Despite the feeling of getting "full" again, the pressure on my body lessens. It feels like the immediate danger is over, so I dare to relax for a moment, "So Mr. Know-it-all, are we safe now?"

"N̷o̸t̴ ̴r̷e̵a̵l̷l̵y̶,̶ ̷n̵o̸.̷ ̸I̶m̶a̷g̸i̷n̴e̵ ̵i̸f̶ ̵y̶o̷u̵r̸ ̸v̵e̵s̶s̸e̶l̷ ̶w̸a̸s̷ ̸a̵ ̶h̵a̸l̵f̶-̷f̴u̴l̶l̵ ̸g̷l̵a̴s̷s̸ ̵o̷f̷ ̴w̶a̵t̴e̸r̷.̶ ̷Y̵o̷u̴r̴ ̷a̸c̶t̵i̵o̶n̵ ̸o̸u̸t̷s̵i̸d̸e̸ ̶w̸a̴s̴ ̵l̴i̷k̴e̵ ̵p̵o̴u̸r̶i̸n̴g̴ ̵a̷ ̶w̸h̵o̴l̵e̵ ̶p̴o̶n̶d̵ ̴i̴n̷t̴o̶ ̶i̶t̵.̴ ̸T̸h̵a̶t̴ ̶i̵s̸ ̶b̵o̷u̶nd to spill over. What we've done just now, was taking some of that superfluous water and freezing it to enlarge the glass. You still have to deal with the rest, and that amount is clearly too much to drink at once. Well, the analogy breaks down once you consider that the reshaping of the vessel could become permanent if done properly... Uh, yeah, that probably wasn't the best comparison..."

I'm not sure I follow that explanation...

Elly begins to translate, "It says that-"

I interrupt her, "No, I... I understood it this time... but why? Why couldn't you speak properly before?"

The glitch creature guesses, "Dunno, but I didn't do anything, you did. I think it is simply a change within you. Maybe acceptance?"

"I... don't think so. I don't feel any different. Well, except for the pressure from the glitch overflow. ...great, it's coming back already. What else do I have to do to deal with it?"

The pressure isn't intense yet, but it is slowly growing. It is just a question of time...

I can't believe I'm putting my hope into them... but what else can I do? I'm already at the cap of Hybrid classes again, and if the description of [Essence Drain] holds true, I'm too weak to reach the next milestone even if I hand out a million random Hybrid classes right now...

It responds with an audible shrug, "Isn't it obvious?"

"No, that's why I asked! I don't know how to proceed, so if you freaking know, tell me!"

It sighs, "Fine. I think we can spare a few minutes to get you up to speed."

Elly protests, "Me too, please. I also have no idea what is going on."

"You heard her."

"Right, right. Are you familiar with the origin story of the System?"

"I doubt what a random religion came up with is relevant here."

Elly explains, "I think I can handle that one. It is said that the Creator had problems when he tried to give people free will. Without it, the souls were stable but they wouldn't make any moves, the Creator had to direct their every action manually. So he decided to grant them [Free Will], the first divine skill, or even skill in general. However, they didn't take well to it, their souls quickly collapsed from the strain and the people died. It turns out that primordial souls are too weak to handle any kind of skill, so he had to find a way to strengthen them. To that end, he created the System. Its primary purpose is to stabilize souls by infusing them with what we now know as 'exp'. They are commonly called experience points, but their real meaning is a bit different and generally not known. Well, once the System was working correctly, he also gave people the option to add other skills, mostly conveniences. Eventually, he transferred ownership of the System to the people, and of course, they added all kinds of shit features, skills, bugs, and whatever else you see today. No one really knows why he's been so off-hands about this whole keeping-the-universe-together business since then, but that's the story."

"And this creator just happened to be your former employer's boss?"

She hesitates for a moment, "...that's what we were told, what I believed until recently; that Graham's boss thrice removed was him, the biggest of big guys, but I learned things here that put that into serious doubt."

"So, am I supposed to be surprised? I've yet to meet a boss who doesn't suffer from a god complex. And given how high up the food chain the devas seem to be, there's little else where his ego could go."

Elly simply stands there, sad, sulking.

The glitch butts in, "Hey, so, if you wanna know, 'exp' stands for EXtract Points - a portion of the creator's essence. Of the real one, not some potential fraud. It is said that to fill the initial exp reserves of the System, he sacrificed half of his own life force. Everything after that supposedly comes from the cycle of death and rebirth. Someone figured out how to make it generate a net positive and then industrialized the whole thing. Pretty disgusting if you ask me."

"Industrialized, huh? I'd place some heavy bets that they also lessened general life expectancies to 'optimize' the whole shit show... And exp is some kind of uber-divine essence? Let me guess, [Essence Drain] steals raw exp behind the scenes and replaces it with glitches. Eventually, this would allow you to usurp the creator. Is that what you're aiming for?"

The threads move around with a shrug-like impression, "Eh, close enough. I only care about my revenge on a certain someone. But that's neither here nor there. We'll talk about that later."

Yeah, no, fuck this shit. The universe may not be in the best of shapes but that doesn't mean I'm okay with you dethroning god for shits and giggles.

