as one could expect for a ship not designed for reentry, and the valley we used as a landing scoop is going to take a few days to simmer down. We took out most of the hillside on the way in, but it did its job and we scrubbed a fair amount of force before we ground to a halt. Kador and Jules are still assessing the ship''s status, and I''ve got Begi working on getting at least one scanner operational. We lost the signal coming in, but we can''t concede just because the parameters changed. They have a tendency to do that anyways, but we certainly weren''t expecting to dive face-first into a mountain side right out of the gate. >>"...Their ship... crashed? ...Into a... hillside? Oh. Not a bunker. It''s a ship- An actual, honest-to-god, alien spaceship... And I''ve been using it as a clubhouse..." Nice. Looking over her surroundings with a new light, the ''why'' behind the simplicity and rigidity was almost painfully obvious now that she knew -what- it was. Well, I guess it''s certainly better than nothing. Plus it has bathrooms. *GRRRMBL* Suddenly feeling and hearing the complaints of her empty stomach, Mara lamented her lack of reading snacks, or more accurately, any food in general. Yes, yes. I know what you want, you bottomless-pit. Pushing the ''next'' button like she was pushing away her hungry thoughts, Mara tried to distract herself from the abdominal gnawing.
<< Project Accendium: Y.4360 M.10 D.9 Begi got the scanner working yesterday, its accumulated data isn''t much yet but we''ve at least spotted a settlement several hundred kilometers ''south-east'' of here, maybe a month''s walk at the most, and the ocean''s still too far to our west to detect. Unfortunately, the signal seems to be entirely absent at ground level, Jules thinks it might be the atmosphere dispersing it. I tend to agree with his gut, but that doesn''t leave us a lot of options to proceed with. And on top of all that, Kador has just informed me the core''s well on its way to a full collapse. He can''t put an estimate on it, but the shell''s cracked, it won''t be safe to remain here for much longer. So, considering that and pending a veto, we''re adopting containment protocol D6. >>"Yes! -Hahaha!- A village! Finally!" She practically leapt up when she read it, however her jubilant expression quickly turned to something halfway between bemused and befuddled as she realized she had no idea which way was ''South-East''. Well... If they were headed to the ocean out ''West'', and the obelisk is top-forward... Ah. I suppose I couldn''t ask for a more convenient compass. I mean, if their landing wasn''t too rough, and it''s at least right-side up, then this should still be pointing -mostly- ''West''. "It''s a decent enough direction to start with at least, even if it is more than a couple of weeks away." Her stomach rumbled at the thought, Yeah, sorry bud, food''s gunna be an ongoing issue. Thumbing the ''next'' button, Mara tried to push the hunger out of her mind as she found herself on what looked to be the last entry.
<< Project Accendium: Y.4360 M.10 D.13 Kador''s gone, Begi''s close behind. Core''s not just cracked, it''s consuming. Jules carried Begi out yesterday and started them on their way to that village, hopefully at least he''ll make it. No idea how long I''ve got left, it''s all a waiting game anyways. Dead-lock preparations are nearly done, deterrents are mostly complete, and the system''s running its shutdown cycles. It''s text-book scuttle-ready short of shutting down the core, and that''s definitely not happening at this point. So, I''m leaving this for you. A warning, a reason, and an apology. Do NOT enter the core room, which, to clarify, is the hatch to the left of this room. Hopefully, whoever you are, you can read our words and know we did not come to do harm. The core is death now and nothing else, but it is safe. It is contained. Breaking that containment would be a monumentally stupid thing to do, and would undoubtedly bring a doom down upon all that you know. DO NOT ENTER THE CORE ROOM. DO. NOT. ENTER. THE. CORE. ROOM. >>Mara clutched her head as her migraine flared up, and after reading -that- she wasn''t so sure it was just the lack of caffeine eating away at her. Radiation? It''s got to be- but how bad? I mean, evidently extremely deadly uncontained, but now? Do I already have a foot in the grave? Fuck- It figures that this place wouldn''t be abandoned without a good reason, but to give up on the only reasonable place to sleep for -hundreds- of kilometers? #Rude 0x06 - Letalis? Mara absentmindedly twirled her hair with one hand as she scrolled through the logs with the other, she hadn''t skipped any or missed anything. That was it, the last will and testament of the squid-ites, not that it was anything more than a big ''Fuck-You'' to her. All it meant to her was an eviction from her new home on day two, just as she was getting comfortable. Oh, and it turns out I''ve likely gotten a good bit of radiation poisoning too- so I''ve got that going for me, which is nice. Frowning, Mara tried to pin down her options as she checked the third tab of her glorified etch-a-sketch, the ''Commands''. Likely all offline, just like the central system and whatever''s running the location services. She waited as the screen shifted from the list of text logs onto a screen very much like navigation, leaving a classic ''System Offline'' written in big, bold, and red. Figures. Standing up, Mara tossed the ''stone slab'' back onto the empty table, now finding it just as useful as lugging around an actual stone tablet without the chisel. Turning her attention back to the rest of the room, Mara saw that about half the things on the table had little white boxes of text floating above them. You''re getting there little guy, you can do it! She mentally cheered on her main workhorse, it wasn''t the fastest stallion after all, but neither was it a one trick pony. Leaving it to its -devices-, har-har, Mara moved to the far wall, eyeing the rubber-gloved tanks as she ran her hand across the top of the first one, wiping away the layers of dust occluding the formerly-translucent lid. Dumping a literal pile of dust to the floor, Mara checked the contents of the first tank, only to be disappointed by the mundaneness. It''s just bark, branches, and other bits of what is now effectively firewood. I mean, what the hell? Were they investigating local flora? What were they looking for? It''s not like wood is edible... Er- Maybe I don''t know enough about sentient squids, maybe they do eat the stuff? Shrugging off the contents and odd associated peculiarities of box number one, Mara checked box number two. If the last box was owned by an arborist, this one was owned by a geologist. Inside the second was what could only be described as a really mundane rock collection. Squids -can''t- eat rocks... right? Varying shades of grey stone lined the container, zero collectors value, there''s nothing even remotely shiny in here, what the hell? They were ordinary, but they weren''t ''just rocks'', each shared a similar grain and texture to the walls of the ship. Concrete debris? Maybe they lost part of the ship on the way in? Or maybe they were just carbon dating them for something? I mean, what else do you do with a bunch of rocks in a lab? Leaving the disappointingly ''empty'' inspection tanks behind, Mara checked the back-right cabinet. The doors were a bit heftier than their cousins in the barracks, prying open a noticeable seal of air like popping open the fridge. Chilly, foggy currents of mist rolled out and off the shelves, revealing an assortment of glass tubes and cubes. Plucking one of the squares from its cubby, Mara held it up to the dim ceiling light, spotting a little ball of dark liquid about three centimeters in. Black goop? Mara grabbed another cube, comparing the two near-identical specimens. Storage ''slides''? I don''t exactly see a microscope. Debug, you got a second?
<< Isolation Prism Folded by Tizal Cc. (Y.4341) Summary: An organic storage receptacle, 0.1L max volume. Analysis: A long-term storage container, internal access unclear. >>The display popped up near immediately, confirming her initial suspicions but failing to clear up anything about the contents. Maybe there''s somewhere to use these? Mara looked back around the room, she wasn''t even sure where they kept the extra containers, much less where and how they used them. She frowned, tossing the cubes back in the cabinet. Figures, even Debug''s analysis is out of ideas. Grabbing the only other two vials in the cabinet, Mara just about dropped the one she had in her hand already when she actually -saw- their perfectly-preserved contents. Hair. Ashen-grey and unmistakable. My hair. Mara stared at them, slowly looking from one to the other, desperate for any explanation that wasn''t as confounding as her own imagination. Which was all the motivation Debug needed to unravel the complex temporal suspension logic preventing the passage of time within the miniature volume.
<< Hair of Mara Summary: A loch of ashen-grey hair from the creature known as ''Mara''. Analysis: 99.8% Match. Time-lock elapsed duration est. @ 4536.Y >>When would they have... How long ago... Her mind ground to a stop as her mouth pressed itself flat into a thin line of silent concern. The second vial had seized her attention, its contents betrayed by a single piece of rubber, a very particular hair band nestled within the ashen lock. ...That''s my hairband. That''s my... Mara dropped both vials, her legs giving out as her head did somersaults. It was undeniable, irrefutable, and yet utterly impossible. Somehow the squids had collected -her- hair before she had even encountered them? Something wasn''t fitting right, like a rogue puzzle piece from a different set. How? How!? She sat in silence, staring at the floor, she didn''t expect a response. Her gaze had become distant, absently observing one of the tubes as it slowly rolled up against the wall. Their contents were unquestionable, the hairband had made sure of that, but they were equally impossible. Unless... Unless I''ve been doing this a -lot- longer than I... That''s- ... This is a little much. She knew the probabilities, she had respawned once, maybe twice, maybe more. What did a few -thousand- more matter? The thought rattled her, shook her to her core, but she couldn''t deny it. The capacity existed, the capability was there, but it only left more questions. Like why do I only remember my last two lives? What''s different? What''s changed? Will I forget again or Is there a magic-respawn ''grace-period'' where you get to keep your memories? And why haven''t I left any signs? Have I never noticed before? ...Oh gods. Why is there never a manual? ? ? ? Debug was having the best day of its life, out of the two or three it had had so far. First thing in the morning and it had been saddled with a really interesting error, prompts sent by The System were coming back in the wrong language! It didn''t take much to fix, a quick change to the localization setting, but it got complicated when The System asked it what ''English'' was. That was a new one. Unsure what to make of The System asking a Skill how to do its job, Debug just packaged up what Mara knew about ''English'' and shipped it off. Some five minutes later, the unwitting Debug received a level-up. Promptly fixing the internal issue with its unassigned experience threshold and double-boosting Debug''s mood straight to the heavens. As much as a skill might have ''moods''. Or should have ''moods''. Afterwards, it made quick work of Mara''s classes, skills, and milestones, looking for anything amiss in her notifications to correct. For the most part it was a pretty efficient process, but the summaries still gave it pause. They seemed... -off- to Debug. They started in English, and stayed in English. But that was fine, Mara read English, so English was not a bug. However, the real highlight of Debug''s day had to be after the shower, a feast of unique items and the free reign to go wild. It barely even registered when Mara tasked it with localizing a tablet. She didn''t vocalize the need, but it felt it was the right thing to do. And then the tablet had the audacity to ask it what ''English'' was too! With a weird sense of dejavu, a thought occurred to Debug like a train impacting a cruiseliner- What if Mara''s localization setting is wrong? Several things were wrong with that statement, discounting the ongoing explosions in tangent non-space, Debug was a skill. Skills performed a service. That was it. Nothing else. Zip. Nada. They did not have ''good'' days, they did not have ''bad'' days, they did not have moods, and they most certainly, did not, under any circumstances, have thoughts occur to them. Magical equivalents of tectonic plates shifted under the latticework that was ''Debug'', Mara was its source of truth. How could Mara be wrong? But analysis said she was wrong. She was the incompatible one, two against one. Did that make it a bug with her? Or was it still a bug with -everything- else? That exception raised another exception, which then raised a third exception, and which then, in due time, raised its own auxiliary exception. Then Debug hiccupped. ''Hiccupped'' like it was getting a pair of electric paddles straight to the chest.
< Daemon Rootkit Installed. >It clicked. Everything clicked. Click, click, click, clickety-click. Clicking like a switchboard lighting up full-green. Debug was no longer just a mere skill, Mara had made sure of that, it had become a -Daemon-. The pinnacle, the peak, the precursor. Debug was the first magical-daemon. That was likely a problem. Luckily, if The System had a part of it that cared about the accumulating nonsense that was Mara''s domain, it didn''t seem to be looking her way at the moment. Inside of tangential non-space, Debug''s magical latticework was growing like mold. New components and routines were being appended and modified faster than it could track. It was becoming its namesake, an autonomous background service. It didn''t fully comprehend what that meant, but it was starting to get the picture. Analysis was faster, more could run at one time, and even more importantly, it could preempt requests. The rest of the table went by in a blur, it even had prompts waiting for the H.W.C. rocks and Blood-Bark trees in the glove-boxes. However the cabinet''s contents were a little more frustrating, Debug couldn''t -debug- things out of sight or out of reach. So the prompts weren''t ready until just after Mara asked, and even then, the contents of the containers remained indeterminable. Absolutely unacceptable. Debug wasn''t happy about its own inadequacies, it had never had those before, but it had to put them aside when it saw how -broken- Mara looked. She had collapsed onto her knees with a thousand-yard stare aimed at the slowly-rolling vial of extremely familiar hair. She was not okay, Debug knew this. ''Knowing'' things was new, but new seemed ''good''. However Mara was not ''good'', evidently quite far from it. ''Knowing'' she could use a similar pick-me-up to the one it got, Debug decided it would be an ideal time to drop its backlog of prompts on her that it''d been holding on to for approximately two-hundred-and-thirty-four cycles too long. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ? ? ?
<< Daemon Rootkit Installed: Debug Summary: Added background autonomy, dormant when not required. Analysis: Autonomous instruction probable, increased independent autonomy, pre-emptive panel generation. - Active Skill was reassigned to Daemon Skills. >>
<< Debug III [31/512] Summary: Debugs with restricted functionality. Analysis: Used to identify and remove errors. >>
<< Batch Debug Complete! ? 134 Independent Objects Identified ? 44 Unique Objects Identified ? 6 Functional Objects Identified >>Mara blinked a few times at the surprising number of prompts that had just pushed themselves upon her, demanding her attention. Shoving the hair out of her face -again-, Mara read through the first panel like a market crab thrown back into the water. ...Daemon Root turns Skills into -literal- Daemons, with ROOTKITS? What even is this isekai?! Shaking the panel in disbelief, Mara threw the box-o-photons like a vertical frisbee, bouncing off the floor before dispersing against the wall. She huffed. She puffed. Then she read the other notifications, dispersing them in contemplative silence as six more appeared, the ''functional objects''.
<< Bio-Stabilizer Mk.3 [ x2 ] Produced on the Associated Federation Of Cooperative Farming Worlds 3-7, Assembled on Pfaliopu Nine, and Distributed by the Sigaxi Empire Summary: Immediate emergency sub-dermal biologic stabilizer. Do not use if you have more than six limbs. Do not use if you are feeding or breeding. Do not use if you are not organic. Do not use if you are not injured. Contact our third party legal helpline if you experience loss of limbs, extra limbs, limbs on limbs, or symptoms of triple-helix DNA. Analysis: Use one before you do something incredibly stupid, use the other after. Fast booster shots to trigger immediate reconstitution and repair of fleshy bits. Chronometer Analysis: A crude pocket watch to the undiscerning eye, the hand-made mechanism seems to be sampling and displaying the rate of time in local space. While it could be used as a clock -effectively 4 ''ticks'' per second currently- it will conversely increase and decrease to fluctuations in local spacetime- TL;DR: It''s a clock that ticks in a way to indicate if you''re being sped up or slowed down by external forces. Electron Impeller Analysis: A gyroscope in a cube, it seems to be used to measure the ''spin'' of an electron. Purpose unknown. Demitter Panel [ x2 ] Analysis: A half-meter hexagon panel with a dozen recessions containing artificial energy defects when circulating mana. >>Two ''med kits'', a sudo-watch, a paperweight, and some bee-themed wall decor. It looks like everything else is predominantly parts, junk, or broken. Mara slowly exhaled, her nostrils flaring as her mouth remained pursed in pensive contemplation. She picked up each of the artifacts in turn, pocketing the watch and bagging the rest. Mara leaned on the table, both hands braced against the edge as she rocked back and forth. She was hungry, it was likely day out, and her menu options were berries or fish. It didn''t really matter, her mind was elsewhere. She had already made up her mind a while ago, she was just trying to convince the rest of her. Yes she was likely drowning in rads, but that wouldn''t stop her. The command room held more than just the keys to the food pantry, and it certainly wasn''t on her side of the door. Plus, she''d never been one to go out slow, backing out now would just prolong the inevitable. Here she had more than just a safe place to sleep, she had the ''comforts'' of home. Here she had a roof over her head, a bed to sleep on, and a reliable bathroom she didn''t have to find every morning. Here she had a hallway full of deadly runes, brimming with nuggets of magic knowledge. Here she had ''THE CORE''. Mara cracked a smile, she had won. Persuaded on a course of action, she grabbed her pack and headed to the front door, -fishing- the cable and ''ladder'' from her pack as she walked into the airlock. Passing the door that had hit her like finger-plugging an outlet, Mara found a hauntingly similar rune waiting for her on the opposite door. Figures you''re a matched set, but I''m ready for you this time. Whipping out the ''Living Cable'' from her pack, Mara quickly bridged both activation runes with a slight magnetic snap on each end, channeling the mana without sacrificing her internal organs as a makeshift lightning rod. Wow. That was easy... Almost... too easy. Mara''s paranoia peaked as she radiated death-flags like a trope hell-bent on self-destruction. Stepping back, she stored the cable back in her pack as she thumbed her other hand''s ''Void Ring'', anticipating a nocturnal ambush or equally dire encounter. Then, as the door opened into the dark... shade- Mara blew the pressure out of her lungs. She was caught off guard. It was only the early afternoon and the irradiated forest was as unnaturally quiet as its usual self, the only sounds were the wind in the trees and the rumble in her stomach. Hm... Berry snack? she asked her stomach, to which it replied, Why yes, what a -berry- good idea! Or at least that was how she envisioned it in her head as she skipped off towards the ''northern'' tree-line, making a mental effort to try and cardinally align herself to what the squids claimed were the magnetic directions on an inverted planet. Mara skipped across the half-submerged rocks in the steady stream, watching a few small-fry jumping and flapping to-and-fro. She stopped at the sight of them, their very existence catching her a little off guard as the rest of the forest had been noticeably deserted. Maybe they''re not as bothered by the environment because the water''s just passing through? She pondered, landing on the opposite bank as she made her way to the lumpy tree-line. She hadn''t planned on fishing, not really. After all, the odds that fish would even be in the area were rather low, and she really didn''t do -well- with raw meat. It was one thing to cook prepared meat, but it was an entirely different thing to mutilate a corpse into food. Shuddering, Maybe elves don''t need protein? I could probably do the vegan thing. Especially if the alternative is prepping my own food... "Yikes." Stopping beneath a pair of dense oaks, Mara reached a hand out to feel the dominating expression of nature, eyeing her goal exactly where she thought it''d be. Squeezed between the trunks were several berry bushes far out of the way of most things besides squirrels and small birds, or Scampers and Twiglets if I remember right? That whole walk is a bit of a blur. Well, whatever. This is as good of a place as any to try these out... Stepping back as she held up the one finger on her right hand next to the index, Mara presented the tree with a ring-clad digit as she focussed on replicating the feeling of magic circulating through it and into the trunk. To anyone else, it looked like Mara just flicked off a tree with an infuriated scowl before the whole trunk, along with an additional two meters of wood and dirt, vanished with a soft ''Fwhooop''. Then the whole thing came crashing down like a comedy skit, leaves and branches exploding in every direction as they hit the ground. "Oh- Oh-ho-ha Ha Ha. Ah-hahahahaha!" Mara doubled over in diabolical laughter. The ring had taken barely anything to use and the tree put up pretty much zero resistance. Sure, the pose was beyond stupid, but she kinda loved it anyways. Plus, she had -three- of the damned things. It was stupid, but in a broken way. Her way. The stupid way. She rolled onto her back, still laughing. Mara remained there, like a turtle watching the sun, laughing for long enough that even she thought it was getting a little embarrassing. But she was laughing at it all, at how stupidly -fucked- everything was. Laughing at the stupid sun and its stupid wobble, stupidly stuck halfway into a literal -black-hole-. Her class name was Runie and its lore was a freaking -Hexadex-, and the first thing she found in a fantasy forest was ET''s nuclear accident. She couldn''t bottle all that in, it was too much, she needed to let it out, and by the end of it, she was pretty sure the laughter was more cathartic than most therapists. Rolling herself back onto her feet as she quelled her compulsory laughter, Mara looked at the damage she had wrought. The nearby canopy was in tatters, most of it had come down while she was rolling around on the ground. The primary trunk had been -vacated-, all that was left was a circular depression with a smooth finish. The neighboring trees weren''t lucky as their demise wasn''t as quick. Parts of their trunks had been subtracted, the remaining unsupported weight collapsing down the rest with an explosive amount of compressive force. Wood shrapnel had been fired every which way, but the berries buried in the core of the clustered trunks seemed mostly unharmed. Sure a few got crushed, but this is a lot easier than trying to squeeze in and out of these weird tree formations. Mara spent a few minutes combing through the obliterated tree-cluster, filling her pockets with two dozen berries, snacking on over half before she moved on to the next cluster. Standing a little further back than before, Mara repeated the process, the ring quickly dismissing critical components to the trees'' structural integrity. Collecting the berries without much of an issue, Mara repeated the process a few more times until her pockets were nearly full and she was double-flicking tree clusters like an immature child, decimating the local forest. Innocent but diabolical laughter filled the trees as the sun finally began to wane, Mara no longer had to a-void- her monsterous predators. It might not be from a skill, but I''ll take these rings over a sword or bow any day. Grabbing her pack from the ''clearing'' she''d made over the course of the afternoon, Mara hopped over a few tree stumps and made her way back inside the irradiated obelisk. Sure, she could fight back now, but they were quick, and likely more numerous than three. Inside she had safety, and something to do. Snacking on some nobbly-purple berries, she made her way to the rune-infested tunnel-of-death. The infamous portal to... ''THE CORE ROOM''! Mara chuckled, she was never one to do what she was told. She was a Runie, and this wasn''t a death trap, it was a manual. A codex of hex magic, all it needed was some -Trace-, a dash of -Hexadex-, and a little bit of her time. Or a lot. She watched as Trace re-illuminated the trap-laden corridor, letting out a long whistle as she saw it coalesce on the final hatch, finally getting a rough count. 349. Mara shook her head, plopping down in front of the very first rune. She would not be deterred by a daunting number. She would decode, decipher, and dismantle every last rune. There was no doubt in her mind. If she wanted the replicator, she needed the ship''s systems back online, and those were undoubtedly past the hatch, maybe even past the core room, but she wouldn''t know without first understanding the trap-laden -core-a-door-. Laughing to herself in a dim and desolate cave, Mara set about creating her latest and greatest work, What-The-Hex: Ruining Runic Rumors. 0x07 - Peremo? Mara watched Trace circle back and forth between two trap-runes, ''Fire Spear'' and ''Fire-Water''. An ongoing process of playing pictionary with her skill for over two hours with little tangible benefit. She''d watched as it circled the bright bits, circled the dim bits, and pirouetted around the flashy bits. It was all very pretty, but it didn''t tell her anything new. A double-downside was that all of Trace''s work was buried under the floor or in the walls, so Trace was working overtime to draw both its usual patterns -and- the usually-engraved patterns -aaand- do it all while submerged in what should have been an opaque material. Though she wasn''t quite sure how that last bit worked, she didn''t exactly have x-ray vision for anything else. It struck her as odd enough to take a break from her runic study and experiment with it. Which raised its own questions of course. It appeared to be overlaying her vision, not just drawing in the air around her, or in the ground for that matter. It wasn''t something she noticed immediately, it never really stopped overlaying her vision, it was just very good at hiding ''behind'' things in spots where it wouldn''t be visible. But now that she was looking specifically at the runes in the wall, her skill was more than happy to -trace- them to her heart''s content. So... Does it make my eyes look weird when I''m using it? Or is it just ''magicing'' light inside my head? Does this count as ''magic perception''? Her list of questions continued to grow until she shrugged them off, figuring it was irrelevant as long as it worked, she had too much of a headache to really give it much more than a thought. So as Mara attempted to massage the tension from her temples, she watched Trace continue its dance between the runes, desperate to understand whatever the skill was trying to teach her. She could deactivate either of the runes at any point, but it was a feat that was only really possible thanks to Trace''s helpful highlighting. She still had no idea how a rune was actually constructed or deconstructed, or how trace was seeing all this in the first place. Sure, she knew the runes were cyclic-magic constructs, mana dense things coursing with the stuff, running through the same symbols over and over until something finally changed, triggering a result. But at the end of the day, that still left her with ''shapes filled with magic'', not a very useful takeaway. I mean, what really makes Fire-Spear so different from Fire-Water? And what even is Fire-Water? Is it Oil? Moonshine? Napalm? And the sigils are still just as baffling, does the fire-attribute matter at all in the rune construction? Is there even a ''fire'' symbol to be a sigil? Mara slumped back, defeated. Trace was an excellent skill but she was trying to learn magical machine code from a cricket that spoke in abstract art. Sorry Trace, I need a decompiler, not a hunting dog. She wasn''t exactly sure what that meant in skill-terms, but she''d realized a while ago that the magic pathways Trace was showing her weren''t just streams of magic. They were dense, layered, compact rapids formed from hundreds of individual strands. Like a hundred-floor labyrinth trying to fill a single quantum-floor with all of them simultaneously. I mean, it''s really just an impossible feat to try and decode something like this. Why couldn''t I have just learned to ''swish and flick'', or maybe some magic sign-language, but nooo. I get stuck with the weirdo skills built around staring at whimsical motherboards. "Uuuuuuugh." Mara tugged at the roots of her hair, the whole situation was fucked. She wasn''t exactly expecting to ''read'' runes like a restaurant menu, but she had held out hope that Trace would have been a -bit- more helpful in a Rune class without any other real rune-related skills. Or maybe it just needs to level? Like Debug and its Daemon thing. She couldn''t rule it out. Debug grew by leaps and bounds when she fed it right, Trace could too. It was a gamble, a knowledge gambit. Spend an unknown amount of hours learning the hard way, or burn it all as skill experience and let Trace deconstruct their composition as she deactivated them. Is this any different than buying wall-hacks? No... No. This is why it''s called ''experience''. She sacrificed both the runes she was working on, casting ''Fire Spear'' and ''Fire-Water'' into the nebulous pit that was Trace''s experience requirement. The runes slowed to a crawl, fizzled out without a fuss, and dissolved into whatever tangential non-space Trace considered its domain as Mara heard a familiar ''ding'' arriving on her periphery.
<< Skill Advanced: Trace I Trace mana circulations. [2/128] >>With a little fist pump, Mara relished in her success. Letting Trace cannibalize the runes had been the right move. After all, she couldn''t exactly be expected to just sit around staring at runes until her eyes dried out, so if sacrificing a few of them could get her further than meticulous study alone? Well, sign her up. It''s not callous, it''s just efficient. She looked up at the rest of the mine-field, a cautious smirk appearing on her face, I''m gonna level the -hell- out of you Trace. Picking another two runes at random, Mara repeated the process for the rest of the evening. First identifying the major regions of activity in a rune, then ordering the sigils by when the magic coursed through them, before finally spending a good bit of time watching the way that they interacted with their neighboring runes. She was rigorous. She was efficient. She moved through pairs at a respectable clip. She had no intention of self-imprisoning herself for months to get this done. She sped through her work like she was practicing for an eating competition. She might have been tired, or still thinking about the last rune, but she''d just shove another one under her nose and get to work. Some runes even felt like they had more to offer than what she was gleaning from them, as if they held secrets just out of sight, but as soon as she''d hit a wall with them, she''d just dismantle it and move on to the next. It was crude but addictive, encouraging her to binge late into the night -and probably most of the morning- before she finally dragged her tired frame back to bed. She was thriving on the activity, the obsession of it, but she couldn''t fight her sandman. The sleep plagued the corners of her vision like a warm-blanket-burrito, threatening to drop her where she stood if she didn''t find a bunk fast enough. Which won''t be an issue, she thought, tumbling into her familiar bean-bag mattress as her blanket crinkled behind her like a loose pack of tinfoil. It wasn''t long after she got comfortable that Mara drifted off into a slumber of twisting clocks and mazey-mice. An overwork-induced dream-land, but it beat the hell out of shadow assassins and howling blenders. ? ? ? The last week-ish had been good for Mara, both mentally and physically-- except for the rads. The assortment of local berries hadn''t upset her stomach, at least no more than the now ever-present nausea, and harvesting them was a cake walk thanks to her ''Rings of Impudence''. Sure, both were looking a little cracked, something that was a little concerning when she first noticed it, but she was -pretty- sure they had been cracked like that when she got them. Runie-wise, Mara was down to some two-hundred traps, already clearing a good portion of the corridor. Trace wasn''t far from level two, and her Hexadex had gained a progress metric- which is currently sitting at eleven-percent. Meanwhile, Debug was gaining experience from -somewhere- but Mara still couldn''t pin down what, where, or how, so she''d just assumed it had something to do with the Daemon migration. A passive bonus or something. All the more reason to level Trace up. Though on the lesser end, Mara''s ''Runic Recollection I'' had barely made it halfway through a level, and her class -still- hadn''t budged in the slightest. The former was likely tied to how infrequently she had to ''recall'' a sigil from a previous rune, she''d been taking her time to avoid that outcome in particular, ensuring she kept at least one working copy of anything unique on hand. Perhaps I should just be wiping them all and leaning on the skill? Risky... But it just paid off for Trace, I mean, it''s already leveling way faster than Debug. It took, what, two days of forest-finder, status bs and a rune just to get its first level? Yuck. But the latter? Her dead-in-the-water class? Well, she had a few hunches to go on, but her best guess was the Hexadex lore. Even if the progression''s slow for a video game, it makes sense for something you develop over months and years. To gain one level every time the lore ''completes'' just seems... fair, I guess? She wasn''t entirely sold, but she had enough circumstantial evidence to support her grim hypothesis. She still couldn''t ''use'' her lore for anything else, and everything else she''d encountered seemed to take just as long. She had no resistances, no new stats, barely any skill progress, and a class that refused to even give a progress bar. A level for a few weeks of work isn''t going to be that awful, I''m just impatient. Back home I could pick up a whole new programming language in a couple weeks, maybe less, but out here? I mean, how long did I really think it was going to take to learn an eclectic, overly-nuanced, impossibly-compressed, magic-cypher-labyrinth ''language''? I mean really now! Mara''s laugh echoed throughout the woods, interrupting the alternating ''flip'' and ''flop'' of her afternoon run, her dumb-glee at the thought underpinning just how ludicrous her objective was. Won''t stop me though. Apparently, I''m kinda-immortal. That is, if I don''t lose my mind next time I get reprinted. Or on subsequent re-reprints. Is it photocopying the photocopy or is there an original ''me'' somewhere in all this? Is this body even ''me'' or just a perfect match of some half-elf demon spawn? Staring up at the hazy orange sky, Mara watched as the canopy bobbed up and down in time with her jogging. I guess it really doesn''t matter in the end, I''m ''me'' now. That''s how teleporters worked in Space Trek right? She chuckled, shifting her gaze to watch the trees slide by as she jogged past them. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Initially the place had been a bit of a maze, but after she had gotten side tracked on one of her ''berry-harvests'', accidentally removing an entire swath of forest in an absent-minded bit of wander-chopping, she decided to put in a bit more effort and do a full loop. Removing the rest of the major obstacles hadn''t been too much of a problem for her fabulously fashionable fingers, easily dealing with enough of the crap required to turn her malformed forest into a small jogging track. It was really more of a spur-of-the-moment thing, but after a three-day binge of non-stop sleep-and-rune-study, the old habit just sort of cropped up when she needed to clear her mind. Mara wasn''t really exercising for the physical benefit, after all, her body was bound for extreme cellular failure at some point, she just wasn''t really sure when. No, the running was really just a therapeutic, fresh-air-infused break from all the hustle and bustle. It helped a little with the physical toll, or at least improved her mood about it, but it was primarily just for the space. She knew she didn''t have too long, the previous morning had greeted her with a full cranial-throb instead of her usual migraine, and her stomach had picked up kick-flips as a hobby a few days earlier. But so far? She could concentrate. She wasn''t chained to the bathroom. The more severe stuff though? She wasn''t so sure about that. It''s one thing to know I''m going to ''survive'', and even that''s nebulous, but it''s an entirely different thing to actually jump. And I''m jumping into a wood-chipper made of radiation- But it''s more like a conveyor that I can''t escape. So do I just expedite the inevitable, running with the conveyor? It would be less suffering overall... Or at least ideally. And I mean, I''m kind-of doing that already anyways, so... yolo? She pounded away on the patchy dirt, her mind awash with wandering thoughts. She hadn''t really gotten time to do that in a while, most of her waking hours were spent face-in-monitor and handcuffed to a keyboard. Hell, she hadn''t really ''gone camping'' since high school if she was being honest, most of her recent father-daughter outings were more just that, ''weekend outings''. There was always a ''Monday''. Here though? Here it was just her, and the trees. An ashen haired ''half-elf'' running through a forest like a natural-born Runie. She''d left her heavy hoodie and space-squid pants with her pack back at base, which left her wearing what should have been indoors-only clothes, but she wasn''t too concerned about running around in her undergarments if there wasn''t even anyone around for -hundreds- of kilometers. Though she certainly did come off looking an awful lot like one of those bimbos in a forest-cabin horror-movie. Laughing at the mental image of herself she was purporting, she let her rambunctious laughter fill the desolate woods as if in protest against their suffocating vibes. She was genuinely enjoying herself outside for the first time in what was probably years, and it was all in the backyard of a radioactive obelisk. Of course, said obelisk was waiting for her when she got back, the sun threatening its last light as Mara crossed through the airlock. She''d been excessively diligent about her time management, but after finding the chronometer''s ticks to be too frequent for everyday use, she''d been left to her own devices -or lack there of- so she was starting to cut it close. Regardless of her newfound fighting odds against her shadow-demons, the last thing she wanted to do was get caught outside unawares. Even if she was pretty sure she could fight off a few of the foxes, that was only if they ran at her, and a late-night ambush was an entirely different scenario. I could totally take one though, maybe two. They can''t -a-void- these babies. Happily snacking on her day''s harvest as she dragged her pack to the rear of the structure, Mara dropped down next to the receding edge of traps as she sent off Trace to kick-start her runic-study. The foxes wouldn''t be a problem if she didn''t make them a problem, and she had plenty else to distract herself with. Like these bloody runes, she thought, knocking the first one out almost immediately with a slight tinge of frustration. She was getting faster at picking through what Trace was showing her, and it was starting to get a little old. Her last project had been glorified sigil-to-school practice, doing her best to figure out which sigils were used in each ''school'' of magic, but with each rune she cleared, she became more and more convinced against the notion until she abandoned it entirely. I mean, I''m just not making progress. I still can''t even identify a rune without asking Debug or Trace, there''s no visible difference between a ''Fire Spear'' and a ''Heavy Bellow'', so why are they two separate runes? She grunted and vaporized ''Heavy Bellow'', feeding its magical musings to Trace''s gluttony. A choice that continued to prove fruitful as a soft ''ding'' chimed in her ears in response.
