New Quest: Leviathan Diversion III

With an Egg already in your possession, finding a way to safely store them is paramount. You have now been provided with a blueprint by the System, but you still need more materials to construct the Time-Severed Containment Field to contain the Eggs.

· Acquire a Kirkesis Core

· Reward: Void Energy introductory video.

Albert was in the Lair when he received the quest, having just delivered the Tier 4 Egg to his mother in the Warehouse section of the base. The egg itself was nothing different than the other, weaker eggs, at least as far as it looks went. Energy-wise, however, it was several times more powerful, and even though they were on Erebus – light years away from Earth – it was clear that the presence of the artifact was already doing considerable damage to the cohesion of the space-time continuum.

Allowing it to continue would mean to poison the area until an Event inevitably happened, also triggering an Alignment ahead of time.

“Albert.” The Lair said as soon as the quest pop-up was dismissed. “I have been given instructions by the System on how to build… something. Only the first step is outlined, and it says that in order to continue after that, you need to give me more materials according to a quest.”

Both Samantha and Lloyd were also present, and perked up as soon as they heard.

“What’s missing?” Lloyd asked.

“A Kirkesis Core. Do you know what it is?” Albert asked.

The old man shook his head. The Lair also replied that it didn’t know, its knowledge spotty at best. It wasn’t its fault though, because not even the great Samantha Cromwell seemed to know what such a core was.

“You’ll need to figure it out.” She said. “But for now, we can already work on the first stage of the Containment Field. We’ll need people and materials, according to the blueprint. A lot more materials than what we have been asked of us so far. I’ll be on it. You focus on the Core, okay?”

Albert nodded. “Sounds reasonable.”

“You know what we should do before all that?” Lloyd interjected. “We should fucking celebrate. Sam, you son just uh… killed a dragon? Hello? Don’t bury him with more work to do! Let’s go upstairs and celebrate!”

Having said his piece, the old man disappeared.

“I’ll join you in a moment. There is something I want to try first.” Albert said.

He appeared in the sun-baked field. The shield surrounding him shimmered as the radiation was absorbed, diverted away from his body.

[Usurp has failed.]

As I thought. I either waited too long, or the dragon was too powerful for a puny level one skill.

When he returned to the Lair, he found Lloyd already at his second glass of wine. How he managed to be that quick was a mystery.

***

Even though they were celebrating, Samantha couldn’t keep her own mind from spinning and spinning. She tried not to let the thoughts distract her from having a genuinely good time with her family, a rare occasion, delaying her urge to plan and scheme until after the impromptu party.

It was when it was just her and her father that she allowed her mind to freely wander.

“He should have used the infinitely sharp sword or whatever it’s called. Killed SpaceOps as soon as he saw him.” Lloyd said, derailing her train of thought.

“It wouldn’t have worked. He was forced to stay at range.”

“Well, still. This only delays the problem.”

“What problem?”

“Killing. PsyOps doesn’t count, by the way. The system will force him to take a life sooner or later. Then what?”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

The system… “Do you think it’s sentient?” She asked, playing with her empty glass.

“What, the system?” Lloyd asked. “Might be. Or it could just be a very complex program.”

“It seems to be able to react, and predict events. It’s even shown that it can and will manipulate Albert to whatever extent it deems necessary.”

Lloyd shrugged. “At this point, to really know for sure you would need to verify what sort of information the system has access to. Is it tied to Albert, and his senses, or is it an autonomous entity that can gather data on its own?”

“It might be the second.” Samantha said.

“Difficult to say. It could simply be very clever, and able to extrapolate based on what Albert sees and what it already knows. It all comes down to computation. I had a conversation with Albert about it, the other day.”

“Yeah,” Samantha said thoughtfully. “Me too. He was quite interested in computationally bound observers and reducibility.”

“Well, following the same topic: if the system is not bound by the limits of computation, then it might just be very good at finding pockets of reducibility and make its predictions. Or even simulate irreducible states faster than real time.”

“You are saying,” she said. “That the system can predict the future, one way or another.”

