Ku Rophiah was unsure what to think of his Prime Trait. In his past life, he was from a universe solely inhabited by a species of intelligent humanoids called the Kotvislar. In many ways, they were similar to human beings, though there were two key features that set them apart from Backwash’s sole inhabitants.
First, the Kotvislar’s blood was nearly fully transparent, which meant that biology allowed their skin to diversify its color. Eventually, they gained various vibrant green hues of skin, which allowed them to photosynthesize - this held massive benefits when a normal day lasted for the equivalent of thirty plus hours. Second, their souls functioned in a far more tumultuous way; thanks to their ability to gain nutrients from photosynthesis as well as normal consumption, their bodies tended to have an excess of energy. This, of course, incentivized an active lifestyle, which strengthened their bodies and, by extension, their minds considerably. They were able to sleep less and less as evolution made the species’ metabolisms more and more effective, which gave them the time and means for self-discovery that many other races did not have. With the freedom of personal insight and the presence of some degree of magic, the Kotvislar people had grown their minds, bodies and souls closer together, to the point of physiological mutation.
When it came time to bring a handful of Kotvislar over to Terraegnus, the gods discovered something disturbing. The souls of the Kotvislar people were dependent on the high-energy bodies and spiritually-attuned minds within their own universe. The Terraegnian pantheon predicted they would become a race of gestalt entities further down the line - possibly within a few million years - which meant that removing their bodies from the equation would vastly weaken their souls. If not transferred to Otectvurce’s system quickly and carefully, it was entirely possible the soul could even be destroyed, like frayed fabric being pulled too taunt over a frame.
It took centuries of work within Otectvurce’s church to conceive of a way to transfer partially gestalt souls into the system without damage, and the input sent from those Kotvislar that survived the transition was both sparse and invaluable. Ku’s great grandfather was one of these survivors, while Ku himself was born and raised on Terraegnus as a Hero. He learned of his home-to-be from his great grandfather for years, making notes and plans for when he went back to the Kotvislar’s home universe as something greater than he could ever be there. In fact, Great Grandfather Rophiah was still alive and kicking, but nobody knew for how long. He was edging on a millennia old now, and had outlived many generations before him. This was because he’d gotten to level 100 in five separate classes, four of them geared towards inherent self-healing or constitution. Additionally, he was a Hybrid - a troll combined with a hydra to make a reptilian regeneration engine with an oddly sleek look. This, of course, also slowed the aging process, but did not stop it completely.
The old man that Ku looked up to never stopped his training regimen, even at well over 800 years old; to the family’s knowledge, Great Grandfather Rophiah was still increasing his stats, even though his old and rickety body could never fulfill the role of a Hero. It remained an inspiration for all generations, though; even as he patrolled the Slicksleet Trails, Ku lifted a set of weights he kept within his bag. He wore mildly-weighted clothing, and thanked the stars for his family’s troll blood, which allowed weight training to be as effective as one would think it should be. His family tended to stick to Hydra-folk or Trollkin to keep the bloodline as pure as possible, but his mother was an actual Angel, and his grandmother on his Father’s side was a chimera-folk. Despite this, it seemed the genes Great Grandfather Rophiah held were dominant in the family’s genetics, including the and unstable nature of his soul.
Fortunately for the Rophiah family, however, their Prime Trait aided them in linking their souls to the system. The nature of Great Grandfather Rophiah’s own Prime Trait had been passed down to his children, growing stronger as both the years and the generations passed.
[Prime Trait: Gestalt Link
Trait Status: Utility, Defense, Support
Trait Rarity: Unique Legendary
Advancements
Advancement 1: Your soul gains an additional link to {The_System}, which creates a circuit between you and {The_System}. To achieve this, your body and soul have merged to become a gestalt entity. You are immune to the effects of aging and non-magical diseases, and no longer need to eat or drink. If this circuit is severed or your body dies, your soul will be destroyed.
Future advancements will be developed based upon your character sheet at the time of unlocking them. ]
Most members of the family who had the blood of Great Grandfather Rophiah in their veins used abilities related to universal forces, raw mana or spiritual bolsters. Ku himself found his advancements aligned to using soul attacks.
Soul attacks, unlike other offensive magics, struck an opponent’s soul directly. This didn’t appeal to Ku in the slightest, even before he felt what that sort of attack was like courtesy of a small cluster of ghosts swarming the Rophiah family home in the recent past. The closest Ku could come to describing the immeasurable pain was a hole being punched through his existence, and the circuit he shared with the system felt as though it might snap with a powerful enough soul attack.
The amount of soul damage he’d taken had originally worried his family, but his experienced great grandfather had put them at ease, assuring them that letting such vast amounts of trauma heal properly would strengthen his soul better than any amount of training could. Still, the near-death experience was more than enough for Ku to swear off his Prime Trait’s abilities for good.