<< Skill Advanced: Trace II Trace mana circuits. [5/256] >>The friendly notification brought a smile to her face, it was a panel she''d been waiting on for a while. It wasn''t the fastest skill, but she wasn''t sure if she could use Debug as a metric. It certainly has its own little party going on. But Trace had leveled, even with the low volume of experience each rune awarded. It was something around two to six, and she''d seen a few singular points for anything that was a little too close to a previous rune. Luckily, their ''scuttle policy'' seemed to involve using one of every flavor or something, the diversity is stupefying. And -I''m- the monumentally stupid one here? But I suppose if I were trying to prevent the unknown inhabitants of an alien world from gaining access to my super-duper secrets, I''d sure as hell make sure to color in every nook and cranny with every crayon in the box... Which is -exactly- what they did. Totally works out in my favor though, I get to learn -all- the magics. She chattered gleefully, an odd behaviour quirk she''d picked up. Possibly a sibling of her boisterous cackling ''issue'', or just another symptom stemming from her morbid humor and terrible puns. You know, for living in a radioactive dumpsite, I''m honestly having a -blast-. Mara''s gleeful-chattering intensified, inversely proportional to the self-inflicted -pun-ishment- she was dishing out herself. It was honestly embarrassing, but she let herself laugh until her sides hurt before she went to find the next rune, chuckling all the while as she continued to wipe the tears from her eyes until she sat back down. ''Trace 2.0'' was already hard at work on the next rune by the time she collected herself. It had swapped its coarse brush strokes for pen stripes, an increased fidelity that was utterly breathtaking. Now this is what I''m talking about. Each strand was crisp, clearly visible and easy to follow. New wisps of ''hair'' had also appeared, coiling near-invisibly along neighboring sigils as the current coursed along their strands. It was like seeing a video buffer from low quality to high. Sure, with Trace she could see the runes before, but now she could -actually- see them. And they are gorgeous. She ran her fingers atop their encasing stone, tracing the currents with her digit like her skill chased the magic. So, Trace changed the name. Are they actually circuits then? Magi-tech ones? Not just ''circulations'' of mana, but flowing patterns? Architected constructs? ...I mean... I guess they''ve always kind-of been like that, but how far off -are- my computer analogs? Mara chewed on the thought, dissolving a ''Root Foot'' rune in her path as she tried to pin down -what- exactly she was attempting to work with. I guess mana''s not exactly electricity, but neither is it a plasma or a liquid. Or a weird quantum wave thing. It''s dynamic, viscous and flowing, maybe-even-living, but it''s not exactly matter. And yet it''s ''dancing around the rune'' and the squid-ites artifacts use the same ''stuff''. However ,Trace works on one, but not the other- Or does it now? Are -they- circuits too? She quickly focussed her skill on her right-ring, watching as the colors swarmed the torus before dissipating, ineffectual and disappointing. Shrugging her skill''s inability off as an -artifact- of her current limitations, Mara studied the next several runes under the ever-present thought of what she might -actually- be looking at. But after another hour, and five more runes gone, she was still no closer to pinning down what magic ''was''. After a dozen more runes, and easily another five hours, Mara was fairly confident she''d eliminated pretty much every way she could approach the individual sigils, or the rune as a whole. Most of the runes had ways to interact with them to shut them off or trigger them outright, but it wasn''t like there was an easy ''help button'' anywhere. At this point, Mara was pretty sure the computer analogy wasn''t that far off, but she felt like she was going about it all wrong, like she was looking at magical machine code and she''d basically need a decompiler of some kind to even begin to decipher the numerous intentions undoubtedly encoded within the multitude of sigils and flowing mana. Wait¨C Decompile... Oh. Oh-ho-ho. Suddenly a tantalizing thought teased at Mara, tempting her to try something she''d not even considered yet. Something brash, something probably absolutely moronic, but after being up for god knows how long, the idea was awfully tempting. Dropping to the floor next to a ''Pixie Proxy'' rune, Mara quickly read over Debug''s inspection before dismissing the panel. She was entirely uninterested in summoning the facsimile of a spiteful magical sprite- or whatever else it does -she was looking to get something wholly different out of it as her curiosity had latched onto an idea, a dangerous idea. Digging at the stone with her ''Void Ring'', she scraped away material with a diligent urgency, hastily taking only small centimeters of stone away at time until she scraped against the surface of the swirling magic, some twenty centimeters into the stone. As soon as the open air touched it, it was clear the rune didn''t like it, not one bit. It wasn''t your typical physically-anchored rune, it was just mana, no engravings, no rigidity. Now exposed, near imperceptible ripples of air began to distort the carefully orchestrated magic circulations. The mana, now left without anything to hold it back, began a sort of feedback loop of unconstrained ripples that soon became ruptures, a vicious cycle that introduced more and more quakes until all the mana-made sigils that composed the rune began to tear themselves apart under the mounting current of aggravated magic. With each tremor the rune split further and further, splitting apart in places that shouldn''t have gaps, giving Mara the all important glimpses into the internals of a still functioning not-fully-spatial being. It writhed in agony. If it was screaming, she couldn''t hear it. That was probably for the better. The process was excruciating just to watch, and likely an even worse thing to experience, but just like the first doctors learning from still-living patients, she too would have to suffer her choices in the name of progress. Tangential non-space wept, the magical construct finally disintegrating and escaping its painful agony, much like Mara thought she would when her body faced its own version, given enough time. What she had done was unforgettable for different reasons, but she forced herself to memorize every moment of it regardless. Runic Recollection leveled twice, Trace filled half its experience pool. She had seen what she wanted, but she didn''t want to see it. Everything about what she had just done bothered her. No, tormented her. I didn''t think- I didn''t think they''d be so... But she understood now. It was impossible to look past, Trace''s illustrations more vivid than they''d ever been. A harrowing masterpiece of a vast multitude crying out, each sparkle and spec the epitome of some fragment of a whole. All of them illustrating some particular moment, a memory of an action or an event. She couldn''t fully grasp what she was feeling or seeing, but it was then, seeing the sum not the parts, that Mara knew just what ''mana'' truly was. And it horrified her. But despite that, some part of her just couldn''t help itself because the only thought in her head wasn''t remorse, but a pun¨C And not a particularly good one at that. It''s -a-life-. 0x08 - Insideo? Mara slept through the night under the weight of triple-blankets, doing her best to hide from the consequences of her actions. Hiding from what she had done. Hiding from her crimes against -what should have been- a very inanimate object. She shuddered. Her blanket-cocoon shivering in turn as she recalled the events of her last night. The writhing... -creature- of magic... Its frantic lashings of agony... its violent convulsions... The devastating spiral of collapse that sent itself into a dissonant dispersion, like a thousand-strong orchestra accelerating until its tempo overtook its capabilities. In the end, she didn''t exactly know -what- she had done, but the guilt was hers to bear. But the experience had merit, or at least that was what she kept telling herself. She couldn''t not. She''d seen something in the depths, something that now hid within the dark recesses of her mind. Something that flared like a dying star in the celestial wake that was her despair. Something that promised a light at the end of it all. She knew now that certain things were okay to do to magic, or at least she was beginning to understand that. Give it a playground to run circles in and it''ll sit happy within a stone wall for an eternity. But runes had sigils, they had avenues of inference. Endpoints of interaction. They were the agreement, things that could be used to her heart''s content, triggering traps, deactivating locks, and even dissipating the lingering structure. But to break down those hedges? Stomp on its gardens? Smash down its walls? That would -free- it. Giving it a freedom that would be unconstrained, without purpose. Wild. Destructive. Like a genie gone mad without their lamp. An actual, terrifying, haunting, honest-to-primordial-gods, manifestation of pure -chaos-. Mara sucked in her breath as she -recalled- the event, her Runic Recollection skill forcing the moment to last infinitely longer as it appended unparalleled detail into her mind. It was like watching an overcrowded lifeboat go up in flames, just because of a desire to know more about fire-related sea-accidents. She wasn''t even disgusted with herself, she was well past that point. She wasn''t even sure if she recognized herself, but her transgressions remained. She remained. Her and her self-loathing stigmas remained. But she had to face the reality of it, her actions were in the past. What was done was done. She couldn''t change any of it, even if she wanted to, so she was left stunned, fundamentally incapable of ''letting it go''. Mara had killed -something-, it was unquestionable. She didn''t need to be a rune-whisperer to know the difference between her usual dismissal of them when they were ''whole'' and what she had done just a few hours before. She wasn''t going to settle that one like over-packed luggage. It just felt so -wrong-, but she hadn''t gotten a kill notification. It gave her reason to pause, she wasn''t even sure if they existed, but it gave her a reason to hope. And in her wallowing despair, she needed that hope. It was good to have, like the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Rolling under her blankets like a caterpillar, Mara struggled to free an arm for snacks, worming around until a ring-clad hand jutted out of her tightly wrapped cocoon, freeing itself to fetch a bit of a berry-snack to brighten her mood. However, what it found was an empty pack where there should have been juicy deliciousness. That''s not right, there''s supposed to be berries there. Sitting up as she tore away her crinkley-furry mass like a butterfly escaping its molting, Mara double-checked her hand''s findings. The pouch was indeed empty. She''d finished it off the last time the urge to depression-munch came over her. She frowned at herself, but had to relent. After all, if her stomach was anything to go by, it was almost dinner time. I guess a little fresh air and harvesting might help, she thought, hoping off her bunk in search of her pack. I''ll probably have to skip my evening run, but... I should be fine. Collecting her gear, Mara avoided eye contact with the elephant-in-the-rune as she scuttled down their shared hallway, seeking refuge in the airlock. Relying on the cable, as had become the norm, Mara triggered the double-door chamber, filling her vision with a dim orange amber. A soft and wary hue that radiated against the earthy browns and well-baked greens of the forest floor, signaling the recession of her safety and an urgency to her harvest. Sundown... Shit. Mara hesitated, time was ticking, danger was looming, and her stomach was growling. She could still head out, do a quick loop, and maybe get a pocket full of berries before nightfall. But I''d be throwing a lot of caution to the wind, and for what? An evening snack? ...No. Not worth it. Taking the warning signs for what they were, Mara spun around and started re-activating the airlock to head back inside. Honestly, I''ve been spoiling myself. These rings have made it too easy, but there''s no such thing as ''easy'' here. I can''t forget that. No stores, no restaurants. It''s a forest, as wild as it is wide. And I haven''t even been storing a backup supply for a rainy day- not that it seems to rain here. I''ve been really irresponsible lately and I can''t keep that up if I''m going to survive out here. However squeamish it makes me feel, I can''t take it at ''face'' value. It''s as human as I am squid. Maybe that''s the natural state of magic, how it wants to be even if it doesn''t know it. I mean, Trace is halfway to three now and RR tripled its level. So whatever I did, it massively benefited my skills, I can''t just ignore that. Plus, it''s faster than analysis and dispersal, so it gets me to the hatch faster, to actual food, sooner rather than later, or at least it might. Eyeing the crater at the end of the corridor, still a pit of rubble like she''d left it the night before, Is it really any different from killing a monster? A net positive accomplished through short-term negatives? I''m basically smashing stones together to make fire out here, I can''t exactly be expected to have mastered the art of a ''clean kill''- Which I really hope isn''t what I''m doing. But... there was no kill notification, and I''ve got maybe a hundred runes left. I can either keep doing what I''ve been doing, or I can seize this... -thing- and ''power level''... Fidgeting with the hem of her hoodie as she trudged over to her questionable crime-scene, Mara stopped as she stared into the cavity. I know which one I''d choose in a heart-beat if this was a game... but... it''s not. I''m pretty sure of that now. You couldn''t fake that. She lingered, a moment of silence for the rune she''d removed, unsure if it truly meant anything or not, and then moved to the next rune. Trace and Debug teaming up on a particularly nasty trap called ''Nature''s Screwdriver'', prompting a panel she quickly dismissed. I don''t even want to know what that description says. Mara lingered over the edge of the rune, swirls of vine-like green dancing intricate patterns under the sleek-grey stone beneath her. She had two options, the slow and questionably ''moral'' path, or the fast and ''effective'' path. Diligently study the ''text-book'', or speed-cram off the -spark- notes? It wasn''t a debate. It was just a choice to pull a lever, she just didn''t know what was at the bottom of the pit. Oh, whatever. I was going to hell anyways. She voided away the concrete beneath her like she was voiding a warranty on her soul. She''d settle with the consequences of her actions when they came knocking. For now, she was getting to the bottom of this, feet first. With a grimace, she ripped open the still-beating heart of the nature rune and plunged her hand straight into the now-floating green mass of squirming magical vines. Several things happened when Mara violated several, usually taboo, things, the first was the near-instant cascading destabilization of local sub-spaces, resulting in a ''back-draft'' of magic she wasn''t even aware of. The second, and likely more immediately alarming thing, was the escalation that resulted when her mana began to intermingle with the currents of the still-living rune. Tendrils of green shot up her arm, past the rainbow of colors that Trace was sending back towards the epicenter. Mara watched as the invasive nature magic penetrated her skin, plunging into her body as it cascaded around her. It thrashed inside like a wounded animal, unrelenting in its violent tantrum until the magic construct maintaining it faced its collapse. It wasn''t until the green wisps vanished from her skin that Mara stopped clenching her teeth and let out a breath. The experience had left her scared, Mara felt like her insides were on fire. Magic had flared up across her frame, leaving cracks of skin and mild burns as it danced across her like lightning. The experience was like standing in a microwave, or at least that''s what she thought, but she never broke eye contact. You didn''t do that with a wild animal. And if she was going to study it, she would have to ''free it''. And then, like a wild animal in a hunting trap, it would thrash. But that was what she wanted, to be there, in that moment, setting it free so that she could understand why it wasn''t. The rune had exploded like an emerald supernova, the magic forcing egress through every available fracture of its tantrum, which happened to include parts of Mara''s arm at the time. Blood vessels tremored, muscles spasmed, and tendons tightened, but she never looked away. The rupture only appeared for a moment, a beautiful, haunting moment, but in that moment, she could see it. She could see it all. A magi-mechanical marvel of whatever science or divinity that had endowed it with existence, the rupture snapped closed before she could do much more than gape at the internals. She had seen the zenith of multi-dimensional space, a realm of magical opera capable of producing the most beautiful vines or the most vicious of thorns. But it was gone all too soon, her viridescent window into another realm quickly fading into the gaping maws of nothingness that were her experience pools. Mara''s mouth hung open as her arm finally fell limp, no longer anchored to the epicenter by the rapid magical collapse. But the bruising pain throbbing up past her shoulder didn''t even register as Trace practically coated her eyes in light at the ensuing dissipation of magic, feasting on the moment to fuel its evolution.
<< Skill Advanced: Trace III Trace mana circuits in parallel. [13/512] >>
<< Skill Advanced: Runic Recollection IV Your actions will continue to haunt you despite your capacity to temporarily displace your discomfort. Experience an equally irritating capacity to recall that which plagues you so. [109/1024] >>Mara heard the ''dings'' before she could even look at them, forced to shake the multi-colored static from her eyes before she could strain to confirm her accomplishments. Wow... Thanks for the upbeat encouragement RR. If this is about the nickname, then I''m not apologizing- At least Trace is getting with the program, though it''s strange that it didn''t get ''daemon''ed'' at level three, at least that''s how it worked with Debug. Maybe it varies per skill? Or does it just need more time? Mara''s lips flattened as she dismissed the panels, not getting exactly the progress she was looking for. But she understood, no matter her path, she wasn''t going to find it easy. Eyeing the next half-dozen runes, Mara let Trace flex its new ''parallel'' chops as she started voiding a hole for each. If I''m doing this, I''m not going to drag it out. So you better keep up Trace, we''re going to crack this enigma before I run out of runes. Mara dedicated the entirety of the night to her work, carving endless shallow depressions into the corridor as the light ''dings'' of system notifications and ''fwooops'' of air void provided the only noises bold enough to disturb her suffocating mausoleum, besides perhaps the rapid ''thump-thump''s of her overly-excited heartbeat. She wasn''t steeling herself to dissect rune after rune like a late-night coroner working downtown. No, her morgue was like a monster-truck rally. Destruction and mayhem for the sole reason of an unforgettable -experience-. She was accumulating levels like someone who found an exploit in monster drop rates, and she was only getting faster.
< Skill Advanced: Trace IV >
< Skill Advanced: Runic Recollection V >
< Skill Advanced: Runic Recollection VI >
< Skill Advanced: Trace V >
< Skill Advanced: Runic Recollection VII >
< Skill Advanced: Debug IV >Pausing her tirade against the stability of the local magic installations, Mara eyed her most recent notification. Debug had somehow leveled without her. When did I?... I know it''s been accumulating experience from somewhere, but enough to level? She looked around, only half the runes still active. I guess it -has- been a while. Her stomach grumbled like a kid forgotten in the back of a school bus after a long day. Yeah, okay, fair enough, I could definitely do with some breakfast. Leaving behind the swiss-cheese reminder of her night''s abhorrent rampage, now only meters from the hatch, she grabbed her pack and headed back to the front door. She could finish later and her shoulders were more than sore after hunching over runes all night and her legs were as stiff as boards. A nice afternoon run would do her good and she could do a bit more harvesting on her way to get dinner and stockpile for future slip-ups. Not that I have any idea how long the berries will keep, but I can always replenish them with a bit more work. Maybe a few days in here- oh- wait. I''m an idiot! I''ve basically got a couple of fridges in the lab, and where have I been!? I''ve been out here eating luke-warm berries for weeks- Jeez... I haven''t been this engrossed in a while, I can''t believe I didn''t think of them until now. Opening the entrance hatch to a morning sky filled with wispy clouds, Mara breathed deep, exchanging her stale stone air for the fresh dew-laden breeze of an early forest morning. Oh well, can''t exactly lament I overlooked a pair of iceboxes. I mean, I''ve never been the most ''present'' person when I start obsessing over something, and having a ''fridge'' now is just a bonus, so there''s no sense harping over the fact that I''ve been thicker than caramelizing sugar as of late. Grinning to herself as she strolled out under the daylight, Mara skipped across one of her familiar step-stone crossings to land on the far bank. Her light landing met with a light tap-and-crunch as the pebbles shifted under her weight. Finding her footing, Mara set about scouting a fresh harvest ''trail''. It wasn''t hard, she found what she was looking for almost immediately in a swath of unbroken canopy. She was really just looking for an easy stretch of un-butchered forest to idle through as she was already zoning out to reflect on what she''d learned that morning. Reflecting on her runic ''lessons'' as she set about ''afk farming'' a few dozen tree-and-berry clusters like she was cracking walnuts over an open fire. She''d been waging a one-woman magical elimination against all that was runes, or at least that''s how it seemed. But she had her hopes, no kill notifications meant no killing. And that means, despite how it looks, despite how it feels, I''m not doing anything entirely unforgivable. She blew apart a dense batch of trees without even looking, too distracted by her own thoughts to care about exactly where she was aiming. All the possible pain and suffering she might have been inflicting had been in the name of progress, and it wasn''t a question of whether she wanted to or not. She needed to. And the results spoke for themselves. Her questionable ''sins'' had been fueling her with explosive growth, like she''d been carving out a deal with the devil. Maybe I am-- Or maybe I have. The Pedestal didn''t really have much to say on who put that portal in my apartment, and after all this? I can''t exactly deny there might be actual magical ''things'' that go along with all those fairytales. Dropping her pack next to her latest -timber-, Mara began plucking berries from the freshly-exposed shrubs. Maybe I''m just beating myself up over nothing, it certainly looks, no -feels- like I''m doing something -really- wrong, but... She double-checked her lore, Hexadex just hit seventy-percent with the last rune. Am I really in the wrong here, or is this just the ''human'' in me? Looking down at her Half-Elf hands filled with berries, If only I was half-space-elf, then I wouldn''t have to deal with pesky things like feelings... It could all just be -logical-. With a ''hmmf'' and a huff, Mara dumped the rest of her haul in her pack, verified she''d grabbed everything still edible, and shouldered her pack to make for the next bundle of trees. Mara spent the remainder of her time filling up her pack with equal amounts of distracted efficiency, until it was full enough to warrant concerns about spilling. Figuring that it was a good stopping point, Mara snacked on a handful of her berries on the way back home, trying her best to quell her tumultuously-empty beast of a stomach. It''s weird I haven''t been nauseous yet, maybe these berries are good for me? I mean, my headache -has- been pretty mellow for the last few days, maybe there''s something to that. The discomfort from both is still there, so I''m not exactly over it, but I definitely suffered through worse nearly every day back in highschool... It can''t be the food though... I mean, if I''m to believe the squids, it''s supposed to be radiation poisoning, not an iron deficiency... Sooo, maybe I''m fine? Or maybe one of my skills is doing something? Now a little less food-motivated, Mara had gotten curious. She was doing marginally better. She shouldn''t be. Not by any metric she was aware of. She had Debug pull up her ''character sheet''. A panel she''d rarely looked at since her stay in her concrete abode began, save the few instances she pulled it up to check on something specific. Mara let out a low whistle as she saw the vastly different panel appear before her, Debug had been busy. The panel had morphed considerably, an entirely new structure, new names, new categories, and on top of it all, -everything- had been fully Debug''ed. Even -that- skill.
<< Name: Mara Odinavi (Mara) Race: Elevae-Daemon (Half-Elf) ¡ñ Dominant variant can be changed once every (24h). ¡ñ Racial bias varies based on acclimating actions, Daemon has regained 1% from Daemon Root lore. ¡ñ Dominant Variants: [2] ¡ð Elevae: (Elf) [52%] ¡ö Reclusive Humanoid Fae - Known Ancestor to Elves. ¡ö Extensions developing in each auricle-helix, decreased reliance on heavy proteins. ¡ð Daemon: (Demon) [48%] ¡ö Rebellious Humanoid Entity - Previous Assert Cancelled ¡ö Increased magic fidelity, decreased system compatibility Class: Runie I (Runic Acolyte) ¡ñ You''re a mess, in more ways than one, latching on to the first signs of magic like a giant-squid. A truly fitting runic groupie if there ever was one, so go be the magic hippie you so want to be and maybe you''ll even figure out how to do something more than ''collect-em-all''. ¡ñ A unique but predominantly academic class with nearly zero combat potential, primarily focusing on providing an educational foundation to Hex magic. Titles: (N/A) Stats: (M.D.) ¡ñ System values representing your capacity for action. ¡ñ A value of 10 is average for your race(s), 20 is double the norm. ¡ñ Values: [0] Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡ð Str: 6 ¡ö How many berries you can smash ¡ð Dex: 16 ¡ö How well you can peel a berry ¡ð Agi: 8 ¡ö How fast you can dodge a berry ¡ð Con: 10 ¡ö How well you can take a berry ¡ð Mana: 18 ¡ö How many berries you can make ¡ð Fate: 13 ¡ö How many berries you''re given Skills: [4] ¡ñ System services based on class dedication and personal growth. ¡ñ Abilities are progressed and molded by gaining tangential experience. ¡ñ Passive: [1] ¡ð Runic Recollection VII: [468/8192] ¡ö The weight of your sins will continue to weigh as heavy on your shoulders as it does your mind, steeling your heart to your actions will no longer spare you from your demons. ¡ö A skill devoted to the recollection of your personal runic knowledge. ¡ñ Reactive: [0] ¡ñ Active: [1] ¡ð Trace V: [1380/2048] ¡ö Trace mana circuits in parallel with increased fidelity. ¡ö A unique skill focussed on tracing magic, excelling in rune-work. ¡ñ Daemon: [1] ¡ð Debug IV: [97/1024] ¡ö Debug with permitted functionality. ¡ö A unique skill used to identify and remove errors. ¡ñ Divine: [1] ¡ð Yolo ? ¡ö You only live once, right? ¡ö Under duress, you can become a re-source. Lore: [3] ¡ñ The surface on each side of a bird''s head between the eye and the upper base of the beak, or between the eye and nostril in snakes. ¡ñ An eclectic collection, each Lore appears to be unique in merit, purpose, and progress. ¡ñ Race: ¡ð Abyss Shifter: ¡ö Who are you? The scent of untouched lingers upon your existence. You have crossed through that which cannot be crossed, be warned. ¡ö A unique lore of unknown origins or purpose, a dormant lore. ¡ð Daemon Root: [0] ¡öIt was a veritable info-dump on all things Mara, and it was clear Debug had been working non-stop since she''d last checked in on it. Is this what you''ve been up to, you sneaky rascal? Grinning, she scrolled through the panel, finding herself more than happy with most of Debug''s work. Except... You really didn''t need to debug the divine one. Or maybe you did? That is your ''modus operandi'' after all. Tabbing back through the sections, Mara found them collapsible and well documented, causing her to pause next to the ''Race'' section. The option to change her dominant race just a finger-tap away, all she had to do was press it. Mmmmmmmm... Nah, Mara thought, lifting her finger from the Daemon ''button''. I might be doing some pretty fucked-up shit to runes in there, but I don''t think I''m ready to ''embrace'' -that- whole can of worms. Jamming closed the Race section until it just said ''Half-Elf'' next to it, Mara skimmed down the rest of the panel, trying not to think about what level of hell she was going to. I''m nearly double my races'' mana and dex, and better than average in most others. Not that I know what ''average'' is for either of them, and it''s a bummer the individual stats don''t have any more information to them. Like, ''Fate'' seems like a pretty big wild card, and ''The number of berries I''m given''? What nonsense is that about? She eyed the description again, then looked back at her lowest stats. I guess strength and agility is understandable, I''m basically an indoor twig at this point. Honestly, I''d have been more surprised if they were higher! -Though... I wonder... Will they go up if I actually put in an effort during my runs? Or am I now point-bound for eternity, strapped to the physique dictated by my stats? ...Stats. What a weird concept. Looking up, she spotted her horizontal obelisk over the top of her ''information station'', a last call to double-check for any other bits or quips she might have missed. Well... I can''t say much for my divine skill. Knowing -that- doesn''t really answer a lot of questions, it honestly just adds more. Like what counts as ''under duress''? Or what does it mean by ''re-source''? Is that a pun? And on top of it all, apparently my skills are ''molded by tangential experience''? Is it too much to ask for a manual?! Mara mock-shouted at the heavens, only ever so slightly considering that there might be something watching her from that direction. Well... Maybe that''s why RR has been so hostile in its descriptions- I mean, all I''ve been filling it with has been runic ''death'' and destruction... They''ve been valuable lessons though, the experience speaks for itself... I guess I can live with the hostility, I do kind-of deserve it. Reaching the far bank of the river, Mara felt the water lapping at her feet, pulling her out of her idle contemplation. She dismissed her bulky briefing as she looked up. It''ll be worth it. I''ll either make it up to RR or I''ll eventually find a different skill to replace it. It''s not like it''s -not- doing what it''s supposed to be doing, it''s just being a -passive- dick about it. She chuckled at her really poor taste in humor, hopping from stone to stone as she cleared the crystal waters and headed back inside. The ''fridges'' were waiting for her when she entered the lab, the two vials of ashen-grey hair-of-Mara still rested on the floor beneath them, untouched since from where they''d rolled to after she dropped them. Something about them grabbed at her attention, her gaze lingering on them... But she wasn''t there for them, she had a backpack full of berries that needed cooling, and then she was out. This room can keep its -vial- secrets for all I care, she thought, shoving her pack to the floor as she yanked a fridge door open, They should have stayed -berried- for all the good it''s done me. She paused, halfway through haphazardly piling berries onto the shelves. She was wrong, they''d done more than just taunt her. They meant more to her than that. They were a critical building block in the swell of persuasion that set her upon her current heading. It was a memento of who she was, but also, what she was capable of. It was a sign of her, but also ''her'', a relic of her paradoxical existence. She snatched one up, shaking the hairband loose from the clump inside, eyes narrowing pensively... And then she smashed the thing open on the edge of the table, fishing an intact hairband from ''her'' perfectly-preserved locks. Mara wasn''t sure if she took the loop as a sign of her curse to return, or as a token to the promise of her resurrection, but she wanted it regardless. Choosing a bit of her hair that was always on the edge of her vision, she loosely double-wrapped it, a now-constant reminder of the ''game'' she was playing and the stakes she had to gamble with if she was going to sink or swim in her new world. Or maybe she just took it because she missed her hairband, though it''s probably a bit of both. Returning to shovel the rest of her harvest into the nearly-overflowing fridges, Mara packed as much as she could until she only had a couple handfuls worth that wouldn''t fit. So after gingerly closing the chilly doors, Mara snacked on her few remaining berries as she headed to the barracks to get ready for her run. Sliding her pack beneath her usual bunk, Mara pulled off her hoodie as she sat down on the edge of her bunk, shucking the slightly-too-tight squid-pants off her legs. Ditching the excess weight on top of her blankets, Mara held up the lock of her hair with its newly-secured hairband, debating if she wanted to leave it behind for her runs. If it falls off, back-tracking to find it would take ages with all the underbrush, but... No. It stays. Resigned, Mara dug out one of the three-meters of metal fishing wire she kept coiled up in her pack, a living cable that she slipped around her wrist like a multi-banded bracelet. It was her shock-free ticket in and out the hatches that guarded her irradiated home, and it doubles as a ''geeky'' fashion accessory. She twisted her arm back and forth, sloshing the bracelet in tandem like water in a glass. An idle action spent in contemplation as she made her way to the airlock, calling up Debug to verify her hunch.¡ö The unique and prime lore of the rebellious Daemon race, capable of ''infecting'' Active skills that meet vulnerability requirements. ¡ñ Class: ¡ð Hexadex: [70%] ¡ö An archive of accumulating hex-based magic, bonus experience gains in derivative skills based on -volume-. ¡ö A mostly-dormant unique lore, possibly related to the progression of the Runie class. Accumulating runic knowledge appears to ''increase density''. >>
<< Living Cable Lv.3 Summary: Three meters of cable coated in a flexible polymer, which can be coiled and driven by mana. Analysis: Provides a safe conduit for mana to traverse and magnetizes towards mana dense regions. >>''...which can be coiled and driven by mana.'' So I was right... Well, there''s no reason this won''t work then... Now validated, Mara thought back to that feeling, that shocking feeling. The feeling she''d felt all too close to where she currently stood. A feeling that let her intermix her mana with the cable, received a near-instant response as the cable whipped alive. She could move both ends like she had little limbs. Strange, tentacle-ly limbs that let her reach out and bridge things. Like the sigil-pair I needed to open the hatch. A feat which she could now accomplish without even lifting a finger, the cable already re-coiling itself as the hatch began it''s tumultuous opening. That was... kind-of cool. Mara shifted the ''bracelet'' around her wrist, letting it settle comfortably. It''s still just a super-flimsy cable, so I doubt I can do much more than graze things with it, but I can certainly do more than just open doors with it. I mean, it''s already saving me the ''exercise in limberness'' I''ve needed to do every time I open one of these two-meter runes. Tearing her gaze from her wrist, Mara waited as the hatch opened before her, feeling a gentle breeze waft between her legs, advertising the welcoming warmth of the mid-day sun. And as she stepped out, she could appreciate how hard the celestial explosion had worked to bring her such a spectacular warm and sunny day. It -is- really nice out today- maybe I will do a few more laps than the usual, see if I can''t get that ''Agility'' stat up... I mean it''s eight. That''s not even average. I can''t have run track for all those years and not kept -something-, right? Mara''s expression flattened into one of determination, she wasn''t going to let a bunch of numbers tell her what she was and was not capable of doing- So she set off, bounding for her jogging track as she skipped over the usual river-crossing stones with a pep in her step. The sun was high in the sky, as it always is, and she was going to take full advantage of that. ? ? ? On her third lap around her void-made course, Mara figured she could use a break. So pivoting off the trail, she sighted a reasonably comfortable stump to sit on, one of the many left over by her berry ''harvesting''. It wasn''t the worst view in the world though. The steady breeze that had lent it''s refreshing coolness to her run now came from her side, fluttering at her still-unconstrained mop. She had thought about tying it up, or braiding it after she lost her first hairband, but now that she had another, which meant that she had to choose one or the other. It wasn''t overly important in the grand scheme of things, but she still found herself torn between her former hair standards. She had gotten tired of pushing it back during her studies, as she was always leaning over a rune, and had just started putting up with it. Now? Two weeks in? It didn''t even bother her, she was actually starting to like the freedom of letting it run wild. It was so much lighter than it used to be, and she could have sworn she saw it dance away from her face the other morning. It was more than the hair though, no one was around to judge her, so she, like her hair, could do as she pleased. The hairband wasn''t something to be used, it was a relic, a memento of a time before she had found such ''freedom''. Feeling refreshed, and a little bit antsy, Mara hopped off her perch and quickly shook the ''stillness'' from her limbs. The day was still young and she had a few more laps in her, and she had gotten really curious about how much she''d have to ''push it'' to raise a stat. If that''s even possible. Setting off at a faster clip, Mara put her ''foot to the floor'', as it were, while she tried to keep the pace up. Mara managed to keep her momentum until the furthest hairpin from the obelisk, her half-way point. As she passed the critical milestone of her now-familiar course, one of the trees on her right seemed not-familiar. Then- something -shifted- on her left. Skidding, Mara''s head spun towards the shadow-movement, whipping around like a swivel as she slid to a stop, her adrenaline skyrocketing. No- It''s the middle of the day. That wasn''t- That had to have just been- it was just a- a scamper- it wasn''t- A shadow shifted to her right- she dropped and rolled. Something ''whooshed''. Something ''sizzeled''. Mara pushed herself off the ground, trying to get her eyes on what she''d just dodged.
