+ Reid +

[ Time is a bitch. It changes everything. There's not enough in a day, and there's too much in a year. This last quest took me a decade to complete. People died while I was gone. People were born - now they're old enough to walk. And people started moving on from things I haven't had the spare time to process. I think I need a break. Maybe I'll take Mark's advice. ]

The first message he'd unlocked in a while was another that filled Reid with questions. It spoke to pain and growth and trials he had no context for, and that made him uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as the sensations he'd felt growing from his passenger, mentor, and found sibling.

Another twinge of emotion escaped from Nyx, as if on queue. It was as conflicted as the rest had felt. They had increased in frequency and intensity ever since... well, right around when he had his heart-to-heart talk with Quinlan.

The boy had been a pretty quick learner for someone that lacked the innate 'sense' of things like Reid had. He'd needed to be taught many things Reid took for granted as innate understandings - and had no context on how to convey the lessons to someone else. It had been a challenge all its own - and one he found rewarding. It brought him back to his time at the call center, where one of his most rewarding tasks had been seeing the younger workers grow and learn. It was sure as hell better than the rest of his responsibilities. That wasn't his only reward.

-

New Achievement Earned!

Magitutor (Earned for guiding a single student to a 50% or greater increase in magical knowledge or ability) Grants a slight bonus to natural instructional abilities.

-

His achievement influx had greatly diminished since he'd left the tutorial, and it was a great thing to see a new one finally roll in. He wanted to doubt the veracity of the claim that Quinlan really improved his ability by 50% in such a short amount of time... but the kid had really taken to the training, and he'd done well. For Reid, it had just helped him a little with the final lessons he gave to the young osteal smith.

He had wanted to spend more time with Quinlan - to see just how far the kid could push himself and how much potential Reid could help him realize. But that was part of the problem. Reid was putting down roots. Forming real connections to the town and a few of the people in it. That wasn't the goal. That wasn't the path forward. He needed to stabilize things. Provide safety, then move on. Move forward.

Reid angled his wings, and landed in a partially clear patch of forest floor. No one was around to see it - but it had been a great landing.

As soon as he was settled, Reid worked up the courage to dive into a potentially uncomfortable situation.

"Nyx, you there?"

"Of course."

"You've been... really quiet recently. I mean, you only spoke up to help me with one of the lessons for Quinlan, and you were pretty short when you helped me take Rongo through the faction functions."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to make you worry."

"Alright... - then talk to me. It's not exactly like we can keep secrets from each other, anyway."

"...Right... Reid, I think we're caught."

"We - what? Is this about the tutorial?"

"Somewhat. I don't... It might be hard to explain right now. I'll do my best to not hit a restriction. So, we got into a tutorial - BUT we ended up getting dropped into what I think turned out to be the instance with what should have been, statistically, the toughest fights against beasts or Belar that could've been found."

As she spoke, Reid decided to push himself down into his metaspaces to talk with her directly. Nyx joined him in the library's seating area. Her face was shadowed with concern.

He regretted not doing this sooner.

"No one in that instance should have been able to help you. The little prince - in any other scenario, he would have either died to Belar, or a beast, or been kept as a captive for the rest of his life. Soul mages don't tend to live long, and there's -"

Nyx's voice cut off completely as she tried to continue, then her body convulsed - some of her tangible sections shifted to the indistinct black haze for a moment. It was long enough to make Reid worry, and he was leaned in close when she erupted into motion and sound again.

".... GAH! Leviathan's Twice-Rotten Eyes! Never get used to that. Okay. Crap. Let's.... let's talk about probability, alright? Casinos, gambling, bookies - they used probability of outcomes in their work. So do weathermen. It's all about variables. But, let's say you want to -..."

"...BY THE DARK LADY'S RIDGED CARAPACE, I SWEAR, C-!"

Nyx was thrown into another series of convulsions that grew more intense. Reid felt helpless. All he could do was reach out and grab her trembling hand. When she came back out of the shake, she drew a long breath, and her eyes stayed fixed on his hand. Her words came steady - and slow. Reid found himself focused not on her words, but on watching for another convulsion.

"...You got put in the hardest tutorial. The beacons stopped letting people in after you. You came out damn near on the other side of the planet from Hugo. The whole planet got hit with a cascade. It's already far more powerful than a new world should be. You have a familial avouchment with Win and Lycra. You already know all of that, Reid. Think. Think through it. What it might mean."

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Reid gave her hand another squeeze, and looked her square in the face. As if to pre-empt any further questions, she shook her head, and walked over into the gamestore section of the metaspace. He was left, alone, in his library. His gaze swept over the chairs, the encyclopedia on the table, the impossibly large rows of shelving he knew contained knowledge and understanding. He'd scarcely had the chance to spend time in here while he was watching after the Dayo Sovni residents, and he hadn't been pushed to be because he didn't have any stats to affix. His mind pulled on Nyx's words as he started to pace between the rows of gathered knowledge.

He was put into the hardest tutorial. Sure - that seemed to make sense. Reid and high difficulty were old friends. It was true from his time on Earth post-awakening, to now. None of his journey had been what he would call easy. Not getting transported to a beacon with everyone else had been the very start of the trouble. Encountering salamanders - then empowered salamanders - had taken things to another extreme. His good fortune and Nyx's feat in reviving him was immediately followed by a kidnapping, and imprisonment... which then resulted in a challenge dungeon attempt, and an incursion from the Vicipods. Alright, maybe she had a point that it was part of some sort of pattern?