One day, as he was training with Great Grandfather Rophiah, Ku felt an odd tingling sensation that immediately set him on edge. As he turned to his elder, Ku saw in the old man’s eyes that he felt it, too.
A pop-up appeared within their fields of vision that made the two freeze.
[Hard Reset in progress.]
The pair simply stood, frozen in place, as the sun itself blinked.
Within that moment, Ku felt his unique link with the system shudder violently, like a dog trying to shake off water. The first pop-up closed and, about two seconds later, another two took its place. Time slowed for each person, allowing them the chance to read the messages contained within their interfaces.
[SYSTEM ALERT!
Due to the requirement for new random-access memory to be installed into all sentient living beings on Terraegnus, the system has undergone emergency maintenance. All soul-based pain and discomfort is from Otectvurce transferring or otherwise altering your own random-access memory to amend this issue. This will not hinder any of the contents of your character sheet, nor will it impact loot or experience gain; however, something else may remove information from your character sheet, which is irreversible.
The reimplementation of the system, which should take approximately 140 milliseconds, will undoubtedly have some issues related to it. Expect low-priority items to be removed from your inventory, and know that any unused traits will have an approximately 13.07% chance of being deleted. This is for the random-access memory to function properly and cannot be negated, undone or ignored.
After this message, you will receive an alert that informs you of any missing character sheet information, save for coinage and items; coinage will be unaffected, and items will have an individual window upon opening your inventory.]
[SYSTEM ALERT!
You have lost the following traits:
* PRIME_TRAIT{ErroR_TRAIT:SL.exe
* ERROR_ERROR_ERROR_ERROR_ERROR_ERROR_ERROR_ERROR
LOOP IDENTIFIED.
PROCESSING…
Would you like to keep your Prime Trait: Gestalt Link?
►Y/Y/Y/Y/Y/Y/∩◄
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Automatic selection forced by {AI_α.exe}
{AI_α.exe} has loaded {AI_α_automatic_deletion.json}.
Trait active abilities unused for at least {3 days}: True
Trait used by 100+ Heroes: False
Trait mandatory for deity: False
Trait uses more than 100 PB of RAM: True
Trait untouched by {Admin_O} for 3+ Days: True
Mass deletion required for stability: True
Admin permissions active: True
Deletion criteria met: 100%
You have been unable to keep your Prime Trait. Your instance of Gestalt Link has been deleted from the System. All future messages have been automatically deleted and/or canceled. All items have been placed within a Bag of Holding where your corpse would be. Your body and soul will dissolve into the Bedlam.
You are dying, and are already considered deceased for further purposes of this system. ]
Even as he read the alerts, Ku felt his body unravel into the nothingness he’d been told of that resided between the realms. He looked to his great grandfather for guidance, but his elder’s face was contorted into a combination of pain and regret.
A sudden feeling of tearing muscle and sinew overtook Ku’s essence then.
His soul was violently wrenched from the system, and fragile as it was, it couldn’t properly adhere to his body - or that plane of existence - after that point. A massive rend had been ripped into his very being, and his life could not continue without some sort of gestalt grounding - some merging of body and soul. Thanks to the system severing his connection, his torn essence could only break down and fade back into the Bedlam, the space between the realms of Terraegnus.
The process of being dissolved was both somehow simultaneously excruciating and numbing. Due to the time still being slowed, Ku was unable to do much other than look to his family’s patriarch, whose eyes were spewing tears. Looking down, Ku saw his body eroding into nothing, patches of his skin translucent or simply gone, flakes of what looked like rainbow-tinted glass floating into the air around him. His connection to the System was fully severed now, and he could feel the loose tethers that were his soul begin to unweave themselves.
His great grandfather turned away slowly but surely, like a film on reduced speed. He watched as his fingers slowly flickered and faded from the world, and his vision faltered for just a moment as his head fully, albeit briefly, blinked to the Bedlam. In that moment, seeing nothing but perfect emptiness, Ku felt a primal fear he’d only known as a child when approaching a dark cavern or fighting his first couple of bosses on his own. His mind drifted once more to what it felt like to be hit with a soul attack, shaking him to his core. He desperately tried to will his body to maintain whatever integrity it might have left, but even as he did, he felt portions of his heart flicker out of being. He coughed up blood in diluted time, pain of the motion flooding his entire being.
Once more, the primal fear gripped his mind.
Once more, he tried to fight it.
Once more, he lost further portions of his body to nothingness.
He felt both frigid and overheated at the same time, as though he was being pressed to a stovetop with a slab of dry ice. His body was slowly going into shock, and he felt himself beginning to lose portions of both his literal and metaphorical mind. He cried out in pain, only to release little more than a gurgle and spit up more blood. He felt one of his eyes fully dissipate as he looked to his great grandfather once more pleadingly, desperate in his prayers to any god who would care to save him.
