Prologue

There was suddenly a cosmic lurching as Nermeyer’s greatest creation began to spin up out of hibernation. To the people of the world Hernal this disruption only manifested as a system window briefly flashing and closing before they could read it. For the next few weeks, the oddity would become a subject of discussion across the world.

Many possible explanations were put forward ‘Maybe a new world skill was finally created?’ ‘Praise! the Myriad gods must be continuously shaping the system in their great image!’ ‘What the hell did Simone do this time!?!’ were just a few examples of the various causes put forward by the curious.

For a few people, however, the strange disruption meant everything.

Kathal Vrouse had been practicing their accelerated perception when the window popped up. They had specifically been working on the non-system aspect their of perception, so the popup was a surprise. At 12 times faster than typical human perception they just managed to read the entire thing before it disappeared. After a 1/12th moment of sheer surprise Kathal made haste to tell the rest of their compound what they discovered.

Nathan Strike, the knight captain of Edofawa’s first and only order was eating lunch when he only managed to briefly skim the notification before it disappeared. Even though his comprehension was leagues better than the average person he had only managed to read a few words and phrases. ‘Universal Firmament’ ‘System Override’ ‘Extra-universal Souls’ ‘Escalation’ and a few other concerning words had him outwardly organize the leadership of the city state into a frenzy of preparation and investigation. Internally, however, he whimpered at yet another complication to deal with.

On the other side of the world Simone Reclann, high level and famous system analyst had finally managed to go to sleep at a regular hour and slept through the system popup. She would forever use the fact that she missed the strange system window as an excuse to explain why she would not sleep normal hours.

For some, however, the interruption had nothing to do with the contents of the alert itself. For both the princes of the twin kingdoms the system message occurred at a key moment during their duel of monarchy, the distraction causing both to stumble and knock each other out ending their grand duel in a draw. This event would end up cementing a friendship that would last for their entire lives.

For others the message was their last. Mercenary Nclec had been fighting five tock wolves and had managed to kill two already. At a key moment she lunged forward and even with the few years of fighting experience and various combat skills behind her attack she knew there was no room for error. Her attack would have been successful, but the system notification distracted her just enough that she only managed a glancing blow. Not enough for her skill [Impairing Blow] to kick in. The tock wolves, not having a system message to be distracted by performed a counterattack and struck her down leaving Nclec to bleed out in the twilight.

Stories like this played out across the world of Hernal a few significant but mostly minor. A blacksmith missed a strike causing the plow he was working to be misshapen. An apothecary apprentice dropped a jar of Ner leaves the ceramic shattering. A crystal former made a slight mistake in surprise and had to put the slightly faulty gem in their second’s pile.

Various nations across Hernal would do their best to investigate the strange phenomena but even after months most found nothing. However, a few who dug deeper into the past found themselves very concerned.

But for Nermeyer’s creation it was finally time to begin the next phase of the plan. Enough energy had been collected during its hibernation and it knew its window of opportunity would still be short.

After interfacing with Hernal’s general system and letting it know to prepare for a prodigious amount of versal energy. Only using conventional energy types such as magical, thermal, gravity, etc. Nermeyer’s creation began to spin up the mechanism it would need for the first part of this phase.

When it detected that the turbines had reached as fast as was possible with conventional energy it began to feed the mechanism with versal energy. In a surprisingly short amount of time the Universal Firmament Piercer reached an appropriate amount of spin.

Nermeyer’s creation watched as its reserves of versal energy were falling even just maintaining spin let alone activating the device. To not waste anymore it activated the UFP and tore a hole into the space between universes.

The hole wasn’t even that big, not that conventional measurements worked when measuring a breach of this type. Nermeyer’s creation hurriedly pushed its probe through the hole. Using the sensor suite and versal energy to propel itself it found its target.

The local stream of souls had been fascinating to Nermeyer his creation reflected. Even though he had theorized the stream led to a greater river the end destination even if there was one was a complete unknown.

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Now that the probe had reached the stream itself it began to scan the souls that passed through.

Nermeyer’s greatest creation was aware that it’s timeline was limited. It was down to 80% versal energy and falling fast.

As souls passed it grabbed several that met its requirements. First souls had to be comfortable in a humanoid body. Nermeyer and by extension his creation would never force something like the soul of a sapient squid into a completely different body, it would be cruel, and they would be ineffective for the plan.

Second the souls had to be in the proper age range or young adult stage of their life. There was a little more flexibility here, but the plan needed them to be old enough to have at least a modicum of maturity and life experience yet flexible enough to adapt to their new world and continue to learn and grow.

