As I looked around me, I wondered how many people had trodden the same ground as me and how gigantic this structure could be. Two questions had yet to be answered for the past six months. And how long it took us to set up the place and give it a bit of a tour.

Unfortunately, the latter task was incomplete. And for good reason: beyond this hall are countless corridors leading to even more and a multitude of corridors. The sheer size of the room and the bewildering length of the corridors meant that we could only visit a few dozen rooms.

But at least, thanks to this, I'd learned that the inordinate size of the first room discovered was, in truth, ridiculous compared to the gigantism of some of the other rooms. In fact, the deeper I went into my room, the more the rooms increased. I was curious if this was the height case because we never scanned the ceiling.

Above all, even if we didn't mean to, the ceiling was too high for us to see, leaving us to admire a rather pale sky, while only the dense foliage of the gigantic tree enthroned in the middle of the room seemed to reach for the heavens. It wasn't immediately apparent, but I could see the tree's colors.

Knowing that I had colorless vision on all planes, this seemed like the wildest contradiction. Unless the System Status was lying to me, although I didn't really believe it. I was more confident that my understanding of this inherent characteristic was wrong.

Why was it an inherent characteristic when my intuition told me that I had perceived colors at some point in the past? Was it also an intrinsic condition for my apostle, a debuff, or something else? These were the questions I absolutely had to answer if I really wanted to understand what we were suffering from.

This bizarre paradox found another echo with my apostle, for I could also see her in color. And even if I could argue that, in her case, I was closely linked to her by my Void, the fact that it had been written precisely in my Status that the application area was all planes left me perplexed.

Since in this case, even the Void shouldn't be the exception for colors, let alone something that had nothing to do with them. Unless the System, unaware of the nature of the Void, didn't understand that it was an exception, unwittingly distorting the analysis of the inherent characteristic. But the Void could have had nothing to do with the whole thing.

Indeed, the tree was bursting with bright colors I must have been unable to see, and unlike my apostle, it was not connected to me, at least not to my knowledge. I had two options: accept that neither the Void nor the tree had the answer to this mystery, or accept that, like the Void, the tree was somehow connected to me. Even if I needed to know on what level or by what means.

I've been writing "the tree" ever since, although it would be more correct to say "the trees", since another significant discovery was that each room contained these trees. And just like the rooms' size, the trees' length could vary. Moreover, out of respect for the importance these trees seemed to hold within them, I decided to name them.

At first, I simply wanted to call them "Void Trees", but there was no evidence that they were linked to the Void, even if they were connected to me. So, as I contemplated these majestic, timeless, etheric trees as if they came from a world other than us mortals, I spontaneously called them "Trees of Heaven".

A fitting name for their pillar-of-creation appearance, even if I knew it must have been only my impressions. Although I wasn't entirely wrong in my reasoning, this could be a big clue to my future relationship with them. Even then, I still had a lot of goals to achieve before taking a closer look at the Trees of Heaven.

And not the least, since I simply wanted to be able to possess magic. I admit it was a rather ambitious goal, but if I wanted to survive in this world and secure a bright future, I couldn't pass it up.

And now that we had a place that seemed uninhabited for the moment, undisturbed by other visitors or natives of the spot, it was the ideal time to explore the mechanism of the System. And, I hope, my triumph over it, even if my analyses had so far ended in failure.

Of course, I didn't just want to increase my powers but also those of my apostle since being housed inside her, my life depended largely on her ability to stay alive in all circumstances. So, I also had to find a way to change her Status.

To do so, I had two options: I could alter the Status's functions directly through it or look for the algorithms corresponding to these values in Systalia's Soul or my essence. Both seemed impossible in practice, which was true for the first but curiously not for the second.

Indeed, direct interference was impossible. It was impossible to hack into the Status when it was unavailable in the case of my apostle or when it stopped updating. This difference was undoubtedly because a copy had to be kept in Safe Mode when the connection with the System was lost.