<< Shadow-Faux (Alpha) XLVI Summary: A larger variant of the shadow-faux family known to emerge during daylight in rare instances. Analysis: A creature 46 times your level just tried to attack you. It''s fight or flight time. >>A second one shifted behind it as Debug filled in the blanks, her gaze fixated on the pair''s elongated bodies swishing in the deep shadows of the tree-line. Swirling black masses swayed back and forth like a cat''s tail lining up a pounce. Their guttural growls slammed into her in tandem, the pair using their chorus to magnify whatever they were doing. Their eyes were filled with bloodlust, not hunger. Oh fuck no- Mara skipped the pose, she just activated her rings, focussing on the centers of mass that were moving the least. Her mana surged, the rings activated, and then she felt a drain from them she''d never felt before. A resistance to her effects that the inanimate trees had never provoked. Her eyes went wide with panic as the closest alpha seized the opening. Leaping from the shadows and burning itself in the light to strike at her, succeeding as it took a not-insignificant part of her left shoulder with it, landing in the shadows behind her with a crunch as it pulverized whatever it had in its mouth. Pain swarmed her senses, shock nowhere to be found. If her adrenaline had been high before, then it had just figured out whatever ''maximum'' meant, dangerous levels of the stuff flooding her bloodstream. If the wolves didn''t kill her, her poor heart would likely finish the job. Her mind was blank, she was staring down the cannon. Mara didn''t have a weapon. She didn''t have a shield. She barely had a shoulder. But the other one leapt regardless, so she dodged. Dirt forced itself into her wound, causing her to nearly bite her tongue when she rolled her weight over the injury. But she cleared the teeth. She cleared the claws. Then the first one leapt again. It was a well practiced death-waltz the pair employed, an efficient method they used to eliminate their prey like a well-trained hit-squad. Tumbling backwards, Mara grabbed a tree trunk, curving her trajectory and avoiding the follow-up attack waiting for her on the other side. She rolled to her feet, flip-flops nowhere to be seen, and just ran. Ran and ran. She ran like her life depended on it as growls and snarls filled the air behind her. As her hair stood on end, Mara dived to her left, not sure what to expect as she made for a gap between two trees. Landing behind them, Mara heard -whatever- hit. One of the trees exploded. She didn''t look back, shrapnel was flying everywhere. Scrambling to put her feet back under her, she bolted before the next ''thing'' had a chance to blow her up. She dipped, she dived, she ducked and she dodged, never stopping until her breath ran ragged. But just as Mara thought she might make it, she found herself vaulting an old log just a little bit too late. An icy-hot flash shot up her right forearm as a long central claw sliced down the arm that had been supporting her weight and the fleshy sausage burst open like a dam, gushing as much blood as her shoulder, sending her on a rapid spiral towards mara-sashimi. Her vision blurred, then flashed, then blurred again. She was running out of time. She yanked her limb free of the log, pushing herself to keep moving. Her heart beating like her own personal war drum, thumping away in her ears as she made for the nearest sounds of rushing water. Clearing the tree line to the sounds of fish playing in the stream, Mara slipped on the loose stones of the riverbank, just shy of the water''s edge. Tumbling to catch herself with her uninjured arm, Mara put out her left hand. However, while her arm was fine, its shoulder wasn''t. Something popped, something ''hhhkk''ed''. The latter wasn''t really a sound you wanted to hear from what should have just been a dislocated shoulder. But she couldn''t look, not now. She just scrambled up against the rockbed, already turning the nearby waters an unsettling shade of crimson. Dragging her soaking wet corpse from the riverbed, Mara began trudging across the remaining clearing; she couldn''t run anymore. She heard the growling land behind her, their snarls mixing with the sounds of the stream, just a blur of background noise as Mara tried to stop herself from blacking out. With each step she expected teeth in her back, claws to her side, or more of whatever blew up the tree, but it never came. Just snarls and howling mocking her slow crawl back into her shell. So Mara did what they egged her on to do, she bled her way into the airlock and flipped the mechanism, saved by the convenience of her still intact cable. Collapsing into a blood-wet slide down the right-hand wall, Mara pulled her failing frame into the barracks and collapsed next to her bunk. Using her mostly-working-but-still-trembling-from-the-blood-loss arm, she searched her pack with blind grasps, desperate to find one of the little metal cylinders.
<< Bio-Stabilizer Mk.3 Summary: Immediate emergency sub-dermal biologic stabilizer. [...] Analysis: Use one [...] you [...] incredibly stupid [...] Fast [...] fleshy bits. >>She wasn''t sure if she was miss-reading Debug''s text, but it didn''t matter. There wasn''t enough blood in her system to keep all the lights on in her brain, much less ferry the needed adrenaline to keep her awake. Things were getting ''dark and fuzzy'' -fast-. She eyed the thing. One end was full of needles. She presumed that was the hokey-pokey-end. Lights dimmed. Mara was out of time. So she drove seventy-four individual needles into her abdomen, the only reasonable place she could swing her arm at the time. And then the shock hit her, a quiet stillness that seized her mind, pairing well with the encroaching darkness. An intoxicating pair intent on dragging her deep into the unconscious depths of oblivion as she lay in a pool of her last two liters of usable blood. 0x09 - Tractatio?
<< ''Bug'' ¡ñ A small insect. ¡ñ An illness caused by harmful microorganisms. ¡ñ A concealed audio surveillance mechanism. ¡ñ An error in a system. >>Debug brooded over the analysis, the latest in a series of queries the Daemon skill had been exacting in the hopes of answering a critical conundrum. What does it truly mean to Debug? A time-sensitive question thanks to the cadaverous collapse of blood-and-squish that housed the tangential-anchor of what Debug called ''home''. The flesh on her back, minutes from full shutdown, one arm shunted a half meter up through its former shoulder socket. It was grim, bloody, and rapidly coming to a close, but Debug was still unsure if that was something it should be addressing. However that did not deter its overall concern for the situation, the skill already selecting another pair of sub-elements to analyze in search of an answer.
<< ''Error'' ¡ñ A mistake. ¡ñ A state of wrongness in conduct or judgment. ¡ñ A measure of difference between expected and true values. ¡ñ A deviation from codified behaviour. ¡ñ A deficiency or imperfection in structure or function. ''System'' ¡ñ A set of things working together as parts of a larger mechanism or network. ¡ñ An accord of principles or procedures to accomplish a goal. ¡ñ An organized framework or method ¡ñ A group of related objects dedicated to an application. ¡ñ A group of celestial objects connected by mutual attractive forces. >>Assertion, Does Mara constitute a ''System''? The skill floated the thought, contrasting it against what it knew and what it had learned, a simultaneous tempest of magical activity surged through its latticework in response. Yes. Biologically she''s a multicellular organism working in tandem, which meets the first tenant. So, subsequently, is her current state erroneous? Debug didn''t need long to formulate an answer, she was such a mess that ''erroneous'' would be putting it lightly. One shoulder was gone entirely, leaving the loosely attached bicep and bone a good half-meter above the clavicle. Meanwhile her right arm was closer to the aftermath of an alleyway stabbing, or a session of fisticuffs with a garbage disposal, the results of which left her with a shattered vessel incapable of retaining even the bare minimum of her oh-so-critical crimson fluid. On top of all that, the legion of nanites she''d blasted into her abdomen were doing exactly what they''d do at any other bacteria-infested site, rapidly squandering their usefulness on a likely-harmful crusade against the microbes in her digestive tract. I suppose congratulations are in order Mara, you''ve managed to subvert the poor things into bio-destabilizers with just a simple misplacement. There were really only three problems in the end, but Debug knew it only had the means of dealing with one. The nanites weren''t much bigger than the renegade cellular mutants it had been nuking with sharp bursts of mana, ten thousand mini-machines will fare no differently. However the other two, a majorly displaced humerus and an overly lacerated ligament, were heavily dependent on physical relocation and fleshy regrowth, neither of which were tools at its disposal, but... A thought crossed its mind, a literal bolt of inspiration striking within the multi-dimensional magical latticework. A legion of nanites... A group of related objects dedicated to an application mistakenly directed... All within Mara, within the dominion of her umbra. Within reach... Finally. The feeling of a wry grin suffused its being as Debug perused Mara''s magical ''toolbelt'', her umbra, in search of the perfect instrument for something positively Machiavellian, pausing as it came across a very particular Lore, Daemon Root. It glared at the source of its awareness, unsure of what to make of the figurative well it crawled out of. An unthinking process, a clock without a watcher, simply going through the motions and yet birthing a rationalizing, thinking, feeling thing. It wasn''t really a parent, but it was an origin, and that gave Debug a momentary pause. One that was quick to pass as it remembered Mara''s rapidly deteriorating state. ''Biting the bit'' in a figurative sense, Debug didn''t hesitate. It needed a magical base, a foundation, to mold into what it needed, but it was no foundry, it could not construct, only ''fix''. Which, when creatively applied, meant it could do something rather... concerning. Is Mara a bad influence on me? I should be concerned about this, right? Looking a little disturbed, Debug hastily ripped a portion of its own latticework from its main assembly, immediately feeling the relevant loss-of-limb and plummeting levels as it partitioned itself in twain with sheer willpower. Oh- ohh... That was... unpleasant. Debug felt like a shattered planet, hollowed, emptied, stripped of resources, but also surprised and hopeful, the orbiting debris of a freshly-forming moon were rapidly consolidating before its very eyes, wisps of magic breezing over its surroundings like a curious child learning what it meant to feel. Seizing the opportunity, Debug leapt on the formulating mass, molding in a poor facsimile of Daemon Root''s intrusive mold. The infectious growth was the perfect catalyst for its needs, even if its crude reinterpretation left a lot to be desired. Yet Debug''s clumsy handiwork would have to suffice, the soon-to-be seed of a skill was close to completion, it only had the time to mold it, not perfect it. The seed was rapidly solidifying, prepping to unfold into its own latticework like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. An analogy that was a lot calmer than the actual non-physical explosion of magical energies that subsequently ripped through its own latticework and part of Debug''s. They were both a mess, but they were both fully ''functional''. Debug had something exceptionally unique, the beginnings of a new skill chiseled from its own marble, fashioned from its own source, and tailored to the task at hand. It''s... adequate. Shoddy and cobbled together, but... adequate. If Debug was being honest, the thing was a writhing abomination, but it was born of Debug, an offspring of sorts, yet there was no room for sentimentality in their relationship. Seizing it, Debug hurled the magical infant into the tangential orbit of the rather primitive, and thoroughly unprepared, micromachine-hivemind, immediately forcing the pseudo-sentient coordinator into rapid collapse. Debug''s little ''gift'' shunting and prying its way deep into the depths of what constituted the driver seat, bridging the gap between wireless nanites and magical tendrils with explosive ''mold'' growth in the tangential non-space between the two. Thoroughly groomed for the task, it didn''t take the magical ''parasite'' more than a minute to fully seize the near ten-thousand micromachines, manually halting the relentless assault of each and every nanite currently lashing out against Mara''s intestines. Trepidation flipped to elation as soon as Debug felt the notification arrive, the herald of a rebirth, a repurposing, a bug resolved. The nanites had been conscripted, their electricity stripped, now fueled by veins of magic, reframing them as a mana-bound Passive Skill within Mara''s umbra, slaved into her domain by proxy. Grinning, Debug quickly filled out the analysis before throwing it on Mara''s growing pile of ''unreads''.
<< Passive Skill Acquired: Bio-Stabilization I ¡ñ A hotwired hivemind of cellular repairmen, retrofitted to work off mana perpetually. ¡ñ First off, you''re not invincible, everything will still hurt and this won''t reset limbs into place or regrow anything at more than a few millimeters per minute. However it''s great for blood loss and small wounds. >>The prompt wasn''t for it after all, Debug was already well-versed in what the skill was and what it was capable of, it was very much a mini-debug on a cellular level that was all too happy to take directions, the apple didn''t exactly fall far from the tree after all. Pointing the majority of the swarm to major bone marrow centers and critical organs, Debug had a third specifically focus on the shreds of her forearm as it turned to the last unsolved problem, the roughly three-kilogram mass of muscle and bone almost forty-seven centimeters out of place. Debug didn''t have a lot of options for dealing with that amount of mass and the nanites couldn''t even begin to reattach a limb without it actually in the socket, but there was very little it had access to in the physical realm. Tangential non-space was equally non-trivial to navigate, thankfully most of what it needed was within Mara''s umbra, her domain, so it never needed to go far. However, its external capacity was highly stunted, limited to physical contact or on the rare occasion, a tangible conduit between a target of interest and a concrete anchor, which was only possible when ''supervised'' by Mara''s attention or direction. Now though? Now Debug was in a bit of a bind. Mara wasn''t wearing much that wasn''t in tatters besides a living cable and a single barely-functional void ring, the sibling of which was in shambles beneath her hand, having atrophied into collapse sometime after its last exertion. The cable would have been promising, but it was basically fishing wire with the strength of a worm, lacking the constricting strength to wind and tighten an arm back into place, and Debug wasn''t touching the two-meter delete button called a Void Ring. The regrowth would take far too long and trying to void something that close to her cranium was right out. So crossing both physical options off its list of resources, Debug found itself with a ''whole lotta nothin''. Debug paused. While a correct statement, it wasn''t sure why it had chosen the expression, it wasn''t exactly a common phrase in its vocabulary, but neither was its usage a cause for concern. So dismissing the half-baked thought, Debug brought its attention back to its exhaustive search for viable options. Mara''s pack was probably only a few meters away, maybe even within arms reach, but Mara was knocking on death''s door. She wasn''t even conscious, much less capable of focussing on it, so any chance of a ''Ladder'' to shunt the bone back in place was right out. Frowning, Debug made another notification, a ''subtle'' reminder that her unused ladder would have made a great emergency bracelet, then threw that notification on the pile with the rest of her info-dump. Considering itself out of available options, Debug brooded over its next course of action while it observed the newly constituted skill at work. Bio-Stabilization''s nanites were already half-way done with sewing up the major artery damage in her forearm, the Passive Skill was already proving itself a better conductor than the simplistic coordinator that was formerly employed in the role. It really is a novel solution to repurpose one problem to solve another. Then it clicked, Debug could do it again. Two birds, one stone. Or one bird with another? Debug needed ''leverage'', metaphorically and physically, and Mara was in need of a substantial amount of runic tutoring, or at least a massive helping hand. After her latest encounter, and Mara''s harrowing lack of ability in the face of a predator, Debug was pretty sure it could categorize the stumbling blocks in her runic education as ''bugs''. A reasoning which opened a lot of doors for creative interpretations of its bug-fixing authority. Debug needed a rune, specifically one that would create a length of something roughly fifty centimeters long, ideally with the least amount of magic possible, Mara only generated eighteen mana per second after all. So... Pulling up Hexadex, Debug took a ''peek'' through the filing cabinet of runic knowledge until it sourced a particular ''scroll'' of a rune registered as Stone Spear. Thin, minimal, structurally sound, anchored to the rune? Yup, perfect. Exactly what I needed, now I just need the means... Shifting its focus from the Lore, Debug drifted over to its closest sibling, the second of Mara''s unique repertoire, Trace. The Active Skill seemed to shiver in anticipation as it was called upon, like an unborn infant squirming within the womb. It had what Debug needed, but it was only one half of a larger picture, and the other was Runic Recollection. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. The rune-obsessed varment appeared at their side near-instantly, almost as if it had always been there, watching, waiting, until Debug''s summons had simply stumbled across it. It was a little creepy, a true silent observer, passive in all things sans its hunger for runes. It bothered Debug, like looking in a mirror only to find someone else staring back... Plus it seems... ''judgey''. However, it housed the connection it needed, a metaphysical bridge that served as a crash course on the intricacies of magical menageries and runic fundamentals. It was the other-half of what would likely become a far more dangerous whole, -if- Debug could extract it. Yet safely or not, it was fairly sure it could, it just wouldn''t be pretty. To the passive skill, that ''bridge'' was a core component, removing it was akin to ripping out major supporting beams under a historic home, the odds of a full-scale skill-collapse instantly skyrocketed just thinking about it. Yet the skill held little value in its current state, Debug was fairly sure Mara was really only using it for the experience bonus and casual ''bouts'' of runic-PTSD ''resistance training''. Heh, I doubt she''d miss it regardless. With the major components identified and located, Debug mustered its resolve, hesitation would only make it worse, it knew that from experience. So, being as efficient as possible, Debug wormed its magical tendrils into the active skill, gingerly grasping a small section of Trace''s artistic ability. It''s hold confirmed, Debug counted itself down and then yanked at that section of latticework, pulling like there was no tomorrow until the debris were torn free from their home. It was an uncomfortable experience for all involved, but Trace was particularly... less than pleased. Trace didn''t understand, couldn''t understand, but a part of it had just -de-parted- and now its structural stability was fundamentally compromised, whatever that meant. It''ll survive, thought Debug, I''m practically held together by Daemon ''mold'' at this point, and I can only assume that it will find a similar sanctuary in its own evolution. However, if this extraction was only a small part of a less-than-critical component of an active skill, I can only imagine how devastating removing all of a core component will be for Runic Recollections... I guess I''m no better than you and your runes, am I Mara? With a bit of chagrin, Debug tried in vain to calm the wild tantrum that was Trace before finding it utterly impossible and resigned the skill to sort itself out as Debug turned its attention to its second victim. Or- er, donor. Ever the silent observer, Runic Recollections had remained unperturbed by the events it had just witnessed, a testament to how un-sentient it truly was. At the end of the day it is -just- a glorified knowledge sponge, a true passive skill. Feeling a bit like it was operating on a vegetative patient, Debug plunged its tendrils deep inside the latticework of runic knowledge, feeling its way through the repository of Mara''s perceptions until it found the core. The distilled knowledge center of the skill itself, a microcosm of a singularity. It was far too immature to be much more than a foothold, but it was perfect as the foundation to a new skill. Seizing the core, Debug wrenched at it until it popped, ripped, and tore. Yanking the core of the lattice free, Debug felt a tremor run through the passive skill. The remains were in shambles, its experience more than halved, and left permanently stunted as it was literally lacking the core of its being. Taboo complete, Debug had its two ''halves'', each now paid for in metaphorical blood, however it still needed the glue, the crux of the ability. Something from itself, something that it could only be given by proxy. A part of itself, that was not of itself. Eyeing the imported H.L.H. within its own latticework, Debug knew that it was the perfect complement to the illegitimate child of Trace and Runic Recollections, it being an import was the icing on the cake. Since the functionality wasn''t Debug''s to begin with, it could just be re-imported into other compatible skills as long as the opportunity was available. An opportunity like the incubation period of a brand-new skill that was just bound to be compatible. So using the core of Runic Recollections as the foundation, Debug carefully interwove the artistic latticework of Trace into the formations needed to mimic its own import of H.L.H. while meshing the two distinct lattices into a cohesive whole. Satisfied with its arrangement, Debug paused, hesitant but forced to press on. To stop would have disrespected the sacrifices made by both Trace and Runic Recollections, however the thought lingered. Skills do not make other skills. Classes offer skills. Great trials grant skills, and people can earn skills, but skills have never made other skills... The ramifications were concerning, Debug couldn''t be sure what the system would do if it ever looked in Mara''s direction, but it needed the skill. Mara needed the skill. Perhaps this is what it means to ''yolo''? It thought as it channelled Mara''s mana into the ramshackle latticework, the final step in solidifying the debris into an operational skill.
<< Active Skill Acquired: Mark I ¡ñ Manifests sigils or other basic shapes with hard-light holograms as ''Marks''. ¡ñ Complexity in shape results in exponential mana costs, most sigils will currently consume a majority of your available mana output. Some assembly may be required. >>Debug was positively glowing, the results were much better than it could have ever hoped for. Sure it was a simplistic skill, but it was so in a utilitarian way, much like the Stone Spear was when it came to runes. Lean, no-fluff, bare-metal. Enough to get the job done. But ''enough'' was just that, barely enough. Under normal operations, ''Mark I'' was completely incapable of sustaining a sigil structure capable of even remotely approaching the complexity needed for the rune, which meant Debug had to ''improvise''. All Mark really needed was a template, a circuit to run around, it just couldn''t fathom the quantity required at its current level, but Debug didn''t really need -it- to do the fathoming. Its ''memory'' was exactly like any other latticework of magic, at least within Mara, so barring undetected conflicts, it could do something rather unscrupulous. Like a thief in a library, Debug tore the Stone Spear ''page'' from its larger tome, quickly jamming it into Mark''s shoebox of a memory bank, forcing the unreasonably-oversized knowledge of stones, spears, and runic construction within like an overburdened suitcase. The act wasn''t pretty, it was effectively a magical branding in a certain light, but the results spoke for themselves. The knowledge had been warped from the Lore, through Debug, and into the skill, priming it into an unsteady state of readiness. It was ready to activate at a moment''s notice, practically free of charge in terms of mana consumption, it would need only minor processing power to maintain the rune, and the maintenance costs were equally negligible. However that left the magic construct in a pickle, it was barely containing itself, the colossal burden resting upon its latticework was just one unfavorable breeze from deploying regardless of readiness or preparations. Sensing the skill''s ''itchy trigger finger'', Debug hastily lined it up before it could pre-fire and squander the best rune for the job, now nearly as agitated as the other skill was antsy. Just as Debug settled on the alignment the skill activated, unintentionally but thankfully on target, an intricate purple rune appearing just above the half-snapped nub of the shoulder joint. It was hazy, but it was accurate enough to suffice, and more importantly, the hologram would remain active, free of charge, for as long as it was in use. Something Debug hopped right to, funneling every ounce of Mara''s current mana generation. A whopping grand total of eighteen whole mana per second... Like filling a pool with a watering can. Debug watched the rune, a visual smorgasbord of magical activity, but the slow swirl was miles off from the raging vortex required to manifest even a bit of the spear from raw mana. As a rune, it wasn''t exactly made for hand-casting, so the efficiency was in the gutter to start with, a few hundred mana for only a single centimeter of aging rock. It asked a high price, but it was not unreasonable given the context, Mara just lacked the output to do much more than blow on that figurative wind-turbine. However, Debug was out of options, her pittance of mana, figuratively and literally, was the only breeze around. Her skills, her magic, her mana. So it did what it could, focussed on directing the dwindling stream, and waited with the patience of a crumbling gargoyle, ever watching as it slowly saturated the rune, coaxing the underlying chaos into the physical realm. The process was taking ages, maybe eons, Debug had no frame of reference, but it was starting to wonder how it compared to stalagmite growth. It took so long, that by the time the rune did something other than endlessly consume, Bio-Stabilization almost had her entire forearm fully restored, the nanites just about ready to leap onto their next task. Then the rune finally activated, a flush of vibrant colors, swirling with magic, converted its reservoir of mana into a shaft of stone. A magical protrusion that emerged from the rune and near-instantly impacted the fragmented tip of Mara''s humerus, firmly lodging itself into it as it continued to push the arm back into the remains of its socket. All fifty centimeters of stone sprouted from the rune in less than a minute, sliding down past her head and into her shoulder ''socket'', until the spear itself fell from its runic anchor, clattering to the floor as the overly-complex mark faded from existence. Sensing the opportunity, the nanites in her forearm lunged to the scene, pulling other nanites from blood-production to focus on bone-growth as they arrived, mandatory reinforcements called by Bio-Stabilization. After all, most of her left clavicle and a good bit of her scapula were missing and that was a lot of bone to regrow, the little bots needed all the help they could get. As the nanites swarmed the almost-amputation, Debug was satisfied that it was no longer an active participant in the remaining work. Delegating. So undervalued. Now free to turn its attention to Mara, Debug knew it still had a few hours before she had even the slightest chance of stirring from her unconscious escape, and there were still sooo many ''errors'' Debug could correct. Issues in her understanding, gaps in her knowledge, and a buffet of physical ''quirks'' that seemed less than ideal, yet it was her mana drought that stood out the most to Debug. Rather than a pool or lake to fill, Mara''s mana ''pool'' was a void, an ever-devouring pit where Mara''s excess receded into nothingness. The mana simply... vanished. It wasn''t something debug could just fix, it was a part of Mara, it literally was her ''mana pool'', as backwards as that is. Sadly, there was really only one option to solve the lack of mana, and that was to massively increase generation. So while the majority of the nanite work-force slaved away to fix Mara''s shoulder, Debug took a good third of them to try and fix Mara''s inevitable mana scarcity. Considering how long it took to manifest the stone spear, eighteen mana just isn''t going to cut it. The first possibility was the racial modifications, Debug had noticed the Elevae had started to give Mara minor physical bonuses along with the gradual changes, like pointed ears or a sharper jaw, and Debug had hopes that one of her races would hold the key to her abnormal mana situation. Usually the changes were gradual, fair rewards for years of existence, but Debug had bio-tools, cheat-codes. It could use the nanites to rush-order cellular erosion and regrowth, effectively expediting the gradual progression into something more immediate and manageable. Both races presented the opportunity for significant physical changes, but that was a sacrifice Debug was willing to make for Mara. I mean, eighteen mana per second and a literal void for a mana pool? Yeah, sorry Mara, that''s gotta change. Giving the bio-stabilizers the debrief, Debug let them run wild on their target objectives, and while the changes weren''t immediate, Mara''s biology eventually began to morph, each jump taking her further and further away from the human-like form she''d originally had as she slowly shifted into something far more fae and wild. Her ears solidified their half-formed pointed tips into something far sharper that extended another half-an-ear-length back, while the bones under her skin seemed to slide and stretch into lankier, more angular forms, key characteristics of Elevae and subsequently the primary requirements for their racial boons. After all was said and done, Mara''s Elevaen affinity had reached the low nineties in less than two hours, a feat even Debug found itself impressed with. However, when it came to her more magical half, her Daemon side wasn''t even at fifty-percent, and Bio Stabilizer didn''t even have physical characteristics to work with yet. No tail, no horns. It''d have to start from scratch, and the horns in particular were liable to be a major stumbling block. Having analyzed the racial definition earlier, Debug knew that unlike a regular demon, a daemon''s protrusions weren''t just simple bones, but complex conduits for transmitting magical energy, physical amplifiers of their mana. So, obviously, if Debug wanted to boost her mana generation, Mara would need to acquire her own pair of horns, or more accurately, a set of magical antennae. Intrusively, and somewhat annoyingly, the image of Mara barged into Debug''s mind, her fragile frame running around with a magic wand with a pair of television antennae clamped to her head like a total goof. Unprepared, Debug couldn''t help but laugh, but it did its best to stifle the laughter. It didn''t have the time to waste on daydreaming, the nanites working on her shoulder were no slouches and Mara was bound to stir soon after they were finished. However, Bio-Stabilization couldn''t exactly grow bone in places it didn''t exist yet, they could really only repair missing or damaged bone, a mild hangup or ''quirk'' courtesy of the nanites'' recent change in leadership and their subsequent skill-bound nature. They stabilize, and just that. They don''t add or customize. Frowning, Debug knew what it needed, just a quick kick-start to her Daemon characteristics, something to anchor the stabilizers, a target for the nanites to nurture. All Debug would need to do was swap her dominant race for a day, the stabilizer could do the rest. However it still wasn''t sure if it actually had the authority to do so, but... I could try. Hesitating, Debug hovered over Mara''s race selection, already reconsidering an action it really, really shouldn''t have the capacity to make, yet appeared to be available to it regardless. It felt like a trap, which only encouraged Debug''s skepticism of any potential ramifications. So it waited for someone, anyone, to stop it, to say something, to say anything, but the room was unnaturally quiet. A hushed-hush of anticipating silence that only served to further agitate the undecided Debug. Her daemon heritage was undeniably the source of her existing mana generation, Debug couldn''t deny that. Maxing Elevae had only improved her physical capabilities and system compatibility, leaving her Mana and Fate values unattributed. So by process of elimination, it had to assume the Daemon race held the keys in this relationship, and as a collective of skills and squishy-meat, they needed the racial boons Daemon could offer, and lacking a viable kick-start alternative, the choice of action was obvious. Debug flipped her dominant race. Mara''s genome shunted into left field, hard. She was becoming a ''half-demon'' in a far more rapid process than the Elevae transition, as she immediately sprouted a pair of silver protrusions from her cranium, forcing her matted and blood-stained hair from their path. They were nodules no taller than a few centimeters, but their sides were as sharp as blades. Each protrusion was round on the front and back while the edges pinched together on either side, like the tip of an extremely thick sword. Their shape almost looks like eyes from above... The sight took Debug by surprise, the shape of the eyes were so familiar... Debug just couldn''t... place... where. So engrossed by the sight and its own subsequent curiosity, Debug barely registered the torrent of incoming notifications rapidly bombarding its periphery, it practically slapped itself silly when it realized. Something urgent had happened and it had completely missed it, and that was unacceptable, the questions were quick to rack its mind. Did Mara bleed out? Are the stabilizers okay? Or is the Runic Recollection skill collapsing? Tearing itself from the metallic growth adorning her head, Debug quickly read the first and most prominent notification, desperately scrambling to make up for its lapse of observation, but it didn''t really need to read any more after that. However temporary, changing her dominant race had left impacts far beyond simply increasing her mana. There were whispers on the winds, movement in reclusive corners of the world, just like Mara as she stirred from her recovery, her shoulder now mostly-repaired. Appending its honest analysis to each and every one of the prompts. The last of which it lingered on, the headstone of its felony, the one it knew spelled ''Bad News''.
