Voices shouted in the other room while Cyrus played Rings of Uneira on his handheld console. Buttons clicked in a fury while he pushed himself harder than he ever had on the infamous challenge that had been hailed as the hardest level when the Internet had still existed.
Lyra sat next to him while she sketched a picture of a house at the top of a mountain. Some kind of lodge? Theo said that the Newton family used to have pretty good money. Maybe they had gone skiing or something. Wasn't she supposed to have stats and powers that turned her art or crafts into divine masterpieces? This was a basic doodle in comparison.
Music and sound effects blared mockingly as Cyrus's character slumped in defeat on screen as he got silver for the challenge instead of the coveted gold. He frowned at his lack of focus while he checked his fledgling status.
[Stats:
Body: None
Mind: None
Will: None
]
[Equipped Power List:
Slot One -- N/A
Slot Two -- N/A
Slot Three -- N/A
]
Unequipped Perks List:
Summon
Analysis
Limit Break
]
Cyrus ignored both messages while he focused on each of his perks in turn. Before everything changed and the Internet had gotten wiped he had found a rumor from someone under the age of 15 that had gotten their perk from the System a week after Initialization. They had *prayed* to it and asked for a power, but it gave them a perk instead with a message to learn and understand it to finish the Initialization... or to wait a year and it'd finish automatically.
He'd been on a warpath ever since to meditate on each perk in isolation as he pried every last secret from each perk’s unyielding grasp. Each perk was a component of a power and, while it could be used, it couldn't be customized or controlled that easily. It either worked or it didn't.
Summon *would* let him tag anything he wanted and summon it to him later on if it evolved into its own power, but for now, he could only tag things or summon whatever was near him for the scant few moments it worked. Analysis felt like it was supposed to create a link that would plug information directly into his mind, but since it was a perk, it just gave him increasingly more information on everything around him at once. Limit Break made him aware of his own limits or those of objects or people around him.
He hadn't figured out how to use it yet, though.
Did Limit Break work to *surpass* limits, make them more restricting, or did it reward him if he broke through and did something he couldn’t before?
Every time he toiled hard to do something he hadn't been able to before and then succeeded, he felt like something clicked into place. It helped him understand his newfound abilities each time it happened. Limit Break seemed to make it easier to reach up to that point of what it considered was his new capability. Cyrus restarted the challenge with a grimace.
Voices shouted in the other room.
"No, goddamn it, you're not fighting and that's final!" Rick shouted before Lana burst out of the room with Theo tight on her heels.
"Are we going home?" Cyrus asked Theo, who ignored him in favor of talking to Lana.
"I don't get why they're so upset. I could go with you and heal you. Keep you safe."
"You know why that's not a good idea, Theo. Besides, Victoria wouldn't want to risk you or any of the other healers fighting." Lana scoffed as she led the way toward the staircase.
"Wait!" Adelaide called out as she burst out into the downstairs living room with a wild look on her eyes as if she realized something. "You're always together, aren't you?"
"I don't know about always..." Lana reeled at the whiplash of parental conversation. Adelaide moved closer until she stood right in front of Theo and Lana. Rick, Herbert, and Roman... no, *Romulus*, stepped into the room to watch with varied expressions of confusion, disappointment, and general anger. Lyra continued to draw while she hummed to herself.
"Could either of you tell me why one of the greants called me the 'Mother of the Creator's Companion'?" Adelaide's tone was as cold as the winter she could create. Cyrus knew since she'd made it snow in the backyard of the Newton house several times so they could make snowmen. It had happened a lot since Theo and Lana usually left him behind when they were supposed to ‘watch’ him.
"Um... That's weird. Who kno—" Lana stuttered with a cartoonish look of fear in her eyes.
"Wait." Herbert grumbled as he pushed himself deeper into the room. His arctic white eyes glistened unnervingly. "Sapblood said I smelled like the Companion of the Creator."
"Uh, wow, that's crazy. I wonder who that could be." Lana's face seemed to crumple in on itself.
