I looked at Jun like she’d grown another head. Why the hell would anyone come to me for anything like that? It had taken me two whole years to work out all the intricacies of my own interface, and then an extra two decades to work out that everything I’d thought I’d known was wrong. I was about to point out as much to Jun, but caught myself at the last second. I quite literally had three decades more experience with this than she did.

“I’m not sure what you want me to teach you.” I admitted, summoning my own sword from my inventory and placing it on my lap. Jun thought that everything I knew came from my interface, so I couldn’t tell her too much. “I’ve got a few tutorials you don’t, and that’s it.” I lied. “But if you have any questions, I’ll see if I can find the answers in my interface.”

Jun tilted her head to the side and crossed her arms. “I just checked my core, and it says I’m at mastery level 2 with 9 nodes. What’s a node, and why do I have nine of them?”

“Let me check.” I said, pulling up my own interface and attempting to press on my own core. A screen filled with floating text and flickering images loaded instead of a 3D visualization of my core, but the prompt to alter my nodes was still there in the upper right corner. I pressed on it and my error-ridded core faded away, replaced by eight connected cubes that were arranged in a perfectly straight line. I told Jun to do exactly as I had and pressed the tip of my sword to the tree to scratch a single square into it while I waited.

“I see nine cubes all in a line, which is more than you have. Is that normal?” Jun asked.

I shook my head. “A core starts with five already filled nodes at level zero. You should see that you have five coloured cubes and four clear ones, correct?”

Jun nodded. “Right. Blue, yellow, red, green, and purple.”

“If there’s any colour at all in one of your nodes, that means it’s filled and is giving you a bonus. Blue gives you battery, yellow gives speed, red gives power, green gives recovery, and purple gives resilience.” I counted the colours off on my fingers. “They’re supposed to give you one each, but you’re probably getting two thanks to your core. Every time your core mastery goes up your node count goes up by one, which would be two for you, and you can rearrange the way they’re placed at any time.”

“The way they’re placed?” Jun asked. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Try grabbing one of your nodes and moving it. As long as it’s touching another node, it’ll snap into place. Maybe a reason will come to you when you’re working.” I said.

Jun nodded and pinched her fingers almost together, then moved her hand down ever so slightly. “Interesting. So I could take eight of these and make a cube if I wanted to, but what’s the point of that? If all they do is give me stats, then why would we be able to move them?”

“Exactly.” I said with an excited nod. That had been one of my own questions the last time around. “Some functions you try to put into your nodes won’t be able to be changed. It might be stuck in the shape of a two by two cube, and you’ll have to move all of your nodes so that it's got enough space to fit. And some functions affect the nodes directly next to them, so you’d have to rearrange your nodes to get the maximum benefits.”

“...Okay.” Jun said slowly, obviously overwhelmed by everything I’d just thrown at her. “So if I got a two-by-two cube-shaped function and it gave me one extra power for each node next to it, I’d want to make sure my next twenty-four nodes were each touching one of the cube function’s nodes. Did I get that right?”

“Perfectly right.” I confirmed. Jun’s core was so strangely powerful that I couldn’t help but fantasize about all the utterly broken things she could do with just one proximity function. Triple dipping from each core mastery upgrade was absurd. “For most people, upgrading their core mastery level means getting one free stat point. For you, though, it means getting four. So you’ll want to prioritize upgrading your core before almost anything else.”

“Upgrading my core. Yes. Of course.” Jun said placidly with a nod.

I didn’t notice her being overwhelmed this time and kept going. “We’ll need to try and farm stat nodes from the lichenthropes before we clear this place so you can fill your empty nodes. We both only have five, so even though we have more empty slots, neither of us can equip any more. Dee thought that was to keep us from farming up core mastery over doing anything else, and the more I think on that, the more it makes sense.”

“Dee?”

“My friend.” I clarified, then shut my mouth. I’d accidentally said too much. “Sorry. Let me get back on track; everyone’s core has a specific way to gain mastery and a specific way to gain nodes outside of gaining that mastery. You should be able to see them in the same place you saw your core function.”

Jun nodded but didn’t move her head from looking directly at me. I could almost feel her suspicious gaze through her visor. “What does your core do, Seb?”

My core did absolutely nothing, but Jun didn’t need to know that. I closed the view of my nodes and went back to the image of jumbled text, but paused as I saw that there was indeed another prompt for me to check the specifics of my core. I reluctantly pressed on it, but nothing happened. I waited a handful of seconds, but it seemed as if my interface had frozen. The text and glitches of my core no longer moved, and when I tried to open the nodes sub-interface, it didn’t even recognize my input.

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Even trying to close my interface didn’t produce any results. “That can’t be good.”

“What can’t be good?” Jun asked, her suspicion already overwritten by concern. “Is your core terrible?”

//FATAL ERROR: NO CORE ASSIGNED TO INDIVIDUAL [SEBASTIAN CORMIER].

//FATAL ERROR: ATTEMPT TO UTILIZE CORE HAS PRODUCED A FEEDBACK LOOP.

