Chapter 15_Exodar Chronicles

You have died.

Combat logs available.

Would you like to review your combat logs?

Yes / No

Ander stared blankly at the message in front of him trying to compute. He had been in his cave, there was a huge rumble, and he went out to find a large part of the base had collapsed. When he tried to climb out… Damn, he had brought the entire chasm down on his head. Ander sighed and looked around, though ‘looked’ really wasn’t the right term when you no longer have eyes.

Ander moved his perception from the floating blue screen to the void around him. He could perceive that odd space near him where his emotions resided. This time however he could feel another space within the void. When he focused on it, he felt his skills, and the odd tether leading to, not an amulet. Here, the tether led to a complicated knot of lines and geometric shapes, seasoned liberally with arcane sigildry, and moving in and out of itself in a way that made his mind and perception warp in unpleasant ways. It reminded him of the video one of his high school math teachers had shown of a turning hypercube. It was both mesmerizing, and deeply unsettling. It gave off the feeling of something that lesser minds should not contemplate.

Ander turned when he saw the blue screen flicker out of the corner of his eye.

Congratulations! You have gained a skill!

Skill: Arcane Metadynamics (Sigildry)

Level 1

You have peered into things better left for greater minds and not flinched away.

You gain greater understanding of how sigils work and interact with themselves, ritual diagrams, and material components.

Understanding increases with skill level.

Ander looked back and forth between the amulet and the notification. While this skill did not seem to have any immediate usefulness, It seemed like the kind of thing crucial for someone making a career in, what exactly? Using sigils for sure, but did that mean Item creation? Ander couldn’t think of anything else it could be used for really. And the amulet was enough on its own to grant the skill.

Ander turned away from the amulet, doing his best to ignore the void and focused back on the blue screen. Curious, he opened the combat log.

. . .

Critical failure in Aetherworks Foundry Support Pillars: C3, C5, D4, E2, E4.

Catastrophic Failure in Aetherworks Foundry Core Structure.

Aetherworks Foundry collapsing, please evacuate.

You have received 0 bludgeoning damage from falling. (3 damage mitigated by environment)

You attempt to climb Chasm Wall. Climb failed.

Chasm Wall collapses.

You attempt to mitigate falling damage using Way of the Wind: Slowfall.

Mitigate failed: too much debris in vicinity.

You take 5280 bludgeoning damage from multiple sources. (Falling, large boulders, small boulders, rocks, medium tree, dirt.)

You have died.

. . .

Well wasn’t that something. It seemed that the disappearance of the ship caused far more damage than he originally thought. He was worried that he might have accidentally triggered some sort of self-destruct. Though he supposed that a mechanism like that would have been hard pressed to survive the intervening years. More of the place than not had been destroyed. What was the likelihood that even one of the self-destruct mechanisms, if there were any, had survived the years and not gone off prematurely?

Either way the result was the same. He was dead. And even though he had successfully reincarnated before, he couldn’t help but be nervous. The screen flickered again.

You have died within range of a reincarnation totem.

Checking eligibility…

We are sorry, but you are not eligible to use this reincarnation totem.

You have been denied by Rule 2: No Exodar.

If you see this message in error, please contact the owner of the reincarnation totem to resolve this issue.

Send message to the owner of the reincarnation totem?

Yes/No

Ander stared blankly at the message, actually feeling the dread building up even past the odd suppression that this place enforced. Frantically he selected yes.

Attempting to send message…

Failed to send message: Owner not online. Time since last login: Approx. 3000 years.

Due to the serious nature of this request, the request may be elevated to a System Administrator.

Searching for System Administrators…

Searching…

Administrator found!

Attempting to send message…

Failed to send message: Administrator not online. Time since last login: Approx. 3000 years.

