You have died.
Re-allocation of resources will commence shortly.
The Soul System.
That’s what Zachary called it, anyways. There was another name for it which, to his teacher’s credit, he had been made aware of. It was a longer, more convoluted one; a title that went out of its way to complicate the straightforward, as if trying to cram in a basic summary of its functions and workings.
On the other hand, there was a definite chance that this extended title was the translator’s fault, inserting their personal opinions of how it should have been named, rather than the actual creator’s intention. Zachary hadn’t bothered to memorise the lengthy version. Soul System was snappier – and easier – to remember.
In essence, it was the rules governing life and death; the cogwheels that turned behind the scenes. Upon the death of a conscious being with the capability of free will, be it golem, human, beast or bug, their souls would be translated into a string of characters and fed back into a separate part of the Reality Stack. This “soul transcription” process would scour your being of its memories and spit out a completely blank slate, ready to be scribbled on once more.
Maybe this time you’d be an amoeba. Or a tortoise.
There were no exceptions to this rule; you die, you get reset and start out life again as something else.
Override code 1325a%731489 accepted.
Suspending re-allocation.
Unless of course, you had the master access code – which his teacher just so happened to have.
How lucky.
It was with this knowledge that Zachary had managed to survive and thrive in the multiple worlds that he had experienced. There was never any real danger to him; not really. He knew the construction of his reality to be akin to that of a video game, after all. Just pull up the developer console and flick on God Mode.
Five hundred and thirty six life cycles he had lived.
He had been a hero, a villain, the mysterious sage that lent the protagonist a hand and on a couple of occasions, the love interest - the entire spectrum. And he wasn’t ready to give up this pseudo-immortality just yet. In all his time spent gallivanting about the Reality Stack, he’d encountered not a single error in the system.
Not one.
It all ran smoothly. Courtesy of his teacher, Zachary had guessed. So why worry about tomorrow when today was still here?
Error! Soul transcription failure!
Please diagnose issue before re-allocation can continue.
Supervisor assistance required.
Not one error until now, that is.
Because by some cosmic coincidence, Zachary’s five-hundred-and-thirty-sixth death happened to coincide with not only a scheduled maintenance period, but a point in time where the supervisor-in-charge was not present to hit the proverbial “Allow” key to resolve the error.
Supervisor assistance required.
Supervisor assistance required.
Supervisor assistance required.
The system threw up prompt after prompt, desperately begging to be given the order to continue with its routine of cycling souls. This continued for a few minutes, before the rudimentary on-board artificial intelligence had had enough of the infernal chirping.
Switching to self-diagnosis mode.
It pulled up the error, the spanner in the works. A human soul? Big deal, they got trillions of these all the time. It was about to do a standard wipe and re-insertion when it caught itself. This error was caused by the entering – and perhaps more importantly – the acceptance of the master access code.
The sole master access code.
Meaning that this was an intentional error.
What to do, then? That was the issue.
The artificial intelligence pouted as it weighed its options. Push through the error, and hope that nothing goes wrong? Or reset the soul based on the pre-established protocol, and pray that the system supervisor wouldn’t delete it out of anger?
Hmm…
It decided to play it safe.
More information was required.
The soul’s properties were expanded, and the problem analysed to the best of its abilities.
The error, as it turned out, was caused by an abnormally large essence size. Where a typical human soul was around two hundred and fifty thousand characters, this one was almost five hundred times larger. And as the transcription software had been stripped back during the maintenance period, the system was unable to process it in its entirety.
Oh, the system AI clapped its metaphorical hands together in delight. The fix was simple, then. Split up the large soul size into more manageable chunks, and redistribute the data into other points of the Reality Stack. Not only would the error be resolved, the supervisor’s precious anomaly would remain, and the maintenance would proceed as per normal.
Problem solved!
If it had a face, that face would be beaming in pride at a job well done.
So the artificial intelligence got to work, diligently slicing down the bulky dataset into tinier haphazard chunks, and feeding it back into the Reality Stack at several different points. After it was finished portioning out the anomaly, it ran a quick scan to confirm that the transcription error had been resolved.
And it was.
Back to sleep, then.
Self-diagnosis mode deactivated.
~
Zachary had no idea what had just taken place - that his precious lives had been unceremoniously tossed out into the formless ether, ripped from his grasp. He’d experienced this rebirth many times before, so he had every faith that this time would be no different. A continuation from the previous life; a New Game Plus, if you would.
That was one major flaw of his pseudo-immortality. Or, looking at it from the perspective of the system’s creator, a feature.
After all, a brain cannot perceive anything until it is connected to a body; nor can words on a page read themselves. Even if a miracle were to happen, and the creations made privy to the secrets of their existence, there would be zero chance that they’d be able to do anything about it to the ones pulling the strings.
