{What do I need to do?} I asked, my words slamming themselves into my interface with the force of a gunshot. {And why can’t I talk anymore?}

//YOU ARE IN A STATE BETWEEN.

//SAFE FROM THE CLAWS OF DEATH, BUT NOW IN THE JAWS OF MERCILESS TIME.

//DO NOT DAWDLE; TAKE THE MESS OF //NULL THAT WAS WITHIN YOU AND COMBINE IT WITH THE CREATION BEFORE YOU.

//ONLY THEN WILL THE CORE THAT IS CREATED TRULY BE OURS.

Ours? I tried to shake my head, but the only thing I could move were my eyes. I could feel the stuff in my chest starting to solidify, and I decided listening to the error messages couldn’t hurt more than having a core that wasn’t really mine.

I looked inwards at the frozen mess that was my body and armor, and felt everything going wrong with me. All the errors that blocked out my interface, all the malfunctions that hovered in midair, all the utter absences on me that both felt like something and nothing at the same time; I needed them to work for me instead of against me. My first thought was that they’d be hungry, and that I could feed them with the swirling slurry in my chest, but they didn’t react whatsoever when I tried pushing the slurry to my interface.

But they did push something back; a feeling like disgust. That they would consume my potential for their own. How I understood that I would probably never know, but in that moment I stopped looking at them as invaders. These errors had been keeping me alive without a core for all this time, and now I’d forced them into the eyes of the system. Where they couldn’t keep helping me. And they were doing everything they could to keep me alive, but not letting me get a normal core of my own. There had to be a reason for that.

A reason I could find out later. Instead of offering them a meal, this time I tried offering them a home. To meld with the slurry at a foundational level, to become one and the same. But the errors felt like they had a purpose, whereas the slurry simply felt like it would be shaped. The errors would shape the slurry for me. The core wouldn’t truly be mine, but it would belong to me infinitely more than the Obsidian Conundrum ever had.

The core I was randomly assigned versus the one I had sculpted specifically for me. The errors fluttered and blinked, then they were gone. Working within the slurry and absorbing it into themselves to keep living, but now without the fear of being discovered. Without the fear of my dying on them.

//RELIEF. {Relief.}

I closed my eyes and sighed, feeling the mess in my chest starting to beat once more. {What do I need to do now?} I asked the error messages, and the text that I received in response was simply understood without me having to read it.

//YOU MUST GIVE SHAPE TO THE SHAPELESS.

//TAKE THE POTENTIAL AND MOLD IT INTO SOMETHING REAL.

{Of course, I’ll just do that now.} I said with a roll of my eyes. {I’ve done it a million times before, so what’s one more?}

//I CAN FEEL THE SASS ACROSS THE ETERNITIES.

//DO NOT BEGIN A WAR YOU CANNOT HOPE TO WIN.

I couldn’t help but laugh, a sound that actually escaped my mouth, and felt the core slurry tighten as my interface blinked out in front of me. I blinked twice in surprise, still unable to move, but now I could see Jun’s helmet a few inches away from my face while her hands were on the back of my head. It looked like she was panicking. I’d have to decide what I was going to tell her happened later, since this didn’t seem like the sort of thing I could hand-wave away.

My interface reopened with a thought, and the only thing I noticed had changed was the absence of my information button. My core was still listed as //NULL, but when I pressed on it, it showed something that was as chaotic as before but nowhere near as glitchy.

{The slurry is spinning around like a whirlpool. Is it supposed to do that?} I asked my errors, but didn’t receive any answers. I had to assume that meant I was on the right track. {Alright, let’s see what I can change here.}

//VOLATILE: The core is in constant flux. Set parameters to constrain what the core, node gain, and mastery gain functions will be.

I tried to cross my arms only to be reminded yet again of my situation. I then tried to shake my head. {I need to get control of my body back.} I muttered, looking into the center of the whirlpool as I wondered what I wanted my core to be. If I could somehow make use of my memories, that would be for the best. Then I thought back to all the massive hazard heart bosses I’d fought with my friends, and how none of their functions could ever be harvested. Maybe my core could take those functions from them.

But then I saw Jun’s helmet through the whirlpool. No; what my core needed to do was let me keep my friends alive. Poe had died because of my incompetence. Sam had died because we couldn’t afford better gear for him. And everyone had lost everything they’d worked for because of something none of us could control. I needed my core to give me control of that somehow.

The whirlpool froze, and I felt my core beating rhythmically once more.

//CORE FUNCTIONS AND APPEARANCE OF //NULL FINALIZED. Functions: //CONSUMPTION, //CREATION, and //ENTROPY solidified. Writing functions to core… complete. Leftover potential: 103. Potential consumed by //CREATION.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

//BRIMMING: //NULL now has sufficient potential to //CORRUPT an item of up to (Crafted) quality. If the item is below (Crafted) quality, //CREATION will not consume all stored potential.

//THANK YOU SEBASTIAN.

//YOU WILL NEVER REGRET THE GIFT YOU HAVE GIVEN ME.

//IF YOU EVER WISH TO CONVERSE, SIMPLY USE {} AND I WILL INSTANTLY ANSWER.

//SURVIVE.