"You're not a healer, are you?" Romulus said, as he stepped closer to Theo. Cyrus's heart wrenched with longing for Roman. They were so similar. Roman had always been around to help Cyrus with homework or to beat a level of Rings of Uneira or show him what new video game he found for sale. But Romulus didn't give him the time of day.
"Of course I am." Theo scoffed.
"No. He's a fucking Biomancer." Romulus spat out as a blade of crackling power appeared in his hand. Cyrus winced at the sight of the blade full of a weight that seemed ready to cut the world.
"You two created the greants?" Herbert gasped as he stepped closer. "By the fucking Savior, what were you two thinking?"
"They did what?!" Adelaide roared as she glanced at Herbert's disgusted face to whirl on Theo and Lana. "How is that even possible?"
"It's like that Chimera Cow from your world..." Rick muttered darkly. "Is this why you want to fight? To atone for this or what?"
"Actually..." Lana whispered with a wince, "I just want the experience and challenge. I mean, I also want things to return to normal and everything, but that’s mostly why I want to go."
"At least you're honest." Romulus scoffed with disappointment as he turned to pin Theo with a revolted glare that pained Cyrus to see that expression on what looked like his brother's face. "What about you? Do you have any regret for tampering with life itself? I doubt you've stopped either. How many more spawn have you unleashed upon the world?"
"Two." Theo admitted casually, as if he were ordering a coffee. "I tried making three more, but they couldn't live. They were failures."
"You created more? I thought we said we were done after we found out they had somehow lived." Lana shrieked as silver flowed down her arms.
"I had to. I got so many levels out of it. Healing or modifying my body or others is nothing compared to creating new life." Theo beamed like he had the day the System Initialized everyone and his Healing power let him walk outside for the first time in weeks since he'd been bedridden. "It's so exciting."
"Did you create failsafes or weaknesses into them at least? Or did you not think and just let them loose?” Romulus growled while the knife he held in his hand shook with rage.
"I want you out of my daughter's life." Rick stepped forward with a steely edge in his eyes. “I don't care why or how you did it, but you did and continued to make more monsters. Sure, she helped you, but you did it.”
"What else did you create, Theo?" Lana demanded as she tugged on his arm hard enough to demolish a pre-System human's bones. Theo didn't even notice.
"Ghouls, by accident. I tried to see if I could bring someone back to life, but it didn't work correctly. I got the System notification for creating it and then I demolished all traces of it. After that, I created a Skeletaur."
"A Skeletaur? What the hell is that?"
"Oh. I made my skeleton sentient and planted a smaller hindbrain along with other sets of microscopic organs in the bone marrow so it could live. I had to kill and absorb the first few attempts, but eventually I made a perfectly functioning symbiotic variant that's hooked up directly to me. It acts exactly as I want it to, has its own set of body and sensory enhancing powers, and an Osteo Control power."
"You've doomed your world, Theo Anders." Herbert grimaced while he shook his head. "It doesn't matter if you kill it right away. Once a species gains access to the System, the System can create or spawn it in dungeons or in the wild. Biomancers are important, necessary even, but every person your greant, ghouls, and skeletaurs kill is on your hands. In our world, you'd be tortured very publicly until you were a husk. Only then would they put you in a stasis so they could wake you if or when your powers would be needed."
"I'd like to see them try." Theo chuckled. "Anyway, it's getting kind of late. We should go home, Cyrus, or Mom will get mad."
"You're not taking him anywhere." Lyra said as she turned to glare at Theo. "Leave."
"Fine." Theo shrugged as he left while everyone watched him go as the tension mounted. It felt like Cyrus's universe was a cake picked up off the counter and hurled onto the floor. Roman was missing or dead, and now it turned out Theo was responsible for the creation of the monsters that had them under siege. "Are you coming, Lana?"
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"No." Lana glowered at him while he left. She turned toward her parents with a wince. "I'm so sorry, I should've said something sooner I ju—"
"It's okay." Adelaide pulled her into a tight hug that Rick and Lyra joined in on. A family.