He tried calling out again, but by now his vocal cords were nothing but loose flesh in his throat, divided at multiple sections. He felt holes open in his stomach as the acid slowly but surely dripped onto delicate organs, melting through clumps of muscle in moments stretched out to egregious lengths of time. He constantly tried to get out of his interface - to simply speed up the suffering - but his system interface no longer responded to him.
As his other eye faded, he looked as closely as he could at his great grandfather, wishing to simply see a family member’s face before being fully removed from existence.
His last sight was Great Grandfather Rophiah heaving on the ground before a pool of bile, barely looking up at his great grandson in time to meet his pleading gaze.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¶ Great Grandfather Rophiah had begun to stand, trying to lunge towards Ku just before the latter’s last moments of consciousness dissolved into the Bedlam, but he was too late; his great grandson’s fragmented essence finally shattered apart. A massive shock wave knocked the elder onto his rear end, Ku’s built-up resources redistributing themselves into the local area. He’d gotten out of menu time long ago and was desperately trying to get Ku back in mind, body or soul.
Unfortunately, the dissolving man held only a body now, and even that was being unmade faster than his great grandfather could remake it.
Nil Rophiah cursed himself, getting back up and scrambling to what minute remains were left of his great grandson. He desperately tried to reweave the boy’s soul, squeezing every drop of everything he had into him, but to no avail. As the last scraps of Ku Rophiah floated off in fragments of quickly dissolving rainbow-tinted glass, Nil let out a cry that could be heard from over a mile away.
This kind of situation was exactly why he’d tried to aid Otectvurce - why he’d worked so hard to develop such a specific Prime Trait. He wanted to see the peoples of all universes able to find a new start and a true purpose on Terraegnus. Something as truly difficult to amend as an unstable soul was more than enough reason for Nil to put his personal training on hold and aid the god of the system in ensuring such individuals’ safe passage to this place.
He felt his mind begin to burn, body trembling. He felt nothing but guilt and hatred at that moment, knowing that he was partially at fault for such a fate befalling yet another ex-Kotvislar. His screams of despair began to ring out louder and stronger, a single voice raising to be heard by a pantheon. His lungs never seemed to run out of air as he called to his once-trusted ally in Otectvurce, forcing every modicum of his pain into his wails.
He’d somehow let that damned god slip in such a contingency as this - something that would allow people to be completely unmade in the face of a system failure. He’d let his family members live with such a danger for generations, only to be played by one of the most straightforward deities in the Terraegnian pantheon.
Nil had put his faith in Otectvurce to keep his family safe in the future, to prevent the suffering from a fate that Ku had just been condemned to. Otectvurce had, in turn, betrayed that trust. Still, the elder knew that the god fully expected Nil to maintain an object of immense power for him. It was a backup plan for the day that Otectvurce would go insane or become unreliable as the operator of the system, but at that moment, Nil did not care.
He finally stopped wailing, taking a shaky breath as he reached into his inventory and pulled out a small device. It looked to be carved from the very cosmos itself - as though someone had punched a perfect circle in reality before him, allowing a glimpse at a supernova. He clenched it tightly within his fist, growling. He began to channel his mana into the device, and the clouds within the baseball-sized sphere began to expand and move faster. The shifting shapes went from nearly stagnant to practically alive with motion, the scene within glowing ever brighter.
Finally, once enough mana had been channeled into it, Nil grasped it between both hands, as though it were a walnut he was trying to crack open. The perfect globe fractured, a massive wave of violet light slicing through the growing darkness of dusk. He squeezed it tighter, and the crack began to spread. It shifted through the colors of the rainbow in reverse as it was further fractured, violet giving way to indigo. He clamped down on it yet harder, the light practically skipping blue and green.
Once the orb was sufficiently damaged to glow a vibrant red through its spider-webbing cracks, Nil poured his stamina into the sphere, followed by his health. Even after hitting zero, his resources continued to drain well into the negatives, and the red light that glowed like a small sun before was now vastly brighter. The vibrance prior might as well have been a candle flame, the light growing into a wildfire by the time Nil had put enough resources into it. Even as his body was beginning to dissolve into the Bedlam, Nil held on. He remade himself as much as he possibly could as the sphere worked, acres of nearby land bathed in a scarlet glow. He let out a scream as he managed to stabilize his condition, only to repeat the process over and over again, his Prime Trait receiving a workout.
After one sloughing hour, the orb fully shattered. The rainbow fragments that were his great grandson returned from the space between, flying into his body alongside the shards of the orb. He cried out in both pain and victory, body thrumming with newfound power and vibrant light. An aurora seemed to emerge from his very pores, colors shifting and melding into one another as he stood still. His Bedlam-bound parts were quickly regenerated, and he felt a connection to the System that extended well beyond his soul.
In his grief, Nil had done the only thing he could think to do, justified by the actions taken by the very god who broke his trust.
He broke the trust Otectvurce had put in him.
[New admin file created: {Admin_N}. ]