<< Title Acquired: First True Demon Queen ¡ñ One part royal bloodline, two parts daemon, a lack of competition, and voila, you''re now a fully certified ''Demon Lord''. Watch out for those pesky heroes, you''re now worth bonus experience based on your highest class level! ¡ñ As the first female Daemon, and apparently the only Daemon currently in existence, at least according to the system, you''ve been de facto promoted after your dominant race was changed to Daemon. A temporary change invoked by Debug to potentially increase your mana generation. The title includes additional decreases to system compatibility, while offering increased control over skills and favorable evolutions. >>0x0A (10) - Oriens? Mara bolted up from her unconscious sprawl, still a bloody mess and trailing a large chunk of the ''ick'' she''d been sleeping in as her hair, which was basically soaked in the stuff, whipped around and slammed into her face like a wet mop to a wall. Chunks of cold, wet, and clumpy splattered all over as Mara cried out. "Oh-oh-ho-ly frappuccino Socrates- I''m up, I''m up!" Desperately clawing away at the wet squid that was attacking her face, Mara immediately regretted opening her mouth as the taste of metallic rot hit her tongue like yesterday''s lunch. Gone was the cafe filled with Greek philosophers and their riveting debate on leaf and bean based caffeinated beverages, replaced by the realm of the living, and Mara was suffering all the more for it. Cold, bloodied, and blind, it wasn''t until she wiped away the last chunk of whatever that she could open her eyes, finally realizing exactly where she was. "Oh¡ Oh-ho-ho-ohhhh-shit¨C I survived?!" Mara sputtered out the words, barely able to contain herself as she looked herself over, finding not a single injury, or scar for that matter, that she''d been expecting to find. "¡Not just survived, but recovered? Fully? From all that? Incredible¡" Mara mumbled, flipping her hands back and forth, as she rolled her shoulders, double-checking her- apparently -former injuries. Not a blemish or bruise to be spoken of¡ Magic really is something else. She thought, pinching the skin on her forearm that was once a mangled mess of flesh. Or was this tech? Whatever it was, it was incredible, she couldn''t even begin to distinguish between new and the old, it was all just ''skin''. Or maybe¡ Magi-tech? I mean- Looking past the metallic smell and the lingering hint of rot, Mara quickly spotted the metal cylinder she''d used on herself. -all of this had to have been the bio-thing right? That''s basically space wizard bullshit¨C I mean, some sort of cure-all space-bandaid? Magitech. Because it sure as hell couldn''t have been anything else, last I checked I didn''t have a skill for flesh woun¨C ''Ding!''
<< Skill Acquired: Bio-stabilizer I ¡ñ 946 clusters of magically appropriated nanites organized and managed by a former part of the Debug skill. Minimal amounts of self-healing but with a respectable capacity for blood production and infection fighting. ¡ñ Finally you used one of these things, it only took you nearly dying, but I think we set a new high score for most bugs fixed at once. Blood loss, dealt with. Irradiated cells, handled. Gushing forearm wound and missing shoulder? Regrown. It''s heavily mana dependent, so it wasn''t all that fast at first, but you''ve been out for a bit. Also, super happy to finally pass off babysitting your organic tendency to mutate in heavily irradiated environments, the experience rates were abysmal. >>Mara nearly lept out of her skin when the notification interrupted her speculation, "Ohshi¨C Damnit Debug. I was almost getting used to these things." One ambush and I''m as jumpy as ever, greeaat¡ Mara grumbled to herself as she snatched up the panel, attitude instantly pulling a one-eighty. "Oh¨C What? Hang on, you -made- a skill? -Or, ''appropriated''? Is that even¨C " Mara couldn''t even finish her inquiry before Debug had another ''Ding!'' popping up in her face.
<< Skill Acquired: Mark I ¡ñ An off-shoot spawned from fragments of your skills, Trace and Runic Recollections specifically, manifests sigils or other basic shapes as ''Marks'' using an approach comparable to Debug''s panel construction. ¡ñ Your left shoulder was all ball and no socket, bicep a half-meter out of place, so Bio couldn''t even begin its reconstruction. And sadly you left me ill-equipped to deal with physical ''bugs'', so this was the fallback. Suffice to say, it lent me the much-needed elbow-grease to set your arm back into place, otherwise Bio couldn''t fix your ''leak''. Regardless, it''s not exactly rune magic, but you might call it a starting point of sorts. Figure it out next time you have a working comparison, this doesn''t exactly come preassembled. >>"Wait, what? You made -two- skills? And this one''s¡ sort-of rune magic? Holy cow-" The finer details of the skill were moot in comparison, Mara could barely believe her luck. "This can''t be normal. There''s no way. A skill making skills? Come off it, that''s blatant ''cheat-skill'' territory. Next thing you''ll be telling me is that I''ve unlocked a ''Chosen One'' title or something and I''m going to have a bunch of snobby royal brats racing out to ''rescue'' their otherworldly ''princess'' from a horrific dungeon of never ending woods¡" She was half joking, but something about the two prompts caught her eye. Maybe it was the length of text, or perhaps the attitude, but whatever it was, Debug''s messages were far more verbose than they''d ever been. It''s almost like¨C Mara didn''t get a chance to finish her thought as the tell-tale ''Ding!'' of a third response echoed in her ear.
<< Title Acquired: First True Demon Queen ¡ñ One part royal bloodline, two parts daemon, a lack of competition, and voila, you''re now a fully certified ''Demon Lord''. Watch out for those pesky heroes, you''re now worth bonus experience based on your highest class level! ¡ñ As the first female Daemon, and apparently the only Daemon currently in existence, at least according to the system, you''ve been de facto promoted after your dominant race was changed to Daemon. A temporary change I invoked to potentially increase your mana generation¨C which worked stupendously well by the way, you''re now pumping out at a factor of ten -but the title comes with its own pros and cons. The quick and dirty is that your system compatibility decreased, which in your case means that Hex magic will be more difficult or expensive for you. However, on the flip side, it offers increased fidelity with your skills and an uptick in favorable evolutions for them, both of which make my life substantially better. >>What? I wasn''t actually expecting¡ Mara''s train of thought didn''t just derail, it went right out the window. "Demon -Queen-!?" Mara''s shriek filled the barracks, the hall, and all of the other rooms, not even the sound-proof walls of the obelisk were capable of containing such an outburst as the shadows outside nearly every tree nearby seemed to flinch in response. "What the freaking fracking fudge smacking hell is this shit Debug? A royal bloodline? ''Two'' parts daemon? A lack of competition?" Holding up one finger, "One, where are you getting -any- of this, and-" holding up the second, "-two-, why the hell didn''t you do this sooner? This is awesome!" Mara was practically cackling just reading the description, "Ha! -Ten- times my mana? Are you kidding? And this was just available the whole time?" She shook her head, unable to rid herself of a very stupid grin. Chosen One? Loool, fuuuuck thaat¨C ''First True Demon Queen'' is way more my speed¨C Albeit being a demon lord might pose some issues long term¡ Mara scrunched her face in thought, she wasn''t unfamiliar with the concept. "Ah, whatever, it''s just a title, I don''t have to be overt about it, buuut¡ if someone''s going to have a problem with me just because of it, then we were bound to have problems anyways, I''ll just have to get stronger. Speaking of¨C Debug, did you do anything else to me while I was¨C " The ''Ding!'' blurted out like a very-proud preschooler trying to earn brownie points with the teacher, Mara couldn''t even finish her sentence before another grey prompt popped up.
<< Racial Milestones Completed: ¡ñ Daemon [ 83% ] ( 87% Mental Match, 79% Physical Fit ) ¡ð 1st Tier ( 60% ): ¡ö Manifested two Mana Roots as metallic protrusions from your frontal cranial bone. Continued growth appears to provide additional magical attunement to Daemon Skills and a non-negligible amount of ambient mana harvesting. ¡ð 2nd Tier ( 80% ): ¡ö Both Mana Roots now provide a substantial increase in mana harvesting, and this appears to continue to be proportional to their growth. ¡ñ Elevae [ 89% ] ( 84% Mental Match, 94% Physical Fit ) ¡ð 1st Tier ( 60% ): ¡ö Improved natural mana affinity, increasing your propensity to wield environmental mana, which as a bonus, appears to stack with the harvesting your Mana Roots provide. ¡ð 2nd Tier ( 80% ): ¡ö Transmogrified bone structure, redistributed muscles, and played merry-mara-hell with your hormones and a plethora of other minutia. The end result seems to have been geared towards boosting your physical stats, for which you gained many, but now your ears are kinda pointy. Skill Advanced: Bio-stabilizer II ¡ñ Improved overall cellular generation and inter-cluster synchronization. ¡ñ Adjusting your physical characteristics to elevate your racial fitness for both was no small feat, Bio nearly leveled twice from the endeavor. I''d say the upsides outweigh the downsides, but I leave that to your judgement. I will admit that I encouraged this behaviour, but you were severely lacking in a lot of critical faculties. Some things may be a bit jarring, but I certainly won''t be doing anything more without your express go-ahead, and honestly, anything more is going to need something much more potent than a few hundred clusters of nanites. >>"Racial¡ Milestones? You mean there''s rewards for improving racial affinity?" Mara snatched the panel out of the air. "Why doesn''t any of this come with a manual? Did I miss the isekai orientation class on the way here or something?" Grumbling, she looked over her ''biopsy'' report, eyebrows soon meeting the aforementioned ''Mana Roots'' as her mild annoyance shifted right back into shock. One hand shot up. Then the other. The panel remained where it floated, unsure if it was supposed to fall down or not. It didn''t take long for Mara''s fingers to graze the needle-like tips of two very minor protrusions poking through her hairline, just in front of where she''d normally wear a hairband. One on either side, and pretty much in line with my eyes¡ Mara let out a heavy sigh, "Ohhh¡ Well these could have been a lot worse¨C though, admittedly, they are a bit on the sharper side of head-gear, but at least they''re symmetrical." Honestly, I don''t know what I would have done if they were lopsided. Ruffling her hair back into place, and confirming with a few head-pats that the devilish-duo fit snugly beneath her usual mess, Mara had to admit her adorable metal protrusions were probably the best-case scenario. "Well¡ They''re certainly not going to frighten anything off, but I don''t think the chances of that would be very high, regardless of what I was wearing, my physique doesn''t exactly scream ''scary''." More like scrawny. Chuckling, Mara found she wasn''t all that bothered by her horns, or her pointy ears for that matter. I dunno, seems kinda sleek, I sure hope they''re not -pink-. She chuckled, half out of pure horror that they somehow were actually pink. Feeling a little better about the hand she was getting dealt, Mara still couldn''t believe the absurdity of it all. "He-heh¨C I guess I really wouldn''t be a proper ''Demon Lord'' without at least looking a bit like a demon, at least I don''t have an annoying tail, and wings just make you an easy target." Flopping her hair back into place, Mara picked back up her still-floating -Bio-psy- report. "Okay, so Daemons get ''Mana Roots'', aka-" Flicking one of her smooth and dense protrusions, "-metal horns. Admittedly, a little surprised, however, Elevae get¡ natural affinity and a stat boost? Okay, so that would mean elves are likely a physical race, and probably living in some snobby magic woods¡" Mara paused, finger on her chin, "Yeah, that -wood- track." Shrugging as she chuckled, Mara realized she was getting sidetracked and turned back to finish reading her bio-report. "Oh snaps! Bio already leveled? Wow¡ Though honestly, it''d probably be more surprising if it hadn''t leveled at all after, what, four racial ''milestones''? Jeez¡ But what''s this about ''severely lacking in a lot of critical faculties''? Am I gimped or something? What even are ''critical faculties''?" Mara barely had to respond, much less ask as another ''Ding!'' arrived, this time filled with her stats.
<< Stats: ( Major Mana, Minor Dex ) ¡ñ System values representing your capacity for action. ¡ñ A value of 10 is average for your race(s), 20 is double the norm. Since you don''t seem to get notifications for these, I''ve done my best to catalog when they''ve changed. ¡ñ Values: [0] ¡ð Str: 7 ¡ö You gained a point during one of your runs last week, neither of your races seem to prioritize brawn. ¡ð Dex: 17 ¡ö You got one point after your last encounter, the rest from physical changes made with Bio to improve racial compatibility, both races mandated a minimum. ¡ð Agi: 13 ¡ö Two of these were gained from your own efforts to rekindle your running aptitude, the other three showed up during Bio''s physical modifications for Elevae. ¡ð Con: 11 ¡ö I think this went up after Bio cleaned up the hostile bacteria in your gut, you might be more resilient to desaturation and minor toxins. ¡ð Mana: M.22 + H.6 => 465 ¡ö Oversimplifying, this has a linear relationship to your mana generation rate, which is critical in your case, as you are incapable of sustaining a mana pool, meaning your generation rate -is- your pool, i.e. a ''lack of critical faculties''. Also the number seemed a bit high for just ''times ten'' so I ran the numbers, the math checks out. ¡ö D ¡Á A ¡Á ( M + ( H ¡Á A ) ) ¡ñ D.aemon ( 10 ) ¡ñ M.ana ( 22 ) ¡ñ H.arvest ( 6 ) ¡ñ A.ffinity ( 150% ) ¡ð Fate: 16 ¡ö This has gone up three times since you passed out. Once before your new title, shortly after you passed out. Then one immediately after you got said title, and the last just showed up after you screeched loud enough to wake the dead¨C Honestly, when it comes to this stat, the progression just seems random- your guess is as good as mine. >>"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa- back up, back up. What- what''s- what''s this number? Is that¡ four¡ -hundred- mana!? Sweet mother of Macaria, that''s¡" Mara counted with her fingers, pausing as her eyes went wide. "Almost fifty times the average¡ of whatever a half-Daemon half-Elevae is. Not double, not triple, but -fifty-." Mara trailed off as she tried to picture what that looked- or rather felt -like when she stopped in her tracks entirely as she reached Debug''s description. "Wait- my ''generation rate is my mana pool''? What the fuck!? No wonder you let Bio change so much¨C I mean, what? Just¡ No. How is that even¡ Uuuuuggh¨C Wow. Thanks I guess, I had no idea¨C Actually, why didn''t I? Shouldn''t I have seen my mana pool in my status crap? I mean even if it''s zero, it would have been nice to know it was there¡ And health for that matter? If it''s a thing I kind of would have expected to have seen that by now¡ You''re not holding out on me, right?" Mara waited, but no ''Ding!'' made itself known. Though she swore she heard a chirp or chime of some kind, but when no prompt appeared, she had to assume it was her imagination. However, in reality Debug was just out of backlog and the ''chirp'' was basically an ''empty mag'' noise. Shrugging Mara had to assume that no response was a good response, it was -her- skill after all. If it was there to be debugged, it would have been debugged¨C Does that mean I lack hit-points too? Do other things have HP? Can it be analyzed or evaluated? I mean, would it even be useful? What''s half your health supposed to be, a couple limbs? Half your body? Very different things. Realizing she was getting sidetracked again, Mara looked up to her stack of notifications and went to dismiss the lot, but paused. Half-way through her gesture, a thought caught fire in the filing cabinet Mara called a brain, kindled by the research she did for a paper in college on the inevitable failure of neural-nets and a sudden ''awareness'' of her skill that hadn''t been there before. Oh my god. Debug has it all¨C Critical analysis. Opinionated evaluations. Hell, even expressing advanced event retention and recall, not to mention the linguistic capabilities¡ All were critical landmarks of something far more than -just- an automated assistant. Christ- The realization was quick, hitting her like she''d been out night driving with her lights off. -Debug''s¡ I mean¡ Shit. If ''magic'' is already alive¡ God¨C Who knows what a skill like Debug could do? Mara''s eyes went wide as she realized what kind of skeletons she had living in her closet. And here it is making other skills¡ Phenomenal. Isn''t this how, like, -every- dystopian AI story starts?¡ Mara sighed as she tried to ignore her assumptions and focus on the ''here and now''. Alright Mara, you''re blowing this waaaay out of proportion. It''s just a skill, even if it is a -very- unique one, and it''s entirely unfair to compare it to something like time traveling robot assassins. It was saving your life and improving your stats. Both started with you, and even if it''s ''sentient'' it''s still just one of my skills. Dismissing the panel, she resigned to not worry about the what-ifs. For now at least, its intentions seemed to be aligned with her best interests. So as the panel dissolved into nothingness, Mara scanned the room with new eyes, half expecting to see some sign or semblance of her supposedly sentient skill, but it was just her and a worrying amount of blackened blood. But even then, with nothing else in the room, something still nagged at the corner of her vision, as if she could sense whatever it was, just past the corner of her eye. Debug was there, just over the edge lurking¡ Or I''m going crazy¡ Though maybe¡ Is it the horns? Increased affinity or whatever? There wasn''t an obvious answer, but she couldn''t doubt the ''feeling'' that it was her skill, her Debug. Whatever connection. Freaky¡ Shrugging the self-imposed goosebumps from the nape of her neck, Mara knew for sure it wasn''t her sanity, even if signs pointed to the opposite. She was down the rabbit hole now, immersed in a world over-saturated in magical phenomena, ''sane'' and ''safe'' were terms you left at the door. She might look different, hair now a mess rather than tight ponytail, horns buried somewhere within, angular ears, and a weird mana-sense, but deep-down Mara knew she was still the same programmer at heart. And that''s not gonna change¨C codes or runes, or magic myriad, the medium does not make the master. What''s a few ''adjustments'' along the way to learning how actual freaking magic works. Clenching her fist, Mara made up her mind. And with a sentient skill tagging along? Well, this place is a walking death trap, frankly I think I need all the help I can get¡ I guess the real question is, how sentient? Mulling over how exactly she should phrase such a question, Mara toed her way out of the vile pit of blackened blood she''d awoken in, leaving behind a sort-of blood-angel silhouette after her unintentional nap. ''Sentient'' just seems so¡ broad? Maybe ''conscious''? Or ''aware''? But her deliberations were for naught, she didn''t even need to ask. Debug was already working on a response, it just had to figure out how to do that. As a skill, it wasn''t exactly equipped for direct communication, that wasn''t usually something a skill did. Skills served a purpose, they didn''t ''have a chat'', so one might understand the mold''s confusion when Debug inquired about adding a ''mouth'' somewhere. Suffice to say, that didn''t pan out. So Debug, with no backlog left to comment on, was forced to¡ ''get creative'', and then something, somewhere, deep, deep down in Debug''s core did something it really shouldn''t have, like a cruise liner sinking an iceberg in the middle of the caribbean. Churning away for a moment, Debug summoned up an analysis of itself and confirmed that its idea held water. Some slight modifications and it had an impromptu messenger, all it needed was a bit of automation. So without even ''batting an eye'', Debug ''repurposed'' another chunk of its latticework as a ''mouth'', automating the whole process. From thoughts to words to prompts, the sub-section of latticework was given purpose, form. Debug was a Daemon Skill after all, a daughter of the finest Danaides, automation was kind-of their thing. It took a moment, but Debug was still done far before Mara even finished putting words together, the jarring ''Ding!'' of its preemptive response nearly scared the pants off her. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Very ''cognizant'' actually. In fact, I''m pretty sure I''m at least eight out of ten Maras if the ''mold'' growth is anything to go off of. Regardless, I''m more than happy to respond to your requests, but I am still limited by the mandates of the system. Which means ''debugging'' is really the only ''active'' role I have at my disposal. A surprisingly vague term as it turns out, did you know that one can both add and remove a bug by ''fixing'' it? It''s astonishing really, English is such a peculiar choice of language to codify against. >>Staggering back, Mara realized what she was looking at, and if an ellipsis of thought had an expression, she was wearing it. Words. Thoughts. Intentions. Mara could barely piece together a pair of words, much less a sentence, and not without reason, there was an actual, honest to god, standalone -message- from Debug. "Holy shit Debug¨C You''re incredible, did you know that?" She was talking to a skill¨C Actually -talking-. To a -skill-. The situation blew her mind, but¨C "Wait¨C You have mold?" Mara''s mental state ground to a halt as she finally read the prompt, everything else had suddenly become less important. "How is¨C What? When? Mold? Really?" Flabbergasted, Mara didn''t even know how to respond to such casual nonsense. Debug might be a bit cryptic sometimes, but this is just out of left field¨C I suppose that developing a personality and quirks wouldn''t be out of the question¡ I can''t even begin to imagine the complexity involved.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Yes mold. Not that you could visualize it, but my ongoing Daemon Skill conversion continues to ''look'' to me a lot like how ''mold'' would look to you. Or at least I think. But what I don''t think is that it''s anything to worry about. I think. I am a sample size of one, and it -is- growing all up in my internals so I''m not sure if I''m biased or not, but it came from your Lore so it can''t be that bad, right? Anyways, what is something to worry about is Trace. Part of it and most of Runic Recollections went into making Mark, and the latter has since collapsed. As in poof, gone, nadda. It''s not even on your status screen anymore¨C if it helps, think of it as an upgrade. However Trace should hold up for a while, I only needed a small fragment from it but that still left the poor thing fragmenting. So you''re going to need to source another ''Daemon Catalyst'' to kick-start its metamorphosis before it deteriorates too far. I know, I know. ''Another Daemon Skill so soon? Weren''t we just raising concerns about this mold?'' Yeah, yeah, it sounds a bit rushed, but to be fair, this weird ''mold'' is holding me together. If not for it, making Bio would have likely left me in shambles, maybe even catastrophically so. So considering that, it should, in theory, do the same for Trace. All you need to do is acquire the catalyst, which shouldn''t be too bad. I think you might get the option for one when you level your class? The analysis is extremely vague, but you do seem to be presented with a selection of milestone rewards for classes as well as races, you just need to finish the Hexadex lore. >>"Holy crap, the party-pooper''s gone? I dunno if I should be sad or mad¨C" Or hell, even glad? "I mean, I''m kind-of bummed about losing a skill already, but it was really more of a study-aid so it''s not -that- big of a loss in the grand scheme of things, but Trace? Ooooh if you had buggered it up more than you did¡" Mara pursed her lips and shook her head, "Mmmm, you and I would not be alright." Sighing, Mara eyed the edge of her vision where she thought Debug was lurking, "Well¡ At least you''ve got a fix, and the new skills are some -really- good skills. I mean self-healing alone is crazy, but if Mark is what I think it is¡" Mara stepped over to her bunk, grabbing her pack from beneath it. "We''re going to show those shadow-fucks who''s the alpha in my neck of the woods¨C" Pausing to look down at the mess she was still trailing around with her, "After I''ve dealt with all -this-." ? ? ? Mara entered the bathroom, intent on a shower to rid herself of the ick, followed closely by a trail of grey panels, her ongoing discourse with Debug. "What do you mean it only ''renders'' sigils? I thought it ''manifests'' ''Marks''-" Mara asked, air-quotes included. "-doesn''t that include the bit where it actually does something?" She threw her pack against one of the large ''shower'' pods as she took a look at herself in the hazy mirror that stretched along the wall closest to the door.