Panic was starting to set in, and Ander’s perception was narrowing on the blue screen. He was about to die because some idiots from a previous age were petty and made a rule against Exodar being able to reincarnate. They were probably dead themselves, why would they do something like this? An ugly rage welled up inside Ander. It was so unfair. He had been doing everything he could to make earth a better place, yet the people at the top were always smacking him down. He was betrayed by the country his parents worked for, the group he had joined to try to rid the world of those meddling with things that they shouldn’t be touching. And when he had been REINCARNATED on another world, he was immediately drafted and sent into an impossible battle between two groups of veteran warriors. His supposed Father didn’t even try to do anything to stop it!

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Ander tried to lash out at the screen, his emotions, his skills, anything at all. When absolutely nothing happened, it made him even more furious.

Searching for System Administrators…

Searching…

Error: No other Administrators found.

Attempting to contact Multiverse net to resolve error.

Unable to connect to Multiverse Net.

Primary Administrator Selection Process Offline.

Secondary Administrator Selection Process… Online.

Searching for candidates who meet Administrator Lvl 1 Criteria.

Searching…

11 candidates found.

Congratulations! You have met the criteria for a System Position!

System Administrator Lvl 1.

Responsibilities:

You will be responsible for responding first to system issues in your area. You will have the option to solve the problem yourself when it is within your capability, or to elevate the problem to a Lvl 2 Administrator when it is not. You will have the ability to suspend updates or patches, and to insert temporary code into the system.

Do not worry! Other administrators will be available to help if you are struggling with a problem! Here is a list of your fellow administrators:

Error, no administrators found.

Here is the name of your direct supervisor:

Error, no Lvl 2 Administrators found.

Searching for candidates who meet Administrator Lvl 2 Criteria.

Searching…

0 candidates found.

Do you wish to accept the position of Administrator Lvl 1?

Yes/No

That took the wind right out of his sails. Apparently there were no administrators, but at least the system was trying to fix that now that it saw a problem. But why, in all the three thousand years had this not happened before? He couldn’t have been the first person to encounter this problem. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if a good chunk of the people born into this world were former earthlings. He couldn’t have been the only one who was given the chance to reincarnate.

Ander looked over the offer again. It really didn’t explain much, and though he tried to focus on the words deeper, no more information came up. He didn’t like that he was going to agree to this with so few assurances about what this was supposed to entail. Still, it was a matter of life or death, so Ander selected yes.

Congratulations administrator!

Please wait while your UI is reconfigured.

Reconfiguring…

Done!

And with that, a dozen new tabs appeared across the top of his screen, each labeled with a different arcane word. Except for two. Ander quickly reviewed the tabs and mostly found gibberish he couldn’t understand. There were graphs and readouts and logs and it all looked like it would come out of a hacker movie. Still he navigated to the tab that was labeled Error Reports. This he could understand. Better, at least.

There were billions of error reports. Far more than he could ever fix on his own, but at least they were conveniently collated. The largest set of errors by far were under one major error which Ander looked at.

ERR 36214 Report.

A local patch has caused malignant effects. Effects block out a large portion of system functionality from users, and severely restricts their activities. Portions blocked: Spellcasting.

The patch was implemented by ∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎: Administrator Lvl 4

This error was presented to ∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎: Administrator Lvl 4 for resolution, but was denied. Said Administrator then attempted an override on the error report.

Elevating Error to Lvl 5 Administrator.

Failed. Cannot connect to Multiverse Net.

That error alone accounted for a third of all error reports in the last 3000 years. Another error, ERR 30624, accounted for all of the ‘failed to connect to Multiverse Net’ errors, and accounted for another third of the error reports. What disturbed Ander the most was that the administrator that implemented the patch banning spellcasting was apparently the highest level administrator available on the planet. If he was still alive after 3000 years. But then Ander remembered something. He went to his spellcasting tab. Oddly enough, he could see an interface now. It was grayed out behind the words he had seen before.

ERR 36214: a local patch has caused adverse effects. Please contact a local System administrator to rectify this problem.

Your use of magic has been denied by order of The Creator until His return.

But this time there was more to the page that Ander had not seen before.