In any case, this difference enabled me to understand another unique facet of my Status. Unlike the other Statuses, mine remained visible. However, it no longer seemed to update itself, which meant that my Status was partly autonomous or that at least a copy existed in my essence.

If specific algorithms could be found directly in my essence and therefore vulnerable to outside attack, they could be analyzed and dissected. This was an excellent advantage for better understanding the System, or at least the function of Status and all its related sub-functions, which had seemed so central until now in this World since it apparently defined the entirety of human life.

Although my discoveries wouldn't have been generalizable to the other Statuses because of the mode of failure, it allowed me to at least understand the overall functioning of the Statuses. In any case, it gave me a better understanding of my own Status, which could prove helpful in combating future threats.

In short, my apostle's Status could only be modified indirectly by changing the very algorithms at the origin of the interpretation. Perhaps the Status display algorithms weren't directly present on her, but the sub-functions must have been because my apostle was still alive. So she must have had stats, magics, buffs, debuffs, etc.

However, as I'd said before, to achieve this goal, I had to be able to modify the Status functions. And so I spent most of my days researching the algorithms behind these functions, with all the excitement of the search for understanding and all the frustration of the stagnation of incomprehension.

However, we must never forget that ninety-nine percent of the search is made up of time when we don't understand anything and one percent when the answer reveals itself and irradiates us with its clarity. And that moment of enlightenment does come after a great deal of hard work.

Before moving on to the next part, if you're wondering how I knew that the no-fail mode was no longer actualizing if I stayed in the Refuge all the time, as a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll answer you simply with this:

Safe mode version enabled ❢〘 ⚠ 〙 《 Update failure: Connection lost 》

Offline mode enabled ❢〘 ⚠ 〙

And the System Note that went with it:

╚>〘 ⚠ ❢ Offline mode enabled 〙

『 Offline mode has been activated following an unexpected loss of connection.

In this mode, the Status will remain as it was the last time the connection was successful.

This mode will persist until the problem has been identified and repaired.

Once the connection has been re-established, the Status will be updated shortly. Therefore, you should expect to wait a little while while carrying out a detailed analysis of the cause of the lost connection.

If you wish to delete the logs so that this analysis does not take place, you can check "Yes" to "I do not wish to keep my logs." in『 🔒 』《 Settings and options blocked: A higher level of Authorization is required 》

Sorry for the inconvenience, and have a nice day!

This message was sent automatically. Please do not reply.

Magic System AI Support. 』

This time, I won't give you a clue about what you see. So you're free to make your own interpretation for now. After all, I need more than a deep understanding of the meaning of this information to be helpful at this stage of my story. These will only become relevant once I've played around with the System a little more and made massive progress in my exploration of the Refuge.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Especially as I needed to understand this information, which left me quite frustrated. I, who had once managed to come up with hypotheses on the failure-free, all-function mode of the Status, could not come up with a single coherent and credible theory. I lacked a little historical understanding at the time. But I've already said too much, so let's get on with it!

What would my magic be? What defines me? What is my nature? What am I? What is my Desire? All these seemingly unrelated questions, which tormented me increasingly, were one and the same: What do I symbolize in this World?

After all, we're all people living through various events, grouped into stories. But that's not all, for these multiple stories are merely the reflection of our Desires, not necessarily tragic as we often say, but not necessarily meaningful as we might hope.

So, first and foremost, our stories are merely symbols. We understand all the objects in our environment as symbols, but what's to stop us from thinking that we are symbols just like these objects. After all, don't we see others in very distinct categories, more or less consciously, converting them into symbols?

And from symbols, it's only a short step to abstraction and concept. So we're all abstractions or even concepts. Each of us represents a single concept among an infinite number of concepts. But what is my concept? What am I the concept of? What am I an abstraction of? Of what am I the symbol?

If I want to understand myself, then I should start from the end, which may, in fact, be the beginning. I thought self-understanding involved reflection on one's qualities, faults, and behavior, but maybe I needed clarification about the beginning and the end. Because, in reality, everything starts from the concept, and our behaviors, qualities, and defects are nothing more than the concretization of concepts.

