System Change

“How did I end up here?” Derek asked back with a laugh. “That’s actually a funny story,” he said.

“How so?” Alanah asked.

“Well, as you know now, I stuck to myself, and rarely every interacted with anybody,” he started. “There were a few teams of people who pushed hard enough, and through those years, I joined up with them for some things—like fighting hordes of monsters trying to overtake an outpost and things like that.”

“I can understand that,” Alanah said. “You have to protect those hubs, I would assume?”

“Exactly,” Derek answered. “But a couple of the teams were pretty extroverted and outgoing, and I ended up seeing them more often than I would have liked. I mean, I did actively try to avoid them, but they tried to speak with me enough for me to say that I was at least on friendly terms with them as acquaintances—though I didn’t exactly consider them friends. I hadn’t even bothered to learn all of their names.”

Alanah nodded along, waiting for Derek to continue.

“So, I was coming back from a bar, and the leader of one of the teams was running around frantically. It was none of my business, so I just tried to blend into the surroundings and sneak by, but she ended up seeing me and rushing over,” Derek explained with a sigh. “Still to this day, I don’t know why I allowed myself to be talked into helping her.”

“What did she need?” Alanah asked.

“Well, her whole team was ambushed, I guess—fighting for their lives. She had run back to search for some help because of it, then she saw me and basically dragged me along with her to save them,” Derek replied. “Honestly, I could have turned around or said no at any point, and it wasn’t like she—or anyone else around the area, for that matter—would have been able to stop me.”

“Not sure,” Derek replied with a shrug. “Honestly, I was technically risking my life, but not really. Even at that point in time, I knew that there were very few people or things on the planet that could kill me, and even fewer that could keep me from escaping. Really, I guess I was bored and allowed myself to go along with her, even though I inwardly complained the whole time. Funnily enough, the only thing I was really concerned about was the Portal skill that she was using to send me to her team’s location.”

“She was using Portal?” Alanah asked with wide eyes. “On this planet with people that had only just gotten this Universal System? Surely there couldn’t have been many max level people by then.”

“Oh,” Derek replied. “There were no people at max level by then. There wasn’t even anyone with a level over 100 at that point in time.”

“Then using Portal could be devastating,” Alanah said. “Even with her team in danger… she would be taking a huge risk. Why would she even rely on a skill like that? One mid-tier Void Beast and the destruction it would have caused would have been unimaginable.”

“Oh, why did she have the skill, and why did she use it?” Derek asked back with a grin. “That’s easy. See, we Earthlings have this thing about reading directions and instructions. I know that on the Universal System hub we could buy booklets on many of the basic class skills for next to nothing. I even seem to recall one that was always listed at the top of the list each time I scrolled through them. It was the cheapest thing on the hub’s marketplace that one could buy, actually. I can’t remember the exact name of the booklet, but I remember it being something about not using Portal. I didn’t know why back then—I didn’t have the skill. But I certainly know why now.”

“That sounds nice,” Alanah replied. “Being able to learn about your skills as you get them instead of having to do things yourself.”

“Yeah,” Derek replied with a nod. “The basic ones were sold by the system itself, but there were some advanced ones written by other users using their personal experience with the skills. That information was drastically more expensive, even with the saturated market.”

“I can only imagine,” Alanah replied. “Learning like that would take months, if not years, off of learning your skills.”

“Exactly,” Derek said. “So, obviously… I never bought any for my own skills either.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Alanah said while rolling her eyes.

Derek pointed at himself and said, “Not only was I an Earthling, but I was an American—one of the countries on the planet—and a man. That’s a triple whammy when it comes to following instructions.”

“Of course it is…”

“But, anyway,” Derek said, getting back to his story. “The plan was for her to activate a portal, me to jump in, get everyone back through the portal, then go through myself. It was a straightforward plan and one I should have been able to accomplish pretty easily.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Sounds like it,” Alanah replied with a nod.

“But, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned throughout my life, it’s that things never go as planned,” he said.

“No, no they do not,” the siren agreed.

“So, once I went through the portal, I noticed that some of their team was already gone, so there was nothing I could have done there,” he explained. “I ended up gathering the ones I could save and taking them to the portal—which ended up not being as easy as it sounded. But I managed to keep the ones who were still alive safe and eventually got them through the portal.

“Maybe I stayed back too long holding all the attackers off while the others made it through the portal, maybe it was as much my fault as it was hers, but, in the end, I tried to go back through the portal and it closed with me inside it,” Derek said.

“No!” Alanah took a deep breath. “I… I’ve seen that happen before.”

“Really?” Derek asked. “So, I’m not the only one?”

“Well, as far as I know, you are the only one who has survived,” Alanah replied. “I… uh… I sent one of my Deathsworn in one and closed it as an experiment. I stayed connected with him for a while, but I felt him die soon after. And it was death. I didn’t just lose my connection to him.”