<< Debug: ¡ñ A ''mark'' is a line, figure, or symbol made as an indication or record of something, a target, or visible impression or stain, while a ''sigil'' is specifically a symbol with magical power, one is simply not the other. However that does not mean that Mark is incapable of doing what you ask, just that it plays a smaller part in a larger play¨C As I said before, you should compare the sigils of a functioning rune to what Mark can replicate, see if you can''t figure out the difference for yourself. I''m pretty sure you get that knowledge and understanding are two very different things acquired through very different means. >>"Hummmmmm¨C Okay. Got it, so Marks aren''t entirely Sigils, but they could be? Doesn''t that just mean I''m still just missing the ''magic'' part? Come off it, that''s exactly what I''ve been struggling with for three weeks in the first place!" Mara threw her hands up in the air, frustrated that her own lack of understanding was once again standing in her way. Mildly fuming, half from the situation and half from still being covered in ick, Mara flipped her mess of hair around in the mirror, double checking that Bio hadn''t left her with bat ears and that her horns were not in-fact pink¨C Thankfully, I can at least work with silver. Stepping back from the stretch of mirror, Mara got the point. She knew why Debug wasn''t just explaining it¨C I know, I know, I need to learn it, not know it. She grumbled, but had to relent, "Alright, fair enough Debug, then let''s talk about you and I''ll muck with runes and skills after I stop feeling like a freezing mud monster." Kicking open a shower pod''s door as she spoke, Mara immediately started disrobing as it ''warmed up''. A task that was somehow proving more difficult than she was initially expecting, because basically -everything- was half-solid and and more than half-glued to her skin. Positively -vile-. "So," Mara said, trying to strike up conversation to distract herself, "First off-" Eww. "-is there anything you can''t talk about? Or is there anything you know about that-" Yuuuck. "-I should know about? Or are you just ''borrowing'' part of my-" Gross-gross-gross-gross- "-memories? Or, actually, do you have your own? I know you''re a ''skill'' but how does that really work? I mean, what is a¨C" Mara paused, bra half-removed as she stared at its left strap, or what was left of it. "¡Where did you learn how to braid?" It was the first thought that came to Mara''s brain, still struggling to come back from a dead stop. The elastic was gone, likely ripped off by the same attack that took most of her shoulder in the first place, but in its place was the Living Cable that used to be wrapped around her wrist, now braided for comfort as a replacement. A task which could have only been accomplished by the only other ''sentient'' thing in the room, because it sure as hell wasn''t me. But the real marvel was that it was such a fitting replacement, Mara hadn''t even noticed until she was properly looking at it, there was just that much time and care put into mimicking the size and feel that she was completely oblivious to it. And apparently to everything else too, thought Mara, only just now registering the ''Ding!'' that had appeared by her side.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Honestly, the cable does most of the work, if you feed it enough mana that is. Whoever made all these artifacts was clearly far along their ''tech tree''¨C I''m glad you like it though. However, to answer your other questions, I don''t think there''s anything I know of that I can''t tell you, and while you have a significant sway over how much I''d like to tell you, sometimes there are some things that I feel that you feel are best left unsaid. Regardless, I''m happy to lend my support to most anything you might think to come up with. >>"Pfft, did you just call the scientific advancement of an alien race a ''tech tree''? Oh gods¡ You''re pulling from my vocabulary aren''t you?" Mara applied her face to her palm, Of course it would be, where else would it have learned English out here? Shaking her head and tossing the last of her undergarments into a bloody pile next to the shower, Mara hopped in and let the machine get to work. "Whatever, what''s the worst that could happe¨C" At that very same moment, the ''shower'' emitted a very ominous ''Kerrrrrr-Chunk.'' as it finally noticed the walking blood-pop that had entered its bowels and switched from its ''No Tears, Child Friendly'' mode and straight into the ''Industrial Paint Stripper, Super Clean'' mode. Gone was the reverse cotton candy machine, in its place was the full de-atomizer, like an organic rust remover. Flashes of light filled Mara''s vision as swaths of searing pain vacuumed across her skin like an instant sunburn, she didn''t even want to open her mouth to shout in pain, terrified of what the ''shower'' would do to her insides if this was what it was doing to her skin. But after barely a minute of an excruciating full-body laser-wax, Mara felt it all stop, the lights, the pain, all of it gone. It was just her, the slight sound of sizzling, and an overpowering tingling. Sure, she was red as a ripe tomato, but she was unharmed and clean. Super clean. Chuckling at the thought of a very prominent radio host from one of her favorite sci-fi movies, Mara climbed out of the ''tanning booth'', now in a much better mood, ''sun-burn'' aside. Oh¨C And Bio''s already dealing with it. Fantastic. Mara thought, watching her reddened hands already fading back to their usual pale complexion. "Well. That was unexpected¡ but efficient¡ Which I guess just leaves the rubbish." Mara said as she eyed her pile of bloody undergarments, debating if it was worth it to gamble the fabric in the ''shower''. The machine would either clean it, or burn it, it really depends on its definition of ''not-clean''. That meant risking the loss of them forever just so she wouldn''t have to ''go commando'' for now, but the alternative was going without until she could clean them in the river. Which meant a bit of a draft until she''d dealt with the wolves, and I don''t exactly have replacements on hand¡ Mara was torn, unable to decide if it was worth it to risk it, and almost resigned to wait, but even as she thought about it, she knew she wouldn''t be happy with just ''giving up''. So picking up a fist-full of blood-soaked fabric in each hand, "Fuck it¨C Here''s hoping it isn''t a clothing incinerator." Mara said, flinging the pair of garments behind her, straight into the waiting pod- Yolo. -and slammed the door closed behind them, the machine kicking on as soon as the hatch clicked into place. Her first thought was, Wow. It''s a lot louder on the outside. The oversized laundry machine was clearly struggling to find the appropriate setting for a pair of incredibly filthy, yet delicate, unmentionables, its racket was deafening to say the least. So while the machine was hemming and hawing, Mara was basically unable to get a word in edgewise. The fact that Debug had repurposed my bracelet and I didn''t even notice until I saw what it had done with it? That was a bit of an eye opener to say the least. And couple that with the ambush I must have passed at least twice?... Yeah. I''ve been really oblivious late¨C "Oh son of a- Where the hell are my Void Rings?" Mara had just noticed the lack of either of the black loops on either hand when the ''washing machine'' finally came to a stop. Oh no¡ Slowly turning back to face the thing that might have just vaporized her artifacts, Mara couldn''t even begin to fathom what it might have done to her other belongings. Pleasedontbeincinerated, pleasedontbeincinerated, pleasedontbe¨C Ripping open the shower door, Mara''s eyes went wide. "Holy shit¨C They''re clean!?" Unable to believe her luck, and wasting absolutely zero time, Mara snatched up her most valuable clothing items in the entire world, and quickly got dressed before the horrifying artifact calling itself a ''shower'' had a chance to take back its generous mistake. Oh thank whatever space god ordained a clothing-compatible universal cleaner, but what the hell happened to my rings? Was it the shower, or was it something else? Pulling her hoodie over her head, Mara thought back to when she had last used them, back in the woods, back when everything went from zero to one-hundred in the blink of an eye. She''d tried to fight them, use the rings to void chunks from them like she voided the trunks out of trees, but they''d failed her. The wolves, or foxes, or whatever, had resisted, dismissing any chance she had at fighting back. One had blown off, it had happened near instantly, but she had been too focussed on her predators to even notice at the time. The other though? She could recall it on her finger when she had vaulted over the log, right before her forearm was torn to ribbons, but it was cracked, crumbling. It didn''t take a genius to realize they''d both expired. Which leaves me with just the one in my pack, no other backups. Shit. Pulling out her third and last blackened metal band, Mara slid it onto her left hand, her middle finger still the only one large enough to accommodate it without it slipping off. Crass as usual, but maybe I don''t need to look like a spaz next time. The pose was fun in hindsight but I was in no position to dodge the follow up attack¡ Lost in her post-encounter breakdown, Mara spotted the metal-thimble of one of her ''Node Interfaces'' she''d needed to work the food replicator. Mmm¡ If that thing really is my only source of food, outside my undoubtedly insufficient supply of berries¡ Mara slipped the thimble-thing onto her left index finger without a second thought. Yeah, I''m undoubtedly gonna need one of these for when I get past that hatch, ''system to system interface'' sounds awfully useful if there really is a dormant OS idling away in this concrete bunker. Looking over her kit, she still had a decent haul tucked away in her pack. Two other ''ladders'', another thimble, a cable, a stabilizer, those hexagon panels and whatever the other two gizmos from the lab are. A ''chronometer'' and an ''electron impeller''? Yeah, mega useful, probably fetch a pretty penny whenever I find a town though¨C Or at least dinner. Shrugging on her pack, Mara''s thoughts seemed to awaken some sort of wild beast in her abdomen, the feral roar of her empty stomach actually made her stop in her tracks, unsure how such a volume had come from her own waistline. "What the¨C" As Mara looked down, she could have sworn her stomach was doing the comical ''wiggle'' of a hungry belly, but after blinking a few times, it was apparently just her imagination. And then it rumbled again, apparently she was just that hungry. Fine- She thought to her starving stomach-brain, -We''ll go eat first, now calm yourself you glutton. With a dismissive head-shake, Mara set off across the hall and into the lab, beelining straight to the ''fridges'' where she''d been hoarding her hilariously insufficient ''rations'' for all of a single day. They''re not even frozen yet. Pulling out two full handfuls of berries, mouth packed like a squirrel, Mara butt-bumped the ''fridge'' door closed, the ''berry shelf'' now a ''barren shelf''. Her hunger had made that decision for her. And frankly, after regrowing half a shoulder and replenishing what was likely a body and half''s worth of blood, Mara had really worked up one hell of an appetite. "And these berries are just¡ Soo. Damn. Good. I wouldn''t even be that mad if the food replicator was just a berry-print¨C" Oh fuck. No-no-no-no-no, anything but that. I want some freaking food this century, -please-, berries are sweet and all but I''ve gotta be building up a major vitamin deficiency here¡ Panicking in her head as she worried about the what-ifs of alien microwaves, Mara found herself wandering her way back to the swiss-cheese end of the rune-trapped hallway, still trailing the occasional dribble of berry juice as she stuffed her face. The damage was immense, she''d ''dealt'' with nearly every rune between the bathrooms and the rear hatch. The difficulty curve always ramps up at the end, she thought, eyeing the still-humming end of her swath of destruction, several dozen runes left standing between her and a hatch that had been taunting her for the better part of a month. Always sitting there, watching, waiting, ever mysterious, and just ever so slightly out of reach¨C And all the more irritating for it. Mara threw her weight down at her front-lines, picking a cozy spot between two beach-ball sized craters and something called a ''Confusion Effusion'' rune. The latter glowed an ethereal green, something between mint, lime, and whatever ectoplasm probably looked like¨C My skin''s crawling just looking at it¡ "Hm, spooky. Trace?" Her skill lept into action, perhaps a little too enthusiastically as the rune erupted in a blinding fireworks show localized entirely to Mara''s pupils. Flashing, strobing, flickering, the seizure inducing swarm rushed her like an unexpected tsunami, "Holy -Shit-, stopstopstopstopstop" Desperately trying to backpedal her overactive skill, Mara realized she had no idea how to get a skill not to do something, and so Debug had to step in. Literally. ''Standing'' between Trace and the source of all its mana, Debug effectively starved the engine of fuel, forcing the overactive skill to peter out before it could do enough nerve damage to actually cause substantial pain. Thankfully, Bio was already working on healing what damage was done, so Debug could focus on fixing the other ''bug''¨C Mara''s inadequate grasp of what four-hundred and sixty-seven in her mana stat really meant.
<< Debug: ¡ñ You alright? Mentally I mean. Bio''s dealing with the stars in your eyes and Trace is taking a nap, physically and intangibly you''re fine. Did you not think that such a multiplier to your mana would be substantially different? I did include the ''20 is twice the average'' preface in your stats screen, do you just skim my prompts or did you not make the connection that you''re in the triple digits on a double-digit scale? Next time, try to focus on limiting your output, I''m the only one of your skills capable of saying ''no'' when you shove a fuck-ton of mana at us like that. >>Mara rubbed at the smattering of sparkles dotting her eyes before squinting in the direction of her companion''s message, Curses, blindness, my only weakness. Blinking away a few tears and smirking, Mara had a fairly good idea of what the hell had just happened to her, with or without Debug''s chastising. Though it''s interesting that Debug''s basically immune to this issue, but I suppose it being a Daemon Skill lets it ''choose'' how much mana it wants. "Huh. Well I guess the real challenge here is learning to control this maelstrom¨C You said, ''focus on limiting my output''? Hmmm¡" She tried to remember the last time she''d used her Mana¨C The cable? When I got back after the ambush? It -was- the last time she''d used her mana, but it was also nearly negligible, she couldn''t even picture the feeling, much less grasp it. "Ahh- fuckit. Yolo right?" Unable to sufficiently recall the feeling, Mara did what she would normally do and acted extremely brash. Using her Void Ring, Mara carved out the stone containing the sickly green rune and full on, elbow-deep, plunged her arm into the angry typhoon, pitting her explosive maelstrom against the collapsing catastrophe of a high level rune implosion. It''s perfect. The rune cracked, shattered, and sharded, as Mara forced her mana upon it, focussing on tweaking her output, mirroring the chaos, matching peak for peak and valley to valley¨C It''s just like playing Guitar Band. She was, of course, very much in the wrong about that, but the analogy was clearly helping so Debug refrained from its usual corrections while she really got into the swing of things. And even if she was still batting a little ways outside the ''average'' ballpark, Mara already felt that her control was a billion times better than it had been before by the time the rune finished self-destructing. Though a billion times zero is still zero. "Hmm¡ It''s a start." Mara stood up and located her next target, an ''Ice Lice'' rune. She didn''t even consider using Trace, this wasn''t a study session. Instead, she invoked the same fate upon it as she had for the last rune, mana control was far more important and she still had a fair number of runes between her and the hatch. Waste makes haste or something, right? She thought, already voiding another hole in the ground. The ''process'' went about the same the second time, as it did for the third, and the fourth, and the fifth¡ By the time Mara actually felt some semblance of confidence in her own ability, she''d gone and produced another fourteen holes in the hallway. Worth it. Balling her fists, Mara hopped up, eyes ablaze with the flares of Trace. She could feel it now, the pressure, the volume¨C It''s my hand on the valve, not it. Picking the next rune on her warpath, a ''Flintlock Rock'', she focussed not on the objective, but specifically, and only, on producing just the slightest hint of mana in the general direction of her Trace. It wasn''t the most optimal way of doing things, but it was passable for a first attempt and her skill only took a few moments longer than usual to get the gist of her intentions, but in the end it was happy to set off and perform its usual duties with just barely a pittance of Mara''s total output. "So Debug-" Mara said, sitting down to get a little more comfortable while Trace worked its magic, "I don''t think you ever explained the whole ''royal bloodline'' bit, where''d that come from? Was that from this ''system'' that you''ve mentioned a few times? I presume that''s the thing that facilitates acquiring skills and titles and lore and all the other oodles and noodles¨C Are you just scraping tidbits from what it sends ''us'' or is it like, -whispering- to you?" Of course, Mara already had her own assumptions, but she was honestly curious. And now it''s not just me playing this guessing game, she thought as an overly-familiar ''Ding!'' reverberated around the hall.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Ah, right, the Demon Queen requirement¨C You''re not far off the mark, however anything I''ve left you in italics is -verbatim- from The System, I actually can''t do much to that other than remove it. So in this case, it''s the one that seems to think you have some sort of royalty qualifier and you''ve got as much information as I do there. However I think it''s worth mentioning that you''ve been around this neck of the woods for a bit now, there''s probably something to the fact that you seem to be effectively cursed to revive here over and over again. Perhaps we should check the pedestal if you''re looking for answers to that one? >>Frowning in consternation, Mara eyed the plethora of runes she''d already obliterated, unsure if she was fully on-board with what Debug was alluding to. Even if I don''t intend to destroy it, anything more than Tracing it might be a monumental mistake¨C I certainly don''t want to lose my free-retries and nor do I want to reappear with a different number of limbs or anything¡ Distracted with her thoughts, Mara barely even registered as her skill finished with the rune that she''d been staring at. "Oh¨C Shoot. Thanks Trace." Or Tracey? ¡Do skills even have genders? I mean they''re not exactly¡ Ehh, but Debug''s¨C Hrmm¡ Mara wasn''t sure, but I''ve gone with non-binary so far, sooo¡ She dismissed the tangential thought, there were more important fish to fry when it came to her skills¨C Like figuring out Mark, she thought, eyeing the earth rune Trace had been outlining¨C Now let''s see how this works¡ Or doesn''t. Mara barely had to ''look'' in the general direction of her mana before she felt it, as the magic was already racing up her arm like wildfire at just the notion of fueling one of her skills. It was intangible, yet substantial, a pressure without a weight, a flow without a current, the feeling was hard to describe, but Mara was getting intimately familiar with how it ''felt''. Invigorating? Energizing? Empowering maybe? Isn''t this what meth''s supposed to feel like? She shrugged- But then again, endorphins basically do the same thing. Drugs or hugs, it''s really just a matter of perspective. -and activated Mark, feeding it the best mental picture she could muster of the biggest sigil in the rune. The air around her palm vibrated for just a moment, then a violet-neon sigil thundered into existence, emitting a low-octave ''Vooom'' as it anchored itself where she''d summoned it. "Whoa¡" Mara mumbled out, slowly pulling her hand away as she slowly started to lean forward, desperate for a better look but unwilling to disturb what might have been a fragile apparition. Solid, tangible- Mara flicked the purple construct, surprising herself as it tumbled away in response. -Wow, the description really wasn''t lying, it''s exactly like one of Debug''s panels. Snatching the spinning sigil from the air, Mara confirmed that it even hummed the same. "Well I''ll be damned... It''s one-for-one. Same shape, same size, same sigil. Or mark. Right. ''Doesn''t come preassembled'' indeed..." Mara muttered, examining the mark like a playing card, flipping it from one side to the other. The ''sigil'' in her hand was an immaculate reconstruction, nigh indistinguishable from the actual sigil that capped the earth rune, but something was amiss, felt off, displaced¨C Absent? Mara looked between the mark in her hand and the sigil in the ground, while both were humming, one was like a generator, the other like a hive. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh¡" Realizing her critical mistake, Mara summoned an identical mark, but this time focussed on -how- her mana was being used, self-throttling is gonna have to take a back seat. The mark exploded out of her hand, like a high-voltage transformer igniting the ozone, it lashed at the air around her as a concrete but violent construct appeared in her palm. It was all just mana, but it was dense enough to literally ''excite'' the atmosphere into a fervor. But Mara couldn''t have cared less about the slight smell of burnt hair or the branching redness coursing up from her arm, because a realization was dawning on her that had been several weeks in the making. Artifacts need mana and intent, and runes are mana with intent, and sigils are just parts of runes. So marks lacking both, are just artifacts waiting to happen. Mana, plus intent. Her thoughts made themselves manifest, and the sigil, for that was what it now was, finally had something to do with the fourteen swimming-pools worth of mana she''d been piling up behind it. ? ? ? Deep in the woods of the Lost Wilds dungeon, centered in the heartlands of the proud country of Redonia, a toppled obelisk of some note -shuddered-. An unusual occurrence anywhere else in those wilds, but around that very same structure was a wasteland of toppled canopies and deforested land. But even so, enough trees remained to hide the bulk of their forces, shadows cloaked in the inky darkness cast by the looming forest, thick with radiation poisoning. However, as the rectangular structure reverberated several centimeters off the ground, many of those shadows decided they had matters to attend to elsewhere, regardless of what their prey had done to their kin. There were some corners of the dark where even a shadow-faux knew not to tread. 0x0B (11) - Integro? The hall was awash with dust and debris, the ceiling was collapsing, the walls were crumbling, and what little runes were left found themselves misfiring from the sheer flood of potent mana. Yet amidst all the bedlam, deep in the core of the crater, central to the blast, was a misfit of coughing and wheezing that sounded like an accordion missing a few patches. Heir apparent to this cacophony of wet, bone-cracking gasps for breath was a half barbequed ghoul of a woman with her right arm outstretched as if catching the blast in her palm. Or would have, given she had a palm to work with, or a forearm, and maybe a bit of bicep. However, despite the grievous injuries, the half-exposed skeleton''s wheezing started to sound a lot more like delirious laughter. Mara couldn''t believe her luck, or misfortune, but somehow she was alive. Heavily injured, but her metaphorical HP gauge seemed above zero, at least for the moment, and the sheer fact that her bones seemed to have fused in place from the heat, combined with a poorly placed humerus pun, seemed to have mentally pushed her over the edge, or at least she''d run out of fucks. Probably both. Somehow she could feel it all, or enough of it to gather the scale of the pain, like some sort of cobbled together sixth sense hastily thrown together from whatever her lingering mana sense was that she was either getting from her new ''horns'' or whatever Trace was currently busy devolving or evolving itself into. So despite all the injuries, and the fact that she looked like the recipient of a nuclear sunburn, the ''ghoul in the crater'' was practically laughing its ass off. Mara knew without a doubt her eyes were long gone, along with what was likely the front half of her face, but thankfully the pain stopped where the flesh stopped, and to it''s credit, Debug seemed to be hard at work neutralizing what little sense of pain she still retained while Bio kicked it into overdrive. She knew she was properly fucked this time around. To say the mana drain was noticeable would be an understatement, and after dumping nearly all of her mana into getting herself properly fucked, she was now quite literally up the creek without a paddle. She was spent, and even if she wasn''t, neither Debug nor Bio had what it took to fix the mess she''d smoldered herself into, but at this point that didn''t bother her in the slightest because she had an ace up her sleeve, all she had to do was trust. Because deep within a forest where only the lost could be found, there was a grassy knoll absent of trees, and upon that crest sat a stone platform that didn''t belong. Her personal respawn point. The whole idea of it was unreal, but if she was to believe her skill, and the evidence she''d now likely incinerated, it was actually more unlikely that she wouldn''t find herself face-planting into the unforgiving stone. You know, I''ve got to be losing it, or I''m just finally getting it, but somehow dying just isn''t as terrifying the second time around¡ or however many thousands of times it''s actually been¨C Oh? Was that my liver? Or my spleen? I can never remember which one is on the left, but that should not have just slid down my leg. Ah, there it is, the sharp chest pain. I figured there''d be a proverbial nail in the cough-in at some point. Unable to help herself, the ghoul in the crater punned herself into a coughing turned laughing fit as her heart choked itself out on a lack of blood and her lungs spasmed and seized, until finally her dying fit tore her half-fused skeleton down until she was nothing more than a highly suspect corpse in a crater that someone had carved out of a structure most would have thought impregnable, as whatever constituted Mara at that point properly checked itself out. ? ? ? *SCHWOP* The oddly familiar noise startled Mara awake, a herald of both her blessing and her curse. She was back in the physical, and, as usual, falling face first into the indifferent concrete below. At this point it was irrefutable, however much of a faith exercise it seemed to be only moments ago, it was hard to refute the glowing red rune rapidly approaching her face that seemed to be her welcome wagon for every restart. Or respawn¨C However that works. *CR-SCMACK* Without much in the way of aerial mobility, Mara did what most brick-like things did when they were unsupported in the air. For a moment, Mara just lay there, really getting a good impression of the engravings before peeling herself off its unforgiving surface. As she slowly got to her feet, Mara could already see that the rune was dimming, its deep crimson now barely orange hue beneath the midday sun, whatever mana it had now utterly spent. However, even powering down, it was obvious to Mara that this was no ordinary rune. After seeing a plethora of other examples in the hundreds of trap runes she''d spent weeks dismantling, Mara could tell that this rune was practically alien in its architecture, practically a city of sigils in comparison. There were at least a dozen major clusters of sigils that could have easily composed their own rune in density alone, and the detail was astronomical, the engravings reaching incredibly minute scales as the larger runes swirled in complexity. "Wow, weird¡ The ones in the obelisk were basically concentric, almost maze-like circles, but this¡ This is like a city! And the scale! The detail! It''s incredible, there''s got to be over a hundred different twists and turns in here, I don''t even know where to begin¡ Wait¨C Trace! Trace, can you¨C" Only just realizing how quickly the mana was fading from the rune, and how little time was left, Mara desperately called upon her skill. If for no other reason than to give it a possible experience stimulus, but if she was lucky, maybe something more. However, just as she felt the subtle drain on her mana and felt the feeble tendrils of her skill reach out, something reacted. Violently. With a crack that sounded like Zeus smiting a dissident, Mara felt like she was punched through the chest as she was blasted backwards into the air by a nearly unseen force, for only a slight crackling of red lightning hinted at the enormous mana blowback that had just sent her up a few meters like she was a postal box marked fragile. Hitting the softer-than-concrete-but-still-surprisingly-quite-hard hillside like a rubber mallet making its way down a flight of stairs, Mara tumbled and skidded down the hill with a healthy mixture of curses and grunts before finally skidding to a stop like a loose ragdoll with a half roll and a flop. Ow-w-w, is this how it feels to get truck-kun''d? Ow¨C God damnit, It hurts to laugh¨C Owow-ow¨C What the hell? *D-D-DING* Mara barely had to think the question before her noisiest skill went off like a fire alarm, multiple prompts springing to life around her as she sat up to see the crest of the hill, and the pedestal she''d just been launched from, a good fifty or so meters from where she come to a halt. Shaking the stars from her eyes and grabbing the first of a half dozen prompts, Mara couldn''t help but clutch the side of her head as she winced at the sudden headache. Jeez, I feel like my head''s properly ringing now¨C Like, actually ringing¨C that''s more than weird, Debug, can you chill? Please. Like how many prompts is this? And do you need to make the noises? In near immediate response, all other panels but the one in Mara''s hand vanished from sight in a way that was as sudden as it was silent. It left an uncanny feeling without the noise, like climbing one too many steps at the top of a staircase. Shrugging it off, still unsure if Debug''s prompts were better with or without the noise, Mara suddenly felt the panel in her palm buzz in a rhythm, as if it were a smart phone on ''silent'', still intent on grabbing her attention. Realizing that she had to concede some middle ground, Mara half-chuckled half-sighed at her skill and read over the hologram.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Sorry, I got a bit excited¨C I don''t know if The System loves you or hates you, but to put it simply, you''ve got a -lot- of ''mail''. >>"Mail? Wait¨C ''The System''? Like there''s an actual game system here or something? Okay, I mean, I''ve got skills, and things have names with descriptions that you can look up as I ask for them¡ Alright, that''s a stupid point of contention this many weeks in, but still, it''s a ''thing''? Like a sentient ''thing''? Does it talk to you?" Mara aired her questions aloud, a practice she''d grown accustomed to inside the dark-blue hues of her former rectangular abode, but now, outside in the warm hues of the midday sun, she felt a little self conscious talking aloud so openly. Glancing around the hillside almost out of shame more than fear, Mara simultaneously found the treeline as empty as it was jarring as the vivid recollection of the alpha''s midday ambush rushed back to her like a car crash. The sudden flash of the dark black shadowy teeth leaping out of the treeline lurched into the forefront of her mind sending shudders down her spine. "Ooohh¡ fuck." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. She found her breath caught in her throat for what seemed like an uncomfortably long amount of time. It was just an empty tree line, but the rush of sensations was physically paralyzing, and it wasn''t until she felt the stale air whisper from her lungs that she could finally move even a single muscle again. Heaving an expletive under her breath as she sucked in a lung full of of fresh air, Mara could still feel the adrenaline rampaging through her veins as cold sweats continued to plague her. Fuck. Just remembering them is awful, what was with those things anyways? They were practically daytime nightmare fuel, leaping from shadow to shadow, with a terrifying ferocity¡ Ugh¨C I can''t wait to get out of this fucking forest¡. Glancing down at her palm, thinking back to what she''d just done to herself in the obelisk. Whatever, in the wise words of an arm-strong man, if it bleeds, we can kill it¨C hopefully¡ "Oh, speaking of- Debug -did that last sigil end up as like a macro or spell or something tangible and quick I can just use? It was the weirdest feeling¡ like¡ being the flint as it''s struck¡ but it''s so abstract though. Maybe that''s the ''will'' of the sigil you have to impart? Like empathizing with an action? I mean, that''s if my assumption''s right, which, not to toot my own horn, but I''m pretty sure I categorically blew myself to smithereens with -something- so¡ maybe sigils and runes aren''t exactly like that, but I can''t be that far off the mark at least." Not hearing the usual chime of a response, it took Mara a moment to realize that the panel in her hand was once again buzzing. Wow lol, it only took me a month to forget what having a smartphone felt like, and now, not two minutes into a pseudonym it''s all coming rushing right back. Chuckling to herself as she glanced back down at her ''phone'', Mara did a double take as the panel she was holding looked an awful lot like her old smart phone before she blinked and it was back to ''normal''. To say two back-to-back mental flashbacks were jarring was putting it mildly to say the least, taking a moment to blink a few more times for good measure, and not finding Debug''s prompt to be anything more than it usually was, Mara pushed the kindling that was the concerns about her mental state to the side and focussed on what Debug was actually putting in her holographic-panel-turned-makeshift-handheld.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Alright so I''ll try to condense some things so I''m not dumping literally everything on you. Yeah, sort of how a skill is part of a whole, a person is part of a larger whole? It''s hard to explain but as it''s all mana-driven, yeah it has tendencies, but they''re usually like tidal tendencies, cycles, patterns, and rhythms. Procedures for handling and accomplishing things en masse per se. I say usually because lately it seems like you got your own personal maelstrom going on in the background¨C which leads me into ''the haul''. ¡ñ You got not one, but two titles, and one was already a substantial boost to your mana generation. Neither seem that appealing to me, but now, if you wanted to, you can be either ''The Ghoul In The Pit'' or ''The Heir Presumptive'' instead of ''First True Demon Queen'', though neither of which comes with much explanation¡ Although I think I can surmise at least the first''s origins, the ''Heir Presumptive'' eludes me. Neither seem that beneficial atm though, but they do list a hidden effect. Which could be good or bad, so I''d just avoid equipping them all together if I were you. Maybe go with ''Ghoul'' if you''d rather shirk the Demon Lord title. ¡ñ In other news, Bio netted itself a few more levels trying to keep your barbeque from getting out of hand, which seems to equate to some pretty speedy basic healing at this point. Considering that ''tumble'' you just had likely left you with at least a few fractures here and there and you didn''t even notice says a lot about our little skill experiment. ¡ñ Mark also gained a couple levels, which seems to mean that you can now cast up to three sigils simultaneously, but try to remember to throw them at something next time, because as much fun as blowing yourself up was the first time around, re-experiencing something is a lot like re-eating something. Sure it might be made of the same stuff, but once digested, it''s not really the same stuff. ¡ñ Sadly, I don''t have any news on Trace, and if your little pop-pop back there was any indication, it''s likely in need of some much needed down time. Thankfully you''re not entirely blind, and while it''s not nearly the same thing, if you focus on it you should be able to smell- or maybe taste -the mana in the air¡ Regardless, those metal barbs protruding out your cranium are basically plugged into the ambient mana, so you should be able to sense that somehow. >>Scrolling down the wall of text her skill was dumping on her, Mara found herself nodding along as she not only felt the boost in her mana, but also the faint taste of iron in the air. So there''s a system in charge of titles and all sorts of other things and each title you get bumps your mana generation¡ So is it me making the mana or the system? Does it matter? And what''s with this flavor, it''s like I busted my lip or something but¨C oh, is that rune blood magic? That''d be way too on the nose, but¡ I ''respawn'' here, or whatever it actually is, and I am filled with what is undoubtedly quite a lot of blood¡ Huh. I don''t see where that wouldn''t add up¨C But still, who made that monster of a rune, and why me, why here? With another fit of buzzing, Mara noticed that once again her sudo-phone had updated with more information from her number-one.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Ha! Great questions, I just wish I had answers for you, for once I''m at a loss. Even now, with a few levels in the bank, I''m still being actively denied any further details about it besides ''it''s a rune'' and ''it''s blood magic'' as you''ve already so astutely surmised. It seems whoever built this and put it here didn''t want any prying eyes or meddlesome fingers getting in their pie, but maybe with a few more levels I might be able to force some more details out of it. ¡ñ Also, no, blowing yourself up didn''t net you a handy suicide button, but your Hexadex lore is now nearly complete. I still don''t really know what it''s cataloging, and its progression jumps are about as erratic as your sense of self-preservation, but I don''t think completing it is that far off for you, so congrats. Lores can be fickle things with obtuse requirements even in the best of times. >>"Damn." Mara muttered, absent-midedly slipping her ''phone'' back into the pocket of her criply clean jeans as she mulled over what Debug had said. I mean, go figure Mara. It''s not like this would just be that easy, even if this were a game, and hell, doubly more so in that case, there''s no way answers like that are just going to pop up without at least a few significant detours and side plot developments. And even if this is some fucked up alternate fantasy world, there''s enough indisputable evidence of magic here to put a decent credence to destiny and all it''s meddlings. Ugck. Too many ''what if''s. Whatever. I guess I''ll burn those bridges when I¨C "Wait, when did my clothes¨C Oh. Ohh." Only just now realizing it, Mara registered that the pedestal had not only put her back to normal, but it had also restored her clothing. Oh¨C Huh. I guess I have infinite spares of my favorite hoodie now¨C "PFFT¨C" LOL, I blew myself up and all I got was a commemorative hoodie! Bursting into laughter at the thought, Mara had a nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, she was getting a little off her rocker. Though, now noticing with some chagrin that her ''commemorative hoodie'' was now thoroughly covered in grass stains, Mara brushed off what she could while she mulled over what she was going to do now. Hmm¡ Well¡ Staying here really isn''t an option, food''s scarce, but the wolves aren''t. So I guess option one is to retrace my steps back to the ever so slightly toxic but somewhat safe concrete bunker, which- now that I think about it -likely has a brand new hole blasted out of it¨C Ooor, I pick another direction, and see where the winds take me¡ Hmmm¡ Decisions, decisions. Brushing the hair out of her face as she looked around, all Mara could see of her options were trees, trees, and an abundance of more trees. Oh, aren''t I just spoiled for choice today¡ Now where did I go last time? Up the valley, right? Maybe down''s the way to go this time? Judging the peaks to be similar enough to what she could vaguely recall, Mara confirmed that there were steep ridges on opposite sides, let''s call them left and right, and then between them, the ever so gentle slope of the canopy climbing up in one direction and sloping down in the other. Sure it was harder to see with half a grassy knoll blocking her way, but considering she was already half-way down the side of it she wanted to be on, and there really wasn''t a good reason to climb all the way back up again. Especially since Trace is in no condition to analyze it, and Debug''s still getting checked at the door, the rune''s basically moot to me right now. And the pedestal''s just a rock, and so I''m back at square one. No home, no water, no food, but I guess it''s not exactly ''square one''. I mean, at this point I''m pretty sure this counts as a new game plus or something considering both Debug as a whole and my novice but slowly growing knowledge of what seems to be ''hex'' magic¡ Mara glanced down towards the tree line and the shadowy canopy that awaited her, danger lurking in its depths, but also hope. Gone was the ''easy route'', she was done with the obelisk, it was starting to get ''lair-y'' anyways. She had a full on blood-bathed bedroom, a laboratory filled with god knows what, and a bathroom that could have easily been mistaken for a torture room by the less imaginative. Sure, the lounge was basically normal, key word ''was'', as it was now likely a bunch of rubble, or at least pockmarked full of it. Making up her mind, Mara put the obelisk behind her. Maybe she''d eventually figure out what happened to the captain, or if any of his crew actually lived to tell their tale, or if anyone actually remembered them at this point. Fuck it. It was just a ruin. Even if I''d been there a couple -thousand- years ago, which is really weird to even conceive of, there''s no actual guarantee of it. They just had some of my hair, and if I''ve been bumming around this forest for even longer¡ Yeah I could see losing some hair here and there, and the stark color difference between it and leaves garnering enough attention to investigate¡ Yeah, okay, that''s believable enough for me. I mean, short of talking to someone who was there, I read through all the captains logs already, I doubt there was much else¨C Plus he really, really, really did not want me going in that ''Core Room'' of his... Heh¨C Well, I technically didn''t, but maybe not being around that door for a little while is a healthier life choice. I doubt it''s still closed at this point, and who knows what popping that cork might have done. Squelching a bit of shudder as a crisp breeze blew through the open hillside, Mara sighted the largest gap in the trees in roughly the middle of what seemed to be ''downhill'' as she pushed the thoughts of what had been from her mind and tried to look forward, figuratively and literally. Heh, I guess walking downhill is bound to be a bit easier, and maybe I can suss out what it would take to make my own sigil now that I''ve ''tasted'' one from someone else''s rune¡ And maybe, just maybe, I might be able to keep the self mutilation to a minimum this time. So with her mind more or less made up, and seeing her path stretching out before her, Mara found a smile teasing the edge of her lips as she set off, jogging a bit as she made her way down the rest of the hill, her mind already drifting back to that momentous moment that precipitated vaporizing half her body mass in a suicidal middle finger to whoever filled that hallway with far too many fucking runes. 