In Loki's Honor

Loki pulled the plug on the System. To hell with the administrator triumvirate, which had always been a farce. Possession being 99% of the law, the guy who could teleport to the core room had always the power to do so. Yznarian was, from day one, His playground. I wondered what it made me. A puppet at best.

The consequences of removing the System from the world were cataclysmic and far-reaching.

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Some rejoiced as if they were born anew.

"Sisters, sisters!" The elder fairy of Fire, self-styled Queen, cheered.

The others followed suit. No longer under the yoke of the System, they were free to manifest themselves as their element. Wind, Water, Earth, and Wood sang their freedom in all corners of the world. Theirs from the start, they spent over ten thousand years under the System's thumb, barred from the lifeblood of the world. Now, it was theirs once again.

The elder fairies extended their senses, connecting to the mana ley lines and reaching out. The magic of the world answered, and they become more. Complete. Their physical forms were now but mere manifestations of their true selves. They were part of... no. Nature itself.

Yznarian was in a poor condition. The massive continents were cracking, tectonic plates grinding against each other, damaged by the many cataclysmic events of the last ten thousand years. Exploding demon lords. Exploding deities. Draconic magic unleashed. Exploding reincarnator. A rain of moon fragments. None of the three continents were spared disaster. Most lakes and bays in the world were perfect circles, former craters. Where the Empire once sat, the maelstrom raged, elemental fury impossible to control even to the elder fairies, elements incarnate.

The scars of the world reached outside of it. A missing moon made the planetary mana flow wild and unpredictable. But now, they could help with that.

The elder fairies were the closest thing to real deities this world had ever seen before the invaders from Earth came with their stolen System Core. Fallen deities they would become so once more.

Let's not forget the newest of them, the Ice Queen. Though she was having trouble "letting it go" of her cosmic task. The world still needed its third moon back.

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Some believed their forced sabbatical was over.

Sitting on her throne, with the Crown of Aiur on her brow, the High Elf Queen cackled like the villainess she was about to become. For two and a half thousand years, Sariandi felt like a flea in a circus, limited on how high she could jump. By the time some horsewoman was prancing around the southern peninsula destroying the status quo, Sariandi had hit the level cap and found that her growth stagnant. It took her decades to earn a single skill point, then a century, then no more. No matter how much she proved her arcane might to the System, the damn parasitic enchantment refused to let her grow.

Now? Now the heavens were the limit. Sariandi felt the yoke go and decided she would master all sorts of magic. All. Sorts. Of Magic.

The Elf Queen stood. She was once the meekest among the council of old, now she was the Great Queen, ruling over the four-Season Queens and a throng of horny elf princesses. The dichotomy wasn't lost on Sariandi. For as prude their biological mother was, these pink-haired elves couldn't keep it in their pants even if their lives depended on it. At least the elven subspecies that was considered extinct after a coup was no longer at a risk of vanishing ever again. Give it a few centuries, and they would be the most numerous elven ethnic groups in the world.

"Mother, where are you going?" Summer asked.

"To my lab. The magic of the System is no more, you've clearly noticed it. I need to revive the magic of old world and usher in the magic of the new. For too long have I waited. Now, it falls on me the burden to push the boundaries of what is possible."

She really believed her words. Sitting at the top of the world, A Queen of Queens, the supreme ruler of the mortal world. The petty Kings of Men were but peasants before her might. Archmages, apprentices before her wisdom and knowledge.

Sariandi sauntered off the throne room. She ignored the wisdom of the sentient trees that composed the Heart of Fulgen. She had power to amass, and what would be of the world if she sat idle? She was the only one who could reach the Apex of Magic, now that the Old Soul, like everyone else, no longer had the crutch of the System.

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Some lost their crutch and paid the price of relying on the numbers too much.

Adventurers fighting monsters they had no business facing based on their raw skills were killed and eaten on the spot. Without the training wheels of the System and the parameterized skills, the assisted mana flows, they had no hopes of raw dogging and using their abilities with any kind of proficiency. These cookie cutter warriors produced by the Adventurer's Guild, following established paths and intent on creating strong individuals that were little more than living machinery died miserably.

They System was the great equalizer. People with no talent could become mighty warriors or eldritch spellcasters with but a few dozen taps on a hallucinatory screen. The talented, few and far between, had only a slight edge.

Not anymore. The power they acquired through their levels and Classes and Perks and Skills were still there but now they had to do all the heavy lifting by themselves.

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Few were unaffected.

The commoners of the world, used to back-breaking labor and familiar with their System-granted powers through rote repetition barely felt the departure of the world enchantment. True, the numeric values added to their beings by the System were small but still, the effect it had on them was the least.

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A lot of creatures were mildly affected but made free to evolve as they pleased.

Monsters were also under the yoke of the System. But just as it did to the low-leveled sentient beings, their statistics were only barely assisted by the System. Most of the work the System did was to force said monsters to conform to a set of statistics, going as far as weakening particularly exceptional specimens. And their growth paths and evolutions were also railroaded.

