OSOS - 0x0F

Initium

image [https://i.imgur.com/ONYtUEH.png]

m( -.- )ra

Mara glared at the floating prompt, it was cold and without fanfare, as if it were saying, ‘Congratulations, you've earned yourself a whopping C- for taking the easy way out’. But it wasn't the demeaning take that she may or may not have been projecting onto the indifferent display, no, it was that this panel was one distinctly separate from the persistent singular panel that Debug had taken to recently. She knew this for sure because the uncanny feeling of Debug’s solid-but-weightless presence remained unmistakably within her back pocket, which left only one other entity that could possibly act like her skill.

The System… So it knows when I leave dungeons? Par for the course I suppose, but does that extend to knowing exactly where I am? I want to assume so, because that would easily double as a way for any other magic to find or search for things… Well, that's fancy but a little too trusting for my taste– Hey Debug, if you can spare the cycles, mind figuring out if we can disable or jam this somehow? It's not a big priority, just let me know how it goes when I get some time alone to check in later.

Feeling a confirming buzz reverberate from her weightless tablet of a skill, Mara attempted to retable the ever-looming thoughts on what a potentially omnipotent magic system really meant from a larger point of view, alongside the wider branching concerns stemming from an unshakable feeling that such a thing somehow had an attitude, and with her specifically to boot…

Well, whatever. Problem for a different day.

Seeing Celeste had noticeably slowed her pace to wait on her aloof ass, Mara added a bit of pep to her step to gain on her enigma of an escort. The woman had claimed she was headed back to town, but after countless weeks of solitude, it just seemed too good to be true. Something about her made it so easy to trust her off the bat, but the doubts hadn’t exactly been quiet over their little stint of a jog as it morphed into a gauntlet of a trek. However, perhaps in spite of how this strange world seemed to deal its cards, Celeste had genuinely gotten her to safety.

Putting aside the superstitious unease, she’s at least been nice enough not to pry. I was half-expecting my first isekai encounter to be some rando douche magically mugging me for all my secrets, but instead we’ve basically accomplished the exact opposite by spending the whole day running flat out with nary a word between us. At this point she has to have just as many questions as I do, and I’m definitely in need of lodging for the night… So are we doing dinner together or something? The view certainly hasn’t been unappetizing, but… is that all this is?

Hearing the crunch of Mara’s footsteps hastily catching up, Celeste couldn’t keep a grin off her face; the ashen haired girl was certainly a bit taciturn, but, begrudgingly, rather endearingly so. Of all the people to pick up a random girl in a dungeon, Celeste wouldn’t even have cracked the top-ten in guesses at her local tav, not that that was what she was implying to do. Not at all. But the thought alone of the rumors that would abound among the locals at her watering hole was more than enough to give pause and reconsider her course of action.

“Um– So… I honestly had no idea we’d make it back by sundown. I figured we might make it by late tomorrow at best but… Damn, the legs and lungs on you could kill a Plainstrider. That's the first time I've seen even a hint of a lag from you since we started this morning.”

Caught off guard by her comments, Mara quickly scrutinized Celeste’s expression. Seeing that it was more bewilderment than suspicion eased her anxiety, but her unexpected physique, and her own obliviousness to it, was baffling in its own right. Sure she’d been jogging around the obelisk on the daily, but between Celeste’s massive strides necessitating full-sprint speeds just to keep up, and the sheer distance they had to have covered, something wasn’t adding up.

My. God. I've been tailing this woman full-tilt from sun-up to sun-down over who knows how many kilometers, how did that not seem even remotely absurd?... Like how in the hell did that just feel like a morning jog that went on too– Oh! Bio! That's right. Debug said it altered my body to match my race, which bumped some of my stats, but to think such marginal increments would change me to this extent? I can’t believe I don’t look like a gym rat. Debug was a bit vague about what that all entailed, but I think Bio jumping up two whole levels for at least this was justified.

However, all that aside, there’s still the problem of Celeste. I feel a little called out, but she’s not wrong. I'm not even remotely tired at this point– Actually, now that I think about it, I feel… airy? Mmm… Yeah. ‘Airy’. Lightweight, not lightheaded… ‘Styrofoamy’? Maybe. Actually now that I’m noticing it, this ‘feeling’ is super weeeeeird… Aaaaand now I’m really really tempted to just jump up and down like a little goofball because gravity feels sponge-y…

Celeste, still finding it exceedingly hard to read the spry little mage, furrowed her brow as it became ever more obvious that no response to her comments was coming. So clearing her throat, Celeste gestured to the town as she tried to lighten the mood.