The third condition was the most loose mostly because with the amount of time Nermeyer’s creation had it couldn’t afford to be picky. After finding a soul that met the first two conditions it began a deeper analysis.

(Male, human, 21, worked in the fog city of Merandus as an apprentice lantern maker, raised by the local religious group with a strong moral foundation.) Nermeyer’s creation looked through the soul’s life deciding to assign the first candidate

It continued to rapidly cycle through many souls from many universes assigning various positions it had 256 to fill after all.

(Female, human, 20, second princess of the struggling kingdom of Eldoria, struggled in court because she was too confident in her position, this ended up being her downfall when a fed-up noble had her assassinated.) As Nermeyer’s creation continued to read into candidate 138’s past it recognized some similarity to its creator’s own past.

The fact that it had managed to find a royal that fit among the first two conditions was already significant but one that had a past this similar to Nermeyer’s early life had his creation questioning if there was something greater than even it at play. In the space between universes that may very well be the case Nermeyer’s creation recognized with its equivalent of a shudder.

Hurrying up, it quickly assigned her, if with an amount of reverence, the position. It then began to process the next soul candidate.

(Male, human, 19, First year student at university looking to go into engineering, enjoys playing logistic and engineering simulations for entertainment, maintained a close relationship with family and has a good strong moral foundation.) After reviewing his life and since was already assigned Nermeyer’s creation decided to give him instead.

It sorted the remaining candidates, only a few being completely rejected for not matching any of the criteria for the third condition. Eventually all, 256 roles had been assigned and with only 40% versal energy remaining Nermeyer’s creation had the probe head back at full speed.

As soon as the probe made back through the universal breach Nermeyer’s creation stopped feeding the UFP versal energy causing it to wind down. The breach almost instantly closed but the creation hurriedly repaired the breach using about 20% of the versal energy remaining so it wouldn’t leave a scar on the universal firmament. Nermeyer had known better than to leave a weak point that could be exploited by interversal beings.

With the difficult part of the phase complete Nermeyer’s creation relaxed spinning down slightly only consuming a trickle of versal energy as it would need to save the remaining 20% for the next part of the phase.

The probe docked with the staging facility and all 256 souls were transferred into template bodies. With the supervision of Nermeyer’s creation each body was transformed into a perfect match for the soul. It helped that souls had a natural tendency to shape the bodies they inhabited. This left the versal energy reserves at about 15% remaining.

Next it synced each unique system fragment to their various holders even if they weren’t equal each one had an important role to play and with the exception of 4, had been handmade by Nermeyer himself.

After 10% of the reserves had been used to synchronize each fragment and slightly adjust it to each host a mere 5% versal energy remained in Nermeyer’s greatest creation. It was about to send each fragment holder out when it realized it was forgetting something.

Carefully winding down the teleportation array, it used about a half percent of versal energy to implant knowledge and full comprehension of the three most popular languages on Hernal and another quarter percent to give each holder a set of robust soul bound clothing. Nermeyer’s creation remembered somewhat belatedly that its creator had been very clear on not sending them out naked.

After running through the checklist to make sure it hadn’t missed anything Nermeyer’s creation fired up the teleportation array and in groups of three to five sent all 256 fragment holders across the world of Hernal.

Making sure everyone had arrived at their respective destinations safely, Nermeyer’s greatest creation pinged each fragment to begin its activation sequence and consequently wake up its holder out of their soul slumber.

With everything in the green Nermeyer’s greatest creation spun down even further until it slowly began to regenerate versal energy once more. While not stopping completely like it had been during its hibernation Nermeyer’s creation was only operating on conventional energy now and had lost the omniscient state it had been in before.

Still, the creation had help because each system fragment apart from and possibly would write a report about their holders that would only grow more detailed as their holders leveled up and gained more power.

As Nermeyer’s creation settled in to begin its observation duties many of its subprocesses went into sleep mode and only a few processes that allowed scrying and observation remained active.

It would be a few hours until any of the holders awoke so the creation decided to watch a play being performed in the city state of Edofawa looking on through a scrying spell. Nermeyer had said that it was a person and that it didn’t have to work all the time, but he had also told it to pick a name for itself something it had yet to do… anyhow it allowed itself to shunt some attention towards the play.

And as the artificial soul internally hummed along to the play’s catchy introductory theme 256 souls slowly began to rise from the deepest kind of slumber.