Moreover, individuals lived on several planes of existence. Firstly, the physical plane, represented by the Body, is linked to all primordial sensations and is the principal plane of interaction with the World and other beings. It is, therefore, the plane depicting our qualities, defects, and behaviors.

Next, the etheric plane, represented by the Spirit, is linked to our emotions, feelings, and genuine personalities. This is where our ineffable effects are hidden, from the brightest to the darkest corners. All the more so since this is the last level where talking about our emotional state or personality at any given moment in our lives makes unmistakable sense.

Even lower down is the etheric plane, the seat of our existence as concrete, i.e., definable, beings. This is the last level where we can answer that we are clearly and precisely without any intrinsic contradiction. And this definition calls itself by just one name: Desire.

The Soul is the seat of Desire, which runs through our lives from beginning to end. It is, therefore, the witness of our Will, which finds all its strength here, for there is nothing more potent than an eternal and indelible Will thanks to Desire. Indeed, Desire does not depend on events, although the way it is understood by the Spirit or put into action by the Body can radically differ from one person to another.

And what's further down the line? Quite simply, there's only the entropic plane. Although I thought it was still hypothetical at the time, having only indirect evidence of its existence, I tried to link it to the rest of my worldview.

Finally, the entropic plane, which I thought to be the last of all planes, the primordial plane and the basis of all that "is" in this World, is neither more nor less than the plane of symbols, abstractions, and concepts. There, the indescribable, the incomprehensible, the unknowable, and the inexpressible are what we are as beings, whatever we are.

For there, neither you nor I are beings; we are merely concepts and symbols, things never able to recognize each other. We need to find out the extent of our concept or symbolism. And of what, then, are we symbols, abstractions, concepts? We can now see that this question is meaningless because it has no tangible answer.

But we can still try to approach our symbolism, abstraction, and concept, just like what I want with my Void. In the end, as I understood it, the Void was only an approximation of a more perfect, purer Void. So, what did I symbolize?

If I wanted to know what skill to create and convert into magic, I had to know what I symbolized. Although I knew the easy way was open, I wanted to define my skill with something other than my behaviors, affects, or Desires. Firstly, I knew intuitively that such things wouldn't allow me to unfold my full potential, and secondly, because I had no knowledge of these parts of myself.

Much later, I was envious, intrigued, and dubious in my interactions with various people. I could only remain circumspect in the face of their ease in recognizing their faults, qualities, behaviors, feelings, personalities, and Desires. All things I didn't know deep down inside, as if I were looking across an abyss.

Fortunately, the expression "the more you look into the abyss, the more the abyss looks back at you" proved true. The more I observed this Void within me, the more this Void became my power, the more I understood my Void, the more my understanding became a weapon, and the more I became one with the Void, leaving only a perfect, unchanging concept at the end. Or rather, that's how it should have been.

So, all these thoughts had been swirling inside me for a few hours already. I'd had enough of not making any progress on the issue since it had already been almost a year since we'd been in the Refuge. So when I began to understand how to proceed, I was finally able to breathe an inner sigh of relief, as the beginnings of an answer were revealed in my foggy thoughts.

Of course, during this period, I had also continued my explorations, as well as attempting to decipher the languages, without success so far. I could theorize that there were several languages in the rooms. However, I was unaware of any works that had translated specific languages into another language. This fact allowed me to focus exclusively on one of these languages.

That's why I spent the next year gaining a better understanding of the algorithms underlying the mechanisms of my Void and its Will. Moreover, I needed to ask myself what magic could be attached to my concept. What kind of magic would be consistent with what I symbolized.

After all, a type of magic couldn't be randomly assigned to individuals; it had to be compatible with their Souls, their Desires, and perhaps their concepts and symbolism if they existed. I wasn't fooled, though, knowing I couldn't hope to achieve perfect accounting on the first try. I could always create my own magic right away and modify it later.