But - didn't that mean all the more that Reid benefitted from everything? Without those challenges, he wouldn't have grown as strong as he had thus far. Plus, the Belar troops in the tutorial didn't seem that strong to him - and Hugo excelled with his abilities. Maybe he had that framing wrong in his mind. Hugo was freed before he started using his magic - which maybe meant if he wasn't freed, his royal friend would never have gotten a chance to grow at all.

Then, the beacon piece. Reid figured that was their fault for tampering with the tutorial system and finding a way in. But Nyx hadn't said 'after Lycra and you', or 'after us'. She'd been more specific. After him. Like it didn't want to let anyone else through. And if it impacted a beacon on the other side of the planet, chances were it happened everywhere on Vuxarina. He still couldn't puzzle out why that bit mattered.

Coming out of the tutorial on the opposite side of Vuxarina from Hugo - that one stung. He'd chalked it up to the same type of irregularity that had seen him not get sent to a beacon on Earth after awakening. His immediate second thought was that, again, Nyx's manipulation to get them into the tutorial was responsible for any odd outcomes on the back end. It was highly unlikely, anyway.

Then there was the cascade - also something he'd written off as part of the effects of, well, him. Everywhere he went, difficulties increased. Heck, it happened multiple times in the tutorial and... wait a minute. The midpoint.

Months had passed since Reid killed the Branching Terror and got to choose a difficulty upgrade for the beast lords questline in the tutorial. In the moment, he'd let his attention fall off of the odd notifications that surrounded it. Between Nyx's words and his own pacing rumination, the detail came back.

There was an error about a tutorial maximum and a theoretical difficulty limit, which brought about a warning about a cascade. Then, initially, the difficulty adjustment was cancelled. That cancellation was then overridden.

Something felt like it was tickling the back of his mind. The system... had overridden itself? The logic didn't track. There had been something else it mentioned. Some reason or reference for the change - Alpha? No, more obscure.

Core Tenet 4, Alpha. That was it.

The more Reid thought about it, the more he felt a headache coming on. He was pulling hard at his own uncategorized knowledge, and it was taking a toll on him. He couldn't get bogged down with one part of Nyx's whole prompting. The cascade was weird but it happened, and now the planet itself was stronger than it should have been.

Then, the final item she mentioned - the familial avouchment. It didn't seem to fit with the rest. What did that act have to do with anything else going on?

Reid rubbed his temples as he tried to think back to the exact moment the avouchment was mentioned. They had been in the showers, in the warrens, right after the CCEs arrived. The avouchment was a document that effectively made them family in the eyes of the system, let them share bank accounts, act as representatives. It was a way to keep their names away from documents, while also linking them together.

Linking. Oh, motherfucking shit.

The other thing Win had promised the Avouchment would do was allow everyone to use system resources to contact or find one another. Reid hadn't even thought of it. And, really, Reid didn't have many direct system interactions. They were mainly comprised of Reid tactically ignoring his notifications about quests or kills in the worst possible way, and then letting Nyx handle everything else for him

Faction interface? Laws? Invites? Leave it to Nyx.

Talking to beacons? Nyx it is.

What other features does the system offer to individuals? Heck if he knew, Nyx was on the case.

Reid sprinted back towards the game library and skidded around the corner. His shoulder slammed into one of the shelves and knocked a few booklets flat.

"Nyx - the avouchment! Can we contact Lycra? Can we see where he is? Can we do it for Win?"

He saw a flash go through her eyes, accompanied by another odd emotion. She shook her head slowly.

"We cannot."

Reid felt himself bristle as his frustration mounted. Why couldn't they do that? It was something the system was supposed to do! It was just part of it, like quests and xp and levels and...

The implication slammed against him like a wave and threatened to topple him. Reid steadied himself against the shelves.

The system wasn't instantaneous. Not always. Reid had experienced firsthand how it sometimes needed minutes or longer to calculate things like rewards or difficulty increases.

Those times involved heavy changes to an environment, pitched battles, and unlikely scenarios. Calculations. Freezes to Tutorial Entry. Failure to perform basic communication functions that would let him talk to Lycra. The incredible difficulty of the trials he'd faced. The error messages.

They were each some kind of failure on the part of the system. Proof that it was not powerful enough to always be instantaneous. Proof that it was flawed. How else could one explain what had happened to him, to the tutorial here, and to the functions of the system itself? The question asked itself.

Why?

Why was the system not powerful enough to do everything, when it had seemed so omnipotent? Why did it seem to break down when there were too many outlandish or difficult things happening all at once? And if that was the case, what in all the cosmos was happening to make it break down and fail so spectacularly now?

In his mind, it all flowed into a truth that didn't seem quite right - except it fit together with all the evidence he could picture. He wracked his mind for alternate explanations, but nothing emerged that seemed possible. If the system wasn't omnipotent, if it could break, maybe there were other things that didn't follow his conventional thinking. It was an outlandish idea - probably.

Reid lifted his gaze from the floor, still steadied by his arms that gripped the shelves with white-knuckled intensity. His thoughts boiled down into two simple statements.

"Nyx," he started. She returned his look, her eyes searching over him like she would be able to read his thoughts.

"I think the System is broken. And - I think it hates me."

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