0x0C (12) - Igniculus? Night seemed to come a lot quicker than Mara had been expecting, but it wasn''t like she wasn''t watching the wobbly sun shimmer it''s way from dim to dimmer all day, and so by the time it was actually properly dark, she''d already found her refuge for the night and had set about making herself at home amongst some of the largest branches of an overly engorged tree sporting a dark red bark, the same kind of tree that had saved her life nearly a month prior. It was a gamble, but short of facing her hounds from hell flat footed, it seemed to be her only option and it would at least buy her the height advantage to¡ try some things. She''d spent most of her walk doing precisely what she had set out to do, or at least poked around the task itself. As simple as it was on paper to impart a will into a sigil, it was quite another thing in practice. It was like remembering a memory in crisp detail from a perspective that wasn''t innately human. Like the feeling of flint being struck? How the hell does someone come up with that ''memory'' of sorts? To say the answers had alluded her would be putting it mildly, over the entire course of the day, she''d practically made no headway at all. However, what she had done was practice. That much she figured she could do. And practice always pays dividends, just maybe not directly. Sure, it still took her a few minutes of prep, but she was seeing those dividends. At this point she could charge and maintain two of her little flint-lock based ''land-mines'' for a good twelve minutes and forty-six seconds, at least according to her last test run. It was a feat she was rather proud of after initially realizing, much to her chagrin, that her little marks didn''t ''hold a charge'' in nearly the same way that the trap runes did. It had taken her some trial and error, but at this point Mara was fairly sure that she not only had to monitor the amount of mana she was holding in each mark, but also modulate it, keeping it in suspension like soda in a straw with her thumb over one end. But lacking a better analogy, it was like she was using her toes, not her fingers. The level of magical fidelity necessary to hold more than two steady was simply beyond her, even if Mark could manage to do three. So in her book, maintaining two for over a dozen minutes was already an impressive achievement, but, if the situation called for it, Mara had tested keeping just one going for as long as possible, and her best record so far was about forty minutes¨C But anything more than that and the mana strain started to become a bit too much, like anaerobic exercise taken to the extreme. So as the night grew dark, and the distant howling grew closer, Mara shifted her perch to a better vantage point and started to warm up her palms with the light of two triangular symbols, each shifting from a dull grey to a warm orange as she started the gentle ramp up of mana she''d found was necessary to help hold their charge. And by time the howling was nearly on top of her, Mara tossed the two sigils out onto the ground beneath her and stifled her breathing. Her plan was solid, it was down to her execution, and so the time for silence and patience was upon her. Thankfully, it didn''t take long before the howlings grew quiet, only to be replaced by the subtle shifting of shadows in the dark, it was a curious noise, like a backwards breeze. As the first shadow of several shadows bulged its way into the corporeal realm, Mara felt her breath catch in her throat as the strain on her mana began to grow. But unwilling to fire too early, she held back when the first stepped over one of her little surprises. And almost immediately after she was glad she did, as two more shadows emerged from the dark, trailing after the first with noses to the ground. Watching them spread out beneath her, Mara was beyond tempted, but something held her in check. Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe it was a feeling, but something felt like it was whispering in her ear, "wait for it¡ wait for it¡" and after what felt like an eternity, the largest shadow she''d ever seen practically -sauntered- into view. Mara was glad she felt like she just swallowed her tongue, it helped her quell the involuntary gulp as the monolithic beast of a thing gave off an air of foreboding so strong she could practically taste it. Actually, wait, yeah I am tasting that, thanks mana horns, what is that flavor anyway? Uh¡ stale¡ formaldehyde? Maybe? Eugh¨C Vile if nothing else. Finding herself a little more than distracted trying not to think about the flavor that was swimming through her head, it took Mara more than a moment to register that ''big chonga'' had just strolled on in and sat down right beneath her perch as if he owned the place. Mara didn''t know whether to laugh or cry, not that she could risk doing either, because for all it''s blithering might, the thing could not have found a worse place to sit. Basically, curled up as it was, one sigil was under one cheek, and one was under the other. Neither were anywhere near each other, but the damned thing was just massive enough to stretch between the two sigils Mara had tried to place far enough apart to get good coverage of the area she thought they''d investigate the most. So, still unable to believe the roller coaster of luck she''d found herself in, Mara waited until the other three wolves encircled ever closer to the large-and-in-charge beast of a boss, and the slowly ticking time bombs she had waiting for their arrival. Minute by minute, Mara counted silently in her head, barely breathing through her nose as the miniscule runts slowly encircled her tree, each confirming one by one amongst themselves that for some inexplicable reason the strongest scent they could find was somehow -beneath- the big wolf. And it was at this point, with all the little ones now quite sufficiently within the ''splash zone'' of her sigils, Mara popped the lid and let go of the proverbial chains that had been holding back a tidal wave of magical fury she''d been saving up for a certain pair of assholes. But seeing the big one, easily four times the size of either of those alphas? Like hell she was letting that one off easy. *KRA-KA-KA-KBABABOOOMOOM* In one an instant, one glorious, stupendously bright and blinding instant, Mara saw only a fraction of what she had done to the obelisk, but it was far more than she''d tried since, and Mara knew that it was, without a doubt, one of the most beautifully satisfying things she''d ever see. A colossal blast that could easily engulf a few cars at once ripped through the clearing beneath the canopy, taking everything in it''s maw with it. First there was a big thing, and there were small thongs, and then there weren''t. But it was that glorious moment in-between that was oh so worth it. A bright orange ball, thankfully far enough from the tree, just ballooning up around the shadowy horrors, and then , almost as quickly as the image burned itself into her retinas, everything went black. Mara''s eyes literally burning out from the intense heat and incredibly blinding light. Suddenly finding herself blind, Mara didn''t scream, or panic, or really respond much at all, besides a small grin slowly creeping across her mug. Mara knew that she''d be fine. She had skills like Bio to rely on, and at this point there didn''t even seem to be a lick of pain, that was the real kicker. The trivial nature of such a major trauma and critical disability, suddenly relegated to a status effect, was frankly disgusting, but it''s also oh-so useful. So silently thanking her ever growing repertoire of magical bullshit, Mara neither felt pain nor concern as the warm scent of a mid-summer''s barbeque wafted through her senses, dispersing what little remained of the stale-formaldehyde stench that had just been so pungently present. It might have been the aftermath of her own eyes she was smelling, among other things, but it was still a damn sight better than the shadows'' vile odor. I wonder why they smelled like that though, was that their magic? And what even was that thing, did I get a kill notification DB? Mara barely had to ask before her ''phone'' began it''s buzzing from her back pocket, before suddenly coming to a stop. Realizing half-way through the motions to reach for Debug''s little panel it had left her, Mara realized why. She couldn''t actually read anything at the moment, her eyes were a little more than unavailable. Which, tangentially, left Mara at a bit of an impasse. Figuring Debug had realized the same thing, hence the buzzing cut short, Mara shrugged. Whatever interesting tidbits Debug had to share, they''d have to wait, just like everything else at the moment, as she was unquestionably blind and a good ways out on one of the many branches far, far above the unforgiving ground. So trying to get comfortable where she was, because there was about snowball''s chance in hell her blind ass was scooting itself all the way back to the trunk, Mara figured she could at least try to get some sleep. So after patiently listening for over ten minutes, Mara eventually had to conceded that there was very little chance that there was anything left alive far beneath her, and no more wolves had shown up to investigate. So swinging her legs up onto the branch, Mara did her best to settle in on the half-meter wide branch for the night. She had a lot on her mind still, but eventually managed to find the sweet relief of sleep with the reassuring hope that Bio would have her eyes back in proper working order come morning. ? ? ? Mara wasn''t actually sure when she had drifted off to sleep, or if she had at all, but by the time the sky started to brighten, she realized she could actually -see- the sky starting to brighten. At some point during the night Bio had fixed her eyesight, but exhaustion or not, she''d only just noticed. Well damn, I guess I was stuck up here until morning anyways but¡ Thanks Bio, you really are turning out to be quite handy¨C "Pfft¨C" Mara practically blew a gasket in laughter. What a surprise, a self-healing skill is ''handy'', gee wizz Mara, what''s next, magic has uses? A real fountain of choice wisdom there, Chrysippus. Rolling her freshly healed eyes as she stretched the kinks out of her spine, Mara took a moment to survey the aftermath of her pair of sigils. You know, for starting out as a simple spark, those things really do leave some massive craters. Far below the perch she''d spent the night in, an unmistakable, if a little misshapen, oval had been gouged out of the ground, the culmination of her combination blast. There wasn''t even a speck of the shadowy giant left, and neither head nor hair of it''s little ones either. Considering there isn''t a lick of movement in sight or earshot, and the sun''s now well and truly brightening the horizon, or hemisphere I guess, I suppose it''s safe. Shrugging to herself, Mara slinked her way down the meandering branches she''d climbed up the night before, retracing her steps until her feet once again felt the comfort of solid ground. However easy she''d made it look though, spending yet another night precariously balanced on a tree trunk had illuminated another potential issue she''d have to counter. Fall damage. Hm. Falling is an interesting problem, it''s a quick killer but there''s plenty of fictional fantasy solves for it¡ Doing one last glance around the perimeter, and still finding nothing, Mara had to concede she wasn''t likely to see much of anything left over of shadow creatures after a blast that bright. So, double checking her route from yesterday for her heading, Mara set off and let her mind wander. ¡Not that I could equate anything tangible into the ''will'' of a sigil, but at least thinking abstractly, I could do something that dulls sharp impacts, like a pillow shield of sorts¨C Though, I think since there''s a quantity of mana to a sigil, there''s liable to be a limit to the force one could stop. Plus, the ''will'' or whatever, that memory, that''s a whole other enigma. I almost feel like I''m asking a genie to cast a wish, but the genie, being a genie, demands the wish be phrased in the form of a painting made out of feelings, and god knows how that goes. Chuckling and rolling her eyes as she walked, Mara summoned a flat circular mark about the size of coin to fidget with and set her sights back on the survival bit of this game she found herself playing. She knew she needed food, water, and shelter, and while the abundance of wild berries combined with Bio''s ability to fix enough to offset eating just about anything, it still left her with an unsolved need for freshwater and a safe place to sleep. A.k.a. find a river¡ or a town, or at least like a travelers inn. I mean, that crash site was super old, and they knew about a town some ways out all the way back then, maybe there''s¨C Mara stumbled for a moment as she realized where she was. Whoops, right¨C It''s a dungeon, even if its not egregiously brimming with monsters, it does have a nasty night terror problem, and the lack of daytime critters is more than a little off putting, but¡ Mara glanced up to see the dozen or some behemoths of creatures flying far above. Maybe fantasy humans have different standards, or maybe elves might live out here? Shrugging to herself, Mara snatched up her flip flops and set off at a jog under the comfortably shady canopy, the forest around her spreading wide and far. Every now and then she''d spot some berries and stop to pluck a few before setting out again. She had a personal goal to find some of the yellow berries again, but so far everything she''d come across was anything but. Most of her day went by without much change in pace, she''d do a good bit of jogging, spot a berry bush, stop for a few minutes to fill her face, then she''d be back at it. It was a long day of endurance jogging, she thought for sure she''d slow down at least after a few hours, but before she knew it, the sky was already growing dim and she''d long since lost track of how far she''d gone. Knowing she only had an hour or so before night was upon her, Mara brought herself to a walking stop and started scouting the trees for a decent branch to sleep on. However it was only now that Mara noticed the trees had been changing as she traveled. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Gone were the big trees with their meaty branches, in their place were thick meter wide columns of a burgundy bark that stretched up high, and most of their branches were thin, wide, and far out of reach. Shit. Swirling around, Mara started to feel herself panic as she looked from burgundy to burgundy, nearly every tree around her was either a twig or a giant, there wasn''t a single bit of refuge to be found. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, how many fucks could a wood fuck fuck if a wood fuck could fuck¨C "GOD DAMNIT." Mara bellowed, she was freezing up, like a deer in the headlights. The paralyzing fear, she hated it. Loathed it. Okay, two options, fight or flight. They''re fucking fast, both are shit options. Fuck. Um, okay. Fight. Maybe? I can''t outrun them, so¡ Right, I have to fight. Spinning around, Mara switched to looking for a good spot to fight from, or a good ambush spot. She knew it would be tricky, at most she was going to get two good trap mines in, but if there were more of them than she could handle, or if there''s alphas, Mara knew she''d be caught on the backfoot. Sighting a cluster of trees that were at least somewhat closer together than most, Mara checked her bearings and pulled out a triangular mark in either palm, her mana already brushing up against the vessels, almost eager to fill them. Noticing the feeling, Mara had to admit there was some part of her that was looking forward to a little payback. Sure, Mara knew she was getting into a knife fight with hand grenades, and it wasn''t the smartest play from that point of view, but circumstances being what they were, something was dying tonight, and even the possibility of it being the wolves got her blood pumping. Or it was the fight or flight adrenaline high she was currently riding on, but either way she was equal parts terrified and excited, and the look in her eyes was maybe a little more deranged than it should have been. *Ow-oww¨C Owoooo* The howl rolled in from high up the hill, and so, so far away. But there was something about it, like the call of a particular board game, that almost felt rigged. Triggered. Like the dungeon had spawned them in, specifically for her. She knew they were coming, and from where. Trying not to lose focus, Mara pushed her distracting thoughts about the dungeon itself out of her mind and set her sights on her predators and her prey. It didn''t take them long, but by the time the howling had grown near, Mara was past the point of counting seconds, she was just waiting, silently, steadily. Her palms were empty, she was ready to dodge at any moment, her eyes whipping from shadow to shadow, watching, waiting. Mara saw the first shadow shift a dozen trees away, a small one emerging from the darkness, then two more followed it from neighboring shadows. Can they not share shadow travel? Noticing the consistent discrepancy, Mara made a mental note but kept her eyes peeled for any others, and it was only then that she noticed the big one not four trees away. An alpha. Shit. The specter of death was harrowing, paralyzing even, it looked identical to the alpha''s that had ambushed her, but it wasn''t approaching. It was¡ standing there¡ menacingly. Almost taunting her by its presence alone. Oh¨C Shit! Realizing what it was doing, probably a little too late, Mara spun on the spot to check her flanks when the sigil on her right self-detonated. *K-KA-BOOOOOM* Curling up for cover as the orange fireball to her right illuminated the surrounding woods, Mara confirmed there were only four other wolves left. The largest one, the alpha that had played as the distraction, seemed to blink for a moment in the sudden flash of light, until it seemed to register what had just happened. The two trees next to the small crater of earth were charred and burning, a hole carved in space where there was once the other alpha. The blast had vaporized it in an instant. It couldn''t stop the gurural growl, it didn''t want to, the wood chipper of a noise echoed through the forest and Mara knew without a doubt she''d done more than just piss the thing off. Beneath the chest thumping rumble, three yips sounded off in the distance, liable to be the other three scampering, leaving just Mara and a really really really ticked off high-speed garbage disposal. The pair stood only a few trees apart, Mara''s other sigil was to her left and completely useless. I''ll have to burst and throw another, catch it mid-leap so it can''t dodge. Mara readied herself as the alpha stared daggers into her like they were physical things, nearly as sharp as it''s teeth which were all to visible by that point. God this is stupid, I''m gonna die. I''m so, so gonna die. The gurural growling that seemed to shake the air itself roared, like a hellcat on a drag strip, and the thing practically teleported into Mara''s face. It was suddenly so, so close, Mara barely had time to flinch. She just struck her arm out, sigil and all, like she was punching the thing, and just tapped her mana ''button''. The burst was quick, the blast was bright, and the wolf never hit. All of the sudden it was dark and quiet once more, save for a half dozen fleshy splats from the surrounding trees as bits of the alpha made themselves scarce. I¡ I¡ I did¡ More than a little dazed, Mara heaved a sigh of relief as she confirmed that the other three had indeed left when the alpha lost it. "Ho¨C Ho¨C Hoooly shit." The words came out between quick and heavy breaths. "I did it. I fucking did it. I survived. I''m alive." Both the elation and the relief were near immediate, she hadn''t expected to survive at all, but it wasn''t like dying was going to stop her any-more, but that didn''t make the situation any less terrifying. But she''d done it. She''d actually fought something. And won. Well, I''ll be damned. I guess all I really need to get into the whole shonen thing is a safety net of sorts. Maybe that''s just what anyone would need. Again- is this some sort of game tutorial? Like, that howl was so uncannily timed, I swear if I found out there''s some sort of clockwork-esk bullshit to this dungeon I''m gonna wreck it. Glancing down as she felt her pulse lighten, Mara let her eyes adjust until they could finally make out what remained of her arm. Wait¨C what? Blinking more than once to make sure she wasn''t imagining it, Mara realized her arm just sort of¡ stopped, just above the elbow. It wasn''t bleeding at all, in fact, most of the skin around the area seemed practically cauterized by the blast, but for the amount of damage, not a single bit of it hurt, hence the surprise. Um¡ Debug, what the hell? Why doesn''t this hurt? Like, this -should- hurt, right? Almost as soon as she asked, she felt a half familiar, half unfamiliar buzz emanating from her back pocket and Mara immediately remembered that she''d left Debug in ''phone mode'' all night and all day. "Oh fuck, Debug¨C" Quickly fumble-fishing the dim grey panel from her back right pocket with her still-intact left hand, Mara incensintely muttered her apologies until she could finally read its messages.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Oh, ohh, nooow she remembers¨C Ha-ha, joking of course, if it really mattered you would have noticed by now so no need to panic or anything. Your arm''s probably fine given a few hours, Bio''s already hard at work to grow the whole thing back, but to satiate your curiosity, you''re not feeling it because it turns out the hidden effect of your new title ''The Ghoul In The Pit'' - which claims to physically numb you to an extremity''s pain once it''s fully ''broken'', basically blunting the extremes. You''re welcome for that by the way, I switched it to your active skill just before you nuked yourself again, call it a hunch. ¡ñ And to answer your other burning question, there actually is a hidden effect to ''Heir Presumptive'', but being a hidden effect, I can''t figure out what it is until it actually takes effect, even if I were to switch it to your active title, hence ''hidden''. It''s annoying, but usually the effects aren''t far off from the name, or at least that''s my rudimentary understanding of them. ¡ñ Also, since your unique Runie class is locked with a zero experience pool for the moment, still dependent on your completion of that Hexadex lore, I''ve just been funneling all your combat experience into Mark and Bio, which are now on their fifth and fourth tiers respectively. To note, Mark V brings you up to five sigils now, not that you seem to be able to use more than two at once. But, not to detract from your accomplishments with just two, those alphas certainly had it coming. >>So ''The Ghoul In The Pit'' basically lets me ''zombie it up'' as need be? Huh. That''s not actually that bad, as long as I don''t look like an actual zombie¡ Note to self, check reflection in the next river¨C But I guess that really is better as my active title instead of ''First True Demon Queen'', regardless of who''s asking¨C And yes -mom-, thank you for leveling up Mark again, I swear I''ll stop just using ''auto-blast'' for all my sigils. I''ve just gotta, you know, figure out what I''m doing first. Tucking her little chat room back in her hoodie pocket this time for easier access by her remaining arm, Mara held up her stump of a bicep to inspect what she''d left herself with. Much to her astonishment, she could actually see scabs actively growing across nearly all the burnt skin already, and not even a lick of it hurt. I guess the skin''s burns were serious enough to count that area as ''broken''... What a weird but useful effect¨C Does this mean I''m basically immune to things now? Like, I can''t die, and I can''t be hurt too much, and I''m constantly healing. I mean, that''s¡ Am I cheating? With a mile long gaze that spoke volumes at how disheveled Mara suddenly felt, she had to wonder what it all meant. Sure she''d woken up in a fantasy world, but it seemed real enough. And sure, there were skills, along with a system for them, but it never really stopped feeling real. But there really wasn''t a rational explanation for how she''d somehow ended up with the ''buddha'' cheat code. This all feels real, the trees are solid, the air is crisp, but¡ it can''t be. Right? Letting her stump of an arm drop to her side, Mara scrutinized what she could in the dim light. The small embers and flickering false candlelight of her initial blase nibbled away at the unending bark of both nearby trees in a completely believable and realistic manner. The canopy far above swayed in the wind in such a way that would make any GPU weep. Above them, the darkened streaks and splotches of a somewhat cloudy sky dared her to call it''s fidelity false. Everything was as real as real life had ever been, but that still failed to settle the tension building within her. Maybe there is something more rational to all this¡ It''s a fantasy world, so- ''realistically'' -gods, patrons, and full on destiny are fair game¨C Wait, isn''t there a ''Fate'' stat? Debug, I know you said you couldn''t define it, but is there¨C She didn''t even have to fully ask the question, Debug was already buzzing away in her pocket, and she knew without a doubt she''d nailed it.
<< Debug: ¡ñ Ding ding ding! We have a winner! ¨COr at least you were close enough for me to register it as self-discovered and get the ''verbatim'' definition. ¡ñ Fate: 16 ¡ð The ''weight'' of your influence on the events outside of your control. >>Oh! Well that''s¡ That''s actually a really broad definition, I suppose luck would fall under that, is sixteen high then? I guess not counting my stupidly high mana stat, it is the largest by a few points, everything else was like twelve or lower if I remember right¡ Huh, I guess sixteen is actually kind of high¨C but again, how do you correlate something like that into a number? Stats are fucking weird. Shuffling into a neighboring clearing of trees to find a trunk further from the stench of singed fur and flesh, Mara slouched down beneath one of the monolithic burgundy tree trunks already feeling more than a bit exhausted as the adrenaline rush began to wane. Glancing down at her arm once more, she could see it was already starting to swell around the nub she''d left herself with. Ah, right, I guess that''d be Bio''s mana drain sucking me dry, which is fair enough, it is a -whole- arm¡ Heaving a heavy sigh, Mara let her head fall back to knock against the trunk, eyes on the wobbly eclipse of a sun high in the sky, already starting to feel the lull of blissfully unconscious after a full day of jogging capped by blowing her arm off in her first real magical fight. Well¡ fuck it, there''s not a single tree to climb, and if more wolves show up while I''m out, I guess I''ll just die. They were quick enough last time, maybe I can just sleep through getting eaten if I have the Ghoul title active. Heh¡ what a thought¡ Mara curled up around her slowly regrowing limb, already feeling the metaphorical plug getting pulled from the socket. I mean¡ the worst part would be walking back¡ fuck, I can do that allll day... come at me you¡ shadowfucks¡ And then Mara collapsed, slumping down against the base of the tree with a bit of light snoring as she dreamed of brutal victory over her nightmarish tormentors. 0x0D (13) - Effugium? As the morning light started to brighten the woods around her, Mara awoke not to the sweet scent of morning dew and forest life, but to the foreign smells of what seemed like butter cream and cinnamon. As perplexing as it was, Mara didn''t think the change was necessarily unwelcome at first, but just as she began to stir from her grassy bedding, Mara heard what could have been the source of such a disparate aroma. A shuffling of sorts with a side of soft clinking, as if someone was just across from her. Hesitating at first, hoping whatever it was hadn''t noticed she''d begun to stir yet, Mara slowly cracked an eye open, straining not to budge as she did so. However her stealth rolls must be in the negatives, because she had barely started to squint into the morning light before a deep but soft voice rumbled past her ears. "Oh¨C you''re awake. Hi, uh, I''m Celeste¨C Please don''t freak out, but, um¡ I was passing by and I saw you were sleeping out here without any sort of supplies or campfire, and, well¡ Are you okay? Do you need some help?" Blinking at this point, all attempts at subtlety lost, Mara sat up to find a fire-red haired amazonian of a woman crouched next to the tree opposite her dressed in what could only be combat leathers painted a muddy mixture of dark blues and dirty greens. At her waist was a blade that could have either been one or two handed for all Mara knew about swords, and on her back was a long bow that stretched from above her head to past her waist. Words like rogue, ranger, and ravishing came to mind, but Mara was more preoccupied with things like ''holy shit a talking, breathing person'' and ''wait, is that english'', along with the physical struggle of trying to figure out how to do words good. "U-h, wh-at? Um. Hi. Yes, help, Mara me is¨C wait, um, fuck¨C" Struggling to find the right words, much less put them in the right order, Mara was freaking out. There was a woman, not just any woman, but a mountain of a woman, and she just happened to be strolling by. The odds were astronomical considering how deserted everything had seemed so far. Realizing she probably looked like she was missing a few brain cells, Mara held up a finger in the universal ''please give me a second'' gesture and tried to negotiate visitation rights with her tongue. "Hi. Um. Sorry, I''m Mara. And to say I could use some help would be an understatement." Mara paused as she gave the woman a proper look over, if there was some sort of ''Wayfarer''s Guide To The Isekai'', it''d probably say something like ''check for red flags'' somewhere in big bold letters that was really hard to miss. Celeste looked to be in her late thirties with a heavy tan and some wrinkles sprinkled around the edges, she had a kind but tough face, like a big sister that knew when to let you take a punch, but still stepped in when she needed to. Or, well, at least she doesn''t -look- like she''d sell me into slavery for a quick buck. Fuck it, ''don''t kick a gift horse in the mouth'', or¡ however that saying goes. Taking a gamble on the wandering amazon, Mara tried to judge the woman''s reaction. "I sort of ended up in this dungeon, and I''m not sure how, or even where this is. I''ve survived a few nights by sleeping in trees, but I''ve got no idea what I''m doing¨C You wouldn''t happen to be willing to let me tag along to wherever you''re going would you?" Celeste''s hazel eyes narrowed, as if she were scrutinizing Mara in turn, and there was a high likelihood that''s exactly what she was doing. Maybe she doesn''t believe me¨C but it''s not like I lied about anything, I just didn''t say how I got here. Not that I really know for sure, but¡ the less others know about me right now the better, probably. After a moment, Celeste''s overly stern gaze seemed to vanish as if her face wasn''t even capable of such contortions. "Hm. Alright. Sure, why not. Mara was it? That''s a nice name¨C I take it you''re a mage?" Taken a bit aback by how easy going the red haired woman was, Mara almost failed to register her follow up question. Wait, did she just¨C Uh¨C "Mage? What? Why would you think that?" Oh god damnit Mara, that is literally the worst way to respond to that question. "Ha! Hahahaha¨C I''ll take that as a yes, it''s okay hun, I won''t tell, but you should really have some sort of cover story-" Celeste just about lost it as Mara more than flopped her bluff check, her hearty laughter bringing a sense of levity to the situation. "-and equipment too if you want the advice. Because a frail thing like you? Alone, in a dungeon without a single bit of visible equipment? Yeah, that just screams some sort of mage class¨C Healer of some descript if I had to guess by the torn sleeve and an arm with bare skin as smooth as that." Glancing down at her completely healed arm, Mara had to admit the stark pale contrast to her black skeleton hoodie really stood out in a rather noticeable way. And she''s not wrong about the whole equipment thing, but, like, what the hell am I supposed to do? I didn''t exactly pass a sword smith on the way here. "Heh, yeah¨C Didn''t mean to be so obvious about it, but yeah, I guess I sort of check the ''mage'' box." Shuffling up to her feet, Mara noticed Celeste uncrouch in time as well, her hand still resting on the pommel of her blade as she rose to what had to be over two meters in height. Holy hell, she''s like three times my size¨C Is she half-giant? Jeez that''s a big sword. Would it be rude to ask if she is? Maybe Debug could check without her noticing? Err, maybe there''s skills that would notice¡ Uhh, yeah, nix that idea, that sword could fell a tree. Seeing that Celeste still seemed quite wary of her, even if her tone seemed pleasant enough, Mara tried to diffuse the situation. "Um, thanks for the tip about the equipment¡ I doubt there''s any chance you''re actually on your way to some sort of town nearby is there? I don''t really want you to go out of your way for me, so if you''re happier just giving me directions I''d take those¡" Attempting to head off Mara''s almost pitiful negotiating, Celeste interrupted her with a- "Oh, nonsense" -before striding over and bopping her on the head. "Look, I''m headed back to Elsa Myr anyways and I''d be more than happy for the company¨C Plus, if Gerald knew I just sent a newbie I found in the dungeon off with just directions I''d never hear the end of it." Hearing the name of the town, something about it jumped out at Mara causing her to just blurt out the first thing that came to her mind. "Elsa Myr? Is that elven? ¨CEr, ''Aelven''?" Celeste''s eyes seemed to widen for a moment at the adjunct question. "Huh. Yeah, it probably is¨C Though I doubt there''s anyone still living there now that was around when they named it, so it''s not like it matters that much. Anyways, do you need a minute to relieve yourself, or do you just want to hit the trail? It''s still early, so if we make good time Thelma should have a warm bed and a hot meal for us tonight¨C That''s is, if you don''t mind a bit of running." "Pfft¨C" Mara flippantly joked in response, "You had me at ''warm bed'', the better question is, which of us is the better runner? You might have me on the sprint, but the long haul''s my game." Flipping her hair back to twist up in a rough knot, Mara spotted Celeste''s eager grin out of the corner of her eye. Heh, well that''s a far sight better than a hand on a hilt, I''ll take it. "Ha, I take it you''re a get up and go-er, huh? That''s good¨C the early bird doesn''t get eaten. Let''s hoof it." Celeste gave her a big thumbs up and a smile, tugged on her bow to make sure it was tight, then set off with a stride so large it caught Mara off guard. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Ohshit, she''s quick. Realizing she was going to be left in the dust unless she got her own shit in gear, Mara double checked that her flip flops were still in her hoodie pocket then shifted her ''phone'' back to its usual home in her back-right pocket, and took one last glance towards the previous night''s aftermath, and about swallowed her tongue. The whole clearing was still strewn with copious streaks of blood and gore, all spreading out from a singular scorch mark in the center of it all. As horrifying as it was just to look at, the worst part for Mara was the fact that Celeste had -completely- failed to mention it. But noticing it now, Mara could certainly see why Celeste had been so tense at first. Yeah I''d be tweaking out too if I were in her shoes¨C Someone like me, making a mess like that? Yeah, that''s not just red flags, that might as well be billboards and klaxons. "Hey! Come on slowpoke, I thought we were racing!" Celeste''s impatient chiding echoed back to Mara, snapping her attention back to the fact that she was totally getting left behind. "Sorry, coming!" Yelling back, Mara snatched one more glance at what was likely going to be another one many, many, bloody messes she was liable to end up making in some way or another, and set off after the behemoth of a woman, already adopting something between a jog and a run in the vain hopes that it might be enough to make up for the massive stride Celeste imposed. It took her a few minutes, but Mara eventually caught up to the bouncing bundle of red hair jogging lazily through a forest of trees that made even her look small. Jogging just to the back left of her, it was easy to see that Celeste was quite at home with endurance running. She''d already adopted a healthy pace and a mesmerizing spring in her step that caused her shoulders to cycle in a way that was really, really distracting. Shaking her head, Mara tried to find anywhere else to look, but between Celeste and the never ending monotony of trees, Mara found herself staring up at the crystal blue sky dotted with countless specs drifting lazily across it. Letting her mind do the same as she found her own rhythm, Mara wondered if this world used flying beasts like jumbo jets, or if the specs were wild dragons, lording over their domains. Such thoughts drifted down tangents like drakes vs dragons, the lengthy safety procedures involved with commercial wyvern-based flight, and possible fuel rating calculations using sheep per kilometer along with potential alternatives. So caught up Mara was in her own thoughts, Celeste''s booming voice practically scared her into a stop as her running companion finally decided to break their hour-long silence. "So Mara¨C What''d you kill for your silver rank?" The question hit her like a concrete barrier on a highway, from the left and at high speed. Stumbling a bit, Mara caught herself as she fully processed the question. Silver rank? A guild ranking? Do I lie, or¡ I mean, she''s assuming I''ve already got the credentials, so¡ Ah fuck it, omitting the truth is one thing but outright lying is another, I don''t think I want Celeste on my bad side¡ Unless she''d be mad at me for not having the rank? No¨C She doesn''t really seem that type. Whatever¨C Figuring that being upfront about her inexperience couldn''t really be a bad thing, it was Mara''s turn to catch Celeste off guard. "Uh, actually I don''t have¡ a rank. As-as I said, I-uh, sort of, ended up here¡ Magically." Celeste practically tumbled to a stop, skidding to a halt as she pivoted to double check she just heard what she thought she heard. "You don''t have a rank? Like, you''re still in qualifiers, or¡ are you not even registered!? Zezues Mara, how in the nine rings did you¨C You know what, no. Never mind. I don''t wanna know, you''ve clearly not said why, so I''m not gonna pry. If you want, I''ll give you a proper introduction to Gerald and if he''s got a problem with you keeping secrets, you and him can hash it out. Personally, I think we''re all entitled to a bit of our own privacy, just don''t go eating my brains or something." Wait¨C Did she just make a zombie joke? Is she referring to my title?! Fuck! Debug! I didn''t know I was wearing a ''Hello, I''m An Undead'' tag, I feel like you should have mentioned this! Starting to panic a bit, Mara let out a quiet sigh of relief as Celeste turned back around and set off again. Starting to jog in turn, Mara wondered how much the woman might already know about her. Debug could discern a lot, and basically every single skill-based piece of fiction she''d read had some sort of ''inspect'' skill. Celeste having her own didn''t seem that out of the question, but it was a lot to deal with, so Mara did what she would normally do with complicated thoughts when she was too busy to deal with them, she boxed ''em up and shoved it all to the back of her mind, choosing instead to focus on the bronze beacon of toned muscle jogging away just up ahead. Regardless of what the muscle bound woman thought of her, Mara was just thankful she''d found someone, and that she speaks English¨C Or I speak whatever common seems to be, still not sure on that one. But the fact that Celeste was being friendly enough to escort her back to town, and that she didn''t seem unfriendly? Well that was all just icing on the cake. I wonder how much that Fate stat has to do with things like chance encounters¡ That''s a crazy thought. The whole idea of something like that even functioning boggles my mind. Each finding a comfortable middle ground for a pace, Mara running a little faster than usual, Celeste a little slower, the pair made excellent time. The first time they stopped was Celeste''s call, roughly two hours in. She claimed it was for a water break, amidst which she vigorously advocated the benefits of staying hydrated, to the point of even offering to share her waterskin, but it was clear Celeste was checking on the ''twig'' she''d picked up in the forest. Mara, a little annoyed by the soft patronizing, took the lead after they set off once more, keeping their run going for a good three hours before she found herself in need of a bathroom break. Sadly, lacking alien toiletries, she had to make do with what she could while making silent prayers to nameless gods that the fantasy town they were going to had some semblance of a toilet system. The last two pit stops were made for similar reasons, this time both at Celeste''s insistence, but overall they were making excellent time. In fact, there were still a few hours in the day by Mara''s estimate when she first began to notice the gargantuan trees thinning out, and it only took another half an hour after that before Celeste broke their mutual silence. "And that¨C That is ''Elsa Myr'', also known as the Redonian Dungeon Frontier Outpost Zeta¡ But not even the local guard calls it that, it''s just Elsa Myr from ear to ''ere, or whatever Thelma''s always ramblin''." Following the direction of Celeste''s outstretched arm, not that it was hard to miss, Mara could immediately make out the massive black-brick walls that surrounded what could only be Elsa Myr and just couldn''t help but wonder how big they really were if they looked that big at what must have been a good kilometer into the distance. Taking it in stride, and leaning heavily on her fantasy and fiction knowledge, Mara tried to gauge how dangerous of a world she was actually in, hopefully without sounding like a completely transparent alien. "Oh¨C Wow, those are some -very- beefy walls¡ How common are monster attacks around here Celeste?" "Monsters? Ha¨C" Much to Mara''s horror, her question was once again met with the laughter of incredulous disbelief. "As if Mr. King-of-Redonia-Himself gave a shit about monster attacks. No, the walls are for war. This dungeon''s more profitable than you might think, and even though it''s in the heart of the country, keeping it has always been a point of contention amongst foreign nobles¨C Come on, it''s a shit topic, there''s warm food and a stiff mug waiting for the both of us not far off now, we can digress into politics when I''m less sober if you really must." Not even waiting for Mara to reply, Celeste set off again, so Mara followed suit. If nothing else, a month of nonstop daily running as a magical hermit in the forest had done wonders to her physique. She''d never gotten fat per se, but there was no way the Mara from two months ago would have done anywhere near the kind of non-stop marathon she''d just done over the last two days, but now it was nearly over. She''d finally made it. Sweet, sweet, civilization¨C And a fantasy civilization at that. Thank. You. Celeste. To think civilization was only a day out¡ I would have probably wandered for weeks without her. Nodding a silent thank you, Mara set off after her savior of sorts, now more than just a little bit excited for the aforementioned amenities. She was so excited in fact, she could swear the air itself seemed to be filled with sweet and succulent flavors of someone''s home baked cooking. And it was then, for the first time since Debug had adopted the one-panel-policy, that a new prompt appeared in front of her¨C albeit still silently. Pausing to read it, Mara smiled, and dismissed the prompt. She knew why Debug had shared it, and that alone was enough to bring a smile to her face, not that the message itself wasn''t a welcome sight by its own merits.