“Yeah… So I bring that up because it's late, guards are definitely on third shift, and I doubt I’m going out on a limb assuming you ‘don't have any identification on you’.”

Realizing she was zoning out mid-conversation again, Mara eeked out a nervous chuckle and a vague agreement in response to what she thought sounded like a question.

Assuming, not incorrectly, that Mara’s response was a confirmation of her assumptions, Celeste shrugged as if resigning herself to the circumstance, but internally she was practically cheering. “I figured you didn’t, I did just find you in the Lost Wilds after all. Well, I’m sure there’s a policy for people like you, happens from time to time, but it’s probably best we go by in the morning– For tonight though, I think we can hole up at my old mentor’s place…”

Pivoting as she scanned the neighboring fields, Celeste eyed the smattering of cabins that indiscriminately spanned the fields around Elsa Myr until she spotted the one that she shared more than a few years of familiarity with.

“There! That one, over on our right, that's Thelma’s place, she built it herself if you can believe it. I used to stay with her for a stint, but after her friend Mads moved in a couple years ago it got a bit too crowded for my tastes…”

Spotting the quaint little cottage a few fields over that Celeste had mentioned, Mara couldn’t help but wonder about this new world. Yet contrary to the curiosity, just asking about even the most mundane things felt like they’d betray her other-worldy origins.

I'm not entirely sure we even have the same vocab for basic things like ‘bathroom’, the fact that we haven’t had an issue yet is astounding… Why is that? I've seen DB translate plenty of written things, but Celeste is speaking what, arguably, sounds like modern English. But that doesn't make any sense, so much of our lexicon is constantly evolving. Even in the same country, the way people talk shifts in less than a decade, let alone the plasticity of slang…

Still unsure if Mara’s muteness was to do with why she hesitated at the threshold of the dungeon, or if the poor girl had just pushed herself a few kilometers too far. Plenty of cadets full of fire put themselves in far worse shape for much less, but it spoke volumes of what she’d been enduring in the wilds by herself. Just considering how long Mara might have been lost out there was heartbreaking, and here she was lamenting her own sob story. Clicking her tongue at her own ineptitude, Celeste shifted topics to something more tangible.

“Ah, but that’s neither here nor there. Thelma will be ecstatic to have guests over for dinner and we can figure out next steps for you after a good night’s sleep in a warm bed.”

Turning to see the look of skepticism plastered all over Mara’s face, Celeste misread it as unease and immediately tried to dispel any worries. “Oh– No need to be nervous. Thelma’s a little stern, but it’s not like you’re meeting my mom or anything– Ah– A-hah-haha…”

Confirming her suspicion that that was nervous laughter coming out of Celeste's mouth, Mara looked at her with a mix of incredulity and confusion, the gears turning in her brain as she chewed on the idea that someone made this pinnacle of feminine fitness nervous. “Wait– That sounds like I should be concerned… What exactly am I walking into here?”

“Well…” Celeste, motioning to resume their walk, “when I started freelancing, it was with some friends of mine from an old town up east. After a short stint as dungeon escorts, we got ourselves into a lose-lose situation too many tiers deep. I had the highest con, so it was only me left after endless hours when the most absurd thing saved my life. All at once the entire floor exploded into chaos! Through smoke and shrapnel, all I could make out was a blur, circling me, rapidly disposing of every single monster around me, like my own personal seraph of death. It was an absolutely terrifying display of destruction and devastation, all the more so because the cause of it all was a single person. When I finally saw them properly, every bone in my body wanted to flee, but instead I was blessed with a revelation. Suddenly, everything that had transpired that day seemed so fleeting, and I knew without a doubt that all I could want and more was within my grasp, if only I could learn how such a feat was even possible.”

Mouth agape, Mara slowly blinked at Celeste as she mulled over the spew of information. The true potential of a world-integrated stat system was really starting to sink in, equally both in promise and terror. The implications alone were so intriguing, she found herself diving down the rabbit hole as she blurted out her unfiltered thoughts.

“I have so many questions, and I don't want to be insensitive, but, like, exactly how fast does something have to be moving to blur?! That's absurd to consider... because that would mean I could do that one day… but the g-forces would– Sorry, go on?”

