1 - 4. The System and I Don’t Get Along.

The green, leafy ‘Alraune’ remains curled up at the bottom of the well. Nyx puts her hand forward again; her expression cramps as her fingers slip through the small creature in front of her. She sighs, more of a heavy exhale than anything else, pulling her hand back. The small set of details continues to float by the creature, providing just enough information to be inflammatory but not enough to provide assistance. The alraune is dying but she has no idea why. No, even before that, is this informational message trustworthy?

Wild animals aren’t pets. It’s such a pointless bit of common sense, but it rings true more than ever now. Wild animals aren’t pets. This creature, the alraune, isn’t a pet. Nyx frowns and shifts a little closer, trying to make out what part of this overgrown cabbage was humanoid. Her eyes open slightly as she claps her hands together in apology. That was rude to cabbages… and also this creature, probably. Leaning back against the wall of the well, Nyx breaks down into little giggles and kicks her feet out. It’s not as though anyone can hear her. The wry grin on her lips doesn’t fade as her right hand slides up to cover her eyes.

Biting her lower lip and clenching her eyes shut, she wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve. Nyx shifts her hand out to run her fingers over the screen of information, but there’s no reaction. Like everything else in this world, her hand simply passes through. Looking a little closer, she spots the word status on the top left corner, making this a status screen. Sure. She clicks her tongue and grabs the rope in the well, climbing out. With a scowl, she glances back at the well, then towards the mountain.

I feel as though I’ll lose something important.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to remember where those words came from. They aren’t hers. They’re just a memory, something thumping in the back of her mind. Nyx grinds her teeth as her hands ball up involuntarily, frustration rising like bile in her stomach. Crossing her arms, she lets out an angry huff and stares up, watching the sun descend.

Now that she has a second, Nyx waves her hand in front of her face, trying to resummon that status screen from before. The last time sentences had appeared, it had been to signal the start of a game. If she can just learn a bit more about the game, its mechanisms, or maybe get some kind of tutorial, she’d be able to make more sense of this twisted reality she was in. She’ll have agency, she can do something - especially about that creature in the well. She feels a headache coming on and waves her hand a little more frantically, this way and that. Nothing. She clicks her tongue again, scowling at the ground.

As she reaches the bottom of the slope and begins the gentle ascent towards the mountain and her cave, Nyx feels her headache intensify. The pain seems to throb and intensify right behind her eyes - when she focuses on that spot, the status screen pops open. Nyx jerks backwards in surprise as a large, dark blue rectangle hovers in front of her, menacing in its simplicity. Focusing on the spot just behind the bridge of her nose again, she feels her headache build up once more before the screen vanishes. Closing her eyes, she pinches the bridge of her nose again, hoping to ward off more headaches. Now that she’s aware of the new mental muscle, however, her attention can’t help but snap to it every time the pain builds. It’s like a bug bite, but instead of scratching, paying any attention to the itch gave her grief. After several tens of repetitions and the climb to her cave, the status screen floats mockingly to her side, threatening to turn off again.

She gives it a little mocking laugh and slaps her hand against the side of her thigh harshly, hissing as pain shoots across her leg and palm. It’s enough to distract her from any potential headaches and she shakes her head and scowls again. The entire mechanism felt so twisted and intentionally frustrating. With the screen no longer flickering in and out, she can finally get a good look at her status.

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- | Name: N/A

- | Nickname: Nyx

- | Title: Cosmic Fault

- | Special Skill: Heroic Merit

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Nyx immediately scowls. Her eyes are locked onto the name field as she stares defiantly. Her hands settle on her hips as she gives the screen a challenging, unamused look, raising one eyebrow contemptuously. The screen flickers briefly before the nickname row vanishes and the name field gets replaced.

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- | Name: Nyx

...

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Nodding and crossing her arms, Nyx walks into her cave and finds a nice spot against the wall. Leaning back, she sweeps her bangs back behind her ear, then flicks her hand forward. It is her status screen, so she should be able to get more information. Focusing in on the title field, her fingertips graze against that row. The status screen fades and several sentences appear all around her in an angry cacophony of visual noise.

[ YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE. ]

[ GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY ]

[ IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT. ]

[ YOU FAILED EVERYONE. ]

[ YOU’RE AN ERROR IN THE SYSTEM. ]

[ FLAWED CRACKED BROKEN COSMIC FAULT ]

She lurches backwards, hitting her head against the wall with a numbing crack. Hissing and rubbing the back of her head, she closes her eyes - the messages pour in even with her eyes closed, assaulting her vision with an endless barrage of insults. Quickly shutting down the screen and covering her mouth with one hand, she slides down the wall and nurses the pain in the back of her head, trying to swallow down her nausea. Shivering, Nyx bites down hard on her lower lip as her nose twitches and creases in. She shudders and waits for her heart to calm down, then shakily brings the status screen back up. Wincing and leaning away from the screen, she pokes her special skill.

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[ You are capable of great things. You always were. ]

That’s not a skill. That’s a pat on the back. Still, it’s exactly what she needs right now, she thinks. Smiling and waving away the encouragement, she crosses her legs and leans forward. Both her skill and title had only opened up more questions, especially about her past, but they didn’t help her current situation. Nyx rolls her head side to side, waving it all away and closing her eyes.