“Hmm…” Derek scratched his chin. “That makes sense. My circumstances…” The odds of making it out like I did would be astronomically low, Derek thought. “I guess my circumstances were rare,” he said.

“So, what happened?” Alanah asked. “How did you survive getting stuck inside?”

“Well, first of all, I was a tank with high vitality and endurance. So I was at the point where—while I was able to starve—I wasn’t actually able to die of hunger or thirst. Even when I ran out of food and water, I stayed alive. It… it was torture.”

“I can imagine,” Alanah replied. “I have had to go weeks without meals before, too.”

“No… I don’t think you can imagine,” Derek said, and Alanah raised her eyebrows. “You know how time is different in the void?”

“Sort of,” Alanah replied. “We don’t know all that much about the void. I just know what I’ve learned by watching you and what bit of interaction I had with it when hunting Void Beasts with Portal. But with how that separate space of yours works, I can understand that.”

“Well, I was technically inside the void for only a couple of years—according to the age listed on my status sheet,” Derek explained. “But the time inside was so strange that I’m not sure if I was actually in there for decades or centuries. Hell, it may have been even longer. But that’s how long I starved—how long I was alone. I went crazy, brought myself back to sanity, went crazy again… I continued that cycle I don’t know how many times.”

“Oh…” Alanah looked at Derek with a bit of what looked like pity. “That must have been awful…” she said.

“It was,” Derek replied. “And do you know how I managed to escape?”

“How?”

“I guess there was a Void Beast here in Cydaria, and it broke through into my dark, little tunnel while escaping,” Derek explained. “When I saw it, I took my chance and jumped out of the crack it had made to get inside. I didn’t know if I was jumping into the abyss, another void tunnel, or what. Hell, I could have been jumping to death, and I would have happily accepted it at the time.”

Alanah nodded along with his explanation.

“But luckily, I ended up in Cydaria,” Derek said. “I actually fell to the ground not too far away from where Thomas was. He was lost at the time, so it’s good that I was there to help him out. With that, the boy helped me learn things that he knew—or thought he knew—about the world here and the Great System.”

“That is quite the story,” Alanah said. “And no, I can’t imagine many, if any, other people could have the same luck you did in escaping the void. I imagine that if they do not die by starvation, thirst, suicide, or even Void Beast, they would spend an eternity inside suffering. That is a terrible fate.”

“Yeah, also, I believe that there are layers to the void,” Derek said. “The Portal skill opened more of an outside layer that messed with time and stuff, but my skill—the Void Travel skill—I think it opens up a much deeper layer. One where space is more the focus, and time affects the being itself. It leads me to believe that there may even be more layers.”

“It is certainly possible,” Alanah said. “It is one of the most mysterious elements I can think of,” she explained. Then, tapping the arm of her chair with one of her fingers, she asked, “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Of course,” Derek replied. “Like I said, you can think of me as an open book right now. Well, an open book about anything that won’t get me killed by the system.” Of course, he didn’t say which system would be doing the killing.

“How did your Universal System react to all of this? And what happened when you were introduced to the so-called Great System?” Alanah asked.

“Oh, that…” Derek muttered. “Well, at the beginning, the Universal System was there with me and helped keep me sane… ish. I did nothing but train my skills and look at my stats and stuff. But eventually, I left the range of the system and lost access to it—that was terrible. In between bouts of Meditation and craziness, I could only occupy myself by continuing that ‘training’ without knowing if it was helping anything.

“When I made it here, though, the ‘Great System’ noticed me. It… connected to me, noticed the other system, and it tried to eliminate any remnants I had of it. But that’s the thing,” Derek said. “It wasn’t able to. All I know is that it suppressed it. From there, it pumped its system language into my head so I can understand everyone here even though it feels like I’m still speaking my own language. Which… is weird because I know that there should be no way you know what some words I speak are, yet everyone almost always understands. I’ve just figured that the system language translates it to whatever word you would use for it instead… unless it is something specific that isn’t already here—like coffee… or America.

“With the Universal System, we had to level up Linguistic skills if we wanted to speak other languages on our own… or buy a very expensive language skills from the hub—which I guess may have done what the Great System did for me.”

“Uh huh…” Alanah said. “I never thought about any of that. There are some legends about languages that used to be here, but they are all dead and I’ve never seen them. We’ve all just heard fairy tales and myths about them.”

“Huh… well… no point in wondering about it,” Derek said with a shrug. “It is what it is. System fuckery at its best.”

“Oh… I like that,” Alanah said with a giggle.

“It’s just how it works,” Derek laughed. “Anyway, after the suppression and being blasted with a new language, I started over at level one, but I kept the stats I already had from the other system. That’s how I was able to grow so fast. The ‘Great System’ even combined similar skills with ones I received here—giving me a much higher starting point.”

“Interesting…” Alanah muttered. “I can’t believe something like that is actually possible, but here you are. Literally living proof.”

“Yup,” Derek replied with a nod. “And as for the rest of it, I think you pretty much know.”