“Or at least, a series of possible futures. It has a broader horizon of what it sees in rulial space, as the Wolfram guy would put it, than humans do. That’s for sure.”

Samantha hummed. “We can both agree that the reason why it didn’t produce a Coreful Setup quest is because it wanted us to take over construction of the containment device, right?”

Lloyd nodded. “I think so. Possibly.” He shrugged. “The whole blueprint business surely looks like it was planned in a way to make it easier for Albert to delegate. Or for you to decide it for him, as you did.”

“Fine. I’ll let him decide for himself, next time.”

“If the system is already manipulating him, you doing the same might be a tad too much.”

She hummed. “Now we only need to figure out how to do it. Lair, can you build the field if we give you the right materials according to the blueprint?”

“No. I cannot.”

“Why?” She asked. Lloyd said nothing.

“It’s too precise crafting. Plus, it’s at least partly magical: finalizing even just the first step requires careful manipulation of magic fields, which I can’t do as of now. But it can be done by someone like you.”

“Would I be correct in saying that it falls outside the realm of Dungeon Core Setup quests?”

“Yes.” The Lair said, confirming her theory.

This explained why the System hadn’t created a quest for Albert to complete.

What it wanted him to do was to go on errands to fetch the materials – go on quests – while she and her team built the device for him. A classic example of gameplay loop in video games (of which she was only aware because Albert told her to look into games and novels for insights).

It was quite clear. The system not only was keenly aware of how Albert functioned as a person, but it also took her and anyone else who happened to be relevant to Albert into consideration when it did its calculations about which quests to dispense and how to phrase them.

It wanted her to take over construction of the device. It knew that the Lair couldn’t do it, and it also knew that she had the means to do so. It knew that the Kirkesis Core wouldn’t be easy to retrieve, and thus provided a blueprint that could be used without Albert’s presence so that she could work on it while he was away.

Speaking of her son. He was calling her.

“Mom. You might want to see this.”

***

“What am I looking at?” Albert’s mother asked.

They were standing before the Iperborea tree sprout that had grown from the seed Albert planted. It was a sprout in name only, however, because the seedling had grown at a rapid pace and was now quite a large tree, with no sign of its growth slowing down. Its trunk was split into two in the middle, as if there had originally been two trees and not just one, and the two had joined together a couple of meters up, creating an arch of living wood.

Or a gate.

“Magic sight says it’s spatial magic. Appraisal is useless.” Albert said.

“It’s swirling and literally crackling with runaway energy.”

“I think it’s a portal.”

“I agree. But if this is a portal, it’s the most unstable I have ever seen.” Samantha said.

“Say,” Albert said, pointing at the murky white film of magic. It looked like milk. “What’s the probability that this is the other side mentioned in my Psionic quest?”

“Read it to me.”

Quest: Racial Evolution – Psionic.

· Find a way to make Perception Level 5 usable.

· Plant the Iperborea Seed to restore the shield around Elvenhome.

· Cross to the other side.

· Return.

· Reward: Race evolved into Psionic Half-Elf.

Samantha took a deep breath. “Pretty high.”

Albert’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “At least the quest makes sense now. I don’t want to cross but… Those skills are pretty damn strong. I need to cross, don’t I?”

His mother sighed. “You are asking me.” She shook her head. “Ridiculous. Yes. I think that the system wants you to enter this portal. And, pragmatically, I think that you should do it. You need the power boost. Am I okay with it? Hardly. Can I do anything about it? No.”

This was literally what she had been mulling about all day. The system doing its thing, uncaring about the consequences. How could she, as a mother, be okay with the idea that her son needed to explore an unstable portal leading who knew where?

She was also well-versed in magic, making seeing what she was seeing was even more impactful. She knew the risks full well. A lab full of corpses back in the day proved the danger of unstable portals beyond any doubt.

“How about we study it, make sure it’s safe. In the meantime, you and I make sure you have everything you need for a possibly long time away.”

Albert cocked his head. “Yeah, you also saw it then. The wording of the Quest really makes me think it’s going to be a long one this time.”