This time, I beat the brothers to dinner. I had already eaten two slices of a pizza that I hadn’t had in thirty years by the time they joined me. They looked exhausted; their hair was out of place, and Elicec had a fresh cut across his forehead. Both of them looked like they had run a marathon and then fought a dragon afterward. Did forming a core take that much out of you? Was it because their race formed two?
“Hey guys, everything okay?” I asked, my voice was full of concern. I hoped they were okay and that if anything was wrong, it hadn’t been caused by bumping into me.
“Great!” they both said at the same time before Cecile continued alone.
“We formed our cores on the first try, and it turns out the mana in this place is pretty potent. We both managed to get a C-grade. I had expected a D at best, considering where we came from. This wouldn’t have been possible without you, Dave, so get that frown off your face. Tonight is a celebration!”
“My brother is right, and he's underselling it. Our cores are even aligned already. I’ve got a knowledge affinity, and he’s got a hoe affinity,” Elicec added.
“Not to sound judgemental, but yours sounds a lot more useful than his Elicec,” I said. What did an affinity with a hoe even mean? Could he use it as a weapon? Sow seeds better?
“Oh no, while knowledge is great, and I’m glad to have it, the gains are much more abstract than my brother’s. He can specialize the hoe as a weapon or use it to grow mana-infused plants. It’ll have some pretty amazing uses as he grows his core,” Elicec explained while his brother kept smiling like it was the best day of his life.
“Well, I’m glad you’re both happy with the results. As for me, no core yet, but I did learn a ton. After dinner, I should be able to complete my first quest,” I said, stuffing another piece of pizza into my mouth between words. I had forgotten how much I loved this place’s cooking.
“Well, there’s always tomorrow. Make sure you complete the quest with the system, or it won’t count. So, with everything you learned, is the world making a bit more sense now?” Cecile asked while his brother placed their order with the waiter.
“Yeah, somewhat; one question, though, you can probably still help with. How do you all keep track of the time? I haven’t seen any clocks anywhere.” As I asked this, what looked like two bright blue heads of cabbage appeared, one in front of each of the brothers.
“Oh, yeah, you probably don’t know about universal time. So the way our mom taught us when we were kids was to close our eyes and focus on the smallest bit of passing time we could think of, and try to think of that filling up the next increment of time and so on. She used different words, but they probably won’t help you,” Cecile explained.
After my next bite of pizza, I closed my eyes and considered a second. I wasn’t sure if that would be small enough, but generally, everything else was just defined as fractions of a second instead of their own unique units. Plus, I knew roughly how to count out a single second; that wasn’t going to happen for a millisecond. I counted out sixty seconds and then tried to picture sixty grains of sand filling an hourglass. From there, I pictured sixty of those hourglasses on a shelf labeled hour. As I started to picture twenty-four shelves, a new image flashed in my brain.
June 3rd, 2024, 8:27 PM.
Assuming I understood how this concept of universal time worked, that meant over two days had passed since the invasion. I would have assumed it was only the second day, not the third. Where had the lost time gone?
“Did it work?” Elicec asked, interrupting my confusion.
“Yeah, though I can’t fully account for all the time I’ve spent here. So, I think I understand how this works. The system is translating its passage of time into whatever the person’s normal passage of time would be considered, is that right?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s how I understand it as well. For example, if I say we should meet back here tomorrow at eighty thirty PM for dinner, you probably heard that translated as a time you understand, whereas I certainly said it in my own local time.” As Elicec explained this, his brother picked up a whole cabbage and ate it in one giant bite, licking his lips after finishing it.
“Yeah, strange. How does the translation work anyway? We can’t speak the same language, can we?” I asked, figuring I may as well get another curiosity out of the way.
“Yep, that’s another gift of the System. There are whole fields of study into it, so I can’t explain much beyond that. As for your lost time, this is our third dinner since we’ve been in the archives. We just assumed you were too busy for the last one. Did you sleep through a whole day?” Elicec asked.
“I must have. I guess the stress had gotten to me even worse than I realized. Well, congratulations again on the cores, guys, but I don’t want to stay out too long again tonight. I’ve got some more reading to get to before I hit the sack and get back into the library tomorrow. I also really want to see what happens when I complete this quest,” I said as I pushed my plate forward and took one last drink of soda.
They both wished me luck as I left. The fact that they had such a great experience forming their cores relieved a lot of the guilt that I had been harboring from them becoming entangled in my mess. That, in turn, did more to reduce some of my stress levels. Now instead of worrying about screwing up their lives, I just had to worry about saving my world—no pressure at all there.
Once I was back in my room, the first thing I did was sit down at my desk, letting the system’s interface flashback into my vision. The same welcoming voice played just like it had before. This time, though, instead of asking any questions, I focused on the options I could read on the menu.
Master Arena Control System
v2,000,000.7ST
Status Quests
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
I selected status, only to be greeted with what should have been a readout of my level and attributes. Instead, it was a series of errors. While I had expected this, it was still disappointing to find. I wondered if the librarian could give me any advice on this. She seemed pretty knowledgeable. I’d ask her in the morning when I made my return to the archives, I decided.