"So what has this creation myth to do with my situation?"

It explains, "What I wanted to get at was that it doesn't matter if you overindulge on gathering skills or absorbing glitches, a soul can only endure so much strain before it breaks. That story should've told you that exp is needed to strengthen a soul so it can tolerate more. It is pretty simple for skills; the more powerful they are the greater the strain they cause, and divine ones are especially nasty. Well, if you want I could show you how to create a skill that costs nothing and deals ten times as much damage as your current best spell, but the backlash would probably tear you apart instantly. Wanna?"

"No thanks."

The threads move around with a self-satisfied nodding expression, "Yeah, that's the expected answer."

"But how does that work with summons? They're whole people with personalities and everything somehow pressed into a single skill; how is that not too much?"

Elly fidgets, "That's... not entirely correct. Summoned spirits are normally only very basic simpletons. We have real personalities only because I rigged some things with the World Navigator title when we created Maria's first body - you know, the one I stole. You don't want to know how many exp that title is actually worth."

Considering how complicated that sounds, I don't even want to ask how it works with Eclaire. She was a real person before, and now she's compressed into that state? Is that how it works? Zip files have come a long way it seems. Better not think too much about it. Don't have the time for that.

"If it is so expensive, it makes you wonder why they granted me that title only as a 'leftover'... kinda like a setup, am I right, Elly?"

She sheepishly agrees, "Possibly..."

Our glitchy 'friend' continues, "So as I wanted to get at, gaining more powerful skills puts more stress on the soul, right? Normally, you're supposed to pay for that all by yourself by collecting enough exp and levels beforehand, but sometimes that isn't enough, especially when you gain too many titles or extra classes in quick succession. In that case, the System is supposed to chime in. No idea who came up with that aid, it wasn't in the original design. But, well, there's a limit to how much it adds per skill but every little bit counts for us."

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"But what has that to do with the infection? Isn't that throwing more fuel into the fire?"

Elly adds, "I guess that's where the Hybrid thing comes in. Our friend here told me that it is still working on creating the perfect fusion between glitch and soul. So I guess they would merge exp and glitchy stuff into one Hybrid-related thing instead of eating or destroying the exp."

It confirms, "Yeah, that's the general idea. A pure soul can't deal with this situation for long, but Hybrids are quite resilient to the infection and can even slowly absorb it."

Elly is suspicious of it, "But where did you learn all of this? I thought you were trapped within Jared's soul from basically the beginning?"

Yeah, that's a good question, but not one I want to waste my limited time on right now. It can wait just like what the hell Elly is still doing here despite everything...

It admits, "Some observation but mostly it was in the documents you brought with you to this world. Did you never read them? They were quite interesting."

She twitches, "We... couldn't. Most of them were glitched. But I guess that doesn't stop an actual glitch..."

"Elly, can you please finally tell me its name? This tip-toeing around how to address... your friend is getting on my nerves."

Elly responds, "It... doesn't have one."

"Yeah, I refuse to get one. Can you imagine what that would do?"

"It would make you more powerful - I've already seen that with Para."

The threads move around as to scold me, "That's not even close to what would happen. I don't understand the specifics, but to make a very long story short, it would cause the System to acknowledge me as an entity, one subject to it. It would try to find out what entity category I belong to, maybe it would see me as a person who still needs a class or something else, I don't know, but one thing is for certain, whatever the System would try to do, it would fail and create an error state in the System. These errors would be fed to me, and I would grow from that. By my estimate, to about ten times as much as the pool you just drank. You wouldn't survive that under any circumstance."

"...fine, no name for you then. But shouldn't that also apply to her?", I point at Elly.

"No, she's a part of you, as such she was already in the System, it had nothing to do with her."

Elly is visibly unhappy with that explanation.

Enough useless tangents.

So as I understand it, the only way to survive is to go all-in with the shady Hybrid business. Either be torn apart from the overload of glitches or...

I don't want to become a glitch, and even these Hybrids are a step too far for my taste, but I guess it is already too late for that decision. The alternative would've been death which is even less acceptable.

"Okay, back to the main point. So by my understanding, the creation of Hybrid classes and glitch skills is basically bait. It sends an SOS signal to the System because the soul is in 'danger' which forces the System to send as much exp as possible. Then you take that exp and mix it with glitches into a Hybrid soup which is then used to grow the Hybrid section, the container basically - and then we just wait until the glitch infection is absorbed, is that it? But what does that do then? I have a hard time imagining the glitches to simply disappear without a trace."

"You got that right, but sadly, we can't go too far or fast. Souls are still fragile things. You can neither endure too many powerful skills nor Hybrid classes, it takes a while to adjust. As for the absorbed stuff, it is basically like soda to you. If need be you could live on it for a while but you can obviously still drown in it, like right now, and it is unhealthy in large amounts."

If what it says is true, we're already too far gone. Not only are glitches no longer extremely dangerous, but they're degraded to mere junk food. If my hunch is right, we could even clean up glitch zones without lasting harm.

That is such bullshit! Give me back the promised cliche isekai life!! Yeah, yeah, that was vetoed right from the get-go.