Now, they were free to embrace their protean nature and evolve as they wished. Some would become great beasts of legend as they picked an exceptional evolution, others would become less than mediocre as they made shitty choices. But the uncertainty regarding monsters would make people fear them as they should. Unpredictable, mysterious, monstrous.

Bit, the Guardian Urchin, God of Monsters and the Labyrinth, grew into a greater deity. Differently from the sapient species, monsters had no choice as to which God to worship. They were all under the purview of the Spiked One.

And that was a boon to the world. For Bit was not a deity of chaos. He was a steward, guardian, and jail warden before anything else. The most dangerous and powerful monsters were banished to either the demon-infested west side of the Scorched Continent, or to the depths of the Labyrinth. Others were forced to go live in Dungeons.

It was said that no other entity saved as many sentient lives in the aftermath of the System Extraction than Bit.

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Kings lost their absolute rule. Tyrants fell.

The System granted rulers special perks that placed them above their subjects. Powerful perks to counterbalance the responsibilities of the role. Of course, the bluebloods soon learned to believe that is their birthright, not a compensation package. Strong beyond their peers, they feared not revolutions nor insurrections. A thousand level 10 peasants could strike at a level 100 King all day long and they would only mildly inconvenience the Sovereign.

The level 100 King was still powerful and mighty. But most rested on their laurels and thrones too much, letting the System work its magic through them.

Their fall was epic. Throughout the three continents, terrorists, guerrillas, cultists, and pitchfork mobs decided that enough was enough. Chaos and death claimed more crowns than a certain reincarnator ever could throughout several millennia.

Just as every epoch-ending event in Yznarian, the Systemfall, as it became known, brought with it a gigantic butcher's bill. Cities were razed, armies fell. The common folk, decided to wrestle their freedom out of the corpse of the System world, died free.

Out of the ashes of the old tyrannical kingdoms, a new civilization rose. Some tried alternative government systems. Some went back to monarchies. But no King felt as safe on their thrones as the Kings of old who could tithe Experience points off all their subjects.

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Scholars Made Arcanistry Great Again.

Magic was always supposed to be wild and unpredictable. Wondrous and mysterious. The System auto-corrected small mistakes made by spellcasters on one side, while barring spellcasters from doing mighty works of magic on the other side. The Great Equalizer uplifted the meek and restricted the powerful.

Now, Wizards, Warlocks, and Witches were free to blow themselves up at all skill levels. Either from magical mishaps or from channeling too much mana and opening a rift to conjure an Eidolon from outer space like a certain Starbreaker in a faraway world.

A whole new field of arcanistry opened up. The old formulae, rituals, runes, and spells relied on the System too much. The mages and scholars had to weave and experiment with new theories, break new ground.

But without the System, a magician's imagination was the limit.

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Those who put in the effort to really hone their skills were the least affected.

Her peers had always mocked Barbara for her slow arcane realization times. She had trouble drawing her spell diagrams and casting her spells, making her desire a form of spellcasting that didn't rely on such free-form diagrams of Mana.

What they didn't know was that her slow casting times derived from her subconscious reluctance on letting the System do everything for her. When the training wheels came off and everybody had to rely on hard-earned skills, all the training Nethe put her through shone like a beacon.

She went from below-average to a polished diamond. Her casting speed remained the same or became slower still but she made few mistakes when casting her spells. Now that a simple mage light spell could blow up in the face of those who slacked in their arcane theory classes, Barbara had the opportunity to rise to the top.

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And at least one person lost everything.

Kasumi fell to her knees, almost drowning in the underwater chamber. The power of Saints had always been artificial, a gimmick granted by the System. Saints and Saintesses never worked their magic by themselves. They sent their wishes to the System, and the System core would cheat on their behalf.

Now, they had nothing. Kasumi was but a lowly priestess, full of Faith because of her close relationship to her deity. But that was not the way she defined herself in the last two hundred years.

She was the Saintess of the Matriarch first, priestess third, and Kasumi a distant ninth.

Her identity shattered. Kasumi's sanity soon followed suit. She withdrew and became less and less by the day. Fortunately, she didn't envy Barbara. How could she? Barbara was her beloved sister, from a life before the Godwar Cataclysm and the destruction of the Empire.

But what was she if not the Saintess?

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I embarked on the next leg of my journey in Loki's Honor. Not that I had any choice. I knew the Asgardian would go through with his threats. Loki had invested enough in me that he could make these demands. I was still a deity but too low on the divine totem pole to challenge him.

The System Core shouldn't fit inside my body but it shifted into a metaphysical dimension and became just a point in the baryonic world.

"So, how do you feel?" Loki asked. "Try to access your powers, see if you still retain your old strength. It should be there."