Returning to the previous screen, I selected quests instead. Unlike the last sub-menu, this one produced no errors. I had two quests listed. The first was the one I had worked on today: Read Karlinovo’s Guide to Core Creation, and there was an exclamation point at the end of it. Did that mean it was completed? The second one was greyed out and said Save U-1.9392912^10e37 Earth-107I2T112. I had no idea why it hadn’t been listed the night before or what exactly it meant for the quest to be greyed out. Luckily, I had a book with me that could probably help there.
For now though, I selected the first quest. The next screen showed a bright yellow quest complete banner above the original text of the quest, and the system’s voice once again played in my head. “Quest complete, three new quests unlocked. Your reward is a better sense of inner self.”
Just as I started to contemplate what that meant, I felt something surge through me. Somewhere around my heart, I could now feel the tiniest bit of energy inside myself. I didn’t think it was a core based on the writings I had gone over today, but it was certainly something. It was possible that this was what most people exposed to ambient mana felt all their lives. I’d have to ask the brothers tomorrow or see if I can find a book about worlds without mana. I returned to the main quest screen and read my new quests, two of which already had exclamation points next to them.
Read Karlinovo’s Guide to Core Creation Learn About Core Grades! Learn About Mana Orb Slots! Read Doplingint’s Manual on Synergistic Effects
Save U-1.9392912^10e37 Earth-107I2T11
This implied that I could complete a quest before I even knew I would receive it. Did that mean that the listed quests were simply hints at potential paths I could pursue? Every bit of information managed to unlock even more questions in my head. I opened the core grades quest and read it over.
Learn About Core Grades Understand the concepts behind why cores are formed at different levels. Reward Core Grading Ability
“New ability unlocked, Core Grading, Rank F,” the System’s voice said as soon as I read the reward. What did that mean? How did I use my abilities? I acted on a hunch and returned back to the first screen. My hunch had been correct. Now, between Status and Quests, there was a new option: Abilities. I went back into quests, determined to get through that before starting anything new, and selected Mana Orbs.
Learn About Mana Orb Slots Understand how to slot a mana orb into a core and how it grows once slotted. Reward Mana Orb Grading Ability
“New ability unlocked, Mana Orb Grading, Rank F,” once again, the System’s voice announced the ability the moment my eyes glanced at the words. Is there a way to turn that off? It had been growing annoying.
“Can I disable the reading out loud of notifications that I have already seen?” I asked the System.
“Yes, would you like me to do that?” it asked in return. I very much did.
“Yes, please, and thank you,” I said, glad to be done of that annoyance.
“Active reading notifications disabled. They can be reenabled at any time,” the System said. I had zero intention of reenabling them.
I returned back to the main screen and went into the ability menu. The only things listed were the two I had just unlocked.
I selected Mana Core Grading and read the description. “Mana Core Grading allows the user to predict the grade and affinity of a core given the current environment and history of the soul involved. Higher ranks will improve the accuracy of the prediction as well as give insights on how to improve the outcomes.” It was also labeled as a passive ability. I assumed that just meant it was always running in the background of my brain somehow.
Mana Orb Grading had a similar description. It let me predict how a mana orb would interact with a core and what kind of abilities it could gain. It was also labeled as a passive ability. There was a pretty high learning curve with the system's complexity, which I was somehow expected to overcome in only a few years' time. My only real choice was to rise to the occasion, as failure meant the end of everything I knew. Oh good, there was that existential dread again.
I focused my mind and managed to push it back down. I still had to read the last new quest before I could lose myself in the book I had brought with me. I selected it and read it over. All I had to do was read the book, and I would be rewarded with an insight. I didn’t know if that was something unique to the system, like quests and abilities, or just a fancy way of saying it would give me an idea of what to do next.
I dismissed the System’s menu and grabbed the book I had checked out. Instead of pondering the nature of the quests, I could read about how they actually work, and that seemed like a much more productive use of my time. The first piece of information I gleaned was that quests could be literally anything. The author had managed to track down someone with something as small as scratching their nose and as large as defeating a multiversal army of sapient black holes. Interestingly, though, it seemed the System never gave a quest that it considered impossible. That didn’t mean the odds in the questors' favor would be high, but as long as they weren’t zero, it could be assigned as a quest.
Now, in reality, I knew that didn’t actually mean much; giving someone a quest with a success chance below one in one-millionth of a percent may as well be zero, but it was still likely an important distinction, as that meant there was at least some intelligence behind how they were assigned.
Rewards seemed to range just as much, though they were generally something that was always useful. Quests should also produce experience, which is used in leveling. It wasn’t lost on me that I had not received any experience for the quest completion. It was probably tied to the error that I received whenever I tried to check my level. I was going to need to find a way to resolve that, as from everything I had read today, levels were constantly referred to as a vital component of growth.
What I didn’t learn anywhere in the book was why I had a quest that was greyed out. That was frustrating, but there was nothing I could do to help it tonight. I resolved myself to another restless night of sleep and resumption of the knowledge hunt tomorrow.