"Right... But how does that help me now? The key is the Hybrid classes which I've already used up. And I couldn't even reach the next threshold to create another even if I randomly handed it out to everyone I could reach."

It sounds disappointed, "So you're not seeing the big picture yet... Look, you can reach your familiars from here to give them a Hybrid class, right?"

"Yeah, so...? Wait, wait, wait, do you mean you're dumping some of the infection over that link!?"

Elly is exasperated, "That'd be madness!"

The glitch explains, "That is exactly what we must do. Though they can only take a tiny fraction of what you can, but every little bit counts. And I promise you, they'll notice nothing of it, no harm will befall them. Well, no additional harm..."

So hundreds of people will have to "randomly" mutate into Hybrids. That'll totally cause widespread panic. They are only used for new familiars to receive that treatment, not long-existing ones...

Fine, I give up, you win.

"Can I just hand out random ones to them? I don't think we'll have time to handcraft them for hundreds..."

"Yeah, that is fine. The random Hybrids are less efficient in that sense but since they would only receive a fraction of what you can handle it shouldn't matter too much anyway."

Reluctantly, I start assigning random Hybrid classes to those familiars that don't have one yet, "What about those that already have a Hybrid class? You said it caused strain on them..."

It responds, "Hmm, good point. In that case, skip them for now, and we'll see how it goes?"

It takes a while but eventually, I don't find another person without a Hybrid class. Well, except for the nameless entries, I skip those. The backlash from the last time I got too 'friendly' with the monsters is still on my mind, I don't want a repeat of that.

"Done, what now? It doesn't feel like the pressure has lessened any."

At most, there were short moments where it felt like it stopped increasing.

The disembodied voice has to think for a moment, "Yeah, that's what you get for overeating... Well, I guess we have to scrape the barrel then. We could try to fight the flood by consuming a few drops. How about you add a few titles? That should attract some exp from the System we could use to grow the Hybrid a bit further. They still have some skills without effect, right? We could work on those two."

Elly asks, "Are you insane? Modifying existing skills would be utterly lethal for him. And not only now..."

It explains, "That only holds true for skills that are 'in use'. You know, passive skills or any skill you can use at a moment's notice. But the effectless ones are just dead space."

She responds, "Uh, maybe? Such skills shouldn't exist normally..."

"How is that only now a problem? Half my skills got overwritten during the first glitch catastrophe."

They both scream in unison, "What?!"

"Uh, neither of you noticed? It should've been pretty obvious."

The glitch apologizes while its threads twitch around, "I was... busy fixing things around here, and I don't care about your skill thingies so I didn't notice. I wanted to leave that management up to you. Damn, seems like I shouldn't have."

Elly mutters, "That should've been completely impossible... Are you even alive? That is like deleting some core files from a running operating system and ripping them out of memory without it crashing."

"Sorry, I'm not that deep into computer stuff..."

She shakes her head, "Not important..."

"Fine. So, what now? Do I just take two random titles?", I sigh, "So much for waiting on the titles we wanted..."

The glitch chimes in, "That's the idea. If you tell me what you want, I can try to guide you towards an approximation."

After the previous talk with soul strain and exp and whatnot, I've no clue how those are even allowed to exist in the first place but asking can't hurt.

"I wanted the Elitist title to be able to take more elite classes, not just three total. And the other would negate weaknesses."

"I see, let me try", the threads again fiddle with my menu without my permission. They take a while scrolling back and forth through an endless list of glitched title entries. Then they finally stop.

Ê̵̱ḻ̸͂i̴̛̯t̶̩̃ȋ̴̖s̸̐ͅț̵͂

Remove the limit of elite classes.

Can only add base classes until you have three.

It asks me, "Close enough?"

As I understand it, this title inverts the restrictions of both types. I think that's even better than the title we originally wanted, not just a plus two but flat-out no limit, and we should already have all the base classes we care about. I like it, "Yeah, thank you."

"But I can't seem to help you with the other one. That's not even close to what I can do currently."

"I'm surprised you can even create something comprehensible in the first place. And then even something so close to what I asked for."

Elly adds, "I bet it learned that from its mysterious ally. A certain Lady Orpyne. She seems to know a bit too much about the System for my taste."

"Yeah, seems like it. You said we have a bit of time, so how about..."

We try a few more things for about ten minutes before I finally give up and settle on this title.

W̸̰̒o̶͉͝r̶̳̉l̸̥͝d̸̗̾ ̷͙̏E̴̖͗n̵͖̋ē̶̘ṁ̷̻y̵̳͒

When you get hit for less damage than 1% of your max HP, the damage is reduced to 0.

This would be utterly stupid on someone like Dan, he could shrug off basically everything we could do to him for a very long time. But me? I'm no tank, but it's still better than nothing - at a minimum, it would prevent some HP-to-1 plus quick weak attack cheese. And we don't really know how long I can endure this otherwise, so I add it as well.

"There, done, is that now enough?"

"Let me check, it'll be a moment", it responds and the threads hurry about. I've no clue what they are doing.

While we wait for some kind of result, Elly and I wait silently. After everything that has happened recently, we're really not on good terms. Rather, I'd like to destroy her permanently...