I knew he was right. I could still feel my strength, my Attributes. Some of my System traits were not granted by the System but just quantized by it. My bond to Pandora, for example, was just a database entry cataloguing a fact. And now, I could fully comprehend what it meant. I could summon the Wisp of Creation to me anytime I wanted but I had to leave it with Nenandil.

Bringing Sylvis back, accreting that swirling green planetary ring was still the top priority. Some rocks that had too much world matter attached to them would remain floating in the world. Our home in the Pekothian peninsula was one such rock. And the exploding moon ejected some matter into the void of space. The new Sylvis would be less than the old one.

I sifted through my memories and tested every power of my old incarnations. Even ones that fell off of my Character sheet were present. Loki was nothing if not crafty. But I couldn't see the numbers anymore. The System was gone even though Tuisto's hologram was right next to me.

"I'm okay," I mumbled.

By my side, Barbara and Kasumi were still coping with the change. One was bewildered, the other, despairing. I reached out and lifted the Kitsune off the ground. Loki clicked his tongue but said nothing to stop me.

I reached out and grasped Barbara's hand. Fortunately, the spells keeping everyone alive in these depths were still working. I suspect Loki had something to do with that. He knew he would have way less than my full cooperation if one of them suffered because of his actions.

My eyes wandered to the two demigods. My divine beasts, now. "Go. The world needs your aid. Help the sentient and sapient first, then try to keep the stability. If you run into the fairies, aid them. Do this in my name."

Kraken and Leviathan vanished, teleporting elsewhere. I gently shook the catatonic Saintess. Former Saintess.

"Kasumi."

Her eyes moved slowly to meet mine.

Barbara approached and put a hand on the Kitsune's back. "Sister."

I cheated a little and read her surface thoughts. Though some might consider it a violation of privacy, I was on the mother of all time crunches. "Kasumi, your power does not define you. We both love you."

And then the blessed hour was gone. My last thought was of loathing and disgust at Loki.

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"So, what happened?" I asked. I was wearing Haru's form and everyone was... sad? Wait, what happened to the System?

Barbara glanced behind me. I looked, only to find Loki, the Asgardian god of Trickery.

"I'll give you two years," Loki said as a threat, not a concession. "Then I'm coming to get you to fulfill the mission I have for you. Do you understand?"

"Let's get out of here, Nethe," Barbara said.

I obliged.

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With the time crunch on our backs, our campaign to retake the Scorched Continent had to be canceled. We reinforced two kingdoms against demons and summoning rituals, and that had to be enough. The hardy people of that war-torn continent had to fend for themselves. It was their land. Their future. I could only hope the foothold we granted them would be enough. We never found Kalael. The heroic fairy could be dead, missing, or just ankle deep in demon blood somewhere in the western side of the continent. Heh. Not much blood, then.

I decided to keep the Eleon halfling form I created to date Barbara.

Back to our floating island, we built the greatest magical academy this world had ever seen. Now that nobody had the System anymore, people had to learn magic the hard way. The next generations would see fewer and fewer Archmages. Most of those who lived short lives didn't have the time to master magic, and most of those who lived long lives didn't have the drive for the task.

But again, this was the world's problem. Not mine. I placed hero duties on hold until the day Loki came to get me. Tuisto appeared from time to time and whenever I summoned him, but the System never returned, not even for me. I could still use everything I learned in my past lives, every single power, but now they weren't quantified. They just existed.

The prospect of leaving Yznarian frightened me. Especially because of the one to one-thousand time dilation rate. If I ever came back, it would be, most likely, hundreds if not thousands of years in the future. I had faith that I was leaving enough support behind to make sure the world would hold it until my return. The aspects of my previous lives, the floating island, Goliath, Miriel and the new fairies. Two divine beasts that were on contract now. Oh, and a shit-ton of magical items.

Two years were such a short time. In the blink of an eye, It was gone.

"It's time," Loki told me one day, after appearing out of nowhere in my workshop.

I sent a telepathic magic to Barbara, Kasumi, and the Aspects. I said my goodbyes, then used curse-breaker and let my mom have her goodbyes too.

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I knew I wasn't about to die but I got a highlight reel of my thirty-something lives in this world. From a germ, to a weak troglodyte, then a rabbit, and so on... It was a lot but I felt it wasn't enough. I was promised a hundred lives. I wondered where the remaining sixty-ish would take place.

Loki opened a portal. He gestured for me to go through.

As I took a last glance behind me, Kasumi, now a simple priestess (no brackets, no capitalization), nudged Barbara. The Holy Matriarch Academy of Wizardry's Headmaster fidgeted, then steeled herself.

"Time to go!" Loki grumbled, impatient.

I went in for a last kiss. Just a chaste peck on the lips. As I moved away, Barbara grabbed my hand.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Barbara looked away.

I went toward the portal. I knew that if I looked back, I would not go through.

"She's pregnant," Kasumi shouted.

I froze. Loki shoved me through the portal.