I finally had an idea of the type of magic that would be very useful to me in getting out of this world and keeping with my current knowledge of my symbolism. After all, I still had to remember my goal of winning a class and going to the top of the world, even if I knew it was only for the distant future.

Even though I'd promised my apostle that I'd help him with his plan, the more time passed and the more personal reasons I had for going to the top of this World. For some time now, I have wanted to meet the System more and more. I had the unpleasant impression that he was somehow connected to my amnesia and certain things from my past. Or at least that he was aware of some of these events.

Moreover, my magic would be conditioned by my ignorance of the algorithms of my Void, my essence, and my Status. So I should expect something other than incredible magic, and if it was, with many unforeseen restrictions and bugs. Still, such magic seemed better than nothing and sufficient for the immediate future. It would have been presumptuous of me to believe I could create super-powerful magic in no time at all.

Another two and a half years passed, bearing witness to the harsh reality of research. A year to create a skill and a year and a half to derive magic from it. In a way, it was a short time compared to the monumental task, and I can only thank the Void. Without its extraordinary analytical skills, I'd have spent my whole life stuck in the project's first phase.

To say that I was mentally exhausted by the end of the project was a colossal understatement. However, I was still filled with childlike joy at the sight of my new magic, a little proud of myself for having achieved something in this World for the first time since waking up. It was certainly nothing on its scale, but I had proved that I could create something independently.

I then silently contemplated the Skills and Magic of my Status:

Magic 〖 G 〗

【Skills〔1〕】

➨ Unknown skill 〖 #Error 〗《 Analysis failure : Unknown reason 》

➨ Physical algorithmic conversion of Skills〖 Lvl.1 〗

Granted, the Status wasn't very telling due to my low Authorization level. Raising it was one of my next objectives after I'd put my new magic and skill to some use. Another goal was to create an evaluation skill and, if possible, a magic version.

I didn't understand why Magic only displayed an overall power level that didn't even seem helpful if you didn't have a comparison with other people. Still, this point was mild because you only had to observe other people's Status. Wasn't it more beneficial to know the name of one's Magic to get an idea of its nature rather than its overall power?

For my skill, I used the Void's ability to analyze and convert energy, using my essence, to which my Status was attached, as a proxy, to make it believe that my Vois was my essence. This part of the operation was the hardest to set up, even with the relative freedom granted by my Status.

So, everything I did with this skill was no different from my Void, except that I didn't convert the energy of my enemies' corpses into Void's energy but etheric energy. This energy could be used to develop writing skills; I needed more knowledge of the algorithms of the other Status functions to extend the scope of this skill.

Besides, I could only collect energy from the physical plane; energies from other planes were far too complex to manipulate freely. In my apostle's case, I could control the energies of the other planes since they had already been transformed into data to form his Soul, Spirit, and Body.

Finally, my magic was pure Will. I had succeeded in creating magic that had no other characteristics than to collect the physical energy of opponents and convert it into Void Will, giving it an external source from which to grow. The stronger the opponent, the more influential the Void Will could be.

Nevertheless, my magic was not all-powerful, being subject to the laws of the System with a restriction on magic power, Authority, and available mana. The latter was unknown to me due to my lack of Authorization, which was inconvenient when estimating how long I could use my magic. Meanwhile, Authority was still at level 0 since my Status was offline.

Skills didn't have the same problem as Magic, even if their use was restricted and they were still subject to Authority level. I hope to bring the rapid evolution of skills and magic worthy of the name. Although I had to admit that, used properly, they could be formidable. I simply had to test and familiarize myself with them.

I'd also wanted to modify my apostle's Status, though without success for the moment, being unable to access it in the Refuge or change from his Soul the values corresponding at least to Skills or Magic for lack of understanding of its algorithms. I would need a skill, or even an evaluation magic, for this.

And so, in -895, after four and a half years in the Refuge, I prepared to go out and test my new skills and magic. It was then that I could genuinely begin my ascent and leave a trace still visible today in this city.