Glancing down at the little enigma of carnage she'd found, Celeste felt a tinge of deja-vu as an irresistible grin made its way to her lips. Here was this girl, one moment mute as a monastery, the next, hyper-fixating about ‘Gee Fourses'. She’d never met a child of the forest before, only heard stories in passing, but this ‘Mara’ was, without a doubt, something else. She knew from experience that normals are gone by their first night, and a stranded free-agent might make it a whole fortnight, but to come out of it unscathed and untraumatized? The inarguable impossibility that Mara presented continued to puzzle her as she resumed her story.

“‘Huh– Well, without much ado, the entity responsible was just a hazy after-image by the time the last body hit the floor. Obviously after that, I didn’t have too much to go on, but someone or something of that caliber had to be known in some circles. So after performing rites for the dozens that didn’t make it, I fixed my attention on investigation and pursuit. With a few months of intermittent guild and crest work, I had managed to follow a trail of leads until, at last, I’d found ‘her’– Not a monster or a force of nature, but a real person! It took me so long to find her because she’s an old retired home-body these days, but she used to be famous! Former royal-guard turned free-agent, turned shut-in, the esteemed Lady Thelma Durji herself.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

A guild of free-agents sounds an awful lot like an Adventurer's Guild by another name, that’s exciting– And this Lady Thelma used to be in service to the king? With her feats? Jeez– I wasn’t expecting to bump into someone so prominent right off the bat. She is retired twice over, but do stats persist with age? I doubt she’s barely any slower than in her prime. God, I hope she’s not looking for a fight…

Noticing the blank expression Mara seemed rather fond of adopting, Celeste realized that the poor girl had absolutely zero context for how impressive Thelma’s many achievements were. Opting to skip further fanfare, Celeste picked up her story on the day she finally met her savior face-to-face.

“Anyways, it took me another month to finally make my way to this little town of an outpost, and within a week I’d found myself at her doorstep. Before I could knock, she’d opened the door, and I knew then, without a doubt, that she was the person I’d seen that fateful day. I of course immediately made a fool of myself, begging her for answers and lessons alike, but I got none. For over a month afterwards, I’d make the daily trek out to her cabin, ask her what she was doing, then beg her to teach me how she’d come to such a pinnacle of agility, and each day she’d respond like a brick wall, until one day she didn’t.”

Stretching her jaw as if she was relieving some long-lost tension, Celeste paused to check their surroundings before continuing.

"I was about five weeks into this little song and dance of ours, when she finally did something other than completely ignore me. I woke up the next day, two fields over and half a meter into the dirt. I don’t know what hit me, but I had to assume it was her, so you can imagine my hesitation on returning. Of course that was far from enough to dissuade me entirely, and when I found her the next day, she hit me with exactly the same thing as before. Three months in I could finally take a few punches and I was starting to understand what she was doing. Nine months and I was starting to get this feeling like she was somehow taunting me. Like she was teasing me with the answers I had been searching for, if only I could give her a reasonable challenge to earn her respect.”

Startled by how candid violence seemed between the two, Mara couldn’t help but be curious. Survival was all about observation, the more she could learn before meeting this dynamite of an individual, the better.

“Wait, but– I assume you have some sort of healing thing, but were you just passively gaining power from getting the crap beaten out of you?”

Noticing they'd reached the outer fence of the little red wood cabin, Celeste fiddled with the gate latch with a reassuring smile.

“Heh. We sparred pretty much every day for nearly three years. I’m still without answers, but after some time away, I think I did find what I was searching for.”

Not entirely sure what to make of that, Mara defaulted to returning a smile while she let her eyes take in Thelma’s humble estate. Centered around a modest two bedroom cabin constructed of precisely milled timber and surrounded by an open-frame wooden fence. One could even call the place a pinnacle of perfectionism, if not for the excessive greenery intent on overtaking everything in sight. The chaotic overgrowth seemed to have ‘exploded’ from what was once a humble garden patch into what was easily its own standalone ecosystem. A diverse variety of vines and branches had already snatched half the house from sight, a dichotomy of structure and chaos knitted together like oil on canvas.

Oh wow! Now that I’m really looking, every plant looks like a different species, was all of this intentional? Whoever nurtured all this has one hell of a green thumb… Hey DB– Can you analyze all of these? Actually, analyze anything you want and we can chat about it later tonight.