"I won't say that you did nothing wrong, but... it's his power, not yours." Rick said gently. “I do wish you’d told us, but it’s okay. We’ll handle it together.”
Romulus glanced at Cyrus with a melancholic frown. Cyrus restarted the challenge he had outright failed as he threw himself into a storm of prompts while he did his best to tune out the conversation and everything that had happened. It didn't work.
"Mom... Dad... I have something else to confess." Lana pulled back from the hug while Romulus and Herbert moved to sit beside Cyrus at the table out of the way while the Newton family talked. "I'm a big reason Eli was bullied his senior year before he di... before he went missing."
Addy and Rick hardly reacted beyond a slight frown while Lyra winced as she turned away.
"You told them?" Lana gasped while her twin nodded. "Why didn't you guys say anything?"
"We didn’t know until he told us some about what was going on at school and outside of it when things got bad with the mall and after he started seeing Dr. Simmons. Then Lana told us about what you said to her shortly after she started living with us after the declaration of martial law and then fully when monsters started popping up. We were and are disappointed, but we've realized that lashing out at you for it would be pointless." Adelaide explained.
"This whole Initialization has really shown us how much our priorities had shifted to our careers before it all happened. We thought we knew everything about you all... and we didn't. At some point we stopped listening and started assuming, and we're sorry. I'm sorry. So much has been going on that we hadn't really found a time to address everything that happened, but we've been doing our best to try harder. To be better." Rick smiled gently while he glanced at Lana, Lyra, and even Cyrus and Herbert, and Romulus. "We're all family."
After that, Cyrus threw himself into the challenges of Rings of Uneira. Cheap plastic clicked as he snapped his fingers faster and faster against each of the buttons and the analog sticks. Each round of the challenge blurred by as Limit Break seemed to stretch and expand as he grinded the challenge repeatedly for marginal improvements.
Romulus tinkered, and Herbert wrote lists and drew maps. Meanwhile, Lyra and Lana went off into the workshop to mess around outside of their parents' earshot, where they spoke together in the corner.
"What are you playing?" Romulus asked after Cyrus lost again. He was fifteen seconds away from getting the perfect score he needed.
"Rings of Uneira."
"Sounds interesting." Romulus peeked at the screen where Cyrus's armored Spellsword Knight waved his glowing sword in an idle animation. "Some kind of alternative historical fiction simulation?"
"What? No, it's a fantasy RPG with brutal game mechanics."
"Fantasy like mythology and fables and stuff?" Herbert asked after he set his pencil down beside his fully written on sheets of paper.
"I guess? Do you guys not have fantasy?" Cyrus paused the game while he stared at the two, wide-eyed.
"I mean... most stories and TV shows have heavy System and power involvement. Based on what it looks like, your game has a different System but it looks similar." Herbert shrugged.
"We also don't really have games like this either. Simulations are more lifelike when you're older and can help someone learn about the other types of powers there are or about the system in general before Initialization. If it involves spawn then it’s more to familiarize delvers with their weaknesses and strengths." Romulus said before he squinted at Cyrus. "You are kind of young, but have you Initialized yet?"
"Not fully. I have some perks, but no power yet." Cyrus said glumly while he resumed his game to look over his Spellsword Knight's abilities and consumables again. Maybe he was missing an item or skill he'd forgotten about that would help him shave off a few seconds on his time.
"Oh, that's okay, it can take some time... wait, did you say you have some perks? Why haven't you Initialized yet?" Romulus set down the roughly assembled watch that had been spare parts a few minutes ago.
"Well, I heard a rumor that if you really figure out the mechanics of a perk after you partially Initialize early, you can get other perks and keep that up instead of just getting whatever power the System gives out." Cyrus shrugged. "I don't want a random power. I want to build my own from the ground up."
"By the Savior, I was the same way!" Romulus beamed while he snagged a mostly blank sheet of paper off Herbert's pile before he summoned a knife that rounded and shrank itself until it became a metallic pencil with a glowing tip. He started drawing and writing under the pro and con list table that Herbert had written for different Mind stat powers.