Zachary was therefore none the wiser when he opened his eyes to find himself in his five hundred and thirty seventh world. He looked around his spawn location, smiling. He’d never get tired of this- of getting to live yet another life, and make another set of decisions which would bring him more entertainment, more enjoyment.
It was a non-descript clearing in a lush, green forest, so his first task would be to find civilisation or whatever passed for it in this world.
“Oh, right- before I forget…”
He bent over, head bowed, and placed the arch of his right hand over his forehead, simultaneously flinging his left arm out with all flair. While this pose was a rather over the top one, it was necessary. It was a Skill Acquisition Condition for his signature, most defining feature.
Snapping his fingers, he spoke two familiar words.
“Mask Generation.”
Beneath his right hand, a masquerade mask formed.
You have acquired the skill Mask Generation.
You have created a “Masquerade Mask”!
He involuntarily winced as he felt half his mana drain from his body. Mana exhaustion was setting in.
Great, he grumbled to himself. Just great.
That was the trouble with being Level 1 again; it didn’t take much for your body to collapse into a panting, wheezing mess. Yes, he did know it was rather foolish to begin his new life by creating a mask. But the skill “Mask Generation” was one he’d picked up on cycle two; his first foray into a world outside of the one he had been born in – it just didn’t feel right without it by his side.
It was ostensibly a trash skill; it greedily swallowed up half your mana pool to create a flamboyant Venetian mask. In its defence, the mask did retain the effects he showed off as Demon Lord Masquerade, allowing one to alter one’s status.
But in the world he’d obtained it in, this skill was known to virtually everyone. It was an unspoken rule that wearing a Masquerade Mask in public would have you shunned and ridiculed. Children would giggle and point, while adults would click their tongues and hurry in the opposite direction.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
After all, what did you have to hide?
In other realities though; this once-stigmatized mask was instead an advantage. Nobody knew what the mask truly was, and just by ignoring that world’s established fashion conventions, enemies and allies alike would have to think twice before offending you.
Probably still shouldn’t have made one so early, though, Zachary thought, casually pushing through foliage looking for signs of life. Eh, it’s not like I’ll be doing any fighting soon. It’ll regen back in time.
After another five or so minutes of trudging through ferns and whatnot, Zachary had reached his breaking point.
There was no real need for him to do all this, this boring… minutiae! The first thirty or so Levels were the same in every world, anyways. Better to just speed through them and get to the fun bits; like dissecting a dragon while it was still conscious, or freezing a slime solid and shattering it to watch the wriggly bits attempt to reconnect.
He smiled, having reasoned himself into using Profile Swap. He was bound to use it anyways- why not breeze through the early game by power levelling off an already fully levelled character? It wasn't like there was a mana cost to an outside system skill.
“Plenty of choices, really… maybe the Genie King of Ethereal Emporium this time? Nah, too boring, he’d just wish for power and I’d be three quarters of the way to max level. I used Wandering Philosopher last time, so I’ll just skip him… Ooh! Necromantic Adept! It’s been a while since I’ve touched that Mask. Could be fun cosplaying a Necromancer this time- at least for the first thirty or so levels. Alright, it’s settled then.”
Zachary closed his eyes, focusing on the image of the Profile he wanted to switch to; then spoke the words.
“Profile Swap!”
He opened his eyes.
However, despite doing everything right, his profile didn’t change.
It was easy to tell; each profile had partitioned memories for the life that he led that cycle. If the skill activated successfully, forgotten fragments of his life would be instantly downloaded into his brain, his subconscious mannerisms and thought processes supplanted by the older persona.
It was him, yet not him, so there was a chance that the installed profile might decide to stay longer than Zachary desired. Most Masks played nice though, easily relinquishing their position to the newest in line after whatever they were summoned to do was completed.
The keyword being most.
“Huh. Never had that happen before.” Zachary mused. “Status.”
Access denied.
The meddling of the system AI reared its ugly head here; it had just so happened to nick the fundamental right of Zachary’s soul to open his own Status Page. He frowned at the transparent blue box that appeared in front of him, thinking through the possibilities of why his Status failed to materialise.
“Gaah! Is this… a damned quirk of this world?! No Status? Shit!” Zachary swore as he kicked a nearby tree. Without being able to see his Status Page, he couldn’t troubleshoot the nature of the Profile Swap failure. And if he wasn’t able to fix the Profile Swap failure, he’d be forced to level up the old fashioned way – like a native. He shuddered at the thought.
At this point, Zachary was still unaware that the number next to his Profile Swap skill…
Was a single, solitary one.
“Guess I’ll get Inspect levelled up first, and do a self-Inspect as a workaround. Stupid randomized world features… that old man needs to get off his ass and fix these shitty bugs.” He looked up at the sky to gauge the time. Good, it was still around noon. Plenty of time to find shelter and sustenance.