Would you like to override the spellcasting ban using Administrator Override Lvl 1?

Yes/No

Before he said yes, Ander focused on the term Administrator Override Lvl 1. He needed to know exactly what that meant.

Administrator Override Lvl 1

You may enable or disable specific system functionality on a case by case basis. Action requires a previously generated error report, and a report of your actions will be sent to a level 2 Administrator for review. All Overrides are temporary (3 months) unless approved by a lvl 2 Administrator.

Ander grimaced. Nothing he could do with this ability was permanent, and there were no level 2 administrators to confirm the changes. Still, it was better than nothing. He decided to override the spellcasting ban. The screen flashed, and the spellcasting interface came into full focus. It had a number of boxes and readouts, but all were empty except for a blue bar at the top that read ‘1000/1000’. It was his mana bar. It never dipped very far, Way of the Wind used some mana but not much, and before now, he could never use any spells. Of course, that would change now.

Before anything else, Ander went to the notification about the reincarnation totem. There was an override request. This allowed him to relax for a moment. He figured he would be able to override it and be reincarnated when necessary. But he would be immediately thrust into an egg if it worked like before. And then there would be all the post hatching activities as soon as he hatched. It would likely leave him little time to do anything for himself. But here, in the void, he might just be able to do something important. Ander focused on his skills, and realized that he had been stupid before. This was a full representation of his soul, with all of his skills embedded inside. The whole thing was an amorphous mass, with little islands of geometric designs pockmarked throughout. However, he was surprised to find several areas that, while quite well developed, had no distinct boundaries. He felt at one of the more developed areas and got a distinct impression. It was his language skills. He could feel the ability to read and write, to speak English, a little bit of Spanish, and this new language that the Exodar spoke. As he examined the pattern he discovered that some parts were more developed than others, but that made sense. His capacity to use English was far more developed than a couple years in high school could get his ability to use Spanish. Oddly enough, the part devoted to using the Exodarian language was more developed than even english. Moreover, it had a clear area where it was demarcated from the rest of his language skill, though it did not have the border that all the other skills seemed to.

Ander wondered if it was possible to get his language skill recognized by the system. Ever since he had started to recognise how his soul was involved with his skills, he had seen them change minutely, getting more detailed and complex. He wondered if that was just a natural part of study and practice, or if that was system work. If the system was helping, it would be more than worthwhile to get all his pre-system skills like language to be recognized properly by the system.

Ander thought he might just have a way to accomplish that. Gingerly, Ander reached into his soul and pinched a part of it by focusing his desire on it. The ripple in his soul stayed for a time, before it started to fade and then disappear entirely. Undeterred, Ander made a small circle in his soul. The circle was far more resilient, and resisted being absorbed back into the amorphous soulmass. A flicker from the screen caught Ander’s attention and he looked toward it.

Congratulations! You have gained Skill: ______

Error: No description available.

Warning Skill: _____ Is degrading.

Due to the fact that the system cannot identify any functionality, no stabilization services are available at this time.

Warning: You have lost Skill: _____

Please be careful with soul modifications to avoid this happening in the future.

Ander was undeterred. In fact this was a great development! He created a skill, albeit with no functionality, that the system had recognized. With that he put his plan into place. He went around his language skill, creating a boundary around the entire thing. He made sure to identify the incredibly small sections that represented his understanding of other languages, and include them. He knew a bit of German, Russian, and Japanese, but that mostly came down to curse words and how to ask for a bathroom. Still that was enough for them to be represented in his skill.

Congratulations! You have created Skill: Multilingual!

Stabilizing…

Skill: Multilingual

Uncommon

You can speak multiple languages fluently. You can understand others easily and are capable of communicating well in the languages with which you are familiar. You perceive languages with which you are familiar better, and can make yourself heard in chaotic situations.

The foundation for evolution has been set!

Please learn 3 more languages to evolve skill into Polyglot!

Chapter 15

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