Feeling Debug’s ‘display panel’ buzz from her back pocket, Mara sent a mental thanks before following Celeste through the wooden gate she’d just flung open without care or concern. Catching it half out of instinct, Mara snatched the gate just before it nearly clattered against the fence. She was just going to absentmindedly swing it closed as naturally as she’d grabbed it, when an intrusive curiosity peaked her attention.

Huh. I'm not sure if I should be more impressed, or disappointed. This latch isn't even remotely magical. It looks like something I'd have picked up at the hardware store. Though it does look handmade– Or hand-forged? It doesn’t look machined, but it’s clearly made by a professional… Interesting, if blacksmithing is a well practiced trade, does that imply runes aren't? Or just that it's been priced or restricted out of common usage?

Uuargh– Fuck. I really want to ask Celeste, but– She assumed I was a mage, maybe I could ask her in some context to that, but then she'd just have more questions about where I came from if I’m just expecting every door and latch to be magical when it’s clearly not the norm here… Frustrating. Buuut I guess that's just another question for when I know more about this country's magic or tech level, or god forbid, lack thereof–

“Hey Thelma! I brought a friend!”

Flinching at the sudden outburst snapping her out of her fixations over the widespread magical utilities of the world, Mara reflexively shot a look of indignation towards Celeste before it clicked she was summoning this terrifying ‘mentor’ of hers. Lady Thelma Durji, a force of nature masquerading as a person. Someone who could send the two-and-half-meter Celeste flying into a neighboring field with just a single punch. A peak example for the potential of stats–

Hangon, did that gnome just sprout out of the ground?

Closer to the cabin, in one of the heavily overgrown planters, a bearded creature no larger than half a meter had appeared. With a head of silver locks, facial hair to its belly, and a backdrop of greenery, it was the spitting image of a high-quality lawn ornament, sans the iconic little red cap.

Whatever it was, it at least wasn’t moving, but it definitely wasn’t there just a moment prior. It looked mostly-normal, maybe a bit too realistic, but all that did was come off as uncanny and that just screamed danger. Combined with Debug’s non-stop alerts emanating from her back pocket, Mara wasn’t sure if she should call out to Celeste or try to pull off a surprise attack before it moved again.

Yet even with overwhelming preconceptions caught in her throat, Mara still found herself surprised as the maybe-gnome, or rather Thelma, casually spoke with a voice far more voluminous than her sheer size would seem to purport. Like a calm river over soft gravel, it washed over Mara’s fight-or-flight impulse like the tide over a campfire. It wasn’t exactly deep, but it had an aged temperament, and it was definitely not the cutesy-mouse voice Mara would have assumed.

“Oh, now this isn’t something you see every day, two visits from Celeste in less than a month. I wasn’t expecting you back for a good week or more at least, yet here you are, and with a new friend apparently.”

Suddenly caught in the headlights of a dissecting gaze that could level mountains, Mara’s mouth struggled to spasm out a few of the words of an introduction she’d suddenly found herself without. “Hi. Uh, yeah– Mara.”

Unfazed by any semblance of the concept of social awkwardness, Thelma simply vanished, like she wasn’t even there, only to be standing just beneath Mara’s eyeline as if she’d always been there.

Staggered, Mara found herself taking a half-step back on instinct, just to reinsert some much needed personal space between herself and the thigh-high silver-haired bullet that now seemed to be picking at her hoodie’s elastic hem. Celeste had said she was fast, but it was only with the scent of freshly tilled dirt drifting in from the subtle after-breeze that Mara knew for sure that this ‘gnome’ was the Lady Thelma herself.

Christ, that’s not even a blur. Stat differences really are night and day here. But that does not excuse her disrespect of my personal– Wait, what’s this feeling… It’s itchy? Slightly unnerving? Like a cat slowly scratching at a door on the other side of the house… Wait, is she analyzing me with some skill without even asking? How fucking rude– Debug, figure out how to ‘Interrupt’ this.