She taps her fingertips against the floor, clacking her nails in rolling waves. One, two, three, four, she continues the idle movement as her mind churns and pores over all she had just learned. She didn’t have a benchmark, but she can guess that what was happening to her wasn’t normal. Of course, how she came to be here wasn’t normal either, but in her heart she considers herself normal. Her eyes slide open slowly and she turns her drooping gaze to her fingers. Mostly normal. She’s mostly normal.

She slumps over to the side and rests her head on the floor, blowing raspberries with her lips. It isn’t as though she has to be anything she’s not. She doesn’t need to be someone else or live up to someone else’s expectations for her. Nyx lets out an exasperated, drawn out sigh and rolls onto her back, now blowing her bangs out of the way. She shouldn’t have checked her own status. No, she shouldn’t have checked the meanings of her title or special skill - they were obviously strange to begin with, so the best option would have been to ignore them completely.

Although she hadn’t realized it before, wasn’t she clearly being toyed with? Her days inside the watery cave filled with stars had bled together endlessly. She remembers forgetting things. There had been a sandpaper voice, but the words had vanished a while ago. She cannot leave the island. She cannot touch other human beings. She cannot remember basic information. Her status screen is absurd. She does not need to eat, but that benefit was used to place her isolation for… She doesn’t know how long. That star and water cave really had been the worst. If this really is a game, she thinks, then the rules and scenario are clearly inflammatory. They’re meant to irritate her and mess with her. Nyx scoffs and rolls over again, giving Mister Wall a wry smile.

It’s alright, Mister Wall. You and I will be best friends for a long time. You always support me, don’t you? Nyx reaches out to gently place her fingertips against the wall, smiling warmly, then laughs weakly as her one-woman performance ends. Her eyelids droop as she rolls over again, giving the ceiling a vacant, empty stare.

After another hour, Nyx raises her hand up to the ceiling. Her outstretched fingers curl in and back out, then over her eyes. Furrowing her eyebrows, she bites her lower lip, sighing again. When her hand shifts away, the status screen is staring at her as if delighted to tease and heckle her again. How had she thought of this before? Twisted.

Sneering and wrinkling her nose, she raises an eyebrow expectantly. Informational screens existed and she had a status screen. Moreover, she clearly had a ‘special skill’, so there should be ‘normal skills’ too. The hills and valleys forming between her eyes deepen even further. The heavy feeling on her body was back, pushing her shoulders down and making her stomach sink. The screen flickers, then vanishes, then reappears in a slightly different color.

She blinks, scurrying backwards from where she sits. At least twenty screens pop up in front of her, blocking her vision completely. The word ‘Status’ has been replaced with ‘Skill’ for each panel, but there are so many diagrams and graphs in front of her that her head and eyes begin to swim. Lines connect to circles connect to other lines which connect to long lists with varying indentations and subsections. Sometimes even those list items connected off to somewhere else. Her eyes dart this way and that as her stomach flips over. Various screens flicker, lighting up then dimming again, pulling her attention every which way. Worse was the clock in the center screen, counting down from ten minutes. She can guess - some sort of time limit on how long she’s allowed to look.

She lets out a weak whine and covers her eyes as the overwhelming amount of stimulus causes her stomach to turn. Shuddering and covering her eyesight except for one screen, she focuses on just that screen. There are several words she can’t read at all, but they look like subitems.

There’s a section devoted entirely to kicking, which further splits into not only types of kicks but also styles or disciplines of martial arts, which further split into factions within a martial art which she can’t read, then techniques - it’s awful. She spots ‘Front Kick’ at least seven times on this screen alone. She slaps her hands onto her face and flops back onto the ground, closing all the screens.

It’s information overload. A time limit combined with an overwhelming amount of information would put anyone into decision paralysis. There are tens of screens of information to consider and ten minutes to not only decide which screen to pay attention to, but to actually comprehend anything on the screen. For someone normal - for her at least - it’s impossible. Yet another feature in this wonderful game that wants to screw with her. It’s invaluable information, a listing of what looked like every possible skill or talent one could ever achieve, but that information is beyond comprehension.

This game system is such a scumbag. Nyx places her palms over her eyes, letting the heat of her hands soothe her tired eyes. She lies on the floor a little longer, trying to figure out what concept to focus on next - something simple and informative, she hopes. It’s clear she can’t get information on anything she wants or she’d have been able to figure out why the plant creature was dying. Yet, when it comes to herself, information seems to either be obscured or overwhelming. The idea of checking her resources and receiving an individual listing of every grain of sand in the surrounding area feels irritatingly realistic. Nervously, she taps her fingers on her knees and focuses on one particular word from the walls of information. Up until today, she could have rejected the idea, but the screens she’d seen today seemed to laugh at her naivety.

Magic.

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- | Minor Analysis

- | Introspection

- | Dungeon Management

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‘Minor Analysis’ is probably how she had checked the status of the Alraune, ‘Introspection’ is the skill that had shown her the various screens of information about herself, and ‘Dungeon Management’ is most likely her newest headache. Puffing her cheeks out, Nyx pushes her fingertips against the corners of her lips, pushing them upwards and fending off the incoming scowl. Whatever ‘Dungeon Management’ is, it’s a start.