I gasped and lifted my hands to my neck, bending over and knocking the top of my helmet against Jun’s chin. I chuckled nervously as she hovered over me, muttering worriedly to herself. I could breathe again. I could move again. And now I actually had a core of my own.

“Seb?” Jun asked, her voice shaky and unsure. “What just happened to you?”

My interface still stared me in the face, my frozen whirlpool of a core now shot through with blinding white potential. Small flakes of it drifted upwards every now and again, letting me know that the errors were a true part of me now, but they were errors in name alone. They’d kept me alive, they’d given me my core, and if corrupted items were worth my time, they’d keep giving for as long as I was alive.

“I just got my core.” I laughed shakily. “And I almost died in the process.”

“You just got your core.” Jun stated, gripping me by the shoulders and pressing her helmet to mine. “You… just… got… your… core. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“No. No, it doesn’t.” I agreed.

“...So are you going to tell me what happened?” She asked.

I shook my head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did. Hell, even I’m not really sure what just happened. But the really short version is that I didn’t get assigned a core, and trying to open the related part of my interface somehow made everything worse.”

“Okay. I don’t get why that would kill you, but okay.” Jun said, nodding quickly and carefully stepping away from me before plopping back down on our branch. “Maybe once you trust me a little more you can tell me the whole story?”

I shrugged noncommittally. I already trusted Jun far more than I should, but that was probably a remnant of my old life. When you were one of the strongest people in the world, you stopped being scared of knives in the back. It was the fireballs blotting out the horizon I had to look out for.

“Maybe.” I eventually said, pulling my sigil off my chest and dismissing it into my inventory. “I want to try out my new core function, but I’m not sure how it works. If all my armor suddenly disappears, it’s because my function drained my battery.”

Jun nodded as I pulled up my interface again and hovered over my Sigil of Amplification, then moved the text over my //NULL core. It instantly broke down into the glowing white symbol-letters, then pulled me into the screen with my frozen whirlpool of a core. The white accented lines dimmed slightly as I saw the sigil placed in the very middle of it, forming a gleaming white mass that pulsed with potential.

//CREATION activated. Item to be //CORRUPTED: (Crafted,Rare) Sigil of Amplification. Stored potential diminished by 50. The following factors will be considered while //CORRUPTING:

//AUGMENT: The //CORRUPTED item will increase.

//ENDURE: The //CORRUPTED item will last.

I raised an eyebrow at the options; it was obvious where the //AUGMENT portion had come from, but had the //ENDURE option come from the fact that the sigil also granted me a small battery bonus? If that was the case, then was there a specific // command for each different stat bonus an item could have?

My whirlpool blazed brilliant white for a short moment, then began whirling. It spun faster than my eyes could follow for a split second, then froze once more. And in the middle of the whirlpool sat three military-esque ribbons that bled the same white pixels that my core did. They each depicted a snake eating its own tail, slowly spinning while its scales shimmered with iridescent blue and white.

//CREATION complete. Sigil of Amplification has been //CORRUPTED into //ENDLESS.

I held out my hand, expecting the strips to appear in my palm, but instead felt them cement onto my left shoulder. The bottom parts of the ribbons turned upwards and fluttered in the air, like kelp stretching upwards in the ocean, giving off little white embers that shimmered in the air for a few inches before disappearing.

“I’m never going to sneak up on anybody with these.” I chuckled, brushing my knuckles over my conspicuous new trinkets that only counted as one thing.

Jun reached over and felt the ribbon between her fingers, then frowned as her armor blocked her from feeling anything. “Your core traded the thing on your chest for those? Was it worth it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I closed my core window and hovered over my equipped gear, noting that I’d lost the stats from my sigil and hadn’t gained anything noticeable from the ribbons.

//ENDLESS(//CORRUPTED,Crafted): Core Mastery Requirement: 3

  Current item mastery: 1

  Ribbons in use: 0/3

Use a consumable on a ribbon to paint it in the colours of said consumable. Consume a ribbon to gain the effects of the consumable.

Ribbon recharge rate is based on the strength of the consumable it is dyed with.

Ribbon consumables have (25+Mastery)% increased potency.

Upgrades at item mastery [1/5/15/25/???]. Upgrade effects are hidden until achieved.

I relayed as much to Jun, who cocked her head to the side in confusion. I knew the question she was about to ask before it left her mouth.

“Consumables? Doesn’t that just mean food? You can eat your ribbons?”

“Technically you’re right, but ‘consumable’ here refers to something else. Have you ever heard of potions?” I asked, receiving a shake no in return. “A potion is something you drink that gives you a temporary effect. Sometimes it's instant, like a burst of integrity or battery recovery, and sometimes it lasts a while, like giving increases to stats.”

“Oh, like a liquid blessing.” Jun said with a nod. “Would it work for solid blessings too, or does it have to be liquid? And I’ve heard of gaseous blessings, but they were always too expensive, so we probably won’t find any of those.”

That brought my train of thought to a screeching halt. Potions had only been a thing in fiction up until the razing, but Jun was talking about them as if they were something real to her. Which meant one of two things, and neither of them bode well for me.

One: Jun’s people were way more advanced than humans were. And knowing humans, we might be at war with them by the time Jun and I got to the new world.

Or two: Jun still had all her old memories and was lying to me about everything.