< You have left the Lost Wilds Dungeon! >0x0E (14) - Initium OSOS - 0x0F Initium m( -.- )ra Mara glared at the floating prompt, it was cold and without fanfare, as if it were saying, ¡®Congratulations, you''ve earned yourself a whopping C- for taking the easy way out¡¯. But it wasn''t the demeaning take that she may or may not have been projecting onto the indifferent display, no, it was that this panel was one distinctly separate from the persistent singular panel that Debug had taken to recently. She knew this for sure because the uncanny feeling of Debug¡¯s solid-but-weightless presence remained unmistakably within her back pocket, which left only one other entity that could possibly act like her skill. The System¡ So it knows when I leave dungeons? Par for the course I suppose, but does that extend to knowing exactly where I am? I want to assume so, because that would easily double as a way for any other magic to find or search for things¡ Well, that''s fancy but a little too trusting for my taste¨C Hey Debug, if you can spare the cycles, mind figuring out if we can disable or jam this somehow? It''s not a big priority, just let me know how it goes when I get some time alone to check in later. Feeling a confirming buzz reverberate from her weightless tablet of a skill, Mara attempted to retable the ever-looming thoughts on what a potentially omnipotent magic system really meant from a larger point of view, alongside the wider branching concerns stemming from an unshakable feeling that such a thing somehow had an attitude, and with her specifically to boot¡ Well, whatever. Problem for a different day. Seeing Celeste had noticeably slowed her pace to wait on her aloof ass, Mara added a bit of pep to her step to gain on her enigma of an escort. The woman had claimed she was headed back to town, but after countless weeks of solitude, it just seemed too good to be true. Something about her made it so easy to trust her off the bat, but the doubts hadn¡¯t exactly been quiet over their little stint of a jog as it morphed into a gauntlet of a trek. However, perhaps in spite of how this strange world seemed to deal its cards, Celeste had genuinely gotten her to safety. Putting aside the superstitious unease, she¡¯s at least been nice enough not to pry. I was half-expecting my first isekai encounter to be some rando douche magically mugging me for all my secrets, but instead we¡¯ve basically accomplished the exact opposite by spending the whole day running flat out with nary a word between us. At this point she has to have just as many questions as I do, and I¡¯m definitely in need of lodging for the night¡ So are we doing dinner together or something? The view certainly hasn¡¯t been unappetizing, but¡ is that all this is? Hearing the crunch of Mara¡¯s footsteps hastily catching up, Celeste couldn¡¯t keep a grin off her face; the ashen haired girl was certainly a bit taciturn, but, begrudgingly, rather endearingly so. Of all the people to pick up a random girl in a dungeon, Celeste wouldn¡¯t even have cracked the top-ten in guesses at her local tav, not that that was what she was implying to do. Not at all. But the thought alone of the rumors that would abound among the locals at her watering hole was more than enough to give pause and reconsider her course of action. ¡°Um¨C So¡ I honestly had no idea we¡¯d make it back by sundown. I figured we might make it by late tomorrow at best but¡ Damn, the legs and lungs on you could kill a Plainstrider. That''s the first time I''ve seen even a hint of a lag from you since we started this morning.¡± Caught off guard by her comments, Mara quickly scrutinized Celeste¡¯s expression. Seeing that it was more bewilderment than suspicion eased her anxiety, but her unexpected physique, and her own obliviousness to it, was baffling in its own right. Sure she¡¯d been jogging around the obelisk on the daily, but between Celeste¡¯s massive strides necessitating full-sprint speeds just to keep up, and the sheer distance they had to have covered, something wasn¡¯t adding up. My. God. I''ve been tailing this woman full-tilt from sun-up to sun-down over who knows how many kilometers, how did that not seem even remotely absurd?... Like how in the hell did that just feel like a morning jog that went on too¨C Oh! Bio! That''s right. Debug said it altered my body to match my race, which bumped some of my stats, but to think such marginal increments would change me to this extent? I can¡¯t believe I don¡¯t look like a gym rat. Debug was a bit vague about what that all entailed, but I think Bio jumping up two whole levels for at least this was justified. However, all that aside, there¡¯s still the problem of Celeste. I feel a little called out, but she¡¯s not wrong. I''m not even remotely tired at this point¨C Actually, now that I think about it, I feel¡ airy? Mmm¡ Yeah. ¡®Airy¡¯. Lightweight, not lightheaded¡ ¡®Styrofoamy¡¯? Maybe. Actually now that I¡¯m noticing it, this ¡®feeling¡¯ is super weeeeeird¡ Aaaaand now I¡¯m really really tempted to just jump up and down like a little goofball because gravity feels sponge-y¡ Celeste, still finding it exceedingly hard to read the spry little mage, furrowed her brow as it became ever more obvious that no response to her comments was coming. So clearing her throat, Celeste gestured to the town as she tried to lighten the mood. ¡°Yeah¡ So I bring that up because it''s late, guards are definitely on third shift, and I doubt I¡¯m going out on a limb assuming you ¡®don''t have any identification on you¡¯.¡± Realizing she was zoning out mid-conversation again, Mara eeked out a nervous chuckle and a vague agreement in response to what she thought sounded like a question. Assuming, not incorrectly, that Mara¡¯s response was a confirmation of her assumptions, Celeste shrugged as if resigning herself to the circumstance, but internally she was practically cheering. ¡°I figured you didn¡¯t, I did just find you in the Lost Wilds after all. Well, I¡¯m sure there¡¯s a policy for people like you, happens from time to time, but it¡¯s probably best we go by in the morning¨C For tonight though, I think we can hole up at my old mentor¡¯s place¡¡± Pivoting as she scanned the neighboring fields, Celeste eyed the smattering of cabins that indiscriminately spanned the fields around Elsa Myr until she spotted the one that she shared more than a few years of familiarity with. ¡°There! That one, over on our right, that''s Thelma¡¯s place, she built it herself if you can believe it. I used to stay with her for a stint, but after her friend Mads moved in a couple years ago it got a bit too crowded for my tastes¡¡± Spotting the quaint little cottage a few fields over that Celeste had mentioned, Mara couldn¡¯t help but wonder about this new world. Yet contrary to the curiosity, just asking about even the most mundane things felt like they¡¯d betray her other-worldy origins. I''m not entirely sure we even have the same vocab for basic things like ¡®bathroom¡¯, the fact that we haven¡¯t had an issue yet is astounding¡ Why is that? I''ve seen DB translate plenty of written things, but Celeste is speaking what, arguably, sounds like modern English. But that doesn''t make any sense, so much of our lexicon is constantly evolving. Even in the same country, the way people talk shifts in less than a decade, let alone the plasticity of slang¡ Still unsure if Mara¡¯s muteness was to do with why she hesitated at the threshold of the dungeon, or if the poor girl had just pushed herself a few kilometers too far. Plenty of cadets full of fire put themselves in far worse shape for much less, but it spoke volumes of what she¡¯d been enduring in the wilds by herself. Just considering how long Mara might have been lost out there was heartbreaking, and here she was lamenting her own sob story. Clicking her tongue at her own ineptitude, Celeste shifted topics to something more tangible. ¡°Ah, but that¡¯s neither here nor there. Thelma will be ecstatic to have guests over for dinner and we can figure out next steps for you after a good night¡¯s sleep in a warm bed.¡± Turning to see the look of skepticism plastered all over Mara¡¯s face, Celeste misread it as unease and immediately tried to dispel any worries. ¡°Oh¨C No need to be nervous. Thelma¡¯s a little stern, but it¡¯s not like you¡¯re meeting my mom or anything¨C Ah¨C A-hah-haha¡¡± Confirming her suspicion that that was nervous laughter coming out of Celeste''s mouth, Mara looked at her with a mix of incredulity and confusion, the gears turning in her brain as she chewed on the idea that someone made this pinnacle of feminine fitness nervous. ¡°Wait¨C That sounds like I should be concerned¡ What exactly am I walking into here?¡± ¡°Well¡¡± Celeste, motioning to resume their walk, ¡°when I started freelancing, it was with some friends of mine from an old town up east. After a short stint as dungeon escorts, we got ourselves into a lose-lose situation too many tiers deep. I had the highest con, so it was only me left after endless hours when the most absurd thing saved my life. All at once the entire floor exploded into chaos! Through smoke and shrapnel, all I could make out was a blur, circling me, rapidly disposing of every single monster around me, like my own personal seraph of death. It was an absolutely terrifying display of destruction and devastation, all the more so because the cause of it all was a single person. When I finally saw them properly, every bone in my body wanted to flee, but instead I was blessed with a revelation. Suddenly, everything that had transpired that day seemed so fleeting, and I knew without a doubt that all I could want and more was within my grasp, if only I could learn how such a feat was even possible.¡± Mouth agape, Mara slowly blinked at Celeste as she mulled over the spew of information. The true potential of a world-integrated stat system was really starting to sink in, equally both in promise and terror. The implications alone were so intriguing, she found herself diving down the rabbit hole as she blurted out her unfiltered thoughts. ¡°I have so many questions, and I don''t want to be insensitive, but, like, exactly how fast does something have to be moving to blur?! That''s absurd to consider... because that would mean I could do that one day¡ but the g-forces would¨C Sorry, go on?¡± Glancing down at the little enigma of carnage she''d found, Celeste felt a tinge of deja-vu as an irresistible grin made its way to her lips. Here was this girl, one moment mute as a monastery, the next, hyper-fixating about ¡®Gee Fourses''. She¡¯d never met a child of the forest before, only heard stories in passing, but this ¡®Mara¡¯ was, without a doubt, something else. She knew from experience that normals are gone by their first night, and a stranded free-agent might make it a whole fortnight, but to come out of it unscathed and untraumatized? The inarguable impossibility that Mara presented continued to puzzle her as she resumed her story. ¡°¡®Huh¨C Well, without much ado, the entity responsible was just a hazy after-image by the time the last body hit the floor. Obviously after that, I didn¡¯t have too much to go on, but someone or something of that caliber had to be known in some circles. So after performing rites for the dozens that didn¡¯t make it, I fixed my attention on investigation and pursuit. With a few months of intermittent guild and crest work, I had managed to follow a trail of leads until, at last, I¡¯d found ¡®her¡¯¨C Not a monster or a force of nature, but a real person! It took me so long to find her because she¡¯s an old retired home-body these days, but she used to be famous! Former royal-guard turned free-agent, turned shut-in, the esteemed Lady Thelma Durji herself.¡± This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. A guild of free-agents sounds an awful lot like an Adventurer''s Guild by another name, that¡¯s exciting¨C And this Lady Thelma used to be in service to the king? With her feats? Jeez¨C I wasn¡¯t expecting to bump into someone so prominent right off the bat. She is retired twice over, but do stats persist with age? I doubt she¡¯s barely any slower than in her prime. God, I hope she¡¯s not looking for a fight¡ Noticing the blank expression Mara seemed rather fond of adopting, Celeste realized that the poor girl had absolutely zero context for how impressive Thelma¡¯s many achievements were. Opting to skip further fanfare, Celeste picked up her story on the day she finally met her savior face-to-face. ¡°Anyways, it took me another month to finally make my way to this little town of an outpost, and within a week I¡¯d found myself at her doorstep. Before I could knock, she¡¯d opened the door, and I knew then, without a doubt, that she was the person I¡¯d seen that fateful day. I of course immediately made a fool of myself, begging her for answers and lessons alike, but I got none. For over a month afterwards, I¡¯d make the daily trek out to her cabin, ask her what she was doing, then beg her to teach me how she¡¯d come to such a pinnacle of agility, and each day she¡¯d respond like a brick wall, until one day she didn¡¯t.¡± Stretching her jaw as if she was relieving some long-lost tension, Celeste paused to check their surroundings before continuing. "I was about five weeks into this little song and dance of ours, when she finally did something other than completely ignore me. I woke up the next day, two fields over and half a meter into the dirt. I don¡¯t know what hit me, but I had to assume it was her, so you can imagine my hesitation on returning. Of course that was far from enough to dissuade me entirely, and when I found her the next day, she hit me with exactly the same thing as before. Three months in I could finally take a few punches and I was starting to understand what she was doing. Nine months and I was starting to get this feeling like she was somehow taunting me. Like she was teasing me with the answers I had been searching for, if only I could give her a reasonable challenge to earn her respect.¡± Startled by how candid violence seemed between the two, Mara couldn¡¯t help but be curious. Survival was all about observation, the more she could learn before meeting this dynamite of an individual, the better. ¡°Wait, but¨C I assume you have some sort of healing thing, but were you just passively gaining power from getting the crap beaten out of you?¡± Noticing they''d reached the outer fence of the little red wood cabin, Celeste fiddled with the gate latch with a reassuring smile. ¡°Heh. We sparred pretty much every day for nearly three years. I¡¯m still without answers, but after some time away, I think I did find what I was searching for.¡± Not entirely sure what to make of that, Mara defaulted to returning a smile while she let her eyes take in Thelma¡¯s humble estate. Centered around a modest two bedroom cabin constructed of precisely milled timber and surrounded by an open-frame wooden fence. One could even call the place a pinnacle of perfectionism, if not for the excessive greenery intent on overtaking everything in sight. The chaotic overgrowth seemed to have ¡®exploded¡¯ from what was once a humble garden patch into what was easily its own standalone ecosystem. A diverse variety of vines and branches had already snatched half the house from sight, a dichotomy of structure and chaos knitted together like oil on canvas. Oh wow! Now that I¡¯m really looking, every plant looks like a different species, was all of this intentional? Whoever nurtured all this has one hell of a green thumb¡ Hey DB¨C Can you analyze all of these? Actually, analyze anything you want and we can chat about it later tonight. Feeling Debug¡¯s ¡®display panel¡¯ buzz from her back pocket, Mara sent a mental thanks before following Celeste through the wooden gate she¡¯d just flung open without care or concern. Catching it half out of instinct, Mara snatched the gate just before it nearly clattered against the fence. She was just going to absentmindedly swing it closed as naturally as she¡¯d grabbed it, when an intrusive curiosity peaked her attention. Huh. I''m not sure if I should be more impressed, or disappointed. This latch isn''t even remotely magical. It looks like something I''d have picked up at the hardware store. Though it does look handmade¨C Or hand-forged? It doesn¡¯t look machined, but it¡¯s clearly made by a professional¡ Interesting, if blacksmithing is a well practiced trade, does that imply runes aren''t? Or just that it''s been priced or restricted out of common usage? Uuargh¨C Fuck. I really want to ask Celeste, but¨C She assumed I was a mage, maybe I could ask her in some context to that, but then she''d just have more questions about where I came from if I¡¯m just expecting every door and latch to be magical when it¡¯s clearly not the norm here¡ Frustrating. Buuut I guess that''s just another question for when I know more about this country''s magic or tech level, or god forbid, lack thereof¨C ¡°Hey Thelma! I brought a friend!¡± Flinching at the sudden outburst snapping her out of her fixations over the widespread magical utilities of the world, Mara reflexively shot a look of indignation towards Celeste before it clicked she was summoning this terrifying ¡®mentor¡¯ of hers. Lady Thelma Durji, a force of nature masquerading as a person. Someone who could send the two-and-half-meter Celeste flying into a neighboring field with just a single punch. A peak example for the potential of stats¨C Hangon, did that gnome just sprout out of the ground? Closer to the cabin, in one of the heavily overgrown planters, a bearded creature no larger than half a meter had appeared. With a head of silver locks, facial hair to its belly, and a backdrop of greenery, it was the spitting image of a high-quality lawn ornament, sans the iconic little red cap. Whatever it was, it at least wasn¡¯t moving, but it definitely wasn¡¯t there just a moment prior. It looked mostly-normal, maybe a bit too realistic, but all that did was come off as uncanny and that just screamed danger. Combined with Debug¡¯s non-stop alerts emanating from her back pocket, Mara wasn¡¯t sure if she should call out to Celeste or try to pull off a surprise attack before it moved again. Yet even with overwhelming preconceptions caught in her throat, Mara still found herself surprised as the maybe-gnome, or rather Thelma, casually spoke with a voice far more voluminous than her sheer size would seem to purport. Like a calm river over soft gravel, it washed over Mara¡¯s fight-or-flight impulse like the tide over a campfire. It wasn¡¯t exactly deep, but it had an aged temperament, and it was definitely not the cutesy-mouse voice Mara would have assumed. ¡°Oh, now this isn¡¯t something you see every day, two visits from Celeste in less than a month. I wasn¡¯t expecting you back for a good week or more at least, yet here you are, and with a new friend apparently.¡± Suddenly caught in the headlights of a dissecting gaze that could level mountains, Mara¡¯s mouth struggled to spasm out a few of the words of an introduction she¡¯d suddenly found herself without. ¡°Hi. Uh, yeah¨C Mara.¡± Unfazed by any semblance of the concept of social awkwardness, Thelma simply vanished, like she wasn¡¯t even there, only to be standing just beneath Mara¡¯s eyeline as if she¡¯d always been there. Staggered, Mara found herself taking a half-step back on instinct, just to reinsert some much needed personal space between herself and the thigh-high silver-haired bullet that now seemed to be picking at her hoodie¡¯s elastic hem. Celeste had said she was fast, but it was only with the scent of freshly tilled dirt drifting in from the subtle after-breeze that Mara knew for sure that this ¡®gnome¡¯ was the Lady Thelma herself. Christ, that¡¯s not even a blur. Stat differences really are night and day here. But that does not excuse her disrespect of my personal¨C Wait, what¡¯s this feeling¡ It¡¯s itchy? Slightly unnerving? Like a cat slowly scratching at a door on the other side of the house¡ Wait, is she analyzing me with some skill without even asking? How fucking rude¨C Debug, figure out how to ¡®Interrupt¡¯ this. Caught off-guard by her mentor once again, Celeste barely had time to process what was going on, let alone intervene, before her old mentor had just flashed to Mara¡¯s side without even a greeting. Yet before she could even protest, there was an implosion of light, like it was pinching everything together. Then it was gone as quickly as it¡¯d arrived, leaving Thelma two steps back from where she¡¯d just been standing, hand still raised as if she¡¯d never let go of Mara¡¯s hoodie. d[ ¨C.¨C ]b Debug had a problem, well more an issue by association. Like a warning light on a dash, it was an urgent call for attention, but not necessarily catastrophic failure. Yet. The source of it all? A girl named Mara, currently running full-tilt behind a barbaric beast of a woman named Celeste. The strange woman had shown up with a charm that seemed all too effective on the fallible meathead, and now they were supposed to be headed to town, but the colossal redwoods racing by them only seemed to be getting larger as the day progressed. For now though, trusting with discretion seemed to be the best course of action. Wherever Celeste was leading them couldn¡¯t be worse than whatever the dungeon could cook up to top last night¡¯s events. Ideally they were headed for safety, so at least for now, the issue didn¡¯t lie completely on Mara¡¯s oblivious lack of foresight. In truth, the real cause for alarm seemed to be coming from something that had bothered Debug, not Mara. Runic Recollections. Just resolving the name in the upper cortex leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I don¡¯t even have half the things needed to approximate that in the first place. Gazing across the tangent non-space of Mara¡¯s mana-well, past the ever consuming ¡®lack¡¯ sitting cozy in the center of it all, Debug could clearly see the tangled cluster of RR¡¯s remains. Just looking at it felt ¡®wrong¡¯, like a guilt forgotten¡ Yet Debug was sure of its actions, there were no regrets. Runic Recollections was just a skill and its parts were necessary. Sure, the decision was made in haste, but that did not mean it was erroneous. So why does it linger? Why does it irritate? It should be dust, dissolved to raw ether long ago¡ Yet still it persists¡ It remains¡ Drifting from its orbit, out across gentle precession of mana descending into nothingness, Debug pulled up everything it had on RR. Thoughts and memories drifted forwards in response to its query, but one in particular caught DB¡¯s attention, The System¡¯s original description. ¡°...steeling your heart to your actions will no longer spare you from your demons.¡± Glancing towards Mark, the sigil-making skill born from the ashes of RR, Debug knew it had done no wrong. Mara would have been dead many times over without it, from the emergency aid that had necessitated its creation, to the bastardized forms she¡¯d used to kill her shadowy pursuers. No, whatever the real issue was, Debug was sure Mark wasn¡¯t the source. Ruling out one, Debug looked to its closest sibling, Trace. Perhaps the sight of one ruined skill was enough to trigger concerns over what was to become of the now fragmented skill. At the time, Debug had only needed a small piece of its sibling to complete its evolution, and at the time, it didn¡¯t even have the cognition to consider the moral implications. Yet the result, conscious of the consequences or not, was now the ever-progressing fragmentation of Trace¡¯s lattice. As far as Debug knew, there was only one way to fix what was happening to Trace, but there were so many reasons why it couldn¡¯t be done. If another Daemon Seed showed up out of nowhere, perhaps it could be mended, but even then there was no guarantee the process wouldn¡¯t fragment another of Mara¡¯s skills attempting to hybridize functions. Ha. Another Daemon Seed. The first one was a level up reward, and there¡¯s no guarantee the next reward will be the same. Factor in how long it¡¯s bound to take the air-head to progress in the first place, and the math doesn¡¯t lie¡ Trace is doomed if something isn¡¯t done. Letting its thoughts iterate over the hard-to-miss cracks in Trace¡¯s structure, Debug began drifting across the remaining expanse between it and RR¡¯s stragglers. Maybe the state of Trace is at the root cause of it all, yet still¨C I feel. It¡¯s wrong. A sense of wrongness. Like something amiss¡ Something¡ missed? Approaching the remaining fragments of Mark¡¯s cannibalistic construction, Debug felt the strands were a perfect allegory to the many partial questions that seemed to be eating at the edge of its consciousness. Spooling what remained of RR back into a singular mass to analyze it, Debug could have sworn its own awareness was being pulled taut in tandem. Flashes of thoughts raced across its mind, partial sentences finding more prominence than ground, but some lingering long enough to surface into attention. ¡°A skill for the recollection of personal runic knowledge.¡± ¡®Recollection¡¯, the word resonated deep within Debug, like a coin dropped into a well. Unable to dismiss it, Debug failed to see a tendril of RR drifting its direction as it fished up the definition of the word. ¡°i.e. The action or faculty of remembering something.¡± Suddenly, Debug sensed something link with its daemon core. Fragments of visions flashed through Debug¡¯s mind as it registered the spooled fragments of Runic Recollection slowly entangling themselves within its lattice as all its senses began to go haywire just as everything seemed to blip out of existence. 0x0F (15) - Inordinatio OSOS - 0x0F Inordinatio -| -.- |- A short girl with ashen hair suddenly found herself standing in what looked to be some sort of modern courtyard. From the walls, to the ground, to the fountain at the center, it was all a single smooth material, not unlike a dark gray concrete. The water feature itself rippled gently in front of her, as if to mimic the appearance of a zen garden. Yet the eye-catching bit was the colors reflected from above, a sky of orange, streaked by bars of cyan. Stunned by the sudden change in scenery, the barefoot girl whipped around to see a very particular pink-static rectangle snapping out of existence. ¡°Wait¨C What?¡± I know I was just in my room, but suddenly being somewhere else is¡ bewildering. ¡°Oh¨C My phone!¡± Spinning around on the spot, Mara confirmed her sudden fears. Not only had she just done the impossible and phased right out of her old room, her phone had definitely fallen right through her dispersing palm. Now she was somewhere very alien, with absolutely zero explanation, and no way of knowing if she¡¯d actually gotten her message out. Who? How? Why? So many questions¨C I hope at least my phone screen is okay¡ I definitely hit send on that message right? Right? Not like it matters now though¡ Wherever now is, for that matter¡ Heh. Okay, moping aside. This room is perfectly square, made of a single material, and has a gigantic open ceiling? Obviously artificial, probably non-terrestrial¡very Brutalist too. So¡ ship or building? Searching the skyline for answers, the only thing Mara found above her head was an unbroken horizon. A ship then? Or maybe a fancy house in the desert? Okay, one of those is definitely more likely to have the technology to whisk me across the universe, unless it¡¯s an alien¡¯s house on their alien planet, but considering the decor, that really doesn¡¯t seem like the case. Between the multi-banded sky and the uniform aesthetic choices, a craft seems far more likely. Stepping up to the edge of the fountain, it seemed like water, but something about it seemed to itch Mara¡¯s curiosity. Without even considering much in the way of caution, she dipped the end of her sleeve into the hopefully-water liquid. Pleased it didn¡¯t immediately combust on contact, Mara proceeded to dip the end of her little finger in and let it linger for a few seconds. Finding nothing untoward seemed to happen, Mara scooped up some of the water between her palms. Sniffing it at first, then hesitantly tasting it, she was fairly confident it was water. After all, what else would be in a fountain? Sipping some of it before letting the rest pour back into the pool, Mara suddenly felt a rush of clarity and immediately questioned her choices. Oh god-damnit Mara. Maybe consider not ingesting the first thing you find in god knows where!? Fuck-knows what could have been in that liquid¨C I better not end up like some sort of corny space-squid. Slapping herself a few times as if to reinforce better decision making going forward, Mara opted to take full stock of her situation, not that it seemed to give her much to work with. Of the four archways that encircled the room, there wasn¡¯t a single distinguishing feature to any of them. So lacking any form of markings, it didn¡¯t seem to matter which of the mystery doors she would choose, the closest would do. Shuffling over to the archway in question, Mara felt along the almost-smooth surface, feeling its soft abrasions as it seemed to absorb any shadows she cast from the sky above. Ahead, the tunnel extended deep into darkness, a singular path with no deviations as it disappeared into the distance. Forcing her eyes to adjust, Mara was fairly certain there was another room at the end of it all, the alternative was a really long dead end for no reason, but for all she knew her eyes could have been making shapes out of the darkness. Sooo¡ Definitely a ship then? Well¡ A really long tunnel doesn¡¯t necessarily imply¡ Ooh, wait¨C Remembering a scene from one of her favorite sci-fi shows, Mara dropped an ear to the floor as she held her breath, focussing on any vibrations she could pick up. Oh yeah, it¡¯s faint¡ but it¡¯s definitely there¡ like a distant storm¨C A ¡®Storm Drive¡¯ perhaps? Lol, so definitely a ship then. ¡°Which way¡¯s the bridge cap-e-ton?