Caught off-guard by her mentor once again, Celeste barely had time to process what was going on, let alone intervene, before her old mentor had just flashed to Mara’s side without even a greeting. Yet before she could even protest, there was an implosion of light, like it was pinching everything together. Then it was gone as quickly as it’d arrived, leaving Thelma two steps back from where she’d just been standing, hand still raised as if she’d never let go of Mara’s hoodie.

d[ –.– ]b

Debug had a problem, well more an issue by association. Like a warning light on a dash, it was an urgent call for attention, but not necessarily catastrophic failure. Yet. The source of it all? A girl named Mara, currently running full-tilt behind a barbaric beast of a woman named Celeste. The strange woman had shown up with a charm that seemed all too effective on the fallible meathead, and now they were supposed to be headed to town, but the colossal redwoods racing by them only seemed to be getting larger as the day progressed.

For now though, trusting with discretion seemed to be the best course of action. Wherever Celeste was leading them couldn’t be worse than whatever the dungeon could cook up to top last night’s events. Ideally they were headed for safety, so at least for now, the issue didn’t lie completely on Mara’s oblivious lack of foresight. In truth, the real cause for alarm seemed to be coming from something that had bothered Debug, not Mara.

Runic Recollections. Just resolving the name in the upper cortex leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t even have half the things needed to approximate that in the first place.

Gazing across the tangent non-space of Mara’s mana-well, past the ever consuming ‘lack’ sitting cozy in the center of it all, Debug could clearly see the tangled cluster of RR’s remains. Just looking at it felt ‘wrong’, like a guilt forgotten… Yet Debug was sure of its actions, there were no regrets. Runic Recollections was just a skill and its parts were necessary. Sure, the decision was made in haste, but that did not mean it was erroneous.

So why does it linger? Why does it irritate? It should be dust, dissolved to raw ether long ago… Yet still it persists… It remains…

Drifting from its orbit, out across gentle precession of mana descending into nothingness, Debug pulled up everything it had on RR. Thoughts and memories drifted forwards in response to its query, but one in particular caught DB’s attention, The System’s original description.

“...steeling your heart to your actions will no longer spare you from your demons.”

Glancing towards Mark, the sigil-making skill born from the ashes of RR, Debug knew it had done no wrong. Mara would have been dead many times over without it, from the emergency aid that had necessitated its creation, to the bastardized forms she’d used to kill her shadowy pursuers. No, whatever the real issue was, Debug was sure Mark wasn’t the source.

Ruling out one, Debug looked to its closest sibling, Trace. Perhaps the sight of one ruined skill was enough to trigger concerns over what was to become of the now fragmented skill. At the time, Debug had only needed a small piece of its sibling to complete its evolution, and at the time, it didn’t even have the cognition to consider the moral implications. Yet the result, conscious of the consequences or not, was now the ever-progressing fragmentation of Trace’s lattice.

As far as Debug knew, there was only one way to fix what was happening to Trace, but there were so many reasons why it couldn’t be done. If another Daemon Seed showed up out of nowhere, perhaps it could be mended, but even then there was no guarantee the process wouldn’t fragment another of Mara’s skills attempting to hybridize functions.

Ha. Another Daemon Seed. The first one was a level up reward, and there’s no guarantee the next reward will be the same. Factor in how long it’s bound to take the air-head to progress in the first place, and the math doesn’t lie… Trace is doomed if something isn’t done.

Letting its thoughts iterate over the hard-to-miss cracks in Trace’s structure, Debug began drifting across the remaining expanse between it and RR’s stragglers.

Maybe the state of Trace is at the root cause of it all, yet still–

I feel.

It’s wrong.

A sense of wrongness.

Like something amiss…

Something… missed?

Approaching the remaining fragments of Mark’s cannibalistic construction, Debug felt the strands were a perfect allegory to the many partial questions that seemed to be eating at the edge of its consciousness. Spooling what remained of RR back into a singular mass to analyze it, Debug could have sworn its own awareness was being pulled taut in tandem. Flashes of thoughts raced across its mind, partial sentences finding more prominence than ground, but some lingering long enough to surface into attention.

“A skill for the recollection of personal runic knowledge.”

‘Recollection’, the word resonated deep within Debug, like a coin dropped into a well. Unable to dismiss it, Debug failed to see a tendril of RR drifting its direction as it fished up the definition of the word.

“i.e. The action or faculty of remembering something.”

Suddenly, Debug sensed something link with its daemon core. Fragments of visions flashed through Debug’s mind as it registered the spooled fragments of Runic Recollection slowly entangling themselves within its lattice as all its senses began to go haywire just as everything seemed to blip out of existence.