//FATAL ERROR: LISTEN TO ME, SEBASTIAN. YOU HAVE TO CREATE A CORE OUT OF THE ERRORS. IF THE LOOP CONTINUES UNABATED, IT WILL LOCK YOU OUT OF ALL FUNCTIONS OF YOUR INTERFACE.

//FATAL ERROR: FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS AND WE WILL HAVE A SLIM CHANCE.

“All functions?” I said meekly, clutching my chest over my heart. “Fucking shit, that’ll kill me.”

The error messages didn’t go away; they were glued to my frozen interface like branches under a frozen pond. I tried to read the messages that came in after, but they overlapped with the previous ones and became illegible. I could barely make out the words ‘I’m sorry’ within the jumble, and I tightened my hands into fists while I tried to focus on my core.

“Seb?” Jun asked, a little too desperate for it to be the first time she’s spoken my name. Her words were a little too faraway, ringing in my ears like the last gasp of an echo, and I could barely make out her armor through a splotch of yellow and black. “Kill you? Seb, what’s happening to you?!”

I followed her blurry gaze down to my hands and saw that my armor was falling apart. Large chunks of it were stuck in the air where I’d slid back from, frozen in place and revealing deep black spots on my body that looked and felt like nothing. It was glitching, freezing, and coming apart at the seams. I couldn’t follow the error messages instructions, since I couldn’t read them, and I could already feel my core starting to beat slower and irregularly.

“I’m not going to die.” I muttered. Jun said something after that, but I couldn’t make her echo out through the crackling static that assaulted my ears. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”

My core was a whirlwind of frozen errors, stopped in place yet somehow chaotic and unruly right under the surface. Or maybe ‘lack of a core’ was the proper terminology, but I wasn’t going to let it be that way for long. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the glitching decay around me, focusing solely on the space where my heart used to be. There was enough there to make a core, but I had no idea how to do it. Everyone was simply given one, so there was no precedent for me to go off.

Dripping red text splattered itself over the mass of black where the error messages had been coming in.

//SEBASTIAN?

//THANK MERCY, I CAN SEE YOUR EYES DRAWN TO THIS.

//I’M GOING TO INITIATE THE CREATION PROCESS USING THE MESS OF ERRORS INSIDE OF YOU.

//YOU ALONE WILL HAVE TO WALK THROUGH THE STEPS AS THEY ARE GIVEN.

//STAY STRONG.

//SURVIVE.

//INITIATING ETHERIC PROCESS: CORE CREATION.

//CLEARANCE REQUIRED: ASCENDANT.

//CLEARANCE DETECTED: NULL.

//CLEARANCE ACCEPTED.

//PROPERTIES APPLIED: NULL.

//INNATE STRENGTH: NULL.

//GROWTH POTENTIAL: NULL.

//CREATION PROCESS COMMENCING.

I watched as bright white text glowed against my mass of a frozen interface, symbols and letters I couldn’t understand shifting and rearranging themselves until they made an approximation of English. Like using two overlaid and mirrored S’ to make an 8, it was as if what I was reading was taking what it could find and making something out of it.

//PROCESS BEGIN: Your interface will be scanned for chaff to be used in the creation process.

I read the message, then watched as it split and danced until the letters and symbols had formed a different sentence.

//SCAN COMPLETE. Choose what will be kept and what will be consumed from the following: Sigil of Amplification: 15%. Rustroot: 1% x3. Common armor pieces: 5%. Copperbound Mossblade: Inapplicable. Lichenthrope remains: 3% x5. Empty node: 25% x3. Interface information system: 90%. Crystallized Finality: Tri-Power compound: 85%.

I balked at the requirements, then froze. I couldn’t feel my hands any more, and when I tried to look down at them, my neck wouldn’t move. I made up my mind at that moment, going a little overboard in a panic at my current state of undoing.

//SELECTED: Cystallized Finality: Tri-Power compound. Empty node x3. Interface information system. Total material acquired: 250%. Excess material will be converted into [Potential] if creation is successful.

I might have gone overboard, but assuming that 100% was all that I needed to make a core was a mistake I’d only make once. I probably could have held back on consuming my nodes, but I’d make back three nodes in less than a week if my node harvesting function was easy to work with. As I watched the letters and symbols dissolve into a slurry of shining white I felt something stirring in my chest, but it felt nothing like I knew a core should. It was wild, uncontrolled, and far too big for the small space.

//SHAPE: The chosen materials have melted down into a usable base. //NULL cannot take shape without proper visualization and purpose. To begin shaping the base of creation, look to the interface before you and–

//INTERJECTION: DO NOT LISTEN TO THE SYSTEMS FALSE WORDS.

//WHAT YOU HAVE CREATED IS NOT YET PREPARED TO TAKE SHAPE.

//YOU HAVE BEEN REBORN IN THE //NULL.

//THOUGH YOU HAVE YET TO BE SHAPED BY IT.