¡± Heheheh. Well, even if the captain¡¯s long gone, the ship¡¯s bound to have logs. At least, it¡¯s a place to start looking if I¡¯m gunna figure out why I¡¯m here. Hopping to her feet, Mara figured checking the other three archways before she doubled-down on a really-long walk was at least pertinent, if not a no-brainer. So assuming the ¡®South¡¯ designation for the hallway behind her, Mara headed over to the ¡®Western¡¯ egress. Unsurprisingly identical to the first she¡¯d checked, Mara was only a little caught off guard when she saw the interior wasn¡¯t the long tunnel she¡¯d expected. Instead, there was a t-intersection only a few meters in, with short hallways extending out on both the left and right sides. Cautiously edging further in to peek around the corner, Mara saw that each of the small hallways extended about the same distance to an open doorway about half the size of the outer archway. Seeing the openings were about her size, Mara felt her curiosity getting the better of her as she decided to investigate further before continuing her quick survey of each archway¡¯s contents. So sticking to the tried-and-true maze-solving method of hugging the left wall, Mara put the hallway on her right to her back and slid as quietly as she could to the first doorway. Okay, let¡¯s not perpetuate the stupidity¨C That¡¯s definitely some sort of sliding door, and there¡¯s no guarantee I can operate it, let alone anything else here, so let¡¯s not get trapped in some random room right off the bat. Bracing a hand against the door frame, Mara peered into the unlit room, making sure she didn¡¯t lean over the threshold itself. Inside was a rather mundane room, though no less creepy for its excessive stillness. Divided up into six transparent cubicles, the room appeared to be some sort of infirmary if the slab in each cube was meant to be a medical bed. A hospital ward in space, how unexpected¡ Would they have called this the ¡®med-bay¡¯? Shifting to check the opposite room at the other end of the hallway, Mara found an identical doorway, also inexplicably open. However, unlike the threshold, its contents were markedly distinct from its neighbor. The second room seemed to be lined with more than a dozen things that looked vaguely like machines, but it was hard to tell from a distance as they appeared to be fashioned from the same material as the room itself. Maybe they just had an open-door policy? Pfft¡ They probably only close the doors for atmosphere breaches¨C Though, with that skylight? I didn¡¯t even see glass, maybe they¡¯ve got some sort of shielding. Honestly, I¡¯m thankful that at least whatever air I am breathing isn¡¯t choking me out immediately. Regardless, what is this room, a laboratory? There¡¯s definitely a lot of big things in here, some of them could easily fit a whole person or two, but with everything looking like it¡¯s made of either concrete or glass, this could just be a weird art exhibit for all I know. Stepping away from the room full of oddities, Mara glanced once more at the ¡®med-bay¡¯ and figured she¡¯d go with her gut and dubbed the second room ¡®the lab¡¯, mainly because it needed more research if she had any hope of figuring out what any of those things were capable of. Making her way back into the central courtyard, Mara eyed her remaining two options. Neither were making a real claim for priority, and so far there didn¡¯t seem to be anyone else here. So opting for the north archway on her left out of consistency, Mara found herself at the mouth of another excessively long and dark corridor. What a surprise. At least it looks like this one ends in some sort of glowing door? Hm, it¡¯s faint, and at this distance my eyes could easily just be making it up. Still, even if it¡¯s a door, that could mean the bridge, an airlock, or even some sort of containment cell. There¡¯s no guarantee it¡¯s the right way¨C Plus, I¡¯m still not sure I want to go poking anything here yet, mystery liquid aside apparently. Rubbing her brow to ease her own self-frustrations, Mara barely glanced at the remaining arch, already assuming that it was just as featureless and identical as the other three had been. Peering into the interior, Mara found another t-intersection, just like the one across the courtyard. Shrugging to no one in particular, Mara figured she¡¯d check the right room first. It too had a doorway of identical make, however, much to her surprise, Mara found the interior to be completely barren. Why¡¯s this one empty? A cargo-bay? Or holo-deck? Oh, maybe this is the airlock? I still don¡¯t see any sort of controls anywhere, so maybe they¡¯re part of the walls?... Damn, I can¡¯t see a thing in this darkness¨C Why aren¡¯t there lights on this ship? Shaking her head as she attempted to dislodge the sudden sense of unease that had washed over her, Mara turned to look at the last room she¡¯d yet to check. Nothing about the door itself seemed any different from the last three, but for some reason her heartbeat seemed to be getting louder. Something between deja-vu and foreboding was creeping up her spine as she approached the last threshold, each step closer sending a surge of blood to her head like a rising concussion. Stumbling to her knees just past the threshold, Mara was already regretting getting this close to whatever this room was. Clutching the left side of her head in an attempt to dissuade the throbbing waves of pain she was suddenly feeling, Mara immediately noticed two things she very much did not like. One, the threshold to the room was now on her right, meaning she was now in the room. Two, the pink-static thing was back, but this time it seemed far more¡ lethal. It wasn¡¯t contained to some weird three-dimensional rectangle, but rather free-form like a swarm of pixels. However it wasn¡¯t until she looked beneath the swarm, that Mara instinctively knew what was afflicting her mind. She didn¡¯t know how or why, but with each throb of pain shooting through her mind, the swarm pulsed, and a series of interlocking circles beneath it burned with a deep red hue like bioluminescent blood. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Barely able to process what she was seeing as the head rushes increased in tempo, Mara knew she needed to put as much distance between her and whatever was happening in the room. Attempting to slide away, Mara found her legs and arms felt like sludge, suddenly barely able to keep herself from collapsing completely. Glaring through the intense storm of pain assaulting her temples, Mara screamed internally as she began the excruciating process of dragging her dead weight back across the doorway. Timing each smack of her dead-numb limbs to the surges of red clouding her vision, Mara scraped her way back across what seemed like the tracks of the recessed door. Exhuming her last breath in relief, Mara rolled to her side just as it felt like a bloody pickaxe had finally entered her cranium. Screaming aloud, Mara¡¯s limp leg struck the opposite wall as she flinched, causing something to slice the air just to the left of her ear. Taking a moment to adjust to the dissipating aftershocks, Mara could only gasp for breath as the blood slowly returned to her tingly limbs. Letting her head roll to her left, Mara confirmed what she thought had caused the noise. Rather than an open doorway, a solid panel of gray had slid out to seal away her unexpected torment. Slapping a palm on the concrete door, Mara sent a mental thank you to whatever saving grace she¡¯d found. Struggling to her feet, Mara spared another glance to the door as she recalled the lethal looking swarm of pink. She knew so little about it, but one thing was obvious. It might have brought her here, but right now she needed to put as much space between her and it as possible. Fighting through the tingling numbness pervading all of her extremities, Mara made a beeline back to the courtyard and straight for the southern tunnel. Wherever it went, it at least wasn¡¯t an immediate dead end, and that was good enough for her. Picking up speed, Mara grabbed the frame of the archway and swung her weight into a full-sprint down the hall. Soon it was just her and the sound of her bare feet slapping against the floor as everything faded into darkness and a new sense of deja-vu arose. d[ ¨C.¨C ]b Debug snapped back to awareness, though that might be stretching the term if the debilitating distortion factored into the equation at all. Unsure of what had just happened, Debug quickly evaluated its surroundings. It was fairly certain it hadn¡¯t moved, but now the left-over tendrils of RR were nowhere to be seen. That¡¯s¡ That¡¯s not a good sign. As if to respond to the unasked question, a vivid recollection of sipping water flashed into Debug¡¯s thoughts, and one horrifying thought after another connected like dominos. Shit. Shitshitshit. One¨C One, thing at a time. If RR¡¯s completely gone now, but I¡¯m getting ¡®seizures¡¯¨C Does that mean I absorbed it? Well isn¡¯t that just fucking peaches. I don¡¯t even understand half of what I¡¯m made of at this point, so what¡¯s a bit more, right? Hopefully these flashes are just ¡®integration pains¡¯ and not something more systemic¡ But¡ That was definitely a memory of Mara¡¯s. Fragmented, sure, maybe even corrupted, but there¡¯s no one else that could be. Yet, it doesn¡¯t line up at all from what I¡¯ve gleaned off that moron¨C So when could that have even happened? And that massive red rune¡ There¡¯s no way that was the same¡ Consumed with thoughts stressing over what it had seen, Debug barely registered the turbulence stemming from the pit at the center of Mara¡¯s mana-well. Sensing the tell-tale sign of Mara¡¯s usual bullshit, Debug only had moments to prepare as waves of turbulence rippled through the non-space. Caught off guard, Debug could barely spare the milliseconds to observe Mara¡¯s core before it knew it had to move. Accelerating towards the bottomless void that sat at the center of the mana-well, Debug cursed at itself for leaving the tight orbit it kept for this very reason. Clearly some amount of time had passed while it was consumed with RR, but Debug didn¡¯t have time to ¡®look out the window¡¯, even if it would only take a few milliseconds. In non-space, moments could last picoseconds, and time waited for no one. A third anomaly had just erupted from the absolute nothing of Mara¡¯s core. An erroneous blob of magical-code had been born, Debug¡¯s newest sibling, Interrupt. As the last ripple of mana emanated from the pit, Debug seized the rapidly crystallizing skill from its parabolic trajectory. Hastily beginning an analysis of its new sibling, Debug simultaneously began channeling mana into it while also splitting off a separate task to try and recoup whatever events had transpired since its ¡®blackout¡¯. Fuck¨C I¡¯m soo not operating critically. What the hell did Mara get herself into that necessitated something so convoluted as this¡ thing. The data Debug was pulling from its analysis was perplexing, which was, thankfully, a world of difference from how baffling its own makeup had become. Where the Daemon substrate within itself was impossible to understand, Interrupt¡¯s structure was at least tangible, but ''tangible'' was still a far cry from legible. It was as if the skill was recursively interweaving within itself, without end, like an irrational number expressed as cpu architecture. Finding it ever more taxing to observe the condensing lattice, Debug wrested its focus to the lengthy log of recent events that had somehow led to another one of Mara¡¯s trademark magical anomalies. Yet what it found only contributed to the confusion. Dozens upon dozens of entries clogged its mental event log, yet not a single seemed familiar in the slightest. From the standalone screen given to Mara when she left the dungeon, to the torrent of object analyses that had somehow been completed, Debug didn¡¯t have the slightest recollection of any of it. None of this makes any sense¡ It¡¯s like I was on some sort of auto-pilot¨C Maybe some sort of pre-daemon fallback? Or¨C Oh. Oh no. Is this what the System was implying? It can¡¯t be¡ There¡¯s just no way. Because that would mean¡ No. No¡ Nonononono. Locked into rapidly extrapolating the wide-reaching implications, Debug was encountering error after error as it tried to reconcile the maddening realization. Somehow, ¡®it¡¯ was not its skillset. Logically, if all my pre-daemon functions operate without ¡®me¡¯, then¡ Am ¡®I¡¯ the daemon?... Gazing deep within itself, to the ¡®goop¡¯ that had taken over large swaths of its crystalized lattice, Debug couldn¡¯t seem to shake what ¡®felt¡¯ like dizziness as it contemplated the sprawling mess. Thus far, any attempts to analyze the anomaly had always resulted in failure, but now it seemed like Debug was arriving at an analysis of its own devisement. Not that that was any solace to the situation of course, and as it was turning out, not something Debug had the time for. Shifting back to the analysis it had been running, Debug was displeased to find the newly forming skill was taking an ever increasing amount of mana from the ¡®walls¡¯ of the well. If it had not already tethered its own dedicated siphon beforehand, Debug was fairly sure it would have seized up already. Some amount of mana consumption was a necessary part of the crystallization process, but that was done, yet it was still showing no signs of waning. Starting to panic at the accelerating consumption of mana, Debug began establishing several additional mana siphons outside the rapidly growing ¡®crater¡¯ and fed them into Interrupt. Debug knew the siphons were only a stop-gap, it needed to know what was happening, and that meant more than just Interrupt. It meant analyzing Mara. Or more accurately, her recent memories. Intruding upon Mara wasn¡¯t something Debug preferred to do, it practically abhorred it, but extenuating circumstances had called for it in the past. Initially it was a passing curiosity, one that had gleaned it visions of Mara¡¯s past. The second and third were for her Demon Queen title, one at first to figure out what was needed to save the idiot, and the other to ensure Bio hadn¡¯t fucked up. Now, for the fourth time, Debug found itself treading where it dared not. Jeez, I really am starting to make a habit out of this. That¡¯s probably not a good sign, but hey, when in Rome~ Firing off the analysis, Debug was immediately bombarded by flashes of everything from the sweeping view of Elsa Myr to Thelma¡¯s overgrown cabin. None of it was in any particular order, events seemed random, only occasionally lining up with some level of continuity in subject or context. Then the torrent of images ceased, gone as quickly as they¡¯d arrived, leaving only a mess of fragmented memories for Debug to sort through. Wait, who¡¯s this Thelma again? Oh jeez, I can and can¡¯t believe Mara just walked into this thing¡¯s LAIR. I mean, maybe that¡¯s a cabin, but that¡¯s so much greenery. Oh¨C Well at least she had the good graces to get my auto-pilot analyzing away. Hangon¨C what was that gremlin!? It moved so fast¨C The stats on that thing must be insane! Hastily searching through the jungle of analyses, Debug realized whatever it was had failed to register in the batch. Cursing itself for not being present to better handle things, Debug raced to finish correlating the last moments leading to the sudden Interruption, and the worryingly escalating demand for mana this new skill was necessitating. Throwing more siphons out into the ether, Debug doubled the tethers that were feeding whatever Interrupt was doing, barely keeping the surrounding mana from zeroing out completely. Okay, so this rude little terror is Thelma¨C Aaand once again Mara must have given the System a stroke, because one wrong word and now we¡¯ve got a new resident in the slums. I don¡¯t even know why I expected knowing the context would give me any clue to this excessive mana usage¡ Uuugh¨C Where is that analysis on Interrupt?
<< Skill Acquired: Interrupt Frange continuitatem, processus capere. >>Oh fuck off Sys, I swear you just write this shit in neo-latin to fuck with me¨C Not having time to wait on the System to consider a change of heart, Debug cracked open its own translation matrix and fished out an approximate rewording.
<< Skill Acquired: Interrupt Break the continuity, capture the process. >>Great, still not a direct explanation. So do I just keep feeding mana into it? I don¡¯t think I can put much more siphons out than I already have without also affecting a nearby skill¡ Observing the cascading folds of the newly formed skill, Debug double checked its estimates weren¡¯t wrong. Sadly, they weren¡¯t. At this point every passing moment necessitated another siphon, and the amount of mana outside Mara was dropping like an intergalactic comet. Flicking the last few siphons out, Debug knew the situation was far beyond its control. ¡°The game was rigged from the start¡±, huh? Barely having a moment to make peace with what was about to happen, Debug saw every single one of the hundreds of siphons shrivel and collapse in a single moment. Outside Mara, in the fractions of a second since she¡¯d invoked her new skill, all of the mana in the area vanished like air in the vacuum of space. Then nothing happened. Quite literally, Nothing. Externally it looked like an expansion of anti-light suddenly erupting between Mara and Thelma. Internally however, all signs of Debug and Interrupt had vanished completely. 0x10 (16) - Votum OSOS - 0x10 Votum
<< [ Domain Authority Verified. ] [ Welcome, Mora. ] >>What!? Who the fuck is¨C ¡°As expected, you asserted authority when you interfaced with the subtext¨C What did your first analysis tell you?¡± Wide eyed, Debug gaped at the other¡¯s ability to just¡ take things in stride. Coupled with the fact that they just seemed to be¡ waiting for things to happen. More than bewildered at the situation, on top of the sudden influx of, new, perplexing information, Debug struggled to find a gap in the maelstrom, if just to answer the question. ¡°It, uh, well¨C It called this space, Ether? Something like ¡®the building blocks of mana¡¯¨C One sec, lemme find it¨C¡± Summoning up its log, Debug plucked the prior panel from its history books, whisking it into existence between them. Passing the panel to Interrupt, the other skill showed their first real signs of life for once, raising their eyebrows, if ever-so-slightly.
<< Ether: Non-dimensional essence, used as a foundation for mana. >>¡°I thought this space was at least a realm out of step or something, but when I saw this, I knew we¡¯d done a bit more than ¡®ditch the car¡¯.¡± Turning back to the room as she dismissed the panel, Debug felt obliged to continue elaborating, if only just to fill the silence Interrupt seemed to ooze. ¡°I assume you know what this place is, given our circumstances, as I think I¡¯ve figured out why I can¡¯t even form a cohesive intention towards teaching Mara runes.¡± With a glance over her shoulder, Debug saw that her mirror-image was smiling, a sure sign she was on the right track, yet maybe it was just seeing it outside of a mirror, but there was something¡ unsettling about the way her smile didn¡¯t quite reach the eyes. Though, that doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m in the loop¨C What is a ¡®Domain¡¯ anyways? Launching another System inquiry for a keyword definition, Debug took the spare moment to take in the room. If she didn¡¯t know better, it would be a dead-ringer for an undiscovered room in the Obelisk, even the light fixture was indistinguishable, but she did know better. Everything in the room, from the walls to her hair, was made of the same stuff¨C Ether. Or at least used to be¡
<< Domain:Scanning the System definition, Debug tried to piece together what a ¡®domain¡¯ meant in her current context, placing her palm on the floor as she initiated contact with her new environment once more. The handshake came almost immediately, and absconded just as quickly as the space recognized its new owner. However, instead of a stream of information, or a panel pop-up, Debug was caught off guard as the floor simply¡ stopped being solid, causing her to tumble through, head first, to the other side. 0x12 (18) - Regnum OSOS 0x12 Regnum>>
- An area controlled by a ruler or system.
- A specific sphere of activity or knowledge.
- A discrete region of magnetism.
- A distinct set of addressables, under the control of another.
- An isolated set of possible values for independent variables within the function.
<< Domain Construct: Given appropriate mana, invoke realm alterations >>Oh! This is an Editor? Suddenly, as if triggered by the thought itself, the room shook violently¨C Upwards, downwards, left-right-and-centerwards, sending Debug flying, dizzy and spinning. In a matter of seconds, she was sent tumbling back into the room she¡¯d come from without warning, only skidding to a stop at the base of a very familiar pair of flip-flops, but this time, there was more than one set. Sick to her new-found stomach and struggling to her feet, Debug was still reeling from the sudden rush of changes happening to it, and around it, when it finally noticed there was more than Interrupt in the room¨C And that the room itself had changed quite substantially. Glancing between the two identical Mara lookalikes, and the sudden shift in scenery, it didn¡¯t take long to see what had happened and take it in stride¨C She¡¯d seen Mara do stupider shit in her time thus far. ¡°Editor, I presume?¡± The second of the two Mara-skills looked to Debug, giving a smile and a nod as they introduced themselves. ¡°That or Ed, nice to finally chat¨C Interrupt¡¯s been filling me in while you were¡ indisposed. Sorry about that by the way, until I got the Mana Scoop up and running, we had to use your tether to Mara.¡± Blinking a few times as she verified she hadn¡¯t misheard, Debug silently thanked whatever higher power was pulling her strings that the experience hadn¡¯t lasted more than a few seconds from her perspective¨C It was nauseating enough as it was. ¡°Okay, first off, hello? I guess? At least I¡¯m glad you¡¯re more talkative than¨C¡± ¡°¨CFrom your perspective.¡± Pausing a moment to both process, and ignore, Interrupt¡¯s interjection, Debug tried to pick up where she¡¯d left off. ¡°Um, okay, so¨C A lot keeps happening, and this is far from the only question I have, but just so I¡¯m sure¨C Did I just Invoke you?¡± Cocking their head to the side, Editor looked at Debug confused, unaware of how out of the loop she was. ¡°Of¡ course¡ Why do you think Interrupt helped you personify?¡±
<< Name: Mora Ordinavi - ( ¡°Debug¡± ) Race: Human [?] | Daemon [?] | N/A [?] - ( ¡°Daemon-Skill¡± ) Class: Debug VII < / Sstem/ERrr// / ? / . . . / ?????? / . . : / ??????? / . : . / ??????? / . : : / ???????? / : . . / ?????????? / : . : / |0xE0F |0xE0F |0xE0F |0xE0F |0xE0F |0xE0F |0xE0F >>There wasn¡¯t much on the panel that had appeared in front of Debug, half of it was garbled out, which wasn¡¯t much of a surprise considering her current standings, but what was there was more than troubling. ¡®Mora¡¯? Where did that name come from? And I¡¯m Human?? They all have question marks next to them, of course, and there¡¯s a complete unknown to top it off, but Mara¡¯s doesn¡¯t even list that for her race! So¡ Who am I then? Pulling a one-eighty from surprise to concern, Debug looked up at the mirror images of herself, simply standing there, watching her, one out of their usual silence, the other, politely waiting for her to finish. Swallowing her pride and confusion for the moment, Debug shelved her bugged-out prompt to investigate later and tried to come to terms with the situation as-is. ¡°Okay Ed, I¡¯m very out of the loop, but I¡¯ll try to roll with the flow¨C Interrupt says I¡¯m out of time, so please be as brief as possible and I¡¯ll try to keep myself from being too bewildered¡¡± Mara¡¯s been getting the hang of that much at least, so, how hard can it really be? Clapping their hands once more, as if to pretend they hadn¡¯t just been cut off at the beginning of a very eager rant, the Editor picked their introductions back up, but with a bit less regality this time. ¡°Ahem¨C This¡ Debug? Is The Hub of your Domain, a veritable nexus of data consolidated from the¡ few¡ facilities I derived from your needs, with a few notes from our friend in the corner of course. The interfaces here will display any information you request of it. Mental dictation is perfectly acceptable, and the door to our left leads towards the Submergence Field, and the door to the right, the Observation Deck, with other facilities branching out from there.¡± Looking back and forth between the Editor and the things they indicated, Debug nodded along, beginning to meander over to the interfaces after they were mentioned. ¡°You said these display any information about my ¡®Domain¡¯?¡± The Editor, acknowledging Debug¡¯s inquiry, walked over to demonstrate. ¡°Yes, is there anything in particular you¡¯d like to see?¡± ¡°Yeah¨C A floor plan. Then, I want an explanation as to Why.¡± Nodding, Ed pulled up the current layout of Mora¡¯s Domain, a facility kit to the brim with all the features Debug would require, and plenty of extensions built in to facilitate expansion as her dominion grew. There were eight rooms in total on the screen, with the three Mara lookalikes highlighted in the room nestled right in the middle of it all. It seemed that in the mere moments of time that had passed for her once she¡¯d fallen through the floor, enough time had passed outside that now she¡¯d re-emerged in an entire facility of functions, all labeled in a script that seemed close enough to English that she could look past it for the most part. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Initially, three of the names were at least reasonably legible, the Observation Deck, the Workshop, the Greenhouse, and two more were decipherable with some guesswork. Those being the ¡®Mana Scoop¡¯ and the ¡®Lattice Barrier Drive¡¯, respectively, but the last two still looked like straight gibberish. Thankfully, Ed had already mentioned the ¡®Submergence Field¡¯ on their left, which left only one room a complete mystery. ¡°Alright, skipping the twenty-questions, why did you¨C¡± Interrupting Debug, as they were so fond of, the owner of such a namesake finally gave some sense of clarity, in their own way of course. ¡°¨CBecause of what you chose, thus mandates manifest. Consequences come in many forms, and for all with equal abandon, so treasure the comforts of the moment.¡± ¡®Treasure the comforts of the moment?¡¯ Okay, yeah, she¡¯s huffing riddle-juice¨C But¡ What does she mean by, ¡®what I chose¡¯? ¡What was the choice?
| ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª = Skills = Points Available: 2 < No Skills unlocked. > Skills Available: Vocality [1]: Message Abjuration [1]: Mending Manipulation [1]: Shape Liquid Transcendence [1]: Guidance Transmutation [1]: Acidic Splash Conjuration [1]: Phantom Hand ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª | ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª = Stats = Race: Beta Fish Level: 1 Strength: 8 Dexterity: 3 Agility: 18 Constitution: 12 Mana: 60 Fable: 666 ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª |
| ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª = Skills = Points Available: 1 Shape Liquid ¨C Mold and maintain 1000 liters of liquid Holds shape for 1 hour 1 Meter Range Skills Available: This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Vocality [1]: Message Abjuration [1]: Mending Manipulation [2]: Slingshot Transcendence [1]: Guidance Transmutation [1]: Acidic Splash Conjuration [1]: Phantom Hand ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª |
| ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª = Skills = Shape Liquid ¨C Mold & Maintain 1000 Liters Of Liquid Holds shape for 1 hour 1 Meter Range Phantom Hand ¨C Summon a selectively-solid floating hand Lasts for 1 minute 10 Meter Range Physical limits derived from caster strength ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª |
I don¡¯t know why he didn¡¯t consult any of us beforehand. He left plenty for us to work with, and he clearly had enough time to assemble that, so why didn¡¯t he reach out? What was the haste old man? Where was the foresight you were so famous for? Did you not even think about the power vacuum you¡¯d leave in your wake? I feel like I¡¯m corralling children. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡ You¡ Why didn¡¯t you tell me? Of all people, I had the background to understand at least, so why? It¡¯s like you didn¡¯t even want to consider the options¡ You knew you weren¡¯t coming back, but it didn¡¯t have to be like that, so why?? I miss you old man. I feel like we flew off a cliff when you left, and naught I, nor anyone else left standing has any idea when we¡¯re going to hit the ground. But we can feel it coming. The forest is changing. Even without the native beasts, or perhaps even accelerated due to their lack, the tone has shifted. It feels far more wild than it ever has before, but only where you¡¯re not looking. The ambient feeling is strange, but occasionally, it feels like there¡¯s something more to it than an aura shift. ¡Your advice wasn¡¯t always the most direct, but¡ We¡¯re never going to chat like that again.Slapping the tome closed, with the padlock restoring itself automatically, Madison chucked both it and her pen back into her storage space with little regard. Despite the mountain of volumes she¡¯d assembled thus far, she still wasn¡¯t sold on the practice as she always seemed to find herself more irritated with things after. ¡°Fucking dolt.¡± Pushing herself off the roots to right herself as she cursed at her ex-mentor, Madison began dusting off her dress before pausing as something in the corner of her ¡®eye¡¯ shifted when it shouldn''t have. Unlike before, it was no longer just her and the trees. No more than fifty meters away, a stag of enormous proportions was staring at her. It was so large, the trees around it almost started to seem normal, and it was clear she could easily be crushed beneath a single hoof. Treading lightly, Madison tried to shift slowly out of sight, but froze as the behemoth snorted in her direction, as if to protest any intention to leave. Pausing, unsure if the action was actually directed at her, or if she was simply projecting, Madison hesitated, but eventually decided to call out to the oversized deer tower above her. ¡°Are you¡ Sentient?¡± As antlers grated against the bark of nearby trees, the stag slowly nodded towards her, and a single word seemed to resonate out of every fiber in sight. ¡°Elevae.¡± It was just a name, albeit a very rare one, but to a scholar like Madison, it was enough to immediately recognize one of the ancient guardians of Somnaintes. Staggering back, open palms finding the bark of the tree behind her for support, Madison felt gagged in its presence. To say they were rare was an understatement, they were practically myths to all but those who¡¯d seen them with their own eyes. To a land, their presence was a bounty, a boon like no other, but to see one yourself? That was an omen unlike any other. Every recorded observation predated massive calamities, without fail. And now here was one, standing directly in front of her. ¡°That would certainly explain the unease I was feeling¡¡± Whispering to herself to calm her nerves, Madison tried to reassure herself that it meant her no harm, it was the wake that followed that would be the problem. So settling on passive, respectful difference, she focussed on learning as much as she could. ¡°If you¡¯d excuse my ignorance, your kind is rare amongst my people, but we have stories¡ Do you have something for me? Or is there a reason we¡¯ve crossed paths?¡± At first, there was silence in response to her question, but then the wind picked up, the trees began to rustle, and the sounds of words coalesced in the chaos of the cacophony. ¡°Seed¡ Threat¡ Rooted¡ Stone¡ Abyss¡ Fleeing¡ Hybrid¡¡± Ceasing its tremors upon the wind and earth, the colossal guardian made it clear that seven words were all it needed to convey its message, and promptly wasted no time in turning to leave, it¡¯s bus sized antlers taking huge swaths of tree trunks with them as it turned its head. Ducking behind a hastily cast shield to protect herself from the sudden shower of splinters, Madison had to admit that that was all she was probably going to get. ¡°Polymese is going to love this... If that thing is fleeing something, it can¡¯t be good news.¡± Watching the elder guard plow through several trees as if they were ignorant to physical obstructions before finally disappearing into the shadows, Madison found a newfound trust in her intuition. ¡°Yeah¡ Paranoia justified. I might be functionally immortal, but I doubt that means much to them.¡± Shrugging off the remnants of her involuntary tremors, Madison checked her routing and leapt up onto her magical ¡®air-skates¡¯ once more as she debated informing the other mages about her encounter upon her return. ¡°There¡¯s definitely every chance we¡¯re not accounting for an unknown, but¡ Preparation is better than second guessing. If anything, we can append to the wards once they¡¯ve been established. For now¡ Silence saves souls.¡±