Herbert pushed away from the table with a respectful nod to Cyrus and Romulus, who didn't pay attention. He took his other sheets of paper over to Adelaide and Rick where they started talking over plans for the upcoming raid on the greant dungeon. Cyrus felt a chill at the danger everyone would go through. If he finished his Initialization would he be able to help out? He didn't want anyone getting hurt or dying. But if Addy and Rick didn’t want Lyra and Lana going, he doubted Mom would let him go.
"Okay. How many perks do you have now, and what are they?" Romulus beamed after he drew out a strange chart with headings like "Dream", "Enhancement", "Control", and "Unique". Each column had a set of numbers from 1 to 5 on the side.
"Summon, Analysis, and Limit Break so far."
"Hm. Interesting. How does Summon work?"
"It lets me tag an object and summon it, but I can't use it fully yet since it's only a perk. If I want to summon something, I have to do it right after tagging an object."
"Ah, okay. Summon can vary a lot as a core component, but it sounds like a hybrid of Control and Unique." He wrote out 'Summon' with U-3 and C-2 beside it. "Analysis is a standard Dream power perk. But how does Limit Break work?"
"It makes me aware of any limits I have when I try to do something and makes it easier once I surpass it. I hope it'll let me surpass limits outright, but so far it hasn't let me do that."
"Probably a hybrid between Dream, Enhancement, and Unique, but we'll see. That's the last one you've gotten?"
"Yeah. I got it a couple of months ago and haven't cracked it." Cyrus's head reeled a bit from what the hell each of these columns and numbers were, but they had the air of practiced categories they must use in their home dimension. Which sounded so cool! Maybe if they figured out how to get back to their home, Cyrus could explore it a little.
"So you won't time it out to a year any time soon. I have good and bad news, though. You'll be forced to Initialize after you finish this perk. But since you've gotten each of the perks your Initialization power will have, you’ll get to choose what it becomes." Romulus lectured while he tallied some numbers to the side of the chart. "You'll probably get a Dream oriented power, which will make you more likely to get those type of powers later on, but depending on how you try to use Limit Break now, you could push that into Control."
"Oh. Okay." Cyrus glanced down at his game while he wondered if he'd gone about this wrong. Limit Break applied to every one of his limitations. Should he have tried to use it for exercise or something? He had focused on gaming since it had clear-cut goals of progression.
"It looks like you're trying to use it passively and that's great! But I bet you'll see some results if you wait until nearly the last second to use it to push you farther. It's Limit Break so that'll be a fundamental part of it."
Cyrus nodded while he picked up the console again and started playing. He did his best to ignore Romulus watching over his shoulder while he pushed his character through a series of fights with monsters as the timer ticked down. Graphics of blood and gore flashed on the screen while the difficulty ramped up with each wave.
Limit Break made him aware of where his reaction time faltered as he chained a series of combos and parries to destroy enemies. Tension mounted in his aching fingers while he pulled the screen closer to his face. He had twenty seconds left to defeat fifteen enemies if he wanted the gold trophy. Walls seemed to close in on his psyche as Limit Break screamed that this was where he fell short.
Determination honed his mind into a battering ram as he pushed against those walls and felt vigor flow into his body.
Cyrus executed a chain of the hardest combos in the game flawlessly as he tossed heaps of enemies together as they bounced off the walls of the arena. Normally, this would've been to slow, but Limit Break helped guide him to monopolize on an animation glitch he barely been aware of until the point that the built up damage and combo modifiers rolled over into Eldritch Snap Mode as he used his finisher to eviscerate every enemy with a slash of his enchanted sword.
Victory! You got... Gold!
"I did it!" Cyrus cheered as notifications scrolled across his vision from the System.
Everything went black before he could even confirm the prompt. He seemed to float endlessly in space while motes of power gathered around him. It reminded him of a loading screen.
Words blazed across his vision.
"Merge my perks, please."
