Noem stared at the statue. The statue stared at him. He snapped his fingers and activated Resilient and Focus, then stood and walked away from the thing that had more Qi than he was comfortable with.
“Hey, what’s up? Got cold feet now that you know I wasn’t just an illusion?” The statue teased. Her feet gently smacked against the bottom of the stone bench, and she laughed when Noem sighed and shook his head. “Aw, poor not-chosen-one. Doesn’t get the world handed to him and now he’s a little crybaby.”
“Quiet, you.” Noem muttered. It wasn’t just the fact that she had an abundance of Qi that made him uncomfortable; it was that it felt exactly like the stuff that had entwined itself on his Qi. He opened his interface and stared at the message that had only slightly changed.
Noem Crest: 26 year old Human.
Qi Realm: Mortal 9.
Qi Quality: Grand.
Active Bonds: N/A.
Maximum Bonds: Still Only Me.
Skills Known: 74.
Skills Internalized: 0.
Maximum Active Skills: 4.
Still only me. One word worth of change, yet it bothered Noem beyond a shadow of a doubt. He turned to the statue that had shifted and now lay on her side, head resting on her palm and propped up on her forearm. She smiled and waved, then slowly mouthed the words ‘only me’.
Noem shivered and dismissed his interface. “Alright, that’s just creepy. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember, I meet whatever you are, and now it’s different. What the hell did you do to my interface?”
The statue innocently pressed a finger to their lips and feigned confusion. “Whatever are you talking about? It must be something only you can see, so I definitely have no clue what might’ve happened to your little problem.”
Noem’s eye twitched in annoyance as he pressed his hand to little miss meteor’s highest chunk. “The statue girl isn’t making the best first impression, is she, little miss meteor?”
“Oh, no! How will I survive this slight?!” The statue let out an exaggerated gasp, then devolved into a fit of giggles. A few seconds later, she stopped without warning and fixated on Noem. “The rock’s just a rock. Whatever you thought it was doing was just responses to your absurd Qi control.”
Ouch. Noem hid his surprise and stuffed it down with all the rest of the stuff he wasn’t ready to deal with.
“I figured as much.” Noem patted little miss meteor with a small smile and a lie. “Even still, it was nice to dream that I wasn’t normal for a minute. So.” He swiveled around and leaned against the pedestal. “You said she was the key. What does she unlock?”
“The rest of the facility. You’re in the admin room right now, and you can use the key combined with your newly improved Qi to explore the place.” The statue paused, and Noem sensed there was a ‘but’ coming. “...Once I finish making it.”
There it was. “So I hold the key to something that isn’t even done yet. Great. And what does that make you, the… architect and engineer for this place?”
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“Sorta?” The statue shrugged awkwardly. “I’m a Djinn. And I can’t say much more beyond that, sorry.”
Noem barely believed the words that came out of the little statue’s mouth. Djinn weren’t real; they were the personification of the myths used to explain the weirdness that permeated the system. No; this was probably some stone spirit who’d grown far too powerful for its own good, and was now playing creator for some reason or another.
The spirit smiled ominously. “You don’t look like you believe me. Well, mister non-believer, why don’t you open your interface and tell me what kind of spirit would be able to do what I just did?”
Reticence and curiosity warred inside of Noem for a moment, but curiosity won handily. He opened his interface, which was pitch black as he swiped through the tabs he’d made. Not a single speck of colour shone through until he reached the screen he’d set to the most number of swipes away; his skills. They all shone the same marigold as the statue’s Qi, but when he tapped on one of them, that screen turned black as well.
Except for a small pinprick of colour in the exact center of his interface. Noem squinted at it as it appeared to be getting bigger, and after a few seconds, he could almost make out a long rectangle instead of the single dot of colour. A little more time passed, and as the colour grew larger, it grew faster. Until Noem could see chunks of black between the marigold, growing and revealing the blocky letters of a hidden message.
{SURPRISE, DUMBASS!}
Noem stared wide-eyed at the two simple words while the statue lost it. She laughed herself to tears, which came out as droplets of shimmering Qi, then paused to take a breath when she saw Noem looking at her. And when she took in his expression, that same laugh sputtered out in wet bursts until she’d lost control yet again.
“Wow. Real mature.” Noem said sarcastically. He closed his interface and crossed his arms while the statue laughed herself silly. “For something that’s claiming to be one of the most powerful mythical creatures the world has ever imagined, you’re making a pretty shitty first impression.”
The statue held out a hand as she got the last of her giggles out. “Sec–ahem–second impression. You were at least a little shaken by the huge hologram.”
“...Alright, I’ll give you that.” Noem reluctantly agreed. “On another note, say that I actually believe you’re a Djinn. Why does that give you control over my interface?”
“Like I said, I can’t say more. Secrets and all that. But… I guess I do owe you a little bit of an explanation if I want you to help me.” The statue smiled as if she was very happy she had someone to offer an explanation to. “You learned that spirits were separated into two types, right? Living and Elemental?”
Noem nodded. Living spirits were the ones that had been alive at one point a very long time ago, and could somehow propagate. Elementals were born from phenomena or high Qi concentrations, and took much less distinct forms than their living cousins. The strongest living spirits were the apexes, and the strongest elemental spirits were the incarnations.
“Well, the Djinn are a third type of spirit.” The statue gestured at Noem’s arm, then at herself. “We’re system-born, and there aren’t very many of us at all. No, that’s not true anymore–there weren’t very many of us. Since a few years ago, our numbers have ballooned to mid double digits.”
“Double digits? That’s not really…” Noem trailed off as the implication struck him. “System-born? You’re digital, but you also have Qi?”
The statue smiled eagerly and pushed herself off the bench. “There’s stuff going on in the background you don’t have any idea about, and there’s even more stuff that hasn’t really started yet.”
She walked right past Noem and wiped her hand through the air. A screen followed her motion, and it propagated into a massive wall of flowing digital information that Noem couldn’t make heads or tails of. The statue dipped her hands in the flow of information and sculpted it to meet her desires, then withdrew her hands with a flourish of her fingers.
The screen shifted to show exactly what Noem saw. A perfect duplicate of his system overlaid on his contacts. He slowly raised a hand into his field of view, and the screen mirrored his movements without a single millisecond of delay.
“I’ve been watching the two of you ever since you and Mona set foot in the Great Quarry. And just you for a lot longer.” The statue turned and folded her hands behind her back. “You aren’t a hero. Hell, you're barely a cultivator. And you’ve got a lot of problems that I might never be able to help you fix, but you’re also doing things I can confidently say I’ve never seen anyone try before.”
She stepped into Noem’s personal space and pressed herself up against his stomach. Her head turned to look straight up at him, and though their positions were reversed, Noem felt the same pressure as when the hologram had looked down on him.
“I’m not looking to bond. I’m looking for a partnership.” The statue’s words shook the room and set her Qi ablaze. The stuff that had entwined with Noem’s rumbled in harmony, and his Qi underneath rose to meet the challenge. “I will do everything in my power to help you overcome the limits of an unbonded human, and you will help me become powerful enough that I will never need to stoop low enough to take a bond.”
The statue balled her hand into a fist and pressed it to Noem’s chest. Right over his heart. “I am The Artisan, creator of the Great Quarry and all that spread from it. You are nobody, but you have struggled and fought to run alongside some of the greatest monsters of your generation.”
“Let me shape you, and in turn, I will open myself to be shaped.”