The knowledge of my own artificial nature was weighing on me a little.

In fact it could be said that I felt as if I had been hollowed out. As if all sense of my self, the texture of who I was, had been stripped away from me, which is accurate because that’s exactly what happened.

I could not even mourn the loss, for what was there to mourn? My memories were false, there weren’t real people that could ever be traced to the longing I felt for them. Even my pain was absurd, I had been alive less than ten minutes and all I had done was kill. I had no past, no identity, I was simply an automaton of death. What kind of existence was this, born only to harm, with no ties to provide meaning.

“Woaaaah there buddy! Your emotional readings are totally unbalanced! You know, I’m remembering now why we keep origins secret. Hold on, I’m just going to put a little pep back in your step, maybe a little more goal-oriented as well,” The Voice chattered on outside the void of my existence. I did not care to attend to his words. Then he hummed, and I disappeared for a while.

Darkness.

“How are you feeling there champ?” A wise and handsome face loomed over me. I looked upon the lines of his face, the kind brown eyes looking down at me with only love. He made me feel like I was eating a candy-bar, a warmth like a chocolate crust of imperturbable calm around a nougat of resounding admiration. This was a man, a mentor, I could trust.

“I feel... really good.”

It was true. I felt fantastic. Like I’d just been through a bunch of montages without putting any of the work in. I felt like I could do anything, but also the confidence to know that just lying there was enough.

My wise mentor muttered something about ‘overshooting’ and ‘it will level out in a bit’. But I am ashamed to admit that I was unable to focus on the wisdom he was undoubtedly producing.

“With that sorted out, let’s just take a look at your replay shall we? I am just dying to know how you managed it.” He was speaking casually, but I could tell there was great weight to his words; he gave me a piercing, almost longing, gaze before turning away.

He gestured at a wall, and there, suddenly, in stunning clarity, I could see myself from earlier. Playing back, with sound, were the events I had experienced since I had... woken up here. I found a somewhat less ichor coated surface and settled in for movie time!

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I was deeply ashamed to see myself behaving so rudely to The Voice. Then my struggles to defend myself, I had been so inept then! Like watching a child pick up a game controller for the first time, I felt an overwhelming desire to take over and do it right.

My wise mentor kept up a steady commentary through the process: he chuckled in delight when I climbed the door, ‘haven’t seen that one before!’; murmured happily when I plunged downwards to strike the first creature; and finally exclaimed on my final execution, ‘A Perk! A room one perk! How wonderful! If a touch macabre.’

It was the strangest thing. I remembered in the abstract having a terrible experience; of feeling frustration, pain, and anger throughout what I had just watched. But in the here and now, it was like the last echo one hears in a canyon, barely audible and far from legible. Some small part of me wondered if something was wrong here, something terribly wrong.

Absolutely something was wrong. I’d gotten a perk and I didn’t even know what it was! That was terrible! I needed to know.

“Hey, uhh...” I realized I didn’t know what his name was. My mentor-sage, he who would guide me in all things, and I didn’t know his name! “Sensei...”

Look, it just felt right okay? Everything in my body, every shonen anime I’d ever thought I’d seen was screaming at me that he was the ultimate repository of all wisdom, and I will not be embarrassed for knowing and utilizing the honorific of the land of the rising sun for such a person... I was maybe a little embarrassed.

I persisted, “...what do you mean by perk? I remember seeing text flash over my eyes, but it was too quick to read.”

My wise master looked at me with what a less discerning pupil would have called bug-eyed confusion, but what I knew must be part of his profound, sage-like teaching method.

“What do you mean by ‘what do you mean by perk?’,” he asked me.

What profundity. He was challenging me to assess the very nature of knowledge, of language, of meaning itself! I didn’t feel ready for such a high level philosophical quandary, but if he pushed it on me, even failure would lead to growth. Like all pupils, I knew that before comprehension, imitation could elicit greater understanding.

“What do you mean by ‘What do you mean by “what do you mean by perk”’?” I philosophized back at him.

Rather than descending a layer even deeper, he just looked at me for a moment before humming in sage-like contemplation.

“Ah I see. Your System level is zero. How odd, at that level any notifications run through as uninterruptible string of text. Say ‘Status’ for me would you?”

I couldn’t really understand his teachings, but the request had been clear enough.

“Status.”

Upon repeating that word a long string of characters and numbers swam past my vision, too quick to process or contemplate.

“Aahh yes. Totally unusable. We can’t have that now can we? Well, seeing as you’ve completed your first challenge room it’s only reasonable that you receive a little something as a reward! I’ll take the liberty of just upgrading your System to something functional,” another hum from him after those words, “there! Now, activate it again please.”

“Status.”