You may select from three Initialization powers: Summoner's Bounty Ev. 0 Analytical Progression Ev. 0 Systematic Gamer Ev. 0> Visions of each power filled Cyrus's mind while he read the options, but he felt like it was missing something. These weren't specific enough. Couldn't the System give him more information about the quality of each power, or at least a description? You may select from three Initialization powers: Summoner's Bounty Ev. 0 (Uncommon) Analytical Progression Ev. 0 (Uncommon) Systematic Gamer Ev. 0 (Rare)> At least that was a start. Cyrus let the System fill his thoughts with visions of what each power offered him and he smiled at the options. He already knew that he was going to pick Systematic Gamer, but the other two *could* be good. They just weren't good enough. Summoner's Bounty would let him summon anything he understood while improving it with the summon. It felt like he'd be able to gain information to summon something by banishing it or tagging it. It definitely sounded interesting, but it wasn't what he wanted at all. Analytical Progression didn't seem to summon all that often as an outright summoning power, but would instead guide him on the weaknesses of himself, objects, or others and how to capitalize on them. If he wanted to, he could then summon the knowledge and skill necessary to surpass them, but it felt like it'd have a tremendous cost. Systematic Gamer would let him summon any game he played and then design a sort of secondary system around it. It'd shape itself to fit that game while helping him, but it'd let him summon characters and items from that game. Everyone always said to choose powers you would enjoy using and learning about. It was the obvious choice for that alone, but Cyrus bet he would be able to make Systematic Gamer work like or with the other two powers far easier than he could make them work like Systematic Gamer. He accepted it and immediately used it as he shot back into his body from the System’s Initialization screen. [Stats: Body: None Mind: None Will: None ] [Equipped Power List: Slot One -- Systematic Gamer Ev. 0/Lv. 0 (Rare) Slot Two -- N/A Slot Three -- N/A ] Other prompts appeared as Systematic Gamer summoned them in his vision like the System notifications did. These had a more grainy and pixelated texture to them though while the System notifications were crisp. <[You have chosen the game: Rings of Uneira]> <[Create Character To Summon]> "What happened? What did you get?" Romulus asked while Cyrus smirked to himself while he effortlessly optimized his new character to take advantage of all his meta-knowledge and experience after grinding this game for levels and understanding of Limit Break. <[Character 1: Race: Wasteblooded Human Class: Fighter Lv. 0 Talent: Arcana Attributes: STR - 1 PER - 1 STA - 2 MAG - 2 Inventory: Tutorial Armor (Leather) Tutorial Sword (Iron) Tutorial Shield (Iron) Basic Health Potion x 1 Basic Mana Potion x 1 Skills: Strike (Poor) Rest (Common) Martial Proficiency (Poor) Double Jump Spells: Identify (Common) Manasight (Common) Magic Bolt (Common) ]> <[Would you like to play as Character 1 or summon them?]> Cyrus disappeared in a flash of pixelated light while he grew into his character's massive frame until he towered over Romulus's smaller stature. It felt like a second skin stretched over his body as knowledge flooded his mind. He turned to Romulus with a wide smile as he laughed in the baritone voice of the male voice actor of Rings of Uneira. "What the hell did you get?" "The best power ever." Cyrus grinned as he pushed himself up to his feet with a jarring snap of broken wood as his Strength stat of 1 pulverized it. He held out his hand as he willed the Tutorial Sword to appear in his grip. Rudimentary knowledge of how to use it according to the game’s animations and skill trees flooded his mind. <[You have equipped: Tutorial Sword!]> It appeared in a pixelated flash of special effects like it did in the game while he marveled at the cheap iron blade before he unequipped it and shoved it back into his inventory where it'd rot. "How do you feel about making me some better equipment?" "What do you want?" Romulus blinked like a fish out of water while Cyrus idly used Identify on him. <[HUMAN: Not a Game Summon.] STATUS REDACTED> Cyrus had to resist the urge to not laugh like a maniac. Oh, this was excellent. He bet that he'd be able to force it to work on anyone eventually after some levels or after he evolved Systematic Gamer. The possibilities were endless, especially since he bet that he'd be able to use other powers too once he got them. "Everything. I want everything."