System Core Administration Realm, five years later
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Wyxnos stood at his usual spot, checking the System’s messages. The dimensional gauntlet was fine although hundreds of demons poured from the coterminous dimension where the boundary of this world’s Ethereal was thin and worn out with the passage of millions of their brethren. It would take quite some time until the next Demon Lord could cross over, although the foolish summoners in the Scorched Continent kept trying to poke holes in the barrier that protected the Material world. All of the Pantheon’s churches knew to hunt for demon worshippers but they grew smart over the last two thousand years. Not even purging that entire continent would stop it, as they already spread to the rest of the world.
Keeping the fifth Demon Lord from being summoned was paramount. They had no idea which one would come. Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, and Envy were already defeated. That the first ones to come over were from the Deadly Sins series was a relief. These were predictable and it also meant the demons put this world low on their priority list. Despite being quasi-deific, these Demon Lords were mass-produced offshoots, clones of the Deadly Sins archetypes.
Worse, now that the Matriarch knew how cheap granting Perks to mortals was, it was obvious they couldn’t buy her services for what amounted to pocket change. They would need to ramp up the cost but Wyxnos wanted to keep it well under the cost of summoning heroes or imbuing natives with enough power to fight back. Summoned heroes could be sent back after their job was done but it would stir the Returner War currently underway on Earth. And draw attention to their world. So far they’d avoided the world-walkers and party-crashers. Imbuing natives with power had the issue of empowering their souls too much. Just like the level 200 bonus Perk, the System wouldn’t strip those gifts from the souls upon reincarnation. The imbued ones would grow strong and over several iterations could become a problem just like the Matriarch. One was more than enough.
Wyxnos couldn’t help but feel that this calm was just the lull before a storm. If it was due now or a few centuries ahead, he couldn’t now. He hoped the Broodmother could finish the job. Either way, it was one less thorn on Wyxnos’ side. He couldn’t tell which was the worse but the drawbacks of interfering further were greater than whichever outcome he wished to sponsor. He was under serious scrutiny from the rest of the Pantheon and both the System A.I. and Loki. He should stick to the basics, fulfill his duties, and let the issues solve themselves.
He glanced to his left. There, in a pocket dimension, a soul was reliving its life. Her life, but souls had no gender. Not after they were stripped of the trappings of their previous life like this one was. Damaged, broken, almost a Dungeon fragment when he recovered them. Souls might be indestructible but that was the very spark that gave them life. There were innumerable layers of energy around the spark that formed the various aspects of Being. Id, Ego, Superego, Memories, Consciousness, Identity, Beliefs, Karma, and even artificial ones like the System Status. The spell in which this soul was used damaged everything to the point of being unrecoverable.
Almost unrecoverable, regretfully. If it were impossible he wouldn't have to work so hard on it. Instead, he would have one disappointed reincarnator and a war with dragons. He had no idea which was the biggest evil but the latter meant less work for him. Anyway, the choice wasn't his anymore. He commited to a path and would see it done.
What Wyxnos did to restore this soul was nothing short of a miracle, even for a deity. Too bad the simpletons would never truly appreciate it. No, they just asked “is it done already? Why is it taking so long?” It was infuriating.
A full-out fight between the dragon faction and the Matriarch would be even more troublesome. Millions died in the simulations Wyxnos ran. And it was the dragons’ fault. The clumsily overgrown lizards liked their wide-area attacks too much. The Matriarch would move swiftly as her [Assassin] instincts dictated, cutting necks and skewering dragons with her favorite kind of spell. The bodies never hit the ground. But the enraged idiots ramped up the aggression. A flight of frenzied dragons that knew no restraint.
But his simulations had one problem, a huge unknown factor. He had no idea what the Broodmother was planning to do. Her stores of Divinity took a deep plunge after she cheated during Bundeus’ duel and subsequent reincarnation. She spent the last thousand years recovering and hoarding all the Divinity she could. Even her tithes to the Pantheon were outstanding. Their fellow Gods were looking the other way and after the duel, she would either pay her dues or it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Nah. Knowing her, she would boast how she was able to do what they didn’t. Then she would walk away, ignoring her debt. Attempting to collect would only make her brag more. It was a lost cause.
He went back to his duties. There was a bunch of change requests that he was collating into the new System iteration. For some reason, the Gods wanted a streamlined Class choice. One they could influence to guide the populations into this or that path. What they wanted was to put more weight into their own churches. Faithlessness and atheism were always a concern. The mortals were about to lose their freedom to choose any Path they wanted to take.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The System A.I. didn’t like it. Wyxnos had to tread carefully. If Loki got involved, the setup would be denied and the Pantheon would place the blame on him. He grumbled. Always him. Everything was his fault. It didn’t matter who spent his entire existence dealing with the System and shit from an angry and anxious Matriarch. While the other Gods were loitering and partying in their domains, Wyxnos was working in his Armani to the point of fraying the fabric. Honorable mentions to Yznera and Galbarar. These two were pulling their weight.