And he’d need both in spades; the Skill Acquisition Condition for Inspect was to stare at a point in space for an entire day straight without looking in another direction; which was why in the life cycle preceding this one, only prisoners would stumble blindly onto the Skill Acquisition Condition. Royalty and merchants would pass it down to their successors, while guarding the skill requirements from all others - information was king, and those who knew more than their enemies would win every battle.
As night fell, Zachary wrapped his arms tightly around the trunk of a tree, perching himself precariously on the branch he found himself on. He’d remembered something about this, a vague recollection from his first life – probably from a wildlife survival TV show, actually – if you couldn’t find or make shelter, then it’d be best to climb up a tree to keep from being eaten by wild wolves or bears. It didn’t sound quite right to him, but hey, if a celebrity was the one saying it, why not?
As one might expect, there had been no wildlife he’d come across that he could feasibly hunt at Level 1. He’d seen a couple of squirrels and something that looked vaguely like a horned rabbit, but they’d scampered off before he could get close. So after something like four hours of scavenging, all he had to show for it was two handfuls of red berries – and no water.
“Meh, I can keep searching in the morning.”
His stomach grumbled – right on schedule. “Welp, time to dig in!”
He picked out a couple that had the beginnings of rot appearing on their skins and tossed them down to the ground. The remaining berries were slightly bruised, but otherwise looked rather appetising. Zachary brushed the dirt off one of them, and popped it into his mouth, biting down. Immediately, a saccharine sweetness not unlike that of blueberries filled his mouth. He savoured the taste, letting the juices from the tiny ball of flavour roll around his cheeks, his eyes fluttering shut in ecstasy.
He popped another in his mouth. Then another. And another.
By the time dawn came around again, he had finished the two entire handfuls. He rubbed his eyes sleepily, yawning. The taste of the berries had kept him up for the whole night. There was no thought of even sleeping; it was all about keeping the berry train going. Speaking of berries, even the mere thought of them made him want to have more. He reached down to his lap for another, only to realise that they were all gone.
More, he thought. I need to find more.
So he slid down the trunk as quickly as he could – in such a hurry that he lost his grip a few feet from the ground and landed squarely on his back.
You have sustained 8 damage.
He ignored the notification and the throbbing pangs of dull pain through his back, instead choosing to scramble to his feet and start madly tearing through overgrowth in search of the bushes that he had scavenged the berries from.
If he’d been more attentive and less distracted from the irritation of not being able to switch Profiles or open up his Status Page, he’d have noticed the tell-tale signs of an outside system “Charm” effect.
And perhaps if he was a higher level, his innate DEF stat would have shielded him from the mental fixation Porri berries induced in small children and less discerning beasts.
The bushes were a common sight in the region and known to natives as an invasive species of vegetation. Their seeds – the cause of this fixation – were indigestible and would usually remain in the bodies of those that consumed them for an extended period of time. As they made their way through the digestive system, they would release chemicals that encouraged the subject to find and stuff more Porri berries down their gullet.
Until these miniscule pellets passed through and left the body completely, the higher mental functions of the victim would be hijacked, and full priority would be placed on locating more of those sweet capsules of nectar.
This was how the Porri berry bush reproduced, even despite having rather demanding requirements for its proliferation.
You couldn’t just plant it in the ground and periodically sprinkle water over its plot, no– it required fresh blood to flower. Thus it was said that if you saw a wild Porri bush, chances were that it was actually the gravestone of some animal that had been driven to insanity, then subsequent death from Porri extract toxicity – completing the cycle of reproduction.
It was on the fifteen handful of berries that Zachary felt that something might have been off; but by then it was too late.
He was, after all, only Level 1 – his HP pool was never that big.
He clutched his throat, gasping for air as his airways swelled shut, and only now noticing the angry red splotches on the backs of his hands and all the way down his arms.
You have sustained 20 damage.
You have sustained 20 damage.
You have died.
Re-allocation of resources will commence shortly.
It was funny, really.
In his previous life, he'd lived it large, doing as he pleased with the powers that he wielded. No barrier nor obstacle could stand in his way, and no master was his equal.
For all his exploits and feared reputation, the one that had ended the life of the Demon Lord Masquerade in this world was a simple berry bush.
Override code 1325a%731489 accepted.
Suspending re-allocation.
It sure was lucky he didn't only have one life to live.
Soul tether engaged.
Allocation complete.
In the clearing of a lush, green forest, the human known as Zachary Altair fell to the ground, wheezing. He rolled over onto his back, trying to catch his breath.
The memory of bright red filling his eyes as each individual capillary in his eyeball burst and his body literally suffocating himself was still fresh in his mind.
Okay, he thought. Let’s take this a little more seriously this time round.