It was unfair. That’s why he felt just a slight pang of guilt when he thought about his plan to obtain the egg. Once he did, nothing else would matter. This world could burn for all he cared.
He kept working. Someone had to. He barely noticed when Galbarar entered the realm.
“Wyxnos. I came to check on our covenant. Is it--”
“Don’t,” the well-dressed deity cut the visitor off. “Don’t ask if it’s done yet. You know it isn’t,” Wyxnos hissed.
“What’s taking it so long? It’s been five full years!” Galbarar crossed his arms and glared.
Wyxnos closed his eyes and waved his hand. The scene changed, the featureless white of the domain became the void of space near the planet. Or what would pass for space, outside the planet. A sheet of black orbs geometrically arranged in hexagons floated before them.
“You’ve seen the spell the dragons used. It sacrifices the soul. They used it thrice. In what condition do you think the cat-kin [Queen]’s soul was when I retrieved it? Let me tell you, worse than Bundeus’ after the Matriarch shorn him down to the spark. At least his Divine spark was clean. Hers? A complete fractured mess. A mess I had to repair, bit by bit, wound by wound.”
“I understand that. Why are we here?”
Understand my ass, Wyxnos groaned inside. “How do you think I’m restoring her?”
“I have no idea.”
“I haven’t yet repaired all the wounds. These last five years were entirely used to heal the delicate fabric of her soul. I need what’s left to guide the healing process. Let me tell you straight ahead. It will take a few centuries more if nothing goes wrong.”
“Yes, a delicate process. Why are we here?”
“I needed to re-record her life. Only compiling her Status from the System logs is not enough, I needed the rest of the psyche. I don't have it. The only way to do it was to time travel.”
“Are we in the past?”
“No. We are still in the System Realm, but what we see here is eleven hundred light-years away from Yznarian now. I have an array of enchanted devices recording the emanations from the planet, following her movements. The output of this enchantment array is then fed to the System core to recreate the prioceptive and proprioceptive sensory input. This last step is still underway. Once I have it, I need to feed it to the soul and have her re-live her life. It’s the only way.”
“Basically it is VR. I don’t know why you just emulate it.”
“The Matriarch will know. I don’t have to tell you she’s a skilled Soul manipulator and knows the subject intimately. Even with all this setup, the data is garbled. We are eleven thousand light-years away. There’s a ton of noise, fortunately, magical emanations don’t follow the Rayleigh Criterion.”
“Who?”
“A scientist from home. Earth.”
“I know where we came from, Wyxnos. You don’t need to get angry.”
Wyxnos knew he would’ve had a heart attack if he were mortal. His blood vessels would’ve burst already.
Galbarar’s stony stance softened when Wyxnos didn’t reply. He indulged the former college teacher, “What is this Raleigh Criterion?”
“Electromagnetic imaging has a resolution limit. Anything below that will merge into a single signal. And no, it has nothing to do with electronics. But magic works on ten dimensions instead of the classical three. I can capture magical emanations at this distance and isolate the ones from the cat-kin [Queen] with a reasonable amount of noise. The System Core then attempts to filter this noise out by comparing it with the System logs of the people around her. But this process is done at twice the normal time. I mean, the array is literally looking at the past. But it is moving toward the planet at roughly half the speed of light. The recording process will take hundred-fifty years to finish.”
“Because she lived for three centuries,” Galbarar mused.
“Indeed. But getting the data to emulate her environment, feelings, and emotions is only half of the process. I still need to feed the data to the soul. Make her re-live her own life and add the System Status as she goes. It’s the only way to accurately restore the soul as I promised. I think I can make her re-live her life at an accelerated rate, but that is risky.”
“Remember our deal. No shady business,” The roman-cosplaying deity warned with a glare.
“No. As I said, I fear the Matriarch will sense any tampering we do with the soul. Even this process is imperfect. What I hope is that some memory remains in the fragmented state the [Queen] is now and the process merges with these scraps of memory to rebuild her psyche faithfully.”
“How fast?”
“Ten times the normal speed is too dangerous. The ideal would be at the normal speed but that’s another three centuries of wait. And no, I can’t use temporal magic. Any magic will interfere with the imprint process. Two times the normal speed is as fast as I dare.”
“Three centuries.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
The space around them warped again and the featureless infinite white returned. Galbarar looked at the soul in stasis and sighed. “Hideous. That’s now why we implemented the [Saints].”
“I know. But the Broodmother almost managed to pull it off.”
“Let the Matriarch know. Tell her it’ll be between three and four centuries. This should give you some room for error.”
Wyxnos was amazed as to how Galbarar could get under his skin even when he was allegedly acting with kindness.
The System egg. Wyxnos needed it. Then he could send all this shit to hell and quit his job. Or fire the pantheon.